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It was now three days later and time to shoot our second day of filming in L.A., which was to be a half day at the studio again. Set builder Ron Hamill had constructed a false interior of the semi truck's trailer for the scene where Vogel and Carey (David and Windham) explore the interior after hearing a strange noise. We couldn't shoot this in Indiana, as we needed five coffins and had no access to them there.

Now, Clifton the DP had had a few days to himself to explore the city and several times a day I'd receive a phone call or text messages about his adventures. It made me giggle at how everything was amazing to him:

WOW! I'M AT THE CHINESE THEATER!
OMG! I SEE THE PANAVISION BUILDING!
MAN, THERE'S THE HOLLYWOOD SIGN!

And my favorite excerpt from a phone conversation: "I went to a bar last night and oh my god! The women! The ugliest one there would be a "10" in Indiana!"

Clifton and I also had a heart-to-heart at one point where he told me that he was thinking of moving to L.A. but was concerned about not seeing his daughter as often. She was ten now, and was more interested in visiting her friends than him. I told him that was probably true of kids in general, and he should think of his career now, as a productive future for him meant a better future for her in terms of paying for college, a car and other expenses down the road. (He applied for a DP position on an independent film being shot out here, but when he didn't get it, he fizzled out on the idea of coming out here, turning his attention to Orlando, Florida, instead.)

So we showed up on the set at 9:00am (on time for a change) and the first thing we all see are the coffins. There were six of them, all different styles and materials. There was a big heavy wooden one, a silver-colored metal one, a battered-looking one with a window over the face (which reminded me of the Great Duquesne's coffin from TWO ON A GUILLOTINE) and a few others. Everyone stood around looking at them, and I said, "Okay, who's going to be the first one to try one out?", thinking everyone would p*ssy out.

But Windham shrugged and said, "I'll try the wooden one. He opened the lid and slid his slim body inside the fabric-lined box. I whipped out my cell phone and took a picture of him.



Not to be outdone, David opened the lid of the one next to it and hopped inside.



Windham wouldn't get out of his until David did, so they both laid there in a sort of "coffin-off".



Now, after watching them, my DP Clifton had to try one out.



In fact, when all was said and done, the only person who DIDN'T get in one was...me. I flatly refused. When it comes to my life, the universe has always enjoyed dealing out ladles of irony, and getting in a coffin and pretending to be dead was just too great a temptation for the fates. So I said no.

The trailer set was twenty feet long, eight feet wide and about fourteen feet high. The left wall consisted of removable flats so we could get a long dolly shot of the guys as they walked through the trailer. Now, Ron has gone to great lengths to make his set look like the actual interior of the real trailer. But the shot began in almost pitch black darkness. It's a bit cartoony, but fun: the guys enter the trailer with only a penlight and a cell phone screen for illumination, and as the trailer is so dark, all you see on the black screen is the two little sources of light. As they make their way toward the back, we get more light, enough to see their faces, where they have dialogue.

We did not have a proper sound guy, so I was forced to record the sound on an HD mini-DV tape with an external shotgun mic connected to the Sony V1U camera. The mic was on a boom pole, which Mike the PA held. Being of small stature, he had to hold it very high to keep it out of frame, but he did very well. We tore through the shots and finished on time. After having their makeup removed, Windham, David, Clifton, Carolina (who subbed for Travis on makeup that day) and I all hugged deeply. We had been through so much together and would not see each other until we returned to Indiana to finish our final few days.

Now, the producer had called me to see how everything was going. Living in San Diego, he was a bit out of the loop as far as the production went and had to rely on reports from me and the still photographer, Jay. But he was very happy with how everything was going...until we started talking about the budget.

"Well, due to the rain, we've gone over budget," I said, feeling really guilty.

"How much?" he asked.

"About nine thousand dollars." There was no response on the other end of the phone. "And, we have to go back and shoot for a few more days, which will probably cost about another twelve."

"You know, this wasn't what we talked about when we first started this project," he said. "I know it's not your fault, and I'm not mad at you, but if I knew it was going to cost this much, I would never had financed it."

My heart sank. On the set, Dennis had been so excited that he had greenlit the next project. Now, I wondered if it was in jeopardy.

"Yes, I know," I said, "but you've gone too far to stop now."

I felt like I'd let him down, but my problem was that I should have budgeted a contingency plan in case of unforeseen events.

