Nobody talks about the crash. It comes on hard and fast the minute you touch down at LAX. What a welcome. Toxic levels of carbon monixide, drivers snarling and fighting, earsplitting noise. Stroll off the plane in Vancouver, and you're greeted by a two-story waterfall.

Your pets are ecstatic to see you, at least. And sleeping in a big bed with your husband is wonderful. But you don't feel right. It's not like jetlag, where time is fractured, but disconnection at the core, as if you don't belong in your own home and never did. For two months you lived with a hundred other people all focused on the same goal: defeating obstacles to get the story on film. Now where's the battle? Where did your comrades go? You're alone with that same barking dog next door, like a nightmare out of Edgar Allan Poe, specifically meant to drive you mad. Irritability is high. You're not interested in food. Actually, you're not interested in very much.

When more than one person in the industry asks, "Are you recovering?" you begin to realize the post-shoot crash is part of the territory. It's not only the grueling physical demands of fourteen hour days in hundred degree heat and freezing rain, but the emotional stress of problems by the hour — and the incredible satisfaction of solving them on the run. What you really miss is the manic high of the bipolar creative process.

"Now you know why we get obsessed," wrote a writer/actor friend, "And life between shoots is just limbo and starts again the next time you see your name on a call sheet, because making movies is all that ever matters. Tough on families and friends but everyone in the industry understands. It's the intensity of the relationship and the shared purpose of the objective that only your colleagues in the trenches can begin to attach the same value to."

Three weeks post crash, you feel back in your body and ready for the next, most exciting phase of all: seeing the movie cut together for the first time. Then comes music, effects, and . . . the audience.