Just for the Hell of It -- Episode Eighteen

                               Photo of the Week

                  "Molefay on a combo roller on top of a jeep"
                                  Courtesy of Shittyrigs

(Note:  Today's offering is a real grab-bag (or potpourri, if you prefer twenty-five cent words) of disparate items that didn't really fit anywhere else -- which, after all, is the raison d'etra of these JFTHOI posts.)* 

Sometimes you just gotta do what you've gotta do to get a shot, so you have to admire the pluck, determination, and inventiveness of the crew that came up with this lighting rig, complete with branch-a-lorus throwing a nice plant-like shadow on the background, providing a lovely simulation of light filtering through that palm tree.  

Half the fun of this business is making it work with what you've got -- that's what gets the monkey-brain inside all of us really cranking -- so if you haven't stopped by Shitty Rigs lately, you're missing out.  

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                                 Quote of the Week

"I'm looking forward to looking back on this"

Jersey Bob,  Digital Imaging Technician **

I have no particular reason for posting that quote, but Bob was a consistent source of snappy one-liners during the run of my now dead-and-gone-forever show -- and like that job, he will be missed.  

By me, anyway.

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Here's a very short story I heard the other day that's enough to make any industry veteran cringe.

“Years ago my brother was building sets on a Harrison Ford movie and lost his pager. While Harrison was filming a scene, a pager went off inside a wall. They had to stop filming and cut a hole in that wall to get it out to resume filming.” 

Given that Harrison Ford started out building sets, I can only imagine how this went over…

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I do love the eloquent, thoughtful prose of Mick LaSalle, film critic for the San Francisco Chronicle.  Here's a nice example from his recent review of “Jupiter Ascending.”

“Almost every movie about the future is really about the present. In “Star Trek,” the universe of competing powers — the Federation versus the Romulans and Klingons — was really just a blown-out version of the Cold War, with NATO pitted against China and the Soviet Union.  Nearly 50 years later, Andy and Lana Wachowski make entertainment out of a host of modern anxieties in “Jupiter Ascending,” envisioning a future universe in which a handful of elites control technology and can live indefinitely. Meanwhile, the great masses of people live short, manipulated lives of meaninglessness and doom.”

The future?  "Great masses of people living short manipulated lives of meaninglessness and doom" sounds a lot like our world today -- but maybe that's just here in Hollywood.

And last but not least, a video treat from the good people at HBO, called Talking Funny, a roundtable discussion on the subject of comedy with Louis CK, Jerry Seinfeld, Ricky Gervais, and Chris Rock -- four guys who know a little something about the subject. It's not short -- something over half an hour, as I recall -- but definitely worth your time.  

Especially if (like me), you're not working these days.

Check it out…

* That'll be fifty cents, please.

** To learn more about what a Digital Imaging Technician does, click this.

Part Five: Long Night's Journey into Day

Leaving Las Vegas

                                     Lessons learned…

(This is Part Five of the series -- the finale -- which means you really should read the other four parts first (starting here), lest this tale of youthful blundering and ignorance make no sense at all…)

Staring at the wrecked generator on the freeway in the dark Utah night as the occasional semi roared by… what to do next?  Being deep in the pre-digital Analog Age of the late 1970's -- no cell phones, internet, or any of the other digital baubles so essential to modern life -- our only recourse was to wait.

So we waited, pondering the string of near-disasters that had led us to this point.  This was bad, for sure -- a busted-up genny and no way to haul it back to LA -- but compared to what could have happened during any one of our three fateful encounters with reality this day, we'd escaped with the cosmic equivalent of a bitch-slap. The Gods of Karma threw just enough trouble at us to get our full attention, providing a vivid demonstration of how quickly the shit can hit the fan when an easily avoidable problem is ignored and allowed to metastasize -- but that's all.  

Maybe those Gods actually did have a heart, or at least a sense of proportion. 

