Blood, Sweat, and Tedium: Confessions of a Hollywood Juicer

Week One

2012-01-29T12:01:00.000-08:00

“Don’t put your foot through a Rembrandt”

Quip from The Unknown Gaffer...

Makeup tables backstage

“It’s a piece of cake,” said the voice on the phone, a gaffer I’ve known for a very long time. “The DP is a great guy who knows what he wants and doesn't try to re-invent the wheel every week. Most of the episodes only have one swing set, and sometimes not even that – our last three shows didn’t have any swing sets at all.”

Given that lighting the swing sets is where the heavy lifting takes place on a multi-camera show, this job sounded like the easiest sit-com money I’d ever make. Not very much money, mind you, since working under a $650,000-per-episode cable contract means getting paid the increasingly common and much reviled cable-rate by a production company feeling relentless pressure from their corporate overlords to wring every last drop of blood from the budgetary turnip.* Unlike my old show, there would be no 48 hour weekly guarantee for the juicers -- I’d get the industry minimum eight hour daily guarantee plus any additional hours worked, and that’s all. Combined with the low hourly cable-rate, that meant a $300 cut in weekly pay, but with my old show more or less on the dust-bin of history and nothing on the horizon for the immediate future, I was ready to take pretty much anything short of an All 4/0, All The Time rigging call.** This job would draw first blood in the New Year and keep my head above water for the entire month of January without kicking my ass.

At this point in my career, that means something. Since making the best of a situation – going with the flow, more or less – comes with the turf in free lance Hollywood, I signed on for the duration.

As it turns out, this show is another product of Disney’s assembly-line comedy machine, churning out simple (and simple-minded) shows made for an audience of kids between six and twelve years old. Most of the cast is well under eighteen, but as the first week unfolded, I was surprised how good they were in front of the cameras. True, we’re not exactly making “Hamlet” here, but these kids fully inhabit their roles, and bring a lot of energy to the set. They've got talent, too, and it's clear that one way or another, they'll be making buckets of money for the Disney Corporation over the next few years.

Not those of us toiling below-the-line, though (not working for the Mousewitz cable-rate, anyway), but the awkward truth is that the low pay had everything to do with my getting this job in the first place. A slot on the crew was open only because the Best Boy hasn’t been able to keep a crew all season long. His juicers would have stayed if the show paid scale, but the minute one of them got wind of a better-paying job, he or she was gone.

The first week was pretty much as advertised, with just one small swing set resulting in three short and easy lighting days. The block-and-shoot day went twelve hours, but didn’t involve much actual work, and the shoot night was over and done in only ten hours. Our DP really is a sweetheart; calm, polite, and a very nice guy, he’s clear and decisive when it comes to lighting the sets. Equally important, he understands what matters and what doesn’t -- he knows when not to "put his foot through a Rembrandt." I’ve worked for him in the past, and always enjoyed the experience, which is one reason I took this gig. In many ways, he’s the polar opposite of the DP I just did 45 episodes with – a cameraman with a similarly great eye, but whose frantic, ceaseless tweaking of the lighting earned him the nickname of “The OCDP.” He’d shoot out of the “Bat Cave” like a Polaris missile twenty times a day to have us add a scrim to a lamp, take it out, pan the head a quarter inch to the right, then put the scrim back. He’d then stare at his light meter, shake his head, and dart back into the Bat Cave.***

There would be none of that on this show, which made it a lot easier to say “yes” to the job.

The gaffer is a very old friend I’ve known since well before either of us got in the business, but if there’s one thing you can count on in Hollywood, it’s the peril of believing the siren song of a smiling man with a silver tongue. Even if he’s telling the gospel truth as he believes it, when he says “bring a book – you’ll need it,” you can bet that sweet promise of a rocking-chair gig will curdle and turn sour before long. That the previous three episodes didn’t include a single swing set between them – three easy-as-pie bottle shows in a row – meant nothing, because the past is seldom prologue in a crazy business where the only guarantee is that there are no guarantees.

That first week was indeed a piece of cake, but it was also the calm before the storm. As I drove home Friday night after our first audience shoot, I had no clue that the easy part of this job was over, or how very different the next two weeks were going to be.

* $650K might sound like a lot to the uninitiated, but my last show – which paid cable-rate in the first season, then bumped us up closer to full scale for Season Two – was made on a $900K per episode contract. Considering that that the average network multi-camera show comes in around $1.5 million per episode (which is still considered a bargain in the upside-down world of television), you can understand just how cheap Disney really is.

** A friend of mine – younger than me, but no Spring Chicken – took such a call last year and ended up wrangling seven hundred pieces of 4/0 through a mountainous canyon for the movie “Super Eight.” The poor bastard won’t make that mistake again...

*** The “Bat Cave” is a dark, closet-sized room where the DP and a Digital Imaging Technician sit all day and stare at a $27,000 flat screen monitor displaying the feeds from all four cameras.

The New Job

2012-01-22T12:01:00.000-08:00

The ropes, brakes, and counterweights at the heart of an arbor system

A new year, a new job, another Monday. I stand in the pre-dawn chill with my work back slung over a shoulder, waiting for the red light to turn green so I can cross Sunset Boulevard without being sent into the Great Beyond by some bleary-eyed commuter lead-footing it to a job he hates but is scared to death he might lose. The darkness is just beginning to fade in the east, the air still and cold. In the fluorescent glow of the corner gas station, a ragged form sleeps on the sidewalk next to a shopping cart filled with scavenged cans and bottles. A filthy, tattered blanket is pulled tight, leaving only an unruly mop of dirty hair to face the world. Once again I confront a living, breathing reminder of just how thin the line can be between a relatively comfortable life and the purgatory of wandering big city streets in a daily struggle to survive – and how fortunate I am to have a job in such troubled times.

Even a cheap-ass cable-rate gig that will run out in less than four weeks. It’s a job, and I’m glad to have it.

The light finally turns green, but I wait a beat and look both ways before crossing. Can’t be too careful in this, the second decade of a very lean and increasingly mean new millennium. A hundred yards down, I surrender my driver’s license to the security guard manning a dilapidated kiosk. He checks my ID against the show’s updated crew list, then returns the license with a red wrist band that will allow me to come and go throughout the day. This doesn’t apply, since I won’t be leaving the studio until our work day is done, but protocol is protocol.

Sometimes you just have to go with the flow.

I navigate around the antique “gate” – a ridiculous hand-operated boom that looks like a prop from an old Groucho Marx comedy – and make my way through the gathering dawn between the big sound stages. Once upon a time this was the old Warner Brothers studio (now saddled with the bland and breathtakingly unimaginative name of “The Sunset Bronson Studios”) before the brothers Warner finally hit it big with "The Jazz Singer" and were able to leave their competition -- the rest of the second-tier “Poverty Row” film studios at the time -- in the dust when they moved to their current studio in the San Fernando Valley.

Our stage is a funky relic of those earlier days, complete with an "arbor system" for hanging and powering the lamps. With an arbor rig (or Fly System), the pipes are suspended from cables and pulleys allowing them to be lowered to the floor, then raised back up once the lamps have been hung and powered. Such systems have long been standard for theatrical productions, but they won't work for sit-coms or episodics, which require maximum flexibility to meet the lighting needs from one episode to the next. This show doesn't use the arbor system as it was designed -- rarely raising or lowerer the arbor pipes -- but simply as the basic pipe grid. To provide the requisite flexibility, the grips hung an additional fixed-pipe rig amid the arbor pipes that can be modified as needed.

This awkward blending of two very different systems creates some problems. On a standard pipe grid, juicers can add or remove lamps without alerting the grips – but with an arbor system, counterweights must be adjusted accordingly whenever a change is made to keep that particular pipe in balance. If that critical balance is not maintained, an arbor pipe can become dangerously overloaded on one end or the other. When the rope lock is released on a seriously unbalanced pipe, the law of gravity can take over with potentially catastrophic results. A grip or juicer unlucky enough to have a finger, hand, or arm caught between one of the fixed-grid pipes and a suddenly rising or sinking arbor pipe could end up in a world of hurt.

The danger is minimal as we hang lamps to light a set, but the tricky part will come when we wrap the entire stage in a few weeks -- and that's when my department will have to work in very close communication with the grips to make sure nothing bad happens.

It's stupid to even have to worry about such things, but this is what happens when the people who make the deals (and the money...) above-the-line don't know a goddamned thing about the actual nuts and bolts of getting a show made. So now it's up to us to make this unholy marriage of two completely different systems work without anybody getting hurt in the process.

That should be interesting.

Still, this grip crew is good, and seems to have the proper attitude. One of them introduced himself as I was inspecting the arbor system. I mentioned "The Jazz Singer," adding "I guess we're breathing the dust of history on this stage." With a quick grin, he put a hand to his mouth and coughed a reply. "We're sure as hell breathing something in here..."

I think we'll all get along fine.

The work day is short when we come in early on Monday. As the troupe of young actors precede the director on set, we hang up our tool belts and head for home. The sun is high as I walk back through the Freedonian studio gate to the real world beyond. At the gas station across Sunset, the homeless man is long gone in search of more recyclable cans and bottles, and another patch of hard concrete for a bed come nightfall.

Such is life in modern Hollywood, where everything seems to get just a little bit tougher every year.

A Matter of Time

2012-01-15T12:01:00.000-08:00

As one door closes, another opens up...

(Paraphrased from a quote by Alexander Graham Bell)

Just three weeks ago this tree was the centerpiece of somebody's home, lovingly decorated in tinsel and twinkling Christmas lights, with a small mountain of brightly-wrapped presents spilling out around the trunk. As the focus of a season celebrating family, love, and togetherness, a Christmas tree represents everything good about the holidays.... and now here it sits, stripped bare in the cold winter light and left out on the street with the rest of the garbage.

There’s an ugly metaphor of some sort in there, but I’m not sure I care to look it in the eye.

The only constant is change, and one of these days each of us will be left out with the trash, figuratively speaking, shuffling off this mortal coil into the Great Beyond. If we’re lucky, a few words will be said, a glass or two raised in our honor, and that will be that. After a respectful moment, the world will turn away and move on as it always has and always will, until the day comes when humanity finally manages to erase itself from this earth. Nothing sustains, nor can the center hold as time marches on.

While back on the Home Planet during the holidays, I watched the television news as a crazy Chechen sporting a pony tail terrorized Hollywood and the surrounding area by setting three dozen fires in cars and apartment buildings over the course of several nights. Meanwhile, a serial killer stalked the homeless community in Orange County, murdering several pitiful souls who had already lost pretty much everything else in life.

Yes, nothing says “holiday spirit” here in Southern California quite like an epidemic of arson and murder...

I returned to the Doomed City of the Future after the holidaze to find a pile of mail on my doorstep, mostly junk –- advertising circulars for businesses and services I’ll never use -- along with the usual stack of bills chanting the same message: Happy New Year, now pay up. Sorting wheat from chaff, I came across a small white envelope with an American flag on the back and a return address for The Neptune Society. Across the front was a teaser apparently designed to titillate my interest enough to rip that envelope open.

“Free Pre-Paid Cremation!” it read, “Details Inside.”

People of Neptune, I’m not quite ready to be shoved into an incinerator and reduced to a small bowl of ashes -- not just yet. And really, are you sure the phrase “Free Pre-Paid Cremation!” makes any sense? If the corpse-burning is "free" then what’s the “pre-paid” bit all about, and if your body-barbeque service requires pre-payment, exactly how is that "free?" Inquiring minds want to know.

So thanks anyway, Neptunians, but don't call me -- I'll call you.

Still, perhaps this serves as a useful reminder that we always have something left to lose until suddenly we don't -- and once that threshold is crossed, nothing else will matter anyway. But until that grim day, hope remains... and right on cue, as I took down the 2011 wall calendar to put up a new one for 2012, the phone rang with a job offer. Yet another low-budget, cheap-ass Disney sit-com at cable rate (20% under union scale and no double-time until the fifteenth hour of work), of course, and with only three episodes left plus the stage wrap, will provide barely a month of work -- enough to make the February nut and put a small dent in the Christmas credit card bills as they roll in with the daily mail. Not a great job, but a job all the same, and if the New Year is to begin with baby steps, so be it. Out with the old and in with the new. As winter leads to spring, the low rumble of pilot season can be heard in the distance -- and that means one thing: soon the Buffalo will return to Hollywood, and the hunting will be good.

It’s just a matter of time.

The Finale

2012-01-08T12:01:00.000-08:00

Our last week on the show was tough. Saddled with the depressing news that there would be no “back nine” pickup, it was hard to feel any real cheer or holiday spirit as Christmas approached. Still, we played out the string in a professional manner, pushing hard right up through the final live audience show-night on December 22. Truth is, we didn't have much choice. Although it would have been nice to enjoy a leisurely conclusion to the season – a “bottle show” using only the permanent sets, and thus requiring no laborious, time-consuming lighting/wrapping of swing sets – that was not to be.

The original schedule called for the final episode to be shot the night of Dec. 23, but it finally dawned on somebody above-the-line that this would force half the show’s writers, producers, and the entire cast onto Christmas Eve flights to the Northwest, Southeast, and East coast, arguably the worst day of the year to battle airport crowds. Accordingly, the shoot night was moved up a day.

Having no desire to make the long drive back to the Home Planet on an Interstate crowded with similarly harried, fatigued last-minute holiday travelers, this schedule change worked for me – but there is no free lunch in Hollywood, and the price this time was doing a full weeks work in only four days, thus putting the entire crew into a full-court press to cram that last show in the can. And far from a sweet little “bottle show,” the season-ending episode turned out to include five swing sets, one of which would be built inside another swing set (something like Russian nesting dolls) after the first set had been shot out during the block-and-shoot day. In turn, that meant the grips, juicers, and set dressing crew would have to come in an hour early to get the new set camera-ready on the morning of the audience shoot.

There would be no rest for the wicked or anybody else this last week.

Following the immutable dictates of Murphy's Law, everything went wrong, starting with that fifth swing set. The plan, as explained to grip and electric, was to build the new set just inside the perimeter of the old one, allowing us to light it using lamps that were already hung and powered. Although we'd certainly have to readjust the aim of each lamp, that wouldn't require a major effort. But -- and there’s always a big “but” in these stories -- the construction dept. didn’t get the memo, and since they have no clue or apparent interest in what all the other departments have to do to make each show work, they built the new set a good four feet off center... which meant all those pipes and lamps were now in the wrong place and had to be moved, pronto.

Thanks for one last nasty surprise, production designer and construction crew – and fuck you very much.

What was supposed to be a quick-and-dirty hour’s worth of lighting turned into a full-on, sweat-soaked, balls-to-the-wall sprint as the grips moved the pipes and we re-hung the lamps to light the new set – and this with the clock ticking down towards shoot night, always the longest day of our work week. Meanwhile, camera, sound, and production enjoyed a leisurely breakfast at the craft service table.

Do I sound bitter? Moi??

It was a crazy day right from the start, with no time for sharing Christmas plans or saying goodbyes to the rest of the crew – that would have to wait for the party after the show. During the audience shoot, lamps that had been working just fine for the past five months suddenly began to act up, burning out globes or flickering intermittently. Season Two was not going down without a kicking and screaming struggle right to the bitter end.... but we put out each fire as it flared up, and waded through the rubble to get the finale done more or less on time.

A minor miracle, that.

The audience didn’t seem to notice. Maybe they thought all our flailing around on ladders between takes was just part of the act. Thank God for the warm-up guy, who managed to keep them laughing all night long no matter what was happening on set.

