This Is Happening — Verse 10

Day 1

Yellow signs with arrows. Almost as common as streetlights in LA. Posted to telephone poles to help crew members navigate one set or another. You never think much of these signs. They’re not meant for you anyway. The arrow points right, but of course you stay straight.

Except today. Today you’re driving alone to Acton, CA for Day 1 of your first official day as a director. It’s just past 6:30, the morning is crisp, the sun blinding and you forgot your sunglasses. First mistake of the day. There will be plenty more, I assure you.

You turn off the highway to a two lane road that takes you deep into the Sierra Pelona Mountains. How this is still considered Los Angeles confounds you. You roll along… nothing… nothing… train tracks… cyclists.. nothing… Eventually, you roll to a stop sign. Tied to its post is a yellow placard emblazoned with a black arrow and the word: “Happening.”

You stop to take a picture because you are giddy and naive and this is the first yellow sign with an arrow that’s ever meant anything to you. You seriously consider stealing the sign — because why wouldn’t you? But then it dawns on you: this might actually be a key piece of navigational technology for dozens of people cruising somewhere on the road behind you. Better leave it.

So you climb back into your car and stare at the picture. And stare at it some more… This seems like it’s real. It’s really… real. Finally, you move on, wondering for the next ten minutes things like, “Who put this sign up there? How did they know? Who’s in charge of all this? Is this for something else called “Happening?” Is this a remnant of M. Night Shaymalan’s disastrous “The Happening” which may have coincidentally been shot in this very place? Are people going to now associate you with that wad of filmed feces? Are you already cursed? Should you change the title? Are other people even going to to see the sign? Forget the sign, are people even going to see your movie?”

The questions persist, seizing your brain like a 32 oz. Slurpee inhaled at warp speed, until you turn into a driveway — your location — site number one — and ahead of you is perhaps the coolest thing you’ve ever seen. There are, like, real trailers and people, like, moving things, and more signs pointing to a parking lot up a hill. It’s… It’s a movie set. You’re not sure what you expected, but it definitely wasn’t this.

Despite the fact that there’s probably a parking spot reserved for you down in movie land, you don’t want to be perceived as presumptuous or, worse, pretentious, so you follow the signs all the way up the hill and park in the junkyard-slash-parking lot, then walk the quarter mile back to the set. (You will soon learn that there is no time to be self-conscious about people’s perceptions of your own perception of yourself, so get over it.)

When you make it back down, your mind is finally calming from the questions destroying it from within, but the moment is brief. A whole new set of queries — these on the outside — have gathered to attack. It feels like literally every person that approaches has a question that only you can answer.

You prepared for this. You were told that this is half the job of being a director: be able to answer questions with confidence. Never show indecision. That doesn’t mean “don’t listen,” but rather, be assertive and know that you are the leader of this team and you are the man with the answers, whether you actually know them or not.

So the questions begin to flow and for a beat, you panic, but then you’re able to remember that yellow “Happening” sign and how good you felt seeing it and how you will not wilt because you can’t. And so you smile, and you open your mouth, and you begin to answer.