It wasn't long before a Utah Highway Patrol cruiser pulled over to see what was going on. The officer surveyed the situation, then radioed for a tow truck to get the genny -- nothing but a road hazard now -- off that highway. Twenty minutes later the tow truck was dragging it to a barren field on the outskirts of a nearby town as we followed in the five ton. While unhooking the wreckage, the driver mentioned that he knew a guy with a forklift who could probably be persuaded to help us out.

"There's a U-Haul yard in town," he said. "If Vern can shoehorn this thing into one of their trailers, you just might get it back to LA."

That sounded like a plan. We found a hotel for the night, then got up bright and early the next morning to call Vern the Forklift Man, who agreed to meet us at the genny and see what he could do -- for twenty bucks. Then we hit the Uhaul office to rent a small trailer, and headed for the field. 

Vern turned out to be a genial, taciturn, and very capable fellow -- the kind of guy who says "no problem" to whatever the situation requires, then gets the job done without making a big deal out of it. He maneuvered the forks under the genny and lifted it into the air... but it was just a little too wide to fit inside the trailer.

"No problem," he said, then unbolted both wheels from the genny and easing it into the trailer, thus earning every penny of that twenty dollar bill. We shoved the wheels and what was left of the tongue in with the rest of the wreckage, and were more or less good to go. 

Granted, we were bleary-eyed with fatigue, running low on cash, and considerably more humble than we'd been just 24 hours before, but it was time finish this long, troubled journey.  

I'd been at the wheel most of the way thus far -- why, I really don't know -- and all that driving finally worn me down. Crashing hard from the combined effects of adrenaline, Jack Daniels,  amphetamines, and very little sleep, I surrendered the wheel to my partner in crime, then slumped in the passenger's seat to watch the scenery go by as we crawled through Utah into Nevada, and finally Las Vegas. Following orders dictated in Sun Valley ("Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke," were the Gaffer's exact words), we returned those thirty-six expensive FAY globes to the rental house in Las Vegas without mentioning that every single one was now burned-out and useless. The Gaffer would have to deal with the family shit-storm once his rental-house relatives figured it out -- which they would -- but our only concern now was to get this truck back to LA.

That final three hundred miles was one long, ugly grind. I slept much of the way, occasionally coming to in the endless dark, then falling back asleep. I finally awoke for good as we passed through the barren desolation of San Bernardino, watching the sky brighten as we rolled into LA. 

In contrast with Day One of our return journey, Day Two ended not with a bang, but a quiet whimper. The owner of the rental house  -- old, fat, and sullen -- stood on the loading dock with a few of his warehouse crew, watching in silence as we pulled into the yard, parked the truck, pulled our bags from the back, then threw them in the car.    

Nobody said a word: not us, not him, not them. That UHaul trailer hitched to the back of the truck -- where the generator used to be -- said it all. 

We were beyond caring at that point, hollow-eyed with exhaustion and done with this job in more ways than one. Fuck the genny, fuck the truck, and fuck the Uhaul trailer -- somebody else could deal with all that.  And apparently someone did, because I never heard another word about it.

It took me years to realize it, but I'd learned more life-lessons on that first distant location job than during my previous two-and-a-half decades on earth. This was only the start of my post-graduate education, of course -- the lessons would keep coming, one after another, as the years piled on. Truth be told, I'm still learning on set to this day, thirty-odd years later. If you're paying attention, the learning never stops.

We met the Gaffer for breakfast at a Denny's in the valley a week later, where he paid us each $750 in cash for those two hard weeks.  Fully rested and recovered by then, I was thrilled. Up to that point, the most I'd made in Hollywood was $65 a day on a cheap commercial for "Lee's Bar Stools," featuring a guy with a chainsaw sawing (what else…) a bar stool in half on camera to prove it was made of real wood.  

Classy, huh?  But you take what you can get when you're starting out, and back then, $750  was a king's ransom to me.**

I never heard any blowback about the generator we destroyed or the great FAY globe burn, and can only assume that the Gaffer and his relatives settled things their own way, within the family.**  Whatever -- that was their business, not mine -- but the lessons I learned on that Sun Valley adventure formed the foundation upon which my Hollywood education would subsequently take shape, and they've served me well ever since. Those were lessons learned the hard way, the kind you don't forget. Ask any industry veteran: one way or another, we've all been there at some point in our careers.  

