The second day of shooting was at the former mansion of Slash (formerly of Guns’n’Roses). The first time I had been there in the early 90s, there were about 25 Harleys parked inside the house.  It is currently owned by Peter Brennan, creator of Judge Judy and Judge Joe, who I knew because he was the Executive Producer of A Current Affair and Hard Copy.  Peter is one of the titans of the TV-tab industry and it felt very apropos to be filming such an intense, sexy scene in his house.

Yasmin Brennan, who I have known since I took her out on her first assignment for the Star back in 1989, was instrumental in securing this location for me.  When I say that corporate speak phrase “instrumental in securing,” what I mean by that is that I wheedled her into her calling her dad (who is currently in Houston, setting up another Judge show) and asking him if I could shoot there.  I’m not sure what I did or said in the past that made such a good impression, but apparently Peter thought this was a cracking good idea. So let this be my first public thank-you to both Yaz and Peter.

Now to the nuts&bolts.  My foremost worry was that during the tech scout that Jon and I had done the previous week, the big master bedroom that we had wanted to use was closed and the A/C was off.  Now remember – the previous day had been the hottest day in the history of the State of California, and it wasn’t any cooler when I arrived on the set that morning.  The first thing I did was go into the Master suite and turn up the A/C.  It was already sweltering – I’ve gotten spoiled by years of living in Los Angeles, because while it may get hot, it is almost never humid here.  This is because when you get down to it, Los Angeles is located in a desert (see Chinatown).

This day, however, was like a Turkish bath.  I was wearing Beavis-esque shorts and a linen shirt, and
within minutes, I was soaked.  So rather than try to cram the crew into this stifling hot space and then turn on hot lights, I figured the best thing to do would be to shoot the “Jamie gets a phone call” scene in another room.  This was a scene that I had added that week, because the actress I had cast had proven to be so versatile that I wanted to give her something more to do – and I wanted to give her character some more obvious motivation other than jealousy or pure malevolence.

So I kinda sprung this seen on Jon, and it was not a welcome surprise.  But there was good natural
light in the room, and we managed to get the props arranged while Brynn was getting her makeup on (hey – it was a couple of trash bags full of what would look like the possessions a young woman would grab when being thrown out of her apartment – yeah, I know – trash bags, how thematic.  I should see if I can get some product placement coin from the Hefty Trash Bag people…)

I have to say that Brynn is one of the ultimate troopers I have ever met.  On one of the hottest days ever to hit L.A., I dragged her into a stuffy room, shone hot lights on her and then asked her to bundle herself under a down comforter.   But she managed to loosen up and get in touch with her frustrated inner bitch so that when the audience first meets her, they will see a woman who is already feeling pretty edgy and agitated.

All the while I was shooting this scene, I kept checking on the temperature in the Master Suite to see if the A/C was kicking in and getting it to a level where we would be able to stage the scene in there without having my actresses burst into flame and spontaneously explode under the hot lights.

Meanwhile, Erin was nervously going over her lines and sitting outside in the garden, around the pool, where Janine took her picture various ways to  use as a prop in other scenes.  And also because the girl is so damn photogenic.

The most difficult part of the filming, however, was not the logistics of the location – unlike the two looming exterior dates – but the profusion of props that I had and wanted to figure out how best to employ to try to support the storyline and move the narrative forward.  Wearing the hat of Art Director and Set Decorator on top of writer/director/producer was, in retrospect, not the brightest decision I’ve ever made; there were just too many details to try to keep track of insofar as making each shot work visually while also trying to stay on top of whether or not my actresses were giving me what I needed performance-wise.

So I’ve had to trust an awful lot in my talent, and to shoot the shit out of the scenes to make sure I get different moods, so that when I go to cut all this together, I won’t have a nasty surprise waiting.  This however, translated into my having to shoot the Mandy on the bed scene at least 20 times from different angles.  And perhaps taking her cue from Brynn, Erin hung in there all the way with me.
Despite having to fake faking an  orgasm (now there’s a hall of mirrors to walk down) in a room full of strangers again and again, she never betrayed a moment’s anxiety and was utterly comfortable and natural in front of the camera … and this despite the fact that she had just arrived in Los Angeles five weeks before this, and this job was the first audition that she had ever gone on.

I was astonished by the way that Erin could turn it on and turn it off – how she could go from the throes of passion to sitting back on her heels and grinning at me when I said cut … relaxed and ready to hear what strange and addled advice I would give her next.

