Production Diary: Day 2

Today was a driving-around day. This morning I had to drive a lead car for the second male lead, who would follow in his own car. I was a little anxious because there were literally four different correct routes from Manhattan to our location in Flatbush, Brooklyn depending on the time of day and whether or not you were driving a truck (I was before, and now I was not.)

Everything went fine except for a little confusion about getting in the correct lane for the Brooklyn bridge, until we get to the tricky part: the turn off from the BQE to Ocean Parkway. It's closed (because it's before 11:00 a.m. - stupid, stupid), I'm in the wrong lane, and now I don't know what to do and I have to take the next exit.


Now I'm starting to get a little panicky because the actor following me keeps checking a map in his passenger's seat and I'm sure he's going to figure out that I'm going the wrong way. I stumble across the route to location for commercial vehicles - which is longer and not terribly convenient, but will get us there. The whole way to location I'm checking the rearview mirror and getting more and more nervous about this actor looking at his map.

Finally we start to get near where we're going. I'm terrified the first thing the actor will say to the line producer when we get out of our cars is "where the hell were you taking us?" and I will be fired from my first-ever feature film job on my second-ever day of production and that'll just be it for my career.

Then I notice that despite the fact that we are now passing signs that say "This way to" and the name of the film, the actor is still looking at the map on the passenger's seat. Not only that, but mere blocks away from the location itself, this actor is not only looking at his map, but also making some sort of strange gestures with his hand. And now he's talking to himself.

Then I realize that he's just been studying his lines this whole way.

After that, the rest of the day went pretty well.