We shot this one really quick - we had been on the move for several hours, looking for a spot with just the right number of mirrors lying around.
Lots of times the main guys will just be behind the cameras, out of the lights. Lots of times, I told them, the guys don’t do it like that.
We’re making magic, we’re making myths, they said back. They said it basically at the same time too. So we did the shoot with them right there, right there in the shot. Magic, they kept saying. They kept saying this was what it was like, what it was like to be admitted into the realm of archetypal objects.
When I get interviewed I always answer the same questions: yes, I’m telling the truth; no, I’m not on Facebook. But this guy had a method of his own. This guy had something to offer.
Here it was, the same old thing, made entirely new right before my eyes. The pressure in the room changed and all the dogs’ pupils dilated. It was a good thing they were out-of-frame.
This one was transmedia, they said—a noise piece for the Germans.
We got in trouble for this one because it turned out that we were not supposed to use language to change the shape of the building. Something about the union they said.
It looked great but really we only tried it because the regular guy who changes the shapes of the buildings was busy on another project. We had so many meetings about that.
This one was rough because she had a touch of the poet but also she was pretty drunk. Maybe they are the same thing, the Union guys were telling me but that might have been a joke.
She kept saying she wanted to spread her treasure around. I thought it was an ugly idea.
They chose the lighting with a chance-based process that was new to me. I worried that I was making something that would run away from me but in the end I guess they got the shots they wanted. In the end they all liked the lighting game, it was the type of game that made men shake hands.
The big guy in the vulture costume turned to me and said, no joke, “If the popcorn can be popped under Daisy’s helmet, her head must be about to pop as well.” That turned out to be the advice I needed to really push the limit and excel.
Later when I thought back on it I could only remember that guy making bird calls, not giving advice: this didn’t strike me as odd until much later.
After the shoot it’s kind of an unspoken rule that you usually hang around with the main guy, even if you’d rather be somewhere else. I don’t usually mind because I like watching people’s mouths when they talk.
We sat around drinking Decision Juice and playing a game where everyone has to burn me a “little” —with matches, or water from the kettle, or the oven grate, etc.
In each shot the camera pulls me inexorably forward, like the future happening again and again, scrubbing around the threshold of each decision. Later it gets out of hand, everyone gets loud and one of the main guys is just reading a phrase over and over: The result is the kind of panting and cackling we call laughter.
Lots of times the only direction you’ll get is in the form of a buffet. I found the craft services table and asked what they had, it was spicy sausage couscous. And a dry white.
It was a code all right, a code or a riddle. They do the same thing when they fly fighter jets. They never say, oh do you see that guy in the other jet go get him. They say hey, look at this. These mirrors here.
It’s an iteration, a dumb dance: I make a move and check my loop. I chew a bite and wash it down. The big fancy guy got angry that I knew the game. He knew a Riesling wasn’t going to cut it.
They get those swoop lines in the image but they never catch the sound. It shimmers, bounces around the room, around the palate of the scene. We’re always in the middle, the middle of these loops.
They often have us do ten or twelve takes on a shot like this. Nobody can ever tell for sure just what food will look the best. They use a stand-in, sometimes, while I get the arc and the speed right. Once I do, I have a lot of options: I can make those motion lines look like sweat, like an idea, like an innuendo, whatever. The main guy once said it was like noblesse oblige.
I like doing a lot of takes once I get in that groove, once I perform. It’s sort of an event metonymy. Each moment standing for the last, each moment without place, like a bowl of those gummi worms those guys are always eating on set.
We got this one on the first take.
I love it when they have a real goal, when they can say what the mission is. That means it’s time to excel or at least that’s what I think.
Your eyes they get that loving look. Our cultural moment.
Each drop of that gelatin sweat hangs there, always just about to drop.
We weren’t sure it was going to work. To help things along, I entered a mythical state. I think that’s what broke the window.
The prop guys were there but they were mesmerized. I used the tools they provided and made an act of magic right there. They could have stopped me but they didn’t. They stared and stared, caught up in the drama of the room.
