Unemployed and pissed upon: Living the dream!!!

“Ma!  Ma!  I quit my job with ol’ man McGovern!  I’m gonna make movies instead!” At which point our young teen protagonist is boxed about the ears by his mother, smacked on the knuckles with a ruler, told to get back to work, grounded for a year and sent to bed with no pie.   Fortunately I am several time zones away from the physical boxing I might deserve for quitting my job and planning to make a movie.  I do however admit that quitting work so I could cash in my retirement savings to make a movie might not seem like the most rational plan I’ve ever concocted; not much of a plan at all actually, especially when reality sinks in that without a paycheck I am not yet sure how one  pays the mortgage, health insurance and those pesky medical school loans… hmmm, ribald tales and large rocks?  I won’t re-read that last sentence.  Thinking rationally evokes a nervous, queasy sensation… and then I remember that I am making a movie, fulfilling a life long dream.  This whole production is one fantastic journey where sinking reality and rational accountability have no place!  (OK, accountability has a place in our accounting department)  Let’s get back to the events of last Friday at 3PM when I was officially without a job.

What comes from achieving that pinnacle of professional success, i.e. joining the ranks of the unemployed?   This photo illustrates just how smoothly things are going so far.  That is indeed my bike and yes, that is also my bike rack.  Sharp inquiring minds might ponder, where is the car that goes with the rack?  Is it invisible?  No.

Neither is that a new system designed to make it easier to mount bike racks on your car.  Rumors of my testing detachable velcro roof rack prototypes are also false.

The large sign warning that the bright yellow bar is only seven feet and two inches off the ground is however true.  Upon close inspection I noted that the girl in the back seat of the car is laughing.   And so it begins.

The bike swinging in the wind day was our first day of camera testing.  Modern camera magic has made it possible to shoot amazing video footage on inexpensive cameras.  Feature films and TV shows are using the video mode on still cameras  (your handheld Canon) to film their shows.  These cameras do however have limitations in how they record fast motion and movement.  I’ll skip the tech-talk about jello cams, but suffice it to say, cycling tends to involve fast movement (unless you are me and specialize in falling off your bike, not speeding past objects) and we needed to test the camera limits as it would show up on the big screen.  It looks like we will use a RED camera for our narrative story and then a combination of smaller cameras to capture the cycling.   Our intrepid Director of Photography (DP), Geno, was in LA over the weekend at a conference specifially discussing the pros and cons of the cameras we are considering and how to overcome the limitations.

The last weeks leading up to my loss of a job have certainly been interesting as well.   First of all, and perhaps I should have led the blog with this one:  The State of Utah granted Peloton Productions a film incentive rebate worth $30K.  THIS IS HUGE FOR US!!!   The funds will be used towards our post-production budget.  It was also a great recognition that we are a real film.  The commission does their due diligence with our application and we were one of two films chosen for this film incentive.  Word of mouth was that they loved the script and everyone involved with the film.  Also to note, the other incentive rebate went to a television show being produced by Brent Geisler, another producer on PELOTON!!

Secondly, I was booked (acting talk for getting a job) for a small part in a Danny Boyle film.  This is the same guy that made the movie about poor kids on game shows in India, won some award, that guy.  Nicest man in the world, or at least in the running.  I was treated like a real actor, had a trailer with a fireplace, cars to drive me to the set on Main Street in Moab and my own hotel room.  And Danny Boyle must have really loved my work as he increased my lines from two to three!!

After finishing on set I was faced with an option of riding my bike in the beautiful desert afternoon or rushing the four hour drive home to possibly catch Luca before he went to bed.  I must be getting older as I chose to set a hot pace North, made Salt Lake in 3 1/2 hours and ran up the stairs to where Luca was standing up in the bath.  He broke into a mad grin exclaiming “DADA!!”  Danny Boyle and a fireplace in my trailer got nothing on Luca.

The next week was a little crazy as it was my last week in the clinic and the gods seemed upset enough to throw all sorts of reminders out there about how much I loved working a job that involves looking in people’s noses, hearing them complain about diarrhea and the thrill of draining abscesses.  Enough of that!  I had my last day and as you would expect I walked out into the setting sun, headed west and dove into the fabulous feature film experience that will be PELOTON.

Actually no, much in line with everything else with this film, there was no smooth path.  Instead I walked out into a snow and sleet storm and drove North to watch footage from our camera testing on the big screen.  Here’s a look up my nose on a huge screen.  Yes, that’s quite exciting.  And from that moment on we have been working diligently on the film….  NOPE!  Wrong again.

I returned home from watching myself cycling on the big screen to Luca waiting for me, but this time it was to be our first entire weekend alone together to party!  I will spare you the details, but know that Luca did not spare me free time to work on the film.  I finally had a little talk with him as we sat in the bubble bath together conversing about such things that dad’s discuss with their 20 month year old boys:  how to squirt water with your hands, farting in the tub etiquette,  why throwing bath toys out of the tub at the dogs is not encouraged, and why it was important for me to quit my job so that I could make a movie that one day he would hopefully enjoy watching and be proud of his dad for pursuing his dreams; he will know who his dad was and the ideas he pursued.

