The Unattainable - Part 5 - The High Cost of Free

"Nothing of value is free. Even the breath of life is purchased at birth through gasping and effort and pain"
-Robert A. Heinlein, Science Fiction author and visionary

And people say I'm not a cheery guy.

Heinlein may have been taking the deeper route when discussing the idiom that nothing in life is free, but my mentor, Stan Bickman, used to refer to it as the "high cost of free."

On any budget, a line producer is looking for value, but on extremely low budgets such as the ones I mostly work on, success and failure hinge on actually getting things of value, if not for free, then for a significant discount - and the two are not the same.

Some of my favorite readers, who have blogs of their own, have successfully found things they truly did get for free or for a token amount, mostly working on truly micro-budgets. I give them credit.

The problem with budgets under $1M but higher than, say, $100-$200K is that there is a level of expectation among the crew about rates, for one, and, for another, if you are going to get a distributor, you need to bring a different level of production value, comparable with films of higher budgets.

The Unattainable is, in no way, a genre film, easy to describe or pigeon-hole. Creatively, that is not only a good thing, but potentially a great thing. If the final version of the film is anywhere near the director's vision, or a representation of her skills, it will be a unique film that will shine like a diamond.

On a lower budget, it chose to achieve the look of some ground-breaking movies from the distant and recent past. I won't name those movies here, as people seeing the final project might then say, "Oh, isn't that just like so-and-so movie" and the comparison is more about mood and tone than subject matter.

All of that being said, to achieve that, we needed that perfect combination of connections, skill, hard-work and luck to pull it off. That is the formula for miracles, and those don't happen every day.

There were areas where our connections did an incredible job, including securing a high-end camera package, a great post facility and digital dailies for the 16MM portion of the movie at significant discounts, without which the project would have been grounded early on, or been forced to make very harsh adjustments.

In other areas, we were not as fortunate.

In the NY area, getting quality locations for even a good rate has been difficult. Over twenty years of all the Law and Order franchise, not to mention Blue Bloods and the film industry that comes here and throws money around, and it's hard to offer locations Muscatel after they've had champagne.

Stan used one of my favorite phrases, "How much is this free location costing me," in exactly this area, in references the home of an uncle of the director that, sure enough, wound up costing more than originally bargained.

Here is the thing about locations. Your friend owns a restaurant, or bar. You tell him or her that you are making a movie that is close to your heart on a small budget, and can you shoot there for free. Sure, they say. This is while you may still be sitting in their place writing your script.

Now, it comes time to actually shoot. The scene will take 11 hours to film, and involve closing down his business for that amount of time, not filming in some corner. Strike One. Next, we may not have flexibility on time of day. Let's say he offers you 8 hours from 4AM until 12 noon. That's great, but it also has to correspond with the shooting schedule for your movie. Are you on days or nights?

Turnaround. Strike Two. If you need crew to be there at 4AM, then they must have wrapped by 2PM (10 hours) the previous day - and that is tight. SAG actors need to get 12 hour turnaround.

On our shoot, our lead actress was in all but about 3 pages of the script. It was rarely possible to leave her out of a scene.

Strike three can be so many things. Their idea of a "good rate" may be good by industry standards, but not your budget. Their business has been slow and they can't close. It's near the Holidays and they are having parties. They recently got a bad health inspector rating and they are having work done. The place is in an over-shot "red zone" and the city is not giving permits there.

On and on the possibilities go.

With apartments, there is the issue that most people in the city rent, which means you need permission of the landlord. If you do own, it's likely co-op, which means getting approval of a board. Good luck with that.

It may have been one thing when you were shooting your student film in your friend's apartment with about 10 people total. I have a crew and cast of 42 people on any given day, and a two cube trucks were needed to carry my camera package and my G/E gear.

You're not sneaking that in.

Then, there is art department, which is linked to the location. They are two areas where you normally trade budget; if you find the great location for a great rate, you can spend more to dress it if it doesn't look right. If you find a location that is close to dressed the way it is meant to be dressed, you can pay a higher fee because you will be spending less to dress it.

