The Videographer's Apprentice
or, the Tale of Blondie Wiggle
Dreamed 1994/7/29 by Chris Wayan
THE FIRST SHOOT
I'm leaning on a brick wall in the Haight-Ashbury, by the Red Vic theater, waiting for the video crew. A delicate blonde walks by, no taller than my nipple. Like a Tussaud miniature: "The 1969 Hippie Chick." Bare stomach, wiggling her short-skirt butt... and ignoring everyone. Just parading in the Haight--her nature preserve.
I study my copy of the outline. God forbid we should have an actual script before shooting.
Here she comes again... Hey, look at me! Nope. She's on stage and I'm just a face in her audience. Sigh!
Oh, here they come. Video time. Lance the brains, Zooop and Dawn the effects artists, Tim the musician, and Crush the videographer. All of them actors. And... me.
We sit in Golden Gate Park and argue how to start and what to film. Wait, they don't KNOW? Guys sidle up and ask "wanna buy pot?"
Crush takes action. Runs along sidewalks with the camera waist-high, until he goes up to Dawn, who's reading Castaneda on the curb. The camera goes inside her head... The book's not a prop--Dawn's reading "The Art of Dreaming" and loves it. Wants to meet shamans. I promise to introduce her to Mark and Dee.
Similar shots, with the actors all unaware of the camera--except me, the crazy one who sees it for what it is. An alien parasite. That's sociologically true, here in the Haight. A neighborhood eaten by media exposure--the flood of refugees in the sixties, and tourist cameras today.
My big scene's in front of the giant tiled mural near Buena Vista Park. Get a stomach ache--it's a hard part. I play a street crazy who isn't crazy, who sees the camera is an alien that flits from mind to mind. I accuse it hysterically.
The crew keeps adding key phrases for me--after the fact--and reshoots. But each time I go into character, I forget their (contradictory) demands and just go crazy. Five takes, all over-the-top intense... By take five, real street people and tourists gather, curious. I'm emoting well, but having a script would help! And still the writers argue. Unbelievable.
Postmortem in a pizzeria. I'm high, happy I could catch such an intense character. Dawn asks "What'd it feel like?"
"Bungee jumping!" I blurt.
Home. Watch the footage. My scenes are usable, but not the rest. Jerky, wild, all cars and tourists, not Haight Street's flavor. Zooop and Crush snipe & start dueling. Turns out they've never agreed (or even knew they disagreed) on basic aims, on what the intro scene is. Miscommunication, and it's not improving. Zooop works only from patterns seen in the footage after the fact. Looped improvs & revisions work for a solitary artist, but they waste the group and drive Crush crazy. Uh-oh!
The tape runs out. I turn off the blank TV so the scanning noise won't make my head ache. They can't hear it--few Americans can. At least when I explain, they believe me that it exists! Didn't expect them to... Oh, wait, that's just my character--the street crazy who isn't.
THE NEXT SHOOT
Back to Haight Street. FIVE MORE takes of me as a street crazy who's the only one to see the horrible truth. I have to shout and rasp, so my voice is shot by take nine. And real street people have gone beyond curious--they start to intrude on the soundtrack. Zooop still wants a perfect take. Ain't gonna happen, not in this setting. Fortunately Crush on camera also thinks the last takes were good enough (and his arm's sore and he was staggering); he says "Get the other shots while we're all here, we don't have much time till the sun's gone."
Page Forrest, a dancer I know, yells "Hi, Chris!" and I wave to her with a tinge of sadness. I wanted her so much, but she just wanted a friend--and a star dancer for her film. Another project I never even got a tape of. Danced for her instead of dated her, sigh! Art sublimates life. Oh well, maybe I could be her platonic friend now... but I doubt it. Maybe if I HAD a girlfriend. But I don't.
Down the street, segment by segment... I keep running into that little Sixties blonde again, with her bright colors and happy aura. So cute! I don't want an acting career, I just want her. Can't I just forget filming and talk to her?
Crush and I sit in New York Pizza, while Lance searches the street a fourth and final time. I'm upset because I've seen this pattern--my dreams warned me. Zooop compulsively subverts order. Did it in the class where I met her, does it in her art. But tweaking your audience is one thing. Tweaking co-workers is infuriating. We feel sabotaged, and I don't think she even sees it--just chugging alone solo.
We head back to the car, and Zooop walks up. "Where WERE you?" she says. Denies hiding! "I looked for you, I was in plain sight. Why'd you disappear?" she asks. She and Lance argue; I wall it out. Lance wants me to tell Zooop to her face what I said in the pizzeria--that she hates closure, so she subverts group process. I have a headache and say "I won't go deeper into this now. We're all exhausted." They can't deny that. We all go home.
I got them some good footage, but man, what an emotional cost! I have to ask my dreams, was all that effort for nothing--is this project doomed?
THAT NIGHT
It's my turn in the game. My opponents watch silently off-camera, as my next challenge is set up. It's a strange one. My friend Blondie Wiggle agreed to play the part of the mad broom from "the sorcerer's Apprentice," to my Mickey Mouse. Only Blondie won't bring me water, but video! Will I be able to keep up with a flood of data, spot the key bit, and win the prize?
Blondie staggers in, lugging one TV at a time. She's too small for heavy lifting, really, but she was willing--and she's cuter than Vanna White! Maybe she'll win us some audience votes. She kneels and places each screen next to the last, slowly building an arc, until she seals the circle, and I'm sitting in a ring of TV. Now I can't watch them all at once. Spin on my butt to scan for the secret...
Wiggle starts stacking the screens into a wall of glare, higher and higher. My ears ring, I'm getting a headache from the ultrasonic scanning squeal. Most people can't hear it, but I have dog ears, and it hurts. I still haven't seen what I need to...
So many screens now I feel their heat and smell the hot plastic of all those circuitboards. I start getting dizzy. Shit! This isn't just the ultrasonics, I'm allergic to their outgassing. I hadn't calculated on that!
The wall of TV around me is so high now I can't climb out. The TVs glow fierce as sunlight and their myriad channels roar. I'm going to die here, not just of chemical poisoning from circuit-board vapor, but from radiation--sheer heat and light.
I'm allowed to reprogram Blondie Wiggle and make her stop, but now she's hidden behind the still-growing wall, and anyway, I can't remember how--the allergic reaction has destroyed my ability to plan. I try to climb the wall, but can't... and I fade to gray static and shrink to a white dot--a black field. Off.
Dead. Death by video!
From the afterlife, I call a foul. The game is to judge my ability to plan, program, and think on the fly, but when I'm poisoned like that, I can't think! That game measured my allergies, not me.
NOTES NEXT MORNING
The dream's warning was accurate. Frustration and dissension grew till the video project died, the group broke up, and all our work was wasted.
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