n o w p l a y i n g - s c r i p t b i n - f a n c l u b - s t u d i o

make love to the camera



March 18, 2001 - 1:14 pm

The Second To Last Day In Cusack Land

Showbusiness is not what you think.

Hard drugs? Liquor? Whores?

Hardly. Not that it's all bad. Let's be logical and start with my penultimate day at the Joan Cusack set, Thursday.

I've said it before: Thursdays are usually a really boring day on set. It's all about rehearsals (often with the stand-ins) and camera blocking, which, for those of you not familiar with that term is when the director says "Let's put the camera here," and the technical director says "What about here?" and the whole fascinating process goes on for hours and hours and hours.

I felt bad for the extras, those poor saps. Sure, getting paid $65 to sit on a stage seems like a good gig at first. But, when you're Random Extra Guy #46 and all you do is fill out the crowd by sitting in the way back of an auditorium and it's midnight and you've been there since 10am, I'm pretty sure you begin to consider business school.

That said, here's some unsolicited advice: If you're a 55 year old man and your sole means of support is the above-mentioned torture, it might be time to pack it in. Call up mom and dad. Admit they were right.

Anyway. I had resigned myself to passing the boring day by reading scripts in the writer's offices and eating everything I could find in the green room. That's the cool thing about hanging out in a television studio: Free food abounds. So, I went to the green room in search of pop and cashews, only to encounter Chris, one of the show's line producers(this means he handles the office-y, administrative end of the show). I settled in, and we began the obligatory 'So what's up next for you?' conversation.

I told him of possible future employment at Starbuck's. Unfortunately, this is a real possibility for me, since I need a part time job, and one of their locations is next door to my place. Chris, however, gave me hope by telling me that he would be line producing some upcoming indie films here in Chicago. He went on to mention that he would need Production Assistants, and he would probably give me a call when the time comes.

In his words: "It won't pay very much. Only about $100 a day. You'd make about $375 a week."

Me Externally: (nodding non-chalantly) Cool.

Me Internally: Not very much? Dude, that's more than half my fucking rent. Right on!

So, with phone numbers exchanged, that conversation runs it's course, and I wander back to the writers' office. I'm not sitting down a minute when Jerry, one of the writers' assistants approaches me and asks whether or not I drove today. I let a slow, cautious 'yeeesss' escape my lips before my brain starts imagining scenarios of me running to buy him smokes or some other such thing.

"Cool," says Jerry. "Would you mind driving me somewhere?"

"No, sure, whatever, man," I say. Already I was thinking fuckfuckfuck.

"Good, we have to go to the Oberweiss Dairy."

�Que?

So, I pull up in front of the studio doors, driving my mom's (Yeah, I don't own my own wheels...go ahead...berate me. At this point, I'm still in shock that I have my own apartment, OK?) giganto hunter-green mini-van. The essence of Cool, yes. Jerry flits out the front door of the studio, and, much to my surprise, he isn't alone. No, indeed. For our little joyride, he has invited along the executive producer's fiance (!) Shari, and Tom, one of the writers.

Fantastic. Cool, successful, rich people: Welcome to my mom's mini-van. I'll be your driver this evening.

As we headed out of the lot, I thought to myself: "I could really throw a major kink into the show if I decided to get into a head-on collision at some point during this drive." You'll be glad to know that since I'm not sadistic or suicidal, I dismissed that thought pretty quickly.

Onward: Our mission was simple. We were to head to the Oberweiss Dairy in Oak Park to pick up $200 worth of chocolate and vanilla milkshakes for the cast and crew.

How disappointing. "I'm in showbiz now," I mused. "We're not going to pick up a kilo? We're not going pick up some strippers? We're going for ice cream?"

Seems like the only white stuff these industry insiders had a taste for came out of a cow.

Before heading to the dairy, however, we had to drop Tom off at a local mall where he had planned on buying some shoes. We picked up the shakes, and came back to get Tom. As I drove through the parking lot, I spotted him waiting for us.

It was a big reality check, actually.

"Wow," thought I. "Here's Tom. He's making $300,000 a year as a television writer, and yet, on some random cold, grey, rainy Thursday afternoon in a shitty Chicago suburb, he's leaning against an Osco waiting for some intern to come pick him up in a mini-van."

Glamorous, eh?

The rest of that Thursday passed without incident. Since I knew it was my second to last day on the set, and I wouldn't have the opportunity again for a while, I wisely left only after I was able to eat my fill of Kraft Services.

That's a lot of information, isn't it? I think that, in classic TV style, I'm going to have to make this one a cliffhanger, folks. Tune in next time for our startling conclusion, and find out what happened on Friday, the last day of taping.

Do I finally meet Joan Cusack? Does her brother, John, show up at the set? Is there really sushi at the cast party?

Those milkshakes: They were really fucking good, by the way.

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