Hollyween

Last year, I didn't get to have any fun for Halloween, as I was knee-deep in shooting, but this semester I actually got to have some fun during the week of All Hallow's Eve.

It worked out pretty cool actually, on Halloween Eve, b/c I got to visit the set of "The Ghost Whisperer", which is exec produced by my teacher for my television class.

They shoot on the NBC-Universal lot (even though the show is produced by ABC studios and airs on CBS), and a friend and myself drove on the lot and, after a bit of snooping around, got to the soundstage where they shoot and met some crew members who set us up with a couple of chairs set up by the monitor and headphones to hear the sound feed.

For those who don't know, Jennifer Love Hewitt (known simply as "Love" on set) is the star of the show. She IS the show, as my teacher likes to say. So she was indeed on set on Friday, and man is she gorgeous.

It was great watching her work. TV episodes are shot really quickly (they have to shoot a 42 page script in 5 days, whereas a 120 page movie script can shoot for 30-60 days).

"Love" is an old TV pro, obviously. She would knock out good performances and has hitting home runs by the final takes. Sometimes in the middle of a line just "-I'm sorry, let me try that again ..." without stopping rolling or anything. Watching how fast the crew moved around the set and got ready for different set-ups was great. We hung out from about 12 to 5, when they broke for lunch at 5 we decided to head home (Love was wrapped for the day).

Then a funny thing happened on the way to the parking garage: we got to see part of the taping of that night's Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien.

Conan, in his infinite wisdom, thought that it'd be a great Halloween treat to see the world's largest pumpkin get smashed by the "Grave-Digger" monster truck. And they decided to do this live, during the show, right in front of the garage. So we had some awesome seats to this ridiculous occurrence, and it was AWESOME. Watch for yourself.


It was pretty spectacular live but I think it all translates pretty good on television.

Though I had class all day Saturday at night headed to a bar to see a gang of zombies, aka USC's football team, lay down and die for the Oregon Ducks, and ended up at a really great Halloween party. All in all, a Halloween that, by L.A. standards, was a frighteningly good time.