Don't expect ghosts.

It has been nine months since the last entry (16 months total since the shooting of Waterhole Cove).

In that last entry, I talked about how Chris and Priscilla did some Waterhole Cove ADR while they were in town to shoot a short film for Andrew W. Jones called Doctor Glamour.  I didn't see them very much during this time.  It was only after Doc Glamour wrapped that I learned the entire film had been shot in a soundstage which was walking distance from my apartment in Glendale.  On the week I had completely off work because it was spring break.  I suppose I just wasn't wanted on set.  That's too bad, because I could've held so many flags for them, at no charge.

(If you don't know, flags are things on film sets.  They help with lighting and stuff.  They are held up by c-stands or p.a.'s.)

For real though, it's not a big deal; I just like to see Chris and Priscilla.  I didn't really know them in film school.  Now that I do, we live on opposite ends of the world.  I've become closer friends with Chris over the past few years, but I only see him when we work on movies together.  It's so sad that some people live far away from each other and that's it.

When September 2011 rolled around, one year after the Waterhole Cove shoot, lots of things started reminding me of that time.  "On this day" status updates popped up on Facebook.  I would find myself listening to lots of 90's dance music, inexplicably.  Maryland was perpetually in my thoughts.  I think I also cut my hair short again.  I don't know.  It was kind of not-short for a while.  It's short again now.  Like in my scene in the movie.  That was not my best haircut because that was the first haircut I ever gave myself with those clippers.  Whatever.

That brings us to today.  After a months-long struggle to find the right sound, the film finally has a musical score by the maestro Phillip Chernyak, and Brett is nearing the final sound mix with Willie.  Brett is also uploading new behind-the-scenes videos for each shooting day on the YouTube, but unlike the previous BTS vids of each day, each one is of multiple vids of that day edited together, plus footage from the actual film.  We're also shooting some interviews with ourselves.  Chris shot an interview with Phil in NY a few days ago, and earlier tonight in LA, Brett shot some interviews with Carl and me.  Carl was good, but I stunk up the joint.  I had a really off day today and it destroyed my ability to tell a fucking story in a casual, eloquent way.  Don't you just have days when your shit is all fucked up, and you just want to forget that day ever happened?  Try not to have someone shoot important videos of you on that day.  Because then everyone will watch those videos and think you're an idiot.  Anyway, you could make a killer special edition dvd with all this bonus material.  I never know if I should capitalize DVD.  dvd.  DVD.  Both look wrong.

The Waterhole Cove Facebook page is now extremely active as Brett posts the new BTS vids to ramp up to the film's official release, which is happening within the next couple weeks.  People can pay ten dollars for the digital download, and for an additional five, they can get a physical copy on dvd/DVD.

I don't know what'll happen with the movie after that.  Maybe some festival screenings.  It would be nice to have a big screening in NY or LA or whatever that everyone can attend.  That would be an amazing ending to our journey together.  At least until I shoot the sequel, which was conceived while we were still shooting.  Let me see if I can remember.

Waterhole Coven is supposed to revolve around the Dolly character sometime after the events of WC1.  Like, Jim's girlfriend tracks her down, and something happens with witchcraft.  I think it's gonna be like a fucked up horror vibe.  A mega departure from the tone of WC1.  Completely unrelated to the unpleasant half-hour pilot, "Harry's House," or the feature-length Harry prequel, which was never titled.

-Diego

They looked like stabbers.

It's been seven months since my last entry in this blog, and some things have happened in that time.  Most notably, the decades-long legal battle between Warren Beatty and Tribune over the rights to make a Dick Tracy sequel finally culminated in favor of Beatty.  So... I mean, now he's too old, and he hasn't made a movie since 2001, but if he wants to make a Dick Tracy 2, that is now something that he can go ahead and legally do.

