GREECE

JULY 2023

Occasionally, we will deploy to a disaster, and then the disaster will be managed within a couple of days. This is the cost of doing business. This was the case with some wildfires across several Greek islands. And there are certainly worse places to be to have nothing to do.

I was stationed on the island of Rodos and had a team of 4 other people. We started our day buying 200 sandwiches and 200 gatorades. Then we split into two teams and would drive around the island chasing the firefighters and offering them sandwiches and gatorade, which they appreciated, but were not totally necessary as they were properly equipped already. Usually we couldn't find enough fire fighters to give the sandwiches to so we found other community centers to donate to. This morning adventure ended around noon, and then we had the day to ourselves. There are two specific meals I remember. One of them was the greatest meal I'd ever had and the other one gave me violent food poisoning. This was also the host of the nicest water I've ever swam in.

SMILF

SMILF was a TV show that ran on Showtime for two seasons in 2017 and 2018. I was friends with the star and creator, and when she was making the pilot I tagged along to shoot a BTS doc. We failed to get permission from the studio for me to do this and when the execs found out some random kid was filming every meeting, location scout, phone call, etc. they promptly kicked me out. I was able to capture enough material for only a trailer. What a great doc that would have been. After the first season, I joined the production - officially this time - as a set PA, specifically (and proudly) the walkie PA. I moved [back] to boston for the summer for 4 months while we shot season 2. This was one of the greatest moments of my life. I loved being a PA so much. The money was borderline illegal, I was making less than $700 a week working 6 days a week, 14-16 hours a day, but I was in heaven. There is something totally magical about a film set, and to live on one for four months was truly amazing. It was the first real production I'd been apart of and I especially relished my roll as walkie PA. I loved having something to be in charge of and organize; I was born to track some 200 walkies across the duration of the production. I made some amazing friends, and learned a lot as well. I would then go on to work both in the location department and rigging electric department for several weeks on Greta Gerwig's Little Women which was shooting right after we wrapped, which was another incredible experience that I cherish. Anyways, below is the trailer I made for the documentary-that-never-was and then below that are the photos I took on the set of SMILF. It was questionable whether I was actually allowed to shoot photos on set but that's the value of nepotism.

https://vimeo.com/230045470

MAUI

AUGUST 2023

One day after I got home from Greece I left for Hawaii. The wildfire in Maui ripped through a small coastal town called Lahaina. I was there the next day and as always we started with sandwiches, fruit, and waters. The project evolved over time though. Initially we partnered with a local organization and community college that were also providing food and then after their participation ended or evolved, we went on to build our own kitchen. In addition to managing the purchasing and movement of all our product, I'm also responsible for our kitchen build outs. We found a campsite that was about 10 minutes from Lahaina, and we rented the whole facility, built our kitchen there, and lived there. In total we were there for about 6 weeks.

This is a good time to start talking about dish pits as well, as this was the first attempt at what would become an on-going passion project of mine to build the perfect dish pit. A dish pit is... a pit in which one does the dishes. For us, this means it has to be big because we have a lot of dishes to clean which are also large dishes. In Maui, I created the first iteration of what I envisioned. This was a platform that would collect the run off, and then the runoff would go into a macerator pump and into a gray water holding tank that would be pumped out everyday. This worked pretty well, but it was only the beginning of my dish-pit journey.

WCK sends out newsletters to it's followers and for their edition that covered this response, they did a short piece about me. The locals that we worked with also gave us our own luau at the end to thank us and told us we had life long surfing rights which was pretty cool.