REFUSING TO GROW OLD GRACEFULLY

I am going to tell you a secret.  I USE BOTOX.  Yep I do.  And I love it.

I haven't scowled for two years now.  And that is saying something.

I have the sort of face that falls into a scowl when I am deep in thought, concentrating, or not thinking at all. My face in repose is a scowl.  This is not a good thing. It leads people to believing I'm a miserable person. It intimidates some and pisses off others.  When my daughter was little she'd ask me if I was having a bad day when I wasn't and back then I never realized it was because I was scowling almost all of the time.  I didn't realize it until the day it almost lead to me getting fired from a show.  That's when I decided that botox was necessary.   For job security.

So I tell myself that the main reason I get botox is because I don't want people to think I am angry when I am not.  But the side benefit of having the vertical crease between my brows, which was getting deeper every day, virtually disappear and having no horizontal lines in my forehead and probably never will is pretty sweet I have to say.  And while I am at it, I also get a couple of shots under my jawbone on either side of my chin that pulls the muscles back slightly to minimize the creases that run down either side of my mouth. I look much more refreshed and relaxed.

It's fabulous and worth every penny.

Now if I could just find a way to get rid of the creases on my chest from lying on my side at night.  And the horrid crepe papery skin that has suddenly made an appearance in the same area.  That would be the same crepe-y look that I noted, with some shock, on my dear aunty one day about ten years back thinking how terribly unattractive it was.  And now I have it.   If there's any remedy for it other than going under the knife, I'm all ears.  There's a comment section below;  I told you my secret, now you tell me yours if you have one that works.

Recently one of my daughters told me that I needed to stop dying my hair and 'grow old gracefully'.  I unsuccessfully tried to scowl at her while asking her if she was out of her mind.   Why would I want to look as old and tired out as I feel most of the time?  Because if I let my hair go natural it would be half mousy brown and half silvery grey and that is not a youthful look.  Forget youthful, it's not even a middle-aged look.  It's bad enough that the greys are coming in with the same shape and density as a strand of brillo pad and no amount of dye or bleach can fix that.  NO!!!  I will do all I can to hang onto some semblance of beauty for as long as I can and if that means I have to dye my hair and pluck out the really bad brillo pad ones for the rest of my livelong days, then so be it.

And I will continue to get botox injections until I die.

CONTINUITY - WHAT HAPPENED?

Here is a music video featuring the young singer, Holly Kay, who has a role in Flicka 3 (or Flicka - Country Pride) as the singer at the Equestrian Event kick-off party, along with clips from the movie.




Also, here is a scene from Flicka - Country Pride where Kelly, the main character, meets Flicka for the first time.



The movie is out today on DVD and BluRay!

Now, just a note; if you have a keen eye you may have noticed that the horse is wearing a halter when she exits the trailer and when Kelly reaches out to her. But when Flicka rears up, there is no halter. This is what is known as a continuity error (or gaffe on some websites that love to track these things). Part of my role on set is to make sure errors such as this one don't occur. However, sometimes it is out of my hands, as in this case. The horse wrangler did not want Flicka wearing her halter for her rear up for safety reasons, but she needed to be wearing it before and after for handling reasons. So what the viewer may perceive as an error or oversight was a deliberate choice for safety reasons.

Many times continuity is sacrificed for other more important reasons. And sometimes it is sacrificed because the director, once I point the issue out to him, isn't concerned as he thinks no one will notice, and/or he loved the performance so we keep it as it is. Often it is a time issue - we just have too much to shoot that day and there is no time for another take no matter how much I plead. Sometimes it appears there was a continuity error when, in fact, the scene may have been shot in perfect continuity but the editor has trimmed a portion of the scene which then creates a continuity issue. For example, if an actor comes into the room with a sweater on, takes it off and then proceeds with the action; the part where she takes the sweater off is trimmed to keep the scene 'tight' (keep the pace of the scene and/or get rid of boring superfluous action) and then when we cut back to her - no sweater and it looks like we forgot she should have been wearing one.

Sometimes the error is caught in the first take and rectified. In that case I always make a note in my paperwork saying something to the effect of; "Please don't use take 1, he wasn't wearing his sunglasses." But then the editor will use that take anyway. I actually had this happen to me, with sunglasses, on a movie. Then, watching it months later, I immediately saw the error and jumped up off of the couch in horror. I couldn't remember if I had made a mistake or if it was for a reason I just stated so I ran to the garage where I kept binders of all of my show notes and found the one for the movie and quickly located the scene with my notes. There it was in CAPITAL letters and starred: ***DO NOT USE TAKE 1*** missing sunglasses!!!. Yet they used it. I have no idea why. Perhaps the other takes were unusable for technical reasons or perhaps they didn't read my note and didn't notice. Either way, it makes me look bad and drives me around the bend.

Sunglasses ON

So, very often it is not that the script supervisor wasn't paying attention, it is that she was overruled, or it was lost in an edit, or the editor can't be bothered to read the notes (the first time I had an editor say to me "Oh I never bother reading your notes", I was SO insulted. It is a LOT of work to keep up with the notes. It still bothers me to hear that). So keep that in mind the next time you see an error and are ready to blame the scripty.