I hope you and yours have a great Valentine’s Day. When you have children you get to watch as they assemble different pieces of parcel with names scrawled on them to give out in a giggling school room. When I was a kid, I remember the Valentine’s game being much more cut throat and filled with a great deal of anxiety. Unlike the way we keep our children emotionally bubble wrapped today, Mrs. Weiler’s second grade was a constant dog fight. Cement walls with posters of planets on them herding and corraling a constant cacophany of legislators and lotharios. There were no rules then that everyone had to receive a Valentine’s day card. Some unfortunate boys and girls got only two or three. The lucky one’s, who possessed the perfect mixture of charm, good looks and sway would receive so many paper hearts that there would be too many to fit all in their desks. Some of the over flow would flutter out onto the ground, leaving perfect, imperfectly drawn hearts littered across the cold floor. The way to ensure that your ego wouldn’t be short changed on the day of days was to start making side deals about two weeks out. You would tell a girl, “If I give you a Valentine, I won’t give one to –insert name of girl’s mortal enemy here). Girls would vote as a Bloc as to decide who would be blessed with their romantic autographs. Their was romance. We may not have known the actual feeling of love and lust but we went through the motions of how we thought it should look and what it should say and we proved what we knew with red ink. We would draw hearts and write “True love aways” inside the creases of the cards. Our nine year old son has been instructed to give a Vantine or as he called it until last year a “Valentime” to each member of the class. That means even boys would be Valentining boys. There was nothing embarrassing about it because all of the romance has long since been removed. Instead of hand crafted love letters with intricate scissor work and sometimes multiple crayon colors; everyone in the class gets a factory printed Valentine’s from the folks at “Hot Wheels” or “Sponge Bob”.

Neither my wife nor I had the heart to tell him that every kid had the same set of guidlines and rules as he did so it wasn’t surprising he came home the afternoon of the 14th with 22 Valentine’s Day cards. Why bother. Just let everyone be a winner.

Looking back I smile thinking of the numbers game Valentine’s Day became. I wish I could sit down with a six or seven year old me. I wish I could tell myself. RELAX. This hitting for average thing is for the birds. Sit back and wait for your one great pitch and smash it over every fence you ever see. I am 41 year’s old and I have just one Valentine this year. I have had one Valentine every year for nearly a decade. Even with only one card, there is no room for anything else to fit inside the school desk behind my ribs. I no longer lobby or cajole or sway or deal or cheat or steal or lie or wander. I have taken out my colored markers and sworn their allegiance to only one flag. The Flag. My wife. My life. I wish I could tell all of you that the safety in numbers theorem sounds nice and seems like a perfectly pragmatic safety net as the calendar page turns towards March. I must also let you in on an enormous secret. Having one Valentine is the greatest feeling in the world. Knowing in your bones that there will never be another. There will never be another’s handwriting on any of your walls. There is no greater love. Laying in bed next to my wife and just looking at her perfect face I often wonder, “How”? How out of the entire world’s population did I happen to wind up sharing a life with the one person who knew exactly how to live my Valentine. Her notes are always handwritten in the most beautiful cursive. Her hearts that she draws are many different colors and only I can see the treasures that lie beneath them. Our love can be seen by all but somehow stays entirely private. I hope for one day you can slow everything down a little bit. Stop the hustle. Leave the traffic. Let go of the wheel. Stop pushing. Stop pulling. Be still and let someone land, right there at your desk.

Hello friends. I have not written in quite some time. Apologies. I haven’t had much to report and didn’t want to keep telling you what shows to watch or what products to buy etc.. Finally I have a decent message to convey to all of you. I am currently working on a new website. It will be completely revamped and will be very interactive. VERY interactive.

IN the mean time, you may or may not know that I have been churning out my very own podcast. It is called Mohr Stories and it is absolutely FREE. This is a labor of love. If you would like to listen to it (foul language so be warned) you can simply visit itunes, go to “podcasts” and type in Mohr Stories. Enjoy it! This week is Patrice Oneil and next week I have Matt Paxton from the show HOARDERS. He isn’t a hoarder, he works in cleaning up their feces and dead cats. Really great chat we had! AT any rate, what I would like to do immediately is start blogging about the podcast. I always have so many things that happen right when the micraphones turn off and I want to share them with you. Hopefully I will start this tonight. I won’t go in order but if you ask me on twitter @jaymohr37 I will try to answer as many of your questions regarding a specific podcast as possible. The new website will have an actual message board so I can just read and respond in real time.

My love and prayers to all of you. “Wherever you go today, take a smile with you.”

