Last looks

In LA, they have dedicated art department warehouses. Out here, there isn't enough business to keep such places alive, so we tend to use the remains of failed industries. On Syriana, we used an old warehouse from a closed factory. For Wedding Crashers, it was a semi-abandoned furniture store. For NT2, it was a closed moving company warehouse. This time, it was an abandoned storeroom at a (mostly) abandoned mental hospital. Five weeks ago, when I first saw it -- debris-strewn, peeling paint, broken windows, a vague smell (chlorine? urine?) in the back, no water, limited power -- I was in love. For the first time, it was my art department.

Over the next few weeks, it got full. Full of props, set dressing, severed human heads, various bodies, gallons of fake blood, power tools, sawdust, guns, everything a growing boy needs.

There were times I hated it. When it was 4AM, and pouring rain, and 40 degrees, and I was working on three hours sleep, it seemed a bit like hell. But mostly, it was home. For five weeks.

Today I cleared out the last of my tools. The faint smell of (chlorine? urine?) is still there, along with that weird clingy smell that the fake blood makes, and the stale odor of the literally hundreds of cigarettes smoked by our F/X interns. A family of wasps was already laying claim to a corner. A lone broom, Maryland state property, stood against the rusted old table saw. I took one last photo, clicked the lock shut, and remembered that stupid line from the Don Henley song, "I need to remember this." I first quoted that to myself in 1989, when I was moving from an apartment that I hated, in Greenbelt. And it pops into my head every time I see a place for the last time. Good places, bad places.

I remembered last Spring, when I was the last person on National Treasure 2; the rest of the set dressers had mostly moved on to other projects. Carl was off filling out paperwork, and Parker was loading scrap lumber into a truck. That warehouse was several times larger, but just as grimy, just as drafty, and just as full of old industrial memories, creeping in the ones we'd just created. I'd spent about five weeks there, too. I looked around, breathed in the dusty air one last time, and pulled the door shut.

It doesn't feel like filmmaking. But it doesn't feel like anything else, either.