Hollywood Dictionary -- Volume 5

The language spoken in Hollywood is a gibberish all its own with terms like "double bangers" and "rezzies." It's like Klingon in that it's an imaginary tongue spoken by non-humans and perpetuated by people who are just a little too into it.

This brings us to today's entries in the Hollywood Dictionary. Use with caution.

Dailies - The unassembled raw footage from a TV or movie shoot. The producers pick the "best" (a relative term) version of each scene and cobble it together into another captivating episode of Kath and Kim. The only interesting dailies are the ones where a celeb goes ape shit over nothing. (NSFW) Not to be confused with a "nooner," or what your boss does during lunch with someone he's not married to.

Headshot - A word that has nothing to do with exacting revenge on your boss. It's just a fancy word for an 8 1/2 x 11 photograph that actors send out in hopes of getting work. You probably know them better from the three piles your boss has on their desk labeled "Potential Client," "Fuckable" or "Garbage."

Cuts - Think of these simply as drafts of the final project, like the early versions of your film school thesis, "Akira Kurosowa and his use of weather as an allegory for Sino-Japanese relations." Once you realized you'd pulled this topic out of your ass and none of it was true, you turned your thesis into a review of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory and got an A. Oh, and cuts are video. But whatever.

Craft Services - This simply means the food table where the dregs of a production graze on Doritos, peanut butter, bagels and Red Vines. No term in Hollywood is less applicable than "Craft Services" as no food on the table indicates any level of "Craft" and there there certainly is no "Service." In the event you're looking for a the director or producer during lunch, don't go to craft services. They've ordered delivery from Sushi Roku.

Technically Available (aka "tech avail") - This has nothing to do with your IT department fixing your boss's laptop because she spilled a VRB on it. It's used to describe when and actor/director/writer/etc. could do a project if nothing more desirable comes through. Or Danny Boyle's agent might say, "Yeah, he's technically available to direct Hotel For Dogs if we can't work out a deal on Slumdog Millionaire."