Friday Night Lights

Disclaimer--if you don't care at all about Friday Night Lights, feel free to skip this post.  


Another disclaimer--even if you do care about FNL, I will probably be giving more details about the experience than you would ever care to know.  Too bad, so sad.

So....last Friday afternoon, I went by and picked up my sister, Lindsay, to make our way to the Cotton Bowl for the FNL series finale championship game.

Lindsay had made these fabulous shirts for us to wear to the filming.

Front

Back

Check-in was supposed to be between 6-7 pm.  Linds and I got there a little before 6 and they had ONE check-in table and the line stretched in the concourse of the Cotton Bowl from one end-zone to the other.  Poor planning!  You were supposed to check-in to give them the "release form" and get a ticket redeemable for a meal.  We stood in the ridiculously long (HOT) line for a while and then decided we really didn't care if we got a stadium hot dog or not and hopped out of line.  This worked out in our favor b/c we got seated with the first group of people that had already checked-in--thus we got really good seats.

Linds saved our seats and I left and went to McDonald's to get us some food since we opted out of the Cotton Bowl meal.  Anyone ever been to the McDonald's across from Fair Park??  Let me say that I was not quite as worried about them messing my order up as I was either 1) being robbed or 2) murdered or 3) recruited by the Mickey D's pimp that looked like a cross between James Brown, Snoop Dogg, and C3PO.  Interesting, to say the least.

Anyway, I got back to the CB with our order that was not messed up and we ate dinner in the stands and waited for filming to begin.  Filming didn't start until about 9 pm and prior to filming, the producers played games with the crowd, we watched the "extra" football players learn their "plays", and we just people watched in general.  

Lindsay also took the time to finish making her signs.  :)

They passed out pom-poms and flags.  We didn't get a flag, but the guys sitting next to us let us borrow theirs for a picture.  

When the actors began to come out on the field, the real fun began!  Vince was one of the first.  

And, Buddy Garrity.  LOVE the Buddy Garrity character.  He reminds me of so many dads I knew from my high school.  Plus, he's a Red Raider which makes me like him more.

There was an actual high school drum line, too.  They played and they were really good!

EMMY NOMINATED Kyle Chandler made his way to the field.  He's a doll.  And, here's what I love about this show and cast--they seemed genuinely excited and surprised that so many people showed up for the taping.  All of the cast seemed to truly enjoy the fans.

In fact, for the first 10 minutes or so, Kyle Chandler was walking around taking pictures with his own camera.  I don't know why that struck me as endearing, but it did.  

Once we saw that he was taking pictures of everything, Lindsay quickly flipped over one of her signs and wrote "We {heart} Coach Taylor".  This next picture is him spotting our sign and about to wave.  Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of him actually waving because I was frantically waving my arm off as if I were stranded on a deserted island and had just spotted an airplane......

BUT, I did get a picture of him taking a picture of us.  :)

Here is Coach Riggins (Billy) talking with Luke Cafferty ("Fours") and some crew guy.

Billy Riggins again

This is during the filming of one of the scenes.  Coach Taylor is talking to Vince right before he goes in for a big play.

This is the filming of one of the football plays.  As much as it somewhat looked like football, you just couldn't get past the dozens of other people on the field.  

The crowd got to participate quite a bit during the action plays.  We cheered and booed, but my favorite was the pantomiming (sp?)--silent cheering.  :)

Coach Taylor's signature "take-off-your-hat-and-scratch-your-head".

As much action as there was, there was also a lot of down time while they set up for new scenes.  You know how actors always say on talk shows...."it's really not that glamourous--it's a lot of sitting around!"  Well, now I know why they say that.  Tons of sitting around.  

Sitting around by the "media", too.  

This lady cracked me up.  She had a Luke Cafferty button pinned to her cap.  

Wish I could tell you how the game ended, but I don't know.  Three seconds left and the Lions are down by 5.  They have the ball and filmed a game-ending hail mary play where they both completed and incompleted the touchdown, so we'll have to wait and see! :)

All in all it was REALLY fun.  The downsides were that it was extremely hot and we didn't see Taylor Kitsch (big bummer) or Connie Britton.  I know Taylor Kitsch wasn't supposed to come back this next season, but thought they might bring him back for the finale.  And, I'm not sure if they film Connie Britton's scenes somewhere else or if maybe she filmed the following day (they filmed Saturday, too), but we would have loved to have seen them.  

The upsides were that it was obviously great to see the actors that we did see.  Plus, it was really neat to see how they film the scenes.  There was lots of crowd participation, which made it a lot of fun!

Looking forward to the next season of FNL!