Now seems like the best time to do this. While I still remember everything. Although maybe it would be more advisable to wait until my mind has had time to filter through the events of the last months and hold onto only those things that are poignant or helpful. I guess I'm not that patient.
You always think you'll have more time to prepare. That you'll know what you're getting yourself into. There were two days on set, night shoots, where we were outside on the coldest days of the year. Seventeen degrees in Florida. Before we left my parents' house where the entire crew of ten was staying I heard everyone talking about how many layers they had on. Jay turned to me at the kitchen sink, "I'm wearing two pairs of pants." I went to my room to get similarly layered before leaving. Tights, leggings, three pairs of socks, pants, three shirts, two sweatshirts. I had the distinct impression that I was suiting up for battle.
It's a little like that, making movies. At least at our budget level. It's not the glitter and sparkle that I think people refer to as "movie magic". Somehow it always ends up being more of the unglamorous crawling through the dirt in a two foot gap under a trailer or cleaning a house that's been abandoned for ten years so it can be shot in the next day or running at full speed on rocks for eight takes in a row. These things that seem the most like work, that demand the most resolve, these are the things you talk about later. Or maybe that's just me. I've been told that I thrive on the adrenaline that comes from everything falling apart around me. Maybe that's a bad thing. I read somewhere (it was probably a Harry Potter book) that the truest friendships are those forged through shared crisis. There's a deeper sense of camaraderie involved. I feel like a similar thing can be said about making a movie. If it were easy, if there weren't some sense of everyone coming together to overcome obstacles to accomplish something, it would be far less meaningful.
I don't mean to say that the moments that are fun and exciting aren't memorable. Of course when I think about the movie I'll think about skateboarding and riding trains and Matt and Waylan shooting each other with Roman candles in the woods. I'll think about that first day on the train when it was just me and Brett and Jay standing on the engine car and just as the train started to pick up speed Brett turned to me and smiled. I was almost giddy. And he said "you love making movies." He's right.
If there's anything I've learned about making movies it's that the things you expect to be the biggest problems usually aren't. Not that they don't end up being problems, but something else will invariably trump them. And it's those things you don't expect that make it interesting. You don't expect that every car involved in the production will break and you never plan on how many times you'll have to call triple A. It doesn't occur to you that you'll get phone calls where people say things like, "I don't think he'll call the cops, but maybe you should come down here" or that you'll have to talk yourself out of getting arrested before going to set. Things like locations falling through and crew backing out never make sense at the time, but I have to believe that there are reasons for these things.
On the day Brett left I asked him if he believed in fate. "It's funny," he said, "I was just having this conversation with Matt." I asked him what Matt thought. "Definitely. How else could we all have ended up here together and doing this?" That works for me. I have much faith.
