it's about making decisions

Spec
I’m on the phone with a family friend of my best friend’s girlfriend’s parents. I sent him my CV a week or so ago, delighted that he’d have a look for me. The thing that stands out to him, he says, the thing that will make me stand out above the rest, is my declaration stating that I will do anything - make teas and coffees, stand by the photocopier until my legs go numb, stay awake day and night - to work in film. This makes up for my lack of experience. That’ll come, he says. The key thing is that you’re driven.

Runner
I’m smoking another roll-up and drinking wine during the day with my beloved housemate, a filmmaker. I’m leaning into my stereotype and loving it. Jim Jarmusch is right, we’re all thieves but authenticity is the goal. Neither of us have proper jobs so we while away the time watching films in .mp4 format, ripped from DVDs. It feels like really living, though, all this watching. Research.

I get a few days here and there as a runner and fixer for various festivals and conferences. I’m quite good at actual running, having completed a sub 2:15 half-marathon the year before. I’m not training for a race but, every morning, listening to terrible dance music, I propel myself forward at speed. The festivals and conferences tend to be held in the same cinema where I was an usher. Or, according to my CV, my first foray into exhibition and audience management. I wonder if I should change my running route but I don’t. It’s so known to me, I don’t have to think where I’m going.

Dailies
I’m learning quickly that a lot film production is essentially working in an office. Knowing that every shitty little task really does go toward the making of a film gives me a sense of purpose that feels like an altered state of being. It’s a high I can’t replicate, though I earnestly try every evening and weekend. Basically, whenever I’m not at work. I start coming in earlier than my allotted hours, so I’m given the literal key to the castle. I am beside myself, watching myself, constantly.

The chatty founder, Luke, is barely in. The friendly Head of Production, Aidan, is in every day. The intimidating Head of Finance is too. My line manager is Jimmy, who isn’t much older than I am. He barely says anything but understands Twitter like he wrote the code itself, so he essentially runs the public face, and therefore value, of the company. I’ve only just got my own Twitter handle. I pump hashtags into the void. I am one of two women. The other is a very experienced executive producer who takes me under her wing by splitting paying my wage with the company in return for being her assistant. She treats me as a promising peer, finds my opinions and taste interesting. I love seeing myself through her eyes.

I feel emboldened to go to drinks dos and parties because I have an answer to what do you do that I’m proud of. This gets me mixed up in a series of fun flings, including someone at the office. We sext over Skype while he reconciles and I prepare script reports. I pull a Scottish musician who’s retraining as a doctor and looks like an elf. We play fight and shit talk in bed. The sexiest thing about me is my job, I say. He says, but look at your ribs, and pulls me closer into him, his fingers stroking into the grooves between my bones.

My job title does sound sexy. I don’t go into the details at the drinks dos and parties. Having been an intern, I’ve been promoted to manage the interns. I sift through reams of CVs, some laminated and hand delivered to Luke’s house, declaring how they’ll do anything - anything - to work in film. I fast track anyone who doesn’t have any experience whatsoever to interview. It feels good to have this kind of sway, knowing what a big deal a placement here is, even if it is a month’s unpaid labour. Anything. Anything.

I do other stuff too, broad strokes stuff. A lot is happening. Luke is off abroad on his pet project. Two productions, one in the south east of Scotland, one in the south east of England, are happening pretty much in tandem. This isn’t unusual but Aidan keeps being drawn to each location for some reason or another, so he’s spending most of his weeks by himself, driving. There’s also the big party celebrating ten years of the company, which isn’t far away and is taking more effort to organise than any film in the decade’s back catalogue. The exec has to let me go because she’s headhunted by a large organisation. I have a credit here and there, mainly in Thanks - but every iMDB Pro page has to start somewhere and mine has begun, legitimately.

One dark evening when we are alone in the office, I see Aidan sigh heavily. I ask him if he’s okay. He takes a moment. He tells me what he’s learned from Luke after working with him for nearly a decade. That, fundamentally, being a producer is about making decisions. Right now, Luke isn’t making any decisions. I don’t know what to say. I wish Aidan a good night, knowing that he has to drive half the length of the country again for the third time that week.

