Wagons, Ho!

I had drinks the other night with a friend of mine who has done a lot of extra work, as well as some stage work and small film roles. Pete is a cowboy in his spare time (long story), but in real life he has one of those good, government jobs that he can't talk about. Although I don't think it is quite 007 stuff, there is no way to be sure. This works out well for me because we get to talk more about what is going on in my life.

Before my first night of filming some screen tests for, "Charm City", I was a little worried because of some things Pete had told me about being on set: mainly, that it was extremely tedious. It is a lot of hurry-up-and-wait. Being (in my own mind, at least) the quintessential hostess, this concerned me. When you are asking people to give you their time and best effort, you have to make sure they are at least having some fun.

I needn't have worried. Amazingly, everyone showed up on time, or close enough to it. That, as I have been told by anyone I've met in this business, is half the battle. Sean Stanley, the director that evening, kept everything running like clockwork. He ran lines with all of us inbetween takes and whenever the film crew had to move equipment around. Not a moment was wasted. My favorite moments were spent observing his directing tricks, that worked wonders whenever we were struggling with a scene. In one scene, my character confronts Bentley. We were sitting on a sofa and it was difficult to convey the conflict within that confined space. So Sean tells Bentley, "When she confronts you with this, stand up. Get off the couch." Bentley says okay. Sean walks by me before we start the scene again and whispers, "Make sure he doesn't get off the couch."

The look on Bentley's face was priceless when I grabbed a handful of his Joe Banks sweater and threw his skinny Canadian ass back on the sofa.

Three of the four scenes we shot that evening were comedic, and even while we were shooting the one dramatic scene, we mostly laughed any time we weren't filming. Sean and his film crew are fantastic, and the dynamic between the actors (with each other, as well as with the film crew) was light-hearted and fun, but at the same time everyone worked hard and did their best.

That was two weeks ago, and a lot of things have, "shaken out," since then. Some people I thought would be involved in this project might not be, some other people I hadn't really thought about are emerging to the forefront. I was telling my buddy Pete about all this the other night. "I'm not sure what to think," I told him. "Some things are going much better than I could have anticipated. But other things that are happening make me feel like the wheels are coming off the wagon."

Pete just smiled his calm, cowboy smile. "From what I know of the business," he said, sipping his whiskey, "That means you're right on track."