Today was our last day in New Westminster. Despite its difficulties it has served us well and I am sad to leave. We departed in fine style with Chad and his other Teen Pageant contestant buddies lining up in their speedos for a bit of teutonic marching practice. In most movies I suppose it would have been a line of bikini-ed babes but the girls had the last laugh this time and got to watch Mr. Rochester, Mr Utica & co. strut their stuff.

Unsung heroes of the set part 2: Transpo’. Last night we left a bunch of trailers and trucks outside the Turf Motel at 9pm in the pouring rain. Lights were burning, heaters were heating and it looked like a small town on its own in the parking lot complete with flush toilets, televisions, video cassette players, fold out beds, photocopiers, clothing racks etc. This morning at 730 the whole ‘circus’ (as we call it) had magically re-appeared outside the Massey Theater. How did it get there? Where did it spend the night? None of us seems to know or care – unless it’s late. When they made African Queen they were miles down a river in the midst of the jungle and Katherine Hepburn did her own wardrobe and changed behind a tree with a mirror hanging from it. Movies aren’t made like that anymore and the inside of these trucks are more plushly furnished than many people’s homes. As I write this in my comfortable hotel room John, Brian, Chuck and co. are shifting the circus to a new location so that when we arrive in the morning we’ll all feel at home and ready for a day’s work.

Rain, rain go away, come back on Mother’s Washing Day…some chance. So it rained all day – big surprise and we got behind. The poor actor who turned up to play the Sea.Doo dude hung around and never got to work. I hate it when that happens.

Unsung heroes of the set – Part One. Script Supervisors. What do they do? (They used to be called continuity ladies at one time but of course you could never do that now – though I’ve never met a continuity ‘chap’). Ours is called Pam and she’s the best. She takes a note of every take, which are my favourites, which lens we used, focal distance, f-stop, footage count etc. She then keeps a note of which hand the actor was using to hold the door when he climbed into the Indian, which person entered first, which lines were missed, which lines were stepped on etc. It’s an endless, thankless task. She tells the actors what they did in the last take and actors aren’t always ready to ‘hear’ what she has to say so it takes great tact and patience. She’s also the only person on the set in a ‘one person’ department. No-one around to take over for half an hour, cover for her if she oversleeps and without her we’d be lost. Every movie has one and every shot you see on your TV or movie screen has been watched over painstakingly by someone like Pam. As you settle-in in front of the TV this evening give yourself a test. After 5 minutes ask yourself which hand the bad guy was holding the gun in when he raced out from behind the building? Which hand did the good guy hold his drink in when he started the speech, which hand did he have the cigarette in at the end of the speech? Bet you get it wrong.

Say a thank-you to all the Pam’s of the world. Without them you’d notice all these stupid things that would take you out of the movie and destroy your enjoyment of it.

I can see it in their faces as they drive by – they think we’re nuts. 30 grown people sitting outside wrapped in a variety of thermal clothes, huddled around portable gas heaters while one individual in a particularly bright thermal outfit (me) watches TV and barks orders and waves his arms around a lot. That’s what happened today for 13 hours and NO RAIN! (OK a few drops just before lunch).

Buss discovered Jerry right across the street from where we shot the last scene two weeks ago on the first day of the Sphincter Unit. Not my original intention but a location SNAFU (not Abraham’s fault I hasten to add) meant I had to pick a new location and fast last week sometime. And you know what – in the end this compromise paid off. It was probably the right choice all along and served our purposes nicely.

Lunchtime brought a package from the Fedex man: my first look at some of the scenes cut together…and wow – we’re actually making a movie. It works. I can’t wait for Maggie, our exec, to come back tomorrow so I can show her some stuff.

We finished the day at the strip club where QT races inside to find some girls. However the “GIRLS” sign was not doing it for me so Kev despatched his trusty second, David Footman, to hoof it over to the Paramount (the emporium down the street where young women divest themselves of their fine apparel) to enlist one of their young employees to provide the necessary incentive for QT to make his dash inside and voila we were in business. Yes folks…that’s what a Second Assistant Director does for a living.

Let’s talk about coverage shall we? Coverage is the different angles you employ to ‘cover’ a scene; the different cuts, the close-ups, the wides etc. So, we started the day with a scene that is 4 and 2/8 pages long which means it will be in the movie for about 4 minutes. (Quick movie rule of thumb: one page equals one minute). And this is all one scene so you want everything to look like it’s being shot at the same time right?

