Third World Girl & the Jay-Z Shoot

A couple Fridays ago found Third World Girl in front of Jay-Z's 40/40 Club meeting a potential DP for the Little Movie I Want to Direct. He's interested in the script, has solid credits and a healthy cynicism for the pitfalls between excited newbie director and the money in hand that a director needs in place to shoot a feature.

Anyway, he was just back from Europe and because we hadn't got a chance to meet up all summer, he suggested I swing by the set of Jay-Z's video shoot for Rocawear and say hi.

My first instinct was to pass on the offer...I'm not sure why, apart from the fear of seeming like a fraud. In the current issue of Moviemaker magazine, Lynn Shelton ("Humpday") talks about feeling like you're living someone else's life after she got a standing ovation at Cannes. I know this is on a way smaller scale but I had a similar reaction to the DP's invite: I do not live the life where I swing onto video sets and say hi, looking all fabulous and pulled together and artist-like.

But in my quest to grow, I'm challenging myself to do the things I would not usually. That means putting my shy, hermit writer self in front of people I wouldn't usually and getting over the fame factor. So yes, dammit...I was swinging by the Jay-Z set and saying hi...if I could find it.

I didn't know where 40/40 was which shows you how sad and unglamorous my life is, but I eventually found it right by Madison Square Park with a couple teamsters and grips hanging out by a truckload of equipment. They seemed to be talking about California vs. New York, the benefits of being in the union, and the cost of the production. Which cost more: a $20,000 light or the line of video girls in front of the club whose job it was to whoop it up when Jay emerged from a yellow cab.

It was all so ordinary and dull that I instantly felt at home. I remembered that at heart, a shoot is just a shoot. Nothing was more shocking to me than my first one as a freshman at film school... up at 5 a.m. on a cold winter morning, P.Ai.ng for some grad students, bored stiff and deciding what I really wanted to excel at was pre-production.

Anyway, a wonderfully polite P.A. helped me find the DP who was shooting a rehearsal alongside director, Spike Lee (yes Spike Lee!) so I had to wait it out with the teamsters and P.A.s. who all seemed to have Caribbean roots. I almost wanted to take out a piece of paper and start taking e-mails to add to crazy Bollywood movie's fanbase.

When the DP finally got a break we had an extended conversation about the problems of film back home, the competitiveness, the cut throat nature, the fact that the gate keepers for content often don't have a coherent criteria or the level of discernment to judge projects submitted to them for funding. He stressed the importance of moxie and hustle...and not rushing.

"What's the difference between shooting this movie in 2009 and 2010?" he said. "Is the story going to be any less relevant?"

It's exactly what I needed to hear. For weeks it's been nagging me that I've been splitting focus between crazy Bollywood project that we have a tight window in which to shoot next year and this other supposedly "small movie" that was supposed to be a quickie shoot early in '09. Production companies have several movies on a slate, was the argument. But production companies have infrastructures. Third World Girl is essentially a girl with a cell phone, a laptop and a home office.

So Little Movie I Want to Direct gets pushed back to 2010 and I can really focus on making crazy Bollywood movie happen. And what you realize standing watching a crew of twenty folks light a scene for a thirty second commercial is that you better get the prep right cause you're responsible for a whole army.

I didn't stick around long after the DP went away to shoot yet another rehearsal. Jay-Z was nearly there, on the turnpike, but it was late and I'd had enough of the monotony, the awful slowness that production can be...when it's not your baby. Plus, I didn't want it to look like I had nothing to do. I had to go home and work on making a movie. Hanging with the Jiggaman, that's jello.

Oh My God. What Did They Do To "Hot Tub Time Machine"?

I read "Hot Tub Time Machine" a while back in the glory days of Scriptshadow's site (when you could still read scripts) and really liked it. It's a ridiculous time-traveling comedy about a groom and his buds who, at a lame bachelor party, get into a hot tub that takes them back to 1987. So like "The Hangover", it's one of those "get the groom to the church on time" movies, except of course they're stuck in a whole different decade!

