Being Farted at by Reitman, Portman and Kutcher:

My first (and probably last) feature employment experience

By Sasha Mitchell

Meet me: apathetic screenwriter facing dire existential circumstance due to prolonged unemployment and excessive extra-curricular deviation.  Through this connection and that, I procured the arguably coveted position of P.A. on a feature film at Paramount (in conjunction with Montecito Picture Company).  That film was the about to be released No Strings Attached.

First side note:  boy, is this town the anthropological oddity.  Where else could a home-skillet such as myself take meetings with production companies and producers (both valid and renown, though I shan’t name them here), even have had her script at least delivered to the gloriously resuscitated Robert Downey Jr., ALL based on a connection?  Connections in this town are like a guaranteed entry, regardless of the quality of your goods.  I believe the ambitious diversity of my thus far Gogh-esque (meaning entirely un-purchased) work, speaks for itself.  Still, I was appreciative when the opportunity arose to work on a film starring Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher, and directed by Montecito honcho Ivan Reitman.

At first, I was telling everyone I’d be working on Ghostbusters 3, but after correcting my fact-dyslexia, I was instead brought onto a Paramount bungalow for what was then called Friends with Benefits (later changed to the Untitled Ivan Reitman Project so as not to be confused with the Timberlake vehicle; and because Paramount wouldn’t dare release under the project’s original title, Fuckbuddies).

I was called in early to accommodate a photo-shoot with Natalie that had everyone in the production office upheaved.  The shoot was subsequently cancelled, so I was transferred from the production bungalow to the art department bungalow (you say bungalow, I say trailer), specifically to PA for set decorating (I’d eventually assume more of a coordinator’s position for this department).  My new home for the ensuing three months was a very small office room, wherein I was given an oversized desk to work directly alongside (as in desks-touching) the decorator, buyer, and leadman.

Second side note:  these guys were amazing.  I was instantly accepted and encouraged; I honestly couldn’t have asked for a better group of individuals to work for.  Then I read the script.

I guess the thing is not to take the film business too literally, otherwise you risk your sanity and turn into one of those uptight anorexic trolls you run into at Ralphs, like Lily Tomlin; or the neurotic sufferers of extreme eye-contact aversion circa Ozzy Osborne or Peter Bogdonavich.  Anyway, the script for Fuckbuddies was only wholly loathsome to me in concept.  Nevertheless, the allegedly-prodigious 23 year old screenwriter patently possessed something that I sure didn’t at 23, like a three-picture deal, one of whose premise consisted of:  1. Guy, Ashton Kutcher, is a lowly PA on a High School Musical type show.  2. Girl, and his adolescent interest whom he asks to finger before page 2 (i.e., soon-to-be-Oscar-nominated Portman) is an enigmatic yet incessantly snarky pre-med student, who somehow drives a brand new luxury car.  Throw in some nauseatingly sophomoric gags where guy’s pot-smoking, ex-acting force father (Kevin Kline) is actually dating Kutcher’s ex, and you’ve got… something nauseatingly sophomoric.  Kline is perhaps the most credible actor in the bunch, so you might ask yourself just how the mighty have fallen.  I did.  Then I met Kevin.

Incidentally, Kevin Kline was my first older man crush (and from where many older male crushes followed).  I was 13 and watching Cry Freedom in history class.  Do not ask me why a movie about apartheid in South Africa ignited carnal inclination.  The point is, I was excited to meet the guy.  When it happened, he was turning the corner for the art department bathrooms (talk about anti-climactic).  We narrowly avoided colliding, as in physically bouncing off each other, but he acted as if I weren’t even there.  I think he only pitched a half-dozen fits during shooting, Reitman eagerly bending over for them.  Celebrity indeed.

The feudal system inherently present on a film set doesn’t cease to blow my mind, but maybe that’s because I fundamentally don’t understand not treating people like people.  Director Ivan Reitman was at the top of that hierarchy, but sheesh was the guy gloomy.  Like a big, gloomy beaver with no real grasp on how the other side lives, i.e., that entry-level demographic that Portman and Kutcher’s characters, Adam and Emma, were originally crafted to be.

