Hey, everyone. ”Moriarty” here.

This is part two of what will ultimately be a four or five-part series about the three strangest days I’ve had so far this year. It was a whirlwind of two cities, two different set visits, three days, and a whole lot of new names and faces. I started this in the embarrassingly not-so-recent article I ran to highlight the trailers for both UNACCOMPANIED MINORS and SHOOT ‘EM UP. These are some pretty hefty pieces in terms of word count, so I hope you enjoy them, and consider yourselves warned.

* * *

Salt Lake City.

That’s not one of the names you’re used to hearing when you’re invited to a set. Vancouver. Toronto. North Carolina. Lately, New Mexico’s been gaining ground. Texas, of course. But when I was told that Paul Feig, creator of FREAKS & GEEKS, was shooting his new film there, I told Warner Bros to work it out with New Line, who was going to be handling the second part of my trip, and as a result, I find myself at LAX at 5:45 on a Tuesday morning.

Ugly. A nightmare, even that early. Modern air travel has turned so annoying at this point that it’s like taking a big fucking public bus with wings.

You get treated like cattle before you’re ever on the plane, and once you are, you’re ignored or treated like an annoyance by obviously overworked air waitresses. Color me over air travel at this point. And now that security has reached the genuinely ridiculous level it has, we are at their mercy for even a sip of water.

When I am met at the airport by a driver from UNACCOMPANIED MINORS, I’m told we’ll be heading directly to the set. “Are you sure?” I ask, wanting to drop off my suitcase and grab a quick shower. “I was told we’d head over around 12:00.” Nope. I’m driven to what I assume will be some sort of soundstage facility. Instead, we arrive at Salt Lake’s convention center, known as the Salt Palace. I’m dropped off, and I leave my luggage in the van, an act of faith on my part.

Inside, waves of extras walk by pulling luggage behind them. Fake security people mingle with real security so it is impossible to tell the difference. I feel like going back to the car to get my luggage just so I can walk out into the shot unnoticed.

I am surprised by how little dressing they had to do to turn this convention center into an airport. It is utterly convincing as I walk through it.

Fake newsstands. A fake Starbucks. Fake ticket desks and terminal boards. The biggest part of the set is a giant fake window that looks out onto an oversized three-dimensional façade of a wing of the airport, with several planes ready to be loaded.

There’s no publicist around when I arrive, so I’m left to my own devices. A quick stop by craft service for a cheap sugar rush to help wake me up. Then I creep to the edge of things and just sort of... hover.

Paul Feig arrives. It’s my first glimpse of him. Like Sam Raimi, Paul directs in a suit and tie every single day. I watch him prepping the first shot as he wolfs down a quick breakfast. He’s tall, whip-thin. Still no unit publicist.

As I’m waiting, Lauren Shuler Donner’s assistant recognizes me and approaches me. I’d forgotten she was producing the film. As soon as he said her name, I caught sight of Lauren talking to Paul Feig. I noticed she had a cast on her right hand and forearm. Before we could speak though, Bernadette, the unit publicist, showed up and immediately took me over to meet Paul. Our first quick introductory conversation is just a sort of flurry of talking points from Feig. I compliment him, before we even start, on the disturbingly funny masterwork SUPERSTUD:

I can see that they’re setting up a stunt for the first shot, a golf car wipe-out into a stack of Janet Evanovich books. “I’m not sure it’s funny,” Feig says, “but at least I get to destroy some Janet Evanovich books.” We talk a bit about Blake Edwards and we talk a bit about the challenges of putting together a young cast, and how he drew on his experience putting together the FREAKS & GEEKS ensemble. Once again, he’s carefully mixed and matched a cast of kids and adults, newcomers and established comic character actors, with the goal being a movie where there’s no star... instead, you just have fun with everyone. A real ensemble movie.

