Friday. Big Friday. Wonderful Friday. The best of Fridays, they’re saying this. They’re saying it’s the best Friday they’ve ever seen. They say, they’ve never seen Fridays so beautiful. It’s true, it’s true… Tuesdays not so good. Never a fan of Tuesday. Tuesday… no one says, okay, not such a good day, they blame it on Monday… what’s wrong with our country?
Yesterday was that great day—when “Time Waits For No One” premiered, screened for a paying audience for the first time—and now, I am “on break.” In most other jobs this would mean I was on break, but with Da Boss, I am merely “on break”—in other words, I got the weekend off and now it’s back to finishing the editing of the feature SATUR-19. “Time Waits For No One” may have been the most time intensive piece, and certainly the longest, but there’s an enormous amount of stitching and clean-up work to get done. Hardly any of the movie has been color-graded, and there are still chunks of the premiered shorts—“One Day in New York City, Summer 2022,” “The Couch,” “Whenever I Died I Died 1,000 Times,” and “Time Waits For No One”—that need to be revised or scrapped altogether.
Scrapped altogether? “That’s a typo.” Why is Da Boss writing my articles for me? “I thought you could use the break.” Oh, so I’m on break now? “No… uh… here, you do it. You can do it now.” Oh no please be my guest. “Monica, I have to eat dinner and get ready for tomorrow. Please. Continue your writing.” I showed him my spur claw and that was enough—but I did get back to it. I mean this. The article I’m writing. My name is Monica Quibbits and I’m a professional film editor.
I went to the movies on Saturday while I was “on break.” I turned my phone off so Da Boss couldn’t reach me. I snuck into the theater in someone’s Birkin and caught a double feature of Saturday Night (horrible) and The Apprentice (damn good). Later on, I talked with Da Boss about Oliver Stone’s W., similarly released weeks before a presidential election featuring the subject. Stone covered George W. Bush’s time in office, while The Apprentice is merely Donald Trump’s rise to real estate fame. Politics are intimated, but director Ali Abbasi keeps it to tucked in the 1970s and 1980s. Sebastian Stan as Trump and Jeremy Strong as Roy Cohn are extraordinary—both deserve Oscars. I could go on but remember, I am “on break.”
I wasn’t going to mention it, but we’ve passed the finish line, and I can admit the night before the screening, the night before Big Friday, I accidentally misaligned all the files in the project. I didn’t tell Da Boss, and after a couple hours of panicking, I took a look at the rough mix—and it got better. I had to fix some titles that were in the wrong place, but the movie had made itself infinitely better. I can’t take credit for it, it wasn’t my idea or intention to make a mistake, but I’m glad I did. Da Boss was too—I’ll make sure I’m watching him as he reads this for the first time. But I’ll be carrying a gun.
—Follow Monica Quibbits on Twitter: @MonicaQuibbits