The lighting guy and the D.P. (Director of Photography) wishing they went to med school instead.

Everyone was behind on sleep. In the middle of the day Wendy and the sound guy passed out wrapped in sound blankets. The sound blankets were really dirty, I wouldn’t be caught dead wrapped in those shits.

Here’s me about to kick the camera’s ass. I am different from most guys in that I will fight little girls and cameras.

Wendy coaching one of the actors. But she wasn’t coaching him on acting, she was coaching him on lovemaking techniques.

Vincenzo didn’t have any furniture but for some reason he had a leather wheelchair. I wrote my college lecture sitting in a wheelchair by the window in the living room.

The final day of Wendy’s shoot was a blur of running up and down the stairs, sleeping on the floor, sparring and freezing on the roof, and trying to act opposite the Japanese girl.

I was worried Wendy would have a meltdown. There was a scene we had to do over and over because I couldn’t get it right. It’s after the part where I try to kiss the girl and she punches me down. I couldn’t react the way Wendy wanted me to, I kept trying but it all felt so unnatural and I couldn’t fake it convincingly. This is why I’m not an actor.

Wendy got pretty upset and just walked away, at wit’s end. The sun was going down, we were running out of light and I couldn’t get this fucking scene right. I felt pretty bad because she had rejected actual, professional actors in favor of me, feeling I’d be better for the part. Unfortunately she was wrong.

It’s one thing to fuck something up when it’s yours, hell, I do it all the time. But it’s a real lousy feeling to fuck someone else’s project up.

I’ll never work in this town again!

I think she’s gonna go with the last take we did.


We finished just before 6pm, after the sun had cast its last over a shimmering sea of Brooklyn rooftops. The tar gets all shiny. Antennas jut skyward like rusted hope. (I ate a poetry pill today.)*

I raced back to Manhattan in the whip, patting myself on the back for quickly cutting through prime NYC rush hour with a series of clever, little-known shortcuts. Having spent eight years in Brooklyn pays strange dividends and I’ll take whatever I can get. I might not be able to feed myself if I were an actor but I’d make one hell of a taxi driver.


Back at the house I packed up some clothes and my laptop and jumped back in the car. Tomorrow I’ve got a speaking gig at Smith so I’m Massachusetts-bound.

When we were little we used to call it Massive-Two-Shits.


The next three hours is vroom, vroom, vroom. Loud music, whining engine, dark lanes, headlights. Best feeling in the world. You only have to stop to put fluids in your car or drain fluids from your body. Note to self: Invent car that runs on pee. No stopping and super-convenient.


*(It was bitter so I spit it back out.)