One Too Many Mornings - a new comedy.

This entry comes from guest blogger Zack Fox, who is a great friend and came out countless weekends to help out on One Too Many Mornings:

I knew it was coming. I heard the saying last weekend but guess I forgot. As soon as I walked into the room a bad Irish accent called out: “Top of the mornin’ to ya!” This would have been a (relatively) normal morning greeting if it weren’t for the fact that it wasn’t morning at all – but rather a Friday night. I responded back in a much worse attempt with the accent: “top of the morning to you.” And before you knew it, the entire crew began blurting it out, “Top of the mornin’ to ya,” all trying to one-up-each-other in how they said the line, and how terrible of an accent they could don. This phrase, this slogan, this line became an ongoing joke on the set. You couldn’t go for more than a few hours without someone repeating it and laughter following soon after.

One Too Many Mornings is a movie about friendship. And in the end, the movie was made that way, too. This realization came through in bright, vibrant colors on this night in particular. The scene being filmed was an important one between Tina and Anthony. It was a complicated scene and a long one – at least four pages if my memory serves. I remember Mike would play out the takes in long masters and as the trusty boom operator, my arms would start to hurt and shake right around the time when he yelled “cut.” It was a scene that was more difficult than any of us initially thought. Poor Tina had to cry over-and-over again. As we kept shooting into the night, I remember looking around and being in awe of the sacrifices everyone was making. Here we were, probably a dozen of us, working at 3am to get the scene right. This was a Friday (now early Saturday) night. The cast and crew had girlfriends, husbands, lives that awaited them and sleep that was calling their names. But no one complained. Everyone stormed ahead and kept going, all while laughing in between the shots.

It was friendship that built this movie, those who loved being there and wanted to make the moment perfect. Mike constantly asking for “just one more,” Elisha making little tweaks on the lights, and the willing crew who donated their most precious resource – time – to do whatever they could to make it right. While cutting the movie, I remember Mike telling me about how this scene – so difficult to shoot – was one of the easiest to cut because of the multiple options and effort that went into it that night. Hearing this was icing on the cake.

There were many apologies about going so late. Many demands that I should sleep over and not drive another 30 minutes home, but I wanted to get back to my bed instead of finding a comfy spot on the floor. “I’ll see you in a few hours,” I shouted out in the parking lot to those still there to hear me. I got a response back. It was a phrase I heard earlier. Only this time, it felt appropriate, bad accent and all.
-Zack Fox

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 12th, 2009 at 6:15 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.