THE FORT

I walk into Fort Langley to drop off a book I borrowed and pick up another that's arrived. An Embarrassment of Mangoes was excellent, and I spent most of yesterday typing all of the recipes into my computer. I just know I am going to need Caribbean recipes one day soon!

I pick up the third book in the Twilight series. I started them last summer and never got around to books three and four. Number four is still on order. I also pick up Dan Brown's new book, The Lost Symbol. As much as I don't believe at all the theory he proposed in the book, The Da Vinci Code, I enjoyed the story and read it in a day, sitting under a tree in the park.

I sit for a while under a tree on the grounds of the Fort Langley Hall, and enjoy the weather and the scenery. This building, along with the rest of the small town, has been in dozens of films. Hope Springs (a good chick-flick), with Colin Firth (who I got to meet) - where I first talked to a PA about working in film and she told me that the person who watches for mistakes while filming is called a Script Supervisor, and also told me I wasn't too old to get into the business; the remake of John Carpenter's, The Fog - they painted the hall a lovely Wedgewood blue, and then had to paint it back to this, comparatively, ugly yellow because it is the historically correct original color ; and more MOW's that you can shake a stick at - I have worked on several that have shot here and one that used the inside of the hall for a square dancing scene in a movie called The Secrets of Comfort House.

I ran into the circus for a Front Street production on my walk into the Fort. It is the bunch I just worked with when I did makeup for a few days. They are shooting Mrs. Miracle 2. I tried to get on it as scripty (as my friend Laura who was on the last one just got hired onto The Troop for three months) but they had someone else already. I don't think I will ever get to work for them again as scripty. Not sure why but it seems that way.

JACK CALLING

I am sound asleep at 7:15 a.m. this morning when the phone rings. Last night, as I was about to turn off my bedside lamp I remembered that I had not turned my cell phone to 'silent' - something I do every night as I have been wakened too many times in the wee hours by a wrong number. I looked at it lying on top of my current book (I went and bought the hard cover of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest - I just couldn't wait for the library) and, for the first time ever, thought 'oh whatever' and didn't turn it off. So not like me.

So when the phone rings, I snap out of a dead sleep and grab it. I look at the caller ID. JACK. Jack? Who's Jack? The only Jack I can think of is a producer in LA I worked for last summer and I don't have his number saved. Then it hits me. THAT JACK! It's the radio station, Jack FM. I have their number saved so I can speed dial it for contests when I am driving into work in the morning. I quickly try to clear the morning voice from my throat and flip the phone open.

"Hello?"

"Hi there!!!! This is Larry and Willy calling from Jack FM. Who's this?"

"Sandra."

"GREAT! Just who we were hoping to get. We want to talk to you about your garage sale. Can you hold a minute?"

"Sure." I answer and, as rock music fills my ear, I clear my voice some more and shake the cobwebs from my brain.

A couple of days ago I received an email from Jack FM telling me about a promotion they're having called Larry and Willy's Neighbourhood Suck Up. The gist of it is, write and tell them about an event you're having on the weekend and they might show up in the Jack Suck Up Truck and party with you and hand out freezies to everyone. They specifically named garage sales on the list of the type of events they were looking for. I thought that was pretty timely so quickly filled out the form and, in the "description of your event" space, I just copied and pasted the ad I placed on CraigsList. I sent it off with pretty low expectations. But now, here I was on the other end of the phone, waiting to talk on the air!

Pretty soon the music ends and I hear them say, "We are looking over entries for our Larry and Willy's Neighbourhood Suck Up this weekend and we have Sandra Montgomery on the phone to talk about her garage sale... So Sandra, first of all, what do you think about GM Place now being called Rogers Arena?" I JUST read about that yesterday. I don't watch the news or read the newspapers anymore, for peace of minds sake, but every now and then a headline catches my interest on Yahoo. I had also just read about a new name proposal for Stanley Park. How great that I know these two things; I won't sound like a complete idiot. "Well, with that and the name change proposed for Stanley Park, I'm not going to know the city soon." "Oh no no," they both chorused, "that's been struck down. Stockwell Day stood up and said it's not happening." "Oh good!" I reply.

