Filming "Golden Mean Girls"

[Pictured above from left is director Brittany Conyers, Lynne Maron (Cady), Joyce Greenleaf (Gretchen), Crystal Ann Taylor (Karen), Bettina Devin (Regina) and producer Bobby Murphy]

April 27, 2017

Yesterday, I had great fun. An actor friend, Tru Collins, recommended me to her friend, Bobby Murphy, who contacted me to play a role in a scene for his filmmaking class. Their assignment was to take a scene from cinema and give it a twist. The top 10 were chosen to film. So yesterday I was on set filming "Golden Mean Girls"... they took a scene from Mean Girls and aged them into a retirement home. Bobby said for me to look at Rose from Golden Girls for my inspiration. So I got to play a Betty White sensibility and I can't imagine a better role for my personality. I had a blast and everybody seemed to love it. Thought I was very funny. I didn't have a lot of lines but my lines were very funny and so much fun to play. However, I was in the scene the whole time so I gave them plenty of reactions. Like my teacher Chris Game says, as long as a camera is on me, I'm going to act.

Well, apparently they liked my reactions so well, that when they were doing close-ups at the end, they were doing close-ups on Bettina's character returning to the table and they had the camera on her. But they also had another camera on me. I was only sitting there to help Bettina have an eyeline for her close-up as she did for me. However, I noticed they had another camera on me. And I'm like, uh, don't you have the camera pointed in the wrong direction?

Nope, they wanted reaction shots from me for her scene. Great. Now I've got to improv because hello, there's nothing here in the script for me. However, Bettina and I had so much fun improving in front of the camera, I was almost sorry when they called a halt.

One of the best times I've had on set. The cast was wonderful, so talented and so supportive of each other, on set and off. Brittany was a great director and made the whole shoot so much fun. And Bobby and the rest of the crew were all so sweet to us actors. It was my first experience with Santa Monica Arts College, but what a pleasant one. When they get it up on their college website, I'll post a link if I can.