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!

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.

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!

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.

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

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….

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?

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!

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.

But for Saturday, I just had one scene. So I showed up, chatted, got into makeup and wardrobe, sat around while previous scene finished up, waited while camera was set up, looked around for leftover food, worried a lot about elevators that were in the shot and sometimes didn’t cooperate. Then finally I did a little bit of acting, and left.

The scene was with Rebecca Rainboldt, the first I’ve shot with her — with many more to come. Funny how my scenes with her are so very central to the movie, but in the first five days of shooting, I’ve just had one very brief interchange with her.

Also: I’m counting my days on set at this point, in terms of the titles of my blog posts. There has been shooting without me. I’m on set about two-thirds of the time.

This chunk of shooting ended very late, and on quite a high. We wrapped at 2:00 am after many takes of a long scene.

In film and TV work, you end up doing lots of little takes, or longer takes that get edited into little moments. But every now and then, there are long, uninterrupted scenes. Some are quite famous, like the opening scene of A Touch of Evil. There’s an amazing, long scene in the middle of Factotum with Matt Dillon and Lili Taylor.

In plays, on the other hand, you always end up working towards something that lasts for many minutes without interruption. Once you start, there’s no turning back. So when you shoot a long scene, it feels like a play. Except it’s not. The environment and rehearsal process are so completely different on set. In other words, you make a scene that’s only a few minutes long, barely a fraction of the final act of Streetcar on stage, and you feel great for accomplishing something remarkable.

I hope what we did at 2:00 am was remarkable. Take after take was required. A mistake in dialog or lighting or anything at all could ruin it because you can’t just edit it out. No cut-aways to save us. Well, it could be done in post-prodution, but it would very much change the nature of the viewing experience. So, after the last “Cut,” and “We got it,” I was feeling very up, not at all tired anymore. Good stuff.

Today is the 3rd and final day at the Calabasas house. Our supportive and generous homeowners, Larry and Sheri (or Shlarry as they are sometimes called), have been putting up with a lot. Today, it’s just Sheri, actually. Guess Larry had to work. On a Monday. Go figure.

I hope to include soon a picture of Larry’s socks, because I am wearing them in the movie and Shlarry got married in those socks!

Juicy inside scoop: Last night, it was challenging for me on set. I had to blow up to a piece of tape. I have spent so much effort recently on doing good acting that is small, real and right into my scene partner’s eyes. This big, angry scene to a non-person was so different and felt very hard to do. We got a good take, but we ran late and I got a little grumpy. Oy — the inner diva is emerging. Run for your lives.

Let’s be honest, there’s a lot of waiting on any set. And in almost any new endeavor in any field there are often start-up issues and time killers galore on day one. So I simply did what I could to overlook the down time. In all, I feel good about how I did my stuff yesterday, and that’s what you can do. And it helped in a sense, because Guy is laid-back, but not pleased with how the day is going at his house.

The other thing to say about yesterday is that everybody here is nice, easy to work with, and all that. A good group. Excellent!

Today is Mothers Day, and we’re back in Calabasas, shooting indoors scenes. The cast is smaller today, but the dogs are barking. They weren’t barking yesterday. But it only helps, because Guy has a couple of lines like “Damn dog,” or worse. ’Sall good.

This morning, Guy overslept and walks outside to see a raging pool party in honor of his mother-in-law. So I’m made up as if I overslept. This is a good way to start shooting a movie! It’s good to know that for the first scene it’s okay to be tired, to look tired, to not be your best self or worry at all about forcing things. Not that I look bad at all — I’m made up today in the trusty hands of Michael, who will be with us for the duration of the shoot.

Here’s the other thing to write about this morning: names. I’ve met about 25 people so far. Please don’t quiz me on their names! But I look forward to working with the same people for many days and getting to know them quite well.

Okay, it’s almost noon. My first scene will shoot soon. The RED camera is up and running now, shooting establishing shots of all the gossipy ladies in the hot tub. So I sign off for now.

Anyway, after Jason expressed interest in me, I became more curious about them — I needed to learn more about them because it was a large project we were talking about! So we met at a coffee shop on Beverly Blvd, and after a lovely 2-hour talk, I felt good about the project.

And now it’s about to start. The mental preparation is there. The hair is cut. And now my work is to sleep 7 hours, awake and prep, then schlep what needs to be schlepped to Calabasas, and then it begins!