It’s two days before Christmas and I’m scouting on the edge of Skid Row, and there is a blind man standing on the corner and he is yelling.

The man is very tall and very gaunt and looks to be in his late 60s. He wears a blue track jacket and brown corduroys. Both are several sizes too large and perpetually seem in danger of falling off.

Some of the things he yells are nonsensical, and others are deeply offensive. Every fifth word is an obscenity.

The man’s voice is hoarse from yelling. There is a bewildered pain in his eyes. It is clear that the things he says are not by choice.

The sidewalk is busy with people walking to the nearby wholesale stores. Most give him a wide berth and ignore him, though I can see that he scares some people, and offends others.

Then, all of a sudden, the blind man steps off the curb and into traffic.

The light is green. Cars race across all four lanes. He shuffles forward, yelling and completely unaware of the danger ahead.

Then, out of nowhere, a man rides up beside him on a loud, gas-powered mini-bike. He cuts the engine.

“I got you, boss,” he says. He motions for the first and second lanes of cars to slow and stop. They do. He gets off his bike and walks it next to the man.

On the opposite side, a middle-aged man in a blue Dodgers jacket sees this. He steps into the road and holds up his hand with the force of a veteran traffic cop. The oncoming cars in the last two lanes immediately halt.

“Almost there,” he says to the blind man, who continues to yell.

A small crowd is now watching. As the blind man approaches the corner, an elderly woman steps forward and takes his hand.

“Come on, dear,” she says gently, and helps him up onto the curb. The blind man finds his footing on the corner. He is safe.

And then, just as quickly as they appeared, the elderly woman is gone, and the man on the motor bike is gone, and the man in the Dodgers hat is gone, and the throngs of pedestrians are walking by, and it’s as though nothing happened.

Like before, the man yells. And like before, the crowd gives him a wide berth.

But I realize now that they’re not truly ignoring him.

They may not want to hear what he is saying. But they seem to be paying a lot of attention to when he needs to cross the street.

—

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More stories / first print issue: nickcarr.com

I step into the small corner store and the smell of boiling peanuts floods my nose. It’s a pulpy, soggy odor, wasted of anything identifiable as a peanut. I find it more sickening with each visit.

The market is small. Candy bars are locked behind protective glass. Only a few of each item on the shelves: three boxes of spaghetti, four cans of chicken noodle soup…

I locate the owner in the rear of the store. He hunches over pots of boiling peanuts, stirs them slowly.

The man is ancient. He might be in his 80s, or he might be well past 100. He is bent and rigid, skin taut over bone, yet still wrinkled like worn leather.

I have a check to give him for $5,000. We’re filming on his block for two weeks, and he’s allowed us to use his rear parking lot for staging.

Throughout the shoot, I’ve made it a point to show this man the utmost courtesy and respect. Though I don’t know his history, it’s clear that he has lived a hard life, and my goal is for our production to be an experience he looks back positively on.

And yet, at every point, his manner has confused me. He speaks in short, curt sentences. There’s a bitterness to his voice. His eyes remind me of unlit coals.

The man sees the check. He motions for me to give it to the woman at the register, then returns back to his pots without a further word.

The woman at the register is his literal opposite. She’s about half his age, likely in her 40s. She’s obese, barely able to fit in the small space behind the counter. Where he has been steadfastly quiet and emotionless, the woman is loud and adversarial.

“That’s it?” she asks, eying the amount on the check. “Feels like you’re taking us for a ride.”

“In fact, you’re actually getting more than most business owners on the block because you have such a large a lot,” I explain.

She “hmmphs” me skeptically, resumes painting her nails. Like with the owner, the conversation ends abruptly.

I leave. The smell of the boiling peanuts trails me out, soaked into my clothes, my hair, my skin. I turn back to stare at the store for a moment, perplexed by an encounter that mirrors every previous encounter.

Then, I hear a voice behind me: “You actually gave money to that piece of shit?”

I turn. It’s the owner of the hardware store further down the block, who I’ve come to know during our shoot.

“Bet you think he’s just a kindly old man,” he says. “That man destroyed this neighborhood. For real.”

I ask him to tell the story.

