Last year, after our youngest child, went off to boarding school, I decided to enroll myself full-time at Boston University's new Center for Digital Imaging Arts in Waltham, MA. I became part of the first graduating class, a group of sixteen of us (see IMAGINE August 05), all varying ages and abilities, who would receive the Filmmaking Certificate. 

For my final project, I chose to write an original screenplay and produce and direct it. 

The Idea

The assignment that day in school was to write a scene in class and have classmates do a reading of it. Committing to an idea is the hardest part for me since I have a continual flow of story ideas in my mind all the time. It was time to decide, right then and there, so I plucked an experience I had witnessed at an actual dinner and ran with it.

At the time, Mike Nichols had just come out with CLOSER, and that put me in the mood for examining relationships, between men and women, couples, and friends. I was intrigued with communication in a party setting, and how signals get picked up without a word being spoken. The birthday dinner I began to write about in class that day had fragments of an actual dinner I had been to but it's never the same. My memory was a doorway through which I could be very specific about writing what you, the viewer, would see. The central event I chose to write about had several elements to focus on. The setting: a beautiful, refined Boston eating club. I saw specific colors, namely orange, suggesting sensuality and sexual communication. I wanted a round, elegantly set table, attended to by uniformed servers as you would find in a private eating club in a big city. 

So I scribbled out the scene with eleven people sitting around a table. The hostess gets up and makes a toast to her husband whose birthday it is, followed by a male friend of the couple making a toast to the husband giving him a provocative Kama sutra object that sends titters through the dinner table. At last, the blond, beautiful female friend of the couple stands up and gives an elaborate, "too gushy" toast passing one extravagant gift after another to the hostess' husband. No one apparently thinks anything of the latter toast except for the hostess and her husband who send signals back and forth to each other during it.

Back in class, we pulled chairs around an invisible table and the words that I had written for that in-class assignment were brought to life in that first reading. That is how fast a story can take form.

The Casting

My classmate, Mona, helped me with Casting by putting a notice on Craig's List and the Stage Source hotline. We held that Casting session right in our classroom at CDIA and taped each actor that came in. Only one of the actors from that session was cast. Jonathan Frost got the part of Harry Carleton, the "Kama sutra" toast giver. He looked the part and read the lines with charm. He was also considered for the husband but he wasn't quite the right look.

Thanks to Angela Peri, Boston Casting in Brighton for conducting the second round of auditions. If you don't already know it, Angela, is an angel. She always uses her heart. Micah and Shannon in the office helped us run the auditions which were held over a number of hours. This is where the luck of the day comes into play because we had some great actors come to audition. 

We cast seven of the actors from Boston Casting! Debra Lee Cook (SAG) plays Caroline Scull, the hostess. Heather Rosbeck (SAG) plays Binny Peck, the blond toast-giver. Michael McCarthy (SAG) plays Sam Scull, the "birthday boy." Jesse Stead plays George Peck, Binny's husband. Cindy Lentol (SAG) plays Juliet Carleton, the Kama Sutra toast-giver's wife. Portland Helmich (SAG) plays Averil Hathaway, the former girlfriend of Sam. Sarah Blodgett and Rosa Diaz play the maids. (Rosa showed up at the audition by chance to keep her friend company who came to audition, and left with a part!) 

Often casting choices are totally dependent on who shows up. I had this one session to cast my actors. I didn't have the luxury of time. Everyone was going to be chosen from this session. There lies the destiny. Heather Rosbeck told me that she wasn't planning on coming that day but something inside her was tugging at her to come. Heather did such a great job of playing Binny!  

Location

The setting for The Hamilton Club had to be grand to establish the refined environment. My friend, Sarah, was in town so she came with my classmates, Mona and Stewart, to find the right space. Stewart suggested we look at the Gamble Mansion at 5 Commonwealth Ave, home of the Boston Center for Adult Education. I was stunned as I walked in to this stately old house that I had never known existed. It was absolutely perfect! We would only be using the entrance and the yellow sitting room on the right. There was a perfect "actor holding" room on the left of the hall where we would have lunch. The whole building is amazing. The little history on the house that I know is that the family had a daughter and built this beautiful, high ceiling, mirrored ballroom for her wedding, or was it debutante ball. I'll use that room for my next film! The location fee was extremely reasonable and more than fair!

Shoot Day

The Sunday night before my first of two shooting days at the Gamble Mansion I received a phone call at 6:00 p.m. with the numbing news that one of our youngest classmates had died and that the funeral was the next day. I had 10 actors and 9 classmates as crew, two hairstylists, my location, equipment, everything all set to begin shooting the next morning at 8:00 a.m. Everything I had worked towards all year had been building to this moment. I made 19 phone calls, cancelled the shoot for the next day and went to the funeral of Brandon Hom, a hugely talented 23 year old classmate and friend, who had tragically died on the previous Thursday. 

Tuesday became my only day to shoot at the Gamble. The entire party scene had to be shot in one day. The only way to pull that off was to get a second camera. Lucky for me, the talented Tom Robotham jumped in to save my day. Having two cameras is what ultimately made the difference in telling the story.

Directing Actors

Working with actors is my favorite part of directing. All the actors, except for Donny Clifford of Party World, (the parking valet) met at my house for rehearsals before the shoot. It was really important to me to see the cast together as a group so that I could see their chemistry together in advance of shooting. All the cast rehearsed around our dining room table to get a feel of being at a dinner party together. For me, rehearsal is a better place to try things and let the actors gel as a group. Come shooting time on the set, I only like to nudge actors or herd them gently back if they stray.Talking and instructing is best done in rehearsal. When the cameras are rolling there's more pressure on the actors; it's best to be sparing with words and to be cool, letting the actors do their job. In rehearsal is when I can give information and backstory to the actors, and instruct their characters to resemble what I want. Plus I knew that I wanted to shoot the party in continuous run-throughs rather than shoot each actor. Continuous shooting of the party scene would make it seem more life-like.

Wrap it Up

This is what I like about directing; it gives you a vantage point of telling a story.

What I find challenging is that in order to be the best director, it requires you to tap into the talent of a lot of people in order to create a vision together. What I love about directing is that it fires up my pleasure of so many crafts: acting, writing, producing and design. Directors are multi-taskers, problem-solvers, and humanists. Directing is a sleep-depriving, terrifying, risky endeavor where sweat and panic are commonplace. If directing was common, it wouldn't be as exhilarating to embark on. THE BIRTHDAY DINNER was a great learning experience; it put me back in the "hot seat"!

---

Sally's acting, writing, producing and directing began at 13 in her hometown, San Francisco. Her video/ filmmaking sprouted in NYC, while working at A&E. Say her children now, "It's time, make films", for real. There will be a screening of Sally's film at the Brattle in February.