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2003-01-26 - 5:30 a.m.
I wanna make a movie so let's star in it together
The 2nd week of shooting Mike’s movie, “Cabbagehead”, was, well, a bit more rigorous than those first 2 days of the first week. In fact, we ended up shooting 5 days in a row. But we really started to get into a groove, I think. J.G. was down for the weekend and had off for MLK Day, so was still around to help out with Monday’s shoot. Mike got up early to head over to Kathy’s to get ready, and he kept telling me we could sleep in a little later and just meet them there when we’d need to be there, but cuddling in bed with someone you love on a cold cold morning always makes a convincing argument for staying in bed for as long as possible, so we ended up being a little late and I felt bad about making people wait. The ‘dream’ sequences at the beginning and end of the movie called for a forest scene in the script, but Kathy (Mike’s director of photography) convinced Mike that they could do it in her neighborhood, and as it turned out, it did look pretty cool. We used this stream and a resevoir tunnel that goes underneath a street and back out the other side, with a bunch of vines hanging over the entrance. It’s going to look really great on film. Mike’s not a super meticulous or organized or obsessive director type, I mean, he cares about what he’s doing, but he’s still pretty laid back about it. Which is nice, because you don’t want some uptight asshole yelling at you about how every little thing is ruining his vision, but he also doesn’t quite have the drive to really put it all together. Kathy is really organized and even though she’s only the d.p., she’s really done a lot for this, putting together a shot list, and really doing a lot to help run things. Which is no dis on Mike, because people are what they are, and it’s just good to have a particular combination of personality types on the set, so that everything gets done without much conflict. But it was slow going getting all the exterior shots, and it was cold as shit out there. I wore so many layers but it was still insane, especially standing around and waiting for stuff to get set up, and we mostly ended up retreating to inside Kathy’s house whenever we could. And by the time we got around to the last stretch of shots and our actress Amy came by, the crew was all getting pretty restless and impatient. Mike had ordered a big Subway party platter for the crew that day, but had accidentally called the wrong Subway, instead of the one by Kathy’s house, and so when we sent Joelle and J.G. to go pick up lunch, it became a big debacle with them trying to find the right one. It was nice to have J.G. on the set, even if she could only be there for a day, and she was a real trooper, helping out with anything she could. I think she just really gets a kick out of the fact that I’m doing this. And besides, there’s really no ‘hangers-on’ on the set...every extra set of hands ends up being useful for something. So by around 4 o’clock with morale low and daylight running out, Mike made the tough decision to just get done with the outdoor shoot and do the pickup shots we needed later in the week. So we packed up and went back to our apartment...for more shooting. After everyone got a couple hours of downtime, and got to actually work inside instead of out in the freezing cold, everyone was feeling a little better. Amy seemed understandably pissed when Mike had her out in the cold for like an hour that day and then we ended up only doing one shot with her, which we decided to not even use. But she was a really good sport. She’s really, like, y’know, an actress, in the way that I’m really, y’know, not an actor. She knows what she’s doing. But she was really good at getting me in the moment. We did our first scenes together at the apartment. My character is basically just hopelessly awkward with girls, which is something I know a bit about. It’s actually kind of hard, because I’m playing the kind of person I’ve always tried not to be, so to actually act that way kind of goes against my every instinct. But I think I’m pretty good at the shy, flustered thing, hence the Jeff Goldblum/Jimmy Stewart comparison that I got and take so much pride in. Although really, if I’m emulating anyone, it’s Crispin Glover in ‘Back To The Future’...”hey you, get your damn hands offa that girl!” In the scene, Amy and I (or Lindsay and Drew, if you want the character’s names) are studying for a math class together. So Mike just flipped open his math book to a random page and threw some jargon into the script. My jargon in the scene is about “the method of Frobenius”, and as things got more relaxed on the set, I started getting punchy and obsessing over the word Frobenius. Calling him Frobes, the Frobinator, Froby Dick. That’s the one problem with having a lot of people on the set and having a good time, it gets hard to actually keep a straight face during takes. Everytime I said “Frobenius” I was ready to lose it. But we got through the day. And it was good. But at that point we were still only maybe halfway through shooting. More on the rest later! -al
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