A Modest Beginning

These pages have been woefully silent in the past couple of weeks, with the exception of the weekly Dance Party. I am very far behind on the obits and tributes which I enjoy researching and sharing, and lots of important people, famous and semi-, have recently croaked. Fear not, I will, one day, catch up.

But that day will surely be several weeks from now. Tomorrow, I launch into my latest project, an independent film called A Modest Suggestion. I wrote about the audition process six weeks ago, and we begin three days of rehearsal tomorrow. On a film, it's a luxury to have so many days devoted to rehearsal, but we shall need it, as the movie largely consists of dialogue between four corporate guys and the two gents they...um...well... kidnap. The shooting script is 100 pages long, and about 97 of those pages are dialogue. That's a LOT of talking for a movie.

So I've spent many hours of the past week trying to get some of this dialogue into the brain cells. I've found this script extremely difficult to learn cold; without having read the text aloud with the other actors, frankly, I'd rather learn monologues. This film has a very ensemble feel to it, with the four leads conversing, interrupting, repeating, arguing, and everything else with each other, making the study of it alone very tough. (Which, in my usual roundabout way, explains why I have not been updating these pages much lately.)

It will be an intense, but I hope fun, experience, with the entire shoot taking only 10 days. I have a hunch my off-hours will be spent with my head buried in my script, trying to commit to memory the next day's pages, but if there is any free time, I'll be keeping the world up-to-date on our progress. Stay tuned!