My 30 Day Week

I have just completed experience of having worked thirty days in a row on a production gig, and it worth noting the progression of my mental and physical state during that time, if only as a laboratory example of the old scientific principle that All Work And No Play Makes Jack A Dull Boy.

The following is composed of quotes taken from my journal during the month of August. I have removed all details which would infringe on my nondisclosure agreements, redacted the names of individuals, and deleted a few of my more, uh, colorful comments. Everything else is as it was written.

The first five days passed more or less normally, being, of course, a normal work-week.

Day 6: "Working on Saturdays has a slightly surreal feel to it. The knowledge of obligation is there, but not the psychological weight that makes an ordinary workday so oppressive."

Day 8: (my birthday) "Forty-four wheels around the sun. Isn't that what I always say this time of year? Yet today I can't say as I feel anything at all. When you wake early, exercise, and work all day, every day, one more day of it doesn't feel like anything out of the ordinary. And it wasn't."

Day 9: "Ten hours in the tinpan, and very dull and exhausting hours at that. I slept poorly because of the birthday drinks, struggled out of bed a little after seven, and somehow managed to get to the pool by ten of eight. A gruff-voiced lesbian coach, like a bad stereotype out of an episode of The Simpsons
was giving instruction to five lanes full of students, and none too happy to see me, but I still managed 26 minutes of very hard swimming before I had to leave. I felt tired the moment I walked in, and as the day wore on, bored, fat, flatulent and fed up. When I say 'fed up' I don't mean disgruntled or angry or ungrateful or even irritable, just physically sick of sitting and playing monotonous games in front of a camera all goddamn day. I forgot my phone, too, and my ass was asleep half the day, or so it seemed."

Day 10: "When is this going to stop? That was all my tired, bored, numb brain could think at some point around the tenth or eleventh hour of work today. How much is enough? When do we get to go home? All my earnest and heartfelt prayers to 'give me work, dammit!' have been answered with such resounding force that I can barely lift my face to the storm, so to speak. This is another way of saying I was fourteen hours in the tinpan and have the numb ass to prove it."

Day 18: "Life has become a monotonous blur, a sort of Groundhog Day in which any detail which variates on the theme becomes outstanding simply by virtue of being different, and never mind if it is intrinsically interesting."

Day 19: "What a lousy day. Not lousy for me personally; just a shamefully lousy performance by the crew of bumbling fuck-ups my employer has hired to serve as foot soldiers for this interminable project.
I swam for a good solid half-hour this morning, trying to concentrate on my surroundings -- the blue skies, the palm trees, the cool clean feeling of the water, even the sound of my own labored breathing as I paddled along laboriously behind my kickboard. (It isn't easy, when you live as deep in your head as I do, to be aware of your surroundings, or to appreciate them.) After the swim, I ate a quick meal in the kitchen and sank into the first available chair. Unfortunately this chair was next to E., a fat, long-haired, drawling-voiced idiot who loves the sound of his own voice and rakes my nerves raw every time he speaks. I was made further uncomfortable by M., who hates E. even more than I do and seemed to be on the verge of beating him senseless, so at the first opportunity I slunk away so I wouldn't have to witness an assault -- or participate in in it! The day passed very quietly until about dinnertime. Unfortunately it took us two and a half hours to get the shot afterwards because the cretinous, submoronic lackwits hired by Casting cannot take direction. The director, who is normally very polite and even-tempered, was growing more and more frustrated and, I think, embarrassed by his inability to get any of them to do what they were told. My temper was sorely tried, and I'm not even directing the fucking scene! T. shares my low opinion of these poltroons, and supposedly they will not be returning after this weekend -- which, of course, I am now scheduled to work. At this point I have recovered from the near-breakdown I had on the Sixteenth; my emotional needle has ascended from the pits of despair to a sort of hardened plateau where I feel neither lows nor highs. I know that my next check, which I will get just before the end of the month, will be a hefty one, but I'm also too flattened mentally to appreciate it just now. When all the smoke clears and all dust is settled, I know I will be supremely grateful for the opportunity to make 20% of my normal yearly income in the span of three weeks: but for now I am incapable of anything except putting one foot in front of the other."