But the trailer for it they just released is terrible. Unfunny, cliche, visually bereft. I didn't laugh once and I'm not sure about the casting. The chemistry between this set feels odd...to quote the folks over at Vulture, in what universe would these four be friends?

Man, I'm worried for the movie, especially since it's already got the dubious job of proving it's not "The Hangover's" leftovers. I sincerely hope they just started shooting and had little to pull the trailer from because trailerworthy moments these are not.

An Open Letter to Netflix About Its Categorization of My Movie Tastes

Dear Netflix,
I understand you feel a desire to customize my movie offerings. You want me to feel that you care with your constant inquiries about when my movies arrive and invitations to sign up my friends. But really, is this how little you know me that you'd label your special selections of movies you think I'd like: "Critically Acclaimed Dark Movies Based on Real Life?"

Oh I see you there...offering in your defense the thumbnails of Michael Moore's "Sicko" and Louis Malle's "Au Revoir Les Enfants." I hear you trying to demonstrate how you arrived at this assessment. But that's just weak, yo. Have you ever even watched these movies? "Sicko" is a social issues documentary that's a passionate indictment of the US health system...but "Rosemary's Baby" it is not. And "Au Revoir Les Enfants?" Despite a tragic ending, there's humanity and bravery and hope for the future entwined in its unsentimental vision.

At any rate, Netflix, you got me thinking about what's considered a dark film and I ended up here at this M&M's game so not only do you hardly know me, you are responsible for robbing me for about half an hour of writing time. (I only got 20 out of 50 of the movie titles in the riddle painting so I think that proves that dark movies are so NOT my sweet spot.)

Listen, we don't have to be friends, Netflix. You don't have to "get" me. Just keep sending me my movies and taking my 12 bucks a month. Continue surprising me with stuff in my mailbox I didn't even know I had in my queue and no longer feel like watching because I added them on a whim.

I promise you, I'll still answer your e-mails.

July 4th...The Chicklet's Lesson Goes Wrong

I've been reading "The Namesake" and remembering why I fell in love with Jhumpa Lahiri in the first place.

When I started out writing fiction, as a fresh off the boat landed in Washington D.C., my favorite theme was identity, the quest for belonging. But I've been in this country for a while and now it's no longer the thing that defines what I write about. In Lahiri's multi-generational coming of age story of a family's journey from India to the US, however, I'm thrown back into that old terrain, and forced to remember how much I still don't really belong.

Most resonant for me is the segment when the "first generationers" are forced into acculturation because of their children. The Ganguli parents learn to cook American meals, pizza, Hamburger Helper, mac and cheese. They celebrate American holidays, including Christmas, even though they're Hindus. And for me, there's been no quicker path to embracing things I was iffy about than wanting the Chicklet to understand and enjoy her world.

For Halloween, hubby carved her a Jack o' Lantern, and on Thanksgiving we have the turkey, mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce that's miles away from what we'd think of as a special feast. But I know things have changed when the holiday I've traditionally been most ambivalent about, July 4th, finds me thinking about where we can go to watch fireworks.

In the spirit of enhancing the Chicklet's appreciation of the holiday, I tried to explain to her that July 4th was America's birthday. (We are on the subject of birthdays because hubby celebrated his birthday this week.)

I say, "It's America, the country's birthday and everybody celebrates because everybody is happy to live in America..."
I find myself mumbling the addendum, "for the most part."

Later on in the day, I decide to reinforce as we're out running errands.
"Whose birthday is it July 4th?" I ask.

The Chicklet screws up her little face, trying to remember with every fiber of her being..."The President's?"

I grin. Impressed. Wanting to give her half points.
"Close...but it's America's..." I eventually concede.

However the Chicklet is still thinking about the President as I begin to harp on once more about America's birthday. "What kind of birthday cake does the President have?"
I tell her I don't know and decide that I need to pause this civics class.

Later on in the day, I'm serving up hubby's left-over cake from the festivities the day before: a delicious red velvet from our favorite sinful bakery. This cake has been promised her from the night before when she had only a little sliver because we got to the celebrations way late.

