Following the night of the big party, we took things easy for a few days. I was still on a ridiculous high following my success as Mr Improv and it was probably just as well that we weren't filming as I might well have scaled new heights of obnoxiousness. So we kicked back and watched the Wimbledon singles finals (won by Graf and Sampras, so no surprises there) and caught up on our sleep.

We were at the Adelphi club again on Monday morning to do some filming there and I joined the rest of the gang on my way back from signing on. To my surprise Matt was sitting in a supermarket trolley being whizzed around by Ralph and Sasha. It turned out that this was Ralph's latest invention, as good a camera dolly as you could nick for only a quid's deposit.

The scene we were here to do came from the early stages of the
Chris/Erica romance. Basically Erica was to see Chris doing his sensitive singer-songwriter thing down the club and go 'Cwooarrr' (the script expressed this more delicately, though not by much). Once again it was vital to convey the impression that this was a typical busy night at the club and so we were all called upon to be clubgoers - with the familiar proviso that our faces should not be seen. This was starting to look contrived at best and we were running out of ways to disguise the fact that we only had about eight people in the cast.

But Matt had another bright idea. 'I know,' he said to me, 'you go and play on that video game near the door. When Erica comes in we'll pan right past you -'

'Past my back.'

' - your back, yeah. It'll look really natural, perfect.'

I looked at the ancient Mr Do! machine.
'Okey-dokey,'

I said.
'Have you got any 10p's?'

He blinked.
'Just pretend,'

he advised.

So I did as I was told and felt like a right muffin as I randomly pressed the button and twiddled the joystick while staring at the hi-score table. Fortunately my bulk obscured enough of the screen to pull the rather crappy illusion of gameplay off. Not that it mattered, in the end...

We had lunch and moved on to the next location, which was our old haunt, the Haworth pub. This was to be the site of an earlier scene from the script, that of Erica and Graeme's first meeting. For me this scene was tremendously important as it contained my only scripted line of dialogue: Erica's awful ex-boyfriend (your correspondent) saunters up to she and Graeme and interrupts their small-talk by sneering the immortal line, 'You two look cosy.' Four words - how hard could it be?

First we had to do a reverse-angle reaction establishing shot, or
something like that, of me at the bar. Matt decided I should be chatting up another girl, to be played by the lovely Caitlin with, you've guessed it, her back to the camera and her long hair up under a silly hat. So I started to talking to her in my usual tiresome way, not trying too hard as it wasn't going to be heard in the finished (ha, ha) film. She usually cracked up very easily when faced by my trademark waffle but I could barely raise a smile from her on this occasion.

'It's cos you're talking about footy, man'

Caitlin explained with a big grin (she was a big fan of Newcastle).
'I can tell you haven't a clue what you're on about.'

I tried to process this tip and suddenly it was time for me to do my
line. Someone pointed out my mark on the floor, the lighting was given its usual cursory attention, and then Matt shouted action. I stepped up to the mark, looked at Graeme and Erica and said:

'You two look cosy.'

'Cut! Yeah, great!'

said Matt,
'But you were a bit flat. Go again,
everyone. Take two, action!'

'You two look cosy.'

'Cut. Yeah, yeah, but it still looks like you're just hitting a mark and reading a line.'

'Well I am!'

'Yes, well, it shouldn't be so bloody obvious! Go again, everyone. Take three - action...'

'You two look cosy!'

'Cut. Listen...'

It was a long afternoon.

The following day I went round to Matt and Erica's to find an unexpected development had, er, developed. It didn't actually have anything to do with the film, but was still of monumental significance to most of us on the project: the lovely Caitlin had chucked her long-term boyfriend and was now entirely single. Erica wondered why.

'Well, I suddenly realised, I've been seeing one bloke or another
non-stop for about seven years,'

Caitlin explained,
'and I just wanted a change, to see what it was like...'

Caitlin was indeed a serial monogamist. It's my experience that there are two kinds of people in this world: those whose natural condition is to be in a relationship, with only brief solitary interludes, and those who are naturally singletons who only experience equally brief interludes of a romantic nature. Caitlin was clearly one of the former type and I was prepared to bet that she'd be getting it on with some lucky feller in a matter of, at most, weeks. I wasn't the only chap there to figure this out and sure enough Caitlin suddenly had three or four new close platonic friends jockeying for position. I was one of them, despite the fact that I should've known better (being one of the latter type of person). Graeme in particular did a great deal of smiling and rubbing his hands and was even smugger than usual: playing Caitlin's boyfriend in the film gave him an obvious edge and he was clearly hoping that life would imitate art. But in the end Caitlin's attempt to deny her true nature seemed successful - all I got from her were a few lifts home and a copy of The Jam's Greatest Hits on tape, but at least it was more than Graeme (unless admirable discretion was exercised). Like the man said, the bitterest pill is hard to swallow.

