For the (pav)love of god...

I know you're all dying to find out how the pavlova turned out. Or, perhaps, I didn't really make a big enough deal out of my boss attempting to make one. You see, Georgie is good at many things... at least that's how she tells it. In her own words, "I'm good at stuff." But, like many fictional superheroes-1, she has a weakness. It seems that sugar and egg whites are her kryptonite. And it is in combining the two, to create the meringue base for a traditional Australian dessert, that she faces her greatest challenge. Having attempted, and failed, many times... Georgie turned to Pavlova Magic, a pre-mixed powder that promises to make the pavlova baking process foolproof. For those of you who need reminding of what a pavlova is *supposed* to look like, take note:



This is Georgie's pavlova:



So much for Magic. But, if there's one thing Masterchef has taught us it is that the important thing is taste. Sadly... this tasted exactly how it looked. The berries were great. The base was an over-cooked pancake of a meringue... and referring to it as a meringue almost seems like blasphemy. I'm not sure what Pavolva god I would be reviling, but that is how it feels.

Despite the Pavlova debacle, or perhaps because of it, we had wonderful night. Meat pies, pizza shapes, a lot of wine... Australian, of course... and a shit load of laughter. Couldn't think of a better way to spend a Sunday evening, 10 thousand miles from home...

xx

-1 Two things here...
1) As opposed to REAL superhereos?
2) My boss isn't *actually* a superhero... clearly.

Oh, the humidity!

I shouldn't really complain about the weather. It's warm and sunny... better than what most of you are experiencing, I'm sure. But the humidity is insane... it feels like you could literally swim through the air. No point in toweling off after a shower in Michigan!

Meanwhile, my boss has a freezer full of pies. Wow... as a stand alone sentence, that just sounds weird. But, you may recall from previous posts, my boss is Australian. So, in context, it makes a little more sense... but still not completely unweird. What's that, Spell Check? "Unweird" is not a word? Screw you, it should be. They are meat pies, obviously. Yesterday she ordered an overnight delivery of Pizza Shapes and Pavlova Magic. It cost her $40. Most of that was shipping. Seriously... ONE pack of shapes and tiny little egg of cake mix. Yikes. It seems we're having a mini Australia party on the weekend or, as Georgie puts it, "Pies, Pizza Shapes, pav and pinot by the pool"... I love my boss :)

I also love my fellow PA, TonyLee... who left this on my desk at work this morning:



Now I don't have to pretend that all the cast presents that end up on my desk are for me :)

In other news, jet lag is a bitch. I've never really experienced it before so I have often regarded people who complain as sulky whingers who are just a little tired and should suck it up. My bad. Turns out the human body can get majorly confused if you keep changing it's sleeping patterns. Makes sense: I left Melbourne at 7am, Wednesday. I arrived in LA 17 hours later... at 7am, Wednesday. I hardly slept on the two flights it took to get there and had to wait 4 hours before boarding my flight to Detroit. I promptly fell asleep during the safety demonstration only to be woken up an hour later by being bashed in the elbow with the drinks cart (pretty sure they did it deliberately because I fell asleep during the safety demonstration). Eventually I arrived in Detroit (3 hours ahead of LA) where it was 7PM, the same day that I had left Melbourne... where it was 9am tomorrow.

Then I got up at 6am to go to work for 12 hours. Same today. Fun times.

And I have "I Go To Sleep" in my head... which, when this tired, feels somewhat akin to hearing the sound of running water when you need to go to the bathroom.

xx

A slight deviation from the plan...

So, I didn't so much throw myself at a movie star as I did accidentally slam a door in one's face. Oops.

Same result, I guess... blog fodder.

Frankly, my dear, I'll never be hungry again.

And now we resume our regular programming...

As some of you know, I had a short break away from Detroit over the last week and a half but now I am back and ready to blog...

Sadly, my brief sojourn provided little in the way of celebrity news... the best I can do is random sightings of Natalie Bassingthwaite and Stephanie MacIntosh. See, it was for exactly this reason that I wrote the mozzie bite post... conditioning. Try not to get your hopes up when I post a new blog... I have an intense phobia of disappointing people. And now because of that, I have just racked my brain and come up with something else... I almost saw Ashton Kutcher and I think I saw Cobie Smulders. Ok, so I'm grasping at straws with Kutcher... almost seeing someone isn't really a thing. But, I'm pretty sure the chick who sat beside me at LAX for a decent 3 mintues was Cobie Smulders. Perhaps, it was just wishful thinking. And I know half of you are thinking "who the hell is Cobie Smulders?" (and probably to a lesser degree, "what kind of NAME is Cobie Smulders?")... shame on you all. Get Googling. You know who she is... probably just not by name. And fair enough... I mean, what kind of a name is Cobie Smulders?

