'Tis the Season

Bring it on, Santa...

By the time this goes to post I should be splashing my way up Interstate 5 through the deluge towards a Christmas break on the Home Planet. My brain is in a fog at the keyboard on this dank Saturday morning, thanks to a grueling work week that ended late last night. Script re-writes delivered an extra (and very large) set to our stage Monday morning -- this in addition to the two we were prepared to light, resulting in longer, harder days to get everything properly lit in time for Friday night's show. There were something like 40 extras in this episode -- and for the on-set crew, that was not good news. Having to wade through a herd that size always makes it a lot harder to get the job done.

But such is life in the Hollywood circus, where a stretch of quick-and-easy days usually makes me feel decidedly uneasy. "Easy" means calm, and given that a period of calm invariably precedes a storm, "easy" is what happens as you sink into the quicksand of complacency -- and the wake-up call from that is always rude. When things get easy on set for too many days in a row, you know damned well a bruising bitch-slap is coming soon.

But with light at the end of the 2010 tunnel, they really couldn't hurt us this week no matter how hard they tried. The blocking/pre-shoot day was the usual tedious, draining, needles-in-my-eyes ordeal, and if the shoot night itself wasn't much better, the prospect of a Christmas party to be thrown by the production company after the show helped leaven our day.

Hey, there's nothing quite like the prospect of dropping the tool belt and heading for the chocolate fountain buffet and a glass of decent red wine to take the sting out of a long work day. Toss in the traditional bag of Xmas goodies -- modest gifts to each crew member from the producers and cast -- and the night ended on a high note.

So that's it for this year. The show is down for two weeks, then we return early in January to crank out yet more television on into April. I'm wrapping things up here at BST for 2010 as well. If some random inspiration hits -- and hits hard -- I might post something between now and 2011, but the odds of that lie somewhere on the far side of "slim" and the near side of "none."

Which is to say not impossible, but highly unlikely.

And that's just fine. Christmas is a good time to think about anything and everything but the business of Hollywood. There will be endless opportunity to delve into all that during the New Year to come.

So to all of you who stop by here on a regular basis, or just from time to time -- thanks for tuning in, paying attention, and for your occasional questions and comments. I wish you all the very best this season can offer.

Merry Christmas...