praying for reality

Last night a van my brother was driving, in which I was a passenger, crashed into a crowd of picnickers. Several of them were killed instantly, including one very kindly-looking octagenarian in a purple, floral-print dress.

My brother is in Alberta right now, xraying pipelines, whereas I'm bumming around British Columbia, pretending to be an actor. It was a dream. I know, I know - you figure I maliciously tricked you there, jumping in like that. But I wanted to start you off with the same sort of a shock that yanked me tearily out of sleep.

I got up, left the bedroom, and began to pace around between our shabbily covered couch and futon. Then I started praying.

I don't know how you feel about praying, but I have never been too keen on it. Oh sure, growing up the child of missionaries in South America you know all about prayer. I did it morning, noon, night and three times on Sunday. Yet somehow it never meant much to me - you know - deep inside. I guess I generally hear myself and others praying and those words sound, to me, something like: "you know what, God, stop screwing around and give me what I want". I know I've heard (and given) arguments to the contrary, but if I were to tell you the truth (and I gotta admit, I might) I would have to say that the words have often felt just about empty.

Last night, though - in the breif moments before rationality reminded me that my brother was not, as I'd dreampt, in a careening van - I realized, deeply, my utter helplessness in the face of what I perceived as deep, lasting suffering on his part. So I prayed for him, for comfort. And even after the dream-sorrow had long faded, I went on to pray for the rest of my family, too.

When I was done, I started to wonder if maybe that is the only type of real prayer there is - the kind borne out of an honest acknowledgement of deep helplessness. Maybe folks who really pray a lot (not just fake it on the street corner to look spiritual) are just more in touch with the true reality of their helplessness.

Homeless people and drug addicts, I have found, pray more than most. They have very few illusions about how well they have things in control. They're desperate, see. So they cry out for help from the only thing that offers hope in a helpless situation - an all-powerful deity. But does the ocurrence of a prayer in a foxhole make it less authentic, less valuable? Or is it, rather, that only in foxholes can most of us ever acknowledge our weakness, mortality and vulnerability?

I think so. Philosophers tell us to live each day with our death before our eyes.

I think what they mean to say is "STOP PRETENDING! Acknowledge your weakness so that you can begin to slough off fantasy and begin to live a real life, not the life of dreams. That, I think, is what prayer is all about. Admitting reality so you can get your focus off of what you can't change and onto what you can.

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.

driving with your guts

When I left for the first time the rainforests of South America for the suburban jungles of British Columbia I met a man named Dustin, whom I chose to deify. I am not sure exactly what it is in me that tends towards hero worship, but I have done it for so long now that my list of heroes has gotten longer than my arm. Maybe it is some sort of Jesus thing, a yearning for a God-in-the-flesh as my own, personal buddy. If I had a buddy like that, I figure my problems would be pretty much gone. "Buddy Jesus", I would say, "Smite so-n-so for me, willya?" And he would do it, too, because Buddy Jesus is like that.

Buddy Dustin was a big guy with broad shoulders, cool blonde hair, a motorcycle and the most smashingly cool job you can imagine - whitewater kayaking guide in the summer, top-level ski instructor in the winter. Dustin was the sort of guy who would jump off cliffs with a couple of planks strapped to his feet, get all upside-down and twisty, and then somehow not die later.

He told me once, when we were e-brake sliding in his car around an icy corner at about two-times-cheetah speed, that the main thing in life is not to hesitate. "Hesitation kills", he said, "you've gotta drive confident, Sparkey". Something about guys like that makes me feel timid and very small.

Welcome to Smallville.

At midnight I was still awake. I checked my pulse to see if I was getting my biological undies in a bunch over the a.m.'s event, which was that I was scheduled to be an extra on the set of the TV show, Smallville. Anya and I had gotten riled up earlier picking out a collection of clothes (you have to have a bunch of stuff for the fashionably gay wardrobe guy to pick from) and prancing around pretending to be stars. Still, that was a while ago and it was all in fun. I mean, c'mon - extras are human fluff. No big deal.