"So tell us about this huge garage sale you have planned for Saturday. We're interested in the antique sewing machine. Is it a Singer?" "Yes, I believe it is." "Of course it is, that's what they all are." They then ask me some questions about stuff I have listed and comment on my line about 'no crocheted toilet roll covers' and say they will bring a few to toss on the table. They ask me for the address and for directions. They ask if there's a landmark nearby like "under the big oak tree" and I say there's not but there will be signs on the main roads and then, because I work in the film industry and can find anywhere with the arrows they put up to locations, I am putting up pink arrows that I made to lead to the house from the main street. They jump on that. "Ohhh! Great idea!!!" I hear them both chorus. Then one asks me, "If you don't mind my asking, what do you do in film?" I tell them I am a script supervisor, but no one knows what that is. "Are you responsible for that awful Twilight script?" they ask. I say I am not but I did work at the cabin they used for the werewolves den a few weeks ago. "Oh really? Wow, that's kinda cool." I am on the air for ten minutes with them and it's so much fun! They finally say that our garage sale is in the running for a visit from them on Saturday. I tell them we are planning on making some Margaritas. "That's it then. We're coming." one says. The other says, "Great. Drunk by 9:30, passed out on the lawn by noon getting sunburned."

After I hang up I realize it was martinis we planned to make. Now I need to find a good Margarita recipe in case they show up!

WEEK TWO ON A DOOMSDAY MOVIE

So the weather decided to cooperate this week and we had nothing but glorious sunshine. Unfortunately, we spent most of the week deep in a forest where there were just spots of sunlight here and there, and the crew, when not working, would gather in those spots for some lovely warmth. So despite seeing people in shorts and tank tops on the drive home, I spent all day in my long-johns (under the jeans, of course) and a polar-fleece jacket.

But I have to say that place, where we spent the first half of the week, was enchanting. Not a half a mile from a fairly busy road, I felt like I was in the middle of nowhere. When you look over to Maple Ridge from a high point across the river, you will see snow capped rugged mountains in the distance, flat acres of blueberry and hay fields in the foreground, and a few cedar covered hills in between. It was at one of those hills where we were buried deep in the woods. I discovered, much to my surprise, that the hills are all moss-covered rock and boulders - more like what I am used to seeing on Vancouver Island. The trees sprung up between drifts of fern, their huge roots wrapped around the rock they were perched on and roping down to the soil below. Although the whole of the forest seems to climb up-hill from a distant perspective, we actually walked downhill into the grotto we shot in and were then at a cliff on one side, and a gentle incline on the other down through the fern and trees to a field about 100 yards away. The whole place was private property and I imagine that the kids growing up there must have a ball playing outside. If I had grown up there, I would have spent all my free time chasing the pools of sunshine with a good book.

The second half of the week, we shot at a cabin buried in the same woods, just on the other side of the hill. When I went inside, I noted the border painted on the wood floor and asked the art department if they went to the trouble of putting it there. It was a border of native symbols and scrolling in black and red paint. He told me that it was already there, that it was done for the Twilight movie. The cabin was used as the werewolf's hide-away. If you saw the second movie, it was the one where all the bare-chested guys went for a snack of muffins served by a girlfriend of one of them. We are using it as a hide-away for an old man who is living 'off the grid'. It is part of a compound of several acres with about 4 houses on it. This one is uninhabited but would make a great little writing retreat. I don't know if it has electricity, we have lights inside but they are most likely powered by our generator. But I'd stay there with some Coleman lanterns. There is a proper oven, although no fridge, so I imagine that it's wired for electricity and it's turned off due to no occupant. There's a wood-burning stove that would keep one toasty warm on a cold night. But I am guessing there's lots of spiders and probably mice, so maybe not so great after all.

It seems that our DOP, Kim Miles, tends to work on shows where, at some point, an eating challenge is made and he must compete. I am sketchy on the details as to how this one came about, but it was decided that a few of the guys were going to eat balut. Balut is a fertilized duck (or chicken) egg with a nearly-developed embryo inside that is boiled and eaten in the shell. They asked the craft services gal if she would be up to boiling the eggs for the challenge and she agreed, as long as the embryos were dead already. I guess they were because at the end of the day, an egg carton appeared at the village (the cart with the monitors) and inside were half a dozen large duck eggs. The challenge was on. When Kim got his egg, he hemmed and hawed and then made the mistake of looking at Bill's egg once it was bitten into. That was it. He couldn't even crack the shell. I made the mistake of looking over at Bill's egg and started to gag. I wasn't even eating it and I almost threw up! Then the 2nd AD, Lori, came along and said she would eat one. I was horrified. Turns out, she has traveled a lot to strange lands and eaten really disgusting stuff. She said the most interesting was deep fried scorpion. I can't fathom why anyone would want to even try that. Anyhow, she ate the whole thing! I couldn't even watch or I was afraid I would lose it right there.