After a hiatus of about a month, The Joneses cast and crew reassembled for our final major shoot at the River Merrimac Bar & Grille in Newburyport. The end for us was truly bittersweet, and I can honestly say making this movie has been the most challenging and rewarding experience of my life. I know Stacey would agree. And I hope it has been meaningful to all our friends, old and new, who have been involved with the movie. While this isn't my final movie blog (far from it!), saying goodbye to this phase of the movie, to seeing Mitch & Suzanne one final time in a scene playing out in front of me...these characters that Stacey & I invented four years ago...well, it's all very emotional. Or, as Jim would say so eloquently, "boobies on my face."
The people at the River Merrimac were so great to us, even when we had to reschedule at the last minute, and we are so grateful to their generosity. It is a beautiful restaurant, and out of all the ones we saw when scouting, it was absolutely the best choice for a romantic dinner setting. What turned out to be a bonus was how nice the people were, and we really appreciate them for it! We also had members of the press there to do a story on us, which was a lot of fun.
Stacey and I (rewriting up until the last minute, as usual) came up with some killer changes before she and Jim rehearsed a final time on Sunday. By Tuesday night, they were rarin' to go. We had Stacey & Jim, and my friend Rob taking over the role of (Buddy the) Waiter as cast, and Mark, Rajah, Maura, Michael, Lou, and me on crew--all showing up on a late Tuesday night, because they knew how important both the scene and the shoot were. And I couldn't have asked for a better night to end on.
No extras showed up, but we worked it to our advantage--setting the stage right by the fireplace which looked beautiful. I had a lot of fun convincing Rob he had to wear the cupid hat as the waiter, and I brought everyone else in on the joke, so he was quite perplexed that we all thought it would work for the scene. Just some light hazing. As it was he did a great job in the scene, and it was good having him there.
Rajah got some really great shots throughout the night, and he even learned to love the one that showed Suzanne in the window and Mitch in the foreground--a very arty, dynamic two-shot. I was so lucky that night to have Lou, Michael, Maura & Mark on crew with me, because we've worked together so much, we've got a great shorthand and it was great to be able to share our final night of production with them.
And then there were Jim & Stacey. The dinner scene is all about performance, a culmination of their characters' entire journey, everything that is wicked and human about Mitch & Suzanne coming to a head in a date that goes very wrong. I love watching these two work and during this scene, they were as brilliant as ever. I'd say even more so. It's been so great watching the characters evolve over time, and I'm so glad we saved this scene for last because it has every ounce of oomph it needs to sell the final chapter of the story.
I had so little direction for both Jim & Stacey that night, because they just didn't need it, which is amazing considering they did the full five page scene, from start to finish, over and over again (from many different angles). It was just one of those scenes where you set up great shots, and then sit back and watch the characters burst to life, feeding off each other's energy, and playing out this verbal tennis match with crazy intensity. I just smiled from ear to ear in front of the monitor. Though I desperately did not want to wrap Mitch & Suzanne, if we were going to wrap The Joneses, I couldn't have asked for a better scene to go out on--not with a whimper but a bang. Well, actually we shot that scene on the Cape.
So, Jim & Stacey, I am so proud of the excellent work you did on this movie and you deserve to be too. Goodbye, Mitch and Suzanne. But to me, the two of you will always be a little bitchy and dicky.
This movie will be amazing because of so many elements, and because of the efforts of so many talented people giving their best work to make it great. Again, our final shoot was made so terrific because of the wonderful River Merrimac, the outstanding performances, the beautiful shots, and an awesome director, who is me.
Warning: by the end of this blog, Tony Wright will be wrapped from "The Joneses" production. Please prepare yourself emotionally, as we did.
So this was the conclusion of the shoot we started Sunday, and I have to give big thanks to Mark, Maura, Jim, Tony, Stacey, Rajah & me for sticking with it and driving to Georgetown on a Wednesday night to finish up. We did a phenomenal job, I think, and that's not just my dinner of watermelon and Jim's famous Long Island Iced Tea talking (although that certainly helped). Also, thanks to OurFilmSpace we found the perfect cupid in Scott England, who was really game for the ridiculousness we put him through for the night.
When we arrived, Stacey & I couldn't help but see that the renovations to the Shalkoski front lawn/driveway area had dramatically accelerated since Sunday, which changed around the way we'd be shooting. Jim made a buddha watching TV out of sand in his front lawn to welcome us. The three of us immediately decided that the huge pile of gravel in between the two houses would be in the way, unless we used it to our advantage. We're so smart. So we covered the pile in red blankets, set up our Valentine's light stands on a table behind it, plugged in the strobe light and added some spare lattice pieces, and PRESTO! we had the perfect Valentine's display on which Cupid could lunge. And by "PRESTO!" I mean two hours later. I wasn't stressed about time, though, because we had to wait until it was dark anyway, everyone was working hard to make it look great, and I was kinda drunk.
