xtcian

9/14/02 Here I am in

9/14/02

Here I am in Scott Bullock's house in Durham, NC, and find myself in a technological quandary. Scott jettisoned his landline phone service in favor of a wireless lifestyle; however, since my iBook is apparently a squeamish little bunny rabbit, it won't hook up to his high-speed ethernet. Which puts me on his ancient Celebris 6200 typing in the blog without access to any of the cool pictures we took today of the various goings-on. I sometimes wonder about those of you reading this thing with a dial-up account; I hope my relentlessly self-involved picture-posting doesn't bum y'all out unduly.

The rest of the Pink House crew left today, leaving only me (a Chapel Hill orphan) and Liz Mann (a longtime Heel born and bred) to navigate our way through some of the heaviest downpours I've seen since the last time we tried to make a movie. Thank god we had wrapped shooting by yesterday or else we'd be back in the same boat, Noah-style and shit. The rain provoked a 3.5 hour nap on my part (which is probably why I'm up and on crack here in the middle of the night), before making the adventurous trek to Kenan Stadium to watch my beloved Heels get their asses handed to them by the University of Texas, coached by our own turncoat leader, Mack Brown. It was good to get back inside the stadium to see the sea of baby blue, and I'm so used to watching our football team lose that it wasn't even all that bittersweet.

I do have to say this again, though: today's sophomores are way fatter and wear way less clothes than they did back in 1990. It makes for a Ruebenesque sluttiness that is half tragic and half sexy. I'd be interested to know if eating disorders are on the way down, since everyone seems so happy showing their bulging love handles, but knowing this country, they're all probably fat, slutty and STILL barfing.

9/13/02 I have to say,

9/13/02

I have to say, today was damn near a perfect day, marred only by the absence of my beloved Tessa. In many respects, it was the perfect representation of the Chapel Hill lifestyle: we slept late, ate Mama Dips for lunch, went to Schoolkids to buy records, slacked at home watching a DVD, went to Pepper's for dinner, then Henderson Street for drinks, then to a party in Chatham County to top off the evening. One forgets the simple pleasures here, and it was very nice, even if it's the kind of life I have no interest in living again.

It felt incumbent on me to provide a good day for the crew Kim and Emily had never been to Chapel Hill before, and Rick's only experience was last year's nightmarish month of hellish Pink House production, so we even went to Surplus Sid's to buy outlandish nightwear. I fancied a blue Swiss Army coat, but Rick actually bought a red-and-white barbershop quartet sport coat that was a hit with the crowds downtown.

Pepper's Pizza was its usual zoo, complete with vaguely hardened-yet-sensitive rock chick waitresses, and the mercurial Moses, who looked happy to see me and then bitched at me in front of the restaurant. One thing was different: the art on the walls - usually moronic black-and-white photographs trying unsuccessfully to give the joint a classy ambiance was the work of David Rose, someone Rick and I immediately loved. His world seemed to be based on a robot called Señor Pantalones and his friend Sausage (who is a sausage). We figured that anyone whose major motifs were robots and sausages had to be supported at all costs, so Rick bought two of the paintings. Of course, this being Chapel Hill, the artist had forgotten to sign them, so I said "well, he's got to be around here somewhere" and we set off to find him.

Rick in front of David's work at Pepper's Pizza

He lives in a backwoods house on Old Pittsboro Road, a shy 28-year-old (I'd guess) guy with his pretty, gregarious wife, watching old movies on a 1967 TV set. He seemed psyched to see us, and signed the paintings with aplomb. Afterwards, we felt damned good; this was money going to a great kid with a genuine talent, and he was going to use the $50 to pay the water bill. "It's not like you're giving money to Julian Schnabel so you can be part of the finger that gets stuck up his ass for a prostate check," Rick said, and you had to agree.

Henderson Street Bar was fun for a few minutes, but if you're not drinking, Chapel Hill bars can seem about as much fun as trivet factory. The guys we met mostly friends of Liz – are awesome folks, and genuinely good writers on our email group. They were, however, identically dressed in blue Oxfords and dark pants, lending a certain surreal quality to the proceedings. The whole event harkened back to the "Robert Frost Tragedy" sequence of the movie, which has newfound meaning for Kim, who drank with them firsthand. Speaking of which, I bought a shot of Rumplemintz for Emily, put it down in front of her, and left the bar without a word. I hope my good intentions were understood.

This being a game weekend, a huge game weekend at that, the sorority forces were out in full peacock feather tonight; painted blondes in the hundreds lined the streets in gaggles and droves, all meeting their flock at various bars to down Sex On the Beach shots with willing fratboys. Even a contingency from the University of Texas was around, hoping to score with some effusive Carolina chicks. The pheremone levels were so high as to be almost visible; estrogen and progesterone ran in rivers down Franklin Street. It was so intense that I made Chip stop the car so that Rick and I could get our picture with a particularly ebullient threesome. Again, I hope my good intentions were understood.

