Wait, who won best picture?””

The Oscar results are being recapped on a TV in the back of the Temecula Applebee’s, relayed down our table in assembly line fashion. It’s late Sunday night, and we’ve stumbled out of the hills after filming all weekend. We scoff at the recipients, feigning sincerity with their trophies and prancing around in fancy clothes on the red carpet. We are dirty, splitting appetizers and sharing one bottomless cup of coffee while our cars wait outside, packed to the brim with props and equipment, a regular “”Beverly Hillbillies”” outfit. We are indubitably removed from the clientele on the red carpet.

Scorsese, Eastwood, Frears, Greengrass … the names at the Oscars populate a familiar category: old-ish white men. When was the last time a female filmmaker won Best Director? The answer sticks a little in my throat: never. In the history of the Oscars, only two women have even been nominated for the category. Is this because there aren’t good female directors? No, it’s because there are no female directors. Or very few. As with many other fields of work in America, film is an industry that continually excludes the advancement of women. There are plenty of women in my film classes who want to direct, but when they get to Hollywood, nobody will want to risk money on a girl. Females drop out or pursue positions more becoming of a lady: script supervisor, hair and make-up, occasionally producer.

Except for the cinematographer, my crew is all male. Doubtlessly, gender politics arise on set, but a bigger division becomes clear in the grueling 16-hour-plus schedule: the division of the strong from the weak. We wake up at 7:30 a.m., exchange a few unsavory remarks and work past midnight. A car chase starts the day: We throw a bike and film it rolling in the dirt. We do four takes, each time dealing with a new problem – dust, bumps – and each time having to reset the truck, the bike, the camera and the sound. All the while, the sun moves rapidly across the sky, threatening us with the inevitable passing of daylight; we need 30 shots. In the nighttime scene, someone sprays an actor with a hose as he runs in place while a crew member in a tree reels a piece of cloth and the lighting team shines a beam of brightly colored light powered by a generator. Eventually, these highly artificial shots will become “”rain scene”” and “”car-chase sequence.””

I wonder – do people watching the Oscars have any idea what it takes to make a film? Was it this hard for Scorsese in the beginning? Out here in the trenches, the glitz and glamour of Hollywood seems so far away.

“”You seem like you’re headed in that direction,”” said John (on special effects) earlier in the day, as I – a broke female film student from San Diego – swept rat poop out of our Volkswagen van. “”Hopefully, somebody does, so we can all live off their success.””

I smile. I hope so too, because it would be nice to have money to pay my crew for a change. It will be a tough road to get there, no doubt, and most of us will not be able to stick it out.