Day 2 - Saturday, September 28

12PM

The first of four locations today is a gallery on Eagle Street in North Adams owned by Eric Rudd, a local artist and one of the primary forces behind the effort to turn the town into an arts community. Eric's gallery was met with some controversy when local, conservative business owners objected to the relatively tame nude portraits that hung in the storefront. Those same paintings are on the walls for our scene, along with art by Howard Cruse, our landlord and the author of the wonderful Stuck Rubber Baby, among other things. Howard's also appearing in our scene today as an impatient gallery owner (after demanding top billing - I promised him the prestigious "and" credit), and his husband Edward Sedarbaum agrees to be an extra right before we shoot. Howard studied acting in college, and he and Ed appeared together as extras in the Sidney Lumet film Daniel, which places them among the most experienced actors in the movie.

In the scene, Alice - stuck in a particularly antisocial phase - is interviewed by Dick Derby, a reporter from the Banner, about her work. I'm playing Derby, partly because I couldn't find anyone who did the part quite the way I imagined it, and partly because it adds another layer to a scene that is already self-depricating (it's surreal when we take a break so the writer from the Transcript can ask us questions like "Why are you doing this?"). I'm wary of giving myself cameos that could play as Shyamalanesque self-importance, and I have no desire to go the Silent Bob route of director-as-pop-culture-icon. So I'm playing a dork, and I'm surprised how nervous I am about it. Usually acting doesn't cause me any stress, but I'm concerned about giving Jess something to play off and I don't have a director. Michael, on camera for this scene, is kind enough to suggest where to tone down the mugging, and I have fun doing the scene with Jess. She suggested adding this scene, and she's great in it, rolling with a last-minute rewrite that forces her to find the scene's emotion in a more economical way. After we wrap, she tells me it was hard to act off me because I was making her laugh. I don't get called "funny" in a positive way much, so it means a lot to me.

4PM

After wrapping early on the gallery scene and taking a short break, we move to the Hub Restaurant on Main Street, where Alice has the dinner date from hell with Meredith, a joyless, pretentious Pottery Barn employee. Meredith is played by Jenna Hoag, an MCLA student who killed at Friday night's script reading. It's not easy to do deadpan effectively, and Jenna's found the perfect monotone, dripping with contempt. We're a little low on extras, so Michael calls in some friends from a play he's rehearsing. Jess, Jenna and I build the scene's unease with small gestures - a pregnant pause here, a sideways glance there. The light in the restaurant is warm and barely needs adjusting. Jenna has an awkwardly long and verbose line to deliver, filled with words like "phallocentric," and "decontextualize," and it's gratifying, after one or two takes where she's understandably tongue-tied, to see her nail it. And despite Jess' fears, she manages to get through the scene without laughing.

6PM

Well, it couldn't all be so easy. First, when I get to MCLA's radio station (which we've booked for a scene where Nikki is interviewed by two leering DJs), I find a freshman who hasn't been informed that we're pre-empting her show and refuses to leave. We agree to work around it but Jessica, who is both eight months pregnant and a born producer, arranges to have the girl removed by security. Jessica could hold her own against Harvey Weinstein.

Next comes my first (and hopefully only) big fuckup. As we're unpacking, I realize I've left the camera's battery at the previous location, which is now closed. Frantic phone calls are made, and we get the battery. My mistake is the result of a smaller-than-expected crew and the need to wear many hats; I think I can direct, but I'd make a terrible grip. Luckily, what crew we have is bending over backwards for the movie - Michael's even kind enough to give me a backrub at just the right moment, without my having asked.

So we're finally ready to shoot the scene, and the actor playing Cougar - the head DJ - can't remember more than two or three lines at a time. Worse, he's playing the part way too low-key, so that it's barely registering. I learned from one of my directors that if an actor is lost, it's almost always better to encourage than to snap and create tension on the set. This guy, however, will not take a single direction, playing every take with the same somnabulent tone - it was literally easier to direct four-year-olds. When he auditioned I assumed the deadpan, burnout approach to Cougar was a choice, now I'm horrified to find that he was playing himself. Rather than accepting my directions on how to recall the lines and bring up the character's energy level, the Cougar explains that, since he is also a "shootist," he assumed I'd be doing a different setup for every line of dialogue. After an hour of fumbling through it, even Ron, our AD, can cue the guy's lines. Rather than informing him that fucking Tony Scott would find that a bit frantic and distracting, I ask Bella to join me in the hall.

"I'm sorry," I tell her, "But this isn't working. We've got to figure a way out of this."

"These guys suck."

"I know. I kind of feel bad for them."

After getting one more take of Cougar and the Woodman stumbling through the scene, I shoot Bella's close-up, reading the lines myself offscreen and directing her to play her discomfort. She's well-prepared and I think I can make it work. The next day, Bella tells me how uncomfortable the scene made her, for the reasons she writes about here - having wanted my set to be a totally safe and supportive creative environment, I'm aghast at my own miscalculation. I'd heard the Cougar make a crack about having trouble focusing with Bella exposing her breasts to him, joking oh so wittily that she should just keep her top off the whole time. I cringed and said "Hey now," but having just met Bella, I was reluctant to play the alpha male lest I overstep my bounds with a very strong, self-possessed woman. I was naive not to realize that even the toughest women (and men) need to feel like someone's got their back. I write the Cougar - who was scheduled to shoot B camera at Club Castaway - and tell him we won't be needing his services due to his lack of preparation and disrespect to a fellow actor. He denies having said any of that, saying Bella was the only professional there and accusing the rest of us of being on drugs. Well, I wasn't on drugs, Ken, but I guess I can be pretty unprofessional - enough so to focus on the scene at hand despite numerous distractions, to give an unprepared actor multiple chances to salvage his dignity, and even to use my blog to make fun of a burnt-out cautionary tale who doesn't know how to treat a lady.

9PM

We arrive a bit late at our last location, Howard and Ed's apartment, which is doubling for Meredith's. It's a relief after the tension of the last scene to get back to Jess and Jenna, who in this scene are doing lines of coke. I'm sure it'd be amusing to an experienced cocaine user to watch three neophytes attempt to do this accurately (and with flour), but eventually we find the right off-balance approach to the scene. Jenna is shaping up to be Black Light's biggest scene-stealer, and with every take we make Meredith stranger and more mysterious. When we do Jess' close-up, she launches into a coke-induced stream of consciousness about polar bears, entropy, death and loneliness, managing to be sad and hilarious and painfully human in one take. When we made Chrissie we knew we had it after that first take, so it's a pleasure to turn to her and coin a new phrase. "Jess," I tell her, "We Chrissied it." The smile on her face is perfect. We do a few quick exteriors and wrap what has been a rollercoaster of a day.