Monday, July 21st, 2008: Shoot Day #8, The Zack Attack

I wake up to a call from my best friends, FedEx. They inform me that my package has come and ask if I would like to come and pick it up or have it delivered. I ask what time it would be delivered at and they give me a ballpark number, I tell them to keep it there and I’ll come and pick it up for fear it’ll end up in Winnipeg again. My apologies for saying it was Windsor before; I screwed up. It was actually in Winnipeg. If it was Windsor, I would’ve driven down to get it. Fucking Winnipeg.

I hang up the phone and try to catch some more shut eye, but it’s over. I decide to get up and head over to Hades; or the FedEx depot. There’s another lady there that I haven’t dealt with before, and she asks me for a tracking number. I tell her I don’t have one. Then she gets a superior attitude towards me and then I restrainfully lose it on her, telling her I had a tracking number and then her company fucked up really bad. I give her my address that it should’ve been shipped to, then also add that I should’ve gotten this package on Saturday, and her company really screwed me over.

I know she’s not directly responsible for this, but if she had any sense, she would’ve called in sick today. Nah, I’m just playing, but she didn’t need to have the attitude I stripped her of.

I get home and open the package. While Sue was talking to one of the main guys at FedEx on Saturday, the dude fell back on the terms and conditions about business days and how Saturday isn’t a business day, so it would be Monday that I would get the package. All this bullshit he was spewing was him protecting his ass if I wanted to go after him monetarily. Basically he was creeping out of the FedEx hole saying that it didn’t have to be delivered on Saturday. Well, doesn’t the box say “Saturday Delivery” on it? FedEx = pieces of shit. From now on, I’m going to see what Brown can do for me.

So I take out the part, hoping there’s a new imaging element inside. There isn’t, but I do notice that the legs that seemed to cause the squeak in the other part are a lot more fixed up in this new one. I tear apart the adapter again, and install the new piece.

I’ll be damned, isn’t there another piece of dust on the glass again? This time I’m not going to make the brush mistake. I brush it off, very careful not to touch anything, but the speck doesn’t want to go away. I rush upstairs to the sink to wash it off, and I drop the glass into the sink. Lucky for me, and the production, but mainly for me because the production would tear me apart, that I don’t scratch or break it. I air-dry it and put it back on, and really take care of the dust issue. It’s all aligned, and I’m off at 3:30 for the 3:00 call time.

Today should be an easy and short day. We’re filming with Dave, Joe and Justine today, and the first scene we’re to film is when Detective Baldwin pays a visit to Grant. Dave looks a lot better today, and a lot more jovial.

All the gear gets brought in from Bills truck as I look over my battered storyboards. Bill asks me if I had the rails for our other dolly system, or if I grabbed them from the bus station last night. I ask him where I would’ve put them, considering I didn’t drive, and I didn’t unload anything out of his truck. Alicia and Bill take off to see if the rails are still at the bus station.

Meanwhile, Dave, me, and Baby Reilly sit around shooting the shit. Bill and Alicia get back and we set the dolly up and start shooting. Luckily the rails were still there. The new part for the Brevis makes the adapter whisper quiet. We could tell it was on before because you could hear the damn thing clicking away; now you have to look to see if the light is on, and touch it to make sure it’s vibrating. Yeah, that’s what she said.

It takes a couple of hours to knock out this scene, but it gets done, and the performances are stellar to my eyes. Dave is wrapped for production, which seems weird, because I always thought he was in more than two scenes. Now I wish I would’ve written him in more. The whole time we’re shooting this, Alicia is upstairs trying to organize the chaos that is Episode 4.

We wait for dark to film a scene where Dana comes home to confront Grant, and also a scene when Grant comes home to the empty place. We’re also going to improvise a small scene, but all of this takes place at night.

Sue showed up from a shift at work she wasn’t supposed to work today. It turns out yesterday she was supposed to work and didn’t go in thinking it was the final day of her vacation. Today she had off, but thought it was her first shift back. She put in the day anyway, and now has tomorrow off. I don’t know if irony covers this, but it’s definitely a weird story.

We have a little bit of time to kill, and we need some food, so we decide to walk over to the Mandarin. While there, more Saved by the Bell talk comes out, centered again on Rod Belding and Jeff, pimp master of the Max, as well as Kevin Bacons angry factory dance in Footloose. No one can think of the song.

We walk back over to Bills, and while Alicia is doing Justine’s makeup, Joe, Bill, and I end up on youtube checking out The Zack Attack, the legendary fight between AC Slater and Zack, the “Get out of my school, Rod” clip, a montage of Jeff, and the angry Kevin Bacon dance. All worth the time and effort. I can’t believe how many re-cuts there are of the Zack/ Slater showdown.

I head downstairs and throw some light on the front of Bills pad, Justine is ready, and we shoot the small scene with four shots. I’m hoping it comes out good.

We move inside and more or less do the two remaining scenes simultaneously. We shoot Justine coming into the house, then we shoot Joe coming into the house and entering the room. We bring Justine back, and we shoot their showdown, having a bunch of laughs the whole time.

During the small downtime we had when we moved from the exterior to the interior, Bill has decided he’s going to grab all the Saved by the Bell seasons. Joe and I really connect as well, because it turns out when we were entering high school, we both thought the same thing: Where’s the Max at? Disappointment ensued.

We finish up the scene and Justine and Joe take off. His job is to watch Sonny Chiba’s 1974 masterpiece Street Fighter and bring it back on Tuesday. My job is to watch a flick he brought me called The Business, which is from England.

Slowly we pack up everything, and eventually scram out of Bills place. I talk to Baby Reilly a little bit, and then I’m off. When I get home, I start youtubing some California Dreams, another show that was dear to my heart growing up. I refund everything I ate at the Mandarin then hit the sack.

Next Tuesday is our next and final shoot day on this production. This saddens me, but I don’t have much time to think about it as I still have a lot of work to do for Episode 4. I’m hoping the cast for that production are as cool as the cast for this one. Most of the people on Episode 4 I’ve worked with before, and they’re super cool. Let’s just hope the New Class is as cool as this one (Saved by the Bell reference).

I don't have the footage on my computer yet, but I hope to soon, so I'll put up some grabs then.