All the World's a Stage
By the ExBF
Geez, where to begin...
Well, first of all, the movie was, as I figured it would be, one big adventure. One big, large, stressful, exhilarating, wonderful, terrible, incredible adventure. I had no idea what to expect, but it was everything I hoped it would be and more. We pulled it off; we made a real movie. There were plenty of mishaps along the way, and things didn't always flow smoothly...or at all, but we luckily ended up with a great crew, and together we all got through it, and made what I think is something we will all be proud of. I think it's gonna be pretty damn good. We also caused quite a stir in the little town we were filming in (oh yeah....we had to move locations an hour south at the last minute...but that's another story), and we wound up becoming local semi-celebrities for a short time as well. It was fun. To say the least.
And then...there's this girl. As you might guess, I met her on the set. Actually, I met her before we ever got on set...she was sort of the lead actress. Now, before you finish thinking what I know you're thinking, let me just tell you that it wasn't like that....I hired her well before anything transpired between us. And yes, I thought she was very attractive (to say the very least), but I had no ulterior motives in the beginning, I swear. And no, I know what else you're thinking, and she's most assuredly not like that either. In fact, it took more than a little convincing her on my part that it wouldn't interfere with the film & with our working relationship. And somehow, it didn't...although I knew it could have gone south in a big way very easily, and possibly taken the movie down with it. But instead, it worked out. Well. Very well.
But in the beginning, there was no time for me to even think about something like that happening, anyway. You see, I had been down there for almost 3 weeks already, we were a week away from out start date, and things around the production office were, in a word, tense. A series of catastrophes had befallen the production, and the whole project itself was on shaky ground. We had lost actors, lost locations, and for a little while, we weren't really all that sure that we would even be shooting a movie at all. Finally, we got just about all the fires put out & managed to get everything in place....except for filling the recently-vacated role of the female lead. Which eventually led to the great Georgia Breast Hunt of 2006. Allow me to explain...
You see, we had a semi-semi-famous actress in place for this role, which required her to appear topless. This particular actress has flashed her brights on camera many times before, and since throwing in a little T&A is, for better or worse, all but essential to the sale & success of any low-budget horror movie, we figured we had that important base pretty well covered. Then, the bottom fell out.
As it happens, this particular actress hosts a national radio show every weekend with a certain ex-frontman from a famous 80's hair band, and at the last moment, her bosses decided that she could not be released for her contract for the entire duration of the shoot. If we wanted her, we would have to fly her back to NYC every weekend to do her show, then fly her back to continue shooting. Since we barely had money for cab fare, let alone round-trip tickets to New York every week, this precluded us from using said actress, and sent us on a mad, last-minute search for a replacement.
So, within the space of a week's time, I proceeded to interview what seemed like every single actress in the southeast, hoping to find one to fill the role...and that would be willing to take her top off. And yes, it did make me feel slightly dirty, but this is for the sake of art, dammit. After sitting through hours upon hours of actresses being paraded in front of me, I'd inevitably ask them the about the nudity, and I saw a pattern start to develop. If they could halfway act, then they didn't want to do the nudity; if they were okay with the nudity, then almost across the board, they couldn't act worth a damn. I was stuck, and the mantra for the week became "who's dick do I gotta suck to get an actress to show her tits in this town?" Yeah, I know...show business; it ain't all glamorous...
Anyway, after about four days of this, and just when I was about to give up, the door to the office opened & this girl walked in. She was about 5'3", and wearing a short, black dress & suede boots. She had long, jet-black hair, dark skin, and eyes that were like no color I'd ever seen; they seemed to go from grey, to green, to blue as I watched. I was a wee bit mesmerized. She was about the most perfect physical representation of "my type" that I had seen in a long time. In other words, she was awful, awful purty.
Her name was....um....Donna. Yeah, that's the ticket. And she looked the part, too; she was almost exactly as the script described the character. Maybe a year or 2 too young, but close enough. But I didn't know if she could act yet...and I also didn't know if she would bare the twins for the camera.
Turns out she could act, pretty darn well, in fact. And she was willing to do the nudity, although she did seem a little embarrassed by it. In any case, she was most certainly the best candidate we had seen so far, and she seemed pretty normal, as well; no diva-ness on display, at least not that I could see at this early stage. I offered her the part on the spot & she accepted.
That night, the crew went out for drinks to celebrate. We had found our actress and our breasts. Life was good, and the movie was back on track. For now. That night, I slept soundly for the first time in a week. It was 6 days until the first day of shooting.
Then, the next day, while I was inspecting plaster molds of mutant feet, waiting for Donna to come in & sign her final contracts, I got a phone call. It was my production manager. Donna had called her, and she had decided that she didn't want to do the nudity after all. She was brought up Lutheran, her family was very conservative, and although she wanted the part, she just wasn't comfortable doing that. So, my PM asked me what I wanted to do; keep her or keep looking...which was something we really didn't have any time left to do. At all. Then, a light bulb went on over my head, I smacked myself for not thinking of it earlier. I told her to give me an hour, and that I had an idea.
You see, the character that Donna was set to play was the one that the script called for to appear topless, but I started to think 'well, why does it have to be that character? Hell, I've changed everything else about the script...why can't I just give the nude scene to one of the 2 other girls in the cast?' If they'll do it, that is. I knew that one of the other girls was making less for her role than the others, due to having less screen time. But we had a little money left in the budget for the actors, so I decided to see if we were to offer her more money, and switch the nude scene to her character, then maybe that would solve everyone's problem. After all, to those foreign sales agents, tits are tits. So, I called the other actress in to see me, sat her down, explained the situation, and asked her if she would do it for the good of god & country. Somewhat to my surprise, she agreed...and for less money than I was prepared to offer her, too. Sometimes I have my moments...
