"What is Past is Prologue"

Architect John Russell Pope placed four monumental statues around the National Archives Building. Each was cut from a single block of limestone weighing 125 tons. Aitken's "The Future" sits on the Pennsylvania Avenue side of the building. The young woman lifts her eyes from the pages of an open book and gazes into the future. Its base is inscribed with a line inspired by Shakespeare’s play The Tempest: "What is Past is Prologue."

Three weeks of "Juju" completed, and we are taking off a week to regroup, figure out the pieces still left of the puzzle, and schedule our pick-up days. Looks like we can get the last of it hammered out by the end of next week.

I have met some great people and great contacts on this job. The Writer/Director, Boyce, is quite a character. He is a perfectionist and refuses to cut corners. Most of the time he seems very serious, but once in awhile he just cracks me up. He is Nigerian, and has this great accent. On the set, Michelle (DP) is constantly asking him if he is happy (with the picture on the monitor, before she shoots it. I have heard him say more than once, "Happy as a LAAHK." It just seems so funny, coming from this big, stoic man! I guess you have to be there, though.

Stayce, the Producer, is a blast. She is the Voice of Reason, but she is also hysterical, and we laugh all day long. Which is a good thing, because the two of us are the ones that really never can have a full day off as long as this thing is still in production. Dealing with payroll, scheduling, location issues, budget, script changes, personnel... it never ends.

The coolest thing so far in this whole experience, though, has been the rewrites. There have been a few scenes we needed to change drastically, and on the fly. I took the liberty of making changes to a couple scenes to expedite things, and printed them up for Boyce, as suggestions. I thought what I had written might at least help figure out how to streamline some scenes or make changes to keep continuity straight, but Boyce liked the pages and kept them as I wrote them, and we shot them. I was expecting the actors to grumble about having to learn new pages in a day or two, but they seemed to like them, too (or else they are just realy good actors!).

Watching this unfold before my eyes was very different than watching my words come to life on the set of my own movie. At first I couldn't figure out why it felt so different, or what it was that felt so different about it. But it is dawning on me, and I suppose what it comes down to is control. It WAS very cool to make my own film and do it exactly the way I wanted to. But I had full control of that project from beginning to end, so of course it was going to go pretty much as I had envisioned it. But this film, "Juju," is not my baby. It is someone else's. And they approved what I did and incorporated some pretty good-sized chunks of my writing into the body of this piece of work. They could have dismissed it, or used part of it, or used only the gist of it, but they used it intact, and it worked. It is a good feeling, and it gives me confidence that I will eventually do what I have set out to do in this business primarily - to write.

The overall experience of being Production Manager on this project has been great, and such an education. I have been at the same hotel management job for going on eleven years now, and in that business for two decades. Hotel management is often crisis management, but I could do it in my sleep. I know I can have a job in this industry for the rest of my life if I want it, and there is some security in that. But there is also INsecurity in that, when you have been doing something for so long, and you start to wonder if you will be restricted to doing that and only that for the rest of your life because you have been doing that and only that for so long. You (and by "you" I mean "I") don't really know anything else, and you don't want to start at the bottom in something else. Between filming "Charm City" and being PM for "Juju," I am reassured that my skills in crisis management have not diminished, and I have been happily surprised at how well the skills I honed in my first career are carrying over into my (hopefully) second. I didn't go to school for hospitality management, and I have worked with and trained a lot of people who also did not and went on to do great things in the business. Often they were (mistakenly) convinced that they would at some point need to get a degree in the field if they were to move up. But I always told them, in the hotel business, you can go pretty damn far if you have three things:

!. Common sense,
2. personality, and
3. a willingness to pay your dues, in advance. In other words, never letting the words, "That's not my job," pass over your lips.

The same rules apply to film production, though more specific aspects of the field (writing, directing, camera work) call for more specific skills. But every day my confidence increases that I can have a successful career in this industry, doing what I was meant to do all my life - to write.

For now, the hotel job pays the bills while I learn the ins and outs of production. Then, soon, hopefully the production jobs will keep rolling in to pay the bills while I get my foot in the door with writing. Once I get my whole LEG in the door, I'm going to kick some ASS.

Table Read

What a great day. This afternoon, the entire ensemble got together for a "table read" of the script from start to finish. I probably should not have scheduled this the day before a holiday weekend, as the people who had to travel the furthest to be here got stuck in DC beltway traffic. But everyone made it.

To call this cast eclectic would be an understatement. Their range in age, ethnicity, and pure style blend together beautifully, and truly capture the diversity that, to me, personifies Baltimore.