After the curtain call, the audience was ushered out and we had the Christmas/Wrap Party, complete with a two-drink limit, ceremonial showing of the gag reel, and all those lugubrious, bittersweet goodbyes. Numbed with accumulated fatigue, the whole thing passed in a blur before I knew it, the stage emptying as the crew filtered out into the night. And then it was my turn, stumbling back to the parking structure lugging my work bag, a few presents from fellow crew members, and another seasons worth of brightly-lit memories. Driving through the studio gates leaving yet another show in my rear-view mirror, it was time to face real life again and the holidays – and with no show to come back to, time to turn the page.

Other than what will certainly be an endlessly grueling, hideously depressing presidential campaign, a potential economic melt-down in Europe that could scuttle our own tenuous recovery here at home, and the ever-present threat of another war in the Middle East -– weighty issues far beyond the scope of this little patch of Internet real estate -- I have no clue what 2012 will bring. Enough work to pay the rent, keep my health plan coverage, and put food on the table, I hope. With any luck, a few bright moments will emerge to sparkle amid the inevitable tsunami of trouble. Good, bad, and/or ugly, it will be a voyage of discovery for all of us in Hollywood and beyond.

Good luck out there. I think we’re gonna need it.

The New Year

2012-01-01T12:01:00.000-08:00

"You can’t always get what you want"

By Mick Jagger, with a little help from Keith Richards...

The word finally came down from on high. After three weeks of wondering and waiting -- and just nine shopping days before Christmas – it was official: there will be no “back nine” for my show. Although not officially cancelled, we’re being sent to the purgatory of indefinite hiatus. After an all-too-brief holiday break, we’ll wrap the 250 or so lamps and several thousand feet of cable used to light this show, and by the time we’re done all the sets will have been disassembled and locked away in storage. The studio will then clean the stage from top to bottom to be ready for the next show, whatever that may be.

After 45 episodes over the course of nearly two years, it’s over. So much for my fantasies of riding this sit-com wave all the way onto the sunny beach of retirement.

Our First AD put on a brave face as he dispensed the bad news. Flanked by our two main stars (who together represent one third of the executive producer corps), he insisted that we have a good chance of coming back sometime later in the year, maybe June or July... or September... but no matter how much lipstick the three of them tried to smear on this pig, it was still a squirming, stinking, shit-stained hog. If the network was truly committed to this show, they’d have ponied up the money to finish out the season, but at this point they haven’t even bothered to air any of the fifteen new episodes -- and this despite a ratings spike for the Season One finale that doubled the viewing audience. Logic would seem to dictate they keep a hot hand rolling and put the new episodes on the air before all those viewers find something else to watch.

But that’s normal, down-to-earth human logic, and thus does not apply. Network logic pulsates and hums at a rhythm and frequency inaudible to those without keys to the executive suites above-the-line.

Granted, we were never a big hit – maybe a million viewers per week – but these little multi-camera cable shows are cheap to make. With numbers good enough for the network to invest over forty million dollars in making those 45 episodes, why not keep the ball rolling and crank out another nine or ten to complete Season Two?

I really don’t know. Maybe there’s been a shift of some sort up in Mt. Olympus, where the Network Gods plot and hatch devious schemes against one another without any thought to how their Machiavellian machinations might roil the lives of those hapless mortals toiling below-the-line. It’s entirely possible that whoever backed my show up there was stabbed in the back during some high-stakes turf battle, allowing some other show to live on while we slide into oblivion. Whatever the cause, I put our odds of returning for Season Three on the far side of slim to none.

Still -- when I step back for a little perspective -- we did shoot 45 episodes over the course of two seasons, which works out to a roughly 22 episode per season schedule enjoyed by successful broadcast network sitcoms. It’s not the 100 episodes we all hoped for, but as the great English philosopher Mick Jagger once pointed out, “You can’t always get what you want.”

Ain’t that the truth – but this 45 episode run was considerably longer than any other show I’ve had the good fortune to work on.* I can’t really complain about that. Besides, the second half of Jagger’s famous lyric evokes the world-weary hope that is the voice of experience: “But if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need.”

Indeed.

I’m not particularly worried about finding another job. With pilot season just around the corner (and I’m hearing this one is going to be a monster), something will come along – it always does – but I do hate the idea of no longer working with this crew; the grips, set dressers, prop dept, sound, camera, hair and makeup, and production staff. They’re a wonderful collection of very interesting people, all of whom now scatter to the four winds in the eternal quest for fire – paying work – that is the cross every Hollywood free-lancer must bear.

I’ll see some of them again, no doubt, but even if this show does rise from the dead like Lazarus late next year, most will have found other shows by then. That's how it is in Hollywood. Whatever happens, the next crew will likely be very different.

And so the pale sun rises from the east over a Hollywood rendered in the bleak, gray hues of winter. For the moment – and with a lump of network coal dangling in the bottom of my Christmas stocking -- I face the New Year like so many Americans these days, unemployed.

Again.

May we all get what we really need in the months to come.

Happy New Year.

* As a member of the core crew, anyway. I was a regular day-player the last two seasons on “Will and Grace,” but not part of the core crew. At Christmas, that meant watching everybody else load Apple computers, gift baskets of wine and cheese, and five hundred dollar gift cards in their cars at the end of the night. Hey, at least the DP – a great guy – gave me a bag of his wife’s homemade peanut butter candy so I didn’t go home empty-handed.

The Best Boy Hat

2011-12-11T12:01:00.000-08:00

Back to juicing with "Mels Muff Ball" (don't ask...) on shoot night.

Note: This will likely be my final post until the New Year -- with the holiday crunch on, we've all got better things to do than read (or write) blogs as the clock winds down on 2011. I might put up something quick if inspiration strikes, but don't hold your breath. Meanwhile, thanks for tuning in and for all your comments over this past year. May the holidays be good to you, and the New Year bring a bright new day to us all.

Merry Christmas.

Returning to LA and work from a brief visit to the Home Planet was a little different this time. With my show’s Best Boy out of town on an extended holiday for a few more days, I drew the short straw to fill in until his return, assuming a role that once upon a time – twenty-odd years ago -- felt as comfortable as an old shoe.

Given a choice, I prefer the clean, simple dance with Newtonian physics of juicing to the logistical hassles and paperwork that define the job of a Best Boy, but you take what comes in this business. Last season I filled in for the Gaffer for a week while he was gone, so this season I strap on the Best Boy hat for a few days. Given that I’ve been around long enough to be somewhat more useful than the average hall-call, stepping up when necessary seems to be my role on this crew.*

I certainly appreciated the bump in hourly pay and ten-hour guarantee a Best Boy receives, which added another three hundred dollars and change to my weekly paycheck. In this era of myriad cable rates and the Balkanization of union scale, every extra dollar makes a difference. To quote the immortal Humphrey Bogart as he poured a glass of champagne in the film classic Casablanca: “This sure takes the sting out of being occupied.”

Another bonus -- paperwork and dealing with equipment is a hassle, but it’s considerably less physical than juicing, so I didn’t take the usual beating meted out by each episode: no cuts, bruises, metal splinters or low-impact (but painful) head-bashing that comes with the job of hanging and powering lamps up among those unforgiving steel pipes. Truth be told, I didn’t raise so much as a bead of sweat during those three days... but the downside was having to stay on the floor while the juicers did all the work. I’ve never been good at standing and watching other people work, and every now and then just couldn’t help myself: I’d hop up on a ladder to rig a light and keep things moving.

But not for long; a Best Boy can’t afford the luxury of getting distracted by the ongoing flow of work. He (or she) has to keep track of and support the working crew while taking care of all the other Best Boy duties on a television show -- and for me, it’s that constant racking of mental focus that takes the most effort.

Once upon a time I was happy being a Best Boy. Back in the good old/bad old days of low-budget location features, the Best Boy gig meant I didn’t have to spend all night in a condor or endure the endless tedium of doing “coverage” on set – all the little shots from every angle the director wants (and the editor needs) after the master is in the can. Once my presence was no longer required, I’d head back to the truck to prepare equipment and/or run any cable needed for the next scene, and perform routine maintenance on the genny.** If there was nothing pressing to be done, I’d sit down and write a postcard to whatever girl was waiting for me (or not) back in Hollywood at the time.

Those were primitive days, kids -- no internet or cell phones back then.

I enjoyed a degree of autonomy the juicers and gaffer lacked – while they were stuck on set grinding out the cinematic sausage, I could come and go. So long as I made sure the gaffer and crew had the proper equipment ready to go when and where they needed it, I was pretty much on my own. If that meant getting a PA to drive me sixty miles into town to burn an entire morning checking out the equipment from a local rental house (and seeing a lot of the countryside along the way), so much the better. This was one of the few perks available in that low budget world.

Things are very different now, especially in the strange little cloister of multi-camera sit-coms. The Best Boy on our show pretty much sits at his desk in the “Gold Room” all day – the cramped set lighting office our crew shares on stage – ordering and returning equipment, keeping the paperwork straight, and fighting with the UPM about what equipment the budget will or won't allow. Meanwhile, the television flickers all day long with sports and trash TV... That kind of job is definitely not for me. As long as I can still climb a twelve step ladder and perform the gymnastics that come with getting the job done in a man-lift, I’ll stick to juicing. If the day comes when I can no longer do that safely, then maybe I’ll have to transition back to being a Best Boy.

But not until then -- not if I can help it.

I needed all three days to once again feel truly comfortable in the Best Boy role, and by then it was over. It had been different and kind of fun, but I was happy to have our regular Best Boy return in time to fill out the weekly time cards -- a task I’ve always hated. Off came the Best Boy hat and on went the tool belt for the blocking and shoot days.

And that was just fine with me.

* A “hall call” is a warm body sent out by the union when a Best Boy is unable to fill a slot with someone he knows. Hall calls can be surprisingly good, so-so, or really bad. Because of that uncertainty – and you never know who or what you’ll get -- calling the hall is usually a last resort for most Best Boys.

** On some of those low-budget shows, I was the rigging crew -- and with no real transpo department, it was often up to me to install fresh fuel filters and do periodic oil/filter changes on our genny as time permitted.

The Great Wheel

2011-12-04T12:01:00.000-08:00

Although I’ve never been a fan of Monday mornings, this last one was looking pretty good for a while. Answering the alarm in the bleak pre-dawn darkness was grim, but I felt a lot better pulling into the studio parking structure an hour later. We took a 6 a.m. call to light the swing sets for the new episode, and everywhere I went that day – our stage, the commissary, lamp dock, and production office – were people I know and like. There was lots of smiling, joking, and laughter as the morning unfolded. After a week off for the Thanksgiving hiatus, it felt good to be back in harness making another episode and earning another paycheck. To sweeten the pot, the actors came in for rehearsals before noon, at which point we were wrapped, walking off the stage into a crisp, sunny Southern California day. I felt great on the bike ride back to the parking structure.

I had no way of knowing then that the Angel of Death was hovering over the studio, or that on this lovely Monday morning one of the studio’s rigging grips lay dying on the cold tile floor of a bathroom.

In essence, a major studio is a machine built for the purpose of manufacturing feature films and television shows, a machine that runs smoothly thanks to a hard working core group of people who form the living, breathing infrastructure of the lot. More than that, each studio is a village of sorts where everyone more or less knows everybody else. Among the many departments that keep the machinery of the studio lubed and synchronized are the grip and electric rigging crews, who prepare sound stages for every new or returning show. Among other tasks, the rigging grips hang green beds (for the lucky shows) or pipe grids (for the rest of us), while the electric rigging crew runs cable to power back-lot “location” shoots, and installs/removes the massive dimmer packs required by every show these days.

I've done time on the rigging crew, and although grip and electric remain distinctly separate worlds, we’re constantly rubbing shoulders working from stage to stage. I’ve seen the same handful of rigging grips for years, and by now we know each other well enough to indulge in the good-natured ribbing that helps take the edge off a tough, physically demanding job. The rigging crews are good people, and it hurts to lose one of them. The tight-knit grip department was particularly hard-hit, but everyone in the studio felt the blow. It didn’t matter that I only knew him by his first name -- he was somebody I’d said hello to and joked with several times a month over the past decade. His death rocked the studio like a sonic boom, reverberating down every office corridor and sound stage, leaving an aching, uncomprehending void in its wake.

The details of his passing raised disturbing, unanswerable questions, but what matters now is that our little village has lost one of its own, a man with a wife and two kids, a man who was always smiling and flashing a wonderfully quirky sense of humor -- a man who was old enough to have lived a lot, but much too young to die.

Ours is a physical business where tragedies can and do happen. I’ve seen things go terribly wrong on set, and hope never to witness that again. Looking beyond the earthly tragedy of this man’s premature death, I struggle with the uncomfortable fact that at the very moment I was enjoying an unusually good Monday, a guy I knew and liked was having the absolute worst day of his life.

I'm not sure how to make sense out of that.

Such is the conundrum of our dust-to-dust existence on this little blue marble spinning through the unfathomable emptiness of space. The messy business of living and dying has never been easy to understand, but in one of those poignant symmetries so often served up by modern life, one of my show’s young grips became a father that very same day. As George Welch Jr. left the trials and tribulations of this world behind, Blaise James Ruffner took his first squalling breath, a reminder that although the void remains -- and throughout the studio the wound is raw – life does go on. Ready or not, the Great Wheel keeps on turning.

Rest in peace, George.

George Welch Jr.
1968 – 2011

Land 'o Links

2011-11-30T12:01:00.000-08:00

Just Do It

They didn't follow the rules. Why should you?

I'm not a big fan of blog posts laden with links. A link or three that further illustrate a point is fine, but when every sentence is riddled with glowing patches of hypertext, the smooth flow of prose is disturbed and I start losing interest. That said, I'm often guilty of link abuse, and rarely so much as today. Black pot, meet the black kettle. But sometimes you've just gotta break the rules...

After a holiday week of overindulging in rich food and drink, are you fed up with reading/hearing/watching anything having to do with the terminally over-hyped Douchebagian family? Me too. I remain thoroughly baffled by the Douchebagians, having no idea who the hell they really are, how they became so famous, or why anyone beyond their obsessively narcissistic selves and the cloud of opportunistic flies hovering around them (agents, managers, and other assorted parasites) could care one way or another about their “reality” shows, clothing lines, fragrance products, or benighted celeb-u-tainment nuptial extravaganzas.

Seriously – who gives a shit about these look-at-me fools?

There are much better ways to spend your time, starting right here. Pay attention, kids -- I’ve been makin’ this list and checkin’ it twice...

KCRW’s The Business has been on a roll of late, including this fascinating interview with Werner Herzog -- who at the outset of the show promised to speak for exactly thirty minutes and not one second more. Herzog is a unique individual in the independent film world, crafting films nobody else would even consider making, and he’s learned a lot in the process. Accordingly, he has much to say on the subject -- which he does by running his own quick-and-dirty film school on a highly irregular basis, teaching a limited number of carefully selected students lessons on how to pick locks and forge film permits, among other things. The latter skill, Herzog claims, proved crucial in enabling him to finish his surreal epic Fitzcarraldo.

His advice to young would-be filmmakers is to avoid the system altogether and go to work doing any job that will earn ten thousand dollars over the course of six months to a year, then go out and make the film using cheap modern digital technology.

Whatever your involvement with Hollywood or the film/television industry at large, you’ll get a kick out of Werner Herzog. Having walked the walk over the past forty years, he’s earned the right to talk the talk – and there’s really nobody else quite like him.

