Director's Diary

Day 20
February 24th, 2001

I wake up after such a short nights sleep. It is maybe my third night in a row with about 4 hours of rest. That is not rest, it is barely respite. It is pouring rain outside. Immediately I am regretting my decision for Jackie, Darcus and the family to come down to Santa despite rain, without calling me. I know now that I will cancel this day and try to reschedule the motel scene that we are supposed to shoot tomorrow for today and vice versa. Andreas and I head down to the field after putting the cast and crew on standby. Ben is in the parking lot when we head out and he decides to come also. We are going to meet Michael down at the field. He has the list of children and their phone numbers and feels responsible for contacting everyone. I feel lucky that someone is sharing this responsibility. So we get down there and the rain is coming down hard. The field is soaking and spongy and on top of that, the goals are locked against a fence and are unusable. We contact the actors for tomorrows shoot and they agree to come to Santa Cruz today. The decision is made and we start calling the kids. Everything works out pretty smoothly at this point and most of the kids parents' agree to come the next day. Jackie et al, show up and are disappointed but fully understand, they will come back down tomorrow. In the middle of this, I run into an old friend who lives right across the street from the field. This seems fortuitous and it is also nice to see my friend again. We head back to the motel.

All is chaos at the motel. Not everyone is happy about the changes and pretty soon some rather unpleasant scenes go down. It is very interesting in a way. At this point, the cast and crew of Humans Being is very much like a family. And I have not yet met a family that does not have its deep dysfunctionalities. So today, we deal with ours. And they are deep. They are really not unlike yours. Think about your family. Remember those days? The days that you don't really want to remember? The days where things were said that shouldn't have been said? Where people performed actions that should have been left unperformed? The days whose memories get vaguer and vaguer as time goes on, yet whose affectations are burnt into your psyche forever? I think you can all remember a day or two like this. So we had one of those days on this day. "Sorrow floats." That's a quote from a John Irving book called The Hotel New Hampshire about another dysfunctional family. I guess that is how humans are when they are being. It is easy, in a way, to forgive people for what happened. Because afterall, we were in psychotic Santa Cruz, where my life was pretty crazy when I lived here; and because we were in the midst of crazy hours in a crazy art project that was saturating us with crazy energy. So I do. I forgive you. And me. Shit happens, right?

Anyway, after all is said and done and yelled and cleaned up after, we are here to shoot a film. So we shoot. We shoot the Sheldon Hicks afterparty scene in which Sheldon freaks out and spouts a bunch of insanity. A proper scene to be shooting under the circustances. Everything goes smooth once we get professional. Although my focus is a bit shot, my camera's focus is tight and the footage is going to look terrific. We shoot for about eight or nine hours, until around 11pm. When we are done, almost everyone goes out to the bar to party together and release a bit of the stress. Andreas and Holly and I stay back at the hotel and share a moment of peace together. I go to sleep knowing tomorrow will be challenging.