Well try this. You arrive in the morning and it’s pouring with rain and it’s dark and you know that you have (after lunchbreak has been subtracted) about 7 hours of usable light. As it gets brighter the rain lessens off and it looks kind of grey so you figure you can make that work. About 11am it starts raining again, hard. So now you have two looks and the actors are wet as well as cold. Before we reach lunch the sun comes out so Marc (our DP) is trying to match the close-ups to the rainy, grey stuff we had earlier. Then it starts hailing! And of course the sun comes out for a final burst before it races away at 4pm.

Mickey and Jerry just before lunch when the sun came out!

I watched a movie last night, which wasn’t very good, but the sun was out constantly and everything matched. Why not us? Everyone is working so hard and this is the stuff which just gets in your way and messes with your day. I’m trying to make sure I’m sending great performances to my editor and there we all are under a snap-up sheltering from the hailstones! Here’s the good news: it happens to everyone – even the greats. There’s a moment in North By North West when they get to Mount Rushmore and you can see that the sun went down between two of the shots and, you know what, it’s still a great movie…perhaps no-one will notice.

Act Three is complete.

We were shooting in Buss’s 9th floor hotel room and I wanted to have his Rolodex in the opening shot but it had mysteriously made its way back to the props house which was 45 minutes away. It was an important little detail that represented all the contacts and years of work that Buss had put in with the Fifth Unit etc. Not having it in the shot was a disappointment but I was going to be a big boy and do without it. Then the fire alarm went off! Buss got dressed (he was in his plaid boxers) and we all trekked down 9 flights out into the bitter wind, back to the front of the hotel only to find it was a false alarm. We all returned to the set for our final rehearsal and by the time we were ready to shoot the Rolodex had arrived! Serendipity? Who knows.

We finished the weeks work at the 50’s drive-in where Mickey went head to head with a fibre-glass pig. I think we’d all been secretly waiting for this scene and Mickey didn’t let us down. “Rodney King!” he cried over and over as the Georgia State troopers lead him away to their car.

Somehow we are already half way through the shoot. How did this happen? I’m realizing that I must concentrate even harder now than I did at the start. The sense that it’s all going well is an insidious little demon that can lead to complacency on my behalf and now I’m responsible for turning all the hours of hard work by everyone else into something truly entertaining. Besides we have to get 2gether to Florida to see if they can whup Woah! butt. My gut feeling is they can do it.

A day of weather ironies. At 7am I find myself scouting a location in the dark and in the pouring rain for a scene that will be shot in daylight and with the sun up (I hope)…Then in the afternoon we go outside (where at last the sun has appeared) throw a tent over The Indian and pretend the boys are driving down the highway at night! Go figure…

This last gag is called “Poor man’s process” or PMP for short. What we do is cover the band’s van with huge and heavy black drapes provided by Dean and his merry bunch of grips, then light the van as if it were travelling down a highway at night. Finally we put the actors in their seats and film a scene as we rock the van to and fro. ‘Why not drive the van down the road and shoot?’ I hear you ask. Well you can do that but you get lots of road noise, you don’t get the same angles, it takes up loads of time and it’s not always sensible to ask an actor to drive and act at the same time. (No offence Doug). There is another way which is to put the vehicle on a huge trailer and drag it down the road with the crew riding on the trailer and shooting inside the van. This is called a Process Trailer shot but is much more costly and also very time consuming. I used a process trailer on the C-Note video I shot earlier this year and the Cadillac the band were riding in fell through the trailer: waste of an afternoon!

This morning we dressed up teams of innocent extras to represent the three decades of Buss’s remarkable career: The Fifth Unit (60’s), The Johnson 5 (70’s) and 2 Kool 4 Skool (80’s). The wardrobe, hair and make-up departments (Lorraine, Monique and Adina) excelled themselves with mutton chops, fros, wide lapels and instant tans.

I made the mistake of imbibing a popular night-time cold remedy last night and stumbled out of bed this morning feeling like a man with a rotting blanket for a head. As I stood in the shower thoughts tumbled through my brain along the lines of “if I collapse in the middle of a take will they find someone to yell cut?” Nevertheless Meredith my trusty assitant (and very popular amongst the lads I can tell you) was waiting for me down in the lobby with the Beast and shuttled me off to set ignoring my grumblings and whingeings like the lady she is.

