Recovering Louie

Carlos from Transpo

Day 10

I'm feeling 3% better than yesterday. It's not much but it's something.

We started off the morning with an injurty to our star dog today who was on deck for several scenes. Carlos the hunk-o-chunk of burning love teamster played with Louie and Georgie this morning and they fought so hard for his attention that Georgie gave Louie a black eye, a cut on his ear, and a concussion. Our boom op used to be a vet tech and took one look at Louie and said he's not right so we had to rush him to the doctor. The vet tried rest, anti-inflammatories and antibiotics. Louie's big scenes were moved and since he came home he ate a big bowl of food and has been sitting in the air conditioned room with makeup all day.

Meanwhile we did another very funny scene with Karen, Julia and David. The composition was really cool. In fact, composition is the word today. A lot of the shots today are beautifully composed. If I don't say so myself since I composed them.

Marianne Murphy was a scene stealer again today. She did some really funny work in the Gerber daisies scene.

I'm addicted to Halls cough drops while the camera is rolling so I don't cough my right lung out.
No deliveries of jalapenos or cayenne pepper smoothies today.

Louie rallied at the end of the day and came out front and delivered a brilliant scene on the front porch eating a bone.

It doesn't matter what Karen says or does, it's always spot on. All the people gathered around the monitor and around her tonight during the last scene spontaneously began clapping. Great ending to a day that started out on a concerned note.

Day Nine

Karen Black is a genius. Everything is so seamless for her. She and Julia play well off each other. Again very funny and heartbreaking I'm trying not to cough on everyone.

It's been a strangely smooth morning considering I've been like death warmed over. I've been given fresh ginger root tea with lemon and honey, Emergen-C, Ninja Red (a concentration of dark red berries), a ginger/carrot/cayenne pepper smoother, and peppermint tea. Now I'm gonna try the Emergen-C with some fizzy water so it disperses throughout the body faster.

A videographer showed up and started today. His camera is more conspicuous than the one Alesia's been using so I looked into the lens once. I'm too sick to be self conscious though.

I made Marianne Murphy chop an apple till it was unrecognizable. She was a trooper and of course I got the perfect shot. She's my perfect Doris.

We finished off the day with Karen and Julia. It was hard to get Karen to look depressed because she's so beautiful. I'm off to try and get a little rest.

Day Eight

I got antibiotics today cause my throat is sore and I’m really sick.

Got all the shots I wanted again today. It’s getting boring because they are all so beautiful.

We had a lot of extras and they were all really great. By the end of the day they were all drunk on the fermented tea Art kept giving them.

We shot the fantasy scene today with Marcus climbing across Louise on the bar with the fan blowing in her hair and in slow motion. Hi-larious. One of the camera department guys said, “That looks like the cover of a romance novel.” Morgan looked at me and said, “Did you hear that?”

The band the Peculiar Pretzelmen played at the bar scene today. They are a really interesting band with such a unique sound. The song they played, New York Girls, is really cool. They're playing at the Foundry tonight at 9. Wish I could go but I've got to rest.

I’m too sick to keep blogging.

Signing off.

Shoot Day Seven - Continued

The reason I lost my temper... The walkies were not fully functional. All the departments were a 100ft away from me. I was standing in the middle of the street with 6 beautiful but melting dancers. The light was about to turn and I was trying to keep them from getting hit by a bus. As well as wrangle pigeons. And I felt like I was getting heat stroke.

Finally we got it though - great footage of the six women dancing in the fantasy scene all around the Marcus character in the street. It turned out beautifully and no one even lost an eye. People kept pulling over to watch. And, nobody caught a bomb from the birds – we were so grateful (especially after the amount of bread we fed them!)

Mark Reid visited the set for a second time yesterday looking dapper on his way home from work.

I posed for a picture for my makeup crew holding a tortured gingerbread man – they asked me to pull my fangs out - which I did obligingly.

I love all my departments. For being troopers, not complaining and doing such a brilliant job. Again the footage was top notch. This is no low budget film…

Day 7

I lost my temper today. At one point I yelled, "When I say Action play the fucking song!!!" I’m sure my red hair was flying all over the place. And I fed a bunch of pigeons.

I'm exhausted. More in the a.m.

G'nite.

