Sunday we shot our ‘Poltergeist’ scene. I’m cooking and there is a knock at the door. It keeps knocking when I walk away and on the third time I am looking at the door, but don’t open it. Then when I turn around the kitchen is all undone and COVERED in tomato sauce! Like COVERED. It even got behind the fridge. And Nick (?) was worried 4 cups would be too little.
We could only really do one take since it took forever to clean, and when we did it, some splattered onto my face, so I had to hurry and wipe it off while the camera was facing the door. Not sure if it ended up adding extra time or not, but I needed to be sure you couldn’t see anything on me. Then I turn around and react. I went with confused shock as my reaction. There was talk of trying to shoot it again, maybe just up until the whip-pan to the kitchen, so they could get a bigger reaction. We never ended up doing that though.
I feel a little bad about that. I like to try and give a director exactly what they want. I think it’s still going to be a killer scene. If we had a clean-up crew we could have gone again, but I think it’s going to work the way it is.