A few things have happened with Waterhole Cove in that time as well.  In December, Brett had me make a poster for it.  He knew exactly what he wanted it to look like, because he was basing it off a poster for another film that he loved.  He described what he wanted and sent me the still he wanted to use, and I used Adobe Photoshop to give him some options.  I encouraged the inclusion of that tagline, because just mentioning that the movie is about a woman and two men, I think that makes people want to see the movie on a base level.  Like, what, are they gonna have sex or something?  A few emails back and forth and the poster was completed.  This went far quicker than the process for the poster of Brett's first feature, The Comedian at the Friday, which had involved me drawing a cartoon sketch of the main character and figuring out how to render a spotlight on it.  At one point, someone thought that people might think Comedian is an animated movie, but it's like, no, dude.  That's just the poster.  Anyway, the Waterhole Cove poster is a lot more... less controversial.

Around that time, Brett was also working on an edit of the film, so he put together a couple trailers for it, which he uploaded to the YouTube.  But in the months since (basically all of 2011), he decided to just completely put the film aside to get a little distance from the whole thing.  This is good because it will allow him to come back to the project with fresh eyes.  So, for the past few months, absolutely nothing happened with Waterhole Cove.  One day, I randomly visited the Facebook page of it and clicked on the Discussions tab.  There, I found a lone thread started by Schatz called "Quote of the Day."  Apparently, Schatz had been keeping a "Quote of the Day" log during the shooting of the film, that I and possibly everyone else was completely unaware of.  The quotes he preserved are as follows:

Day 1: I am an ordained minister in the Church of (Lady) Gaga. - John Heppe  

Day 2: A lot of people are jumping ship on Vanilla Ice but I am still on board. - Chris Shields  

"I am enjoying my turkey sandwich with a side of funk!" - Diego Kontarovsky  

Day 4- "Jewrassic Park; it is some wort of weird cross between Jurassic Park and Schindler's List; 'if we put their name on the list the T-Rex won't eat them." -Brett Ryan Bonowicz (Paraphrased)  

Day 5- After an evening of tits and ass, what's better than some bacon and eggs? - Ian Campbell  

Day 6: "You can't molest the willling" - Priscilla McEver   

Day 7: "It's like a (UCF Professor/ UCF Professor) fanfiction!" -Brett Ryan Bonowicz  

Day 8: "See what happens when I ask to go handheld? Marco tries to kill himself" -Brett Ryan Bonowicz  

Day 9: "Phoebe, it's day for night cheese." -John Heppe  

Day 10: "Oh Davin boys, oh Davin boys, you sold your souls for a few bucks" - Ian Campbell sung to the tune of O Christmas Tree  

Day 11: It's CSI Slug down here- Michael Schatz  

Day 12: "My nickname was Matherine because I was so good at Math." - Katherine

After that, the entries mysteriously stopped.  This was an interesting discovery to make so long after the shoot.  And, for outsiders, I can confirm that this is a pretty accurate representation of our typical on-set banter.  From inappropriate sex jokes to inappropriate Holocaust jokes, right down to the thing Schatz said that makes no sense (that he then quoted himself on).

Anyway, it's now April and two more things have happened.  The first thing is that Chris and Priscilla have flown into town from New York.  They're a couple now because they fell in love while making the movie or whatever.  Sort of like a David Arquette/Courteney Cox type of thing (though hopefully not exactly like that).  They're in town because they're acting in a short for Andrew Jones, and from what I understand, I won't see them very much because they'll spend all their time shooting and then fly back to New York.  Which is a major bummer, though I did see them last week.  We watched Scream 3 on video and then saw Scream 4 in the theatre.  I hope I get to see them again.  Brett mentioned he wanted to get them for a couple hours sometime while they were here so they could record the ADR for Waterhole Cove (for the unenlightened, ADR means when you go into a sound booth and redub the dialogue that got recorded shitty).  On Monday, Brett posted a photo of Chris doing the ADR.  I was like, "Fuck, I wish I could've gone to that!"  Not just cuz I like to see Chris Priscilla Brett, but also because Willie the ADR guy is the fucking shit.  I realized then that if I really wanted to go, I should've mentioned it to Brett earlier.  Oh well.  Then on Wednesday, Brett posted a picture of Priz doing her ADR, and I was like, "Ah shit, I missed it again!"  But I've been keeping pretty busy this week anyway.  Reinstalling Windows in my malfunctioning 6-year-old Dell laptop and watching all the Cube movies on Netflix.