Matt and Erica's video collection offered up some unusual treats later that week. Firstly, and most irksomely, I was discussing with Matt how things were going (impressively, after ten days of filming we were a week behind schedule) when he mentioned that they were going back to the Adelphi the next day to reshoot the scene set there.

'Why? What was wrong with it?'

'Nothing.'

Matt looked shifty.

'So why the reshoot? Technical glitch?'

'Kind of.'

'"Kind of"?'

'We recorded over it for last night's LA Law. By accident,'

he added, somewhat redundantly I thought.

I thought to myself that Francis Ford Coppola probably never had this
problem. In the end I didn't go to the reshoot, or the night shoot later
that week when we filmed the scene where Chris got mugged (on that occasion I held the fort at the house and read Matt's comic collection). I was, truth be told, beginning to become disillusioned with the whole project - it was something I'd help out on when there wasn't something more interesting happening elsewhere at the time. (One of my weirder memories of this time is of sitting in the front room with Erica's scary, Greek-Cypriot, mid-life-crisising Trotskyite dad, and Leann, watching National Lampoon's European Vacation with the sound turned down while everyone else filmed in the hall outside.)

I think the disenchantment stemmed from stress and lack of sleep, which were giving everyone short tempers. Matt and I weren't getting along as well as we had at the start of things, and I was starting to suspect that all this was just some delusion of his while he believed in it all as strongly as ever. It was awkward.

Things weren't helped when a casual rummage through Matt and Erica's
video collection turned up a tape marked Pump Up The Volume - a
not-terribly-good Christian Slater movie if memory serves. I sniggered and turned to my hosts who were talking with the rest of the gang.
'This isn't yours, is it?'

'Oh,'

Erica said, blanching.
'Don't play that, for God's sake.'

'Why not?'

Matt looked confused, and so was I - her reaction seemed a little extreme, it's a bad film, but not that bad...

'It's got us on it!'

Erica said tersely.
'The other night, when you were messing about with the camera...?'

Ears pricked up all over the room and at that moment in time I think a lot of people there would rather have seen the full version of In Bed With Matt And Erica than that of All Our Tomorrows (our film, in case you're a newcomer or have forgotten). Disappointingly Pump Up The Volume (perhaps in this case Pump Up The Director's Wife would be a more appropriate title) disappeared, never to be seen again - by us, anyway.

The vaguely seedy direction that events seemed to be taking continued as the time finally came to film Graeme and Caitlin's a-huggin' and a-kissin' scene in the back garden. It was a lovely summer's afternoon, the temperature soaring, and - surprise, surprise - there was a virtual 100% turn-out from the wholly masculine crew, all eager to help out. We had some difficulty all squeezing into the space behind the camera, Matt's garden not being enormously spacious.

Mutiny threatened as Matt declared a closed set (i.e, essential folks
only) and ordered us all back into the house and posted Erica on guard to stop us leering through the back windows. His excuse was that he didn't want Caitlin embarrassed and nervous. Well, I for one was as sick as a parrot: if you can't engage in a bit of vicarious a-huggin' and a-kissin' every once in a while, things have reached a pretty poor state. It wasn't as if crew morale didn't need a boost. Graeme's smugness was also reaching dangerous levels and I felt our presence would have helped defuse this equally alarming situation.

Matt wouldn't even let us watch the tape afterwards. What a *******.

With things at such a low ebb it was probably just as well we had an
enforced break in production: Erica was off to Manchester to see her mum
that weekend and wouldn't be back until Tuesday. Matt was sticking around, planning to join her on the Monday, and I was pleasantly surprised when he invited me round that Sunday night to watch a few vids and discuss how it was all shaping up. Naturally I agreed, not realising what an alarming experience Matt-off-the-leash could be...

Next Episode: Portrait of an Auteur, and a battle of wills with a post box.

The Adventures in Cinema Collection

Awix

23.02.06 Front Page

21.02.02 Front Page

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