Moose Productions Blog

Went down to the basement to see Paulie. He was in the tool shed.

Right away- he was high.

A hot day and Paulie- inexplicably- had a sweatshirt on. Sitting in the broken office chair with wheels, his huge frame spilling over the edges. He kept tinkering with a small black fan. The cage was open, the blades exposed. I remember he held a paintbrush with dry red paint on it. I guess he was trying to sweep dust off the fan blades, but I’m not sure.

His head dropped, chin slowly to the chest. He’d doze off for a few seconds. I stood there, filming him. I don’t think he knew I was there.

He rolled the office chair over to a white wood work table. He plopped his elbows down and put his head into his hands. Moaning and complaining of a terrible head ache but he couldn’t remember the word for head ache. Shadow’s calendar was blowing in the breeze created by a loud, a painfully loud fan mounted above the door. It was on the month July, which was the right month. There were sunglasses on the table. Paulie started singing “Why’d you have to be so good?…the way that you hold me….the way that you scold me” his voice was wavering, and low, but in tune. He seemed lost in thought over some memory, some past lover perhaps. He’d fall asleep for a few seconds and then start to sing again “…the way that you hold me”

After a time, he decided to put on the sunglasses. He unfolded the glasses and slowly held them open with both hands. He moved his head toward his hands very slowly, trying to fit the glasses onto his head. It was a slow, slow process.

Jason, his best buddy, said Paulie’s got a problem with a few drugs. The problem is sometimes you get hooked on the drugs you need to get you off of the first drug. It’s a vicious cycle. Paulie’s trapped.

When he finally got the sunglasses on, Paulie started to comb his hair. A black fine tooth comb. His thick black hair is always greased back and he combed it back in place, only to have the fan blow it out of place again. This continued until he used the comb to scratch his back, but I don’t think he ever reached the spot that itched. James came in and talked with Paulie briefly. Paulie didn’t say anything that made sense. He called James, by the name Charlie, and said he never wanted to get dirty. Realizing Paulie was high, James smoked a usually prohibited cigarette with Paulie and then left work early, not completing any of the necessary repairs to the cubicle upstairs.

After a while, Paulie’s high wore off. He took his shirt off and shaved in the sinks in the basement. He told me he no longer lived at the White House. Meyer had told him he could have his cubicle or his job but not both. Paulie kept his job and moved into a shelter on 125th St in Harlem.

He was so down, so rejected. He had looked upon Meyer as his savior, but now his savior had decided he had to go. Paulie was a broken man, at the lowest point I’d seen him.

He walked out of the blue doors of the lobby and stood on the Bowery smoking a cigarette before he left. A bunch of young women walked by in tube tops and Paulie and I decided to people watch. That seemed to lift his spirits. He walked off down the Bowery. I wanted to follow him and film him where he lived but I didn’t have any tape left, or any energy either.

Go show some love over at Treehugger’s Convenient Truth Contest. Our resident hippie Graham posts us a little clip showing how he solves a problem we all have… how to deal with an excess of plastic bags. I know you have this problem. Even if you got a dog that craps a lot, you still can’t get rid of them fast enough. So go watch…

Moose is entering the second annual International Documentary Challenge. The challenge is this: Make a 4-8 minute short documentary in 5 days. On Thursday March 1st, we’ll be assigned a topic. The final cut is to be mailed in on Monday March 5th. It is truly inspiring and intimidating to see what some of last year’s winners were able to do. The topics include: Music, First Person, Biography, Direct Cinema, Sports, Environment and a few others. All the films are given a general theme to work into their genre. Last year’s theme was freedom. The cameras will start rolling on March 1st…

The summer heat was thick, to stand outside meant to feel sweat bead up on your skin. It was mid-July and I had just returned from a trip to China, my whole understanding of the world shaken. The White House lobby was kind of cool, the working fans spinning at full speed, the others going as fast as they could. It felt good to be in familiar surroundings. Over the past years, the lobby has always had a slow welcoming feel to it; the plants hanging from the ceiling, the orange and white cat weaving between the chairs to greet the old timers. Some days it feels like the lobby itself is an old man, a place that’s already seen its most ambitious and dangerous times, and now sits back, full of stories, waiting in relative peace for the days to pass on.