“Back in the 80s, when crack first hit this area, that man’s son, a teenager at the time, became a dealer for one of the gangs. One day, a deal went bad, there was a shootout, and his son was gunned down. Dad over there swore he’d get revenge.

“So he started his own drug operation. He hired everyone that used to work with his son, paid them double what they were making to switch crews. He sold crack for cheaper than anyone else in the hood, because he wasn’t in it to make money. He started taking over the entire game.

“And his ace in the hole? You meet his old lady?” I ask if he means the woman behind the register. “Yeah. That’s his wife. He had her open a bail bond place. So anytime his guys got pinched, they’d call her and she’d have them back on the streets the next day selling.”

“The other gangs started getting mad over the lost business. That’s when the violence started. The killings. People were dying all over the place. Kids in his gang, kids in rival gangs, kids who were using his drugs. It went on long after all the people responsible for his son’s death were taken care of. It was like he couldn’t stop.

“Eventually, they got him. He was given 25 years. Been gone ever since. He only got released last month.

“That’s the man you’ve been so generous with,” he says with a laugh. “Just a kindly old man.”

I later confirm the story with a police officer assigned to our production. For the rest of the shoot, I avoid the owner and his store as much as possible.

But I can’t help notice each morning as the man hobbles to his store at 6AM and begins the process of boiling his peanuts, which he tends to unwaveringly throughout the day until he closes the store in the evening.

And not once in the entire two weeks of filming do I ever see a customer buy a bag of his boiled peanuts.

“You know,” says the homeowner as I scout his palatial home media room, “this is the largest privately owned digital screen in all of Southern California.” I take pictures, having trouble fitting it in a single shot.

The homeowner’s mansion is located on a bluff on the Malibu coast. It is one of the most beautiful homes I’ve ever scouted. You would know it instantly from its appearance in a series of commercials for a particular high-end product featuring a celebrity.

We move upstairs to the bedrooms. First, the master, with a panoramic view of the Pacific.

Then, we step into his 12-year-old daughter’s room. My eyes are instantly drawn to the wall-spanning, 15-foot tall bookcase.

It is nothing short of a child’s dream library. The shelves are lined with complete collections of every series you could ever want to devour as a kid. Harry Potter. Lord of the Rings. The Unfortunate Events books. The Narnia volumes. The copies are not paperbacks, but rather, the hardcover, fully illustrated, luxury limited editions released for each series. You could spend a year with this collection and still have more to read.

“Wow,” I say. “Your daughter has a very impressive library.”

But as I take pictures, I notice something strange through my viewfinder: none of the books have been read.

All are in mint condition. Not a single bent spine. The Harry Potter collection is still in its plastic wrap, along with numerous others. The shelves suddenly look more like a bookstore display than a kid’s bedroom.

“Yeah, I bought those for her,” he says. “Thought she’d like them. If she ever wanted to come see me,” he says. “She lives with her mom,” he adds, forcing an odd laugh. Then, he trails off.

I look back to the hundreds of unread books. The pristine white desk, an unused pink journal and rainbow assortment of pens ever-so-perfectly arranged on its unmarked surface. The unopened chemistry on one shelf.

An awkward silence pervades as I finish taking the pictures.

“Hey,” he says as we step out of the room, enthusiasm suddenly returning to his voice. “Have I shown you the infinite pool yet? It’s one of the biggest in the state.”

I drive up to the rusting chain link gate surrounding the barren desert property, a 100-foot-square parcel of gritty sand and scrub brush. A single ramshackle trailer at the far end looks one strong desert gust from falling over.

I’m here to see if the owner will allow us to park trucks on his property for a film shoot down the road. There is no one else around for miles.

I honk several times. I wait.

After a long while, a man steps out of the trailer. Indeterminate age. Skin leathery from working in the sun. Face worn and etched with lines. Wiry and thin. He motions for me to approach. I slowly drive onto the property.

Suddenly, six large dogs bolt out from behind the trailer toward me, barking their heads off. They leap against the doors of my car, smear slobber on the windows, paw the hood.

I can tell they’re not vicious. They’re desert dogs, allowed to run freely across the vast expanse they call home, and this is more a game than it is protection. Still, I don’t doubt that a bite will follow if I get out of the car.