Feig talks about how he didn’t want any kid who had any show bix polish. There are a few kids with experience here, but Feig read them and spent time trying to make sure they were totally unaffected. He says he had to struggle with Warner Bros. a little bit up front when he signed onto the film.. He finally had to point out to Warner how well his FREAKS & GEEKS ensemble has all done since they were on his show. That finally inspired Warner Bros. to turn him loose. He’s thrilled with the adult cast he put together. Lewis Black, Rob Corddry, David Koechner and Dave Gruber Allen (who will appear together soon in Comedy Central’s new NAKED TRUCKER SHOW), Rob Riggle, Kevin McDonald, Bruce McCulloch, Mark McKinney. Wilmer Valderaama is in the film, and although he features prominently in the advertising, I got the impression it’s not really a movie about him. Most of these are friends of Paul’s or people that he wanted to meet and work with, a wish list that came pretty much completely true for him.

The film is the story of several kids, each from a broken family, all traveling home for the holidays. When a blizzard shuts down an airport where they’re all trying to catch flights, the kids are all tossed together in a holding pen for unaccompanied minors.

Y’know... hence the title.

The film’s about the mayhem that ensues when the kids organize a revolt. That’s why one of them has a golf cart and runs it into the newsstand. Feig seems pained by the staging of the scene and explains that this wasn’t one of the scenes he liked, but was instead something the studio asked for.

Before they rolled on the shot, Pee Wee Piemonte gets up in front of the crew to give a quick safety speech. Piemonte’s the stunt co-ordinator and second-unit director, and it’s his job to make sure everyone knows what to expect. After the set-up, we watch them try the stunt twice. Once they have the take they like, they start moving for the next set-up.

I take advantage of the moment to head over to the hotel, which is only six or seven minutes away. I get checked in, take a quick shower, then head back to the set.

Upon arrival, Bernadette asks me if I want to meet the kids. I recognize a few of them, but not all, so as we find an out-of-the-way bench, I ask them to all say their names for me:

GINA: I’m Gina Montegna. I play Grace Conrad in UNACCOMPANIED MINORS.

DYLLAN: I’m Dyllan Christopher, and I play Spencer Davenport.

TYLER: I’m Tyler James Williams, and I play Charlie Goldwyn.

DYLLAN: We’re missing a few people. Where’s Bubbles?

All the kids laugh.

To their surprise, I tell them I know who Bubbles is. Brett Kelly. If you’ve seen BAD SANTA, then you absolutely know who Brett Kelly is. He’s The Kid. Thurman Merman. I think his performance in that film is pretty great, and I had asked the publicist about him when I had first met her. She’s the one who told me about a lasertag game the cast all played where Kelly’s nickname emerged. He’s “Bubbles” now to everyone on-set, even the director.

MORIARTY: I’ll catch up with him later today. Right now, tell me about the movie. You guys are the stars. This is your film. That’s pretty exciting. Everyone else in the film is just having to contend with your characters.

DYLLAN: Yeah. Don’t tell the rest of the cast that, though.

TYLER: The great thing about this movie is that kids are going to love the movie because it’s all about kids, and it stars kids.

DYLLAN: I think anyone should be able to related to this movie. It’s really about how you can make a good Christmas out of anything.

GINA: Anybody can relate to that.

MORIARTY: So it’s about the whole group of you…

DYLLAN: Six of us. Right. We’re all going to our other parent for Christmas.

GINA: We’re all from divorced families.

DYLLAN: … and we get snowed in at Hoover Airport.

GINA: Hoover International.

DYLLAN: Yeah, which is really, like, five different places.

GINA: We’re not really sure where that is. We end up snowed in, but the movie’s about how we escape from the U.M. room. That’s the room where they keep all the kids, and what happens is they haul away all the younger kids, the little kids, to, um...

DYLLAN: My sister gets taken. So I make it my quest to find my sister.

GINA: It’s about the kids who were left behind at the airport.

MORIARTY: It’s a pretty big cast, isn’t it?

GINA: Oh, yeah.

MORIARTY: And you work with everyone a little bit. How’s it been working with some of those established guys, like the Kids In The Hall, or Lewis Black?

GINA: It’s been awesome. They’re all so much fun. But we enjoy each other more. Tyler...

DYLLAN: Tyler’s hilarious.

GINA: Tyler has his own comedy show, though, so...

DYLLAN: The whole cast is full of comedians, and so a lot of the time, it’s really hard not to laugh.

GINA: It can be uncomfortably funny.