This is the "taking from Peter to pay Paul" part of line producing, and while the term is not a positive one in the business world, it is common in the film world.

Our main problem was our "hero" location - the apartment of the main character. We knew we would be there for eight days, and that, with scenes taking place currently, in the character's imagination and in the past, that we needed a flexible set dress. Additionally, there were logistical considerations (french doors) and the possibility of reflections, and the ability to light through windows, which the DP felt was crucial. The latter limited us to first or second floor apartments or someplace with a penthouse or terrace, neither of which would have made any sense for the main character.

Our location manager worked out a good rate, if not one that was close to what we hoped to pay. Nothing in the apartment was right from a dressing standpoint, which meant moving and storing all of the furniture that was there.

The next thing was one of those classic examples of why "free" isn't always so "free."

One of our producers had just the right furniture - beautiful furniture - and offered to let us use it for free. We needed a 20 foot truck to pick it up significantly outside the city, the manpower to get it, and, at the end of the shooting period, to return it. As my production designer was quick to point out, the manpower to move it (we used professional movers to do the return), the truck rental, the parking of the truck, the gas and tolls etc were not part of her department's cost, and technically, she is right.

But, for the line producer, that does not really matter. It is money spent that was not budgeted, that needs to be made up somewhere else. As I pointed out in the previous post, no department thinks they should be the "somewhere else."

The latter donation by this producer crosses more than one idiom; both the high cost of free and Murphy's Law of no good deed going unpunished. This woman was more than generous, and as it turned out, the "professional movers" actually did some damage to what was magnificent furniture.

Then, there are vendors.

With vendors, the "deal" you got the last time is not necessarily the deal you get this time. The great camera package deal came at the last minute with a contact from one of our exec producers - the contact of the producer as well as a long-term contact of mine were fifty percent higher and more.

Then, there is crew. The reality of getting quality crew in NY is that even on a non-union film, you are paying something close to the lower union rates, and paying overtime and meal-penalties, if you want to get top-flight talent.

Again, this is an area where folks who do genre films consistently insist - and I believe them - that they can go a cheaper route, but with the background and reputation of some of the key crew we brought on, we were never going to get much better rates.

In specialty areas, there is always the question of how busy the city is in terms of work. A fantastic steadicam operator - and great guy - worked a few days for us for an unheard of rate, at first because he and I had a relationship, and later because he fell in love with the project and the director. Still, he was booked on many of the days we needed him, and even those he recommended were often booked.

These are only some examples, and I use them not to complain but to explain to aspiring "guerrilla filmmakers" some of the ways reality can intrude on the optimism you bring to items you think you will get free or cheap when budgeting. My hope is that these experiences help you to hopefully build something of a contingency into the money you raise.

This is not to be all negative. My staff and I got many great rates, and the producers and exec producers did bring in some great favors.

Still, whenever someone tells me that they can get something for free, a little twitch, more like an electrical shock from some torture device, goes off inside of me.

As The Boss reminds Mary in Thunder Road:

"From your front porch to my front seat,
The door is open but the ride it ain't free."

Party Like It's 1999 - Part 1 ...When the Big Man Joined the Band

"When The Change was Made Uptown

And the Big Man Joined The Band"

Bruce Springsteen

Tenth Avenue Freezeout

So, this post, this turning point in my career, starts with an Assistant Director getting replaced; and a good one. As I have pointed out, this is a more common occurrence than you might think.  As a matter of fact, it became something of a recurrent theme, as my first gig as First AD came replacing someone.

In this instance, it was someone I knew, and a very good Assistant Director. I never found out the reason for the change, but got a feeling it was mutual and not acrimonious. The brief introduction to the project by the producers did not include any scathing indictment of the previous AD, and my brief conversation with the previous AD did not come with recriminations of the producers. This was, at least, a good sign.

