July 21 Murder Near Jobsite

I was working as a sort of guest guard for mostly weekend night shifts during the Olympics at CTV in Scarborough. Most of it was uneventful apart from being told I take washroom runs more often than most guards. I figure over the course of 12 hours three or four is reasonable. On a dark note, I had a couple of unfortunate clashes with the main site supervisor who will remain nameless. The last of which was a matter of which shift I agreed to do. In July he called me at home and asked me to do an additional shift which was Monday 06 August from 1900 hours to 0700 hours. Agreed. Simple enough. I wrote it down on m home calender - Monday 06 August was a civic holiday as well, so it was especially marked in my memory as maybe a possible few extra dollars. The Monday 06 shift arrives and I work it and no problem. My next shift should be Friday. Then Thursday the 9th just after 1900 hours or 7pm I get a call from this supervisor. Maybe he is the account director. I don't know. I've been calling him supervisor. I'm at home chilling and almost went to a matinee of Jaws which would have meant never getting this call. I should have gone to the show as it turns out. Instead of saying what was clearly the truth, "Gee, William, I screwed up and I should have asked you to do the Thursday shift. Can you help us out and come in? I accidentally had someone put you in the schedule for that and posted it but I didn't ask" he immediately starts with an accusatory tone. "William, why aren't you on site? You have a shift." I say no, I work Friday. He says he called me in July and got me to work Thurday the 9th and I remind him it was Monday the 6th. I tell him I guess I can come in at the last minute but it would have been better if I had known. He says it was on the same schedule posted "for the past 2 weeks." At this point I could have told him that Blessing, one of the other guards, asked my last name on Monday because she was apparently in the office correcting the schedule. Unfortunately nobody told me that it was to add me into any other shift. I did not want to bring her into the conversation. The onus should have been on the supervisor to ask me to take the shift, especially since I was a visiting guard and could take shifts from other sites while off. He knew that, hence his call in July, which I contended was about Monday. And I reminded him that I only had one Monday-into-Tuesday shift and it was the one on the 6th. Therefore that was the one he had booked me into. His response was "I'm the BOSS." Even though I agreed to come in, he said, "You are a no-show. You are a NO-SHOW. I am going to make sure (***the company we work for***) knows about it. This is how easily life can go from sane to insane. I reinforced my comment by saying the only times I've been in there on a Thursday were on July 26 and then the following week by accident where I was reminded it was just a one-off and I start my weekend shifts on Friday. FRIDAY. Extra reinforcement of logic. He claimed that he was aware I accidentally came in the previous Thursday and that it somehow indicated confirmation that Thursday the 9th was an agreed-upon shift. I say no, as it was a week away and clearly I came in and worked the MONDAY 6 shift which can't be overlooked. (It somehow did not occur to him to change his story to claim that he asked me to do two shifts; he stuck with the idea that it was Thursday and not Monday he asked me to do. Sheez!!) Now even though it was clearly his mistake, and it was a minor one, rather than accept the slightest responsibility he decided it was easier to throw me under the bus. He concluded - even though I was going to drag my tired ass in for this 12 hour (now it would be 11-hour) night shift - he went so far as to say to me, "I am going to make sure that once this Olympic coverage is done you don't come back." Wow. WOW! That's a pretty hurtful jab, considering that I did nothing wrong. Of course it is tempered by the fact that I wasn't SUPPOSED to come back. He had only decided I was of use as a night-shift gatehouse guard. He had already decided a month previous that I shouldn't be in regular rotation because after touring the complex with him I couldn't immediately verbally give directions to the places I had been. And this is a place that everyone calls a maze. Not to disparage the rest of the staff, because I find them generally nice and the few I've interacted with regularly were quite helpful and accommodating. And there is agreement that the fall-back of a line like "I'm the boss!" does sound like something this glob of shit would say. Maybe he does have friends at our head office who have kept me out of shifts elsewhere. Hard to tell. But for what it is worth, I am not going to be discrete about corrupt supervisors who have become too comfy at a site and become like Col. Kurtz in Apocalypse Now. He may not be chopping off heads of natives but he has an unintentionally comical swagger and the security computer has a desktop photo displaying his precious black fancy car. The sort of car you don't expect a security site supervisor to have. He must have made peace with corruption long ago. Of course, that much is just speculation. A little more charitable than his own speculation about me. The first real offensive call I got from him was on Thursday the 26 (again, the only Thursday I was asked to come in; they don't want to give a lot of overtime) when he phoned me in the gatehouse from his own home to ask about the morning of July 21. He blatantly say, "Not just the cops but I think you should have seen something or heard something. Were you watching a movie or sleeping or what?" I told him even with the A/C on and the radio I likely would have heard a scream if there was one and that I have felt awful talking to family and friends about it and speculating about how a murder could have happened so close by and maybe I could have caught the guy or helped the victim. He left the conversation at that and nobody corrected me. I had to read on-line a news item about the death. Police did catch the killer, partly due to finger-prints on the car that had been abandoned at the roadside. But the murder HAD NOT TAKEN PLACE NEAR OUR PROPERTY !!!!! The victim had been stabbed and killed elsewhere and then driven and dropped in the ditch nearby out site. So in the best of circumstances, the most I would have heard is a car pulling over to the shoulder of a busy street and (hidden from my view by trees) someone dropping a body (whatever that sounds like from half a block away) into the grass slope. And since I can't leave my gatehouse and walk around there is nothing for me to see. According to dickhead, the CCTV cameras show that the killer after dumping the body ran through the opening in the far fence (not on the property) and walked down the court or driveway to flee and may have dropped the knife out there. None of which would read as anything significant in the dead of night. The images I have taken with my still camera (some video setting shots) show how difficult any of that would have been to see. Also, my supervisor would know that I am not the one with CCTV camera access. That is the main console inside, and even when police started to gather on the street and I phoned that guard to pan around he could not spot a body. We helped the police in way way we could and they looked around, but they knew our involvement could only be after the fact and I am certain (considering my own direct interaction with the detectives that night) they knew darn well that the person was not stabbed near us but was dumped and all of our involvement could only be after the fact. I am furious that this goddamn jackass in charge had no problem letting me think I could have saved someone. . . and also had apparent ignorance of what that site looks like from the post I was at.

