Saturday, June 14th, 2008: The Day of the Rehearsal

The day of the rehearsal. The idea was to have Alicia, Steve, and Bill meet up at my place earlier than everyone else and go over what the days events will be. I’m a little nervous about meeting new people and hoping that they’ll mesh and be cool with each other. The deadline for shooting is approaching quickly.

Back when we made Streets of Wonderland, one of the cast members said that I was an “actors director.” I really dug on that compliment. I feel that I’ve gotten away from that in the last few projects and I definitely don’t feel like an actors director anymore as much as I feel I’ve been more of a technical director. My focus on today is to return to that actors director moniker.

Keith Assoun, one of the guys that I worked with a few times before, arrives about an hour early. It’s nice to see him again. He’s one of those guys that are super nice and puts you at ease right away. I shoot the shit with him for awhile until Bill, Alicia, Steve, and Steve’s friend Brad arrives.

The rest of the cast trickles in and we’re just waiting on two people now.

While we’re waiting, somehow some one asks Steve how he met his wife. He goes on to the biggest, most elaborate story of how they met. Man, this dude tells stories like Hemmingway. We’re all into the story and laughing, and it very well could’ve been the most boring, most mundane thing you ever heard in your life. But Steve tells it and you’re riveted. It’s the equivalent of sitting around a campfire and listening to a master storyteller do his thing.

Harry Mouratidis, the other guy I’ve worked with before, arrives last, about an hour late. Harry is another guy that’s super nice and you can’t help but love that cat. The dude is incredibly charming and funny as hell.

The first day shooting with Harry never turns out well, so we’re hoping that this rehearsal counts towards that first day jinx he seems to have. He was cast in The Weight, and we had to postpone his shoot because he got bit in the face by a spider, and it looked like a giant herpes sore according to him. Understandable enough, but who else would have the bad luck to get bit in the face by a spider?

Bill and I lead the parade and we introduce everyone to each other and tell everyone which roles the actors are playing, and who these crew members are standing around. We fill them all in on how we run our shows, what they can expect, and what we expect from them. We tell them that the shoot on the 7th is mandatory and we hope that everyone can make it. Everyone can. Big relief there.

We then go into a plain old read through of the script before moving it to my backyard to start some blocking and some real rehearsal where I’ll give them direction.

The day goes off without a hitch. We finish the rehearsal after going through the script a few times, and we chow down on some eats that Alicia brought over and Bill barbequed.
While we’re all munching down, we go over the tentative schedule with the start date pushed back again until the 5th of July. The cast scratch down the dates they’ll be needed and there doesn’t seem to be a problem with any of the dates. My only problem with it is that we’re starting out with three consecutive shoots in a row, but there’s no other way to do it if I’d like to give myself enough time to somewhat gear up for Episode 4, which we plan to shoot in August. There’s also a few days in July that Bill and I can’t do as we’re tied up in other shoots for those days.

While everyone’s eating, I tell Harry about his role as Bulldog in Episode 4 and give him the general gist of the story. He’s digging it and laughing about it. I tell him I’ll send him the script, but to keep in mind that there’s a few things that still need to be added.

We then go over wardrobe possibilities with everyone and get that all worked out thanks to Alicia. It’s such a relief having someone else do the Assistant Director work rather than doing it myself. It’s even better when that someone is as on top of their game as Alicia is.

Most of my worries about the production are gone as far as the actors are concerned. I think we’ve got a great bunch of people for this production, and they definitely have the chops to pull the roles off. Even better than that, they all seem like really cool people that get along great. I really dig on these actors as people, and not just actors.

I think everyone had a good time because when the day was officially over, everyone kicked around for awhile to shoot the shit. Bill, Steve, Alicia, and I decide to get together again next Saturday to hammer out the call times and go over some other company stuff.

I’m not one to say that this movie is going to be great, or good, or anything. There’s a million things that can go wrong during production to make it horrible, and a million things have to go right to make the flick work. My goal at the end of any show is just to have something that we can all be proud of being a part of. I’m feeling good about our odds of having that happen.

I was hoping that Steve, Bill, and Alicia would kick around to watch Double Indemnity, the flick I’m ripping off to see first hand where this project got its basis from. Turns out everyone’s busy, so we’ll have to make it another night for the Double Indemnity viewing. Oh well, Sue and I decide to watch “Never Back Down” and Bill pops by again towards the end of the movie to shoot the poster for King of Hearts.

It takes about 3 hours with us fooling around and experimenting a lot, but I think we finally got a picture that’s pretty damn badass. Bill’s going to send it to Alicia to get her approval and then continue on with the poster.