LIVING IN THE PAST: DAVID AND DERICK: NEW ADVENTURES IN PREPRODUCTION

A writer-director, who we'll refer to from here on out at Dave, and his co-producer, a cameraman who we'll refer to as Derick. A movie we'll almost sarcastically call Love in the Year 2000. And a orangutan named Clyde. These are the players. I may be joking about the orangutan.

Without sounding too condescending, there are all kinds of movies. There are big movies. Small movies. Really small movies. Love in the Year 2000 is a really small movie. But with a heart. David expects to win the Nobel Prize when it's completed, sometime in 2034.

Derick voiced the need to screen tests. Screen Tests of the Third Kind. With the sort of complicated/simple scene dressing we're experimenting with, not to mention the expense of shooting on 35 mm film, we have to be all sorts of careful that we get what we want, and more importantly, how we go about getting what we want.

So, Derick proposed a series of tests. For each set, we designed a number of lighting schemes, for which we'd shoot a minute or so of footage, then review and select the scheme we preferred for the final version.

The nice thing about a budget is that a lot of things get done for you. Such as in this case. So, we tasked our assistant camera, who we'll call Josh, and our assistant director, who we'll call Tony, to get everything set up according to our specifications and have the light marks and the sets ready to go for some tests.

Derick and I don't know quite what we're doing, yet. And we neglected to tell Josh and Tony exactly what tests were. We walked into the hanger we were using to find the door locked. We looked at each other.

"Well, I'm okay with going home," I said.

"No, let's give it a chance. They might have gone to lunch or something," Derick said.

"I don't remember giving them permission to eat while they did this. Where did they get the money?" I said.

"I don't know," Derick said, and knocked again. "Maybe we should break in? It's not like this door is going to stop us at all."

We heard a lock being shifted and stood back. The door oepned, just a crack. Josh squinted out at us through the space. It was very dark inside, and something was making an awful amount of noise.

"Derick! Hey!" Josh said. "Hey, we're almost ready for the tests."

"Great," said Derick. Derick started to push his way through.

Josh held tight in the space. "We're not ready yet, though."

"Miller and I can help," Derick said. "We want to make sure we get this done tonight." Derick forced the door a little ways, and noises became louder, and we heard screeching.

"Can it be just a minute?" Josh said, and a chimpanzee ran past him, out the studio door and into the parking lot.

Derick and I continued into the studio. Josh slammed and bolted the door behind us and hurried after us. In the corner of the stage dedicated to the "apartment" set, the lights were set up in the first configuration we'd assigned. Glowing white set, with the plasma screen emitting an appropriate reddish tinge in the middle of things. Among the things surrounding were about sixteen chimpanzees.

The chimpanzees were doing a remarkable job of not disturbing the lights or harming our valuable equipment. They were making a lot of noise, which seemed to frustrate the chimp in headphones working the DAT machine.

"Josh," I said. "Why are there chimpanzees running around the studio?"

"Derick said we were doing tests!"

"Yes."

"So I got some chimps."

"Yes."

"Listen, what Miller's trying to say is, why did you get chimpanzees for the tests?"

"I, um," Josh said. "I didn't think we were ready for human trials."

I looked over at a chimpanzee sitting in my chair. He urinated into his hands and sipped the piss from his cupped palms. He was wearing my beret. He smiled at me and gave a thumbs-up, emptying the contents of his palms on the floor. I smiled back wanly, and reciprocated a thumbs-up of my own.

Originally composed on August 25, 2005. I really need to write my memoirs.