Dispatches from the Island of Misfit Toys

It’s  4 a.m. and I just got home about 20 minutes ago. I left for work at 8:45 this morning. This is all in the nature of the business I’m in. In fact, it isn’t even unusual.

I started the day shooting camera on two scenes for Ben. The first was a young girl who’d done very few scenes who was sweet, but as boring as boring can be. The second girl was doing her first scene ever and, really, performed like a champ.

Afterwards, I went to shoot on Punk Rock Schoolgirls for Joanna Angel and James Deen. Joanna writes rally cute, funny scripts for her movies, but sometimes they’re a bit… overambitious. As the oldest warhorse on the set (I’ve got five years on the next oldest person, and 11 years more experience in porn), I had the unenviable task of pulling James & Joanna aside and suggesting that they weren’t going to make their day.

In the past, Joanna has always gotten lucky and pulled off the impossible. This time it just wasn’t going to happen. So, the plug got pulled with one incredibly intricate dialogue scene to be picked up at some later date.

For all that the populace at large things porn is an enormous fuck-off job, I often think there are no harder working people in the world than porn shooters.

Tomorrow I’m going to run errands and spend the evening with Mischief and some of her friends. It’s good because I’ve been feeling incredibly anti-social lately, I think as a reaction to being so overwhelmed by work and debt (strange combination). She forces me to get out in the world.

For my birthday she took me to a big cat preserve, ironically located right next door to the Tropic Desert Mine where we shot The 8^th Day, so I was already aware of the place. It was a great day out, spent mostly in the company of animals (whom I largely prefer to people).

Rape of the Aboriginal Americans day and most of this coming weekend will be spent at the computer, working. Indulging my misanthropic nature.

My fingers are stiff from too many long days in a row, so for now let me just say eat some dead turkey in honor of a dead Indian and enjoy your Thanksgiving.

Well, hello there! I was walking by and saw this blog sitting here abandoned and adrift like the Mary Celeste and decided to come aboard.

Yeah, it’s been a crazy few weeks. I’m gonna keep this short, because, well, I’ve still got shit to do, but I’ll try to check back a little more often.

Been doing a lot of editing. Finished Kiss of the Strangler, which is a new feature (what?! NOT a parody?!  Do they still make those?) for Hot Video. I’m really happy with it. If you’re curious, you can watch their very own on-the-set report here: http://www.hotvideo.fr/usa.php

I don’t come off looking too ridiculous.

I also spent a few weeks under the gun editing Joanna’s Angels 3 for BurningAngel. It’s their big movie for the year, and even though I was the DP on the movie, I forgot what an epic it is until I was faced with trying to finish it in the space of 10 days. That deadline almost killed me when it raced past.

Still, the movie got finished, and I’m quite proud. It’s hysterical.

I’ve got other shenanigans in the works, including the possibility that I’ll be a producer of a multi-million-dollar mainstream film. But those details will have to wait. Until, y’know, they might be a real thing that’s not going to be cursed out of existence by its mere mention aloud. Like love or faeries or justice.

I got smacked on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper this morning for some comments in this blog.

Apparently, “honesty” doesn’t test well.

In the interim, while I try to think of something pointless and innocuous to write about, here’s a picture of a bunny.

Time is an implacable enemy. I’ve fought this battle with time and its constraints for as long as I can remember. Which is, granted, not as far back as I once could remember, middle-age being what it is.

I feel certain that the things which require doing by me — jobs, projects, tasks, etc. — things which cannot be delegated, assigned or outsourced, would easily fill every waking moment of my time from now until my death, and possibly not be completed. And this is assuming I could STOP. Accrue nothing else to “the list,” reach a point of gaining momentum where I was scratching things off without the list lengthening.

This, of course, is impossible. The very enterprise of my life is a pointless farce, and yet I continue.

I have only recently learned that I have the privilege of continuing to pay for what I refer to as The Most Costly Vacation in History, a month-long trip to London, not taken by me, which has cost me not only thousands of dollars, but my relationship as well. And all I got was this lousy T-shirt. Tomorrow, whether I will or no, this trip will cost me another $1,400, drawn inexorably from an account as bare and overtaxed as Ma Hubbard’s cupboard.

And yet I continue.

Last night, I was able to escape for a time. I spent a lovely evening with a submissive in her 20s who seems to enjoy my company, and is young enough to find me “interesting” rather than “jaded.” This was made all the better because it occurred away from home base, which has lately come to be a living metaphor for all my loss and failure, one which I spend my days occupying.

