One year ago today Soccerboy in LA began! When I started I had no idea where it would take me, or even if I’d really have anything to say that would take me farther than one month. I’m surprised. And grateful. This is the most amazing journey, and it has been/is nowhere near easy. It was always fun and compelling, but the learning curve was steep.
A week after the first feature I wrote one titled One. Week. Old. When I look back, that feature is surprisingly in tune with the obstacles and successes I have encountered in the past year. This is just a taste of what I’ve learned on this path of following my dreams.
Believe in your work. Love your work. Pour your entire being into your work. Make brave choices in your work. Never settle for mediocrity. Demand the best out of yourself every single day, and when that begins to feel old renew that feeling.
No one is going to give anything to you – you must be prepared to do it yourself. It may be surprising at first, but you get used to it. As soon as you realize that you have complete creative control, you’ll love doing it all yourself. Doing it yourself also means that when things go wrong, you are the person who has to fix them. The longer you wait to get things fixed, the longer you will wait for results. All sorts of results – results you can’t even imagine.
As soon as you begin to get results, people will try to take everything away from you, or explain it away. They will call you crazy, or worse. They’ll say “You got lucky,” or “You’re not talented,” or “Your work isn’t good.” Even if you’re getting genuine compliments from people, there will always be the buzz of vultures. Sometimes they’ll even be brave enough to say hurtful things to your face. Let them, congratulate their courage but Never Defend Your Work. Besides, how are you going to let someone who sits on their ass all day and does nothing creative get inside your head? Then, move along. Once you’re far enough away, you’ll realize that their hatred is simply ceremonial; it confirms that you are winning. When you’ve done something for yourself, no one can take it away from you.
Don’t trust everyone. Look directly into people’s eyes and you will know who is worthy of your trust. Immediately.
Know when a compliment is genuine. Never be afraid to hear constructive criticism.
Surround yourself with supportive people. Become a supportive person – it’s much more fulfilling than you realize.
Maybe most importantly: Be a nice person. I like being nice, compassionate and loving. It’s one of my favorite things about being human. In fact I think that’s what’s missing from the world and causes a lot of our problems. It also makes it much easier to build personal and business relationships. The problem is when you are nice, many people will perceive that you are weak and will try to stop you, fuck you over, overlook you or dismiss you. You must remain strong. You must always be willing to stand up for yourself and your work. And if you have to, remind them that being nice is just a choice.
Never. Give. Up.
[© MMIX MD TOTAL all rights reserved]
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Festival de Cannes DIARY : The Last Day
The view from from my bedroom's balcony in my apartment in Cannes. [click pic to view larger]Tuesday May 24, 2005
The Beautiful Letdown.
My blackberry’s alarm went off right around three AM, waking me up from a fuzzy dream. I showered and went out onto the balcony to wait for the call from the van. It was the middle of the night and the moon was big over the Med. Somehow everything felt normal. The festival was gone, and so were all the people. This was the first time since we had arrived that Cannes felt like the city it is the rest of the year. It felt familiar, the way a sleepy town on the French Riviera should feel – glamorous for all the right reasons.
“That’s it,” I said to myself. “It’s over.” Even after having driven our host to the airport, there was no real closure on the experience. The wrap party didn’t accomplish that for me either. Now we just waited to see how we’d accomplish the next step, selling the show. I was a bit sad because I no longer felt the same sureness about getting the show sold as I had before we went to Cannes – and it wouldn’t be because of the content. In fact, the footage we got had great potential for being a very good show. But I no longer trusted the ability of everyone above me to have the expertise to get this show to air. And as long as every new idea I had was thrown out before I had a chance to prove it’s relevance or at least thought through first, I couldn’t even save the show on my own. I sighed.
It was a heartbreaking realization.
I listened to the waves crash below me and looked at the moon hovering over the water. This really is a beautiful place, I thought to myself. As crazy and exhausting as this trip had been, I knew I would miss being here.
We got the call from the van to pick us all up and take us to the airport. I was beyond ready to leave. We listened to the radio in silence, too tired to talk. I looked at my director, who had trusted me more than anyone else on the production team in the previous two weeks and was the only other person who spent as much time at the house in St. Tropez with me. We exchanged a real look. We knew we had experienced something really special. Just then, the driver of the van turned up the volume on the radio; he said it was playing his favorite song. We listened to the song as he drove through the hills and out of Cannes.
I thought of everything that had happened: good, bad and ugly. I made a decision right then that I would come back to Festival de Cannes many times in my future. And as soon as I thought it, I knew it was true.
We drove through neighborhoods, past mountains, and saw the Mediterranean one last time that trip. The song on the radio was Keane’s Somewhere Only We Know.
[© MMIX MD TOTAL all rights reserved. That's right yatches, this shit is MINE!]
Monday, May 25, 2009
Festival de Cannes DIARY : Day Fourteen
Monday May 23, 2005
My now trusty blackberry’s alarm woke me up and I was so hungover I wasn’t even in pain. I knocked on our host’s door and we drove off. It was a pretty morning – and with the Med in view, it felt spectacular. We got to a tollbooth on the A8 [Ah-WEET] and realized that neither one of us had cash. Now this was no American tollbooth, this tollbooth had six lanes and no attendants at all. We couldn’t figure out what to do, there was a gate that had to open and I wasn’t about to bust through it while I was in another country with a “cocktail flu.” Our host promptly began to freak out about missing her flight, and I understood – she had to make four connecting flights to get back to LA and if she missed the first one all the rest were screwed.
I had an idea and asked for her credit card, I was going to put it in the cash slot. She was understandably reluctant to give it to me and asked me if I had one. I lied and said no. At this point, I was feeling so used that I refused to risk my own card. What if it just took it? This ridiculous errand of chauffeuring our host to the airport was not something I was willing to lose my credit card over. So I refused. And you know what? She had no choice! It wasn’t my flight that I was going to miss if we were stuck on the A8. So she handed me her credit card. She was asking me what I was going to do with it when I hastily pushed it into the cash slot. She gasped. [Of course she gasped!] I had several long seconds to think about what I had just done – what if it didn’t work? What if it took her card! And then the machine made a noise and returned the card and provided a receipt. I snatched the card back and the gate opened. We both cheered! And I drove off before something had a chance of happening. She exclaimed that I was brilliant and I just laughed. She asked me how I knew that the cash slot would take cards and I told her the truth. In all my experiences in Europe I kept seeing how much smarter they were than the States in many ways and I had a feeling that it should work that way.
