I dreamed that a sequel to Martin Scorsese's Last Temptation of Christ was being filmed. (During the dream I didn't know why anyone could've have wanted to film a sequel to Last Temptation of Christ, but as soon as I woke up I remembered that there are rumours that Mel Gibson plans to film a sequel to The Passion of the Christ. That alone, the fact that there are rumours, could very well cause a sequel to Last Temptation to be made in real life. Hollywood monkey-see, Hollywood monkey-do.) In the dream, Martin Scorsese was not associated with the remake and was on public record as having disparaged the whole enterprise. Nobody anywhere near the film industry expected this movie to be any good. But there was a lot of debate about whether it was going to be a huge financial success.
I was hired to play a small part in the movie. I was so far out of the loop that I had no idea what the plot of the movie was going to be like. I was on location out in the remote desert in Arizona, but I had not even been given the script for my part yet, let alone a copy of the entire screenplay. I didn't even know my character's name, whether I was playing Zebedee, or Peasant #2, or what. All I knew for certain was that while I was here on location, I was making a huge amount of money, from my perspective. From Hollywood's perspective, I was making scale. For those of you who don't know what scale is, I was making $3,488 a week, plus $1,005 a day for one, two or three days in addition to a week. Plus a location per diem which I didn't need because between free hotel room service, and craft services, which is what they call the superb caterers who provide meals on film sets, I didn't have any idea what I could spend my money on.
Many others in the cast and crew seemed to be in a situation similar to mine: no idea what, if anything, was going on with the movie, but making more money than they were used to. From a purely capitalistic viewpoint, for us it was a brilliant arrangement. From an artistic point of view it was very frustrating.
Our production had taken over a nice hotel in the desert. Other than the hotel, there was literally no man-made structure for miles around. I wondered why people came to this hotel if they weren't making a desert-themed movie. Off-road racing, perhaps? There was a group of young actors and actresses, in their 20's, I guessed, who got very restless out here in the middle of nowhere, and snuck out at night and drove to the nearest bar, miles away, to spend that per diem. One early morning, they could be seen on hotel security-camera footage, sneaking back into their hotel rooms through the windows. One of the women in this group was particularly beautiful, even compared to other young actresses, so beautiful that she was striking even on hotel security camera footage when she was horribly drunk and falling clumsily through an open hotel window.
For some reason, this security camera footage was being passed around the cast and crew via our phones and other mobile devices. Most of us seemed to agree about two things: 1) these young people didn't have to try to hide the fact that they were going out nights looking for fun. It didn't bother anyone. And 2) that beautiful young woman most likely would have a fairly good acting career based on looks alone. And if she could actually also act, she could become a superstar. She was Jennifer Lawrence-level beautiful -- so beautiful that it actually sort of hurts.
I woke up before learning anything at all about my part, and before seeing anything which resembled actual film production.
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