That 4
Friends Movie
Day 06 - Thursday
Okay, last night we got our call sheets (the schedule
which lists who and what has to be on set the following day and at what
time) and it didn’t really clarify the time thing, mostly because there
were big red magic markered letters over the typed “7:30 AM” crew call
reading “CALL TIME IS PUSHED 1 ½ HOURS.” Even though buzz among
the crew is call time is 9 AM, I don’t know if my time is a
half-hour before that, because the individually marked time next to my
name, along with the actors and AD Michael, reads 7 AM. And Gina
and I had a message waiting on our phone telling us “Room 232 has a 9
AM call time,” but again I don’t want to be late in case they
overlooked the tiny marking on the call sheet saying my time was 30
minutes earlier and Gina doesn’t have to be on the set at all
today. So, encouraged by Gina, I had set the alarm for 7:50,
which woke up both of us, and called Lonnie to ask him. His
sleepy
voice tells me to call AD Michael. “Michael! Of course,” I
whisper into the phone, “Okay, go back to sleep.” I hang up and
fall back on my pillow, telling Gina, who’s buried under her blankets,
“Great. Now I get to wake up Michael.” Michael answers sleepily
and annoyedly, “9! Didn’t you get a call?!” “Okay, we’ll talk
later, good night,” I tell him and hang up, opting to explain my
situation after he’s had breakfast. Gina happily called out from
beneath her sheets, “Who can we call now?” and we laugh.
Today’s the big day where we shoot at the famous
Madonna Inn hotel. I’ve never heard of it, but it has huge wildly
decorated rooms with huge fireplaces and big beds, etc. Our
catering truck breakfast is waiting for us in their parking lot, and we
discover the Inn is hosting a rodeo this weekend, so the area is loaded
down with all kinds of trailers and animals.
So I find our room in the part of the hotel at the
top of the hill (DP John tells me to follow the cables) and see all
sorts of activity as the grips and electricians set up lights and power
without actually touching anything, as requested by the hotel
people. And Set Designer Scott and Chris Props try to rearrange
the setting without moving anything, as requested by the hotel
people. Grip chatter on the walkie-talkies: “Fly me in a red
head.” “Speak English.” “A DMC.” “Dude, I don’t know what that
is. I don’t even know what Run DMC is.”
We also can’t control showers taken by other guests,
so loud running water ran loudly through the pipes while we were
setting up. Sound said we can’t have that during the shoot.
Chris Locations said we can’t do anything about it. Harry
suggested giving them $10 to stop. After a while we begin the
notice this shower has been going on for a very long time and Harry
asks if they’re showering their entire family.
For me, however, the bigness of the day was the fact
that I was working with all four actors in a scene together for the
first time. While I had been looking forward to the acting part,
I was dreading the baptism by fire of four-actor continuity where they
were
running into the room at the same time, pulling off all kinds of wet
accessories and attire and replacing it with dry attire or towels at
different places in the room at different points in the dialog.
The first part was dread-worthy enough when I knew I had a monitor to
help. Then Alfredo picked up the B-camera, which wasn’t hooked up
to the monitor, and did handheld shots for the rest of the day.
What was he seeing in the camera? I don’t know. What was in
the background that could have been wrong? I don’t know.
Where was he beginning scenes? He wouldn’t say.
So it’s time for Jane’s coverage, and Wardrobe Marcy
steps up
to me, noting her concern that Jane’s socks are on and they should be
off by the cue Alfredo seems to want. But Alfredo isn’t clear on
where he wants to start and after I tell him my concern, he doesn’t
seem to care, he’s busy doing something else. Marcy and I hold
our breath. Then Richard and Harry look at me in a panic as
Alfredo calls “Rolling!” and ask me “Where are we starting?”
Marcy jumps in with “colostomy bag” and they start there, which is the
point right before Jane takes off her socks, which she does with
perfect
timing. I look back at Marcy with a smile and she holds up her
hand in a silent high five. I’m very impressed.
Lunch, and Camera Loader Karen is frantic because
she had
accepted a high-paying commercial shoot for our two-day break which
started the next day, but Lonnie didn’t let her bring her own car up
and
now she couldn’t find anyone to ride back with. Meanwhile, DP
John is spending his day in the camera truck smoking a cigarette.