I got our host to the airport in time and as she was about to get out of the car, we exchanged a long and meaningful look. We had both survived so much in the past two weeks, and in a lot of ways we trusted each other more than we trusted anyone else who was on this trip with us. She sighed. I shook my head in disbelief, and hugged her. All she said was “This has been fucking crazy!” I said, “I know!” I could tell that mentally she was already on to her next thing. I would have the rest of the week off before we started to cut the footage, but she would be back in her office solving more problems and putting out more fires tomorrow. We’d catch up again in a week. I watched her walk away into the airport, and I felt an amazing amount of relief. It was over – we had no show to shoot as long as she wasn’t with us. A huge weight had been lifted.
I got back to Cannes where I had no problem parking the rental on the Croisette. I got back to the apartment and passed out for a couple of hours. I remember our coordinator coming to pick up the keys to the rental but not much else.
Looking out of our window onto the Croisette was a completely different experience even from the day before. The festival was over, it was literally being packed up and taken away. It was very similar to the way life feels on January 1st, except that it wasn’t après-noel and we were on the Riviera. It felt like the day after your birthday. Sort of. Well, not really. What did it feel like? Transition. We had shot everything we had planned to shoot and more and at this point we were just waiting to leave. And you know what? I was ready to leave. It’s very easy to hear this story and think I was on some sort of pleasure cruise – but it wasn’t that way at all. We gave ourselves an astronomical level of stress to deal with and with good reason. Anything less than that level of commitment would have killed the show.
It felt like we had been in France for more than two months, that months had passed since we left Los Angeles. LA. Even the name felt weird to say. For the first time in my life, I felt more than ready to leave Europe. Or was I? My brain was no longer tired from translating, and I had begun dreaming in French. Thankfully, the weather was grey to fit the mood.
My roomie and I spent the afternoon packing our bags. Our room was ridiculous. After the two weeks we had, getting it all back into our suitcases was akin to moving into a new apartment. What can I say? It was all very boy. And with good reason – after sharing a room with one of our producers during this crazy period has bonded us for life. It was like going to camp, with money. Lots and lots of money. Whenever we were in the room going to sleep we would talk. Really talk. And the best part is that is wasn’t always about what was going on with the production. It was real.
My EP returned to the apartment for the first time since the previous Wednesday to pack and told me to order a pizza for him. Um… okay. After the previous two weeks of ridiculous behavior from him, I was happy that he was trying to bond? The best part was once the pizza did arrive, he actually went back to his bedroom to avoid having to pay. Very classy. I actually had to ask him for money for the pizza he made me order for him. I broke it down for him like we were in elementary school. “You demanded that I order this pizza when none of us were hungry. You need to PAY. Right now.” I was finally beginning to figure out how to handle him. I would later learn that I would have to become much more aggressive to get this man to act in any way that was close to reasonable.
He ate, and we all went to a bar to meet up with the rest of the production for an impromptu wrap party. Everyone was celebratory, but I wasn’t in the mood – I was exhausted. Plus, we were about to spend a lot of time traveling together back to LA. I went because I knew that it was important to raise a drink with everyone else to commemorate what we had just accomplished. I stayed for less than half an hour, then went back to the apartment to make sure I had everything together.
I was about to go to bed when my EP told me to drive him back to the house in St. Tropez. It was less than five hours before I was supposed to leave for the airport to get back to LA and we were not flying nonstop – there was no way I was going to drive all that way there and back! My body couldn’t take it anymore. I told him no and said I was going to bed because I literally had twenty-seven hours of travel ahead of me. He didn’t care; all he cared about was not paying a taxi to take him back to St. Tropez. He asked me “What do you mean, no…?”
I thought of exactly how much I had been used in the past seven weeks. All the hard work I had put in to get us all to Cannes – the staying up late/getting up early plus all the ridiculousness I had endured once we finally got there amounted to nothing for him. I had been used, and in the worst way. If my life at this company was going to be like this, then not only did I not want to be there, but he didn’t deserve to have me. He was ridiculous without reason. A lot of the fires I had to put out were either caused by lack of focus, lack of expertise or just plain stupidity and once I realized that, I knew it would only be more of the same if we ever sold the show to network. And that’s if the network even agreed to let him be the EP, because unless my job depended on it, I couldn’t speak well of his ability or desire to produce.
And then I remembered that I didn’t have another job to go back to. When I joined his company, he needed me to start working that evening. And I did. And by quitting without any sort of notice, I burned bridges at the old agency. Being unemployed was not an option for me – I always thought that you shouldn’t quit a job until you have an offer for your next position.
So I kept my mouth shut. Luckily, my producer and our advisor both spoke up, and on my behalf. They saw what I had been through in the past two weeks and making me do that would be ridiculous. I interrupted them anyway.
“No.” I repeated. “I’m going to bed.”
[© MMIX MD TOTAL all rights reserved. That's right yatches, this shit is MINE!]
My now trusty blackberry’s alarm woke me up and I was so hungover I wasn’t even in pain. I knocked on our host’s door and we drove off. It was a pretty morning – and with the Med in view, it felt spectacular. We got to a tollbooth on the A8 [Ah-WEET] and realized that neither one of us had cash. Now this was no American tollbooth, this tollbooth had six lanes and no attendants at all. We couldn’t figure out what to do, there was a gate that had to open and I wasn’t about to bust through it while I was in another country with a “cocktail flu.” Our host promptly began to freak out about missing her flight, and I understood – she had to make four connecting flights to get back to LA and if she missed the first one all the rest were screwed.
I had an idea and asked for her credit card, I was going to put it in the cash slot. She was understandably reluctant to give it to me and asked me if I had one. I lied and said no. At this point, I was feeling so used that I refused to risk my own card. What if it just took it? This ridiculous errand of chauffeuring our host to the airport was not something I was willing to lose my credit card over. So I refused. And you know what? She had no choice! It wasn’t my flight that I was going to miss if we were stuck on the A8. So she handed me her credit card. She was asking me what I was going to do with it when I hastily pushed it into the cash slot. She gasped. [Of course she gasped!] I had several long seconds to think about what I had just done – what if it didn’t work? What if it took her card! And then the machine made a noise and returned the card and provided a receipt. I snatched the card back and the gate opened. We both cheered! And I drove off before something had a chance of happening. She exclaimed that I was brilliant and I just laughed. She asked me how I knew that the cash slot would take cards and I told her the truth. In all my experiences in Europe I kept seeing how much smarter they were than the States in many ways and I had a feeling that it should work that way.
