Tuesday, December 4, 2012

The Worriers

The Worriers  is now available on Youtube! I directed this comedy parody, a dark and humorous view of the poetic underbelly of Portland, Oregon, and with the kind graces of Neil and Patrick, the writers and producers, it is now online. Please share this. Thanks.

Monday, December 6, 2010

Trailer II




This trailer was edited by Luke Lefler, who also did the soundtrack.

Final Credits










Produced by Ceylon Anderson, Patrick Bocarde,
and James Honzik

Directed by James Honzik

Directors of Photography/Cinematography
Adam Jones
Justin Hawthorne

Editing
James Honzik

Opening Timelapse Sequence
James Honzik

Sound Design and Original Score
Luke Lefler

Crew
Arthur Lloyd
Luciano Wiehl
Charles Bonds

Makeup
Kim Damio
Meghan McCreary
Rich Vail Mackin

Screenplay by
Ceylon Anderson and Patrick Bocarde
based on the Anabasis of Xenophon

The Worriers
Achilles: Ceylon Anderson
Funkface: Patrick Bocarde
Clinton: Brandon Sawyer
Caligula: Benjamin Fisher

and The Girl from Gresham
Brittany Baldwin

Star Trek Commanders
Krisztian Carrasco
John Terry
Todd George
Joel Earl

Third Eye Lyricists
Ric Vrana
Christine Homitsu White
Joel Earl
Blair Vail Mackin
David Deserano

The Prom Couple
John Terry
Amberley Terry

The Poets in Residence
Cyrus: Michael Franklin
Hanna Sourbeer
Bethany Moore
Lauren Wilhelmi
John Keller

The Unfurled Zippers
Joel Earl
Charles Bonds
Veronica Greene
Melissa Hanley

The Sketchy Raging Wifebeaters
Simon Diamond
Charles Bonds
Jacob V. Brown
Arthur Lloyd
Evan Wellington
Joel Earl
Curtis Whitecarrol

Other Gang Members
John Alan Szfranski
David Milholland
Judith Pullman

Disc Jockey
Doug Spangle

Washington Park Girl
Becca Yenser


All Poetry and Songs
Property of respective authors.

Thanks to KBOO
Three Friends Coffee House
Show and Tell Gallery for archival material

Dedicated to the Memory of Andrew MacArthur

2010
All Rights Reserved

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

The trailer for the Worriers

The inside story of the making of the Worriers

The Making of “The Worriers”

“In the spring of 2010, Ceylon Anderson asked me if I would like to become part of a great adventure—the making of the movie ‘The Worriers.’ I’ve never regretted my answer. Which was no.”

--Steven Benjamin

On Monday, March 22nd, during a poetry reading at the coffeeshop, “Three Friends,” James, Patrick, and I went next door to the bar, the Hungry Tiger Too to discuss James directing the screenplay Patrick and I had written. We had tried to talk at Three Friends, but it was impossible. Too many people we knew kept coming up and talking to us, making inane suggestions, and generally wasting our time. When we sat down at a booth at the Hungry Tiger, I was relieved that we would finally have a few moments by ourselves to discuss locations, dates, costumes, casting, and all of the other necessary elements of the movie we were about to make.
My relief was short-lived. Patrick went back to Three Friends to get his backpack, and came back with a woman of his acquaintance—loose acquaintance—in tow. She had a drink in her hand, was giggling, and gave every indication of needing a lot of attention. In short, she did not look like a helpful addition to our meeting.
Somehow we got through the meeting. We agreed on tentative shooting dates, I volunteered to start getting the costumes together, James and I discussed his compensation for directing the movie. The meeting took twice as long as it should have, though, with giggly girl repeating things that were said, slowly, as if her intonation itself was providing some hitherto unsuspected insight, distracting Patrick by occasionally groping him, and towards the end by interjecting our discussion with complaints about the quality of her drink, and attempts to hail the waitress to get a replacement. I considered having a few strong words with Patrick about the unprofessionalism of bringing a hook-up to a business meeting, but decided against it. It won’t happen again, I reassured myself.
When we had our next meeting, ten days later, at Tony’s Tavern, it happened again. Same woman. Within seconds of our sitting down together at a booth (Patrick and James on one side, me on the other) she made a bee-line towards us, and tried to sit down next to me. I scooted to the end of the booth to prevent her and snapped “Can you give us five minutes, please?”
We had our meeting. Patrick was distracted thoughout. At one point, when discussing what order to shoot the O’Bryant Square and Couch Park scenes, Patrick demurred from offering comment. After the meeting, we went on to the sidewalk, he explained why. “I’m kind of ….seeing… that girl, dude. Why did you blow her off like that?”
I glared at him. “She’s trouble,” I said, and walked away.