But I had to press ahead. The 2nd wave of shooting in Indiana lay ahead and had to be planned out. Who would return? Who would WANT to return? And although my mother had told me that it hadn't rained a single day since we'd left (figures. See what I mean about the universe?), I wanted to make sure that THIS time, I would be ready in case it did.

Plus, I still hadn't figured out how to change the ending. But a peek at the rushes would give me a brilliant idea.

To be continued...

DOCTOR 13

After looking at the remaining shots yet to be filmed, I determined that we could finish the film in three nights, given clear skies. Now it just depended on which set of dates to return: end of July or end of August. Clifton the DP wanted us to shoot the end of July but I knew it was because he wanted to make money right away. Sonny the Sound Guy couldn't work either set of dates so a new sound man had to be found. Rick the Gaffer couldn't come back, either, as he was working around the country. So we pretty much needed a new team of grips and sound. My husband Cliff would AD and a pal of mine from film school, Mike Weaver, volunteered to drive down from Chicago and PA. So, based on Clifton's suggestion, I hired the guy who rented us the camera for the first shoot, Mitch, to Gaff and Jeremy and Josiah as new grips. The tight-lipped Dustin would return as Key Grip. Jennifer could only work one night as the production manager, and Travis couldn't return to do makeup, so he sent Carolina back to take his place. Derek was hired to be our new sound man, and for the first time, special attention had to be made for someone's diet. He was a vegan, but he told me that simply having a bowl full of carrots, celery, apples, bananas and granola bars would suit him fine.

Now, Cliff felt that we should shoot at the end of August to guarantee rainless nights and to give us the maximum amount of time to prep for the shoot. But I felt that would be too long of a wait. The decision was made for us when Krystal Main, who had to return as the vampire girl told us she was on vacation in August and not available. End of July it would be.

The manager of the Motel 6 told us he would give us the same rate as before, so I put everyone up there again, except for Cliff and myself. We would stay at my parents' house this time, which was three miles away from the location and five miles from the motel. I had bought a male mannequin for one of the final scenes, and had it delivered to my folks' house. It was a tall, muscular form that was anatomically "suggestive", and we put it together and set it up in their garage to await execution. My mother got embarrassed by the nude plastic form and afraid someone would see him and think she was weird, decided to cover him up. She also named him "George."



As the days passed, my mother, who obviously had nothing better to do, began to accessorize George.



Then one day I got a weird phone call from someone at the junkyard. Again, my first thought was that they weren't going to let us come back, but while it wasn't that, it was certainly strange.

SIR: "Mark, I have a question for you: did you wire a building while you guys were here?"

Me: "Wire a building? What do you mean?"

SIR: "You know, wire a building for sound."

Me: "I'm sorry, I still don't understand what you're talking about."

SIR: "The old manager seems to know what we're discussing in our private business meetings, so we were wondering if he asked you to wire a building for sound so that he could sit in his living room and listen to us talk."

Me: "Are you asking me if we bugged your buildings?!"

SIR: "That's right."

Me: "Uh, no, we didn't. In fact, I don't think we'd even know how to do that."

SIR: "All right. We just didn't know how he seems to know what we've been discussing."

Me: "I can assure you that we did not bug your meeting room."

SIR: "Well, I had to ask. When are you coming back?"

Me: "End of July."

SIR: "Good. We'll see you then."

Click.

We had moved from filmmakers to potential spies. I wondered in what direction our legends would go next.

The ending of the film was still in question. We couldn't burn the pickup truck, nor would the scrapyard allow us to move it elsewhere and burn it. They would sell it to me and allow me to move it then, but their rival junkyard wouldn't let us burn it there, either. What to do?

Hello, I'm William Castle...er, Mark Bessenger, and you've reached the SPOILER BREAK. I am going to describe how the ending of the movie got changed, but for those of you who hate spoilers, I am going to type it in black. If you wish to read it, you must highlight the text. For those of you who wish to see the ending of the movie as virgins (to the movie, anyway), then skip over and continue. There is no Coward's Corner, but I invite you to return after viewing the film and see how the process happened. So I'm turning out the lights on the text... On we go:

The problem was this: Cary and Vogel are trapped in the cab of the pick-up truck with Vampire Girl outside trying to get in. We had already shot this footage. What needed to happen was to get the guys out and Vampire Girl, or "Chickula", as we sometimes called her, inside. Then the truck had to be destroyed with the fanged lassie still trapped within. The guys had already soaked her with diesel fuel, and Cary was to grab a lantern left by the junkyard owner and set her on fire, burning her inside the cab. But that was now out. What could I do instead?