Everyone jumped in with their ideas and suggestions to tweak the script. It is important to me that everyone have their say, and take ownership of their characters. The collaborative effort absolutely made the script stronger and funnier. And I think the actors appreciated being asked their opinions, and knowing that their voices were heard.

One of the things that surprised me when I started wedging my way into the microcosm that is filmmaking is how poorly actors are often treated, and how willing they still are to do things for cheap or free. To many directors and producers, actors fall pretty far down on the list of priorities, after gear, locations, and well below film crew. Of course, any of those things can make or break your film. But so can acting, of course! It doesn't make good business sense to treat them like cattle. Not to me, anyway. I don't want to be that director.

Today's reading brought it home to me, and I think to the cast as well, that this is really happening, we are really doing this. And not only that, but we are going to do it very well, and have a great time while working our asses off. We had a lot of laughs today, and the natural chemistry that surrounded the table let me know that the tough choices I have had to make so far were the right ones.

In a nutshell, I could not possibly be happier with the way things are going. Tomorrow I am driving to my secret retreat in the Poconos, to spend the holiday weekend alone (well, I'm taking my dogs with me), rewriting the script to incorporate the changes we made today, and to start plotting out the rehearsal and production schedules. But tonight, I am just going to enjoy the moment, the sweet satisfaction of a productive day, and I am going to sleep like a baby.

Breaking Down

Don't worry, that's a good thing! Starting to really get to the meat of the matter. I am still in the VERY early stages of it, as the script is not, "locked," yet. "Locked," is when you finally say, that's it, the script has been through a million rewrites, through so many tweaks, trims, and tucks it would put Joan Rivers to shame, and that is about as good as it is going to get. That is when you have the "shooting script," and you can start breaking down the script, scene by scene, so that you can map out to the last detail what you are going to be doing, when, where, and with whom, once the cameras are rolling. That is "pre-production", along with a gaJILLION other details. For example, where exactly you are going to get those cameras. Or, more likely, camerA.

I am trying not to get ahead of myself, but this is how my brain works, how I problem-solve. It is not that different from what I have done in the hotel or restaurant business, or in the art circuit, organizing group exhibits. It is organization that requires extremely holistic thinking, and I find that if I let it stew in the back of my head, things start falling into place in my sub-conscious, and then when I am ready to set them to paper it flows a lot easier.

A one-day shoot takes weeks (and depending on the shoot, possibly months) of planning. Think of it this way: If you have ever been any part of a wedding, you know how involved it can be. In theory, it is an event that lasts, what, 6 hours including the ceremony, driving from the ceremony to the reception, then the reception. Right? HAH!

The Bride and Groom are your stars. The wedding party are your supporting cast. The guests are your extras. The mothers of the Bride and Groom are often your Lindsey Lohan and Britney Spears. They can be really valuable if they focus on the task at hand, but often they can be your problem children.

There are so many things that have to be planned, just like on a movie set. There is an agenda to be followed, lines to be spoken, and so many things that can go wrong. Costumes! Make-up! Music! Locations! Even photography and lighting. And don't forget the all-important catering. Tensions rise as blood sugar drops. And many a nervous Bride has hit the floor after forgetting to eat that morning.

Also, like on a low-budget movie, whoever is organizing the whole to-do (= producer) has probably roped a lot of people into doing a lot of things for free that in reality, they don't have the time or desire to do. So you have to also worry about (a) making sure those people don't drop the ball, and (b) making sure they know how much they are appreciated.

Going from ceremony site to reception site = changing locations. Another CRUCIAL thing to think about when breaking down the script. In scene two, Thanksgiving dinner at Grandma's house, in scene twelve, Grandma is dead and the wake is at her place. Guess what - you're shooting those scenes back to back, in the same day, to save time, money, and aggravation. But you still have to deal with costume changes, redressing the set, and getting everyone in the cast to go from cheerful to mopey.

So many people besides the Bride & Groom to think of...the Officiant, the florist, the caterers, the photographer, the make-up artist, the hairdresser, the limo driver, the band... you get the idea. Even who you are going to ask to drag all the presents from the reception to the house, who's going to do something with the flowers, who saved a piece of wedding cake to freeze, did someone tip the priest? It doesn't just end when the open bar closes.

You get the idea. Now think of planning a DIFFERENT wedding every day for 10 to 15 days straight. Boggles the mind, doesn't it?

It does. But when you break it all down, into little, manageable pieces, it becomes...manageable. It is nothing more, and nothing less, than an enormous, difficult, challenging, mind-boggling, intimidating, and manageable jigsaw puzzle. And I, for one, am entirely and unequivocally PSYCHED.