illumination

everything is illuminated--a film adaptation of the best-selling novel of the same name starring elijah wood and written and directed by liev schreiber--comes out today (in ny and la, everyone else may have to wait until next week, but do go see it because i loved the script and hope the film delivers). it is, and will always be, the first feature film i ever had my hands on. as most of my readers know, i interned for independent film producer, peter saraf (who happens to be the executive producer of the film), during the last semester of my senior year at nyu, and continued through the summer as a voluntarily-low-paid-temporary-part-time-production assistant.

however, when you see the movie, don't expect to see my name next to that job-title. in fact, don't expect to see my name at all. and because i am 99.9% sure i will not be credited, i decided to take this opportunity to credit myself with the following responsibilities:

-Reading the script and giving my "valuable input"
-Copying the script about 5000 times
-Making travel arrangements for liev, peter and others to travel back and forth from la
-Running town car vouchers to liev many times
-Processing payroll for the script translator
-Processing petty cash
-Renting movies from all over the city with scenes of people "writing" on the screen and dubbing the scenes
-Begging people at mtv for tapes of a show from the mid-90s with a highly praised example of the above
-Begging mtv again, because they said no
-Renting more movies from all over the city and dubbing them
-Tracking down aerial images of washington dc from some gov't agency in wyoming
-Packing up boxes of supplies and shipping them to prague
-Running back and forth to whole foods and cvs for pounds of green tea, prenatal vitamins, and generic sunscreen...and then shipping them to prague
-Buying season six part one of sex and the city, and shipping it to prague
-Shipping elijah wood's special cigarettes, to prague
-Running from 11th ave and 25th to ave b and 5th street to buy special energy bars from random health food store on the second hottest day of 2004...and shipping them to prague
-Picking up liev's order from marc jacobs, picking up liev's dry-cleaning, and taking them to his apt, picking up liev's clothes for the u.s. open and taking them back to the other side of the island, on the hottest day of 2004
-Making an "emergency" run to JFK airport on a sunday to wait 2 hours and pick up a super-important "box" that had to be taken off the hands of the assistant director asap who was coming in from prague...only to be offered a ride back to manhattan in her town car...confused? so was i
-Absorbing the cost of calls back and forth to prague on my cell phone
-Picking up executive producer's leased volvo on the third hottest day of 2004 from his apt garage and driving it down 11th avenue to the volvo dealer where it was to be returned
-Depositing a weekly check to executive producer that could easily cover a new luxury sedan
-Wondering why i don't have a credit on the film?