Rajah was a total perfectionist about lighting the shot, and God bless him for it, because it came out looking so good that we were able to scrap the more complicated moving shots for a very simple but hilariously effective one of Cupid, Paul, Suzanne, and Mitch driving out of his driveway and into frame. It established everything I wanted, just watching it on the monitor made me laugh at how absurd it all was, and though they had no lines, the performances of Jim, Stacey, Tony & Scott were all spot on! People are REALLY going to enjoy this sequence. Big props to Dan for coming up with the live cupid display long ago--we always thought it was a good idea, and we totally (and finally!) pulled it off. And, as always, big props on the props to my wife who created the perfect Cupid wings out of a boa, some coathangers and a wreath. Jim helped too, I guess.
Then we all gathered around Tony and said our goodbyes. It was very sad to know he was wrapped, even though we all are eventually (literally and philosophically), and I'm glad we'll still get to spend the next six months or so seeing Paul on our computer screen. I'm pretty sure Rajah was the most broken up, because that guy just gets so attached to actors it's embarrassing. Tony did not bring beer for his final night, if you can believe that!
Not much to say about the rest of the shoot, really. We shot the two other scenes in the neighbor's driveway (one of which will feature a HILARIOUS digital effect suggested by Mr. Lou Bert long ago). We had lights, red gels, the DiSanzomobile, Jim pushing fake buttons on an electric meter, and good Mitch-y expressions overall. This entire sequence, while only about 30 seconds, is going to be a great one...trust me.
So that's it. Our penultimate big shoot. One more to go, next Tuesday and then (aside from three very short scenes that we'll be shooting in the future) we are officially wrapped. Goodbye, Georgetown: we loved being there--and again we appreciated the generosity of the Shalkoskis and their neighbors immensely.
Tony: thank you for tonight. And thank you for the shoot. It has been our pleasure.
Day 43 began with us knowing that it was the day to wrap Tony. But the fates would not allow it.
Rajah Jones (archaeologist/cinematographist) brought his street surf board, which we all enjoyed. Stacey & I did an enormous amount of prep the night before with our hooker-y Valentine's Day backdrops which were created by stringing Christmas lights around Target garment racks and then wrapped around those were about 100 strings of dirt cheap foil heart thingies we bought with Maura back on Feb. 15th. They took forever to make! Also we got the awesome donation of 2 Open House signs and 2 enormous For Sale signs from our realtor, Steve Amaral. And we were excited to have our extra special players--Heejean, Brendon, Rob, Diana, Owen, and Irene to play some important roles for the day.
We started quickly. It was me, Mark, Stacey, Maura, Jim, Max, Lou and Rajah there at noon. We started setting up the darkroom (I thought the bathroom would be a good place for it, but I was dead wrong--the basement turned out perfect for it). Meanwhile, Maura & I shot a pick-up shot of Stacey in the yard for the yard sale scene that I had neglected to get a few months ago. Rajah refused to have anything to do with it because he said the lighting wouldn't match. The man is insane and I totally disagreed. We got it. It's great.
Tony arrived and we drove off immediately to the Byfield post office to shoot the scene with Paul filling out change-of-address forms for his neighbors. We shot it two different ways--one as one long take from inside the car (Stacey's idea), and one with a series of shots that Mark & Rajah came up with. We did not however do Jim's plan of doing a series of 18 simple shots, but his plan made me laugh a lot.
We got back to the house and shot the darkroom scene. Man, did that ever look ridiculously good! It's amazing what you can do with two kitty litter trays, some clothespins, some kitchen tongs, a regular flood light, a black sheet, and a red gel. Instant movie magic. It just looked outstanding! Big props to the whole team for making that come together so smoothly and awesomely.
Then we were joined by the other gang, so we set up over at the neighbor's house. We started in immediately with a great shot of Heejean & Brendon reading (they're very slow readers) the open house sign, and with Rob, Diana & Owen by the front door, much to Mitch's dismay. We did a few different shots for coverage of the montage scene, and it looks really great. I'm especially glad we panned with Mitch as he dumped the signs in one take--I really like the way that plays. Everyone did a very good job in the scene, except Owen because he just kept blowing every line. I don't care that he's an infant: he needs to be a professional if he's going to make it in the biz.
After that we were ready for our scene with Irene, Brendon & Heejean which I can't say much about, plot-wise, except that it's either an important scene or will be only on the DVD. I hope that makes them feel special and not, you know, completely unnecessary. :) They did a great job too, and I am very thankful that they were all able to pick up the lines and fall right into the scene with very little practice. Indeed the funniest thing that happened was that the neighbors (who know we're going to be using their house, in a general way, but didn't know we'd be there at that time) arrived home to see two cars parked in their driveway, a smattering of people by their garage, and For Sale signs planted in the ground. Just as every homeowner wants to see. They thought it was hilarious, so that was great.
