My "Doctor Horrible" Experience

It seems like such a cliche for Los Angeles. You know a guy who knows a guy who is doing lighting for Robert De Niro's new movie. Everybody has some kind of connection, even my parents have hung out with Jay Leno is his legendary garage. It's just what happens. So I guess I shouldn't have been surprised when my boyfriend at the time, Jonathan said that his friend Otto was the First Assistant Director to Joss Whedon on his new project starring Neil Patrick Harris and Nathan Fillion. Yeah, sure he is.

I'm pretty sure that's how the conversation went on the other end when Otto told Joss he knew a guy whose house looks like a mad scientist's secret laboratory all year round. Yeah, sure you do. But as luck would have it, in that magical Los Angeles way all of these things were true. This was the summer of 2008. I was living in Reseda with my boyfriend Jonathan and two roommates in a house named The Monster House. This house was called The Monster House because it had been renovated on the tv show, Monster House in 2004 to resemble that of a mad scientist's evil lair. Jonathan is a bio-chemist and so this theme is quite appropriate for him. I'd say you can read more about this episode of the show on the website here: http://www.tv.com/shows/monster-house/mad-scientist-house-321131/ but there isn't a heck of a lot of information. There's a big "It's a live!" spinny wheel which lowers a thing from the ceiling that booze comes out of and big metal operating table, brain scan curtains, etc. Basically this is a great place to host a party or film a low-budget web series that needs to take place in a mad scientist's house. Convenient, right?

Before I talk about the actual filming process and all that I have to say something about personalities. Jonathan and I are both only children. We are the opposite kinds of only children. He is the kind who felt lonely as an only child and thrives in big crowds with the massive social interactions and everyone being his friend by the end of the night. I am the kind of only child who thrived in her solitude and has purposefully run from crowds for ages. I get easily overwhelmed when in big groups and I would much rather stay home and have a glass of wine and read than go to a massive party and dance all night. Opposite types of only child personalities.

Well, after Otto told Joss that he knew a guy who has he perfect house for the shoot, Joss was skeptical of course but sent a location scout out anyway. Shock and awe do not begin to describe how this guy felt when he saw the interior of the house. There was no argument. It was perfect.

A little history for anyone who doesn't know why Joss Whedon made "Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog." There was a writer's strike in 2006-2007 which brought all productions in Hollywood to a halt during negotiations. (It also caused all the movies for the next two years to SUCK. We are only just now beginning to recover.) Joss Whedon and his brother Jed wanted to prove that you could make low-budget, quality productions without having to jump through all the Hollywood hoops. By the time productions were underway, he had roped in Neil Patrick Harris, Felicia Day, Nathan Fillion and Simon Helburg. Also, the strikes had ended. This did not deter the Dr. Horrible team! There was still a point to be made!

So early one summer day, a large Uhaul looking truck pulled up in front of my house and camera equipment, craft services, costumes and giant lights came pouring out. I anticipated this would be severely overwhelming for me so, like a boss, my best friend Ashley pulled in right after this truck. That much chaos that early in the morning is not my idea of a good time so we killed a couple hours while they set up and started filming.

When we returned a few hours later, most of the contents of our living room were on the front lawn, there were extras milling about, the neighbors were peeking through their mini-blinds and there were dudes with clipboards and earsets. "Hi, I live here. Is Jonathan around?" I asked a clipboard dude. He looked at me and pushed on his earpiece,"Jonathan's friends are here. Please send Jonathan out." Magic! It became clear that this whole process was a little unnerving for everyone, even Jonathan. We all love Firefly, we all watched Buffy and now the magic was happening in our house. I was hiding, Jonathan was drinking. (If you listen to the director commentary on the dvd, they mention this fact as well.)

I managed to get into the house between takes but it quickly became clear that there were only two safe places in the house: in the front yard and in the bedroom. The problem with the bedroom was that this was also NPH's dressing room and where he was hanging out to nap and learn lines between takes. (I will take this moment to note that NPH also brought his shiny new iPhone with him and he was reading, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows." It warmed me to know that there are actual nerds making the nerdy things I like.) For most of the day, I was too overwhelmed to go into the house. Luckily, the giant, pink, fuzzy Love Sack was one of the things tossed on the front lawn to make room for lighting and camera equipment. I spent a lot of the morning on that reading graphic novels and napping. I spent a little bit of time talking with the extras about how cool this all was and gushing over the AMAZING pink combat boots The Pink Pummeler was wearing.

