So Ken Dickason (Professor) and I got permission from Professor Lewis to use his lecture again, so we trucked on down to film on Thursday. Ken is the man. He takes the Professor, already the villain, to a psychosis unmatched in recent memory. Not in corny overracting either. He plays him as a bitter, angry german guy not unlike Chaplin in "The Great Dictator." We had a blast. Just me and him, we set up the lights, equipment, then let it role and he took the stage. It was some of the purest filming I've ever done; he was acting and I was directing. Very fun. Check the pictures to get a glimpse of Ken as the Professor. There is a question here for me as a director: how dark do I let the professor get? We filmed him spiraling into madness, man. There's plenty of dark material here, but how much is too much? I don't know. I'm tempted to throw it all out there on screen. This character hates Jack, he hates him so much he can't control himself in class. Ken does a good job of showing that sometimes in a deep, gravely voice and sometimes in a tirade of German nonsense. Yeah, I think I'll put all the rage on screen. This will be fun, he he he...

This Saturday we reshot the cops scene, this time with Ed Finn and Mike Backus. They are basically Abbott and Costello, with guns and badges. They bumble, have terrible gun control and slap each other. They are very funny. Watch the end of 'Spade on the River' to get a glimpse of how they will be. Here presents a problem for me as a writer: how many zany characters do I let in my movie? We have eccentric Kitsy - the biggest spectacle of the film, we have a crazy professor, idiot cops, over zealous bookstore employees, complete idiot jock posing as an intellectual, and Jack who is the main clown. But will Jack appear normal in a world filled with misfits? Will they all cannibalize each others laughs? I don't think so. They're different enough characters. The tennis ball theory of comedy is that when there is a funny character (tennis ball), the stronger the wall (solid supporting characters), the harder he can bounce. There's always a wall for them to bounce against. When Jack and Kitsy are going crazy, there's Kate or the Sales Manager or the Psychologist - all relatively normal characters. When the Professor is going nuts the class is more or less the solid wall, though they are pretty crazy too. Jack acts as the wall sometimes in these scenes, though he's a pretty stupid wall. Not flawless, and I'll probably regret some of it sometimes, but it works. Actually, I won't regret it, they're all funny. And funny is what we're going for. I'm really rambling here. Okay, we reshot the cops scene, they rock, and then I reshot a bunch of my lines. That was the third time I've reshot all of those lines. I know I have surpassed the 100 take mark on at least two of those lines. I did one line at least 30 times yesterday in a few different ways. But that's the beauty of film and comedy, you can fish until you catch something. If you put in the work, you'll reap the rewards.