A most productive day indeed. We started out by meeting Rudy and Bonnie a J&J Café. fuego looked around the place and said, “This is a lot better than I thought from the pictures.” We discussed how we were going to make the shots work, how we were going to build the counter, and so forth. We had a viable location and the director had blessed it. *Whew!* We could get going on the serious set preparation.

Still, the other site under consideration, Wild Horse Mesa Bar, was just plain better on the outside. Sitting alone along a stretch of 2-lane, there’s just nothing else like it. We discussed ways to perhaps cheat the WHMB Exterior onto J&J, but the places are simply too different. It was still morning, and WHMB doesn’t open until two. fuego and I ran around town, getting his phone set up and other essentials and peering through the window of a defunct diner whose furniture we may be using. The stuff was nice, if a little too shiny and new. It didn’t really match J&J’s that well, though.

In the early afternoon we met back up with the others and we headed out into the desert to choose which stretch of highway worked for which shot. It’s beautiful out there; our little flick is going to be gorgeous. After a few photo stops we were at White Horse Mesa Bar. It was open and busy – not with patrons but with painters. Genie, the owner, is sprucing the place up (and adding more Christmas lights).

fuego looked around a bit, found a great shot through the front door, across the parking lot, past a faded sign for the bar, and on to the red mesas beyond. I been aware of the shot, but I had not communicated the potential to fuego effectively. Sometimes you just have to be there. Pending a conversation with the Art Director, we selected White Horse Mesa Bar as our location. If Bonnie said OK, we could get going on the serious set preparation.

That evening it was back to Los Alamos for fuego and me, to recover the Hotelsmobile and see the folks. And heck, as long as we were up on the hill for the evening, we took the opportunity to stay out with Jojo (my beer slave) and Spencer until the wee hours of the morning. We enjoyed the distinctive ambience of Canyon Bar and Grill. We even got to see a bar fight! Woohoo!

It was a series of short meetings, with legwork in between. I’ve been in the car enough now that one arm is darker than the other. I headed up north, to a small town a few miles west of I-40, where I knew there was a cafe/bar but I knew nothing else about it. On the way I stopped off at Raphael’s, another potential location, but it had been closed every time I passed by. Apparently the hours posted on the door have nothing to do with the hours that they are actually open. It was still pretty early but I thought I’d drop by and see if there was some kind of license or better business bureau ID number on the door that I could use to track down the owners.

Unlike my previous visits, there was a car in the parking lot. The door wasn’t locked. I stepped in to the smell of ammonia. “We’re closed, buddy,” called out a man from across the room. There were three of them in there giving the place a good scrubbing down. I looked around a bit – the place was much more of a bar than a roadside café, but the folks there had no problem with us filming. The daughter asked to be in the movie as an extra. I had no problem with that. I checked sight lines and all that, decided it wasn’t perfect but would do in a pinch, and got contact info and called Rudy from the parking lot. “Oh, we talked to them,” he said. “The Director of Photography likes J&J’s better. It’s more like what Ruthie would have.” Here is the problem when you have a mix of very experienced industry pros and rookies. The inexperienced producer took the DP’s word as more or less gospel, without assking the people who invented Ruthie what we thought. While I’m inclined to agree in this case, a decision like that is no time to be bypassing the director or his surrogate. And at the very least, tell me about it.

Right, so, on to Peña Blanca I went. Before I even got there I knew that it was just too far from Albuquerque to be useable, unless it was absolutely perfect. It wasn’t, not even close, so I turned around and headed back into town. Next I headed out West a few miles, to the very end of Central Ave. The terrain was good, still more buildings than I would have liked, but workable. I passed a sign for Angel View Cafe. A cafe? Out here? Sounds promising! Only, I couldn’t find the cafe. Signs last a long time out here, often outlasting the buildings they mark. I’ll make one more attempt to find the place using high-tech tools like the phone book, but I suspect once again that time has overtaken the sort of place I’m looking for.

