1999 – Pick Ups
“Don’t ever, Ever, EVER, EVER pour from my tap!! HOW DID YOU THINK THAT WAS OKAY!? What would you do if I took one of your film rolls? Would that be OKAY?!” Jimmy was a bar owner downtown and had been nice enough to let me shoot a scene in his downstairs bar, but no one warned me of his volatile nature. I had apparently broken one of his three commandments. An employee of his confided in me later: You don’t ever mess with his Woman, Money, or his Bar.
The man seemed possessed by a devil. His face was red, Grecian eyes darkened even more, veins bulged from his forehead. I could tell he wanted to hit me. Everyone in the bar was staring. He slapped his hand on the bar, hard, “Give me $20!”
“What?”
“Give me $20 NOW!”
The scene was so macabre, so surreal. I was powerless as I watched myself dig into my wallet and meekly hand over the bill. It kinda seemed like he wanted payment for me getting him so angry. But I think it was for the suspected free for all we had with his beer tap. In reality, my actor had only poured two pints for the scene we were shooting. Jimmy wouldn’t have even known about it if I hadn’t offered to pay him for the two drinks.
I would have run out of there, if not for one thing.
“We need to return to finish shooting the scene,” I managed.
He pocketed the $20 and looked at me incredulously. Then he seethed, “It will cost you.”
Of course it will.
I needed a break. The energy needed to muster the troops and go out into the world to do battle against angry actors and raging proprietors was waning inside me. It didn’t help that despite the movie being about 90% shot it still needed a considerable amount of audio work. Due to budget constraints and poor choices, most of the scenes had really noisy backgrounds. This meant we would need to get most of the actors back to re-record their lines in a quiet environment. One of the few things that motivated me was that we were nearly finished with Hernando. He had stayed with the project for 2 years and I needed to get him done.
I never had any regrets casting him. His caliber of acting brought so much value to the project; I still feel lucky to have found him… A scene downtown in an empty parking garage, a scene in front of my cousin’s house, a scene in a café, and we soon had him wrapped. My relief was palpable.
Many of our pick-ups involved another actor I wouldn’t necessarily say was difficult, I think calling her high maintenance would be fair. We’ll call her Ms. Blue Moon. It was difficult to get her to succumb to a few hours to us and our camera. And when we were blessed with that one day, she always had an eye on the clock.
During our shooting I was still trying to figure out what her character was in the story. She was the Mayor’s re-election campaign manager who helps out our detective for a bit and then disappears. I wanted her character more relevant to the plot and was trying out different ideas. I suppose that created some frustration on her part, which she revealed in irritating questions during shooting such as, “Do I have to keep with the script?”
I wanted her character to be duplicitous, perhaps revealing her to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing near the end: someone capable of killing, and is from France. A French assassin! 
We were at the airport. I was apprehensive. My initial call to the airport administrative offices succeeded only in them giving me a list of applications and insurance forms I needed. And I didn’t want to explain that in the scene, the French assassin wouldn’t kill anyone in the airport, it would just be implied by her pulling a syringe from her purse in placing it in her pocket. Bureaucrats tend to not understand artist types and often take things literal. I could imagine them denying my application not liking the idea of an assassin in their midst, French or otherwise. Surely that would be a security breach.
So… what would they do if we just showed up with a small camera with a tripod – local news style? That was one source of my apprehension.
We were bunkered down inside the airport coffee shop, about to step out into the busy main thoroughfare in front of the shops and shoot the brief scene with Ms. Blue Moon. Unfortunately we were late.
After apologizing, I cut to the chase, “Okay, you ready? You got your lines ready?”
“Oh, I forgot to tell you. I kept playing phone tag with whats-her-name.”
I hesitated. Whats-her-name was to help with her French dialogue, “So how are you going to say your lines?”
“I’ve been replaying her saying the lines on my mini-recorder. I think we should be okay.”
“I’d feel better if you tried calling her now. She’s the only one who can verify that you’re saying things correctly.”
“Okay, I don’t have any more minutes on my cell.”
“You can use the public phone.”
“Where are they?”
“I don’t know. I’m sure they’re around here somewhere.”
“Do you have change?”
“Here.”
She looks at me, “Are you okay? You look nervous.”