I was looking at the rushes and was checking out a scene that Clifton wanted to re-shoot if we had time. It was a bit of dialogue between Cary and Vogel in front of a big crane with a claw on it. They walk off and that's the end of that. Suddenly, a bomb went off in my head! The CRANE! If we couldn't burn the truck, we would CRUSH IT! Excitedly, I called the manager of the scrapyard and told him my plan. "Sure, we can do that," he said. "In fact, I will operate the crane myself, and since you're crushing it here, you won't have to buy it. We'll just throw it on the scrap pile when you're done." I smiled and breathed a sigh of relief. Not only would we have an equally exciting ending, but now we weren't doing two burn gags in a row (more on that later). I thanked the guy and hurriedly called all the principal parties who got equally excited about the new plan.

Since we would see Vampire Girl inside the cab of the pickup, we had to get a female mannequin. I ordered just the upper torso of one, since it would be sitting on the seat and only visible from the waist up anyway, and had it shipped to my parents. My mother, upon receiving it, promptly put her next to George in the garage, dubbed her "Georgette" and threw a towel over her naked upper body. I'm surprised she didn't marry them.  I needed a long, dark brown wig for Georgette, and put in a call to my pal porn directrix Chi Chi LaRue to ask her where I could get a cheap wig in town.  She sent me to Hollywood Wigs, telling me if she'd had one herself she would have given it to me.  I zipped downtown and picked up the wig for $45.  When I told the owner what it was for, she carefully brushed it out so it would look nice.

So Cliff booked plane tickets for the actors, Carolina and ourselves. I was going out first to set things up, two days ahead of everyone to make sure things were set and ready to go. Then Cliff would fly in for a few days, as he was unable to stay the length of the shoot (he had to return to work the following Monday so he could set up an important meeting at his job), then the actors would arrive two days later, then the crew. I warned everyone that even though the shoot was going to be three nights, we would be in Indiana for five, so in case we ran into a problem, we had two contingency days to reshoot. They were fine with that. If we don't need them, I said, you are free to change your flight to return home early--on your own dime--otherwise you can just chill in Indiana for a couple of days. Mom told me they were starting to get rain again, in short bursts, but still showers nonetheless, and she warned me that the weather was like a damp rag drying in an oven. But it didn't matter to me. I didn't care how hot it was, as long as it didn't rain.

I flew in on Tuesday. On the trip from Dallas to Louisville, I got upgraded to first class where the flight attendant kept pouring wine into my glass throughout the flight. I can hold my liquor pretty well, and wasn't even tipsy when we landed, but when I got into my mom's car, the first thing she said was "What have you been drinking?" lol. I guess I should have taken the breath mint I was offered.

They had my room prepared, thumbtacking a blanket over the windows to keep the sun out when we began shooting nights. We had a nice dinner and caught up on everything that had happened in the four weeks that we were gone, which took five minutes. I went to bed, thinking about the next day. I had to go to SIR to make sure they were still expecting us and make sure the truck was still there, then back to Louisville to pick Cliff up at the airport, then back again that night to get the actors. Things seemed to be going smoothly this time around, and I was confident that it would be a smooth shoot.

Of course, nothing goes the way you think it does, but while I had been fretting on the film's ending, a situation would arise that would make me consider a question I never thought I'd have to deal with: how do you shoot a movie without actors?

To be continued....

DOCTOR 13

I was to pick up the actors that evening at Louisville airport, then my husband Cliff the next day. Jay, the production photographer, was flying in that afternoon but picking up his rental car and hanging out there to bring two of the actors and Carolina the makeup girl back with him to the Motel 6. My flight in two days before had been very easy, as had Jay's: "I'm here! I'll just be here reading magazines at the airport!"

