The suspenseful, exciting, better than sliced bread conclusion to the Evil Ken Chronicles!
At long last, I’m writing the exciting conclusion to the shooting, trying to get down the details before my memory fades and I forget all kinds of things. I almost forgot a few things. Although I wish I had forgotten Janet Jackson.
In the weekdays after the shooting, Oren, George, and I all worked to upgrade the adapter. The new version actually looks polished and properly manufactured and worked much better, after a trip to the fantastic plastics place (Where, after some of my harder fabbing jobs, they have started to recognize me).
Before we started, Dara asked in an email if I was ready for some “Chicken soup for the makeup artist’s soul” and informed me that I will be providing some, like it or not.
The fallout from last week’s entries was positive. Dan The Man was amused by Chris being referred to as his little man (and let me tell you, Chris is one tall dude). Unfortunately, he didn’t show up personally to beat up on me for offending him. John wasn’t sure he wanted the chicken bit mentioned in the permanent record but credited Dara, Famed Vegas Dancer Dudette, for the excellent Makeup. This time, I started warning folks that random things, personal quirk, and perhaps even sexually deviant behavior, would go on their permanent record. Oren was smart enough to pay me off ahead of time because whoa… he’s a sick little monkey.
I continued to be sleep deprived. People were marveling at my ability to sleep with my arms properly folded in the corner. On the final day of shooting, I showed up astonishingly early and nobody was awake when I came. Either way, I wasn’t the only person who was sleeping on the job some of them in my corner.
I should mention Christine “The Wardrob… wardorb… wardrobadie… aw hell, the wardrobe chick” Sweet, in my account of the filming, as she would high-five me every time I did something cool. I was reading my prior account and realized that she didn’t get much mention. She’s much better looking than being cast as Mrs. Feldman (complete with a sleeping cap) would indicate. ;)
For some odd reason, after the first week of shooting, I became obsessed with preparing a “Hammerhead” for somebody. Sam was a very willing participant. Hey, I didn’t call Sam, Sam “Any coffee is good, as long as it’s coffee” Child for no good reason, you know.
One of the props was Thinking putty. George and Sandy and quite a few others had some fun with it, eliciting questions of “What the heck are you guys doing?!”
James Conolly was the new actor, another last minute substitution. James is also of the school of “Actors must have bizarre things happening up in their head”. He got along far too well with Sam “Upcoming Hollywood Stud” Child, most noticeable when he was far too good natured about having to be right up close and cuddly with him to get the focus right. His best quote was “I used to think my parents were weird. Then I found out that they were just British.” He goes from slightly-nerdy-guy-with-glasses to ugliest woman in Golden Gate very quickly.
I noted that you know that a story is going to be interesting when it starts with “So we were driving to pick up the gun,” when Sam started a story off with that. We did in fact get a replica Glock pistol on the set, which we took turns getting photographed with.
The waiting room was rather interesting. All of the sudden, it felt like a real room, with chairs (borrowed with permission), pictures, and a little statue we all called “Busty”. Busty got a life of her own, once we realized that she was a potential source of amusement.
At one point, I was discussing the John Waters theory of non-acting, which basically revolves around the notion that people who are not actors will generally end up overacting into bizarre contortions of themselves when they are on a movie set and generally aren’t ending up acting naturally. I made some comment that started with “People are like..” and made a weird expression. George was waiting to record it on film. Most people have a replica of the PHB from Dilbert as their boss. I get a wise guy.
Evan was another new guy, doing work as a gaffer. He walks in on Sunday morning, while I am preparing breakfast, and asks if I’m an Assistant Director. I told him that I was just a simple cook. Evan did a knock-up job with special effect lights. He brought some lights he owns. He explained that he purchased them for about the same reason as a musician becomes a bassist. I mean the reason other than being lacking in the intelligence department (With gentle apologies to Chris the Lounge Lizard) — the benefit of always being in demand. Apparently every struggling filmmaker buys a camera first and can’t afford lights.
Apparently, my fish and chips (with abnormally large spuds being used) went over well. This time, all I needed to worry about was not making especially large amounts of noise.
I helped tape plastic bags to the window to simulate night, as my contribution to some of the non-cooking work. I also got to be the clapper-dude and do the slate thing for one or two shots. I discovered that, left to my own devices, I’d stuff these folks to the gills and still have food left over.
I explained to Dara’s parents, who had previously only seen me sleeping in the corner, that I wasn’t ordinarily the sort who sleeps in the corner of random movie sets. Dara’s parents have an adorable dog, incidentally.
The shooting went well. The collection of shutterbugs proved to be quite useful because they could go back to the photos and make sure that everything was properly set up. We used Dan The Man’s green VW Beetle because it was so timeless for the last scene.
We had to race through the filming because we needed to get the walls down in time for the Superbowl on Sunday. I caught the most I’ve caught of a superbowl since… well… the eighties. I’ve still got the heebie-jeebies about Janet Jackson’s.. ehrm… body modifications.
I made Crème brûlée using my smaller torch. Dara is also a pyromaniac, so I let her… well.. in her case it was more like roast.. her own custard.
After it all, I got many high-fives from Christine “That’s” Sweet over the cooking. I left the crew, when I took off, with some Tiramisu, which apparently was rapidly consumed by Sam, who put table manners aside and dove in with two hands, or something. Scott asks me if I cook like this all of the time. I told him “Yeah, except I don’t normally make all the fancy deserts.” I, of course, have nobody to blame but my mother and my mother-in-law for all of the cooking knowledge. And I believe that my deserts were able to beat Sandy’s cookies in the goodness department, no offense to she-who-sits-next-to-me-at-work-and-has-evil-thoughts.
After all of this, I was tired, my apartment was a total mess, both because I didn’t have time to clean it, and because I had half of my cooking gear packed from the catering. But it was quite fun, especially given that nobody was complaining about the food not going down right. And the movie should be awesome, they’ve already got the trailer done and it looks nice. It’s coming next passover. ;)