March 31, 2009
812am

Took on some extra hours this week to catch up a little on some bills; a good friend of mine just had horrifying surgery that went about as poorly as it can and he’s going to be laid up for a while. Yesterday was a miserable one - finding out about his condition left me in a quivering state of nausea/dread. He’s an avid movie lover and introduced me to classics I’d never have unearthed, lending me films from his collection ranging from Audie Murphy to Busby Berkley and CB DeMille. It was from him that I learned about “Battleground” and Errol Flynn and how truly fantastic William Holden used to be. I knew him from “Network” and my all time fave “The Wild Bunch” but didn’t realize what a charmer he was… I hope my friend gets well, and can move on after such a bad diagnosis.

I took quite a bit of those old films with me while we were shooting “Window”, in my noodle, in the spirit. The Boss has more than a little bit of 50’s era Sterling Hayden to him and I cannot help but be influenced by the low-angle claustrophobia of Orson Welles… when we broke down the “bedroom” set and began moving things around for the “Apt.” scene, I scoped out the kitchen and it was as barren and sterile as I could have hoped. Andrew set up the camera and the lights and I ran through the single, uncut shot he’d be doing. Sujin got him suited up and did his hair and I was suddenly at ease. He had turned from my buddy into the Agent and when I looked through the monitor at him walking into that monochromatic kitchen (especially through that wide-angled lens we’d rented) I was knocked out. We took the lens off and moved on to some close ups and cutaways, things seemed to be moving rather well.

I was so wrapped up in things that I didn’t even notice that someone hadn’t shown up. We were finishing up and preparing to shoot the stuff with Tim and Phil, which would include (at the end of the scene) the arrival of the Collectors. We only had one. I failed to notice that Paul was the only one sitting back there, that the fella we’d interviewed two nights before and enthusiastically promised to be there on time was nowhere to be found, not even a phone call. I made some frantic calls to all the people I knew who were taller than me but it was useless, everyone was busy.

Then Steve, who Andrew had brought along as an assistant, wandered into my view. I grabbed him and said, want to be in a movie? He’s about as tall as I am, and with a shaved head we threw him in a jacket and nodded. He’s fairly laid back and said, “Sure” and we had our second Collector. Now came the rest of the costume, the uncomfortable breathing apparatus I’d put together from some oil filters and velcroe and speaker wire. Then the goggles, underneath -

The goggles. We forgot the goggles at home. I had a moment of panic, seeing everyone around waiting. We’d eaten already, were set up with the shot and we didn’t have an ESSENTIAL prop. I blew up at Sujin like a rank amateur, like some hotheaded pig knuckle and she sent Steve Bruce back to our digs to grab them. Chuck tossed him his keys and said, “Careful with the Cruiser” and smiled. I felt like a turd for losing my cool and apologized to my producer for pulling a tantrum move.

The damage had been done. She gracefully accepted my apology but I’d crossed a line, I’d pulled a diva move and there was nothing I could do but learn from the lesson and move on. We sat and waited for Steve to drive halfway across town and find the junk. We’d already sent someone back for the hat I’d forgotten and it wasn’t a short little milk run. I ran through the scene with the actors just to do something but they knew their shit so really I was just trying to breathe calmly and not look out the window every five seconds, glance at my phone to see the time and hear that eternal, dramatic ticking clock pounding in my head as everyone began to grow restless. I saw Jonathan looking at his watch. I was ready to claw my eyes out and began cursing Steve in my mind for not having Nightcrawler-style teleportation skills. I would’ve chanced Seth Brundle’s teleportation device at that moment if I thought it would speed things up.

tbc

March 30, 2009
724am

It’s been six days since we finished shooting and I am finally back in the real world. I don’t know how Andrew does it, he left for Sri Lanka two days after shooting and will spend two weeks there and Uganda or something like that. Three days of doing it and I had trouble going back to work. I’m a lightweight I guess.