April 7th

April 7th, our first shooting day, consisted of an hour of waiting around, and then two hours of fractic racing up and down Hawthorne. James had recruited make-up artists for this scene, since the Worriers were supposed to look bruised and bloodied, and the make-up artists also added psychedelic touches to the Third-Eye Lyricists. Ric, Christine, and Joel all politely declined to late our artists apply the make-up too literally, leaving late arrival David to volunteer to take one for the team, submitting to having a brilliantly colored eye depicted on his forehead, above his two real ones. When everyone was dressed, Blair cheerfully volunteered to don a tie-dye t-shirt as well and become the 5th Third Eye Lyricist.
Shooting on Hawthorne, a fairly busy street, posed some challenges, particularly considering this was our first film shoot and we were all getting used to each other. James filmed us crossing Hawthorne towards the Bagdad Theater, against the light at least once. As the Worriers’ leader, I took it upon myself to keep an eye open for traffic, and to be the first to break into a run if I saw a car approaching. I never bothered to verbally warn my fellow Worriers I figured, if they didn’t possess the minimal instinct for self-preservation to be able to guess why I had just broken into a run, they would never make it through the entire film shoot alive anyways, and we might as well find out now.
Once we got the location shots, we filmed the big confrontation between the Worriers and the Third-Eye Lyricists, in front of the Third Eye store (?) Ric recited a hilarious hippie poem he had just written a few days before, which posed our greatest obstacle to getting the scene shot, because we kept cracking up.
When were done with filming, several of the actors followed me to my car to get their backpacks and coats out of my trunk, including David. David exacted a promise from the make-up artists that they would wait for him to get his things, then meet him back on Hawthorne to remove his Third Eye with cold cream. They cheerfully agreed to do so, but when David, Ben, Patrick and myself returned from the suburban side street where I had parked my car, we waited in vain for them in front of Ben and Jerry’s for about 20 minutes. David, in despair, said, “No! I’m doomed to spend the rest of my life as a human Cyclops!”
“No,” I reassured him. “Cyclops only had one eye.”
David glared at me, and went into the Ben and Jerry’s restroom to apply some soap and water to his forehead. As we waited for them, Patrick asked me, “Have you ever felt so alive?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know…I didn’t realize that making a movie would mean having to get along with other people for hours at a time. That’s not what I signed up for.”


