Go North
Well, the last post showed Sara to be a much more popular blogger than I, earning the most comments ever. Wang. Tough. She can't help me with this one as she wasn't there. Suffer.
For tonight's show I present "Mr Smith goes to Wellington" an epic work encompassing four fishing vessels, nine windmills and some form of proto-muesli.
So, there we were sitting around at Picton when Ben tells me about a thing in the paper what said that they were still looking for extras for ROTK, or rather that they had a couple of scenes they wanted to shoot in the next few months and they needed people for them.
Wang? So to the Press I went and looked for myself. Coolness, they want tall Nordic looking people, men 16+ and woman (mainly) 55+ So I thinks hmmmm, I am male, tall and 16+ this is good. Then I read that te casting call will be in some auditorium in Upper Hutt. Ah. Sod.
But no, as Ben points out we could just go to Wellington. Go to Wellington? Go to Wellington. Good point. So go to Wellington was the plan. Called up car rental companies to discuss relocation of vehicles (free or very cheap + petrol) to get Ben and I to Wellington. "Sorry, I have no idea what you are talking about" said some ass hat Hertz call centre monkey sitting in Australia. "You don't?" I said, well good day.
Went on to Avis my friends from journeys past. "Sorry we don't have any relocations at this time of year." Sod. OK, how about the train and ferry combo? $93.
$93? What the hell? One way? Yup. $93 for a one person, one way rail ticket from Chch to Picton, and then a one way ferry (not Lynx) ticket from Picton to Wellington. BAH!
So to Air New Zealand I went. I was warned and cautioned about ho much it would cost to fly as I was trying to book on Monday for a flight that Friday (and then the following Monday) Well in there faces. The return ticket (so 7 days from booking) was still only $62 and I had a wide selection of times I could have selected. The ticket up being only four days away was a little more expensive at just over $100, but still the total was much cheaper than poxy train/ferry combo and cut travel time from 15000 hours to less than two. So, Air New Zealand was the winner on the day. Seriously, the ferry train thing seems mental. Mental.
So Friday rolled around and after stealing the digital camera from eCOSM I was off to the big city. I used express check in, and really it didn't seem to express. If you don't have bags then yes it is express, but after I had done the touch screen computer thing, I then had to take the boarding pass and my bag up to a check in counter and give her my bag, she then seemed to take too long to simply take my bag. Not a long time, just longer than I would have thought necessary.
Wellington airport held a mini captive, so I checked it out, and discovered the cooper sports variant costs $44,000. That is a lot. I took the flyer into the central city and headed for an Internet cafe in Manners mall. From there I emailed Carl to inform him that the eagle (such that I was) had landed. Carl was one of the guys that James and I did honours with, and when I emailed him on Monday to inform him I was coming up, he offered me his couch. Wang.
Carl was heading back to his office, and I set off to walk to a building commonly referred to (apparently) as the "mothership." Got changed and headed to The Back Bencher a pub across the road from Parliament. James will know it, and we of ADT will know it (well Night shift peoples) There I found many a friend.
Not like that, and not straight away, but eventually. By an excellent chance a gathering of people had been organised for the nigth and so I found Abba, Anna, (Carl), Ginny, Lisa, Mark and Sam all gathered up for drinking. All honours people, and many more than last time I was in Wellington with James where we managed to only meet up with two of the above seven. So that ruled. Disturbingly, six of those seven having done POLS honours now work in the dreaded bureaucracy.
Eventually we moved to the Malt Room (James, that one nearish your place that has many many beers on tap....?) which provided me with good food, drinks for all and the rugby screen for those inclined to see Canterbury smack over the Brumbies. Carl and I went home around 1230 for we had things to do in the AM and walked to his flat on Oriental Parade.
It is a nice walking distance from town, and the flat itself is pretty cool. In fact bar the apartments of James and Leyland I would certainly rate it coolest flat I have stayed at in Wellington (the Big Flat being a different kind of beast to all others, it has a bank vault, I mean really). It is a nice little two bedroom affair with an excellent lounge and view of the harbour. It is also closer to ground level than all other flats, being not up any hills, only one flight of steps, which is good as otherwise it would be at street level, and would not have such a good view of the ocean, harbour and environs.
At his flat I met Ryan his flatmate. He seemed both English, and also from Timaru. (He didn't seem to be from Timaru, I actually heard him say he was from Timaru, the English bit was just the feeling I got, although perhaps it was just his mother that was from England... not too important.) And three other people whose names escape me. After some sitting around they went into town, and Carl and I were left with....
MORE MINIDISCS THAN GOD. Oh my, there were many, somewhere in the order of 600 I'm told, definitly a lot. But more on that later.
The next morning Carl and I walked back to his office which had my pack in it, and I got changed whilst he found his car. He then drove me out to Upper Hutt, which was good, and Upper Hutt is much further away than I would have thought, it looked just like it had when te good ship CRV had stopped off there for KFC. We didn't know where the auditorium was so stopped at a BP. The woman behind the counter wait till I got as far as "do you know whe..." before she started giving directions, many people had come before me.
Directions were followed and just before midday Carl deposited me at the end of the line.
The line was some long, I couldn't tell you how many people were there, as I would certainly suck at that kind of estimation. However it was about the same length as a line from S block to University Drive (think enrolment here people) it wasn't a straight line, but folded around on itself.
I was tallest. (as far as I could see (with my glasses on)) Score. This made me feel much better about the cost of the trip. Slowly the line moved forward, and I watched as a number of cameramen and a TV3 news group wandered around talking and shooting stuff. There were some hippies that really looked the part. They had long hair down to well below the shoulders, and a number of them had beards almost as long. But I was not afraid, as I was still tallest, and my beard whilst not being really long, was still better than many of the males nearby. So that was good.
Then someone came out and talked to the front of the line. Who knows what they said. Awhile later someone else came out and talked to the front of the line, but this person had a larger brain and walked down the line repeating the talk at several places.
Thanks for coming down etc etc, nice to see you all, etc etc, really busy, don't have time to see you all, so listen to me "We only want woman 55 and over. We do not want woman under that age, so girls, thank you, but you are wasting your time. As for them men, we only want people with long hair, or anyone over 55. If you do not fit these criteria we are not interested in you today as we are filming a very specific scene with specific requirements." So take one of these forms, fill it in and send us a photo and we will contact you if needed.
Sod.
I witnessed nobody paying attention to the speaker, and continued to read my book as we moved slowly forward. After awhile
Posted by luther at May 24, 2003 10:45 PM