The Art director and I have issues. He thinks I'm not taking my job seriously and I think he's a wanker. It's been a steadily deteriorating state of affairs since midmorning when he caught me pogoing across set on a spacehopper, my wee noggin bouncing up and down behind stage as I propelled myself along an imaginary race track. I didn't know it was a bloody prop and so when he comes up to me bellowing, I chalk him down as having a case of mistaken identity and propel myself towards the distant fire escape, my arse bounding up and down on the inflatable bubble, whilst unbeknownst to me the Art director gives chase, his saggy, pink jowls similarly rippling with the motion of the chase Bounce, flop, Bounce, flop, Bounce, flop. B… And then suddenly I'm brought to ground as the huge mass of air below my haunches suddenly disappears and I come crashing to the floor in a crumpled heap. I shake my head to regain clarity but then a fraction of a second later the art director comes tumbling over me, his mighty girth smacking into the floor with a sound sizable enough to raise every head in the studio. I look across at his prostate figure and wonder whether I might be in trouble.
When he comes to, it's not a pretty sight, his huge bulbous eyes fill with water and his cheeks flush crimson as he unleashes a torrent of abuse at me. On and on he goes, about the importance of this fucking spacehopper and the stupidity of my actions. Gradually though it all starts to wear a bit thin and any feelings of contrition that I might have been experiencing give way to boredom and then a mildly distasteful loathing. Watching him pummel his face into a puffy pink mass and I begin to wonder with morbid curiosity whether it's really necessary to have that much face. The more I think about it, the more surreal the whole experience becomes and the less I listen to what he's saying. Gradually he runs out of steam and I'm ushered back to set to continue helping the art department. I had hoped for a while that I would be sent home like some disgraced school child but another spacehopper is found and the urgency of the set build dictates that all hands are needed.
As it turns out the whole incident is something of a blessing for the roguerunner cause because I later hear the Art Director expounding to his second-in-command that he's never going to settle for a runner again instead of a proper art department minion. I feel myself flushed with pride at the prospect that my labours might have freed my brethren from the toils of art department slavery. Gone will be the days when a runner can be offered to the art department like some sacrificial virgin, no more I say, no more…
I hate the art department, all good runners do, because art department means being dragged out to these fucking big old houses in the middle of the country, then helping as you unload four vans of solid oak antiques and rotund marble statuettes up sixteen flights of steps at 6:30 in the morning for 3 hours before the rest of the crew even show up, then spending 12 hours running after eighteen five year olds while the 1st A.D wanks on about needing someone or other on set RIGHT NOW before watching all the shiny happy grownups finish shooting and fuck off home leaving you to spend another 4 hours checking and unloading all the crap back out of the house in the pitch black cold of midwinter, knowing that you're up at 5 the next day to be some other production companies' favourite little one door whore house and that in between you've got to drive past your front door to go right into the centre of Soho to drop the rushes at Soho Images at 1am on a Friday night, when traffic along Wardour Street has been known to go so slow that the space/time continuum has occasionally spiraled into reverse creating a strange bread of freakish ape-like creatures in some bizarre reversal of Darwinism, before running the red-light on Oxford Street, smashing your side mirror on a stationery motorbike at the corner of Regent Street, having a less than amicable discussion with the boys in blue on the corner of Marylebone, before finally throwing the motor through the Camden one-way system and yanking it onto the pavement outside your house, for the shitty, resentful, life hating 3 hours sleep that you're going to get before you do it all again.
Of course recognizing that my martyrdom might be some time in coming I spend the afternoon mooching around set, casting a curious glance towards the art director occasionally to ensure that the depth of animosity between us is not alleviated and otherwise being as unhelpful as I deem necessary to ensure that I'm never used by this man again. The afternoon actually passes surprisingly quickly. I have a brief but unreciprocated moment of flirtation with one of the models from the adjacent studio when I let her use my lighter and when wrap is called at 7pm I start to wonder whether this whole art department thing maybe isn't so bad after all.
Later that night as I drift off to sleep with the sound of my housemate 'Flint' shagging in the adjacent bedroom, I think about that model once again and wonder what she might be doing right now. Somehow my imagination presents a couple of sound possibilities and as I close my eyes and drift into sleep, I try to come to grips with them all.
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