In to town, a couple more errands, a meeting with Archie about props. He had welded up an anchor from scratch the day before, and was starting fabrication on the nuclear warhead. We discussed snow globe styles and limitations, and other props. Apparently the machine gun is not a given. He can make a fake one from photographs, but we would need a belt of ammo hanging out to really sell it.

Then to callbacks. Going in I was reasonably sure who I wanted, but I wanted to see if the people who looked best for the role could iron out some of the flaws in their earlier performances. When I got there I discovered I would be looking at two more people than I thought I would. One Moab had said he was unavailable because he was going to be at a pirate party, but the role was just too juicy for him to pass up. The dude lives and breathes pirate. The other was a potential Ruthie that had not been available for the previous auditions but was well-known as an excellent actress so they tossed her into the mix.

So, things were a little more complicated than I expected. There were a couple of actors who could have made my choice easier by nailing their parts, but they didn’t. I could coach them so they would get one key phrase right, but then they would lose track of the rest. In one case it was nerves, I’m sure, but we just don’t have the time for our lead actors to get over the jitters and start performing. In the end, there was only one Moab, Izzy was a slam dunk, Kentucky Jack fell out of the mix, Miguel was decided long since, but for Ruthie there was no clear standout. The new candidate did a good job and had excellent chemistry with Moab, but just came off a little, well, lightweight. The other top Ruthie contender isn’t as experienced of an actress, which is a risk, but she projected a stronger personality, though not as much range. I had not been prepared to direct the actors myself, and in retrospect I don’t think I put the Ruthies through enough.

Now, I must decide.

Much of Pirates of the White Sand takes place in a diner/bar on a lonesome stretch of highway. I don’t mind a few other buildings around, perhaps a gas station maybe even a fleabag motel. Urban is right out. Little outposts like that used to dot the highway along the famous Route 66, back in the day when half the fun was getting there. Now Interstate freeways have been cut across the land, draining the life and the commerce from the smaller roads, replacing Ruthie’s diner with a drive-through window where quality is measured in seconds.

Still, I figured there must be something around here that came reasonably close to that description. Maybe on the outskirts of town, where buildings get sparse but there are still people nearby. Maybe along some 2-lane blacktop that allows savvy motorists to cut a corner and save a few miles.

Nope.

There are some restaurants out there, big contrived things built to appeal to yuppie bikers and Sunday drivers. There are few of those, but they outnumber the crappy dives. We’re not looking for either of those, so now we are going to construct one. Yep, that’s right, unless a location miracle happens in the next couple of days, we will begin the task of converting a somewhat suitable cafe into a diner. Ahhh, the miracle of film. Need a counter? Put one in. We’ll have to be able to remove it during the café’s regular business hours. No problem, apparently. Alas, no matter how much we dinerize the place, it’s still lacking, especially the exterior shots.

So I was back from the Black Hole, and searching for the miracle location, when I got the call from our part-time editor, Charles the First. (Charles II is a camera operator.) First Chuck was calling with (for me) good news. He had suddenly and unexpectedly become unemployed, and wanted to celebrate. I considered, and realized that there were several important issues I needed to discuss, in particular if they could somehow edit out the big, busy freeway that went right past one potential location. (“No problem”, 1st Chuck said, but I’d have to see it to believe it.) I invited Bonnie along, but she wisely demurred. We went our separate ways and after I armed myself with a twelve-pack of ESB I was on my way.

1st Chuck was in fine fettle, and had a good head start on me in the drinking department. It was a lead he would never relinquish. Ken was there as well, and 1st Chuck’s mother substitute/landlord. 1st Chuck fired up the barbecue and one rack of ribs later we were all feeling just fine. We stayed up too late and I slept on their couch, where I was visited in the night by giant dogs.

Since I had last seen the black hole, it had grown, bursting out of the confines of the former Piggly Wiggly and sprawling across the parking lot. The neighboring ex-church, once a separate singularity, now has been absorbed by the sprawl. Outside the ex-church is a sign proclaiming it to be the World Peace Institute, or something like that.

