A Death in New Orleans

Jun 02, 2013 21:10


My heart in bro­ken into a mil­lion lit­tle pieces and I’ve been wan­der­ing the streets of the French Quar­ter and Lower Gar­den Dis­trict col­lect­ing the shards. There’s a piece on Wilkin­son, there’s a sliver in Bywa­ter, there’s a large jagged hunk under a tree in Holt Cemetery.

What pieces I can find, I bring back to the Fairchild House. New Orleans is a strange city for a bout of depres­sion and in spite of the fes­tive col­ors and rau­cous atmos­phere, I’m a mis­shapen weed at the base of a bloom­ing and fra­grant mag­no­lia tree.

I’m sup­posed to be film­ing a movie this week, a lit­tle some­thing I was very proud of and excited to bring to life. The set­ting of New Orleans wasn’t even my idea, because the story as writ­ten could be in any city, but since it was essen­tially some­one else’s dime, the prep was made to film here.

In the end, it was no one’s dime but my own because the Over/With (née, “I Do This Because I Love You”) isn’t being filmed here in this city where I will spend the next 9 days because I have to. Alone. No cast, no crew, no film because the plug was lit­er­ally pulled while I was in transit.

I don’t think I can fully express to any­one - and I’ve been try­ing to find the words over the last three days - how com­pletely crushed, demor­al­ized and gut­ted I feel. I have been made to feel in noth­ing so tan­gi­ble as words but mere actions (or lack of) that my time, my money, my energy are worth­less. Film­ing was going to begin with­out me in another city; appar­ently it was all set to go over there, while I sat here in New Orleans won­der­ing what I did to deserve to be treated like a dis­carded gum wrapper.

Friends, fam­ily, co-workers - every­one was excited for me. I was on my way, they said. I was going places and it was a Very Good Thing. Yep, I was going to New Orleans to be told “these things hap­pen” and now I can go home on the 10th (my stay here has been set in stone since March) to be rec­og­nized as a sucker, a chump, just another writer not wor­thy much more than last-minute smoke and misdirection.

I spent money (my own money I prob­a­bly won’t see again, because why should some sucker be com­pen­sated), a good chunk of my vaca­tion time (time I could have been at con­ven­tions net­work­ing and meet­ing like-minded peo­ple), not to men­tion my writ­ing, my words, and my tal­ent. I set aside dead­lines, passed up projects and put pro­fes­sional cap­i­tal on the line. What’s sit­ting here not mak­ing a movie net­ting me?

A big fat check in the Les­son Learned col­umn with noth­ing to show for it.

I don’t even believe, because hind­sight has  painful clar­ity, that it was ever going to hap­pen in New Orleans. I handed over my faith and my trust and I feel like I’m stand­ing on my front porch dressed up for prom, and my date just called to tell me that there was a cheaper party nowhere near me but every­one would totally Skype me in, because clearly I wanted to be there.

There are things I won’t get back - money (yeah, it’s impor­tant and pre­cious), time (I don’t write in a Pocket Uni­verse), and my sense that a writer’s efforts are worth something.

The actors (I’d begun to think of them as *my* actors) got the shaft, too. How many of them put off com­mit­ments and other gigs to film this lit­tle short. What about their time and effort? Except they’ll prob­a­bly be paid.

Not me, though.

Doug has been great, help­ing me find things to smile about, tak­ing long walks with me, includ­ing me on the things he was going to do on his own while I was film­ing. My friends have been incred­i­bly sup­port­ive, being angry and heart­bro­ken with me, being furi­ous for me. I love them for check­ing up on me, ask­ing how I’m doing, won­der­ing if I’m okay, because this feels like a hor­ri­ble, tragic death.

And it is.

A really fan­tas­tic dream was mur­dered and I’m here in New Orleans to bury it.

Alone.



In the French Mar­ket, a bronze ver­sion of how I feel sits in the rain.

directing, over/with movie, ars gratia artis

Previous post Next post
Up