DAY 1: Monday, June 28, 2010
Instead of beginning the shoot of his film GRASSROOTS with an icebreaker, Stephen Gyllenhaal literally breaks a plate. “In my lifetime we’ve gone from 35 mm film to HD and various digital forms,” he announces to the crew, “so I’d like to perform a Russian ritual I learned from a Russian DP who worked with me back when we were still at war with Russia.”
The ritual brings good luck, he assures, and he’s concerned that his alarm did not go off this morning, almost making him late. He holds his ceramic plate high, then smashes it in the middle of the road in the heart of a residential Capitol Hill neighborhood. “Now everyone has to take a piece.” The crew members take up the pieces and set them reverently on a dish.
The symbolic act complete, Gyllenhaal quickly balances superstition with pragmatism. “Now Jim (first AD) will give a safety talk. On one of his first film shoots, my son Jake rode over a piece of glass on a bicycle, and the crew had to spend twenty minutes fixing the tire.” The crew excels at picking up pieces, which bodes well for the coming weeks, when they’ll piece together an entire feature film.
Today’s scenes take place in the house of the main characters, Phil (Jason Biggs) and Emily. Cozy, and messy, it overlooks the gorgeous Seattle skyline, punctuated by the Space Needle and the Lake Washington horizon.
This zany comedy embraces some serious questions; among these are whether Seattle traffic can be solved through a monorail system, whether following a career ambition is worth losing the love of your life, and whether best friends should come before lovers. But the lightness on set mirrors the tone of the movie as a whole, which is always grounded in its sense of humor.
Biggs keeps it light between takes by joking with his co-star after breakfast. “You have sausage burrito breath,” he says. We’re not sure if he’s joking. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out…nothing. “Oh yeah, I emptied my pockets. I had a mint in one and an ecstasy in the other. So one of you is going to have the best day ever – or the worst.” Yes, he’s joking, and making everyone crack up with him, even the girl he just accused of halitosis.
In the middle of an emotional phone call scene in which she’s off-screen, Lauren Ambrose, the actress playing Emily stretches on the sidelines between takes. With her hair haphazardly clipped and no makeup yet, she looks like a true Seattleite, doing yoga in attire that does the grunge scene proud and somehow still managing to look good. Biggs wears a mismatched suit and chunky plastic frames. “Is that what he wears to work?” an AD quips, “No wonder he got fired.”
But Biggs in real life is clearly a stickler for detail, as he picks up a quarter from the coffee table and yells reprovingly to the set dresser, “This quarter is from 2009!” (The movie takes place in 2001. And he’s joking again, if you didn’t get that.)
When Gyllenhaal finally gets a break, he tells his assistant, “When Coppola was shooting in Southeast Asia, he had pasta shipped in from Italy. So I want you to go around the corner to Caffé Vita and get me a cappuccino.” Gyllenhaal’s assistant clearly appreciates that this film is humbly grounded in Seattle.
Gyllenhaal knows when to get serious, calling private rehearsals with the actors as needed. He also knows when to improvise, setting a globe on its side and propping it up on books when something seems to be missing in one scene. “I like how Stephen dresses the set,” the DP laughs.
The locations intern informs me the house has been abandoned for fourteen years. Its owner, who lives in Florida, has hired a free-spirited visual artist across the street as a caretaker. The set dressers have turned it into the lived-in abode of two struggling journalists. Of their touches, my personal favorite is the dual chalk/bulletin board in the kitchen, on which the words “pay this” are scrawled with an arrow pointing toward a bill in an envelope. Maybe it’s just that I’m familiar with the unstable life of the evolving twenty-something, but small touches like this resonate with me.
Most of this story is in fact true. I hear the wardrobe staff joke about the real Grant Cogswell, Phil’s best friend played in the film by Joel David Moore. Dawn, the head makeup artist, says, “I heard Joel and Grant had a date yesterday. I just hope Joel got to hear him sing ‘Like A Virgin’ at a karaoke bar in Spanish. Because until you have heard that, you have not had the real Grant Cogswell experience.”
I have a feeling the cinematic Grassroots experience will be even greater.
-Sara Lynne Wright
Thank you Sara for taking us on this exciting behind-the-scenes tour via your posts.
“Instead of beginning the shoot of his film GRASSROOTS with an icebreaker, Stephen Gyllenhaal literally breaks a plate. ‘In my lifetime we’ve gone from 35 mm film to HD and various digital forms,’ he announces to the crew, ‘so I’d like to perform a Russian ritual I learned from a Russian DP who worked with me back when we were still at war with Russia.’ The ritual brings good luck, he assures, and he’s concerned that his alarm did not go off this morning, almost making him late.”
The opening lines of your post made me sit up at once. Stephen deciding to launch the filming of Grassroots with a ritual of this kind had a ring of familiarity for me. In India no venture is started without breaking a coconut in honor of Ganesha, the Elephant God who is invoked to remove obstacles and confer stability. While rituals of this kind could appear like mere superstition, there is more below the surface. Even as the act of breaking (the coconut shell or the plate in this case) represents the breaking of barriers to progress, the choice of the coconut (pure white kernel sealed within the hard shell) has its unique significance. You need to get past the hard shell of resistance to get to the essence that you seek. According to one belief the shell represents the individual ego, considered (not wrongly) the biggest obstacle to advancement..
“The crew excels at picking up pieces, which bodes well for the coming weeks, when they’ll piece together an entire feature film.”
I’m curious to know the fate of the plate-pieces after they were reverently (that word speaks to me) set on the dish. The pieces of the coconut of course are consumed (with reverence and indeed pragmatically) by those assembled, a sharing of the sought-after essence with the hope that the fruits of the endeavour would be thus shared by all.
There is also a part of the essence – the juice – that you let go when the coconut breaks. Again symbolic of detachment and the idea that one must let go of ones creation.
As for the safety lesson, that fits in so well with this entire ritual (be it a plate or a coconut). The so-called superstition is really so much more. It is about mindfulness which ultimately clears negatives out of our path and helps us go forward.
“I have a feeling the cinematic Grassroots experience will be even greater. Indeed art enhances life into a more intense experience.”
I’m confident Grassroots will reward not only its cast and crew but all the viewers amply. And it goes without saying that in my faraway corner of the globe, I shall break a coconut to Ganesh for the success of this venture. Good luck to the team!