Me and the Testosterone Posse

The Estrogen Posse

Morgan being forced to drink an Airborne

I'm not gonna bag on the extras but I am gonna say that I renamed them. I changed one guy's name to Chris, another gal's to Joy, a Ladybell and a very sweet lady, Bonkers. But we didn't call her that to her face. Every time we had a wardrobe change they all seemed to coordinate a strange color scheme. Once it was monochromatic brown, once it was bright colored shirt day and once it was all zebras and black. But they remembered their cues better than me. I also told Marty to stop calling the extras “Atmosphere” and to call them background artists. They were troopers.


One of our makeup artists fell over with the plague and had to go home so everything was on Kim's shoulders but she held up just fine.


Sascha ran around the set getting in everyone's way saying spiritual things about how everything is about ryhthm and once today I took my brain out and I licked it and put it back in.

After the nine page scene day everyone was expecting too much. Morgan said we’d wrap the office by noon and we were out at seven. That’s what happens after a nine page day… a nine page day…. a nine page day!

We had a screamingly funny scene today with Scott Ford where he played a slimy, recently separated wannabe on the prowl. I told him it was so horrible it was wonderful.

I had another idea for a shot that hadn’t been originally planned. Once again Sascha threw his hands up but Morgan got it done. The word was, “there she goes – looking for the million dollar shot again” and, of course, it was another million dollar shot.

Julia was given a pair of Toms through wardrobe connections and forced us all to sign them kneeling at her feet. She even had Carlos, the resident Teamster, kneeling at her foot. The grip guys started a trend – they said it was no fun unless they were signing it kneeling at her feet. I was tempted to slap a few of them.

Tomorrow… Romance scene in the park, booty girls in the street dancing to the artichoke song, and stepping in dog poo. (We have a dog poo wrangler on tomorrow. Last time the dog poo was overcooked and hard as a rock and made cling clink sounds when Julia tried to scrape it off her shoe in the shot by the hose. Oh, the other thing we’re gonna do is cue Louie Garcia up for running the perimeter when Marcus leaves the house.

Until tomorrow.

A Few Pics

Shoot Day Five

A few people gave me flack about speaking harshly about my old extras for the insurance party scene. I wanna apologize for speaking ill especially when I found out that the odor I mistook for them in which I referred to as embalming fluid was one of the grips aftershave.

I saw the dailies again and preliminary cut of one of the scenes. Julia’s performance was so moving we all cried. I pretended to have some dust in my eye.

Today, we ripped out a four page scene in the first half of the day. Once again the chemistry between Barbara Bain and Julia was electric. After replacing 55 flourescent light bulbs in the office corridor we broke for lunch.

As I was driving in to the set at 6am I started thinking about the beautiful conference room in the office spaces and when I arrived I decided I needed to use it for scene 81. Of course everyone threw their hands in the air as if I was some kind of difficult director or something but wait until you see that light streaming in like shards through the window. Morgan hugged me at the end of the day and said that that shot was like we had made an insane 50 million dollar movie, there’s no way anyone will look at that and not think it was a very big budget film.

Shot 9 pages today like I was taking a walk in the park. Everything was perfect.

Off Day

Today we did a location scout of the office, grocery store and bar. Here’s whats perfect about the insurance office. The real president of the insurance company looks like a young Barbara Bain and she’s agreed to let us use her image. She’s done all the things that I wrote in the script that ‘Catherine’ did... like visit the children’s hospital and attend groundbreaking ceremonies, etc... etc...

I also saw the dailies today and they were stunning. Not much else to say but, damn!

Lastly we had our first dance rehearsal for the dream sequence with Marcus. Its Louise’s jealous imagination sequence where she see’s Marcus with six beautiful bootifull women who all end up dancing around ‘freakin’ Marcus in a music video style dream sequence. Artichoke. That’s the name of the song that was written for this scene. “Mama said to eat my greens before I go to bed. It’s my artichoke, my artichoke, my artichoke.” Soon to be available on the soundtrack at a Virgin records near you. ;)

A few gems a la David Hardie/Marcus – (and just picture the six hot and sexy dancers all around him pawing at his chest at the time)
“I’m, uh, trying to keep with the beat here.”
“My dad is going to worship me.”
“Come on, let’s get a tear away shirt for this!”
“I’m suffering for my art.”
“Artichoke is now my favorite vegetable.”
“Oh, if Pavlov’s dog only had a bell. Mine would be artichoke. “

Favorite Kingsley/Choreographer bits were:
“You’re interested in him, you’re interested in her, you’re interested in everything that moves.”
“Can we have four counts of pawing?”
To Marcus, “I like your interest but I need to see more of the urge to participate.”

I've got a few photos but will upload them tomorrow when my camera battery is all charged up again.

I'm off to bed.

