The series of romantic letdowns was a contributing factor, but it was the Celine Dion music video for her song “A New Day Has Come” that put the final rift in my relationship with the entertainment industry. I’d been hired on to the three-day shoot as an art department shopper, which meant I rode all around L.A. in my Volkswagen looking for things as if on a wild scavenger hunt. In the video, Celine sings about how a new day has come, the light in your eyes, and other such matters as a montage of international scenery, all shot in Los Angeles, fades in and out. There’s Paris, (Universal Studios), Japan (some loft apartment near Laguna Beach or some similar far-off locale), Morocco (Universal again), and some other places I can’t recognize. For the Moroccan market scene, I was entrusted with having 500 loaves of artisinal bread baked by a little Armenian bakery in Glendale, up in the Valley. I also had to go downtown to the Mexican fruit and vegetable markets and buy out their entire stock. My car piled high with crates of tomatoes, lettuce, carrots, apples, beans, peas, celery stalks, loaves of bread, and every other conceivable type of foodstuff, I headed back to Universal to set it all up on mock-Moroccan market stands as camels wandered around threatening to eat the apples when their trainers had gone over to craft services for Ranch dip, Tostitos, and peanut M&Ms.

Hours upon hours were spent constructing and gathering the necessities to put this set together. When the twelve-hour shoot ended and I sought out my boss for instruction on where to take the components of the now-broken-down marketplace, he pointed at the giant green dumpsters and said, “Just throw it all right in there.”

“All that food?” I asked.
He shrugged. “You can take it if you want it. But it’s been sitting in the sun all day.”
“It hasn’t gone bad, though. That bread was baked yesterday and all the fruit and vegetables are fine.”
“Well, take it home then.”
“So you’re saying that if I don’t, it just gets thrown away?” My mind flashed to countless movies, commercials, and music videos I’d seen that had had banquet scenes, or elaborate dinners, or third-world marketplaces. What was that video where everyone got into a huge food fight? I’d been working in the art department for nearly a year, and the wastefulness of the industry only then dawned on me. Was it all just going into the trash? When L.A. had so many homeless, hungry people wandering its streets? Was this even allowed?
“Yeah,” he said. “It’s not like we’re going to make ten tons of salad or eat bread that’s gotten hard.”

I decided I would take the remnants to the mission district in downtown L.A. and donate them. I loaded everything back into my car as my boss watched disbelievingly. In the morning, I sped down the 110 to Los Angeles’ surreal urban center that wasn’t really the center of anything. I found the streets where the homeless were camped out, streets lined with tarps and shopping carts stuffed with dirty unidentifiable things. I pulled up by one of the homeless shelters and began unloading the food. Some of the people on the street approached and took bread, potatoes, tomatoes, carrots. I wondered when the last time they’d had a vegetable might have been. I put on my car alarm, glad I’d dressed down and worn sneakers rather than my usual height-adjustor platform sandals.

I carried crate by crate of bread to the entrance of the shelter. A black man with cornrows approached me with an air that said he was in charge of things around here.”Are you making a donation?” he asked.
“Yes, are you the manager?”
“I’m Dante,” he said, extending his hand. We shook.
“Where’d you get all this?” he asked.
“A Celine Dion music video shoot, if you can believe that. It was all going to go in the garbage.”
“Damn.” Dante shook his head from side to side, surveying the amount of food. “We can make soup for two weeks with this stuff. And look at that gorgeous bread…”
“I know,” I said. “That’s why I’m here. Do you ever get donations from film sets?”
“Naw,” he said, shaking his head some more. I shook my head, too. We both stared at the crates of food.
“Hey, Jerome,” Dante shouted to another worker. “C’mere and help me take these down to the kitchen.”

Driving back along the 110, mission-donation mission accomplished, I realized I couldn’t do it anymore. I was driven by some sort of underdeveloped will to do good in the world, to bring light, to spread joy. Tell me, why are you in this business? Leo had asked. I’m not sure anymore, I had said. I was sure now. What was I doing in this industry? Getting out.

In the final cut of the video, the Moroccan market scenes occupy less than ten seconds of screen time. Never once do you catch a glimpse of food.