“That’s A Wrap!”
This is a follow up to both “A Cemetery Story” and “A Photo” stories listed prior.
The Rainbow and the Photo incident were one of many incidents during the making of Be Like Trees that seemed to imply some kind of deeper connection between the production and our lives. We saw another rainbow the first day back in California after shooting in Florida. Ironically, like the first rainbow, it appeared while doing a scene with a deceased parent, only this time it was me shooting a scene talking to a photo of my late father standing amongst the Beatles.
But it was the wrap of the production that really put a final cap on the strange connection between our personal lives and the movie. The last big day of scheduling involved a comedian, Ben Gleib. We had been trying to schedule the last scene for some time, but Ben was super busy and we hadn’t found an actress to play his girlfriend. We kept trying to cement a date, but couldn’t nail it down.
Finally, it came together. Ben was in LA and available and he had talked to an actress/comedian he knew, Leah Lamarr, about doing the scene. We scheduled a shoot date. This was to be the last major scene in the movie, and it was officially Brian Drolet’s last scene.
On the morning of the shoot, Brian woke up and realized something he hadn’t made any connection to until that moment. The last big day of shooting. HIS last day of shooting, turned out to be …
… his mother’s birthday.
That kind of wraps up the cemetery story and the rainbow, but there was one more strange beat to come.
There was one more small, but important scene left to shoot. It was me, in a studio, singing one of my songs from my album “Thirty Years Unplugged, which is featured in the film.” The song is called, Standards, and it kind of sums up the message of the movie regarding art.
In any event, as I was pulling up to Brian’s apartment the morning of this last day of shooting my last scene, I received a text from my friend, Richard Snyder. Richard is the friend from college who was there the night Danny was killed.
Rich was in Connecticut that morning for a business meeting and he stopped by our college campus, Connecticut College, to visit on his way home. He wanted to connect with all of his college buddies and let us know how much he missed us.
And … he took a photo which he sent along with the text.
It was a photo of something that I didn’t fully grasp the significance of when I first looked at it. It was a photo of something on campus that was dedicated to Danny and still remains there to this day with a plaque in his name.
The photo he took and sent on the day I was wrapping production, the day I was singing the last song of the album “30 Years Unplugged,” on which the photo Danny took graces the cover …
… was a picture of something that symbolizes the spirit of Danny ... and our movie ...
Be Like Trees …
