Gorillas in the Mist

This weekend we shot our pickups back in the fair town of Sunland, which is probably technically a suburb, but is so un-LA-like in terms of the people that live there being nice that it feels more appropriate to refer to it as a town.

Our crew was there at what was supposed to be the crack of dawn, but was instead the crack of an overall misty greyness that made the hills look like Japan.

We were shooting on the front lawn of this house up the street from an elementary school. There was some kind of Halloween fair at the school all day, so our touching early morning mother and child reunion had strings of "Eight Days A Week" and "Hard Days Night" in the background (maybe it was a Beatles carnival?). Little kids in costumes were spotted being walked to and from the fair.

So we're shooting and this kid walks up and we all know this kid. This is the fat kid whose shorts are too short and whose legs are yet somehow too skinny and who has a flat-footed kind of walk and no art whatsoever in interacting with other humans. In this case, she had two eyes, a nose, and a giant bright orange stain for a mouth, an orange which continued down the front of her t-shirt. Had some punch at the fair, no doubt. She carried a gorilla mask under her arm. She stood there for a while, and then Molly saw her and said hello and she asked if we were making a movie and Molly said yes and Molly asked if she had been at the carnival and she said no, she'd been at the festival.

Then she walked away.

If I had been captain of the camera ship I would have snagged her for a cameo, because no one gets that much punch dye up to their nostrils, out to their cheeks and down over their chin like a kid like that.