Big Bother Goes Live!

It's been a very exciting month, BB fans. "Big Bother" went live on June 18th, 2009, with our first episode, "The Start of Something Big." It's received rave reviews from everyone we know :-) . June 27th was our Premiere Party. No red carpets or Hilton debacles, just cast and friends enjoying the fruits of our labors -- the first five episodes of "Big Bother," most of which haven't aired yet. Now is of course the time when it's critical that we get all the viewers we can. So please be sure to tune in for a new episode every Thursday and encourage your friends to do the same.

Last month, I chronicled the crises of the first stretch of shooting. We next planned to shoot one brief "Farf Infader's Day Care" Scene at my Dad's house in New Lenox, IL. My Brother Jim was in costume as Farf and my nieces and nephews, MacKenzie, Jessica, Camden, Alexandria, Jimmy, Lochlan and Tyler were to play the daycare kids. Sadly, there was a video camera malfunction, so we had to create the scene with still shots.

I'm happy to report that things went much more smoothly after that. We had several more shoots in the Fall of 2008. The scenes with the largest cast were out of the way, so not spending my evenings begging people to fill costumes was nice. The weather was much cooler as well, as Southern California goes, so the cast appreciated that.

Several new actors joined us at this time. Jenna and Anne did several days as Citronella, Super Chick. Amanda, Austin, Becky, Cameron, Elwood, Ilana and Nick took turns in character costumes as well. I forgot to mention the earliest scene we shot in August '07 when friends Pete and Betsy helped us turn the Arizona landscape into our "Buttcrack Mountain" scene.

Some of the new locations we added were the "To Catch a Character" and hospital sets (Joelle and Nick's house), the Prince's castle and various bedrooms (Nate's house) and Poppy Place (My and Mike's house).

One of the final scenes we shot was that of Mermalade's family. Originally written for my Mom and Dad to play, my sister Jil filled in admirably. Her husband Dan played "Ironing Man" as well. The three were on their first trip to Los Angeles, and were willing to set their vacation aside to get the true Hollywood experience. It was a lot of fun to turn them into mermaids, though we had a lot of trouble with Dad's squid crown.