I got our host to the airport in time and as she was about to get out of the car, we exchanged a long and meaningful look. We had both survived so much in the past two weeks, and in a lot of ways we trusted each other more than we trusted anyone else who was on this trip with us. She sighed. I shook my head in disbelief, and hugged her. All she said was “This has been fucking crazy!” I said, “I know!” I could tell that mentally she was already on to her next thing. I would have the rest of the week off before we started to cut the footage, but she would be back in her office solving more problems and putting out more fires tomorrow. We’d catch up again in a week. I watched her walk away into the airport, and I felt an amazing amount of relief. It was over – we had no show to shoot as long as she wasn’t with us. A huge weight had been lifted.
I got back to Cannes where I had no problem parking the rental on the Croisette. I got back to the apartment and passed out for a couple of hours. I remember our coordinator coming to pick up the keys to the rental but not much else.
Looking out of our window onto the Croisette was a completely different experience even from the day before. The festival was over, it was literally being packed up and taken away. It was very similar to the way life feels on January 1st, except that it wasn’t après-noel and we were on the Riviera. It felt like the day after your birthday. Sort of. Well, not really. What did it feel like? Transition. We had shot everything we had planned to shoot and more and at this point we were just waiting to leave. And you know what? I was ready to leave. It’s very easy to hear this story and think I was on some sort of pleasure cruise – but it wasn’t that way at all. We gave ourselves an astronomical level of stress to deal with and with good reason. Anything less than that level of commitment would have killed the show.
It felt like we had been in France for more than two months, that months had passed since we left Los Angeles. LA. Even the name felt weird to say. For the first time in my life, I felt more than ready to leave Europe. Or was I? My brain was no longer tired from translating, and I had begun dreaming in French. Thankfully, the weather was grey to fit the mood.
My roomie and I spent the afternoon packing our bags. Our room was ridiculous. After the two weeks we had, getting it all back into our suitcases was akin to moving into a new apartment. What can I say? It was all very boy. And with good reason – after sharing a room with one of our producers during this crazy period has bonded us for life. It was like going to camp, with money. Lots and lots of money. Whenever we were in the room going to sleep we would talk. Really talk. And the best part is that is wasn’t always about what was going on with the production. It was real.
My EP returned to the apartment for the first time since the previous Wednesday to pack and told me to order a pizza for him. Um… okay. After the previous two weeks of ridiculous behavior from him, I was happy that he was trying to bond? The best part was once the pizza did arrive, he actually went back to his bedroom to avoid having to pay. Very classy. I actually had to ask him for money for the pizza he made me order for him. I broke it down for him like we were in elementary school. “You demanded that I order this pizza when none of us were hungry. You need to PAY. Right now.” I was finally beginning to figure out how to handle him. I would later learn that I would have to become much more aggressive to get this man to act in any way that was close to reasonable.
He ate, and we all went to a bar to meet up with the rest of the production for an impromptu wrap party. Everyone was celebratory, but I wasn’t in the mood – I was exhausted. Plus, we were about to spend a lot of time traveling together back to LA. I went because I knew that it was important to raise a drink with everyone else to commemorate what we had just accomplished. I stayed for less than half an hour, then went back to the apartment to make sure I had everything together.
I was about to go to bed when my EP told me to drive him back to the house in St. Tropez. It was less than five hours before I was supposed to leave for the airport to get back to LA and we were not flying nonstop – there was no way I was going to drive all that way there and back! My body couldn’t take it anymore. I told him no and said I was going to bed because I literally had twenty-seven hours of travel ahead of me. He didn’t care; all he cared about was not paying a taxi to take him back to St. Tropez. He asked me “What do you mean, no…?”
I thought of exactly how much I had been used in the past seven weeks. All the hard work I had put in to get us all to Cannes – the staying up late/getting up early plus all the ridiculousness I had endured once we finally got there amounted to nothing for him. I had been used, and in the worst way. If my life at this company was going to be like this, then not only did I not want to be there, but he didn’t deserve to have me. He was ridiculous without reason. A lot of the fires I had to put out were either caused by lack of focus, lack of expertise or just plain stupidity and once I realized that, I knew it would only be more of the same if we ever sold the show to network. And that’s if the network even agreed to let him be the EP, because unless my job depended on it, I couldn’t speak well of his ability or desire to produce.
And then I remembered that I didn’t have another job to go back to. When I joined his company, he needed me to start working that evening. And I did. And by quitting without any sort of notice, I burned bridges at the old agency. Being unemployed was not an option for me – I always thought that you shouldn’t quit a job until you have an offer for your next position.
So I kept my mouth shut. Luckily, my producer and our advisor both spoke up, and on my behalf. They saw what I had been through in the past two weeks and making me do that would be ridiculous. I interrupted them anyway.
“No.” I repeated. “I’m going to bed.”
[© MMIX MD TOTAL all rights reserved. That's right yatches, this shit is MINE!]
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Festival de Cannes DIARY : Day Thirteen
Sunday May 22, 2005
We woke up late. I was excited to have a full two days without an engagement in Cannes. The mood was completely relaxed – we had gotten more than all the footage we needed, and the footage we had gotten was phenomenal. I walked around the area surrounding and including the Croisette. After two weeks, this crazy place felt like home. The crowds we mostly gone, but vestiges of magic hung in the air.
We were deciding what to do for dinner when my blackberry rang again. By now, I was getting really tired of the blackberry. Really. Tired. Two weeks before, I was amazed that I had email in my hand, but now all I could think of it was that it was just a fucking phone. I answered it anyway. It was my EP calling with an invitation for us to come back to the house in St. Tropez for dinner. I didn’t know if I could take it, but we decided that going would be the right thing to do.
I hung up the phone and thought about the situation.
My EP had basically been staying at the house in St. Tropez since Wednesday. Thinking about that tugged at my emotions. The Festival de Cannes is made up of two parts; one is the film festival that the entire world knows about and the other is the Marché du film - the film market. The Marché is where films are shown [even if they aren’t an official selection of the festival] to potential buyers in hopes of securing distribution. If our EP didn’t want to be a functioning executive on the production but was more comfortable securing deals, the Marché was the perfect place for him. It’s the place where a few minutes of really good footage could possibly sell our show to a few international territories – other countries always seemed to be fascinated with the American movie star celebrity machine. All it would take was a few minutes, we wouldn't even need multiple episodes edited. Often, buyers' schedules are so packed with screenings that they only have twenty to thirty minutes to commit to one property before they run off to their next screening. This is how many films are bought around the world. It's also why buyers generally don't have the most fun at Cannes.