The second thing that happened with Waterhole Cove is that the other day, Brett burned me a DVD of his first complete rough cut of it, which I watched last night.  It was interesting to watch it after all this time.  But I was surprised, as the Assistant Director of this movie, to see my name listed in the credits as the Unit Production Manager.  I was like, what the fuck is that?  Maybe the credits are incomplete?  Gonna have to get to the bottom of this.

And that's about it so far.  Looking back on the actual shoot, I definitely learned a lot about on-set dynamics.  I also learned that I'm allergic to air.  And I caught a brief glimpse of a country lifestyle that was intense and fascinating.  I'll surely never forget our night out with Sarah, the bartender who was so insanely, unreasonably nice to us; her stupid boyfriend; and her oddball buddies.

I'd Facebook her, but... what do I even search for?  Sarah Maryland bartender?  There's like a million results.

-Diego

If I get that shovel in my hands, I'm just gonna kill all of you and go back to sleep.

On Friday, I woke up way earlier than necessary.  Again, because my body needed Zyrtec.  I killed some time by watching Oscar's Greatest Moments, which was a VHS showcasing like two hours of highlights from the Academy Awards ceremonies of the years 1971 to 1991.  I saw lots of great moments, including Madonna's live performance of "Sooner or Later," which won for Best Song.  In fact, I think Dick Tracy still holds the Academy Award record for most wins for a comic book movie.  When I went to the Dolly house, Phoebe was watching Up again.  For the past several days, Up had been playing on a loop in the red room because certain parts of it hold Phoebe's attention.

For lunch, we ordered sandwiches from Sam's Pizza and Restaurant.  I ordered a grilled chicken sub, specifying that I didn't want onions (which I hate) or lettuce/tomatoes (which I only like on cold sandwiches).  What I never anticipated is that it would come filled with not just chicken, but pickles and hot peppers.  It was spicy, but amazing.  In some ways, I feel like a part of me is still trying to eat that sandwich.  Later that night, people were watching The Sword in the Stone.  I walked in at some point and we watched some bonus cartoons that came on the disc, as well as trailers for a lot of shitty direct-to-video Disney garbage.  I was disgusted, but too tired to do anything beyond sitting there and watching it.

We reshot Carl smoking the cigarette.  This time he didn't vomit for two hours.  But he could have if he wanted to, because he was now officially wrapped.  Then we went out into the field and shot the second fire scene, where we really burned all the stuff you see being burned in the movie.  It was fun.  Chris brought us out some beers, which was a mistake, because we ran out of beer long before the night was over.  We ended up wrapping pretty early, with designs on regrouping at sunrise to do the last four scenes we needed out in the woods.

I filled this break time by drinking some more beers as Carl and I helped Ian, Heppe, Mike, and Marco reload the grip truck.  Then I just chilled in the dining room.  People stopped by for snacks and went to sleep.  I watched the season premiere of The Office.  It was a laugh riot.  Then, when it was time for everyone to wake up and shoot the last four scenes, I got REALLY FUCKING TIRED.  I just wanted to go to sleep.  My body was demanding 8 hours of uninterrupted defragmentation.  I laid down for 15 minutes.  I don't think it helped.

As we convened in the woods, I longed for the sweet respite of death.  Then Brett sent me to go park the Cobalt back at Waterhole Cove.  I did this, then rode a bicycle back to the woods, which kinda woke me up a little.  I don't care how sleepy you are, if you ride a wobbly bike that's too small for you alongside a bunch of speeding trucks on a country road, your brain will start firing helpful chemicals.  We shot Dolly in the woods.  I reminded Brett of a scene he was going to cut and we ended up shooting it.  The key scene (literally).  You in the future of course know whether or not it made the final cut.  The last scene shot for the movie was the main character running, which was also the case with Brett's previous movie.

When we finished shooting, I dragged myself to the Harry house, slept for a half hour, and then it was time to go to the airport.  God dammit.

