This day we move on to a new location -- a studio. A movie studio. Not Paramount, mind you, but a real life studio with soundstages and facilities, etc. This is what I'm told in the morning when I wake up (I knew we were on to our next location, I just didn't know it was a ...you get the picture). This is exciting!

I have to drive Lee's truck there, by myself.

This is exciting in a whole different way!

Lee has to drive the generator truck (precisely that -- a van with a huge generator built into it), so I'll be following him in his truck. I've actually driven his truck on the LA freeway system a couple of times now, but only on the way back from a location, where I kind of had an idea of where I'd been and where I was going. This was a whole new place.

I'll save you the suspense. I didn't get lost. It's easy to follow a van with a couple of tons worth of generator in it that accelerates at, if anything, negative Gs.

Lacy Street Production Center is an old mill -- it should be a location itself. An abandoned brick factory (built of bricks, it didn't build bricks) that could star all by itself in a film version of any Charles Dickens novel you can name. Inside, of course, it has been gutted and set up for film production, so this means there are some "permanent" sets that film crews such as ours can come in and dress and make their own and then leave and make room for the next film. Lots of big films have actually shot scenes here (they had posters and autographed photos in the office). The TV show Cagney and Lacey filmed here -- if you look closely, The Cheshire Cat's precinct room looks suspiciously like that of the above named old cop show -- mostly 'cause it is.

But for today we are filming on a different stage -- the apartment hallway. Movie magic, ladies and gents, prestidigitation of the most wondrous kind. An apartment building hallway with doors that open into nothing and an elevator whose doors are pulled open by stagehands off camera. Windows that, when draped in black, look more like the night sky on camera than the night sky does.

I have one problem with the hallway set. It is small. That means it is crowded. That means all non-essential personnel should get the hell out of the way. This is never said, or even implied -- I take this order upon myself and stick to it for most of the day, so that for most of the day I have no idea how filming is going. The dialog is minimal and can't be too damaged by rampaging actors (although I see later in dailies that it suffered some nicks and bumps) but that leaves me with nothing to do.

Except smoke. It gets to be a joke. Every time somebody walks out the door, I'm sitting outside smoking. I get a good tan. I sunburn my head a little. I smoke three and a half packs that day.

And the astonishing thing is, I still wasn't bored. I never once wished I was somewhere else.

Because even off set, there is excitement in the air.

Witness: Tommy. You remember Tommy: First AD, yells a lot. At first we all thought it was a good thing -- a heavy to keep everybody on track. By the end of the shoot at the bar, opinions had...changed. Half the crew was ready to walk (remember, they're working for free. Getting yelled at unnecessarily wasn't in the contract). On the last night at the bar, he blew up at Kerry (not only was the problem not her fault, but it is generally a bad idea to yell at the person who is Associate Producer and one of the stars of the film and the Executive Producer's significant other. A politically risky move, I'd venture.) Most importantly, even Parris is having trouble working with him. Considering his job is to make Parris' life easier, this is Tommy's greatest sin. I'm sitting with Lee at Lacy in the morning when Parris comes over and asks Lee if any progress has been made, what they can do about Tommy, etc., and I realize quickly that this conversation is a continuation of an earlier one. But what can Lee do? He can't find another First AD at the drop of a hat. He promises Parris he'll work on it, and Parris says he'll live with Tommy as long as he has to.

[Important aside here: I don't recall if I've already mentioned this. Remember Professor Parris Moriarity, my nemesis, the man who gave me ulcers in pre-production. The man with whom Liza, the production designer, literally got into screaming fits with in preprod? Sometime between the last draft of the script and the time I flew to Los Angeles, he was abducted by aliens and replaced by one of their podlings. But they made one fatal mistake that immediately revealed this alien creature for what he really was: from day one of the shoot, "Parris" could not have been easier to work with. He was pleasant, he listened to suggestions, he asked my opinion, he joked, he was a consummate professional. At one point Liza walked up to me and said "Who is this person and what have they done with Parris?" Give the man his propers -- he did a fine job. I went into the shoot swearing I wouldn't work with him again. I came out of it hoping I could. Ain't life funny sometimes?]