The movie, 1999, was about a party on the eve of the millennium, which was then a little bit away. It was being directed by Nick Davis. In speaking of my old friend, the talented writer/director Raymond DeFelitta, I pointed out how it was years after I first met him that I realized that his father had been in the business. Similarly, 1999 was long-wrapped before I discovered that he came from an industry family, and I mean, a
"breeding on both sides," as they say in horse racing, that would have impressed anyone. His father is film director Peter Davis, his paternal grandparents were both acclaimed screenwriters, and his maternal grandfather was the legendary Herman J. Mankiewicz.

I've worked with people who had a fourth cousin that was an assistant editor on a Scorcese film that reminded you of this hourly, and the fact that it never came up once in all my time with Nick says a lot about his character. The only equivalent I can think of is someone failing to tell you they were a Kennedy.

I did know there was something special going on. Here was a director without any lengthy resume shooting a film with some actors I knew, comic Steven Wright and The Graduate author and Saturday Night Live regular Buck Henry. I was also told that some of the young actors on the shoot were "up-and-coming," what I used to refer to as "industry hot." (much more on that in subsequent posts).  I certainly was not familiar with them. While IMDB had been around for a few years at that point, it was certainly not the industry standard it is today, so checking people's credits still had some mystery.

To the logistics of the movie:

All of the action took place in one townhouse. We were shooting the main action on 35mm, but director Davis, himself a documentary filmmaker, would also be a "character" who shot home movies on video, and that footage would also be used.

The townhouse was three floors, with most of the action on the first and second floors. Production and holding for actors was mostly on the third floor, so it would not have to be struck constantly. Because the party happens over one night, continuity was a big issue. We had to bring back most of the extras for background - it would make little sense to see different people in the background in every shot at a party that happens over one night. As I will also go into with subsequent posts, there were actor conflicts.

All of this meant I was walking into a lot of logistics to deal that had to be addressed without a real feel for how it was being handled.

On my first day, the producers walked me through, and introduced me to the two 2nd ADs, who had not been let go. One of my first decisions would be whether to keep the 2nds or replace them.

This was a hard one. I figured they knew a lot more about what was going on than I did, and that could be helpful. When these sorts of parting happen, however, producers sometimes like a clean break. All of the reasons to replace them would have been political. Would they resent me? Would it make the producers happy? Should I bring in someone loyal to me?

If you think politics has no place on a film set, well, good luck with that.

I did not have someone waiting in the wings. I had been PM and line producer more than an AD recently, so I didn't have a regular second, and my calls to the few seconds who I trusted turned up people who had either moved up to First AD or were not available.

Talk about good fortune.

I decided to give the two, Amy and Brian, a chance. If nothing else, they could guide me until I found replacements.

We didn't exactly shoot in sequence, but we tried to stick to it somewhat, so there was a lot of striking set, moving to the next one, coming back to the first. Not my preference from either a logistical or scheduling perspective, but, hey, we weren't there to make things easy for the 1st AD. I already had the luxury of one building to deal with; I was not about to complain.

So it was, a moment I will always remember. The PAs were responsible for striking sets and clearing rooms for the next set, while art department dealt with the details. We had a lot of PAs, almost all of them without much experience. It amounted to a lot of "hands," which was exactly what I needed as we wrapped one set and were moving on to the others.

Neither Brian nor Amy were shouters, which was good. Over the years, I had developed a calmer demeanor, and always hated screaming on set. It just sets such a bad mood, but, we were still in the age when, as one co-worker once famously said to me, an AD was often thought of as "a grip with an attitude." Sure, on DGA gigs, this would be ridiculous, but on the low-budget indies, we were doing our best to establish demeanor and rules in the absence of anything on paper.

I got on walkie and calmly said, "Hands, please." There was some shuffling and scuttling, but not in the way of movement into the room, certainly not as fast as I would have liked. I also only heard my two ADs reply with, "copy."

Now, this is a major annoyance with newbies on walkies, PAs who don't "copy." It means I don't know if you heard me and are just not doing it, you lost your walkie, you're "on a mission" (someone else in charge has you doing something) or just fell asleep in the corner.

