Low Noon

There are two people in as many years who have been frienemies from the filmmaking side of my life intersecting with the other side of my life I don't freely blog much about, the job-job side that is almost enough to pay my rent. I once thought it was a amusing quip to end a bio calling myself writer-director-security guard. I have what I'm told is a very good HDV camera, two choices of good editing software on a laptop that is "in the shop" and a new MacBook Pro that seems to take so much getting used to I want to return it. Since 2009 I have been able to make some strong shorts, but have fallen short of the goal and only made a few and not with the preparation and commitment from all which is needed to do it right. I also have to improve my game, despite an aversion to even the word "game" itself. I have improved my writing and have been able to refine some old stuff and I'll be shooting a lot more this year. But a life is like a body where all could be well except the broken pinky finger which ends up being your main focus while it is injured and untreated. //////////////////// I was posted at a bank on Monday. Overheard conversations had been about the Oscars the night before and the prospect of Toronto Crack Mayor Rob Ford appearing as a guest of Jimmy Kimmel. I am wearing a yellow vest with security on it while standing in and around an ATM vestibule and often outside in the cold having forgotten my proper winter uniform hat. Along comes a woman to the door who seems familiar but her mouth is covered by a collar and without the wide, pleasant eyes you see from her on a stage or in 2004 when I first met her she did not register as anyone specific. Despite wearing the same jacket, boots and pants she had on when attending a recent film screening by a mutual friend, I didn't immediately think she was _____ until she was opening a door beside me and entering the vestibule. Then I thought she had plenty of approach time to recognize me, and I stand out, and unlike most of the people who pass me on their way in or out (complete strangers) there was no hello of any kind. That in a way could confirm that this was the person I suspected. I actually mentioned an issue I had with her a few blogs back. There would be no danger of her chancing to read it, because she did not accept either of my FB requests back in 2008 or so. At the screening I went out of my way to say hi by name as I was leaving, but I think she ignored my hello and wave the first time. Fair enough. She would have been paying respects to our mutual friend who had achieved a feature. But I mean people usually have periphery, and most respect the Godfather rule of "keep your friends close but keep your enemies closer" even though I've often thought that axiom doesn't seem practical. It boils down to a chill that was not present back in 2004. After seeing a play of hers last year, I made the effort to invite her into a project. But there may have been a mind f**k there. I've come to a certain conclusion after much reflection that in her case the eyes are not at all a window to the soul. There can be an aesthetic to a person's eyes up close that may persuade that there is a soul, but these are tools of most charismatic people. You don't know who someone is until they are frustrated or want something or have made a judgement based on misinformation. I don't hang very often. I have made room for some events and participation between whatever shifts of work I am thrown into. So "the hang" that is s important with building groups may often be forgone. So if someone wants to put a spin on anything, it likely will be outside of my sphere. I am certain that the first hint of aloofness at a screenwriting circle meeting might have been just before she shared her theory that I am to blame for a troop falling apart. /////////////// Oddly, the first from that group who met me in a uniform standing outside a bank had softened since that group was dissolved and he had apologized. It occurred to me mentally that this would have been the time to respond with a "me too" or something, but since it was not the case and I was not wrong in questioning the way funds were to be allotted for his own project alone after being raised ostensibly for four unknown scripts to be voted on. . . I had said my piece and suffered through the hot seat for that. I still say that was a cordial and psychologically relaxing chance meeting and it's good to know there is no ongoing resentment there. ////////////// But in a cold March Monday at noon 2014, as I stood waiting for this person to leave who had not met my eyes, I had my hat off and there was no chance that I would be mistaken for anyone else. Had she looked at me I'd have to have waved. But as a rule I don't stare of hover while someone is approaching a bank machine. Though I did think of her as someone who had badmouthed me and caused me some strain, I would have been polite and in fact intended to croak out her name and say hi just as a human being, but my unconscious must have overridden that impulse and would not allow me to speak. In my gut, I felt that without give and take I would be a puppy chasing after someone who has kicked me. ***********@#!%$^&#********* Even though 11 years ago I had a producer drop in on a job-site who proved to be my worst antagonist, that person at least knew of my other job in advance. But even she was coming from an "office boss" kind of background wanted to see the director she was working with in a more menial setting. (So it must have frustrated that person when she lost the battles to come.) ***********@#!%$^&#********* This current frienemy, someone with several Facebook friends in common and who had been a presence in some organizations with which I was involved, clearly didn't know me well enough to greet me as a person and likely would have felt the uniform I wore was an elephant in the room or that it meant I was a phoney posing as a filmmaker the rest of my life. But that is on her. Maybe she thought I was embarrassed and it was on me to put on a hyper-enthused show. But that decision was removed from me by whatever controls the ability to make myself speak. Right or wrong, like a movie audience, I stood my the vestibule windows and watched her leave. There was a little spring in her step that seemed acted. ////////////////// The whole time I'm thinking this is creepy. But you know, here is an actress seeing someone who makes films in what may be a vulnerable state and she does have the ability to look past it and diffuse any real or imagined tension but she chose not to. It's so outside of my nature to be rude that my inner monologue screams out the script, "Hey Ms E_____. Is this your area?" But no. I can pretend non-verbal cues are in the imagination, and that the chill in my nerves to any past exchange is just my imagination. But apparently my central nervous system wouldn't let me be disingenuous. Of course I get thinking I failed the love-thy-enemy challenge yet again. However, any time I have forced by voice to work it is like an e-mail that doesn't have to be filtered through human interaction and visual counterpoint. //////////////// So all it well as I turn this over in my head and wonder why today I failed to greet friendly someone who merely failed to greet me friendly. I end up leaving the subway train after work and visiting a the Palmerston library which was a familiar place when I lived in the Annex between 1997 and 2003. I left with a couple of DVDs, Shock Treatment, and John Carter, neither of which I had yet seen, and a book I used to have from which only the dust cover survives a loan to a friend, "Further Along the Road Less Travelled" by M. Scott Peck. Something besides free newspapers to read on the bus. At least until my eyelids get heavy. Spiritual self-help. But I had been intending to re-read it every time I tidied my apartment and fount the useless cover. I can't be completely cynical about the non-events of the day. They would not make much of a pitch for a movie. I have more positive things to consider. A couple of people I know have had screenings of their features these past weeks, one of which retains writing I did for it while at college between 1991 and 1994. Another friend phoned after reading my draft of a script she commissioned. She read it on the plane to Vancouver and called me a few times to thank me and discuss it. And it is one of those discussions where comments are specific and things were actually read and noticed. So maybe I have that kind of thing as a counterpoint these days. Maybe I don't have to hump every leg begging to be liked. Some fall away. Someday I'll have memoirs worth folding together into a book, assuming books exist then. As long as I keep paying my rent more or less I still have a horizon of accumulated full stories, drafts, and other crap to refine and shoot and beg and coerce people to sit through.