Day 7: The OC

Today's shoot was a breeze!  All we did was montage stuff.  I sat on the sidewalk while people walked past (We only had 3 people.  Ed's supply of extra's consists entirely of his roommates and June), filmed me walking down some streets, and then headed down to Orange County to get some footage of me sitting by a playground making the mothers uncomfortable.  A friend of Ed's lives down there and agreed to bring her kids by to be filmed.  It took us all of about 10 minutes to actually film the scene, and about an hour each way to drive there.  Go fig.  I rode in the back seat of Ed's truck - which is one of those back seats that faces sideways.  Remember those?  Good times.    

After lunch, on the way home we decided to stop and get a couple of extra quick shots for some montage buffer.  Just me walking down the street.  I walked past this adorable little old Mexican cowboy and just wanted to hug him.  Then as we were driving back I spotted a guy with an ice cream cart and thought it might be funny (if a bit absurd) to film me buying an ice cream to ease my sorrows only to have it fall to the ground when I tried to eat it.  Ed liked the idea, so we went ahead and shot it.  I surprised Ed with my mad Spanish-speaking skills.  Ice cream cart guy was not-so-fluent in the Inglais.

Easy day.  Loved it.

Since it was such an easy day, now might be a good time to expound a bit upon my feelings regarding this film.  I'll try not to get too long-winded here.

I had a bit of a moral dilemma at the outset of this film.  As I've mentioned there is some vaguely implied inappropriate behavior and my character drinks quite a bit in the film.  A while ago I was having trouble deciding why I was ok with playing a character such as a killer on a show like CSI or Criminal Minds, but I wasn't ok with extra-marital relations and things of that nature.  I came to the conclusion that it depends on how those things are portrayed.  In a show like the CSI's or L&O's, murder, rape, and things of that nature are still portrayed as wrong, whereas most of the time other things like drinking and schtooping are not.  So as long as the portrayal of the character jives with my personal belief system, I'm ok playing that character.  Does that make any sense?

Now to a current application.  I came to the conclusion here that the things this particular character does that are of a negative nature are due, in large part to his circumstances.  (Personally I believe in taking charge a bit more than that, but this character doesn't/can't, and that's ok.)  He's sort of driven to the bottle, and in the one scene, as I mentioned, he lacks the courage to speak up against the lady entering his bed chamber.  He doesn't necessarily believe these things are good, or even neutral, they're kind of just things that happen to him. In the end of the film he has a prodigal son kind of turn-around, and I felt those ends justified the means.  It also helps that Ed is a super-religious guy and even though our personal beliefs don't mesh 100%, he's done a lot to make this a pretty clean film.  Little language, and no taking of The Name in vain which I greatly appreciate.  He has also avoided as much as possible filming on Sundays.  Gotta respect that.

Lunch: 5 guys with what seemed like every corporate goon in Orange County.
Wrap Time: 2:10 ish