Sean Patrick Flanery & Groove |
One month and 21 shooting days later, the bullies are summoned to the set for their last little set piece. The chase is over. We have Zack. We're driving him down to the river to teach him a lesson he won't soon forget. But during the fracas, Zack tumbles into the water and doesn't come up. We killed him! Off we go in panic. And off we go for good. That's a wrap!
Our last day began easily enough. We were the first up on a day that included night shoots. So we had the best of both worlds-- we didn't have to wait for them to shoot something else (first up), and our call time wasn't until 11:15am (because they'd be going so late). We did a little driving stuff first, cruising along with Zack pinned in the bed of the pick-up truck. That was pretty fun actually. We got a good shot of me peeling out and then down into the woods.
Then to the river for a fight scene. Ahhh...fight scenes. Last time I had a fight scene on stage was West Side Story and it filled me with terror. It was probably the hardest thing I had to do on stage at Harvard and as Act I plodded along towards my death, I could feel the dread rising in my gut. There were never any major physical errors, no one ever got seriously hurt, and even gun-misfiring problems were solvable, though annoying. So I survived.
The last fight scene I had on film was in Against the Grain and it involved me getting thrown against the wall three or four times as we tried to get the shot right. That effort got me nothing but a headache since the scene ended up on the cutting-room floor. Lame.
Today was nothing resembling any of those problems. For one, I didn't volunteer to do anything physical and so I was never really assigned anything. Zack gets thrown to me and then I throw him to Don. End of my violent input. No headaches. No backaches. No cartwheels across the stage. And cutting-room floor problems? Highly unlikely. The fight and subsequent tumble into the river are crucial to the plot of the movie. Lots of stuff would have to go if our fight was cut. Clean and simple, right? Well...
This scene was a big audition scene, which we had run a number of times at the marathon callback way back in early June. And the last of the four times we had run it, Rusty was really losing it and Don slapped him into line to get him to stop blubbering. It was a big hit (literally and figuratively). So we decided to use it today.
Luckily for my face, we are the "one-take trio," notorious for getting our scenes shot and in the can in only one take and with little to no coverage. But today? Well... it's nearly the last day and there's lots of film to burn so we shoot it eight times. Eight slaps to the face. Slapping and slapping and slapping. I guess that's the "suffering for one's art" thing. And my biggest concern is that it may not even be very funny. The worst thing that could come out of all this would be a stupid, unfunny, and painful scene.
But after that we were all done. Time for the bullies to go bully elsewhere. The adventure was over. After a very weak round of applause and a final trip to the Pasta Bar, I signed out for the very last time as Rusty. Wrapped.
Go back to Day 1