That 4
Friends Movie
Day 01 - Saturday
After a night with a snoring roommate, enhanced by
nerves about the upcoming day, I sleepily awoke at 5:30 a.m. and took a
shower. Gina and I had finished up and hurried to the vans that
were waiting for us and another 10 minutes worth of people.
At base camp, I checked out the breakfast side table
for a cereal bowl (I brought little baggies of my own cereal for every
other day of vitamins). Someone stepped up to my right, diving
for the fruit. Still sleepy and unbalanced, I turned and nearly
fell nose-to-nose into Thomas. “Oh! Good morning!” I said.
“Good morning,” he returned pleasantly. “Did you sleep well?” I
asked. “No,” he said, “I tossed and turned all night. I
always do for the first day.” “Yeah, me, too.” A few more
words, and slinky Greek Make-up Stella stole him away, so I grabbed a
for-once free Alfredo to discuss the North-to-South dilemma (screen
direction – do the riders always need to be moving screen right to
screen left and how do we avoid that boredom). He said a bunch of
stuff I tried to sleepily pay attention to, then I went for the
adventure of breakfast burrito ordering.
As I explained to Craftservice Dixie (Craftservice
Marti’s mom) while waiting with her in line, no matter how intricately
you describe your order, with 3-D topographical maps and
aroma-enhancing technology, your burrito will never NEVER be the same
day to day. I then ordered an egg, cheese and salsa burrito and
smiled at her. “And now, let’s see what I get.” She smiled back,
excited to find out. A short while later, I get my
breakfast. An egg, bacon, cheese and salsa burrito.
Then Producer Todd announced he was taking
the director and DP to the location to scout the shots, and I asked
Director Alfredo if I could go, too. (This was, after
all, the time for me to see what direction their shots would be set-up
for, and if I had any concerns, this was the time to speak them rather
than when the grips and camera guys are setting up. This is also
the time script supervisors are the last thing on anyone’s list.)
Alfredo said, “No, you don’t need to.” I nodded, anticipating
this brush-off. He smiled “Just kidding. Of course you can come!”
he said as if he was Jon Lovitz saying “My dear, there wouldn’t be a
location scout without you.” As I approached the van, in came the
second Wall o’ Obstacle, AD Bob stopped me with “You don’t need to come
with this trip, honey,” he said to me dismissively, and before I could
say “Alfredo said--” the DP of all people, John, spoke up and said
“Yeah, she needs to.” And Bob immediately backed down. So I
went, and John had someone he could turn to and roll his eyes at
Alfredo’s every indecision.
And then it’s official: the trucks begin to
arrive from base camp to this country side road with trees on one side
and fields on the other (a sign on the main road declared this road
unsafe and for local travel only) and unload their equipment for the
first shot of the movie. And it’s an open road, meaning the
police could hold traffic for the takes only, and we could only block
one lane of the two lane road of traffic. This only became mildly
annoying right away, with the constant baying of “Watch your back!” (an
expression I’ve never liked. One, you can’t watch your back. Two,
the phrase usually applies to people carrying poles, lights and cameras
through a crowd of crew. I finally blurted out “Car!” a few
times, which scattered the crew from the road like a group of 12
year-olds playing ball in the street).
Eventually Thomas arrived wearing a black short
sleeve shirt that I remembered Alfredo had nixed for another day (it
was a particularly flattering shirt, and Wardrobe thought it
complemented Jane character’s line for the first day of the race “He
looks hot,” but Alfredo preferred it for the day Jane's and Thomas's
characters ride together which leads to their intimate evening
together). So Alfredo says to Thomas, “No, not that shirt,” and I
say, “You want him in the NYPD Blue one, right?” And all around
me laugh and say “NYPD!” Thomas smiles at me and says “Not NYPD Blue.” I smile,
duuuh. He said he'd done the same thing on a different show -- “I
was supposed to say 'the people will find
out this is picked up by the NYPD!’ but I said 'the people will find
out this is picked up by the NYPD Blue!’ and I got caught.”