pitch in with pitching

Bitching should be part of the heading here, but I wasn't bold enough to do that. All I know about this blog is that I may start posting pitches here for my scripts and videotaped movie reviews. The process of retelling myself a film story helps clarify and simplify it. Some details may fall by the wayside, but maybe this is the way to discover what ahould fall out. Some ideas or details I fall in love with, even directorial ideas that I have already imposed on a script not yet finished. Have to make sure I'm not going out of the way and straying from the dramatic center of a story to include stylish wanking. I've also considered using these blogs for knocking off "four pages" as described by Julia Cameron's book The Artist's Way. Just an excuse to dump out any random trash cluttering up my head soit isn't the driving force of my creative writing or infecting it. But most of the clutter is exactly what I want to generate, so just getting it out of my system and having it sit unread and unusable or having to cull through it all for morstles that might be of use is not enough. I've put a handful of pitches into my virtual office at zoetrope.com and have changed the office name to Pitch Bitch. People do rely on oral instruction and presentation, to a point where may people in autority can barely write an e-mail. That's a hurdle for me, because I'd rather fuss over something than be a less intimidsting version of me. This pitch-focus means less fussing, mainly streem of consciousness description of a project. We'll see if it works. I have such a backlog of scripts and projects. The stories may as well have their structure and be contained even in their most minimalist and conversational form.

