Production Diary - The Perfect Combination

Once a month I’m going to talk about a specific production, what it was like to film it, and what was involved in making it happen.  This month I’m going to talk about The Perfect Combination.

The Perfect Combination actually started out as a novel that I was writing and decided to turn it into a movie, which is funny because it’s usually the other way around.  There were some major adjustments (I didn’t have a cruise ship to film on), and using a comical frame plot to skip over large chunks of the story via narration.  There are whole scenes that were transposed from the novel into the script, but overall most of the scenes were similar but cut down for time and realistic locations. 

I distinctly remember when I made the decision to do a movie version of a book I hadn’t finished writing yet.  We were filming the Renaissance flashback scenes for The Dragon & The Unicorn in January of 1998.  Annamarie MacLeod and I were talking during a break from shooting. She mentioned that Jacob, her brother, was wanting to be in another movie and I was already looking for a project that could star Jill Hutchison (because Jill is wonderful).  So I decided to do The Perfect Combination as a slapstick comedy with a dash of romance.  I say a “dash” because it’s the only production I’ve written where two people fall in love and get married, yet don’t actually have an on screen love scene or even something vaguely romantic that doesn’t involve pizza or guns. 

I quickly wrote a script (which wasn’t hard since half the dialogue and most of the plot were already done), and cast it using the usual pool of people.  Jacob and Jill were set the play the leads, Michael Winters and Catherine Summers, and I cast Chris Hutchens as Raymond – Catherine’s brother who is a top member of “The Agency” (a sort of CIA type thing) and the frame plot story teller.  Danny Skirvin and Nina Samii were cast as the villain and his sidekick – David McGaskill (aka the Reaper) and Houstan.  I had Jen Weber play the double agent Lyric, and had Annamarie and Paul Nelson play Mimi and Carl – Michael and Catherine’s “little” children in the frame plot scenes which was really funny. Rounding out the cast was Rachel Anderson as the confused cab driver/pizza girl who has really bad luck and a terrible accent, and Chris Lamb, Mike Baym, Ryan Segovich, Edward Stasheff and anyone else I could find to play random guards, police officers, and various extras. 

Oh yes, and me.  This is the only production where I willingly cast myself in an acting role, playing a semi-retired secret agent named Music who turns out to be Michael’s long lost mother.  Every other part I’ve played - be it extra or whatever - I only played because I couldn’t find anyone for the part or someone dropped out at the last minute and there was no one else I could shove in front of the camera except me.  I actually wanted to be Music.  I loved the character in the book and decided to cast myself, even though it might have been better for someone else to do it since it required some logistics in filming without me behind the camera.  

We had our first filming day was sometime in February.  We filmed all the frame plot scenes with Chris, Annamarie, and Paul as well as a couple of scenes with Jill and Jacob.  Both Annamarie and Paul had a blast pretending to be little kids, and there was a lot of joking and goofing around on the set.  Annamarie even tied Chris’s shoelaces together at one point, and everyone learned just how hard it is to say  iron-plated, fuel-injected, heat-seeking ironing board.

We also filmed the “cab” scene where Michael kidnaps Catherine, races through town, and then gets into a car crash – all filmed in a stationary van parked in front of a high school (tee hee). Ah, slapstick, no-budget comedy at it’s best.

Over the next few months filming days were sporadic and the shoots sort of blur together a bit.  They only way I can tell what was shot when in relation to the other scenes is by the order are on the tapes.  I filmed some scenes with just Jacob - opening credit stuff and his lines for a phone call that included about ten takes of throwing a phone on a couch to get it to land just right.  Then we had a Saturday afternoon shoot with Chris, Jacob, and Jill that included the jail scenes, voiceovers, and a lot of fun bloopers.

We spent quite a while filming the scene with “The Board” – Lyric (Raymond), Music, and Libretto – where they meet Michael and he joins “The Agency”.   The difficult part was that I was in the whole scene and Annamarie wasn’t free that day to work the camera.  So I had the “brilliant” idea to hook the camera up to a TV and have a monitor in the room so I could see the shot.  It’s what the professionals do after all, so why not? But it was a big TV, since that was the only one upstairs and was on a wheeled cart which made it easier to bring into the room, and that distracted the actors.  Whoever wasn’t on screen at the time operated the camera under my direction, but since they could see what was recording they had a fun time goofing off.  We were also in a room that had some old kids toys stored there and the actors found those and…things went downhill fast. 

Sometime in the late spring we had another all day shoot on some Saturday at the Homestead.  We filmed most of the scenes at the Reaper’s mansion, including a couple of fight scenes, and ended the day with filming a scene between Catherine and Music. Since I was in at least one scene that day, Annamarie agreed to be the camera operator.  There was a lot of silliness, including strange vibrating toy guns, Smints, and having two guards killed in one scene then suddenly alive again two scenes later.   It was a really long day but, as always, it was a lot of fun. 

