Crackle Blog

February 23rd -- It's the day before principal photography begins on Backwash. I head over to Lacy Studios in downtown L.A. to check out the set on which we'll begin filming the next day. Lacy is an interesting facility. Its brick facade conceals what appears to be a warren of crack dens. Most of these sets have in fact doubled as crack dens in various movies over the years. Among the standout films shot at Lacy: Dead Presidents, L.A. Confidential, Mi Vida Loca and Crackle's breakout hit The Bannen Way. We'll use Lacy for a wide variety of locations for Backwash including an off-Broadway theater, our heroes' apartment, a Sacramento diner, and an elegant wood study. I should have written a crack den scene.

When I arrive, I'm delighted with what I see. It's the set for Val and Jonesy's apartment. As scripted, the pals live in a small San Fernando Valley dingbat littered with the detritus (five dollar word!) of their pathetic existence: pizza boxes, a grocery cart filled with recyclables, garbage, coupons, a metal detector and furniture and decorations that look as if they've been pulled out of a dumpster, albeit by someone with a discriminating eye. Billy Jett -- our amazing Production Designer -- and his crack team (Laurel Brock, Peter Dang, Evan Deery) have constructed my dream set. The level of detail is staggering -- a million nifty knickknacks that make the place look authentically (and entertainingly) lived-in. It's a visual comic feast for the eye, without going overboard. Director Danny Leiner and I are determined to create our own world with Backwash, and though it's a surreal comic world we're aiming for, we don't want to wink and snicker at the audience -- "Hey look at us, we're being fuuuuuny!" Billy has walked the line beautifully with this set.

It's worth noting that Backwash represents the first time anything I've written has actually been produced since I penned the winning skit for Camp Greylock's "Red & Grey" color war of 1978. To see my material realized like this is pretty thrilling – you just write it down and it appears! I make a mental note to become power-mad as soon as my schedule has an opening. Before heading home, I check out another set currently under construction. Backwash will be presented in a Masterpiece Theatre-like fashion, with a different celebrity introducing each episode; hence the need for a warm library setting featuring what I've learned is properly called a "tufted" leather chair. Again, the fulfillment of my vision is taken to another level by the pros I'm working with. It looks fantastic.

As call time is 6 AM the next day, I set every available alarm in the house and create a voice mail reminder as well. I can't oversleep on my first day! I'm an insomniac in the best of conditions, but this night proves particularly challenging. I lie awake seized with anxiety about the shoot -- Is the material strong enough? Can we manage to make our first day without going into overtime? Will the other kids tease me about my third testicle? Thanks to the good people of Sanofi-aventis and their phenomenal product -- sweet, sweet Ambien -- I doze off just before midnight. Sadly, I wake up three and a half hours later. Despite the meager slumber, I'm surging with adrenaline. Why I feel like a kid on Christmas morn! Actually, as a Jew I have no idea what a kid on Christmas morn feels like, but I assume it's a heady mix of explosive diarrhea and hopefulness. After sitting for a while mainlining coffee, a mouse scurries out to greet me and I flee the house wondering whether this is an ill omen.

Without explaining why, I will tell you that our first set-up of the day involves a fake parrot on a string. Said parrot must zip into frame and wake me up where I sleep in the lower half of a bunk-bed. This proves to be a challenging technical feat and I worry that the entire production will fold before a word is spoken on camera. A few tense hours, and the bird schtick is successfully completed. Huzzah! Now we can concentrate on the acting. Aside from a few hours of rehearsal this is Michael Panes' and my first real chance to take these characters out for a spin. The scene we're shooting is very prop-heavy: monocles, scissors, salami, newspaper, cereal boxes, a Polaroid camera and the aforementioned parrot figure prominently. Despite all the business, Michael and I get a little momentum going and start to own the scene a bit.

It is mind-blowing after all these years of imagining it actually to be shooting the material with a kick-ass director on a crazy-cool set. Panesy and I remind each other to take in the moment and enjoy the process, even though things are hectic and we are quietly wondering whether anything we are doing is remotely funny. The crew is extremely busy and we don't have visitors yet, so we're not getting much feedback (kind of like writing this blog ... comments, people!). Our fragile egos are playing an endless loop of, "This is good, right? RIGHT?! You like us? We're funny … RIGHT???!!! HOLD ME!" It's not appealing, but there's a little peek into the actor's mind. A word on the cameras: we shot Backwash on Canon D5's which are digital SLR cameras that take incredibly high-quality HD video. It is an odd sensation, acting in front of a camera that looks like something you take on a family vacation. I'm still slightly concerned that it will turn out the D5 does not actually take video and we'll have to release Backwash as a flip book.

In any event, Day One of the shoot ended with our getting everything we needed within a reasonable amount of time. Huzzah! More soon on the increasingly hectic, mad, guerrilla nature of the shoot. Until then, get a good night's sleep, eat well, and if you must sneeze, please do it into the crook of your arm as the Center for Disease Control would have you do.

Joshua Malina – Star and Creator of the Crackle Original, Backwash