April 11th

April 11th was the day we had scheduled to shoot the Gresham scene. We were shooting it in St. Johns, because I didn’t want to have to go to Gresham to shoot it. At 3:45, Brandon, drove my place to pick me up, with Patrick and Ben already seated in his car. I directed Brandon to St. Johns, specifically warning him not to make the same wrong turn I had made last July (see Hastily Transcribed Conversation: A Sasquatch in St. Johns, from Venetian Blind Drunk # 7).
From the moment we were on the correct highway to St. Johns, the atmosphere got irritable and quarrelsome. Ben asked us to keep our eye peeled for a drive-through.
“Dude, we are not stopping to get you something to eat.”
“Fine, if you want me to pass out while we’re shooting.”
I turned in my seat to give him the full brunt of my glare. “If don’t get this scene shot because you’re eating, you’ll have more to worry about than passing out, because I’ll fucking kill you!”
Ben shrugged. “I’m hungry.”
“Then you fucking plan ahead! You eat on your own fucking time! This is a fucking movie shoot! Every moment we have to wait for you to finish eating is a moment we’re losing daylight!”
Brandon, the nicest of our merry band, tried to lighten the mood, asking if I’d brought a chapbook for him to carry. When I answered yes, he asked, “Is it an assless chapbook?”
Patrick broke up. “What would be in an assless chapbook?””
“‘Shut up before I slap your chapbook!’ Brandon said, apparently imitating a schoolteacher in a porn movie set at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. “I ran the marathon last year in assless chaps.”
“In assless chaps, that must have been cold,” Patrick observed.
“They had people standing by with Vaseline—they wouldn’t apply it for you if you were wearing clothing, though,” Brandon explained.
Ben (I didn’t actually write down who said this, but who else could have said it but Ben?) contributed “Marathon runners used to finish races with bloody nipples—from chafing.”
“You’re turning me on,” Patrick said. He was joking. I think.
“Remember, your character’s homophobic,” I cautioned him. “When you’re being filmed, I don’t want to see anything but over-compensating heterosexuality.”

We were the first to arrive at the St. John’s bridge, so I gave Ben permission to go to Burgerville to get something to eat. Patrick, without asking permission (!) went to get something to drink at Starbucks. I quickly regretted their departure, because everyone else—Brittany and a friend, James, Joel and his girlfriend, Charles, and our cameramen—arrived while they were gone. We put on our costumes and I went over the release forms with out new actors. That still left us with downtime while we waited for Patrick and Ben. When they finally got back, it turned out Ben had ordered a hamburger and fries, and we had to wait for him to finish eating before he could even put on his costume. “From now on, eat on your own time,” I snapped at him. I passed the time mentally composing a to-do list after we finished filming (1. Recoup my expenses, 2. Get revenge on Ben Fisher…)
The shooting went well, by and large. The Worriers had to be repeatedly filmed walking up a hill, running up and down a staircase, which Patrick and Ben, somewhat out of shape, grumbled at. Ben, huffing and puffing grumpily, threatened to quit. I threatened to stab him to death with a toothpick, publish an unauthorized, poorly-edited second edition of Emotional Bulimia, and fire him. Not in that order.
James’ friend Charles turned out to have prior acting experience, which added a lot to the footage. Joel, who had a lot of dialogue, most of which he’d only just been added, recited it with stoic good humor. Brittany endured my unsolicited advice (“try to act more stoned”) with amused tolerance. James, as ever, was a whirlwind of activity, chain smoking, composing the next shot in his head while shooting the current one. At one point, after shooting close-ups of the Gresham gang, he clapped his hands and announced we were heading out to the next location. Patrick reminded him he hadn’t shot close-ups of the Worriers yet. He waved a hand. “It’s all good, it’s all good.” I chimed in, “No, really, you haven’t gotten close-ups of the Worriers yet.” Distracted, he again murmured, “It’s all good.” Brittany, witnessing this exchange, stepped forward. “James, you didn’t do close-ups of the Worriers. We need to get those shots done.” James slowly blinked, mouth slightly open, cigarette adhering to his lower lip. “Oh, yeah. The close-ups.” We set up for the shots and got them done.
One of the many things to remember making a movie. It’s a good idea to have a beautiful woman on hand to get the director’s attention.
We filmed next in an underpass near Delta Park. Despite the fact that it was a crowded scene, featuring every actor present, and the fact that I for one had only just read my dialogue, we got it shot pretty quickly. James had written this scene, and everyone kept breaking up when Brittany read her line to Charles “I love you…” (pause, to look at his nametag) “…Cornelius.” James then filmed some footage of the Worriers hiking over a pile of broken pieces of pavement and other construction debris, which apparently was going to double as Mount Tabor, and we were done with shooting for the day.