By far my favorite part of the day was shooting the interactions between Brynn and Erin. It took me a while to get down to the core of what I wanted from them in the scene – just the blocking of their bodies on the bed so as to show that Brynn was trying to hide her desperation and her anger at Erin, but that she would allow it to come out when Erin wasn’t looking.  It was a tough range to be able to play – from bring outwardly friendly and ingratiating to pissed and resentful to feeling self-loathing for having to go through someone else’s drawers and possessions, to, finally, mean-spirited triumph.

Jon helped me out with a great idea to get a real sense of what it was that Brynn was giving me – he curled up in a ball next to the bed and shot the scene from the condom’s eye view.

A word about the condom.  I had originally planned for it just to be a shrunken, stiff object.  But I left that dried-out condom at home.  Instead, I had to fake up a tied-off and still … uh … juicy … condom by putting in some cream cheese and mixing that with tap water.  Yeah, I know.  Bleah.  But it looked realistic.

Part of the scene called for Brynn to open a file folder, discover the condom within, and then shriek in horror/disgust and fling the condom flying across the room.

And a big shout-out here to the good people of Ramses.  That condom got tossed, thrown, stomped, shoved around with the sharp metal end of the file folder, splatted against the window (more about that in a bit) and finally squished up into a garbage bag. And it never sprang a leak.  I’d send this to the Ramses people to use in their ad copy, but I’m not sure if that is the kind of testimonial that they really want.  Then again, what the hell.

I did notice that I was the only person on the set who would actually handle the damn thing.  I don’t know if my cast and crew thought I was some kind of sick freak who would actually subject them to a real, live actually used in combat kind of condom – or if they were just being squeamish to stay in character – or if they were being deferential and only allowing the Prop Master (yeah, that’s me again) to be the only one to handle the prop.  At any rate, after each take when Brynn would fling the condom (I’d call it a rubber for variety’s sake, except that it wasn’t made out of rubber, so that really doesn’t apply) I would have to go crawling out of the video village over cables and around lights, and go pick up the squishy little fella and put him back in the file folder with the torn wrapper and say “OK people, back to one.  Now let’s try it this time with a little more of a pause for you to recognize this thing, before you go tossing it across the room.”

Then I had to sit on the bed next to Jon (who was shooting most of this scene hand-held – an act which was wearing grooves in his shoulder) and throw the condom at the window again and again.  I will confess something that I didn’t tell the people on the set at the time – to make the condom stick to the window was a real trick.  The outer lube had long since been rinsed off and rubbed off on the shag carpet.  And if I had used water, it would have just slid off.  So I used … wait for it, perverts … saliva.  I rubbed spit on it.  And then flung it against the window.  Where it stuck.

I was going to go peel it off, when Jon, with great cinematic instincts, stopped me.  No, wait, he said. I think it’s going to come off on its own. I can see it peeling … peeling …

And sure enough, the condom sloooowwwwwlllly peeled off the window and dropped to the floor.

Man, I wish the special effects on my last shoot had even once worked that well, Jon said.  That was perfect.
Either this scene is going to be gross-out funny, or my audience is going to barf and then run out of the theater and beat me over the head with baseball bats.

So all you budding auteurs out there, take note.  Sometimes there is no substitute for a combination of luck, ingenuity … and the timely application of bodily fluids … to get the shot you need.

One other note from this day’s shoot: the actresses all coveted the walk-in closet.  I think that Erin would have gladly moved into the closet and paid rent, just to be near all the Jimmy Choo shoes.

Finally, we wrapped after I got Erin to do one last take of the bouncing up and down shot, this time shot MOS and with a close-up on a mirrored box on the armoire so that we only see her head going around and around in reflection.  Erin later told me that she had done the motion so much that her thigh muscles were sore and quivering the next day.

After everyone left, I changed into my shorts and jumped into the pool and just soaked and floated for a couple of hours, talking to my other grip, Martin, who was driving back up to San Francisco.  The other two grips had left and were headed back to Sacramento – I didn’t envy them having to go through the Central Valley and back into that blast-furnace heat.  If I could have shot the rest of the shoot in a place where at the end of the day’s efforts I could have just laid back and soaked in a pool, I sure as hell would have.  Because what was coming up, the exterior scenes, were to make the controlled (or at least partially controllable) conditions that I experienced doing the interior shots look very desireable.