May 27th: Day Six

Blocking out the scene where Bullet gets killed.

May 27th

Got some rest again. Well needed, but I still feel very tired when I get up. I shower and bolt over to Tuckahoe so I can back up my picture files—publicity stills are worth their weight in gold.

Hung out, finally got to take a decent crap. People started showing up. Things felt pretty relaxed even though we had to pick up a scene before our regularly scheduled shots.

We did the pickup of Shivers killing Old Man Horner. Came off nice, with some decent coverage so I can make it work either way.

Then over to the meeting hall. It’s our headquarters, so it was packed with food, drinks, equipment, props. Everything. So we had to hide all that stuff. In the story it’s a place that hasn’t been stepped in for years.

Again with the falling behind. Not terribly, but it gets worse and worse.

We got almost all of the inside shots, but Mun wanted to break for dinner, that minute. So we did. It was ham so I went out and had a dinner of iced animal crackers.

You will believe a clown can fly...

Back in to finish, then they set up the lighting outside. We filmed some more shots and really picked up speed.


Jackknifed when we had to do the stunt where Shivers drops off the roof of the building onto Hot Rod. We piled up the mattresses, but it still looked dangerous. Lars, the guy playing Stoltz, offered to drop down and test it. He did, no problem.

Hey, I don’t ask my actors to do anything I wouldn’t do, besides act, so I went up and dropped off. I landed awkwardly so my forearm hit my knee. It was painful, but I sucked it up and laughed like it was cool.

Mark jumped off the roof a couple of times--it was awkward timing the jump with the camera movement, and on one drop Mark rolled and kicked Jared in the face. It was pretty funny, unless you ask Jared.

Setting up the dolly for a shot

We only had about an hour of sunlight, so we tried to shoot some of the end scene but we really couldn’t do much before the sun came up.

Another problem with falling behind is that actors know when it’s happening, and they start rushing through their performance. They may not even realize they’re doing it—they’re trying to help you out. But you gotta slow them down, or their performance won’t sell.

So we missed a HUGE scene—a big pickup now. I come back to Frank’s and revise the schedule. We had a light day after Memorial day, but now I’ve thrown everything there but one missed scene. Gonna be tight.

Gonna try to go to sleep again. 7:17am. Hard to sleep in someone else’s house, especially during the day. Curtains are see through, it’s hot, and uncomfortable.

"Hot Rod"(Adam Ciesielski) is about to get a headache...