Checking my watch, I had to run over to Southern Indiana Recycling for a meeting with the on-site and operations managers, and found them both there talking to Delbert and a couple other employees. I embarrassed myself when I didn't recognize the on-site manager, even thought I'd spoken with him in person before, but to be fair, the sun was behind him and he was in silhouette. The operations manager was new to me, although he had been the one who called me to ask if the buildings were bugged. I explained that we would be there Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, then we should be finished. I also wanted to shoot my new ending on Saturday night. This is where the first snag of the new shoot began. "I'm not doing your new ending Saturday night," the on-site manager said (he had graciously offered to operate the required machinery himself). "I'll do it Friday night or Monday night, but when I leave here for the weekend, I'm gone." I told him I'd have to check with the actress playing the vampire girl and get back to him. This was not good. I wanted to shoot the new ending on Saturday night so I could shoot a vampire's demise by fire early the next morning. While they had nixed the idea of my burning the pick-up truck, I had decided to shoot the burning vampire scene anyway, but make it the last thing we did, so if we were caught and they threw us out, at least everything would be in the can. Devious, I know, but I was desperate.

A phone call to Krystal Main confirmed my fears. She couldn't change her flight to Monday because she couldn't get off work. She had to come in on Friday, and we needed the pickup truck for other scenes on Saturday, so we couldn't destroy it Friday night. It was then that I made the realization that we didn't NEED her for the new ending! We would shoot everything with her involving the truck, send her home, shoot everything else involving the pickup on Saturday, then do the new ending on Monday night! In fact, this prompted me to rearrange the schedule. We would not shoot Thursday night, but instead shoot Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday and make them really easy nights. Cliff wasn't happy about this, because he had to leave on Sunday to go back to work, but I consoled him with the knowledge that he'd only be missing one night. "Yeah, but it's the big night!" he bemoaned.

The manager okayed the new plan and everything was set. It was now five o'clock. Jay was still at the airport, thumbing through magazines, I assumed, and I was due to meet them at the Motel 6 to check them in at eight. Then, my phone rang. It was one of the actors.

"Mark, we're in Chicago at O'Hare. Our flight has been cancelled."

The back of my neck instantly got cold, then hot, then prickly. "What? Why?"

"Apparently there's a big thunderstorm in mid-Indiana that the plane would have to fly through, and they say it's not safe, so they cancelled the flight. We were on the tarmac about to leave when they brought us back!"

"So what are they going to do?" I asked.

"We're on standby for the next flight," he said. "But they only have four spaces and there's about twenty of us, so I don't know what our chances are. I'll keep you informed." I called Jay and told him what had happened, asking him if he wanted to go ahead and leave for the motel, but he refused, saying he didn't mind continuing to wait on the off chance that they made it in.

Crossing my fingers, I sat down to dinner with my folks, wondering what the outcome of this would be between bites of mashed potatoes and cooked peas. What if they didn't get here at all? How would I shoot the movie with no actors? The phone rang again about an hour later.

"We didn't get on the flight," he said. "They told us we are definitely on the next one, but that isn't until ten o'clock tomorrow morning."

"What?!" I yelled. "So what are they going to do for you?"

"What do you mean?"

"They cancelled the flight, you didn't," I said. "How are they going to take care of you? Are they putting you up in a hotel for the night?"

"We're checking on that now," he said.

It turned out that American Airlines would not put the trio up for the night. The best they would do is give them the address of a hotel FIFTEEN MILES AWAY where they could get a discounted room, but they HAD TO GET THERE THEMSELVES!! I called American and explained the situation to a rep who told me that it wasn't AA who was doing this, but rather the airport itself. "The airline didn't cancel the flight," she said, "the airport did. So we don't feel responsible for the passengers. It's just our policy."

"So everyone on that flight is just supposed to wander the airport all night until ten tomorrow morning?"

"Unfortunately, that's the way it works," she said, giving me this piece of advice before hanging up: "Tell them to be forceful with the person behind the desk. Not rude, but stern. It works better than you'd think."

I phoned the group back and was told that they had found a cheap motel and gotten a room together. They would be on the plane in the morning and see me around lunchtime. Bidding them goodnight, I then called Jay and explained the situation to him. He cheerfully agreed to leave and head for the motel. When I met him there an hour later, he had already been checked in. The manager remembered him and went ahead and gave him his key.

Since I was out, I grabbed a bag of White Castles and headed back to my folks' house, where I found them asleep in their chairs in front of a TV set blaring Bonanza on the Western Channel. They woke up and Mom headed upstairs. Dad ate two of my mini-burgers then followed her. I called Cliff and told him of the problem, then went upstairs myself.