Day 20: "Christ and Christ and Christ. Not sure I can take much more of this, and yet I must. It's not the work, which is easy in itself: it's the bloody goddamned grind. The sameness, the monotony. The Möbius loop. I wake up. I piss. I feed Spike. I let Spike outside. I cook and eat breakfast. I pack. I bring Spike inside. I turn on Classical KUSC and double-check the locks. I drive to Park La Brea by way of Avon Street and Burbank Boulevard and Hollywood Way and Olive Street and Barham and Cahuenga (West) and Mulholland Drive and the Outpost Road and Franklin and La Brea all the way to Sixth Street and then to the entrance of Park La Brea. The fat security guard hands me another pass and I park. I get two towels and a locker and change and shower. I swim with one eye on the clock -- a lap of freestyle, a lap of breast-stroke, a lap of kickboard, repeat. Chlorine stings my eyes. I try to appreciate where I am and what I am doing. The last minute strikes: ten-thirty antemeridian. Out of the pool. Into the shower, again. Into my clothes. Hair fixed. To the car, down Sixth Street, up Fairfax to Sunset to the studio garage. Into the studio. The bathroom. Then the cap room. Then the kitchen. And then it begins: make the coffee, eat the pear, drink the water, sit down in the chair. Choreograph, rehearse, crash, shoot, crash, rehearse, shoot, shoot. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Same faces, same smells, same routines, same conversations, same fantasies and daydreams and distractions. All the same, right down to the frustrations with the laptop (new) and the internet (slow). I couldn't wait to get the hell out of there. Tomorrow is Sunday, and another day in the tinpan. Forever in the bloody tinpan. I can't stand it for much longer. The nerds are on my nerves x10 x10: it takes so much restraint not to get ugly. But somehow I have to hold on and endure the prosaic dullness of it all."

Day 21: "Something joyous happened today at work, something quite wonderful enough to mitigate the harassed morning I had, and the nausea I suffered in the evening as a result of some bad food I ate for lunch. E. the Mouth got fired. I haven't written much about him in here; indeed, I haven't had time to write much about anyone in here. E. was the fattish, pale, dead-eyed, long-haired jackanapes whose droning, whining voice resounded all over the set lo, these last five or ten days and who raked my nerves interminably during that time --and not just mine. Evidently his bullshit accumulated to the point where even the long-suffering production staff had had enough. When M. told me this, I was dazed with joy, because goddamnit, I really was dreading being around him for another five days -- worried I'd snap and say something that would get me canned. The fucker is just intolerable. And now I don't have to tolerate him anymore. It's remarkable how little things like this -- the surgical removal of assholes, to use some rather unpleasant imagery -- happens in life. Normally the single spoiled apple spoils the bunch, and keeps spoiling it. But not this time."

Day 22: "Thirteen hours in the tinpan. What can one say about it? In spite of everything -- every trick and device I could muster to pass the time at hand -- I reached levels of boredom that tested the mettle of my soul. Iit was just a sevencourse serving of the same old shit. Ernst Jünger said that boredom was "pain diffused over time" and he was correct. It is painful to be bored for the course of a whole day -- miserably, interminably bored, and on top of bored, frustrated."

Day 26: "The last few hours were very dull, with tempers getting short and voices getting loud, and I've been informed that they want me to work the weekend and be on standby Monday as well. Will it never end?"

August 29 (morning): "'Today ought to be the last real day of shooting.' So they tell us. I know, I know; we've heard this song before, right? Think I know the sheet music at this point."

August 29 (night): "I've seldom been so vocally disgruntled in my life around people whose opinion of me has a direct bearing on my economic future, but when I get in that mood there is no shutting me off."

August 30: "We wrapped tonight at 10:48 pm, bringing the Siege -- the longest in my experience -- to its climactic end. I fled the building, said goodbye to the crew, drove to the bank and deposited a fat check in my account, and then came home to a disgruntled cat. No parades, no speeches, no tickertape: just a sink full of dirty dishes, a hamper full of dirty laundry, and silence."

And that, folks, is why I'm running behind on this blog, which is supposed to appear at least once a week. I have worked some gnarly production gigs in my day but this was the gnarliest, at least in terms of the sheer endurance required. And yes, I am using "gnarly" in a sentence. The Valley Girl slang popularized by Fast Times At Ridgemont High and just as quickly ridiculed and forgotten, has never died here. I on the other hand probably will, if I ever have to do this shit again.