I was really hungry on the way to Dulles, so when we stopped for gas, I bought a big tube of Cheddar Cheese Pringles.  I ate half of it, and when we got to Dulles, didn't know what to do with it, so I stuck it in the bag I was checking.  Carl and I had a lunch of airport Chipotle as we discussed global warming, and then it was time to board.  We sat near the front of the plane, on opposite aisle seats.  Brett had put us in opposite aisle seats because he thought it would be funny.  Before takeoff, I tested out the chat feature by chatting with Carl.  Here is our chat log:

5D: bigdpitch  Has joined this chat session
5C: CoolGuy3  Has joined this chat session
5D: bigdpitch  im bored
5C: CoolGuy3  was up
5D: bigdpitch  this is boring
5C: CoolGuy3  the lady in front f me is guaranteed to tilt her seat back

As soon as Carl said this, I looked over and the lady in front of him slammed her seat back.  It was amazing.  I made myself a super long playlist and slept for four hours.  And when I say slept, I mean sat in uncomfortable stiffness as people walking down the aisle kept knocking me awake.  And though I don't think my state during these four hours could be classified as fully conscious, I do vividly remember hearing the songs from the playlist.  Had this been a window seat, I might have been able to really rest.  Although I was just unconscious enough that I was not bothered by the ongoing turbulence.  I woke up for the last hour.  The two guys next to me took this opportunity to go to the bathroom (they apparently held it in while I appeared to sleep).  I then ordered a Coke on the touchscreen.  It arrived several minutes later, watered down in a cup of ice.  I wish there was a way to order the whole can.  I want a whole can of Coke, okay?  Maybe next time I'll just order a bunch of cups at once.  As we made our final approach, a steward asked me to "power down my camera."  Lest the flight go down in flames.

What sucks is that Virgin America gave me so much music to choose from, I made a tremendous playlist in alphabetical order, and when we landed, I was only up to Michael Jackson, coincidentally the same song I was listening to when my previous flight landed.  I'll never be able to listen to the back end of their catalogue, unless I happen to fly Virgin again someday.  But I have so many miles with American Airlines.  Oh well, who gives a shit.

When I got home, my brother told me it had been pretty cool in LA, like long sleeve weather, but for some reason it got way hot as soon as I arrived.  The next few days would be the hottest ever, with Monday (9/27)'s 113 degrees breaking the previous Los Angeles heat record set on June 26, 1990.  When my Zirtec wore off on Sunday, my allergies came back full force.  Apparently all my clothes were covered in whatever Maryland pollen I'm super allergic to.  I was forced to wash all my clothes all over again.  For that reason, and also because the tube of Pringles exploded inside the bag.

-Diego

How is it that you're the weirdest person I've ever met in my entire life?

So the hope was to sleep all day Thursday and wake up just before breakfast at 6pm for our night shoot.  I instead woke up in the early afternoon, because my body was on a schedule that superseded the sleep schedule-- my Zyrtec schedule.  Since I am allergic to Maryland, if I don't have a Zyrtec daily, my body mutates into a screaming terror and I burst into a pile of crud.

Schatz was already gone.  Chris drove him out into a field and took care of him.  He says in the very end, he was peaceful.  We silently made our own peace and moved on.

Since this was the second-to-last shooting day, things started running a lot more intensely.  There were no more call sheets.  We just kinda remembered all the scenes we still needed to shoot.  In anticipation of our departure, food and supply runs stopped.  We had to start getting creative with what we were snacking on.  Bread slices were folded for half-sandwiches.  The Internet was scoured to find out how they make toilet wine in prison.  And just about everything got dipped in Nutella.  I never had Nutella before this shoot.  It's like peanut butter, but it's technically an Italian hazelnut spread with cocoa mixed in.  When life starts getting heavy, just grab something in the kitchen and put some Nutella on it.

We also found out that all the water flowing out of the pipes is coming from a well.  And when they run out, they'll have to just dig another well.  I could sense this was too much reality for some of us.

On this night, we shot one of the most important scenes in the movie.  The inciting incident.  Or the turning point.  I don't remember all that McKee bullshit.  It's the thingie that happens.  We thought it would be a bitch to shoot, but it came together really naturally.  I think I was drinking Diet Cokes to stay alert.  Brett had coffee for the first time in a long time and it made him crazy.  He was running around kicking the air, going "Look at this old man, Shields!  He can kick high!"  We also had a Jiffy Pop making competition where the only winner was chaos.

