December 15, 2021

I was relieved yesterday to hear that one of the actors had notes. He's the black actor in our cast, and he's playing Henry, who arrives with lots of weaponry and causes chaos. He's like the 60 minute substitution in soccer, only in the story his job is to make everything lots worse. The director wanted to Sam L Jackson-ify him in a Tarantino way. Anyhow, it's a negative stereotype -- the big black scary criminal -- and now we need to remedy that somehow. The issue is that his whole raison d'etre is to be a big scary guy -- I always wanted him to be white. The casting is the trouble. Of course it's too late to change that now. But anyway, I'm sure I'll be working on that more today. (12/16) 

Yesterday, we did our random other locations around town. I sat in a fancy hotel lobby and worked on rewrites. The director told me in the morning that I'd be playing the fan (Cheryl) in the flashback scene. I don't think he remembered how many lines she has. Anyways, whenever I try to act in stuff I'm always pretty wooden/frozen/bad. But I wanted to take a run at it anyways. I memorized the lines during the day. I got hair and makeup done -- wow! I didn't tell Ricky, the makeup assistant, but it was the first time I had ever worn liquid eye liner. 

The scene itself, which we did over and over again for hours, felt like it went well. The nice thing about doing it with real actors was it was easy to feel like it was really happening. I didn't feel self conscious about the camera or about the people watching. I felt in the moment. It was kind of like how I can slip into a zone when I'm playing with my nephew. There's a way to dial into the make-believe of whatever's going on and just role with it. I hope I don't feel too embarrassed when I watch it on screen. Maybe it'll get cut and I won't have to worry about it. 

Oh, adding -- my scene had a stunt-ish component. Leila comes at me and pushes me out of frame. It was super fun to do. Annabelle is smaller than me by enough that I always felt in control. I also had the stunt coordinator behind me, steadying me when I finished. It was exciting but still felt safe. Great fun, and Annabelle is a queen. She's awesome.