Just once I’d like to go somewhere and do something without having something done to me somewhere on or in my body. Admittedly, some amount of my accidents have occurred at my own hand, their causes ranging from impulsiveness to negligence to plain old stupidity.
After a lifetime of elevating injury to an art form, it’s no longer the pedestrian aspects like the physical pain and trauma of these events that get to me. Rather, my ire is of a mental nature as I cause myself nothing but perpetual strife in the wake of these calamities by contemplating what cosmic, karmic significance I have that continually permits the worst possible complications to emerge among even the most mundane of circumstances.
Anyone can lose their footing while hiking on a trail of rocks over a shallow, docile stream, but it takes a truly exceptional individual to slip ankle deep in to that same docile creek only to discover that it is downstream from a nearby sewage treatment plant and awake the next day playing host to a flesh-eating disease that slowly rots away his foot. Similarly, any poor schmo can be unfortunate enough to provoke the anger of the local neighborhood dog and have to flee as the animal gives chase. It’s only when you’re talented enough to invoke the wrath of the neighborhood peacock on an evening stroll that you really begin to appreciate your place in the universe… as its punch line.
Case in point: Lately I’ve been working on a movie set pulling 19 hour work days and as a result have found myself spending my nights in the production office, not even bothering to go home. It’s been a rewarding job and a simple enough arrangement as I’d made the necessary preparations: fresh clothes, cell phone charger, toothbrush.
Now I can’t be sure if my frenetic state on one particular morning last week was due to stress, a lack of sleep, or just the natural atmosphere of any film set after a crew has been forging ahead long enough. Nonetheless, it was a multitasking morning for me as I distributed sides, assembled my PAs, and brushed my teeth all at the same time as well as tackling a list of other tasks that kept my head darting in every which direction. Inevitably, my coordination was compromised and I shoved my toothbrush in to my mouth at the wrong angle, the plastic hitting my teeth and bruising the roof of my mouth. While I’m sure many of you have experienced this clumsy, harmless hiccup in your daily routines at some point, I’m less confident that the rest of you banged your toothbrush against your jaw so hard that the brush head broke affording you the opportunity to swallow it. Yep.
So on my first (non-official) day off of that week, rather than sleeping or going out and having fun with Colleen I was living in the lap(arotomy) of luxury then spending my subsequent weekend off recovering from the experience.
Basically they shove a camera and a crane inside of you to play “One of these things is not like the others. One of these things just doesn't belong.” Stick a quarter up my nose and it’s the new twist on one of those prize claw games, except with more exotic prizes... and mucosa.
(Depending on the success of this venture there is talk of converting my esophagus into a ski ball lane.)
The last time I worked on a set with this group of people, I got the ear bud of my walkie-talkie wedged so far in my ear that it required hospital intervention as well… and a wire.
Just once it’d be nice to make a movie where I don’t get penetrated.