I slow to a crawl, doing everything I can to not run one over. They dart back and forth in front of my car, challenging it as if it’s a fellow canine. I took to the man for help. He shows no sign of concern.

I finally arrive at his trailer. The man snaps his fingers for the dogs to desist. They race off to another part of the yard.

The man only speaks Spanish. I do my best to convey the request, and after a few minutes, he understands and accepts the offer. I tell him I’ll return with an agreement and his payment.

I start to drive out. Within seconds, the pack of dogs are crawling all over my car again, snarling and drooling.

I call to the man and ask if he’ll hold back his dogs. I tell him I’m afraid I’m afraid I’ll accidentally run one over.

“They fine,” he says gruffly, with little concern. “Don’t worry. They fine.” He disappears back into his trailer.

Frustrated, I slow the car to idle speed, ride the brake, literally inch toward the gate as the dogs show no sign of relenting. I finally lurch through onto the empty desert road, and for a moment, I think I’m free.

I’m not. The dogs bolt through the gate after me, racing beside and in front of my car.

There’s simply no way I can accelerate without possibly killing one or several of them. So I come to a complete stop on the vacant desert road. I wait. I wait some more.

The dogs wander around their unexpectedly dormant foe, confused. Suddenly, movement. Some unfortunate desert critter scurries by, and they’re after it at lightning speed, chasing it back onto the property.

Then, all is quiet. I wait to be sure they’re gone. I slowly inch forward. No dogs appear.

I slowly accelerate faster, 10 mph, 15 –

It happens in a microsecond. A black dog, what looks like a lab mix, gallops at the front left front corner of my car. Without any warning, he veers to the right, not in front of my car, but under.

I both hear and feel a massive THUNK at my feet as something – presumably the dog, possibly its head – slams into the underside directly below the pedals.

Horrified, I whip to look in the rearview mirror. I see the black dog race out from under my car at bat-out-of-hell speed, barking its head off. I search for any sign of injury. No limp. No trail of blood. I drive a Subaru with a decent amount of ground clearance, so maybe, just maybe it’s OK. But that thunk…

I watch dog hook a left abruptly off the road and disappear into the desert amongst the scrub.

I slam on the brakes, pull over. I climb on the roof of my car, search desperately for the animal. It’s gone.

I return to my car. I sit in the driver’s seat, deeply shaken. I sit there for a while. Then I realize with a sinking feeling I have to go tell the man what happened to his pet.

I slowly pull back into his property. For some reason, the dogs seem less interested in my car this time, engrossed in digging a hole at one corner of the yard.

I pull up to the trailer. Knock on the door. The man steps out, waits for me to speak.

“I’m so sorry,” I say, near tears. “Your dog… It followed me out. I didn’t see it. He ran under my car. I think I hit it. I don’t know if it’s OK.”

The man squints hard at his dogs. “My dogs fine,” he says.

 “No,” I say.  There’s one not here. That’s the one I hit.”

“All my dogs here,” he says. Measurable annoyance has grown in his voice. “They fine.”

I look at him with confusion. “No, there’s one missing,” I say. “The black one. I’m talking about the black one.”

A look of cold fury suddenly passes over his face. It’s so sudden and intense that I take a step back. 

“Black dog not my dog,” he says in a low, angry tone. 

“What?” I ask.

“Black dog not my dog,” he says again, each word dripping with hatred.

“But it was in your yard,” I say.  

“Black dog very bad,” he says, in the haunting, austere tone one might use in a horror movie when telling the history of the monster that has been viciously killing people for centuries. “Very bad. Black dog not my dog.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t understand,” I say. “A black dog followed me out of your property with your dogs. I think I hit it with my car. I’m afraid it’s injured – ”

“My dogs fine!” he yells at me. “Black dog not my dog!”

He stares daggers into my eyes, states each word with finality: “Black dog very bad.”

The conversation is over. He walks back into his trailer, slams the door.

I sit for a long while in a daze.

I slowly, carefully maneuver back to the gate. His dogs ignore me, still distracted by their hole digging.

Once on the road, I pull over a short distance further and search one last time for the black dog, but he’s gone. I sit there for a while longer, lost in thought.

