Was here at 6:30 am for breakfast before the 7am call. Just a few crew members ate the breakfast, which was basic dorm food. Well. before dorms upgraded the food.

I am now in a conference room set off the courtroom that is serving as the green room waiting to be called to wardrobe and make up. There are no working outlets in this pretend conference center so I don't know if I will have enough laptop battery to blog all day. I hope to be able to do so from the set in between scenes. We'll see. We'll also see if there is enough interesting stuff to blog about.

Am shmoozing with Brandon Ford Green who's playing the court clerk. Finding out about how he got into the acting business. Earlier I was talking with J.G. Herzler ("Star Trek Deep Space Nine") who is moving to Ithaca to teach drama at Cornell. He remarked that, though the Drama Department is next to the law school there, there is no connection between them. He said that because actors are full time liars, and lawyers lie for a living, law students would benefit from some dramatic training. I disputed the liars part, but said that those lawyers who try cases do need to present themselves the way they want to be perceived by others in court and some acting skills would be helpful for that. It is no secret that courtroom work does involve genuine acting, though I would not say that's the same as lying.

Just spoke with James Runcorn, who is playing the bailiff and also casting the background actors. He said it would be great if my mom and dad, who live in Orange County and are coming to visit the set tomorrow, wanted to be spectators in the courtroom scenes. And they would get named credits at the end of the film too. I think that would be especially cool because when I was a real prosecutor in Chicago my parents came to 26th and California to watch me first chair a murder case. Now they would be in a pretend courtroom pretending to watch me pretending to be a prosecutor.