Rent, the show with less TB

Rent, geez. I keep starting this blog and erasing and restarting and erasing… I’m not sure what my problem is today.

Well, in the first place I have to say that this is a much more powerful show live than it is recorded. I suppose that’s no surprise but I continue to be surprised by it. There is something about hearing real people tell you stories and hearing music played live that makes the theatrical experience much more moving, even when the material isn’t that great. Having working on film and theatre in this past month, I much prefer the theatre experience. It’s amazing to be present at the moment of creation, to see a show created live every single night, to hear a new audience respond every night and to see the energy exchange between the performers and the audience. Given that, I feel better about my choice to pursue a live theatre tour. I think I’ll enjoy the experience of working with the same show night after night because it’s the same but different every time.

The second thing I’ve learned this week is that there is a marked difference between equity and non-equity shows. Rent is a non-equity show which means that the actors aren’t being held to the standards of the actor’s union and aren’t being paid union wages. And just glancing over the list of credits, very few of them have high profile professional experience. So while that may not show in their performance on stage – and a few of them are really really good, including the girl that I’m dressing – it definitely shows in their attitude backstage and in the attitude of their road crew. For the most part, they are all less professional, less polite, less friendly, less organized and the crew seems less competent than the equity shows I’ve worked so far. Of the 20 or so cast, there are only a few actors who are exceptions to this rule and have gone out of their way to be polite or friendly or even grateful for the work that we’re doing as a crew.

It’s an interesting thing for me since I’ve spent so much time in the past couple of months searching for a job on a touring show and being willing, up to this point, to take anything offered to me. I have to say that I’d actually have to think about it if I were offered a job on this show. Even if it got me out of Tucson and on the road, I don’t think I’d want to work and live with this crew and cast. But it also makes me think that I made the right decision when I decided to join the stagehands union (IATSE). I would much rather work a union show with equity actors and I have a much better chance of getting one as part of the union.

Things to ponder…

As a small aside, the doctor that I work for is a huge opera fan and when I told him that Rent is based on La Boheme and he says "oh right, but with less tuberculosis, right?"

So that's my new favorite description: Rent! The show with less TB!

In other news I’m teaching Sewing I again this mod. It’s now a 5 week class with 5 hour classes, instead of the 10 week/2.5 hour classes schedule I taught last mod. We’ll see how that works. But in my class yesterday I had three students and they are all characters. Here are a few highlights:

1 hour into class student #1 tells me that she might have trouble working in a classroom setting because she’s claustrophobic and needs a lot of space to work and doesn’t like other people working around her. I told her that she could take as much space as she needed as long as she was polite to the other students and left them enough space to work.

1.5 hours into class student #1 tells me that she sews really well but that she has one little problem with sewing on a machine. That small tiny problem is that she can’t sew a straight line. The sound of the industrial machine makes her nervous and jumpy and the fabric moves around and her seams are all crooked. However, and despite that small problem, she’s “a great seamstress.”

2 hours into class, student #2 is still struggling with making a knot in her sewing thread. She keeps making a loop with the thread and then putting the needle in the wrong way and the thread just straightens out instead of knotting. No matter how I show her, she can’t seem to understand the concept. I finally tell her to put the needle on the table and just tie a knot in the thread, which she does. And then looks at me and says, “That’s it? That’s all I needed to do?” yep. That’s it. Sewing lesson numero uno…

3 hours into class student #1 tells me that she hates working with patterns. She just wants me to know. She likes to “make things up” instead.

3.5 hours into class, student #1 tells me that she has one other small problem with working in a classroom setting. She “needs to work surrounded by silk” so it will probably be easier for her to sew at home. I told her that she probably needed to start bringing silk to class then because I need her to work in class…

4 hours into class, student #3 says “You’ve mentioned a “hem” a lot today. What is a hem?”

Never would I be able to make this stuff up!

And on that note, have a good weekend everyone! :)

The young, diseased and poor

Welcome to Rent, the musical. And of course, the week has started with a bang proving yet again that some of the best stories are back stage.

There are only 4 of us working wardrobe for this show – vs. the 15 or so that worked Lion King – and our load-in this morning consisted of the four of us sitting around chatting, getting up to do laundry, chatting some more, doing a little more work and leaving by noon. We’ll be back for the show tonight but it promises to be a pretty easy week. It’s funny that I’m working this show now because in my last year of school we studied this musical and I didn’t like it. In fact I think I called the music “amateurish” in the discussion class and that was the last word I got in edgewise as the class erupted into an uproar. Something about this musical has elicited a hard core fan base – calling themselves “Rent-heads” - who follow the show around from city to city, squat on the sidewalks waiting for tickets in NYC and generally act like groupies. There were a couple of Rent-heads in my class and they were outraged at my description. In fact the teacher of that class, now my friend, still talks about the uproar. So suffice it to say, I hope I like the show more after working it…

The quote of the day, however, belongs to my friend Chris this morning who, when asked to iron yet another pair of pants, said “Everyone in this show is young, diseased and poor. Do you really think they iron their pants??” Ah, the magic of theatre. Even the poor and diseased get pressed pants.