I get back on walkie: "I need hands, please. PAs, please copy." Static.

As a deep sigh was leaving my lungs, I feel the movement erupts like a volcano. Over walkie comes this voice, calm but firm, only slightly raised.

"I heard JB call for hands. Is there a reason no one is copying?"

Next came an immediate string of "copy that"s, followed by PAs running into the room. Before the ones who were just outside the room made it in, there was Brian, my 2nd, having made it down two flights of stairs moving things and directing PAs.

In bad Rom/Coms, this is when they backlight people and play violins. Don't get me wrong, Brian and I are happily straight, but I took one look at this calm big man, making things happen, and I thought, "you're not going anywhere."

When working as a 1st, chemistry with your 2nd is important. It is even more important when you line produce and UPM and need to work with a 1st AD. The problem with 1st ADs who move up to UPM or line producer is we tend to either expect our 1st ADs to work like us, which is unrealistic, since no two people are alike, or we tend to micromanage. The solution is finding someone whose style may not be exactly like you, in fact, who can complement you with their difference, while respecting them.

This was that guy. A big man with broad shoulders (I later learned his friends called him "Biggs") he was nonetheless always calm and quiet, but when he needed to make a point, everyone listened. He commanded respect because of how he dealt with problems on set and, more importantly, how he dealt with people. We've worked together many times over the years, and never, not once, has anyone come up to me and asked, "why did you hire him?"

Truth be told, I think those same people liked him more than they did me. That's just fine by me - I tended to agree with them.

I love the calm Brian brings to a set. If I come on set as line producer, and things are a little off, I look at Brian, he will shrug his shoulders, then give me a succinct and simply explanation, one that I know that I can trust without an ounce of defensiveness.

Amy was very good as well, but had a very different personality. It was okay, they did complement each other, and I wasn't about to replace either of them.

Yeah, right then I knew what that look Springsteen gave the late/great Clarence Clemons meant. If you ever saw them live, you saw it, and never so much as when Bruce would sing those lines above, "..and the big man joined the band." It meant that finally, everything fit. It's the line I always thought about when Brian would have his first day with us on any shoot.

So, we were a team, a team that would work very well together, on a very creative and funny movie.

This was the beginning....

The Bet (or The Fall of Love) - Part 6 - Love The One You're With

Well, there's a rose in the fisted glove
And eagle flies with the dove
And if you can't be with the one you love honey
Love the one you're with
-Steven Stills

Goodbye to our Idyllic Fall of Love

In light of the previous posts on the carnal adventures on The Bet, the title and lyrics I chose to start this post might seem redundant, yet another indulgence of amorous excesses of a crew on location in a picturesque location.

Actually, it's not that at all, but rather an ironic confluence of past and present.  Last night was the festival premiere of a film I adapted from a stage play for a former student of mine, who directed it.

The circumstances of the film were less than ideal.  The director had decided to shoot it pretty much like a play, without considering the consequences of trying to do all those set changes and making it look real.  Representational sets work in theater, but the camera creates a situation too real to make this work.  Additionally, stage plays are, by nature, dialogue-driven, and the long stretches of dialogue that may have been hilarious in the play drag in a film.

To say he was working with a micro-budget would be kind; his plan was to shoot the film for less than I make most shorts.  Additionally, he was close to shooting when he contacted me about it.

All of this led to me rewriting the script on the fly, sometimes the night before scenes were shot, sometimes the morning of.   Less than ideal.  We should have done a page-one rewrite, and maybe even thought of a way to make it surreal ("Tell them it's a dream sequence").  Maybe we should have picked original material altogether.

The fact is, we did none of those things, and the movie we made is the movie - that's it.  We tinkered in post as much as possible with the material we had, adding some fun found footage.

In the end, we would up with a zany comedy that is still funny, though the director and I find it hard to see the humor, having poured over the footage endless times since it was first shot.  Also, too much dialogue remained even after my cutting and the volume of new lines I gave the cast at the last minute led to us having days where it took forever for the actors to get the lines right as we shot on a schedule that required us to knock of chunks of pages per day because of the budget.

