Joshua in Wonderland

It's amazing how quickly you (that is, I) flutter up into the headspace of Hollywoodyism. It isn't just that I allow myself to get twitterpated over the whole experience - looking up statistics, actors and directors of film projects I am to be working on - I have noticed as well how easily I get swept up by the culture that is the movie business.

On set the majority of folks are the sort of techies you'll find anywhere - dressed in outmoded jeans and strange, opinion t-shirts and walking around with a bandolier of clothespins across their chest, a roll of duct tape on one hip and a radio on the other. They have odd hair and sweat a lot.

Even the actors give the impression that they're just there doing a job.

Still, through it all there is a subterfuge of glamour and implied glory and fame. The techies talk in funny accents and sing loudly to themselves. Even when not on camera, Jennifer Garner blinks in slow motion. Seriously - it's amazing. And speaking of amazing, you should see the woman order a peice of wheat toast with earl gray tea; you'd just about climb the alps to get it for her.

But there I go again, hollywoodizing.

I take a boring, uncomfortable, all-night, red-eye shoot and turn it into a beguiling, one-second blink. Why? Am I trying to suggest coolness by association, placing myself in the sort of film/fantasy illusion in which Hollywood specializes? Or am I just pulling all punches to try to leave you, the reader, entertained?

I guess both. Hollywood's got me.

1984. Yarinacocha library. ILV, on the edge of Pucallpa, Peru, South America. Saturday night movie night. Cicadas, toads and crickets chorussed outside. I watched my first movie, Alice in Wonderland, and entertainment became for the first time more than a pile of fresh-cut grass and a few sticks.

And I was in it.