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One of my favorite shoots so far, and our most ambitious on either film to date, the Halloween party shoot was at times way too much fun, way too much stress, and took me the last 3 days to recover! Now that's a (fake) party!

Stacey & I spent the entire day before creating the dinner table costume, which when finished was even more ridiculously awesome than we had described in the script. It is absolutely hilarious to see, and I can't wait to see how it came out on film, but please do check it out in the pictures. A big thank you to Amy for donning the hockey shoulder gear and the five foot long table for the evening, despite a cold that made her utterly miserable--although her misery was entirely appropriate for the scenes. And Lou and Frank--thank you guys for helping Amy get in and out of the table numerous times; it was a huge success. I also have to mention that my wife, who wowed us on Naughty or Nice with her all-too-real counterfeit checks and plane tickets was ever the perfectionist on creating this table, down to the red-jello as wine and the salmon pieces she carved out of that weird green foam used for flowers, broiled it slightly, cut into them to make salmon texture, and then sprinkled green Sculpey on top for dill. Dill! Amazing.

I've got to mention too that it was a night of great reunions (Naughty or Nice in full force with Stacey, Mark, Kevin, Scott, Bobby, me, and Lou representing), the Low Expectations trivia group (Chris, Connor, Stacey, Lou & me), and the gang from Spotlight (OK, that's just Michael and Stacey, but still). And I appreciate everyone who brought friends as extras (Jim, Adam, Lou), and those Joneses cast members who did double duty as Halloween characters, including Jane "Danielle" Reardon, R.N. as Amy Winehouse, Frank "Ben" Tarara as Leatherface, Michael "Andy the Pizza Guy" Culp as Yoshi, Adam "Parker" Lopez as Punk Guy, and Lou & Rajah making their umpteenth background performances. I played the little Dutch Boy/Lost Monkee, but never appeared on camera which just makes me a weirdo.

As promised, one of the early highlights of the shoot was when Tony got handcuffed and THEN we decided to make sure the key worked. Which it did not. There was some tension on many of our faces, although not Tony because he's a pro. And to be fair, Stacey had checked out the key earlier, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the very old handcuff key broke in the process of checking it out. Who would come to the rescue? Would it be Stacey & Jane picking the lock with hairpins? Nay. Would Lou make it to our local porn shop in time to get alternate keys? Nay as well. It was Shalkoski...James Shalkoski with his trusty tool kit that helped pry Tony loose from the handcuffs. And we were G2G!

I spent about 5 or 6 hours setting up the location, which was VERY generously donated to us by O'Brien's Pub on the Saugus/Lynn line (formely the Boston St. Cafe). They told me they have a web site, but I cannot for the life of me find it, otherwise I would be linking to it here and everywhere I could. We used the place for a scene in Naughty or Nice, and they have been so absolutely helpful to us (opening their doors to our ragtag crew on the one day they're closed a week) and giving us free reign to remove all Christmas decorations and completely take over for the shoot. I am so indebted to them, and we will absolutely be having our cast party there, because they deserve to have money thrown their way. Also, it's a pretty sweet commute for Stacey & me.

OK, last paragraph about the preproduction, and then I swear I'll move on. I have to thank Mark, Stacey, and Adam for all coming quite early to help, and when we got that call from Rajah that he was going to opt out of his other shoot because he has more fun on The Joneses (and frankly, who wouldn't), well we all breathed a huge sigh of relief. Thank you guys (and Frank) so much for tirelessly working all night to keep the production going so smoothly. And Lou "Koko B. Ware" Ottaviani deserves his own paragraph for his work during the Halloween shoot, but I promised I'd stop after this one. Suffice to say, Mr. B. Ware was certainly the MVP for the evening, and if you didn't see him much that night it could be because he was buying last minute set decorations, directing extras, moving lights and bounceboards, keeping me on schedule, moving the camera, fixing problems, helping with the table costume, getting actors in place, and so on and so on. Koko, I take back all those times I made fun of you for lounging around our house while we edited around your naps. Well, not all the times, because some were very accurate. But still, you made the night happen.

If you're still reading this blog, and looking for your name to appear, kudos for your stamina and I apologize for the epic length, but it really was an epic night and I did not want to do a disservice to anyone who was crucial that night, and really everyone was.

So we spent a LONG time lighting the first scene which put us behind schedule for only about 2 hours (yikes!), but my experience on this film has shown thus far that Rajah's instincts pay off in spades. Yes, it makes us work faster as the night progresses, but I trust that when we see the final edited version of these Halloween scenes, we are going to impress the hell out of everyone!

The first scene we shot was SO exciting to me because it was the very first time that our principal seven actors got to work together. We had Leila (the slutty witch Renee) and Mark (the slutty biker Todd) making their first performances that night, and they did such a great job; Kevin (Victor as "Austin Powers from Goldmember"), Stacey and Tony (Suzanne the hot cop and Paul the naughty prisoner), and Jim and Amy (Mitch the Waiter and Ally the Table). I absolutely loved seeing these guys work together and this is going to be an awesome, awesome scene.

Then we moved to Setup #2 (I'm not sure but it may been around 4 in the morning at this point, but actually it was probably more like 9PM) by the Boxing Game. That's where we were joined by old friends Scott Carney (Military Man) and Bobby Baldassari (Masked Man) who did a bang-up job playing lascivious Halloween weirdos who were hitting on Suzanne while she basked in the attention. Though we'll never give a writing credit to Scott for his "you say potatoes, I say po-ta-tas" line, I thought I'd mention it here. While the blocking of this scene left something to be desired (i.e. good blocking), I was smartly advised to go back to my plan of shooting close-ups, so this will be an easy fix in the editing. Stacey did a really wonderful job as Suzanne having a blast with all the male attention, and it was a really fun merging of our last film and this one as Tony, Jim, and Amy came in during the second half of the scene for some very excellent work as well. I am really pleased with how this turned out, and am glad that: a) nobody asked where I got all those singles; b) when posing for a shot as one of Stacey's 3 husbands (me, Scott, Tony) that there weren't many more who came out of the woodwork that I didn't know about. Also, the comic timing of Scott placing the beer next to Amy's platter face was so good.

We then moved on to Setup #3, with some terrific scenes performed by Kevin, Jim, Tony, Mark and Amy. These were really funny and we were able to get through them really quickly because the performances were so good and our crew worked so quickly to get them done. The same was true for Setup #4, where Leila and Stacey took center stage and did their scene very well and in record time. Also Yoshi made many, many appearances, because he's Yoshi.

Now that I think about it, I'm probably leaving tons of things out, including some joke Michael made about a light falling down that had everyone hysterical, but I never heard it completely, so now it just becomes a thing of legend. I really hope the whole night was as memorable and fun for everyone as it was for me, and I am excited to see how the footage turned out. We finished up around 1, and as mentioned before, some of us are only recovering days later.

If I didn't make it clear earlier, I have to say again that every single person involved--cast, crew, extras...hookers, made this scene more than possible, they made it even better than it was on the page, and I know that especially Stacey, Lou, Mark and I have been stressed about how well it would turn out for months. So this is one of those times when "thank you" isn't enough, so I'll just say to all of you that you deserve to be proud of your work that cold, December night, and your talents and patience (in that order) meant the world.

And on the 7th day....we rested. Happy Holidays!!!!