The next morning was going to be busy. The wandering trio would arrive at eleven, Cliff at two, and David at five. The crew would be showing up on the set Friday night then going to their rooms after we wrapped the next morning. The shots were spread out over four days, which would make this a pretty easy production. I got a phone call from the trio saying that they had gotten on the plane just fine and were about to take off. Jay volunteered to go down and pick them up. I would meet them at the motel to give them their keys. Three keys for three people, although two of them now had a secret. A secret, that had I known, would have saved me a motel room rental. But more on that, later.

I showed up at the motel, only to be told that they were all at the nearby Cracker Barrel having lunch, so I headed over there. I sat with them and had a glass of orange cream soda and chatted for about ten minutes before I had to leave for Louisville to pick up Cliff. They showed me some video they'd shot on their cell phone of the previous night. Apparently, by the time they arrived at the hotel, they were so punchy from all the airport mess that they'd gone nuts, laughing and shouting and jumping up and down on the beds. And no, they wouldn't give me the footage to post here. Darn it.

I picked Cliff up at SDF and filled him in on the way to Mom and Dad's. I had cancelled shooting for Thursday night and had added Sunday and Monday, effectively using all our contingency days. "It better not rain," he said, "or you're screwed." He was right, but I was checking my phone's weather channel app every few hours and it still called for clear skies all four nights.

Jay called me later to tell me that he had picked up David and that they were all back at the motel, safe and raring to go to work the next night. The caterer was paid and we would all be well-fed. The equipment had been rented with a special arrangement for everything to be carefully cleaned upon return (although not for the same low price I had originally gotten). And the new ending was a "go" for Monday night. Although this created a new problem.

As I said, I wanted to do the vampire burn gag as the very last thing we shot in case we got thrown out of the location. It had to be done at dawn for the right light. Even though the burning itself would only take less then a minute, shooting it Tuesday morning meant we might run into the men showing up for work. I needed to find out when their day began. Dawn was at six-thirty. Even though the burn itself would last less than a minute, if the workers were there, it would have to be cancelled...and I NEEDED that scene.

To be continued...

DOCTOR 13

It was now Friday. The crew would be arriving that day, and all the actors were here...save one. Krystal Main was also having flight trouble. She was expected to arrive in the morning, but her flight had been delayed and she was now arriving in the afternoon. Jay again volunteered to pick her up, getting the most use out of his rental car. I told him to take her straight to the set, as putting her in the extensive vampire makeup was a three- to four-hour task, and she wouldn't have time to go to the motel, unpack and rest before the shoot. She also needed to go back the next morning, so when she was done, she would only have time to be driven back to the motel, take a shower, then head for the airport.

Tonight was not a difficult shoot, really. We had to get all of Vampire Girl's shots, of which there were about twelve, but they were in three different locations. Clifton the DP asked me to try and set up my shot list according to angle, then shot size, so they wouldn't have to switch lens as often. "It doesn't matter if we have to jump back and forth ten, twenty, forty pages in the script," he said, "it's more important to shoot the film this way." I reminded him that it was more important to him to shoot the film that way, but there were other issues to consider: do the actors need special effects makeup? Would they have to switch between clean clothes and dirty clothes? Would the set have to be re-dressed in a major way? I would try to set up the shots for camera, but camera was not the top man on the totem pole. Not on a low-budget film like this.

At 3:30pm, Cliff and I returned to the Southern Indiana Recycling facility for shooting. I wish I could say I was excited, but honestly, after spending two weeks there, it was the last place I wanted to see again. A feeling of depression swept over me. Instead of being excited, a bubble of disappointment inflated in my chest. I had not finished the movie on schedule, rain or no rain, and now I was paying the price for that failure. Parking the car, we went inside to see Carolina the makeup girl applying foam appliances to Krystal, who was once more sitting in a metal folding chair clad only in pink panties, her made-up pale breasts bare and exposed for all to see. The crew began to arrive, including our two new grips, Stephen and Josiah. Now, Josiah was a very tall young man with a big Tom Bakerish-mop of snow white hair. In fact, every about Josiah was snow-white. He was an albino. He wore very large thick-rimmed glasses, a t-shirt and shorts, exposing his amazingly pale long limbs. But when he entered the room and saw the topless Krystal sitting there, his eyes (brown, not pink) grew as big as hubcaps and, putting a hand next to his eyes, he averted his head. This act of embarrassment and concern for Krystal's modesty struck me as incredibly cute and amazing humorous, and with that, I immediately felt great about the shoot and was raring to go.

