A good year—not just a bad Ridley Scott movie from 2006. Unlike the 87-year-old British director, I’m not “lazy” nor “impatient” nor am I “rushing to get things done.” I know I have plenty of time to spend working on whatever I please, whereas my human superiors—such as Da Boss—have a much shorter span of time to work with. They’ve got to rush no matter how well they’ve prepared; there are only 24 hours in a day, and no human being has ever lived as long as me. It’s in the four digits. Maybe five. You really don’t want to know, it would hurt you and possibly “make the strings in your brain break” as Borat explained of his girlfriend in 2020; he may have been making a joke, but I’m not—I don’t want you to die from exposure to my blinding intelligence.
Divide? Exclusion? Subtract? Difference? These are the four options we are faced with every day… there are dozens more, I just like those ones the most. Hard Mix is ugly but a solid last resort. Overlay is for cowards, Screen is for sophisticates, Color Dodge is for experts. I’m learning on the go even as I finish editing the movie. It’s assembled now, 80 minutes; now it’s just a matter of trimming ends with dissolves on the image and sound tracks. It’s all very tedious but unfortunately necessary work—it’s as obvious when it’s wrong as it is hard to point out to the layperson. A bad sound mix can’t be explained in less than five minutes, if that, but it immediately presents problems (again, Altman, McCabe & Mrs. Miller; also Christopher Nolan’s dialogue in his later films, especially Tenet).
There’s also the business of creating a “reference preview mix” for an interested journalist who interviewed Da Boss for a promotional piece. Quite nice, no? Da Boss doesn’t think so: “Yes, it is quite nice of him, but it totally fucks me because I wasn’t planning on showing this to anyone until the premiere. Whatever. Just make a reference mix of whatever we have up and I’ll tell him it’s not even finished. It’s, uh, missing a layer. No, three layers. Five. I’ll tell him it’s ‘not a scaffolding file,’ which may or may not be true, but—” I interrupted him and confirmed that it was a scaffolding file. “Whatever, just make an SD grade bounce or mix or WHATEVER and I’ll send it to him… the first 10 minutes are finished so it doesn’t matter anyway.”
I reminded him not to yell at me by spur-clawing him in the face and chest and thighs. Da Boss usually has my claw marks on him, and it usually gets him into trouble. “Were you attacked?” “Do you have a girlfriend?” “Why is your leg bleeding?” And I know that whenever he’s asked and embarrassed in public, he remembers me and my sage advice. This is fact, and it’s fact because I say it’s fact. I’m working 16 hour days in here now and I don’t have much to look forward to. The bus is coming: next week you’ll read of my celebrations, my vexations, my fluids I’ve collected. Eww. Forget the last part. Not talking about my precious bodily fluids in print. But, you know, my DM’s are open; also never mind on that seeing as my husband and his ASSHOLE cousin Bennington are on Twitter as well, and they’ll see any lascivious interaction between us and indeed they may be reading this now. Hi honey. Hi Benny. This is a satirical, fictional article. I’m still helping John Boehner escape from Guantanamo Bay. I’ll be home soon!!! Later.
—Follow Monica Quibbits on Twitter: @MonicaQuibbits