THE CUT

We have been in the studio since 6am cutting voice over. Morgan is dropping it in now. The first pass at a rough cut will be delivered this afternoon, just like we said it would. MORG AND JOE DOIN WORK.

SIR MISTER DOCTOR TO YOU

SHOTGUN LOVIN IN MAH POCKET
We are going to run this song on a loop for the entire documentary. Apparently it's only available on a 12 inch vinyl from the UK. Well anyways, it's in the mail.

Cool and Classy

It's been hitting 105 in LA this week. Tough to sleep in weather like that. The windows in the apartment are big and broad and slide on a horizontal axis. Not immediately conducive to window-mounted AC units. But really all you have to do is hang the thing out there, cantilever it to your box spring with some sturdy strapping, and frame out the rest of the window the classy way, with cardboard.

Slept pretty good last night. Actually had to pull out the bathrobe this morning because I caught a chill in LA, in August. That'll be fine.

Sometimes I wish the thing would fall out the window, just so I can hear what kind of noise a 60 pound AC unit makes when it hits the pavement from 20 feet. Probably nothing like it in the world.

Camisea, 7 June 1981

"In the face of the obscene, explicit malice of the jungle, which lacks only dinosaurs as punctuation, I feel like a half-finished, poorly expressed sentence in a cheap novel. While hauling away a mud-smeared, uncooperative steel cable, one of the Indians farted from the effort with such force and duration that it sounded amid the roaring vulgarity of nature like the first indication of a human will to impose order. In my imagination my wishes carry me away to a place where people fly over church towers, church towers over farmland, ships over mountains, and continents over oceans."

-Werner Herzog
Conquest of the Useless
Reflections from the Making of Fitzcarraldo

Up on Redcliff Street

It's a twisty drive up to Redcliff. You just take Berkeley off Silverlake and you're right there. Fred the landlord has a few properties here on this lot and he doesn't mind about most things as long as the rent checks come through on time. Fred listens to old timey music you can hear through the screen door and has a small and alert white dog that sometimes sits on the picinic table and watches people and things go by.

Today I worked from home. Mostly on account of my producer and my editor are both in New England at the moment, where I've heard they're getting some weather. I'm only doing research now, and I can do that here. I'm reading two books. One about how to tell stories and the other is the diary of Werner Herzog that he wrote during the filming of Fitzcaraldo back in 1980. It's Stephenson's book but I have no idea where Stephenson is right now.

The weather is fine. It's always warm and breezy and dusty and filthy. They got the Silver Lake all fenced off with barbed wire and security shacks. I guess water's something of a hot commodity out here and they use the Silver Lake to pump it around to faucets and toilets. But there's a nice dirt running track that loops around the lake that's pretty popular between the hours of 4:30 and 9pm. I walked around it tonight at about 8 and passed probably 100 people. If you make your own hours I'd say get out there around 2pm and you got the thing to yourself.

I been getting out doing some running and the architechture is strange and modern and the trees seem strange and ancient. There's all these new buildings around here but in your gut you can feel that California is an ancient, natural place and there is only a fragile and uneasy truce between mankind and nature here. Sometimes out by the Silver lake in mid-afternoon you'll be elevated into a trance-like state for a few moments that reminds you of a dream. Not a good dream or a bad dream. Just a strange dream. The dead can still feel the California breeze.

I am learning my way around town and some things are happing as I'd hoped and other things aren't panning out too great but mostly everything is going according to plan. Sometimes I feel like a paratrooper that's been dropped behind enemy lines and caught a bad gust of wind and ended up alone in the woods. But then the Scottish blood in me takes over and mechanically starts digging trenches. I just finished reading 'The Art of War' and learned that the 5th form of war is Siege Warfare. It is the lowest form of war but is sometimes necessary.

The submission date for Tribeca is December 14 and we're going for it.

Well, here we are at the Battle of Los Angeles.

We are in Los Angeles now.

Los Angeles










Home Office.










Erin took us on a golf cart tour of a horrific plane crash. Luckily, everyone survived.













Filmmakers.













Hollywood.

Goodbye Maine old friend

The work in Maine is done. All the binders and tapes are packed. I hear tell a man can find an honest job of work out West. Pointing the moving truck toward LA in 17 hours.