Rick and me between three Carolina girls who wished us "an awesome weekend"

9/12/02 I have much to

9/12/02

I have much to say at this point, especially since this spate of re-shoots came to an end tonight, but I'm so tired I literally can't run my fingers over the keyboard. I can report this, however: we nailed every shot we attempted. The most complicated set-up was a horse and buggy shot through downtown Hillsborough just after rush hour, and we nailed it on the first take. More tomorrow when my coma is over; in the meantime, here's a bit of proof that we came, we dressed, we filmed, we conquered:

the only scene I'm in: us posing with Amazon, The Horse That Wouldn't (But Eventually Did)

9/11/02 Being in a small

9/11/02

Being in a small Southern town on the anniversary of 9/11 highlights just how important geography really is; in New York, we think about aspects of terrorism every day, and here, on the media-saturated remembrance of the day itself, we had to keep reminding ourselves. In New York, we find ourselves in massive anxiety-producing crowds pretty much every day; in Chapel Hill, the only time 20,000 people get together is to eat barbecue and get drunk at Kenan Stadium on football Saturday.

In short, it was perfect. Not only was I not around the relentless sorrow and ubiquitous concerns for our safety, we actually managed to have a good time and stayed busy. I'm noticing my anxiety takes a precipitous fall whenever we're involved in an intense project and when we're surrounded by a commune of friends. Shooting pick-ups with the likes of John Kelleran, Rick Gradone, Liz Mann, Kim Ludlow and our small staff of production assistants all of us holed up in our connecting apartments – is exactly what I needed.

John Kelleran, Tessa, me and Rick Gradone on set

Not only that, but the shots we're getting are fabulous. There's a line in the movie that is so weirdly bad that it is funny, but only if delivered correctly. A restaurant hostess (played by Tessa) asks Windy (Natane Boudreau) if she has reservations. Windy replies, "So many... I'm just not sure about anything anymore." Yep. And it didn't work for a year in the editing booth, but today at the restaurant, donning the purple dress after a year in storage, Natane nailed it. It made Rick and I think about one's ability to change art once it was made; Windy and Murray have a line in the movie about painters who might be frustrated with an early work hanging in a museum and want to break in and change it. With re-shoots, we're basically doing the same thing.

Tonight we shot water, horses and moons at a farm outside town, and it was amazing as always. By 9pm, a panoply of bugs descended on us, all gravitating towards the light, spinning in maddening disarray to their gorgeous deaths against the filament. It was too good not to capture:

bugs race and dance around the movie light at Pleasure Horse Farms in Durham, NC

9/10/02 Everyone reading this on

9/10/02

Everyone reading this on September 11th will no doubt be having a weird day; we're pretty resourceful, Tessa and I, and damned if we knew exactly what to do with the day. Fortunately, that decision has been largely made for us: we're on re-shoots, and therefore recreating Chapel Hill in 1929. However, if we had the choice, I think our positions would be very different. Tessa wanted to observe the day in some way, commemorate it somehow and I feel like I live it so often, and I'm taking so much Celexa to drive away the worst things it brought, that it reminds me of that old, tired fucking joke reprinted every year in Reader's Digest. The kid says to his mom, "There's a father's day and a mother's day, but no children's day!" and the mother replies wearily, "Every day is children's day!"

Which is to say, the gloom of that time has never left me. Anymore, I'm not interested in analyzing how our country is different, I just want to find solutions. To me, it comes down to this: in the long run, we can't stop terrorists, so let's take away the reasons terrorists hate us. It's as fucking simple as that. Unfortunately, we're saddled with an administration that seems to have no long-range thinking ability at all, as well as a toxic dose of pride, so I just have to remain hopeful that we'll eventually elect somebody with some Vision. You know, with a capital V.

Chances are I'd be stuck in "anniversary reflection" mode anyway, since today we revisited many of the locations we shot the movie almost exactly a year ago. The worst of them was Starpoint, which is now populated with what I can only describe as a non-racist skinhead metal groove band, an affable crew that let us fill their house with smoke that probably lingers there now, nine hours after the shot. The residents weren't the problem, it was just the peculiar smell and environment of the house, never a place to sit, the site of so many setbacks and awful Movie Moments that damn near had me convinced we were rudderless and adrift in the icy Atlantic.

We had barely recovered from the emotional toll of making the Pink House movie when we got back to New York and spent the 11th of September carrying soot-encrusted suitcases for refugees streaming up the West Side Highway. The words written those few days seem as visceral to me as they do now, and time has not melted those moments into anything more coherent. My thoughts don't feel any more finished now than they did then.

Maybe we were too close to it. Perhaps 40 blocks isn't far enough. The folks in Midtown seemed stunned but managed to eat; by the time you got to the Upper West Side, couples were flirting at Starbucks. Frankly, I don't see how the rest of the country mustered as much care as they did, and I wouldn't be surprised if they spent this September 11th feeling a little guilty that they don't care as much as they should. I wish I could care a little less, I really do. I wish I could stop reading news reports and macabre re-enactments of disaster and I wish various unsavory contingencies would stop pure-ing through my brain. I wish I'd stop looking at maps of how far we would be from potential targets, and how I'd get my family out of Brooklyn, and where we could move to grow our own corn. These thoughts don't paralyze me the way they did in January, but they follow me along like a crazy man stalking; always a block away, always just out of view, impossible to give professionals a description.