But my story today has nothing to do with Rent. And I have to preface this story by saying that it’s disgusting and disturbing, so take that as a spoiler. If you don’t want to read about something horrifying, stop now and come back tomorrow when I’m actually talking about the show.

Are your loins properly girded up? Alright then, proceed.

So, our Department Head (DH) - she lives in town and we worked together on Lion King - shows up this morning and she looks horrible. Worn out, exhausted, glassy eyed etc. So I ask her what’s going on and without preface she says that for the past 4 days she’s been living in the middle of a crime scene, a’la CSI. Well, ok, I’m intrigued. Tell me more.

A week ago her daughter’s cat disappeared and they thought she had just run off. Now this DH (her house is all over the news right now but I’ll try and keep her name out of this blog) used to be an animal activist when she lived in San Francisco – the “chain yourself to a building and get hauled off to jail” sort of activist. She still does a lot of animal rescue work here in town working with various pet shelters and taking in strays until they find homes. She’s very much into animals and this cat has been their pet since her daughter was born. So, she and her daughter spent time putting up flyers and asking about their pet but couldn’t find her. Then last week one of their neighbors comes by to say that while out walking her dog she found part of their cat. A head with no body… There are coyotes around here and they prey on domestic pets so everyone figured that was what was happened until that same neighbor, the next night, found a cat in two halves and missing the legs. Well, now something is going on because coyotes will eat the whole thing or at least drag it away and this cat looked cut in half.

So the DH and her husband call 911 and the cops refuse to come out because it’s an animal. They call Animal Control who say they’ll come out but then they don’t. For three days they call every day and no one responds. So the DH and her husband start scouting around the neighborhood and behind a vacant house near them they find a pile of cat parts, different cats all in pieces. And what looks like a dog leash with bones attached to it and the end chewed off like something escaped. So she gets a bucket and plastic bag and starts collecting all the cat parts (um, ick…) while her husband calls someone he knows who knows someone else who knows an animal forensic specialist here in Tucson (A. there is such a thing? And B. in Tucson??).

The specialist responds immediately takes one look at the scene and calls Animal Control and they respond immediately, and then someone calls a local news station who responds immediately and suddenly the cops are also there with crime scene tape and an attitude. They actually yelled at the DH for “disturbing the crime scene” after they had ignored her for three days (and you know they were probably on the set of the movie Snappers. I saw several cops there, sitting around doing “traffic control” to keep the noise down during shooting…).

The forensic specialist looked at some of the bones and the DH asked if it was coyotes. He looked at her and said, “Well when coyotes eat something they hold it down with their paws and drag their teeth along the length of the bone to strip off the meat.” He shows her the bone and says, “These teeth marks are going around the bone, the way a human eats a chicken leg…” Yes, that’s correct. We have someone human out here - or someone who once was human - eating cats. And now, of course, everyone’s all concerned because almost every serial killer has started with animals before moving on to humans.

Can I repeat? Someone in Tucson is mutilating and eating neighborhood cats. I doubt I’m going to hear a story all week that tops this one. Except for the guy I met who’s telling me a story about how he was a sole survivor of a triple murder suicide here in Tucson a few years ago.

So murder, mayhem and disease down here in the Old Pueblo. And what are you doing with your afternoon?

I think it looks good, really. Pink is your color.

Two 11 hour days of working made for a LONG weekend on this film. Fortunately I did not have to be there at 5AM and instead got there at 8. But then Nate was in town so I’d be home late and then go out to dinner with him and his friends and finally get to bed around midnight and do it all again the next day. Needless to say, I'm tired today. But one highly amusing thing was how much of a kick Nate got out of this job. I told him I’d call him from “the set” so he could say things like “I’m sorry, I need to take this. It’s my sister calling from the film set.” Then we’d both sound important. :)

But you don’t care about that! You want to know about my glamorous film job on “the set!” What did I do exactly? Well, I did a LOT of shopping and learned a fair amount about film costume design in the process. The main problem with designing for film, I say after 4 whole days in this business, is that there are too many people who have a say in the process. In theatre the main costume decisions are made by the designer and the director and then the actor only if the actor is famous and has a fair amount of pull. In film, the actor seems to have a lot more pull, even when they aren’t a “household name” (that’s the PC term, no one uses the word “famous”). So on this film, we have one problematic actress who has a lot of opinions about her clothes, opinions that are diametrically opposite to the director’s wishes. Somehow Lori, the designer, has to find an option they can both live with AND that fits the character AND that goes with the rest of the clothes in the scene AND looks good on camera.