This happened five years ago. To this day, I still think back and wonder if the black dog survived. And then I wonder what it could have possibly done to make that man speak of it as you would the devil.

The exterior of the Mexican restaurant is covered in a vibrant mural depicting traditional religious iconography. 

As I take scout pictures, I notice something hidden in one corner: a likeness of Kermit the Frog. 

I go inside and see that behind the register, there are dozens of Kermit-related items: dolls, toys, keychains, a lunch box, a calendar, a Chia pet. 

I finish taking pictures of the interior, then thank the owner. As we walk out, I ask if he’s a big fan of Kermit and the Muppets. 

For a moment, it looks like he’s going to confirm this enthusiastically. Then, he motions for me to come closer. He lowers his voice as though he’s telling me a dark secret. 

“You know,” he says. “I just painted that on the front because I thought it was funny. But the customers? They love it. They think I love Kermit. And so they just keep bringing me this shit. Toys, posters, socks…” He waves his hand at the counter, his voice growing louder. “Much of it, I hide away but some, I have no choice but to display…” He trails off, exasperated.

He sighs. Composes himself. “I just don’t know what to do,” he says quietly, staring at the Kermit doll perched on his register.

“So when did you lose your virginity?” the female bartender asks me.

I’m scouting a VFW bar. It’s noon. Dimly lit. Fake wood-paneling. Three or four big guys bent over their beers far enough that I can’t see their faces. Today’s special: Jim Beam and Coke for $4.

The bartender looks to be about a decade older than me, though I have a sneaking suspicion I actually have a few years on her. It’s hard to tell anything for sure in this light. Her question is the first thing she’s said to me since giving me the OK to take pictures.

“Ah — ” I stammer, trying to get any hook into where this is going.

“I lost it when I was 15,” she interrupts, her voice gravely.

“Oh,” I say. Then, because the ensuing pause clearly implies I say something more: “How was that?”

“It was on a beach,” she says. She’s broadcasting for the bar to hear, but no one seems to pay attention.

“That sounds romantic,” I say, the sentence waffling between statement and question.

“That’s what we thought. We went at night, put down a towel. Well, you know what beaches have a lot of? Sand. And it turns out, sand is very uncomfortable for that sort of business.” She thinks for a moment. “Seems a bit obvious in retrospect,” she adds.

“That’s too bad,” I say.

“Oh, it gets worse,” she says. “Right in the middle of everything, it starts raining. So we hide under the towel hoping it’ll pass. But then it starts down-pouring, and then thundering and lightning like the world is going to end.

“So we’re running for the parking lot, only lightning is ripping across the sky and the car is too far and we think we’re going to die. We find a blue tarp someone stuffed in a trash can. And we grab it, and we roll ourselves up in it, and lie down as flat as we can on the beach. And we’re screaming, and the thunder keeps booming, and we’re getting soaked, and it’s freezing…”

She stops, lost in the memory. A beat, then she’s back to the present.

“You know, all things considered,” she resumes, taking a sip from a beer I didn’t know she had behind the bar. “That was actually one of the better times.”

It’s one in the morning on a Friday night and I’m cold and cranky and I’ve been standing in front of a donut stand where we’ve been filming for hours, and all of a sudden, a mime is coming toward me, and I’m honestly not sure I have the patience left to deal with a mime.

Because this donut is stand is not just a donut stand.

Yes, look through the picture windows and you’ll see that every square inch is taken up by racks of trays jammed with every type of donut imaginable, jockeyed out to customers by two sweaty, exhausted clerks.

But go around to the back, and you’ll see two doors. One leads into the donut stand’s kitchen. The other leads to one of the worst kept secrets in the city.

In the basement is a speakeasy-style club with no official name. If that was once an attempt to keep it unknown, a non-stop nightly stream of celebrity clientele certainly did away with any hope of anonymity years ago.

Normally, a very tall, very burly bouncer is stationed at this door, and to get in, you have to either Be Somebody, or Look Like You’re Somebody. Except that there is no bouncer tonight, because the club is closed for our shoot.

Yet patrons keep coming. And so I’ve become the bouncer.

I was afraid of this. Earlier in the day, when the owner opens up so we could begin our prep work, I ask if he has made any announcement that the club will be closed.

