On Ike Turner and Jiminy Cricket

And that’s that.

It ended a week ago yesterday. Two days early for me as I decided I’d had enough. I won’t go into details. I’ll just say that this film was hands down the worst experience of my life.

A friend who also worked on this and I were talking one night and I related it to being bullied as a kid. As in those situations, it’s not like this situation was life or death. You can easily stop what happening just by standing up for yourself but you don’t – and that’s what hurts you. It’s not the things that other people do to you. It’s that you let them do these things. The fact that you let yourself be abused eats at your humanity.

I spoke with many people on the set who felt the same way. Phrases like “I don’ deserve this” and “never again” were bandied about frequently but now that it’s over everyone is talking about it in glowing terms, talking about how they can’t wait for the next one.

All I can do is shake my head, chuckle and wonder. I have to imagine that the afterglow has gotten to them. The bruises have healed and they only hear, “Ike loves you baby,” and so they swoon. Personally, I’m just happy to be back to real life. A steady job. Dogs to play with. A granddaughter to help raise. A loving wife to cuddle up to.

As for film making, I had an interesting conversation with one of the producers after a particularly grueling day. We talked about the desire for personal cinema. Movies that people make for themselves, inviting everyone else to come along for the ride if they like. Wouldn’t it be nice to see more films like this? Movies that weren’t made with a goal of being this summer’s big blockbuster but rather with the singular goal of telling a story. And not the same story that has been told countless times by countless people.

That’s where I’ve wanted to be all along. Small simple films that focus on telling a story. I don’t usually make New Year’s Resolutions but I do have one this year. I’m only doing my own work from now on. I’ve partnered up with a guy who is of the same mind and we have some good stuff planned for 2008.

So is that what there was to learn from this? Not quite. I already knew that Hollywood is not where it’s at for me. I already knew that real life was more important to me than the big show. I already knew what I wanted out of film making. So just what was there to learn here?

I deviated from my path. I chose a different road because it looked like it had been newly paved. It was a bad road, through a seedy section of town. Bad things happened there and when I got off that road, I was a little worse off. But I learned that I could have seen those bad things coming - in fact, I did see them coming - and could have avoided them.

My practice fell off in the days before the project started and was non-existant while it was going on. On one hand, it probably would have helped. On the other hand, I don’t think there was any knowledge that I didn’t already have that would helped in this situation. I knew what I needed to do but knowing what to do means nothing. It’s all about what you actually do.

I learned that Jiminy Cricket was right. “Always let your conscience be your guide.”