I went on to work dozens of distant locations over the next twenty years (before retreating to the world of multi-camera shows on stage) and although each was challenging in its own way -- for very different reasons -- there's only one first time for everything.  

Sun Valley was my first, and like the song says, "there's nothing like the very first time."

I wouldn't want to do it again, but I'm glad I did it then -- and survived.

  
* Roughly $2,200 nowadays.

** A little google research and an inflation calculator revealed that the cost of those blown FAY globes back then would be well over $4000 in today's money. That's quite a burn.

Just for the Hell of It -- Episode Seventeen

A Few Random Musings on Writing -- One Juicer's Opinion*

"...it's just me writing about what I know the best way I can, answering to no one."

Richard Price

Other than a brief stab at writing a screenplay forty years ago in a college class -- an exercise I thoroughly enjoyed at the time -- I've never been particularly interested in the craft of screenwriting.  Not that writing for movies or television isn't an exceedingly difficult, highly skilled and eminently respectable endeavor here in Hollywood (and quite lucrative for those who succeed at it), but I've never found reading a screenplay to be much fun.  

And if reading it is no fun, then how much fun can writing a screenplay be?

A screenplay is a blueprint for a movie.  If you're lucky enough to sell your script, that blueprint can then be subjected to the abuse of half a dozen writers the studio will hire to "fix it," then the producers, a director, and one or two of the "A List"  stars cast in the film will have their say as to how your story should unfold. That's how the system often works --  as an escalating hierarchy of involuntary collaboration where the person swinging the biggest stick at the end has the final say.  And that means what winds up on the big screen (assuming it actually gets filmed) often bears scant similarity to the script -- the blueprint -- crafted by you, the original screenwriter.  

But hey, as long as the check clears, no problem, right?  By definition, a screenplay is a product designed and manufactured to sell, because if it doesn't, only a dozen people will ever read or appreciate all the work and creative genius you poured into it.  And absent a sale, you the screenwriter will not be compensated for all that labor.

The same can be said of prose, of course, but with one big difference: prose is the end product.  Yes, there are usually editors to contend with -- I've had two experiences fighting with editors thus far, and both were stressful -- but in the end, what's on the page was mine, for better or worse.  To me, a good book is magic -- in essence, a movie that plays out in my mind's eye, something I can hold in my hands that doesn't require a screen, batteries, software, or anything but a little imagination and enough light to see the page.  

Given how hard it is to write in the first place (which nobody ever believes until they actually try it), and the overwhelming odds against selling any form of writing at all, tilting at the windmills of screenwriting never made much sense to me. My feeling was -- and is -- that if I'm going to endure all the pain and frustration of writing in the first place, I'll damned well suffer in the service of a story I want to write rather than something I think, hope, and pray somebody else might be willing to buy. My aim is to write the kind of stuff I'd like to read, and if other people like it too, so much the better.

Fortunately, the film and television industry is full of very smart, incredibly creative people who are terrific at writing screenplays -- and more power to them. If not for such hard-working writers, there would be no "Sopranos," "The Wire," "Breaking Bad," "Mad Men," "Walking Dead," or any other quality shows.  Those who appreciate good movies and television should be eternally grateful that so many people out there continue to strive hard for the brass ring of Hollywood writing success. 

Another thing: without those writers, I wouldn't have a job.  Details...

I very rarely talk about writing on set or anywhere else (except here, of course), because really, what's the point?  Either you write or you don't, and if you do, your writing pretty much speaks for itself -- or it should.  But on the odd occasion when the subject comes up, someone invariably asks the obvious question: why don't I write scripts?  