“This oughta do it,” he says, and produces a single sheet of 8.5×11 white paper with “CLOSED FOR FILMING” written across in about 24 pt font. He tapes it to the door, then leaves, saying he had to go tend to his pet alligator (I assume he is joking, but later evidence suggests he might actually have a pet alligator in his apartment).

The sign does not do it. In fact, it gets knocked down and blows away in the first hour as the grips load in.

Normally, a film crew would be an obvious enough presence to ward off approaching clubbers. But we’re starting our night at a different location a few blocks away, and won’t move the company here until at least 3 AM. With little activity, the club door looks just as it would on a normal night.

And so it falls on me to turn away customers. For hours, I’m approached aspiring entrants who think I’m the bouncer they need to impress, all trying to prevail in the Look Like You’re Somebody category. Chic, sheer, slutty, trashy, hip, stylish – each new arrival merits a fresh round of adjectives.

But the strangest thing unites each encounter. Despite the individuality and uniqueness and creativity in their dress, the confidence they carry themselves with, the casualness with which they ask if there’s room to get in tonight –

What follows is the eye contact with me to gauge my assessment. And uniformly, in that eye contact is a pleading, a desperation, a vulnerability that undermines the entire aura they’re attempting to project. Like everything they’ve done is worthless until I deem it worthy. Will I deem them worthy?

Unfortunately, I have to deem everyone unworthy tonight. And honestly, I feel terrible. Everyone has clearly worked hard, and it sucks to have to tell them it’s all been for nothing.

The responses run the gamut. Some look like they’re going to cry. Some get angry. Many are too high to care. The funniest are the ones who think this is some elaborate ruse to turn away unwanted guests, and argue with me that there is no filming in the club.

It’s been quiet now for a while, and for a moment, I think that maybe I’m in the clear. Then I see the mime.

To be clear, I see his date first as she comes around the corner. She’s tall, blond, wears an unbelievable black evening dress. Then the mime appears behind her.

The mime is exactly what you picture when you hear the word mime. He wears a red beret. His face is painted white, with black lipstick and the little black triangles under his eyes. He has a red scarf, red suspenders, a black shirt, black vest, and black dress pants.

Before I can say a word, the mime instantly breaks into pantomime. He indicates that he wants me to Open The Door so he can Go Downstairs to Have A Drink and then Dance.

I pause, not sure how to respond. His date smiles as he acts out each beat. She could not be more charmed.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m so, so sorry but the club is closed tonight. We’re filming a movie.” I indicate my walkie-talkie.

The mime considers this. Then, he makes a “tut-tut” motion with his index finger, and does the Open The Door pantomime again, this time, with an Unlocking addition.

As he’s doing this, I realize that he thinks this will be his in. That rather than fight the hopeless battle for Most Stylish or Sexiest, perhaps being Most Eccentric will allow him to cut the line.

“I’m telling the truth,” I say. “It’s really closed. You’re going to have to go somewhere else.”

“Wait. You’re serious?” asks the girl, and suddenly she’s very upset.

“I don’t understand,” says the mime angrily, breaking character for the first time. “Why weren’t we notified?”

“Notified? Do you mean like, call you personally?” I ask, confused.

“Well, no. I just mean like, put the word out or something.”

“Well, I think the owner put out a sign,” I say, looking everywhere for the printed sheet. “But I absolutely agree. I think the problem is, the place doesn’t even have a name, let alone a website, so there just isn’t a good way to do that.”

“Well, I just think what you did is terrible,” says the girl, glaring at me. She grabs the mime’s arm. “Come on. We’ll find somewhere else to go.” The mime shakes his head angrily at me, then follows her off.

As I watch them disapear into the night, it occurs to me that up until just a few moments ago, this man had had firmly believed that tonight, he was going to be validated as Somebody.

And now, he is just a guy in a mime costume wandering the city at one in the morning.

It’s 9:30pm. I’m watching TV. My phone rings. A number I don’t recognize. I’m about to let it go to voicemail, but at this hour, I’m curious. I answer. “Hello?” I say.

 “Well, congratulations! You cased the joint!” says the elderly voice on the other end. Angry and sarcastic, it sounds a lot like Estelle Getty catching a cat burglar in her kitchen.

