I woke up this morning to watch a rat swim across my
street.
The car-parked-in-the-road’s tires seem to be almost
missing. From my perspective it’s as if NOLA’s
underwater.
It’s been raining for about 24 hours now. I now can
imagine how horrible it was during the hurricane and
I’m worried about the Foxy driving to work, and what
the roads are like in other places. It seems the side
streets are also this terrible, at least from what I
can see from my door, automobiles creating tides as
they roll down the street.
Can’t say the city is boring. It always keeps you on
your toes. Last night the power went out all across
the city for about 30 seconds. And as I looked out the
office window before it came back on, I remember
thinking: Oh. No. This is not the city to be stuck in
a blackout. Images of looting and chaos ran through my
mind. If this town did what it did with 20 feet of
water surrounding the merchandise, imagine what it
would do without. But the power came back on. It’s
not on in Jefferson Parrish right now; our set
construction is sort of at a standstill.
On a brighter note I had an eventful week. I finally
got a chance to introduce myself to the director,
David Fincher when I had an errand to run to Set where
I found him in his “office”, a railroad room on the 3
½ floor (yes, that’s ½, it’s the rooms located midway
between the official third floor and the fourth, not
counting the attic) of the 4 story “Nola House” which
has been our set this week.
“By the way, my name’s Naomi” I said.
He gripped my hand in both of his, squeezed them and
said in a voice with a pitch a tad higher than I
imagined, but buttery soft, “It’s a pleasure, thank
you for working on the movie. My name is David”
“Nice to meet you David” and then I watched as he
ripped open a package addressed to someone else in the
hopes that it was a present for him, with a wink and a
nod.
Day before yesterday I also met one of the “smaller”
actors, a sweet old lady playing, what else “Old
Woman” that has a few lines to the young Benjamin
Button. I brought her her script pages as she lives in
New Orleans.
Thinking that would be easier than FedEx I jumped into
the Foxy Jalopy and headed out to Poland Street. No
one told me that the journey to Poland Street would be
like going through a Favela. I thought at first I was
headed in the wrong direction as I went over a bridge
that seemed to take me momentarily out of New Orleans,
or what resembled New Orleans proper to me. The
houses became more and more dilapidated, boarded up,
run-down. More people were wandering the street,
aimlessly with carts and other paraphernalia. The
actress had told me that they had been lucky during
Katrina, some minor damage but no flooding in the area
she called the Bywater. Good Christ! So this place had
looked like this before. I have since found out, the
neighborhood has another name, the Upper Ninth Ward,
and if you make a right on Charters from Poland and
travel a few blocks, before you hit Esplanade you will
run across NOCCA, New Orleans Center for the Creative
Arts, a funky wrought iron building next to the tracks
and right before the road merges into N. Peters.
I eventually turned onto Poland Street. Her little
house was situated directly across from the Army’s
naval base in New Orleans, a dreary and horribly grey
front step. The house sitting on the corner seemed
out of place with the slabs of grey mortar and metal,
the railroad along the water and behind the levee
across the street. Walking to the backyard where her
door was wide open, though, I saw orange and lemon
trees, roses and honey-suckle; A little oasis even
with the rap music booming heavily from the neighbors
over the short fence, disturbing the tableau. A
lovely older woman sat inside talking on the phone,
when she saw me she screeched in glee, telling her
friend on the phone “Can you believe it, a real movie
person is bringing ME my script! Do you want to talk
to a real movie person?” And she shoved the phone into
my hand. I spoke to the woman on the other line
briefly and when I was off the lady gave me a lemon
and a navel orange that she had picked when she missed
my call earlier. She then noticed my amber ring and
told me about her daughter who had just died this past
June from Ovarian cancer. “The Katrina brought it on,
I know it did, or at least made it come faster” She
looked like she was welling up and then quickly
jumped-to, running to her jewelry box to show me all
the amber her daughter had bought for her while in
Hungary and other places in Europe shortly before she
died. “I knew I was destined to do this, to meet you”
she said, having not taken out the amber since her
daughter died, “the world is funny that way, sometimes
it just sends you people you know you’re meant to
meet.”
That’s New Orleans.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays all, talk to you in
the New Year if I don't see you before.
Much love,
Naomi
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