Trailer Park #4--Pellston

Be careful thinking you're too clever. Events have a way of leveling you, but good. 

Last weekend,in Athens, on Sunday afternoon, we filmed the interior of the bobhouse scene that I appear in. There are others, but this was the lone scene I appear in the bobhouse. (FYI-- a bobhouse is a small shack icefishermen build over their ice fishing holes, and it stays there all winter, and then when the ice starts to melt, they take all their gear out, and burn it down).

So anyway, the interior scenes were created buy using a raised wooden floor, and 4 theatre flats, clamping the corners together to make the four walls, then removing various sides so the camera can capture the action. This was very cramped going, but the detail was very cool. Lots of gear, tackle, bedding and such, and a hole in the floor that the students filled with ice and snow to look like an ice fishing hole.

My scene consisted of bursting into the bobhouse, pushing through some other actors, then I accuse the the old guy who owns the shack of kidnapping, and then see his partially hidden shoe-box full of lottery money, grab it, but it gets snatched from me, and I go barreling out the door after the guy who took it. Cut. Print.

Not quite of course--we spent four hours doing various permutations of the scene. I wasn't comfortable with picking up the box and having it snatched from me--it just looked like I was holding it out for someone to steal. So I hit upon the idea to grab the box, realize I can't open it with my gloves on, so I begin to pull one of 

them off with my teeth when the guy snags the box and bolts. That way, I figure, it could be funny--I rise cursing, but my words are muffled by the glove in my mouth; I go out running with the glove still dangling from my teeth, money-fever having consumed me. The director loved 

the idea, so that's what we went with.

Cut to this past weekend. We have driven 8 hours on Friday to get to Pellston, Michigan--ok, more than 8 hours, because we took a wrong turn somewhere in a snowstorm and ended 30 miles away, and had to backtrack, finally reaching our hotel by 1:30am. The next day, we are driven to the location, about 7 miles away, a frozen lake upon which sits our glorious bobhouse. A lovely couple hosted us there, people who had a sweet little A-frame cottage on the lake. They have given over their garage as a warming shack for us, and it is filled with heaters of all sorts (Michiganders are experts on portable heating devices, I discovered). There is also a grand lunch of brats and chili and ravioli, provided by the parents of Andy Poland, the DP, who originally hail from the area. The crew has been on the lake since dawn, setting up generators and camera equipment, and constructing the bobhouse.  

The snow is falling pretty steadily, which is a problem. We are here to film the exterior portion of the scene from last Sunday. The stuff we are to film outside the bobhouse leads to stuff we also filmed last week, namely the trailer fire. So, the sequence is this:

(Above, the lake at dawn, before the storm)

1. We burst into the bobhouse and take the money box and run out--interior, shot last Sunday

2. We wrestle each each other on the frozen lake, grappling for the box, which I knock into the air, scattering all the money, which we all dive for, till the character Marcelle (Shelley Delaney) looks out past the cameras, and calls out "fire!"--exterior, to be shot now.

3. We all run to the burning trailer, try lamely to put it out, and give up and watch it burn. Exterior, filmed last Friday and Saturday.

The problem is, it wasn't snowing in Athens last Friday and Saturday. But now, in Pellston, Michigan, it's snowing hard. And, the wind is gusty and sharp, and most of the time the snow is falling at a 45 degree angle. So we have an exterior already shot which is snowless, and one we are about to begin which will look, accurately, like it was filmed some 600 miles north and a week later. And I doubt the budget includes money for CGI snow. I suggested we add some line to the fire footage, something like " Well, at least the snow stopped." Only, you know, not as lame. It'll be interesting to see how it's solved.

Anyway, like I said at the top, be careful of your own cleverness. Because now I realize that I am going to have to spend the entire afternoon with my right hand ungloved, and not only that, it is going to have be digging in the snow, snatching up money. (The money by the way looks very real, until you see the denomination is 6 dollars, and the President's face is Bill Clinton's, and at the bottom it says "SEX DOLLARS").

The temperature as we left the hotel was 10 degrees, and given that we were standing on an ice covered lake means a drop to about zero. Add to that the hard wind, and we are looking at wind chills in the -10 to -20 range.