The morning was filled with various dramas which I shall report on another occasion and the afternoon was spent watching Jerry, QT, Mickey, Doug and Chad try on a variety of stunning dancing outfits the like of which only Mr Buss could conjure up. The Firemen’s suits made me think of Village People, the catcher’s outfits made me think of Tom Hanks spitting chewing tobacco and the Tarzan outfits reminded me of an old Was Not Was video that I made back in the 80’s. 2gether – I’m so proud of them: they worked hard all day and nary a grumble between them.

And of course it rained from dawn till dusk.

Today was very special for us all as Mark Gunn and Brian Gunn (“we’re cousins not brothers”), our trusty scribes, were in Vancouver to watch us bring their words to life. I am happy to report that they were still talking to me after Maggie played them a bunch of dailies. Brian then changed into a Bellhop outfit and lead the guys to the bunker where Buss will turn them from raw recruits into finely tuned teen machines. Today’s Buss jacket was for the Transatlantic Rhythm Kings – another of my old bands. Hopefully my old band mates will have a snigger when they see this on MTV next year.

I checked my guestbook today and noticed that Erin had checked out the web site. She misses us and I’m sure Jerry and the lads are thinking about her too…

It was just like shooting that Backstreet Boys commercial in NYC all over again: 150 screaming girls and thick grey skies only this time my luck held out and it didn’t rain till we went inside where Chad and Mickey were giving Woah! lots of stick – “don’t dance so good,” they begged, “you make us look bad!”

After my plea for Chilliwack discs Tony (production designer) and Abraham (location man) both appeared with different Chilliwack albums for my collection. Nearly all my dreams on this job are coming true!

I’d been dreading the Jerry / Erin scene. Having seen it so many times in casting read by so many different actors I had lost sight of the lines and could only hear them one way. I also felt the actors were having the same problem. I used an old trick that Judy, my acting teacher, uses all the time. I made Erin say “But I’ve just cooked dinner” before every line. I made Jerry say “I want to go to Orlando” before every line. And the scene worked great. (You can learn many neat tricks like this from Judy – if you want to check out her class leave a message in the guest book or read her book “Directing Actors.”)

By the time we’d got back into the Spelling Bee everyone was in a holiday mood: it was Friday afternoon. We have acheived an enormous amount this week, have shot all of Act V and something from Acts I, II, III, VI & VIII and have managed to stay almost completely on schedule shooting mostly 12 hour days. It’s only rained about half of the time and we’ve all been to Chilliwack and back. I also feel I have connected with Marc (my DP) and Kevin (my AD) – I am touched by the quiet patience and unchecked enthusiasm they both show when I present them with my huge storyboards every day. Thank-god they both found me. My first night nerves are over now and I have to be on my guard to see that complacency doesn’t set in.

It’s Saturday night and the band are eating dinner over at QT’s place. I have stayed at the hotel to work: I felt the pressure of my shot-list bearing down on me and I needed to get that pencil moving again.

Passed Hilary Swank in the hotel lobby this morning – very serene and quietly beautiful. We also keep seeing vans for the guys from Spinal Tap waiting outside our hotel. They’re making a dog movie called “Best In Show.” I wonder if their movie will look wet like ours does?

An easy day: 120 extras, 4 contestants, one moderator, a bunch of cheerleaders, a couple of stunts and five fat-man outfits. A piece of cake…well almost but it was certainly a bit crumbly at first. Doug was brilliant: “It makes me a Heathen,” he sang over and over as the show fell to pieces around him. QT lapsed into his coma about 27 times (perhaps Jerry told him about last night’s kissing scene) and Chad took fall after fall – never once leaving his fat-man outfit. Come to think of it he’s taken a bashing these last few days – the wet-suit and now the fat-man thing…and we haven’t got to the speedo scene yet!

At the end a kind gent called Randy Thompson, who’d been one of our extras, gave me a copy of his book “A Journey.” At first glance it appears to be a description of his passage through many difficulties to a place of self awareness and peace. He writes: “Change is sometimes hard for people. Whatever is familiar is more comfortable even if that familiar is unhealthy. People are usually reluctant to change. They don’t know how it will come out. They don’t know what will happen. Fear of the unknown. But change is necessary for growth. Without it we stagnate.” Amen to that Randy.

Film-making, like any group endeavor, is often made by a million small kindnesses and thoughts coming 2gether. As I knock on wood I feel that making this film is an experience that is changing my life irrevocably and I feel blessed to be sharing my time here with so many good souls.

