Sometimes I Remember Why I Moved Out Here

The other day I was lucky enough to be an extra on the set of Iron Man 2. Being an extra isn’t a glamorous or even a fun job, but there are certainly worse things in the world to get paid for than watching the making of what promises to be an awesome movie.

Movie making can be unbelievably boring and tedious. I’ve been on a lot of film sets, and I’ve almost never seen people act as if they were having any fun. Especially in film school, everyone approached the process of movie-making with a deadly seriousness that bordered on ridiculousness. Part of that was probably the “school” factor weighing everyone down—school is rarely fun—but on so many sets it just didn’t feel like anyone was truly enjoying the process of making movies. Maybe I just didn’t see it.

But on Iron Man things were completely different. During one take, I caught sight of Jon Favreau, the director, watching a shot on the monitor and just giggling. It was a gigantic Hollywood production, probably one of the biggest movies out there right now, and the director was giggling and smiling like he was a kid with a video camera. In all the time I’ve been in LA, I’ve never once seen something so exciting and inspiring. People come out here to make movies because movies are fun, damn it. It can be so easy to forget that.

Watching the first Iron Man movie, it’s hard to pinpoint what exactly makes it such a fun movie. The script isn’t anything we haven’t seen before, the special effects aren’t groundbreaking—there’s nothing in the workings of the movie itself to point to and say “that’s why it works.” What makes the movie so great is that all the fun and joy Favreau and Downey Jr. put into making it shows up on screen. "I cry when I watch C.H.U.D." says Robert Downey Jr. on his love for movies--all movies. Sometimes I wonder, if you don't love movies that much, why would you do it?

Sure, there will always be bad days when making a movie. But at the end of the day, it should be fun. You can get so much out of filmmaking if you just love what you’re doing. If someone doesn’t get a thrill from pointing a camera at Iron Man, I honestly have nothing to say to them. It’s Iron Man, for God’s sake! Anyone, no matter what it is they’re doing, should be as happy as Jon Favreau was making Iron Man. Otherwise, look for something else to do.