A Very Good Day

I arrived in cold grey stone and brick Winnipeg, where I am shooting the new movie, in a state of advanced and possibly mortal Buyer's Remorse. WHAT THE HELL HAD I DONE!? I had said yes to directing a meandering, repetitive, sentimental, unfocused script based, of all things, on a book by an outrageously fraudulent pop psychic. I had barely three weeks to prep it. What actor of quality would ever say yes to being in it? What would happen when the thing actually spilled out onto the airwaves? I knew I would be rewriting it, but I had a whole big whopping four days--really three nights--to do that, while simultaneously carrying the 24/7 job of prep. Then, the first night, atrial fibrillation struck--what else? AAUUUUGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!

Then I got to work. I set up in my hotel room and had my assistant (on this movie I have an assistant of my own, an unheard of luxury in movies for television, but Winnipeg is Canada's bargain basement city, and quite a wonderful place by the way) bringing me Vietnamese takeout and miso soup, and I just started on page one and started re-writing. I slept 7 hour in four nights--that's 7 hours altogether. Page by page, I had no confidence that another idea would come into my fuzzed-out panicked brain. At all times I felt the pressure of an art department, wardrobe department, assistant directors and location scouts wondering what exactly they were supposed to be doing as day after day of undirected prep ticked by.

I'll cut to the chase. When the producer of the movie called me yesterday, after reading the script, she was sobbing. Not just crying. Sobbing. Gentle readers, I seem to have pulled off an authentic tearjerker, which was exactly the goal. The script is still sentimental, it's still based on a book by an outrageously fraudulent (though apparently personally quite sincere) pop psychic, but it's a movie I'm excited about making now.

On top of that a Major Historic Star, 70 years old, winner of one Oscar and an entire raft of Emmys, expressed interest in playing one of the two leads but needed to talk to me about her concerns. We got on the phone. She opened quite bluntly: I love the character, I hate the script. I spent twenty minutes pitching my rewrite and at the end she said yes. Basically the producers gave me a tickertape parade.

So it was a good day.

But for one thing. My daughter had called saying she missed me and wanted to catch up and I called her and we were having a great time and I told her the Major Historic Star was doing my movie and said "She does a lot of TV movies, doesn't she?"

It was quite the pin in the balloon--the implication behind that--(though in fact she has done only a few). I don't think it was said with hostility--was it? No: worse than that. A shade of disappointment. And I can't entire fault her for it. We had all been hoping for an Even More Major Historic (and newly sober) Star, winner of an even earlier Oscar (for a movie which my wife and I saw on our first date in 1972), who would have been the next offer if Major Historic Star had said no.

Fact is, I was slightly feeling the same thing as my daughter.

Welcome to the brain of yours truly. A day as good as can be had by a living organism on planet Earth and there's still a cloud of "Yeah, but..." over the whole transaction.

Only one cure for that, after a terrific nine hours of sleep: Shut up, Tom, put on your sixteen layers of warm clothing (it's 10 below zero centigrade today, which I think is about 20 farenheit), have some breakfast, drive into the office and GET THE HELL BACK TO WORK.

I'm on it.