Speaking of in flight entertainment (shh... just humour me, I'm tired)... I watched a hell of a lot of movies today. Here is my run down...

Leap Year - wait til you stumble across it on TV, but then maybe watch it... it's cute...
The Rebound - see above. Potentially DVD if there's nothing else. Or purely for CZJ... :D
The Runaways - I liked it. But, I was always going to... it's about Joan Jett for frick's sake.
The Blind Side - this was my "I want to fall asleep so I'll put on something I've already seen" movie. Who was I kidding? I doubt there is even one person who doesn't struggle to take their eyes off Sandra Bullock. Except maybe Jesse James. Wanker.
Gone With The Wind - yes, long flight. Love this film. And it struck me that while there are more famous quotes that are, well, more famous... the following is possibly one of the best lines I've ever heard... clearly didn't have the same affect on me whilst watching this film in my pre-adolescent years ;)

"No, I don't think I will kiss you, although you need kissing, badly. That's what's wrong with you. You should be kissed and often, and by someone who knows how." - Rhett Butler.

Now who doesn't want to be able to pull off a line like that?

Meanwhile... V Australia, great airline. Highly recommended. And if you want to transport a ridiculous amount of chocolate biscuits to the US, Customs are surprisingly okay with it.

Anyway... this has taken the last remaining ounces of energy I had. Time for bed. But, I would just quickly like to take this opportunity to thank everyone that offered and provided support, in so many different ways, to myself and my friends over this last week. However you did it, it was perfect and greatly appreciated.

I will endeavour to make up for lost time at work tomorrow and perhaps throw myself at a movie star for some new material... should be fun.

Jess

xx

"Now I don't hardly know her... but I think I could love her"

And the killer is...

Feeling a little homesick today. Lots of office cuddles and Vegemite on toast for breakie helped some :) Actually, just using the term "breakie" is good... and having it catch on with other people in the department is delightful. My boss is an Aussie (possibly explains why the hell there is Vegemite in the office kitchen), as is one of the make up artists, so I'm hearing the comforting sounds of home quite often. It's a little less comforting, though, when people ask if I'm from New Zealand. Sadly, it happens more often than you would think. No offense, Kiwis.

I read the script last night. Yes, I caved. I *had* wanted to actually wait and see the movie, so I could be surprised. But, I kept catching glimpses of dialogue or character names in the final few pages whilst printing and counting scripts constantly. So... I figured that the only way to NOT ruin the whole thing for myself was to READ the whole thing for myself, start to finish, before I accidentally read the ending or inadvertently discovered who dies and whodunnit. So, now I know who dies and whodunnit... and I ain't telling any of you. :p It frustrates me that I can't watch the film the way the rest of you will be able to, but at least I got the story in the right order... and I know what most of the cast and locations look like... so, it was a little makeshift movie in my head. And it was good. There have already been more rewrites today, so who knows what has changed... but the feel of the script at the moment is classic Scream, for the fans.

:) Good times. Well... creepy, murderous, slasher-y times... but you know what I mean...

J
xx

My thoughts are free to go anywhere, but it's surprising how often they head in your direction. ~Anon.

Meanwhile, it's pretty fricken' warm here. Hit 90 yesterday and today. Roughly translated, in Australian, that means low 30s. Yes, I am deliberately mentioning this because the majority of you reading this (if not all of you) are in Melbourne... where I am told it has been something beyond cold lately. Right now it's 10:45pm and according to my trusty pal, The Weather Channel, it is 27 degress but feels like 29. And I reckon if The Weather Channel were to take it's readings from my bedroom, it would be telling me that's it's actually 30plusbloodyhellhowamIgoingtosleep? degrees in here.

And sleep is something that I was rather looking forward to. It actually seemed like we were going to get out of work early tonight (if you are one of the people to whom I constantly mention my long hours, go ahead and marvel at the thought)... the Production department had been engaged in a collective thumb-twiddle for a couple of hours this evening, awaiting wrap to be called for the day so we could go home. I was certainly ready... almost killing Rory Culkin really takes it out of you. As does excessive thumb-twiddling, it turns out. So, anyway... there we were, mid-twiddle, hearts swelling with the promise of an early night, never expecting our dreams to be shattered into a million pieces... okay, I'm being a little dramatic. We actually left the office at 9:30, so not really that bad at all. The annoying thing of it was that we received "new pages" at 8 o'clock (right about the time we should have been going home early)... meaning (more) revisions had been made to the script (this having already happened once today) and they needed to be printed, counted, stuffed into envelopes and delivered to the cast. I wonder whose awesome job that is, you ask? It is indeed mine. No sarcasm here, by the way... it *is* an awesome job. Wanna know why? Because when Hayden Panettiere giggles at something you say the room fills with music and sunshine and you are overwhelmed with the desire to buy every person you've ever met a puppy... and many, many cupcakes. Okay, possibly being dramatic again. She's cute, is all I'm sayin'. :)

Anyway, that was my day. How was yours?

xx

I just can't get over how exciting life has become since joining "the biz"... I mean today, for example, Macaulay Culkin's little brother gave me 28 cents... I'm not sure how it could possibly get any better. Actually, I'm pretty sure it was a tip... I am an excellent chauffeur. It could have been more but I did almost run through a red light (and over numerous pedestrians) while he was in the car. My bad.

