The Rex Blog

…for lunch and several Guinnesses with Hayes.

Today, you see, is a day off for the whole cast and crew.

Fed - and decidedly drunk - we head back from the Hockey Town bar and grill and run through our lines for tomorrow.

Sort of.

Hayes then informs me that he needs a siesta. I leave him in peace and head down to my apartment…where I, too, crash out.

Talk about the glamorous movie-star life.

Matthew Jure 12/07/08

‘Rain Bird’ flies through Hayes’ sleeping brain…

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…or, rather, don’t.

Today’s my favourite shoot so far: Rex really opens up to Nick, taking off his stage wig during their conversation, and it’s at this point in the story that the glam rocker starts to become the vulnerable man…

…you can hear a pin drop when Steve says “Cut…” and, as we get ready to go home for the night, Hayes and I are both quietly assured by various people that it was a great scene.

I love this job.

Matthew Jure 11/07/08

The sun sets on Rex…

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…arrives in my inbox.

I landed a double role in this play just before coming out to Detroit. Ian (Attfield), a friend from previous film collaborations, had put in a good word for me with the writer-director, Simon (Mawdsley) - I auditioned and was cast as a dim-witted prisoner and chief prison guard in this edgy comedy about four inmates who join an art class for beginners. Rehearsals start in August and the play runs throughout September at the Old Red Lion Theatre in London.

And now I’ve got the full script. :^) 

Today’s a complete day off for me, so I familiarise myself with the story.

There’s an odd musical coincidence going on with ‘Starlight’ and ‘Painting by Numbers’: I first met Ian when he starred in a music video for my song ‘Rainy Daydream’, directed by a mutual friend (we were at school together), Carlo (Ortu). The opening line of ‘Rainy Daydream’ is “Say goodbye and dry your eyes…” but, because I forgot to label the CD I gave to Carlo, he and Ian always refer to it as ‘Say Goodbye’…

…my favourite ‘Starlight’ song.

Spooky.

Oh, and while we’re on the subject of coincidences, I was only available to shoot this film because - a couple of days before being offered the Rex role - I’d turned down an Edinburgh fringe play, ‘A Dog Called Redemption’. I remember thinking how strange it was that a dead dog featured in the play…

…but I’d turned down the part only to end up being in a film featuring another inanimate canine!

Dead weird.

Matthew Jure 10/07/08

“Yes…you like that, don’t you, boy?”

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…gets a day off.

I spend most of the morning asleep and most of the afternoon practising the songs for the film:

‘Welcome To Dust’ opens with the line “Rest, my son, rest until the light of day…”. Oh, yes. Pomp rock. The reference Steve gave me for this one was ‘A bit like Tommy, you know?’. I try it numerous times, singing along to a backing CD on my laptop, just trying to get the words right at first. Then, once they’re in my head, I belt out the song a few more times so I can get a feel for how I’ll need to deliver it on the day we shoot the band stuff…

‘Make Me Feel’ is kind of weird. It starts off quite subdued, with a plodding bass and half-spoken lyrics (my favourite line: “In this life, baby, I’m a knife that can kill…”. Ouch.). The words are almost Pixies-esque in their quirkiness, but the bridge is more like a Cult song from ‘Electric’…YAYUH! And the chorus? Freddie Mercury must be turning in his purple velvet grave.

I play with the low notes in the verse, the rasp in the bridge and the falsetto in the chorus for what must have been more than half an hour until I eventually feel I could perform the song on demand if Steve so wished…

‘Contain It’ rocks. It just does. Ramones-style: “I want it all (yes, I know the words are more Queen than Ramones, but never mind that) and I can’t contain it/Always on my mind but I can’t explain it…”. Genius. I sing this one a few times at full volume and at the very top of my range (yikes!), thoroughly enjoying myself.

‘Say Goodbye’ is an acoustic ballad. I really like the lyrics, but something’s bothering me. I suddenly realise what it is - there’s too many of ‘em. The words are very simple, very elegant, but they repeat one too many times for my liking. I axe the last verse, experiment with a different tuning (top E down to D) and come up with a descending sequence of half-open chords as an intro to compensate for the lost verse. It sounds good to me, so I keep it.

Then, after the big double chorus at the end, I repeat this new chord sequence (staying on each chord twice as long as in the intro), but strum it instead of finger-picking. Maybe it’s all the Coldplay (don’t start) and Radiohead I’ve been listening to, but I instantly come up with a falsetto melody to accompany it. I hope Steve likes what I’ve done to his baby…

I make myself some dinner, then get ready to be picked up by silent-movie Nikki at 9pm. 