Cut
I’m feeling better for the first time in weeks. All I needed was to reset my sleep schedule. Drinking coffee throughout the day was messing me up but when you’re making coffee for everyone three or four times, the perk for you is the perk. That’s okay, I’ll just cut out caffeine. It was embarrassing to say the least when Aidan looked at me and instructed, with some of his own tiredness leaking through, Emily, go home. I hadn’t been able to sleep for four nights before that but I kept showing up because that’s what you do, that’s half the battle, showing up. Besides, I’d been through longer stretches of insomnia in my teens, I’d told Aidan a couple of weeks before, when I’d taken him aside to tell him about my mental health diagnoses and that’s why I’d been having panic attacks and messing up my shitty little tasks. My housemate, the filmmaker, told me that work doesn’t just want me there, they want me there well, as he tucked me into bed at 11:30am. A lovely lullaby, it did the trick.

It’s a Thursday morning. I’m sorting the post when Aidan tells me to go with him. I ask why, he says just come on, in a bright tone. I find myself in a meeting room sitting across from Aidan and the Head of Finance. They tell me that they’re happy with the quality of my work but things haven’t quite clicked, so they’re letting me go, with a month’s notice. I go very still and quiet. I thank them for the opportunity. Aidan winces compassionately, saying you don’t have to fall on your sword. But it’s not about what I have to do.

Scenes
In a last ditch attempt to get some more credits to my name, Aidan sends me to the flattest county where a series about a fictional mass shooting is, well, being shot. I’m staying with a producer whose work I admire hugely but haven’t yet met. Maybe this is the start of a beautiful mentorship, just when I need it - what a great arc!

I grab us dinner from the one recognisable place in the nearby tiny town - a salad for her, a cheese-free pizza for me. Because I’m lactose intolerant, I lie. I’m just terrified of food, full stop. There’s an error in the order, so my pizza is slathered in dairy products. I begin eating with gusto, sensing her approval at my low-maintenance, roll-with-the-punches attitude. She goes on to talk about how she barely eats when she’s working, what with the stress. I nod and munch. She looks healthy, like a real woman. Hey, I don’t eat either! I want to say but my mouth is full. At least, she says, when I do eat, it’s salad, which is healthier than pizza. I swallow a bit too loudly.

By day, I production assistant trainee. By night, I drink supermarket value range gin neat in my hotel room. No one knows what to do with me, even me. The hangovers fill my entire being with a sickly heat, handy for being on location in the winter. The actor known for being method bounces up to me, gets right in my face and shouts, I shot my mum today! I laugh and guide him down the path to his mark. I watch another actor, who is much smaller than I imagined she’d be and she’s already known as petite, run the same stretch of path back and forward for an hour. The final sequence is four seconds.

Premiere
I eventually get short-term hired to help with the big party, the final item on my to-do list. I don’t eat for most of the day. There’s always something else that needs doing or scoping. Then hundreds and hundreds of people arrive, with varying degrees of cachet. Famous faces take turns to DJ. What does it say about me that I’m happiest at a party when I have a walkie-talkie?

I serve an alternative comic on the merch stand. He does a little mime performance of the system I have going with the unpaid volunteers. I hunker down a bit deeper into the warm crease of self-hatred. A gurning man licks my face as I stand aside in a doorway to let him pass. He growls into my ear, I’d love to play with you. I register the threat and play-scream anyway because the Head of Finance is beckoning him to the bar. I make a point of saying hi to a past fling. It’s delicious to feel him squirm. Not including him, I’ve slept with four people at this party. It suddenly feels a lot smaller.

Taxi time. VIPs are the same as the rest of us after a free bar. A drunk Aidan goes to kiss me on the cheek, accidentally lands on my mouth, then looks at me with a tenderness that makes me ache.

The office get me a leaving present, a coffee table book that is cool and of the moment. I don’t have a coffee table. It dawns on me how difficult it must have been for them to choose for me. I make it through the whole day without crying until I say goodbye to another former intern, now working on a film she hates. I remember how excited she was when they brought her on board, how I’d suggested her for it. I’m sad for her and for me and my stupid guilt and our shared ambition.

Over the course of the next three jobless months, I decide to leave town and increase the total number of people I’ve slept with in my life by 50%.

Episodes
I’m in the thick of what I realise is my second breakdown after being let go, this time from TV. Soap, no less. I get a text from an old secondary school friend, who was the most gifted, grounded artist. I’m amazed she still has my number. I was so jealous of her and all she ever was was nice to me. She tells me that she’s sold out to the House of Mouse, heard that I was in telly writing, that it’s good to know someone who made it, who deserves it. It takes me two hours to compose the reply, another hour to send it.

Fade
I tweet - Finally unsubscribed from the last film and TV newsletter. Kids - if your dream job becomes a nightmare, give up! Aidan likes it.