I didn’t expect to sell it to the entire planet without it having been on the air as of yet, but we could have sold enough territories [possibly even in the States] to pay for more than the rest of our production costs. Yes, it would be difficult. He would have to step far outside of his comfort zone, but isn’t that what he signed up for when he decided to be an Executive Producer of an show that was completely independent? He’d have to get out there and actually sell this show, even if it didn’t feel sexy to do so.
But he was out in St. Tropez on vacation. As much as we would like to believe that you can do business entirely over the phone, when you’re in the position we were in you just might have to get off your ass and actually do something in person.
The worst part of recognizing this, was that I suggested it back around two days after he hired me. As soon as I got the offer, I began to research the festival - and it became clear that the Marché du Film was a place to sell filmed entertainment! But as I soon found out, any time I came up with an original idea in the past five weeks, it had been thrown out summarily. I had hoped to prove myself while we were in Cannes, and I definitely did, but by then it was too late. We needed him to have been on this aspect of our show since day one. I began to realize that if he didn’t want to be an actual production executive or a distribution executive then he didn’t really want to be an Executive Producer at all. Or worse - he didn’t know how to.
And just like that, I no longer had the highest hopes for us selling the show in the time frame that we needed.
I drove one of the producers, our advisor and myself over to the house in St. Tropez in the production’s rental car. I have driven in France many times, but this somehow felt like a first. I wasn’t driving whilst on holiday, I was working in France and driving.
This time at the house, it was just our hosts and some people from our production. We had a phenomenal evening – extremely relaxed. There was a large cheese plate we were nipping at. I had some of the best cheese I have ever had in my life – there was a Roquefort so pure that when it sat out on the kind of warm day we were having, it would melt. MELT! I also had the best cheddar I have ever tasted in my entire life. In France. If fact, at dinner I was seated next to our host and actually stole the very last bit of cheddar in the house off of her plate when she wasn’t looking. She looked back at her plate quizzically, and I said nothing. I wasn’t even sorry.
Because our production coordinator had gotten the flu, I was the chauffeur of the evening. I was told that our host didn’t have a ride to the airport at seven the next morning so I would have to be the one to take her. But first, I would have to take some other people back to Cannes, then come back, “spend the night” and take our host to the airport in Nice thirty miles away!
I was pretty angry about the situation. It was clear that I was being used.
I took them back to Cannes, drove back to St. Tropez and finished the evening. Having finally slept so well for the last 24 hours, I had a difficult time getting to sleep and hung out with everyone else. We actually had a good time, we reflected on the events of the previous two weeks and bonded more. It was special, but by the time I got to bed, I had less than four hours of sleep ahead of me.
Ouch.
[© MMIX MD TOTAL all rights reserved. That's right yatches, this shit is MINE!]
We woke up late. I was excited to have a full two days without an engagement in Cannes. The mood was completely relaxed – we had gotten more than all the footage we needed, and the footage we had gotten was phenomenal. I walked around the area surrounding and including the Croisette. After two weeks, this crazy place felt like home. The crowds we mostly gone, but vestiges of magic hung in the air.
We were deciding what to do for dinner when my blackberry rang again. By now, I was getting really tired of the blackberry. Really. Tired. Two weeks before, I was amazed that I had email in my hand, but now all I could think of it was that it was just a fucking phone. I answered it anyway. It was my EP calling with an invitation for us to come back to the house in St. Tropez for dinner. I didn’t know if I could take it, but we decided that going would be the right thing to do.
I hung up the phone and thought about the situation.
My EP had basically been staying at the house in St. Tropez since Wednesday. Thinking about that tugged at my emotions. The Festival de Cannes is made up of two parts; one is the film festival that the entire world knows about and the other is the Marché du film - the film market. The Marché is where films are shown [even if they aren’t an official selection of the festival] to potential buyers in hopes of securing distribution. If our EP didn’t want to be a functioning executive on the production but was more comfortable securing deals, the Marché was the perfect place for him. It’s the place where a few minutes of really good footage could possibly sell our show to a few international territories – other countries always seemed to be fascinated with the American movie star celebrity machine. All it would take was a few minutes, we wouldn't even need multiple episodes edited. Often, buyers' schedules are so packed with screenings that they only have twenty to thirty minutes to commit to one property before they run off to their next screening. This is how many films are bought around the world. It's also why buyers generally don't have the most fun at Cannes.
I didn’t expect to sell it to the entire planet without it having been on the air as of yet, but we could have sold enough territories [possibly even in the States] to pay for more than the rest of our production costs. Yes, it would be difficult. He would have to step far outside of his comfort zone, but isn’t that what he signed up for when he decided to be an Executive Producer of an show that was completely independent? He’d have to get out there and actually sell this show, even if it didn’t feel sexy to do so.
But he was out in St. Tropez on vacation. As much as we would like to believe that you can do business entirely over the phone, when you’re in the position we were in you just might have to get off your ass and actually do something in person.
The worst part of recognizing this, was that I suggested it back around two days after he hired me. As soon as I got the offer, I began to research the festival - and it became clear that the Marché du Film was a place to sell filmed entertainment! But as I soon found out, any time I came up with an original idea in the past five weeks, it had been thrown out summarily. I had hoped to prove myself while we were in Cannes, and I definitely did, but by then it was too late. We needed him to have been on this aspect of our show since day one. I began to realize that if he didn’t want to be an actual production executive or a distribution executive then he didn’t really want to be an Executive Producer at all. Or worse - he didn’t know how to.
And just like that, I no longer had the highest hopes for us selling the show in the time frame that we needed.
I drove one of the producers, our advisor and myself over to the house in St. Tropez in the production’s rental car. I have driven in France many times, but this somehow felt like a first. I wasn’t driving whilst on holiday, I was working in France and driving.
This time at the house, it was just our hosts and some people from our production. We had a phenomenal evening – extremely relaxed. There was a large cheese plate we were nipping at. I had some of the best cheese I have ever had in my life – there was a Roquefort so pure that when it sat out on the kind of warm day we were having, it would melt. MELT! I also had the best cheddar I have ever tasted in my entire life. In France. If fact, at dinner I was seated next to our host and actually stole the very last bit of cheddar in the house off of her plate when she wasn’t looking. She looked back at her plate quizzically, and I said nothing. I wasn’t even sorry.