April 14th

Although we weren’t scheduled to shoot his scene for another week and a half, I grudgingly agreed to schedule a rehearsal for Simon at my place. Simon kept e-mailing me about a revised script, and I kept making up a series of increasingly lame excuses. Simon was portraying the leader of the Sketchy Raging Wife Beaters, and although Simon was a nice guy, he had an edge to his personality that made me a little nervous. It was why I had chosen him for the part, but it also made me a little tense around him. Simon was playing a human volcano, capable of eruption at any moment, and I wasn’t sure where Simon ended and his role began.
James and Patrick arrived first, and we discussed scheduling until Simon arrived. Once Simon arrived, we blocked out his scene, Simon literally throwing himself into the part, dropping to his knees and flailing about in agony in the scene where Cyrus names the Worriers as the new Poets in Residence. Simon came up with the idea of reciting his lines in the voice of an obscure Hanna-Barbera cartoon character, which worked great, and we blocked out how he could slap two flimsy chapbooks together while I made sound effects with bottles off-camera.
After the rehearsal, James invited Patrick and I back to his place, where he showed us the rushes from what we’d shot so far. The footage looked good. I had only one complaint. “You left out the part after Patrick says “Who’s that?” where I say “Trouble!” James obligingly found the close-up shot of me saying “Trouble!” and inserted it. “Thanks,” I said. “That line defines my character.”

April 18th

I was a bit stressed out about the Starfleet Commanders scene. It was going to be a relatively long shoot, and it was all going to be outdoors. We were going to meet at Laurelhurst Park, then, time permitting, do some location shots at Mount Tabor, or Belmont, then go over to Washington Park for Patrick’s big kissing scene with Becca Yenser.
Fortunately, when I arrived at the park at 2 pm, it was evident that we were in for a brilliantly sunny day. I was the first to arrive. I read some Willy Vlautin, and shortly, Todd and Kris, two friends of mine from work, showed up. I gave them their long sleeved red t-shirts, television remotes, and buttons, and began rehearsing with them. Despite the fact that I had only rehearsed with them once, about 5 days prior, and that the rehearsal had only lasted about 10 minutes before we said “Fuck this” and went for Korean food and beer, they knew their lines. Everyone else began to gradually show up.
James arrived, with his friend Charles in tow. We didn’t have a role for Charles, so Charles was appointed rehearsal leader for the Commanders. A serious Star Trek fan, he took to his role with gusto, after apologizing to our actors for being stoned out of his gourd.
It took about an hour for everyone to arrive. The first scene we shot was some reflective monologues of the Worriers, each of them posed pensively against a big tree. James asked us to imagine that we were posing for Seventeen magazine, which made Patrick crack up. Ben was the best, lighting his cigarette, delivering his line “Will the world ever come to terms with my sexuality, as expressed in my unpublished chapbook,” then punctuating it with perfectly time exhalation of smoke. He refused to fondle the tree (Patrick’s idea. Probably.)
Kris, Todd, and John Terry, despite being relative novices, handled their lines confidently, as did Joel, an old hand by now. The most pleasant surprise of the shoot was the fight scene, which we more or less improvised on the spot. John Terry and Patrick fought each other with surprising enthusiasm. Kris attempted to dispatch Ben with the Vulcan death grip, which Ben withstood with gleeful innuendoes. I told Todd “I’m going to take that remote from you and permanently tune it to the Lifetime channel.” Best of all were Brandon and Joel. Brandon did an impressive somersault, they feinted a bit, then Brandon punched Joel in the balls, prompting Joel to yell, “KHHHHHAAAAAANNNNNN!”
The shooting lasted several hours, till the onsent of twilight, and we had to skip the location shooting. We released the Starfleet Commanders, and went to Washington Park, James and Patrick going to Albina first to pick up Becca, who had strained a muscle or something playing softball. Fortunately, she could do her scene sitting.
Shooting at Washington Park went well, though we weren’t able to do as many takes as I would have liked because the card unexpectedly filled up, due to having shot so much footage. Patrick managed to kiss Becca several times with a minimum of cracking up. James and Patrick drove Becca home to St. Johns after, and I followed them out to join them at a bar there to celebrate. The bar turned out to be a sports bar, where everyone was watching a basketball game. I had some chicken and dumplings, washed it down with a beer, thanked everyone for a great day of shooting. That went well, I thought. It can’t possibly last.

