Coming at me with both barrels!

Philip Henslowe: Mr. Fennyman, allow me to explain about the theatre business. The natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster.
Hugh Fennyman: So what do we do?
Philip Henslowe: Nothing. Strangely enough, it all turns out well.
Hugh Fennyman: How?
Philip Henslowe: I don't know. It's a mystery.

Producing is a job not for the feint of heart or the thin of pocketbook or the gumption-challenged or the heart attack prone. So far, in this last weekend, the Enemy has come at me with both barrels blazing and I've had a pretty tough time of it dodging the blasts, but darn it, I'm sticking around until the end - come heck or Water World, which ever comes first.

Last week, I started buying props for my film, while I listened to my co-director overcome one obstacle after another in casting this film. Scheduling conflicts being the most serious set-back, we worked around the problems and finally set most of the cast by Friday evening - which was good since the (first and final) script reading was on Saturday afternoon.

On Thursday night, I went to Kinko's to print scripts and to get them bound. I was given folders that would allow the script pages to easily be added and subtracted from the total. I took the copied scripts and the folders with me to work on Friday to fix up the scripts and discovered that none of the folders actually worked. So back to Kinko's Saturday morning in a mad scramble to have scripts ready for the reading just in time.

The reading went incredibly well and it was a thrill to hear the words I'd co-written and the characters I'd co-created come to life. I even laughed more than a few times, which is a good sign for a comedy - and even better for a comedy where you've been writing the script for several months (if you can still laugh, the joke must be good).

Saturday night my enormously expensive and pampered little beast of a vehicle decided that it didn't like its coolant, so it got rid of it all and my car overheated and started steaming. Replacing the coolant, it then decided to have transmission problems. All this less than a week after I spent $300 on preventative maintenance on my coolant and transmission. Now, I'm out another $250 just to find out what has possessed my normally reliable vehicle.

So I spent Sunday being chauffered around while I tried to find robes for my actors. Robes. That's it! Simple. A nice simple costume that you can find anywhere, right? Wrong! I spent three hours before I finally found robes that my characters could wear and that only cost me a whopping $130 to outfit five characters. *sigh*

Everyone's asking me what I plan to do with all this film-making expertise in the near future. I think I might start answering them with, "I'm going to file for bankruptcy."

Next time, I use somebody else's money. That's where the real smart film makers go.

Oh, and I will buy a foreign car as well. Maybe a Lamborghini to save some money!

*UPDATED*

I just got a call. My thermostat and my tranny are both shot. Repairs will cost me $3000. I still owe $2700 on this thing. I would like to include a swear word or two here plus mention the unsavory parentage of FORD Motor Company and all who work for it. But I will refrain, cry into my beer, and figure out what to do next.

It might be time to crack out my bicycle and take my lumps physically as well as fiscally. And every drop of sweat will remind me never to buy American again!