I've never been able to come up with a good answer. I just prefer the flow of good prose in reading and writing, that's all, which puts me outside the industry fence.  Screenwriting has always been the default setting in this town, where every waiter, waitress, PA, stand-in, and half the studio security guards are busy chasing the dragon of screenplay success. I admire their energy, pluck, enthusiasm, and commitment, but for so many of them, no other form of writing even seems to exist.  Jack Warner may have said "Writers are just schmucks with typewriters," but the screenplay remains the only form of writing Hollywood values or is willing to acknowledge.**  

Here, nothing else matters. 

Maybe that's why I was so heartened to hear the following quote from novelist and screenwriter Richard Price during a recent Fresh Air interview with Terry Gross.*** 

"GROSS:  So you've been quoted as saying what you really want to do most - that you write for TV, you do movies, but what you really want to do is write novels. And I'm thinking much as I love your novels, why would you be so insistent on writing novels in an age when fewer and fewer people, sadly, read them?"

"PRICE: Well, it's all that crap. The novel is dead. You know, cable took over the novel's purpose. It's just a bunch of nonsense. You know, the novel will outlive us all, will be at our funeral."

"And of all the art forms for a storyteller, everyone that pays better - screenplays, TV - there's a committee over your head that determines what you're supposed to do. You are basically writing for them to feel like, yeah, this is marketable. We can get a maximum audience for this. When writing my books, nobody tells me anything. You know, if I trust my editor and have a rapport with my editor, I listen. And with my current editor, John Sterling, I listen very hard. He was the editor for me for "Clockers" and "Freedomland." But I'm free. I'm to write what I want. I don't have to worry about whether people in Montana, you know, are going to tune into my novel. You know, it's just me writing about what I know the best way I can, answering to no one."

Read that last sentence again -- the same sentence at the top of this page. To me, that's the distilled essence of writing: following your own personal muse, doing the best you can, answering to no one, and hoping what you write might connect with a few readers.

Granted, this is all very easy for me to say, because I enjoy the luxury of not having to write for money. I'm a guy who lifts heavy objects for a living, which makes this screed just one juicer's opinion -- and thus as meaningful as a single grain of sand out on the vast expanse of Zuma Beach.  All those screenwriters with mortgage payments, families, and private school tuition to pay every month are in a very different situation. They absolutely must write to sell as a matter of survival, and for that they have my full respect and profound sympathy -- and because they do what they do, I get paid to light sets.

So God bless you screenwriters, one and all.

If screenwriting rings your buzzer, then by all means swing for the fences -- but first, you might listen to some sage advice from the writer/creators of South Park.  Theirs is an elemental lesson, but those are the most important kind.

Prose may rule in my world, but all prose is not created equal, and -- hard though it may be to believe -- there are a few misguided digi-nerds out there attempting to program computers to write in a creative manner.  "Bot authors," they're called, and the propeller-heads in charge of this benighted effort seem convinced it'll happen one day… and maybe they're right.  I hope not, but sooner or later computers seem destined to do everything for us, at which point there will be no further need for humanity.

Then again, read the example of computer-generated prose (ostensibly the best "short story" a computer has yet come up with) in this transcript, and you'll understand why Richard Price won't be losing sleep over the prospect of cyber-competition anytime soon.

That said, I wonder which major studio will be the first to buy and produce a robo-screenplay?

And of course, every story needs an ending, no matter the genre, but finding a good ending can be elusive.  Beginnings are all fun and games, endings not so much.  Here, in another pithy Martini Shot commentary, veteran writer/producer Rob Long discusses the eternal problem of endings.

And speaking of which, we've arrived at one. 

* Yeah, that's a blatant rip-off of George Putnam, all right…

** Then again, maybe he didn't...

*** Go on, click that link under the photo and read about Richard Price. Once you see what an accomplished writer he really is, you'll understand why his words carry such weight.  

Part Four -- Twenty Miles of Bad Road

The Darkest Hour

                                What now?

Note: Don't expect this to make much sense until you've read Part One, Part Two, and Part Three… 

They say one picture is worth a thousand words, but like most cliches, it's not always true. The photo above -- shot through the windshield at a wide-open, one-second guesstimate exposure by the glare of our rental truck headlights -- does indeed capture the culmination of a long day where everything seemed to go sideways, but although it tells the essential truth of what happened that night, by no means does it tell the whole story.  