Chicklet takes a bite of the red velvet, savoring the cream cheese icing. I swear I can hear a cosmic sigh as the sugar hits and all is well in a three year old's world. And then, after what seems like an eternity, she asks, "Is this Obama's cake?"

Oh man. Maybe next year.

A Study of Gender Bias in Theater Throws Up an Unexpected Twist

The New York Times has this article on gender bias that unearths this surprise: female literary managers and artistic directors are more likely to rate as poor a female-written play than a male one, and are therefore partly responsible for the disparity between the number of male vs. female plays produced.

Other findings from the study conducted by Emily Glassberg Sands, Princeton student: men are more prolific than women and submit more work... which provides a rather more mundane assessment of why more women's work isn't produced. Interestingly enough, however, in the last ten years female written shows have performed better on Broadway. (Plays and musicals by women sold 16 percent more tickets a week and were 18 percent more profitable over all.)

Finally plays featuring women are less likely to be produced.

Any parallels over in Hollywoodland, ya think?

The Further Writers Group Adventures of Third World Girl

Just like the projects in my life, my writers group has entered this weird holding pattern. Instead of the weekly, different participants every seven days, the group has gone back to the infinitely more sane bi-weekly schedule but there's the same volatility in its make up.

I have no idea who'll show week to week. Sometimes it feels like it's just me, the group leader, and a background cast. This kind of makes for vastly different chemistry session to session which I find frustrating because the quality of the feedback is unpredictable.

Last night for example, we had a new addition...let me call her The Holder-Forth. She's the one in the group who has to tell you she's read for contests, knows A-list actors, and inform you of how they do it in "the business". The thing is she was whip smart and gave good feedback and I really hope she returns but she bugged me in one particular, all too familiar way.

Allow me to illustrate.

My script, unsurprisingly, is set in my home country because it's the Little Movie I Want to Direct and I figure the only hope I have of getting it made is to call on every bit of goodwill I've managed to accumulate on the island. Holder-Forth seized on the script's concept and started to wax poetic about the kinds of conflicts I might be exploring seeing as the story involves a girl based in London returning to her island home. "I imagine there'd be quite a contrast between her life in London and on the economically depressed island of Barbados."

I bristled but I let it go. What I really should have said is tell me more about my economically depressed island, Holder-Forth. Do they have houses or does everyone still live in mud huts? It turned out I didn't have to invite her to do so, however, because later on in the feedback she expressed a level of perplexity at why all the characters in the movie didn't know each other. "They live on the same island, right?" she said.

I gently tried to explain to her that my particular island, the "economically depressed island of Barbados" actually had more than a quarter million people on it and therefore not all the characters in my movie know each other. It was possible for people to be strangers and meet for the first time. She shrugged and said, "I'm just telling you what the perception in Hollywood is."

So now I know.

Some days more than others I think I need to hurry up and write my goat racing comedy on an economically depressed island where everybody knows each other because Hollywood would totally get that and then I could sell out and go live in Cobble Hill.

The "I Must Make This Movie" Draft of the Budget

Just got back from meeting with the line producer on crazy Bollywood musical.

We're in the process of doing the "I Must Make This Movie" draft of the budget, down from the optimistic, maybe this recession will go away, mid-budget draft he wrote a month ago. We're also doing this paring down because the music artist who's attached to the movie has a window next year to make this thing and so we've got to shoot for it. (He's usually booked year round.)

I've spent a lot of time waiting for permission from other people to make this movie but the thing is sometimes your story begins when YOU begin. I keep giving myself reasons not to move ahead with this project but at every turn the reasons dissolve. Just when I'm losing faith, the right people appear to push the boulder a little further up the hill.

Like a producer said at some IFP panel I went to a couple years ago, the first thing you've got to do in your capacity as producer is greenlight the freakin' movie. Sure you can have more than one plan and budget for it: the Dream Budget, the Mid-Budget and the I Must Make This Movie Budget but in the end, you've got to give yourself that start date and go for it. And that's what we've done.

Now we sink or swim.

Image by moleitau