Warning: This journal is rated R, for restricted audiences. It contains naughty language and adult situations. If you are under 18, do not read without the consent of an adult.
10-4,
Friday, July 31, 1998: Production Day 10
Last shift of the work week, and I have to say: between the pace of production and the banality of my position, the days are finally blurring into one indistinguishable casserole. My character is wearing down to a dull point, like a pencil writing on a piece of sandpaper. How much longer before this brutal timetable reduces me to slobbering waterhead, virtually incapable of making any contribution, artistic or otherwise, to society beyond a trail of drool on the sidewalks of Los Angeles? Even the ominous threat of public uprising and/or switchblade-wounds on my way downtown didn't serve to excite my deadened synapses this dismal morning. I wonder often, in fact, whether the various and sundry disheveled homeless folks about me on the Row were not unlike Lloyd Rice one day, long ago, bright eyed and hopeful, carrying heavy objects around and yelling codenumbers into their headset walkies on the set of some overwrought and exorbitant film production. Perhaps they too worked their fingers to the bone, endured unending abuse from their superiors and the prevailing talent, slept but three hours a night, and sucked down the coffee and booze in a fruitless attempt to keep up the pace. Valiant they may have been, but eventually their great timber did weaken, their minds grew soft and their knees gave way, their souls trampled into bone meal, their hearts beating only enough to pump the minimal amount of life blood through their thinning veins. One day, I imagine, they finally broke down, crumpled to the floor- and with outstretched hand, pleading for compassion- they were left in the dust, without skill or soul to complete a meaningful existence on this planet. Banished to cardboard hovels with bottles of Mad Dog for a pillow, and rocks of cocaine for blankets, their final years were as inconsequential and vaporous as a fart in the wind. I'm not enthused. Already the curio of closequarteredness with superstars has become tiresome and predictable. I don't care if you were in Con Air, I don't care about your Zone diet, and I certainly don't care if you move to the side when I roll through this sick town one last time in an 18 wheeler, bound for the Yukon. Bring on the vodka-tonics, the week is done. Million dollar idea: a computer program that can translate your spoken words into text on a computer.
