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THE SHOOT. Here it is finally. After all these months organizing things it all comes down to this. Two weekends. And we were super lucky because we had perfect weather. The first weekend we shot the Interiors at Hicks' house in Howell, NJ. I think I extended myself a bit too far for this shoot. I have a problem where sometimes I feel like unless I do a task it won't get done right. Or, ya know, if I'm doing it I know it's being taken care of.
So with this in mind on
Friday I had to rent the production van then drive up to
Staten Island to get the crew and equipment. Then
into New York City to pick up some more equipment at
Shadow Studios and then down to Wall, NJ to drop them off
at the hotel. Next I had to pick up Sabrina in Long
Branch, NJ at the train station and drive her back down
to the hotel. Now all this took me from about noon
until maybe 8PM. There's a lot of distance in
between these locations for those of you unfamiliar with
the NJ Shore. So it would be Okay if I was going
to bed at 8 - 9PM for call time Saturday at 8AM.
But Kevin Kolack (H.R.) was attending a play that night
so I couldn't pick him up from the train station until
around midnight. So the night before we start
shooting I didn't go to sleep until after 1 AM. But
I think I was so hyped, ready to go, that the little
sleep I got didn't even affect me. But again, had I
given someone else some of these responsibilities it
would've made things easier for me. So the shoot
went surprisingly smooth. Every shoot has a handful
of problems. You try and be prepared as mush as
possible, but things always come up. We really only
had two problems. First, we lost our beach front
location in Manasquan. So one night after we
wrapped I drove up to Asbury Park and wandered around
before the sun set and figured out where we could shoot
there instead. No big thing. The 2nd problem
was a bit more frustrating. Rich told me how much
film to buy. And I did. But our first weekend
we suddenly appeared to be running low on stock.
There was no way we'd make it through Day #2 with what we
had. So I had to contact a place in New York and
they opened up and charged me more for the stock as well
as an emergency fee to open. I've been on shoots
where this has happened a few times so I didn't let it
bum me out. Luckily, Joe (The Dude) was going into
the city that night so the bright side was I didn't have
to make the trip in myself to buy the film. Other
than that it all went good. Everyone seemed to get
along fine and we usually ended ahead of schedule.
I took a small part as "The Engaged Guy."
Basically the part required someone to sit with a girl
and get water dumped on him ("the fake piss"
I've mentioned) and then have the vegetable soup that was
doubling as the puke to be spilled on him. I
figured it'd be hard to find someone willing to do this,
so I took it. I also figured if the cast and crew
was hating me, this would be a good time for them to
relieve some tension by chucking globs of soup on my
head. But when all was said and done I was pleased
with how things went. I could go off on one or two
things but there's no reason. Well, I finally got the film back from the lab. I was anxious to see how things came out. I guess when all is said and done, I was about 80% pleased. There was no way everything was gonna be perfect. It just never is. But there were a few shots where I could see Kevin's arm as he operated H.R. and some reflections, that I know we asked about on the set and were told they were not in the shot. But that's life. There was, however, one shot of Joe and H.R. in the tree after they've "pissed" on my head that was totally unusable. So I called up Rich and on a 100 degree day we went back to the park and re-shot it. I stood in for Kevin as H.R. and we got the shot. Since we were there we got another funny little bit that I'd wanted to do originally but we just didn't have time for - where Joe applies zinc oxide to H.R.'s nose on the beach. We actually shot this on top of a gravel/dirt path but it totally looked like it was at the beach. No one would ever know the truth...that is if we used the footage. It was cut like other moments for timing.
Into the recording studio we went with the band to record "Sunny Day." This was my first time in a professional recording studio to record music I'd help to write. As excited as I may have been, after about 5 hours hearing the same cheesy, Brady Bunch-type song over and over and over again, you learn to hate it. I don't know how musicians do it. Then again, editing a film is not much different (but I'll get into that later). So at the end of the day, the song sounded pretty good. It needed some fixing up, but even after hearing it a million times I was happy with what we did that day.
Let the editing begin. My friend Phil Botti agreed to edit the film. I was hoping he would. For starters it would save me lots of money since we could use his facilities at Atlantic Records. Also I trusted Phil enough to know he'd do a good job. Plus, the thought of finding an editor I felt comfortable with seemed like another headache I didn't want. It was weird editing at first. I'm not used to just sitting back in a chair while someone else is at the controls. It takes some time to adjust. I'm not sure I totally did. Phil put together a nice assembly cut. But watching it I started having those second guesses. Was it funny? Keep in mind, we're going on a year I've been working on this film. For a 10-15 minute film, that's a long time. It's hard hearing the same 10 minutes of jokes for a year. There was no question I was gonna question myself. Had I just wasted all of my money? Did it work? I had no clue. It took some life out of me. I tried to watch Phil's reaction to things since it was sorta new to him. Even hearing him laugh didn't convince me totally that I was on the right track.
After working on the assembly cut, I decided I needed a longer version of "Sunny Day." That part of the film I always knew was the best part. I called John the guitarist to talk about it with him. He was cool with it, but they wanted to bring in a new drummer. Nobody was really happy with Rob's playing on the original, not even the engineer.
So I agreed. There
wasn't anything I could do. Rob wasn't the
"end all-be all" with me. A new drummer
made no difference to me. So we went back into the
studio and re-recorded the song. It went a bit
faster the 2nd time. The new drummer, Andrew
Hauber, worked out better for everyone. We mixed
the song a week later and that was that.
"Sunny Day" was complete. I had always
hoped we'd make the deadline for the first festival I was
eyeing. The New York Comedy Festival. What
better festival for my film? It was tough because
we were only editing about once a month. Even
though this frustrated me, there was nothing I could
do. When you're getting services for free you have
to work around those schedules. I kept on Phil
about making the deadline. He assured me we'd make
it, but I have to admit I didn't believe him. We
started editing a bit via e-mail - I'd send Phil notes on
what I wanted and then he just edited at work when he had
the time. This actually worked out better than I
thought. We got a decent rough cut of the film done
in time and I sent it off to the festival. Not
expecting much since the film wasn't done. 
