Money, power, and silence

Anyone who works in media in any capacity keeps secrets.

Most of them are harmless: the vegetarian who eats bacon, the studio exec with an 8th grade education, the erudite gangster rapper.

But some people do very, very bad things and get away with it. For years.

Because they’re powerful. Because they’re rich. Because if you dare challenge them they’ll litigate you into a special kind of hell from which you will never re-emerge.

Even if you do win, you’ll be demonized by the unwashed internet masses because how dare you speak ill of Mr (or Ms.) Perfect? They make great media!

Since he’s Canadian, you’ve probably never heard of him, but Jian Ghomeshi is rich, powerful, beloved, and an alleged serial date-beater.

The accusations span a decade, and the women in his media circles have been warning each other to stay away for about that length of time.

But no one went to the police, because apparently the police in Canada aren’t any better at dealing with this sort of thing than the police here in Los Angeles, where they warehoused rape kits for years.

And that’s women who were assaulted by the hoi palloi, not the rich and powerful.

Here in our little Southern California media community, there is at least one serial rapist – not a sad sack who confuses BDSM and battery, an actual rapist – who has been at it for at least 8 years. Maybe longer.

No one that I know of has gone to the police because this person is very, very powerful and, well, that’s why. Even those who are raped by poor people face victim blaming, accusations of being liars and whores who secretly wanted it, etc..

Imagine how that gets magnified when one’s claim involves part of the city’s economic elite, or very, very famous.

Is it any wonder that we just quietly warn each other to stay away from Mr. (or Ms.) Nightmare?

Glances get exchanged, texts get sent, private messages fly around – stay away.

But it’s not a perfect system. Some don’t get the warning. And they have to suffer through the cycle of shame, anger, grief, guilt.

And said abuser walks free.

Because the abuser is above the law. And will likely never face the consequences.

And one could lose faith in the human race, except that Jian Ghomeshi is, finally,  facing some (admittedly mild so far) consequences.

It’s not much, but it’s better than nothing, right?

 

P.S. For fuck’s sake – no comment guesses at any names, even if you know who it is. I can’t afford that kind of lawyer.

 

 

Filed under: dating, life in LA, Los Angeles, Non-Work, Off-Topic, rants, Uncategorized, battery, fame, fear, Jian Ghomeshi, rape, silence, women

Panic and destruction

In case you were wondering, the day before we’re scheduled to shoot is not the best time to make major changes to the sets.

It screws up everyone – us, grip, camera, actors, but mainly set dressing.

Set dressers are the nice people who make the sets look like, well, not sets.

I’m sure you’ve seen the low-budget movie with sparse backgrounds that somehow look like sets – you may not be able to pinpoint what’s wrong, but you do know they don’t look right.

That, my friends, is set dressing.

They place magazines, table lamps, newspapers, pens, mismatched pillows, sex toys, statuary, flowers, coffee cups, and the difference is amazing.

But, like the rest of us, set dressers don’t do their best work when they’re in a ‘holy fuck what just happened’ panic.

So they rip out all the practicals* – the table lamps, the floor lamps, the wall sconces, the weird puck light things in the cabinets that I’ve never, ever seen in the real world ever and wad up all the zip cord into a ball and helpfully set it somewhere that makes perfect sense. To them.

So then we come in on the day we’re supposed to shoot and find all new practicals in all new places and all of the zip and stingers connecting them to the dimmers gone.

Well, not gone, but wadded up… somewhere.

So now it’s our turn to panic as we try to work around the actors and director and camera trying to block the scene so we can shoot.

Of course, the only people who think that practicals are important are the DP and the gaffer.

Everyone else just see them as crap that’s making the toolbelt people have to get in their way.

So we have to balance getting yelled at by the gaffer, who wants that bedside lamp to work, and the director who wants us to get the hell out of his set so he can be a creative genius.

Since the director doesn’t hire us for the next show, guess who wins that battle?

Lucky for us, we managed to get everything redone in time to shoot, and hopefully there won’t be many more changes for show day tomorrow.

Oh, and the cat’s still hanging in there. She seems to have perked up a bit since it’s not as hot.

* Any light that’s on the screen is called a practical. It plays as part of the sets, but it’s a working light fixture.

Filed under: studio lots, Work, dimmer, director, lamps, poor planning, scramble, sitcom, table lamps, television

Work is not on my mind right now.

The cat is old.

Really, really, old, and recently she’s begun to act her age.

Most of what she does these days is sleep, and she very rarely ventures away from her perch on the bed. I think it’s been six months since she’s done anything other than walk to the food bowl and then walk back to the bed.

She doesn’t look out the window, she doesn’t come and sit with me if I’m watching  TV, she doesn’t come yell at me to hurry up and get out of the shower.

She’s not even showing interest in her beloved Cat Track.

Her muscles are atrophying because of the inactivity, making it harder for her to move around.

She just sleeps. She doesn’t even wash her face these days – I’ve been having to scrub the food crust off of her nose for her.

I know the end is coming, but right now what I’m really struggling with is when.

I’m not going to let her slide and slide and become really miserable before dying naturally.

I’ve done that because I was too much of a coward to go to the vet. The suffering that animal had to endure because of my lack of action is something that will haunt me for the rest of my life.

But it’s not that simple.

If I do it too soon, she loses time (or maybe it doesn’t matter to her and I’m the one losing the time. Who knows).

If I do it too late, she’ll suffer.

Where’s the line?

I’ve had her for so long that I can’t imagine life without her, so I wonder if that clouds my judgement.

The vet is spectacularly unhelpful, just saying “You know your pet”.

Fucking duh. Of course I know my pet. That’s why this is so hard.

It would be super easy with someone else’s pet.

“Dude, that dog’s, like, jacked. You should put it to sleep”.

See? Easy.

So now I’m watching, and waiting, and wondering if I’m doing the right thing or just torturing the sweet soul that’s loved me unconditionally for almost two decades.

I wish there was an easy answer.

Someone please give me an easy answer.

 

Filed under: Non-Work, end-of-life, geriatric, geriatric animals, pets

Time and space

As the show goes on and more stuff gets put into the sets, the stage itself starts to get harder and harder to navigate.

On shows running longer than three months, the boxes, cases, oddly shaped bits of wood, unused couches, etc..  would be tucked away somewhere not the stage (sometimes an office but many times a shipping container).

Since a lot of the stuff we have will only be on camera for one episode and no one has any real estate large enough for storage, everything just gets stacked where ever there happens to be space.

In hallways, behind backdrops, against set walls, in the bathrooms, around our carts, under the audience bleachers.

Which I understand, as there’s just not any room on the stage to store anything, but it’s getting difficult to navigate lifts through the monumental piles of crap.

Add in the copious amount of fake trees in the fake yard and it’s damn near impossible to reach some of the lights.

Of course, the lights that are the biggest pains in the ass to reach are the ones that need the most attention.

So we bushwhack our way back to a point at which we can almost reach the light and then have someone act as a counterweight while we lean out over the debris to change a globe or refocus.

We’ll do a set changeover in a couple of weeks, so at least it’ll be different junk, hopefully in different places.

 

Filed under: studio lots, Uncategorized, Work, cluster fuck, crowding, sets, shipping container, storage