When I got up to Melanie’s apt. I had a bit of anxiety over the building’s management thanks to an offhand comment by someone about having difficulty in this exact type building in the past. I had it in my head that we’d need to smuggle everything in on the QT and knowing there was only one elevator (no freight) made me anxious about exactly how surreptitiously we could do everything. It turns out my fear was unfounded - the doorguy was great and by the end of the day was buzzing us in without the usual Q&A verification. Melanie was fantastic as well, handing off her keys and being a gracious host all around with not a comlaint about how long we were taking, how late it was, how crazy her apartment had suddenly gotten.

Sujin had taped the storyboard on the outside of the door and I walked in, immediately pleased. Steve and I had brought along a halved section of drywall (or as Mike determinedly refers to it, sheetrock) for the “bedroom” set. She had cleaned out a corner and created a cute little bed out of a folding table. I went over and felt it; she’d even put foam padding beneath the sheets for Phil, and I scolded her for this. “He can have no comfort.” I was just joking, thankfully he wasn’t around to hear it. Later, as we were shooting and he was pinned into that corner by the drywall like a lab rat with lights and gadgets looming over him, he very politely said, “Thanks, by the way, whoever put this padding under here.” That woman, always thinking of others - I was glad at that moment that she thinks of things differently than I do as I was concentrating on efficiency and putting foam on a table was not my concern. Sorry Phil.

We leaped into action and got the “bedroom dream sequence” out of the way first, Laura showed up and diligently did her digital duty (I get carried away with words) by putting her hands all over Phil’s face while crouching out of the shot, her head smashed into his chest without a peep of protest. Once she was done with that she shook his hand with the casual manner of the pro and hurried off to her other duties. She’d made a possibly awkward situation lighthearted and fun and I was grateful. My first scene had been shot and we were making good time.

March 25, 2009
956pm
The shooting is over. It was an incredible weekend, full of ups and downs and emotional highs and lows. The amount of names I’d have to thank are too many for me to go through right now but I’ll get to them sooner than later.

Our neighbor Lupe and her husband Enrique let us in their upstairs apt., currently under renovation, to build our “listening room” set. I put Mike Veleas in there with some doodles and he went to work. Before I knew it he’d rocked out the foundation and was preparing to make it look like a quasi-antiquated futuristic transdimensional listening room. Meanwhile, Sujin was working her ass off at Melanie’s to turn it from a young woman’s apartment into the sterile and emotionless dwelling of a drone.

Andrew was picking up the camera from Alex Lemay, who had generously donated it to us. It was a relief to know it was in Andrew’s hands, as he has a fantastic work ethic and a reliable history. The procurement of the camera was a haze of poor communication on my part; I had looked to other sources and proven what a poor businessman I am. The good folks at a very fine production company who I’d done work with, for instance, had given me a perfectly legit and entirely too generous offer for the use of their camera - but being the neophyte I am I’d misinterpreted or just failed to hear the full offer and assumed otherwise. Those guys over there are fantastic, I’m proud to have worked with them and I would’ve loved to have had them be a big part of this movie but communication is key and in this case I’m afraid I came off a bit ignorant. As an aside, my ignorance was reflected in one of my previous blogs as was my lack of understanding/appreciation. My apologies to anyone I may have misrepresented - I have no qualms about how any of this went.

Andrew had a few other options as well, just in case, but by then I’d gotten tunnel vision and things were getting complicated so it was a relief that Alex had a basic plan with simple guidelines even a luddite such as myself could understand.

Sujin and I had a nice talk on Friday night before we began on Saturday. We have learned over the years that fighting is inevitable and it’s better to get it out of the way before things get too heavy so we did a little bit of that and laughed and said, “okay, let’s make a movie”. One of the helpful things she suggested was that I ease up on the self-deprication while on set, as it tends to eat at peoples’ confidence in me and they need me to be the captain of the ship. I took a deep breath and nodded. I’d been faking it this long and nobody’d called me on it, so I put on my game face and tried to get some sleep before the big first day.

