Baby Mine

Only in California can you get a call from Arnold Schwarzenegger aka The Governator and not fall all over yourself in the star-struck excitement of receiving a call from a movie star in the first place, even if it is only a message regarding the upcoming election for Governor. (Pre-recorded of course.)

Moving on. Thursday's job turned out to be a lot of fun, and we were wrapped after 5 hours. On the recording with the details of the job, they said we were going to Air Hollywood. So I thought we were going to a real, small airport, one of the ones with the small private touring jets or something like that. Turns out Air Hollywood is a sound stage with everything needed for airport and airplane scenes. There was a full-sized airplane cabin, and shelves of different colored and quality airplane seats, there was a smaller airport waiting room, a huge terminal hallway, and more, it was really cool.

In the scene we filmed, the lead actor comes charging out of a bathroom into the hallway, nearly knocks over me and another woman but dodges each of us at the last second. After the PA had set us, the actor asked us to move closer together to help him make the manuever look better on film. (Then after a couple of takes the PA came over, asked us why we had changed positions, and moved us back again even though we told her the lead actor had asked us to move. Oh, the joys of organized chaos as normal on any set.)

Also, once again it was decided that I looked like a mom, so they gave me the baby carriage to push. (Even though they ended up only filming from behind me, with me walking away from the camera.) And here's where the real fun begins. The crew had used black utility tape to create evil eyebrows and a small goatee on the baby, they had put a bottle of Jack Daniel's in the seat with him, and had a fake $5 bill tucked into his jammies. I said to them, "I named him Jack Daniel, can you tell?" They thought that was hilarious. They even took a picture of me with the baby and one of the crew guys as "Dad". It occurs to me now that I could have asked if they could e-mail me a copy of the pic. Ah well, hindsight, 20/20 and all that. The crew removed all the "extras" from J.D. before we started filming.

Then a little while later when I was standing with my back to the carriage, all of a sudden I heard a baby cry. WTF? I turned around, wondering if the doll was one of those crying dolls, but the sound seemed to come from further behind me. I studied the people standing behind me, the baby cried again, but I couldn't tell who was making the sound. Then a guy sitting on a bench near me asked me, "Is that your baby crying?" I replied, "I don't think so, he's plastic." And then one of the crew guys walked past me, and subtly made the crying baby noise as he walked past. Later when he walked by again, I asked if he was the one who made my baby cry, he said yes, so I asked, "Can you make my baby rap?" thinking maybe he could rap in a baby's voice, but he laughed and said, "Hell no!"

And it surprised me how many of the background people said to me, "Your baby is so cute! How old is he?" throughout the night, even when we weren't filming. And I turned into the proud parent, "Oh, he's three months old. He's such a good baby, he hardly ever cries." It amazed me that I recieved so much attention from so many different people simply because I was pushing a plastic baby in a baby carriage, and that I was eating up the attention!

And the green screen thing actually turned out to be interesting: They were using a steadicam to move in front of the actor as he ran down the hallway in addition to a stationary camera further back down the hallway. They had the steadicam operator dressed in green so they could edit him out of the stationary camera's footage.