I pause. A long pause. “I’m sorry. What?” I say.

“Oh, I know what you were up to,” she says. “Well, you did it. You’ve got pictures of everything. Congraaaatulations. You cased the joint.”

I sit up, trying to figure out why I’m suddenly involved in a conversation from a 1930s pulp noir.

I think I’ve heard this phrase before, but I want to be sure. I grab my laptop and look it up. “Case the joint.” As per Wikipedia, “to thoroughly observe or examine a place, in order to familiarize oneself with its workings in preparation for criminal activity, often robbery.”

Then I realize the voice sounds familiar. In fact, it sounds a lot like the elderly woman whose house I scouted earlier in the day.

“Maude?” I ask with surprise.

“You know who it is,” she says bitterly.

And then I put the pieces together and I know exactly what’s going on.

Most of the time, when I “cold scout” houses (i.e. go door-to-door hoping to find a house open to the idea of filming), I just leave a flyer with all the pertinent information about both the show and myself, and let the homeowner call me back at their own convenience after they’ve had some time to think it over.

But once in a while, there’s an emergency situation and you have to work a lot faster. This is the situation now. We had a midcentury home drop out of filming at the very last minute, and we are scrambling to find a replacement by the permit deadline.

In these situations, I’ll typically knock on the door and talk to the homeowner directly in the hopes that I can scout on the spot. Some homeowners will ask for time to think about it. Others will welcome you right in.

Maude had done just this. She had ushered me right in to her exquisitely period living room, and even offered me tea. She talked about how long she’d lived in the home, how she’d raised three children here, and how she was excited at the idea of having some excitement again.

I scout a lot of homes in which an older person lives alone, and this is common. What should be a five minute scouting appointment will often extend to fifteen or twenty minutes as I hear stories about family, work, illness, death, grandchildren, past loves, and so on. I’ve come to realize that for many, I’m a rare interruption in a life where each new day tends to be a carbon copy of the previous, and I very much value the stories and histories life these homeowners opt to share with me.

When I left Maude’s home earlier in the day, the scout had gone wonderfully, and she couldn’t have been more excited at the prospect of having filming. But there is a very different woman on the phone. And I think I know what happened.

After I leave, she calls someone. Say, one of her children. She gushes about how a movie location scout just showed up at her door, and how her home might be featured in a big TV show, and that she might even get paid thousands of dollars for it.  

And then, that person reads her the riot act. “How could you be so stupid, Maude!” they yell at her, making her feel like an old fool. “There’s no TV show! He’s a crook! He was taking a pictures of everything so he could come back later and steel it all! He was casing the joint!”

Maybe Maude says no, that the scout showed his credentials. “They were fake! You really think someone out of the blue is going to knock at your door and pay you thousands of dollars to film a TV show? They were casing the joint!”

And Maude hangs up from the conversation, feeling foolish and scared and hurt and angry.

I hate that this has happened, knowing that her fake tough-guy attitude is actually her doing her best to deter me from carrying out the terrible plans she imagines I have cooked up.

“Maude, it’s me! It’s Nick, the location scout. Everything I told you is real! In fact, it was the director’s top choice!” This is true. There’s a very strong likelihood we will film at her home, with a fee approaching $10,000 for just a couple days.

But she refuses to believe me. I beg her to do a Google search for my name, or call my union, or call our production office, but none of it makes a dent. She just keeps saying, “yeah, right,” very sarcastically.

Finally, I realize there’s nothing I can say that will convince her. I tell her not to worry, that she won’t hear from us again, and that I’ll delete the pictures. “You better,” she says, and hangs up the phone.

I learn a very important lesson from this encounter. Now, when I’m cold-scouting and a homeowner invites me in on the spot, I stop them in their tracks. I tell them that first, it’s very important to me that they are sure I am who I say I am. I give a list of ways to verify my identity, and I encourage them to check before letting a total stranger in their homes. Most thank me later, saying I’d opened their eyes to just how easily they could have made a very bad decision if I were actually a criminal.

I’ve never had an interaction like my encounter with Maude since. And I also realized it explained a lingering mystery from my earlier years of scouting.

