welcome aught eight

well, tonight's the last night of a long, luxurious visit to fort worth, where i had little to worry about besides the IRS (which was enough) and writing an article or two. tomorrow morning i fly to new york to be with monica for new year's, and on the 2nd, i take the express train to boston to begin rehearsals for julius caesar. an extremely exciting way to start the new year!!

russia was a success, although the trip back had to be the worst plane ride of my life. i was sandwiched between a temper-tantrum-ing toddler and a big obnoxious guy who drank (too much) cognac for the entire flight. even dad's super-powered Bose earphones couldn't drown out that kid, and i didn't have noseplugs for my other neighbor's fragrant belches. to top it off, the electronics in my seat didn't work, so i could not douse my light, or listen to the audio of the movies they were playing. now it seems like a good setup for a comedy sketch, but then i was miserable!

xmas was amazing, gorging myself on more sweets than i could name in a single breath, and spending quality time with dad, darius, and all the lovely ladies in my life: mom, emily, anahita, and monica.

happy new year to you!

one dub down, one to go

spent the last 8+ hours standing in a huge dark studio staring up at the movie, listening to audio in headphones and trying to talk along. the fun part is i don't just have to do the lines and make them match my lips onscreen, but i also need to make all the 'sounds' of my character as well, which includes breathing, laughing, grunting, exhaling exasperatedly, etc.... then it's wacky to hear your emotive grunting booming back through the room over the loudspeakers.

 

now after a couple of beers in the casino (aka hotel lobby) and a good dose of jet lag, i'm ready to hit the hay and try again tomorrow. i've been invited to my director's house for dinner tomorrow night, which, according to my friend jenya the translator, is a rare honor. apparently he has a world class modern art collection in his home. it's gonna be a trip!

 

still miss xmas in texas though.

russia, again

things have been great in fort worth- family friend betsy is in town and we went out for dad's 62nd birthday the other night, dining with some serious zeal at Lanny's. the next morning was reminiscent of pre-xmas saturday mornings of years long past- waking up to the sound of christmas music on the twin bed that is way too short for me, padding downstairs and receiving a made-to-order egg breakfast from dad. my longtime friend the cap'n came over to install some bathroom cabinets that he'd been working on, and i sipped coffee and yakked with him while he worked.

 

so it was with some major reluctance that at around 2pm i piled into the car with dad and betsy to take me to the airport. after nearly 24 hours of interminable travelling, i arrived last night in the Korston Hotel and Casino in moscow. i tried to postpone sleep, but succumbed at 8pm after wolfing down room service pasta.

 

so now it's 6AM, i've been up for a couple of hours and i don't go to work doing ADR for the egypt movie until 330 PM. i've wandered the hotel lobby which is basically a full-service casino and filled with a lot of tired looking gamblers.  of course i don't have an adapter for my laptop, and of course the hotel doesn't supply or sell them. so i'll read and watch bbc news for the next several hours until it's time to work. i know once i'm in the studio i'll have fun, but i just want to get this over with and get back home to xmas!!

 

 

from cairo to cambridge (with a layover in moscow)

it's been a month since my last confession. i mean post. and a lot has happened!!

the great news is i'll be headed to cambridge on january 2 to start rehearsals for 'julius caesar' at the american repertory theatre. i've been to many auditions in the past month, but this one was the first one i went to after returning home from cairo. it's awesome to be hired by the a.r.t. again! the show is going to be weird and awesome. it runs from early feb to late march, and i'll be updating this blog during the rehearsal process.

the medium news is i'm going to moscow this weekend to record audio for the russian film! it's going to be two days of flying and two days of work (for not a lot of money) but it's worth it to me to have my voice in the film. already one of our number has withdrawn, which means a new actress will do her voice... this has very negative repurcussions on the film, and on its potential to be marketed in america.