The Black Hole is located in Los Alamos, New Mexico, birthplace of the atomic bomb and still big in the devastating explosion business. And that’s how many of the folks see it up there – as a business. That pisses off Ed. He has been working long and hard protesting the activities at the Los Alamos Lab and the cavalier attitude that many of the employees take there. He has also been profiting off the Lab at the same time. Ed is a junk dealer, but oh, the junk.

Ed has a point – the scientific community (it’s more about the biotech than big physics now, but the principle still applies) has not taken a leadership role in helping society come to terms with new technologies that can transform it or sweep it away. “That’s for the government,” they say, but that’s a copout. The government is a bunch of idiots elected by the rest of us idiots. Just as Universities have awakened to the ugly truth that businessmen need training in ethics, people designing weapons of mass destruction need to understand the meaning of the device beyond the megatons, and they need to help the rest of us understand. A much more coherent expression of this idea is in the novel A Canticle for Liebowitz by Walter M. Miller. The book also has the best explanation of the Catholic position on the sanctity of life I have ever read.

But I digress.

Ed would like our movie. When he and his crew like a movie, sometimes props are loaned for free. My goal was to pitch the movie, get him on board, and get his support. Bonnie was with me, and I’m told the presence of a pretty woman is always helpful.

Alas, this day Ed was not wearing his hearing aid. It’s bad enough trying to talk to him ordinarily, I understand, but in this case it was impossible. He couldn’t hear Bonnie at all, so it fell to me to shout into his ear. There was no way to communicate even slightly complicated ideas. We listened to Ed’s lecture and watched a video he has that was “smuggled” out of the lab, showing a portion of a lecture about the nuclear weapons business at Los Alamos. Ed shows the video because of the cavalier way the lecturer discusses making nations cease to exist. After the video we “discussed” the current situation around the world. I put the quotes around the word discussed because he couldn’t hear my comments.

After that we went poking around the place, gathering up an assortment of electronics, a geiger counter, and some bits that might be good for making a nuclear warhead mockup. We had gone there because we heard that Ed had his own mockups, but they sucked. Ah, the stuff, the stuff. Strange things, sinister things, mysterious things, and lots and lots of pure worthless junk. Most of it was older stuff, so if you ever need the retro look for a film, you can’t go wrong there. Near some really expensive vacuum pumps in the back there was the semi-dessicated poop of a small animal on the floor.

Then it came down to time to pay for the stuff, and this is where the gravity well of the Black Hole distorted mathematics beyond all reason. We needed the stuff for three weeks, but the rental cost was as much as (if not more than) the purchase price. At this point I think Ed thought we were doing a feature film with a big budget. Haggling ensued, and putting things back, and numbers spontaneously appeared out of nowhere, connected to nothing, and then disappeared again with a faint popping sound.

I am now the proud owner of a geiger counter.

Danger! This is a long one, covering a day and a half of movie-making.

Last night when I got back from the Tractor Bar it was time to go to open casting. While the previous time we had an allocated block just for us, this time people were reading for all the movies. I was the only writer there. All the other movies were represented by the producers or not represented at all – the decision will be made based on recorded performances. Not our movie, baby. I was there, Bonnie was there, and Luther was there. Rudolph was there much of the time as well. It’s not even my presence pushing the crew to be there, although that must help. In the words of Luther, “I gotta be there so I can tell you you’re full of crap later.” I love that attitude.

Bonnie had arranged for the people she thought most worth seeing to come in the evening, so I showed up at 7 p.m, without covering as much road nearby as I had hoped. The studio was sweltering, and I worked on storyboards and script revisions while an endless stream of actors reading for other movies auditioned. (Note to self: next script make sure there’s a part for a babe.)

An hour passed, and another. No Pirates. No Ruthies. Although there were more representatives of Pirates in the studio than for any of the other films, they were holding the pirates to do as a batch – right at the end of the evening. It was while I was waiting that I composed a daily summary message to fuego that featured some choice language. Luckily I couldn’t send it until later.

