Yikes! It’s really happening, ain’t it?!?
You are looking at a snapshot of a copy of a scanned version of a fax of the ACTUAL AND REAL shooting schedule for the RUNAWAY BOYS shoot. It came via e-mail to me (and the rest of the production personnel) about 20 minutes ago. Since then, I’ve just been sitting here (in Dunn Bros…where else?) gawking at the thing.
In spite of everything—going to NYC, living through the past couple of weeks, meeting Aaron, yada yada yada… This…THIS is what really brought it home for me. That on Tuesday of next week cameras are gonna be rolling, Tim’s gonna say “Action!”, and actors are gonna start struttin’ their stuff—I even know which scenes are happening on what day! …And it’s all from a little short story and then a little script that came out of my very little head.
Sometimes I am so boggled by all of this. At other times I am so honored, I tear up. Other times I am all “This is SooOOoOOo cool!”—I feel like a kid in a candy store.
Every once in a while I am scared shitless. Thankfully, this is the case by far the minority of the time nowadays.
I am, in fact, even less scared than I was just yesterday. The kids and I popped up to Cambridge for a short visit with my parents (Lynn is in CA at a qigong retreat till Wednesday). There were about 15 minutes when it was just my mom and I alone in their half-finished house.
We were sitting on the couch together (hell! Just ‘cause your house ain’t done don’t mean you can’t live in it a little, right?), and I was giving Mom my patented “Now the only thing left to worry about it that the movie doesn’t suck” speech. Well, everyone else listens to that speech and is more than willing so commiserate with me—to be a willing party to my little exercise in wallowing in self-doubt.
Not Mom.
She wouldn’t hear anything of the sorts.
“Billy,” she said. “Don’t say that. Your movie is going to be wonderful. It’s going to be terrific. You’ve worked so hard on it. Everyone’s worked hard on it. You just got to have a positive attitude…say ‘It’s going to be great.’ That’s all. …And it will.”
Ahhhh…a mother’s faith.
You’re right, Ma. It’s gonna be great. Plain and simple.
…And it’s going to all happen beginning next Tuesday.
So…speaking of being back in Minnesota… I touched down in the Land of Lakes around 3 a.m. Saturday morning. Inclement weather just to the west of New York caused major delays, and we sat on the tarmac for over two hours waiting for whatever storms were out there to blow over. I was a more than a little worried about this because I only had an hour lay over in Chicago before I had to catch my next flight—the one to Minneapolis. Turns out that flight was late, too. No idea what the reason was for all that…didn’t care, either. Was, quite frankly, thankful.
I arrived home exhausted—both of the mental and physical varieties. Slept in till about 9:30 on Saturday, when I was awakened by a big monster hug from my Zach Attack. Wow! It was the best hug I’d gotten in…man! Weeks. Months! Then he climbed into bed with me, and Syd kid wasn’t far behind him. Neither was Elvis…or Minnie for that matter.
There we were, quite the crew, all giggles and tickles and dog slobber. And though it wasn’t nearly right without Lynn there in the mix, it felt good to be home.
Since then, I’ve gotten two good nights’ sleep. I can, however, still feel the tiredness tugging at me.
NOTE: I really typed all of this yesterday…Monday. I had somehow deluded myself that I was going to finish the whole story yesterday. Then, when I finally settled in after a long day of cleaning and errands and running kids around and catching up with a couple of good friends and what not—when I finally got home and crawled into bed around 11:45 p.m., I suddenly comprehended just how messed up in the head I was on that particular point.
When I awoke today, in fact, tiredness didn’t merely tug at me; it consumed me. Apart from my quick trip to drop Sydney off at cheerleading practice, I slept like a log until after 9:00. I opened my eyes, saw the time, and jumped out of bed in a panic. I rushed through my shower and getting dressed, and I was still ten minutes late to my appointment with my barber (I want to avoid looking utterly and completely shaggy in the event I can’t avoid a camera lens over the next 3-4 weeks).
Anyway…so what I’ve decided is to take a play from the Wilmeister’s playbook. Write it out little by little, day by day, over the next few days. That way, by the time I head up to the set in Catskill, I will hopefully have you all caught up on the story of my recent and amazing trip.
So…keep posted. I think you’ll like it. The whole thing is interesting (in a Project Greenlight kinda way), I guess.
For now, I have spent the most awesome day alone with my beautiful daughter. We watched three-and-a-half movies (yes, there is a story behind that), had lunch at a Mongolian barbeque, sipped coffee coolers, and gabbed gabbed gabbed all day long. Wonderful…so wonderful to get in touch with her again. All that said, I’m bushed, and I’m going to close my eyes now. I will—I promise—catch you on the flip side.
‘Night, all…
CUT!
True Life 