the bad news is i'm being audited here in fort worth, which is really what the holidays are all about, right? seriously, it's a pain in the booty. if you want to be prepared for an audit, this is what you should do: keep EVERY bank statement on record for five years. on every bank statement notate EVERY deposit and mark whether it was a payment, and if not, where it came from. keep copies of every tax return and every earnings statement. keep detailed receipts of every expense, dated and itemized. all things i SHOULD have done, but also all things i've never heard of anyone doing. and they are practices which i get to start now because a. getting audited is like a financial bar mitsvah, and b. getting audited begets getting audited, i.e., chances are high that i'll get this privilege again in the next couple of years.

and full circle to great news again: at least the audit is an excuse to be home in texas, hanging with dad. we've been baking and decorating and generally being holiday-ey already, and been getting mutually excited to have the family together for xmas. the house is fully anahita-prepared, with high chairs and changing stations and a truckload of toys. all told, anahita, emily, darius, mom, dad, and monica & i will be here for the holiday. that makes me very happy.

brutal

this is gonna be brutal.

dropped off my first load of headshots and resumes at my agent's office this morning, with her promise to begin sending them to casting directors for specific projects. then i get to hope that, based on my headshot/resume, they give me an audition appointment. then it's simple. i just show up and get the job! first one she's sending me out for: alabama shakespeare festival.

film and tv are shut down because of the writers' guild strikes. it could last months. i can do student films and the like, but they don't pay. i'm officially eligible for the stage actors' union, known as Equity. now i can join, and audition for shows that actually pay on the kind of scale i could scrape together a living on. the catch: i have to pay $1100 to join. YIKES.

meanwhile, i'm going back to my old job at the drama book shop a few days a week to make a little (emphasis on little) spending cash, and i just got a writing assignment for los angeles confidential, massive thanks to the two friends i still have at the magazines!

and i'm also acting as my own agent, trolling backstage casting notices and submitting myself for audition appointments. tomorrow i'll just show up for an open call for the roundabout theatre company.

here goes!

halloween

i love running errands in manhattan on halloween. it's nice to see neon red hair three times on one block, and to glance down a subway car and see a giant banana reading a newspaper. it makes me wish that every day was halloween, because i'd love it if people typically had so much fun expressing themselves with how they dress. of course, when i expressed that to monica she had to be a party pooper and said, "Well then Halloween wouldn't be special anymore."

she's right, but when i imagine a culture that wears plastic devil horns as much as neckties, i also have to think that their halloween would be something truly worth seeing.

caesar audition

it's amazing how i can spend more than half my life learning and accruing experience in this profession, the last two years training to be a versatile and skilled professional, and yet i can still walk into an audition and behave like a nervous schoolboy. hopefully as i audition more and more in this city, i'll get over the pressure of the moment and just do what i've been trained to do.

regardless, i felt i botched my julius caesar audition pretty badly. oh well! i plan to get 'em next time!

bbq bliss

I just saw an ad on TV for a restaurant here in new york. Towards the end of the ad, it flashed quotes from positive reviews of the place in print. One was "'BBQ bliss.' -Gotham Mag." It was pretty sweet to see my own words displayed on a commercial!

I know, I'm easily amused. But it's the simple joys, ya know?

scarlett's blog

for anyone yearning for more anecdotes and impressions from the egyptian experience, visit my fellow actor scarlett mcalister's blog. http://www.scarlettmcalister.com and click on 'scarlett's blog.'

she has photos of all of us and stories that include my antics.

ps headshots

by the way, if you look at the gallery, my headshots of choice are 97 and 114. let me know if you particularly love any others!

headshots

getting back on my feet here in nyc, gearing up for hitting the streets (i.e. auditions) as an aspiring actor. on thursday, i have a private 'callback' audition for a really great gig- i'm doing a lot of preparation for it (3 new shakespeare monologues!).

putting in an order for a second set of headshots- my new agent wants me to have two different pics, for two different 'looks.'

if you're really masochistic, want to see the anatomy of a headshot shoot, or just love staring at my face, you can see the best 150 shots from my photo shoot at www.philipkesslerphotography.com. follow the tiny link at the bottom for 'photoshoot client access' and find my gallery under headshots. the password is 'Neil' with a capital n.

