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.