My Life as a Movie

Friday June 20th

After getting back from work last night I went to Eddie and Donny's room to watch a movie with them and Robert. I fell asleep instantly on Eddie's bed again. I woke up around 2:30AM and realized that I should head to bed. So I went down stairs to Lucius' room where I was spending the night.

This morning Lucius woke up at 10 to get ready for work. I had plans to go to lunch with this guy, Jonathan, at noon,but I went back to sleep regardless. I woke up to his phone call. I told him I wasn't quite ready and would meet him at 1 as I quickly showered and got dressed. At 1 Jonathan and I went to get some sushi from this small little hole in the wall that isn't visible unless you are standing right in front of it, but you can get a platter of about 30 some sushi for 18 dollars. We then took our food back to the Columbia campus and ate on the steps. It was a really nice day out and there were quite a few of our other friends outside as well. After we demolished the sushi we went inside to get cool and get something to drink. We talked for a while, Jonathan is the kind of guy who is kind of arrogant and may not always have the best intentions, but he is someone that I work with on student council so I keep him close like a frienemy.

After we parted ways I went back to the dorms. I called for Donny to come sign me in and as I was waiting I handed the security gaurd my Columbia ID. He happened to bring the card down to the scanner which then registered the chip in my card and brought up my information on the computer screen. I also happened to be standing at an angle where I could see the screen and I noticed that there was a green bar under my name that said "access accepted", rather then the red bar that says "access denied". This meant that I actually had swipe access into the dorm. Seeing this I asked the gaurd about it. He was very confused and hesitant about letting me in. I told him that my card had simply gotten deactivated and I hadn't realized they reactivated it yet. He let me through and I met Donny in the elevator. This is a break through for me because it means I don't need someone to sign me in every time I want to go in and out of the building, which also means that I wont have to be signed in more then five days in any consecutive 30 days, which is actually a rule that I have just been ignoring.

I then went downtown to return some clothes and do some more shopping. I ended up spending a good portion of the day downtown, yet only bought one cute skirt from Macys. I headed back uptown around 8 when I got a call from Lucius saying he was bored and didn't know where anyone was. When I got back Lucius and I decided to go out to dinner. I wanted to take him some place nice to treat him for letting me stay with him for a past couple of nights. We didn't decide on a location until around 9:30 when we headed over to a steakhouse on the east side.
We ate at a place called BLT steakhouse. They give you bread and spread and popovers as complimentary appetizers and you order your steak completely separately from any sides or even sauces. I ordered this California steak that apparently the cow was only fed organic substances, with the pepercorn sauce, some mashed potatoes and some wine for the two of us. Lucius told me about this amazing day he had yesterday where he met some baseball team from Canada and he showed them all around new york, as they treated him to all the different tourist attractions such as the empire state building and riding in a rickshaw. The day ended with them finding some random limo to take them back to their hotel and giving my friend a ride back up to Columbia. We ended the dinner with some complimentary chocolate chip cookies, which I don't believe how they describe they make them because they were not cooked around the edges, and closed out the restaurant around 12:30.

We then walked around the upper east side looking for a dessert place called Serendipity, but gave up around 1 and got back on the subway to come home. We didn't get back to campus until close to 2:30 and we talked for a while longer until we fell asleep.

Saturday June 21st

I woke up around 11 in Lucius' room and went down to P's room to shower and get dressed. P went home for the weekend, and since I had a key to his room made it was like I had my own place for once. I got dressed in a fun summer dress and went down to B and C's apartment. We had plans to go to Conney Island and see the mermaid parade, and then back to times square for a city wide bubble battle. However, when I got to their apartment at 1 I was informed that they had entered a 72 movie shootout last night and had to make a movie pronto. There were a couple of other people there, T, who is their female roommate, David, who is a friend of C's, Ness, who is a girl from France and a friend of B's and is staying with them for a week, and Alvin. Alvin is a volunteer for the Asian American International Film Festival and was instructed to follow around one of the groups and keep a blog of the film making experience. C of course was the first to approach him at the launch party, and offered to put him up in their apartment for the weekend. If you would like to read his blog about the weekend you can find it at:
http://www.72hourfilmshootout.com/

The first thing we did was sit around and think of a plot for our movie. The theme was "a first goodbye" and as of last night all they had done was gotten wasted and drew penises on their idea sheet of paper. We finally came up with the idea of a call center for coffee that tasted horrible. People would call in and complain to one particular guy and keep hanging up on him. Then finally to use the resources we had Ness would call and talk to the guy in french. As he struggled to translate using google they would have a flirty conversation ending in the guy finally saying goodbye for the first time today, and the girl looking up the word for goodbye in a french-english dictionary and saying her first english word, and first goodbye. We then spent the next 3 hours writing out the script for our 5 minute film. I don't know how I got roped into being one of the writers seeing as english and such is not my strong suit.

By that time it was 5PM and C wanted to get a particular shot on the rooftop of a friend's building at sunset. So we all walked over to his friends place and set up a dinner party on the roof. C had sent out a mass e-mail and called several people asking for extras and actors. In this scene we had about 7 people standing around at the party as T was the main character talking on the phone to the call center about the horrible coffee. We then headed down to Chinatown to try and get the early dusk lighting. We shot Ness walking out of a convenient store and to her apartment in Chinatown. (In order to be counted for one award there had to be a scene shot in Chinatown). After all our outdoor shooting we went to dinner at a shanghinese restaurant and back up to B and C's place. For the rest of the night we mainly just sat around discussing what needed to get done the next day and fine tuning the script. I also called up Bert and asked him if B and C could film in the gateway lab on Columbia campus. Bert is the undergraduate in charge of the lab and has the keys to access it. It would make for a great call center. Luckily he obliged despite the fact that I would not be on set. I also called Donny and Eddie to see if they would be extras in the film. Around 2AM I went back up town and slept in P's room because he was out of town.

Sunday June 22nd

I woke up late, 10AM, for work. I ran over to Crepes on Columbus and apologized. The shift was pretty busy, there was a good consistent flow of people. When I was finally done I bought 6 crepes and headed back down to B and C's place. The production crew at crepes and then sat around for a while longer as we waited for a coffee maker. Alvin then had to leave to head back to Boston, so from his point of view we did not really accomplish much. We shot our two last scenes and C went into his room and started editing. The rest of us watched Beatleguese and then The Professional, which is a crazy movie. I moved in and out to try and help C and not have him feel to alone as he was editing.