Thanks to Triguy, the Fellowship will make its Hollywood debut in 2009 in “The Burning Plain.” Anowyn, Triguy, and yours truly were “technical extras” in the filming of the next Charlize Theron film by the writer of Babel, Guillermo Arriaga.
The film weaves together two storylines taking place in the past and present. Basinger will play Gina, the mother of Charlize Theron’s character as seen in childhood. Theron will play Sylvia, who tries to find common ground with her parents after a turbulent childhood. The two narratives eventually converge. The drama begins shooting in early November in New Mexico.
Before I start booking flights to next year’s Oscar ceremony, I should point out that we may not make it past the cutting room floor. If we do become a celluloid sacrifice, it won’t be due to our superb acting or cycling skills. It will probably be the fault of the nosy couple that sneaked out from behind a rock on the 4th or fifth take to try to get in the film.
It was a blast being in the production and getting a first-hand look behind the scenes of making a film. All of the crew was so professional. I got a sense that everyone loved what they did, and they all did their best to put in 110%.
It was my first ride of the year as well, and it felt great to get on my bike again. We spent the entire morning shooting a 3-5 minute scene between the Burnside and Steel bridges. Anowyn and I began by the Burnside bridge, and Triguy started at the steel bridge. We crossed paths a few moments after Anowyn and I cruised by Charlize and Jose Maria Yazpik. The scene typically ended about the time we rode past the roundabout by the steel bridge. We estimated that through all the takes we probably rode close to 7 miles in all.
We had several near misses as we rode by Charlize’s real-life dog (does a dog count as an extra?). I’m happy to note that we did not run over Charlize’s dog; I don’t need my 5 minutes of fame through that type of infamy. I did run over a cable during the first run-through. After that, one of the ADs told us to ride on the other side of the path.
We got paid $10 more than the standard extras because we were technical extras due to our specialized skill. And I have to say that they got their $10 worth; it’s not easy riding past Charlize, Jose, a camera guy, and the guy that was holding up the big white reflective board, especially when you have to look like nothing in particular is going on.
To be honest, I’m more excited that “Little Joe” will be in the movie than the fact that I might be recognizable as the second blur of a cyclist rides by.
If that scene doesn’t make it, I may still be in the movie because we also shot a scene at the Portland airport. That was even more interesting. Rather than rope everything off and create a big disturbance to real travelers, we shot the scene as unobtrusively as you can get. Other than the guy with the steady cam and the actors and us extras endlessly walking the same circuitous path (past the actors, out of the camera view, turn around, up the escalator, down the escalator, back into position to wait for the next scene, repeat…), you would have no clue a film was being shot.
The best part was rather than rope off a section to film (to keep the random passersby, who aren’t getting paid, away from the scene), the ADs were dressed as sky cabs and wrangled travelers away from the camera.
So, next year’s academy award winning film, The Burning Plain, will hopefully showcase the talent of our Fellowship. Sorry, Cap, we missed you. We’ll still talk to you when we’re famous; maybe we’ll even let you ride with us!
I might just have to say w00t, but now it seems cheapened. Not only did w00t make it to Webster’s online dictionary, but w00t was awarded Word of the Year for 2007 by Merriam-Webster readers.
All my technology students will toss out a big huzzah for making lexical history, and it’s true; they did make lexical history because w00t is l33t-speak, an online (bastardized) variant of the English language that creates all types of English soup with letters, numbers, and acronyms. Unlike my students, I can’t help but think that this marks the beginning of the end of Western civilization as we know it.
Now that w00t got its foot in the Dictionary’s door, what will be next? pwnd: where the p is supposed to be an ‘o’ and the ‘e’ is dropped? lol: the bane of email banalities? Will the number 2 now be a preposition? Has Boyz II Men been justified after all these years? Can we drop the ‘b,’ ‘e,’ ‘a,’ and silent ‘e’ from because (after, of course, we swap the z with an s)? Didn’t anyone read 1984? This is DoublePlusUnGood!
So, why in the world, does Merriam-Webster choose to forgo years of grammar instruction and embrace the new lazy-speak? Don’t they have rules against that, such as words must contain at least 1 vowel, or that words must be spelled with letters (and not numbers)? Aparently not. I looked into it, and low and behold, they don’t consider themselves gatekeepers of the English language but more like reporters of the English language as it is, warts and all. I hate to admit it; Merriam-Webster is part of the “it is what it is” crowd–for shame! I even tried going to the Oxford English Dictionary, hoping that the Brittish would at least have a dictionary that has some standards, but they are the same:
The Oxford English Dictionary is not an arbiter of proper usage, despite its widespread reputation to the contrary. The Dictionary is intended to be descriptive, not prescriptive. In other words, its content should be viewed as an objective reflection of English language usage, not a subjective collection of usage ‘dos’ and ‘don’ts’. However, it does include information on which usages are, or have been, popularly regarded as ‘incorrect’. The Dictionary aims to cover the full spectrum of English language usage, from formal to slang, as it has evolved over time.
So, who are the gatekeepers? I guess there are no official gatekeepers. It’s not in the Constitution; there’s no fourth branch. We aren’t like the French, with their Academie Francaise (pardon the lack of accents); they actually have had official gatekeepers since the Cardinal Richelieu (they were mostly writers and elite members of society). That would never fly here in the US; we’re too populist for that. Without any official board or government position, the gatekeepers are, by default, the teachers, editors, publishers, and any stickler, wherever he or she may be. I’ll call it the “club:” the gatekeeper club. Hey, maybe even Microsoft Grammar check can join in the club.
With all that being said, I must make a disclaimer: my technology students will be the first to point out that even I occasionally utter the famous w00t expression in class (and even in front of my own kids). Before I explain myself, let me at least point out that it’s one thing to say a word, and it’s quite another to add it to a dictionary.
Now, on to my explanation. I only said w00t on rare occasions. It was fun to see my students’ reaction, kind of like an inside joke. Part of that fun was using the expression in public. It would be so foreign to most people my age or older that saying it would completely slip under their radar while getting picked up by some net-savvy youth. But now that the word has been picked up by the Webster Dictionary, I feel that I must stop using the word. Instead of it being an inside joke, it looks more like I’m pandering to the youth by using the 2007 word of the year.
I’ve been pwnd—by Merriam-Webster, no less.