August 22-23rd, 1999

August 22nd

Oh my God, what a wonder two days off can make. I feel refreshed. Mun went to New York for a couple of days, and Gil went to D.C. to visit his cousin.

Sunday morning rolls along and we headed to Owings Mills to make up some shots we couldn't get at the office before. I picked Mun and Gil up at 7:00am and they were pretty tired. Ganz was a half hour late, but once we started shooting, everything rolled pretty smoothly. Gil was pretty tired, so he let Mun shoot most of the shots.

I dropped them off and went to my house to get an hour's worth of sleep before the wrap party. My girlfriend bought enough food for an army.

Only about half the crew showed up. Any other time you mention free beer, you get too many people. I got drunk, and that's all that mattered anyway, isn't it?


August 23rd

Behind the Scenes shot to the only deleted scene

Hard to believe it's the next to the last day of shooting.

I mean, we're almost done shooting a feature film on a shoe-string budget. How many people actually accomplish what we've done? There’s literally thousands of people on the web all talking about doing it, but I bet you only one in a thousand does.

Anyway, we had a flashback scene where Ganz comes out of the bathroom pulling on a ski-mask and shoots a guy in the back of the head. I was going to have it very John Woo-ish, with Rick catching the bullet shell in slow-mo as it pops out of the gun.

It was what I called a “trailer” shot, something that would make it into the trailer I’d show everybody. Really, it wasn’t even in the movie.

The evening started badly enough. Rick couldn't find a ski-mask. He ended up buying a bandana to wrap around his face, so I guess now I'll be accused of stereotyping him. Oh sure, the Latino had to wear a bandana, did he?

We get to the racquetball court and find that someone has signed the court out for the time we wanted to shoot there. Rick has played with him before, so when he showed up, we asked him if he'd like to be in the movie. He's not too enthusiastic, but since all he has to do is play racquetball, he said okay.

The guy who was supposed to die doesn't show up. He was my hair-cutter, who just about begged me for a part. I substituted one of the guys who was supposed to be a racquetball player, but we didn't need him since two real players showed up.

We set up. I pumped up the sprayer so when Rick fired the gun, I could squirt blood all over the glass. After a couple of rehearsals, we went. The bullet shot was loud as crap, and Rick didn't catch the shell.

The blood went everywhere. It went onto the glass wall, but it also went all over the floor, the camera, the rail and my pants. And all of a sudden, a woman's voice said "What's going on here?"

I was in the process of coming out of the bathroom with some paper towels when I heard her, so I was completely unprepared. Rick and I have played racquetball there a lot, and I have never seen a manager in the building. It's like 11:00pm at night. For once, I didn't have a lie on the tip of my tongue.

Rick knew her. He tried to smooth-talk her. It seemed to work, but she said she wanted the place clean, as she just spent $4100 getting the place painted. I'd say she got ripped off.
She left and Rick started panicking. She knows him, she'll have us arrested, and so on. I calmed him long enough to get a final shot from inside the racquetball court, but we started cleaning up and I didn't get any slow-mo of the bullet being caught.

We did get her whole speech on video though. Way to go, Mun.

I dropped the guys at the motel and Rick and I went back to clean the place. We must have done an okay job, because Rick called her the next day and she said that all was fine.