Now before you have any ideas about me trying to tell you a cute father-son bubble bath story, let me tell you how my 20 month old, bubble covered boy responded to my story.  On cue he pissed all over it.  Yes, it was the father-son bubble and urine bath.

So with pissed on plans I am now fully embarked on filming.  The script is getting messy and ugly as I work it through towards brilliance.  Casting starts this week.  We are working to get legal clearance for all the bike, clothing, gear labels that appear in bike stores and races (We should change it to a swimming movie, less logos)  We are planning a great fundraiser at THE METROPOLITAN restaurant, http://www.themetropolitan.com/ thanks to Francis Fecteau, my friend, fellow cyclist and wine broker extraordinaire (check out his wine blog at www.elibation.com) who is donating wine to host the party, Karen Olson, the incredible owner of the Metropolitan (new menu is fantastic), Stacey Richards our stunning music coordinator and dear friend Lauren Brady.  Paradoxically the more I do, the longer the list of things to do becomes.  Feeling overwhelmed, and not sure how, but I know it will all come together.  To steal from Tom Stoppard’s dialogue in SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE:

Philip Henslowe: Mr. Fennyman, allow me to explain about the theatre business. The natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster.
Hugh Fennyman: So what do we do?
Philip Henslowe: Nothing. Strangely enough, it all turns out well.
Hugh Fennyman: How?
Philip Henslowe: I don’t know. It’s a mystery.

“I don’t know.  It’s a mystery,” is apparently today’s inspirational fight song to carry us forward.

ever yours,  John

The wheels on the bike go round and round

“Well, I evaded the Syrian Ballet Company as they attempted to export me to their Arabic Kingdom to star in performances of GOAT LAKE.”

“At any rate, I am having time (I’ll leave you to attach valence to my time) learning very little (longest word in English language: approximately – floccynoccynihilipilification) and generally making a drunken ass of myself.”

“I live with an Italian family, and we speak only Italian in the homestead which has produced conversations like, “How was your day, John?”  ”Oh fine.  I went to find a large elephant, but ended up getting massaged with a chunk of steak.”

(Excerpts from John’s letters to me years ago — which were a continual reminder of my own limited vocabulary)

Justice is the only worship.  Love is the only Priest.  Ignorance is the only slavery.  Happiness is the only good.  The time to be happy is now.  The place to be happy is here.  The way to be happy is to make others so.  –Ingersoll

If you read my very first blog, The Genesis of PELOTON, you read about John (pictured above), my cycling/writing/witty friend with the gregarious and sharp sense of humor and how he died far too early in life.  An inherent part of life is facing the loss of those we love.  It happens and it hurts and no cliched response takes that pain away, it just flares less painfully over time and we search to attach meaning to it all.   There is an essential or archetypal circle of life that intertwines life and death.  When I heard the fateful words about John, I was on my very first day of the obstetrics rotation in my third year of med school.  On my first day on the labor and delivery deck as an intern, my very first case was a young woman who I had to tell in Spanish that she was having abdominal pain because the term baby in her belly had died.. and then she almost bled to death as we rushed her for an emergency c–section.  Years later, as the chief resident, I had an evening phone call that my grandfather had just passed away and was then called to deliver my friend’s baby just minutes later… the circle of life for you Lion King fans.  I hope the film does justice to how we honor those people by living our life more fully.

Note the photos of John above and below, on the day he won a race that promoted him to a Cat 1 rider (an elite racer)…. full of life as we always remember him with that unforgettable smile.  And if anyone is laughing at my efforts on this film project, my sweating over the whole thing, it’s John.  I can see him starting to break into a grin with some hilariously wicked barb to throw out at me that will break all of us into belly-aching laughter.  He would have poked fun at me relentlessly for obsessing about filming a movie that involves guys with shaved legs in tight shorts.  He would have been the first in line to be filmed up close, making sure his film credit read: Best looking Cyclist.  He would have invented better dialogue for the script and would have pushed me to keep rewriting better scenes.  He also would have supported me late into the night when I was broken with frustration, buoying my spirits with humor, but also just present to talk in the deep, simple, honest ways that only close friends can manage.  He brought many of us together in that way, close friends from the various aspects of his life who had heard about each other from someone who who was so genuinely close with each of us and knew us so well.

So the genesis of peloton might have come from an accident that took John’s life, but the inspiration was how John lived.  The Ingersoll quotation above is the same one that I wrote below the same framed photo because he made so many people happy with his words and wit.  I have been blessed with a host of friends who inspire me on a regular basis in how they choose to live (I’ll get to them later) and producing this film now, this is me living the life I want.

And finally there is Luca (see below), my own little boy, a year and half old, he shares John’s middle name and loves bikes. Before he was born, while he was floating in utero in his spacesuit, I was struck by the absolute knowledge that I needed to change my life, make the films I had always wanted to make, because the only way to teach him to live fully, would be to live the life I wanted, to set that example, not to tell him to do one thing and not be living up to the same standard and expectations in my life, however frightening those steps might be… so the film is being made to make John laugh at me (as if he needed fodder), to inspire and teach Luca, to hopefully make them both proud and after the months of filming and editing and not sleeping, to have a movie that makes people happy.