Director's Cutting Edge

Cut!

It's the word, the only word that they seem to understand. Some are idiots, and I ask myself how they could have possibly been cast in my movie. My movie! I don't make dollar store crap, I don't direct flouncey boob movies...you know the kind where the heroine is always running up the stairs when she should be tearing out the front door while calling 911 on her sparkly pink Razr. I leave those two-bit productions to the lower class. I direct drama. Large budget, epic concoctions of grand perportion. Yet, in order to access the money, the industry wants a name. A name! As if I am not enough to sell a feature. I've won Emmys, People's Choice and SAG awards. Julia Foberts, they say. We must have Julia Foberts. And I daresay, I almost replied with a firm no. Who wants to see that smile with hair anyway? An Oscar award winner. Maybe ten years ago! If I put her in my movie it may appeal to the older crowd, but what about the younger generation? Give me a Red Johansen any day...or a Hillary Stanke. But they want Julia freakin' Foberts.

So, I get Julia. But she won't do it unless George Scoony is on board, and he won't commit without twenty million large. Then there are the make-up, gaffers, the Foley producers and a thousand writers. Just to make my movie. It's my movie!

What do they think they can do that could possibly enhance what I've already envisioned. In today's market it really isn't the actors that sell a film, but the effects. And I have plenty. I only wish I could write Julia Foberts getting nuked, but they tell me it wouldn't make the audience happy. I beg to differ.

And so here we all are, the blind and dumb. They race through the script like ducks quacking for food. I find it offensive. But I tolerate it all in order to preserve the art, in order to express the art. My art!

Action!