The Dictator, Mel Gibson, History and Comedy

The Dictator is an outstanding satire which is not burning up the box office in America as it should and has gotten temped ratings on rotten tomatoes. Too bad. A movie that swings for the fences will impress those it was meant to impress (people like myself who find it refreshing) and will alienate people who are either strict formalists who insist a movie can only be a satire or a rom-com. It will also annoy morons, but we'll leave that aside. I love the fact that this is both a satire and a somewhat disingenuous rom-com with a protagonist who gets to do heroic deeds and still has a back-story and attitudes that are off-putting. Too many movies are running for office. This movie expects you to know when it is giving movies the finger. Some people don't get it. I got it and appreciate it. This is the sort of movie I would like to be doing. Get the Gringo appears to be released somewhere and I like what I am hearing about it, that it has the quips of a Lethal Weapon and it has a tone like Robert Rodriguez flicks. I look forward to Machete Kills, in which Mel Gibson is supposed to play a bad guy. This all happens around the same time Joe Eszterhas is coming out with an e-book called Heaven and Mel which will fine-tune his own spin on the creative falling out he had with the actor-director over the Maccabee script. I have only the other day heard that he released audio of Mel's alleged rant to him in Costa Rica, but it is clearly from another room and kind of low key as rants go. Mel yells at him for not writing a darn thing over 14 months of being employed to do a screenplay, then yells "Who wants dinner? Yum!" or something. No big deal. He also apparently appeared on Jay Leno and (appropriately) made light of it. It is a shame. I have a copy of Basic Instinct which is entertaining. I also have a book, "The Devil's Guide to Hollywood," wherein one presumes our guide is Joe. After the downbeat visit to Costa Rica (where another writer was having better luck writing with Mel, one Randall Wallace who wrote Braveheart and directed Mel in We Were Soldiers) Joe did finally whip-up a screenplay draft. But it was apparently slip-shot and not reflective enough of what Mel wanted. Warners rejected it and then Mel rejected it. Warners had already paid Joe for the work thus far. Now without Joe's spin, it is the tale of a screenwriter who hasn't cranked anything out since An Allan Smithee Film, Burn, Hollywood, Burn in 1997 if you don't count the 2006 foreign polo film Children of Glory which has three other credited screenwriters and I've never heard of it. Getting his draft of the Maccabee script rejected by Warners would be such a blow to this latter phase of his career he knows his posterity is at stake so he has to make something else of it. Why Mel or Warners chose him to work on this material is unknown. Maybe this time-honored story of Jewish history needed a "Showgirls" touch. Joe wants to amp up the perception that Mel Gibson is not only a lunatic but anti-Semitic. Is The Passion of the Christ a slam against Jews? I didn't feel it as such when I watched it. And it didn't motivate anyone to go out and commit acts of violence against Jews either. It is a very contemplative film. I don't know if Hindus deny that Hindus killed Gandhi or whether the Nation of Islam says their members had nothing to do with killing Malcolm X. The facts don't seem to be much in dispute. People see evil done do Jews OSTENSIBLY for the killing of Christ and therefore can't suffer the fact that not only a Jew named Jesus got crucified and that some high-ranking Jews insisted on it but that crucifixion was common, as was public flogging. I have not heard any dispute of the line "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do" spoken supposedly by Jesus, which would (one thinks) wipe the slate clean for all of JC's persecutors. But even then to not know "what they do" is to assume they don't realize they are killing the Son of God but believe they are merely torturing and killing an ordinary person for blasphemy. So any way you slice it, people have been barbaric and stupid throughout history. Hopefully we will get to see Randall Wallace's Viking film which might very well push Viking violence to the limit. It's a little too easy for people to whine that they don't agree with their employer. It creates a climate where famous employers can't write you a letter or an e-mail without fear that you will release it to the public. I likely will read Joe's e-book, but I already don't respect it. Sascha Baron Cohen (The Dictator himself) has made a couple of digs against Mel Gibson but they are inspired digs. I can respect both in that case. Gibson is made an easy target for accusations of racism. Hopefully meanwhile I will soon find a copy of Get the Gringo. Apparently it is in theaters overseas.

Mel Gibsiob in better times

As far as I'm concerned, this is the real Me Gibson.

The Dictator demands you see his film

I just saw the movie. The Dictator is both a conventional comedy with a romantic subplot. I've heard it described as "Coming To America with rape jokes" which ill-serves the movie. It has a brisk-yet-warm tone similar to the Eddie Murphy classic, but in context the most evil aspects of The Dictator's back-story are understood by fans of Sacha Baron Cohen to be post-modern satire and only the most clueless person - some of whom being critics - will be offended. It is part movie and part practical joke even if the film itself is pure fiction and has no literal wink to the camera. The fourth wall is perhaps broken verbally, through code. This film is about as funny as Ali G In Da House, his first feature-length movie. It may not have the tension of Borat, but it may be funnier than Bruno without having the squirm factor. The Dictator as interviewed: Cohen himself interviewed by Howard Stern