Also, Stacey played with a baby frog.
Then Maura & I donned the Space Invaders outfits and we took all of about four minutes to shoot some B roll in the Shalkoski attic, which is being renovated, and was our location for a second Space Invaders episode. Our backs were awesome actors.
Finally, as we waited for Tony to return and darkness to set in some more, we all had some pizzas and beers on the front lawn. Then--and you're never gonna believe the nerve of him--Tony arrived and BROUGHT MORE BEERS. Can you believe that?! What is wrong with that guy. Of course we all yelled at him.
The darkness began overwhelming the sky much more than it usually does at 6:00 in the summer, largely because supposedly we were going to get huge rainstorms. I refused to believe it and tried to will it away. I decided blind optimism and a complete dissociation from reality would be the best way to combat the guaranteed twister that was inches from us. And then it was obvious. Seconds before the downpour we each grabbed a piece of equipment and ran inside.
Once inside, Stacey got a call from her family that her grandmother (who is fine now) was in the hospital, and so we wanted to be there. It seemed everything was pointing to delaying our final scene for the day, so we all made a hasty getaway, knowing we had gotten 6 out of 7 scenes done, all shot and performed very well, and it was a very good day overall. Except now that rat fink Tony has to see us one more day.
Day 42 was another plagued day, I'll admit it, way before it even started. The shoot was originally supposed to happen in January, but our location wasn't ready so we moved on to other shoots. By the time it was going to be OK to shoot it in February, the location fell through entirely, and we spent months trying to see if we'd be able to get back in to shoot it, to no avail.
Finally about a month ago we settled on a new location that would work. We would just have to rewrite and tweak some things in the script. We also had to find a time that would work best for our actors, D.P. and crew, and settled on a Thursday afternoon in late June. But as the weekend before the shoot approached, that location fell through too. Stacey & I went into emergency mode and asked her Dad & Cheryl if we could use one of their rooms, and they very generously accepted. We went right to work redesigning and stripping the room of all non-essentials, rewrote the script to fit it, and Stacey created tons of tiny details to fit into what had gone from a kitchen, to a guest room, to a contemporary beach-themed guest room. We were good to go!
I was very nervous about the day, not just because so many things had gone wrong leading up to it, but also we had a crazy, crazy schedule to accommodate everyone's needs for the day which meant several actors would be performing with empty chairs, and then we'd cut it all together later. We had a (too small for my liking) window of time between about 4 and 5 where we had to shoot all four of the main actors and Susan Wornick reprising her role as the host Maxine. On the drive over to the location to shoot, however, Susan let us know that a big story broke and she wasn't going to be able to make it. Because there was a big tire recall, and because she's been covering the story for a long time, she wasn't going to be able to come, and of course we understood. But now we were stuck. This was Amy's last day before leaving for California for good--and we had to shoot.
I suggested to Stacey that we could shoot Susan's stuff separately, but we both knew that would look terrible since the whole point is seeing the host sign-off with the two couples (as well as standing there with them as they "swap keys"). Stacey said let's have co-hosts! So Plan B was in full effect. We called Cindy Houle, a neighbor of Cheryl's who had graciously agreed to play a dialogue-less soundperson for 10 seconds and asked if she minded being upgraded to a full speaking part and co-host of the show-within-the-movie "Space Invaders." She was up for it--and we were back in business!
It would seem like everything was all set, but we did battle a lot of other elements throughout the day. Rain that kept threatening to burst. Miscommunications about start times for actors. Traffic. Dried-out markers. Poor Stan had to stop mowing every five minutes because we kept rushing into shooting. It was a tragedy of errors, but in the end we got everything we needed. I have to give huge thanks to Stacey for organizing the whole shoot (and chunk board) well in advance, and the ideas that helped us keep going. And to Stan & Cheryl for not only feeding us a wonderful smorgasbord of nachos (to which I hear Jim may be addicted) and sausages, peppers & onions, corn-on-the-cob, and ice cream treats, but also to opening their doors for us and letting us completely use their house and interrupt their lives for the day. We are extremely thankful!
As far as the footage we got, I'm very happy with it. Dan arrived and he and Stacey did a great job doing their scene with the paint, and his interview segment. They were very, very funny. Amy arrived early, thankfully, and we started right in with her close-ups reacting to the new room, and then ran back outside to shoot Cindy's (brand-new-to-her) line to be cut with Dan's. She did an excellent job. Then she left for awhile and we had a lull before our next arrival--Jim--in which we shot Stan & Maura as the cameraman & soundperson, respectively. Then Jim did his close-ups, and we woke Amy up for their two-shots, all of which worked out great. I really can't wait to edit together these opening scenes of the movie, because I think all 4 of the actors, as well as Susan & Cindy as co-hosts, did really good work.
