A Week in the Bag

What is it the old Irish guy says in John Ford's The Long Gray Line? Well, that's how I feel. The shower scene knocked my block off. An already dank boys' locker room, with piles of extra dirty laundry room in a fenced room that we couldn't access, hot lights, fifteen sweaty crew, and a hazer (a delightful machine that mimics smoke or steam by filling the air with minute particles of mineral oil), throw in some echo, get behind by about an hour and have it all take place between the hours of 9PM and 10AM. That's Friday night.

Our "erotic" shower scene was then followed by a night of toilet humor - all the bathroom scenes. I realized that I'm making my second film to include a mirror shot of a boy cleaning a stain out of his shirt. I do not need this analyzed, incidentally. And we finished as sunrise and the morning birds chased us out of the woods on Sunday morning.

I had ridiculously unsettling shoot dreams as I slept from noon-6PM on Saturday and from 8AM-Noon on Sunday. The struggle is to stay up today to get back on a regular schedule for tomorrow, which will be one of our hardest days. In a different location on campus with fourteen actors in both scenes.

The crew still appears to be in pretty good spirits but they're as tired as I am. I got a huge boost at 7:30 this morning when Conor, one of our grips, told me that he really liked the scene that we had just shot. Usually that would mean that he liked the way it looked but he meant the scene. He had read the screenplay and thought we did a good job playing it and he was the one closest to the action, holding the bounceboard a couple feet from the actors, while I crouched out of frame so I could see them.

I suspect the middle week will be the toughest. I'll let you know.