i will keep posting updates every now and again- if anybody is out there still reading, thanks!

home

after a lot of limping and a very long flight, i am home at monica's in new york. tomorrow... the rest of my life!

pictures

pictures of my last night of shooting and post-injury at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=9692&l=49030&id=514867448.

rusty nail

the good news: i'm finished! we shot a LOT of scenes today, including a cross-dressing scene and a brawl, and i'm finally done.

the bad news: during one of the shots tonight a malicious thick rusty nail punctured my foot and bored about 3/4 of an inch inside. boy did that hurt! luckily i had a tetanus shot right before leaving for cairo, and a doctor immediately came to set and dressed my wound and prescribed me three medications to avoid troubles.

i fly home monday. i have some great pictures from today which i will post soon.

wetness

tonight we had a lightning storm and, for about five minutes, RAIN! pretty sweet. we were going to eat at Mom's, but since it's out in a field, they brought it to us instead!

going to bed. tomorrow is a 730 AM call for my 'sobbing' scene. oh boy...

people everywhere

three shooting days left (they added one) and tomorrow is a daytime one.

the two nights in a row were exhausting, but great. i really wish that yuri wasn't so frugal a director. he is so confident in his editing that he is usually satisfied with two takes, sometimes just one! but this is all new to me, and i watch the playback, and i know i can do it better. but it's ok, it's his movie! the best part about all this is that i'm finally learning a thing or two about film acting. part of me wishes we could go back and start over now, with what i've learned, but part of me just wants to get it over with and move forward with my life!

we drove into the thick of downtown again and went to... wait for it... yet another mall. (i'm not the social director!) this time a really big mall, called City Stars. and when i say big, i mean big. the atrium in the center opens up to reveal 8 stories of mall rising up, with mirrored escalators and those fancy clear elevators that you see at hotels. we ate where anybody would eat while in egypt, at a tex mex place called cantina laredo. the beef was imported from the US! we had tableside guacamole, queso, fajitas, everything. it was a cruel imitation of real tex mex, but satisfying to partake in anyway.

the traffic was insane. it's already insane in egypt but the people were out in force. at 11pm on a monday night! i think when Ramadan ends, there is a big rebound of social activity. it's an amazing thing about egypt- people, everywhere. the vans are stuffed like sardines and sometimes people are on the roof or standing on the bumper holding on for dear life. many drive with the sliding door open like it's a big window. the cars park two, three deep on the side of the street- i don't know how somebody leaves if they want to! and there's sidewalk cafes on sidewalks that are barely wide enough to walk two abreast. people are hanging out at street corners, on medians, and they even stand around in intersections! the gates to the mall were closed and there were men in suits letting people in single file as if it were a nightclub! the result was a huge throng of people crushing each other against a gate. you'd think britney spears was on the other side!

a week left before home...

rated R

about to leave for my second night shoot- and tonight we film the scene that will guarantee my niece won't watch this movie for at least 15 years or so. i'm kinda nervous.

night shoots rock

5:30 am, just got back from my first full-on night shoot. i like filming much better at night- i've always felt more creative juices flowing after dark. plus tonight i worked constantly. most days i've been sitting on my butt much of the time.

my character's jacket (plus its two duplicates) were stolen out of the costume room. that's gonna be tricky for the film's continuity. there's one scene left from the first day in the world of the movie- they're talking about having me wrapped in a blanket or some other visual non sequitur.

egyptian coffee is just two fingers of caffeinated tar.

two make-up ladies sticking eyeliner pencils in your eyes is a great way to simulate crying.

there's a low-hanging lantern in the set and i hit my head on it tonight a total of seven times. seven. once so hard that make-up had to cover the mark on my forehead. yeah, i'm a professional.

getting there

Bleary-eyed days as I set my clock to nocturnal to prepare for night shoots.

Day-before-yesterday rode with Mark to the Dreamland Hilton for what anybody would do in Egypt after they've already been to Chili's and the mall. Golf! I drove the cart and drank beer and generally heckled while Mark played 18 holes. I love golfing, but not playing. I just like to spend the day outside with a friend or two driving a golf cart around. I'll let them hit the ground with their clubs and curse.

