Zacchaeus was a wee little man

A wee little man was he. He climbed up in the sycamore tree....

That is the last shot from the aborted concert. I promise.

Yesterday we sat with Annie to go over the last things for the shoot.

She had her own version of the concert.

She said there was at least 10,000 people there.
She said two people fell out of trees and one fell out of the second story of the department store. Everyone survived.
She was told she was not allowed to talk to the crowd because they might riot.
(they did anyways)
She was told not to dance "too Sexy" or the crowd would riot.
(whoops)
She was told she would not be given a real microphone because past celebrities have stolen them.

I like the last one best... :)

And here's where I find things interesting.

Annie is really sweet. We sat for a couple hours yesterday - and finally connected. Since I'm going to be directing her for the next three days - there needs to be some sort of understanding.

But here's the funny thing.

We live in a celebrity obsessed world. And because of that - celebrities control the cards. Annie has been in this business since she was 16 and knows how to play things. She can manipulate a situation perfectly so that there is no question that she will get her way.

Bill was so disgusted that he just got up and walked out. He couldn't take it anymore.

But what do you do?

Celebrities live in a little bubble surrounded by people who tell them exactly what they want to hear at all times so that they can keep their cushy jobs.

There was a great episode on 30 Rock where Tracy Morgan thought he was getting a ton of money from one of those Nigerian banking scams. He decided to add another member to his posse. So they get the kid who plays the page. This kid proceeds to tell Tracy the truth about everything - even that he repeats the same jokes all the time. The kid kills him at Xbox. Tracy freaks out - cause he realizes that the other guys have been lying to him all the time.

After a couple days - he realizes he prefers the lies.

And we prefer the lie too. We want our celebrities to be cool. To be better than us. To be nicer than us. To adopt more children than us. We want someone to idolize and put on a pedastal.

I love music - and a few years ago - I realized its best never to read about the people who's music you really love - cause inevitablly you'll be severely dissappointed and then you'll never enjoy their songs the same way.

And really there's no way this cycle will stop. We need them to make our projects higher profile - and they need us to keep them in the limelight.

My film had a greenlight for two years waiting for our stars to open up their schedule. They were already commited. They gave me 4 different start dates - and finally they took a different film with a budget 10 times mine. And as soon as the stars were gone - so was my greenlight.

I waited for two years and was left with nothing to show for it.

4 months and a new agent later - one of the stars called me again to set the film up - after destroying my life -and bankrupting my savings - all based on his promises. And guess what?

Like a dog returns to his vomit... I said sure - let's try again.

That's the nature of celebrity. You hate them - but you need them.

Case in point:

In an hour and a half - Annie convinced us all that she can't wait to film - but that we should change every days schedule and get rid of all the wardrobe that we had so far and start over.

And we went away smiling thinking she was sweet.

That's the genius of celebrity, my friends.