Not by a long shot.

Still, it could have been worse, and therein lies a life lesson, kiddos: never forget that no matter how dire the situation might seem in your darkest hour (whatever that may be), things can always get worse -- and if you're not careful, they will.  Minutes before I snapped this photo, the Gods of Karma had just ended their busy day with one last haymaker, a sledgehammer left hook worthy of the late, great Joe Frazier that caught us completely by surprise.  That blow stopped our journey back to LA dead in its tracks, leaving both of us in a much more sober and humble state of mind.

Cue the violins.

Earlier that night…

With a new but considerably less-than-perfect wheel bearing now enabling the genny to roll without the axle melting down and catching fire, we crawled on through the Utah night at a steady fifty-five miles an hour. By now it was clear as beer-piss that the fun part of our Sun Valley/Anita Bryant adventure was officially over, and the road back to LA would be one long grind.  

But we were also aware how fortunate we'd been, and how tenuous the membrane between "everything's fine" and complete flaming disaster really is. Thus far the windshield of the truck cracked, but did not break, then we managed to dodge the long arm of the Idaho State Police (and probable arrest on open-container and/or drug charges) despite an inexplicable and inexcusable lack of registration papers on the truck, and now we'd narrowly avoided having one of the genny's wheels come off while blithely barreling through Utah's scenic wonderland.  Rather than being in jail or marooned by the side of the road, we were still on our way home, with hopes of making LA by dawn.

It's all good, right?

So it seemed. We rolled along at a steady pace, eating up the miles while stopping only for gas and food.  We weren't going particularly fast, but every turn of the wheels brought us that much closer to home.

As the clock approached midnight, the map took us off the smooth highway and onto a very dark and rough two lane road. The truck bounced around like an airplane caught in heavy turbulence, which --  much to the ire of the big eighteen wheeler following close behind -- slowed us down considerably. With no safe shoulder to pull off, and no way for him to pass,  he sat right there inches from our ass for a good twenty miles until we finally reached the lovely, smooth freeway again.  There, that semi blew past us and steamed on into the night.

Good riddance. Still at the wheel, I heaved a sigh of relief and began to relax as we resumed the 55 mph grind.  A minute later, the truck gave a slight lurched as a ball of sparks materialized in the rear view mirror. But as soon as it appeared, it vanished, swallowed by the darkness.  

"What the fuck was that?" my partner in crime asked.  

I eased off the throttle and gently applying the brakes, not wanting to stress that genny any more than was strictly necessary.  With the truck safely parked on the side of the road, we got out to see what had happened… and found only the steel tongue of the genny dragging on the ground, still attached to the truck's hitch.

The generator?  It was gone, baby, gone.

Ho-ly shit...

Leaving the emergency blinkers on, we walked back down that highway until we found the genny by the side of the road, facing backwards, the sheet metal panels bent and twisted like the broken wings of a dead bird. When that steel tongue broke, the genny instantly nosed into the pavement, then flipped and tumbled for a hundred yards before coming to rest -- thus the ball of sparks.

This ugly day, which began so sunny and bright, had darkened at every turn in one long crescendo of ever-deeper trouble -- so now I couldn't help wondering what fresh hell the dark Utah night might have in store for us?  Which is when it occurred to me just how dangerous it was to leave a big chunk of dark metal on the side of that highway at night.  We ran back to pull off the hitch, then backed the truck up and parked it  -- blinkers still flashing -- between the road and oncoming traffic. 

The hard lessons administered by the Joe Frazier School of Higher Education all day long were finally beginning to sink in.  