Since I’d been out of the loop awhile, I needed to get the camera rolling again, get caught up on the happenings of the White House. At Matt’s suggestion, I followed a new employee of the hotel, a skinny young Scotsman named James. 20 years old and loaded with optimism, he told the camera of his plans to improve the White House– to “get it in its prime again.” James had been assigned a new job, the seemingly simple task of making minor repairs to an empty cubicle on the first floor. Confidence in his stride, James dragged wood out from the basement.

First, he set out to repair the chickenwire ceiling. This meant he had to cut some long thin wood slats. (Part of the ceiling had been torn off, almost certainly evidence of someone climbing in from above to steal valuables) Using four steel chair frames, James set up a simple workbench and then selected a hand saw from the tool shed. After measuring, he attempted to saw but his slender arms were not capable of generating the power to move the saw through the wood. He soon took a lengthy smoke break. Upon his return, we found Paulie in the tool shed. It was Paulie’s day off but he had stopped by to check in, he said. When James explained what he was attempting to do, Paulie realized the futility of James approach and took over, intending to educate James on how to use the power saw. As Paulie changed into a work shirt, I noticed massive scars on his chest. Paulie said that he’d had a number of heart attacks which required bypass surgery, and he’d also had a stroke. He mentioned this without any desire to be pitied for his poor health or commended for his knack for survival. It was very matter-of-fact, the same way he’d talk about what he’d had for lunch.

The power saw out, Paulie began to cut the wood, producing a harsh high-pitched screaming sound. Particles of the plywood filled the air like snowfall. It was hard for me to breathe from a distance of ten feet. Paulie, whose face was inches from the saw, didn’t wear a facemask or even safety goggles. Every minute or so he would have to stop sawing and shake his head, causing all the wood bits to fall off his face. Every time he did this I would chuckle a little bit, thinking that he looked remarkably like a giant dog shaking water off his body. I climbed an old fire escape to breathe easier and get an aerial shot, the late afternoon light adding a soft beauty to the moment. The two men worked outside on the small concrete patio, surrounded by old brick walls. Paulie scolded James when he realized James’ measurements made him cut more wood then was needed. This prompted James to leave quickly with the wood, not even thanking Paulie for his help. I followed James inside and upstairs to the first floor cubicle where he made a brief attempt to repair the ceiling, giving up after a few minutes to leave for a long lunch break. I decided to head back down and catch up with Paulie.

Moose had a busy, gory summer of opposites.

Summer started off with spring– innocently enough, as we shot a documentary about a very talented and young Julliard quartet, Attacca . Directed by Yaron Zilberman(Watermarks), we followed Attacca with cameras as they tackled Beethoven’s Opus 131. (The slow haunting rhythm of the 6th movement has fast become a favorite) The shooting culminated in Attacca’s concert of the famed piece on Florida International’s campus in Miami. Each member of the quartet had a different style of play; Gillian Gallagher’s slow reserved viola an interesting contrast to the vibrant cello of Andrew Yee, his thick black hair splashing across his face as he played. Another fascination, was the degree of collaboration the quartet achieved, all of them able to swallow egos and inevitable frustrations to pursue the best possible performance of the 131.

From the palms of Miami, we headed North to the ghettoes of Detroit. Armed with bullet resistant vests and little sleep, we shot a documentary series for A&E entitled “The First 48″. The premise is simple: In the first 48 hours following a murder, detectives must find a lead or the chances of solving the case drop by half. Our job was to follow homicide detectives during their initial investigations in the rough spots of Detroit. Given local cell phones, we waited unnervingly for the phone to ring. When the phone rang it meant someone had been killed, signifying that our work day had begun. We then drove at high speed through the most dangerous hoods of Detroit to the murder scene. Bodies riddled with bullets and blood stained concrete became the norm, as did filming detectives try to piece together the clues. Once a suspect was named, we would put on our bullet resistant vests and follow the Fugitive Apprehension Strike Team (FAST) as they broke into properties where the suspect might be. Adrenaline pupming through the veins, the melodies of Beethoven’s 131 a distant memory, we would routinely see doors pummeled by battering rams, shotguns drawn and weeping mothers and sisters. And of course, the camera was always rolling. When suspects were brought into custody, they were usually quiet and unremorseful.

In the late summer, we returned to New York City. Relieved to be home.