SeeingEyeBlog

My luck has been consistently down when it comes to meeting a girl I like who is NOT attached to someone. More to the point, I’ve had an unusually long streak of girls who want to go out with me who were attached, married or otherwise. And I’m sick of it. Why do I have a happy valentines day message on myspace from a girl who’s dating someone else? In fact, what is she doing on the computer on valentines day if she’s with someone? I don’t intend any offense, and she’s a nice girl. It’s just an easy example of what’s been happening a lot lately.

What is with this generation of women? They seem to outnumber men in their non-committal attitudes toward relationships. Everywhere I turn I find myself attracting women who don’t seem to have a hard time reconciling their boyfriend or husband at home with a yes when I ask them out. And sometimes they’re the one asking me out, and it’s only later that I find out about their significant other. Did the last generation of women burn too many bras for their own good? Have they answered the question “Are men necessary?” with a “Not really”? Whatever happened, they have certainly tasted some kind of perceived freedom during women’s liberation, and from my experience, it’s gone to their collective heads. And now we’ve got intelligent women walking around virtually asking for sex without much semblance of a relationship. Do any of them seriously think that is sexy, and/or desirable? That appeals only to a man’s most base desires, and although we men would all on the surface rejoice in the steady stream of no-strings sex, deeper down we find it repulsing huge waste of time and money.

If I didn’t want to acknowledge individual responsibility, I’d say my self control comes from the fact that I’m a man, and as a man in a patriarchal society my freedom to be non-committal was my birthright, just as it was to my fathers and their fathers for millennia. As such, the taste of that freedom is not as fresh and intoxicating as it is for women, who are just now tasting it for the first time in fifteen thousand years. Therefore, the differential between the sexes regarding the potential to exercise our sexual options now favors women. It results in a reversal of some typical stereotypes, namely, men (like me) being more docile and loyal. I’d say that if I fell for it. Being faithful to a relationship is not a passive trait, but one of the most active things a man can do, even though there are few outward manifestations of it. Inwardly though, it requires discipline, which is a responsibility decidedly individual.

So the next time an attached woman says yes to a date with me, I’m going to ask her about the guy who’s either waiting for her to get home or at work making money to help buy her that dual-income, no-kids, non-fat-mocha-latte lifestyle. Don’t hang yourself with the bra your mom tried to burn, honey. Remember who puts up with you when you’re on the rag, crying as you watch Extreme Makeover. We are your emotional rocks. Acknowledge it and embrace it, you’ll be happier that way.

I just received a call from a company for which I did a corporate video this time last year, asking if I wanted to do another one this year. Getting the call sparked a desire to do a year end recap and take stock of my life a year down the road.

This time last year I was unemployed, having just gotten back from a month-long job out of state, and the corporate video was my first job in a month of looking for work. My unemployment was a result of my firm decision to only accept cinematography jobs, as opposed to doing lighting or camera assistant jobs. It was a tough gauntlet of bills and expenses with no way of paying, going from interview to interview getting rejected with lines from producers like, “…we liked your reel the best, but someone else offered to do the job with their own camera for free…”, all the while turning down work that I would have otherwise taken had I not willed that career step. My girlfriend of three years was breaking up with me in her heart, waiting another month before telling me about her decision.

In January, I was in the lowest point emotionally that I had ever experienced. But things were about to change professionally. I received two feature scripts within a month, and got both jobs. By March and April, I started shooting for NBA Television and Major League Baseball, making huge cash and got to meet a lot of great athletes. After wrapping the first feature, I went to work as a colorist at a post house, learning the ever-important craft of color-correction, a skill that will serve me well as digital cinematography becomes the norm. After coloring a feature film, I started working on a prime-time network television drama called Fashion House, and made a huge splash there as a great camera operator in the eyes of the directors with whom I was working. This was the first time I was working with seasoned, experienced directors as opposed to young upstarts. After Fashion House in August, I shot the second feature I was offered back in January, Yesterday Was a Lie, a black and white film noir which turned out beautifully. I returned to operate on the next television show, which turned out to be Wicked Wicked Games, on which I made some good friends with cast members. It’s airing now and I’m proud of my work. On a day off, I shot a quick short with a contact I met on one of the features, and I surprised myself when I told him on the phone that I didn’t want to be paid, since I was making enough on my TV show job. I could have easily made a quick $400, but I am finally able to “give back” or whatever you want to call it. I’ve been making a lot of money and have been able to completely obliterate my revolving credit, pay down my student loans, and start investing a lot of money.

