|
| | | | | | | | | | | | | Pete Jones - Working With Kids
I can't stand the negativity of the reality show on HBO so I won't even bother refuting everything from tonight's episode. Just know that tonight's episode is egregious in its editing. It makes for entertaining TV and I am appreciative of the awareness it has created for "Stolen Summer." But, in my opinion, there's more truth in an episode of "ER."
A question I seem to get a lot is "How was it to work with kids?" Reporters brace themselves for the answer as if I am going to go off on an expletive filled tirade. They then look at me suspiciously when I say what a thrill it was to work with all of the kids, especially Adi Stein (Pete) and Mike Weinberg (Danny). Sure, the labor laws regarding children make it incredibly difficult to get exactly what we needed in twenty five days of shooting. The law states that an eight year old like Mike could only be in front of the camera four hours a day while a ten year old like Adi could work five hours a day. It limits the amount of takes we had, but the truth of the matter is after five or so hours little kids cannot concentrate. Hell, most adults can't.
When casting the two lead roles, I wanted to make sure we cast two kids that acted like kids. You would be amazed at how many child actors acted as if the audition process was a necessary evil to increase their stock portfolio. Then Mike Weinberg walks in. Eight years old and all boy. I couldn't get him to calm down, stop dancing, and concentrate on the scene. When he did, he was terrific. Head and shoulders better than anyone else. As soon as I said cut, he started laughing and dancing. I knew we found our Danny.
Finding the Pete character was much more difficult. The fact that this character was similar to my brothers and me probably had something to do with it, but mainly I think it had to do with finding a boy that I could believe would be innocent yet intelligent. Tina O'Brien from the Chicago Casting Agency called me to come over and watch a tape of a young New Jersey boy. Tina and I had seen over five hundred boys and I could tell from the excitement in her voice that this ten year old boy was good. She popped in the tape and this freckle faced red head smiled into the camera and auditioned the scene. And he was good. Really good. But his best work was when they stopped the scene and the little boy talked about himself. The lady who read with him asked him what he was doing this summer. His eyes danced and he said "I'm going on a family vacation with, um, with my family." He rolled his eyes and laughed midway through the sentence when he realized that of course he was going on a family vacation with his family. He was smart enough to realize the redundancy and confident enough to laugh at himself. I asked Tina what his name was and she told me Adi Stein. I nodded and looked back at the TV. It then hit me. I looked back at her and asked his name again. She again said Adi Stein. I laughed. The boy who was going to play the lead Chicago Irish Catholic character, the boy who was going to represent my childhood, was a Jewish kid from New Jersey. And to top it off, he was the son of a rabbi. Irony aside, this little Jewish boy from New Jersey best represented Pete O'Malley. A week or so before shooting was to begin we had found our lead.
These boys reminded the adults on set why we wanted to get into movies in the first place. It was fun. To both of these young boys, five weeks in Chicago shooting "Stolen Summer" was summer camp, not a job. There were times when the difficulties and pressures of making the movie wore me down. But it wouldn't last long. It couldn't. Mike and Adi were having too much fun. | | | |
|
|
|
