Saturday, July 19th, 2008

When it rains, it pours.

So my part for the Brevis is supposed to be in St. Catharines today. I was told 8am, but the FedEx depot here doesn’t open until noon, so I try to catch a few zzz’s before heading over there to pick it up. I figure it’s a good idea to sleep in a bit, then head over and grab it for noon, then meet up with Bill at my place at one, then meet up with Dave in the Falls for two to start shooting the wedding, which he’s already started shooting this morning at eleven. You catch all that?

For some reason my sleeping in isn’t happening. It might have something to do with Sue calling the FedEx main office this morning to get the whereabouts for my package and being told it would be in Windsor by noon. It might have something to do with her having to correct the lady and telling her it’s supposed to be in St. Catharines at noon. It might have something to do with yesterday, when I tried to look it up on the computer, it wasn’t scanned anywhere. Maybe I was too optimistic and ignored the obvious problem of my package disappearing.

That’s all hindsight. This morning I can’t sleep in.

I hop on the computer like I do every morning and see what I missed during my slumber. I have an email in my inbox from a friend of mine I worked with way back in 2002 who says that he has some friends that have the scratch to make a flick, and they just fired their writer. He of course, dropped my name to them as a possible replacement. Right now, they’re interviewing writers to take over, and since they’re looking for an edgy, Tarantino style writer to take over, he thinks I’ll fit that bill.

I wrote a script for him a year ago or so that he was supposed to produce, but I’m not sure exactly what happened with it. He asks me if he can give that to them, or an old script I wrote back in 2002 as a writing sample, or if I have something else I’d prefer. I’m not too keen on that old script, so I tell him to either submit the one I wrote a year ago, or the attachment that I’m sending him. I send him Desolation Row, and he says he’s going to pass that along to them.

I’m not really expecting anything to happen with it, and it won’t be a paying gig regardless, but we’ll see how these cards fall.

Sue and I have two guinea pigs, Wolfgang and LaMotta. For the better part of this week, LaMotta has stopped eating, and more importantly, seems to have stopped drinking. This isn’t good, because when a guinea pig gets sick, they have very little time to recover before they get real worse real quick. Today, Sue phones the vet in Grimsby and asks if they can take him. This stings her a bit, as she recently had her cat put down there and they raped her financially on the cost of it. But what can you do? They’re the only ones that are semi-local that even have an idea of what to do with a guinea pig. They say they’ll take LaMotta so as I’m checking the many inboxes I have, she grabs LaMotta and is off.

I head out to the FedEx depot to pick up my new part. The lady punches in the tracking number and I hear that dreaded noise that all windows users hate to hear. The “dung.” It sounds as if someone smacked your intelligence, that would be the sound it would make. Dung.

Obviously, she can’t find it in her system. She tries a few different ways to find it, and phones some other people and there’s no package to be found. I have to call the shipper, and to do that, I need to go back home and get the number. Why can’t this shit just be easy for me?

I come back home, phone Cinevate and leave a message on their machine, then I get a phone call from Dave asking if we can meet him ten minutes earlier than planned. I say sure, I’m just waiting on Bill who was supposed to be here fifteen minutes ago. I get off the phone with Dave, ring Bill, who tells me he’s on his way. I print up everything I have from FedEx and plan to stop off at the depot on the way to the Falls.

Bill gets here and suddenly I can’t find my ass if it was on the toilet seat. I waste probably a good ten minutes trying to find all my shit before we take off. Bill’s high-tailing it out of there after the ceremony as he’s got previous plans, so we take two cars.

We get to the FedEx depot and I hand over all my printed shit and patiently watch as the lady goes about trying to find my package again. Nothing gets accomplished and it becomes quarter to two, so I have to leave. She has my number and Sue will be home after picking up and dealing with LaMotta and the vet.

Bill and I get to the Falls later than we said, but early in that the show hasn’t started. We quickly get everything set up and ready. Now we just wait on the wedding party and for this show to hit the road.

I’ve shot weddings before, and I’ve been to weddings before. They’re all the same. Until you get a Serbian wedding. Now that is some crazy shit there.

As soon as the gig starts, I know this is going to be different. For example, the whole wedding was in Serbian, and the priest/ minister/ Serbian religious leader is chanting everything. I can’t understand anything that’s going on. They’re walking back and forth, and the priest/ minister/ Serbian religious leader is standing in front of the bride and groom, but facing the same way as them towards the wall. Righteous.

Then they do three laps around the church. There’s a choir on the balcony that seems to be repeating everything the priest/ minister/ Serbian religious leader is chanting. Man, I felt like Jon Voight arriving in New York City in Midnight Cowboy. I’m just trying to keep up.

There was none of that “do you take this person, give her the ring, say your vows” thing going on, and if there was, it wasn’t in English. At one point the dude tied the bride and grooms arms together, placed a book on their heads, planted some crowns on them, made them kiss the book and crowns, then untied them and that was it. They were hitched.

Then the priest/ minister/ Serbian religious dude spoke English, in an English accent of all things, and said they were going to sign the papers. Sweet. This wedding was pretty far out.

We go outside to get the wedding party leaving the church and there’re rumors about throwing money. Sure enough, it wasn’t a rumor as handfuls of change started flying up in the air and smacking people in the head, against the limo and wherever else change felt free to fall. People start scurrying for that shit like chickens to feed. Crazy. Then a fistful of bills comes out, and that was thrown in the air. The funny thing is, only one bill came off, and the rest of the wad landed right in some lady’s hand. To her benefit, she started sharing the money instantly.

So the wedding party comes out, and the wedding party does what all Serbian wedding parties do I guess; they start drinking booze from a cooler beside the church stairs. Serbians are pretty awesome people.