This first morning at Lacy Street we have a couple of new people aboard. Rob is our new 2nd AD, because Sarah had to leave. We are introduced very briefly that morning -- he seems like a pleasant fellow, easy going. So filming has begun. They're up on the hallway set. Lee and I are down on the main floor just hanging. Next thing I know, I hear Rob YELL "You know what? I don't need this shit! Fuck this shit, and fuck you!" [sorry, those of you with tender ears and eyes. Real life is ugly sometimes] I turn in time to see him throw his clipboard at Tommy's feet and storm off the set, past me and Lee (who is rising quickly). Lee sends Mark after Rob, and himself goes to Tommy. Mark returns, and Lee calls Parris off the set. I'm eavesdropping as hard as I can, but Lee, Mark, Tommy, and Parris are talking too low, damn them, I can't hear a word they're saying. It all seems calm, but intense.

And then, the only words I catch in the whole conversation: Lee says to Tommy "Well, we can't use you then."

Tommy turns, stomps over to the table, grabs his stuff, and storms off the set. Mark follows at a discrete distance, watches him from the door, then announces that Tommy is off the lot. I half expect a cheer to go up. This is the end of Tommy.

Of course, now we don't have a First AD. Rob is brought back to the set (Mark had sequestered him over in the green room, letting him calm down while they got Tommy off the set). It was a simple choice, Lee says. Easier to lose Tommy than to not only lose Rob, but potentially a chunk of the crew. Turns out to be a better decision than he anticipates even -- Rob is good at what he does, and is indeed a pleasant fellow and fun to work with.

But we still don't have an AD. All eyes turn to Mark. Poor Mark. His life as UPM is already pure hell and phenomenally busy. But he's also the best qualified person to be First AD, which is another intensely hellacious job.

I tell him, for what it's worth, I'm available to be used however you need me. Damn him, he takes me up on it. I become FAN BOY.

Okay, it was an easy job, and it got me on the set. And I enjoyed it. But it is so much more fun to complain about it, ne? What they needed was someone to oscillate the fan on the curtains hanging in the window at the end of the hall, to give some movement in the background. I think I did a fine job. The curtains moved with, dare I say it, a startling realism. To make my job harder (to challenge me, I think, to push me to my limits) they took away my fan (noise problems). I had to wave at the curtains with a board. I like to think I rose to the challenge. I kept the curtains moving, but I did it with just the right degree of random chaos that you would find in wind swirling past the side of a building -- light breeze, the occasional gust.

In dailies, you could barely even see that end of the hall. So much for stardom.

I finish my moment in the sun as Fan Boy. I smoke some cigarettes, basking in the ephemeral glory of it all. On the stage, they're shooting the opening scene of the movie, where the body of Dorothy Eddings is found in the hallway. The police photographer is snapping away -- the man playing the police photographer is the same man who is, in fact, the production's still photographer -- cinema verite! His name is Stephen, he is British, he is a good photographer, and he is intensely annoying. Not a bad guy, just one of those types who grates on my nerves. I bring him up because you'll meet him again on the last day. But for now he snaps his pictures, and they finish the scene, and he comes down and asks Tracy to get somebody to go develop them, because they're need to use them later in the day, in a scene where the audience sees the crime scene photos in a close up. Trouble is, we're short handed. Oh, Cary! Can you take these to get them developed?

Uh, sure, I say. Except of course I don't have a car.

Take mine, says Tracy. (Thanks, Trace)

Okay, says I. Where do I go?

Well, I know of a couple of one hour places down town, says Stephen. As in downtown Los Angeles. As in miles and miles away, in a huge urban metropolis in which I've never driven before and do not know my way around. It'll be easy, Stephen says, you'll do fine. Just do this and this this and this.

Tracy, bless her heart, immediately sees the idiocy of this. No, she says, if we're going to send somebody downtown it's not going to be somebody who's not even from LA. But why go downtown? There must be a place nearby.

We track down Austin, the head of the studio. Is there a 1 Hour photo place nearby? He's got maps already made up that show the location of the nearest facilities for just about anything a production could need, including photo development. It's about four blocks down the street. I thank my lucky stars that nobody listened to Stephen, and take the photos down. It doesn't occur to me until after I drop them off that I should have mentioned I was from a film production -- this is a role of pictures of a bloody body. I expect the police to be waiting for me when I return, but apparently this guy deals with film crews alot, and never bats an eye. I'm going to assume that's why he never bats an eye.

This is, overall, perhaps the hardest emotional day of the shoot for me. Despite the above, the vast vast vast majority of this great wasteland of day is spent doing nothing for me. Sitting. Smoking. Drinking water. Drinking soda. Smoking. I feel so god damn useless I could spit. I see everybody working so hard and I can imagine their contempt, their derision of me as I sit on the sidelines doing nothing to help. My rational mind tells me (and rightly) that my job is done. Yes, these folks are working hard and will work hard for two weeks. I worked hard for six months writing the damn thing, and another three months in rewrites. I have contributed my fair and appropriate share to this production, the work that I was hired to do. But I still feel like shit.

