Day 3: Death of a Hobo

For a portion of the film you'll find me living on the streets of LA.  I am befriended by a homeless man named "Jim" who is quirky and probably a little crazy.  We filmed a lot of my scenes with him today.

In real life Jim is an actor (obviously) and I don't think he does much else.  He's pretty bombastic and not afraid to say what he thinks.  I think he may originally be from New York.  He has lots of stories - some of which I'm sure are true - about his time in LA.

The big scene from today was the scene where Jim dies.  I don't really consider that information a spoiler because the crazy homeless spiritual guide character always dies.  Anyway, this is another one of those intense scenes Ed wanted to get out of the way at the beginning. I find Jim sprawled out in his tent dying from a drug overdose.  I attempt to get help, but he tells me it's too late and then dies.  I am pretty broken up about it and actually managed some tears for the scene - even though on my close-up I was acting with a spot on the ground and not Jim himself (it makes a difference, trust me.)  I felt pretty good about the whole thing and hopefully Ed got some good stuff out of it too.  He didn't have any complaints and seemed to be pretty satisfied.

Something I learned from today that you don't really think about until you have to do it, is consistency.  When acting in a film you almost have to choreograph every movement you make.  I didn't necessarily think that was true.  I mean, you're not going to see me say or do anything more than once, so why should it matter if I do it differently?  Here's why:  When you're watching a movie you don't just see a continuous scene.  They're constantly cutting among different angles.  If you're facing one direction in one angle and they cut and suddenly you're facing a different direction, that looks weird.  (An example that comes to mind is from the movie "Valentine's Day".  At the end Ashton K is talking to his lady love - the actress escapes me at the moment - they cut between to different angles.  In one angle he's standing straight up, in the other he's leaning down.) So, you kind of have to plan out where you'll be and when you're moving that way it's easier for the editor to cut.  It's a lot harder to do that than it sounds.  I'm getting better at it, I think.

At the end of the day Ed wanted to get a quick shot of me walking into Skid Row.  Like, the actual Skid Row in the middle of south-central Los Angeles - where all the homeless drug-addicted people live.  It was kind of scary.  But it was daylight, we were across the street from the police station, and we were only there for 5 minutes (which was still enough time to see a prostitute jump on the back of some guy's motorcycle), so it wasn't too bad.  Luckily Ed decided against filming all the "Jim" scenes in Skid Row - which was his original plan.

Lunch: Subway.  It was hilarious to me to have Jim with us because he was still in costume and looked 100% like a hobo.  Plus he's kind of an odd guy anyway - which didn't help.
Wrap Tim: 4ish - which is still only an 8 hr. day.  Some of these big budget films shoot for 16 hours a day or more.  Livin' the dream folks.