the losing fight against technology

Bill arrived last night.

I find that when I am on the road anymore, I tend to gravitate to my hotel room. I'll get a couple movies, write, and basically stay out of trouble. Expecially when its cold. When it's warm - I love to walk around the city. 4-5 miles a day. But now - its too freaking cold out to do much... so I stay indoors and lock myself away.

So it's nice to have a freindly face here to force me out of my little shell.

Bill and I haven't been in Beijing since 99 when we did our TV series here. Next week, John, my DP comes back. And Shawn - now a big wig International Project Manager, has a trip planned to New Zealand and might stop by here on his way back.

Reunited and it feels so good...

This city is amazing and I feel as if even when I'm gone for two weeks, the whole place changes.

We are going to meet with the Assistant Director and the Art Director today. The assistant director in China is responsible for all the casting. This is obviously different than at home where we actually have a casting director - but so be it. Here - the art director is also in charge of locations - which in the states we actually use a location manager for - but it seems to work here.

Bill has been my art director for over 10 years. He is incredible - when he's not busy being an ass - although he would probably say the same thing about me... well -maybe not the incredible part...But it will be fun to see how he works with the art director here. Our experience last time was such a nightmare that I'm really curious to see if its better now. It seems like it will be and I can't imaging anything ever being worse than that first shoot.

Bill and I went out for Indian food last night. Had a huge meal - more than we could eat between us - and then went over to the local DVD store - where between us - we bought 29 DVD's. Pitful huh? I got a copy of Children of Men - which I almost went to the West Coast Premiere of when I was in LA a couple weeks ago.

After spending 15 minutes trying to change the default audio track from Russian to English - I got to see a really enjoyable film. Clive Owen is really great - and the film has some amazing stuff in it. I wouldn't go as far as Jeffery Wells and claim it to be the movie of the year - but it was really good.

And then I slept through most of the night. Still only about 5 hours sleep - but it was at the right time. Go figure.

Woke this morning to start writing when I got a call from Bill.

His computer is down. With all the pics of stuff to show the Art Director. And the strangest part - HE HAS A MAC. So its off to try to find the new Apple store here in Beijing. And see if we can get his computer fixed.

Then off to the meetings.

(for the typos in this post - forgive me. Blogger for some reason came up in German here today - and it recognizes every English word as a typo. Perfect!)