Back in New York, we were always under the gun to find locations as quickly as possible, and I became an expert at talking my way into homes to scout on the spot. But midway through, as I was taking pictures, I’d consistently notice the conversation suddenly take a noticeably awkward and uncomfortable turn. I could never put my finger on why that was.

Now I realize: it’s the moment the homeowner suddenly realized they had let a total stranger in their home, and that he just might be casing the joint.

I’m standing outside a rusting gate in Hollywood, set in a cinder block wall. I’m here to scout a landscaping operation that’s supposedly within, but there’s no sign to confirm this.

I call my contact, Manny (not his real name), but he doesn’t pick up. I ring the front bell. Wait. Wait some more.

Then, the gate dings, and I step inside the courtyard. It seems like I’m in the right place, a maze of flowers, potted plants, and various outdoor decorations. But no one comes to greet me.

Off to one side is a small one-story building, just larger than what would constitute a shack. Despite its diminutive size, a banner hangs on the front for a film production company I’ve never heard of.

Unsure what to do, I go to the door of the shack and knock. Inside, a dog starts yipping up a storm. I hear someone shuffling.

The door opens, and a guy about my age stands in a bathrobe, scowling at me. “What do you want?” he says, glowering. A small white terrier leaps at his ankles, barking its head off.

I’m thrown off for a moment, as this was a scout appointment we had arranged over the course of several phone calls.

“I’m Nick,” I say. “The scout. We had the appointment today to scout the property? For the TV show?”

“Yeah?” he says, sneering at me. “I’m in film. What is this for? Who are you working for?” He talks as though I’m a child who has borrowed his dad‘s camcorder to make a movie with his school friends. His dog continues to yip shrilly.

For a minute, I’m not sure how to handle this one. I know LA’s reputation, but it’s still pretty rare to get hit with this level of overt condescension.

My eyes drift past him to the movie posters on the wall, presumably produced by his company. Horror movies with lots of sequel numbers after their title. Like, Lumberjack Killer 8 and Sleepover Slaughter 13.

Then I see a movie I’m familiar with, and suddenly, I realize I know who this is. He’s a director. Years and years ago, I went and saw his very first movie at a screening in New York, back in a time when he was allowed to make movies without sequel numbers. He even stayed for a Q and A and answered a question I asked about the film’s score. I’m not sure what happened in the subsequent decade or so, but this seems to be a very different person in front of me now.

“Sorry. Let me start again and see if I can clear up the confusion. I’m working for [director whose film career is larger than this person’s by astronomical magnitudes], on his new TV show. I had arranged an appointment to scout a landscaping company. Am I in the right place?”

He looks at me with total disdain. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“But this is a landscaping company, right?” I ask. “Manny. I arranged the appointment with Manny, the owner. Do you know Manny?”

“Sorry, dude,” he says. “Can’t help you.” And with that, he shuts the door in my face, his dog still yapping up a storm.

I stand alone in the middle of what is clearly a landscaping business, utterly lost.

Not sure what to do, I wander back out the gate and stand on the sidewalk in a daze, having apparently followed my Google Map directions into the Twilight Zone.

Then, my phone rings. “Hey, Nick, sorry I missed your call!” says Manny. “Come on in!”

“Manny, I think I’m in the wrong place, I say. “I’m on the sidewalk outside some kind of landscaping place, but a guy here says this isn’t the right location.”

“Oh. OK. Hang on, I’ll come get you.” After a minute, the gate in front of me opens and Manny steps out and shakes my hand. I feel like I’m losing my mind.

“Manny, I just had the weirdest experience,” I say. “A guy in the shack over there said there was no landscaping company here. And he said he didn’t know you.”

Manny’s face clouds. “This fuckin’ guy… I rent out that place to him for his film thing. He’s very…” And for a moment, it looks like he’s about to unleash an unholy explosion of wrath and fury at his tenant, who has subjected him to countless such irritations over the years. But at the last second, he calms himself.

“…He’s very particular,” he concludes. Yip yip yip, still coming from inside. “And that fuckin’ dog… Anyway, come in!”

They say you need an ego to survive in Hollywood, and I guess that applies to everyone. Even the director of Sleepover Slaughter 13 operating out of a small shack to one side of a landscaping company that he refuses to admit exists.

(note: as always, picture is not a location being described)