Not a good combination.

As the producing team, we remember those long days, the endless takes, the botched lines, hour eleven on set where it seemed that nothing funny had happened all day.

For a long time, I had a hard time just saying "I wrote the screenplay."  It wasn't, in a perfect world, a "JB" screenplay, not the script I would have written if I were to chose to write a script.  Last night, as we were discussing the screening coming up, the director said, "Don't worry, we'll be at another screening  for another movie we do that's good."

Right then, what we both had known all along crystallized.  This was not the perfect movie, our ideal movie, that movie that is in our mind at one point that we are sure we can make.

Well, kids, grow up, and I direct this as much at myself as the director or anyone out there.  That movie you had in your head rarely gets made, at least frame-by-frame the way you saw it.  You have let others in on that dream - actors, crew, etc, and they have added their dream, and circumstances, especially on a low-budget indie of any level, mean you couldn't just keep shooting until you got it exactly the way you saw it.

The one thing, you can do, though, is stick to your vision, keep fighting for your vision, even if in the end, it doesn't come out exactly they way you imagined.

"Is a dream a lie if it don't come true, or is it something worse?"  Bruce Springsteen's line from The River may be true for a life unfulfilled, but how many of us really live the dream?  We start out with a dream, and we make it the best we can.

The same is true for our movies.  The irony is that you need to fight hard every day for your vision of the film as a director, or it won't even come close, grab and claw and fight to put that vision out there, and in the end, you have to love what you make, even if it isn't quite that.

I started the saga of The Bet with JR and I joking at the screening, commenting on how melodramatic the movie seemed, and to this day, I still think it is.*  We stifled laughs for all the wrong reason.  We had drinks and joked about it afterwards, dismissing Adam's vision, but, you know what?  There was Adam, sitting at that screening, and I'm sure many screenings afterward, enjoying the hell out of it.

JR , Christine and I, as well as the entire crew, had done good.  We helped Adam make the movie he wanted to make, melodrama and all.  As I think back, the same could be said of Lucky Stiffs, a movie I'm sure Matt still holds dearly, and Uzo before him on Walls and Bridges, who made a movie that seemed too real and too tough.  They all made the movie they wanted to make.

A director needs to surround himself with people he can trust, and needs to listen to them when they offer good advice, and take that advice in, and consider it carefully.  That's his responsibility to the project.  Those who advise him or her have a responsibility as well, to keep the director's vision in mind when offering advice; you're making their film, not yours.  Sometimes it can be a fine line between overstepping your bounds on the advice side, and stubbornness on the director's side when they wont listen to those with good advice.  It's a balance you probably never get exactly right, but you need to try.

The movie is your child.  You brought it into the world, now it's your responsibility to see it grow up right, even if it's not as pretty or as smart as you hoped it would be.  You have a responsibility to see it through and give it a good life.

Adam, I know, did that with The Bet.  He got small distribution, enough to make it worth it for him, set up sales for it online before many others were doing that, and came out with something to add to his other accomplishments in life, his jackal of an assistant director or DP be damned.

So, this is a little reminder  to all of you as are in the middle of what seems like it can't be the film you set out to make, on the worst day on set, when you are sure that this is never going to be what you thought it would be - slog on.

Oh, and that screening last night?  To quote my director, "They laughed.   There were genuine laughs." Sure they did.  They didn't know the road it took to get there, they didn't slave over the footage.  They just came to enjoy a movie, to maybe laugh a little.   Isn't that what a comedy is about?  Gotta love that kid!













*While the nature of the film was melodramatic, none of that falls on the actors.  The dialogue tended to lead in that direction, and they were quite talented and grounded the movie as best they could.  The result is miles ahead of what it would have been with a less talented cast.

And now, a little treat from the 70s for those of you who only know them as old men, when their voices and their chops really were that good.

(Un)Lucky Stiffs - Part 4 - Greetings From Asbury Park

When I was in high school, the Jersey shore was a trip from the Bronx to Seaside Heights with fake ID and big dreams.

