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After a two-week hiatus that felt like a lifetime, we were back in business shooting at O'Brien's Bar on the Saugus/Lynn line, on Presidents' Day, inches from the bridge where George Washington did something historical many, many years ago back when history happened. You can look it up but it's true.

It was good to start production again, and was oddly reminiscent of our Day 1, with Tony & Jim on location, and a whole new slew of obstacles to overcome. Here are some of my favorites:

• The battery charger. Somehow, somewhere our battery charger has been misplaced. So we had to make it through the night on one and 3/4 batteries, which we did fine. But I spent hours that day looking in all of our bags and it still never turned up. Then I went to Best Buy but they didn't have the universal charger that they advertised. So I drove to the Danvers Best Buy who did have it. But of course it doesn't fit our battery. Things were not off to a terrific start.
• Our contact at O'Briens forgot that we were going to be shooting that day, so there was some more nervousness as Mark, Maura, and I waited around in our house. Thankfully they opened their doors to us, generously, as they have done in the past.
• Lou arrived and the four of us set up our first shot--a scene we had skipped over for the Halloween shoot--with Stacey & Tony again playing their roles of Sexy Cop and Bad Boy Prisoner. We zoomed through that scene, and they both did great jobs. I used packets of sugar (Domino for Stacey, Sweet N' Low for Tony) as their marks. Hence the blog title--Stacey's and Tony's impression of my wonderful direction for the night.
• Thanks to Lou, the handcuffs were fully functioning.
• Our extras in attendance were Craig, Michael and Yuri, who I called Huey for the better part of the night. Maura, who is non-SAG as far as I can tell, played the part of bartender. Remarkably, we switched their configurations around enough that the bar actually looked like it had a good amount of patrons. We're kind of geniuses.
• Rajah showed up (minus the tripod plate--again!--this is my attempt at shaming him into bringing it next time) and we busted out some kickass lighting. The shots in the bar are stellar, especially Rajah's over-the-shoulder shots which are very, very dramatic.
• Oh, yes, and Jim showed up with his acting toolbox. By the way, Jim's 3rd favorite catchphrase ("Jim Jim Jim Jim Jim Jim Jim Jim Jim Jim...) for some reason caught on with Rajah that night, who repeated it ad infinitum. I don't know who to blame more. I guess I should be glad that he didn't get Jim's 2nd favorite catchphrase ("boobies in my face") stuck in his head.
• The scene between Mitch and Paul at the bar is a very important one, and these guys did an awesome job with it. Really awesome. I gave a lot of direction, and afterwards kicked myself for one supremely stupid move of insisting that Jim do a specific line ("They're shitty") over and over and over again, because I absolutely loved the way he did it once, but wanted his next line to be perfect in that same take. Apparently I forgot about editing, and how we most likely will use my favorite take (probably #2), then cut to Paul's reaction, then back to Mitch on a different take, thereby making the subsequent 40 takes of "They're shitty" completely unnecessary. Jim, if you're reading this...I'm sorry, that was quite dumb of me. Oh, who am I kidding, Jim only reads the last three lines of anything written, unless it's in pink.
• Now that I re-read all of this, I'm definitely questioning the bullets, because everything is really a paragraph, but I'm far too tired to change it now. OK, I'll wrap up.

It was so excellent to be shooting again, and I couldn't have asked for a more seamless night to get back into it. The Paul/Suzanne scene was great and easy, and the Mitch/Paul scene was really terrific. Once again, I'm so proud of these actors, and the crew who make things go so efficiently (when they're not drinking Michelob Ultras), and the extras that give this movie so much needed authenticity, and for the wonderful places that open their doors to us.

That's it for now. Blah blah blah...stand on sugar.