Day 83: Camp Keep the Lights On by

Ira Sachs and Thure Lindhart on set in Phoenicia

Good day yesterday, and now it’s six a.m. in upstate New York. We are all staying at the Catskills Seasons Inn, a bit like Camp Keep the Lights On, as the boundaries become different, and the times. Instead of everyone going home after the 12-hour shoot, we all go out for pizza and calzones in Phoenicia. The first night, after a day at the Phoenicia Diner and then the Peekamoose Blue swimming hole, I felt so exhausted, it was very difficult to then continue, socially. There is something about leaving a set and being alone that can be a relief. But last night, more relaxed, less tired. I still feel like the camp counselor. Now that Veronica Lupu has gone, I realized that I’ve become the oldest person on set. I call myself granddad with a mixture of pride and aversion. More…

Day 79: What The Film Needs by

Zach Booth in front of a Neil Goldberg on set

A wasted day off. It’s hard to rest when you are used to working. It’s hard to rest in general I find. I am one of the many who has fallen, who has stopped knowing how to read a book, who can only read a paper if I’m having a meal by myself. I still hope this changes again, reverts to the years just after college when I could read for hours, days in fact. Though I was also more depressive then. Now I’m healthier, happier, but still not very good at staying still. And with Facebook and now Twitter, and the emails, and the calls….and the dreaded cam sites. It all overwhelms me and makes my day off the opposite of peaceful. Writing helps. Though now this ”production journal” is now on the Internet—the site was launched and looks very good (though how do we get people to go to it?)—and people make comments (not many, given), and I wonder if I’ll regret some things I say. I don’t say everything. More…

Day 75: Extras by

On set at El Faro

Tense day and short turnaround. We stopped shooting at around 11:00 and the crew was probably there for another hour. Now we start again at 9:30 and there’s a good chance for bad vibe. Arrived in the morning at 8:30 at El Faro and the guy who was supposed to open the restaurant at 6:30 hadn’t arrived. Lots of talk of possible other locations—I call Jim Bidgood and he is as funny and charming as ever and open to us coming over if necessary that morning for the re-shoot—but we end up getting in and by 11 or so.we are starting to shoot. It’s a group scene, lots of new actors, lots of extras. I’m not sure I’m on my game—some days you feel like you are shooting but you aren’t necessarily in complete control—but, luckily, the actors are very good and natural, so it works, hopefully. More…

Day 74, Part 2: Shooting Sex by

Actor Chris Lenk on Set

Shooting sex. A difficult thing to write about. There’s a good long essay to write about it, if one had the skills, because there are so many moving parts to the story. The thing I’ve begun to notice with this film, on this set is that as we’ve shot more of it—and there’s been a lot—there is a familiarity about it that I’m guessing is not unlike what begins to happen on porno sets. My deeper hope is that the set of the movie is not unlike the movie itself, meaning that the openness of our approach to shooting these scenes makes these types of moments less foreign to the grips, to the gaffers, to myself as a director. That we are making a movie about openness and bringing sex into the picture (into the light), and so it becomes visible, familiar, easy to talk about. That we are making a movie that keeps the lights on. More…

Day 74: One More Time by

Actor Miguel Del Toro on set at the Blue Store

It’s the first morning I wish I had more time to write, because a lot of days have passed, and a lot of moments that I’d like to get down to remember. But I have to be at set in 25 minutes—El Faro, the old Spanish place in the West Village—to review the “crack” scenes, which were from our second day and, thus, have scratches. Did I mention that the first four days of the shoot we had a faulty camera and there are intermittent scratches on all the footage? Intermittent being the operative word. Lucas and I are trying to figure out whether to do a re-shoot or not on Friday, our day off. A hard rock to push up the hill because, at least for me, my own tiredness craves that day to myself. This is always an issue in directing: when to push, when to lay back. You have to constantly assess. One of the hardest moments on set is “one more time.” More…

Day 70: Too Nice by

D5-9097

I walked past my ex-boyfriend’s first apartment on W. 15th Street on my way to set this morning. Mild musings, but it was a long time ago—14 years—and I feel somewhat like a different person. I do believe people can change, maybe not essential personalities, but the level of pain goes up and down and, with it, the character. I don’t live in the kind of steady pain I used to, and loneliness and isolation. It’s a running theme in the movie, certainly, that from the age of 13, when I first started having sex, in secret, with a lot of shame, I held a certain part of me back from others for the next 26 years. I came out at 40, I might say. I decided, through the Program, to not keep a part of myself back anymore. You get mostly what you pay for. More…

Day 69: A Change in Weather by

Producer Lucas Joaquin on set

I got a good night sleep and the skies are clearing after a rained out day yesterday. We weren’t really prepared for the change in the weather, and soon enough it seemed best to give into it. The days are going fast. I’m both ready for the shoot to be over and sad it’s only a month more. One good thing about being a director is that you finish shooting and have editing to go into. It just gets more interesting. Last time I finished production—in Vancouver, years ago—I was a mess, so I think the silences were larger when the crew went home (or “the circus left town” as they might say in Canada). More…

Day 66: Take 21 by

the carrot, an integral prop.

I forgot how totally grueling it is to direct a film—maybe this one more than others, because of the intensity of the material, though in truth, the little throwaway scenes in a movie are actually the hardest to shoot and probably should be literally thrown away. Which is why they are hard to shoot. Last night, we were at Sue Simon’s house, shooting the “Ken” scenes, one of the pick-ups. She mistakenly thought we were shooting a party scene until I arrived on set with three carrots and explained they were props for a blowjob. More…

Day 64: A Good Nap by

director of photography Thimios Bakatakis

I just watched the first dailies, no sound, at the editing room, and I came away wanting very much to go to sleep. They aren’t what I imagined and I just want to go to sleep. We were on nights last night, so I got to sleep around 7am and then was awake by 11am, so I’m also tired, clearly. The day ahead seems long. Funny how quickly when you direct you can go from elation to depression. A grave desire to sleep. To turn on the A/C to get online and watch porn. To escape. More…