Throughout May and June shoots were short and very sporadic, mostly filming some cut away scenes and a few big ones here and there like the scene towards the beginning where Michael and Catherine literally run into each other, almost get caught, then escape, and the scene where Michael poses as Catherine’s lawyer.  Jacob and Jill endured short notice shoots, some late hours, and uncooperative props, but they were terrific to work with and ended up having great on screen chemistry – they were hilarious and were really able to play off each other.  They had filmed a lot of scenes together in Destiny and Destiny III, so I knew they were a good combination (possible even a perfect combination).  

A lot of actors were brought in for only an hour or so simply because I needed someone else in the scene.  Edward is my brother and when I needed a police officer for one of the jail scenes I just grabbed – I mean asked – him to do the part.  I also had Ryan Segovich volunteer to play some extras like an undercover cop and one of the Reaper’s goons.

“I remember filming outside of your house,” Ryan said when asked what he remembered most about filming Perfect Combination.  “I had to handcuff Jill and dropped the keys or the cuffs just out of reach.  We kept filming as I struggled vainly to reach them.  Hilarity ensued.”

But the best filming day was saved for last.  There were several scenes that were supposed to take place at a different mansion that The Reaper owned.  The heroes had discovered a spy in their midst who had stolen a necklace of fake diamonds that secretly concealed micro-film (I know, silly right?).  The scenes were totally campy.  They were filmed in parts on three different days – one for Danny’s lines and bits, and one for Nina and Rachel’s lines and bits because none of those actors could be there for the main shoot. 

“I remember I died and had to do the scene about 10,000 times, cuz I wanted to keep my eyes open and I kept blinking,” Danny recalled, “I think I blinked in the final version.”

The main shoot was at Kate Weber’s house (thanks Kate!) and was a blast and a half.  The day included fake disguise glasses, the top half of a fake tree, facial mud, a refrigerator, a lampshade, guns, wigs, and some badly made props. Several people got to have over-dramatic death scenes, and the day produced one of my favorite lines of all time: “The couch won’t let me go and the Christmas tree stole my necklace!”

 “Diamond necklace in the ice-maker in the fridge door,” Kate said when I asked her what she remembered about filming.  “Being chased around my own house while wearing a Metallica t-shirt.  That’s about it.  Was I even in it otherwise?” (nope Kate, that was pretty much it)

The day ended with a one or two hour shoot of chasing each other around the house with everyone trying to steal the necklace, and brainstorming new bits, each one wackier than the last.  We needed a few extras to be part of the chase scene so Kate and Rebecca agreed to join in. It’s one of the most memorable shooting days for me, and one of the best.  It was so much fun, and it was very freeing to film us goof around on the set for a few hours without worrying about lines or drama, just being as silly as we could.

I can think of one person who may not have had that much fun filming.  Poor Chris Hutchens is allergic to cats and almost all of the shooting occurred in houses where there were three or more cats.  The first day of filming I had him wearing a sweater in the first scene that I didn’t realize was covered in cat hair.  By the time I realized how bad it was we were halfway through the scene, and I found a place in the script to have him take it off and we got it far away from him.  However, the damage was done and he spent the day sneezing.  He also ended up getting stuck in the part of hiding in a sofa covered in cushions that I should have realized were also covered in cat hair.  He was such a trooper and put up with the sniffling and sneezing. I hope you still had some fun Chris!  (see Eidolon people – see what I made actors put up with in the olden days? You got off easy with hotel rooms, beaches, apartments with fish and only two cats in the main house we shot in!)

The filming for Perfect Combo was sporadic because I was also filming two other movies at the time.  I was wrapping up shooting for The Dragon & The Unicorn when we started shooting, and was also filming The King of Elflin’s Daughter at the same time.  The King of Elflin’s Daughter was finished first, but only because I focused on it more during June.   The Perfect Combination finished filming in July and premiered to the “public” (ie the actors and their families and friends) at the end of July in 1998.

For over ten years the only people who had seen the movie were those who watched it at the premiere.  It was partially edited on ¾ inch tape, but was dubbed to VHS and used the VCR-to-VCR style of editing to finish it up.  There was only one master tape at that time and shortly after the viewing it broke while I was making a copy of it.  It wasn’t until a few years ago that I re-edited in and put it on DVD.  So anyone out there who was in the movie but has never actually seen it, let me know.

Big thanks to everyone who worked on this production (especially Chris Hutchens whom I tortured mercilessly with cat hair).  It’s one of my favorite movies and I had a lot of fun making it.  I hope you all did too.

(hmm…this ended up being a lot longer than I expect.  Well, I do love to talk…)