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Monday, January 29, 2001 - Filming of Love Liza continues in New Orleans. With the movie crew gone to New Orleans, I catch up on my diary. I also keep Web Guru Alvin Reed busy with several additional hyperlinks to be inserted in the reports. By clicking on these links you can now see pictures that I took while on the set, and other scanned images. In the evening I call Scot Broadus (the Props Master) to see if he has any idea if I would be needed in New Orleans. Around 5:00 PM I get him on his cell phone, but he's totally out of breath and can't talk! I'm sure he's still on the set... "Let me call you back," he says. But he never does... Friday, February 2, 2001 - Scot calls me to New Orleans, but... Last Tuesday I had gotten word that my Dad had to have an operation on Friday, so on Thursday morning I took off for North Fort Myers, FL, a 10-hour drive. This morning my Dad had the operation. Everything went well... Later in the afternoon I get a call from Carol, my wife. Scot Broadus had called she says, and he had asked: "Are you and Frits ready to come to New Orleans?" He wanted me to do the airplane taxiing scene. It is to be filmed the next day, Saturday... Carol tells him that I am in Florida with my parents. "What's their telephone number?" he wants to know and Carol gives it to him. "Scot is going to call you later this evening," she tells me. Later he does call me. He asks about my Dad. "He's fine," I tell him. "The operation was really a procedure to extract a stone the size of a golf ball from his bladder." I pause. "Without surgery," I add. "OUCH!!!" Scot says. "Well, of course they pulverize the stone first," I say. "Oh..." I hear a deep sigh of relief at the other end... I then tell him that I'm sorry that I can't make it, but... "Well, too bad!" he says. "I wanted you to be on the set with Kathy Bates," he says. "Yeah, me too!" I say. We chat a while, and then I suggest some safe ways to set up the plane to prevent it from accidentally taking off. One is to set the elevator trim switch in such a way that it will make it difficult to take the plane off if the throttle should unintentionally be increased too much. "And remember - there are no brakes, Scot! And left and right will reverse on you when you turn the plane toward you. Just be sure you don't run into people!" Scot says he'll be careful. He says the film crew will probably get back to Mobile midweek, as things are not running on schedule. Filming in Mobile may be extended several days past the originally scheduled final day, he says. Monday, February 5, 2001 - Tyler is "out"... As I'm checking my overloaded e-mail box this morning I run across an e-mail message from Tyler Rosen, the Props Assistant. I had sent him a test message a couple of weeks ago to make sure I got his e-mail address alright. I can't believe what I'm reading! "Hey, amigo..." the subject line says. "Congratulations! You've been upgraded to Props Assistant... hehehe. I'm out... In fact, I'm sitting at my desk in Brooklyn as we speak. Sorry that I didn't properly say goodbye, but I had no choice in the matter... Big things went down this week in Love Liza world. I was unofficially 'fired' due to budgetary constraints. What can you do? I'm still sad about it, but hey - that's the film industry for ya. I still think that you're somehow behind all this! You always wanted that promotion!... hehehehe! Good luck as Props 2.0..." A couple of weeks ago Tyler had jokingly referred to me as Props 3.0, Scot being Props 1.0 and himself as 2.0... I feel a bit sad as I read his message. And I'm sad for Tyler. I never expected this! In my reply I ask Tyler what he is going to do next. I tell him that I hope to run into him again some day. I wonder if he was let go after the filming of the airplane scene... Well - I'll ask Scot. Later in the evening I call Scot. I reach him on his cell phone at his home in New Orleans. "Are you on location?" I ask. "No, we're having today off," he says. "We will move to Mobile on Tuesday and start filming Wednesday." I ask how the taxi scene went. "Okay," he says. "I ran into a tree! And the ground was bumpy and I kept hitting the prop on the ground, which killed the engine several times. But overall I did alright." Well, at least he didn't take the plane off, he didn't crash it and nobody got hurt, I thought... I start to ask him about Tyler, but the signal starts breaking up. He says he'll call me Tuesday night and we end our conversation. I wonder what the schedule will be like next week. Scot had told me last Friday that at least one day of filming at Municipal Park has to be redone because of camera problems during the first filming... I wonder what other changes due to "budgetary constraints" were made... |