Next morning Mike came by to finalize the wall. A few people had volunteered to help him out with it but volunteers are exactly that and often the priority falls to a low rung and Mike ended up doing most of that monster alone. He called me from Menard’s, where he was going to buy a Septic tube for us that would - with a little work - become the “receptacle” into which the agent puts his files. He informed me they’d been all sold out so we were screwed on that unless we figured something out by Monday.

Our money had long since run out, so we were running on fumes. Thankfully just about everything had been taken care of in advance so what we needed was set aside. If anyone needed a pack of smokes from the grocery store, though, they were on their own.

I was finishing up on the props I’d been working on when like some kind of hero in a chariot Charles Klein came by with “The Cruiser”, his PT Cruiser. Sujin had asked me the previous night to find someone to help her finish Melanie’s place the following morning, ie. moving furniture and such. Chuck was good enough to say, “Where do you need me? I’ll be there.” Talk about a fella. Another friend had said he’d be there whenever we needed him but he’d overbooked himself as we all can do and was unavailable but for a small window of time. He helped with a few things and disappeared toward other obligations - he’s a good fella and I’m glad he made it for as long as he did.

Chuck was a rock star. See, I met him maybe three, four (cripes) years ago as a director in his own right. He’d DP’d on a few sets and been part of a comic book project I’d been briefly involved in. He also is a founder of the “Indie Incubator”, along with Matt Kubinski. They round up shorts here in Chicago and put them on the big screen twice a year, it’s a fantastic venue for anyone starting out and looking for some kick-ass audience reaction. I screened “Shank”, “Good Place To Die”, and “Lilly” there in recent years and it’s a great time and I’ll put a link up somewhere for it.

Anyway, he drove Sujin to the set and Steve Bruce, star of “Shank”, arrived with Mike and they went to work next door. I was putting chopped up frames onto a plain white board on the wall for a shot list - a practice that, without an Assistant Director, I would later find invaluable. I took the single storyboards and taped them together in clumps by location, then by the actors involved, then by props and makeup changes. This allowed me to get an idea as to what we could shoot quickly and without so much moving around. If everything could be taken care of from a certain angle there’s no need to move lights and camera and interrupt the momentum, just adjust what you need to and mark that shot off the board list with a big black X.

Steve and I loaded up Mike’s truck while he continued work next door. He’d already solved the “receptacle” issue - he was at the gas station and saw a large white plastic drum and asked the guy at the car wash if they kept them, threw them out, what. It was a massive drum for holding the toxic, crystaline soap they used for the car wash mechanism. The guy shrugged and told him to go ahead, take it, and Mike threw it in his truck and brought it over. He dusted the white off one half of the drum with the final remaining puffs of his black spraypaint, left the other half white as we’d only ever see its one side.We set a toaster oven from the Salvation Army on its lid and Mike found a tube of muffler or something and propped it against the barrel. It was lame, it was like R2 Doo Doo, which is what I named it right then. Mike shrugged and said he’d see what he could do with it.

So Steve and I stopped at the bank, I got the bread out for the food and the lens, or however much Sujin’d asked me to bring. Andrew was meeting us at two thirty and the cast was to start filing in around three. Steve and I had a few laughs on the way up, I was nervous but that fella’s known me for damn near thirty years and he told me he was proud I was finally doing something. Too bad it was gonna’ suck ass, he said. We laughed, I can always count on that guy to poke a few holes in my enormous bubble of self-importance. We spoke fondly of Mike, who we were sad to know was leaving the following week for Connecticut. He’d been a huge part of our lives for over a decade and he was splitting with his girl but it was good to have him around for this project as a final thing.

We arrived at Chestnut early, about noon-thirty, and Ron McCormick was walking up at the same time. He’s a good fella who volunteered to PA and we all walked up and got in the elevator and went up to shoot a movie. I swallowed a throatful of fear and said a silent prayer. It’s all good, it is what it is, don’t take yourself so damned serious.

TBC