DAY 25: Saturday, July 31, 2010
Achieving a sense of reality in the first scene of the day is easier than usual, because a) we’re filming at the ACLU, the actual setting of the scene in the script, and b) two actual lawyers play the ACLU employees hearing Phil and Grant argue for the ability to speak out against McIver in campaign materials.
Lance Rosen, sitting directly across from Jason in the scene, is an entertainment lawyer. “Can you renegotiate my contract, right now?” Jason asks him between takes, so straight-faced that any gullible person would be unable to tell if he is joking.
Lance turns the table – not literally, though that happens for the next shot. “Can you give me more lines?” This cues the eruption of laughter common when Joel and Jason act (to use the comparison of the head of the hair and makeup department) like Cheech and Chong. No deal reached, but worth a try.
Silently walking through a hallway becomes far more complex when it’s captured on camera for a fiction film. Just after Joel and Jason enter the doors of the ACLU in rehearsal, Stephen adjusts them. “I’d walk a little bit faster and with a little more sense of purpose.” Allowed some rare extra time while our next shot is set up on another floor, the duo watches the playback of their scene to judge their walks and adjust accordingly.
DC, Joe, and Michael ride with Jason behind the wheel for the next scene. A train of vehicles, one in front towing Jason’s car and two behind supervising, cruises around Burien to get the shot. Sean Porter is strapped into the left backseat of Phil’s car, perilously hanging out the door with the camera on his shoulder and a seatbelt/harness holding him in place.
The trio leaps out of the car to pound campaign signs into the ground. It’s the middle of the night, and they wear black berets over black stocking caps. They look like a new kind of triple threat: the artist-ninja-mugger.
DC’s sign gets “pretty mutilated,” to use his description, so the props department has to replace it after the first couple takes. Either Michael’s hammer or his arm strength is ineffective, prompting a repeated ad lib: “It’s not working!”
The shoot goes all night. By the time DC, Joe and Michael wrap, it’s too late to properly celebrate their excellent work on this film. It’s exhausting being a rebel campaigner, even just playing one.