lierdumoa | Today

I have a post about vidding that I want to make, but for now, I have to talk about my day.

The good.

The film is progressing really well! The other outspoken guy in the group, David, is coming up with a lot more useful ideas now that we've started planning our camera shots, since directing is his passion, while scriptwriting is clearly not. I really feel like we're on the same wavelength and understand each other well.

We (the group) actually managed to cut the script down to three main characters without hurting the plotline in any way. Fewer actors to find. We've got all but one of our filming locations reserved. Our story looks great, and if we do a good enough job, this short film could end up at the Sundance Film Festival. I think the idea has the potential for it. Now it's just a matter of making sure it's executed well.

The bad.

Oh, the bad.

Remember the idiot I mentioned in my last post, who liked to say "I don't want to do things the easy way" and then put absolutely no effort into working out how to do things the hard way?

I find the more I am around him the more edgy and irritiable and generally bitchy I become. Wednesday, for example, I started acting bossier than I would normally and it started to piss of the other group members. My behavior was triggered by an incident. I forgot about the incident after it happened, but my bad mood lingered.

Basically, we talked about filming in a park near campus. The idiot made some comment to the effect of, "Oh yeah, I heard that's the gay park. Yeah, it's kinda shady. Ha, ha, I don't know if we want to film there."

Instead of saying, "Shut the fuck up you fucking homophobe" I said in a really crabby tone of voice, "Okay, that's really off topic and we're wasting time. Can we get back to the matter at hand."

Instead of snapping at him, I snapped at the group at large, and everyone got a bit pissed with me.

Now basically every idea this guy comes up with is completely ridiculous. It wastes time, it's totally unnecessary and often completely unworkable with our story, and trying to go through with the idea would be totally unfair to our entire group.

Problem. David can't stand the idiot because he was forced to tutor him all last term and let me tell you, hanging out with this guy just wears you down. David's gotten to the point where whenever the idiot comes up with a bad idea David flat out tells him no without consulting the rest of the group. As you can imagine, this pisses off the rest of the group.

The rest of the group may agree that the idea is bad, but they don't talk unless you ask them individually for their opinions. They will never say no to an idea. I have to be the one to outline all the reasons an idea is bad, get the rest of the group to agree with me, and then say no. I'm always the one saying no. No one else will say no to him,and we really can't afford the time it takes to keep arguing a futile point.

I swear, every time an idea of his is even slightly workable I find a way to include it. But I still have to say no the majority of the time and the more I do so, the less friendly I sound.

Finally at the end of class, when everyone was rather harried, I asked who could stay after. The following conversation wiht the idiot ensued.

"I have to leave."

"You're sure you have to leave?"

"Yeah, I have to leave right now."

"You're leaving right now."

"Yeah, in 20 minutes."

"So you're not leaving right now. You're leaving in 20 minutes."

After which he came up to stand less than a foot away from me (he's six foot five; I'm five foot flat), stared down at me, forcing me to look up at him, and said to me, "I really don't appreciate you speaking to me like that. Please don't ever speak to me like that again."

My reaction at that point was to look down and say as calmly as possible, "Okay." I'm sure I looked totally cowed which pisses me off because I was hardly afraid of him. My thoughts were more along the lines of -- if you jam a pencil point against his jugular they'll expel you. Don't react. Don't react.

I knew David was thinking the same thing as me because he suddenly yelled out, "I'm going to get a snack" to which I replied, "A snack sounds like a great idea" and we left the room for about five minutes to vent and calm down.

No one else in the group said anything. But then, of course, they never say anything. They just leave me and David to make all the decisions and complain when we make them. They can't even express opinions without me asking them at every single break in a conversation, "Do you have any ideas on this?"

So we returned from our snack. We worked on the project a bit. The idiot left. We worked on the project some more. I had a really hard time concentrating so I didn't contribute much. I spent an hour and a half trying to calm down and failing miserably.

See, before today, male chauvanism was something I read about in books. It had never occurred to me that anyone would do that to me. Ever. It's simply not acceptable adult behavior. Hell, it's not acceptable juvenile behavior.

I'm just a little bit traumatized, not to mention so pissed off I could cry.

I'm feeling rather betrayed by the members of my group who stood there and acted like it was okay for him to do that.

After I got back home I ranted to my roommate and to

permetaform. Then I called up David and ranted to him, and we basically agreed that if the idiot did something like that ever again I would report him to the school authorities and David would back me up. Thank God I'm not totally alone here.

I have to see the idiot again on Monday. I don't know how I can handle this.

Except I will handle this. Because this project is my baby and no one is going to take it away from me.