The Long Version

Let’s see… which story should I tell? How about the "Coke gave us clearance to use their name at the very last minute – saving us from having to Greek out Dr. Skippy Safeway brand soda cans?" Nah… Too corporate for Independent Film.

I could talk about the 22-page shooting day complete with 10-to-1 coverage of five guys sitting around a poker table. No. Not much more to that story.

I know. I call this one, "The Long Scene, Good-bye." Cue the lonely saxophone and set the lights to Noir.

We were three days into a twelve-day shoot and already 15 pages behind schedule. Never mind that we had shot 12 pages the first day and over ten the second -- before having to cut that day short. The big boys – the studio pictures – they’ll shoot 3 pages, tops. But our schedule was like a little old lady in a Desoto on a Sunday afternoon drive, a bitch to be behind and hard to get around. And it was hot. The tinsel on Tinsel Town was wilting. So were my cast and crew. Worst of all, one of the cast had to leave early.

His wife was in the Big Apple directing some glam musical. That left him looking out for the kids after school. What’s a director to do? I’d written the part just for him, but I wasn’t about to let my little movie turn his girls into juvenile delinquents. Some things just aren’t worth it. We decided to work around him. So there I was in the heat – in more ways than one. We had seven pages of his stuff to shoot, and 30 minutes to do it in.

On the upside, there was no movement in the scene. Just five guys playing poker. Easy for camera and sound, but hard on the cast. When to cut. When to deal. When to bet. Easy enough to do in real life, but hard to keep up with when acting.

We rehearsed for camera a couple of times, and things weren’t looking good. The guys were going up on their lines. We’d blocked the entire movie for a week, but that was now a week ago. They knew their stuff, but it needed brushing up. Twenty minutes left. Seven pages to shoot.

We ran through the scene one more time, and it was a disaster. Tension filled the air, mixing with the heat. The crew looked at me like a Chihuahua locked in a car on a Texas summer day. We didn’t have long to live.

"He’s a theatre guy." You could almost feel them think it. "He doesn’t know the first thing about film." They didn’t have to say that. I’d said it for them. Prior to directing this film, I’d had about 4 weeks total time on a production set, and most of that was as an actor on a soap opera. And even then I was an under five – a glorified extra. I didn’t know the first thing about film, but I knew about actors, and these guys were hot, tired and dehydrated. Less than 20 minutes left. I told everyone to take five.

"Are you crazy!?!" It was my first assistant director. "We’re talking SEVEN PAGES! Thousands of feet of film! We should be shooting! When they screw up, we’ll pick up where we left off and keep going!"  Of course, I can't blame her.  That's the way they do things in film.  But I'd been on stage with most of these guys, and for the first time in production, I knew something these film kids didn't. 

"They’re hot," I said, and left it at that. It was a gamble. If we didn’t get the shot when they came back, then not only would we be impossibly behind schedule, but I’d look like an idiot. I’d lose the crews’ respect, which is a sure signal for disaster ahead.

So the cast went out the front door to sit in the shade and run lines. The crew went out the back to smoke ‘em if they had ‘em. When they all came back, we started the scene.

About two pages into it, I knew this take wasn’t going to work. An actor had to put the deck of cards down for another one to cut. He didn’t, so in a page or so, another actor, who had to bet, wouldn’t be able to say a crucial line. I let the scene run though. There was good stuff happening on B-camera.

When the train wreck happened, I called "cut." Before I could get to the cast, the 1^st AD came running up to me. She was in a panic. The actor who’d missed his cue spent most of that take looking at his sides on the floor. She thought he didn’t know his lines, but I knew different. Five minutes left.

"We’ll take it from the top," I said, then pretended not to notice her "this’ll never work" look. I went up to the cast. "You missed your cue to put the cards down for Jack to cut." "Yeah, what is it?" I told him, then said to everyone, "Let’s do it again from the top."

A few minutes later, we had a perfect take in the can. The actor who had to pickup his kids got out on time, and the crew decided they would stick around to see how this movie came out.