Tribarazzi: Joline Gutierrez Krueger

"Bordertown," Take 203

Bright and early and somewhat unexpectedly today the cast and crew of "Bordertown" descended upon our humble Albuquerque Publishing Company for what is expected to be three days of filming.
By the time it is all over, I expect that I will be able to recite line for line of the script.
Yes, folks, the movie biz is not as glamorous as one might imagine. It is a lot of repeating the same scenes, the same lines, the same gestures until somebody "feels it is right" (a common phrase director Gregory Nava likes to use). It is a lot of standing, a lot of fixing, a lot of waiting, waiting, waiting.
Your feet ache, your throat burns from trying to hold in too many coughing fits once they yell "quiet on the set." OK, that's just me.
But you want to hear about the stars, don't you?
So here it is. First of all, they are smaller than you might imagine. Martin Sheen, a very affable guy who glad-hands and chats with everybody as if he were a, um, presidential candidate, maybe clears five feet counting that shiny graying mane. He uses an extra chair cushion to bolster his presence when sitting in the leather editor chair.
He strolls from his trailer in our visitors parking lot to the set, stopping to converse with security guards, prop guys, food guys and one gushing features editor who shared cashews with him (she is saving hers FOREVER).
He eats in our cafeteria with the rest of the crew (more food info later).
Jennifer Lopez is intense, beautiful, her features sharp and small. Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't get the whole butt thing. Her derriere has been the subject of college thesis papers, paparazzi photos. "Saturday Night Live" presented a tribute to it. To me, it looks like something she sits on, nothing more. Maybe it was too hidden under the simple gray pants and black jacket, a dressed-down look in keeping with the style of an investigative reporter for the Chicago Sentinel. Honey, if you want reporter style, try Target's 30 percent off rack. But that's just me.
Lopez was standing about two feet away from me before I realized who she was. This is not the high-haired diva I had imagined. Still, it becomes quite clear right away that she is here to do a job, not to schmooze on the set. She is focused on her character, her lines, and her two WWF bodyguards might just haul you away by your thumbs were you to mess with her method.
She paces the floor, whirls her arms, jumps up and down a few time in preparation for a particularly intense scene where she impassionately argues with her editor about the importance of her story. Hey, babe, been there, done that.
She is so me.
La Lopez has three women assigned just to one of her hair curls. They are armed with baskets of creams and colors and packing brushes in their pockets like .357 Magnums. As the day wears on, their job becomes tougher, that one curl threatening to relax too much or, worse, frizz. One of the women prepares neat little cheese and salami crackers for Lopez, covering up the snacks with a napkin to keep them nice and fresh.
Lopez does not walk to the set. She is chauffered in a big black Ford Excursion from her trailer doorstep to the newspaper's front door, a ride that takes all of about 20 seconds. She does not eat in the cafeteria.
Hubby Marc Anthony is also on the set, sitting in his wife's chair watching her performance on screen in a separate viewing room. He wears a massive watch, a John Lennon T-shirt, sandals, size 0 jeans and a gray knit beanie even in the New Mexico heat. Must be a Hollywood thing.
Today's filming is all in one office of the executive suite upstairs from the newsroom. In my 18 years with the Tribune it took a film crew to get me access to this swanky place.
For four hours they shoot and reshoot one scene, the aforementioned passionate one that requires both Lopez and Sheen to scream at each other, tossing in a few expletives for emphasis. She is fighting for her story about the unexplained killings of women in Mexico. It's an important story, she argues. It could save lives.
But Sheen, as Chicago Sentinel editor George Newman, is more worried about the corporate line. Investigative reports like hers aren't what the public and the guys who sign the paychecks want, he tells her.
Aw.
She has a file folder with papers in it, apparently her investigative reporter notes. At one point she peruses it, then angrily flings it on Sheen's desk.
Her fling is not quite angry enough, director Nava says.
"Could you throw it back a little more definitively?" he asks.
Five takes later, it is definitive enough, though it looks the same each time. But that's just me.
It reminds me of my brief and ill-fated thespian turn as a college student in a freshman acting class. "Walk like you are a piece of bacon frying," the teacher told me. I dropped the class after that. I wanted to be Katharine Hepburn, not breakfast meat.
Lopez and Sheen I bet could do a mean bacon walk. Each time they say their lines they give it the same intensity, the same passion. It's exhausting.
It's also exhilarating. At least the first couple hundred times. But that's just me.