When I got to college and started working at the radio station, the Jersey shore was a trip to Asbury Park and a hope that in some random night at the Stone Pony, Bruce would walk in and jam with the band.  I mean, we heard that it did happen; why couldn't it happen when we were there?

At some point during the filming of Lucky Stiffs, Asbury Park became my Niagara Falls.  In case you're too young to remember:



(Yes, Abbot and Costello did it as well, multiple times.  Old vaudville routines, like 'Who's on First', made the rounds, and even when they came to movies, since audiences could only see movies in theaters - no  DVDs, no Netflix, no cable, no television -  the idea was you could do the same routine with a slight twist and it would be new for audiences.  Television changed all of that)

Our main location was a warehouse in Brooklyn that got multiple uses.  It was the home of our art department, some main sets, and where we would shoot generic material when we didn't have a set (the location problem) or needed a cover set for weather.

We didn't want to burn our cover sets, as even into early October - we weren't going later than that, remember - we could run into bad weather.

The script required us to shoot one day - actually, about six hours - in Asbury Park.  We had to see the boardwalk and some other attractions.  Glenn, our location manager, with the assistance of NJ Film Commission's David Schooner, had gotten all the clearances for us.

Of course, the scene was about a beautiful, sunny, day so we needed the weather to cooperate.  In those days, you couldn't go to weather.com (didn't exist) to check out hour-by-hour forecasts.  Film companies would often pay a service to a company that would get their information directly from the National Weather Service, and when correct, they could tell you the forecast within a hour or so in any given area.  Farmers used similar services.  For a city boy like me who never needed such services, this seemed like a marvel of modern science.  (Now, of course, you can do it on your phone in a few clicks and we all take it for granted.)

Moving an entire crew with full equipment one-and-a-half hours for crew, and longer for equipment (commercial vehicles could not take the Garden State Parkway)  to a location requires a good deal of planning, and we had that.  We had checkpoints and maps (no GPS - geez, I sound like Stan now) and written directions and times to check in.  As per usual, some of us would go ahead first, Stacey and myself being among them.

That was the plan.

On the first day we planned to shoot Asbury Park, there was about a 50 percent chance of rain.  As I said earlier, I was leery of burning our cover set, and didn't have a lot of location alternatives that I could easily move .  That also meant the art department would have to stop everything and have our cover set.

I laid out a perfect plan, involving all of the drivers checking in with me at a precise time at the office.  I was there an hour before call time (probably looking at 4AM or so) on the phone with the weather service.  JR, Rody, Matt, and probably Stacey and my 2nd AD, Julie, were there as well.

As decision time got closer, it was still a tough call.  Matt and I talked about how much sunshine he really needed, and could we get by if it was clear part of the time, and maybe we shot in looking away from the water or something for a bit.  It wasn't optimum , but there were slight alternatives.  The guy at the weather service gave me hope.

Matt asked me what I thought.  I said considering everything, I thought we needed to give it a shot.  We were behind on locations, and if we kept pushing Asbury Park back, who knew when the weather would work for us, not to mention at some point we would wind up on nights and turnaround would be a problem.

Calls went out and calls came in.  We were on our way.  This was one of those times when someone had to make a decision, and I even remember saying bravely when some of the others were ready to back out that it was my decision, and I would take the responsibility (look in the dictionary under "hubris").

As we headed south on the Garden State Parkway, all signs were positive.  First, there was a slight mist, but as we got about 20 minutes or so from the exit, the sun came out.

I am reminded of that moment in The Perfect Storm when they are in the eye of the storm, and the sun comes out, and everything seems so beautiful.

Then, the skies opened up.

The rain was so hard that I remember saying that maybe this meant it was one of those downpours that comes and goes.  JR and I start talking about how it might look if it's sunny out and the boardwalk is wet, and he says we can make it work, and, in fact, the reflection off the shiny boardwalk might look nice.

Hey, this might all work out.