My brief brushes with Ms. Portman, someone I’d respected, occurred first when I visited one of Paramount’s titanic stages, whereon was erected her character’s apartment set.  Besides hardly portraying an apartment any humble-origin, pre-med student could afford (minus some Darfurian oil-scam operation on the side), I’m still proud to have had a hand in the presentation of it.  Anyway, Natalie was in the stage-bedroom before walking on camera, and into the stage-den.  I remember being dressed like a hipster power lesbian (however you might picture that, just so long as it’s the lipstick kind).  It was there that Natalie Portman looked directly at me, but who knows if anything even registered.  My next instance in her non-working presence was outside of the soundstage, where she exited during a stoic phone conversation (I want to recall reaching for a cigarette).  A sigh of self-deprecation’s demise escaped me when I put 2 and 2 together, and realized that actresses are so gorgeous because, for the most part, they’re freakin’ Liliputian.  Meaning they’re incredibly tiny, and thusly confined to be of uber-proportion and consequently pleasant symmetry.  They aren’t necessarily better-looking versions of you and me, they’re just so damned miniature they have little other option.  Ashton, however, is taller than most men I’ve slept with.  But I didn’t exactly do any sleeping with anyone until I got to LA, so that ain’t sayin’ much.

On that note, can I just officially out that Hollywood operates on a currency of sex?  And not just sex, fucking.  I mean, where else exists thousands of willing, young – and in some cases one might substitute ‘delusional’ for ‘young’ –  actors, writers, and other idiots volunteer for indentured servitude with such alarmingly consistent frequency?  “Well, we aren’t going to actually pay you for your time, traffic-induced stress, and/or thoughts or ideas, but maybe someone above the line will bed you.  See if you can’t sell their sweatshirt on eBay and call it compensation; who needs to fiddle with a 1099?”

Let it be stated here, that I am nothing if not a lover of film.  All I desire is for something that perhaps does its share to advance the human condition, and not cater to the lowest common denomination.  I am not an aspiring filmmaker or celebrity or industry sycophant; and while I respect that it is nice to escape the ugliness of our very real world, I reject that it be through highly processed baby food which relies on the repeated smooshing of ‘pretty’ people with no personality for an $11 aesthetic narcotic.  I’d rather just indulge the real drug and experience a real work of art, that or simply pay for real porn.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand, I only have this to ask:  can sex friends be best friends?  No, but you might contract some nice gonorrhea.  Let’s face it, this isn’t When Harry Met Sally.  It’s not even when Tyler met Perry.  Furthermore, I read somewhere that No Strings Attached might present Portman’s main obstacle to an Oscar for Black Swan.  She may be the critic’s choice, but who really knows if No Strings will click with your average Joe, who’s only seeing it because he’s being dragged there by your average Jane.  I suppose the question for the upcoming week is, will Natalie Portman repeatedly boinking Ashton Kutcher, though claiming not to enjoy it until in one of the final original lines, her character acknowledges (somewhere on the shoulder of highway 101 no less), that it is her romantic ambition to just “fart” in front of Kutcher, indicating that he is indeed the Bogey to her Bacall… Will Portman and Kutcher make the audience believe that they are enjoying themselves as opposed to being force-fed diluted sexual comedy?  Or does the producer credit forewarn at how Portman may well be gearing up for her directorial debut of some calculatedly abstract, prostitute/holocaust tale?

As I’ve yet to see the final edit of No Strings Attached, and as it was an overall beneficial experience for me, I’ll reserve any further judgement.  Oh yeah, Ludacris is in it.  Although, I’ll probably cringe less during his scenes as the other smarmy sidekicks I’m normally coerced to abide in these kinds of movies.  And surely Reitman’s not the irrelevant fogey his critics might suppose, and I say that knowing full well his last movie was the superhero one with Luke Wilson and Uma Thurman.  What was that called again?  Oh yeah, you didn’t see it, and neither did I, even when it was playing for free on my last overseas flight.  There’s just not enough booze on an airliner for that.

No Strings Attached also stars Olivia Thirlby (Juno), a civilly villainous Cary Elwes (eh, he shoulda stayed British), and Lake Bell (the only cast member who ate with the rest of us plebs, and whom acquires points for that alone).  All these blinding lights aside, and the quaint notion that Kutcher’s nobody turned producer/fart-inspiring character, is actually a talented writer who gets his script happened (I surmise looking the way he does only supplements that make-believe; be still my heart with those Twitter shots of him and Demi bouncing before pyramids), I can assure you there’s at least something of exquisite visual nature within the impending fuckbuddy romcom; and that is, if you look really closely, you’ll see a photo of me as a blonde with painted-on whiskers in Kutcher’s kitchen.

If your eyes haven’t glazed over by then due to the unrelenting farce that is popular culture.