(Don't) Give Up Your Day Job

I hate work, but it's necessary for any real sense of discipline.

Let me correct that, I hate what we've turned work into. Capitalism can be pretty cool, don't get me wrong, but we've built a cathedral around money such that our economy is largely based on fooling each other into desiring shit we have zero need for. In an effort to get things moving in the right direction I got a Regular Job in high energy office-based sales, and I came to two conclusions...

1) Most successful people in the non-necessary market are probably some kind of high-functioning sociopath. I've walked through Skid Row with less fear of people eating what they can of me and fucking the leftovers.

2) I'm not, as I previously suspected due to feeling either too little emotion or ALL THE EMOTIONS, a sociopath. Despite the weird, cultish mentality, the morning vigor chants, and the incentives, I immediately find myself thinking about the bottle of "landmark" pinot noir at home. 2010 "Grand Detour". Let me digress and beg you to never touch this shit, because when it promises "earthy tones" it's not being at all subtle. It feels like trying to take a bite out of the planet. It's not nearly as alcoholic as most wines, but it is fucking mean. It is a wife beater amongst the fiefdom of wine, crude, deep, and aggressive. I am instantly buzzed, but it is a deeply unpleasant experience. It is as unwelcome as sexual advances from Carrot Top.

So I'm back at my freelance job of location scouting and managing for films, which has its own perils but is also one of the most wonderful things in the world. The autonomy is great, the travel is great, but the fact is that even ultra-competent producers have no idea how to communicate with you to adequately prepare you for the types of places you need to shoot. You really need to have a list of detailed questions and commit to annoying them to avoid wasting everybody's time, otherwise they'll wave you off and somehow conjure the idea that what they have in their head magically beams into your mind, or perhaps that the script gives you what you need (at my indie level, most scripts are AWFUL. This last one I worked on had a scene where a guy was peeing and his hydrocephalic girlfriend wanted to hold his cock while he did it, so he STOPS PEEING long enough for a reacharound.)

It doesn't work like that. If you go forth thinking the moons will align, you might get lucky. More likely, the director will suddenly start giving detailed notes they should have given in the first place. Remember that these people are, in the words of Patton Oswalt, the ones who look at a script and go "On page 32 she's eating peanuts, but then on page 96 she's wearing a hat, does that make sense!?"

This job took me out to the Santa Clarita valley, shooting grounds for such as Justified and a huge expanse of desert land where maybe on out of twenty people gives a shit about property upkeep. Read between the lines, for those of you wanting to make a post-apocalyptic piece and don't mind shitting over the edge of a cliff for lack of running water, I will lead you to the promised land.

Now if I can find the correct memory card on my +5 Desk of Horrors, I'll run you through some of the highlights.

First place is a small film ranch on the cusp of a valley opposite the Vasquez Rocks, a formation that was made popular in film and television by various westerns and Star Trek. This place is kind of terrifying in a way that makes it wank fodder for Mad Max junkies. It's dusty, quiet, and even for Santa Clarita it is isolated. But the elderly caretaker is a riot and they have three old dogs living out there that, when they learned my assistant and I were game to play fetch, followed us just the fuck about anywhere.

Go ahead, I'll wait here while you look around.

So clearly if you're looking to film a Fallout flick or some kind of hillbilly assrape scenario, this is your mecca.

Down the valley a bit is a variety of strange sites all bundled up into one rolling vista, a film ranch owned by Disney. And we start at the center, where magical ole' Jew-hating (allegedly!) Uncle Walt himself had a vacation home!

The surreal part is that this cabin is about twenty feet away. I guess in case he wanted an adventure.

The couple didn't spend any time there, apparently. They were aging and you still have to drive across hell's half-acre to get to this place.

There are two film sets on the huge expanse, and let me tell you that there is nothing more surreal and creepy than an abandoned town set. The buildings are all hollow, like blank slates, and it's all like some kind of Truman Show on acid. You can't shoot in there unless you actually build an interior, including walls. One edge of town is that kind of fake prop wall, even. Here Evan poses with the main thoroughfare and I had to get the theater facade.

Some of the scenery and other cabins between there and the end of the world:

 

The above is interesting. It's a very Stepford neighborhood, viewed here from the top of the valley as we were looking for a vineyard on the map (it's been replaced by a medevac helipad because the place is so freaking remote) that we didn't have time to photograph properly for losing daylight as we passed through. Only one house in there has an interior.

 

HEY EVERYBODY I GET PAID AN INSANE AMOUNT TO GO AROUND AND FIND SHIT LIKE THIS.

It's a small wonder that gods tend to originate in the desert. There's an almost compulsive need to put something between you and that much sky.

Finally, homeward bound. Downtown, you may be an insane clusterfuck of non-drivers, screaming hobos, and fat people in cutoff jean shorts gobbling down jumbo-sized Pixie Sticks. You may be full of historically protected buildings that have seen assault from bombs, bullets, Baseball Furies, and a hundred hook-handed whores. But as long as I have this view of the Times building at night, I can put up with you and the occasional stray molotov cocktail through the window.