So, I called my PM back & told her that I had solved everybody's problem, and that Donna was still on board if she was willing. She had done the best reading for hte part by far, and I really wanted her in the show. So, we hired her, re-wrote the script to shuffle the breasts around, and went off to make a movie.
Since Donna had come into the cast so late in the game, and since I had been working with the other actors on their parts for some time now & wanted her to have the same preparation, I wanted to get some time with her before we started shooting to just talk about the character & try to come to some understanding of how I wanted her to do things. But, she was committed to her other job up until the day before we were to start, so we never really got a chance, as I was leaving town in a few days.
Since we were having to move locations at the last minute & I needed to be on the set as soon as possible before production began to make up for lost time, I & a few other key crew members left Savannah for the other town a few days before the rest of the crew. Also, that particular week, Lanie had flown down to spend a few days with me & try to keep me sane, so she went with me down to the new location. Donna was scheduled to arrive only a couple days before we were to begin, and as I was trying to schedule some time for her in advance, I remember her saying to me "we will be up there on Sunday, and then I can start to work with you'. I took her 'we' to mean that her boyfriend would be coming to stay there with her, and I wasn't surprised; a girl like that just isn't single...she couldn't be.
But, she was. The 'we' was her & her cat, named Buddy. When she arrived at the hotel with the cat-carrier in hand & I realized what the situation was, I was a little excited to see that she was single...but I still at that point didn't have any serious thoughts about anything. After all, as cliched & undoubtably common as it might be, hooking up with your actors is probably not the best idea for a director...especially a first-time one like me who is going to have plenty of other things to worry about & plenty of other things to screw up, anyway. Or, at least, that's what Lanie said.
But since when have I ever been one to let logic dictate my love life? Are you new here?
It was the night after Lanie left, and the rest of the cast & crew arrived at the hotel. My assistant, the DP, the lead actor & I were all sitting out by the hotel pool, trying to relax for one last night before embarking on the most important job of my life. I was in the middle of talking to my DP about some lighting issue or the other, when out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that Donna had come out to the pool. She was across the pool on the other side, wearing a white robe, talking to some of the other crew who were already in the pool swimming. I was literally in mid sentence when I saw her drop her robe to reveal a white bikini, and I stopped dead in my tracks mid-syllable. It was something to see. The other guys, who knew already that I had the hots for her (not that that's why I hired her...I swear....really) just kind of laughed. I decided to let 'em go right ahead, and I jumped my ass into that pool, quick-like.
I swam over & started to make some small talk with her, all the while thinking two things: 1. I should probably not be flirting with my lead actress on the day before we've even started the movie, and 2. Holy Jesus Lord she looks fucking hot in that thing. All of a sudden, I felt the old cockiness come back over me like a cold wave...what Alan & I always called the Attitude, and I decided that, since I was sort of trying to finally live my dream out here, and since I didn't know how long all this movie business was going to last or if it was even going to really happen, that I should probably just try to milk this thing for all it's worth in case I never get this chance again. I chose to focus on the aforementioned #2.
So, I turned on the charm that I wasn't sure I still had in me, and proceeded to chat her up, which she seemed to respond to. Everyone was drinking wine & a few funny-looking cigarettes went around, and after a while we were basically flirting like a couple of teenagers. We also engaged in some of your general playful splashy pool antics, and she seemed to be enjoying herself. She also didn't seem to mind our half-naked wet bodies brushing against each other once in a while, but you could have just blamed that on the geography of the situation...
Then we swam over by the side of the pool and just talked for a while; first about the movie, but soon just about ourselves. And it turns out she was not only amazingly beautiful...she was cool. She was very, very cool. We had a lot of things in common, and she was nothing like the aloof beauty I would have expected her to be upon first sight. Ignoring the sly looks from the rest of the crew all around us ('boy, he's not wasting any time, is he?'...and things of that nature), we just sat there talking until we turned into prunes. Then we got out & talked some more, just sitting on the deck chairs, eating M&M's and drinking root beer.
I eventually got around to broaching the subject of whether she had a boyfriend or not, and she said she didn't; that it had been a while since she had dated anyone. She then asked me how long my girlfriend & I had been together...she had seen me with Lanie & thought that we were a couple. Or, you know, a normal couple, in any case. She asked the question very hesitantly, and I could have sworn I detected a sense of relief when she found out that we were just best friends...though I'm not quite sure she bought it at first. In any case, we started talking about relationships, and it turned out we had a lot in common in that area of our past, too. Not that she had been in love with a lesbian, too...but she had definitely been as unlucky as I had been lately.
By the time I realized what time it was, I looked around & everyone had gone inside. It was late...and I was about to start shooting my first movie in about 5 hours. As much as I wanted to stay planted there & talk to her all night, I figured that if I was ever going to be responsible, now was the time. I told her that I thought she was a fascinating person & that I looked forward to working with her, and I went back to my room & went to bed. Sleep didn't happen right away, though, and I found myself thinking about her just as much as I was thinking about the shoot. I also remember telling myself to keep my priorities straight. Nevertheless, the last thing I thought before drifting off to sleep that night wasn't how am I gonna pull this off tomorrow or what if we fall behind schedule or what if all my actors suck & the crew turns out to be all crack addicts; it was I wonder if I should have tried to kiss her....
But first I had a movie to make. And it's late. More later....
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