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July 9th, 2003 Thanks to Alan for this submission: Katie Holmes at the First Daughter Set in Orange Ca. I arrived in Orange at around 12:30pm and according to various posts I had read on the internet the production was shooting on the campus of Chapman College there. I decided to check that location out first. As I drove down Glassel I came directly in front of the entrance to the college. The lawn was filled with children in light blue t-shirts. They were playing some sort of organized game of tag or something. It wasn’t what I wanted to see and my hope of catching a glimpse of Katie suddenly seemed like a cruel joke. I decided to circle around the campus and see if I could find something that told me that the production was still in town. I turned left, and started admiring what a neat campus they had there while keeping my head on a swivel. Suddenly, down a narrow neighborhood street to the right I see what looks like a huge trailer with an oversized barbeque grill that looked lit up. This looked like something to investigate. It was a nice typical suburban neighborhood of Southern California, everything bright and the lawns, in particular, were extremely well kept. I liked Orange. The trailer turned out to be part of craft services servicing the First Daughter production and it was parked in front of a YWCA. I knew then that I was at the right spot. An extra had posted his experience in working the previous day and he mentioned that the extras were instructed to meet at this YWCA in his post. Another thing that gave things away was the parking lot full of trailers across the street from the YWCA. It definitely looked like the production was still in town. I found some free parking on the same street, got out, locked up and had a look around. It looked like everything was going to be done two short blocks over where two production trailers were already unloading film equipment next to a building they had rigged to look like a movie house. Right next to this building was a complex of restaurants, one of them being Zito’s, a pizza joint, also mentioned in a post. I approached one of the crew members standing by some of the equipment and asked if they were breaking the stuff down or putting it up and he told me they had just got there and that filming would get underway at around 3pm. So, that left me with a couple of hours to kill. I took a few shots of the makeshift movie house and nightclub that were to be used in the movie. I took a long lunch and did some reading.
By 3pm I saw a crowds of extras arrive and I saw Forest Whitaker, the director of First Daughter walk right past me. I figured it was time for a look around. Slowly but surely about 30 extras arrived and waited in their spots. Traffic cops arrived and started re-directing things. A camera was mounted on a track and the doubles for Katie and Mark arrived and they started rehearsing the scene. A crowd had started to gather and it consisted mostly of families. Most of them seemed to know when things were going to start and they had planned ahead to be there. One thing that brought a smile to my face was that a lot of people had cameras. More than a few had video cameras too and they were all looking to go home with a souvenir. I even overheard one matronly looking mom of four say "They better not try and tell me I can’t take pictures". Boy was I relieved. I thought I would stick out like a sore thumb if I were the only one trying to sneak taking a picture. It still took a while to set things up but when they finally got every detail in place and then the rehearsals got under way. Basically, it was a scene where Sam and James (Katie and Marc) were going to be chased down the street by reporters. They run down the sidewalk and duck into a Mexican restaurant as a reporter goes flying by. Then they come out and continue walking in the same direction as the first reporter. Then another reporter behind them screams out and starts chasing after them and Sam and James break out into a trot down the street in front of a movie house and turn the corner and flee. The doubles rehearsed this scene at least 5 times before Katie and Marc Blucas arrived to the set. Out of the corner of my eye I spied a second purple sweatshirt just like Katie’s double was wearing and immediately, I knew who it was. From that point on the crowd had an entirely new focus. There were some Marc Blucas fans sprinkled about, and there were a few people just interested to see what a Hollywood production was all about but most of the people there were plainly there to see Ms. Holmes. At first Katie stayed close to the area where the monitors were set up and she and Marc could take a look at what they had filmed so far. She also had to touch up her makeup and I saw her give director Forest a big kiss on the cheek. Not a bad way for Forest to start a workday I thought to myself. The biggest treat of the day came when Katie and Marc finally came out in front of the movie house to actually film the sequence. Katie and Mark were only going to film a short piece of what the doubles did. They didn’t move very far down the block at all and their beginning point was in clear view of everyone watching from across the street. Katie was in a playful, cheerful mood. She was chewing gum and joking around with Marc constantly. She was rolling her shoulders in an exaggerated fashion then kicking her legs out as if she were going to start break dancing. She was dressed in very dark blue jeans, almost black, a purple Redmond (the fictitious college the First Daughter attends) sweatshirt, and a grey baseball cap. Her hair was in a ponytail and she had red lipstick and silver earrings on. She was incredibly beautiful, even in her nondescript outfit. Marc was in blue jeans and a black t-shirt. They filmed one take and Marc and Katie start out walking, then they look back and see a reporter chasing after them and they break out into a jog to get away. There was quite a long delay before they were ready to shoot the scene again. It was quite evident to everyone that was watching that Katie and Marc were very comfortable around each other. Marc put his arm around Katie and she looked sideways at him and they shared a laugh. Then Mark got behind Katie and started to massage her shoulders. Katie got a huge smile on her face and started chewing her gum furiously and then Mark decided to make it a whole back rub. I’m sure it must have seemed strange to them to have an entire restless crowd stare at their every move from across the street. At one point Mark put his arms around Katie from behind and he was about to squeeze her back into him when he realized that his outstretched arms were directly in front of Katie’s breasts and he would have been feeling her up right there in front of everybody. He realized this and pulled his hands back quickly and Marc seemed a bit flustered after this. He never tried putting his arms around her again. Katie acted as if nothing had happened and actually, nothing did. She stayed loose and was in a good mood the entire time. They ended up filming three different takes before they decided that they had what they wanted.
At this point Katie came across the street with her ever present bodyguard at her side to ward off anyone who looked like they were going to approach her. A small café on our side of the street had been closed down by the production and was being used as a place to serve drinks and snacks to the cast and crew. Katie was the first one to look the goodies over but she chose not to eat anything at the time. She stayed at the café for only a few minutes and then she was escorted back to the area where the trailers were kept. It looked to me like the rest of the filming that evening was going to take place indoors so I decided to call it a day. More FD set pics
 Testing the bonfire at UCLA
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