Exit Mordy

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This past Monday evening I found myself back in Deerfield, Illinois on my last shoot date for Marc Morgan and Jeremy Turkin’s independent feature, “Mordy to the Max.” I say “back” because the date had originally been set for a Tuesday night last month, but when we arrived at the location a sudden violent storm knocked out the power and forced us to reschedule.

This time around the weather was perfect. When Marc and I arrived the sky was clear and blue and the temperature and humidity pleasingly dry and comfortable. The only potentially discouraging circumstance was the shrill buzz of cicadas that greeted us as we got out of Marc’s truck, which might have made recording sound rather problematic. Happily for us, by the time the equipment was set up for the shot, the sun had gone down and the cicadas had silenced themselves.

The scene itself was short, easy and fun to do. Prior to the shoot I had given some thought as to how my character would show his six championship rings on camera - a comedic bit which had been carried out in a variety of different hand gestures in all of his previous scenes. Since in this scene, he would be in the comfort of his own home late at night and called to answer his front door, it seemed plausible that he might appear with a drink in hand. Marc liked the idea and then built upon it: “Why don’t you try doing the scene slightly inebriated?”

I did, and from what I saw in the playback, the result was pretty good. (Marc's note to play the scene with "lazy eyes" was especially helpful.)

After recording a few takes of that, all that remained for me to do was a little ADR work (Automated Dialogue Replacement, more familiarly known as “dubbing”) which Marc had been saving for our last session together. He needed several lines of my character, Coach Bishop, shouting into his telephone, for a couple of scenes where the Coach could be heard from off camera, behind the closed door to his office.

Marc and I went into his special recording studio (hint: it was parked in the driveway and we had to roll the windows up so that we wouldn’t disturb the neighbors). Since the script only indicated that the coach could be heard yelling in the background, and did not provide actual dialogue, my lines were to be improvised. Marc suggested several scenarios for various phone conversations -- such as the coach having an argument with an administrator about questionable expenditures for his athletes, another conversation in which the coach demands that one of his recruiters secure a hot prospect, and so forth. Although I was to rant and rave, being both intimidating and sarcastic in the manner of someone castigating an underling, I was not to resort to obscenities -- at least not to the really nasty ones.

We did four or five audio takes. In the first few, I was “in my head“ thinking too much about the circumstances of each conversation rather than fully diving into my character. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, I must have been tense. I think I was holding my breath a lot and I suddenly found myself experiencing an uncomfortable bout of heartburn. Fortunately, by the third or fourth take I relaxed and somehow got past thinking about what I was going to say, to simply being the character, reacting in the moment. And it wasn’t until then that we got some good spontaneous stuff on tape. (I really must get back to practicing improv regularly, I was definitely a little rusty on Monday night.)

So that was my last bit of work in “Mordy to the Max.” All in all, it has been a very good experience; I am looking forward to seeing the completed film, and I appreciate having been asked to appear in it. Thank you Marc. I hope we’ll have the opportunity of working together again in the future. Till then, good luck in LA!

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