Because our production coordinator had gotten the flu, I was the chauffeur of the evening. I was told that our host didn’t have a ride to the airport at seven the next morning so I would have to be the one to take her. But first, I would have to take some other people back to Cannes, then come back, “spend the night” and take our host to the airport in Nice thirty miles away!
I was pretty angry about the situation. It was clear that I was being used.
I took them back to Cannes, drove back to St. Tropez and finished the evening. Having finally slept so well for the last 24 hours, I had a difficult time getting to sleep and hung out with everyone else. We actually had a good time, we reflected on the events of the previous two weeks and bonded more. It was special, but by the time I got to bed, I had less than four hours of sleep ahead of me.
Ouch.
[© MMIX MD TOTAL all rights reserved. That's right yatches, this shit is MINE!]
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Festival de Cannes DIARY : Day Twelve
Saturday May 21, 2005
Again, I woke up in a bed in this house that was no longer strange to me. Again, my stomach rumbled, except this time it was serious. I spent the next two hours in and out of the bathroom. This was bad, really bad. Today we had an event to shoot the plan was for all of us to get in our host’s boat and ride from the marina near Cannes to Monte Carlo for the Grand Prix. The Monaco Grand Prix in Monte Carlo.
I got a kaolin pill [French Kaopectate, more or less] from the host, who assured me it would at least help me make it back to the apartment without any problems. We got in the car and made our way back to Cannes to get ready for the long day ahead. At this point I knew something was wrong with my digestive system – I had to get back to the apartment immediately. I wasn’t sure if it was something I had eaten, but I did get confirmation that sometimes super pure MDNA caused this reaction if you weren’t used to it.
Damn it! Of all the times not to have a drug problem!
The car ride home, which was on a windy road on a cliff next to the sea, was tumultuous. I don’t think I’ve ever been so sweaty from just sitting down. Best of all, we could only get dropped off at the entrance to the city center in Cannes. Since we were in the festival boundaries, you couldn’t get a car in without a pass. We would have to walk the last three quarters of a mile back to the apartment. I didn’t know if I would make it – I wanted to run, but knew that would just make everything… worse. By the grace of god I made it up to the flat and into the bathroom.
After an hour or so, it was time to go to the boat so we could leave. I knew that I couldn’t – I was in pain. My digestive system was torn up. So I stayed. And let me tell you, that decision was unpopular. Everyone actually expected me to run the show even considering the condition I was in. We were shooting our host’s final event and it was the climax, where she would receive the contract from Yari – the point of the entire show. I had to miss it. If we were shooting on a soundstage or at a house I would have done it somehow. But the idea of riding on a small boat in the sea for thirty miles, only to then have to shoot more and then go onto an event on a cruise ship sounded like hell. I had no choice – I had to take care of myself. Today, they would have to act like the adults they were and would have to get the job done themselves.
After several more painful hours where I alternated between sleep and trips to the bathroom, I woke up hungry. Normally after an experience like that the last thing you want to do is eat but I had eaten maybe five actual meals in the last 12 days and my GI tract was now completely empty. I made my way to the kebab and got two orders of frites. Back in the apartment, I stuck the frites in the oven while I made an omelet. I remembered my roomie mentioning that he had an episode of Friends on his computer. I got the food all set up and started the episode.
This episode started in the coffee shop – thank god. As soon as it started, I cried. Cried! It took my favorite sitcom to show me exactly how lonely I had been feeling for the last two weeks, especially with all the stress I had subjected myself to. There is something about having to take care of yourself when you get sick in another country that magnifies the loneliness you were already trying your best to ignore. Sure, I had spoken to some folks from back home since I'd been in Cannes, but there were a few factors to consider. Since my personal mobile didn't work in Europe I could only call people whose phone numbers I had memorized, which were only a few. Who has phone numbers memorized anymore when our mobiles store those numbers for us? And because wifi was spotty, email was the same story. All in all, I felt very far away from my life in the States.
I knew within ten seconds that this episode was “The One Where Joey Speaks French.” I watched and laughed and cried. I got halfway through my meal when I realized that I felt considerably better. Yay, potatoes! I started a movie but ultimately went back to that episode of Friends.
At this point it was well after midnight when I realized that it was that episode as much as it was the food that made me feel better. Just before I could start it again, I heard my apartment-mates in the hall on their way back.
What did I do? I opened a bottle of rosé and they told me all about their adventures in Monte Carlo, repeating that I should have come.
But I knew better.
[© MMIX MD TOTAL all rights reserved. That's right yatches, this shit is MINE!]
Again, I woke up in a bed in this house that was no longer strange to me. Again, my stomach rumbled, except this time it was serious. I spent the next two hours in and out of the bathroom. This was bad, really bad. Today we had an event to shoot the plan was for all of us to get in our host’s boat and ride from the marina near Cannes to Monte Carlo for the Grand Prix. The Monaco Grand Prix in Monte Carlo.
I got a kaolin pill [French Kaopectate, more or less] from the host, who assured me it would at least help me make it back to the apartment without any problems. We got in the car and made our way back to Cannes to get ready for the long day ahead. At this point I knew something was wrong with my digestive system – I had to get back to the apartment immediately. I wasn’t sure if it was something I had eaten, but I did get confirmation that sometimes super pure MDNA caused this reaction if you weren’t used to it.
Damn it! Of all the times not to have a drug problem!
The car ride home, which was on a windy road on a cliff next to the sea, was tumultuous. I don’t think I’ve ever been so sweaty from just sitting down. Best of all, we could only get dropped off at the entrance to the city center in Cannes. Since we were in the festival boundaries, you couldn’t get a car in without a pass. We would have to walk the last three quarters of a mile back to the apartment. I didn’t know if I would make it – I wanted to run, but knew that would just make everything… worse. By the grace of god I made it up to the flat and into the bathroom.
After an hour or so, it was time to go to the boat so we could leave. I knew that I couldn’t – I was in pain. My digestive system was torn up. So I stayed. And let me tell you, that decision was unpopular. Everyone actually expected me to run the show even considering the condition I was in. We were shooting our host’s final event and it was the climax, where she would receive the contract from Yari – the point of the entire show. I had to miss it. If we were shooting on a soundstage or at a house I would have done it somehow. But the idea of riding on a small boat in the sea for thirty miles, only to then have to shoot more and then go onto an event on a cruise ship sounded like hell. I had no choice – I had to take care of myself. Today, they would have to act like the adults they were and would have to get the job done themselves.
