Public Eneimes Day 0

Well I did get the call back for being in Public Enemies about a week later.   I was going to be in the Aragon Ballroom dance scene.   About a week before the shoot I would have to come into the wardrobe office and get fitted for a period piece suit and haircut.  At the time I still had the mustache even though Formosa Betrayed was long gone. 

I arrived at the office which looked kind of a mess.  There were racks of clothing everywhere.  Shoes stacked up over the edges of the boxes they were put into.  Hats everywhere.   I mean the place was a disaster.   It wasn't as big as the wardrobe location for Dark Knight.  They had a warehouse full of clothing and uniforms plus several semi trailers full of clothing racks outside the warehouse.  In the building, I filled out more paper work before going to the back area where they had a makeshift hair salon.  The guy looked at several old photos in a book and compared them to my head.   Then he went to work on my head.  It felt good to get the sideburns gone as they were getting bushy, plus I really dont like long hair on myself.   Then he got stuck on the mustache.  

There were no notes from the casting office or Mr. Mann about if it needed to be shaved off or not.  The 3 people in the area couldn't make up there mind about it.  Finally one of the head costumers  said to leave it and if it needed to be, it could be shaved off on the set.  They actually didn't have many people with facial hair at all so they thought it might be great if I keep it.  I didn't care but I was hoping to get rid of it soon because I hate having facial hair,

After my cut, I met with one of the wardrobe people.  She took my on a whirlwind tour of the racks going through shirts and suits.  I tried on about 7 different shirts and about 20 different suits.  Once we had the colour of the shirt and suit combination, it was time to work on the tie.   That went easy.  We had it on the second tie.  After she had me dressed in the combination, I was in another dressing room and she was working on hemming my pants.  She told me stories about situations while working on other films such as Planet of the Apes, Mission Impossible 3 and Sweeney Todd.   She has become something of an pro working on peiod piece films.  She had to run but had an assistant finish up on me.

I was making some small talk with the assistant.  I was explaining how I was shocked that the woman dressing me worked on such big films.  This was the assistants first gig too, she was just out of school and wound up interning on it.  She was also excitied to work with her.  It turns out the lady'd name was Collen Atwood.   The 2003 Oscar winner for Chicago and 2006 winner for Memoirs of a Geshia both in costume design!!!   And here she is designing my costume for this movie!!!!!  I was floored to say the least.

She returned a little while later to finish picking out my coat and hat.  Even though we are shooting in May -June it is winter in the movie.  I wound up talking to her about the costumes in Memoirs and talking about how cool Kyoto was when I lived there.  We only went through 3 coats and 5 hats.  She took me to another section of the office to take some Poloroid pics for them when I get on set.   Upon taking the pics, she though a different colour coat would work better and we went back and picked out another coat and then back again for the photos.

After nearly 5 hours in there, I came out looking something like this.

After it was finalized, I had to go back to the dressing room which was a sheet hanging over some pipes in the cieling and had an chair and racks in there.   I was given a stack of hangers and some plastic bags to put my outfit into.  Then a guy came in and gave me a sheet of numbered tickets and a stapler to attach tickets to the bags to keep my outfit together.  On my way out of the offce I had to stop and confirm everything with one of the desk girls.

The shoot would be next week on Thursday and Friday night.  It was an all night shoot.  I would  maybe have to go in on Tuesday night for a dance practice with the choreographer from LA.  It was just waltzing and tango.  Wednesday night I would get my call time and they would see me Thursday.  The scene was a big club outting with Johnny Depp and all of his gang.  They were celebrating and having dinner.  This was also the night he met his girlfriend played by French actress Marion Cotillard.

One week to go.........