This is like water to me.

So yesterday we shot the John scenes with Mike Diaz as John. He was very good in the role. Brett was having orgasms over how good. Chris was the sound man. As a result of this recasting, an unseen, almost imperceptibly implied subplot was conceived by Chris. Brett whispered it to Mike before the scenes were shot, and later let Priscilla in on it. I wonder if anyone will perceive it in the final cut. If you've seen the movie and still don't know what I'm talking about, ask Brett about it.

During the shooting of the first scene, Brett noted that Mike looked like Matthew Fox. I blurted out a Lost quote, then realized it would be funny if I kept doing really lame Lost quotes until Brett asked me to stop, so I could respond with "Don't tell me what I can't do," which is obviously a John Locke quote. I did this and it worked, but the line didn't really seem to land with anyone but me. I guess what matters is that I enjoyed the humor of it, and everyone who didn't can go fuck themselves.

During a quick laundry room shoot, I was eating chips while they were setting up. These are "mac and cheese" flavored chips. They don't taste like anything but potato chips. But they're still good and everything. Brett looked over and said, "Don't be eating chips during the take." Yeah, I know. I have a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Film Production. I've directed, produced, and edited a bunch of shorts. I'm aware that eating chips during a take can fuck up the sound, because then you have to edit out the sound of chips being eaten. Obviously, if we're looking at the main character in a laundry room, and she's searching for a cleaner, it wouldn't make narrative sense to hear a separate person eating chips in the same room, especially if it's been established that she's the only person in the house. So, right, I know to stop eating the chips when Marco and Mike start rolling.

The next few scenes are a blur to me. I was having a major major allergy attack, and spent some time outside trying to calm down. Whenever I get these allergy attacks, it's like torture. I can't think straight. Maybe it has something to do with the nasal cavity's connection to the brain. I seem to recall a bizarre conversation taking place in the next room about a shot that was shaky, but that we apparently weren't doing a second take of. I only heard part of the conversation, but I remember thinking that I was in hell. Just unable to escape from my allergy-filled skull, which was filled with fragments of a nonsensical conversation about a fucking ridiculous problem between two people who were just really irritated with each other about something stupid. I think if I had been tip-top, it would have all seemed more manageable.

I was snacking throughout the day because I realized that the brief moments when I was chewing and swallowing were sort of respites from my allergies. And the meals today were super bizarre. Breakfast was french toast, but they were waffled. It was waffled french toast. And then dinner was tiny pasta shells mixed with muzzarell, tomatoes, and turkey meatballs. These meals were tasty. But also strange. My stomach is perpetually like, "Where the fuck are you?"

Then we shot some more stuff, like when Dolly finds Jim's butt. Carl's not here yet, so I believe we used Mike's butt as a double. No one will be able to tell in the final cut. After that, a couple more John scenes. Then some nighttime Dolly bedroom stuff upstairs. I'm really happy that we did that without ever waking Phoebe, who was asleep upstairs the whole time. This crew works hard, plays hard, and does so completely without waking the sleeping psychopath.

At one point last night, we had to shoot a quick thing of Dolly putting empties away in the kitchen, during the bit where she and Jim are drinking. Brett needed empties, so he said we had to drink the beers. This made more sense than pouring them down the drain. They were warm. Of course they were warm, because there's only three gigantic refrigerators in the main kitchen. But they were Michelob Ultras, which I enjoy, so I drank four. Which kinda sucked, because I had also just finished drinking a Mountain Dew. The shot was done before I drank the third and fourth ones, but I had to drink them anyway, because they were already open. Brett and Chris enjoyed the company of "Drunk Diego." But that wasn't really me drunk. That was me after four Mich Ultras. All it did, I suppose, was sort of intoxicate me so that my behavior was modified. You call that drunk? I mean, that's the real me, if you were to make me drink a substance that clears my head and sort of curbs my crippling unmedicated depression and obsessive inner monologue. If that's what you call "drunk," then shit. I dunno. It was fine.

All day, Brett was stressing about making the schedule. We're locked in to finish this picture in a total of 18 days, because everyone already has their plane ticket home. So for the entire shoot today, Brett was cutting scenes left and right. When they were setting up for the last scene, Chris asked me if I thought we were losing too much. I said that we've lost some moments that would have been nice, like scene 87/88 (or, the vomit/mirror scene, previously seen in The Comedian at The Friday), but we haven't lost anything crucial. Chris said he thought the movie might be missing an extra something, and he described to me the type of feeling he would want to evoke. We discussed it and arrived at a concept that I thought sounded like a great, memorable moment. I told him it definitely needed to be one of the last things we see. When we wrapped for the night and Brett came downstairs, Chris pitched the scene. Brett loved it. He said it could be the thing that really ties the film together. You've seen the movie, so you may have an idea which scene we're talking about. It's not a big thing. But hopefully, it's as haunting as we imagine it. We're shooting it tonight.

-Diego