We started the day with a drive-by and finished with a stunt. A drive-by involves the crew and me sitting in some ditch and having the Indian park in some convenient lay-by 1/4 of a mile away until we’re ready. We then call “action” down the walkie and the Indian trundles into action towards us. After she’s passed we wait five minutes for her to turn around, drive back, do a second U-turn and reset. It’s all very time consuming and boring as hell for the actors. Then Doug had to swerve because there was a pole in the middle of the road and suddenly everyone was very focused again.

Movie / language trivia for you. What’s the French for “Walkie-Talkie” ? Would you believe “Talkie-Walkie”?

The stunt involved Marc (the DP) hanging out of the back of one of the Windstars with the camera while two stunt men swerved across the road behind us. We had to lock down a street and shoot it three different sizes. All very time consuming for just a few seconds of usable film.

Buss is ill with a cold / flu. I sent him home to bed – his boys will need him next week.

“Gentlemen knuckle-down time has begun.” So says Mr. Buss when he starts his boys on their inevitable road to stardom. And that’s where we are tonight…tomorrow is the first day of shooting with our guerilla-style splinter unit. Kevin has christened it the Sphincter Unit . We’ll be shooting drive-bys and bits and bobs that we don’t need the whole crew for – but even so this will be the first time most of us have gone into battle together or even 2gether! As the troops settle in for the night I feel rather excited – we have a great team both in front and behind the camera: I can’t wait to get my hands dirty and shoot some plastic. Wish us luck and some good weather!

I’ve met Doug at last. Doug will be played by Kevin Farley and Michael, Noah, Alex, Evan and I all had fish and chips with him for lunch. He’s funny and fun to be with and could be described as the missing link of our new Supergroup.

Today’s drama was the news that Bob Buss wouldn’t be making it up here on Sunday night as planned – he’s filming something else in San Diego that’s running late and he won’t be able to leave till Monday evening at the earliest. To help us out he is going to fly up here tomorrow for a wardrobe fitting before flying back in the evening to return to work. Like our DP who was shooting a video in Toronto till 9pm last night and appeared at the location scout here in Vancouver at 9am this morning, and myself who spent three weeks bouncing around the West coast like a yo-yo, Mr Buss is going to line the pockets of the airlines and tire himself out in the interests of creating a fine film and putting 2gether on the charts where they belong. As Buss would probably say: “Story of my life: they put problems my way, I bounce back…”

I’m in Vancouver for good now and it hasn’t stopped raining the whole time I’ve been here…the shape of things to come? We had the production meeting today – a big deal where the head of every department sits around a huge table and goes through the script scene by scene: 7 skateboarding punks here – 30 screaming fans with big hair there; one stunt double here – 4 breakaway table lamps there. Our first AD, Kevin, led us onwards at a breathless pace delivering his pithy version of each scene with a dry wit that reminded me what a gem of a script this is. Like many of the crew members he is not shy of staking his claim on his favourite gags. This very particular filmic ritual took place in the Squamish Recreation Centre, a beautiful building with the most highly polished floor I’ve ever seen on a basketball court. Thank-you the Squamish Nation for providing such a fine ambience for the first meeting of our little film tribe that will be burning plastic in just over a week from now. I hope I can complete this job with the same dignity and fortitude shown by the totem pole that watched us all as we climbed into our cars and drove off back to work.

Bill, our producer, has seen the perfectly adequate (and environmentally reasonable) car I was driving and has insisted production change it. Apparently it was not suitable for a man of my stature and, despite my protestations, Meredith (my assistant) and I are now proud parents of a humungous and ungainly black SUV. It takes up two spaces in the hotel parking lot.

We call it The Beast.

Just two weeks before kick-off and still no Doug but the crew’s getting bigger day by day. We’ve hired the costume department, the DP, an AD and the Production Designer and they’ve all quizzed and caught me out. They all see the script from their own perspective and it’s fascinating to watch them fixating on details that will be but mere pixels in the finished ‘work’ but which irrevocably create the atmosphere in which our actors will bring their parts to life. I feel overwhelmed by all these details. I remember a story John, who co-wrote Private Investigations, told me. He was directing his second movie and bumped into Francis Ford Coppola one day. John asked the bearded one for a word of directorial advice and FFC replied: “If you’re not constantly terrified, feeling sick with worry and unable to eat or sleep, then you’re not trying hard enough.”

Oh well, I must be doing OK then.