The Business ran another interesting interview with Mark and Michael Polish, who more or less followed Herzog's template in making their new film For Lovers Only, shot in France on the very thinnest of shoestrings. They pulled it off in a manner that would make Werner proud, and their efforts should give any young wannabe hope that although the Hollywood system is indeed rigged against outsiders, you don’t necessarily have to play by the house rules.

Yet another recent half hour of The Business features an interview with Roland Emmerich discussing the long and winding road he traveled to put his new movie Anonymous -- at one point considered unmakeable -- up on the screen. Whatever your feelings about Emmerich, his movies, or the endlessly vituperative debate as to who William Shakespeare really was (not having studied this contentious issue, I have no dog in that fight), hearing how he overcame the many obstacles between script and screen is an interesting and instructional story. You don’t always have to like – or agree with – somebody to learn from them.

There's a common theme to all these interviews: if you really want to do something -- like make movies -- don't sit around waiting for some higher power to discover your true inner genius so you can then dazzle the world. Get off your creative ass and make it happen.

Otherwise, "it" might never happen for you at all.

It's the self-starters who make a difference in this world, regardless of the field -- those who refuse to play by the establishment rules, wait their turn in line, or take "no" for an answer. Those people carve out their own destiny, and sometimes achieve spectacular artistic and/or commercial success in this town and beyond. Rule-breakers can bomb in an equally spectacular manner, of course, but failure stalks all creative endeavors, including those that toe the line. Doing anything in this town is a roll of the dice, so if you really want to make your own films, what have you got to lose?

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates didn't follow the rules. Neither did Orson Welles, Steven Soderbergh, or Quentin Tarrantino -- instead they broke the mold and got it done their way. Welles paid a horrendous price for daring to buck the system, but in the process reinvented modern cinema, and for that earned his place as a Hollywood legend. Roland Emmerich might only be a legend in his own mind, but he makes a good point in his interview: "A moving train is more interesting than a train that's standing still" -- meaning that momentum is important. It's easier to attract backing for a project already rolling toward the starting gates than get people interested in a brilliant idea that has yet to venture off the page.

The lesson: get your project moving and make it happen.

And finally this four minute meditation from Rob Long, who once again explains how and why Hollywood works the way it does. His is another voice of experience, so listen up. You just might learn something.

That’s all for this week. Remember, only 24 shopping days left...

A Time to Worry

2011-11-27T12:01:00.000-08:00

The Network giveth and the Network taketh away...

Thanksgiving means many things to many people -- returning to the hearth for the traditional family feast, gathering with an impromptu family of fellow "orphans" marooned far from home, or simply hunkering down to dine alone, brood on the past, and pretend it doesn't matter.* But for those of us who toil in trenches of television, the last Thursday in November raises one crucial question: will my show get picked up?

“Yes” means maintaining a decent income for another three or four months, while a thumbs-down will send the entire crew back on the dole of unemployment just as the holidays drown us all under a tsunami of consumer spending. When your show doesn't get picked up, you’ll be scrimping on everything while day-playing for dollars until pilot season finally revs up in March.

I’ve been there more times than I care to recall, and it’s not fun.

There are lots of smiling faces around the studio lately, as show after brand-new show gets picked up for “the back nine,” giving those lucky crews a full slate of 22 episodes to keep them working well into March of 2012. Without clearing this hurdle, every new or returning show is doomed to the ashes-to-ashes fate that has sent so many to the funeral pyres of Hollywood over the past fifty years.

The bad news came to some good friends of mine just a few weeks ago – their show got the axe while in the midst of a Friday shoot day. The producers were waiting with grim faces as the crew filtered back from lunch, and after the meeting, they all had to go about the business of grinding out the seventh (and last) of what had been twelve scheduled episodes. I’m told the show-runner didn’t take it well – that he broke down and cried right there on set in front of everybody.

Ouch, babe.

That cancellation is a fact of life in the television biz doesn't make it any easier to take. When you sign on for twelve episodes, part of your brain starts putting every one of those future paychecks in the bank -- even though you know better, you start thinking of that money as yours -- so it’s a serious gut-punch when the rug is suddenly jerked from under your feet. It's also a severe test of the free-lance credo that having one door slammed in your face really does mean another one will open soon.

Sometimes that magic works, and sometimes it doesn’t.

The thing is, once you’ve planted your flag in Hollywood, life on the bubble is part of the deal. If you need job security, go work for the tax man or an undertaker -- those people will never go hungry.

The news usually arrives by Thanksgiving. Thus far the back-nine pick-ups have far outnumbered cancellations at my home lot, but the show I'm working on remains stuck in the netherworld purgatory of who-the-fuck-knows? As the clock runs out on our scheduled fifteen episodes – eleven down, four to go – we’ve had no word one way or the other. Meanwhile, the smiles on set grow thinner and a little more brittle every week.

It’s better to live with the uncertainty and retain hope than have the axe fall, of course, but the not-knowing inevitably create a vacuum... and nature does abhor a vacuum. With Thanksgiving approaching, that vacuum was filled by rumors. The most hopeful of these has us closing down for six weeks at Xmas, then coming back in mid-February for a pick-up of nine or ten additional episodes – or as happened last year, another fifteen . That’s the rumor I like, but there’s a darker narrative floating around that says the network will wrap production as scheduled at Christmas and won’t bring the show back – if it comes back at all – for six months.

Six fucking months??? A lot can happen in half a year, none of it good. In a town fueled by the power of foreword momentum, six months is an eternity. If we shut down for that long before any of the new episodes have even aired, I have a hard time believing we'll ever come back. It’s possible, of course – hell, anything’s possible – but each passing month pushes the odds ever further from the pale winter sun of “slim” towards the dark yawning abyss of “none.”

Even if the show does return for another short season in June or July, the entire crew will need to find paying work in the meantime, and such post-holiday jobs will be scarce until pilot season rolls around in late February and March. All of this makes for a rather poignant “holiday” season approaching, complete with lumps of network coal in our fireplace stockings -- the grim prospect entering a New Year rendered in the bleak gray hues of unemployment.

“So it goes,” to steal the signature line of an infinitely better writer than I’ll ever be. If you make your bed in Hollywood, you really do have to sleep in it. But the wild-card kicker is that we never know what’s coming around the bend, nor is there any way to suss out which of these rumors will morph into tangible fact. Sometimes that slamming door actually does lead to something better.

“Time will tell,” mom used to say, and as usual, mom was right. But time is running out. Thanksgiving has come and gone, and the news – good or bad - will arrive soon.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

* Having done all of these over the past three decades, I can attest that each has its up and downsides -- but the best description of modern Thanksgiving I've ever read is right here. It's only 800 words, and well worth your time...

Error

2011-11-23T12:01:00.000-08:00

Breaking the The Fourth Wall

I should know better by now. Having been burned more times than I care admit by the eccentricities and bugs in Blogger, I know damned well only a fool dares to compose and edit a post on-line using the domain host for this and a million other blogs. I’ve learned the hard way to do all the writing and editing off-line on my computer, then when everything is just right, log on and post.

Because if I don’t – if I walk out on that very thin ice and start dicking around with the words and syntax while trusting Blogger to save all those editing choices – that ice will eventually crack and leave me floundering in the dark, cold water. When it comes to saving edits on-line, Blogger is as trustworthy as Lindsay Lohan out on bail.

Which takes me to last Sunday. Having teleported back to the home planet for the holiday week – which just happened to coincide with my shows final hiatus – I tried to ram and jam the Sunday post onto the blog. But it wasn’t quite ready, and I knew it. So I started fixing things, cut a word here, paste a sentence over there, then reassemble the verbal infrastructure to accommodate all those changes. It took a lot longer than I’d anticipated, flipping back and forth between “preview” and “edit” modes, being careful to save each new and improved version as I went. Long about seven p.m. – many hours after I’d planned to post – it was finally ready for prime time. I hit the “publish” button and waited.

And waited...

Conditions are rather primitive here on the Home Planet -- no streetlights, wood heat, rabbit-ears television reception (meaning my 12 inch portable cathode ray gun can display one of three channels if and when conditions are right), and slow-as-a-tortoise dial-up internet.

I don’t know if it was Blogger or my lousy internet connection, but something fucked up. After a full minute staring at a blank screen, I clicked the “back” button and found the post in edit mode... only none of the edits were there – Blogger didn’t save any of them. All that work hammering the post into shape had vanished into the ether.

Back to square one, I threw in the towel. It was late, I was tired. Time for wine and food and staring into the fire. Fuck the goddamned internet...

And that’s why there was no fresh post last Sunday.

Now, three days later, I go back to look at that post and it just pisses me off. I see all the problems I’d fixed, but no longer recall the solutions. Essentially, I have to start all over again, and right now simply don’t have the energy. Thanksgiving looms, and then the long haul back to LA and four more weeks of work before we shoot episode 15 – the final scheduled show of this year – on December 22. Add in the frenzy of Christmas bearing down on us all like a big black steam train festooned with tinsel and colored lights, and it looks like energy will be in short supply as the clock runs out on 2011.

Maybe I’ll knock the post back into shape by next Sunday, and maybe not. Right now that seems unlikely -- just looking at that post depresses me. When that stops being the case, I’ll sit down and get the work done ... and I’ll damned well finish the editing off-line before entrusting my post to the not-so-tender mercies of Blogger.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving, all of you.

Oops

2011-11-13T12:01:00.000-08:00

(Photo by Ben Margot, AP)

"To err is human; to forgive, divine."

Alexander Pope

No matter how careful we are, no matter how many times we remind ourselves to check and double-check, we all screw up from time to time. Everybody does. Ours is a highly imperfect world heavily populated with equally imperfect human beings – and anytime humans are involved, mistakes will be made.

After a long and tiring blocking/pre-shoot day recently, I slogged home through the LA gridlock, poured a glass of wine, and began preparing a simple dinner. While chopping an onion, a cosmic snowball suddenly came howling in out of the ether and smacked me right upside the head. My knife froze in mid-air.

I’d fucked up.

I tried to reassure myself that my blunder was no big deal, but the more I thought about it – and after a few seconds of gear-spinning cogitation, this was suddenly all I could think about – the worse it got. A brain fart at the end of the day led me leave a dozen or so practical fixtures in one of our swing sets still burning after we’d clocked out and left the stage.* Although the total wattage involved was minimal (two or three hundred watts, max), even a small incandescent lamp can be a fire hazard if left burning in the wrong place at the wrong time.** Given that we weren’t due back on stage until the following morning, those wall sconces and small table lamps would be burning unattended on set for at least twelve hours before anyone on the set lighting crew could turn them off. If just one of those lamps had been left too close to filmy drapes hung on a set wall built of thin, highly flammable wood, a fire could eventually ignite and do considerable damage before the stage sprinkler system doused the flames. Although the sound stage itself could survive such a disaster, the combination of fire, smoke, and water would certainly ruin our sets and all the furnishings, and possibly much of the grip, lighting, and camera equipment.

This worst-case scenario (and I’ve always been a worst-case-scenario guy) was grim indeed. A dark vision unfolded in my head -- driving to work the following morning to find a mountain of sodden, smoldering wreckage inside our sound stage. Not only would I be out of a job, but so would the entire crew – and all because of me. Even if the show were to rise like a phoenix from the ashes with new sets on another sound stage, my services would certainly no longer be required or desired. I’d likely be banished from that studio, forced back to the unforgiving world of day-playing on whatever shows would have me. At my age, cobbling together enough work days to survive, let alone hang on to my union health coverage, would be a steep hill to climb.

In reality, such an apocalyptic scenario was unlikely, but having left the door open to the possibility, I was staring down the barrel of a long and troubled night. See, it’s all right for others to make mistakes occasionally – hey, they’re only human -- but for reasons that would require a psychiatrist to fully unearth, it’s not okay for me to fuck up. I expect myself to cover all the bases at work and make sure that nothing under my control slides off the rails. That’s just not supposed to happen.

But it did, and now I had to fix it.

There were a host of contributing factors to this particular fuck-up. Our show labors under an exceedingly tight lighting budget, and with five swing sets that week – including sets built within sets – we’d been pushed to the limit. Lacking enough dimmer circuits to run all our lamps and the swing set practicals, we’d resorted to using two home-built “Socco-Savers” – each with six household dimmers running off power from a single plug – to free up half a dozen Socapex circuits for lighting the sets.***

The downside of this was that responsibility for adjusting the on-set practicals then shifted from the dimmer operator to the set juicers, who ordinarily don’t worry about adjusting -- or killing -- practical fixtures. Socco-Savers are generally powered via a Socapex circuit so that the practicals will still go off when the dimmer operator kills the power to that set, but in trying to save every possible dimmer circuit for our lamps, we’d powered both Socco-Savers from a studio wall plug not under dimmer control -- and that meant somebody had to remember to unplug those units at wrap. Since the Best Boy had to leave work a little early that day, that somebody was me.

And I forgot.

Leaving the onions half-chopped on the cutting board, I called the Best Boy and explained the situation. He agreed to call the studio’s electrical shop (where a real electrician is always on duty so long as any filming is taking place on the lot) to take care of things. With the problem solved -- and potential disaster averted -- I went back to my dinner preparations and bottle of wine with a clear conscience, secure in the knowledge that the stage and sets (and my job) were safe. I slept easy that night.

The next morning, I headed in a little early, grabbed a cup of coffee and a doughnut at crafty, then found the set dressing department’s Lead Man carting away the last of the swing set furnishings.

“The practicals were off this morning, right?” I asked.

“Nope,” he said. “I had to pull the plug and let ‘em cool down for a few minutes before I took the bulbs out.”

That was a sobering moment. It turns out I’d “slept easy” with my clear conscience on the thin ice of a Fool’s Paradise after all.

I don’t know what happened with the studio electrician, and didn’t ask. Maybe he had a busy night taking care of the several episodics shooting late that evening, and never got around to checking our stage. Since nothing bad resulted -– another bullet dodged -- it doesn’t really matter. Luck was with us both that night, so no harm, no foul.

That doesn't excuse me, of course, nor does the fact that nobody else on our crew remembered to check those practicals at the end of the day either. Since I was standing in for the Best Boy, the weight of that fuck-up rests squarely on my shoulders. If Alexander Pope was right, any forgiveness must come from a higher source.

Still, such near-miss experiences serve a useful purpose. The important lesson to absorb is that none of us -- newbie or veteran -- can afford the kind of complacent assumptions that might leave your crew in the position of depending on someone outside the department to cover their asses. Don't let that happen.

I certainly won't. Whether covering for the Best Boy or not, I won't leave that stage again at the end of the day without doing a quick walk-around to check every set.

Call it a form of penance if you will, but refusing to make that same mistake again is the only way I'll earn my own forgiveness.

* “Practicals” are the table lamps, floor lamps, chandeliers, and sconces set decorators can’t seem to get enough of...

** An incandescent bulb is really nothing but a tiny toaster -- complete with glowing white-hot filament -- encased in a very thin glass shell.

*** Socapex is multistrand cable that comes out of a dimmer pack and ends with a "breakout" consisting of six individual circuits, each capable of powering a 2000 watt lamp.

Yes or No?

2011-11-06T12:01:00.000-08:00

It all depends...

(This is a follow-up to last week’s post concerning the value of knowing when to say "enough")

Over at The Hills are Burning, AJ recently posted a few rules of the Hollywood road for Industry below-the-liners under the general heading of “You’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do.” Her list is brimming with hard-earned wisdom that any wannabe or newbie griptricians would do well to absorb... but I’d offer a caveat to one of AJ’s nuggets:

"I may be tired and want a day off, but when a call comes in for work, I'll take it anyway because who knows what great things this job may lead to."

