October 26, 2004:
We move to SOKA University, a Buddhist-based college in Orange County. It's a full day of shooting here in Phil's office, the former school library. Fans from the college have left notes on the office desk for Orlando. One expresses goodwill, another expresses goodwill and also asks for a large-flat-screen television. Orlando's mom is also on the set, and she's a wonderful presence, a real supporter of her son. She sits next to her son in massage chairs that have randomly been moved from the outer room into a side room where we watch the monitors. The two of them together are hilarious, and for a moment it feels like a glimpse of what the Bloom living room looked like in his childhood. It's a full day of shooting in Phil's office, and introductory scene for Alec Baldwin's character. The sequence begins his important run in the movie. His actions reverberate through the rest of the script. His office is even a touch gothic, it's perfect for his character, a powerful CEO who is about to experience a huge fiasco because of Drew's creation.
October 25, 2004:
We are back at Mercury Shoes, and typically there's a long list of scenes and shots to be gotten. This is also the week of Alec Baldwin, and he arrives on set early to show me his character's wardrobe - jeans, tennis shoes and a tan leather sport jacket. He looks like a troubled billionaire who has just flown in from Telluride. It's perfect. Our last new character has arrived on set.
Alec is immediately funny, in rhythm with the movie, and happy to be here. We film the last sequence in his long walk through Mercury - it's a long monologue that goes through four different locations. He's alternately powerful, angry, loving, musing... all different shades of emotions, and when we turn around on Drew, Orlando is in top form. We continue filming with the second sequence, another scene with the two men that happens over a large "think tank" of employees. With the shot on his back, Baldwin improvises ten different hilarious scenarios and alternate versions of the dialogue, all so that it will be fresh when the camera is on their faces. He's spectacular and so is Orlando. I'd love to do a movie with Baldwin in every scene.
October 18, 2004:
We begin at Mercury with Drew's arrival by helicopter - the beginning sequence of the movie. Orlando arrives and immediately sets the tone for this important stretch of scenes. It'll put the whole movie in play, whatever he does, and the small knot in my stomach eases... even disappears... as we see Bloom bring all the hideous complexity of his failure into his first shot. It's also meant to be funny, of course, and we've learned to play this hideousness in an absolutely real way. His pain will be funny, if we do our jobs right... but Orlando seems to immediately know that his body language, the tautness of his face and the stiffness of his walk will mean a lot. It's a perfectly grey day, too, which is one of many in our long line of lucky breaks. It's the perfect weather for a company guillotining.
October 15, 2004:
We move to Hollywood where we're going to film Claire walking through the airport terminals, talking to Drew on her way home. I love these shots, they're big and active and quick... just our girl Kirsten blasting through the shots, talking cheerfully on the phone to this suicidal guy.
I always get superstitious when an actor gets time off, and then returns to the part they've been filming. There are so many distractions, particularly in L.A., and you're never quite sure what all the distractions might have done to the delicate head of steam you might have already built up on a characterization. Clearly, I worry too much, because Kirsten shows up in her airline uniform and is instantly Claire. She is dependable and durable and loves to shoot and shoot and try different things. Her Claire is a joy to watch, a blast of life energy that will consume and save our troubled hero.
We finish the night, and week, and the movie now moves to Orange County, and the world of Jessica Biel and Alec Baldwin and Mercury Shoes. Biel is here today to show her makeup and wardrobe (she looks amazing). She too has taken some time off to make herself available for this smallish but important part. I keep thanking her for doing it. I love her comic gifts, as I've written in this journal before. And to those who think they know her talents, they will surely see more of them when they see her in the role as Orlando's first girlfriend Ellen. Clay Griffith shows up to show photos of the Mercury Shoes location in Orange County - a Japanese "lifestyle" company that he's outfitted and changed the colors of and completely re-imagined as a Portland citadel of shoes and fashion. Clay is peaking as a talent, and he will be peaking for years to come. (Curtis Hanson has already hired him for his next movie). It's a glimpse of where the movie, and all of us are heading...
It will be a good weekend, and a chance to take a breather before the home stretch - a week of shooting in the stark world that begins "Elizabethtown," the world Orlando fails in and retreats from before getting the harrowing news that he must go to Kentucky to deal with the death of his father.