On set, I get into my silver lizardskin shoes, sparkly trousers, glam blouse, jewellery, make-up and yellow wig. The camera rolls and I light a cigarette. The shot is: ‘Rex sits and works out the opening chords to ‘Make Me Feel’ - so…I sit and work out the opening chords to ‘Make Me Feel’ for three or four takes, then Steve calls “Cut!” and I’m wrapped for the night.

This really has got to be the best job ever.

Matthew Jure 09/07/08

Oh, those halcyon jam sessions (sigh)…

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…on set today. :^)

After yesterday’s tricky scene, Hayes, Tevis and I get a great dynamic going: Nick (Hayes) baffled, Stumpy (Tevis) speaking out of turn and Rex exasperated, resulting in what felt like some really funny moments…

Steve seemed quietly pleased with our performances and I went home happy at having done a good job.

(Apologies if that sounds like toilet humour.)

Matthew Jure 08/07/08

Liz models the new ‘Turnupocket’…

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…survived his grapple with Gory Gordon!

He promises that his fight scene in ‘The Brawler’ will look awesome. (”It’d better do”, I think to myself, “Your swollen lip and grazed face deserve that much…” - having been assured by the director that no real contact would need to be made during the shoot, the scene sounds like it ended up being little short of a real fight. Ouch.)

Canada comes up in conversation on set and I make a quip about Danny Mooney and bridges - Tevis turns and asks if we’d like to hear his Canada bridge story. I ask if it involves any violent re-enactments and, if so, do I have to be in them?

It turns out it doesn’t: in his late teens, Tevis and a few friends had been getting stoned in Detroit when one of them suddenly decided it’d be a great idea to drive to Canada…

…stoned! Stinking of pot! Looking like a bunch of hippies!

Predictably, they get stopped at the border, where they wind down the car window (to give the officer the full cannabis aroma experience) and explain, goggle-eyed, that they “Wanna go to Canada, man!”. Wearily, the officer tells them to get out of the car, he and a colleague search it, find some whacko tobacco and proceed to read the boys the riot act - full personal searches, lifetime bans from the country, jail sentences etc.

The highlight of the story is Tevis explaining how he managed to persuade one of the officers to believe him that the ganja in the car was all they had - Officer X had been intending to don the old rubber glove, you see…

The upshot is that, after this incident, Tevis frequently had to sneak through the border (pulling ‘innocent’-looking faces, I imagine) to play bass with various bands that had booked gigs in Windsor.

So, there you have it, kids: drugs are bad.

Coming down off this narrative high, Hayes and I have a bit of trouble getting into the scene today - it’s very downbeat for Nick and Rex…meanwhile, two moronic removals blokes guffawingly take the piss out of objects Nick held dear. The contrasting energies prove difficult to pitch right, especially since we played a very different kind of scene yesterday.

However, like consummate professionals, we get it right.

Eventually.

Matthew Jure 07/07/08

Rob gets into make-up…

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…about Carey (Peters):

She plays Beth in ‘Starlight and Superfish’ and her connection with Steve Kopera and Rob Hess begins way back in high school. She showed me some very amusing photos from a school play nearly twenty years ago, with Steve pulling a deeply silly face at the back of a group shot. Nice.

‘Starlight’ isn’t the first film she’s made with The Triumvirate (the company’s made three features - Solitude [2005], How Clarence Became Truly Normal [2007] and now Starlight and Superfish [due 2009]); she played Eustice in How Clarence Became Truly Normal. Carey was also in Victor Fanucchi’s feature film Beyond The Pale (2007) with Hayes (whose performance as desperate doctoral candidate Sasha Plotzkin is bloody funny).

A very good shoot today, with a real chemistry seeming to have developed between me and Hayes - it was a really satisfying scene to play (the first in which both characters’ guards are truly down).

In between takes, we spare a thought for Tevis who, unlike us, isn’t pondering how best to deliver this line or that, but is instead tangled up in a fight scene somewhere with Gory Gordon for ‘The Brawler’…

…we hope he’ll get to set alive tomorrow.

Matthew Jure 06/07/08

Chris P and Sholtesy make their brains hurt…

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…my luggage finally arrives!

Had a very long lie-in followed by a pleasant late lunch with Hayes (roast Canadian in maple syrup sauce) then mucked about on GarageBand again, recording a pretty respectable version of ‘Rain Bird’ by Love and Rockets.

In the evening, Hayes drives us out to the Henry VIII bar where Tevis DJs. I don’t know why it’s named after Henry VIII (perhaps because the punters are all sick of their wives?).

