Muggles
My wife is the Harry Potter person in the family but I have overheard enough of the books on tape to know that in Rowling's universe there are the people with magical powers and then there are the prosaic unmagical masses out there, the normal people, us: the muggles. Today we were shooting on a public road and a car came through and one of the AD's (assistant directors) wanted to know if it was a car and driver hired for background to the scene or if it was just a passerby, and to find out she asked "Is that us, or is that a real person?" In the same location a bicyclist started biking lazily and without hurry down a road we were about to shoot on, at which another AD announced "We have a bogey in the shot." Real people. Bogeys. Lookey-loos. The normal people out there living their humdrum everyday nine to five lives while we, the crew, the moviemakers, willingly spend insanely long hours fighting time, the elements, the budgets and the utmost limits of our energy and abilities to maybe, hopefully, bottle a few ounces of magic. We were in a very stressful moment today--and it was a stressful and not entirely succesful day--and a veteran local producer who I like a lot said to me "Every time I ask 'why do I put myself through this,' all I have to do is drive by downtown and think of all the people working in those little cubicles in all those towers..." And I feel the same way. It's part of the reason I gave up architecture. Couldn't deal with nine to five under flourescent light. Couldn't deal with being normal.
Yesterday when I was high and happy it felt great to exist outside the grey reality of the muggles. But today when a rain shower cut short my time on a crucial shot, leaving me with only one very approximate take, and when a series of miscommunications and miscalculations put me into another half hour of overtime and left me with another scene pulled off in at best an approximate manner, I realized something critical:
The muggles have the last word.
Right now we the wizards are reveling in the magic making but come a few months from now the muggles get to turn on their TV's, take a quick look at a couple of scenes, say "oh give me a break" and move on.
And that includes you, gentle reader.
So when the day comes, be kind, okay?
Yesterday when I was high and happy it felt great to exist outside the grey reality of the muggles. But today when a rain shower cut short my time on a crucial shot, leaving me with only one very approximate take, and when a series of miscommunications and miscalculations put me into another half hour of overtime and left me with another scene pulled off in at best an approximate manner, I realized something critical:
The muggles have the last word.
Right now we the wizards are reveling in the magic making but come a few months from now the muggles get to turn on their TV's, take a quick look at a couple of scenes, say "oh give me a break" and move on.
And that includes you, gentle reader.
So when the day comes, be kind, okay?
posted by Tom at 11:23 PM
3 Comments:
Be kind to yourself first, then worry about the Muggles.
Seems you and I are always in similar kyaks paddling down adjacent rivers and dealing with similar rapids.
What gives? Destiny? Fate? Misery? Laughter?
Cubicles, know what you mean. Had that literally at my last job. I just up and quit with no other job lined up. At that job, I even had to BE beuracracy, recording every single little interaction three different ways. Oh that SO pissed me off. I couldn't handle it. The only job where I've ever called in sick without actually being sick.
As for the muggles having the last word, it helped me when I realized that, "And you will toil by the sweat of your brow to get anything up out of the ground" (Genesis 3: 19) is as prophecy for us now (for all men). That's why I like Bunuel; surrealism is all about gardening. That and cubicles are, in a sense, two different issues.
I understand what you mean, but writers have it even worse. Once they've worked and put their thoughts on paper, the "muggles" get to pull it off the shelf, glance at a cover illustration by some artist who didn't even bother to read the book, decide it must be crap, and put it back. If we survive that, our book is sure to be mangled when it's made into a movie. I'm not against movies, but why can't they use original screenplays, instead of 'basing' everything on some poor author's work?
Post a Comment
<< Home