DYLLAN: You laugh the least, though.

GINA: I try not to. I bite my lip a lot.

TYLER: We saw her lip bleeding one day. That’s how you know a take was good.

MORIARTY: As a director, does Paul encourage you ugys to play around a lot? Does he let you experiment with the scenes?

DYLLAN: Paul is a great creative entity. You can bounce ideas off of him and you’ll just... you’ll try something, then you’ll both end up brainstorming, and then you’ll end up with something really cool in just two minutes.

TYLER: Like the golf cart scene.

DYLLAN: Yeah. We were doing a scene where we all jumped on a golf cart, and Tyler thinks up this cool idea about hopping on a luggage cart and grabbing the back so he gets towed along. And Paul was like, “Oh, yeah, and then you could jump off and kick it back into the carts, you know?”

GINA: He’s always open to new ideas. It’s like we’ll have the script in front of us, but he actually likes it... or at least, I think he likes it more when we fill in things that we’d naturally say.

DYLLAN: That’s because we’re a team!

GINA: (laughs)

DYLLAN: We had this whole improv things. The way it was scripted, it was this sort of average pep talk. But Paul was like, “Try to make this like a really, really heavy pep talk. And it doesn’t work.” So instead of just saying, “Guys, we can’t fight like this. If we’re going to get back down to the hotel, we’ve got to think like a team, you know?”

So I turned it into “Guys, we can’t fight like this. If we’re going to... to get down to that hotel, then, well, we’ve got to act like a team! A good team. We’ve got to walk like a team and talk like a team. We’ve got to coagulate like a team.”

TYLER: Don’t you love how he remembers every line of his improv from a scene we shot three weeks ago?

GINA: (laughs)

DYLLAN: And then after this whole thing, I end with, “Yeah, okay... I’ve got nothing.”

MORIARTY: How much of the time do you guys spend on set... I mean on any film, there’s a lot of down time, and you must spend a lot of that time getting to know each other. Does that spill onto the screen?

TYLER: We’ve got good chemistry because they brought us in for two weeks before shooting began. We were really able to bond just by talking.

GINA: We sat in a room, having school for two weeks and rehearsing. It was really nice. And we all really get along. It’s funny, though, because our characters in the film... a lot of them don’t get along at all. At first, I hate everyone.

TYLER: But I love you.

GINA: That’s true. He loves everyone. We’re having such a good time that it’s difficult to shoot some of those scenes where we have to act like we’re annoyed with each other. The second Paul yells “Cut!” we have fun.

MORIARTY: As you said, you have school while you’re working, but isn’t it your spring break right now?

GINA: Yeah.

MORIARTY: I see that you’ve all got your whole families here right now.

DYLLAN: It’s nice not to have to miss anyone. I got my mom to bring up my dog, too.

GINA: Yeah. I’m so jealous.

TYLER: My dad comes out every two weeks. ‘Cause he’s still working.

GINA: Still working in the real world.

TYLER: Yeah. He just needs two more years to be retired. So yeah, this is a great time to be shooting a movie.

GINA: Oh, yeah. The weather’s been picking up.

DYLLAN: The weather’s been nice. Sunny. Warm.

GINA: As we get towards the end of April, it’s getting nicer.

DYLLAN: It was sunny on Sunday. Rainy on Monday. Sunny today. And it snowed last week.

MORIARTY: You guys have any favorite moments on the shoot so far?

GINA: There are too many.

DYLLAN: Last night, right?

TYLER: What was last night? Ohhhhh... I thought at first you meant when I was ringing those bells last night. But no... I had a scene where I get to kiss Quinn. She plays Donna.

MORIARTY: I think I saw her earlier driving the cart.

GINA: Yeah, that’s her. She’s got that red sweater.

TYLER: (acting bored) Yeah, she did an okay job considering it was her first stage kiss.

GINA: Tyler, that was her first kiss ever.

TYLER: (suddenly not joking) It was?

GINA: Yeah.

TYLER: Oh, then she’s very good.

GINA: She was complaining that the first boy she ever kissed was going to be an onscreen thing. “Not fair,” she said.

TYLER: She did pretty good. She did all right.

