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I'm either participating in a sleep deprivation experiment for UCLA or workingfor an insanely scheduled low budget movie. So I get to the parking lot for the 12:30 call and just miss the shuttle.Jack gets out of his car and waits with me, Dana and a couple of other people.Transpo Dennis arrives, pulls a donut with the van, spraying us with graveland dust, and we climb in. He's in a punchy fun mood and starts tellingtranspo jokes: "How can you tell who the transpo's kids are? They're theones standing in the playground watching the other kids play." I ask him ifthese are transpo jokes or Teamster jokes. He pouts he can't tell Teamsterjokes because he's not in the union.
Melody steps in to watch the dailies with us and starts joking about what hercharacter must have been thinking during all these close-up shots of herlistening and reacting to Sonya (old Russian woman) and Randy (extremelyflaming gay guy) talking to her. Her close-ups feature her looking a littlewowed, a little bored, a little eye rolling. Melanie voice-overs it with"This is the gayest man in the world. Why can't I meet any decent guys?" Wethen see the wider shot of her standing and listening to Sonya right beforeRandy's entrance, and I say "Trapped with this old Russian woman. What couldbe worse--" Randy enters. "Hi, guys!" we cry. Mark announces that Mel has gotten a part in the new Cinderella movie, and weapplaud her. She very sweetly nods, saying nothing's been signed yet, so... but she is happy about it. She would play the sweet mean sister who gets a guy at the end. They meet at the costume ball, both dressed as horses, and shekisses the nerd. Drew Barrymore is Cinderella. It will be filmed in theSouth of France.
Then there's set poetry time. We're in a need of some equipment. Are wetaking care of it? Yeah, we sent a runner to Gunner. "A runner to Gunner?"we ask smiling. Who? The A.D. laughs as he answers, "Trent went." Lunch! We pile into the van, Melanie sitting in front and grabbing disposablepictures (which Boom Greg said is what disposable cameras take - you look atthe pictures once and then have to throw them away) of the crew. Hours later, it's late night and we still have so many set-ups to do, the crewis starting to struggle with sleep and the doom of never leaving. I discover the props guys didn't give Melanie her purse for the shot where shewaves bye from the group and walks to her front door (previously we filmed theinterior shot of her walking in from the front door holding her purse), so Iask Mark if we can give Wardrobe the purse to handle from now on. He says noprob, Wardrobe is game, A.D. Clint is game and Props pout that I think theycan't handle it. I tell them I just don't want them to look like sissies witha purse. They tell me Wardrobe usually does purses, but since this was usedin the [CENSORED] scene, it was a prop thing. No problem, the [CENSORED] scene is done, they can hand it off to Wardrobe now, I tell them. Then they flirt shamelessly with Melanie and tell her that they've been taken away from her and they're so sad... We return from 2nd meal and the generator promptly runs out of fuel and wedon't have power. It's 1:30 in the morning with 4 more set ups and everyone'sthinking "Let's go home! It's a sign!"
Cops quickly disperse, we get our last shot at 3 AM. |
Today's dailies: the laundry room scene. Mark, Julia and I are watchingdailies and see that [CENSORED]. Then Mark says the eye-line for Sonya is way too far left, it should have been cheated more toward camera. We discuss the nightmare space in the tiniest laundry room ever with that big counter where the camera needed to be. Still I contend we should have cheated it more. I'm "fired!"
We spend days inside at the mailboxes, Melanie walking by, wardrobe change,Melanie checking mail and walking on, wardrobe change, Melanie getting postcard out of the mailbox, wardrobe change, Melanie walking through withoutchecking the mailbox, close-up, close-up of post card, close up of bill...Mark tells me he can't wait to get out of this building! Someone at camerafumbles something, Mark in a new character shakes his hands and says withincreasing speed toward the end of the sentence - "You're fired! You're sowrongyou'reFIRED!" I laugh and he says, "Stop laughingyou'reFIRED!"
Power back and we get shots of Steadi-cam walking with the Neighborhood Watchextras. It's 2:30, and no one can believe it's 2:30. We've only got 30minutes before our permit runs out and we've still got two set-ups left.Hurry, guys, let's go. Let's go! Then THREE police cars show up and park inour shot. We step away and locations has to deal with them, show properpaperwork... A.D. Clint walks to me and Mark. Mark says, "I can't believewe've got THREE cop cars!" Clint, furiously trying to actually make his day,says, "Okay, there's only three cars of them, we can take them!" |