April 19th

I didn’t particularly want to go to 3 Friends that night, but we were shooting the big crowd scene at Couch Park next Sunday, and we needed to make an announcement to encourage people to come. I gave Melissa Sillitoe a heads up, and she graciously gave James, Patrick, and I a chance to address everyone before the open mike started. I told everyone that we needed as many people as possible, and that we had a lot of different costumes to be filled. Patrick immediately freaked out. “Do you mean they need to bring their own costumes?” he asked me. One thing I haven’t adequately conveyed in this account is that Patrick was always freaking out, and that he always freaked out about stuff that wasn’t worth freaking out about. This was a particularly bizarre thing to freak out about, because, (1), we had costumes, (2) Patrick knew we had costumes, because he’d seen them, both at my apartment after I’d bought them, and at the 3 film shoots we’d done so far. “I didn’t say they needed to bring costumes, because they don’t need to bring costumes, because, as you know, we already have costumes!” I half-screamed at him, while James was charming the crowd. When James was done, I mollified Patrick by spelling it out for the crowd that no one needed to bring costumes. No one mollified me, though. Patrick is a sweet, affectionate guy, but no one—including people who have tried to get on my nerves—had gotten on my nerves as much as Patrick had the past month. I was beginning to wonder if Patrick was as innocent as he seemed.

April 25th

James, Patrick, and I agreed to meet at my place at 3, an hour before shooting was to start at Couch Park. James had to leave almost as soon as he arrived, because Michael Molotov was stranded on Hawthorne and needed a ride. Patrick arrived shortly after James left, and was freaking out because John, ex-husband of his squeeze Mary, had put something on Facebook saying he might show up. “Mary doesn’t exist,” he told me over and over. “For the duration of this film shoot, she does not exist.”
“Did she exist when you had a quickie with your jailbait pickup?” I answered.
Patrick glared at me. “Why are you taking notes? This has nothing to do with The Worriers.”
“It’s part of the context,” I pointed out. “You were telling me all this while you were putting your tie on.”
We walked over to Couch Park for the film shoot, which ended up going more smoothly than I had anticipated. I passed out the black wife-beaters, which proved to be comically small. Charles gamely put one on, and quickly won the nickname “Belly Shirt Guy.” bestowed by one of our cameramen, Adam. Ric, Christine, and Blair reprised their roles as Third-Eye Lyricists. Kris and Todd donned their Star Trek togs again as Star Fleet Commanders. I handed Kris’s girlfriend Lauren a beret, and drafted her as Third Eye Lyricist, joining Hanna, Bethany, and John (different John—not Mary’s ex-husband, who didn’t show up). Ben, characteristically, showed up late.
James had mentioned Curtis White Carrolll might be showing up. Patrick and I had mixed feelings about that. Curtis had been present years ago when we had come up with the idea for the Worriers, so it was appropriate that he be involved, but in the intervening years there had been a lot of drama between Curtis and Patrick, and some bad feelings on Curtis’s part towards me as well. Still, Curtis had seemed conciliatory when I had seen him a week ago at 3 Friends, so I was prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt. Curtis didn’t show up, though.
Once we began rolling, it was evident we were going to get some great footage. Mike really threw himself into the role of Cyrus, bellowing out his lines with charismatic panache, and we did the scene from several angles, James, Adam, and ------- being determined to make the scene as visually interesting as possible.
The chase scene was a bit problematic, as James wanted us to run through a sculpture. I ran through, but it took me so long that the other Worriers were far ahead of me, and I was engulfed in the other gangs. I gamely tried to outrun them anyways. We would sort it out in the editing.
After shooting was done, we adjourned to the Blue Moon, where Patrick bought everyone beer. James showed me a text message he had gotten from Curtis, in which he bitterly informed us he’d been waiting since 4 pm. “He sure as hell hasn’t been waiting in Couch Park,” I said, shaking my head.



