1900 Miles to Chartarum

So, how did I end up helping to make Chartarum? Well, John Shaw had been posting on the Free Talk Live BBS asking for help making a movie. I didn’t really think too much about it at first, after all the set in Michigan is a long way from my home in Florida. As it got closer to the date, I started realizing it would be a fun thing to do. When I found out Brasky…I mean Dave wanted to go if I could pick him up along the way, I couldn’t pass up the chance for a week of supreme awesomeness.

So, on last minute notice I packed up as much of my camping gear as I could into my Chevy Tahoe, especially the portable shower, and headed on up to Pennsylvania to meet up with Dave. From there, it took a couple of long days of driving to arrive in Luther on the set. We got there a short time after sundown, and while the first scene was being filmed. Setting up the tent between takes was interesting.

I kept busy over the week of filming by recording audio and keeping people fed. Lots of funny moments and memories behind the scenes. Jason Osborne was hilarious in makeup. Trying to make things work in a rural setting with limited resources was fun. I happily got to be in two small scenes in the film. But what about Boner Joe? I’ll write some more about my experience in a future post…

[Note from webgoddess (Mel): Jay gets a lot of credit for improved morale as we moved into the shoot. There was some misunderstanding early on about the facilities at the site and we would have been without showers (unless we wanted cold ones) without Jay's portable shower and his generosity in letting us use it. As long as we toted & heated our own water - using his heater - and cleaned up after ourselves, we were free to use his shower tent. (Seemed like a perfectly fair deal to me!) He did much more, some of which he's mentioned above.]