(edit, this is an OLD draft that was never finished, but why not publish it? ehh?)
…do as the LA-ains…? Well yesterday was a full day to say the least. I went for a run around Ryan’s neighborhood, and then came back, took a shower and all that jazz. The run had worked up a bit of an appetite, so I headed out to find myself some food. Since I was going to be here for a while, I decided it would be worth going to the super market to pick up some staples for the week.
This proved to be more difficult than one may have thought, since Ryan lives in Highland Park. There was no shortage of street salesmen selling peeled fruit and vegetables, or corner store markets, but as for your normal super markets, I was hard pressed to find one (turns out there was one just one block past where I had given up, but that’s life).
But while I was in one of these corner stores, I got a call from one of Ryan’s high school friends, DaVide, who said I should come down and visit him at his work. He works as a sort of manager of the ‘base camp’ of a movie set. Base camp is where the actors hang out while not on set, whether they are getting in/out of make up or relaxing between shoots.
Dave was actually going to try to get me into one of the shots as an extra, but I didn’t get there in time for that shot, so I just hung out and tried to help out where I could. It turned out today they had more actors coming than they had trailers, and so me and Dave had to put together a make shift changing room out of a small shade tent and some tarps. Dave kept complaining on how this film was so low budget, but all an all it worked out fine and some of the actors were really laid back and didn’t mind using our makeshift changing room.
After we wrapped that up, things were kind of slow, so I went for a walk, and dipped my toes in the grand Pacific. I watched some babes surf, and checked out this awesome park/work out area they had on the beach. They had rings you could swing on, ropes to climb, and a grassy area for people to do yoga type exercises. It was pretty awesome. This was all right next to a concrete trail for the explicit use by bikes and roller skaters (yes girls really roller skate [not blade] down these in bikini’s. Its rad!).
After checking that out I went over and took a gander at the Santa Monica pier, which had a roller coaster and ferris wheel on it. It was a pretty cool spot, filled with street artist and people selling cheesy Cali t-shirts. The sort of place that might be fun on a date, but was kind of mediocre on your own.
Done with seeing these sights, I headed back over towards the set. They had just finished filming at the spot they were at earlier and had moved down to the beach. I met this guy named Kip (who had the role as the European partier in Cruel Intentions(?)) who was pretty cool. He lived really near by and so he had actually riden his bike to the set. DaVide told him about my bike trip and he joked asking me if it took three or four days.
With all the actors on set, base camp was going to be pretty quite for a while, so we headed over there to watch them film. Tom Arnold is the big name in this movie and we watched him film the few lines they didn’t get to do the previous day. There wasn’t much left for him to do on this set, so it didn’t take long and when he was finished, he asked for someone to walk him back to his trailer. This ended up being me and Dave, and was really weird. The trailer was within eye sight but he wanted us to follow him there so that he wouldn’t get lost. He walked the whole way there about 3 steps in front of us, stopping only to take a picture with an Asian tourist. I don’t know, he wasn’t a jerk or anything really but he definitely thought he was better than just about anyone around him. I thought it was cool to get to kind of work on the same set as an actor that I knew the name of, but i was glad that it wasn’t my real job.
It wasn’t long after this that Ditch got out of work and met up with us. We walk back over to the pier and then up along the Boulevard and check out the sun set on the Pacific, which was pretty awesome.