The Last Days of France
It is nearing the final hours of the trip. It is night, we are again in Paris. All of us are having a picnic by the channel. The police cleared us out of the neighboring park at closing time. Fillip plays guitar and sings as one song flows into another. Across the river, a group of police watch as another officer says something, wildly gesturing with her arms.
The Kabaret at Nogent-le-Rotou is over. The films were great. I appeared in five or six of them. Sometimes as an extra, sometimes in a more substantial role. One of the Austrians taught me how he smoked a cigarette with his asshole, a lesson I am bound to take value from in some way.
There were countless moments that I meant to preserve in writing in the last few days, but many of them never made it to the page. Last night, after the screening, we made party. A French DJ played Britney Spears and I was disappointed but still sang lyrics by another obnoxious pop star to the beat and claimed to be Australian. I asked a teenage girl from the town if it was true that in France, there was always a half moon. When she said they had full moons too, I denied it and claimed to be from Manchester. We ate greasy ham and cheese grilled sandwiches with the cheese on the outside and wrapped in tin foil and drank beers like Leffe, 1664, and Heineken.
I sit at a bar getting late-night food to bring back to the party with a woman from Corsica who reminds me of the French woman from Lost. She is the resident FXC person. Her car is full of low grade explosives, fake blood, and accelerants. She talks to my camera as we wait, talking about proclaiming herself as a "Video Terrorist" after being stopped by a police officer for setting fire to a car outside a grocery.
The day before I am exhausted from once again climbing up to a castle (every freaking town we go to has a castle in it) near where we would film. I am acting as DP, and I think most of the shots look great. Pascal puts makeup on me and everyone else. Flour and ash from a burnt cork. In black and white, we look like zombies. Sam keeps telling us not to say the zed word. I give Sam a little wish fulfillment by asking for multiple takes and angles during a sex scene between him (as a dead man) and Pascal. Nothing much else happens. In the morning, Sam and I had filmed a bit for his piece.
The day before that is officially the first day of the Kabaret. The theme is
"If only I had known," but it is ignored by most. In the afternoon I go with Joe up to the top of some hills to wait in the rain. I swear, it just randomly starts raining in France, and always when you are in the middle of nowhere with sensitive electronic recording equipment. As I write this, what appears to be a transvestite goth kid walks by, momentarily breaking my attention.
We arrive in Nogent-le-Rotrou by train two days previous to the Kabaret. We are one day earlier than everyone else. We were due to stay at the apartment in Paris for one more night, but at about 2:30, Samuel bursts in and says he got a call from Karim and we need to be out by 3:00, as the apartment owner was coming home. Every hotel and hostel in Paris is booked because of a music festival coming up. So we run with all our baggage to catch the last train to Nogent. The hotels in Nogent are cheap, only 45 euros for the three of us. Cheaper than our hostel was. We sleep, the next day everyone else arrived and we had dinner on the eve of the Kabaret.
And so this ends. In a few hours I will go to sleep. A few hours after that, we will wake up, take the Metro to the train station, retrieved our luggage that we stowed in secured lockers, and take the train to the airport. Paris to Newark, Newark to Madison. Sam and I grab our bags and get ready to leave the group of people we have spent the last two weeks with. We say our goodbyes to everyone. Abel and Hamid practically molest Sam in their goodbye, and we leave them still gathered by the channel. We get about half a block away and they are still yelling goodbye to us, I stop, turn around, and blow a big kiss out to them. We keep walking until they disappear from sight. A fat lady walks past us, and I shit you not, she begins to sing.
The Kabaret at Nogent-le-Rotou is over. The films were great. I appeared in five or six of them. Sometimes as an extra, sometimes in a more substantial role. One of the Austrians taught me how he smoked a cigarette with his asshole, a lesson I am bound to take value from in some way.
There were countless moments that I meant to preserve in writing in the last few days, but many of them never made it to the page. Last night, after the screening, we made party. A French DJ played Britney Spears and I was disappointed but still sang lyrics by another obnoxious pop star to the beat and claimed to be Australian. I asked a teenage girl from the town if it was true that in France, there was always a half moon. When she said they had full moons too, I denied it and claimed to be from Manchester. We ate greasy ham and cheese grilled sandwiches with the cheese on the outside and wrapped in tin foil and drank beers like Leffe, 1664, and Heineken.
I sit at a bar getting late-night food to bring back to the party with a woman from Corsica who reminds me of the French woman from Lost. She is the resident FXC person. Her car is full of low grade explosives, fake blood, and accelerants. She talks to my camera as we wait, talking about proclaiming herself as a "Video Terrorist" after being stopped by a police officer for setting fire to a car outside a grocery.
The day before I am exhausted from once again climbing up to a castle (every freaking town we go to has a castle in it) near where we would film. I am acting as DP, and I think most of the shots look great. Pascal puts makeup on me and everyone else. Flour and ash from a burnt cork. In black and white, we look like zombies. Sam keeps telling us not to say the zed word. I give Sam a little wish fulfillment by asking for multiple takes and angles during a sex scene between him (as a dead man) and Pascal. Nothing much else happens. In the morning, Sam and I had filmed a bit for his piece.
The day before that is officially the first day of the Kabaret. The theme is
"If only I had known," but it is ignored by most. In the afternoon I go with Joe up to the top of some hills to wait in the rain. I swear, it just randomly starts raining in France, and always when you are in the middle of nowhere with sensitive electronic recording equipment. As I write this, what appears to be a transvestite goth kid walks by, momentarily breaking my attention.
We arrive in Nogent-le-Rotrou by train two days previous to the Kabaret. We are one day earlier than everyone else. We were due to stay at the apartment in Paris for one more night, but at about 2:30, Samuel bursts in and says he got a call from Karim and we need to be out by 3:00, as the apartment owner was coming home. Every hotel and hostel in Paris is booked because of a music festival coming up. So we run with all our baggage to catch the last train to Nogent. The hotels in Nogent are cheap, only 45 euros for the three of us. Cheaper than our hostel was. We sleep, the next day everyone else arrived and we had dinner on the eve of the Kabaret.
And so this ends. In a few hours I will go to sleep. A few hours after that, we will wake up, take the Metro to the train station, retrieved our luggage that we stowed in secured lockers, and take the train to the airport. Paris to Newark, Newark to Madison. Sam and I grab our bags and get ready to leave the group of people we have spent the last two weeks with. We say our goodbyes to everyone. Abel and Hamid practically molest Sam in their goodbye, and we leave them still gathered by the channel. We get about half a block away and they are still yelling goodbye to us, I stop, turn around, and blow a big kiss out to them. We keep walking until they disappear from sight. A fat lady walks past us, and I shit you not, she begins to sing.
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