This is certainly the right approach most of the time -- suck it up to do a good job, meet and impress a new crew, and come away from the experience with a check in the mail and further opportunities for future employment. That’s how you expand your network of contacts and eventually move up in the business. The one exception I'd add to that rule is when you’re too tired to bring your “A” game to the job -– if for whatever reason you really do need that day off -- then you might think twice before taking the call.

When a Best Boy or a UPM you've never worked for calls out of the blue, it’s usually because he/she got your name from a trusted source, which means you’ve begun to build the foundation of a solid reputation. That's a very good thing, but a budding reputation is a lot like a fragile young plant breaking through the soil into the sunlight -- it must be carefully nurtured to take root and grow strong. Your mom was right when she warned “You don’t get a second chance to make a first impression,” so when you take a job with a new crew, you'd better be ready to deliver. If you show up tired, cranky, or otherwise unable to work up to your usual high standards, you may be blowing any further chance to work with that particular crew. Not only will the Best Boy (and his entire crew) conclude that you’re not nearly as good as advertised, but you’ll have burned the person who recommended you for the job in the first place, thus making him-or-her less likely to throw your name in the hat for another gig.

At best this represents a squandered opportunity, and at worst, you might have done yourself some real damage. Other than getting paid for your work -- always a plus -- that's a lose/lose outcome. Ours is a performance-based Industry where reputations live or die based on word-of-mouth. Given that word travels fast in this business, if the buzz is that you're an unreliable quantity (for whatever reason), your working reputation -- and income -- will suffer.

I torched a couple of bridges early in my career by getting greedy and taking calls when I was too fatigued from overwork or had indulged in way too much fun the night before. Hard drinking and chasing women (or whichever gender floats your boat) on a school night is something most young workbots are going to do -- hey, what’s the point of living if you can’t have some fun? – but timing is the issue here, and heavy partying the night before working with a new crew can be a huge mistake.

There's a potential bonus in having the discipline to decline a job you're not rested and ready for (assuming you turn it down the right way) -- the Best Boy who wanted to hire you will suddenly understand that your services are in demand. If he thinks that some other BB already nabbed you for a gig, then maybe you really are as good as your reputation.

This kind of defensive subterfuge might sound like a stretch -- and it's not something you want to make a habit of -- but I have reason to believe it worked for me early in my career. In any event, it's better to skip a job and preserve your good reputation than stumble through the day and make the Best Boy wish he'd called somebody else. Sometimes discretion really is the better part of valor.*

It's always a judgement call -- only you know what you're truly capable of, and the only real way to find out is by doing it. When first getting started or still finding your Industry legs, you'll take every paying job that comes along. That's what I did, and in the process, learned what my own limits were by pushing the envelope. When I pushed too hard, I tried to learn from those experiences and not make the same mistake again.

Instead, I found lots of brand new mistakes to make... but such is life, a bruising process from start to finish.

The instant nature of modern communication makes it hard for young griptricians (and other budding below-the-liners) to make a truly thoughtful yes/no decision. Pagers and telephone answering machines were the latest in must-have technology when I was getting started, allowing a relatively fat cushion of time to ponder the pros and cons before returning a work call. Nowadays, a Best Boy marches right down his cell phone contact list to hire the first person who answers, or else texts everyone on that list instantaneously and waits for a return text/call. In the modern heat of the moment, making a considered decision isn't easy, so most young juicers and grips just say "yes" and hope for the best.

Still, choosing wisely -- taking the pulse of all relevant factors at the moment -- can make a big difference to a newbie on the way up. So the next time work (or life) is coming at you hot and heavy, allow a moment to think when your phone rings with a job from a new source. Hard as it is to say "no" to any work, if you're not ready or able to give a full hundred percent to that new employer, you might be doing yourself a favor by letting it go.

* The proper quote (which I didn't know until looking it up) is "The better part of valor is discretion," from Henry the Fourth, by William Shakespeare.

The Tuna Run

2011-10-30T12:01:00.000-07:00

“You take more than you probably should, but do so because you'll never know when an opportunity like this will come by again.”

The Hills Are Burning

On a Monday afternoon a few weeks ago – our first heavy lighting day of the week – the Best Boy called in a couple of extra juicers to help us rough in the new swing sets. Both had worked with us before, but one of them looked unusually tired, as though he hadn't gotten much sleep.

“Rough night?” I asked.

“Nah,” he yawned, rubbing his hollow eyes. “This is my fourteenth day... or maybe the eleventh. I can’t really remember now.”

By that he meant he’d been working fourteen straight days (or eleven) without a break – going from job to job, day after day, right through the weekends.

It’s happened to all of us who toil in the salt mines of below-the-line Hollywood: a stretch of non-stop work where one job ends just as the next begins, hopping from one gig to the next in a giddy cascade of call sheets and time-cards that starts out feeling like a new Gold Rush but usually winds up more like the Bataan Death March. This is one of the hazards of life as a free-lancer, where we're all slaves to human nature. As the naked apes who long ago fell out of the trees into a feast-or-famine world of fear, danger, and scarcity, we never evolved a hard-wired ability to know when to say when -- we just keep taking while the taking is good, because sooner later the vast herds of buffalo will disappear, that rich vein of gold will play out, and those scaldingly hot dice suddenly will go cold. No matter how sunny and fat things might be at any given moment, the free-lance workbot knows damned well that the bleak gray dawn of another lean winter is always just around the corner.

A gaffer I met very early in my career – a man who took me under his professional wing and taught me everything I would need to succeed in set lighting – had a term for such an avalanche of good fortune: he called it the “Tuna Run.”

Bear in mind this was nearly thirty-five years ago, when “Tuna Run” referred to a crude but effective method of catching those big fish prior to the advent of modern industrial fishing. When a tuna boat found a huge school of fish boiling near the surface, a row of strong-backed men stood shoulder to shoulder on the rail yanking increasingly large tuna out of the sea using only a hook and line attached to a stout wooden pole. They worked at a furious pace, pulling fish after fish on deck until the holds were full or the ocean was empty*

For those who come from outside the system, getting started in the free-lance world of Hollywood is a tough slog. After struggling through those rough early years that form the crucible of every Industry career, the concept of “enough work” does not apply. There’s just no such thing. To a struggling young free-lancer, work is what sun, water, and fertile soil are to a growing plant: it's life itself. Without work, we slip towards the bottomless black abyss always waiting at the shadowy edge of our imagination, hungry to swallow us whole.

The notion of work as precious commodity is burned into your brain during those hard early years, molding your outlook into a reflexively fear-based survival mode. You relax a bit as the years pass, but even when you reach the point where work comes with minimal effort, you never really forget. The Fear is always there, just under the surface, so when the Gods of Hollywood send a big wave of dovetailing jobs your way, you hang on tight with a white-knuckle grip -- both hands -- until that wave finally hits the beach.

And it will. Hollywood has a gravity all its own -- what goes up will come back down -- and there's usually a price to pay for cashing in on a long Tuna Run. Most of the time that means getting sick with whatever bug is going around, but in a business that routinely requires driving to and from far-flung locations all over LA during the course of some very long days, the consequences can be deadly.

The danger isn’t limited to bleary-eyed driving after a long day, though. The gaffer I mentioned at the top of the page – a big robust guy who was also one of the smartest, most erudite and articulate people I’ve ever met – finally caught a Tuna Run even he couldn’t handle. In the midst of working a brutally long string of big budget music videos all over the country, he headed for the airport to catch a plane and scout another shoot in Las Vegas. Pausing to buy a hot dog on the concourse prior to boarding, his heart locked up. From the reports I heard, he dropped like a steer under the slaughterhouse hammer. A few hours later, in the fluorescent chill of a nearby ER, he was dead.

Just a few weeks from his 45 birthday -- with a wife and three kids to support -- he had literally worked himself to death. I was a gaffer too by then, so we hadn't seen each other or worked together for a while, but it turns out he had this one last lesson to teach me: even the strongest of us has limits. We push the envelope at our own risk. It's a lesson I haven't forgotten.

There will be Tuna Runs to catch as long as a free-lance film and television industry exists, and hungry below-the-liners will take full advantage. Such is the nature of the Hollywood beast. Just remember that if you push yourself too hard for too long, something has to give. Getting sick is one thing -- we can all handle that -- but no job is worth dying for.

We all need as much work as it takes to keep our increasingly complicated and expensive lives afloat, but when you catch a solid Tuna Run, keep one ear tuned to that quiet little voice inside. It can be hard to hear in the fatigued state of survival mode, working day after day after day -- but if your inner voice finally whispers "enough," pay attention.

Your life could depend on it.

* If this sounds like more sepia-tinted nostalgic bullshit about the good old days when Men were Men, check out this rather astonishing Utube clip. Be patient, though – it starts out slowly, with the kind of sternly lurid cock-in-hand narration typically heard in NFL Films documentaries about the Green Bay Packers -- but once it gets going, the action is fast, furious, and eye-opening. You’ll get a glimpse of a world and way of life that doesn’t exist anymore, and just might find yourself wondering if you could do what those guys did. More to the point, you’ll understand exactly what a Tuna Run really is...

Great Expectations

2011-10-23T12:01:00.000-07:00

There's a terrific interview with Bryan Cranston over at Mark Maron’s WTF. It’s a long one – a solid hour of good stuff (Cranston) preceded by fifteen minutes of Maron hurling F bombs, discussing his cats, and taking an on-air phone call from a very strange comic pal (definitely not for children’s ears), but it’s worth wading through all that juvenilia to reach the interview.

Any fans of “Breaking Bad” or “Malcolm in the Middle” – both ground-breaking shows in their own unique ways – will enjoy Cranston's story of how he got into acting in the first place, the rough early years (including being sought by the police in Florida as a murder suspect), and how he finally hit his stride to become one of the more successful and interesting actors working today. The road from Hal on Malcolm in the Middle to Walter White in “Breaking Bad” was anything but smooth or direct. This is a fascinating interview, full of great stories well told. Don’t miss it.

One thing Cranston talks about is “not being attached to an outcome” at any point in his career, refusing to set goals aimed at becoming a feature film actor or big star. He just wanted to be a working actor able to make a decent living performing his craft -- TV, movies, theater, whatever. His only stated goal was to do good work and let the rest take care of itself.

What a refreshing attitude. In a world where the painfully-needy craving of blind, insatiable ambition – a mental state so unbalanced that it might require medical intervention in any business other than politics, Wall Street, or Hollywood - is so often viewed as a virtue, it’s nice to hear more modest (read: sane) goals espoused, particularly when the slow-and-steady approach resulted in such a spectacular success.

Ambition is a lot like testosterone -- without enough, most of the human race would probably still be grubbing in the dust for roots and berries, but too much can turn an otherwise normal person into a driven, high-achieving zombie. Although society as a whole tends to reap the benefits of those with big ambitions, the individual involved is often reduced to a hollow shell of a human being.

While listening to that interview, it dawned on me that I came to Hollywood with a similarly determined but unfocused approach. I certainly didn’t arrive burdened with any specific or particularly lofty ambitions. The possibility of becoming a cameraman appealed for a while, but once I'd worked with a few DPs and heard what they went through to get there, my interest in following that path faded. All I really wanted to do was work and learn enough to get good at something directly related to creating that movie magic -- and in the process, find a niche for myself.

That’s pretty much what happened. Although my own checkered career is just a molehill next to the mountain Bryan Cranston ascended (hey, that man brought some serious talent to the table), the drive and ambition to climb higher and do bigger things simply didn’t burn within. You can't push a string. All any of us can do is look deep, trust our instincts, and go with what feels right. If that means aiming high for the Big Prize (whatever that might be), then more power to you. Just be sure that's what you really want, and be prepared to pay the price.

I don’t mean to be critical of anyone with big ambitions – we all have to please the Beast Within, and each Beast is a unique fusion of our own upbringing and individual chemistry – but the career of Bryan Cranston offers graphic evidence that the door to a very good place can open wide for those unburdened by grand and/or obsessive ambitions.

Sometimes the tortoise really does beat the hare.

Still, life isn't a race, nor is a Hollywood career. There’s no prize at the end – there’s just The End – and when it’s over, looking back on a career spent doing good work with good people while making a decent living sounds pretty good to me. Better that than rattling around a big gated estate up on Mulholland Drive like some modern day Charles Foster Kane, looking back on forty years of ruthless decisions and burned bridges while dragging that ball-and-chain of great expectations.

But that's just me. Your path depends on what you want and need out of your Hollywood life -- and there, to each his own.

The Dogg Does Hollywood

2011-10-19T12:01:00.000-07:00

Seriously?

Yet more unmistakable signs that the Apocalypse does indeed draw near...

First came news that the late, great Ed McMahon had signed to do rap videos*, and now the polar opposite shoe drops -- and drops hard -- with the startling announcement that infamous gangsta-rapper and rap-porn pioneer Snoop "Doggy" Dogg (or as the New York Times once referred to him: “Mr. Dogg”) has been slated to do a sit-com.

Wow. Snoop Dogg starring in a family sit-com. I can honestly say I didn't see that one coming.

Wonder if the show will be called “Doggy Style?”

* Okay, so this particular news item happens to be three years old, shortly preceding the passing of Ed McMahon. Sometimes the Wheels of the Apocalypse grind exceedingly slowly.

And sometimes they don't...

Menda City

2011-10-16T12:01:00.000-07:00

Lies, lies, and more lies...

“You said it yourself, Big Daddy. Mendacity is a system we live in.”

From Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

I hate to lie. Always have, ever since I was a kid. Maybe that’s because my mom drummed the mantra “Honesty is the best policy” into my head as I grew up, or that the penalty for youthful lying – or getting caught, at least -- was a bare-assed spanking from the heavy hand of my Dad. Still, I fudged the truth enough over those early years to learn how complicated life can become when one lie leads to the next until the whole creaky structure collapses under its own compounded weight.

Mom was right, of course – normal life tends to run a lot smoother if you just tell the truth and man-up to the consequences. Then again, she never had to work in Hollywood, where lying pretty much is the norm.

Still, there are lies and there are lies. Last Sunday’s post pointed out how a timely and otherwise inconsequential lie can be exactly what the situation calls for -- but don’t push your luck. As The Anonymous Production Assistant recently advised, newbies and Industry wannabes should be very careful about inflating their resumes with bald-faced lies. Enshrining such mendacity in the black and white of print is seldom a good idea.

That doesn’t mean a newbie should stick to the Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing but the Truth all the time, though. The best piece of advice I brought with me to Hollywood was “Don’t be afraid to make a fool of yourself.” With that in mind, on my very first day as an unpaid PA thrilled to be working on an extremely low budget movie, the producer asked if I’d ever driven a five ton truck. “Sure,” I blurted (the first of many lies I would tell in my then-nascent career), and half an hour later found myself sitting in the cab of that massive truck at the rental yard pondering the intricacies of a five speed manual transmission equipped with a two-speed axle. I grew up driving stick-shift cars, but until then the biggest vehicle I’d ever piloted was a Volkswagen bus. The prospect of navigating this bulky leviathan through the crowded streets and freeways of Los Angeles was terrifying.

Fear can be a highly effective motivator. Facing my first Hollywood crisis, I confessed my ignorance to the rental clerk, who gave me a quick primer on how and when to use the red button to switch between low and high range – a simple mechanism that effectively doubled the five forward gears to create a ten speed transmission – and soon I was piloting the massive beast back to the production office in the San Fernando Valley.

