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A good night’s sleep and I felt a lot more confident about my admitted limited acting abilities today. And it was another fun day. One of the actors told me about working with a Hollywood star who insisted on getting his scripts six weeks before filming and wouldn’t allow any last minute changes. I don’t think he would have been able to work with me. But it’s a shame when actors won’t muck in. And self-defeating. I would imagine it just means you end up being written out of things.
Phil Davis has such a fine pedigree and reputation that it would easy for him to be starry, but he is delightfully happy to do all that we are asking of him. My favourite moment today came when we were out in the car park recording a scene with Emily and myself. His character drives up and shouts out of his car window, but Phil did it without being in a car, gamely redoing it every time we asked him to cope with minor changes and positions.
I was supposed to be in the front seat and to wind down my electric window. But because it’s easier to record I was in the back, where the window could only be lowered manually. So the producer had to wind down the front window and then I would quickly manually wind down mine and then carry on with the scene. Phil was meant to be shouting from car with the windows up initially so had to turn his back.
I pointed out that the aforementioned Hollywood star would not have done this. And that’s why Phil Davis is the king.
We’re whisking through the scenes and I’d been looking forward to a night off and maybe some Me vs Me snooker whilst my wife was out, but after the final scenes of the day my producer told me that the scripts I had extended last week, were still coming in about four or five minutes too short. So I had to go home and after I’d put Phoebe to bed, get back to the computer and write an extra scene for all four episodes. I managed to write over 20 extra pages between eight and midnight. But luckily it came pretty easy and I think most of what I did was adding to the whole. I was even able to add a couple of in-jokes from the day’s actual conversations between actors.
For the moment I am so happy to be writing something that is actually being produced that it feels like a little treat to get to do more. Don't tell my producer.