On a side note: I asked some people on set today what was the best live music show they ever saw. Actually, I asked Donofrio and then we started shooting and I didn’t get to ask anyone else.  I hope he doesn’t mind me writing this (I don’t have his permission, I just thought it was really cool to share). He told me the best live show he ever saw was when he was a teenager, his older sisters took him to see the New York Dolls. I was instantly jealous. After a moment of thought, he then put an addendum on it and said, “No, I saw the Clash at Bonds when they were touring for Sandinista”

Holy smokes. I was quickly reminded of my constant complaint that music is completely dead. Who are the new bands? Who are the new bands that actually play instruments?

IN these times of lip synching and earplugs, it’s hard to imagine that there was a time you could see the Stones, Led Zeppelin, Lou Reed, James Brown, The New York Dolls and The Clash in the same calendar year. These days it seems we just sit around in our living rooms waiting for U2 to blow through town again.

The best live show I ever saw was Jane’s Addiction at The Ritz in 1991. They were about to break up and there was an incredible sense of malevolence in the room. If the Russian army broke down the doors of the Ritz that night we would have kicked their ass.

What was the best live show you ever saw?

No Dave Matthews’ band and no Phish.

jj

I have an off day today. It’s strange to suddenly put on the breaks once you are in the full swing of things. D’Onofrio and Erbe are the ones that should have a day off. I cannot begin to tell you ho much dialogue the two of them have to remember each day. I would go so far as to say that Vincent D’Onofrio has memorized more dialogue than anyone in the history of television. Ten years of pulling cases together is a lot of words. I woke up this morning wondering where every one is shooting today. One of the fascinating things about shooting on location is how much you are like a conquering army. Before you get there, someone and their entire department (locations) has to comb through the city of Manhattan or Calgary or Atlanta and find someone who will accept money to allow a film crew in their house. Then you need to secure permits for taking over five or six blocks that are adjacent to that house. Then you need to find acceptable places to film outside too. You need to find a park and a street and a flower shop and a place to tow a car around with actors in it acting like they are driving. All of these locations take permits and cost money. Once all permits are secured, someone has to go in and make sure the house is safe from the hundreds of pairs of boots and shoes that will be invading it over the next ten days. Valuables are photographed and removed. Police tape is strung up across doorways no one is to pass through. Cardboard is laid out and taped to the floor so no actual feet ever actually touch the ground inside the house.

Then the tanks come in. In this case trucks. Camera trucks. Wardrobe trucks, electricity trucks. Trailers for actors. bathrooms for extras, vans that shuttle the actors and crew back and forth from the trucks and trailers to the set move through the streets like ants. All of these streets also need to be scouted out and permitted weeks in advance. There will be many, many men and women carrying heavy things up and down your sidewalks as you leave for work in the morning. They will be there when you come home. There will be a crane in the middle of the street with giant lights on it that will shine through windows at night making the inside of the house look very cool and mysterious. You see hundreds of man hours and hundreds of people go into finding a place to shoot and then actually shooting it. One last thing that I almost forgot: All of those hundreds of people showing up on your street to film and take over and not litter or shout…WHERE WILL THEY ALL PARK?

Yes, that detail is also not overlooked. Usually about five blocks away in a high school or church parking lot you will see seventy cars or so that have never been there before. Those are ours. We will now need vans to take us from the parking lot to the trailers where we work and back again in the night time when it is all finished for the day. Someone will stay behind and make sure there is no scuff marks or damage done to the house and they will clean up all the tiny pieces up tape that may be stuck to the floor where the cardboard was. They will make sure there is no litter and make sure that there are no crew members asleep in a private room. When all of this is completely finished. The entire production moves to it’s new location across town where the war machine is already up and running while you sleep.

jj

The days sort of run together. I began listing them numerically but after a while it really just boils down to, “How many lines do I have tomorrow”. Last night I had two. The day before that I had three. Today is a pretty big day. I am in every scene but only speak in the last one. I can’t tell you why without ruining the story. Last night It began to rain, sleet and then snow on the island of Manhattan. it was incredible. My sore throat feels like it hit the road already which is a blessing. The recaps have been a little shorter because we are shooting on location in the streets and there isn’t Wi Fi like there was at Chelsea Piers. I will do my best to give you a more comprehensive recap later tonight. Today I am back in the thick of things with Vincent and Katy (I call her Katy now. I am a very fancy man.)

When I woke up this morning, there was an , “I love you” note from my wife. On the note was a hilarious list of acting tips.

“My acting tips for the day:

- Have a big mouth and dead eyes.

-if you can see the audience, the audience is having fun.