Birthday

I've been told I should do something special for my birthday, so that must mean writing a blog entry. After mid-night I started writing something I had taken a few runs at in the past. It's time to resolve to write faster. I've dithered over a few projects, buying into the idea that life will inform scripts and help them to mature. Total nonsense. I don't currently have deadlines, and that slows everything down. Time to invent some deadlines, like death itself when you have officially run out of time to finish all of those half-completed projects. I realized the other day that a segment of Big Babies is out of sync, so I will have to re-upload. So the longer I put that off the longer people are watching an inferior version of the flick. That sort of emergency can throw me off. Better to utilize my energy. I'd like to be working on a shoot, planning it, knowing there is ground under my feet. I start training for a new site on Tuesday, though the hours may be part-time. Got to get through the check-list of scripts. Need to be shooting regularly, not letting months pass and only doing my guard job. Maybe I just need an interjection of new energy. I'm 44 today. Just spent some time sweeping and mopping my filthy balcony. Why choose to do that on my birthday? Got to go for a walk. Too many things are up in the air. I don't expect to get 40 hours of work next week. I am twisting in the wind. I need to see the track that I am on. One of my scripts is good and could start shooting ASAP. Money may be an issue. Energy is another. Weight loss would be a boost. I can't be thinking in terms of a year at a time or maybe next year; it has to be more of a crunch.

