It only seems like 40 years in the desert

Here’s the thing: I was offered the chance to edit an entire season’s worth of… well, disaster reenactment docutainment. For an entire year. Good pay, nice, intelligent people. And I just wanted to slit my wrists. Did I mention it was for an entire year?

The alternative was, of course, to submit a short film I had made to "On the Lot". Course I was delusional at the time and didn’t quite realize that it's a fucking game-show.

So instead, I got myself into a room with two producers who asked why a seemingly sane and well adjusted (they have no idea) person like me would want to direct “The Naked Archaeologist.” Good question. I gave all the stock answers. They didn’t believe me. So I pulled out my secret weapon. I had already worked with Simcha Jacobovici a.k.a. "The Naked Archaeologist". In fact I had been to Israel with him. On another project. “The Lost Tomb of Jesus”. Top secret. So secret, in fact, that apparently no one knew I had worked on it. Even the Producers of the show were only vaguely aware of my existence. This is a fair precis of my career.

But, I had an ace up my sleeve. "The Lost Tomb of Jesus" was so secret that every single cast and crew member had signed a confidentiality agreement.

Except, as it turns out, me.

So I told them all about it.

And, like Martin Sheen said in Apocalypse Now: “I wanted a mission, and for my sins, they gave me one.” And God knows, it was just as hot and sweaty as Mr. Sheen’s mission.

In fact if you look at the picture to the left you’ll see me in the process of becoming glued to Simcha during a two hour drive down a forlorn Jordanian highway. It was only about 45 degrees.

The picture nicely illustrates the balance of power between me (writer-director) and Simcha (talent). He’s full on, middle of frame, engaged in an important phone call. I’m half cut off, amusing myself by taking a photograph of my own nostrils.

Actually, this may overestimate my power on the shoot.

But I take heart in the fact that we have matching baseball hats, matching glasses and his arm appears to be around me.

Thankfully neither of us is actually naked. That's a different blog.

So that’s how I ended up driving around the deserts of Israel and Jordan for two weeks in August, directing "The Naked Archaeologist." Two weeks in a van with Simcha Jacobovici is better than “On the Lot” isn't it? Right? Right?