So the first shot is up, a wide master shot of a few
riders coming over the slight curvy hill, then Jane and Richard, then
Thomas who will pass them, then a few extras. So they line up
their shots, and we get the extras lined up to ride in front and behind
the actors, and my heart’s thumping pretty hard, because I was going to
have enough problems keeping up with everything (sunglasses, helmets,
arm positions, bike positions, camera angles) of the leading actors
without worrying about the extras. But we do it, it’s fine,
another take or two, and Jane walks back to her chair, announcing with
a
smile, “Well, we’re committed now! No turning back!” which is, of
course, a joke, because it was a 40-second take kicking off a 4-week
shoot.
On the last take of the master wide shot, a few crew
people behind us announced, “Oh, Alfredo, you’re going to love this!”
and we see a line of 5 antique cars pulling up behind us. So very
little sweet talking (except that the take was taking too long to set
up and the cars’ engines couldn’t idle for much longer), and we’ve got
a picturesque shot of riders and quaint cars.
A few hunks of coverage, and we’re at Lunch.
During lunch back at base camp, the actors sat
together among the crew at the middle table. I sat at the next
table, my back to Harry who has joined us for afternoon takes, and
listened to what I could from their story trading from previous films.
We return to our first location to regroup, and the
caterer arrives with a birthday cake, and we sing “Happy Birthday” to
Jane. The cake goes away.
Back to work, and we’ve begun the bad habit of
splitting our unit into two, with Todd off with one camera doing close
up shots of Thomas on a bike rigged with a camera on the handlebars and
our guys not able to get our stuff together for a long shot of Richard,
Harry and Jane riding down a wicked hill. I was in a van with AD
Bob, who was freaking out and bitching about the split unit wrecking
his schedule, and Still Photographer Don was sitting next to me.
I picked the
best time I could to ask AD Bob if I had time to dash over to the truck
to grab more Polaroid film, which I needed. He told me no, we
were leaving right away. And we weren’t. And we still
weren’t. And Driver Larry told me to just go, but I didn’t want
to piss off the AD on the first day, so I stayed. Finally, AD
Bob’s about to get out of the van, and I ask again, and AD Bob tells me
“Marilyn, sit down and shut up!” and I’m stunned and trying to figure
out how to look cool. I glance at Don and he smiles at me and
says “Well! I guess he told you!” and I smiled back, grateful for
the tension break.
Down at the hill, Alfredo has reworked a scene with
Jane, and I made notes in my script. Richard steps up to see what
has happened to the dialog that he and Jane memorized, and before I
know
it, I’ve got Jane over my left shoulder and Richard over my right
shoulder reading through lines of a scene. Pretty cool.
We finish this location and move on. I walk to
a van for a ride back to base camp and see Jane and Richard in it,
signifying it as the Star Van, which, on big shows, crew stays clear
of. When I realize what it is, I say, “Oh, actor van,” and start
to walk away, but Jane hurriedly calls out to me that there’s room and
she and Richard move over, encouraging me to get in. So we’re
riding back, and I ask Jane how she enjoyed the Kentucky Derby, as I
saw
her interviewed on ABC. She brightens up and tells us about the
nice treatment she and her friend got and it was fun.
A small group of us then move on to the winery
scene. It’s a quick shot,
with Harry and a couple of extras. I need a Polaroid of Harry in
this new day’s clothes for my record, and he’s really not into standing
and being Polaroided, and my beaten up camera often jams or takes
useless attempts at pictures, which doesn’t aid in the fight against
impatience. After a few tries, I finally ask wardrobe Tracy to
take an extra picture for me, as her camera works better and he doesn’t
hate her.
Finally, we’ve wrapped and headed back to our hotel.
Except for Harry sending me “You do nothing for me” vibes, I’m having a
pretty good time. But now Gina has informed me that she has
obtained a box of Breathe Easy to prevent another night of snoring –
except! Oh, no! Whoever got it for her got the wrong
size! And she turned to demonstrate the child size bands
incapable of reaching over her adult nose, and we laughed a lot.
She also brought a piece of Jane’s birthday cake and shared it with
me. And she let me know in no uncertain terms that she was not
impressed with AD Bob.
End Day 1.
That 4
Friends Movie
Production
Journals - On the Set
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1997-infinity