I like this beer we're drinking, but it's getting me intoxicated though.

On Monday, Brett got mad at us and took away the house wifi for a while. It was more of a symbolic punishment, because there's a wifi signal coming from the property caretaker's house right next to us. Nevertheless, it was not a pleasant morning. But things got resolved later on.

We reshot a Jim/Dolly phone call because Brett realized the tone of it was all wrong. I believe I was having an allergy attack during the original shoot, so I took his word for it. This time, Carl was able to say the Jim lines opposite Priscilla, and she was able to put some her fun 'tude into her delivery. Then we did some boring indoor stuff, and the Spanish phone call scenes, with me temping as the Spanish voice. As he occasionally will do when he is unsatisfied with the page, Brett had us improv a little bit, to take the convo into new realms. I think we did.

After real dinner (a DELICIOUS chicken in a lemony sauce with rice and brocco), we shot the fake Jim/Dolly dinner, where they re-ate the same thing. You never realize how disproportionately sized two people are more than when you have to frame them together in a camera shot.

At the end of the night, we shot Jim smoking a cigarette on the front porch. I had emailed Carl ten days earlier and told him, "Your character smokes, so start practicing. Maybe take up smoking for real." Not only did he not practice before flying out, he also didn't practice while here, even though half the people here smoke. The cigarette he smoked in the scene was apparently his first ever cigarette. It was an American Spirit. For several minutes, Marco rolled as different people shouted directions to make the smoking look better in the shot. "Inhale longer!" "Exhale faster!" "Make the smoke more visible!"

I suppose the proper way to do this would have been to have Carl smoke an herbal cigarette, but this is rock 'n roll guerrilla style fuck you independent filmmaking. We're putting our lives on the line for the sake of entertainment. When Carl finished, he sat down on the steps and informed us he was done. He spent the next few hours puking the two dinners he ate earlier that night. I believe he decided that would be his last ever cigarette. Little did he know we would end up reshooting the scene later that week.

-Diego