April 27th

After work, I drove over to Three Friends to shoot the opening montage coffeeshop scene. It went fairly smoothly. A rather spacey young man was sitting at the window where we wanted to film. James, with typical gracious charm, offered to buy him a coffee if he moved. He mumbled something about looking for a rainbow in the sky (the weather had been alternating sunshine with rain all day). Once Patrick arrived, we got the scene shot quickly, then walked over to the KBOO radio station to shoot Doug Spangle’s d.j. scenes. On the way, James shot a scene of Patrick and I poking our heads out of some big concrete canisters, which ended up on the cutting room floor. A shame, it had a sort of Laurel and Hardy feel to it.
The shooting of Doug’s scenes also went smoothly. Dough, James, Patrick, a friend of James, and myself all crammed into the recording studio, and had to constantly switch places to make room for each other—eventually Patrick and I took some chairs out of the room to make more space. I didn’t really need to be there for this scene, but I was curious to watch, and I tried to stay out of everyone’s way. Doug borrowed my green granny glasses, and snapped his fingers periodically to punch up the dialogue. While we were shooting in the studio, someone stole Doug’s glasses from the front room, despite the presence of Doug’s wife.

May 1st

James and I had discussed what days to schedule the remaining two scenes, and I spent part of the afternoon at the I.P.R.C., confirming the actors we needed by e-mail. May 4th looked like a lock for the MAX scene. Brittany e-mailed me that May 8th was about the only Saturday in May that she’d be able to make it. Everyone else seemed okay with May 8th—Patrick had some concerns about his job, but was fairly confident that he could get the necessary time off. Given Patrick’s tendency to over-react to everything, if he wasn’t worried, I wasn’t worried.
Simon e-mailed me back that he very much preferred May 15th instead of May 8th. I didn’t understand, since he’d told us his last final was on Wednesday May 5th. He e-mailed me back that he wanted sufficient time to recover before the arduous filming. I conferred with James. We agreed, not shooting May 8th would mean pushing back to June, which we couldn’t do. I e-mailed Simon back, gently telling him we couldn’t move the scene, and enthusiastically repeating my invitation.
No reply.

May 4th

After work, everyone began convening at my apartment before walking over to PGE park for what would be our most difficult scene—the MAX scene. James arrived first, and we began blocking out the scene while we waited for everyone else. Patrick and Ben showed up, then Brittany, Justin, Brandon, and Kris, who had good-naturedly agreed to be a key grip of sorts for this scene. Last to arrive were John and Amberley, who would be playing our prom couple. The other Worriers and I donned our vest and olive ties, Brittany borrowed my black peacoat, John and Amberley were already dressed in their prom clothes, and so, with the relatively normally dressed James, Justin, and Kris in tow, our motley group walked the four odd blocks over to PGE park and waited for a train.
Shooting went more smoothly than I ever would have imagined. While waiting for the train, we shot some scenes of the Worriers walking back and forth. Then, aboard the train, shots of the Worriers taking their seats, and being confronted again with the Gresham Girl. Then the class conflict scene with the prom couple, a personal favorite of mine. Then the scene where the Worriers tell the Gresham Girl to get lost (a late addition to the script, to heighten the drama of the O’Bryant square scene where the Gresham Girl rescues the Worriers—Brittany did some of her best acting in this scene, pouting brilliantly.) And finally, a scene where Brandon takes his leave of the other Worriers—another late addition to the script, because Brandon wouldn’t be able to attend the shooting of the O’Bryant Square Scene on May 8th.
Throughout all of this, the only untoward incidents were James spilling his drinking on Justin while exhorting us to emote, and James and Ben getting busted by a security officer for smoking on a platform. The good-natured security officer permitted us to finish a shot of the Worriers walking down the train platform. When we got back to PGE park, we wrapped with some more footage of the Worriers walking back and forth dramatically. I tried to sing that awful Joe Walsh to myself to improve my acting. On bidding us good night, James told Patrick and I that he wanted to meet us on Thursday to discuss the Saturday shoot.