During the next two weeks of pre-production, I drove that truck all over LA to pick up, load, and unload furniture with the set dressing crew. The experience was an education in and of itself. Among other things, I learned that large vehicles share a secret brotherhood of the road in the fearsome traffic of LA. Riding high above all those pesky little cars, the drivers of city buses, eighteen wheelers, garbage trucks, and big delivery vans act as blockers for each other, holding the cars at bay to allow another truck or bus to make progress through the gridlock. Soon I was doing it too, helping my elephantine brethren out as we battled traffic together. The cars had speed and maneuverability, but in that lumbering five ton, I had sheer bulk on my side – and sometimes size really does matter. Thirty-four years later, I still recall the sweet sound of screeching brakes and an angry horn blast from the Cadillac I deliberately moved over on after the driver refused to acknowledge my patiently blinking turn signal in the thick traffic of West LA – but the instant he saw that truck swerving towards his car, he got the hell out of my way.

I grinned all the way back to the office, feeling like the King of the Road.

That first Hollywood lie allowed me the opportunity to prove myself to the production team, who then knew that if I told them I could do something, I’d do it.* So when the producer asked if I could synch up dallies as an assistant editor, I didn't hesitate to tell another convenient lie. Having conquered the ten-speed five ton, I was one newly confident kid. Besides, I’d handled lots of 16 mm film in college, so how hard could it be?

Harder than I thought, as it turned out – especially when the camera assistant neglected to clap the slate for a printed take, leaving me to match sound and picture with a set of rewinds, a squawk box/synchronizer, and a moviescope. Putting in twelve hour days under fluorescent lights staring into that tiny screen was a new and humbling experience, but at least I was finally getting paid. Fifty dollars a week.

Although the editing room proved a career dead-end for me, that job allowed me to keep working and getting paid long after the shooting crew was cut loose to look for their next gig. Those several months as an assistant editor provided a bridge to the next stage of my LA adventure, and added further motivation. Sometimes you have to learn first-hand what jobs you really don’t want to do before you can find a better fit. For me, the physical inactivity and repetitive drudgery of those long days in the editing bay were a sign that I needed to go in a very different direction.

Honesty may indeed be the best policy in real life, but sticking to the absolute literal truth can hold you back during the crucial early phases of an Industry career. This business was created by people who weren't afraid to take risks, roll the dice, and deal with the consequences. Although a producer or UPM might admire your honest admission of incompetence (in my case, that would have been "Uh,no, I don't know how to drive a five ton truck," or "Synch up dallies? Nope, never done that..."), the job will then go to the next PA bold enough to say "yes," and make it stick.

"Nothing ventured, nothing gained" may be a tired old cliche, but it's true. Every career move in this business is a gamble, and you can't let a fear of failure hold you back. Just be straight with yourself, at least, and make sure that if everything does go sideways, the only real damage will be to your pride and that particular job opportunity. If boldly rolling the dice entails a serious risk of doing horrendous property damage or getting somebody hurt, step back from the precipice and think again. Don't just close your eyes and leap off the cliff assuming that you'll somehow learn to fly before smashing into the rocks below. Be bold but smart, following your own good instincts, and with any luck at all you'll pull it off to emerge stronger, more confident, and much more employable. If you don't fall on your face too often, taking such calculated risks can eventually lead to learning enough that you won't have to lie anymore -- and by then, you'll have built the foundation of a solid career.

There's no way of knowing what direction my own Hollywood path might have taken had I stuck to the truth during those early years. Maybe I'd be living in the luxury of a gated mansion in Beverly Hills with my third trophy wife by now rather than in the relative squalor of a rent-by-the-month Hollywood hovel. All I know is how things did work out, and I can live with that. I certainly don't advise spewing lies like a politician on the stump in your efforts to get ahead, but sometimes the situation calls for a roll of the dice, stretching the truth, and hoping for the best.

Such is the nature of life in the free-lance jungle that is Hollywood.

* Click here for another tale of lying, failure, and the sweaty-palmed experience of incomplete success

The Little White Lie

2011-10-09T12:01:00.000-07:00

“Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.” Walter Scott

Just don't do a Milli Vanilli...

Note: As always, the following is based on my own experiences working in Hollywood over the years. Your mileage, as they say, may vary – and readers are always welcome to disagree.

The first (and biggest) hurdle confronting most newcomers to the film and television industry is getting enough work to survive. Failing this most basic test means going home with your tail between your legs, which is why finding the next job -- and the next, and the next -- becomes an all-consuming obsession for every Hollywood newbie. Not everyone figures it out. People who truly belong here learn how to get jobs and stay employed, while those who can’t stomach the economic uncertainty endemic to free-lance Industry life eventually move on in search of a steadier source of income. You don’t have to be special to make it here – you just have to want it bad enough, and not everybody does.

There’s no shame in this. Just as everyone isn’t meant for the suit-and-tie straitjacket of the corporate world or the constipated monotony of life in the fluorescent glow of a cube farm, not everybody is cut out for the down-and-dirty end of the film and television Industry. If you’re not, then find something else to do with your life. You -- and everyone else you might otherwise work for or with in this business -- will be better off in the long run.

Once you’ve managed to achieve a certain level of success below-the-line, though, a different problem can occasionally arise: a work call will come in that you really don’t want to take.* You’re available, but just don’t want to accept that particular job. Maybe the gig would require working for a Best Boy, Gaffer, or crew that you’ve had bad experiences with before, or the call is for a low-budget, flat-rate movies-‘til-dawn night shoot that would put you out of action (and thus unable to take a better job) for the next couple of days. Then again, your reason could be more primal -- maybe the hot babe you’ve been chasing for weeks has finally agreed to go out with you on the very day of that job...

Hey, neither man nor woman lives by bread alone, and what’s the point of working if you can’t carve out a little quality time to do some actual living?

I’ve turned down jobs for all those reasons and many more over the years, but the “why” doesn’t really matter. Whoever called you for the job doesn’t care about your needs, your desires, or your life – he/she just needs a body to show up at call time and do the work, and hopes you will solve their problem by saying “yes.”

But what if you want to say “no?”

It depends. Like so much of life, Hollywood operates in a gray zone with very few absolute truths to guide you. If you happen to know the caller well enough to feel secure that he or she won’t delete your name from their list, you might be able to tell the truth and beg off the job. Otherwise, you’ll just have to lie.

“Thanks so much for the call. I’d love to work with you guys, but I’m already booked.”

It’s unfortunate, but admitting you’re available and simply don’t want to work a given job is often a mistake. During the twenty-plus years I worked as a Best Boy, then Gaffer, the one thing I really didn’t want to hear when offering somebody a job was “No thanks. I'm not working, but one day's work will just ruin my unemployment.”**

In other words, the prospect of working on my crew for a day -- and thus further cementing our professional relationship for the future -- wasn't worth the effort. Maybe this says more about me than them, but that kind of refusal just pissed me off. If the person instead turned me down because he/she was already booked for the day, that was fine, even if I suspected the conflicting job might be fictional. At least they'd been smart enough to feed me a lie I could swallow.

It's almost perverse, but telling the lie -- that you're already booked -- makes the best of a bad situation, and can even enhance your reputation in the mind of the caller. Other Best Boys are calling you, so you must be really good, right? The perception of being in demand can help create the reality.

At its core, Hollywood is an elaborate mechanism built for the express purpose of creating big beautiful lies. Acting is a skilled form of lying, writing scripts is the clever, highly organized telling of lies, and for many producers (and virtually all agents/managers) lying is a way of life. Other than straight-out documentaries, the vast majority of productions we help put up on screen are designed to create a compelling fiction – a polite term for the word “lie” -- to enthrall and entertain the viewing audience. Television is the worst, with every program bought and paid for by companies who then pummel the hapless viewer with loud, slick commercials (a lie by any other name is still a lie) every eleven minutes until the show is mercifully over. Given that the entertainment industry as a whole has long been a swamp of 200 proof, triple-distilled mendacity on every level, we who do the heavy lifting can be forgiven the occasional harmless and expedient little white lie.

Nobody will know (or care) so long as you tell a sincere and convincing lie, with the best and only universally acceptable excuses for not accepting a job being that you’re sick, out of town, or already booked on another job. Be sure to thank the caller for thinking of you, and – unless you really don’t want to work for that person again -- tell him/her that you’d love to work with them in the future. Never burn a bridge if you don’t have to. In such a fickle business, a job you don’t want today might be one you’d love to have a year or two from now.

You do have to be careful, though – the expedient lie should be employed only as a last resort. Keep it quick and simple, and don’t elaborate. This is a lot easier when leaving a voice mail message, of course. Telling such a lie during the course of a phone conversation can get sticky in a hurry once the caller starts quizzing you about the details of a job that doesn’t actually exist. Hollywood is a big little town, and getting specific as to who you’re supposedly working for and the nature of the fictional production will exponentially increase the risk of your convenient lie coming to light -- and in this business, reputation is important. You want to be known as hard working and reliable, not a serial liar. Getting caught in a single expedient lie won't necessarily ruin your reputation, but it can't help -- and if you make a habit of telling careless lies, your phone just might stop ringing.

In these hard times, turning down a crappy job is a luxury few of us can afford. Work is work, and one lousy day isn't going to kill you. Besides, you never know what will happen -- I've met some great people on really lousy jobs who would later help me get more and better work down the line. Still, to lie or not to lie is a judgment call depending on you and your individual circumstances. As Walter Scott pointed out (and Milli Vanilli learned the hard way), life is a lot simpler when you stick to the truth -- until for whatever reason, you can't.

And then it might be time for the little white lie.

* With no personal experience above-the-line, I can’t speak to the customs and formalities up there in big-money heights of Mt. Olympus.

** When collecting unemployment, you are required to report any paying work – and the pay for a one-day commercial or going into overtime on a TV gig can roughly equal that weekly unemployment check. So why spend a day working when you can make the same money for staying home? That’s a subject for another post...

Next week: Lies, lies, and more lies...

Off the Hook

2011-10-02T12:01:00.000-07:00

This pay phone on Vine near Hollywood Boulevard is almost enough to make me reconsider my Luddite stance towards cell phones...

I’ve got nuthin’ this week -- nada, zilch, bupkis, zero. With the show in the midst of a shooting five straight episodes (as opposed to the normal multi-camera schedule of three weeks on/one week off) and a Thursday block-and-shoot that requires me to be up at 5 a.m. followed by the Friday night shoot that never allows my head to hit the pillow before midnight, I’m pretty much fried by the weekend.* Saturday is a wasteland of essential chores: washing the mountain of accumulated dirty dishes in the sink, then doing all the laundry, grocery shopping, bill paying and banking required to get me through the following work week. Sundays are better – at least I feel human on Sunday – but enough chores remain to leach away the hours. So where’s the time to write a blog post?

Weekday mornings. But last week was a busy one on the show, each day starting earlier than normal, leaving me very little time to write.

And that’s why there’s no new post for today. Could be more of the same next week as well, but any readers who haven’t taken a walk through this post yet – the “Greatest Hits” more or less – might find something worth reading.

Or not. At any rate, I’ll be back with something new as time allows.

* Granted, this is nothing like the long hour abuse endured by crews of features and episodic television, but most of those people are a lot younger than moi...

Linked Out

2011-09-28T12:01:00.000-07:00

It’s not you, it’s me...

The (supposedly) professional Industry network Linkedin began barraging me with e-mails a couple of years ago, and in a moment of weakness, I signed up. It was something new, and I was curious as to what it was all about – and what I subsequently learned is that for me, it’s of no use whatsoever. I’ve long since forgotten my site password at this point, but the ghost of Linkedin continues to haunt me. Every few weeks I get a request from somebody I've never met (on line or off) to “connect on Linkedin,” an invitation I silently decline. It would be simple to accept, but truth be told, I’m a bit weary of all this social networking. Facebook is bad enough -- changing all the settings around every month or so for no discernible reason other than that young Mr. Zuckerberg apparently seems to enjoy watching us all dance like virtual puppets at the end of his long digital strings -- but Linkedin?

I don’t think so.

What’s worse, Linkedin seems to reach out on its own, without the individual members even knowing about it. When I got an invitation to connect with one of the set dressers on my show last season, I waited until the next day at work to ask her how she used Linkedin.

“I don’t,” she said. “I never sent that invitation. Ever since I was stupid enough to join I’ve been trying to get the hell out of Linkedin.”

That was my “aha” moment. Since then I rarely bother to reply to these invitations. With no way of knowing whether an actual human or Linkedin’s clever algorithm made the request, I see no point. Besides, including me in a list of professional industry contacts isn’t going to do any newbies out there any good. I never was a DP, and no longer work as a Gaffer or a Best Boy – I’m just a juicer now, a lowly Morlock toiling far below the line in the dark shadows of the Industry food chain. For someone I’ve never met and do not know to think that adding my name to their list of Linkedin contacts could somehow help advance their careers is absurd.

This doesn’t mean I don’t care.* I hope all my readers go on to enjoy wildly successful careers in the business, and if you’ve got any questions I can answer, use the comments section or the Gmail link on this blog and I’ll do my best to help out. Just don’t waste your time asking me to connect on Linkedin -- and if you (or more likely, the insidious algorithm) insist, don’t take it personally when your invitation results in the sound of silence. No offense is meant by my non-response, and none should be taken.

Hey, I’m just an old dog who doesn’t have much use for all these bright and shiny new digital tricks.

Harrumph...

* Nor will I ever underestimate the power in a few timely words of encouragement...

The Gears of Karma

2011-09-25T12:01:00.000-07:00

C’est la vie say the old folks, it goes to show you never can tell

(Chuck Berry)

The gears of Karmic Justice generally grind with maddening deliberation in this troubled world, offering little satisfaction for those of us who would rather see wrongs righted with a little more alacrity. Villains usually do get their comeuppance bitch-slaps in the long run, but such justice can take a while to unfold. Meanwhile, bad things keep happening to good people for no coherent reason at all.

Every now and then, though, those cosmic gears manage to produce a very satisfying -- if unexpected -- justice in a more timely manner.

A recent post here discussed the sad side of my show getting picked up for a second season: those crew members who did not rejoin us on stage. Some left by choice, others due to an unfortunate cascade of circumstances, but two of the stand-ins were let go – fired – for stated reasons none of the crew could understand or accept. They were both professional stand-ins who knew their job and did it well, but the Powers That Be way up the production food chain ordered them gone, so they disappeared.*

Hollywood has never been known for loyalty, but this was ridiculous. Those two stand-ins just got hosed, which pissed off everyone on the crew – including, as it turned out, our lead actor, who didn’t learn that his stand-in had been fired until our first day back on set. To this actor’s everlasting credit, he hit the roof, then called the execs responsible on the carpet and demanded that his stand-in be re-hired. The following Monday, that stand-in was back with us on the show.

Stand-ins occupy a unique and awkward position on a production. Neither fish nor fowl, they’re not really part of the technical crew nor are they actual cast members, but they are an essential cog in the machine of a television show. If “their” actors aren’t willing to go to bat for them, they’re shit out of luck – which is why we were all very glad to see justice delivered and this stand-in return to the fold.

