Friday, October 12, 2012

Video Shoot

What you see on screen is not what you see behind the scenes. It's only six in the morning, but the set at Beso's in Hollywood is bustling with two dozen men and women hard at work. Key grips adjust a light, making sure it reflects off my cheek in just the right way. Not too harsh, but soft, a comforting and warm glow, like a reassuring pat.
The director paces the restaurant, points every which way, a general in the mists of battle, his mind a million places all at once.
In back, the actresses prep with makeup. Two stylist for four girls. Brushes and blush and hairspray. Steam billows from a portable iron. Someones looking for eye liner.
Time to block out the video. Chart each and every step I'll take from 'Action!' to 'Cut!' There's a girl with celestial emeralds for eyes on my arm. She follows me into the restaurant. To a table. I pull out her chair.
On the second floor, catering has coffee and breakfast.
A photographer snaps another photo inches from my face.
Cameramen swarm, circling me like vultures  "Can you sit up, please?" they ask. "Move a little left. A little right. Good, good."
It's almost eight and we haven't shot a single second of footage. Two hours of preparation  Two hours of checking, rechecking, and checking again the cables, the angles, the continuity.
"We ready?"
"We're ready," says the director. He waits quiet. All is still. Until he puts into -- "Action!"


Saturday, October 6, 2012

Second Death

Death gets the living thinking. About legacy. About who will show up at our funeral. Who will cry and who will laugh and who will raise the first shot of vodka for a toast.
It's not death that scares us.
It's being forgotten. Irrelevant. "Here today, gone tomorrow," as Sugarfoot Bonner would say. Very few have escaped this second death. That honor goes to the Shakespeares and Einsteins and Christ-like figures across time.
But the rest of us?
What footprint do we leave behind?
Luckily, it's the little things that leave the longest lasting impressions. Making a stranger laugh. Reminding someone you love them. Singing when it's unexpected. Smiling. And the smells -- the perfumes, the new apartments, the deep-fried carnival food, fresh-cut grass and fog machines of our memories.
These things are our legacies. Our lives.
No matter how long your name is still muttered after you're gone, nothing and no one can take that away from the world.
Rest in peace Steve Lee.

Thursday, October 4, 2012

Generic Interview: Part III (The Power of Music)

It compels us to kiss. To cry. To twitch with nervous energy. The power of music is unlike another other on Earth. Instilled by God and drilled by man, it has evolved cultures. Fought tyranny. Caused quite a few to faint.
"So, you asked me what music can do?"
"That's right," asks the interviewer.
I pause. Think. Search for the right wording. "Anything it wants to."
That's why we listen in the car -- stuck cursing in traffic or cruising the coast. That's why it's on TV and in the movies. On our phones. Our minds. Music pushes us to jog further. Lift more. Make love. Mosh pit. Stage dive. Take risks. And live.
 "What are you trying to do with your music?"
"Besides not work a real job?" I joke.
"Besides that," they laugh.
If you could make people kiss, cry, twitch; if you could mold their emotions like clay --
I answer, "I'm trying to make this world a livelier place."