Lord, it's so true: film-making is like war. Weeks of preparation and planning, the relocation of a ton of equipment and people on a specific date, and everything has to come together at precisely the right time. This time around (our shoot is on Tuesday), we've already had three things go astray. First, our venerable actress from LA is sick, and can't make it. So we picked up another older actress on Friday, whom we'll see perform for the first time tomorrow night, in the final rehearsal. Yesterday, we lost our boom operator. You know. The guy who drops the microphone boom into the shot to ruin it? Fortunately, I'd just received an email from an acquaintance from an earlier film-class, and he'd made it clear that he had lots of time on his hands. So he quickly agreed to fill in as the boom operator.

And this morning, I suddenly realized that none of us had spoken to one of the actresses in two weeks, and that she hadn't responded to my emails! So we're waiting to see if she reappears today. If not, we'll have to find somebody tomorrow who can come to both the rehearsals tomorrow night, and the shoot all day Tuesday. Is this supposed to be fun? What makes it harder is that you can't even get mad at these people who disappear at the last minute, since we're not paying anybody.

Yesterday, we finally agreed on the complete list of shots we want to capture, which allowed us to estimate shooting time for all the shots, the order in which to shoot them, and, from that, the call time for the actors. The good news is that if everything goes according to plan, we do, in fact, have time to capture all our shots in the single shooting day. The bad news is that we'd have to shoot from 7.00 a.m. until 10.00 p.m! So we're going to have to drop some of our precious shots.

Needless to say, I'm completely wiped out. I'm not sleeping well, and my strange habit of waking up in a panic feeling as if I'm suffocating has been becoming more frequent. Not sure what's causing that, and my doctor was equally clueless. Although I'm very excited to be doing this film, I'm also keenly looking forward to Tuesday night when it will be finally in the can, good or bad.

At least we're getting free hair gel and free food. One of the nice things about making a movie is that people become willing to give you free stuff in exchange for a mention in the closing credits. So, hopefully, we'll have "Catering by Pasta Pomodoro", and "Hair Products by Nancy Boy."