But that left the other stand-in – who subbed for our lead actress – out in the cold. Still, those Karmic Gears don’t always grind in a linear fashion. Being very good at her job, she quickly found a new home on a much bigger broadcast network sit-com, where her real talents were soon noticed. Last week she got a major break in the form of a speaking role as an actor on her new show. Finally, this hard working stand-in got a chance to spread her acting wings and fly on screen. For her, this is huge – a major increase in pay for the week and a big boost to a late-blooming acting career that must have seemed like it would never come.

And if she hadn't been fired from our show (however unjustly), none of this would have happened.

Which just goes to demonstrate that in Hollywood, opportunity can come in many disguises. Anything can happen at anytime, and what feels like a soul-crushing disaster can in fact be the sound of a golden door being unlocked and opening wide. If you keep pushing, doing a great job, and showing people what you’re capable of, good things can happen. This is a useful lesson for everyone in this industry -- young or old -- to recall.

Sometimes those Hollywood dreams really can come true.

* If you think that job is easy, you don’t understand what they really do...

The Wednesday Inbox

2011-09-21T12:01:00.000-07:00

An e-mail dropped into my inbox the other day with the following short Utube video titled Film School or No Film School?

Ah yes, the eternal question for which there is no answer.

I didn't go to a real film school, but attended an institution of higher learning that offered just enough film classes to spark my interest, lure me away from the more rigorous (read: useful) fields of academic study, and eventually take me down the glittering road to perdition through all nine circles of the modern day Dante’s Inferno we call "Hollywood." Although a sketchy education in film isn't much help in the art of juicing (indeed, it can be a hindrance if you don't know when to keep your mouth shut), it's nice -- as happened at work last week -- to be able to carry on a conversation with one of the show's writers at the craft service table about the films of John Ford.

Not that this short conversation added any numbers or moved the decimal point on my paycheck mind you, but man does not live by bread alone.

The e-mail was from a recent NYU graduate who has -- with a fellow (if opposite coast) film school grad -- formed what they're calling National Film Society. That's an awfully big name for what seems to be a rather small organization, but hey, mighty oaks from tiny acorns grow. A description of NFS in their own words:

"The National Film Society is a new media studio co-founded by filmmakers Patrick Epino and Stephen Dypiangco, who've decided to take their talents to YouTube. They produce original content, showcase amazing works, interview talented creators and make fun of each other as much as possible."

I have no idea if attending one of the elite film schools is really worth the horrendous expense. It's hard to justify borrowing $120 grand to get a degree in the filmic arts unless you really do have what it takes to become a very well paid writer, producer, directer, or cinematographer-- and I know people who have become all of the above without benefit of a degree from a film school. But if you've got the money and the desire, why not? Especially if after you've spent all that money and still can't get a job, you're able to retain your sense of humor.

As you'll see in Steven and Patrick's short video, they have a lively sense of fun, and don't take themselves too seriously. That, I like. Good luck, guys.

****************************************

More good listening: Monday night's "Fresh Air" on NPR featured two interviews that will interest fans of "Breaking Bad," one with series co-star Aaron Paul, and the second with the show's creator Vince Gilligan, a man who -- as far as I'm concerned -- has been walking on water out there in the New Mexico desert for the past four seasons. Altogether these two interviews are less than an hour, and worth every minute of your time.

***************************************

Yet another e-mail this week alerted me to a blog called Hollywood Oracle. In their own words, "The Hollywood Oracle is committed to delivering informed, insightful advice about how to make a successful move to Los Angeles and work in the entertainment industry."

Advice from those who have walked this path can be useful for any young Hollywood dreamer. Take a look -- you just might like what you find. And if you forget to bookmark it, there's a permanent link under my Industry Blogroll over on the right side of the page.

And those are your tips 'o the week. Check em' out...

The Thrill is Gone

2011-09-18T12:01:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time – a few years out of school with a head full of Hollywood dreams – I loved nothing more than to bust my ass all day or night on set, then hang around the truck after wrap sipping a beer while listening to “war stories” from veteran crew members. Work was fun, with every day on set a new adventure. Later, while working as a Best Boy, then Gaffer, I was one of those telling the stories, but now -- after so many years toiling under the shadow of that big white Hollywood sign -- when my work day is over, I just want to go home. At this point, working on location or in a studio sound stage is just a job.

The thrill is gone.

If this is supposed to bother me, it doesn’t. I’m at least fifteen years past harboring any serious ambitions for this business, and although I didn't get around to everything I'd wanted to at the start, I did a few things I'd never even dreamed of, met a lot of great people, and had some big fun in the process. At this point my only remaining goals are to do a professional job every day, have as good a time as possible with the crew, and make it across the finish line on my own terms under my own power. The latter is not a given. This kind of work is physically punishing, exacting a heavy toll on one’s body over time. I know several fellow juicers who were forced to retire early due to an accumulation of job-induced physical maladies that finally made it impossible for them to answer the bell -- and I’m not interested in joining them in the Permanent Disability Club.

That's why I'm making my last stand in world of multi-camera sit-coms, which is the closest thing I’ll ever find to a safe harbor. But if working these shows is an order of magnitude easier than being tied to the whipping post of episodics or features, that doesn’t mean it’s easy. A lot of lamps need to be hung and powered on that pipe grid every week for a sit-com, and there’s usually only two of us (with some help from the ground crew) to make it happen. This is real work, and it gets harder every year.

Still, there’s something to be said for sucking it up, ignoring the pain, and finding a way to get the job done, whether that means walking the set walls, working atop a twelve-step ladder, or performing the occasional (and highly illegal) EVA when necessary. There’s a very real satisfaction in meeting such challenges – quietly, with nobody else noticing – on a daily basis. It means I can still do the job, pull my weight, and really earn my weekly paycheck.

That much is essential. Should the day ever come when I look around and realize I’m just dead weight on the crew – no longer able to fully contribute – I’ll drop my tool belt for the last time and walk away.

All this doesn’t mean I’m not still interested in what’s going on with the present and ever-evolving future of our industry. I haven’t withered into one of those bitter, don’t-give-a-shit dinosaurs whose sole remaining joy in life is playing Dr. Buzzkill on every job – the sour curmudgeon who’s forever telling everyone in earshot how fucked everything is now and how much better it all used to be back in the good old days -- but there’s no denying that the magic which drew me to Hollywood in the first place has pretty much evaporated into the LA smog. Mostly this is a matter of time and experience -- the cumulative weight of all those years on my shoulders. When you’re young, Hollywood is a bright and shiny place full of endless possibilities, but time has a way of narrowing the horizon and the path ahead. Ride the roller coaster long enough, and you come to know every twist, turn, and stomach-churning drop on those rails -- and along the way, where all the bumps and bruises are.

But you also learn to adapt to the unique rhythms of each job, how to pace yourself over the course of brutally long days, and -- most importantly -- you learn what matters and what doesn't on set. When to walk and when to run. You also learn to deal with change – and I’ve seen a lot of changes in this business over the years. If things weren’t necessarily better back in the day, they were a lot simpler when most stage and location productions ran on Direct Current electricity, and carbon arcs were the state-of-the-art BFL. Film ruled the movie and episodic television world, while video was left with the sloppy seconds of sit-coms, soap operas, game shows, news, and sports programming. Alternating Current now dominates the film and television industry*, HMI’s and high-output fluorescent lamps are standard equipment for location filming, and the digital video revolution has shouldered film into an ever-shrinking corner of the biz. By the time I take off my gloves for good, 35 mm film may have joined the daguerreotype on the ash heap of history, and LED based lamps could well be reshaping the foundation of set lighting technology.

The changes have been dizzying, but the more things change, the more they stay the same.** I see this time and again in some of the new Industry blogs that have popped up in the last year or two. Although everything about the Industry continues to evolve at a rapid pace, young people still come to the business with the same enthusiasm and commitment that brought me to Hollywood so many years ago.

I thought about this while reading a post by a recent college grad-turned blogger describing his experiences working with some local pros on an indy film in the San Francisco Bay Area. Having worked in varying capacities on several projects (including extra work), Jessie M. seems to be honing in on Grip/Electric while keeping an eye on a possible future in the camera department. In this latest job, he finally had the opportunity to learn what it means to be a core member of the crew on a real film -– a heady feeling I remember well -- and it seems the young man is now well and truly hooked, for better or worse.

The irony in writing a post titled “The Thrill is Gone” that references another blog post called “The Novelty Never Wears Off” does not escape me, but it's just a matter of viewing the business from opposite ends of the Industry roller coaster. Jessie M. is just starting his wild and wooly ride, while the finish line of my own Hollywood journey looms closer every day. In thirty years, he may understand and share my current state of mind – the thrill fading away – but maybe not. We’re all different, with our own approaches to life and the biz. Still, entering the film and television world is a bit like the experience of young love; a hot, all-consuming fire that feels like it will burn forever. The passage of time cools every fire, but if you manage to avoid the jaded bitterness that afflicts some Industry vets, all that heady excitement can evolve into something deeper and more resonant -- something you can’t even separate from your own self.

The thrill may be gone, but I still walk onto the set with a smile every day. After all these years the Industry really is in my blood -- and if going to work is no longer much of an adventure, it's still a pretty good job. Besides, I couldn’t wash Hollywood out of my system if I tried. This town and the Industry that made it are a part of me now.

That much, at least, is forever.

* Somewhere, Nicola Tesla is dancing on Thomas Edison’s grave.

** Let’s face it, all the clichés are true...

The Wednesday Grab Bag

2011-09-14T12:01:00.000-07:00

A hopelessly lame poster, but the movie might be worth the price of admission for fans of action films...

Picture for a moment a successful movie director known for putting big budget action movies on screen that made lots of money for Hollywood – four of which grossed a cumulative total of more than $700 million worldwide against budgets adding up to $200 million and change. Whether you loved or hated Die Hard 2, Cliffhanger, Deep Blue Sea, or Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master, enough people bought tickets to earn half a billion dollars in net profits for the Hollywood system.*

You’d think a record like that would garner the man a certain degree of respect in this town, but there’s a giant stinking turd floating in this director’s otherwise profitable Hollywood punchbowl: Cutthroat Island, a pirate movie that cost nearly $100 million to make while bringing in only $10 million at the box office -- a flop of such magnitude that it’s now considered the biggest bomb in Hollywood history.**

When this movie came out in 1995, it smelled like like a bomb in the making to me – not because I knew anything about the story or director Renny Harlin, but simply because it was a pirate movie being released at Christmas. Who the hell wants to go see a goddamned pirate movie over the holidays – or anytime, really? Even back in the day when pirate movies were good they weren’t all that good.***

The stink of this bomb has lingered, forcing Renny Harlin to live and work under the dark cloud of epic failure ever since – which provides an interesting background to his latest cinematic effort, 5 Days of War, a drama set amid the chaos of the bloody invasion of Georgia (former member of the Soviet Union) by the Russian military in 2008. The trailer looks interesting, if somewhat predictable, and given Harlin’s resume, the movie probably work well as an action film, if nothing else. I'll say one thing -- the trailer looks infinitely better than the incredibly crappy poster above. If that poster was all I knew about "5 Days of War," I'd never go see the film -- it looks like something from a bad B movie in the 60's.

If that's the best this movie's marketing people can do, Renny Harlin better buckle up for another ride down the Hollywood toilet.

At any rate, the story of how the production came to be filmed on location in Georgia – with a name cast (including Val Kilmer and Andy Garcia, among others) who lived in a farmhouse sharing one bathroom for the duration of the shoot -- is fascinating, as is the recap of Harlin’s up-and-down career in his interview on this week’s podcast of KCRW’s The Business. In the digital age, they really don't make movies this way anymore, and Renny Harlin deserves some credit for pulling it off.

At barely twenty minutes, this one is worth a listen.

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I heard a terrific interview this week with Margo Martindale on NPR's "Fresh Air." I first noticed her in the short-lived "The Riches," a flawed-but-gripping cable drama with Eddie Izzard and Minnie Pearl a few years ago, then couldn't take my eyes off her wonderfully repellant performance as The Worst Mother in the World in "Million Dollar Baby." Margo has been nominated for an Emmy for her spooky-good portrayal of Mags Bennett, the folksy-but-deadly matriarch of a back woods Kentucky family that lives way outside the law in the most recent season of "Justified." As always, she inhabited that role as if born to it.

The Emmys may be something of a trash award (although not nearly so lame as the pathetically hopeless Grammies), but they mean a lot to those who are nominated. Older, heavier actresses rarely get to shine in an Industry spotlight so focused on the young and sexy, and after hearing her story, I'm pulling for Margo to win.

This is a wonderful and surprising interview on so many levels. It's nearly forty minutes long, but that's a good thing -- and it's definitely worth the time.

Check it out. If there's an ounce of humanity in you, you won't be disappointed.

* All figures from the IMDB. I’ve seen none of these movies, and have no idea if they’re any good.

** Thus taking “Heaven’s Gate” and “Ishtar” off the hook.

*** The subsequent (and utterly astonishing to me) success of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” series is yet another example of why I’m a juicer and not making big-buck decisions in the executive suites...

As Seen on TV

2011-09-10T15:53:00.000-07:00

“United we stand, divided we fall. Let us not split into factions which must destroy that union upon which our existence hangs.”

Excerpt from Patrick Henry’s last speech

Tomorrow being Sunday, I should be dissecting some aspect of the film and television business here -- and truth be told, I’d been planning to put up such a post until I noticed the date of this particular Sunday: 9/11/2011.

Ten years after the Day that Changed Everything.

I’ll leave that post for another week. This is not a day to discuss the ups and downs of working in Hollywood or anywhere else.

Much has been written and said about 9/11, with countless television retrospectives airing throughout the week bringing it all back like a stiff slap in the face. Here on the West Coast, I awoke to find the madness already underway -- the first tower down and the second soon to follow. Like everyone else outside New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania, I followed the day-long nightmare through the lens of television, watching those monstrous billowing clouds of death roll down the streets of Manhattan enveloping so many tiny fleeing humans like something in a horror movie. But there was no CGI this time – it was all too real.

The images from that morning are seared into our collective consciousness, joining so many other tele - visions I’ll never forget: the grainy 8 mm Zapruder film, Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald in the belly a few days later, the Challenger explosion, the wreckage of the Marine barracks after that first truck bomb in Beirut, Pan Am 103, and the fiery destruction of the space shuttle Columbia as it broke up entering the upper atmosphere.

So much shocking man-made death, destruction, and misery right there on TV.

All were stunning events in their time, each a gut-punch to every American, but 9/11 was larger still -- big enough to unite us all and most of the civilized world for a few weeks.* Given the social, economic, and political schisms we’re experiencing today, it’s hard to remember the feeling of unity we shared then. The temporary nature of crisis-driven unity precludes any sense of togetherness from lasting long, but it's discouraging to see just how far we’ve fallen from that brief state of grace. A decade later we are united only in our disunity.

That’s not just a crying shame, it’s a dangerous state of things.

But here we are, ten years and counting, still mired in two foreign wars and a “war on terror” without end. Indeed, as the anniversary draws near, the news media is buzzing with “credible but unconfirmed” reports of terrorist truck bombs intended to anoint Sunday with blood by striking another blow to New York and/or Washington. We can only keep our collective fingers crossed that these reports prove false or that the would-be bombers will be caught or neutralized before carrying out their plans. All we can be sure of is that a lot of people are working overtime to make sure nothing bad happens -- and more power to them.

Those at Ground Zero, the Pentagon, and in Pennsylvania ten years ago know the reality of that day ten years ago in a way the rest of us can only imagine. Similarly, those who have served in the military, Foreign Service, or the many NGO’s in Iraq and Afghanistan since then understand the ramifications of 9/11 in a very personal way. The rest of us experienced – and continue to experience – it on television.