GINA: What was my favorite? Maybe the canoe. The first week we were here, we had to ride in a canoe down a hill.

DYLLAN: It was, like, five degrees outside.

GINA: Yeah. It was very cold. But it was so much fun. And on that, we all really bonded together. We had to get along to be in that canoe.

TYLER: I took advantage of my position to kick everyone. That was our first scene. It seemed like Paul put us through everything hard first, so that everything else will just be smooth sailing.

MORIARTY: Tyler, this question’s for you. How different is the pace of working on this film and the pace of working on your television show?

TYLER: Working on a film, you have so much more time.

DYLLAN: Yeah, we’re working six days a week here.

TYLER: No, not like that.

GINA: It’s more spread out.

TYLER: Right. On a series, you have a certain amount of time to get one episode. But on this, we’re together for a full three months. That’s the main difference. I don’t really see much difference in working with the cast. On every TV show, you go in and you bond with the cast. And that happened here. I’m really happy with these people I’ve met here.

MORIARTY: And, Gina, you’ve grown up around film sets.

I should add here that the entire time we’re doing this interview, Gina’s father Joe Mantegna is lurking about nine feet away. You would never know he’s paying attention to us. He’s very casual about it. But I guarantee Papa Joe knows every word coming out of my mouth, and he’s ready to step in at a moment’s notice. I get the strong impression from the few times he looks directly at me that I do not want to say the wrong thing.

GINA: Yes, I have.

MORIARTY: How’s your dad feel about visiting a set where you’re the actor, and he’s the guest, and he’s here to support you. Are you loving turning the tables on him?

GINA: He cracks up. He’s done two movies before this in Utah, so he keeps seeing crew members that he’s worked with before. He loves it. He’s just glad he can see his daughter doing what he did. He’s really proud of me.

MORIARTY: It’s got to be great for him. He’s just here relaxing. Enjoying the catering.

GINA: I’ve always loved coming to a set and sitting in his chair and listening to him doing all of his scenes. So, yeah, it’s great to look past the camera and see him back there now.

I see Bernadette approaching, so I thank all three of the kids for their time, then walk over to the publicist, who apologizes for interrupting. “I’m sorry. I just want to make sure you get to meet everyone. I’ve got some of the other kids available right now.”

I look over to where she’s pointing, and I see Brett Kelly sitting there, big ol’ smile on his face, AQUAMAN action figure gripped in one hand. AQUAMAN evidently plays a big part in the life of Brett’s character in the film. Do you get the feeling at this point that DC and Warner are telling us something? Between this and ENTOURAGE and the MERCY REEF pilot, they’re obviously doing their best to re-establish the Aquaman brand in the public consciousness. Curious to see what their endgame is.

The first thing I bring up is, obviously, BAD SANTA:

MORIARTY: That’s a pretty wild, adult film.

BRETT: Yeah. Yeah.

MORIARTY: When you get sent a script, do you and your parents read it together and talk about what it is and what the responsibilities of that role are?

BRETT: For that, I didn’t get the script until I got the callback. I just got the sides and did that, and then...

BRETT: ... once I got to the second callback, they gave me a script.

MORIARTY: And then you got an idea of what it was.

BRETT: Yeah.

MORIARTY: Did you and your parents ever have a moment where you thought maybe it was too rough or too adult?

BRETT: We always thought that, but it seemed like there was a really good chance of me getting it, and at that point, I was willing to take any good role. I knew I wanted to act, and I told my parents not to worry, that I could do it.

MORIARTY: Well, it turns out that you were working with a very strong director and playing most of your scenes opposite Billy Bob. So I would think it was a really good experience overall.

BRETT: Oh, it was great.

MORIARTY: And then on a film like this, where the leads are all kids, it must be fun. Especially with an adult cast like you guys have, supporting you guys...

BRETT: With Paul as a director, he lets us do anything. He’ll let us experiment, and he’s always looking for any good idea. Maybe it won’t work out, but he’ll let us try it at least.

MORIARTY: And you guys came in a few weeks before you started shooting so you could all meet, right?

BRETT: That was great. We came in for rehearsals and wardrobe fittings, and mainly so we could just hang out and get used to each other. It was so much fun.

