The Search

This always happens to me. Yet again, I find myself searching for the thick electric cable known as seaway, I listen for the hum of voices or the squacky chatter of walkie-talkies. I strain to hear someone saying "copy that" or the more mysterious "I'm 10-100". I wander on, hoping that nothing is yet "up" - a rehearsal or blocking or, worst of all, "picture" - any of which would mean I am late. In the case of "picture's up" very late.

Through one or more of its indexical signs, I am trying to locate the film set, caught between good timing and bad. But even before I get a toe on set, I experience something like this:

A long corridor, a hallway of closed doors seem to swim past me as quizzical eyes peer at me. I am obviously not supposed to be there. The Job Interview is in a recently rented temporary office space. There are no signs leading me there, and naturally nobody who works behind the mysterious hallway doors has ever heard of them. "Angry Dishpan Productions? What?" Glaring at you as if it's your fault they don't know how to get rid of you.

The interview itself is as strange an anomaly as I've ever come across in this business. I've been offered a year-long well-paying television series over the phone and then had to present myself to two separate producers of a low-budget feature film. Another time the director and producer started having a technical conversation in the middle of my interview. I have been asked to wait while the producer I needed to impress reamed someone over the phone. Once I endure a two-hour inquisition by a Hack Director for three weeks work on a low-paying B-movie. Which I didn't get. When the producer called to let me know this, I told her I was relieved; I thought there was something wrong with the Hack Director. She said Thank You. Later I remembered the hastily-assembled office she worked in had no walls, only 5 foot high dividers; I am sure her own superiors were listening in.

Like many of my brethren, I move from show to show. There are no Big Studios and few film technicians, the people who physically make the movies and TV shows, have any job security beyond their last paycheque. The very temporariness of the film industry is part of its attractiveness. It is a world of non-commitants and quiet rebels and not for the faint of heart.