Since Alfredo was doing his own camerawork, he had no reason to be
there.
We return from lunch and the actors are talking
among themselves, discussing the rodeo out in the parking area.
“Did you see that huge henway in the field outside?”
asked Richard.
I thought to myself, then looked up with a smile as
Harry took the bait, “What’s a henway?”
“About 5 pounds,” returned Richard and we all
laughed.
Harry shook his head. “I knew it the minute it left
my mouth!”
We’re setting up the next scene, which is the same
room an hour or so later. PA Gabriel asks me about the props on
Harry’s bed which he had thrown there in the previous scene.
Should they look the same, what? I say it’s a time cut, the stuff
could be gone, so he clears the stuff away. We’re into the scene,
Harry’s rolling in the middle of his dialog and actions, he runs to his
bed and stops dead in his tracks, almost falling head first into the
bed. He starts swinging his arms and yelling, “There’s no s**t on
my bed! Where’s the s**t on my bed?!! I can’t believe
this!” I look up and defensively cry, “It’s an hour later.
The bed’s clean--” “But that’s where I threw my s**t!” he
returns. “It’s why I’m going over here! It’s my
motivation!” He’s jumping up and down, pushing the issue as far
as he can while his swinging arms hold out, and I finally break into
his harangue, calling out to Props with disgust, “Okay, let’s put the
s**t on the bed for the ACTOR!” and the crew bursts out laughing.
So Gabriel hurries in and returns everything the way it was.
Harry keeps digging, cutting near-smiling glances at me, “Good thing
I’m paying attention,” he says, on and on. Finally I pop a
warning look at him and say, “Hey! You can only get so far on
those looks.” And he smiled wickedly at me.
We move on to the next set-up and Gaffer Ron checked
the lighting and commented “That white chair has moved dramatically,”
which Harry found amusing, repeating “dramatically.”
Various members of the crew discuss that even though
this is a hot set where nothing was supposed to move, the table and
white chairs were used for lounging during the lunch break. So
somebody starts to move it back and Alfredo looks up from his camera
angling and says, “What are you doing? Move it back!”
“No, it was this way,” someone says.
“No, it wasn’t!” Alfredo argues.
I bury myself into my notebook, muttering, “Don’t
ask me, don’t ask me, oh please oh please oh please don’t ask me!”
Harry, eighteen inches away from me and hearing
every pleading word, looks at me and smiles. “So, Marilyn, did
the chair move?”
“Shut up!” I hiss at him.
He’s still smiling. “Do you know if the--”
“Shut-up, Harry!”
“Hey, Marilyn--”
“STOP IT!”
He sits down smiling. The master.
Thomas was whistling some movie theme that was
driving me crazy. Finally I said, “What is that?” and he smiled
and said “Braveheart.”
Thomas and Harry started doing dueling Robert DeNiro
impressions, with Harry switching to Joe Pesci.
We jump a little shooting between the two scenes, so
I have to help Harry keep up with whether or not he’s wearing his
bicycle gloves (one good save before camera rolled when he wasn’t
wearing them when he needed to, but nothing to compete with Marcy’s
sock save).
Alfredo moves the cast into the bathroom, which is a
really mirrored room with all kinds of reflection possibilities for the
camera and sound departments. Script has to sit out in the living
room with everyone else. I’m really looking forward seeing the
movie so I’ll know what the shot looked like.
We finally finish inside the room and move outside,
where Transpo has water trucks ready to simulate rain. Plus we
have to wait for it to be dark enough, because this is a night shot in
the rain. So it’s finally time, the hoses point up in the air and
water rains down, extras and Stand-in David ride through it a couple of
times, and we’re done with that. Now we move to the entrance
leading to the lobby area, where the four meet before all the stuff we
shot all day. For the first time today, hotel guests watch us
work, so it was cool to be part of a group I used to watch. We
wrap and finally get to leave.
I go to the camera truck to turn in camera reports
and find out Karen rented a car during lunch break, so she
finally gets to leave to drive back to L.A. tonight even though it’s
midnight and we’re talking 3-hour drive and a 7 a.m. call time for her
weekend job.
That 4
Friends Movie
Production
Journals - On the Set
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