Unused Trailer Footage

A lot of it looks like this. So far, my heart is intact.

We did film a lot of floating garbage: it was the day after a big rainstorm washed over the city and flushed all the sewage out into the water. The sea was still high, and the waves were creating a mist that washed over the whole port. It had this acrid, metallic smell. I turned to the person filming with me, a stone Tel Avivi, and asked her if that smell bothered her.

She shrugged her shoulders. "That's the smell of the ocean."

"That's not what the ocean smells like," I said. "That's pollution."

The most family-friendly beach in the city is the closest one to where we had this conversation. I know, it's where I go with my kids. It's not far from the power plant that overlooks the meeting of the Yarkon River and the sea. All this city's beaches have their own cliques. The hierarchy of the beaches south of the power plant is: family beach, religious beach (with alternating men and women's swim days), gay beach, dog beach.

I have a high tolerance for self-parody. If I had seen a plastic bag caught in the wind like this it would have made the final cut. But I don't think I've ever seen a garbage bag spinning in the wind in Tel Aviv. There definitely aren't dead leaves like that piled up on the ground. It may be that that kind of beauty can't happen here. It's too autumnal. This is the wrong geography. The garbage is begging you to play with it, but the game is completely different.