I didn't go to the light show. My castmates got stuck in downtown traffic and there was no time to pick me up.

I'm getting sick of crackers and bottled water as meals. Somebody DHL me some chocolate chip cookies!!!

Less than two weeks left, and only four more shooting days (nights) for me! But they keep changing the schedule around, so I'm always at the ready.

On-set photos at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=9692&l=49030&id=514867448.

xmas

had fun yesterday shooting a scene where my character behaves (and dresses) rather outrageously.

kathleen's boyfriend came to town, bringing with him a santa sack full of requests from us. he said he was thoroughly scared to make the trip after he saw our list: pepto bismol, immodium, nyquil, protein bars, and breath mints. me, i'm just happy to have my pepto. kathleen is like a little kid, she's so happy to have her significant other here. it makes me very jealous!

going to see the 'light show' at the pyramids tonight. i'll post pics of that and some from yesterday's set tonight or tomorrow.

last day in fayoum

this is a pic from two days ago, our last shoot in the fayoum desert, thank god, since it's a teeth-rattling no-seatbelt two-plus hour drive each way. my castmates are from left to right, scarlett mcallister, actress and horse trainer extraordinaire, mark adam, country music singer and former member of one-hit wonder band deadeye dick, who rocked many a mix tape of mine in 1994, me, jeff grays, former atlanta falcon and general smooth operator, and kathleen gati, who's a hollywood pro and a former star of hungarian cinema!

some pics of me dancing in the desert at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=7563&l=6e713&id=514867448

pain again

i'm afraid i just don't have the stomach for this! yesterday i only ate food from the hotel and today i'm sick again. it's very annoying!

i'm a terrible clown

here's a link to a video of me attempting to entertain some of the kids at the studio set in cairo.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Zv0ZfBPVgQ

cold

caught a head cold, probably from all those kids, and because my system has been ravaged gastrointestinally. luckily it coincided with two days off from shooting, today being the second one.

we found a little pizza parlor down the ghost town street from Mom. the food isn't bad and it's so cheap it's basically free. it'll probably become the default dinner spot, since the hotel restaraunt 'Cote Jardin' is not cheap (or French, for that matter).

i have a basic cell phone that i bought out here, and it receives calls and text messages for free! so if you have an international plan and feel like a chat, call away! (0185796309)

back in business

the internet's back up at the hotel. so i will be posting again!

i finally put up pictures from our visit to the pyramids, if you can call it that. more like our visit near the pyramids. http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=7563&l=6e713&id=514867448

today i went to the studio at 8AM, changed and got made up, and shot a scene for about an hour out in the sun. then i sat on set for five hours before they finally released me without shooting any more. pretty easy day! i think it was the last of the vaccination scenes- a good thing, since the little egyptian kids are so used to me prodding and pulling on them that they just walk up to me now and open their mouths for inspection. many of them do it while we're not shooting!

one of the shots this morning was an incredibly close one. my huge head fills half the frame. the director cautioned me in his thick accent: "very close. small. small. small." i tried to be 'small' but i felt like i was just being 'frozen.' he seemed satisfied, though, so hopefully it'll look ok. i really have no idea how i'm doing with this movie- there's not the same kind of feedback that you get from an audience or during a theatrical process. but i know i'm learning quickly, so even if i'm terrible, next time i'll be better!

tomorrow the americans are off because the russian actors flew in tonight and will be shooting for the next day or so. it's nice to get days off because i still feel weak from the stomach troubles, and also from the carb-heavy diet that i'm eating in effort to avoid risky foods.

things are good!

goooooooood morning cairo!

hello everyone!

thanks for all the emails- it gets very lonely out here and it was
really nice to know that the blog was missed.

several days ago the internet AND the phones went down in the
surrounding area and there's no telling when they'll be back up. i had
a day off today, and as i lounged by the pool i overheard some dutch
people conversing about how they picked up a wireless signal in the
gazebo area by the pool house. well, i just came out here, and voila!
the connection is spotty, though.

