A Big, Gaping Hole of 'Uh-oh'

Slide that bookcase a little to the left.

I was standing in the office hallway after dark and I was ready to fight. I could tell my opponent was as well. Our mutual friend, holding the camcorder, yelled “Action!” and the two of us jumped into our hastily choreographed on-screen tussle.

We were in the middle of shooting my James Bond send-up sequel, Mind’s Eye and my dad had given us permission to use his office as our location. In this particular scene, James Bond (that was me, and before you look at me sideways, remember that I had hair back then), was in Russia and had broken into the offices of a tech oligarch in order to steal important data. Bond had successfully secured the MacGuffin and was on his way out when, as usual, he has to take out a guard in order to escape (played by a classmate). The struggle spilled out into the hallway. Everything was going great. We were really nailing it.

We’ll wrap earlier than I thought!

The fight choreography called for me to slam the guard into the wall before landing the knock-out blow. The moment came. I shoved my friend toward the wall and his back crashed into it… and also through it.

Everything stopped. I stared at the gaping hole that we had just made in the drywall and my heart sank. That’s it. The movie’s over. We’re done. I’m done (once my dad sees this)!

There are moments in life where you can really feel yourself standing at a moral crossroads.

• Do I run?

• Do I own up to it?

• Do I move a bookcase into the hall and strategically place it in front of the hole?

In the end, I’m proud to say that I owned up to the mistake and took my lumps. Since we were shooting after hours on a weeknight, a left a note for the office staff to read the following morning. I explained what happened. I told them it was my fault and that I would pay for the damages. And I did. It was about $350.

First lesson: Always accept fault for your own mistakes.

It’s very easy to make excuses and to shift blame, but you should always be the first to raise your hand and say, “This one’s on me.” And sometimes you have to do that even if the mistake wasn’t 100% your fault. People appreciate honesty. They appreciate people who take responsibility. But that’s just the first step.

Second lesson: Rectify the situation and never make the same mistake twice.

Although people will respect you for taking the blame, they will quickly lose patience with you if you don’t put all you can into making things right. And they’ll have even less patience with you if you continue to ignore the lessons of the past and repeat the same errors again and again.

Yeah, it was definitely a long ride home that night as I dreaded the inevitable conversation with my dad about what I did. I’d like to think he was proud of me for doing the right thing. But of course there were consequences. I was out $350. I never did shoot in his office again.

But hey, we did wrap early that night.