Fast Track

My family arrived  in Berlin on Thursday and my daughter couldn’t wait to get to the set. She’s made herself right at home, as you can see in the picture.  So far, the response from the studio and the network to the dailies has been very enthusiastic, so I’m optimistic about our chances  to go to series. We wrap production on the pilot at the end of next week, and then I go off to France on vacation before returning to Germany in mid-July to do my cut. After that, I head off  to Lohr for five days to teach another Writer’s Room class  with a major American showrunner (whose name I will  share once  things have been firmed up) and then it’s off  to Munich to present the final cut of the pilot to the network in early August.  But now that my family is here, I’m not in such a big hurry to get back home…

The one thing I am missing is the chance  to go out and promote the hardcover release of MR. MONK AND THE TWO ASSISTANTS. If I wasn’t shooting FAST TRACK, I would have arranged full a schedule of booksignings in July & August.  But I still have MONK work to do… I have to start writinng my outline for my sixth novel.

We wrapped our tenth day of shooting at about 11:30 on Sunday night, right on schedule. So far, the production has gone very smoothly and we’ve only had to push two scenes to later in the shoot. That’s not to say we haven’t our little crises (an actor dropped out due to illness two days before shooting, one of our cars wasn’t delivered on time, etc.), but overall it has been a pleasure. The dailies are terrific and both the studio and network are very, very pleased…so I’m a  happy man.

Mondays and Tuesdays are our weekends, so after we wrapped on Sunday, half of the crew — including most of the cast, the director, the a.d., the second unit team, the line producer, and myself — went to a bar in Prenzlauer Berg and had an in impromptu little party. I stayed until 4:30 a.m.  but just about everyone else stayed until 6:30 in the morning. I haven’t stayed up that late in a bar since  college (but then, as now, I was drinking only water or Diet Coke). I don’t know if this show is going to rejuvenate me or kill me…but I had a great time. This has got to be the nicest group of people I’ve ever worked with. Not a single jerk in the bunch.

I spent the day… or what was  left of it… on Monday doing domestic chores like laundry, grocery  shopping,  and getting my hair cut before meeting the cast in my room in the evening to show them the dailies and share the good feedback from the studio and network. Afterwards, I went on my own for dinner to a tiny little Italian restaurant and then took a long walk, finally winding up back home around 1 a.m.

Today played tourist, visiting the  Berlin Wall museum at Bernauer Strasse, then heading out to Lake Wannsee for a drive and a long walk. Tonight I got together again with the cast for dinner and nice walk through Mitte.

Tomorrow we start shooting again. This is going to be a big  week for me. On Thursday, my family finally arrives…and not a moment too soon. Two months is way too long  for me to be away from them. It hurts too much. I can’t wait to have my daughter on the set with me on Friday!

(The photo on the upper left is me with  two of our stars, Andrew Walker and Alexia Barlier, with Soccx, who perform one of their songs, "Scream Out Loud," in a sequence in FAST TRACK: NO LIMITS. On the upper right is one version of our new, improved  logo. You can click on the images for larger views).

Today we shot near one of Berlin’s most popular landmarks…but you won’t see it in our movie. We’ve been careful NOT to include the landmarks you’d see in a tourist’s home movies. We’re shooting the modern city of Berlin, the exciting  architectural mix of old and new…but staying away from things like Brandenburg Gate, etc.It was the perfect day for location shooting and we got some terrific footage. (You can click on the photo for a larger image).

It’s Monday night here in Berlin…which means we are just one day away from commencement  of principal photography on FAST TRACK: NO LIMITS.

The last week has been filled with (among a thousand other things) rehearsals, stunt preparation, wardrobe & make-up tests, and the transformation of a fleet of cars into str eet racers. The days have been long and exhausting…but lots of fun, too. The highlight for me has been the opportunity to spend four days in rehearsal with our incredibly talented  and creative cast…led by  Erin Cahill, Andrew Walker, Alexia Barlier, and Joseph Beattie. I can’t wait to get  them in front of the camera.

But none of this would have been possible without our line producer Heiko Schmidt, who I’ve seen perform at least one production or budget-crunching miracle every day that we’ve worked together. It’s really not possible to do a job like this without a partner like Heiko watching your back and doing whatever it takes (within the budget!) to make sure that your vision makes it to the screen. 

I’m also fortunate to be working with Axel Sand, a director and D.P. who immediately understood how I saw FAST TRACK and, even before we’ve started shooting, has already done so much to bring that world to life. I’m anxious to see him at work on the set.

Tonight I got home earlier than usual (around 8 pm). I grabbed a table outside a restaurant in Berlin Mitte and had a chance to take stock and reflect on the last few months. If you’d told me a year ago that I would be here in Berlin today, writing and producing an action movie, I wouldn’t have believed it. But here I am. In a few weeks, my family will be joining  me and, after the movie wraps at the end of June, we’ll be spending the rest of the summer in Europe together.

I am, without a doubt, the luckiest guy I know. The only thing that could make this better was if my family was already here with me.

(The photos are a few of our over two dozen cars in various stages of transformation. Click on the photos for larger images).

Production on FAST TRACK: NO LIMITS begins in just a few days. The casting is done, the cars are here being transformed into racers, and the stunts are being tested. Now the fun really begins.

I’ve been spending most of my time the last few days rehearsing with the lead cast members, going through the script scene by scene, discussing the conflicts and finding the emotional turns together, and then working them out in performance. I’m so lucky to be working with these young actors. Besides being talented, hard-working, enthusiastic, and great looking, they are unbelievably nice. The whole crew is falling in love with them.

For me, working so closely with them is exciting on another level. In a way, they are my imaginary characters come-to-life, which is exhilirating and a little unnerving. I’m the writer, so there´s no doubt that the characters represent some aspect of my own personality, weaknesses, desires, experiences, fears, and dreams. To see those aspects of myself — who I am, who I want to be, who I desire, who I can never be, etc — reflected back at me in flesh-and-blood is one of the great things about being a screenwriter and a producer. 

Yesterday, we all went out to a race track outside of Berlin for driving school with our stunt coordinator, stunt drivers, and our second unit action director. It was incredible. We all got the chance to drive three BMWs 5-series and one BMW z4 on a wet track, learning how to drift around a curve, do a 180, and how to drive backwards & spin  the car forward again, among other things.  We also rode with the stunt drivers as they drifted, spun-out, and rammed one another…it was like playing bumper cars with real cars. I’ve never done anything like that…and I loved it. So did the actors and it showed in their performances today in rehearsals when we got to the car scenes. (That’s me with Joseph Beattie, Alexia Barlier, Erin Cahill and Andrew Walker after a day of stunt driving. Could my smile be any bigger?)

Speaking of cars, we have three of each vehicle — a "picture car" for the  beauty shots, one with the camera rigging, and one for the big stunts. We are starting with stock production cars and then "pimping them"  inside and out for the stunts. Our cars include a 1965 Mustang, a BMW Z4, a Toyota MR2, a Toyota Supra, a Nissan ZX350, a Subaru Imprezza, a Pontiac Trans Am, and an Opel Tigra, to name a few. We´ve also recruited 50 amazing cars from the "tuning" scene in Germany for the racings and as color at the starting line. Every day I wander down to the shop to see how the cars are being transformed and to watch the stunt drivers testing them.  The shots you see here are some of the naked cars in the very, very  early stages of the work…

Tomorrow there are more rehearsals, more meetings, and on Saturday, a table-reading with the entire cast.