MORIARTY: And does your dynamic off-camera spill over into how you guys are onscreen together?

BRETT: A little bit, yeah. I hope it does.

MORIARTY: In the film, you don’t all start out as friends. In fact, there’s some open antagonism, right?

BRETT: Yeah, but we all work really well together. That energy that we have off-set really helps when we’re filming.

MORIARTY: Is that a fact, Bubbles?

BRETT: ... how did you hear that?

MORIARTY: So you guys are having a good time with...

BRETT: Seriously. How did you hear that?

MORIARTY: I’ve been paying attention since I got here.

BRETT: I guess you have. Well, then...

MORIARTY: I think it’s important to pick an intimidating name when you’re playing laser-tag.

BRETT: Exactly! Tell me you wouldn’t be scared of Bubbles. No one wants to be killed by Bubbles. My motto was “Watch out... Bubble’s gonna pop in your eyes, and it’s gonna sting bad!”

MORIARTY: Have there been any moments during production that have really stood out for you or been particularly fun? It seems to me that a film like this, about kids rampaging and having fun, is an excuse to play on film.

BRETT: Oh, it’s all been great. I’m jealous, though. Everyone else got to slide down a mountain in a canoe.

At this point, Quinn Shephard came walking by. She plays Dyllan Christopher’s little sister in the film, and she heard us talking. Not even seeing the recorder, she jumped over to us and started talking.

QUINN: That was sooooo much fun. Except for it was six degrees one night. It was friggin’ cold, but it was so much fun to go down the side of a hill in a canoe.

BRETT: It was really cold out there.

QUINN: Oh, please. You had this on... (She indicates the heavy snowsuit that Brett wears through most of the movie.) The rest of us were just in light jackets and our regular clothes.

BRETT: I remember taking the top half off at one point and there was steam coming off me. It was so cold. That’s how cold it was and how hot I was.

QUINN: Better to be hot than to be cold.

MORIARTY: Forgive me for asking, Quinn, but have you worked in film before?

QUINN: I’ve been doing acting since I was three.

MORIARTY: So you’re basically growing up on film sets. Is this the biggest role you’ve had in a film so far?

QUINN: Definitely.

MORIARTY: Are you enjoying having this much to do in the film?

QUINN: It’s great. I’m learning and picking stuff up.

BRETT: There are some great people here to work with. I missed the Kids In The Hall. But we’re learning from everyone. Any time you work with people who are this funny and who have been doing it for as long as they have, you’re going to learn from them. All the stuff they do for us is so helpful.

QUINN: I’ve learned some good jokes.

MORIARTY: With FREAKS & GEEKS, Paul put together a great cast of then-unknowns who have all gone on to do smart and interesting work. I think he’s got a real eye for talent. Do you guys feel like you got tapped for something special here?

QUINN: He could have used much more famous kids. I think they wanted him to. But he said he wanted to use us, and he really fought for us to be here.

MORIARTY: How do you stay grounded while you’re the center of attention on a film set? That’s a lot of power to give to someone so young.

BRETT: When you’re not onset, don’t act like you’re onset. I think the real key is just going out to have fun when you’re not working. Forget about what you’re doing here and just go be a kid.

QUINN: I think school takes care of that. It’s hard to think you’re a big deal during school.

When the kids went off to rehearse the next shot, I took a walk further down the long main expanse of the convention center to check out the detailing of the set. In particular, I wanted to check out the huge “window” looking out at the “runway.” There was a great sense of depth to it, and even live, it’s a convincing visual trick.

Before I could, though, the publicist found me again and asked me if I wanted to talk to Aaron Osborne, the film’s production designer. I recognized his name from KISS KISS BANG BANG, and I told her I’d love to chat with him for a few minutes. We continued to walk around the set as we talked.

AARON: How ya’ doing?

MORIARTY: Very well, thanks.

AARON: I’m a fan of yours. You gave us some serious nice press on KISS KISS.

MORIARTY: You made my top ten list last year.

AARON: I know we did.

MORIARTY: I can’t wait to get it on DVD if they ever put it out.

AARON: Me, too. They keep pushing it for some reason.

