Ask Not For Whom the 'Belle' tolls

Today makes nearly four straight days of working on (re)writing 'Belle' in Tribeca with Ed. Friday morning I got to work at 11 and didn't leave till 10 that night. We were trimming, editing and re-working scenes beginning on page 1 and didn't stop till we got to the end.

I was back on Broadway at 11 Saturday morning and spent only a couple hours there because of previous Father's Day engagements with the family, but of course I was on the phone for about an hour with Ed after lunch/dinner in Queens with the fam was over.

Sunday I was up and on the train as soon as possible, getting to Ed's where the two of us spent roughly 9 hours going word for word threw the script yet again changing scenes, creating new scenes, polishing up dialog and making it fit together in a nice little package. It was raining all day apparently, but I couldn't tell because I was stuck to the desk at my laptop creating new material, emailing people, making phone calls to the other parties interested in reading/producing the script and otherwise wanting to be involved. By the end of the day I was so psychically drained that I could barely find my way to the train station.

Monday, more of the same. Going thru page by page, this time trying to make the scene and action descriptions sound more sophisticated and flowery though. As well as cleaning up, creating, trimming, adding and deleting scenes, of course. Started that around noon and got finished about 10:30pm.

All in all, it's been a very long 4 days. But it'll be worth it to see my words up on the big screen and to make this the best fu*king movie we possibly can. Also, Angelina Jolie and Lindsay Lohan are waiting to read the script, apparently, so we want it to be perfect. Plus the fact that of the people who started in January I'm pretty sure Brian and I are the only ones left. Mariana, Paul and George have all jumped ship within the past couple weeks and I'm gunning for George's job. And the fat paycheck that I'm sure went along with it.

Writing, watching and making movies

Friday at First Line we spent all day reading, critiquing and fixing 'Belle'- going word by word thru the script. After a couple hours of reading it silently to ourselves and taking notes Chelsea, a new girl, and I read the first 50-odd pages outloud, made notes and debated how to fix things that popped up along the way.

I was at the office till about 7pm before dashing over to Film Forum to catch 'Food Inc.' on its opening night. It was an ok documentary, not groundbreaking and nothing that I haven't heard already; but it was good to see over a hundred people waiting on a line out the door for a documentary like this. After the movie the least significant other and I wandered around the village aimlessly for a while till we found a decent restaurant in Little Italy where we ate the most unimpressive Italian food I've ever had. I would think you could at least get good pasta in Little Italy, but I 'spose I was wrong.

Saturday was a lazy day that involved nothing more than sleeping till noon then a bit of work on a couple short stories I've been writing, but mostly it was a cold, dark, rainy, lazy day used to recharge the batteries a bit before they (and I) died.

Sunday I spent in Brooklyn again filming, eating pizza and talking with Christina. She's really interesting and fun to talk to. I can't wait till the two of us are able to work on a project worthy of our capacities, rather than something with Ken which may not be as good as we can do with some more talented help.

We were filming a fight scene on the streets of Brooklyn in an empty, industrial area, yet that didn't stop everybody who drove by from watching us and trying to stick their nose into things. The cops showed, thanks to some nosey women who, they thought, were just trying to help a poor boy that was getting the snot kicked out of him. Little did they know (or care) that there was a camera and boom mic across the street filming Ken being beaten up by Tim. The most obnoxious of the two women was complaining that we had 'traumatized' her 'baby' daughter, who it turned out was TEN YEARS OLD! If your daughter is ten years old and not capable of telling the difference between real and make believe, then maybe that's your bad parenting and your fault, not our problem. Why do we and the cops have to be dragged into this?

Anyway, the cop was a pretty decent type and after getting this hysterical lady to calm down and hearing our side of the story he let us get on with our day. When we really stopped to think about it and got over the initial shock of being annoyed, bothered and kept from working it really was quite a comical situation. And it was encouraging that our fight scene looked real enough to passersby that they felt it necessary to scream at Tim all kinds of horrible names and offer to take Ken to the hospital. All in all, it was at least a slightly productive day of filming and I got to spend some time with the warm sun on my face and talking to a really cool girl.

Poemness

Her

long ivory legs 

encased in fishnets

scrape along the 

cold, dark concrete

on thin black heels 

as the train 

rushes by overhead

blowing short blond hair 

past her ears

black fingernails 

hold loosely a cigarette

to dark red lips 

in the naked white light

that bathes her skin 

a thin black jacket 

wraps around narrow hips

while she walks along 

below my window

she turns a corner 

out of sight

I see her 

for only a second

but hold her image tight