But escape is a transitive state, and we can only run away so far, and for so long. So here I am. I’m not normally one to allow myself the luxury of catalepsy; but today, this afternoon, for just now, I’m welcoming the paralysis.

And then I’ll continue.

As I do.

I grew up white trash. In fact, I come from a long, distinguished line of white trash. My childhood and teen years were surrounded with desert, a house that was built onto a double-wide (with the wheels left on under the house, that way property taxes were dirt cheap), and lots and lots of rusting cars in various states of disrepair.

I worked in my grandfather’s garage on and off for years. Working on cars isn’t fun for me; it’s a chore. I never aspired to own more than one vehicle.

When I got my directing contract after Corruption won its awards, I thought I had finally achieved one of my long-standing goals. I wouldn’t have to haul gear to set anymore. I bought a 350z, partly as a reward, and partly because it has a tiny, tiny trunk.

“Hey, Bryn, can you take the cameras home with you?”

“No,” I would say honestly, indicating the little convertible. “I can’t.”

And then I would drive home, beaming.

Then the contract fell apart, and my primary workload shifted to shooting camera and lighting. MY cameras and MY lights. All I do now is haul gear.

About a month ago, I decided I need a permanent vehicle for this purpose. I found a great Chevy step van (think FedEX truck) for $2k, and bought it. It ran great, has space, racks, etc. A perfect mini grip & electric truck. Almost immediately, my friend Hollywood asked if her could rent it for a low-budget horror movie he was gaffing.

I agreed, at first thinking I would get a little cash out of it. Then, I asked him instead to simply get some repairs done and we would call it even. Fix the broken turn signals. Replace the missing gas pedal. Niggly shit that I just didn’t want to deal with.

I should have known better. Hollywood is my people. We don’t “fix” anything. We just get it working. Half-assed isn’t our slogan, it’s our religion. This is one of the reasons why I’m so frigging OCD; my constant battle against my white trash urge to make do.

Long story short, as I write this I’m sitting at a location in North Hollywood, waiting to have the truck towed because the “mechanic” Hollywood describes as the “Redneck MacGuyver” fucked up the electrical system when he put in the supplemental turn signal unit, and now, the truck won’t start.

Hollywood had a different mechanic come to my place to fix this problem last week. The truck started no problem this morning. Of course, that was then. Whichever wire or harness I cannot find from the starter has now once again vibrated loose, and here I sit.

The tow should be about $250. Getting the problem actually repaired, oh, $350? So I’ve nearly worked for free today.

I’m angry. At myself. I know better than to let certain people do certain things. I cannot seem to absorb the parable of the frog and the scorpion, no matter how hard I try. You do not ask a leopard to change his spots. You do not believe a scorpion will not sting. And you do not allow a redneck to repair something and expect it to stay fixed.

On a lighter note, here — for no adequately explained reason — are a couple of pictures of my fantastically cantankerous 20-year-old dog.

This blog has been a long time in the making. I think I first bought the BrynPryor.com URL in 2001; EntropyTango.com followed sometime not long after. In the intervening years, it’s simply never been a priority for me to get out there and tell people what I think.

That’s a total fucking lie, by the way. I love telling people what I think. When I want your opinion, I’ll give it to you. I’ve just been doing it in other forums.

Well, things take time to percolate, y’know? For a while, MySpace served as my de facto blog, but the whole process was just too goddamned annoying. So here we are.

There’s a lot of ground to cover. Relationship discussion and sex talk and mainstream projects and porn biz and movie reviews. All of that will come in the days, weeks & months ahead.

First, I think it’s important to lay out a few basic rules:

• This blog is going to be brutally honest. If I’m talking about someone, I will probably use their name. If they don’t like what I have to say, they can post a nasty comment and I’ll publish it. If that someone is you and I’ve hurt your feelings, I apologize…?
• We’re all adults here. At least, we’d better be. This space is not intended for kids, and since I really can’t tolerate the little fuckers, I’m hoping they will either piss off or be emotionally scarred by what they find here should they stumble in.
• I will not apologize for being incredibly geeky. I am. If you know me, you know that. If you don’t know me, now you know that.
• I’m going to do my level best to Keep This Up. I think not having to cope with MySpace, being able to post pictures more easily, and being newly single and desperate for attention and human interaction will all help.
• You’re welcome to comment on anything. I’m welcome not to publish your comments. Get yer own goddamned blog, you don’t like it.

This is Ape Law. Welcome to the darker spaces of my cerebellum. I hope we all live to see the dawn…