I’m having a hard time coming up with a pseudonym for the guy who’s running the show. His actual nickname is too perfect. Still, in the interest of interest, we’ll call him Grizz. Grizz was there last night, and he’s a good guy — easy-going but on top of things. He works with Smithers, but ultimately outranks him. Grizz helped Randy cut through the bullshit and get some key crew members.

Ahhh, Smithers. More on him later.

Finally, finally, we got a couple of reads for Pirates. Good reads. Not outstanding, but solid. A couple of new takes on Ruthie. The line, “Hello, boys,” can be said a lot of ways, and each way it says a lot. I’ve heard renditions I’d never considered before, and delivered right it works. It is not always delivered well. Then again, some of the guys auditioning for Moab drifted far from the script, to the point of undermining the significance of the conversation – significance I was unaware of when fuego and I were writing the lines, but . What are you doing to my words? I wanted to cry out more than once, in true martyr-writer fashion. But I bit my lip and quietly moved on to the next candidate.

Bonnie managed to dodge much of it by going on a pizza run. It was a long pizza run, more like a pizza stroll, a pizza promenade through the park, but when she finally got back, she hadn’t missed anything.

Another of the members of the Pirate crew has shown great dedication – Luther has spent way more time at the casting sessions than was necessary, He filmed all the relevant auditions and gave me a tape of the performances tonight. I have tried, a couple of times, to hint that the effort is not really necessary, but he is enthusiastic, and I don’t want to underestimate the value of that. The dude is totally on board. I felt a little sorry for his wife, however, who also got to be baked alive for this late-night session. She’s very sweet, though shy – she calls me Mr. Jerry. Some time that night Luther promised to hook me up with some good music for Pirates.

About the music. We have several people who have expressed interest in contributing music for the movie. Some of them are actually doing it. Ages ago, last week or even earlier, I gave them a deadline. I don’t even remember what it was, but it wasn’t yet. Now that I’m here, and I see all the balls in the air, I want to hear the music yesterday.

The casting session ended and we all went home. I went to sleep. I woke up. I went for a breakfast meeting with the producer. That was today, this morning. It seems like a long time ago.

The producer had good news. We had the Director of Photography we had been trying to get. Grizz had put the squeeze on Smithers and this morning the email came in from Smithers affirming what we already knew – Doc Sarvis is our DoP. Right after that came another email. Smithers, it seems, had been sick, and he promised to be back up to speed and ready to go. At the time I thought that was a good thing.

After breakfast I did some more catching up with communications, bought some new pants, and headed off for the last of the casting. Again, there were long periods of waiting, in which I created a new shot list, modified the script a bit more, implementing changes I had already discussed with fuego, and finally watching the first scene of Sponge Bob SquarePants, the movie. It’s a live action sequence with pirates. With almost no time left I heard a really good Moab read. Really good. The scouting report is that if I like what he did, well and good, because it’s going to be hell to change his delivery. Not impossible, but tough. The good news is that his instincts are pretty close to what I wanted.

There is another actor, who was instrumental in the casting process for all the movies, who also read for the role. He was good, and here’s the thing: He’s a part-time pirate. Mostly a 1500’s pirate, before the flintlock, which apparently was the technological advance that ushered in the golden age of piracy (and here I thought is was our incomprehensible tax code). he has friends that fit our descriptions of the scurvy crew, right down to the horrible teeth, and they have their own outfits already. A gold mine to fill the Crusader. The only trouble is, that for half our shooting schedule they are going to be at the Big Pirate Ho-Down (BPH-D). if we want to use them (and I’m thinking we’d be silly not to), we will have to arrange shooting so that scenes with the full crew are shot on the last two days, and on Monday they’re likely to be hung over, if not still drunk. Some of them may even have jobs to get back to. It’s crazy, but people still do that.

After I heard this potential Moab I was out in the hall cooling off and discussing props with Bonnie. Smithers was in the hallway chatting up a strikingly attractive actress here to read for another film (see note to self above). He seemed to be doing all right but he exercised the good judgement to give her the space she needed to practice for her role. Now that I think back, it was my next visit to the cool air of the hall for another chat with Bonnie when Smithers approached me.

