Op-ed: What the Camera Doesn’t Show

Actor Gerald McCullouch and The Hat Sisters

Editor's Note: Check back all week as Gerald McCullouch takes us through the making of BearCity 2.

It was months ago when our cast and crew arrived in Provincetown to recreate BearWeek, which is now, officially, yet another of my “if you haven’t — you must” life experiences.

It was  a tumultuous, non-stop ride. We faced the post Irene downpour that took two days from our 11-day Provincetown shoot and forced us to cut more than 12 pages from the script on our first days of shooting. A bat flew into our main location house on our first big day of production — the first time all the key cast and crew were together — and a herd of burly men screamed and ducked like school girls from the darting critter. So we lost more and more hours to the ticking clock.

There were sleepless nights rolling into sleepless days and tense times when we thought we might not make it through to the end of principle photography without going grossly over budget — an option we didn’t have. 

Our cast and crew arrived just as the beach town was beginning to close down for the season, and there were times when needed supplies were next to impossible to locate. Production vehicles got stuck in the sand as the tide came rushing in. There were missed airport connections and replaced department heads and lost luggage.

As the rainy days brought with it a September cold front like no other, we shot scenes in bathing suits with chattering teeth and froliced for hours in the intensely icy waters of the Cape Cod Bay, pretending that it was the height of summer. We shot a bonfire scene with no bonfire due to undisclosed fire codes on the beach where we were filming.

(Above: Arriving in town. Below: Chilling between takes.)