It was only while contemplating this latest turn of events that it dawned on us just how lucky we'd been this time. The genny could have broken loose at any point on the twenty miles of bad road we'd been bouncing along just minutes before, and with that semi following much too close to avoid it, a crash would have resulted that could have hurt or killed the driver, wrecked the eighteen wheeler, and demolished the cargo it carried…. all of which would have been laid squarely at the feet of two young fools from Hollywood dumb enough to pilot a truck across three states with no registration papers while carrying a half-empty bottle of whiskey and a handful of illegal amphetamines.

It was only by the whim of those fickle Gods of Karma that we'd narrowly avoided a very real  flaming disaster, one that could have done incalculable personal and property damage, and likely sent us both to jail. 

As the saying goes, sometimes it's better to be lucky than good.

It was with a rather giddy sigh of relief that I took the photo above. Yes, the genny was destroyed and our return journey to LA stymied, but this thing could have turned out so much worse. Then again, here we were at midnight in Utah with no way to get that wrecked generator back home.  The question dangled there before us in the dark night: 

What now?


Next: Part Five: Long Nights Journey into Day

The Maysles Brothers

(photo courtesy of Maysles Films)

"Making a film isn't finding the answer to a question, it's trying to capture life as it is."

     Albert Maysles

Albert Maysles died last week.  Although the name might not mean much to the current generation of film students (with the possible exception of those interested in documentaries), Albert and David -- the Maysles Brothers -- were a big deal when I was studying film. They made their mark with Salesmen, a gritty documentary that followed a door-to-door bible salesman making his rounds, then went on to make Gimmie Shelter, which documented the drama behind a free concert the Rolling Stones put on for the San Francisco Bay Area in 1969, where four people died among the vast crowd of 300,000 -- including one man who was murdered by the Hell's Angels. Taking place on a chilly Saturday in December, Altamont served as a dark book-end to a busy year that saw the first man walk on the moon, the start of the Chicago Eight trial, the Manson murders (which scared the hell out of Los Angeles), the legendary good vibes of the Woodstock festival, and finally the ugly spectacle of Altamont as it played out in the bleak gray hills east of San Francisco.*  

If Woodstock marked the high point of the peace-and-love 60's, Altamont pretty much drove a wooden stake through what was left of its heart.

You can read about the Maysles' careers and filmography here, or in any of the obituaries currently circulating... but what you won’t learn there is how they made a living between their documentary projects.  Documentaries are relatively popular now -- with so many television outlets in this Brave New Digital World, a good documentary filmmaker can actually make a semi-decent living these days -- but back then, docs were art house curiosities funded largely by grants from foundations, and seen mostly by social activists and film students.The average movie goer (arms laden down with a giant tub of hot, buttered popcorn and half gallon of Coke) couldn't care less about documentaries in those days.  

So how to make a living among the barbarians? If you can't beat 'em, join 'em -- that's how. The Maysles Brothers financed their documentaries by making television commercials, among other things.  Although I have no idea how many commercials they made over the years, I worked on at least one for Kal Kan dog food, and another for Business Week magazine back in the early 80's.   

At first, Albert and David came across as rather tweedy and reserved, but they were very nice guys with a great sense of humor. They were patient, too -- an essential quality for any documentary film-maker.  Sitting there with a camera on his shoulder, hour after hour, Albert would roll when his instincts dictated as David cajoled the proper answers from a variety of civilian dog trainers for that Kal Kan spot.  I'll never forget walking into the home of one trainer out near Riverside only to have a Whippet sail past my head above eye level, all four legs canted off to one side like a Moto X biker doing some serious aerials at the X Games.  

At six feet tall, I had to look up to follow the flight of that dog...

That's one of the very cool things about this ridiculous business -- you get out in the world to see things most people don't.  It's not always pretty, and not always pleasant, but sometimes it really can blow your mind.

We made the long drive out to Edwards Air Force Base for the Business Week spot, there to film the CEO of Rockwell pontificating underneath one of the four B-1 bombers then in existence. The B-1 program had been cancelled by President Carter, leaving only those four prototypes, one of which was wheeled out of the hanger as a backdrop set for the commercial.**

I was fascinated by airplanes and rockets while growing up, so that day at Edward's AFB was like a little kid being set loose in Disneyland.  Everywhere I looked, another jet would come blasting by every few minutes -- an A-10 Warthog practicing loops, rolls, and simulated attack runs on tank targets, an F-15 doing full-power vertical S-curve climbs, and an F-104 Starfighter flashing past on a low-altitude speed run.  