When the crew broke for lunch, I finally had the courage to go look inside at what they were doing. On the way to the backyard I ran into NPH with his lunch. "Hi!" he said trying to balance his food on one hand while extending the other to shake mine. "I'm Neil! This place is pretty cool, eh?" (Okay maybe not exactly that but something like that.) I tried really hard to not say, "I know!" and instead introduced myself in a normal, non-rabid fangirl fashion. Yay thumbs up to me for treating him like a human and not Doogie Howser, M.D. (I heard he hates it when people ask him about that.) and yay to him for being super nice! The living room looked mostly the same expect most of the furniture had been moved out, there was a bunch of equipment everywhere and there were dudes dressed like cowboys in my hallway.

I spent the next several hours in the bedroom where I could sort of hear and see what was going on but didn't have to interact with anyone. I was mostly emailing my mom and probably fiercely updating Live Journal. (My mom was emailing me back saying, "Tell Neil "I love How I Met You Mother!" It is such a shame he is gay. He seems like such a nice guy...") Listening to the filming was a great deal of fun. I got to hear some of the songs and watch as little things got tweaked and perfected. And then the magic moment happened: I was clicking away on my laptop sitting on the bed and NPH came in and asked if I minded if he took a nap next to me. Apparently this kind of filming was really tiring and he was trying to learn all his lines quickly and he had a mean need for naps. Of course I couldn't say no. I tried really hard not to stare little holes into his back while he slept but my first thought soon became, "Neil Patrick Harris is sleeping next to me. I'm sleeping with Neil Patrick Harris!" Out of context, this sounds a lot different than what was actually going on but none the less, it is a true statement.

So they said it was only going to be a twelve hour shoot but it ended up being like, 15 -17 hours. It had been a long day and everyone was getting irritable. I had been kicked out of the bedroom so NPH could change and I was commandeered by the wardrobe lady. Turns out, she was the same lady who did wardrobe for "Firefly!" "Oh, you remind me of Kaylee!" she said to me. I blushed and thanked her. I had seen some "Firefly" at this point but I wasn't a rabid fan yet. They were about to shoot the final seen of the night which is the final scene of the web series. You know, the one with the villain party. Jonathan had already made it known that he wanted to be in it (they were just trying to figure out what he should wear) and the wardrobe mistress thought I should participate as well. My inner bookworm came out and I tried to hide but there was nowhere to run! She put me in an UGLY brown leather and faux fur coat and told me to go look like I was having fun.
Proof:

After they perfected this shot and the shot of Dr. Horrible donning his red Super Villain costume, they started packing up and Joss said he was ready for autograph and photo time. Unfortunately, I was too tired and overwhelmed to say anything profound so I asked Joss for an autograph for my friend Leigh who is a die-hard "Buffy" fan and nothing for me. Jonathan did the smart thing and got an awesome picture taken with Joss.

Now, I can look back on this event and fill my head with all the things I could have and should have said. Now, I want to thank Joss for continually making wonderful, brilliant television and movies for nerds like me to enjoy. I wish that I had started watching, "The Big Bang Theory," it the first episode so I could have told Simon Helberg how much I enjoy that show. Yes, it is a shame but at least I have this memory and some proof that this happened.

The weirdest thing was watching this web series explode across the internet. Suddenly people were looking into my living room and trying to find hidden messages. "Why does Dr. Horrible have three copies of the latest Harry Potter book?" Because there are three of us who live here, we're all Potter fans and we are TERRIBLE at sharing! "The pots and pans hanging in the kitchen are an homage to Firefly!" Actually no, that's just how we have to put out pots and pans because we have limited cabinet space. "The giant red chair is a prop! Totally not real!" No, the giant chair has lived their for years. The fan commentary went on and on. I found myself in chat rooms dispelling the rumors and and probably making things much less exciting people. People were taking screenshots and zooming in to look at our dvd collection and trying to find secret messages. The message is not-so-secret. Hi, we're nerds. We have lots of nerd dvds. We watch a lot of nerd movies. No hidden messages.

We were super sad that this was the year we decided not to go to ComiCon because really, our costume could have been ourselves. We watched the internet for weeks as new Dr. Horrible costumes cropped up. It was absolutely fascinating. It still is. Dr. Horrible is one of those things where I feel kind of awkward being a fan. I love it because it is a fantastic piece of nerd history and I was very lucky to be a part of it but I know it was my fifteen minutes of fame. Every year, at least a small handful of people introduce me as, "that girl I told you about in Dr. Horrible." That's really cool to me. I may not be cool enough to have gotten and IMDB.com page out of it like Jonathan did: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3076659/ but I got to be a part of something really cool. If I ever run into Joss or Neil or Nathan again, I will have something else to thank them for.