Diary 8/12/99

Our film is about coincidence and this project has involved so many coincidences. From meeting Paul Rose at the Haufrau in Bozeman to all the other circles of meeting and seeing people. Today our film crew and cast diminished as people left. Dan and Kristine left early so that Kristine could catcher her flight back to Minneapolis and Dan headed on to Big Sky. Rob and Sam and I left early to go to Anaconda, where Sam and I caught a bus and I filmed her riding into town.

The distance from Anaconda to Butte is the largest superfund site in the U.S., and this can be seen in part in all the stunted trees growing between the two cities. The arsenic from the Smelter in Anaconda killed nearly all plant life between the two cities, and it was only after the Smelter shut down in the 80s that small, strangely shaped trees began to grow in the polluted land. The trees first all poked up like stubble on a face. That is how it struck me when I made that trip in the mid-eighties, after only a few years without the smelter operating. Today the trees continue to stand at a variety of short lengths, still looking like slightly longer stubble in the face, and shaped as if they were clipped by Edwards Scissorhands. They came in all kinds of bizarre shapes, and as we drove into Butte on the bus I tried to concentrate the camera on these strange trees.

Meanwhile, Rob had raced ahead to the bus station to meet us and to film the bus coming in. But our bus, instead of going to the bus station in Butte, first went to a casino a couple blocks away from the bus station for a breakfast stop. I filmed Sam walking off the bus from the inside and the outside after the bus emptied of passengers for breakfast and then we walked the three blocks to the bus station. As we got to the station we saw Rob walking toward us. We went back to his car and then he realized that he had locked the doors with his keys inside. We waited across the street from the bus station as he went to our caterers, The Front Street Market, to call for a locksmith. We taped some of the locksmith for the "Making of" video and then set to filming the walk up Main Street.

I filmed Sam as she walked up most of Main Street, from the bus station on Front Street to Main and Park. Rob drove along behind us and drove us a few blocks up the street. He filmed the filming with the Hi 8 camera.

About a block before we reached the Scandia Bar, I saw a woman watching as we walked up the street. She was watching our filming, and as we got close to the bar she greeted us as if she had been waiting for us for a long time. She welcomed us into the bar and told us about the great tin ceiling. I shot a shot of Sam looking into the bar and then the woman told us that we should interview some of the men who were sitting at the bar. She said that they were all miners. We told her that we had a schedule to keep to and I shot Sam walking out of the bar. These men sitting around the corner of the bar in that dark ancient room in that dark ancient Scandia Hall on a day that was turning sunny and Montana humid with puffy clouds was an image that I didn't turn the camera to but still is vivid in my mind.

After filming Sam's arrival at to the corner of Park and Main and the El Toro Cafe, the three of us went to Jan's Dippin Diner for lunch. After lunch we moved our things to our third hotel room of this trip.

Then, after a costume change, both for Sam and I, as I put on a white shirt to play the Archive Librarian, we went to the Butte Silver Bow Archives to shoot our archives scenes. Ellen Crane helped us to shoot some research scenes as well as the scene where Irene offers to donate some photos and through that gets the tape that tells her about Hail Mary Harrington.I played the librarian, my bit part, as Rob filmed. Earlier Rob had played the role of the driver who takes Sam to the Berkeley Pit. We two filmmakers had our important bit parts as strangers who give Irene important clues.

All we had left after the Archives scenes were the scenes of Irene walking through uptown and some neighborhoods, the scenes that we had postponed yesterday because of rain. But as we walked away from the Archives Building we noticed some very heavy grey clouds heading east. We went back to our hotel room for a costume change for these scenes and walked a block to shoot the first of these last scenes. The wind was blowing, so we could not film the first scene we planned to because it would not match scenes that we had shot earlier. So Sam and I went quickly to the Copper Block to film while Rob went back to get his car. We quickly shot some scenes there and by the time Rob drove up we were ready to get in his car because the rain started to fall. We went back to the hotel room and watched as a rain storm rolled in and dropped half an inch of rain. Rob and I relaxed as Sam went to the store and after a while the storm had cleared up enough that we went out to shoot the rest of the shots we needed to do today.

We shot a few scenes of Sam looking around Uptown and then went up to Centerville to shoot. We walked along a street in Centerville that had a sidewalk high above the street. I shot up as Sam walked up the street toward the Pit, and then shot from a high angle to show the wood sidewalks as we walked down the other side of the street. There were a whole bunch of dogs up there and a ramshackle house with screaming drunken voices issuing from within.

We then went back near the Finlen to shoot the scenes of Irene watching Frank bury something the first time. After this we were back in the hotel room as Sam changed to the period dress. We got a number of looks as Rob and I walked with Sam in her dress with big 1890's hat near some buildings on Granite Street and then in front of the Copper King Mansion and the Art Chateau, two west side mansions that were owned by W.A. Clark and his son Charles. This was the "martini" shot, as Rob explained. In shoots the last setup before finishing the whole thing, the principle photography was called the "Martini." I felt ready for one.

We then said goodbye to Sam, who drove back to Bozeman, and Rob and I went to the Ippity Bop. It was open mic night and the place was filled with people. We listened to an odd jazz trio that invited guest solosists on a number of instruments. We also saw Sam's friend Deb, who showed up with her date who, as she and Sam said last night, was set up by her sister.

Rob and I celebrated the end of principle photography.

Afterwards, in our hotel room, Rob lined up all the Madonnas in his big box of them onto a shelf along the wall so that he could decide on which ones to give away to whom. We had a wall of Madonnas along the wall in our south facing room in the Finlen hotel.

Left for us was a day to get a few more shots and also just relax a little after a busy but really fun and rewarding and actually a great form of vacation. We had already filled eleven hours of tape and still had a number of scenes and Voice overs to shoot in Bozeman on Saturday and Sunday. This film has been all about coincidences and chance occurences and strangeness. Although our film is really just our dream of Butte, I felt very much, sitting in the Ippidity Bop and luxurting in Butte eccentricity, that it might be something in the spirit of Butte. Rob suggested we watch our rushes but I was not in the mood for it. I was tired and not ready for the reality that things could be wrong with all that we had done.

Diary Entry, 8/13/99

Diary Entry, 8/20/99

This page last updated 21 August 1999

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