At The End of Week One

This will probably be a very boring post because all I have to say right now is that I just had the most wonderful couple of days. We were shooting in a massive--I mean like 14 bedroom--mansion, probably the largest and grandest in Calgary, which is standing in for the ancestral North Carolina plantation home of one of the families in the story. (Why people as wealthy as the homeowners want to allow the trampling army of marauders that is a film crew into their art and antique filled home is a question I can't answer.) We moved fast, the lighting was great, the actors were having a great time, there were no more costume disapprovals from the network (actually the producers have wisely told the network "we will accept no more such calls"), and even thunder, hail, sound-wrecking airplanes, power problems and too much work to get done didn't dampen anybody's spirits. Which is not say that every second of it wasn't tense. It's just that way on the set. Time is speeding by, the physical world generally refuses to fall in line the way I want it to, and there's always the question "am I doing this right?"--but like I said, it's just that way.

Here, possibly, is why the days felt so good to me. I was looking at the referrals on my site meter--always curious how people find their way to places in blogland--and one of them was a google search for the phrase "director's prayer." I saw that something from Shekhar Kapur's blog had also turned up in that search. Kapur directed "Elizabeth", the one that starred Cate Blanchett, which I thought was directed about as well as a movie can be directed. Masterful. So I clicked on the link and discovered that he's writing a blog about a movie he's shooting, too--the sequel to Elizabeth--and that he is feeling just as squeezed by his schedule (80 days) as I am by mine (19.) It's a terrific blog but the best part of it is this prayer that he wrote, which has now become my anthem. It is titled "At The End of Week 2", and it goes like this:

Hanging on,
to the slim thread of instinct
which is lost so easily
if cut by arrogance

for in this punishing schedule
where there is not a moment to think
like a soldier in the middle of battle
dodging bullets and moving blindly forward

Be one with the bullet

live by pure instinct
no time for logical thought
tap into something that is more immense
than yourself

do it quickly
impulsively

listen to your heart
amid all the fear of
that pervades the set,
be in love

never, never
not be in love

trust
that somehow,
you are loved
by God

and be pure of heart,

shekhar

Is that great or what? "Be one with the bullet." I should have that tattoed on my arm so I can look at it whenever things get crazy.

Maybe I actually will.