That part I bought. Perhaps the director feels he is being forced a subpar actor upon him. However I don't get this Jason Patric is a star stuff.

Qualms about the episode aside, that wide crane shot from "Smokejumpers" in the beginning was pretty awesome. Could make a good real-life film.

Just one other question.

They're in the middle of a forest. There is, it seems, hundreds of firemen.

Where are they getting water?

I'm now all caught up this season. This was definitely the weekest episode of the season so far. Everyone just seemed off.

I wonder if they just shot on location of the California wildfires.

I don't mind that they have Jason Patrick in there. I think its meant to be more of a joke that he's a bigger star than Vince and is headlining a blockbuster film. I don't even mind that they skipped ahead what seems to be a year. My problem is that there is enough material for them to have an episode in between two weeks ago and this one. They could have at least had an episode where we find out that Ed Norton dropped out (too bad he couldn't/didn't want to do a guest appearance it would have been great to see him instead of Jason Patrick) and that Vince wanted to squeak into the lead role but the director wanted Jason Patrick. Once again having Vince take a slap in the face before filming. It would have also made a lot more sense to the idea of the director giving Patrick all the lines.

There were 9.

FWIW, I thought he was channeling Wolfgang Petersen more than Herzog.

I thought it was more Herzog, especially with his name being Werner, but I see Wolfgang's personality in there too.

I thought the director was going to throw his arm around Vince and solve a really complicated math problem.

The director says its the first day of production during the dinner scene when he take the stage.

With all due respect where do you people get this stuff? The guy was in one relatively successful film (Head On), a critical darling (Queens Blvd.), a summer blockbuster whose success could have been attributed to James Cameron (Aquaman), and a movie that went straight to DVD (Medellin).

In fact Turtle says that Aquaman 2 did good business in a previous episode. So his participation in the first movie probably meant very little to its haul at the box office.

While I realize that Jason Patrick is not an a-list star he's worked tons more than Vince Chase.

I thought that the fire would never actually be shown. It was supposed to be about the firefighters talking about the fire. I'm pretty sure it was mentioned when the script was first brought up.

Right, but they also said as the script was moving around that it wasn't going to be a tiny indie flick anymore -- the studio saw it as a tentpole.

There was a scene were they panned over a hill, and there were a great deal more than 9 firemen

With the director's Ed Wood attitude to multiple takes, I was thinking Boll.