MIDNIGHT RUN – SCENE RECREATION

acting, Scene Re-Creations

I’m back with another SCENE RECREATION like the ones we did before with LA LA LAND and BEFORE SUNRISE. This time, it’s a fun scene from an iconic buddy-comedy movie from the 80s, MIDNIGHT RUN.

I was very late to the Midnight Run game, I’ll have to admit. I’d always seen it on various critic and magazine lists early in my career and was confused. This was 2015-ish, so it’s around the time that Robert De Niro was starring in comedies that nobody was laughing at. So I saw these lists and I was like ‘whaaaa?’ a Robert De Niro movie that was funny when he was younger and more serious?? I didn’t even know who Charles Grodin was at the time. I thought, great, De Niro and some nobody. It can’t be that funny.

Another reason why I never watched it was because it wasn’t available to watch anywhere! And then, streaming came around. And still, it wasn’t available! Until TWO YEARS AGO glorious HBO Max had it available during the pandemic. (For my money, HBO Max is the best streaming platform based on content available. One just hopes they figure out their always-buffering situation. Oh, and we also hope that they’re not being stripped for parts as we speak.) I was home for a couple months, and my mom and I ended almost every night with a different movie. So I told her, we HAVE to watch this. It’s got De Niro..this other guy, and it’s supposed to be really funny. She was skeptical herself (I’ve taught her well) but we put it on and let me tell you

WE HAD A BLAST. Such an 80s movie, so much fun, so much hijinks. De Niro was actually funny! And Charles Grodin was a revelation. His monotone delivery sticks with me till this day.

So ANYWAY, it had been a long time since we’d done a scene recreation for lots of reasons. Well, mainly just two reasons. We shot a comedy short film over the course of 4 months (writing and shooting), and I was home for 2 months in the summer for #weddingszn. But now we’re back at it! Working with one of my oldest friends in Los Angeles, the glorious Wes Selby. We took improv together 6 years ago and we’ve been in touch ever since. We always have so much fun when we work together and so when I saw him recently I told him we should make one of these things. We settled on this scene in part because Wes had never seen the movie and didn’t want to watch it until we finished filming it.

We rehearsed this ONE TIME before we shot it. ONE TIME. And then we rehearsed it one more time on the day of shooting but that’s basically it. Super quick turn-around time made possible because of the skills of Wes and our cinematographer Quinn Hester, the ultimate collaborator.

Here is our scene re-creation of MIDNIGHT RUN!



And here is the scene from the original!

VEEP Scene Re-Creation – “Selena vs. Gary”

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One of my favorite scenes we’ve done starring one of the greatest up-and-coming actresses and one of my great friends Shalini Bathina (Long Slow Exhale, Little Voice). We normally have a couple rehearsals before we shoot but Shalini is an incredibly busy and in-demand actress so we had to work around her schedule but also I had a hectic schedule during this time as well. Adding to that, it was just really difficult for us to find a good scene to work on together. Initially we had played around with a scene from ‘You’ve Got Mail’ but it was hard to really feel anything when we rehearsed (might be because we did it on Zoom but we’ll never know now!). But we put that away and kinda didn’t have anything for a while. Then I re-watched VEEP for the third time and started kicking myself. I realized how hilarious that show is but also more importantly that this would be a PERFECT show to do with Shalini because Shalini IS Selina Meyer. And wouldn’t you know it from the very first read-through of the script Shalini knew exactly what she was doing and turned in this performance that you see above.

Another thing we did in this scene versus ones prior was include a lot of hand-held camera movement. Credit goes to our DP Quinn Hester and our B-Cam operator Mauricio Zambrano. It was difficult in the edit to match both movements because we had two different cameras and two very different backdrops for each angle. For this shot we thought that since Shalini as Selina was the main character, we’d shoot her with the nicer camera and more interesting backdrop.

If you’re a fan of this scene, check out the others in our series and subscribe to my social media channels for more!

SCENE RECREATION: BEFORE SUNRISE

acting

I went to the screening of Best Picture winner CODA and met Madeleine Humphries. She was there with an actor friend of hers and I was there with my brother. She saw us walking in the reception and reached out to us and we struck up a conversation. I talked with her actor friend more than I talked to her, but I managed to show her the La La Land scene I did earlier and that piqued her interest. We met up a couple more times to talk about potential scenes to do and then…2 months later we put this out. Talk about fate!

Hope you enjoy this recreation of a scene from the iconic movie ‘Before Sunrise’.

Our recreation
The original

La La Land – Scene Recreation

acting

I remember loving this scene from the first moment I saw it in a theater. I also knew I would never get a chance to perform the lines because…I’m a guy. So we shot it both ways, because ultimately I believe that this scene isn’t really between a man and a woman, but between an actor and a musician. Between two people whose relationship allows them to be vulnerable to one another while also being brutally honest in support of one another.

The ‘original recreation’, starring Sharayu Mahale as Mia and me as Sebastian.
The swapped version, with me as Mia.

The original by my actress crush herself

Weekly Monologue – “Perfect for Each Other” from Good Will Hunting

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Another week, another monologue, another GOOD WILL HUNTING monologue. God, I love this movie so much.

In this scene, Robin Williams’ character teaches Matt Damon’s character a little thing or two about romance. Holding people to impossible standards and keeping them propped up in your mind is unhealthy, especially because you’re not without your own flaws yourself.

Hope you enjoy.

Here’s the original:

Weekly Monologue – “The Best Part of My Day”

Monologues

This is a scene from one of my favorite movies, Good Will Hunting. I’m working on a couple scenes from this movie, because each one of them feels like an older version of myself speaking to a younger version of myself.

In this scene, Will’s friend Chuckie lets Will know that he’s wasting his potential by staying at home.

And here’s the original: