Huh?

Hello, friends.
It's the first day of summer! And our basement is flooded. Well, today it's actually only mildly flooded, yesterday was the real action. It'd been raining here since Thursday, which is pretty unusual for my prairie town, and combined with an old house... rubber boots time! We spent yesterday taking turns doing the shopvac/sweeping water down the drain routine.

Blech!

And then the saga of the "film director" continued. Have I not mentioned him? He's some young fella who wants to make movies. He's apparently making a movie, and had asked me to be in it this summer. Now, this isn't my first experience with this guy-- way back last fall he'd asked me to be in an independent he wanted to shoot over the winter, which fell through for some reason. And I've never worked with him, but according to one of my friends, he's very nice and organized and talented.

So when he offered me a one-scene neat little featured role in his independent? Sure! No money, but experience, a credit for my resume, and a chance to practice on-camera.

Easy, right?

Er... no. He'd asked me to send him a picture of me in wardrobe, and I'd emailed him to say that because of the play reading, would it be okay to get that to him this weekend? And then he replied no, and he was worried that my play reading would leave me unable to focus on his movie, and he only liked to hire actors without any other projects on the go, because he didn't want their creative focus split. And he wasn't sure that my schedule was going to work anyway, and maybe he should look at other actors, and he'd let me know.

Huh?

OK, (a) it's one scene. One day of shooting. I'm pretty sure I can maintain focus with my tiny actor's brain. (b) Do you really mean you want people who don't have anything creative on the go at all? Yikes! And (c) You're not paying me. So this kind of lessens your ability to dictate how I spend the rest of my time.

So I emailed him back and said actually my play reading was already done, and yes, I did have a job, but I was available for the dates we'd probably be shooting, but if he wanted to recast, then best of luck.

Then I get an email back saying "Oh my god, this is working out great, I can't wait to work with you, I'm so glad your play reading is done, blah blah blah!"

Okay.

Now, my scene would likely be shot on a Sunday, because that's when we had access to the location. He'd mentioned that he wanted my character to be sort of background in some other scenes if possible, and that he'd let me know when they were shooting those. So yesterday I realized I wasn't available one Saturday in July, due to a work thing. So I emailed him to say, oh, this one Saturday I wouldn't be available until later in the day.

SATURDAY. Not SUNDAY.

I get an email back saying "Oh, that won't work, we can only shoot in the location on Sunday, so best of luck and maybe another project will come up in the future."

Huh?

Time to walk away on this one. Good luck with the movie, have a great summer, goodbye. I'm going to split my creative focus by doing some rewrites and maybe starting a new play this summer.

Well, time to bail out the basement again!
Happy first day of summer!