AND I just spoke to Lynn McRee on the phone... better known as "Maureen Prescott". Thrilling.

I don't really have all that much to say today... except I want to complain about my countless mozzie bites (okay, that's incorrect... there are 7) and I want to condition you all to not expect every update to contain namedropping and movie stuff.

I am very itchy.

That is all.

J

PS. If you want Americans to laugh at you, say "mozzie" a lot.

Morning all!

Well, it's actually the middle of the night for most of you... but you will probably get this in morning... so I'll shut up about that.

So, it's been brought to my attention that (despite all my ramblings in the first post) some of you were actually NOT aware of my new job. Not sure how that happened. And it's also become clear that some people don't stalk my Facebook page (what's with that?) and were unaware of this blog.

Here's the recap (if you can't be bothered reading the first post):

Jess got job. Jess likes job. Office Production Assistant on Scream 4... so technically working for Wes Craven (it's okay, I let out little shrieks of delight every now and then too... go right ahead).

When I say "technically" I mean it... I don't have all that much to do with Wes. Although, I do refer to him as Wes... so I guess that is pretty cool. I have a little more to do with the other members of the production team (exec producer, Ron Schmidt, is just lovely) and the cast.

Here's a snap from the office:



Now, it's time to hit the grocery store... 4th of July weekend BBQs! Mmm... long weekend :)

Stay well,

xx

Hello lovely people!

So, here I am in the States... where I have been for the last 4 weeks, without bothering to give most of you much information at all. And then I went and got myself a job and 'not bothering' turned into 'having very little time to do much of anything'...

BUT... it seems that every so often (and more often than I like) a night like this comes along where the shoot goes late and I'm stuck in the production office with bugger all to do until they wrap. And if there's anyone who missed the part where my job is a production assistant on a film, that last part may not make sense. But, now it does. And who am I kidding... I've told anyone who will listen. But, I'm getting ahead of myself none-the-less... this blog is about ALL my adventures over here...

So, in the spirit of chronology, let's go back to Hawai'i...
(because if we can't do it literally, why not do it literary-ly? Do you see what I did there?)

Simply put, Hawai'i was beautiful. Six days of swimming, sunshine and sipping on cocktails. It certainly felt like things couldn't get much better. But then, of course, one of my best friends got married to a truly wonderful man in what can only be described as an Eden-esque setting. Cake. Icing. Check.

Any more words about that would be superfluous... check out my photos here (yes, Facebook friends, they're the same ones... these are pretty much for Mum and Dad):

http://picasaweb.google.com/100909840703717088159/Hawaii#

And from there to Detroit, Michigan. Well, not really Detroit. Like if you live in St.Kilda you don't really live IN Melbourne, as a suburb. I am living in Ann Arbor (which is a hell of a lot nicer than Detroit, as a suburb). Following? Good. Ann Arbor (or A2, as the tshirts would have you call it) is what's known as a "college town"... the University of Michigan is here and the campus spreads out all over. It's really quite beautiful. There are frat and sorority houses everywhere, too. Sometimes I feel like I'm in a movie... ( *cough*--- segue ---*cough* )

... speaking of movies (seamless... seamless, I tell ya)... as I mentioned at the beginning, I have a job on a movie. And please excuse this silly attempt to pass old information off as new. I am an Office Production Assistant (or PA) on Scream 4, which has just begun shooting right here in Michigan. The production office is in Ann Arbor, which is nice and handy, and locations are scattered around all over the place (but mostly within a 30 - 45 minute drive). Today, for example, I drove about 30 minutes out to Livonia Police Station where they were shooting scenes set at Woodsboro Police Station. Gave a little head nod to Courtney Cox and David Arquette as they walked by... and nothing says "Hey Jess, what's up?" quite like a complete lack of acknowledgment. Exciting stuff.

Anyway... got some last minute Travel Movement memos to distro to the department heads (yep, I'm speaking "film"... or possibly just "office"). Cast changes - yikes!

I'll be back... in the meantime (again, probably just Mum and Dad) check out my Ann Arbor photos here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/100909840703717088159/AnnArbor#

Goodnight!

Jess

xx