* Well, what a day! Call time was 7:45 am, so I went to downtown LA to find the old building we were using and made it in great time. It was a large, ornate municipal building that had been closed about 18 years ago (when I was just three years old!) and was still full of junk from 1986, which was way cool. Since I was playing a detective, I got to wear two of my own suits, which was very comfortable. Everyone was already lined up at the snack wagon to get breakfast, and I noticed something that would affect the rest of my day… other than the crew, there was only one other woman on set! The lead actress had her own trailer, so she was not out there with the rest of us hoi polloi scrabbling for truck-food.

* When I went to get in line, everyone was like, “Hey, you can go ahead of us”, so I got my chow fairly quickly and went inside to set up. We ate fairly quickly and everyone started getting into costume. It’s funny how, in many cases, the addition of a police uniform or a nice suit made otherwise plain looking guys more handsome, ha ha. I went to the makeup and hair trailer and got my first of several unflattering hairdos, and when I returned I was surrounded by a sea of uniform cops and other “detectives” in suits like me. We all got our last cups of coffee and went to the filming area upstairs.

* If you don’t already know this, in police circles the uniform cops are analogous to “enlisted” military people, and detectives are like military officers, with college degrees and management positions. It was funny to watch how a little division developed among the actors, wherin the detectives kept with each other and acted a little superior, and the uniforms bunched up and were a little scornful of the suits. The crew fell into it, too, taking more care and trouble getting the suits taken care of and were pretty careless with the uniform cops sometimes. It was all just make-believe and costumes… it’s strange that it had an effect like that.

* Most of the time there is a little light flirting on sets between the actors who work together for such long days (I was to be there for 15 or more hours). Of course, when I am dating someone I discourage any flirtation with me at all, but as a single girl I allowed the boys to go and get me cups of coffee, fruit snacks and such things. One even insisted on fanning me with a hand fan whenever I looked too hot. At the end of the day, several “cops” had had words with each other or razzed each other for paying so much attention to me, and at least one representative from makeup, crew, principal cast, background and security had asked me out. It was all a bit much in the end, so much attention from a room full of testosterone addled macho cop wannabe’s, but I have to admit that it was quite fun at times. Rest assured that I was a prefect lady and did not allow any improprieties to take place, nor any social liberties to be implied. I know this whole post sounds terribly vain, but I hadn’t had so much attention at once in quite awhile, so it was remarkable to me.

* The set looked like a standard 1980′s police station, with metal desks, accountant’s lamps, dingy walls and false ceiling. It really stuck out to me that there were no computers at all anywhere, only manual typewriters and rotary dial telephones at each desk. I am a fair typist, so in between takes I sat and typed at an old machine in the holding area. It was a challenge, because if you type too fast and slur the keys, not keeping each stroke individual, the little arms for each letter swing up at the same time and get tangled with each other, interrupting your flow. And of course, when the typewriter “dings”, you have to push the carriage back over to the right. But once I got a rhythym going, it made that cool, characteristic typewriter typing sound punctatued by dings and felt a little like playing the violin or piano… meticulous, specific finger motions in a series. The director came by and thought it sounded cool, and was going to use me in a shot typing, but ended up running out of time.

* My actual work consisted of being directed to “flirt” with a rougish, weathered-looking detective with a British accent in one scene, cementing the woman’s role as sexual quarry no matter what character she’s playing (/feminist dogma, ha ha). Then I had several crosses, wherin I crossed the scene in the background as the leads said their lines. At one point, a bunch of ultra hard-core looking SWAT officers are planning some act of heroism and I stood by looking doubtful. And in one scene, one of my underlings comes up to supplicate me over something or other, to which I respond negatively and dismiss him. Who knows which, if any of these scenes will be used, but I’m only at the police station, so you won’t have to bother looking for me anywhere else.

* Our holding area was an abandoned courtroom upstairs with floor-to-ceiling windows. There were long periods of time wherin lighting was being set up or camera positions changed, so some of us would go into the courtroom and sleep on the audience benches to wait. Once I went up and sat in the Judges chair behind the bench to have my coffee (beating a certain someone to the Bench by many years, I have no doubt, ha ha). Spending so many hours sitting in a courtroom on 7/27/04 made me feel kinda sad when it was quiet and I was alone in there, thinking about my life and so many of the things that have come and gone in it.

* Some of the other actors in the movie were MeatLoaf (referred to as “Meat” by those on a first-name basis), Gary Bussey, and a few actors I had seen many times but couldn’t name. Meatloaf is playing very straight in this film, as a plain old police boss, but I just kept thinking “Wow, he was in Rocky Horror!” ha ha.

* Overall, it was a long, long day with lots of attention directed toward a heart that was elsewhere, but I had fun. Now on to the next project!

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