Thump, thump, thump. Pulse, normal. It is just TV. It isn't real. I am told there is no superman. But for some reason, super thoughts kept creeping in as Sleep, that elusive bedfellow, kept creeping out. A few precious snores here and there and then the high-pitched beeping of my wristwatch played ayahuasca war drums on whatever dangly things it could find in the recesses of my head.

So, after a quick bowl of cereal I rode my bike out down the road towards Burnaby with a backpack and some hangers stuffed with clothes strapped to my back. When I got out on the highway I could feel the stares of the people in the vehicles around me. It was obvious they were jealous of me - the cool guy on the motorcycle with the cool battered black-leather jacket, headed off to get filmed for TV while they disconsolately plodded with the other rats towards their flourescent-lit cubicles. I coolly ignored them, coolly using my turn signal as I coolly took the Brunette Street Exit and then proceeded to coolly wind my way down a bunch of random, interesting roads.

As a side note, there is a book waiting to be written about how to look cool while getting lost in Burnaby before the sun comes up. So cool.

Eventually, though, I wheeled up to to 6228 Beresford Street, Burnaby, where there cluster a gaggle of warehouses crammed with sets for Smallville. Everybody in southern British Columbia thinks the show is filmed in Cloverdale, but while that is where they shoot the outside stuff, most of it takes place here, inside. Shhhh - don't tell anybody. Fifteen minutes late, I parked by the door of a likely looking warehouse and went inside.

Incidentally, fifteen minutes is about the minimum amount of time you can be late for an appointment and still be cool. I don't recommend it, though, unless you're cool enough to flick cigarett ash at Extra Handlers while they yell at you.

I don't smoke, unfortunately, so I went timidly in and wandered around a bunch of dimly lit barn and house husks. Eventually, a guy with a radio pointed me in the right direction, which I did not take. Because I'm just like that. After another fifteen minutes, I finally walked up to the doors of the correct warehouse.

Now, I want you to pay attention.

Seriously. Pay attention.

This is the defining moment of the story, the one that directly relates to that first bit about living decisively. Remember my last post, when I was talking aobut beating Anne Hathaway in a staring match, and how I said I'd like to punch Superman in the face? Well, as I pushed open the huge double doors, who should be strolling towards me but Clark Kent himself. Just me and him in a large, abandoned hallway and about four seconds to decide, cock back my arm and let him have it. I was wearing a padded leather jacket and wearing thick leather boots and a stuffed backpack to protect my spine. In my left hand was my hard black plastic brain-bucket. Iw as well protected and the moment was just golden.

I thought about it.

In the fraction of a second it took to size him up, I could see that even if the camera adds some weight, this guy was still about six-foot-three and weighted well over two hundred pounds of what might very well have been Krypton-enhanced muscle. He was square-jawed and had a smoldering blue look that said, "go ahead, Lex, make my day". I hesitated. What if, just what if this maybe was not the real superman? Not only would I get a real good beating, but it wouldn't even count. As I thought about assault charges, jail time and a fist-fractured skull, the man brushed by.

Oh, sure - he and I danced a dangerous tango (he had no idea how fragile his hold on life was) through forty-one takes of a ridiculous scene in a ludicrously tacky cafe called, get this, "The Talon" - but the moment had come and I had proved my weakness.

Another broken myth. Another heroic buddy, flying off into the silver lined clouds of memory. Another shattered TV dream.

What can you learn? What lesson has been craftily secreted into the tissues of this story? Never, ever, ever hesitate. Hesitation not only kills, it leaves you feeling small and un-heroic. Heroes probably don't exist, I know. But if they did, they would undoubtedly be the sort of people who saw what could or should be done and went and did it. So if you get a chance to punch superman in the face, take it. Seriously. He's an actor, for the love of Jim... probably just a pansy with a glass jaw. I'll watch.

Safely.

Over here.

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Not had enough of Josh's Screen Tales?

Tune in soon...

... as our hero Joshua Barkey, extra extraordinaire goes on the set of the new Jason Reitman (director/writer, Thank You for Smoking) comedy about an unwanted pregnancy (whoa, nelly! is that funny or what?!) with actors such as that Alias ninjagirlperson and one of those mutants from X-men III.