I saw a woman smoking a cigarette the other night…
At the gas station where I stopped to get gas…
And she was casually leaning on the metal cage full of propane tanks.
I fueled up and got the hell out of there as quick as I could.
The misuse of the word “literally” has gotten out of hand. It’s everywhere. Even in the media and printed materials. Ever since I have had discussions about this with friends, we’ve all suddenly become attuned to it and have started noticing how rampant it is. It’s like when Roddy Piper got those sunglasses in “They Live!” and could suddenly see all the aliens or whatever they were. People say things like “It literally blew my mind!” Umm, no it didn’t. I know this from the fact that they were standing there telling me this.
Two recent observances that really stuck out to me were in video game related materials. In an ad for the Super Smash Brothers Brawl game it said “…literally anything can happen, and usually does!” Wow, that’s some serious technology they’ve developed there. So it’s totally possible and in fact likely that I could be playing the game and suddenly see Dennis De Young from Styx fly in on a half-dolphin, half-bagel creature with purple monkeys flying out his butt.
In a review of Assassin’s Creed on gamespot.com the reviewer mentioned how the game’s atmosphere was so great that it was “…literally a living, breathing world.” Again, I really had no idea this kind of technology existed! They should really let some top scientists study this stuff!
We have friends who use this word in what seems like every other sentence. It seems like they just use it for unnecessary emphasis or something like, “I was like, literally, just sitting there eating my dinner…” Really? I’m glad you specified because I thought you meant it figuratively. You know, that old colloquial saying, “eating my dinner” meaning that you were building a wooden effigy of the Bee Gees.
I was just talking to Larry about some details of submitting “The Ruse” to South By Southwest and I actually said “Well, we’ll tackle that boat when we come to it.” We both paused for a moment before I then said “Where the hell did I come up with that?” and we laughed for many minutes.
Periodically a producer friend likes to issue challenges as a sort of learning experience. Recent he challenged my friend Chris to make two short films, one with no dialogue, and one with only 30 seconds of picture and the rest just dialogue.
The first one has a rough cut finished. We shot this in one afternoon. Written and Directed by Chris Thompson.
I find it quite amusing. I’m the burglar, by the way.
As I was sitting here trying to think of something to say that didn’t have to do with Rock Band or my marriage, a commercial came on that I could have sworn said “Homos, want to refinance?”
I very quickly realized that he had said “Homeowners”.
Sleeping isn’t something that I really do well any more. One of the biggest side effects from this that I’ve noticed is that when I’m hanging out with Jess, that’s when I feel comfortable and happy and content (well, in some ways) and thus when sleepiness really sets in. Especially if I’m lounging around her bed talking or lying around on the couch. It doesn’t make me very good company. So I can’t sleep normally but then it all comes crashing down on me when I want to be awake and enjoying her company. How annoying!
I went to a read through of this film I’m doing the other day and one of the other cast members was a guy I’d worked with once before. In the course of conversation he told me that he had just been hired as Ed Harris’s stand in on the new movie, “Appaloosa” which Ed Harris was directing and starring in along with Viggo Mortenson, Renee Zellweiger, Lance Henrikson and Jeremy Irons.
Last night I got a call from someone who I’ve done a lot of extras work for asking my height and weight. She told me that she needed a stand in for Ed Harris because the first guy’s mother had just just died. I told her I had just been talking to the first stand in the other day and was sorry to hear that.
I was excited about the prospect but also nervous. The original casting call had said they needed someone who was 5’9″, 155 and preferably balding. I am 5’10”, 165 and have a thick head of hair. My contact told me that she just didn’t have many guys of the right frame so I should be close enough. She told me to wear the flattest shoes I had and keep my hair as low as I could get it.
About 30 minutes later she called me and told me that the first guy wanted to go ahead and work but that she didn’t feel right about him going in despite his mother just dying and she couldn’t understand how he would want to go ahead and work under those circumstances. She asked how well I knew him and what I thought about the situation. She said she was just worried that maybe he thought he wanted to go in but then might have a freak out on set or something. As much as I wanted this job (and could use the money) I told her that I understood where he was coming from. If I was in his situation I would not want to just sit and dwell on it. I would rather go and be doing something I loved and something that I was excited about and would make me feel better and perhaps help me deal with it better. She understood and agreed with me that it wasn’t really her place to make that decision for him and she certainly didn’t want to take the job away from him. I also told her that though I really wanted the job, I also didn’t want to take it from someone who had it first and who could probably really use it now. That would be a double whammy to lose his mom and then a cool job too. She said she’d call him back and tell him he was back on. I felt like I’d done the right thing. Luckily I didn’t have too much time to get too excited about it.
My condolences to you, Anthony. I hope you at least had a good time on set to ease your mind.