![[sweater]](../Graphics/HnlSwetr.jpg)
The sweater that
didn't make it
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The sweater that |
Crazy day. Having gone through both hell and high water yesterday and coming out on the other side with three scenes still not blocked for camera, the "to-do" list had quite a few items on it today, not the least of which was to tape the actual show at 7pm tonight. That deadline was not flexible.
We pushed hard to get through the camera-blocking and rehearsals. We started later in the day since we would be there into the nighttime hours. The kids can only work 9 1/2 hours in a day, so they didn't come in until even later so that they could stay until 11pm. So the grown-ups and the kids' stand-ins did their duty for a few hours as the cameras were blocked and rehearsed. The tight schedule pushed the start of the final run-through/dress rehearsal past 3:30pm. A few of my friends showed up and made up most of the audience. The dress-rehearsal went OK. No one died laughing in our sparsely-filed seats. It was hard to guage how a larger crowd would eventually respond to it, but if resembled this afternoon's response, the show would be in big trouble.
Notes were given over dinner. Final line changes were kicked around. Every effort was being made to tighten and sharpen. We then had about a half-hour to relax before the big show.
The crowd was loaded in and the warm-up guy set to work trying to keep them as lively as possible. We had returned to being just about on schedule by not running the closing scene during the dress. So maybe corners were cut and maybe confidence was a little shaken, but there was no stopping now. On with the show...
And it was a huge hit. The audience was great, listening to every word and laughing at all the right places. The first scene between the kids got a laugh on every line. About six lines in row generated a response. It was fantastic. My stuff in the first half of the show seemed to be going quite well. I only had a few lines here and there so I wasn't really doing any "scenes," just telling the occasional joke. Good laughs all around, though, and more than once, we tried a different joke in the second take of a scene. That was useful in keeping the audience on their toes.
The second half of the show was were I really got to do interesting things. In one of the scenes, I counsel my brother about his relationship with Dad, and then in another, I come up with the idea that Tom move back home and work with Dad. Both of those scenes went very well. The laughs were big, the scenes were well-received. There isn't a better way I could have imagined it going, and that applies to the whole week.
One of the most impressive accomplishments about the night was that Gil Junger, the director, was a ball of fire, blazing about the stage making sure that we moved the show along at the speed of light. If he needed a re-shoot or a pick-up, he would literally run from the monitors over to the set and set up what he needed and then run back to his chair and get it going. It was very helpful for keeping the energy of the show up, staying in the flow of the play, and perhaps most especially, it kept the audience from getting too bored with the whole process. The show was in the can by 9:30pm, perhaps a pilot record.
And what was the word on the set afterwards? Very positive. Now it's easy to be high on a show right after an audience of good friends sees it and laughs heartily, but the buzz was definitely there. I personally received many favorable remarks from bigwigs on the set so I felt great about my contribution to the whole process.
A couple of years ago, a reporter from my hometown network affiliate was out in Los Angeles doing a story about Chicago Hope and she interviewed me for an additional little fluff piece about trying to make it in Hollywood. One of the questions she asked me was what my ultimate goal was. I responded that ideally eventually I would like to be working on a sitcom. I don't think even I thought that within two years I could be standing on the threshold of that dream. And with all the craziness of the week, between my cold and lost voice, and the constant re-writes in the script and the hectic camera-blocking, the resulting delays, in spite of it all, or maybe partly because of it all, it was an exhilarating, invigorating, empowering week. And I have had such a wonderful time working on the show with all these people and performing it tonight for such an appreciative audience, that to think it could all be over is the only sad whisper under the sea of joyful shouts. This has been a grand adventure!