May 6th

By Thursday, I was beginning to worry about whether we’d have enough actors for the Sketchy Raging Wifebeaters. After getting off work, I walked down to the Pearl to see what I could of First Thursday before meeting Patrick and James at 8. At the gallery of Hannah, who had played one of the Poets in Residence, I ran into Arthur, who had played a Sketchy Raging Wifebeater on April 25th. Arthur was a friend of James, and he cheerfully agreed to reprise his role on Saturday. As I gave him the details, Hannah came over to us and greeted me by informing me she had gone a week without smoking. After exchanging a high-five, she asked if I had a lighter. I did not, Arthur did. As he handed it to her, I asked suspiciously, “Why do you need a lighter if you’ve quit smoking?” She raised an eyebrow at me, and pointed towards a candle on the window sill.
I met up with Patrick and James at Anna’s (Patrick’s ex—girlfriend’s) gallery. We adjourned to Backspace. None of us had printed out my suggested revision to the O’Bryant Square scene. James told me flatly he didn’t like the idea of me reciting one of my poems (“Five Minutes Ago,” which had been a crowd-pleaser at Mojo’s Coffee House back in 2005). I argued with him, he said sullenly that he’d shoot it as written if I insisted. Trying to placate him, I recited Mortimer’s gallows scene speech from Marlowe’s Edward II. James clapped his hands in delight. “Yes!” he exclaimed. “Classical poetry! It’ll be brilliant!” We hastily batted around ideas for using classical poetry for the dramatic fight scene, and shook hands on it, with everyone more or less enthused. We did a mental count of how many Sketchy Raging Wifebeaters we could hope to have on hand. Two and a half was the number we came up with. We had two days to find at least one and a half more. Patrick brought up another concern. “When you google the park, it gives you the wrong directions! Everyone might get lost!”
“You told them O’Bryant Square, right, not Paranoid Park?” This referred to several previous conversations we’d had, about whether O’Bryant Square is in fact the “Paranoid Park” of the novel by Blake Nelson and movie by Gus Van Sant (if it is, Van Sant didn’t film it there).
“Yes! But google gives you the wrong directions!”
I had had enough from Patrick. Patrick was always freaking out about stuff beyond our control. I was out of time, out of patience, and out of politeness. I lost it. “We can’t control google, Patrick! There’s nothing we can do about that! We can tell people the name of the correct park! Which is O’Bryant Square!”
“Okay, okay,” Patrick muttered. I had long since stopped wondering whether my friendship with Patrick would survive this movie. I just wondered whether Patrick would survive this movie.

May 8th

An hour before I left for O’Bryant Square, Simon called. He was on his way. I bit my tongue, and thanked him. About two hours later, as actors gradually arrived at O’Bryant Square, James, Patrick, and I realized that we would have a grand total of seven Sketchy Raging Wifebeaters—more than enough to make the three remaining Worriers look hopelessly out-numbered. One of them was Curtis White Carroll.
Shooting dragged on, but was reasonably uneventful. A guy obsessively jumproped while we shot around him, taking no notice of us. A couple of homeless teenagers tried to talk us into featuring them in the movie. Michael Molotov brought characteristic brio to his role as Cyrus, adding flamboyant flourishes to every line, including a moment when he leaned forward into the camera, cross-eyed. He asked James if he could add a line at the end, and James, with weary good-humor, reassured him “Go ahead. I can always cut it in editing.” Everyone laughed at Michael’s indignant double-take.
After James declared it a wrap, Patrick, Ben, Simon, Brittany, her boyfriend William, and I went over to Rocco’s Pizza to celebrate over pizza and beer. As I sipped my beer, I felt an unfamiliar sensation. Regret. Why?, I wondered. What would I miss about this experience? The endless haggling over dates? The worrying over weather? The last minute heated debates over script changes? Patrick’s frequent freak-outs?
Then it hit me. I was going to miss having an excuse to tell my friends what to do.