I refused to complain however--the crew had been there all day, with nary a break. I was not going to be the pansy actor who whines about bad conditions, after the tending and consideration we'd been getting.  And I don't have nearly enough in the can to go Christian Bale on anybody yet (you want enough footage already shot so you can't be replaced), so I suck it up. My glove, dangling from my mouth on each take as I barrel out of the bobhouse and tackle the guy who took the box, keeps sticking to my lip. It has become stiff as a board from my drool on the fingers, and it freezes solid instantly as soon as I hit that wind.

The latter half of the scene, where we are scrambling on the ice, on our hands and knees, grabbing the dollar bills whirling around in the wind, is where I finally lost all contact with my right hand. My brain was sending signals, but the message was garbled in transmission. It became this red and white claw--it look more like a small garden trowel than a hand. and there was no place to warm it--because I was enthusiastic about diving for the money, there were a number of takes in which I was on my belly in the ice and snow, and all my pockets were filled with melting snow.

Finally, as "magic hour" approached, the time just before sunset when the light is perfect for film, we began filming wide angle shots, the whole sequence of events, culminating in our running out of camera range toward the burning trailer. On the last run, I stepped on a bubble in the ice (they said the ice was generally a foot thick), and my ankle buckled, and I fell into the pile of snow that the crew had swept from the playing area. As I lay there, making snow angels, I heard the word I'd longed for--"WRAP!"

We went to the warming garage (above), and gathered our gear, and were driven to another location which I forgot to mention. This was about 3 miles from the lake, a horse farm, with a large bunkhouse attached to a veterinarian's field office. This was our dressing room, this was where we stopped at the beginning of the day to change into costumes and get made up. There were a few horses in the pen, and after makeup I went out and passed the time till calltime scratching their ears, and letting them kiss me. I don't pretend they were being affectionate--they were looking for treats.

So anyway, we go back to the bunkhouse, get out of costume, and get shuttled back to the hotel. This is a Holiday Inn Express, but not like the one I stayed in in Athens the previous week. That one was new and pretty swanky, for an HIE. This Michigan version looked like it was a motel that got converted. The appointments were pretty average. But I didn't care. All I thought about all afternoon was getting into the hot whirlpool. I ran to my room, changed into my swim suit in record time, ran to the "spa" only to discover it wasn't working. The water was hot, but the jets wouldn't come on. After complaining at the desk, I saw a gaggle of 10 year old boys running through the halls with wet hair, and I put it all together. I went back to the spa, to the emergency shut off box, and saw that it had been tripped. Little douchebags, those boys. I reset the device, and the bubbles came full bore, and I dove in. My hand came back online in no time. Good thing too--that was my favorite hand.

(The crew's cabin)

After soaking in the spa with a few other castmates, I dressed for dinner, which meant bundle up for a long cold drive. The crew were staying at a rented cabin some distance from the hotel. 30 college kids were sharing this large cabin--sleeping bags all over the floor. There was a nice fire in the fireplace and a huge kitchen, where Mr. Poland, our craft service man, had prepared an amazing dinner of spaghetti, three kinds of sauce, meatballs, and a many bottles of red wine for the table. The crew had already eaten and were in the living room area sprawled out and chatting and joking and having the kind of camaraderie you only get at that age. I miss it sometimes. The cast, all 10 of us, sat at the table downing vats of spaghetti ( ok, I was downing vats) and meatballs, and polishing off bottles of wine in world record time. It was a terrific end to a hard day. After dinner, Patrick, one of the directors, showed a rough cut of the trailer burning scene from last week, and it looked terrific. SOme one teased me that of all the cast, I seem to have gotten the lion's share of the closeups, and I told them perhaps I was the only one giving the directors what they really needed in the scene. As written, it wasn't really a scene about me, but as cut together, it became so.  I suspect they'll see this, and make some proper edits to it.

After dinner, I was shuttled back to the hotel--I knew the crew would be up till dawn--and some of the cast we going to get together in the lobby for a nightcap, and I fully intended to join them, but I lay back on the bed, and woke up at 3 am, with the TV blaring some war movie and my phone ringing. By the time I answered it, no one was there, but I suspect it was the desk wanting me to turn down the volume.

The next morning, we loaded up the car, and returned to God's Country. It was easier coming home, because, as we all know, heading south is like going downhill.