After several more painful hours where I alternated between sleep and trips to the bathroom, I woke up hungry. Normally after an experience like that the last thing you want to do is eat but I had eaten maybe five actual meals in the last 12 days and my GI tract was now completely empty. I made my way to the kebab and got two orders of frites. Back in the apartment, I stuck the frites in the oven while I made an omelet. I remembered my roomie mentioning that he had an episode of Friends on his computer. I got the food all set up and started the episode.
This episode started in the coffee shop – thank god. As soon as it started, I cried. Cried! It took my favorite sitcom to show me exactly how lonely I had been feeling for the last two weeks, especially with all the stress I had subjected myself to. There is something about having to take care of yourself when you get sick in another country that magnifies the loneliness you were already trying your best to ignore. Sure, I had spoken to some folks from back home since I'd been in Cannes, but there were a few factors to consider. Since my personal mobile didn't work in Europe I could only call people whose phone numbers I had memorized, which were only a few. Who has phone numbers memorized anymore when our mobiles store those numbers for us? And because wifi was spotty, email was the same story. All in all, I felt very far away from my life in the States.
I knew within ten seconds that this episode was “The One Where Joey Speaks French.” I watched and laughed and cried. I got halfway through my meal when I realized that I felt considerably better. Yay, potatoes! I started a movie but ultimately went back to that episode of Friends.
At this point it was well after midnight when I realized that it was that episode as much as it was the food that made me feel better. Just before I could start it again, I heard my apartment-mates in the hall on their way back.
What did I do? I opened a bottle of rosé and they told me all about their adventures in Monte Carlo, repeating that I should have come.
But I knew better.
[© MMIX MD TOTAL all rights reserved. That's right yatches, this shit is MINE!]
Friday, May 22, 2009
Festival de Cannes DIARY : Day Eleven
Friday May 20, 2005
I woke up to the couple’s son moving around getting ready for school. After he saw me, he ran up to me, gave me a hug and said with pure happy surprise “You’re still here?! I can’t believe I have to go to school today!” We ate cereal and watched some Sky TV show hosted by Gordon Elliot. He was testing Range Rovers by having them drive woodland obstacle courses while basically having grenades thrown at them. SkyTV. Classy.
I finally got back to sleep and heard that the chef was getting ready to make the trip to town to shop and would be able to take us back. My stomach rumbled. I ran to the bathroom and almost didn’t make it.
I have never experienced anything like that before or since. As little as I had eaten in the past eleven days, almost every single bite of it was questionable. I knew that with having eaten so little and having pure MDNA, my stomach was most likely emptying itself out. And quite painfully, I might add.
You get what you deserve.
The wife took me aside to ask me a favor. She had just discovered that one of the guests who had borrowed a swimsuit of hers had left with it. It was her favourite swimsuit. Her husband was the one who handed it to the girl because he knew it’d make his wife angry. Luckily, the girl left the party with our producer and she wanted me to ask him to call her to put her in touch with the thief.
We rode back into Cannes and I caught up with the crew and saw some amazing footage. Our camera operators were ecstatic that we were giving them so much freedom. Thank god for that, because thanks to my blackberry being completely out of juice and being “exiled in St. Tropez,” I wasn’t able to check in even if I had to.
Just as I was about to figure out what to do next my blackberry, which I had finally plugged in, rang. It was the owners of the house, asking me back to have dinner with them and some of their friends. I was happy to oblige. Why, you ask? Because when you’re trying to sell a show, and there are people whom you enjoy being with and they enjoy being with you and they are interested in your work, you go. I was about to take a proper shower when my roomie stopped me. He was understandably unhappy about the fact that our EP, director and I had all spent so much time at the house near St. Tropez. I felt bad. He said we missed a party in the city where we could have gotten a lot of business done. That information hit hard. I fucked up. I missed my ride home and was stuck at that house. But why didn’t he call? If there was something he thought we all should be going to, then it was his responsibility as a producer to call us – we can’t read minds.
I apologized for my outburst and said that I was in a bad mood because I hadn’t slept well and my stomach was all fucked up. He apologized as well, and realized that he should have called. He was just angry because he felt like he was marooned in the city. It’s funny how we both felt exactly the same way under different circumstances.
I asked him about the girl he had gone home with and explained to him about the situation with the swimsuit. He was the only person who had her phone number, would he call her and talk to her about it? He didn’t want to, and I didn’t understand why. This was the host’s favorite swimsuit and this girl took it. A phone call and a cup of coffee could take care of this entire situation – it was that easy. It’d be better if he at least made the first step before we went over to the house for dinner, because that would be the first thing the wife would bring up with him. It was very important to her.
This was one of those situations where you felt like you were in high school, and not for the obvious reasons. This was one of those times where the company you keep could get you into a sticky situation. A swimsuit might not seem like a big deal to you and me, but it mattered a lot to the host and after all their generosity, the least we could do was take care of this. The best thing to do would be to correct the problem as soon as possible and move on. I didn’t understand his reticence.
I was about to start getting cleaned up for dinner when he said he wanted to talk to me about something else. Oy, I thought to myself, this shit is never ending! He became super polite and asked if it was possible for me to take a short shower because I had been using up all the hot water. That was strange, because I was well aware of the length of the showers I had been taking. Super aware. If only because of how many times I had been walked in on. For some reason, instead of debating, I asked him if he knew that the knob for hot water is on the right on these faucets. “WHAT?” he said. “Yeah, it’s not always like that in France but the temperature is reversed here in this apartment.” All he said was “Fuck.”
I was almost successful at not laughing. Almost.
We made our way back to the house in St. Tropez for dinner. The two of us were undeniably closer in the way friends can only be once they’ve yelled at each other and resolved it. He was a very cool guy, and I was happy to be getting to know him. There were a couple of other people there from our production. We started talking business and many of us had to get other people on the phone. One of my favourite memories of that night is standing by the pool, barefoot in dress clothes, staring at the Med while I called the office of an agent at the agency I used to work for.
A lot had changed in the past few weeks.
[MMIX MD TOTAL all rights reserved. That's right yatches, this shit is MINE!]
