Magic

Earlier as I was running through scenes for todays rehearsals, I had an overwhelming sense of dread. The scenes suddenly didn't work for me. Maybe it was the time of the day, maybe it was my dialogue, maybe it was the future blocking or how it would be photographed. Maybe I wouldn't get my exact locations with the correct amount of background extras. The canvas of each scene is so big*, that at times it's tough to properly examine the screenplay and look at only what I should be concerning myself with when it comes to rehearsals.

With that said, all of my worries faded away once Jeff and Harold started. The two men are fantastic for just bouldering through their scenes together. Of course, we talk a bit about it before hand, talk about the bookends (the scenes that take place before and after) just so there is an understanding of where the characters are coming from, and the future choices and objectives of things to come. But this is just the first stage. You don't want to dive too deep and figure things out too perfectly. There needs to be some magic that happens when the filming process begins. What I am loving about all the actors is their true ability to improvise; within creative boundaries, I will add. They aren't afraid to take out or add in lines, and what's more wonderful is that there is such an organic fluidity in the "fresh" non-scripted moments.

Before we finished the night, I decided to show Harold and Jeff a little bit from Robert Atlman's Short Cuts. Altman is a director I've greatly greatly admired for a very long time, and I will always credit him when people ask who my influences are.  While Short Cuts wasn't a film I was thinking about while writing Nicotine, I wanted to show Harold and Jeff what I love: that being how in Altman's grand canvas of characters, there is never a moment where an actor isn't doing something. But it's not small busy work for the sake of there being something to do, it all has a reason.






What did influence me while writing Nicotine? I have an answer to that only because I found the answer while working on my Kickstarter site for my film.  The Long Goodbye, The Verdict, Opening Night, Le Samourai, I Vitelloni + other films, the music of Tom Waits and Albert Camus' The Fall. Plus several personal stories from years past.


What is next? Sunday I will have my first rehearsal with Jasmine and Jeff. We'll work on the scenes for a few hours, then I need to go to Tuttles and convince them to let me use their bowling alley. Wednesday I have a meeting in the afternoon with an actor possibly playing the part of John. It's been a long search, so I am excited about this meeting.

That is all for now.

-JCA

*To add more to my above statement that each scene is "so big", that's a bit of an over exaggeration. Nicotine is a film with a lot of talking, a lot of small quiet moments, and there's nothing big, in the epic scale of things, happening with the movie. By big I mean very detailed, in my mind, as I said concerning locations, photography, b.g. extras, blocking, etc. So no, it's not a big movie, but there are a lot of details.