1. Lead singer David Coverdale lights a Yankee Candle in his dressing room. Drummer Aynsley Dunbar smells something autumnal wafting towards him on set and investigates. He knocks on David Coverdale’s dressing room door and says, “That scented candle smells glorious, mate.” To which David Coverdale replies, “Thanks, mate. It’s Sugared Pumpkin Swirl from Yankee Candle’s new set autumnal fragrance house-warmer jars.”
2. A lighting person suggests that Tawny’s dress is too translucent. Interns prepare charts and pie graphs detailing the gauziness of dresses worn by various video vixens. Analysis is made regarding the translucence of various fabrics.
3. Tawny is initially slated to cavort atop a solitary red Jaguar. After a few days of dress rehearsals and cavorting practice, Tawny suggests that she cavort atop two Jaguars, one black and one white. When Marty Callner halts production and asks, “Why Tawny?” Tawny replies, “I think that would be a powerful expression of existential angst and despair and depict Whitesnake’s philosophical worldview, namely the extreme futility of human life and the inescapable dissatisfaction and decay intrinsic to it. The existential feelings buried in this work achieve their most vocal moments in lines such as ‘Though I keep searchin’ for an answer I never seem to find what I’m lookin’ for’ and ‘Like a drifter, I was born to walk alone ’Cause I know what it means To walk along the lonely street of dreams’ in both of which David seems to contemplate the sense of dread awakened by the obliterating force of death.”
4. After a day of shooting, David Coverdale asks everyone to join him for happy hour at Fuddruckers. The whole crew goes: camera people, lighting people, the guy that squirts the hairspray and blows the wind on everyone. As they’re heading to their cars, they see Tawny Kitaen in the parking lot and ask her if she’s going to Fuddruckers. She says she can’t because her cat is sick. The crew tries to convince her to go to Fuddruckers for “one beer,” and she relents. While there, she gets salsa on the sleeve of her gauzy translucent dress as she reaches for some nachos. Everyone laughs. The next day, Tawny returns to the set. Everyone asks how her cat is, and she, ecstatically, tells everyone that he is 100% recovered.
5. There are lots of discussions concerning crimping. There are pie charts and bar graphs regarding crimping ratios, sizzle rates, and the efficacy of various crimping irons, electric and non-electric.
6. Inspired by David Coverdale’s Yankee Candle, other band members start making efforts to make their dressing rooms smell better. Guitarist John Sykes brings a wicker basket filled with apple and cinnamon stick potpourri. Bassist Neil Murray burns spiced apple scented incense.
7. No matter where you go, Tawny Kitaen is never more than three feet away from you. It’s weird. It’s like there are a fleet of Tawny Kitaens. And she (they) is always being windblown. You walk out of the cafeteria area and Tawny Kitaen’s leg, approximately five feet long with a shiny red stiletto attached, blocks your egress. You turn a corner and yards of flowing toule assault you as Tawny Kitaen’s silk dress inexplicably blows as though in the vortex of a small tornado. You head into the janitor closet to pick up a mop and Tawny is in there giving herself a sponge bath. At every corner, down every hallway, in every restroom stall, behind every camera, at every catering table, there is Tawny Kitaen.
8. At the catering table, as Tawny Kitaen reaches for the tongs to get herself some mini taquitos in the Sterno pan, the flowing gauzy sleeve of her translucent dress catches fire from the Sterno flame. A cameraman douses Tawny Kitaen with a glass of water. Tawny is relieved at not being burned but upset that her hair is wet. Tawny says, “I just wanted some taquitos before they dried out from the Sterno.” A crew member brings Tawny a plate of taquitos as David Coverdale comforts Tawny. David Coverdale mouths “thank you” to the crew member as he holds Tawny.
9. A large tanker truck — the type that typically hauls pesticides and gasoline and other flammable liquids – but this one filled with hairspray pulls up to the set every morning to replenish the kegs of hairspray strategically situated about the dressing and stage areas. The band’s preferred brand is L’Oreal’s Studio Line, but Tawny Kitaen prefers Vidal Sassoon Pro Series Extra Hold. Because buying hairspray by the tanker-full presents such an economic benefit, they compromise and buy tankers of Aqua Net.
10. Guitarist John Sykes makes a suggestion about staging to which lead singer David Coverdale innocuously replies, “I think it’s fine the way it is, mate.” Rebuffed and embittered, Sykes yells, “Of course. We are all mere marionettes in David Coverdale’s Machiavellian puppet show” and storms off, causing the director Marty Callner to shout, “Let’s take five” while Sykes cools off.
11. There is a scare when Tawny Kitaen reapplies her hairspray perilously close to David Coverdale’s Yankee Candle. David holds Tawny. The record label adopts a no candle policy for the remainder of the shoot.
12. There is a feeling in the air that everyone involved in the shoot is participating in something bigger than themselves. Something magical. No one can explain it, and no one voices it, but everyone feels it and everyone looks at each other in a knowing way, like “We are in the midst of something magical and we all feel it but we shan’t voice it.”
14. After the second day of shooting, everyone just instinctively meets at Fuddruckers.
15. After the shoot, guitarist John Sykes gives the cast and crew his old guitar picks. They cherish them.