Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1331269
THE ARTISAN WINTER 2021 • 61 a BB Balm and Kiehl's skincare. We filmed more than 22 days with a week of prep. We had a lot of little gags to accomplish throughout. From Andy being chased and tortured by Roy (J.K. Simmons), yolo death stunts, and of course, my favorite, crashing the wedding of Tala (Camila Mendes) and Abe (Tyler Hoechlin) in so many ridiculous ways. I have so many highlights from production. My favorites span the spectrum from the obscure to the innovative. Acting fast on our feet to meet our shrinking timeline and remain in budget brought about some of the more creative and exciting decisions. Having a gracious cast that was in on the collabora- tion and roll with the punches was key. I didn't get to meet J.K. Simmons before the shoot, I only got to meet him on his first day of him filming. In all honesty, I was very nervous as he is one of my favorite actors. When he walked in, he was slightly serious, I'm sure vibing us out as well. It wasn't long before we broke the ice talking about obscure '70s rock. I was then comfortable smearing camouflage all over his Oscar-winning face. He was a total trooper because one of the days we were filming in the middle of the desert, we had to switch back over to his clean look. We had to be super quick without taking the time to drive all the way back to base camp. I literally got him cleaned up standing in dirt and switched him back. He laughed at it all. Another hysterical moment is when Tala loses her teeth. We went with the ole classic black out the teeth and gurgle out some blood. While she is crying, she is accompanied by Misty (Meredith Hagner), her bridesmaid. Chelsea added over-the- top face gems, which just adds to the hilarity. All the while Tala's bloody teeth are being passed around. The biggest moment for Chelsea and me was the 'fork in the face' gag. The day before shooting it, we were told that we were going to have to nix it. Just wouldn't have time to film it. I remember begging Becky and Andy to please somehow, someway let us film it. They wanted to too, but there was just so much already on the schedule. They told me to have it on standby and "we will see." That night toward the end of wrap, we had a hard out and were still shooting other stuff. "Fork in the face" was pretty much cut from the list. I was still begging for it and the 1st AD said, "if you can do it in 15 minutes, we will shoot it." Becky said, "Galaxy can do it." And with that faith and belief (and maybe a little prayer to the universe), Chelsea, Teresa Aguilera, and I grabbed Abe right there on set and started doing the application straight from my set bag. We clocked it in 12 minutes and 36 seconds, I shit you not, no CGI had to be used. It was true, good old-fashioned Hollywood magic. With Nyles, Sarah, and Roy being the only time loop char- acters we were able to give them multiple looks essentially. Roy had his wedding look, camo guy, and cop with a nice thick cop 'stache.' Sarah got to do some fun and kooky looks. For the birthday scene, we added some glitter to fun it up. I would've loved to have dumped a whole can of glitter everywhere but that's part of the compromise in indie shooting, going to a clean look next in the same shooting day with limited time. Clockwise from left: Tyler Hoechlin, Camila Mendes; Peter Gallagher, Jacqueline Obradors; director Max Barbakow, J.K. Simmons. Photos by Christopher Willard/Hulu