being Pro-Mel Gibson

I just counted and I have 20 of his movies on DVD. The "publicly heckled" thing - to me - is geared more toward people who don't so much care about movies or TV anyway but just want to shit on celebrities in general. 1) If you are gay, maybe maybe you resent that he a) is Traditionalist Catholic b) may have said something about not being interested in flirtations from men (a remark I have not read or seen a link to), c) told a joke at a party in the eighties to Winona Ryder and her gay friend which you interpret as hostile as opposed to breaking the ice, of d) had a hilarious scene in Braveheart where Longshanks pretends to confide in his fey son's boyfriend and then flings him out the castle window. Or maybe they don't like Mel pretending to be gay in Bird on a Wire and What Women Want. 2) If you are Jewish and just "love to hate" Mel without giving any actual thought to the overall context of his 2006 drunk driving remarks, you may hold a grudge. If you resent the fact that he made what feels like an accurate dramatization of The Passion of the Christ, you probably already hated him when he announced the project and hadn't even written the script yet. And maybe even being Catholic is by definition some sort of offence against extreme Judaism that can't bear to imagine any distant ancestor crucifying someone for blasphemy. Or maybe you blame Mel for the sins of his own father Hutton Gibson whose ramblings about the Holocaust have been fact-free and embarrassing especially for a former Jeopardy winner. Somewhere in the middle are very smart gay activists who hate Mel for category 1) reasons, and put their time and energy into fanning the flames of category 2). I'd like to see what kind of Viking movie crazy Mel would have made. Maybe some day. Although with the release of Edge of Darkness Mel was fending off a lot of interviewers whose motive seemed to be to re-set all things back to 2006 and erase whatever cooling off had naturally happened. I think there is a destructive and misguided push against Mel. One could say that he should have assumed at all times someone will try to record his voice and he was off the rails when he phoned his ex-girlfriend (his enemy) and spoke on her level. Whatever Mel's worst haters think of him, I think worse of Oksana. Funny or Die had an interesting skit with Mel in a meeting with Jamie Fox and Gary Shandling. I think Mel basically has to tough it out. If he wasn't such a positive force in film, it wouldn't matter if he never worked again. I'll definitely see Get the Gringo, formerly How I Spent My Summer Vacation, though I expect Mel's "Vacation" has gone on longer than expected. He still seems to be in good form, but there is so much misinformation being pushed out by media that it will be a miracle if he gets anything more mainstream than the bad guy role in Machete Kills. (Although I hope it is true Rodriguez plans to use him; he will be a step up from Steven Segall). You know, there are some people I like who have a blind spot about Mel. With bi-polar disorder, alcoholism and Catholicism pressing on him, it is a miracle that he can be so funny and interesting in films. The odds may be against him getting a lead again in a big film. But then maybe big films are going down the drain anyway. It will all be niches and I still consider myself part of that niche that will see Gibson's flicks. The Maccabee story doesn't itself interest me, nor did Joe Esterhauz as a writer of it. I'm not shocked that when his last minute whipped up draft was rejected by the studio. Apparently after months of discussions with Mel he hadn't written one page when he arrived with his family at Mel's island. So there is legitimate anger there. But then he blames Mel for "not wanting to make" the Maccabee film -- when Mel has said for 8 years it was his plan and he will make it with whatever script gets green-lit by a studio. Joe felt himself being thrown under the bus, so he tried to throw Mel under the bus with his allegations about Mel's deportment on his island. Most interesting is the accusation that Mel went off on a tirade about wanting Oksana killed and what profane things should be done to her (all understandable and things I want done even though she isn't my own personal tormentor). Joe said his young son witnessed this, that he was in the room when Mel was spewing this, and that his son videotaped it. Uh, one part of that puzzle doesn't fit. First, if he had the footage, it would be "leaked" just like his letter to Mel was leaked. Second, if the little boy was in the room with a videocamera Mel would not have said profane things, given his nightmare with Oksana. Third, it's no judgement against Mel if he didn't know the kid was in the room and he only thought he was talking to the biker-like screenwriter of Basic Instinct and Showgirls. I just counted and I have 20 of his movies on DVD. The "publicly heckled" thing - to me - is geared more toward people who don't so much care about movies or TV anyway but just want to shit on celebrities in general. 1) If you are gay, maybe maybe you resent that he a) is Traditionalist Catholic b) may have said something about not being interested in flirtations from men (a remark I have not read or seen a link to), c) told a joke at a party in the eighties to Winona Ryder and her gay friend which you interpret as hostile as opposed to breaking the ice, of d) had a hilarious scene in Braveheart where Longshanks pretends to confide in his fey son's boyfriend and then flings him out the castle window. Or maybe they don't like Mel pretending to be gay in Bird on a Wire and What Women Want. 2) If you are Jewish and just "love to hate" Mel without giving any actual thought to the overall context of his 2006 drunk driving remarks, you may hold a grudge. If you resent the fact that he made what feels like an accurate dramatization of The Passion of the Christ, you probably already hated him when he announced the project and hadn't even written the script yet. And maybe even being Catholic is by definition some sort of offence against extreme Judaism that can't bear to imagine any distant ancestor crucifying someone for blasphemy. Or maybe you blame Mel for the sins of his own father Hutton Gibson whose ramblings about the Holocaust have been fact-free and embarrassing especially for a former Jeopardy winner. Somewhere in the middle are very smart gay activists who hate Mel for category 1) reasons, and put their time and energy into fanning the flames of category 2). I'd like to see what kind of Viking movie crazy Mel would have made. Maybe some day. Although with the release of Edge of Darkness Mel was fending off a lot of interviewers whose motive seemed to be to re-set all things back to 2006 and erase whatever cooling off had naturally happened. I think there is a destructive and misguided push against Mel. One could say that he should have assumed at all times someone will try to record his voice and he was off the rails when he phoned his ex-girlfriend (his enemy) and spoke on her level. Whatever Mel's worst haters think of him, I think worse of Oksana. Funny or Die had an interesting skit with Mel in a meeting with Jamie Fox and Gary Shandling. I think Mel basically has to tough it out. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRIeT5R7edU If he wasn't such a positive force in film, it wouldn't matter if he never worked again. I'll definitely see Get the Gringo, formerly How I Spent My Summer Vacation, though I expect Mel's "Vacation" has gone on longer than expected. He still seems to be in good form, but there is so much misinformation being pushed out by media that it will be a miracle if he gets anything more mainstream than the bad guy role in Machete Kills. (Although I hope it is true Rodriguez plans to use him; he will be a step up from Steven Segall). You know, there are some people I like who have a blind spot about Mel. With bi-polar disorder, alcoholism and Catholicism pressing on him, it is a miracle that he can be so funny and interesting in films. The odds may be against him getting a lead again in a big film. But then maybe big films are going down the drain anyway. It will all be niches and I still consider myself part of that niche that will see Gibson's flicks. The Maccabee story doesn't itself interest me, nor did Joe Esterhauz as a writer of it. I'm not shocked that when his last minute whipped up draft was rejected by the studio. Apparently after months of discussions with Mel he hadn't written one page when he arrived with his family at Mel's island. So there is legitimate anger there. But then he blames Mel for "not wanting to make" the Maccabee film -- when Mel has said for 8 years it was his plan and he will make it with whatever script gets green-lit by a studio. Joe felt himself being thrown under the bus, so he tried to throw Mel under the bus with his allegations about Mel's deportment on his island. Most interesting is the accusation that Mel went off on a tirade about wanting Oksana killed and what profane things should be done to her (all understandable and things I want done even though she isn't my own personal tormentor). Joe said his young son witnessed this, that he was in the room when Mel was spewing this, and that his son videotaped it. Uh, one part of that puzzle doesn't fit. First, if he had the footage, it would be "leaked" just like his letter to Mel was leaked. Second, if the little boy was in the room with a videocamera Mel would not have said profane things, given his nightmare with Oksana. Third, it's no judgement against Mel if he didn't know the kid was in the room and he only thought he was talking to the biker-like screenwriter of Basic Instinct and Showgirls.