And then there’s the Set and the Lighting who also get a say. Case in point was a particular scene that they filmed outside. The scene had to have the swimming pool in it because the subtext was about how much money one of these characters had, which means the pool had to be visible in the shot. However, the actors standing by a pool meant that the lighting guy was extremely limited in his lighting options since he can’t put the lights in the pool and surround the actors. That means that he has to bounce the light off the water, in some complicated way that I know nothing about, in order to light the actor’s faces. However, the lighting was making one of the actresses look “weird” so the costume solution was to give her a hat to bring the light back down. Ergo, Lori has to find a hat.

Well, we had several straw hats, few of which fit and then the one that did fit, and that the actress loved, made the actress look “witchy” according to the director. Something about the crown and her nose, I don’t know. My eyes started to glaze over after a certain point because I started hearing about this hat on Wednesday, moved hats around for storage and fitting possibilities on Thursday and then shopped for hats all day Saturday and Sunday. Given the time we’ve taken on this costume point and adding up my salary, Lori’s salary, the director and actress’s salaries and the money we’ve spent on hat options, it’s now the most expensive scene in the whole film. And all because of a pool… Think about that the next time you notice a weird costume choice in a movie.

This is only one small instance of costuming and the need for a variety of options. This means that for every costume decision you need a minimum of two options – for the basics of color and fit and character – and then you get into people’s opinions, necessitating more options so you can satisfy everyone. Then once you have the decision made, you may need duplicate costumes for body doubles – camera shots that don’t show the actor’s face so you can use a cheaper body double actor dressed like the main character and save some money. And you don’t share costumes between the principal actors and anyone else. So you have to buy a complete duplicate set of costume stuff down to the jewelry, shoes, watches, hats etc. for the double to wear.

Naturally you then end up with a multitude of clothes and accessories that you want to return to the store after you’ve decided on the one you like. And when you haven’t found that perfect shirt, someone needs to go find it. So who does all that shopping? Well, that would be me this weekend. Both days consisted almost entirely of a marathon shopping fest, 11 hours per day of driving around all over Tucson returning things we aren’t using and buying more stuff we may use and then returning some of that stuff because the designer takes one look at it and knows we won’t be using it. Which reminds me that I'm really happy Not to be a designer. My job was exhausting but when I got on set Lori was there and when I left the set she was there and even the day that everyone else had off, she was working. She has definitely earned her name on the credits...

I have a couple more small film things but I’ll post them later as I really should be working right now.

Busy busy busy!

Film, day #2

Yeah, so I got up this morning thinking “WHY OH WHY do I do this to my self? Oh, right. Because this is my job and my work is erratic and when it comes up I should take it. Right. I remember. Then WHY OH WHY didn’t I choose to be an accountant!?? Can't do math. Right. Ok then. Off to work.”

I always take the job and I always regret it the morning after. It’s my way.

So as I’m driving to one job – the teaching one – I get a call from my other job – the Cancer Center one – telling me that there’s some work that needs to be done ASAP. So I offer to come in between my first job – teaching - and my third job – film – to do a little of my second job. Oh good, today will be fun!

I teach my class – pajama pants for my sewing one students – race over to my second job and spend a frantic hour pounding out a long complicated patient note with the dictating doctor at the height of his OCD way of stuttering/repeating himself/spelling all the words I already know how to spell and then the repeating the spelling (grrrr…) and every minute thinking “Get. On. With. It. so I can get to my third job!” and then finally on to the film where everything was in complete chaos.

Basically picture a good sized double hotel room that’s been pressed into service for 4 wardrobe people and clothes for a cast of 30 (+ multiple extras), washer, dryer, office equipment, dyeing equipment, the whole works for two weeks – and that's the room that had to cleaned out and emptied into a truck today. Lori – the designer – and I looked at the truck, she told me where she thought some of the costumes should go, rather generally, and then said “it’s going to be tight so use your best judgment.” That was officially all the instruction I got. And I was now in charge.

Well, here’s a small secret. I like being in charge. I do some of my best work in charge. And I especially like to work when I’m being left to my own devices. Being in charge and getting left alone to do my own thing? It’s the best of all worlds. So I got someone to boss around, someone who fortunately took direction well and didn’t have any pesky opinions of their own, and the two of us packed that whole truck by ourselves this afternoon. And in between I did more dyeing and more sewing so I was quite productive.

I also got to organize the truck (really, it’s a big huge trailer), label everything and decide where it was all going to live for the next two months. That was a little tricky as I’ve never had anything to do with film, ever, so I have kind of no idea what gets used the most… It’s almost like you have to crawl inside someone else’s head and figure out what they think is important and then arrange things the way they would want them, after knowing them one whole day. So it’s a bit of a crap shoot. But by 9PM, when dinner finally arrived, the truck was packed and they were ready to start the first day of shooting.