I woke up to the couple’s son moving around getting ready for school. After he saw me, he ran up to me, gave me a hug and said with pure happy surprise “You’re still here?! I can’t believe I have to go to school today!” We ate cereal and watched some Sky TV show hosted by Gordon Elliot. He was testing Range Rovers by having them drive woodland obstacle courses while basically having grenades thrown at them. SkyTV. Classy.
I finally got back to sleep and heard that the chef was getting ready to make the trip to town to shop and would be able to take us back. My stomach rumbled. I ran to the bathroom and almost didn’t make it.
I have never experienced anything like that before or since. As little as I had eaten in the past eleven days, almost every single bite of it was questionable. I knew that with having eaten so little and having pure MDNA, my stomach was most likely emptying itself out. And quite painfully, I might add.
You get what you deserve.
The wife took me aside to ask me a favor. She had just discovered that one of the guests who had borrowed a swimsuit of hers had left with it. It was her favourite swimsuit. Her husband was the one who handed it to the girl because he knew it’d make his wife angry. Luckily, the girl left the party with our producer and she wanted me to ask him to call her to put her in touch with the thief.
We rode back into Cannes and I caught up with the crew and saw some amazing footage. Our camera operators were ecstatic that we were giving them so much freedom. Thank god for that, because thanks to my blackberry being completely out of juice and being “exiled in St. Tropez,” I wasn’t able to check in even if I had to.
Just as I was about to figure out what to do next my blackberry, which I had finally plugged in, rang. It was the owners of the house, asking me back to have dinner with them and some of their friends. I was happy to oblige. Why, you ask? Because when you’re trying to sell a show, and there are people whom you enjoy being with and they enjoy being with you and they are interested in your work, you go. I was about to take a proper shower when my roomie stopped me. He was understandably unhappy about the fact that our EP, director and I had all spent so much time at the house near St. Tropez. I felt bad. He said we missed a party in the city where we could have gotten a lot of business done. That information hit hard. I fucked up. I missed my ride home and was stuck at that house. But why didn’t he call? If there was something he thought we all should be going to, then it was his responsibility as a producer to call us – we can’t read minds.
I apologized for my outburst and said that I was in a bad mood because I hadn’t slept well and my stomach was all fucked up. He apologized as well, and realized that he should have called. He was just angry because he felt like he was marooned in the city. It’s funny how we both felt exactly the same way under different circumstances.
I asked him about the girl he had gone home with and explained to him about the situation with the swimsuit. He was the only person who had her phone number, would he call her and talk to her about it? He didn’t want to, and I didn’t understand why. This was the host’s favorite swimsuit and this girl took it. A phone call and a cup of coffee could take care of this entire situation – it was that easy. It’d be better if he at least made the first step before we went over to the house for dinner, because that would be the first thing the wife would bring up with him. It was very important to her.
This was one of those situations where you felt like you were in high school, and not for the obvious reasons. This was one of those times where the company you keep could get you into a sticky situation. A swimsuit might not seem like a big deal to you and me, but it mattered a lot to the host and after all their generosity, the least we could do was take care of this. The best thing to do would be to correct the problem as soon as possible and move on. I didn’t understand his reticence.
I was about to start getting cleaned up for dinner when he said he wanted to talk to me about something else. Oy, I thought to myself, this shit is never ending! He became super polite and asked if it was possible for me to take a short shower because I had been using up all the hot water. That was strange, because I was well aware of the length of the showers I had been taking. Super aware. If only because of how many times I had been walked in on. For some reason, instead of debating, I asked him if he knew that the knob for hot water is on the right on these faucets. “WHAT?” he said. “Yeah, it’s not always like that in France but the temperature is reversed here in this apartment.” All he said was “Fuck.”
I was almost successful at not laughing. Almost.
We made our way back to the house in St. Tropez for dinner. The two of us were undeniably closer in the way friends can only be once they’ve yelled at each other and resolved it. He was a very cool guy, and I was happy to be getting to know him. There were a couple of other people there from our production. We started talking business and many of us had to get other people on the phone. One of my favourite memories of that night is standing by the pool, barefoot in dress clothes, staring at the Med while I called the office of an agent at the agency I used to work for.
A lot had changed in the past few weeks.
[MMIX MD TOTAL all rights reserved. That's right yatches, this shit is MINE!]
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Festival de Cannes DIARY : Day Ten
Thursday May 19, 2005
Soon after sunrise, I learned that the person who was driving people back and forth had long gone. I couldn’t walk back to the apartment, we were 10 miles away from Cannes! Our EP and one of our producers were still around somewhere [I knew things would get naughty] I just had to wait for them to wake so we could get back.
At this point I got pretty hungry. I was averaging a meal once every 36 hours with hors d’oeuvres in between. The host’s eleven year-old son, who had been splashing me in the pool, showed me the kitchen. He was hungry too, but everyone was asleep. “Why aren’t you in school today?” He told me that he never goes to school on the day after his parents throw a party! Nice Life. “I know,” he said. I decided to make eggs and a toasted baguette. Because I was still feeling the effects of the previous night, it took an hour, but they were easily the most amazing eggs I have ever had. We ate them down on the lower patio looking out at the sea. Why is it that the best meals I’ve ever had tend to be in Europe? Even if it’s eggs and a baguette...
At this point, the host came and joined us and had the rest of the eggs. He had gotten a couple of hours of sleep, but was basically in the same shape I was in. And we had a meeting. He and his wife owned one of those European cooking vacation schools in three countries and were interested in making a show about the whole thing. After seeing the work I was doing on this show (at Man Ray and the previous night) he was interested in working with me. I was aware that the MDNA was speaking then, but I didn’t care because it felt real. The one thing I will say about my experiences with MDNA, as limited as they are, is this: Yes, I connected with people more than usual and yes it all felt magical to share that much love, but it was always real and I immediately knew I didn’t need MDNA to feel that way. It just helped me see that I could feel that way.
I asked him how I could get back to Cannes and he told me that a taxi would be a ridiculous expense and during the festival it would be well over $100 euros! I gasped. He told me that if I could wait another day, I could ride into town with his chef who would be doing some shopping then. Tomorrow? Wow. We didn’t have an event for two more days, so I could easily stay, but… Wow. I wanted my bed, and I wanted to change clothes and I wanted my freedom but I didn’t really have a choice. I watched the sea rolling beneath us and let it all go. And then I laughed out loud. Was I really complaining about having to stay another day at a fantastic house in St. Tropez?! Not anymore, I wasn’t.
