October 5th, 2003

Some extras think that posing with me will get them better background placement.
Sorry, ladies, only handjobs will do that.(I'm kidding. Maybe.)
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You can see much of this day in the "Making Of" FOC. This is the night you see me leaning over the counter rolling my eyes while Jacky and Rick make fun of the lines and then do some uninspired acting with them.

Now normally I'd laugh with them and then try to explain to them just what the point of the scene is. Once you get an actor understanding the whys, then they will typically get on board.

But at this point I've probably had about 12 hours of sleep in 5 days, and have already been working 14 hours with my only break being the five minutes I sat in my car eating my Burger King meal.

I'm exhausted, frustrated from actors not showing up, and there just comes a point where you hit a wall. This was that night for me.


Oct 5

Enchanted forest. We slipped the crew and equipment through the hole in the fence and tried to block the scene.

Some other people were there. I acted like we had permission to shoot there, and started bossing them around. They left and we got down to it.

Again it's pretty cold for the day. We did okay. The contacts are bothering Mark. He can't keep them in for that long so we try to get all of his angles done first. I'm concerned about the clown running around in the day, but the reason I'm doing it is to try to buck the all too common killer-only-appears-at-night.

Don't know if it will work or not.

We lost light fast--the scene was taking a while. There's a lot of wind, and the trees are blocking the sunlight. We get it done though, and I think it turned out okay.

Rick and the crew were gonna go grab a quick bite to eat. I said go ahead, but be at the diner by 7pm.

I hit Burger King, eat on the drive, head by the house and grab some equipment. Then went to restaurant. Rick and the crew was late.

Set up, not bad, but I forgot to call Mark to tell him to go to Paul’s early and get made up for the scene later that night.

Paul’s pissed—he’s gotta work early in the morning. I’ll hear about it more later I’m sure. But right now I have to get the diner scene with Lisa Willis Brush finished. It's a lot of set-up and exposition.

Got it done in a minimal three hours.

We ran late getting to theater. Two actors didn’t show up—Frank Lama and Jack, the kid. I call Frank and he says he must have got the nights confused. Says he can be at the theater in two hours—he lives all the way on the eastern shore. Means he’d show up about 4:30am.

Can’t reschedule. Had to improvise and shoot one side of the scene with Jacky and Rick talking to me, standing in for Frank. A couple days down the road we’ll shoot Frank talking to me, standing in for Jacky/Rick, and hope the eyelines match. Jack’s just gonna be written out of the scene, but it’s gonna make the main character look like a bad mom since I wrote her kid out of the scene. Or it’ll make me look like a bad writer.

We move on to James’ death scene. We don’t have much blood left that night, so James grabs a bag of cherry slurpee mix and we use that.


James dove in. Looks a lot like blood. Crazy man.

We do a scene by the soda machines and Rick and Jacky have both decided they don’t like the dialogue. They make fun of it during the first run-through, then proceed to do the most-uninspired first take ever.

I’m very frustrated and short tempered. It was a sixteen-hour day for me, and I had had enough and didn’t have the energy to fight to get what I wanted. We finished shooting, packed up, and I left without saying goodbye to anyone.

It’s getting harder every day. It’s hard typing this now.

We worked until 6:30am.

I know--they don't look like they're sucking at their jobs right now, do they?
(I'm kidding--it was brutal on all of us)