Click Here forPictures!

Friday night. Canton. Stacey & I hit some traffic on the way there and for the first time on any film shoot...we were the last to arrive! Which happens to be my own private neurotic hell--being late--so things were not off to a good start. However, we had Tom, Tina & Gianna there to entertain the troops, we were greeted by about 10 smiling faces of our trusted crew and Jim, and we had a cake shaped like a damn cheeseburger. So the neuroses ended quickly.

In attendance Friday night was me, Stacey, Lou, Mark, Rajah, Frank, Mike, Kim, Maura, Tom, Kevin T. and of course James Gandolfoski, Jr., who was (as I had promised he would be) the best actor of the night. We had about eight potential scenes to shoot that night, which is absolutely ridiculous to attempt to accomplish in 5 hours, but we placed our faith in Jim. Little did we know that Jim cannot ignite his acting fire and remember to turn on a light switch at the same time. It can be tricky.

Honestly it was a great night's shoot, and Jim did an excellent job as usual channeling Mitch at radically different parts of the story--from the very beginning of the film, pouring drinks, to coming back home and finding Ally missing, to returning home after a traumatic night. And while we were all excited by Jim's performances, Rajah as usual was very excited about ice cubes, liquor bottles, and a set of keys. Which is, by the way, the perfect ingredients for a very, very bad night. You're welcome, MADD.

We had many moments of inspiration that night. Maura noticed and suggested that we could shoot the foyer scene and the kitchen scene from one super-dramatic wide shot. Then Stacey had the great idea to do the following scene from that angle as well--thereby allowing us to do three scenes as one long engaging take by Jim. Then Rajah and his magical mystery lights created an amazing moonlight that gave the whole scene a beautiful glow. It was group creativity at its best. We had to do 43 takes however because, as I mentioned, Jim was so into the scene that he forgot to turn the light on basically every other take. But we can't blame him--it's not highlighted in his script.

Then we did a super close-up of keys falling to the ground that I'm sure will turn out great, but apparently none of us could drop keys onto the carpet sufficiently for our oh-so-picky D.P. I'd like to see him try to drop keys onto a carpet!

All in all it was a very succesful night and we all went home for some sleep before returning the next day. Stacey & I left last. :)