“Oh, you’re the ones who want a b-camera,” he said as if he had just made the connection. “Grizz and I have ben talking. It’s going to cause you trouble to have two cameras. You just don’t have enough tape. We’re not sure we’re going to allow to cameras and right now I’m inclined to say no.”

Let’s just say right here that I don’t know crap about filmmaking, but fuego has been in more that one situation where resources are strictly limited. To give Smithers some credit, he may know more about what it takes to get a student crew and semi-pro actors into place and hitting their marks. Setups may just take longer and it may require more takes. Longer setups is an argument in favor of a second camera, more takes means eating up more tape. A mistake with two cameras running costs twice as much. So I can see where he’s coming from.

But really, in the end, that’s not his problem. It’s our problem, and we are intent on bringing the right people on board to make the shoot go smoothly. For reasons I don’t fully understand, having an experienced script supervisor can save valuable feet, and so Rudolph went and found us one. I have no way to judge, but I think we’ve managed to tap into some pretty high-level local talent. The script is undeniably a factor, but most of the credit goes to Rudolph. He’s not afraid to ask for things.

Case in point: after breakfast we were driving back to his place. We passed a neighbor’s house. they had a convertible parked out in front – no, wait, two convertibles, including a giant Lincoln ragtop with suicide doors. Sweeeet. Rudy parked and we knocked on the door until he flushed out the owner. It’s not a done deal – far from it – but the guy agreed in principle to let us use his car in the movie. There are logistical difficulties; he wants some he trusts there babysitting it and he’ll be out of town during the shoot, but Dang! Rudy just up and knocks on people’s doors when they have something he needs. That’s what makes him the producer and me the flunky.

So, where was I? Right. Smithers was imposing a rule on us to protect us from ourselves. I used the straw man defense: “Then you and Grizz need to get on the phone with my brother and work it out, because he’s confident that he can do it and get a better movie with two cameras. This is what he does for a living.” Just then someone went in to read for Pirates, so I ducked away and left it at that.

To Smither’s credit, it could have ended on that confrontational note, and were it left to me it would have been. Instead, he went out of his way to strike up a conversation about pirates, talk like a pirate day, and a big project he had worked on that was pirate-related. So there was a subtext that he was also a pro and had been around the block, but mostly it was looking for common ground, and an honest interest in the subject matter. So any time I sound scornful of Smithers, don’t forget that he really is trying to do the right thing, and he’s working to forge a friendly relationship.

That said, I would be able to do a lot better with him if he was a little more straight about the reasons for his decisions. I don’t really think he was trying to protect the crew of Pirates from failure; I think he was trying to keep one crew from completely tipping the festival. It’s an odd thing. I don’t care if we win the festival or not; what I want is the best possible movie as a result. A movie with legs, that will hold up in other venues. He wants a good festival. Sure, he wants to see movies get out and increase the stature of the shootout, but at the same time he doesn’t want it to become a money-spending contest.

And there it is. We’re trying to become the Yankees of the Duke City shootout, and he doesn’t want there to be a Yankees. I can’t blame him. I hate the Yankees.

But in the end I’m only guessing at his motivation, because he has never told me where he’s coming from. I want to ask him, but I have to do it in such a way so as not to hand him an answer. I composed an email tonight. I said that if we could be frank and understand where each was coming from, we would much better be able to work together. I was blunt. I said “I want to make the best movie I possibly can and that means I will augment the festival’s resources in any way that will result in a better outcome.” I used I instead of we because if ire does fall I want it focussed on me. I have a strange combination of power and uselessness. On the one hand, none of the other writers are participating actively in this stage of the production. On the other, I don’t know crap. But I can make a decision and make it stick.

I did not send the message to Smithers. I sent it to fuego and Rudolph, and got very different reactions. Rudolph, who has been dealing with this guy longer than I have, was supportive. fuego phoned from eight time zones away to solicit restraint. fuego’s right – he doesn’t want me pooping in the pool before he’s even on the diving board. In the end, though, this conversation will have to happen. Only after Smithers lays out what the real reasons for his decisions are will we be able to move forward with confidence.