The Bathroom.

You think it's so easy when, in a movie, someone walks into the bathroom and turns on the water, and the water comes out. Hah! If that scene was filmed in a studio, that means that somebody had to rig that sink with a hose so that it had a water source, and they had to arrange for the water that went down the drain to go someplace, because that drain ain't real, it's more movie magic, and magic ain't nothing but hard work that you don't see.

The Precinct bathroom. There are two scenes here, one where Lt.Rigby comes in and finds the sink clogged and yells "Fuck!" and storms out. The other is where Parks pours Draino down the sink and has an epiphany. Both require running water, and that the water drain. This sink is not hooked up to anything, and the pipe underneath is not connected to anything. Liza and her crew run a hose to the faucet and jerry rig it as best they can, but there are reasons big shoots have plumbers on hand. With the equipment we have, we can make it look great, but in reality whenever the water is turned off, half of it leaks out onto the floor behind the set wall.

Which is where I'm stationed. That's right, now I'm WATER BOY. It is my job to turn the water on at the source when the AD tells me to, and to turn it off when they say cut, so as to flood the set as little as possible. Which is a lot, so in between shots I'm mopping like crazy trying to keep the water out of all the dressing rooms, etc.

Which is easier than Liza's job. As mentioned, there is no piping under the sink, so a bucket is placed there to catch the water. That works fine. The problem is, we need the drain to be clogged. It is important to the script, essential even. It never occurs to me how they are accomplishing this, while I squat behind the set next to the water main. Turns out Liza is laying under the sink, out of camera view, with her palm pushed up against the bottom of the pipe that sticks out below the sink's drain. Pushing as hard as she can as the water tries to force its way out. Then, when the sink is supposed to come unclogged, she moves her hand. Not a big move, there's no space for that. She just pulls it away from the pipe. And all the water and all the "Draino" (blue-colored karo syrup) drains right down her arm. Take after take after take. That's dedication, folks.

Bill Douglas plays Lt. Rigby. You remember Bill -- the man who read his lines exactly as I'd heard them in my head? He is as good in filming as he was in rehearsal. He is a pleasant, big hearted big guy with a round, jovial face that transforms magically into the hardened, sharp features of Rigby whenever "action" is called. I'd like to see him in a bigger part. He's good.

For now, all he is required to say is "Fuck!" Parris isn't sure how he wants it played -- big, small, in between, you tell me, Goldilocks. So they film the scene, and then, with just sound rolling, have Bill say the line. Over and over. Different every time. For five minutes. He must say it a hundred times. "Fuck. FUCK. fuck. FUUCCCKK. FUck. FuCK..." By the end of it, all of us sitting outside the room are in giggling hysterics, it's just so ridiculous. But by god, Bill Douglas found 100 different ways to say fuck.

One more excitement associated with the bathroom (and there's a phrase you don't hear often). Under the sink, as set dressing, are a mop bucket, bottles of drain cleaner, other cleaning supplies. Liza and Sue (one of her staff), between takes, are banging on the sink and its fixtures, trying to get the water to run properly, etc. Bang. Bang. A shout. "MEDIC!" Somehow in there a can of spot remover got hit. It splashed right into Sue's eyes. Kai the medic rushes onto the set, they get Sue to a real sink and flush her eyes thoroughly. Sue is spitting fire and cursing all the way (which is unlike her, in that she has been preternaturally good natured throughout). She is mad at herself for getting hurt, blaming herself (meanwhile Liza is blaming Liza, and Mark is blaming Mark, etc. Lee is blaming nobody -- these things happen, and that's why there is a medic on the set.) She fights it all the way, but they send her to the hospital (somebody else drives). On the way out they give her all the proper insurance forms, call ahead to the hospital to have them standing by, send the bottle with them so the doctors can see it. It is all handled so smoothly, so professionally, that I am flabbergasted. It is one of those moments that really drives in the fact that these people, really and for true, know what they're doing. They're professionals. They're professional movie makers, and they're making a professional movie. Out of a script Charlie and I wrote. Too cool.

Sue was all right, and the show goes on.

[Just should anybody care, there were two other movies filming while we were at Lacy: something called "Topless Brainsurgeons" and, believe it or not, something even lower on the totem pole -- a porno. Some of the women from the latter flashed some of our crew, I was told. I missed it. I was actually on the set. Doing what, you might ask? Well, read on...]