it's been a very busy week. we started with that 3AM day, and we did
shoot a car wash scene and the goat rescue. we did one more day after
that in fayoum, shooting a scene where we're pulled over and bill is
vomiting. the cars were covered in live locusts dipped in petroleum
for both days. not exactly ASPCA-friendly, and pretty gross to boot!

since then we've been at the studios, which thank allah, are only
twenty minutes away from the hotel. there is an entire village set at
the studios, which in truth doesn't feel like a set. it is a complete
network of run-down buildings that looks like it was abandoned only
days before. we've been doing the vaccination scenes non-stop,
complete with 60 or so little egyptian rugrats all over the place.

for all of these group scenes, like the goat rescue, the car wash, and
the vaccinations, yuri's approach has been to run the entire scene or
process three or four times, each time filming it all with two cameras
at once, and never explaining to us where the cameras will go. so i
never really know when i'm being filmed except when i sense a camera
looming over my shoulder, or when i accidentally look right into one,
which i've done a few times! my vaccination 'station' involved
checking the kids off and inspecting their mouths with a tongue
depressor and listening to their chests with a stethoscope. MUCH
thanks to cousin karen, without whom i surely would have felt like an
impostor doing those things.

of course, there were several little ones that are so sweet and cute
you just want to hide them in your luggage and bring them home. (there
were two girls who would blow us kisses and say the only thing they
know in english over and over: 'i love you!') and, there also were the
required number of willful little devils as well. tomorrow i shoot a
scene where my character echos my own desire to steal one of the
little ones for my own.

haven't had the food poisoning back full-force, but my stomach has not
been happy with me. all of us americans and many of the russians are
dealing with the same thing. the food's pretty safe at the hotel, but
of course it's very expensive.

we've eaten a couple more times at Mom, met Mom even, and enjoyed it
thoroughly while staring at the desert sky. last night we had the
company of an incredibly large harvest moon.

i'm very homesick, but i'm having fun at the same time. more soon!

we were aliens

drove the two and a half hours out to our 'lonesome desert road' location just in time to suit up, get made up, and eat lunch in our new actors' trailer (basically a 70's kitchen on wheels) before they informed us that there was a technical problem with the jeeps and we were not shooting any more. luckily scarlett and mark got some shots in before the trouble.

so we rode back, pausing at sundown at an outhouse-sized market in a little village for our driver to break his fast with three twinkies and a pineapple slushie in a bag. we actors made a heck of a stir in the village since we all still had our costumes on, which is pretty much safari gear, and our cameras and our loud voices. kids of every shape, size, and age poured out to the road and stood around looking at us as if we were aliens. which we are i guess.

we stopped fifteen minutes from our hotel at a mall named CarreFour that puts Hyper1 to shame. It's vast, and not only has a Pizza Cream but also a Chunky Fries.

i've stopped being alarmed at the driving. surely we are chancing death every time we ride these streets, but only now do i start to feel the rhythm of the driving here. there's no sense of security provided by strict speed limits and driving laws, or even defined lanes, for that matter. and there's no car insurance. instead people drive extremely alertly, unified by their common goal of making to their destination alive. we've covered a lot of miles here so far, and i've never seen a wreck or a sign of one, but every car is pocked up like someone's been hitting baseballs at it.

our current shooting area is in Fayoum, next to an enormous oasis of a salt-water lake that the Greeks used to call Crocodilopolis, and was a vacation spot for the pharaohs. it's pretty amazing to see such a huge body of water, complete with waves, in the middle of the Egyptian desert. even before the oasis, most of the drive is very pretty, chopped up in tiny acre-sized farms, and large lots that look just like old southern plantations. farmers work in the fields, or lounge next to them, women working too, in everything from jean skirts to full burkas, and kids riding around on little donkeys. camels, cows, goats, dogs and cats are everywhere, too.

it's only 8pm but i just took a sleeping pill in hopes that i can get some rest before our 4AM call. they promise that tomorrow we finally will get to shoot the scenes we're excited about- the attack of locusts, rescuing a goat, and my partner bill vomiting everywhere. yay!