Then we went out to the docks and waited for the sun to rise, so it could light our goddamn dock scene.  It took like an hour, so we did what any group of 20-somethings would do when faced with an hour of darkness on a windy dock.  We listened to Guns 'N Roses and ate Doritos.

-Diego

Ally Sheedy. All day.

Breakfast call on Wednesday was noon.  At one point, Brett and Anne were like, "Where is everybody?"  Schatz looked up from his laptop and said, "When I went to sleep at 3:30, they were still up playing ping pong."  Now, here was a conflict.  Obviously Schatz needed to be punished for his snitching.  But by telling everyone that he was a snitch, would that make me a snitch?  I wasn't sure what to do.  I ended up letting everyone know.  Let's just say that when we got up the next day, Schatz was no longer a concern.

The first scene we shot was the one where John's relative Charlie helps Dolly with her bag.  Minutes before shooting, Brett told Heppe he was playing Charlie.  It was later observed that referring to Heppe as Charlie was humorous, because a large old man in town during our fun bar-hopping Sunday had ribbed Heppe about being a "Vietmanese" (which he is not).  Then some car stuff was shot.  Lots of down time between things.  We also shot a long bit in the back kitchen involving Dolly and Jim.  And I ain't talkin' about the scene where she makes him a sandwich.  You know what I'm saying.  It was intense.

There was some good stuff on this day.  Our dinner was pizza from Sam's Pizza and Restaurant on Talbot Street.  This was like the best pizza of all time.  We also watched a couple of oddly lame episodes of ALF.  That night, we had to force ourselves to stay up as late as possible to switch back to vampire schedule.  We did so with reheated pizza and liquor, which didn't quite help with the staying awake part.  But we did have a very long, in-depth convo about which babes we like, and what we might do to get next to them.

For the most part, things run okay on this set.  But I do have moments of frustration.  For example, there are many times when stuff is close to shooting and everyone's talking, and I will try to assemble order in the room, but nobody is listening.  Then, like five minutes later, I'll be saying something and someone will shush me or somehow indicate that I'm being disruptive.  Where were you five minutes ago, chump?  Something similar happened on this night.  I ended up calling Brett an asshole and he dismissed me from the room for the entire shooting of the scene, even though I had been trying to get the actors to run through the scene for several minutes.  I ended up playing Tetris in my bedroom for 90 minutes, after which Chris came to get me.  I didn't enjoy my time out.  I would rather have been helping make the movie.  But I did score over 5 million points.  You would have to play FOREVER to beat that.

-Diego

Can I talk to you for a second?

On Tuesday morning, we went to Target to get the usual provisions.  I purchased a new pair of jeans (to replace the ones destroyed on Sunday).  It took me a few tries to find ones in an acceptable style and color.  There's many designs, including carpenter pants that have lots of pockets and strappy things.  But I doubt real carpenters are buying their work clothes at Target.  Let's call these what they are.  Pretend Carpenters.  I decided not to be that guy.  I just kinda wanna fit in.  This Target is less than two years old (basically the same age as Phoebe).  It's in the town of Easton about 18 miles away, and the short trips we make there are the only thing keeping me in touch with civilization.

 

Living in Los Angeles, there are advertisements for everything everywhere.  I'm never not looking at a billboard or bus stop poster for a thousand different TV shows that will probably be canceled within the year.  I'm constantly aware of exactly what movies are coming out in theatres and on video, and all day long in the back of my head, I have an ongoing list of what I'm going to see next.  Out here in this rural part of Maryland, there's no advertisements for anything, except a bunch of different names that want me to vote for them for sheriff or something.  I have no idea what movies are in theatres right now.  Though I kinda prefer it this way, it's still not ideal.  I don't like living in a big city, nor do I like being far away from the movies.  I guess the ideal living situation for me, in terms of everything, is nearby.

Shooting went fine.  One shot required an L-shaped path of apple boxes for Priscilla to walk on, because Carl is 17 feet tall.  Later on, Anne put a lot of woman's make-up on Carl's face, and then showed us how to work the player piano.  You stick a scroll in and pump the pedals and it plays music for you.  This was the thing before mp3 players.

 

I wish the other people on here blogged more.

-Diego

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