Fear and Leaving Los Angeles

3 days left in Los Angeles.
The white car I hired is now grey with the soot I must be breathing when I go for a run through the streets. I'm looking forward to drinking from the tap and being able to walk places. It's been ... odd.

Pilot Season, the mad scramble to make new TV has all but wrapped up and Hollywood  refocuses its attention back on film. I've had my fill of police detectives for now thanks. I read an interesting statistic the other day. In this Pilot Season the big 4 studios ordered 22 pilots about law enforcement agencies, including the C.I.A, F.B.I, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, U.S Marshalls, Bounty Hunters, Police Psychologists, Forensics and the Rank and File. This probably wasn't the best year for me then. Next year will most likely be lawyers, doctors and the like. Swings and roundabouts. There's a lot to be said for being in the right place at the right time.

I have my first audition for a ridiculous big budget blockbuster tomorrow. Nice to see Speilberg's name on your audition form from time to time. I'm polishing up my maniacal Wild West outlaws demented younger brother routine this afternoon. Be nice to leave some sort of impression before I go. I also have a full afternoon of A.D.R (additional dialogue recording) for Tracker tomorrow. Most of the film was shot exterior on West Auckland beaches and hillsides in Glenorchy so you can imagine the sound quality might be a bit sketchy. Usually it's a word here, a line there. I wasn't quite prepared for the amount of pages I got sent however. The entire final scene! ADR is a funny thing. Alone in a soundproof booth with a pair of headphones on you have to put yourself back where you were a year or so ago and match to your own mouth the same dialogue. Some times the opportunity to adjust or even improve on the original performance can be a blessing and certainly the paycheck is welcome. It can be damn tricky at times but for me the hardest thing is always seeing raw footage of your work and realising you don't look or sound nearly as cool as you thought you did. I can understand why some film actors never watch their own work, and given the chance I think I'd be the same.

I have learnt, through limited but interesting travels, that the best way to learn about a place and its culture is through its people. I have found that it certainly throws into relief my own peculiarities and cultural hang ups. Americans, Californians, the ones I've met are a handful to say the least. I've found myself thrust headlong into uncomfortable conversations regarding spirituality or conspiracy theory. People are also 'super-nice' however (super being adjective of choice, as in super-fun.) There seems to be a real outward-looking, heart on your sleeve mentality that highlights my own inward-looking, easy going with a dark streak kiwi way. Of course, this is L.A not America, and I'm hardly the cultural paradigm for Male New Zealand. I stumbled across a poet today. He's one of the most famous poets in the world and I'm glad to have finally found him. These were the words that caught my eye ...

The way we are living, timorous or bold, will have been our life.
-SEAMUS HEANEY

Yep, he's quite something. On further investigation I laughed when I read this ...

”The political implications of lyric art are quite reactionary,” Heaney says. ”You are saying to people, ‘Everything’s all right.’ And, in fact, one of the things America exposes you to quite radically is people’s hunger to be comforted. And it’s very moving, and it’s authentic, but somehow you get co-opted into a language of comfort that is quite bogus.”


I think I have come to understood a little of what he is saying.

As I write my neighbour is taking his pet Boa-Constrictor for a walk on the grass. No that's not right. A slither? My other neigbour sits in his usual afternoon sun spot in short-shorts chatting happily on his big chunky cordless phone in some sort of African dialect. Phillip the squirrel is crashed out on a power line snoozing and the crows rummage through the recycling. They'll have to be quick, it's about now the local homeless dude rummages through himself for the 5-10c returns he'll get from our glass and plastic. I have a nice cold root beer waiting for me in the fridge and I have half an ear out for the sound of the communal laundry to stop so I can get my last load in before I leave. The Hollywood map I kept from a 6 year old Empire magazine that is sellotaped to my wall is now covered in blue crosses and marks pinpointing studios and audition rooms. The LAPD Eye in the Sky is still circling a few blocks away, I still find it loud and annoying but that'd go after a while I assume. I live next to the motorway in Auckland and without it now, I usually have trouble sleeping at first. We are adaptable creatures. I think I could do okay here. To quote the Governor of California, Governor Schwarzenegger,  "I'll be back".