Day 4 - Tuesday, September 30

3PM

Jess has strong chemistry with the T. rex. We're starting today at The Rock, Fossil and Dinosaur Shop, Alice's workplace and a location I've been looking forward to. The juxtaposition of odd roadside attractions - Club Castaway and the Dino Store chief among them - sitting on a stretch of Routes 5&10 that sparked the idea for Black Light. And more than Club Castaway, the store is irreplacable, so it was a relief when owner George Marchachos said yes almost immediately. As we shoot moments of a stoned Alice wandering around the store's impressive collection of large-scale dinosaur models, it's clear that the store is bringing out Jess' inner child. She's delightful as she caresses the T. rex's teeth before hopping aboard a triceratops, dubbing the beast "Lazarus" and commanding him to take them to "Dino City." I'd written the role to accomodate Jess' often-sarcastic demeanor, and I'm surprised to find she's not playing Alice sarcastic at all; wherever she's finding this sweet vulnerability, it's working.

As we stop to talk to a reporter from the Greenfield Recorder, Jess and Johnny (who, like Ron, will be helping us for part of the shoot and playing the part of Dan later today) go to the nearest convenience store to buy pipe tobacco for Alice's pot-smoking scene. I'd written the scene for the store's restroom before finding out that the store has two "mines" for kids to search for rocks and gems. I ask George if it would be okay to have Jess smoke in the mine. He asks me what she'll be smoking.

"Tobacco. But it's supposed to be - "

"Okay. Do what you've got to do. Hey, can I see the script?"

George peruses the script, and I wonder if we're about to be kicked out of the store. Jess and Johnny return, and we shoot the scene. The mine is perfect - dimly lit, with walls that absorb light so only the sand-covered floor is illuminated. A stereo system fills the room with an endless loop of wet, cavernous sounds - it's like being inside Alice's head. Jess sits in the center of the room, smoking a bowl and drifting, sadly and sweetly, into the blank state that every self-medicating stoner is after.

Apparently there are a lot of mosquitos around the store, or so I'm told. Mosquitos don't usually bite me, but one of the joys of directing is that everyone around me gladly fills me in on every discomfort, whether they're hungry, tired or itchy. I'm sort of immune to these conditions, partly because I'm so focused on the day that I'm barely aware of the periphery, and partly because I'm always sort of oblivious to the elements - I don't usually start wearing a jacket in the fall until someone asks me if I'm cold. I try to be sympathetic to my cast and crew's needs and accomodate them as much as possible; at the same time, they're kind of a pain in the ass. My shoot is much less demanding, time-consuming and uncomfortable than any of the ones I've worked on, the difference being, of course, that those were paying gigs. For some reason, when you ask people to work for a deferred payment, they act like you owe them something.

The toughest scene at the store, for me, is the scene between Alice, Meredith and Glencora. The idea is that Alice met Meredith and Glencora in school, doesn't like them but puts up with their patronizing advice because she's too passive to tell them to fuck off. Meredith and Glencora exist to tell us something about Alice; as they're more cogs in the story than fully-formed characters and are deliberatly uninteresting, I feel a little bad manipulating Lauren and Corrine - the very talented actresses playing them - to be as dull as possible. And in setting up the scene, I find it's hard to judge when the characters and scene are just tedious enough. I put Jess slightly in the foreground so that we can play the scene off her annoyed reactions and hopefully make it clear that these two are supposed to be annoying and irrelevant. After a few takes, we get it right, which is to say, boring. I think.

As we're leaving, Jess tells me, with a curious smirk, "I took a picture of Bella on the triceratops." I feel like I'm missing something; later, when Bella sends me the pictures, I get why Jess was smirking.

8:3oPM

Alice and Nikki's date at the Whately Diner, a grand old truck stop diner located just off 91. As we're setting up, I realize why Wong Kar-wai has so many scenes set in diners - the lighting is naturally gorgeous, and there are practically no bad angles. This is the scene where Johnny is playing Dan, a jackass who stood Nikki up earlier in the movie and who Alice confronts. Johnny took the initiative of buying fake tattoo sleeves and some shitty faux-bling, and everyone has fun upping the ante on Dan's douchiness. A toothpick, a pat on the ass of his date and some text messaging later, and Dan has become the embodiment of everything I hate in my own gender. It's a pleasure to watch Alice go Dirty Harry on Dan's ass before heading out to the parking lot and enacting a bit of revenge I won't reveal here. That moment, and Alice and Nikki's subsequent fleeing the scene with Dan in pursuit, are the closest thing Black Light has to an action sequence. I've been letting the performances dictate the visual strategy of the movie, so it's a challenge and also a blast to pretend like I'm Paul Greengrass for a little while. I'm helped immensely by Bella (whose spatial intelligence would be a great strength if she ever directed a feature) and Michael, who is operating boom and is spry as a fawn when we race backwards, following Nikki and Alice as they race to the car and peel away. This may be the most fun five minutes of the whole shoot.

10PM

Our next location is the Hatfield Pub, where Nikki and Alice meet. As we shoot the scene, I find myself fighting an odd sense of insecurity I haven't felt so far. I find myself second-guessing simple setups, and when my actors ask me questions about the details and logic of this and future scenes, I'm percieving a lack of trust in my abilities, which is ridiculous - they're working for free and offering suggestions to improve the scene, which is exactly what I asked them to do. I realize a possible cause - all day we've been shooting scenes about insecurity, loneliness, self-doubt and rejection, and it's weighing me down more than cold, hunger or bugs. I tell myself to snap out of it, to focus on the scene at hand. It's then that we start to find a working method for each scene - Bella, Jess and I talk about the scene at hand, the underlying meaning of the scene for each character and translate into terms that they can put into action. It feels like it did back when I was directing plays; I'm finding a method, and I leave the pub feeling energized.

11PM

I'd hoped to shoot the scene where a stoned Nikki and Alice eat fast food and get to know each other in the Taco Bell parking lot in Greenfield, but other logistical stuff prevents it. Bella and Johnny suggest the lot outside Diva's, a club in Northampton. We find a well-lit patch of grass on the edge of the parking lot; I ask whether it's plausible whether Nikki and Alice's first pseudo-date would happen in a dirty, nondescript lot, and Bella and Jess respond with an emphatic yes. This is our biggest dialogue scene so far; Nikki and Alice both talk a little about their lives, and it was tricky in the writing to let the audience learn a bit about the characters without it seeming like a shallow attempt to "explain" them. Bella and Jess make it work; they don't play to the camera, don't reach for the emotion, instead giving each other their attention. The scene feels honest, and the nondescript lot looks surprisingly good through the lens, even if it is infested with slugs (Jess and Bella both make sure that I know this).

This scene segues into a moment where Nikki and Alice dance in front of Alice's car. I was eager to cut this scene - I added it in the second draft trying to strengthen their connection, but I fear it's like something out of a Chris Columbus movie - but Bella asked me to keep it in, so I agreed to give it a try. It's fun watching Jess play the awkwardness of the moment, and Bella is sweet, playing the moment as though Nikki is urging Alice out of her shell. I'm still not sure the scene works, but if it does, it's because of the performances. We had one more small scene to shoot, but it will have to wait until tomorrow, as we have a good and surprising problem - we've run the camera's battery completely dead.