October 13, 2004:
A big day looms as we wrap most of the Aunt Dora's ensemble, and then move over to Jessie's house. It's a brutal day for the crew, and by lunchtime, it already feels like a sleepy Friday... but we lurch into a second wind and film two of the important Jessie and Drew scenes. They're good together, and their camaraderie is important. I also love the Kentucky culture that has seeped into Jessie's scenes - a young man's love of Bourbon and horse racing and Derby glasses and rock.. It's a very real, very regional, very soulful mix. I love Jessie and I love his house. We end the day on a scene of the spooky summer weather scratching and rattling the windows of the room where Drew is trying to sleep. The whole crew is enlisted, making spooky noises, carrying trees, running by the window and howling, as Orlando rolls restlessly in bed. As one crew member said, "even when you have a lot of money to make a movie, it always reverts at some point to film school basics."
October 11, 2004:
My God, this will be a huge week. We have two days left to finish a mountain of work here at the Aunt Dora's location. There's a slew of chairs on the front lawn of this Pasadena house that has come so much to feel like Kentucky. All the chairs are filled with actors who've come to flesh out their vivid lives, and they're all waiting for their final round of scenes. I have to work fast or I'll have to cut a scene or two, and I can't. Every line of the script, every action means something, and to miss a beat will mean a price we pay later in the editing room. So we work fast, and get through a big scene in the Dining Room where Bruce McGill, Paul Schneider, Paula Deen, my mom as Aunt Lena, Loudon Wainwright, Gailard Sartain and Orlando all plan the Memorial that we've already shot. The scene goes well, and just as with almost every other scene, there's no time to reflect, just time to race into the next scene, block it, rehearse it and shoot it. Adrenalin - where would we be without it?
October 7, 2004:
Tonight we move into the backyard for the shooting of the night-time section of the Aunt Dora's visitation party. The goal is to capture the mood of a Southern summer night. "We are talking about summer nights in the south" is how James Agee's great book, "A Death in the Family," starts. This is what I want to capture on film. We go to work setting the scene and positioning the extras and the principal actors. Ana Maria, an ace at building background for scenes, works hard to help me capture the ambience, and she raises the bar for sure. Shane, who plays the Starstuck Shoe Fan who pesters Drew throughout the party, is on fire. Drew is hilarious with him. The party, in feel and tone, reminds me of the "Say Anything" graduation party. That's a good sign.
October 5, 2004:
Our first day at Aunt Dora's, and it immediately feels great. I play music to establish rhythm and pace, and it works. All our characters at lined up in the kitchen, with Paula Deen appropriately presiding as the great Aunt Dora. I love these Kentucky characters, and I've written hopefully rich backstories for all of them. Before we film, I go around the kitchen and explain these details to the actors, and we all decipher who's related to who, and who's a cousin and who's not, until we realize - in life, this stuff is never fully worked out, so let's take this conversation into the movie. So in the movie, it will never be truly clear who's related to who and why, but the knowledge that roots are intertwined is enough.
The bigger goal is to not descend to any easy stereotypes. William Eggleston, the photographer, once said his whole life was dedicated to a "war against the obvious." That is the cause at hand... to show these Kentucky characters as real people, with real complexity and emotion, uniquely their own, as we work in this beautifully appointed house in Pasadena.
Russ Marlowe, the public relations man for the Veterans of Bardstown, Kentucky, is with us. I met him in the airport in Louisville, and videoed him early in the scouting process for the movie. He was wearing a veteran's hat filled with pins, standing with a buddy with a similar hat reading: Elizabethtown. I'd interviewed them on camera, and never forgot how Russ could talk movingly and in great chunks, about the veterans and the causes of the veterans and great restaurants and the delights of Bardstown, all in one long screed. I'd asked Don Lee to fly him in for the sequence and immediately I can see my instincts are right. The guy is a talker, and a natural on camera. We throw him into the mix here in the kitchen, and it's the straw that stirs the drink. Paula Deen is a natural too, of course, and watching her command a kitchen in our movie is like watching Bruce Springsteen play the Stone Poney in Asbury Park - iconic.
October 1, 2004:
Everyone is tired, but energized from the work at the ballroom. It feels like it will be a great sequence in the movie, something that we shape the entire picture to accommodate. But the message is clear - don't work the crew too hard today. Many had stayed until 1 am, clearing water-soaked equipment from the L.A. Center Stage where the ballroom had served us so well. Now we're a long drive out to Alta Dena to film the "Chapel Scene" where Drew is led to face many of the relatives he will come to know so well in the course of the movie. There are only eight shots, but it's a combination of a come-down from all the work in the ballroom, an anti-climax day that makes those eight shots take almost the entire allotted day to film. Orlando does well.