Meals would be a bit different this time around. My Aunt Kathy was interested in trying her hand at catering and asked if she could cook for us. Previously, call time was seven o'clock, we would be set up to shoot by ten, then we'd have dinner around eleven or midnight, which seemed to me counter-productive. We would just be getting into our groove, then we'd have to break to eat. Everyone was informed that this time, call time would be at eight, and we'd eat dinner right away, then begin to set up to start shooting at ten. Craft services would be plentiful, as before, but sandwiches would be left in the mini-fridge so that as the night went on, if anyone got hungry again, they could nip over to the kitchen and grab something to eat quickly. Everyone agreed to this and it actually worked out very well.

The evening was to begin with four shots to finish the fight scene between Benjamin and Stephen Geoffreys. Thankfully, we had finished with Stephen's shots, but his character's demise had been interrupted by a spontaneous cloudburst. We didn't need Stephen, just his head, which thanks to Rob Burman, we had a good replica of. Two shots looking at Brewster, two shots looking at Vampire Girl. Now, Delbert, an employee there at SIR, had stayed behind to see if we needed any help, and it turns out we did. We needed a hose to wet the ground, soaking it so that it matched the earlier stuff, and to make sure his clothing matched, Benjamin rolled around in the mud until he was filthy, like before. Delbert also helped us run power lines for the lights, and when we pushed the pickup truck into position, we discovered that the battery had died, so no headlights. Delbert had us move the pickup over to one of the buildings and he hooked the battery up to a power source, charging it while we got our shots. Awesome guy. Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! and we were done in that location.

Next, we moved on to the pickup truck (the battery held the charge and the headlights worked again--thanks, Delbert!) and the scene where Windham and David are cowering inside while Vampire Girl tries to find a way in. There were about seven shots there, including some new dialogue between the guys that would set up the different ending. We nailed those, too. Everything was going great. The new crew was getting along just fine and we were working together well. I noticed that with the two new grips, Dustin, who was our socially awkward, painfully shy introvert, was now in the position of key grip and this was bringing him out of his shell. He was volunteering to do jobs and showing the new guys how some things were to be done. Once, when we needed the 18-wheeler moved but didn't have anyone there to do it, Dustin suddenly blurted out that he knew how to drive it, and while we all stood around with our mouths gaping open, he climbed behind the wheel, started it up and deftly moved the massive vehicle to where it was needed!

We just had one shot of the Vampire Girl left to get. She had to walk up to the empty cab of the truck, lock the door and walk around the front. That took very little time and we were done. We all thanked Krystal, who headed into makeup to get it removed then off to the motel for a shower and her trip back to Louisville. She was amazing.

It was now four o'clock and still dark. As the crew wrapped, Clifton asked me if I anticipated finishing that early every night. My reply was that if things went as well as they did this night, we probably would, or even earlier. He told me that he would like to re-shoot some of the shots we had done before, if I was open to the idea, and I said, yes, if we have the time, I had no issue with it. he just wanted to try lighting some scenes a little better than he had. No problem for me. But I reminded him that we had to get our makeup shots first, and that the next evening we had to start earlier as a few dusk shots still needed to be done. He understood.

Everyone headed back to the motel, and dropping off our charges, Cliff and I rolled back to my parents to crash in our specially-darkened bedroom where we slept until about noon. It was Day Two. Call time was to be seven o'clock so we could get those dusk shots. These were of Windham and David in the truck. Mostly. What had happened was that there was supposed to be a dog in the film. When the guys stop in the junkyard and Brewster exits to check underneath the cab, he is accosted by a barking watch dog. A Craigslist ad had brought two responses, but only one of the dogs was suitable. After contacting the dog's owner via email, she agreed to the date and time (and price) and guaranteed me that her mutt would do what was required. But every day I had been in Indiana, my phone calls to her went unreturned. I called, texted and emailed her repeatedly, but with only silence as a reply. Now, we had already shot Brewster's side of the scene. We just needed the dog's shots. But as the day arrived and with no dog, I had to think of an alternative.

