 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
||||||||
 |
||||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
||||
Diary 8/10/99 Last night the crew had a good time playing pool and drinking beer at the Silver Dollar Salloon. But the two beers I had there made me a little weary, and tho other members of the cast and crew continued the party at the Cavalier lounge in our hotel, I went to bed. I felt those two beers in the morning, and woke up pretty woozy. But I still made the trek to Java John's to pick up coffee and had it waiting for everyone by 8. We were aiming for a 9 a.m. call and a trip to the cemetaries to film the scenes there. We made it close to 9, tho I had to lie down for a few minutes after breakfast to gather up the energy to get going.
The cemetary scenes involved all three actors. We shot it mainly in continuity, but because we took some artistic license with our story and put Frank Little's grave in the same cemetary as Mary Harrington's, it wasn't quite all in continuity. Frank Little's grave was in the Mountain View cemetary, and Mary Harrington's was in St. Patrick's cemetary, the old Catholic cemetary, and a much more interesting background. First we shot in St. Patrick's, making our only synch sound scene, Frank walking and telling the Frank Little story. Then we shot the scenes of Irene listening to the Dublin Gulch oral history tape, and her discovery of Emily at the grave of Mary Harrington. We then went to Mountain View to film the scenes at Frank Little's grave. Last week his grave had been surrounded by tall weeds but sometime in between then and today the weeds had been mowed down. We didn't quite get the weedy effect around the grave that we had hoped for, but I did shoot through some nearby weeds to get some kind of effect. By noon we were wrapping up the cemetary scenes and it was hot and sunny in Butte. We were feeling a little tired of it, at least I was, having a headache and queasiness for most of the morning. I swore off alcohol and took a nap at noon. We then ate lunch and went over to Frank Rapallo's house to shoot the scenes in Emily's house with all the Madonnas. We collected Madonnas on the living room floor and first arranged them in the hallway in the house. When we got up to actually look closely at the shrine Frank kept in his basement we realized that there were not as many Madonnas as we first thought, and most of the candles were dedicated to St. Barbara, who didn't look quite like the blessed virgin, so the Madonnas did not quite look as thick as we had hoped. We shot several takes of the scene where Emily leads Irene through the house and past the Madonnas and then moved madonnas into the kitchen so that Emily could lead Irene through there.We were reusing our limited Madonna supply to make it seem like there were more than there really were. We shot the scenes with Frank on the back porch, listening to a rock, and telling Irene that her grandmother must be somewhere under ground. After shooting a couple takes of this Sam and I realized that she really didn't understand the scene. Frank said that Irene's great grandmother must be somewhere underground. Irene hears this and realizes that there must be some tangible thing from her great-grandmother, like a name on her gravestone, somewhere in the cemetary. She has been looking for something, something of a sign of her great-grandmother, so this comes as an important realization. I explained this and Sam seemed much more confident of her acting for the scene. We also realized that Kristine, as Emily, was saying that Irene was looking for her great grandmother Mary Harrington. This was going to be a silent film and I wasn't too concerned about this, but we reshot the scene anyway. What we did not reshoot was the walk through the kitchen, and that didn't quite turn out as well as I had hoped. Then we lined up Madonnas again on the front porch for the scene where Irene comes up to the house. Some of the absurdities of this project were hitting home when Dan made a joke about how easily Irene followed this strange Emily into her house. Kristine had asked me if she should still be wearing her nametag for this scene, at home, and I told her yes. Would somebody have followed someone still wearing a name tag and sitting on her front porch polishing a madonna through her house? I don't know. Sometimes I wonder how this film is really going to turn out. It was written in a slightly Kafkaesque humor style, but will people laugh absolutely at it and think it a bomb for that? I still enjoy the project very much but I do have doubts. After a lot of time setting up and taking down madonnas in various rooms of Frank's house we packed up and headed back to the hotel. My mother had arrived, coming through and stopping at our hotel for the night, and we met with her briefly. The motel was getting crowded with young people, maybe army recruits here at the recruiting station that was in the lobby of the Finlen. After an hour break, Rob and I shot the hotel scenes with Sam. We used the blinds on the window to help light scenes of her reading books on Butte and going through her photo collection. Rob then left and I did the scripted voice-overs with her. We all met together for pizza at the Ippity Bop cafe and then we went to the Irish Times pub for beer and, for me, a 7Up. On the way there we had look into the Club 13, a stop we had made before and a place that was usually quite empty. It was packed tonight, while the Irish Times, usually full, was empty. As Sam, Kristine and I went up to our hotel room we spied Dan, Megan and Rob walking down Broadway, in the direction of the Club 13. They were keeping the night alive while I, working on this diary, was ready for bed. This page last updated 21 August 1999 http://www.sloppyfilms.com/buttemagic/diary810.html
|
