Jeesus Christ!

Phew! I'm in the middle of a crazy weekend that actually started yesterday, Friday. It's wrap weekend on Akeelah and the Bee. The shoot is goign very well and it will finish up tomorrow. The day after is a reduced crew day when we go in and shoot some White House interiors on the West Wing set. That should be interesting.

Why am I writing this: Well, I want to talk about a low point. So you meet all kinds of people on set and you meet bullies, and insecure people, incompetent people, greedy people and then as many awesome, nice people. I had to deal with some people of the former kind this week and I swear I thought I could handle it just fine after 6 years of boarding school experience in India. Well, apparently not.

Today, I almost threw up my arms. I was two microseconds away from cussing like crazy and I had to just contain myself and avoid this person. I am actually seconds away from going on a rant about the things that are absolutely so messed up about this person but I'm going to contain myself.

The lesson to learn is when people say don't take anything personally, they REALLY mean it. You just CAN NOT take anything personally or it will chew at your self-confidence. I'm confident it will happen to everyone of us at all our internships, whereever it may be. Suddenly, youre like, WHAT! SO NOW I DONT KNOW HOW TO RECOGNIZE A 40mil LENS!! or STAPLE A BUNCH OF SHEETS! or something totally stupid like that.

My first day at Bernie Mac, I could NOT, for the life of me, slate the shots in a remotely graceful way! Back up: I was with the camera department my first week at Bernie Mac and one of the responsibilities I had was to SLATE the shots that week. So, having made all these films at Ithaca, I was so damn confident I knew how to do this but BAM, I started tripping. I couldn't center it, avoid glares, soft-slate, remember right take numbers and made EVERY single mistake in the history of slating.. Jeez, I was super embarassed and my confidence was majorly shaken. Part of the reason was that I got nervous and screwed up like a jackass, but part of it also was that I took all the jokes everyone made at my screw-ups seriously.

This weekend was worse than that. The way these guys joke around is they make fun of me or yell at me or transfer their mistakes or others' mistakes on to me. When I rebut it, they tell me they are just giving me a hard time - which is totally true. It's just that I'm letting this get to me and getting really frustrated with it. I don't know what the lesson in this is, but I know it will probably happen to all of us.

Bucky, this grip on the Bernie Mac show, told me this when I was working with the grips; a lesson I carried with me, one that I use to console myself and justify certain situations. He said: Everyone tries to make their job look complicated. All you're f***ing doing is trying to capture an image. So there are a hundred ways to do it and none of them is right. A C-stand is a C-stand whether Conrad Hall is holding it or Suds. SO DAMN TRUE. I see these people all the time, who draw their standing in life by opressing people below them. That's why going to college does more than give you a space in film school. Jeesus Christ! If only I could explain this to them, I wouldn't have to justify going to college everyday to these guys.

Guy: So, Suds, what do you think: Is film school a total waste of time?
Suds: (O. My. God.) (polite laughter).