And of course I thought I’d be done with all this after this weekend but now they want me to stay on. Which is great except I don’t really have time. As it is, I went back to the Cancer Center at 10PM tonight to do more work for them since they are getting the short end of the stick while I go play at being in pictures. Having 2 other jobs is putting a crimp in my film career! And it doesn’t help that every other job I have pays better than film. But this has been fun, I must admit. However, Rent, the musical, is in town next week and I really want to work that show so I may have to squeeze it in somehow around all the rest of this madness.

And I’m doing a pile of sewing alterations for the film tomorrow because, well, because I’m crazy and apparently I don’t like sleeping.

But I learned the director hierarchy today so here it is. Director, followed by First Assistant Director (AD), followed by Second AD, followed by the Second AD’s assistant (the lovely Second Second) followed, on union shows, by the DGA who is in training and aspires to someday be a Second Second and work his way up the ladder. The costuming hierarchy is even more confusing with designers, assistants, key costumers, heads of costume, costumers, PAs and then all the technicians. I can’t keep it straight, yet.

Our first day of shooting is Saturday and I’m expected to be there all day – they have a 5AM call, yawn! – so more to come…

Also...

A. I have no idea what a Second Second is. It could be the Second Director's second in command, but I think I'm completely making that up.

B. I forgot to mention that in addition to "Oh good you're here" the second thing I was told is "start taking vitamin C RIGHT NOW. There's some in the closet over there, here's some airborne, and don't touch anything until we lysol the room!" I felt like I was walking into a cholera epidemic. Turns out the guy who unpacked all the costumes had a nasty case of the flu that was working it's way through the production and everyone is completely paranoid about getting sick and the production getting behind. Someone showed up 10 minutes later with 3 (three) cans of lysol and we worked amid "outside fresh" lysol fumes for the rest of the day.

Oh, and the dryer handle had to be taped to the dryer because it kept falling off and everyone now has cut up hands from the raw metal.

See? Cholera ridden, haz mat area. Glamorous!

I said, Where's my headset!!!

So random, my day.

Actually it started a week or so ago when I got a call from my boss, Marsha, at the Cancer Center telling me that she had heard about some film work. Got that? Cancer Center boss with film work for me.... Apparently, Marsha used to work with a cancer research technician who has a sister who is a film producer. This sister was going to be shooting a film in Tucson and needed a Production Assistant (PA). Well, I wasn’t so much interested in that position but thought there might be some costume work. So I got the producer’s name and number and then got busy and didn’t call her. Adding to the interest is the fact that the producer’s name is Andi McCaffery and she’s the niece of Anne McCaffery the science fiction writer of the Dragons of Pern books. Though this movie has nothing to do with her books.

Anyway, today I go to a theatre union class on hair and makeup – I’m in the process of joining the stagehands union – and on my way there my friend Chris, also a stagehand, calls to tell me that he’s on his way to check out a movie production because he got a call that they needed some sewing work done. Huh. So he eventually shows up to the class and at the end of class asks me if I’d be interested in working on a semi-autobiographical movie about a guy who invented a talking bottle cap opener. Well, strictly for story value, yes I’m interested in being part of anything that has a talking bottle cap opener in a starring role. Chris gives me directions and I show up at the Best Western hotel where the movie production has taken over several rooms on the bottom floor.

I walk into the “wardrobe room” (room 108) and they say “oh, perfect you’re here.” I am? Turns out some wardrobe head walked off the job this morning, so the wardrobe PA got promoted to wardrobe head and now they need a PA, which is apparently me. As we’re discussing this situation I notice the phone list of producers with Andi McCaffery’s name at the top. So the niece of Anne McCaffery is making a movie about bottle cape openers. Curiouser and Curiouser… I make a few phone calls rearranging the rest of my work this week, go to “accounting” (room 110) and fill out paperwork consisting of my name, address and SSN (they didn’t ask to see my ID, so I suspect I could have put down anything I wanted…) and I was hired as the new wardrobe PA.

Now doesn’t that sound like the kind of job where I get to stand around in a short skirt, with a clipboard in one hand and my venti skinny latte in the other, yelling into my bluetooth things like “Not good enough! We needed it yesterday!!” Sadly, it actually involves a lot of grunt work – sewing, dyeing, cleaning, labeling, organizing – and all in a hotel room. I have to tell you it’s an unusual treat to see a washing machine stuffed into a tiny hotel bathroom with the water hose connected to the sink. The dryer? In the closet. The walk space? Minimal. People working and walking in this space? 4 at a minimum. Number of job descriptions that I have heard for the first time today? Many. What’s a Second Second??

Tomorrow, we load trucks for the shoot. Ah, the glamorous life of film!