So I'll try to leave myself this day with a few positive things, since good can be found in the darkest of chasms. I think the tragedy cured me of my relationship fears, something that had plagued me for at least 15 years. After September 11, asking Tessa to marry me seemed so natural and wonderful and obvious. Something about the event acted as a polarizer: either you broke up with your significant other, or else you married them. For us, hardship bred intimacy, and that's a rarity to be celebrated.

And to a lesser extent, I've learned to celebrate innocence, if not in me, then in others. I've jettisoned a lot of my critical eye in favor of appreciating those people who give anything a fair shake no matter how misinformed. Even bad style is style tried, and that's such a brave thing to do in this increasingly boxed-in world. Being sarcastic and talking shit is as easy as eating candy, and believe me, I'll continue to do a lot of both. But when a handful of extras show up to the movie set like they did tonight, having driven hours through the North Carolina countryside for a non-speaking part in an independent movie with no money for three hours and still coming up afterwards, beaming, thanking me for putting them in my movie you understand such spirit is left in the world. These people all want to move to New York, for god's sake! If that kind of innocence in the face of terror doesn't give you some kind of hope, then you're not paying enough attention.

extras for the exterior "party shots" for the Pink House movie

9/9/02 Here I sit at

9/9/02

Here I sit at two in the morning (did you know that I postdate or fake – the time at the bottom of these blogs so that the header above doesn't get confusing? it's almost always the middle of the night into the next day when I write these) and I'm back in Chapel Hill, NC for the next round of re-shoots for the movie. Our one and only shot went really well tonight, Matt Dawson re-creating a tiny moment that wasn't lit well enough over a year ago. It's all fakery, this moviemaking, but when else do you get to go shopping at Harris Teeter at 1am for a Montrachet Cheese joke? Rarely, I tellsya.

We start filming again in seven hours, so I'm truncating the hell out of my thoughts tonight, but I do need to add that we met the Offically Rudest McDonald's Employee in North America tonight. She manned the register in Dover, Delaware and was so bad that the manager gave us coupons for more deep fried shit somewhere else! Yay!

9/8/02 This will be a

9/8/02

This will be a short respite, a day off from shooting the film and travelling, and I spent it playing absolutely hideous basketball in Astoria, and then walking around Park Slope with Scott and Diane. It felt really nice to do absolutely nothing, and even though I know talking about sleep is about the most boring writing available, I'll let it slip that I took a 3-hour nap in the afternoon something I haven't done since about 1972 with a pint of chocolate milk and a Curious George Goes to the Hospital book.

This was also Dad's 63rd birthday, so I tracked him down on his cell phone. He was on the way to Carmel, CA to screw around for a while and most likely get away from the meltdown some of Carole's kids are having. One of them is getting the kind of divorce that ends up being put into novels, so ugly and mean-spirited and downright criminal that it makes me happy to lie next to Tessa, who possesses none of those genes.

I think Tessa and I got along better in 1987 - on the day we met better than my parents did in 23 years of marriage. It's strange to me how people make decisions, but you can never put yourself in their skins, and you can never judge. I'm sure both Dad and Mom had their reasons to go on a second date in 1962, I'm just not exactly sure what it was.

Thank god they did, though, for at least 3 of us in the family. Steve and Kent had already made the galactic cut by 1958, but a lot of stuff had to happen for me, Sean and Michelle to snuggle on our mortal coils. My affection for my mom is well-documented (and if that isn't enough, I'm sure I'll have more about her later), but I have also come to understand how important my Dad is to me as well. He had been easy to vilify, and I'm sure at least 5mg of my Celexa is dedicated to him, but the fact is, I think he made an incredible adjustment in the middle of his life, and is an inexorably better person for it. He has been nothing if not stunningly supportive of my career, in all its phases, since I was 22. Given the kind of fathering he had, it's amazing he's not in prison, and the fact is this: most men don't change, and he did.

Even if he changed only a little. Almost all men, especially those born in his generation and before, see no point in even the tiniest modification of behavior. They know they can basically get away with whatever they want forever, and set forth to do it. He was well on his way to this kind of life (and he still has his peccadilloes that sometimes drive me bonkers). But he is different than he was growing up, he engenders dialogue, he is much freer with his emotions, and he doesnt scare me at all anymore.

In the past, some of my family thought I was full of shit on this one, and that's their prerogative; everyone has a different relationship with their dad. But even if I am full of shit, who cares? I decided on November 23, 1986 when he said he was leaving the family – that I was going to have a good relationship with both of my parents and would do pretty much anything to make it work. Like they say in AA, "you fake it 'til you make it" and now I feel like both of my parental relationships are good and second-nature, even though they are very, very different.

Either way, this goes out to my dad, born in 1939 this day in Compton, California to a real asshole. I take the same oath that my dad did, that I will not be locked in father/son loathing, imagining an old man inside a casket with his middle finger still extended. I actually love my dad, and he actually loves me, and even if that's all it is, it's a revolutionary step forward from the last generation.

dad conducting circa 1982