Just landed in Vancouver in the pouring rain after a bumpy ride from Reno where it was clear blue skies and super dry air – the scourge of all our singers. The scene in the kitchen this morning was quite unique – a long line of large water bottles quickly being snaffled up as the guys wrote their names on them and started drinking hard – everyone’s been getting sore throats. Each morning Halim, the general factotum of Sierra Sonics, has been preparing a wondrous potion from honey and lemons for those with throats like the bottom of a plumber’s tool-box.

It’s been quite an experience and I’m sad that this part of the movie came to such a sudden end. Veit’s song, the 2gether anthem, has turned out particularly well and it’s been a wonderful lesson for an amateur musicican such as myself to watch the different styles of the three production teams at work. We have been truly blessed by their talent.

We had a run through of the script last night – lots of laughs but the cold realisation dawned on Maggie and myself that the script is too long and pages will have to go. (Maggie is the astute girl from MTV who’s hired us all by the way). However all is not lost: a side effect of the whole process is that Chad, Mickey, QT and Jerry have enjoyed a unique bonding experience which will stand them in good stead before the weeks ahead – if only we had a Doug that everyone was happy with…

We’ve all made our way to Reno, Nevada to record the songs that will appear in the movie and with Michael flying in from Vancouver, Evan from NYC and Noah and Alex from LA this is the first time that 2gether actually hang together. We’re working in an old Victorian house with a recording studio inside (www.sierrasonics.com) – this quiet suburban house has had Eminem, Ozzy, Dr Dre and Captain & Tennille record here. As you will all find out the Captain and Tennille link is particularly apt.

Casting all day yesterday. We saw our first Bob Buss’s. Buss is the svengali who invents 2gether – part Brian Epstein part Mr Magoo. He’s a wonderful character who does a kind of reverse King Lear: we find him at his lowest ebb and by the end of the tale he has re-discovered himself and is back on top of his game, and remarkably, despite the setbacks, he carries no trace of bitterness. He reminds me of Dale Griffith, the John Candy character in Planes, Trains and Automobiles, and I wonder what Buss’s life was like before we first meet him. I describe him to all the hopefuls as being terrifed of a 9 to 5 job because he has no idea what he would do between 5 and 9 and wonder for a moment if I’m not describing myself. Some of the actors who read for us bring lumps to the throat when they tackle Buss’s phone call to Jerry when all seems lost: a testament to the actors commitment and the Gunn’s writing. At one point I realise that I am describing Buss in terms of my old boss Robbo – a man of such intense belief in his acts that he would press on through insurmountable problems with unbelievable determination regardless of the cost both to himself and to those who worked with him, never revealing his fear once whether he was stony broke or flush with cash. If I can’t bring Buss alive on screen then I will definitely have to consider going back to cab-driving as a career.

Four weeks to blastoff and though I feel quite relaxed about the whole thing it’s obviously getting to me. Woke up in the middle of the night and found I’d been having a nightmare about different ways of covering the numerous drive-by’s the movie will feature. Initially I was furious with myself – I mean, this is second unit stuff – you need to get some sleep! But then common sense kicked in and there I was at 3am scribbling notes regarding angles, lenses and focal lengths furiously on the pad I keep by my bed for such moments of ‘genius.’ The benefits of such nocturnal sessions aside isn’t it amazing what power our conscious has in that it can override what we’re really thinking (bloody hell – how am I going to shoot this thing?) with what we’d like to be thinking (I can do this – everything’s going to be allright)?

Back in Vancouver: Josh played us the demo version of the Woah! song down the phone. (Woah! is the band who are 2gether’s bete noire). It’s catchy and hysterical at the same time and is all about wanking which is a subject I could write about at great length. And on that note…

We’ve been casting all day and I think maybe we have our band. Making a movie is a bit like abseiling over the edge of a vertiginous cliff using a chain which you are making link by link as you lower yourself downwards. Each link in the chain is one of the decisions you must make every minute of the process and it only takes one of those links to fail to send you tumbling into the void with no hope of ever scaling your way back up the cliff. But, even though you are aware of the tremendous pressure hanging on each decision, you must enter into a zen-like state of freedom where you must have the courage to go with your gut, stick with your decisions and make them work. As Judy, my acting teacher would always tell us, “To succeed you must be prepared to fail spectacularly.”

The decisions we make to decide who will be in 2gether are five crucial links in the chain that will make the movie a success. It’s terrifying but at the same time I know that today I spent time with some wonderful characters who made me laugh till it hurt and that’s enough to send me to bed with a happy heart.