I lost my lead actor hours before the shoot

Don't worry, just stick to the plan.

There are times in your life when you know things just aren’t working. Oh sure, you could keep going, pushing forward courageously in the face of overwhelming adversity to prove something to yourself and to others so you can craft a motivational LinkedIn post after-the-fact (for the engagement). But the triumphant ending I just described assumes one thing: that your situation will eventually get better; that by staying the course, sticking to your original plan, and “working the problem” you will emerge on the other side victorious, if not the worse-for-wear.

But what if it doesn’t get better, no matter what you try?

Several weeks earlier an auto repair shop in town hired me to produce a :30 commercial for the upcoming football season. The owner of the shop was very active in the community. He purchased some media time with the local high school to air an ad during the football broadcasts each week.

My creative instincts kicked in. I had lofty aspirations. I wanted to do something more than the typical commercial you see on local television. You know, the ones that go something like this:

McKinley Audio Repair is a proud sponsor of Patriots football.

At McKinley, you can expect quality service at a fair price with a friendly smile.

And while the voice-over is spouting off generic info about how great the service is, you’re seeing the following sequence:

• Wide-shot pan of the entire shop

• Medium shot of a smiling mechanic shaking hands with a customer who just walked in

• Medium shot of a mechanic under a car that’s up on a lift.

• Medium 2-shot of a friendly mechanic holding a clipboard, pointing things out to a customer

That kind of local commercial is a dime-a-dozen, and as a young, independent video producer looking to make a name for himself and build a business, I wanted my spot to stand out. I wanted a concept; a story. So I wrote three scripts and presented these to the client. He picked his favorite and I went to work.

One of the first things I needed to do was select the cast. The spot required a head referee, the school mascot, and the play-by-play broadcaster. All three were carpooling to the game. It was a piece of cake.

• I approached the school’s actual broadcaster to be in the spot, because he was so recognizable in the community. He was eager to participate and I met with him one day to go over the script and hammer out the details.

• It didn’t matter who was actually in the mascot costume because he never talks and you never see the actor’s face. Turns out that my dad was available.

• That meant that the only role that required me to look at different actors was the head referee. But it wasn’t long before I found the right actor. He had the perfect look: late 60s, white hair, a lot of character in his face, and a slight gut.

It was all shaping up so nicely. But then the Universe stepped in and said, “Not so fast, my friend!”

Only a day or two before the actual shoot, the broadcaster calls me up and tells me he has to drop out. This was a huge, huge blow, as the broadcaster character had all but one of the lines in the entire :30 spot. I lost the most recognizable face for the commercial (aside from the mascot); the one that my audience would immediately recognize; the one that connected my client’s shop to the school’s football team.

“Well, of course you called up the client immediately and postponed the shoot until the broadcaster was available. Right, Clint?”

That would have been the sensible thing to do. But alas, no. Faced with a deadline, I had to keep moving forward. But maybe that’s one of the lessons here. Maybe I should have gone over options with my client as soon as my lead actor backed out. Either:

• Cancel the shoot and wait for the following football season, or

• Scrap the initial concept and go with something else.

In retrospect, option 2 would have been the wiser choice. But I didn’t do that. My client trusted me when I told him I could find someone else. The only problem was that I needed an actor with the very specific look and sound of a broadcaster. I knew some local news reporters at the time, but they were all working and unavailable. I turned to the local film community to help me. And that’s when a filmmaker I knew referred me to an actor he had used in several of his short films. So I met with the actor over coffee to go over the script and talk through the shoot.

My head was filled with conflicting thoughts as I talked with him.

• On the one hand, I was relieved that someone was available and that I could shoot the spot as originally scripted.

• On the other hand, I had seen this guy before in other short films and I wasn’t impressed.

• But on the third hand, I believed I could pull a great performance out of him. I mean, it wasn’t that far-fetched. The broadcaster role didn’t require a ton of range. And he had a deep voice perfect for the part.

So it was a mixture of hubris and desperation that led me to cast this guy only a day before the shoot. And it didn’t go well.

During the shoot, this actor struggled with his lines like no actor I’ve worked with before or since (with maybe one exception). He just couldn’t remember anything. Starts and stops. Starts and stops. Over and over again. The shoot dragged on and I can’t tell you how many takes we got up to. All I remember is that I was sitting on set in my brother’s driveway, hoping for three things:

1. That my substitute actor could get through the script just once without flubbing.

2. That I could somehow piece together a believable performance in the edit.

3. That my dad wouldn’t suffocate in that mascot head while sitting in the backseat of the car (God knows I already punched him in the face when he tried helping me make a movie once).

At some point late into the night, I finally got enough coverage and I felt like I had something useable in the can. After calling “wrap” you could feel the collective exhale of relief from everyone on set. In the coming days I sifted through a lot of outtakes and cobbled something together that I could present to my client¹. Sure, my original vision hadn’t been compromised. Everything was there on the screen, as scripted. But the final commercial landed kind of like this.

The whole thing sort of worked. But the first thing my client mentioned after seeing the edit was how bad the main actor was. And I couldn’t disagree. The spot could have been so much better had the original broadcaster been able to participate.

In the end, the spot ran during football season, but the auto repair shop owner never hired me to do anything for him ever again. He trusted me when I told him I could make things work with the substitute actor. So I was left with this question:

Was it better to insist on my original vision and forfeit the opportunity for future work?

Now I know the answer. I should have pivoted by throwing away the script and moving in a new direction. No, it wouldn’t have been what I wanted and it wouldn’t have lived up to my original vision, but I’ve learned in the years since that compromise is sometimes necessary. Live to fight another day.

1. The blooper reel would have been as long as a feature film and as tragic as anything Shakespeare wrote.