The Phone Call

Sometime between my day of work in December and my next scheduled shoot date for The Box, a package arrived at my house with some pages of rewrites as well as some new scenes.  Among the new scenes was one that sounded very familiar to me because it contained much of the same information included in the Deer Island scenes we had recently shot.  The major difference was that the new scene was considerably shorter than the previous version and it required only two actors - me and James Rebhorn.  It was also an exterior scene taking place at dusk at a location referred to as the lunar lander module at the NASA Langley Facility.

I didn't quite know how to handle this development, but I set about learning the rewritten lines over the following days.  Then, as I was sitting home one afternoon, the phone rang.  A voice on the other end asked, "Is this Mark?"  "Speaking."  "This is Richard."  "Richard who?" I inquired.  "Richard Kelly from The Box."

Needless to say, I was quite taken aback.  I tried to remain calm and innocently asked him what was going on.  "Oh," he replied, "we're just getting ready to shoot Cameron's final scene."  If you haven't seen the film, I will not spoil it for you, but it is an incredibly tense and emotional scene.  I could not believe that the director was taking the time to call me at that precise moment.

Richard then went on to explain the rewrite to me.  He said that the people at Warner Brothers were not happy with the Deer Island scenes, feeling that they contained too much exposition at such a late point in the movie.  He assured me that it had nothing to do with my performance.  (Of course, the insecure actor in me did not buy that for one second and I will always wonder if that was truly the case or not.)  I told him that I had already received the new pages, and I did agree that the new scene was definitely more dramatic than the walking and talking version we had shot.  He told me that he would be seeing me soon and I thanked him for the call.

I have always felt that this was extremely gracious on his part.  To my way of thinking, Richard was under no obligation to inform a local hire like me of the reasons for making any changes in his film, especially so far in advance.  He could easily have waited until the day of the shoot - if he chose to give any explanation at all.  I can truly say that this event in particular, more than anything else that happened over the course of the production, made me feel like a valued member of the team.

I had been receiving e-mails since I was cast in November detailing the day to day progress of the production.  I initially thought that they were being sent to me in error, but soon realized that this was simply standard procedure.  One spreadsheet showed not only the days completed but also the future days of work as projected at any given time.  It was now clear to me that I would indeed be going to Virginia, and not for just one day.  But the spreadsheet was constantly being updated - sometimes more than once a day - so I did not yet know the number of days or the actual dates, as they kept shifting.

In the meantime, I did the only thing I could do - I continued my preparation, determined not to give anything but my best effort when the time did come.