Currently, I’m working on Saints & Sinners, another TV show following Fashion House and Wicked Wicked Games. This job will carry me through March, at which time I am in talks to shoot a feature film. After that, there is another film on the horizon for April or May. Overall, I think it’s been a great year for me professionally, and I am now way past many of my colleagues whose progress seemed far, far ahead of my own this time last year.

I am now convinced that the last dealer ever to deal me a card was named Brad. It’s not that I don’t like playing cards or the excitement of winning big money. It’s how utterly pissed off I get when I lose any amount of money, whether it’s mine or not. Tonight my mom was winning in blackjack and gave me $100 in chips and insisted that I sit down and play. I had been standing and watching, having a very good time being the good luck charm. (Everyone with me won at least $400)

Brad, the dealer, swept in my $100 in chips inside of 5 minutes, and I was betting and playing the right way. I won three hands and lost thirteen. Since this money was gravy from my mom’s winnings, it was essentially play money that I was betting. I should care less if Brad the dealer takes it all. It’s not even my money. What I don’t understand is how my blood pressure and pulse skyrocketed after I got up from the table.

I tried to mask my contept for the entire idea behind casinos. I’m too talented and intelligent to believe I’ll ever get something for nothing, or that the odds ever change in games of chance. I might be old-fashioned, but I prefer to receive either a good or a service for my money, and I know that the services I provide will eventually be worth over $100/hr, which will make me a millionaire, before I’m thirty if I made the odds. The casino certainly wasn’t doing me a service by making me share my personal space with the dregs of humanity who walk around with walkers and/or rolling oxygen tanks, who are slowly embalming themselves with the tar and formaldehyde in their cigarettes, and giving me a sore throat with their second hand smoke. Get the hell away from me you bunch of losers.

Unable to mask my contempt, I took a walk to find a bathroom, thinking it would render upon me some kind of peace. All I found were more angry thoughts and bitter memories, all surfacing at the same time with an overwhelming ferocity to them. Random, disparate, dismal memories from all phases of my life, all being forced on my psyche by some force wishing me ill. And again, all I had done was lose $100 of what was essentially play money.

I just got back from a camping trip from Catalina island with my brother-in-law’s brother, and some of his cousins. There were five of us, and I was told it would be a “survivor” trip, where we live off what we could procure from the surroundings. They brought fishing poles and a spear gun, and assured me we would have plenty of fish. I was excited because of the idea that we would really be living off the land, and exercising survival skills.

On the first day I saw one of the guys start eating a protein bar on the hiking trail, and I got my first clue that I might be the only one actually follwing the rules.

The second inkling came when we got to our destination beach and made camp near the northern end of the island. A couple of the guys spotted a cache of food that was dropped off by a pickup truck and abandoned. It ended up being food for a large group of boy scouts who were hiking in. So they stole a bunch of their food, and justified it by saying it was a life and death situation.

They ended up catching two fish the whole time, largely because their drive to fish went down after they started stealing food. The youngest kid with us (who just finished jr. high) found a pile of buffalo crap that apparently looked like pumpkin pie, stuck his finger in and scooped up a mouthful. I still can’t understand what was going through his mind as he extended his arm to the orange pile. I’m completely dumfounded, as we all were when he told us about what he ate.

