Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Thursday I woke up from a film student’s nightmare – I was on the set of my project I’m shooting next semester. None of my initial crew showed up, only production assistants that had never worked on a shoot before. My actress quit mid-shoot, so I had to recast. Five hours had passed and we still hadn’t got a shot off. The lighting equipment was never picked up. Lunch was not organized, so I had to do that while directing the shoot. I couldn’t keep control of the set because people kept changing the subject and joking around. At the end I realized we weren’t actually filming a scene from my script, it was an older version of the script! I told everyone to go home and I will contact them once I organized myself. All in all this is a perfect example of not doing ANY pre-production…again a “film student’s nightmare.”

Entertainment Tonight

When I woke up I was already flustered. Part of me wanted to crawl on the couch and stay in for the day. I went to meet an old boss of mine, Tim McKay, at his studio for lunch. As I drove up, he asked if I wanted to work for Entertainment Television. Sam Griffin, Tim’s partner in the production company, was DP for Entertainment Tonight covering the Edwards court case….more importantly the shots of the mistress and love child. I yelled out, “YEAH,” and we drove to the courthouse. I was a production assistant, and we sat for hours waiting for them to leave the courthouse.

My view of the courthouse when everything went down.

Car Accident

After leaving my “duties” as production assistant…if I told you what I was doing, I would have to kill you…I drove on I-40 to go home. It was rush hour traffic and very “stop-go.” I noticed this and began to slow down, thankfully because we all stopped at one point. This was when the driver behind me failed to stop, and ran into my car from behind, which pushed me into the car in front of me, and so forth – a 5 car accident! We were all in the left lane so we pulled onto the shoulder and got as far over as we could. Ironically, a UNC Basketball player yelled to me to move my car more because it was still in the street. My response? “Go Tar Heels!!” He waved.

The driver turned out to be an 18-year old high school grad on the way to the Coldplay concert with his buddies, who actually admitted to distracting him! I looked at his friend and said “yep, he won’t let you forget that!” I left the accident with definite whip-lash symptoms. I could barely sleep because it hurt to not only move my neck but my whole body! I was surprised at how much I was hurting. I always see the grandmas with the neck braces, not me!

I went to the doctor and they are treating me for whip-lash. I’m still not better. I was unable to work for a few days on my script or email because I could not simply keep my head up long enough to work on a computer! I felt so out of it and so bummed. My mom was literally going to trade-in her car the next day. Yes, I was in her car – her really nice company car! In fact, the boy who hit me told me he was wondering what my license plate “SLEDDOGG” meant as he was rear-ending me. Now we have to go through insurance to get both ends fixed, which will take a few months. It’s been almost a week, and the accident report hasn’t even been released yet! The Durham Police Department is still waiting for supervisor approval. I hope to get it today or tomorrow morning, so we can get this process moving with the many insurance companies involved in this 5-car accident.

The guy who hit me and all his buddies who were in the car. He was really nice. If I had to get into a car accident with anyone, I’m glad it was him 🙂

The row of cars in front of us. All of us are waiting for the police to let us go.

So there you have it! The story of my ridiculous Thursday. I leave LA on a short summer break, only to get in a car accident in Raleigh, NC! Ridiculous!