Look up "Cluster Fuck" in the dictionary..

And there should be a photo of Friday night.

Some genius scheduled a night exterior in Hollywood on a Friday night.

Hollywood Blvd near all the nightclubs - complete with loud motorcycles, honking horns (for some reason, people see a movie set and they start honking their car horns like crazy. I still can't figure out why). Add that to the screaming and yelling because we had blocked traffic lanes, and you have quite the din. I can only imagine the sound guy's unhappiness at trying to record dialog in that. He probably went through a whole bottle of antacids.

There was massive confusion about the crew parking - I couldn't figure out where crew parking was, and there were no signs (there are usually signs). There were also THREE different companies shooting within a mile of each other, so I had to make sure I was in the parking for the correct movie. I got into an argument with the parking lot attendant (he claimed to not know there was a crew parking there - even though I recognized the cars of folks I knew, and tried to charge me 15 bucks), and had to phone my boss to sort it out.

Since I had to take a shuttle from the parking to the set, I was late to work. Late to work means no dinner. Damn.

This is a movie ("Material Girls") starring a bunch of Duffs - there's about 12 Duffs involved, and according to the guys, the Duffs are really, really sweet, fun to work with and very nice to the crew.

On every movie set, they have craft service -it's basically a food table that's set out to circumvent osha's meal break laws (if we had to give the crew a break as often as osha mandates, we'd never get any work done - so they have a sort of nosh table available for the crew). The craft service guy on this movie is a man that I worked with years ago - who was notorious for having an unbelievably dirty truck - the medic used to warn folks not to eat the food unless it was sealed. He has a new truck that looks much cleaner now, but I was still afraid to eat anything he might have touched.

I ended up going up after all - the chassis of the nightsun was in a traffic lane, so they put up cones and stationed an off duty cop at the base to protect me from the drunks.. the good thing is I wasn't 'full stick' (as far up in the air as the basket will go), so I was only about five floors up (a survivable fall should a drunk hit the chassis. Yes, this has happened. Not to me, but I've seen cars hit lifts before. It doesn't knock the lift over, but the shock to the base swings the arm really, really hard. Whatever's not tied down will come out of the basket.) - the bad news is that I wasn't full stick so all the engine revving, drunken revelry and occasional profanity (shouted from the window of a moving car, I'm certain) kept me from getting any sleep.

Over the walkie, my boss kept a running commentary of the fights that were breaking out (as the clubs let out) right outside the truck.. it got crazy at 2 am - the streets were full of people walking. It looked like New York for a few minutes.

Oh, and two people got popped for DUI right behind the truck as well.

call time 5 pm
wrap 4:30 am

Went straight from work to Mr. Movie Star's house, where I passed out on the couch for most of the morning (I'm so glad I managed to talk him out of coming by the set.. the teenybopper extras would have torn him limb from limb).

He pouted about my 'ignoring him', despite my efforts to explain my not being able to sleep last night. It would have been cute if I weren't so tired.

Actors.