Now it was getting close to 5 and we had a half-hour left with Cindy. We quickly went through her close-ups, which was only hard because it was a lot of lines that she was seeing for the first time, but she was a real trooper. Tony arrived and got in costume, we shot the end to that sequence, and moved outside for the key swap. We were very rushed, I'll admit, but I think we got everything we'll need. We went back upstairs and finished up some shots with the foursome, and then we all had an emotional moment when we wrapped Amy as Ally for good. Thank God we had champagne on hand (whatever Suzanne hadn't polished off in the previous takes!) Not only was it sad to say goodbye to Amy, but it's also hard to let go of these characters that Stacey & I have been living with for 4 or 5 years.
I'll continue truncating (just as we did for the shoot). We did Tony's parts of the paint scene, which were terrific, coffee break, dinner break (delicious!), and then upstairs to shoot Paul & Suzanne cheesy moments of finishing the room. Just like the Mitch & Ally ones, these are some of the MOST fun things to shoot, and they had us dying laughing--especially when Tony & Stacey stand back-to-back with super-over-the-top smiles. It's so nice to see these characters have fun, and it's going to be even more manipulative where we put them in the film! We finished up with shots of Mitch sad in the guest room with a cool mirror shot, and then an even cooler shot down in Paul's office of Mitch planting the lab results. That looked amazing.
Also...my new favorite joke is when I tell Rajah something that he isn't particularly fond of he now smiles widely and says "I totally disagree!" as he gives me a high-five. I urge you to try this in your own life. It is simply genius. And now that I've given him credit for it, I will forevermore say it was my idea.
So there you have it. A painful day with a long history, but I'm pretty sure everything we got was really very good. Huge thanks to Cheryl, Stan, Cindy, the cast, the crew, the academy, and Stacey for helping me hold it together (and occasional on-line shoe shopping).
The wonderful people at the Naked Fish again opened their cumin-flavored doors to us so that we could reshoot the scene we had shot in the first few days of production (back when we were all tweens). We had many, many reasons to reshoot: I had the camera on a bad setting the first time, some of the references in the script no longer worked, it gave us a chance to rewrite and make it stronger, we wanted to play up different angles of the characters, and maybe the most important and all-encompassing reason--we knew we could do it better.
Our day started off very well and fun with Amy, Tony, Jim, and Stacey posing for publicity/poster photos at our house in front of our bluescreen. Maura took a slew of pictures as the bluescreen continued to droop and tear like my patience. It worked out very well, and I'm glad we had a chance to do it. Then we had ample time to rehearse the newly rewritten scene, which was exponentially better than our original version. With time left to spare (a phrase I don't use very much when speaking about our film), we headed over to "The Fish" for a pre-shoot dinner. It was me, Stacey, Maura, Mark, Rajah, Frank, Amy, Tony, and Jim, later joined by his brother.
It took us forever to get started probably because we were so prepared and so ready to go, but there were patrons there for much longer than I remember the last time. I guess it must be more popular to eat delicious seafood and have some Cuban cocktails in the summer than it is in mid-November. Rajah, Mark, and I ran outside to shoot the exterior which looked so great. A mixture of the magic hour and a neon sign that is to die for. But nobody died.
So we began shooting and I gotta say it was almost a flawless shoot. The actors knew so well what they were doing--they've become so comfortable as these characters--that my directions were mere nuances or slight emphasis changes in lines. They performed great and the new version of the scene has tons more conflict and vitality than the original version: so crucial since it's the first scene the four main characters really get to have dialogue together. Plus our inclusion of hatboy/non-hatboy as a key extra was genius. P.S. hatboy is brilliant and non-hatboy is ridiculous.
Then there was the humming. We won't talk about the humming too much, because it's kind of a sore subject. Suffice to say that our one issue that night was that there was a distinct humming coming directly from above our special booth. We asked them to shut off the air conditioner, which made it hot and still humming. They discerned that it was probably the dishwasher, that there was probably nothing they could do about it, and actually nobody had ever heard it much before because it usually wasn't that quiet in the restaurant. There were also a lot of dish rattling sounds, so we overshot footage to make sure we're gonna be OK on sound. I'm pretty confident we'll be able to fix it in post and, as Stacey has pointed out, with some music and restaurant background noise, it won't be bad at all.
We finished in good time, thanks to some excellent shots, some excellent acting, and Frank making sure to get in a lot of good naps. There will be no need to re-shoot our re-shoot, which is really ideal. My thanks to the super group who helped out that night, especially those who did so back in November too--it was well worth it!!
