Here's the challenge: Twenty nine days of shooting in Lockhart, Texas. Eight starring roles. Three dozen additional speaking parts. A Super-16 camera. And no script.
In the days ahead, the cast and crew will set up in a car dealership, a gymnasium, and numerous office buildings, streets, homes and restaurants. Following an outline of characters and key plot points conceived by Christopher Guest and Eugene Levy, the cameras will roll and the small cast of actors will create a unique identity for themselves in the small town of Blaine, Missouri.
Based on his previous experience as Nigel Tufnel, the lead guitarist in "This is Spinal Tap," and armed with an idea of his own, Guest approached fellow "Spinal Tap" colleague Rob Reiner and Castle Rock Entertainment. He pitched "the 150th Anniversary of (fictional) Blaine, Missouri." A version of Corky St. Clair was resurrected from "a weird cable show in 1981 that I did with Michael McKean, Harry Shearer, Billy Crystal and Rob Reiner."
Almost from the project's inception, Guest knew who he was going to cast in the film.
He says, "I had a rough outline of a story, and worked with Eugene Levy on all the characters. I wanted him to play Dr. Allan Pearl, the local dentist, and then we talked about other people."
"I had to work with Catherine O'Hara because she's one of the best comediennes," explains Guest. O'Hara portrays Sheila Albertson, a travel agent in Blaine, who auditions with her husband Ron (Fred Willard) on a duet version of "Midnight at the Oasis."
Parker Posey ("Party Girl") was new to Guest, but she immediately impressed him. "In our first meeting with her she was really fun and surprising," recalls producer Murphy. "Even though she was not a veteran like most of the cast, she really held her own and always surprised us. It was her idea to sing the old Doris Day song, "Teacher's Pet."
"I worked with Bob Balaban 20 years ago," recalls Guest, "and I go back 30 years with Paul Benedict."
Longtime associates Michael McKean and Harry Shearer teamed up with Guest to write the original songs for the "show within a show" and recorded rough musical tracks so that the actors could learn the material before they arrived on location. In addition to a 15 page outline which loosely defined the characters and fictional history of Blaine, the actors were also provided with dialogue for "Red, White and Blaine."
The filmmakers selected Lockhart, Texas, a small suburb near Austin, for the quaint atmosphere of Blaine. "Austin had a pool of talent that we could use for cast, as well as crew," explains Murphy. "It's also a music town with great access to recording studios."
Gathering in Lockhart for a brief five days of rehearsal, the cast quickly began drawing the details of their characters. "Fred and Catherine were given the role of travel agents," says Murphy, "but they made up the fact that they had never left town before. He's domineering and she somehow flows with it."
"We basically talked out their characters and they knew the parameters," says Guest. "I gave them a lot of leeway. In fact, I'd literally never seen the material that was performed at the Blaine auditions."
Two weeks before the shoot began, Guest and Murphy were still wondering how long it would take to tell the story. "We thought, 'What if we show up, roll camera, and five days later...we're done? We really didn't know." Looking back, Murphy admits "We shot all the film we bought, and had plenty of material."
With 60 hours of material to sift through in the final edit, the filmmakers were disciplined to focus on the main storyline, even at the expense of hilarious scenes.
"We had a lot of distracting, fun, good stuff, but our main focus was the show in Blaine," says Murphy. "The musical was the only part of the film that had to be shot real time, with dialogue and songs carefully timed and choreographed."
Although it was impossible to include all of the great material in the final cut, the filmmakers are confident that additional scenes will find their way to a future CD-ROM or laser disc.