My frustrations mounted higher after I hiked two miles to find water, and brought it back like someone in a third-world country. I was proud of finding the water by surveying the most likely part of the mountain. When I got back I learned that the rest of the guys had hiked to a civilized part of the island to buy food and water. I’m sure they were proud of their “survival skills.”

The trip was ridiculous, but it would be fun to try it again with some real survivors.

If you don’t know, I work as a freelance cinematographer on many varied projects. I don’t have a “day job” and I don’t have a regular employer. There are a few clients who regularly use my services, but the bulk of my work is with a new company every time I take on a new project.

When you work the way I do, fueled by a dream and a lot of passion, money becomes a problem. I have the potential to be making $15,000/week on big budget movies by the time I’m 35. As it is now, I make barely enough to survive. It wouldn’t be a problem, but Hollywood is full of deadbeat employers who either don’t pay, or take forever to pay. For example, I can do $5000 worth of work and not see that money for three months. By then, I’m down to eating peanut butter out of the jar because I can’t afford to buy groceries, let alone pay my cell phone bill or buy a tank of gas.

But far be it from me to write a sob story. I have way too much pride to consider myself a victim and go on food stamps or get welfare, as many of my colleagues do. Yes I’m out of work much of the time, but I don’t consider that anyone’s fault but mine. This post is basically just a statement of circumstances, so I can look back at it when I am making $15,000/week and remind myself of what I was going through.

As Thomas Paine wrote during the American Revolution, “What we earn too cheaply, we esteem too lightly.” I look around at a lot of people my age who are getting married, have kids and own a house already, and who are much better off than I am, unable to fix my unreliable used car or pay half my bills half the time. It’s not because of a discrepancy between how hard we work. An eight-hour day is foreign to me, but my friends with houses and wives and kids seem to have a positive cash flow with an eight-hour work day behind a desk. I work days that are never below 12 hours, and are much more intensive. Filmmaking can be just as much a tactically critical situation as a battlefield, and as a cinematographer I am a field commander with a lot of responsibility.

I think the difference between my “normal job” friends and I has to be that I need to threaten lawsuits or labor board intervention in order to receive 30% of my income. 50% is later than expected but not far from legal action. 20% of my income is on time.

Living in a 1099 world means you don’t have a regular paycheck, so you need to generate a backlog of receivables in order to stay afloat financially. This is extremely problematic in my situation because I can’t just pick up work any time I want it. Many times I work for people who will never make another movie again. I can’t just call them and see if they have work, because they’re on their way back to Indiana or wherever they came from. Other times, getting a job is a highly political, competitive process. Quality work does not ensure a job. I’ve been told that I had the best looking work out of all the applicants, but was turned down because someone else could work for free. So not only am I dealing with a high turnover ratio of producers, I’m dealing with a dilution of the market with voluntary slave labor, and many producers are unscrupulous enough to actually let someone work for free.

It forces me into situations where I have to evaluate whether the artistic merit of the project will garner results worthy of my own volunteer labor. I have done several films for free, because I thought the material would be great for my resume/reel. Producers love me when I do that, but the only reason I even had to consider working for free is because the next guy (less experienced than I) will work 18-hours a day, 6-days a week (7 occasionally) for free and thank the producer for the abuse.

The obvious implications of working the way I do are these: During a long project like a 4-8 week feature, you can’t be devoting much time to finding the next job (unless it’s already lined up). So usually, a long job is inevitably followed by at least a week, usually longer, of unemployment. When you’re working for free, the longer you work, the smaller your backlog of receivables, which means that you better have a lot of paid work coming up right after the freebie, or you’re going to run aground financially, and stay that way for at least as long as the free job lasted.

Breaking into the film business is in many ways a leap of faith remniscent of The Matrix. I’m basically jumping off a 50-storey building, hoping to land on the 30-storey building across the street, without falling to my death at ground level. The pile of bodies on the road below doesn’t give much hope, but the 30-storey building is where the rainbow ends.