A little while later, we are standing around in holding, from our vantage point right by the water, looking out at the power of the sea.



Ok, maybe it wasn't that bad, but it was a downpour.  We called the weather service, and they said maybe it would be down to a drizzle by afternoon.  Thanks.

A note about those weather services we paid.  At one point on another shoot I was doing, we were doing a night exterior shoot out in Long Island.  We call ahead to the service, and they said "no chance of rain."  Great.  We get there, and the winds are swirling.  We set up the light stands, but don't raise the heads, out of safety concerns.  I finally get the guy from the weather service on the line (cell reception was bad in these areas in those days).

"Oh, yeah, there's a lot of wind.  You folks are catching the remnants of a hurricane that swept offshore."

"A hurricane?"

"It's not a hurricane now.  It's been downgraded."

"Why didn't you tell me about this?"

"The rain is all offshore.  You only asked me about rain.  You folks shouldn't get any precip (I'm supposed to feel better because he uses cool terms like 'precip').

I only asked about rain?  I didn't ask about tornadoes, either; it's just the type of thing I assumed you'd mention.  "What about the winds?"

"Should be about 40 to 60 miles an hour."

"I can't put light stands up in the air with wind like that."

"Light stands?   You better secure those things.  That sounds dangerous!"

Really?  Thanks for the advice.  Last time I ever paid for a weather service.

Back in Asbury Park, I take JR aside.  I probably sounded a lot like Uzo from a previous post.  Could we cheat some of the shots where we see the characters and the ocean in the background without us being in the rain?  Where, he asks?  With the wind and the rain, even if we found cover, we would get  pelted, not to mention production sound would be useless.

JR and I were talking privately.  Finally, friend that he was, he put his hand on my shoulder, smiled and said,"JB, unless it stops completely, we're screwed."  It's the sort of gallows humor JR and I often shared, but this time, I felt my neck in the noose.  I was the one who said we should come down here, and now we were going to lose a day.

Jeff, our trusted gaffer and meteorologist, looked out at the clouds and said the rain wasn't going anywhere.  I thought that maybe we just didn't have a good enough vantage point.  Without putting on any rain gear, I stormed out of holding, passed Madame Marie's, expecting no good fortune there and headed to the boardwalk.  I perched myself along the boardwalk, looking out at the ocean, getting soaked.  It didn't matter at this point.

Momentarily, I hear footsteps; it was Julie, my loyal 2nd AD.  She was much shorter than me, 5'2" at most, and, at that moment, smarter than me, as she had rain gear.  I shook my head, leaned on the rail, and looked out to the ocean.  She did the same.  Somewhere, someone has a picture of two crazy ADs  looking out at the ocean and getting drenched.

We didn't shoot that day, and as we headed back, there was talk of shooting Asbury Park the next day.  There was still a chance of rain, and I wasn't going to have this happen again.  Rody, of course, was her usual supportive self, reminding me that I had been wrong about today, and that shooting a cover set tomorrow would put stress on her friend's art department.  I didn't care; we were shooting the interior tomorrow.  Trust me on this.

The next day was sunny in New York, and in Asbury Park.

As we struggled with a lack of locations and prepared sets, we headed out to Asbury Park a second time a while later in the schedule.  As we got a little bit outside of the exit, it was a little cloudy.  Please, please, no rain!

No rain.  Fog thick as soup rolled in, fog so thick you couldn't see your hand in front of your face.  Don't ask me about the weather service.

Fog?

JR and I weren't joking as much this time, but, in an effort to cheer me up, he did mention that we hadn't yet seen locust or raining frogs.

There is little worse than objectively knowing you were making the best decisions possible given the information and circumstances at your disposal, yet doubting yourself because the results were so bad.

We did eventually get Asbury Park shot, and it looked great.  Combined with the location problems and the art department problems, though, we did lose days.  At one point, I had to have us down for a few days to regroup and save money from shooting half-days.  Not good.

We were now going to wrap somewhere into the third week of October, and Halloween was looking scary.