Soon thereafter we both took another tab…
Before long, some of the previous nights’ guests came back and we all swam in the pool until one guy broke out his acoustic guitar and played for us while we sang. As if we needed more reasons to feel that this was a magical experience. I was even coerced into improvising a song about my lost sunglasses. Really. We sang a lot of songs, but the one that undeniably set the mood was Keane’s Somewhere Only We Know. Only the guitarist and I knew it enough to sing it. I looked out at the azure sea as we sang that song and had one of those rare moments in life that felt perfect. The song was the perfect expression of that moment. As difficult and crazy and ridiculous as the previous week had been for me, I was still lucky to be there. All of my worries melted away.
I made my way inside the house to find a bed to lie down on for a minute. I found one of the guest rooms and I passed out around 5PM. I literally woke up with some girl in my arms. What the hell was going on??? My watch told me it was after 2AM and I felt dirty. Not morally, actually dirty – I hadn’t showered or brushed my teeth in two days! I went straight to the adjoining bathroom and started a shower while I brushed my teeth with my finger. Yes, with my finger - at least I did that.
After the shower I was awake and explored the house. I found the host of the party [this time the wife] sitting on her kitchen counter talking on her cell phone to the States. I was about to leave but she grabbed my wrist in the nicest way to stop me. For some reason, I felt like I was back in high school. She covered the phone and said “I’m just talking to Joel Shumacher, I’ll be done in a minute.” Whaaaaaaaat? She poured me a scotch and sat me down while she finished her call. Not only did she remember that I liked scotch, she remembered that I am a fan of Johnny Walker in particular. I was feeling pretty bad for basically squatting at her house because I didn’t have a ride into the city and she’s pouring me scotch?
After she got off the phone, we talked. It turned out that she was from Atlanta, just the same as me! At this point I was saying yes, so I was not surprised – there are no coincidences. We sat by her pool and talked. People began to wake up and join us. We played music and talked some more. It was exactly like one of those nights back at summer camp when you’d all sneak out of your cabins and talk around the fire, except we didn’t have sneak around. We were adults and this was allowed.
[© MMIX MD TOTAL all rights reserved. That's right yatches, this shit is MINE!]
Soon after sunrise, I learned that the person who was driving people back and forth had long gone. I couldn’t walk back to the apartment, we were 10 miles away from Cannes! Our EP and one of our producers were still around somewhere [I knew things would get naughty] I just had to wait for them to wake so we could get back.
At this point I got pretty hungry. I was averaging a meal once every 36 hours with hors d’oeuvres in between. The host’s eleven year-old son, who had been splashing me in the pool, showed me the kitchen. He was hungry too, but everyone was asleep. “Why aren’t you in school today?” He told me that he never goes to school on the day after his parents throw a party! Nice Life. “I know,” he said. I decided to make eggs and a toasted baguette. Because I was still feeling the effects of the previous night, it took an hour, but they were easily the most amazing eggs I have ever had. We ate them down on the lower patio looking out at the sea. Why is it that the best meals I’ve ever had tend to be in Europe? Even if it’s eggs and a baguette...
At this point, the host came and joined us and had the rest of the eggs. He had gotten a couple of hours of sleep, but was basically in the same shape I was in. And we had a meeting. He and his wife owned one of those European cooking vacation schools in three countries and were interested in making a show about the whole thing. After seeing the work I was doing on this show (at Man Ray and the previous night) he was interested in working with me. I was aware that the MDNA was speaking then, but I didn’t care because it felt real. The one thing I will say about my experiences with MDNA, as limited as they are, is this: Yes, I connected with people more than usual and yes it all felt magical to share that much love, but it was always real and I immediately knew I didn’t need MDNA to feel that way. It just helped me see that I could feel that way.
I asked him how I could get back to Cannes and he told me that a taxi would be a ridiculous expense and during the festival it would be well over $100 euros! I gasped. He told me that if I could wait another day, I could ride into town with his chef who would be doing some shopping then. Tomorrow? Wow. We didn’t have an event for two more days, so I could easily stay, but… Wow. I wanted my bed, and I wanted to change clothes and I wanted my freedom but I didn’t really have a choice. I watched the sea rolling beneath us and let it all go. And then I laughed out loud. Was I really complaining about having to stay another day at a fantastic house in St. Tropez?! Not anymore, I wasn’t.
Soon thereafter we both took another tab…
Before long, some of the previous nights’ guests came back and we all swam in the pool until one guy broke out his acoustic guitar and played for us while we sang. As if we needed more reasons to feel that this was a magical experience. I was even coerced into improvising a song about my lost sunglasses. Really. We sang a lot of songs, but the one that undeniably set the mood was Keane’s Somewhere Only We Know. Only the guitarist and I knew it enough to sing it. I looked out at the azure sea as we sang that song and had one of those rare moments in life that felt perfect. The song was the perfect expression of that moment. As difficult and crazy and ridiculous as the previous week had been for me, I was still lucky to be there. All of my worries melted away.
I made my way inside the house to find a bed to lie down on for a minute. I found one of the guest rooms and I passed out around 5PM. I literally woke up with some girl in my arms. What the hell was going on??? My watch told me it was after 2AM and I felt dirty. Not morally, actually dirty – I hadn’t showered or brushed my teeth in two days! I went straight to the adjoining bathroom and started a shower while I brushed my teeth with my finger. Yes, with my finger - at least I did that.
After the shower I was awake and explored the house. I found the host of the party [this time the wife] sitting on her kitchen counter talking on her cell phone to the States. I was about to leave but she grabbed my wrist in the nicest way to stop me. For some reason, I felt like I was back in high school. She covered the phone and said “I’m just talking to Joel Shumacher, I’ll be done in a minute.” Whaaaaaaaat? She poured me a scotch and sat me down while she finished her call. Not only did she remember that I liked scotch, she remembered that I am a fan of Johnny Walker in particular. I was feeling pretty bad for basically squatting at her house because I didn’t have a ride into the city and she’s pouring me scotch?
After she got off the phone, we talked. It turned out that she was from Atlanta, just the same as me! At this point I was saying yes, so I was not surprised – there are no coincidences. We sat by her pool and talked. People began to wake up and join us. We played music and talked some more. It was exactly like one of those nights back at summer camp when you’d all sneak out of your cabins and talk around the fire, except we didn’t have sneak around. We were adults and this was allowed.
[© MMIX MD TOTAL all rights reserved. That's right yatches, this shit is MINE!]
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