Naked in Dangerous Places - Cash Peters [37]
This, I hear myself saying, each word punctuated by infinity, is amazing.
To think, there are Buddhists the world over who at this very moment are closeted away in hilltop sanctuaries; maybe they've been there for their entire adult lives, meditating in solitary silence in an effort to glimpse a fraction, a tiny speck of the nirvana I'm experiencing right now, when really, honestly, they're wasting their energy. The answers they've been searching for were right there waiting for them from day one. All they needed this whole time, it turns out, was drugs.
Lots and lots of lovely drugs.
Who knew?
1 I'm given duplicates of every outfit, which I keep in my hotel room just in case, although for the sake of continuity it's considered best that I wear the same set of clothes for the whole show, however smelly, filthy, smeared, baggy, crumpled, creased, stained, or mutilated they might become.
2 TV talk. Postproduction is a period of controlled panic that takes place at the office after you're done filming a show. It includes editing, sound, voice-overs, digital effects, music, color correction, and so on. This is when you discover that half the stuff you shot doesn't make sense or won't fit together in an even semicoherent way, and as a result you'll be lucky to end up with even ten minutes of usable material to send to the network. When that happens, the director will blame the cameraman, the cameraman will blame the editor, the editor will blame the director and the cameraman, and, when still nobody can decide why the show isn't working, everyone will blame the host, who will run, crying, to the executive producer, who traditionally resolves the matter by firing everyone and bringing in a whole new bunch of people, who will go on to screw up the show too, but in different and previously unimagined ways. It seems like a very odd system, and not how I'd do things personally, but it works.
)3 My own book refuting this—Er… No He Not; It's All Made Up—will be available in trade paperback next spring.
7
Solvang
You know what a pilot show is, right? We're talking a low-budget dry run of a series idea. A tease, a presentation. Taking it out for a spin to see if it flies.
As Fat Kid promised, ours was shot in the scenic town of Solvang, north of Santa Barbara, deep in California wine country. Fascinating place. Founded around 1911 by a bunch of sour-faced schoolteachers—you should see the photos!—who left Denmark to build a new life in America, but then, when they got here and saw what America was actually like, changed their minds. “Screw that,” they cried, “let's build another Denmark instead.” So that's what they did, laying cobbled squares reminiscent of the ones they'd left behind, and surrounding them with cute windmills, half-timbered gingerbread houses, and tea shops that are still standing today, many of them owned and run by descendants of those original settlers, who, despite being several generations along, still find themselves stuck with Danish names, such as Lars and Bent.
Anyway, for three days I romped carefreely around town with a film crew of six people—frantic, buzzing electrons to my nucleus—pretending to be lost (first essential element of the concept), shuffling from square to museum, museum to café, café to windmill, chatting with pastry-shop owners and smorgasbord restaurant waitresses, wangling free food off them wherever possible (second essential element), and ultimately finding a local baker to offer me a bed for the night (third essential element). And I carried it off very successfully,