The final location shooting days of "Sunshine Dreamer" would be for the night time scenes only. After that, it would be soundstages only. Each night, we'd ride over in the crew van, wide awake and ready for action. Then we'd be waiting around most of the night which made sleep all the more tempting, and hard to fight. So my body clock was really thrown off by the schedule. I felt like I was riding a school bus each night and fighting back sleep in a classroom. Blake had made surprise appearances at the local radio stations with a call for extras in the crowd scenes outside the Fillmore West and several other buildings. And several thousand people turned up, mostly guys looking for a glimpse of Ms. Lively. So this meant that seeing Blake alone would be next to impossible. Especially in the controlled chaos that is a film set. But I didn't mind, work was work, it's what we're paid for.
Blake's scenes mostly consisted of her walking outside the Fillmore, the City Lights bookstore and buildings in the Haight-Ashbury section of town. I couldn't hear her dialogue but her scenes ranged from giddy excitement to heated confrontations with other characters. Chris and I snapped our photos when we could. One crowd scene at the Fillmore was set in the midst of a 1969 New Years Eve show that featured Santana. John McDonald, our director, had really loosened up as filming went on. He gave us a lot more freedom for our work, and the results looked great. For the "New Years Eve" scenes, he let us roam freely in scenes meant to depict the craziness of the event, and ostensibly, of Blake doing her job. So in an odd way we were photographing her photographing the event. We blended in quite well.
At one point, I caught her eye in the crowd, and she smiled and blew me a kiss. Oh, was it sexy! For the Fillmore scenes, Blake was decked out in a green football jersey with the Fillmore logo on the front and vintage blue jeans that hugged her curves. Her character had apparently been promoted to house photographer and she now had the uniform to show for it.
The following evening was more of the same, wait around, and don't fall asleep. I was trying to keep myself awake with coffee. Then my phone chimed in saying I had a new text message from Chris;
"NEED U IN FMORE BLCNY ASAP"
This had been Chris' work space for his shots early on, he probably wanted to trade places with me. That was fine with me, the San Francisco chill was starting to hit me and I knew the morning would be worse. Mark Twain was right.
I went inside the Fillmore and some crew members were there setting up for interior scenes. I trotted up the stairs to the first balcony area, no sign of Chris. OK, second balcony then. I was in the upper reaches of the theatre. It was very quiet and dimly lit up there as you'd expect. I could see a figure sitting in one of the seats.
"Hey, I got your message." I said as I walked down the aisle
"I'm glad you did." The figure stood up and walked toward me.
It was Blake.
"Whoa, what are you doing up here?" I asked, stunned.
"Waiting for you, what else?" she replied as she took me in her arms and we kissed.
"How did you text me?" I asked.
"Chris has the same phone as me, I just said the battery was dying on mine and needed to text somebody." She said as we kissed again. "And that someone was you."
"Well, lucky me." I said kissing those soft lips of hers.