So originally, Brewster walks around the cab of the semi, sees the dog, confronts it, then gets chased up onto the doorstep by it. We needed him there to match the remainder of the dialogue shots with McDougall. So how to get him from walking around the cab to up on the step? Here's what I came up with: Brewster walks around the cab of the semi, but instead of confronting a dog, he confronts Windham's character, Cary, who he doesn't like. As he looks under the passenger door, Cary would say something that would tick him off, and he'd jump up on the step like he was going to attack Cary through the window. Good. But what would Cary say? I asked Windham to think of something that would p.o. Brewster. After a few seconds, we were ready.

Brewster walks around the cab, looks under the passenger door, and Cary says, "What's wrong with it?"

Brewster replies, "How the hell should I know?"

Cary/Windham then said, "Didn't they cover Truck-driving on your G.E.D.?" and Brewster lunges at him.

Very funny. Very nice. Now we needed to come up with a line for Brewster to say in reply to when McDougall asks him if he was gonna pee his pants. We had a two-minute group think but none of us could come up with a suitably funny joke. Then, I remembered that Brewster has a habit of saying nonsensical "folk sayings" at various points in the movie. We didn't need a joke, we just needed a laugh, and another nonsensical saying would provide that. Benjamin and I walked away from everyone else and I explained my thought to him. He completely agreed, and we tried to come up with something whacked-out for him to say. Then I remembered that Benjamin had a knack for stream-of-conscious improvisation, so I told him to just ad-lib something, and I threw him the words "mosquito", "beach ball", "picnic", "pee" and "avocado".

He climbed back up on the truck's step and the camera rolled. I fed him McDougall's line, "Whatsa matter, son? You p*ss yourself?" and Benjamin snapped back a weird-ass line combining all the words I gave him. I was about to call cut, when suddenly, Benjamin pulled a "Bill Murray" and just continued improving lines, using the words I gave him in different combinations and throwing in some of his own. It was amazing funny. I saw Windham in the truck cab, trying not to laugh, and finally, I couldn't hold it in any longer and burst out giggling and calling cut.

It was so humid that by this time, Benjamin's shirt was soaked with sweat, so he went inside to dry off and put on one of his spares. When night fell, we filmed more missing shots of Windham and Vogel around the pickup truck and a large crane, and then I told Clifton we could re-shoot the scene he wanted to do. We went to a different, more cinematic part of the scrapyard that had been bare when we shot there earlier. He carefully lit it so that light reflected off all the little scraps of chrome. Clifton also set up a slider so that he could do a mini-dolly shot. We did several takes of it, and it looked great.

Tomorrow we had more dialogue to get with the three guys, but my Weather Channel app was worrying me. It was calling for a 10% chance of showers something that evening, but it wasn't being consistent. Every hour it would change between overcast with no rain to 10% chance. Tomorrow night was going to be pretty easy, but a storm of any major length could be potentially devastating. As we all went back to our rooms for some sleep, this thought took its place next to my ongoing worry about the burn gag and how we could pull it off if circumstances were against us.

To be continued...

DOCTOR 13

It was the third night of shooting, and tonight we were doing the new ending. This is going to be an odd entry, as I don't really want to talk specifically about what we did, because it will spoil the surprise, so forgive me if I talk in vague descriptions.

The on-site manager of the scrapyard told me that he would personally handle the equipment for the new ending, and to show my thanks, I asked him what his favorite liquor was. He texted me back that he liked any king of double-blended malt whiskey and Captain Jack in particular, so I ran to the local liquor store and tried to find something that fit that description. There were several single-blends, but I couldn't find a double. The owners even seemed puzzled, so I settled on a large bottle of Captain Jack and headed out.

While I was in Seymour and had some time, I drove over to the Jackson County Cemetery to visit the grave of my childhood friend Kenneth Smith. We had become friends ever since we were forced to sit together in a school bus seat in the 4th grade, which he was repeating for the second time. Kenny was our school's "Carrie", only male and without the telekinesis. His family was poor, and he was picked on mercilessly at times, but he had a sweet, sensitive nature and I liked him. Several years later, we came out to each other as gay, and sharing this secret brought us closer together. Kenny dropped out of high school and joined the military, but he was tricked into revealing his sexuality (in a particularly dirty method that I won't reveal here, and this was before "Don't Ask, Don't Tell") and he was discharged, albeit honorably, with the excuse that he had a heart murmur. He didn't. He got work at a local factory and everyone liked him...until he came out. Then he was shunned, reviled and eventually fired. When the word reached his church, he was asked not to attend services anymore. I was living in Chicago going to Grad School in the 80's, and I hadn't seen him in over a year. He called me one night to tell me he had contracted HIV. This was before the cocktail. "I've just been given a death sentence," he said. A year later, he passed away: friendless and never having ever fallen in love. It took over a year before he had a marker put on his grave, and I took this picture to remind me of the friendly boy that I knew who bore so much pain and sadness on his shoulders.