minefields, goats...

recovering now from a serious bout of food poisoning. took a little more than 24 hours to run its course. luckily it set in just as the shooting day ended yesterday and we had today off. it was a long day! i'll be packing my own lunch to the set from now on.

the first day of shooting for me went well. most of the day i sat waiting in our 'trailer,' which is an awesome ancient RV with a wood interior and modified with two AC units powerful enough to cool a grocery store. we shot some 'driving through the minefield' takes at the end of the day, only got a half an hour of shooting in before the sun went down. for that half an hour i sat in the passenger seat of a jeep with a side-mounted camera as we drove all over the dunes. our director yuri was in the back seat and our translator was in the trunk space. pretty wacky.

tomorrow we shoot all day and do more car interiors, basically the opening shots of the movie. in the afternoon, if we get to it, we'll shoot the 'rescuing a goat' scene.

more soon...

dub you

the good news: i start shooting tomorrow! we're doing the "jeep driving through the minefield" scene so i'll spend the day jostling around looking scared. the word is that the first day of shooting today went very well.

the bad news: we learned today that they plan to dub us in russian instead of using subtitles for the russia release. i think that sucks.

win win

tonight as we rode on a sweaty chain of camels with a far-off view of the pyramids, jenya got a call on his cell phone that the cameras were finally released.

because of the russian actors' tight schedule, they're starting tomorrow with them, and only one of us Americans, who has a scene with them. so it's win/win. i get another day of vacation, and the filming gets underway!

we had a long script session with the director today which was fantastic. between the script sessions and the chances we've had to hang out and get to know one another, the shooting delay might have been a blessing in disguise.

i'm exhausted. i'll post pictures of camels and pyramids tomorrow.

love,
neil

we ate at Mom

Our cameras are still locked in customs, a situation whose direness seems to be increasing exponentially. The movie is losing money quickly. It's hard to feel bad yet, though, since the result for me has been vacation.

We did spend four hours yesterday trying out various combinations of costume and makeup, and parading for the director, who is VERY opinionated about these things. He has a very demanding and singular vision for how the movie should look, and I respect it. At the end of it, he assigned me to sit by the pool and get some sun. I've had some easy jobs in my days, I'll admit, but that one clearly took the cake. Maybe I should be a lifeguard!!!

Last night we ventured out of the massive gates of the hotel and wandered through this area known as Sixth of October. It's a really bizarre aesthetic here- a complex that has been built in the middle of nowhere in the desert... (I guess most of Cairo is like that!) ...it's clearly trying to be a luxury area- there's a Gold's Gym, and several fancy hotels, one street of mansions (that I hear are homes to rich Iraqis fleeing the war), a condominium complex, and a couple of corporate campuses. But still, everywhere, are trashed-out abandoned lots with old construction materials in them, and the brickwork sidewalks are in dotted lines, petering out into curb-contained sandboxes and piles of unused bricks. It all has the feel that a grand design was hatched, and then halted about a quarter into production. The places that are finished are finished well- our hotel with its mushroom-covered lawns, and the Hyper One mall with its shopping cart that towers into the sky, but the rest seems to be ground down by the sand, steadily sliding into entropy.

We ate at a restaurant called Mom. It only is a restaurant because there are menus and food eventually comes; other than that it really is just a sand field covered with lawn furniture and Indian rugs and pillows. The food was fantastic, and I treated all six of us. We feasted, ordering EVERY appetizer, and each person had an entree (Jeff had two), and I dropped a whopping $50 to cover all of us. It did take two hours for the food to come out, so it was lucky that we still have a lot of getting-to-know-you to do, and the night was rather cool. Apple-scented shisha smoke wafted from around us, and a family of kittens circled us, mewing, but never getting close. The beauty of it all was a little busted when they dragged out a projection TV and blasted some channel with a never-ending story in Arabic, apparently centering on what a great party-town Beirut is.

