An unanticipated schedule change greets the crew upon their arrival in Ferndale at 7:00 a.m. (most of the company is staying at two hotels in Eureka, a 30 minute drive north of Ferndale). Frank requests the company move from the Mabel's Diner set at Ocean and Main to the Ferndale Cemetery two blocks away because today's weather is spectacular.

Dense morning fog is the norm here during the spring, and based on our departure from the Red Lion Inn in Eureka, it sure looked gloomy as we headed south to the Eel River Valley.

As soon as we drove over a bluff out of the neighboring town of Fernbridge, the fog seemed to suddenly evaporate into a bright sunny morning, as if Mother Nature provided her own lighting for our set this day.

Future weather reports (over which the company keeps an hourly watch through national and local weather services) predict rain and clouds for this coming Friday, when the cemetery sequence is originally scheduled. So, Frank directs assistant director Colwell to move to the cemetery, for a moving scene (Sc. 42 -- Ext. Cemetery: Harry tells Luke who he is) where Carrey, now suffering from amnesia and unsure as to who he really is, gets to see the gravestone of one Albert L. Trimble, the person the town has presumed him to be.

This marks Academy Award winner Martin Landau's first day on the set. Landau, ever the gracious professional, plays Harry Trimble, the owner of The Majestic movie palace. He truly believes that screenwriter Peter Appleton is his long lost (and feared dead) son, Luke Trimble, listed as missing in action on June 9, 1944 (three days after the bloody invasion at Normandy). Landau must walk into this patch of graves with Carrey, show him the headstone where he has placed his son's Medal of Honor for Bravery and Valor in Service. He retrieves the medal from its case, places it around Carrey's neck, and, weeping, welcomes his son home from the war after a long, tormenting absence.



By 4:00 p.m., fog rolls in, but not before Frank, elatedly, tells me that he "got the meat of the acting. Boy, am I glad the sun held out this long. I owe a couple of shots at the cemetery, but we got what we came for.”

Suffice it to say, he had a good day on the set.

Ferndale Cemetery, on a fairly steep green slope bounded by a dense evergreen forest on its north end, offers a beautiful view of the town below (it is one of the reasons Frank chose Ferndale to set the story). There is a black wrought iron gate and ornate archway at the entrance behind an old Methodist church that borders the graveyard on its south end. One of Ferndale's lifelong residents, Andy Doerner (some call him the town sage), tells us that the first grave marking is dated about 1860 (the town was settled in 1852). There are hundreds of very old gravestones and monuments inscribed with the names of local settlers dating back to the mid-19th century.

During breaks in filming, some of the crew tours the grounds, with caretaker Dayton Titus (his daughter-in-law Caroline, whom you've already met, runs the local newspaper) relating colorful stories about the people who lived (and died) in this town. Oddly enough, the cemetery served as a key location in Tobe Hooper's 1978 TV miniseries, "Salem's Lot. "

Our small patch of graves (49 in all) has been created for the scene in the film by Melton's art department (who constructed the fake headstones) and the "greens" crew (those who supervise the dressing of ferns, grass, leaves and any plant life needed for a shot), led by Tom Acosta.



The fenced-in area is actually part of the gravel road that runs through the small town graveyard. To fabricate this fenced-in memorial, Acosta purchased two old lawns from local Ferndalians. Once he removed the sod, he replanted brand new lawns for these two local homes, and transplanted the rundown grass onto the graveyard set. Once the grass was laid down, Melton and his set decorating gang positioned the gravestones (many of which contained the names of actual crew members, like office assistant Michael Peterson, set assistant Stephan Horvath and Melton himself).

Melton relates that, "This location was supposed to work on Friday, and we had not yet finished dressing the set with the various headstones. I got a call saying Frank was moving to the cemetery this morning, and we scrambled to get everything together in time to shoot Sc. 42."

That's showbiz!

Tomorrow -- eat at Mabel's!