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Diary August 9 Today was our first day of shooting with our full crew. I left our motel room before seven in search of coffee for everyone. I walked around a couple blocks near our hotel and all the coffee joints were closed.This was the day after the big motorcycle rally, the Monday after the rally and after a big concert near Whitehall, and the town was quiet. A few well dressed people made their way to their jobs, but for the most part the city was silent. I came back and then set out at 20 after 7 to go just a little farther. After going up and down the streets of uptown Butte I finally found a place that opened at 7 and poured out five large cups of coffee coffee there, at Java John's. Back at the motel (we had taken a room in a corner of the motor hotel next to the Finlen hotel, because the rooms inside were all taken for the weekend and, we assumed, the Bike Rally) room Dan and Rob were waking and preparing for the shoot. Kristine was sacked out and looked like she would remain that way for a while. Before long, Sam, our star, arrived, and we were soon on our way for the scenes we would shoot at the Berkeley Pit. Because we were shooting guerilla style and had no permits we arrived early, a little after eight, and were hoping that we wouldn't run into many other people. In fact a couple had arrived just before us, but they left soon and we were able to shoot pretty much unhampered for over an hour. Sam had never before seen the pit so we shot her walk into it as one long take to make the most of her reaction. She was nearly crying as we walk out of the long tube to it (you approach it through a log tunnel like an underground mine passage) and reached the observation deck. This huge former open pit mine was always an awe-inspiring place, and now, full with water and reflecting the sky, it would be difficult to imagine it not having some impact on everyone who visits it. The last hour that we were at the Pit, more people began to arrive. Because Dan was dressed as Frank, in his miner's uniform, a number of the tourists thought he was some kind of interpretive history guide, and asked him about the Pit and about Butte. He acted, answering as best he could. I shot all the scenes hand held, blowing out many of the backgrounds, but having a very fun time.
The last few shots we made we had to interrupt several times as groups of tourists filed past us. We waited for them to go through and then we continued. After the Pit scenes were completed we went back to the motel room to pick up Kristine, and then went to our location near the pit on the east side of Butte. The east side of Butte, the area that had been largely a working class neighborhood, had been demolished in the late sixties and early seventies. The Anaconda Company eyed the area for future expansion of the Berkeley Pit but the Pit closed long before it had a chance to eat up that land. But despite that, most of the buildings there were demolished, and just a few remain, spots of brick and wood in a vast prairie of dead grass and scarred earth. We shot first the scenes of Irene following Frank to the Pit, and then we shot the scenes of Frank digging in the dirt and burying back the bits of copper that he was trying to bury. As a guerilla filmmaker, these scenes were perhaps the ones I was most looking forwards to being done with, because we had no permits and I wondered how much of a problem that might present if someone asked us what we were doing. Rob said that as we were finishing he saw a police car drive by, but nothing came of that. After a return to the motel and some lunch, we found Megan, who had come up from Bozeman and, not finding us at the motel, had gone off to explore thrift stores. Next we moved on to the El Toro restaurant. Rob and I had come up with the restaurant scene, one of the first in the film, on our trip to Butte a couple years ago. The restaurant was one of our first stops in Butte, and we had a waitress who kept coming back and asking us if we needed anything else. Sitting in the restaurant back then, we came up with pretty much the scene that we filmed this afternoon. We were let into the restaurant by Gil, but after some time John and Ernie, the brothers who shared ownership of it with other family members, arrived. Rob took polaroids so we could put the place back together as we found it when we had finished. We moved a couple tables slightly and began shooting right away. In most cases I covered the scenes in long master shots, and then covered individual details. The restaurant was full of mirrors, so I was constantly on the lookout for how to avoid getting me and the camera in them, as well as avoiding getting our PAs Dan and Megan showing up somewhere. Depsite my vigilance, they showed up in mirrors in a number of the long shots. The filming went smoothly and we finished way ahead of schedule. We had nearly two hours to relax before dinner and the evening's shooting. After dinner Sam and I walked the streets of Uptown near the hotel to get some shots of Irene walking through Butte. From one of the bars on Main Street issued a couple, with a woman walking many steps behind a man and screaming murder at him. This dimmed our mood, as did the clouds, which kept away the magic hour light that I hoped to use for these shots. Back at the Finlen, Rob had dressed the hotel room that Kristine and I shared to fill in for a room back home where Irene and her friend, played here by Megan, browsed the web for sites on genealogy and Butte. We shot a bit of that and then I shot Dan's voice-overs for Frank. Then we all went to the Silver Dollar Salloon for a couple beers and some pool. The pool games got very silly but I was so very happy. Here we were in Butte actually putting all this stuff on tape, really making our movie! This page last updated 21 August 1999 http://www.sloppyfilms.com/buttemagic/diary89.html
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