Taking Direction

"Yes."

I got to the shoot late. I was even later than the actors, that's how late I was. I was wrong about the writers, by the way: they weren't skiing, they were there. (I suppressed my urge to shout, "Writers off the set," as long as I could.) I went over my dialogue cuts with them and they convinced me to put four lines back in. They were right. They also rewrote the last scene a little and gave the pages to the actors shortly before we shot it. I had the two of them run the lines a couple of times, and they both got it perfectly. I love professionals.

Before we got started for the day, I discussed the scene with the actors, both of whom were comfortable with the physically intimate aspects of it, despite having just met and the fact that she's married. Both of them were good, and on top of that they were very good-looking: Kimberly looked like Teri Hatcher (only better looking, I think -- she was in Executive Decision as a flight attendant, if you've seen that), and after we wrapped Kathleen compared Jeff to Pierce Brosnan, which I thought was apt.

I thought the whole shoot worked really well considering how it was put together at the last minute. Jose was very, very good with the camera (we watched the rushes by hooking up the camera to a TV) -- I said, "You're shooting all my stuff for me!" He said, "Okay." The best part was having other people to do stuff and not having to do it all myself. I could ask Kathleen or Bernice or whomever to go get the candle we needed for one scene and then go back to concentrating on the setup on hand. When you're writer/director/producer/everything on your own production, you start getting freaked about having to handle everything. Dividing stuff up is much nicer.

I can't wait until I have P.A.s around all the time.

I think I mentioned that the writers are also the editors, so they watched the footage with us, and they seemed pretty pleased. Yay. I was afraid that I was going to screw up how we decided to shoot things or get their enmity, earned or not. But they seemed fairly pleased: it was the first time I had shot a piece someone else had written and the first time they had seen their writing handled by someone else.

I came home and was so tired I had to lay down. I closed my eyes but decided after a while that it wasn't working. I looked at the clock. I'd been asleep for an hour and a half. Out like a light.

I need to sleep all the way through tonight and not get woken up by anything tomorrow morning.

I've been watching this tacky Shannen Doherty movie tonight because Jeff (the actor) mentioned he was in it, as "the bartender." I haven't seen him yet. Although he might have been tending bar in the makeup room (of course, aren't there always bars in makeup rooms?) -- the camera didn't stop on him long enough.