OK, I have to admit it.  That picture to the left makes doing this entire shoot worthwile!  I'm going to print it out and make it my Xmas card!  Today was the big shootout scene that takes place between my character and three bounty hunters.  It occurs at this observation tower that is on top of Mt. Sugarloaf in (I believe) Hadley, MA.  The view was breathtaking!!!  Click here and here to see two pictures of the scenic view.  Mark got permission to shoot there, got a permit to shoot and had a permit for the blanks that we were shooting.  And of course...there were still problems.

  We got there right when the park opened at 8:00 AM and started filming scenes.  We started off by filming scenes with the bounty hunters (who were played by myself, Jeff and Tony...we had bandanas, sunglasses and hats on...you couldn't even tell it was us!).  There was some gunfire (most notably from that big ass shotgun) as we tried to get most of the scenes with blanks out of the way early, before people got there (even though we got permission from the regional supervisor of the park/mountain, they couldn't close it down for the day.  We had to shoot around visitors...who, to their credit, were ALL incredibly polite and cooperative).  At about 10:00, a 4th grade class showed up (actually a few it seemed) with their teachers.  We warned them about the gunshots and the kids watched one scene in which I had to hit the ground, roll to my side and fire shots.  Mark calls cut and this applause erupts from the tower where all the kids were watching from.  It was very cute.  I was doing pushups between takes and I heard one of the kids say to his friend, "Do you know why he's doing that?  That's because guns are heavy"  I started laughing and didn't have the heart to tell the kid that, "no, it's because I'm vain and want to look decent in my tanktop."   I wanted to get a picture with all of the kids for the website, but the teachers didn't want to risk getting in trouble because they didn't have the parent's permission to do so.  I don't fault them, but it makes me sad that we live in that kind of world where everything is so PC and everyone is scared of their own shadow.

  Filming continued for another hour or so until....the boys in blue showed up.  There is something weird (and kind of uncomfortable) being dressed up as a cop with real policemen standing right in front of you.  I felt that they must be thinking, "great, another wannabe".  Apparantly, there were some complaints about the noise...but we had all the necessary permissions to be there.  There has always been something that angered me about people that called in noise complaints to the police.  When I was younger, I was in a band and we would practice in the AFTERNOON and people would call the cops and make us stop playing.  Yet, my fucking neighbor has no remorse in waking me up at 7AM with a friggin' woodchipper, which is 100 times more cacophonous than kids playing music.  I tried calling the cops one day just to be a dick, and they told me not to waste their time.  I despise double standards.  He kept digging and it was really starting to piss me off, because it was obvious that he was looking for something to complain about.  "Those real guns?"  "No sir, plastic...the ones that fire blanks have plugged barrells."  "You got a permit for those?"  "Yes, sir here it is".  (to me) "Is that a real badge?" "Not a police badge, sir....just one from the Dept. of Corrections"  "Let me call the regional supervisor and check out whether you should be here".  It checked out.  He actually said, "well it looks like you guys have dotted all your I's and crossed your T's" as if we were trying to put something over on him.  We're making a movie, damn it.  We aren't doing anything wrong, went through all the appropriate measures and we still got hassled.  He then said, "well, what you guys are doing isn't technically illegal (try not illegal at all) but it is in poor taste (running around with the guns with the kids around)."  First off, we had spoken to the teachers and totally worked around where THEY wanted to be.  If they were on one side of the tower, we were on the other.  And why is it in such poor taste?  When I was a kid, I used to play cowboys and indians, war, guns, cops & robbers and other assorted gun games....we played them all the time.  What we were doing today was no different than that, except we were filming it and some of the guns made loud noises.  We had to stop filming for two hours while the cop made Mark make more signs and until the kids had left.

Continued in Part 2