I found this... the one and only entry in the Robert Cake jounal I swore I would write... And I can't believe we've been working on this movie so long... no... actually I can.
December 17th, 2001
“Oh my God! I’m dying! Oh my God!” Jeremy is being blasted in the face with spray after spray of freezing cold water. Anthony could have easily filled the squirt bottle with warm water, but didn’t.
I’m laughing my ass off.
We’re about to start shooting on our first scene of The Robert Cake and Jeremy needs to be a sweaty beast, hence the water. And my mind is telling me that the water is going to make the black magic marker under Jeremy’s eyes run like a crying woman’s mascara, but it holds up well. The magic marker was Anthony’s bright idea, created out of the pure laziness of three guys that don’t want to take the one minute walk to Jeremy’s mother’s apartment to steal some actual eye shadow. Not that he’s supposed to be wearing eye shadow in the scene… we just need dark circles under his eyes.
I tell him that he looks like Whitney Houston.
He doesn’t seem to know what I’m talking about.
“She’s the one whose husband beat on her, right?”
“That’s Tina Turner.”
Oh.
I’m wondering why we decided to film this scene first. No matter what, the first scene you film WILL suck. We just so happen to decide on a really tough scene, towards the end of the movie to kick it all off. And there’s an overwhelming sense that we are completely unprepared that won’t stop tickling at my face. The script isn’t even finished. That’s no fault but my own. And the apartment, the apartment is a mess of equipment. Ninety percent of the living room is comprised of this equipment and ninety percent of this equipment we’re not even using. This is no environment to film in. There’s no room to film! But it’s okay, because we’re only filming toward the couch for this scene. The couch is clean and clear, probably because we moved it in here less than an hour ago. It’s Jeremy’s mother’s really, but we stole it for filming. We can’t have our leading man couchless like he is in real life.
Anthony jumps behind the camera and we start filming. Jeremy pushes his gut out and mopes into the shot. The take isn’t perfect, but it was more of a sound test anyway.
And then a knock on the door. It’s Natalie; she lets herself in. “I got underwear today. They’re really cool.”
We explain to her that Jeremy’s magic marker eyes don’t look bad on camera, so she doesn’t freak out upon the sight.
Ryan shows up in the middle of a glorious take, knocking; ruining. He walks in, proclaiming Puddle of Mudd the best band ever.”
Jeremy says, “Isn’t their new song great?” He obviously doesn’t know that Ryan hates them… even their new song.
And we’re just about ready to start filming again. Jeremy needs a few more blasts of ice water in his face though. Natalie’s phone rings and it’s quite warming. It brings back all the memories of people’s phones ringing and ruining takes in the past. Filmmaking is just one interruption like this after another.
Jeremy’s sister walks in. Chris needs to be picked up from work. Jeremy can’t go now, he looks like a zombie with all that magic marker under his eyes. Zombies cannot drive in public. Oh yeah… and we’ve got to continue filming. That too.
We start filming again and are soon distracted by the sight of Natalie showing off her new underwear. This is EXTREMELY distracting.
After asking Jeremy to tone the Chandler from Friends down a bit, we finally get a good take and it’s time to move on. Or in Anthony terms, it’s time to take a twenty minute break so he can call his girlfriend and smoke.
Ryan is babbling on about The Shipping News. He says that he would give Jeremy a blow job to see it.
We start talking about Vanilla Sky, which we saw last night. Natalie says that she’d watch AI again before she saw Vanilla Sky a second time.
Jeremy says, “The day I watch AI again is the day I reach into my own head and pull out my head.”
After his break, Anthony starts setting up for the next scene. He’s assembling a tripod with wheels for some elaborate dolly shot that will undoubtedly take thirty takes to perfect.
Jeremy and Natalie are listening to Flickerstick in his room.
I try to tell Ryan something, but he’s not listening. He’s setting up a light.
Natalie screams, “WE WERE IN SOUTH DAKOTA,” from Jeremy’s room.
I tell Ryan that I fucked a midget in his honor. I figured that would get his attention, but it didn’t. I tell him that I broke the midget’s arm for him. He’s still not listening.
Chris walks in the front door.
Ryan turns to Chris and says, “I thought of Alicia Keys the other day and it made me smile.”
Chris says, “Alicia Keys can do that.”
I hear Jeremy in the other room… he says, “You are the magnet.”
Chris sits down on the couch next to me. He tells me that he made seventy dollars in tips at work today.
Some show with crazy aliens and monsters with giant claws comes on TV. Chris is trying to convince me that it’s called “Vampire Eats Person.”
I tell him that it’s Alien Nation.
“You want to bet me? It’s called Vampire Eats Person!”
The title comes up… its Earth: Final Conflict. We were both wrong.
Chris says, “You should’ve bet me. You should’ve bet me seventy dollars. You knew I had seventy dollars!”
Natalie screams, “I was a boy! I was a big, fat boy!” She must’ve found some old picture of herself in Jeremy’s room.
Chris points to a monster on screen and says, “Look at the claws!”
And why the hell aren’t we filming?