I hope it stays that way. I also hope, however futile it might be, that we could stop yelling at each other and put our collective shoulders to the wheel to make this country a better place over the long run. Such troubled times leave us standing at the crossroads holding the future in our hands. If we choose the right road in making sound, reasoned decisions over short-term expediency, we just might work our way out of this mess – but taking the wrong road in succumbing to fear and ignorance will send us down a very dark road from which there may be no return.

The decision is ours, the stakes high.

On this day ten years later, maybe we should recall the words of Patrick Henry. Think about what we share in common as Americans, not those issues that divide us. Should we make the wrong decisions, the resulting avalanche of catastrophe won't be confined to our television screens this time, but will hit us all right where we live.

So choose wisely.

* The only other moment of comparable unity in my lifetime was the first manned lunar landing in 1969, a much happier occasion.

(Pardon this quasi-political interruption in the regularly scheduled programming. We'll be back to normal next Sunday.)

The Money Machine

2011-09-04T12:01:00.000-07:00

Like Randy Newman said, "It’s Money that Matters"

The goal of every commercial (non-PBS) television show -- broadcast or cable, scripted or unscripted, drama or comedy -- is to become a money machine. Once a show attains that lofty status, it can feed a lot of people for a long time. For an actor or producer atop the food chain, that money machine can buy a monster McMansion in a gated community and fill the six car garage with expensive German automobiles. For the rest of us, the machine will pay the rent or mortgage, make the monthly car payment, and keep the fridge full of food. Call it "trickle-down economics" if you will, but everyone employed by or connected to a successful show will prosper so long as the money machine keeps running.

Every successful show – and by definition, any show that earns a second season has achieved a certain level of success – experiences growing pains from one year to the next. If the first season is something akin to a blind stumble through a minefield, the second season feels very different while facing the same challenge of attracting and maintaining a big enough viewing audience to avoid the sudden death of cancellation -- the network’s way of saying “you’re fired.”

Studios will often cut a lot of slack to a brand new show, giving them a break on equipment and stage rentals with the unspoken but implicit understanding that if the show does well enough to reach that second season, the largesse will vanish faster than a five dollar bill dropped in the abyss of downtown LA’s infamous “Shitter’s Alley.”

From the studio’s viewpoint, turnabout is fair play: after helping a brand new show find its legs and stand tall, they expect a return on their investment now that the money-machine has survived to enter a second year on its own two feet.

Production companies don’t always fully understand or appreciate the dimensions of this unwritten deal. Consumed and distracted by the pressures of running the Season One gantlet, they sometimes assume that the same nurturing kid-glove treatment from the studio will continue -- but Hollywood doesn’t work that way, a hard lesson the producers of my little cable show are beginning to learn. Faced with considerably higher second season rental expenses, our UPM has been grinding the grip and set lighting departments hard to minimize costs over the first two episodes. I don’t know for sure, but imagine the other variable-expense departments (set dressing, props, and wardrobe) have been tied to the budget-cutting whipping post as well.

It wasn’t so bad for the first episode, which had only one swing set – but episode two called for four swing sets. Depending on the area involved and the action required, we'll use up to twenty lamps of varying sizes to properly light a modest three wall set, which is why the UPM’s head spun around in a full Linda Blair 360 when he saw the lighting order. He was not a happy man, but there wasn’t much we could do to ease his budgetary pain. Our job is to light every set so that it and the actors look great -– that’s our bottom line -- and if the production company can’t afford it, then something else will have to give.

My guess is money will be pulled from future shows to cover our suddenly-bare asses right now, while the writers are urged to craft scripts that make full use of our existing permanent sets rather than setting scenes in extensive (and expensive) swing sets over the weeks to come. Not that we won’t still need more equipment to tweak the permanent sets as well -- that never stops -- but a few additional lamps here and there are nothing compared to what's required to light new swing sets. Still, this semi-rosy futuristic scenario depends on the writers behaving themselves and doing as they’re told – and anybody who knows writers will tell you that’s a lot like herding cats. It can be done, but believe me, it ain’t easy.

What makes this situation rather awkward is that we on the crew can’t seriously bitch about all this pressure to minimize our equipment because – will wonders never cease -- we actually got a Season Two raise from the standard five-bucks-an-hour-under-scale-fuckyouverymuch cable rate of last season. We’re still not up to full scale, but four additional dollars per hour sweetens the weekly paycheck rather nicely. Although this was rumored to be in the works as we came down the stretch last spring, I never believed it would really happen – so this juicer will not squawk about our shrinking equipment budget. We'll get the job done one way or another in the hopes that a third season -- inshallah -- might finally close that last one dollar-per-hour gap with full union scale.

My little cable show will never be a big network money machine, but even if it isn’t perfect, at least we've made significant progress. In such tough times, when so many people in this country would kill for a job like mine, I’m just happy to be here.

And while on the generally distasteful subject of money, I’m happy to report yet another miraculous occurrence on this job.* Attentive readers might recall my dismal trail-of-tears futility and endless defeat at the week-ending post-show ritual of Dollar Day. My spotless record of failure in this tradition is unrivaled among my peers – everybody I know has won Dollar Day at least once. Not me. Despite the countless one, five, ten, and occasional twenty dollar bills I’ve fed into the big plastic jar over the past thirteen years of working in sit-coms, never has mine emerged a winner. When it comes to serial losing, I’ve been right up there with Al Smith and the Chicago Cubs... until last Friday night when the lovely star of our show reached her delicate, perfectly-manicured hand into the jug of five dollar bills and pulled out the one with my name on it.

Was I stunned? Was I shocked?

Is the bear a Catholic? Does a Pope shit in the woods?

For me, this was right up there with an alien spacecraft landing on the White House lawn, nice guys finishing first, or Rush Limbaugh taking to the airwaves to urge that his legions of followers acknowledge evolution and global warming as accepted scientific fact – in other words, a sure sign that the the world has turned inside-out and the Apocalypse Draws Near.

And so a week that started out rough and only got rougher ended up pretty well. As we head into our first short hiatus -- me with thirty utterly unexpected five dollar bills in my pocket -- I’m beginning to feel pretty good about Season Two.

* I know, it’s bad form and a sign of poor upbringing to openly discuss money, but being abandoned at birth and raised by wild goats in a leaky, drafty barn, I never had the opportunity to learn proper manners at good old Pencey Prep. I have thus labored under this crass and splintery cross ever since...

The First Week

2011-08-28T12:01:00.000-07:00

It's all hard, but the first week is the hardest.

I walked on stage early Monday morning to find a brand new and considerably larger set for Season Two of my little cable show. The pipe grid hanging above those new sets was empty, a bare steel skeleton ready to be rigged with a dense array of stirrup hangers, lamps, meat-axes, flags, and teasers -- but for the moment, only a thin layer of fine sawdust adorned those cold metal pipes, a residue of the ongoing process of building, sanding, and painting the sets.

Getting a show up and running from a standing start is a daunting task, and with only one short week to rough-in the lighting, our work was cut out for us. We had just five days to hang, power, adjust, move -- in some cases, repeatedly -- well over two hundred lamps to light the sets for actor's rehearsals the following week.* As usual, all this would have to be done while the carpenters, painters, and set dressers did their work, which meant the juicers and grips working in man-lifts -- me being one of the former -- would have to be very careful not to drive over (and thus crush) anything or anybody down below, all the while trying to avoid dropping a fifteen pound stirrup hanger or fifty pound lamp on some hapless innocent unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the worst possible time.

There's a reason we call that four-by-four area directly in front of a lift "the Kill Zone."

So we got to work. The dimmer operator took two young, strong day-players up hight to wrangle cable and drop dimmer leads while my fellow core-crew juicer and I climbed into our respective man-lifts and began hanging lamps. As someone much older and wiser once said: "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step," and it's true -- one by one, lamp by lamp, that empty pipe grid began to fill up. It went slowly at first, but before long we were back in our familiar working groove, and by the end of that first ten hour day, nearly fifty lamps had been hung and powered. Those were the easy ones, of course -- and as the grid filled up, working amid those pipes became increasingly difficult. It was tough enough working around the lamps we'd already hung, but hard on our heels were two grips busily installing meat-axes, flags, and teasers to cut and shape the light from our lamps. All that grip equipment takes up a lot of space, making it much harder for us to add, power, and adjust any additional lights -- and there are always going to be more lamps to add. Worse is when we have to go back and move a lamp already burdened with the additional weight of a meat-axe (a clever but ungainly combination of a big C clamp and two sliding gobo-arms) and a large flag. The lamps are heavy enough, so my habit is to remove all that crap and hand it off to the nearest grip. Once the lamp is in the right place, he (or she) can re-install the grip equipment.

Two steps forward, one step back.

Such is the nature of the beast when gearing up a show, where everyone is constantly in somebody else's way. It took all five days of that first bloody week, but by Friday night a measure of order had emerged from the chaos. Getting there took an enormous effort (with much remaining to be done), but if we all limped into the weekend like survivors of the Bataan Death March, at least we'd accomplished something -- and fully earned our paychecks for the week.

Although the first week is the hardest, we're not done with the heavy lifting just yet. Following the contours of the first few episodes (where the set is essentially a construction site), all the permanent sets will be re-painted and re-furnished as the season unfolds -- which means the lighting will have to be adjusted on a continual basis. The first week was a blur, but we'll be very busy for a while. The truth is, working on a show never really gets easier, but evolves to a different degree and variety of difficulty. With each episode being custom-made to fit the requirements of the individual script, new challenges will arise every week -- and that means we'll be pushing that big rock up the steep hill for a long time.

It's been a while since I've worked a show that survived its first crucial season to earn a shot at another. It's a nice feeling, a rare (and doubtless fleeting) sense of stability in the typically storm-tossed Hollywood seas. After all those brutal one-after-another pilots and shows that could have (and should have) continued, Season Two of this one is officially underway.

And that feels good.

* Most new or returning shows allow at least seven or eight days to rough-in the permanent sets and any swing sets for the first episode.

Season Two

2011-08-21T12:01:00.000-07:00

People come, people go, but nothing ever changes.

(Bastardized from – and with apologies to -- Grand Hotel)

Heading into the heat of late summer, good news came over the telephone: my little cable show was picked up for a second season. The re-up order of fifteen episodes is better than the ten to twelve most cable networks typically offer, and there's an option for nine additional episodes if we manage to bark, roll over, and dance on our hind legs with sufficient enthusiasm to please our masters. Should all go exceedingly well, this would pan out to a twenty-four episode season, and if that’s not quite the thirty we got last year, hey, who’s counting?

Well, me for one, but beggars can’t be choosers in today’s Hollywood, so I’ll take what I can get and be happy about it -- or at least a lot less unhappy than if the show had been cancelled, leaving me standing on the dock watching the entire fleet of new season shows sail over the horizon.

Still, ours is not a perfect world. Several of my favorite crew members from Season One (in different departments) won’t be coming back – some for reasons of their own and others who were victims of highly questionable decisions by the Powers That Be. When someone works hard, pays attention, is always there when needed, and does a terrific job that often extends well beyond the normal call of duty, they’ve fully earned their spot on the crew and in the “family” we form on stage. It never occurred to me that most of the departed wouldn't be back for another good year, and I remain stunned at the stated reasons for kicking them out the back door. What’s right is right, and this is wrong by any measure.

Trouble is, this business has never even approached being a pure meritocracy, and that's not going to change anytime soon. The Industry has been disappointing and pissing me off in that regard with some regularity for more than three decades now. I’m grateful to be returning for Season Two, but hate to see good people get screwed out of their jobs for no valid reason -- and there’s not a goddamned thing I can do about it.

Hollywood, same as it ever was.

So I’ll do what I always do -- what every Hollywood work-bot learns early on: make the best of the situation and keep going. The day I can’t manage that, for whatever reason, will be the day I’m finished in this town. Those left behind were good at their jobs, so I wasn’t surprised when they picked up new (and hopefully better) gigs on other shows. Still, that won't ease the sting of being bitch-slapped and kicked out the back door – which they certainly didn’t deserve -- nor will it restore the warm sense of “family” our show enjoyed last season. For the moment, that’s gone... but as the weeks pass, the new crew members will be assimilated and a new stage family formed. For one reason or another, a few people move on or are tossed overboard every season, and if nobody likes it, the survivors keep on rowing through the choppy seas just the same.

Television is different from the world of features, commercials, or game/reality shows, where the crew lineups typically shift from job to job depending on the production company, director, and DP. When I was working features as a juicer and Best Boy, it was typical to see a completely different cast of set dressers, props, sound, or production departments from one film to the next. But where a feature is usually shot in two to six months, a hit television show can remain in production for a decade or more with much of the core crew working the entire run. When a show like that comes to an end, everybody feels it on a gut level. I was a regular day-player over the final two seasons of “Will and Grace,” working with people who had been together for the better part of a decade. At the final wrap party -- and it was a good one -- there were a lot of tears in that crowd.

But in Hollywood (and increasingly the world beyond), the only constant is change -- willing or not -- so back to the stage I'll go to help rig and light a brand new set and do my best to make Season Two a winner.* As usual, there are no guarantees. We could be done and the show cancelled by Christmas, with the entire crew joining the ever-growing ranks of unemployed in America. The only sure thing is that we’ll be going at it hammer-and-tongs for the first few weeks before the dust begins to settle.

Anything beyond that is just wishing on a dream.

When we report on stage for our first day of work, I’ll salute the missing, wish them well on their new shows, then put my shoulder to the wheel and start pushing the big rock up the steep hill one more time. Win, lose, or draw, the show goes on.

So long Scooter, Bruce, and Justin. Good luck, Red. Take care, Dev, Brian, and Tracy. Know that you will be missed, and that -- inshallah -- we'll all meet again down the road.

* The old set was all but destroyed in the first season’s final episode.

Wednesday Morning, Three A.M.

2011-08-17T12:01:00.000-07:00

Maybe this is why we don't make movies in Hollywood anymore...

(photo taken last Sunday on Hollywood Boulevard near Vine)

Kurt Sutter bared his soul on his unique blog recently, explaining exactly what it takes to be a successful showrunner on a one hour television drama. Nearing the projected halfway point in the “Sons of Anarchy” story arc, he takes stock of how far he and his creative team have come and where they go from here. This is honest, revealing, interesting stuff:

“The greatest gift god has given me is the ability to learn. When I stop being teachable, I'm dead -- creatively and personally. Running a television show requires a level of authority and control unlike any other job in Hollywood. You are king of your little television realm. All decisions big and small pass your desk. From the words on the page, to the color of a porn set, to the montage music, I make or sign off on every decision. That vision and that authority is needed for a show to run smoothly and to be successful. A singular vision is key. Shows fail when that vision is lost. That's why so many big network shows tank, because executives refuse to empower their creatives. So how does one be a teachable king? How do you instill confidence in your cast and crew that you have a sure hand on the rudder while still being vulnerable enough to learn from your mistakes? There's the big fucking rub.”

It’s a great post. You can read the rest here.

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In last week’s Martini Shot, Rob Long tells a very short story about a callow young man, an expired AMEX card, one utterly cool, very understanding restaurant owner, and the lessons learned. It’s a good one.

Check it out...

Back on the Gang

2011-08-14T12:01:00.000-07:00

Photo courtesy of MPTV Images

The phone rings in the evening with an offer I can’t refuse – a day of work on the studio rigging crew. After three and a half months off (thanks to some minor-but-unpleasant surgery and the annual spring/summer television hiatus), this will be my first paid day since April. I hang up with a smile, knowing that the wheel has finally turned and Hollywood is getting back to work.

