Do
Elephants
Pray?
Thursday 23rd - Friday 24th August 2007
The day starts, unlike so many others, positively, that's if you count no-one having quit before 10 O'clock as being positive. I point this obvious upturn in fortune out to Paul as I look at flights to book for our recce to France next month.
“Not yet!” He grins.
With perceptively perfect timing befitting more a Neil Simon play than the pre-production office of a film I get a text from Anna regretfully informing us she has to quit, some family crisis apparently. I stop looking for flights and start looking for more potential Art Directors. I call Seanne and tell her we had to sack Anna as she wasn't welsh enough. We decide that maybe we are aiming a little high and need to set the bar a little lower with regards to the Art Director position, so low in fact that a one-legged drunken chimp could stagger over it.
Williams arrives with the wonderfully tradition call of “Good news or bad news?” We let him decide which to reveal first.
“The park with the roundabout wants £500 to film there.”
“And what about the good news?” I ask.
“That is the good news,” he replies. “The bad news is Alexandra Palace wants £250 an hour.”
I finally abandon the Art Director search and book six flights to Nantes for the recce. We are taking a bit of a gamble here as we are booking a flight for Roger the DoP even though he hasn't yet agreed to do the film, nor even read the script. In fact I am not sure he even knows about the film as he is currently in Syria shooting a three month mini series and doesn't get back until the end of the month. Paul is adamant he wants Roger and no-one else and is hoping to guilt trip him into agreeing by showing him how much we have paid for his flight already.
“How much have we paid for it?” he asks.
“Two pence plus tax.” I reply rather smugly. Many, many people complain that they never manage to book those tax only free flights, that is because I usually have booked them up already. Six return flights for twelve pence plus tax. Even our impoverished budget can afford that. Just. Checking my emails I get a very interesting one from someone in Croatia applying to be Paul's Assistant. Somewhat worried about the daily travel expenses from Zagreb I email back but she assures me she is only there on holiday. I ask if she has a car and get the following reply...
Hi Jonnie,
I do drive and I do have a car, yes, even though it's fairly old and unreliable, but I do have access to a more up-to-date vehicle which doesn't make me look as cool but works fine.
Marina.
I like this reply, and chuckle. I ask Paul which car he wants?
“The knackered old one!” he replies, and so Croatian Marina and her vintage wreck are hired.
I sit back and relax into this latest success with a cup of tea still amused at her email when I'm instantly jolted back to reality by a text from Stéphanie.
“On ferry.”
Oops, I'd clean forgotten she was coming today. I hastily tidy up and plan how to tell her why there are two desks and four chairs in my front room. I decide on breaking it to her gently as we climb the stairs. She is set to arrive and at 5pm and so I calculate I have just enough time to nip out and buy much needed stationary. I get back to see Stéphanie with a look of horror dangling her set of keys at me having already decamped her bags inside.
“You make a film here?” she asks without really needing to.
“Erm yes,” I say sheepishly hoping over-emphasised cuteness will soften the blow.
“Is okay, will be fun!” Well, she says that now. I decide not to tell her just then that I have to leave in three hours to go to work all night.
Crew members. 1 gained. 1 lost.
Locations. 0 gained. 1 lost.
Day 10 Friday 24rd August 2007
I wake up after three hours sleep by a ringing noise. I answer the phone but there is no-one there and the ringing keeps on. In that semi-conscious sleep-deprived state I realise it is the door bell. I throw on some clothes, barely, and stagger downstairs to see Billy Bob Thornton at my front door. I look confused and want him to go away so I can go back to bed, he however looks happy.
“Hello I'm Tim,” he says in a clear Australian accent. “I'm here about the Art Director's job.”
Kerching! Come on in and save us.
“Oh, that will keep Paul happy!” I say ushering him upstairs.
“Who's that, your Designer?” he asks.
“No, our Director with an obsession for multinational multilingual crews.”
I sit him down with a coffee and a few minutes later Seanne arrives to chat with him and an hour later he still hasn't quit so we feel good about him.
Paul and I head into Soho for a casting session for the lead actress organised by Jeremy Zimmermann our Casting Director. This is a tense day for us as Malika is clearly the hardest part to cast and if we fail to find the right actress the whole film will suffer. Not only does she have to brilliant but I have to get on well with her to make the chemistry between us work. She is a unique character and, unusually for a lead role, only only interacts with one other character. Callum. The one I am playing. None of the auditionees know that the person they are reading opposite is actually going to play the part. The magic is going to take place in a venue that Jeremy has booked for us called the Soho Laundry which, despite half an hour of searching, we fail to find. We eventually stumble across a building with a load of washing machines and try our luck.
“Hello? Is this the Soho Laundry?”
“Hello yes this is the laundry,” comes the inevitable reply.
“Are you having a casting here?”
“Que?”
“Casting here for 'Do Elephants Pray?'”
“Do elephants what?”
We quickly realise perhaps this is not the place and look around again finally finding a small, dark room in an old building that USED to be a laundry. Mmmm. Maybe the Soho Ex-Laundry would be a better nomenclature. We settle in and wait the procession of wannabe Malikas.
The first girl who comes in is called Julie. She was on holiday in Ibiza when her agent sent her the script and she has just flown in to read for the part. She brings her own stone from the island to use in the audition scene and gets so carried away she hurls it and a plastic bottle at the table, the latter of which bounces off the surface and smacks me right between the eyes. I like this, it shows passion and she is a passionate character. It is at this precise moment that I decide I want her for the part. Paul & I look at each other...
“That was fucking amazing,” he says to her and I agree. When she leaves we stare out the window reflecting what had happened.
“Shall we go home now?” suggests Paul.
“I feel sorry for everyone else but I guess we should see them.”
So we do.
We sit there all day watching a succession of actresses ranging from the brilliant to the goddam awful try out for a role we both know we have probably already cast. Some are French, some pretend to be French, some look the part, some don't, some find part of that character none find it all. Apart from Julie. Manny our other Casting Director brings us coffee and we watch some more.
The last one in is the French actress we met last week. She tells us that she has become obsessed by the script and is desperate to play the part. She reads and is good, very good, so good in fact that we both feel really bad about NOT casting her.
Several long hours later we hastily eat some chips outside The Blue Posts pub and head to Mandy's place to persuade her to let us use it. She and Paul hit it off immediately and talk about Formula 1, Lewis Hamilton, Minardi, Hakkinen, it's all an alien language to me but apparently they understand each other. Seanne and Williams arrive having gotten lost and Seanne instantly doesn't like the place.
“Can we repaint?” she asks. Mandy looks apprehensive but I persuade her it will be fine.
“How's your little French thing?” she asks as I leave in her slightly churlish way.
“Stéphy, she's fine, she's...”
Bugger! She is at my place, sorry, our place. I think of her there all alone as I head straight to work. I text her and apologise that I can't be with her, she replies “You do what you have to.” I think to myself how lucky I am. How many many other girls would move to a new country to be with their boyfriends and be happy to be alone for the best part of the first two days!
Not many.
Crew members. 1 gained. 0 lost.
Cast members. 1 gained. 0 lost.
Locations. 1 gained. 0 lost.
Part 3 ...
Part 5 ...
T
ELEPHAN
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