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Careful readers of this blog know that I finished shooting my lead role in the indie film Look in the Mirror. Careful readers of this blog clearly have too much time on their hand, anyway, so I do not cringe to report that this weekend, we are spending two more days shooting some new scenes for LITM. These are scenes that were deemed necessary after months of ediiting to really make the movie work. Fine by me! Fun group, and I want to the movie to be as good as possible.

Today’s work is being overseen by this ever-vigilant butler, at the Calabasas house. He’s always been here, every day, at the house “I” own, but to be honest, I’m not sure he’ll be seen in the final cut. I wouldn’t want him left out, so you go, Mr. Butler!

I am happy to write my final post about Look in the Mirror.

To recap, Look in the Mirror is an independent feature film in which I have the lead role. I blogged about it months ago when the bulk of the shooting happened. Yesterday was my final day on this awesome project. Yesterday was a long day of pick-up scenes with more makeup and wardrobe changes in one day that I’ve ever experienced. Yesterday was 14+ hours of work, with Jason, Brian, Michael, Ally, Tim, Pamela, Barbara, Leslie, Fred. To all: thank you, thank you, thank you.

Next step: festival submissions! Stay tuned.

It has been many moons (literally) since I blogged about Look in the Mirror. Principal photography wrapped some time ago, but the movie wasn’t “done done.” For various reasons, including crew illness, the time between wrapping principal photography and actually getting all photography done was longer than expected.

But! The exciting thing is that Wednesday is a full day of work for me on Look in the Mirror! I look forward to it! I will blog about it! Yay!

There will be no photo from yesterday’s shoot. We drove many hours in a black Audi convertible, a good looking car. I look good in it, and Rebecca looks even better, but I don’t have pictures of that goodness. We shot for many hours, so I also have a serious farmer’s tan — and I will certainly not be posting any photos of that either!

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve been here, but today I blog once again from Calabasas. This is my house in Look in the Mirror. In this picture, see me blogging earlier this morning near Allie, who plays my daughter in the movie.

Without Allie, we just went for a drive in my Audi convertible, to get a shot of me on the phone. It failed. Why? Because the RED camera has unreliable, short-lasting batteries. They never talk about that in the glowing reviews, do they? Aargh.

Hello, all ye followers of Look in the Mirror. Yesterday’s shoot was at Tony’s apartment on Hayworth Avenue. Tony and his cacti are pictured here.

The shoot involved a lot of down time, then suddenly I was shooting a close-up with me and the redheads (Rebecca and cactus).

My eighth day of shooting (see explanation about where day seven went) took place in Manhattan Beach over Memorial Day weekend. It’s the second time I’ve been down there, and I gotta say: it’s a lovely place. The beach is nice and the homes inland have a great style to them.

We shot a scene from Look in the Mirror where Lonnie and I pull over for a bite on the way to my big golf weekend. The generous people at Ocean View Cafe let us use their patio. The weather was ideal … when we started. And then the sun started to go down. Right after we wrapped, I began to shiver uncontrollably.

Again, it was a pleasure to work with Rebecca and a good crew. Thanks, everybody! About a half dozen days of filming remain, but this may be the only shot in right out there in public (not my favorite thing). DP Sam responded to questions from passers-by about what we were filming with, “A mayonnaise commercial.” A great answer, I thought! One girl told us that she’d done a ketchup commercial. Now all we need is the mustard….

Somewhere along the way, I got confused while writing on this blog about my shoot dates for the indie film Look in the Mirror. I realized I was confused when I looked at the headlines for past entries. I’ve had seven days on set, but only six days of headlines. I suppose it’s because I often post about the day before instead of the day of. But besides the day count, the locations got messed up, too. Oh well. You’ll figure it out.

So. The second and last day of shooting at the Culver Hotel was another long, glorious day of shooting. A day with trials and tribulations,¹ but also a day with a definite sense of accomplishment. Many pages of dialog, my friends, many pages.

The day went well in large part because of the pleasure it is to work with good people. I’m grateful for the professionalism displayed by Michael Jones and Rebecca Rainboldt (pictured here), and also all the crew members (not pictured here). I’ll be seeing them again tomorrow Sunday in a diner — and I’m looking forward to it. I’ve had four days off. Four days wherein I very much needed to step away from acting as much as I could, including this here blog, but now I’m licking my chops in anticipation of being on set again tomorrow. And also since it’s a diner, I’m licking my chops thinking about pork chops and applesauce. “Porshops and apple shaush.” Quick. Who said it?

You can see me blogging in costume this morning in the picture, with my MacBook desktop showing an endearing picture of a lovely little Bostonian.

It turns out that Culver Hotel is an interesting, older building centrally located in Culver City. It’s the one taller building, hard to miss. Built in 1924, with odd angles throughout because of its wedge shape (inspired by the Flatiron?). I like it. Rebecca and I had some good scenes, it wasn’t a horribly long day either because we lost our light and went home at a decent hour.

At one point, I stood back and watched the monitor for a scene from Look in the Mirror with only Rebecca looking out the window. With the HD camera, an interesting hotel room and a beautiful woman with a great profile, it was lovely and compelling to look at. Good stuff!

Monday’s Look in the Mirror schedule: several hours shooting scenes at the hotel with the lovely Lonnie, played by Rebecca, a day of scenes exclusively with one acting partner. Sunday at the office was the same, a day of scenes with just one other actor, but this time it was with Ed Ford (previously pictured) who plays Mr. Hinkle. Sunday was a long day! It ended for me with lots of second-wind energy, and hard work getting some good scenes, but it was a late night again! Ed was exhausted, but I was rarin’ to go.

We also felt that earthquake, you know, the one that everybody Tweeted about. At first, I thought somebody was working on the roof of the building right above us, but then the building kept moving a little so I made my way to a doorway. The building’s on some sort of rocker/roller system, it turns out. Good times, but just a brief moment then on with the show.