Three Movies in Three Weeks: Proud Mary Part Two

In Which Everything Starts to Go Wrong
About two weeks before we were going to shoot "Proud Mary," everything started to go wrong.

I'd just gotten pre-production in to a place I was comfortable with - we had the schedule settled and our cast together - and I had enough work left to do that I could just get it done before we started shooting if I worked solidly until the shoot.

Our first problem was that we were having a lot of trouble finding a full crew: it was midterm-time at NYU, and Easter Weekend, and, because I had been stuck in pre-pro, I had sort of fallen behind on the favor-trading (you work my set, I'll work yours) that is in many ways the life blood of independent film production. We were shuffling crew until literally the day before the shoot.

But the biggest problem was that, just as we'd gotten our cast finalized, one of our lead's moms got sick and he had to leave the country. I arranged some quick auditions, and we found a good replacement, but, just before his callback, his aunt got sick and he suddenly had to go take care of her on Long Island for the weekend.

So we replaced him with someone who'd had a so-so audition, but then he got two days of paid soap work and decided he wanted to spend Sunday with his family, so he dropped out.

After the second and third guy dropped out just before we were going to pick up the equipment, I decided that if anything was going to go seriously wrong with this production, it wouldn't be my fault.

This was a big moment for me - deciding that, after all the work I'd put in, and the number of factors I had working against me - the budget, working alone, the casting and crew problems, shooting in New Jersey, the complications of the schedule - I really had no choice but to forgive myself if things weren't perfectly button-up when it came time to make our movie.

At the last minute (we literally auditioned him during our equipment pickup, hours before our table read) I found an actor who could play our second male lead, a friend from college who was available during our shoot days. Crisis masterfully averted, thanks to y.t.

Okay! Logistics arranged, budget estimated, actors in place, crew committed, New Jersey Transit tickets purchased, catering menus settled and priced out, fucking brilliant table read accomplished. I called Nadine.

"Hey, Nadine," I said. "What are we doing tomorrow?"

"Making a movie?"

"That's right," I said. "We're making a movie."