Miss you, buddy.

This night was going to be special. We had taken our female mannequiin, Georgette, and bloodied her up to resemble Krystal Main in her final stage appearance as Vampire Girl (or Chickula, as we had taken to calling her). I pulled out the long wig purchased in Hollywood, and Carolina the makeup artist pulled out a brush to straighten it out. She said she needed a model, and so Kip the AC volunteered. She placed the wig on his head and began brushing it out. To our surprise, Kip actually looked good with black hair down to his waist. I told him it made him look very "70's, cult-leaderish". I took some pics of him but somehow they mysteriously vanished from my cell phone. Hmmm.

The wig was placed atop Georgette, who was then positioned in the pickup truck. Since so much of the set had been off-limits, I took this opportunity to invite my parents, aunt Kathy and my nephew and his wife to come and watch. Now, I had not asked the on-site manager yet what time his men showed up to work the next morning, but it was definitely on my agenda. We had to shoot the fire gag between 6:30am and 6:45am right at dawn; no earlier, no later. If there were workers there, they would stop us and I've be stuck without an important shot. Now, I had confided this dilemma to my parents and cautioned them that IF they talked to the manager at the site that night, UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES were they to mention the fire gag. Period. So what does my dad do? He walks over to the manager and says, "When are they going to do the burning?" I wasn't there, but thankfully my quick-thinking nephew Jason was. The manager said, "They can't burn anything here," to which my nephew quickly turned to my Dad and said, "Grandpa, they're not burning the truck, they're doing this instead." Phew! The situation was relieved, and things were still okay, although I did mildly admonish Dad for his transgression, and Mom chewed him out when she heard about it.

It was 10:00 and time to get cracking. The on-site manager moved the equipment into position. I got a couple of shots of Windham shouting an ALIENS-like "Get away from her, you $#%!*!" line then he ran off. I waved to the on-site manager, he pulled a lever, and it was done. And it looked awesome!

Now, I know I'm being a tease, so for those of you who don't really care about spoiling surprises, here's the footage recorded from Benjamin Lutz's cell phone. Just click on the link below to check it out. Please don't tell your friends and neighbors the shocking ending!

http://img405.imageshack.us/img405/7146/img1033.mp4

Grasping the manager's hand, I thanked him for his help, and handed him the booze as a token of thanks. He seemed very happy. I asked him what time his men showed up for work on Tuesday, explaining that we needed a dawn shot and wanted to get it done before anyone started to arrive. He told me that he and Delbert showed up at 6:15 and the rest of the guys around 6:30. Damn. It. All. To. Hell.

We picked up a few more shots, then Clfton the DP asked if we could re-shoot another scene. Since we had plenty of time, I said yes. Windham and David were still on set, so we re-did a dialogue scene by a mountainous pile of scrap metal that was lighted better and done as a mini-dolly. The metal looked all sparkly with the new lighting set up.

I call a wrap for the night. Call time would be nine again to get the last dozen or so night shots. But the burn gag was still flying through my brain. How in the world was I going to get it at dawn and without being seen by the people would could throw us out? And why did I feel guilty about it?

To be continued...

DOCTOR 13

Hey guys, sorry about the lack of new postings, but we are very close to a picture lock, so I've been keeping close to the editor for the last couple of weeks. New updates, soon, promise!

DOCTOR 13

Hey, guys! I'm sorry to have been so lax with the updates lately, but we are in a mad rush to get the film finished by Thanksgiving. There have been some new developments which I am eager to share with you, and all that is coming. However, everyone has been so supportive of me and this film to the point where I want to give you all a special treat.

Look for an announcement tomorrow on this thread about a special surprise I'm planning for everyone at the end of the week.

DOCTOR 13