On the walk back, we passed an enormous mosque, decorated in Xmas lights, in the middle of worship. Hundreds of people were praying, and a singing male voice was blasting at arena concert volume.

This morning, I wait to see if there are developments on the cameras, but they made it pretty clear that there are some Russian actors here that need to leave soon, they will probably shoot them first. We are tentatively planning on taking advantage of another free day and going to the Pyramids.

There are more pictures up at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=7563&l=6e713&id=514867448.

Love you all.

the mall

tonight my fellow castmates (plus our lovable friend evgeniy) and i did what any american would do in egypt: went to the mall.

the malls here are open until 2AM or later, and they close for a while at dusk for ramadan so that they can eat. so it was weird to get to the mall at 8pm and watch people opening up. other than that, and the arabic everywhere, it was fully a mall, in fact, fancier than most malls i know: there's a waterpark on one end, and in the parking lot is a shopping cart the size of a football field. no joke. i'll post pictures of it tomorrow. the mall had all of your standards: radio shack, KFC, and a place called 'Pizza Cream,' where you can buy pasta in a cone. for dinner we again did what any american would do: ate at Chili's and for dessert, Cinnabon.

the two cab drivers took us from the hotel, waited for us for THREE hours, and took us back. each cab's total came to less than $20. i had a full meal at chili's, appetizer, steak, and drink, and my total was around $15. and apparently that's still expensive for cairo. the drive was again death-defying, since all cars seem to be devoid of seat belts, and the egyptians have a peculiar habit of neglecting their headlights.

tomorrow morning: make-up and costume session, and i get a shave and a haircut!

hard living

I spent most of the morning today sitting out by the enormous 8-shaped pool, reading an awesome book. So far this job is pretty sweet. Tomorrow was to be the first shooting day, but it looks like things will be postponed, at least another day. For two days now, both of the cameras for the film have been locked up in Egyptian customs. It's a huge ordeal now, verging on national incident, as the Russian government is attempting to intervene. Pretty fun stuff.

This afternoon we Americans watched a 45-minute instructional video on giving vaccines in the field. In a week or so, we will be shooting a big medical-tent-vaccinating-kids scene, so we're studying up. The director has informed us that he's procured a huge amount of Egyptian five-year olds to be our co-stars in the scene. It sounds like that day is gonna be a ball.

Our first day of shooting will involve being in a jeep attacked by locusts and rescuing a goat from a bog. I think I'm gonna have fun with this!

Just a couple of preliminary pictures are up on my facebook page. Go here to see them: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=7563&l=6e713&id=514867448

early morning egypt

woke up just before dawn today, disoriented. from my window, i watched the daylight begin to spread over the horizon, oceans of sand as far as the eye can see. i went downstairs and walked around the grounds. the morning was very cool, and they keep the grass around the pool so wet that there are actually mushrooms growing everywhere! i went to the buffet breakfast when it opened at 6:30... (12:30 AM in new york!) and feasted royally. i skipped dinner last night because i hadn't exchanged any money yet, so i was happy to gorge and guzzle this morning. i feel a little lost, but i know things will change once i meet the other americans today. i miss monica already.

cairomaniac

hi all!

just a note to let you know that i've landed in cairo safely, ready to embark on egyptian movie madness.

off to a fun start- got through customs after an all-night flight, only to wait around in the airport lobby for an hour, scratching my head. turns out they thought i was supposed to be black, so they didn't know i was the neil they wanted. i took a cab on my own to the hotel, and went on a harrowing, hour-long, near-death experience of a ride in order to get here. but i made it in one piece! and we went right by the pyramids! it's early afternoon here, and for some reason i'm pretty wired, so maybe jet lag won't be that bad.

this is the only mass email i will send- this post and all my subsequent posts will appear on my heretofore rarely-used blog, at http://ilovebigneil.blogspot.com/. so you can follow my progress there! i'll send a reminder of the url in a week or two.

all my best!

~neil

in egypt!

the first of my transmissions from egypt. just got into the hotel and linked up. more soon.

test

testing the blog via email feature, take two.