Working 9 To 5 To Pay The Rent - Working 5 To 12 To Make Love 10 To 1

We’ve been in pre-production on Love 10 to 1 for a while now. From the beginning, there’s been at least a weekly meeting pertaining to the movie, usually between Christine and I, mostly on the hiking trail on Saturday and/or Sunday. Besides this, I'm also involved with Movies By Women, I take classes , go to seminars etc. My schedule's pretty packed right now. I'm taking an editing class on Tuesdays and the other six days, have been filled with meetings for the film.

I work full time, I'm an executive assistant in Santa Monica. I live close to work in Brentwood. My commute is usually 15 minutes. The way home is usually more congested. Most of the times, it takes me between 20 – 30 minutes and on a few rare occasions, (though they are becoming more frequent) the trip home from work has taken, at times anywhere from 1 hour to 2. Yes, that’s traffic in LA.

I’m not digressing. The point is that I work full time – 9am – 5pm and then I focus on film stuff. The last month, it’s been non-stop meetings after work and on weekends. I’m slowly feeling the burn.

Most of the production meetings take place in Hollywood, around 7pm. So after a day at work, I sit in traffic for 2 hours. I’ve tried taking different streets, Olympic, Venice, Santa Monica, Wilshire, Sunset etc. Most of my time is spent crawling from Bundy to Sepulveda and again at various points in Beverly Hills.

The meetings used to last until 10pm – now, they are lasting closer to midnight. There are times when I’ve gotten home at 2am. For the most part, I’m typically home by midnight but then I have to check my email (I don’t have access to personal email at work), so I’m usually in bed by 1:00am. I get up around 7:45.

The gym and hikes are now a luxury that I try to squeeze in about once a week. I barely speak to my family because of the time difference (they are mostly on the east coast).

I’m no stranger to hard work. I’m the oldest of 4 children. When I was 16, my parents gave me a decent allowance but I wanted more money to go to concerts and shop. So I got a job after school. I worked as a telemarketer from 4pm to 9pm three days per week and on weekends I did one eight hour shift sometimes two (depending on how much those boots cost).

I’ve always worked hard for what I want. I don’t have the sense of entitlement that a lot of people have in this town. So, if the end result is going to get me what I want, then I’ll work hard for it. However, I’m also very impatient and I feel like I’ve been working towards this goal most of my adult life. When is it going to pay off?

Unlike a lot of people, I’m not depending on filmmaking to make me rich. If it got to that point, I’d keep my day job but cut down my hours so I can dedicate more time to filmmaking. I like having a job that has nothing to do with film. It keeps me balanced.

I’m ok juggling the full time job, the two hours in traffic, the meetings – I can do it. BUT, what if I had a child? How would I fit all of this around a human being who would be depending on me? One of the coolest things I saw at the LA Film festival were two female filmmakers (they had a doc at the festival) and they walked down the red carpet with their bundles on their hips.

I think documentaries tend to be more women friendly than narrative filmmaking. My next project after Love 10 to 1 is a documentary and I’ll also be working with Christine on her feature. So, it looks like for the next two years (plus) I’ll be doing the 9-5 gig, followed by the 2 hours in traffic followed by 3 hour meetings.

Here’s to the art of multitasking.

Lucy