“’F’ FOR PHIL,” OR, “HOW I SPENT THE LAST TWO MONTHS”

Before I begin, a disclaimer: During the next few seconds, you will hear events which may seem impossible to believe or too amazing to be real. However, I assure you that they are entirely true. They actually happened. More importantly, they happened to me.

Many people have asked me how I landed an intern gig for Much-Respected Actor’s upcoming film. It’s a long and twisted story, but an entertaining one, assuming you’re high.

As I may have told you already, I landed an internship at After August Productions, a modest New York-based production company. They had recently started pre-production of a script by a published novellist-turned-screenwriter named Robert Alford. I read the script, and I can tell you, it’s damn well-written. So there I was, the new Art Department intern, green to the gills, but excited about helping out on a feature film. Since we’re talking a low budget picture, most of the props for the AD were acquired as cheaply as possible, if not right off the street. My first day, I helped unload several vanloads full of seriously desiccated furniture, so believe me, if you live in Manhattan, and you happened to throw something away during the last four weeks, it will probably appear in this film. Thank you for your contribution.

Now, Robert Alford’s script is about this reclusive author and his attempts to mend his relationship with his daughter. Most of the movie takes place in reclusive author’s house in upstate New York. He’s shuttered himself away in this house for some forty years, so it’s accumulated a lot of books. About five-to-ten thousand books, by the art director’s estimation.

The AD managed to find this library in NJ that was about to lose its public funding. For about a nickel-per-book, we managed to acquire seven thousand books at a pretty reasonable price. I spent almost an entire day helping to carry these 7,000 books from the cube truck to the service elevator, then from the service elevator to the holding area, where all our props are. Now, when I bitch about having spent an entire day doing this, I don’t mean 9-to-5. No one at After August works regular hours, so it was about nine in the evening when the last of the books were stacked, and my spine felt too weak to support my pumpkin-size head any longer.

The AD coordinator (who, to his credit, wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty and lug some tomes) told us all we could go home. I snuck into the prop room and decided to lie down for a bit on a couch for the upstate New York set. For cast-off furniture, it was damn comfortable. Or maybe I was just really tired. Either way, before I knew what happened, I had fallen asleep.

The lights in the office had dimmed noticeably when I woke up. I soon realized that it was because everyone had gone home, and only the emergency lights were still on. The holding area is a pretty big room, and the couch was tucked away behind some stacked chairs, boxes of product placement items, and one of those Japanese-style folding walls. No one had seen me before they left! They must have assumed I had already gone home!

Even worse, to keep anyone from stealing props at night, there is a chain link door with a pad lock. I was locked up behind the wrong side of the door, surrounded by props but unable to get out.

I called for help. I rattled the chain links. I would have made a call to somebody on my cell phone, but my knapsack was in the AD office. I soon realized that I would not be leaving until someone arrived the next morning and unlocked the pad lock. Then I looked around at my surroundings, and took in the surrealness of it all. When I used to go to shopping malls with my cousins, we would conspire to hide somewhere until the mall closed. Then, after the guards went home, we could walk around the mall unmolested, break into Sears or something. Sleep on showroom beds, which was as good as sleeping on someone else’s bed. Here I was kind of doing exactly that, except it wasn’t a retail store showroom, it was a bed somebody tossed out of their home. But that was what came to mind as I sat there, and it took my mind off my fear of rats and cockroaches.

At least I didn’t starve. There were cookies and soft drinks in the product placement boxes, so I drank warm Snapple that had been donated to the film. The chain link door was between me and the bathroom, so I ended up relieving myself out the window. We were seven stories up, but my aim was true, and in the spite of the wind, managed to nail a gold-colored Lexus parked at the curb. Sometime around 3 in the morning, I grew tired again. Rifling through a garbage bag full of bedsheets, I found some natty blankets that would keep me warm against the night air, which was growing steadily colder. I wrapped myself in the blankets, returned to the couch, and soon fell asleep again.

Something woke me from my slumber. The sound of someone talking to herself, then the warm beams of sunlight from the nearby window. I sat up, peeked around the boxes of product placement items. There was a short, blonde girl, half-undressed. She had the folding wall behind her, and must have been using the boxes next to the couch as a second barrier, creating a miniature dressing room for herself. Looking back, I suspect she was an actress of some kind, and had been trying on clothes for the costume department. She must have expected the prop room would give her ample privacy. However, she hadn’t counted on me being there…!

Not wanting to alarm her, I tried quietly climbing over the back of the couch, and tip-toeing past her, then out the now-open chain-link door. Unfortunately, while standing on the couch, trying to climb over the backing, I accidentally upset the stack of boxes, causing the top one to fall down right next to the girl. She turned around, saw me standing up on the couch, partially leaning over what was left of the stack of boxes in an attempt to maintain my balance, and must have suspected that I was some kind of peeping tom who had been leering at her while she changed clothes.

She screamed. Good lord, she screamed. I tried to explain everything to her, my being locked in the prop room overnight, her not seeing me on the couch, possibly because of the blankets I had covered myself with. To no avail, for she was shrieking. So I very calmly decided to wait for the others, more rational people, to come over and to explain everything to them. Surely cooler heads will prevail, I said to myself. Then I decided to fuck it and run like hell.

I ran as fast as my sleepy legs could carry me. Even as I exploded down the hallway, towards the elevators, I could hear her yelling and screaming horrible accusations to whoever would listen. I could see the fire escape from the window, and I decided not to wait for the elevator and ran to the opposite side of the floor instead. I shoved open the fire escape door, ran out into the fresh air. The latticework of the fire escape was like black iron spaghetti; I could see straight down seven stories to the dirt yard and the broiler. My legs turned to jelly as the cold air crawled up my pants legs into my ass. I was about to go back inside, when I glanced at the windows and saw people hurrying across the office. “I cannot possibly explain what happened to an angry mob,” I said to myself, and ran down the fire escape. I tried every door to see if it opened, and about three stories down, there was a door propped open by a large coffee can. I leaped into the doorway, then picked up the can behind me to close the door on any pursuers. Then I turned around, and ran nearly face-first into a man with a bald head and facial hair.

“Hey, good thing you’re here,” he said. “Joanna wants that,” he said, indicating the coffee can. I looked down and noticed it was full of sand and cigarette butts. However, not feeling like drawing attention to myself, I nodded and walked past him, looking for anyone who looked like a Joanna.

Luckily, finding Joanna didn’t take long. She had an office nearby with her name on a sign next to the door. She was Prop Master for Much-Respected Actor’s upcoming film, and wanted all the butts put into a brown paper envelope. She mentioned that she hadn’t seen me before, and I told her that it was my first day. I ran errands for her the rest of the day, and got a chance to read the screenplay, too. I thought it was a pretty good screenplay, even better than Robert Alford’s. So I came back the next week, and I’ve been here ever since. Most of the work is similar to what I did at After August, but there’s no half-naked woman shrieking at me here, and maybe that’s what counts.