It felt like they were putting on a show just for me.

The B-1 was a sleek, dark death machine, with all the form-follows-function beauty of a Great White Shark. We set up the camera and lights under the wings, then waited for the talent to arrive. And waited, and waited… which was fine by me; I was happy watching all those jets flying overhead.  The camera assistant, however -- a skinny young man who bore an uncanny resemblance to a youthful Leon Trotsky -- became restless, and decided to snap a few pictures with a tiny 35 mm camera that looked a lot like something a spy might carry. He wandered back under the rear of the plane, then framed a picture of the jet engine's exhaust nozzles.

Seconds later, four heavily armed security police raced up in a jeep to confront the assistant, demanding to know what the fuck he was doing and why. A long, earnest discussion ensued, during which the producer finally managed to convince them that our camera assistant was not in fact a Soviet agent working for the KGB.  

I still run into that assistant every few years, and every time he just shakes his head at the memory of that day.  

The public radio program Fresh Air re-ran a short-but-sweet interview with Albert conducted in 1987, which offers some telling insights into the man as a cinematographer and film-maker.  I wish it was longer -- at only ten minutes, that interview is twenty minutes too short for me -- but it's worth a listen.  

The photo above (from the Maysle's website) is how I'll remember Albert: slightly owlish behind those big glasses, always with a bemused, engaging smile. He was good man and a great filmmaker, and like so many of his passing generation, he'll be missed.

Albert Maysles, November 26, 1926 -- March 5, 2015


*I couldn't make it to Woodstock, but was at Altamont all the way to the bloody end -- just another human cork bobbing along that great seething mass of inebriated humanity...

** Ronald Reagan later cancelled Carter's cancellation, and the B-1 bomber remains in limited service to this day. 

Generators -- Part Three

Trouble ahead, trouble behind…

                                  Now go home…

Note: This post will make a lot more sense if you read Part Two first -- and reading Part One will bring you right up to speed...

It didn’t take long for our luck to turn. An hour out of Sun Valley, the windshield on the five-ton suddenly cracked for no apparent reason, startling the hell out of us with a jagged four foot crease across our field of view. A bad omen, that -- and sure enough, thirty minutes later an Idaho State Police cruiser was on our tail, red-white-and-blue lights flashing. Two cops -- one a tall, older veteran, the other a short, stocky kid who looked like he’d just joined the force -- wanted to see my license and the truck’s registration. I retrieved the license from my wallet, but the registration proved harder to find. It wasn’t taped to the inside of the windshield nor tucked in the glove box... but checking the latter was a tricky proposition thanks to the half-empty fifth of Jack Daniels and small baggie containing half a dozen White Crosses stashed therein.

Strictly for medicinal purposes, you understand -- fuel for the long drive ahead.

I kept searching while my buddy chatted with the cops, but those registration papers were nowhere to be found -- and now the tall cop was asking if we’d pulled over at any of the weigh stations.  

Weigh stations?  Hell, we’d blown right past everything that wasn’t a McDonalds, a liquor store or a gas station ever since leaving Las Vegas. Besides, we’d done most of our traveling at night, when the weigh stations appeared to be closed -- and I say “appeared” because we’d seen every one of those signs for weigh stations, but ignored them out of convenience, a sense of mission, and the fact that we were carrying substances frowned upon by law enforcement. 

I played dumb (hardly a stretch, at that point), explaining that we had no idea a little five ton truck was supposed to stop at weigh stations.

"Those are just for big semis, aren't they?" I asked.