Unsurprisingly, we have another very late night.

Hargrove + Jure + Detroit = Dog-tired.

Matthew Jure 05/07/08

Sit, Starlight, SIT…!

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…no bloody luggage! Grrrrrr.

The shoot went well today (and was less pressured than yesterday’s). Before going to the set, two things reminded me I’m in a foreign country. First, I bought a bottle of something called ‘buttermilk’, thinking it was full cream milk. In fact, it’s the most sour liquid known to man, and is - I’ve now discovered - used primarily for cooking (especially ‘buttermilk biscuits’ [which, apparently, aren't actually biscuits but a kind of bread roll. Don't ask.]).

Then, I put some washing in. The apartment has a twin-machine: a front-loading white box at head height and a top-loading white box at waist height. The washing instructions are on a strip running across the front of the top box.

So I stuffed my washing in that one.

Several minutes of empty-sounding sloshing later, I realise that it’s actually the bottom box that’s the washing machine. I’d put my dirty laundry in the dryer.

After the shoot, Hayes and I drive to Rob’s house in Whitmore Lake for a Fourth of July party. Great fun. Lots of fireworks and guns going off in the distance.

And numerous reminders that this particular holiday celebrates the States’ independence from British types.

I laugh nervously and try not to spill my beer ;^).

Matthew Jure 04/07/08

The life aquatic with Nick, O’Doyle & Rex…

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…sleep - nowhere near. Ho hum.

I suppose it must just be all the excitement of a new place, new people, new experiences. Last night, Hayes and I were up till the wee hours exploring the recording capacities of GarageBand on his laptop. ‘High and Dry’ never sounded so good (honest ;^). We watched some clips from ‘Once’ - the Irish film with the bloke from The Frames in it - and Radiohead’s ‘Scotch Mist’. Nice.

The shoot is less sweltering today - not least because much of it is up on the roof-decking, overlooking the Detroit River. Hayes and I both really seem to hit our strides and we nail a fairly substantial scene in good time, earning some heartening praise from both director and crew. And the sunset views from the rooftop are absolutely stunning. Danny Mooney takes some fabulous pictures (which I make sure I get copies of… :^).

Perhaps the palpable sense of relief in the air once we wrap for the day is partly due to the fact that we were running well behind schedule when we went up onto the roof. During some filming inside the loft earlier in the day, there had been a technical hitch that had cost the crew an hour (and, on a tight schedule, too many of those add up pretty quickly and can cause serious logistical problems) - although I hadn’t minded that much, as it had at least given me a chance to chat properly with Continuity Laura and Sound Steve. They’d tried very hard to explain musical modes and I’d tried very hard to understand. I got it. Kind of. Eventually. (I think.)

Anyway, while we’re all winding down on the rooftop as the sun goes down, Tevis tells a few of us about something that recently happened to a friend of his. An actor - Gordon someone-or-other - had pulled a knife on Tevis’ friend on another film set in Detroit, and disaster had only narrowly been avoided. It then turns out that Director Steve (who’d overheard some of our conversation) had auditioned this Gordon guy…not only for Tevis’ role as Stumpy, but also for mine as Rex! Steve, however, didn’t seem the slightest bit surprised that Gory Gordon had threatened to stab another actor in broad daylight - apparently, it had become clear from his general demeanour at audition that the bloke was a fruitcake.

Tevis then laughs off the fact that he has to shoot a fight scene with the aforementioned psychopath this coming Sunday, for a film called ‘The Brawler’. After a second’s awkward silence, we, er, wish him luck.

At dusk, we descend into the loft, where hot pizza awaits - a reward for a long but ultimately successful day’s work. Fed and happy, I pick up Director Steve’s white Stratocaster (Rex’s preferred axe in the film) and he gets behind the drums for a bit of a jam as everyone else starts to disappear off home for the night. He suggests we play one of my songs, ‘Behind The Smile’ - which, incidentally, was one of the deciding factors in my being hired to play Rex - and we give it a bash.

Literally. Well, I do, anyway. Halfway through the song, I wobble off the little padded stool I’m perched on and manage to smash myself in the nose with the headstock of Steve’s guitar. I even manage to draw blood. Plenty, in fact. Well done, Jure - first the stigmata, now this. (Sigh.)

Steve politely suggests we call it a day. I nod sheepishly and dab my wounded nose with a tissue.

Rock’n'roll, Rexy.

Rock’n'bloody roll.

Matthew Jure 03/07/08

“Not rock? Us? You MUST be kidding!?”

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