So that’s all done, I hop on Bills cell to see if there’s a voice message from Sue, who was supposed to call FedEx to get to the bottom of this shit. There is a message so I call her back and she starts telling me that FedEx says that Cinevate fucked up. I don’t really believe this, and I start telling her that I don’t care who fucked up, I just want my package when Bills phone dies. Of course.

I borrow Dave’s cell (I really should get me one of these things) and call her back and she tells me she’s on the other line with FedEx. I manage to say that I don’t care what happened, if it’s in Brantford or Mississauga or some shit, I’ll go there and pick it up. She’s on it.

The three of us then caravan it over to where the wedding party is getting their pictures taken. We haul ass to get there and then…. we wait. I meet Joe the photographer and he shakes my hand and crushes it. I realize now how jacked up my hand still is. I punched walls before but it never lasted this long. Oh well, it’s a little embarrassing and I yell at Joe for being the Hulk. I’m not sure how he takes it as I just met him, but damn my hand hurts now. I’d punch him if it didn’t hurt so much.

I hop on Bills cell again and call Sue. Turns out FedEx is changing their story and taking the blame for it. They’re pretty adamant that the fault is theirs and not to blame Cinevate. They fucked up, and my package is in Windsor after all. How the fuck does this happen? How does it go out of province when where it was coming from, and going to, are all in the same province? Yay FedEx, you’re taking the blame. You apologize. Big fucking deal. How does you saying you fucked up get me my package that I need for tomorrow?

FedEx, you are now on my piece of shit list. Congratulations. You’re pieces of shit.

I ask Sue to call them back and find out if the truck is making any stops. If it stops and unloads in Mississauga onto another truck, I’ll drive my raging ass up to Mississauga and grab it, maybe punch a few walls in the process. That building should be made out of some nice concrete. I get off the phone, and Bill jets to meet up with Leanne and do some family thing in Markham.

Finally the wedding party arrives just in time for it to really start raining (literally). Joe starts leading them through the paces of their pictures, Dave and I tape a lot of it, they move to a few locations around the joint, we film it, then Dave and I head off to the hall, hitting a Tim Hortons up along the way.

We get to the hall, start charging our camera batteries and wait. And wait. And wait. Joe arrives and we ask what’s going on. He says the limo is riding around town and the wedding party is having a good time inside. While I’m getting setup for the shit we got to do in the hall, I spill my coffee over my brand new shirt. This isn’t too important, but it pissed me off. I like that shirt.

The limo arrives and no one gets out. Dave and I are ready to go. The window rolls down and an empty case of Heineken comes out. Serbians are really awesome people. They wait in the limo for about 45 minutes before coming out; the groom very tipsy but happy.

Dave and I tape the rest of the night. All 400 people in the hall do some crazy linked arms dancing to music I don’t understand. It literally sounds like Looney Tunes music to me and all the songs run into the other. They have a saxophonist, a guy and girl singer, a keyboardist, and an accordionist. More proof that I ain’t got no culture. If I didn’t see it in a movie, I don’t know about it.

After dinner I phone Sue to see if my far off dream of getting my package before Monday will be a reality. It will not. Again, she tells me FedEx took the blame for it, and I was curious to know what they said when she told them they just cost me five grand for a shoot I can’t do tomorrow. Turns out they just apologized more. She asked them what time on Monday it would be here because if it’s not here at a certain time, that’s going to cost me another five grand. They can’t guarantee a time, but guesstimate noon.

This shit ain’t costing me five grand, but this is ridiculous. I can take blame all day long too if it don’t mean shit. I mean, really, what does them saying the fault lies on them do? They still give me my shit on Monday. I still don’t have it when I need it. Am I getting money out of them? No. Them taking blame doesn’t change a single fucking thing in the fabric of the universe, so congratulations FedEx, you’re on my piece of shit list. Because you’re a piece of shit.

I get home around eleven, with plans to set up the Brevis on the camera, take a shower, do this diary, and hit the sack. Alicia is online and we talk about scheduling Episode 4 briefly. Turns out she’s going to take that off my hands. I send her what I’ve done so far, and she’s going to get on top of it. She also tells me that tomorrow we’ll be without Kyle and Baby Reilly. I remember hearing about this earlier, and I remember coming to the same conclusion I come to now. We’ll just have to do it without them.

My dad also informs me he went out and got smooth wheels for the super awesome dolly system, but he’s going to have to cut the dolly a little bit to make it fit as the wheels are slightly bigger. I phone Bill asking when I can get the dolly for him to cut it up, and have it available for us tomorrow. Bill calls me back, and I fill him in on the rest of the wedding, and we decide that I’ll come and get it tomorrow, throw it in the back of his truck, bring it here, then load it up again and bring his truck back for the noon call time.

I pass on setting up the Brevis tonight, and decide to do that tomorrow while my Dad alters the super awesome dolly system. I change the counter balance spring back, hook the tripod plate back on the rails, then hit the shower.

We shoot tomorrow, which is a Sunday, which I’m also hoping is the start of a brand new week. I usually say Monday is the start of a new week, with Sunday being a sort of “limbo” day, but I’m really pulling for Sunday to be the start of a new week this time.

So I’m hoping we have this week behind us, or behind me at least because I don’t know what everyone else went through. I don’t know if my resolve for making this picture was being tested or not. I’m not sure if my resolve for this dream of a filmmaking was being tested or not. If it is, I’m going to pass this fucker, because there’s not too much that’s going to stop me from shooting this and getting it in the can, and there’s very little that’ll stop me from making movies.

Hopefully the test is over. Tomorrow’s a brand new day, and hopefully a brand new week.