My Game Plan
by Lauren Baltrus
Being in The Game Plan was an experience I will never forget. I had fun in the rehearsals and a BLAST on filming days. Plus, I made a lot of really nice friends and got to know some famous people.
The director of The Game Plan, Andy Fickman, was one of the warmest and funniest people I've ever met. He cracked jokes throughout the rehearsals, keeping us laughing all the time. I'll never forget the first time I met him, at the audition. He walked down the line of dancers that he had just selected for the movie and shook our hands one at a time. It was such a nice welcome to The Game Plan. We were thrilled.
Dwayne Johnson (“The Rock”, but we were asked to call him “Mr. Johnson”), who stars in The Game Plan, was especially nice to the Boston Ballet students who had been cast in the movie. Once, towards the end of the longest filming day at the Majestic Theatre, we were really tired and hungry, but we still had a while to go until we would be dismissed. As our stomachs grumbled, a few of us complained that we were hungry. Mr. Johnson overheard us and suggested that we help ourselves to the food that was laid out for the actors and Disney crew members. But we had been told that we weren't allowed to take food from that table and we weren't allowed to leave rehearsal to get a snack. Mr. Johnson felt bad for us so he snuck off the stage, grabbed a donut, split it up into pieces, and handed it to us on a paper plate. We hid behind the stage scenery and gobbled up the donut in about 5 seconds. I will never forget that day, and Mr. Johnson's thoughtfulness!
Another famous person that I got to know throughout The Game Plan is Madison Pettis, the 8-year old girl who plays the role of Mr. Johnson's daughter in the movie. She is a big star, but hanging out with Madison on the set of The Game Plan was like hanging out with a regular kid. She was actually nervous about performing ballet in the movie because she hadn't done much ballet before coming to Boston. We helped her put her hair up in her first ballet bun. I became good friends with Madison and visited her when I went to California earlier this year.
Several interesting things happened during my The Game Plan experience: I'll never forget the frantic shopping trip that Laura B and I took the night before we filmed the toy store scene, because the Disney people had called at the last minute with instructions for each of us to bring 3 specific outfits. Another time, a Disney stunt person came to the set to demonstrate how to make a fake fall look real. This was necessary because there's a scene in the movie where Mr. Johnson accidentally knocks one of us down in the ballet studio. We all practiced falling down, and then Bronwyn got picked to be the one to get whacked by Mr. Johnson in the movie! I also had fun practicing with Lily and Bronwyn for the “Burning Love” video that appears at the end of the movie. We were all disappointed when the filming was delayed after Mr. Johnson snapped his Achilles tendon on the football field. When we resumed rehearsals in September, Mr. Johnson's second cousin, “T”, played his body double in several scenes. He was as friendly as Mr. Johnson!
It was lots of fun meeting famous people and being in a Disney movie, but the best part of being in The Game Plan was hanging out with the other Boston Ballet kids. During all of the long rehearsals (and I mean LONG, some of them were over 8 hours!) and several days of filming we spent so much time together -- and became best friends. I will always share this special Game Plan bond with the Boston Ballet girls. We will be friends forever!
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