-ALWAYS walk moving the same side arms and legs.

-Yell all of your lines.

-when in doubt, triple take with a blowfish works every time.

- always make sure your character dies in a comfortable position.”

That really sums up life as well as show business. Make sure your character dies in a comfortable position.

 I’ll put in my full twelve hours today. No complaints here. Actors are incredibly pampered. You get fed twice and whenever there is a half hour window you can take a nap. Today I will probably take two. I am the Ernie Banks of naps.

I promise for a better recap tonight. Thanks for reading this stuff. I think it’s fun and way more interesting then having to type something in 140 characters.

jj

This is a message to jmill911@yahoo.com

One of the reasons I left twitter was because of assholes like you. Anyone reading this, feel free to email him and let him know he can get lost. He lives in Louisiana and has asked online how to store gasoline with no lid on his porch (seriously)

jj

Criminal Intent.

Yesterday was a fun day. We were shooting in someones 16 million dollar house in the West Village on Hudson street. Holy smokes it is beautiful down there. Very quiet, lots of dogs and kids. I had a 2 hour window for lunch and ate some incredible linguine and white clam sauce at a hole in the wall Italian place. Opie from the Opie and Anthony radio show came down with his 9 month old son to visit. My man La Machine came down too. It was a pretty relaxing day in that I only had three sentences of dialogue. I managed to get one of the three sentences wrong though. The script supervisor had to walk up to me between a couple of takes and point out my mistake. That is the walk of shame. When a woman holding an enormous binder with a script in it and a stop watch around her neck starts weaving through crew members to speak with you, it is ONLY because you have made a mistake.

During one of my breaks, I wandered off the reservation and went to Sunglass Hut and to more importantly to the Marc Jacobs book store. The book store was filled with FABULOUS men. These guys all had the bodies and tattoos of UFC fighters and had the style of Perry Farrell. I seemed to be very popular in the book store as I walked in wearing my designer wardrobe clothes, new Ray bans and holding a tea cup Yorkie. Everyone seemed to think I was pretty fabulous too. I bought a super cool book of very early Cindy Sherman photos. That was a real find. It was like finding treasure.

I woke up today with a bit of a sore throat which according to Murphy’s Law means I will have strep or something by tomorrow when I have the most dialogue. I am looking around for a good acupuncturist to try and needle it out. I didn’t sleep well. It has been a while since I have been on a set. I now remember why you don’t keep drinking the free coffee during the day. I woke up around seven times last night to pee.

The rains have come. New York is awash in the heavens and showering herself with stars. I have three lines of dialogue again today. Each one precious and guarded by a powerful woman with a binder and holding a stopwatch.

jj

I was up at 5am today to go through a run through Central Park.
That time of morning is always so cool no matter what city you are in. Whether you are watching a beast like New York slowly stretch awake or driving along the fog covered ocean in Los Angeles, pre- dawn always seems so private and personal. It’s like you are sharing a secret between you and the town. The garbage trucks don’t know. The other joggers don’t know. The coyotes scampering up Temescal Canyon don’t know. You have a job!

Lot’s of still photography today and one scene with the lady that plays my wife.  Still photos are amazingly shitty but they have to get done. Whenever you see family pictures in a movie on the table or the mantle of the fire place, that took an entire day to make those happen. After you get your picture taken for a few hours, the Art Department does it’s magic and drops in trees and roller coasters behind you to make it all look so real. Very time consuming and it’s hard for me to sit still that long.  If I was ever president my Presidential Portrait would be blurry from me goofing off. I am going to walk the dog, eat some breakfast and go to Criminal Intent.

More later…

Well, that was interesting. As I mentioned before I am playing a Charlie Sheen-esque coked out fashion designer. I rehearsed today’s scene in my hotel room about a thousand times. I had a bunch of super neat ticks and gestures that I thought were perfect for a coked out fashion designer. After the first take, the director approaches me (he is super nice) and says, “Don’t forget. You are in mourning here. You are incredibly sad. You have the whole first half of the show to act cracked out. Make sure we see how sad and vulnerable you are here. Let’s go again right away.” Terrific. I just spent three days practicing how to play this guy in this scene and it is ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY DEGREES in the wrong direction of what they want.

The good news is, I now have a minute and a half to figure out how to do it completely different. We did the scene three or four times and after each take the director seemed pleased and then we broke for lunch. That was scary. By the way, D’Onofrio and Erbe are the freaking coolest and NICEST.

More of the same scene after lunch. Different angles, shots, lens sizes etc… I’ll either check back in later on or tomorrow.

 jj