MORIARTY: I would think that they would have put it out sooner rather than later so that people could find it.

AARON: Believe me. Knowing Joel [Silver], the date’s been carefully thought through. He’s like, “We will strike at the precise moment.”

MORIARTY: I know it’s going to have a secondary life and people will rediscover it.

AARON: I was so pissed. Have you ever talked to Shane [Black]? You should call him. He was just heartbroken. “They tanked me, man!”

MORIARTY: Y’know, I read an early draft when it was still called YOU’LL NEVER DIE IN THIS TOWN AGAIN, and I wasn’t crazy about it. Something magic happened to it, though, the way the cast clicked and the way Shane really got his voice onscreen for the first time. It’s like it took him directing to finally figure out how to get the humor of his scripts across.

AARON: Go to lunch with Shane Black, and you’re laughing the whole time. He’s so deadpan, though. You never know he’s kidding.

MORIARTY: Well, just because you can write it doesn’t mean you can shoot it. Two very different skill sets. But I thought he really stuck the landing.

AARON: The crew loved each other, too. Everyone walked out happy, and that doesn’t always happen.

MORIARTY: I can tell you that the e-mails we get and the response in our chat room and on our message boards... people are finding it. Okay, so let me ask you... your main job in this film is to make us feel like it all takes place in a real airport.

AARON: That’s right.

MORIARTY: Post 9/11, it’s got to be a nightmare to even deal with airlines, airports... and it sounds like they’re going to try for one day at the end of the shoot in a real airport, and even for one day, it sounds incredibly over-regulated.

AARON: We just don’t want to build the baggage claim conveyer belts. With the money we have, that would be cost prohibitive. We’re trying to get in for just that baggage claim.

MORIARTY: Even so, I hear security is insane, and they have to run full background checks on everyone.

AARON: That’s right. God forbid you have any alimony you owe or you’re late on the mortgage payments.

MORIARTY: Half your crew isn’t going to show up.

AARON: More than that. I’m sure we’ll get there, and only three people will make it through the whole process, and it won’t turn out to be the three people we really need. We kept dealing with these TFA guys.

MORIARTY: When they first came to you and said, “The whole movie takes place in an airport,” what’s the first thought you have as a production designer?

AARON: Well, I’m a huge research guy. So first I hooked up with Paul... and I’ve got to tell you, he’s a great director to work with. He is collaborative and all about ideas.

MORIARTY: I’m hearing that from cast and crew alike.

AARON: The guy’s amazing. So, the way I work is I just start throwing pictures on the wall. I say get me the biggest room you can, and I just start compiling images. So then I started to figure out what was the airport of my dreams, and that turned out to be Chicago O’Hare. Helmut Jahn was the architect on that project. These beams overhead? They’re there. And they’re also in an airport in Quebec. And so I just start to compile these details. So then I started to go, “Okay, where are we going to find it? And where are we going to go that’s going to let us rape and pillage as we love to do?”

MORIARTY: The architecture of an airport isn’t really like other buildings. The long corridors, the wide corridors, the gigantic windows... those are all specific things.

AARON: You can’t really adapt other places to that. Megastructures. That’s what this movie is about for me. Megastructures. Because of that, it’s a logistics nightmare.

MORIARTY: How many buildings do you have playing the part of the airport in the film?

AARON: About... eight. Including a UPS baggage facility. I don’t know if you’ve heard about that sequence.

MORIARTY: No.

AARON: Oh my god. Okay. We took the Denver Airport... once again, one of those photographs I had... and we took the Denver baggage system. It’s famous because they spent millions of dollars, they built this thing, and it just trashes everything that comes through it. It’s hysterical. Okay, so we were like, “We need our own evil version of that for the kids to go through.” So we couldn’t find anything until someone suggested UPS, and we saw their facility and it was perfect. We just worked it out with them. We’re shooting in a facility of theirs, and I’ve created these conveyer belts to sort of fit in with theirs, and one of the kids goes on a ride through the entire system. And that’s just one of the sets. Everything’s a megastructure.

As we were talking, we finally arrived at the huge panorama that I wanted to take a better look at, and Aaron gestured up at it.

