When Palmdale Hands You Lemons ...

The abundance of good luck I mentioned in the previous post was about to come to an end.

Without a doubt, the most difficult location to line up was that of the desert showdown scene. In this scene, the hearse was supposed to be stopped by a police blockade just before it reached Mexico. We more or less needed a long strip of desert highway with little or no traffic.

As much as possible, I tried to find locations close to L.A. I didn't want to drag my cast and crew all over the place, plus I was reimbursing everyone for gas. The "real" desert would have been the Mojave or Sonoran Desert - a 2-4 hour drive from L.A.

Many of the desert locations you see in T.V. and movies are actually in Palmdale/Antelope Valley, which is only one hour away from L.A., even closer to the San Fernando Valley. Personally, I find the Palmdale landscape to be rather flat, scrubby, and dull, but it was our best choice. We decided to meet in front of the Four Aces set, because most of us had been there before and knew how to find it. Michael would arrive an hour early in order to pinpoint a remote and deserted stretch of road.

At the appointed hour, everyone showed up. We shot one quick scene involving Shore and Cass, and then we were ready for the big Desert Showdown. We had in attendance:

Cast: Shore, Cass, Jorge, Lola, Two Cops, Shore's Father, Lubitch, Two FBI Agents
Crew: Lisa, Craig, Michael, Justin, Jared, Shanna, Steven, Christian
Vehicles - hearse (and owner Jeff, paid by the hour), police car (and owner Gavin, paid by the hour), monster truck (towed up behind our RV)

This was our biggest scene yet, and we were excited. Michael found a suitable road with little traffic, and we were ready to head over there.

Then ... the sand storm started up. Justin became immediately concerned about his camera. As did Jeff with his hearse. The sand storm became so intense that we clearly could not film. We took an early lunch, hoping the sand storm would pass. But as I mentioned before, this was not my lucky day. In fact it was a terrible day.

After lunch, there was no sign of sand storm abatement. Everyone looked to me to make that executive decision ... wait a while longer, or give up and tell everyone to go home? If you count the above people in attendance, you get a grand total of 20. Twenty people wanting to know whether we were going to hang out (in our cars, because we had no other place), or call it a day. I knew what I had to do; I just didn't want to do it. The expense of reimbursing everyone for gas was one thing. Trying to reschedule 20 people on a pick-up day would be horrendous. And so I told everyone to go home. However, Michael, Justin, Jared, Jeff, Mac, and Mario volunteered to drive back to Michael's apartment in L.A. to shoot an interior hearse scene in his parking garage. (The miracle of movie magic) So all was not lost.

I learned later that this was one of the biggest dust storms to hit Palmdale in a long time.

They say all's well that ends well. I managed to reschedule the hearse scene by rearranging the pick-up day schedule. Amazingly, seventeen of the 20 people would be available on 4/22. Two of them were the FBI Agents - easily replaceable. The chief concern was the gentleman who was to play Shore's father. He had a previous out-of-state trip planned on 4/22, and could not be persuaded to change it. (There is only so much persuading I can do when I am not paying people.)

Finding a new actor to fill this role also meant we would have to re-shoot the scenes we had already shot with this actor. Remember when I said that being a producer involved hours on the phone? This experience alone should give you some idea of the hustling I did nightly.

None of these phone calls yielded a replacement actor for Shore's father, though. And time was running out. I had less than one week.

One night Craig said, "I could play Shore's father."

I looked at my husband. I had never thought of him as an actor. He was a computer programmer, musician, author ... but actor? Hmmm. Well, why not? He was a talented and brilliant man. He ought to be able to say the lines convincingly. Plus, what was I going to do ... tell my husband and executive producer that he couldn't have the part?

"Really? You would do that for me?" I asked him.

Craig can now add one more talent to his list of amazing qualities ... actor.