Like Accidental Nudity

The thing about shooting on film, and only shooting one project for this term, and also this being the last time I get to make a short film (and not just complete an exercise) in the degree means my script keeps blossoming forth and then getting beaten down to the earth, like an accordian.

Today, because of the potentially disturbing politics of my current re-write (aka: The Pablo Problem) I sat at a table and threw out increasingly random ideas. "What if we start in 2001 and then at the end it's 1920?" "What she cooks the bread, but when she cuts into it, it's full of blood?" "What if the OgoPogo's head appears in the kitchen window just as she's taking the bread out of the oven?" Eventually I scaled it down and came up with an idea that I think will work.

Also, auditions.

I never did hold auditions for any of my other projects. I now know why and applaud my decision not to try and do this before. It's utterly exhausting, and that's just calling everyone to get them to come out. The audition itself is a bit like a marathon. There's so much tension in the room, so much nervous energy. I was trying to be low-key and casual and put people at ease, but sometimes I'd catch sight of someone's pit stain or slight tremor and feel bad for them all over again. I got the feeling so many of them really want the part because unlike the stripper/whore/cute girl/murdered girl/waitress roles that usually come up for struggling actresses, this is a feminist movie with a female director.

My audition consisted of getting the actors to think of a story of a turning point in their lives and then tell it to Jordan while they folded a pile of laundry that I had out for them. This is an old acting exercise, the story while doing laundry thing. I wanted to see them doing habitual domestic action and how they focussed on other things while they did it. I did tell them that the stories could be fictional because I didn't want them to feel like they had to reveal inner dark stuff to Jordan and me, but you know, they did anyway. Rapes, deaths of children, commiting to childless-ness, my marriage is bad, we got a smorgasboard of very personal, often very touching stories. I'm pretty sure only one was made up. A considerable percentage cried during the telling and seemed surprised at themselves for crying. And I got to watch my clothes (three t-shirts, one button-up shirt, one pair of pants, my Christmas sweater from Mom, and my favorite red socks) get folded many many times over in many many different ways.

Every audition was mesmerizing, if only for the anthropological aspect of the kind of stories that these women had to tell. I kind of just want to make a film about that. There was something distracting and familiar enough about the folding of laundry that seemed to make their stories less calculated and more vulnerable than they otherwise would have been. It was beautiful; I want to cast them all.