Day 2 -- June 21, 1998 No such luck. My phone rang at 6:15 this morning and Rebecca was on the other end. "Sorry to call so early. We couldn't get a hold of you last night. Your call time is 7:30." "A.M.?" Yes, it was a feeble attempt but it was my only hope. And yes, it was 7:30am, because the last couple of shots that they did not get last night were scheduled for first up today, and they included the friendly ice cream guy. So I pulled myself into the world of the living and went off to work. The morning's activities were centered around finishing up yesterday's shots so that we could start on today's schedule before it got too late. We shot, among other things, the ice cream guy's only line, "Ice Cream! Popsicles! Frozen lemonade!" (scene 1a) which, if nothing else, got a hardy laugh out of the director, Susan Walter. And really who's more important to please than the director, right?

behind the wheel

By 11am or so, we had successfully wrapped Day One's inventory. That was pretty impressive. Finishing Day Two by night fall would be even more impressive. I wasn't going to be around to see it happen, though. I think we all know what my schedule had on it for the next few hours... a nap. I went back to the dressing room and spent four hours on the couch in various states of REM, returning to the set again at around 4pm, the same time as yesterday, which would suggest that they were doing quite well with the schedule. And they were.

Soon after I arrived, they shot a master of probably the busiest, craziest scene I have been a part of to date (scene 5). It included lifting the injured biker on a surfboard, backing my truck into the scene, pulling the news van into the scene, unloading the truck, putting the guy into the truck, pulling the cop car into the scene, piling people into the truck, and finally taking off in the ice cream truck lead by the police escort. And God bless Susan Walter, she pulled the whole thing off. From there we collected as many inserts as possible. And as the sun set in the imitation West constructed on the Fox Lot, two days of Rubbernecks shooting had actually gone quite well.

Given the circumstances of this mostly volunteer endeavor, Susan Walter accomplished a Herculean feat. It doesn't just involve these two days, however. Her accomplishments of the past months were evident today in the collection of professionals assembled to get her debut off the ground. The crew did a remarkable job keeping up a solid pace and Susan did an outstanding job as the ringleader. She really projected just the right attitude these past two days. I had never seen her "at work" before, but it seems that her temperment, attitude, and style are well-suited for the directing game. If she can handle the craziness, I may have just taken part in the very first production of one of the most successful and famous directors of the future. And I had fun doing it.

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