The older trooper shook his head, but seemed to buy our dumb-and-dumber act, deducing that he was dealing with a couple of doofuses too clueless to be real criminals, who thus posed no threat to the good citizens of Idaho -- and the sooner we exited his fair state of famous potatoes, the better. It seemed to help when we explained that the TV special we’d worked on starred Anita Bryant, who had recently created quite a stir in the national news for her public statements critical of gay people. 

Hell, we couldn’t be all bad if we were making a TV show with Anita Bryant, could we?

The junior trooper had been quiet until now, but his body language -- arms crossed, and a cold, suspicious stare -- made it clear that he didn’t think much of us. At just over five feet tall, he was apparently afflicted with SMPD -- Short Man Personality Disorder.   

“What do you for fun down there in LA?” he asked, an edge in his voice.

“The usual stuff,” I shrugged. “Go to clubs, listen to music, meet girls. You know.”

He glared at me for a very long moment.

“I wouldn’t live there for NUTHIN!” he barked, nearly coming out of his shoes on that last word.

Okay...

The older trooper saw the situation veering the wrong way, and had better things to do than spend the rest of his day taking us in, impounding the truck, then filling out reams of paperwork.  

“You boys go on your way,” he said, “but be sure to stop at the next weigh station, understand?”

“Yes sir,” we nodded, then climbed back in the truck without another another word.

That little cop had freaked me out, but in retrospect he did us favor -- it was his outburst and obvious lack of self-control that convinced the older trooper to let us go, despite the fact that we had no papers for the truck.  

I fully intended to follow his orders about the weigh-stations, but as my now-partner in crime pointed out, what was the point of stopping if we didn’t have registration papers?  We'd only find ourselves attempting to explain the inexplicable to yet another Idaho state functionary who could turn out to be less sympathetic than the trooper. Just how heavy the resulting shit-rain might be was unknowable, but neither of us wanted to find out.  

There was only one logical course of action: make a run for the border. 

It wasn't much of a "run" at 55 miles per hour (as fast as our absurdly overloaded truck would go), but the next few hours passed without incident.  Having stashed the whiskey and white crosses in a less obvious hiding place, we rolled along looking at the world through that cracked windshield, managing to make it across the Utah border by late afternoon without stopping at any weigh stations or attracting the attention of the Idaho police. 

Having made our escape, we both relaxed.  I pulled out and passed a beer truck -- the only vehicle on the road slower than us -- but the driver immediately sped up and pulled even with our cab.  

What the hell? Was this clown trying to race? 

No. Unlike us, he was pro behind the wheel, which we realized as he frantically pointed towards the back of our truck. My buddy turned to look, and saw smoke.

Uh-oh.

With a wave to the beer truck driver, we pulled over to investigate the source of that smoke, and found the passenger-side wheel hub of the genny glowing bright orange. This was doubtless due to the six hundred feet of 4/0 we’d figure-eighted and tied-off on that side of the plant -- a great idea while were doing multiple location moves during the shoot days in Sun Valley, but not good for the long drive back to LA. Being greener than fresh spring grass, it never occurred to either of us that an additional six hundred pounds atop a single-axel wheel might create a problem, so now we were out in the middle of nowhere with a melted bearing and daylight rapidly slipping away.   

Another lesson learned the hard way.

The first thing to do was get that cable off, so we strung it out and wrapped six hundred feet of cold, stiff 4/0 as the sun sank lower in the west.  We'd barely finished shoe-horning those six heavy coils into the back of the truck when a Utah Highway Patrol car pulled up.  Fortunately, the patrolman didn't ask for our registration, and once he understood the situation, put in a call to a guy who could get us back on the road. A heavy duty pickup truck arrived twenty minutes later with what looked like a fully-equipped machine shop in the bed. It took half an hour and the help of an acetylene torch, but the mechanic installed a new bearing and left us with a warning to take it easy.

"She's pretty stiff," he said, "but ought to make it to LA. That axle's gonna need some serious work once you get there, though."

We thanked him and handed over a hundred dollars cash, then climbed back in the cab and got underway.  

Darkness was falling, and we had more than six hundred miles to go. 

Next: Part Four --  Twenty Miles of Bad Road…