File: Movie Set

Close-up.

How to transform your basement into a movie set bar in an hour or less:

1. Look at basement. Panic about painting the wall or using wallpaper.
2. Have spouse suggest using faux wood paneling.
3. Drive to Home Depot. Buy faux wood paneling at $17 a piece, totaling $38.
4. Roll twine cart to the outside cutting station, where it should have been in the first place. Use twine to strap wood paneling to the top of your tiny, tiny Scion XA. Drive away as children point.
5. Unload panels into basement. Drop spouse off at local grocery store to pick up Mexican saint candles, plastic tablecloths, and diet 7UP, although diet ginger ale would have been preferable, especially if your principal actor is a diabetic.
6. Cut panels to fit basement. When spouse returns from grocery store, apologize for all the holes you're drilling into the brand-new walls. Laugh together.
7. Send spouse upstairs to brew coffee to turn the diet 7UP into beer.
8. Hang walls. Hang window.*
9. Spouse, once upstairs, will realize that she has no idea where the coffee is. She'll come up with the idea of using diet iced tea instead, noting that it is also sugar-free. Spouse will also gather the six-pack holder of Mike's lite Hard Cranberry Lemonade and place salt and pepper holders, a napkin, and plastic utensils in it. Spouse should also collect empty bottles, the two cans of Miller Lite you keep in the house just in case, and bottle caps to give the actors something to play with. Spouse will also put pub glasses in the freezer to create frosty mugs, corral the cat, and bring all of this down to the basement. Stare at spouse in awe as she attempts to feed you Cheerios because your hands are too dirty to touch food.
10. Have spouse peel the illustration of the Virgin of Guadalupe off the candle. Say a small prayer in thanks. Experiment with plastic tablecloths. Yellow may not hide the white of the table. Yellow over red looks like a picnic. Red over yellow looks like a magician's table. Choose red because it looks like a bar.
11. Decide you need art. Watch in awe as spouse opens her craft supplies and immediately begins ripping photos of bikini-clad women out of the stock photography books she's kept through four moves for this very purpose. Hang onto wall using duct tape. Open storage bin to get Christmas wreath. Hang on the wall with a screw gun. Apologize again to spouse for holes in wall. Curse yourself for leaving the dart board in the attic of your last apartment. Watch spouse in awe as she breaks one of her cigar boxes, used for making purses, in half to give you more substance on the wall. Hang cigar box lid using screw gun.
12. Spouse will decide that it needs "those warning signs in real bars." Spouse will go upstairs and hunt the Internet for the actual wording, as well as statute numbers. She will choose Alaska's statute number because "it looks like the most realistic."
13. Set up lighting.
14. Have spouse answer the door, twice, to have actors climb two flights of stairs to send them down two flights of stairs to the basement. Send actor down with frosty pub glasses.
15. Mix iced tea and diet 7UP in frosty mugs to create beer.
16. Spouse, in the interim, should print out warning sign, crumple it, give it to the cats to lie on, and decide it needs to be more ragged. Spouse should then douse it in vinaigrette dressing, find that sticky and disgusting, then try and wipe it off the page. This will be unsuccessful. Spouse should wipe harder. Spouse will find that vinaigrette will attract dirt. Have her throw it on the floor for the cat to play with. She'll be struck with a brainstorm to take a teaspoon of tomato sauce and plop it into paper. She'll then wipe it off, creating the perfect stain. Have her run the warning sign downstairs. Allow it to slip out of her hand, get caught in the wind, and fall in the drainage ditch. Have her stomp on it with Chuck T's. This will create the perfect amount of raggedness. Hang onto paneling with duct tape.
17. Hang green screen on another wall.
18. Insert actors. Begin shooting.

* If you know you're going to turn your basement into a movie set, scavenge your alley for windows people may be throwing away. Take window into your basement and cover it in hot green plastic so that you can chroma key it during post-production.