AARON: Have you seen it lit up yet?

MORIARTY: No.

AARON: Hold on. You have to see it lit.

Before I could say anything, Aaron was on his radio and on the move, determined to get the window’s backlighting turned on.

I would guess the entire thing was about 30 yards across, and maybe 30 feet high. Enormous.

And as I stood there looking up, the lights came on. And what looked like a really clever optical trick became a seamless illusion. Aaron walked back up, pleased at my reaction, and started to explain.

AARON: So I said to Paul, “Okay, let’s find a way to get this amazing…” I said, “We’re never going to get planes out the window unless you let me build it for you.” And even after he said yes, I had to fight with production, and there was a huge thing with Warner Bros., but eventually I found the right guys to work on the physical construction with me, and I put this entire structure in here. There are scenes that play out here, we open it up. We keep referring back to it to make sure it pays off.

MORIARTY: Nice.

AARON: And snow is a huge thing, so you have to rig this so snow is always falling through the frame.

Sure enough, upon closer inspection, I realize that it’s snowing outside Aaron’s giant fake window. Convincingly, too.

AARON: We snowed out all the windows, and everything sort of builds up from there.

MORIARTY: Wow. It’s really overwhelming just standing here. It must photograph beautifully.

AARON: It does. It photographs really well. We’ve got all sorts of lights in there, and they all work independently, some of them blinking, some shutting on or turning off. And it’s got real depth.

MORIARTY: And then beyond that, there’s the infrastructure of the airport. The gift shops, the newsstands...

AARON: ... arrival/departure boards, concessions, and then we’ve got video running...

MORIARTY: Did you end up striking deals with Starbucks and the other companies to get their store into your airport? Because, I have to tell you... I know some people have an issue with product placement, but I find it more distracting when I see people using a product in a film that I know was created for that film, and it’s obviously meant to be something else, something that you didn’t get the rights to use.

AARON: Yeah. I hate that.

MORIARTY: But I do hate it if a product gets pushed on you in a film, and it’s blatant. It’s that fine line of grounding it in the real world.

AARON: I’ll give you an example. I worked on I AM SAM. You remember how Starbucks plays a sort of a role in that film? Well, it’s just a coffee shop that’s like a Starbuck’s in the script, but I’m friendly with them. I can call them up and say, “Look, we don’t want to be phony.” Because I’m like you. Give me a fake Fizzy Pop Soda can in someone’s hand, and I want to kill myself. Here, we put in a Starbuck’s kiosk, and we’ve had people walk through here doing something in the actual convention center, and they go right to the Starbuck’s. It’s something they visually know. It’s just part of the fabric of what we know. Same thing with Krispy Kreme. This doesn’t look like a set. It just looks like a regular mundane familiar terminal.

MORIARTY: Well, I think products are part of our world. They’re unavoidable.

Before we can continue, the gaffer who turned on the giant panoramic view for us walks up and explains that Aaron is needed elsewhere for a while.

I thank him for his time, knowing full well that once you get called away on-set, you might not ever have a chance to come back later in the day. I walk down to where they’re just calling for quiet so they can try some more scenes of the kids running wild with their golf cart. It’s time-consuming stuff, but onscreen, it’ll end up being a few quick seconds that flash by during a larger comic sequence.

I watch them do two or three takes, then realize someone’s standing next to me. It’s Lauren Shuler-Donner, who I’ve known and talked to occasionally for the last few years. It’s our first chance to talk since I saw her earlier in the day, and since I had just interviewed her husband for the first time about a week or so before this set visit, we definitely had something to chat about as we walked away from the edge of the set, to a comfortable spot where we could sit and talk.

And I’ll have that interview for you in the next part of this series of set reports. We’re just on day one of the three strange days, and I still haven’t written about Lewis Black, Rob Riggle, a random and remarkable sighting of a Bad News Bear, and Paul Feig himself. All that before we move on to Toronto for a whole different kind of film and a whole different experience. More on that soon. For now, I’ve got two interviews to transcribe. All that and I have a three-week edition of THE DVD SHELF to get posted on Tuesday.

No excuses. Lots to do.

Drew McWeeny, Los Angeles