Day Four

I was so tired last night that I laid down on the hard wood floor and fell asleep till I noticed people sweeping around me.

We had a really good spaghetti with bolognese sauce for lunch today. One of our vegetarian PA's declared, "I couldn't eat it but it was incredibly mad that I couldn't."

The executive producers were insisting on seeing some dailies. I fought them and lost... I just didn't wanna keep living up to such high standards.

The Bacon Experiment failed miserably. I told all the PA's to start using the term bacon instead of cool or awesome. I threw the word out a few times and people just looked at me like I was crazy. Then Morgan said that a take was sweet and I said, "No, it's bacon." He asked if that was like sweet but I said it's more like savory...

We had eleven extras for our old man insurance party scene tonight. One confirmed alcoholic and one that looks so old his eyes look like their gonna fall out. There was definitely a stench of embalming fluid about him. My two veteran actors Dougald Park and Weston Blakesley had to teach all eleven of them to walla walla.

Barbara Bain is stunning. I'll let you just imagine. More on that later.

I'm exhausted. Tomorrow we're off on a location scout to the offices, grocery store and bar.

Shoot Day Three

I passed out really cool toothpicks today.

We shot at the Catherine's location with the 360 degree view of the city. The Hollywood sign, downtown, the Hills, etc... Had to shuttle everybody up from base camp because there is no parking on the extremely narrow streets of the Briarcliff hills. A fire marshall was on set all day smiling from ear to ear and eating our food, but there were no fires to be had. Except coming off of the cigarette butts most of the crew were lighting up between set-ups. Naturally it was from the art department, they're a debaucherous crowd.

I said shit a lot.
Are you shitting me?
Let's do another take just for shits and giggles.
Shit! That's brilliant.
Oh shit, somebody stop the cat.

It was the first day working with Barbara Bain. It was everything you could imagine. Hopefully you have a great imagination. More on that later.

We started losing the light in our last shot and then the Gaffer hung a big white board and suddenly it looked like the middle of the day but with a perfect purple sky. What a beautiful shot.

Tomorrow we get to party with a bunch of old, crotchety, grey haired rock star insurance underwriters. They're party animals.

Day 2

Today we said fuck a lot. And in so many variations.

That’s fucking awesome.
Honey is fucking dripping from the lens.
Fuck me I’m a genius.
Shut the fuck up I’m making a movie.
You fucking rock.

It was just a day full of fucking beautiful and highly technical shots. We got an amazing trombone shot after about 7 tries that was definitely worth the wait. I'll post a photo.

We also had a few celebrity drop ins... Jimmy Duvall came by. Then Sandra Oh walked up in the middle of shooting Frannie and Carlos on the front porch and said, “I just wanna give you a hug Angela. You deserve this.” (Then I started saying fuck to people and she said sweetly, “I’ll get out of your way” and backed away.)

Brangelina live up the street so we had a bit of a papparazzi problem mid day as about a dozen papparazzi we're hanging out on the watch and getting in our way. Thankfully one of the PA’s pulled a Bruno and chased them off in his speedo with Louie Garcia. A little later Brad Pitt drove by on his old school Harley with his gold helmut and white t-shirt on looking like a God. And they came screetching down after him in their SUV’s.

We also had an unplanned explosion as our picture car decided to blow up right after the end of the car shot. At least it had good timing.

The dailies are going to be fucking beautiful.

daily look

picking out wardrobe


working lunch


watermelon curry, yum!

Day One

What a great first day!

Makeup is awesome! We can’t quite tell why but Julia’s eyes are like giant globes looking out on the world. She’s natural and beautiful. Makeup and I got to talking about divas and joked that you have to be a little bit of a diva to work in makeup. Just enough to do it well but keep it under control.

We got some great shots of Louie Garcia licking on cue. Licking the air... licking his paw… and even fluffing the pillows after Julia gets up off the bed. And right after I said, “Louie, stop fluffing,” he flipped up his nose and laid down in a humph. Guess he must have known Mommy wanted him to act today.

When Julia did the montage scene of costume changes she accidentally pulled her underwear down – camera just kept on rolling but we turned away.

We made our morning schedule with time to spare and even got some pick-ups! Later in the afternoon we got through the ‘stepping in the poo’ shot. Power bars will never seem the same. It had to be perfect – swirled around like an ice cream.

The opera was beautiful. The crew was crying. And people walking by on the street stopped and began clapping when Carlos finished singing. We got every shot we planned and more with two minutes to spare at the end of the day.

Can’t wait for Day Two.