Previously Discussed: The ultra-low budget of Mulberry Street and the decision changing the setting from the Pennsylvania countryside to a small New York apartment to accommodate the budget.

Today: More Script Changes: Casting, stunts, kid actors, animals on set

The film’s writers (Jim Mickel and Nick Damici) continued to refine the script for around six months. A large part of this process consisted of being practical about what was possible with the available resources.

“[W]e pulled out some of the bigger stunts we wanted to do.” Says Damici. While Mickel is quick to add, “I think that kind of made it worthwhile because there were a lot of scenes that were bigger scenes that we never could have pulled off. In hindsight when you look at it you say: we’ll take it out and replace it either with a character moment or … instead of this explosion it’s something more about the characters that would be more affordable and also interesting.”

Another scripting issue came round with the casting of Javier Picayo. Damici knew Picayo from the gym where he teaches. Damici explains part of the appeal of the young actor, “We hired him because he said he had a pet rat. We thought, wow we can use his rat.”

“So we wrote him in with a rat and everything.” Mickel adds.

However, there were problems with casting Picayo. “He was a SAG actor, the kid, so we had to cut his part down. One time we re-wrote him completely out of the script. We said: well, if we gotta pay the kid, [if] his agent’s not going to make a deal with us, then we can’t use him. We cut the kid out… then we read the script and said: no we can’t cut him out. We’ll keep him for two days. So we said: okay after this scene you disappear till the end,” says Damici, laughing.

There was one more snag in the scenario according to Mickel, “[W]e called the day before [shooting] and said, ‘Hey, can you bring your rat tomorrow?’ He was like, ‘Rat? What rat?’ Eventually they got a rat from Harlem which producer, Adam Folke and Mickel explain:

Folke: “Yeah, we bought it at the store. The rat went home with the art director and it now has several babies. They still have the rats, still alive and well.”

Mickel: “No, that one’s actually dead. “

Folke (producer): “Oh, really? The mom died? “

Mickel: “The babies are all alright.

The majority of the rats in the film were real and were the last thing that was shot.

Damieci: “[W]e had a rat wrangler and a rat trainer come in with eight rats for a couple of hours. We built a little set in the office and she was able to say if you put them here, they’ll likely go there. And usually she was not right.”

One of the rats named Sammy actually appeared in The Departed. Damici jokes, “That was our only name actor.”

Next: Solving Last Minute Production Disasters