It’s a welcome change. Not being one who lives to work, I very much appreciate the time off afforded by this inherently unstable business, but enough is enough. With a checking account coughing on fumes -- and no experience as a Wall Street crook (pardon the redundancy), crack dealer, or Amway salesman -- working is the only way I know to make money.

So I’m up with the alarm at 5:00 the next morning for thirty minutes of stretching, back and stomach exercises, then a shower and quick breakfast before heading up and over Laurel Canyon, a drive I could probably make in my sleep at this point. It's all rote by now. The first real test comes at the parking structure, where the laser scans my aging, faded studio badge – and by some miracle it still works.* The gate rises and I’m in, circling all the way up to a space on the fifth floor to park amidst my fellow below-the-liners. Down six flights of stairs, my rusty old bicycle is still chained up where I left it in the basement after the show wrapped. The tires could use a little air, but other than that it’s good to go.

A brisk two minute pedal carries me over the river to the stage, where eight big tubs and pallets are lined up outside the elephant door, each loaded high with heavy black cable. An electric hoist waits inside, all set up and ready to go. Connecting these dots is easy: today we’ll be sending all that cable up high, which means I’ll probably end up driving the mule.

I leave my work bag in the dimmer room and walk around the stage. The carpenters and painters are already at work on half a dozen sets in various stages of completion. Sawdust and paint fumes linger in the air. I hate that – foul air in a work situation is a personal peeve. Thirty-plus years of sucking down my daily ration of LA smog is bad enough without having to inhale an additional load of particulates and airborne toxins at work, but there are some things you just can’t do anything about. Toiling in less-than-ideal conditions comes with the turf of a rigging crew.

Still, I’ve had to work in much worse air, and as I cruise the stage perimeter checking out the sets, it dawns on me that I’m suddenly feeling pretty good – hardly my normal state of mind this early in the morning. Despite the full day of hard physical labor ahead, it feels like I’ve come home after a long absence.

Once the rest of the crew arrives, the rigging gaffer issues our marching orders. Two of us remain on the floor to send the cable high while the other two head up the long flight of stairs to the catwalks above. With my fellow floor man loading the sling, I end up “driving the mule” – running the hoist with a foot switch and the big inch-and-a-half thick hawser. It’s been a year since I’ve run a hoist, and since rust never sleeps, it takes a good twenty minutes to get back in a comfortable working groove. But it's not exactly rocket science, and although we have to endure the wailing cacophony of power saws and percussive chatter of nail guns, the usual array of bellowing boom boxes is conspicuously absent. This is a very welcome change, allowing us to communicate without screaming, which considerably lowers our collective stress level. Power saws run intermittently, but a boom box never stops -- and a typical set construction crew has three of them on stage, each tuned to a different radio station blaring at maximum volume. Working under those circumstances is too much like the Bad Old Days doing music videos, where the deafening sonic assault made doing even the simplest tasks so much harder.

With no boom boxes today, I count my blessings.

We spend a couple of hours sending cable high before stopping for breakfast. The studio commissary is crowded and awash with familiar, friendly faces. Lots of new and returning shows are gearing up, so it’s homecoming week with everybody happy to be working again.

Back from breakfast, we switch places – the floor crew goes high while the high-boys take their turn driving the mule. It’s a different world up here, removed from the dust, fumes, and confusion of the floor. Here the task is simple: as each hundred-and-twenty pound load of cable comes up, we pull it in from the open void, release the hook, then muscle the cable atop a narrow furniture dolly and roll it down the catwalks to lay out in neat rows. The dolly makes this much easier than it used to be – there was a time when we’d simply shoulder each coil of cable as it came up and carry it to the proper spot on the catwalk – but convenience comes at a price, which means we have to be very careful. If we go too fast and hit a bump, the load will shift. With eighteen inches of open space between the catwalk boards and the knee rail, it would take only a moment’s inattention to lose a sixty pound coil over the side, where it would plunge forty feet to the floor. Any carpenter, painter, or juicer unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time down below would be in a world of hurt -- and the person up high who allowed it to happen would have to live with that.

I haven’t killed anybody yet in this business, and don’t plan to start today – so I take it nice and slow rolling that heavily-laden dolly down the catwalks.

The idea is to store the hundred and fifty-odd rolls of cable far enough away from the waterfall to avoid hindering the show boys when they start running it out to power their sets, but close enough to keep it relatively handy.** Even with the help of that dolly, we still end up manhandling every coil of cable at some point in the process – and once again I remember the hard truth that the only way to stay in shape for wrangling cable is to wrangle cable. All the hauling, splitting, and stacking of firewood back I did back on the Home Planet last month was hard physical labor, but it didn’t do much to keep me in cable shape. By the end of this eight hour day, we've transported five or six tons of cable forty feet up and laid it all out in neat, accessible rows. The job is done, leaving me dog-tired, aching, and sore all over. Everything hurts -- my neck, shoulders, back, arms, and legs -- but I’m working again, earning a paycheck.

And that feels good.

* Something I never take for granted after a stretch of time off...

** The “waterfall” is a massive flow of cable running from the dimmer room up the interior stage wall to the catwalks. Power is modulated through the dimmers via the waterfall to the sets, allowing the DP and gaffer to have control over each lamp on stage.

WTF

2011-08-10T12:01:00.000-07:00

Better call Saul...

One thing I missed while back on the Home Planet was a new addition to KCRW’s lineup of show-biz related programming – an hour long garage podcast called WTF created by stand-up comic Mark Maron to interview a wide variety of industry talent. Not all the interviews are Maron's fellow out-of-work stand-up comedians, either -– the first couple of shows on KCRW featured interviews with Conan O’Brien and Judd Apatow. This past Sunday’s show had two half-hour interviews with actor/writer Bob Odenkirk and stand-up comic Maria Bamford.

Uh, who? Truth be told, I’d never heard of either of these people, but with a big load of dirty dishes to wash, I turned on KCRW at 11:00 a.m. on Sunday morning anyway and got to work. Through all the suds and rinsing, something about Odenkirk’s voice began to sound familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it – until he mentioned appearing on “Breaking Bad,” my own favorite television offering the past few years. Sure enough, Bob Odenkirk has played the wonderfully oleaginous character of lawyer Saul Goodman on that show over the past couple of seasons. Odenkirk describes how he landed that role, and talks about the rest of his heretofore hidden (to me, at least) career.

It's a good one.

As for Maria Bamford, well, she seemed like a nice young woman; kind of funny, kind of vulnerable, and kind of crazy, too. Listening to her portion of the show (recorded in a car) brought to mind Nelson Algren's famous advice: "Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Mom's. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own." Maria Bamford is a cute and lively, but this interview makes me wonder if whoever gets involved with her tightly-wound bundle of neuroses had better keep his-or-her eyes wide open.

I'm just sayin...

There’s a catch, of course. Unlike most KCRW podcasts, listeners cannot freely access the entire spectrum of WTF archives. Listening to some of the bigger names (ie: the Apatow interview) requires signing up for WTF’s “premium” service at their website, which then allows all manner of digital streaming straight from the source. It’s not free, but at $2 a month, $5 for six months, or $9 a year for anywhere/anytime archive access, it’s certainly affordable. Not all the big names fall under the “premium” umbrella, either – there appears to be free access to the Conan O’Brien interview – and the no-cost option is to simply tune in to KCRW FM or stream the program live via the internet on Sunday mornings.

WTF has been around for a while now, so maybe I’m just the last person to hear about it. I don’t know if every podcast is worth listening to, but the two I’ve heard thus far were certainly worth my time. Hey, I got a lot of dishes washed while listening to Conan and Saul Goodman tell their stories.

*************************************************

KCRW's The Business had a great interview this week. Rather than bore you with my own recap, here's the setup from their podcast site:

"Well before The Help was a bestseller and a major motion picture, Kathryn Stockett -- who'd racked up 60 rejection letters from literary agents and as yet was unable to get a publisher -- gave Tate Taylor the movie rights to her unpublished manuscript. The two talk about how she did this despite everyone in her life having told her not to, how the contract they wrote was far from formal and yet how committed they both became to making this movie happen that way. In fact, they were so committed and stubborn that once Hollywood got interested Dreamworks studio had no choice but to make the film with Taylor as the writer/director."

This is an exceedingly rare exception to the usual process of getting a book made into a Hollywood movie -- especially a best-seller -- and from the interview, it's clear that Kathryn Stockett and Tate Taylor (no relation, I assure you) pretty much broke every rule in the unwritten book to get the deal done. I have no idea whether theirs is a good movie or not, but you have to admire these two for demonstrating that there really are no rules when it comes to succeeding in this town.

That's a very useful lesson for all you film students and recent grads to absorb.

And remember folks, in times of trouble...

Art vs. Commerce

2011-08-07T12:01:00.000-07:00

The Eternal Struggle

“Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television. Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers... choose rotting away at the end of it all... choose your future.”

(From the deliriously wonderful opening scene of Trainspotting)

I recently came across an interesting post that got me thinking about the eternal struggle between art and commerce in Hollywood. To my mind, much of what we do below-the-line falls under the heading of commerce -- trading our time, sweat, and hard-earned knowledge for money -- but even in such a do-it-quick-and-dirty business as the film industry, a certain level of craft is required to do every job right. Like the countless individual brush strokes that make up a beautiful painting, all that heavy-lifting and shared expertise can help raise the occasional blessed project to a level approaching art. For a Hollywood movie to enter such lofty territory remains the rarest of exceptions, but the level of craftsmanship routinely displayed on set often blurs the line between mere competence and that higher calling.

While rigging a sit-com a few years ago – day-playing up in a man-lift helping the show crew hang, power, and adjust the two hundred and fifty-plus lamps it takes to light an average multi-camera show – I watched as one of the set painters turned an ordinary piece of sanded plywood into what looked like a thick slab of yellow marble. It took him about twenty minutes, and when he was done, the results were absolutely perfect. I doubt Michelangelo could have done it any quicker or better – and the grizzled old painter (an ex-con with a cigarette dangling from his lips the entire time) performed this minor miracle using a couple of paint rollers.

It was amazing.

As luck would have it, that “marble” counter top – a small part of the kitchen set nobody in the viewing audience would ever notice or fully appreciate – was probably the best thing about the entire show. No matter how skilled, one person is never enough. A solid lineup of talent, artistry, and support from the powers-that-be in the executive suites are needed to make a truly good show.

The epiphanies keep coming as the years pile on here in Hollywood, occasional moments of clarity allowing me to see the Industry for what it has always been: a business. It’s not a normal business, though, since producing screened entertainment isn’t the same thing as manufacturing widgets. Unfortunately for the mega-corporations that now control our film studios and broadcast networks, television and movies aren’t toilet paper, weed-killers, erection enhancers, or frozen dinners -- which means they can’t be manufactured and sold quite the same way. Any halfway competent corporate drone can use his MBA to oversee the marketing of a new product, but a more sophisticated approach is required to craft and sell a dream. That delicate task requires a measure of art, but the cruel irony is that most of those who come to Hollywood hoping to make a living by creating art are doomed to disappointment.

Every now and then a fresh name will blaze out of nowhere to light up the Hollywood firmament – a young writer or director blessed with the talent, super-charged ambition, an eagerness to work hard, and the ethereal combination of timing and luck it takes to succeed. If he or she can follow up that initial success with a string of box office hits, they can earn the chance to break out of the commercial straitjacket and go for the artistic gold.

But these Chosen Ones truly are the exceptions that prove the rule.

As lapdogs of their corporate overlords, most studio and network executives hate having to depend upon artists to get the job done. A true artist answers to a Higher Power, and typically fails to show proper respect for their employer’s groveling obeisance to the bottom line. Rather than kneeling down before the top-down, my-way-or-the-highway management typical of the modern corporate power structure, an artist follows the dictates of personal vision – and when pissed off, is likely to forget who’s the real boss, and offer some tart and very explicit advice as to exactly where the corporate drones can shove their intrusively lame committee-and-focus-group spawned "ideas." Although artists and management may come from the same genetic well of carbon-based bipeds, that’s where the similarities end. Like oil and water, they do not mix well in the real world, but when the right combination of talent comes together under proper circumstances, amazing things can happen: films such as “Chinatown” and “Blade Runner.”*

Unfortunately, this kind of magic rarely happens in the current era of comic book blockbusters, movies based on old TV shows, and paint-by-the-numbers Rom-Coms starring the hottest young male and female flavors of the month. This trend towards recycling and regurgitating – or is it “re-imagining?” -- pop culture reveals a profound lack of initiative and vision on the part of studio executives. It's no surprise, given the extreme aversion the corporate hive-mind holds for taking any serious risks -- but art rarely emerges from that fear-based, cover-your-ass studio mentality.

A few organizations beyond Hollywood actually do “get it.” Just look at the Ipod and Iphone – there are many mp3 players and cell phones on the market, but Apple’s products consistently capture the public imagination with elegant designs that blend artistry and engineering. In the best products – be they tangible goods or screened entertainment -- the line between art and commerce vanishes.

This is increasingly the exception in our own film industry. The only good news here is that the corporate steamroller often sows the seeds of its own demise. People eventually get sick of being spoon-fed the same pre-packaged assembly-line pabulum and turn to something raw, fresh, and different – in the case of Hollywood, the occasional small, quirky film made far from the mainstream: a “Spellbound,” Little Miss Sunshine,” or “Juno” that takes the viewing public (and the corporations) by surprise. Stealing their lunch money is the only thing that really gets the attention of those ponderous corporate Goliaths, at which point they are forced to confront the terrifying notion of bringing some of those honest-to-God artists back into the building.

Television has fared better, thanks to the cable networks (the TV equivalent of indie films) which have been running rings around the hopelessly sclerotic and befuddled networks for the past ten years. I’ve got my own problems with these cable outfits, but can’t deny the quality, dynamism, and breathtaking originality of shows like “The Sopranos,” “The Wire,” “Battlestar Galactica,” “The Shield,” “Dexter,” and the current champs “Mad Men” and “Breaking Bad.”** These shows were not conceived and written by committee and filtered through focus-groups, nor given the green light by some bloodless corporate mandarin in his penthouse office. Without people who really cared and were willing to follow their gut instincts all the way, such shows would never have come to life -- and to me, such people are artists.

In this eternal struggle, commerce wins most of the time -- it's hard to beat the crushing power of money, and those hell-bent on making as much as possible in the shortest span of time. Still, most decent movies and television shows contain some level of artistry: a gorgeous dolly move or steady-cam shot, an atmospheric set beautifully designed, painted, dressed, propped, and lit, or wardrobe-hair-and-makeup so perfect for the actors and tone of the show that you can't imagine them being any other way. If you look for it, the proof is right there on screen.

Flowers grow from shit the world over. Despite the increasingly crass nature and dumbassification of our own modern culture, the miracle of art -- and its cousin, artistry -- lives on.

Even in Hollywood.

* To be fair, both of these classics were made before Hollywood was swallowed whole by the current crop of mega-corporations.

** There’s no denying that cable raised the bar to new heights for quality dramas on television, but I have a few issues with the cable world.

LA Again

2011-08-03T12:01:00.000-07:00

Redwood trees are beautiful, but the land of the palm trees pays the rent...

Just back from a month on the Home Planet, sifting through the mountain of bills and junk mail left at my front door, I found the latest bill from Time Warner Cable. Printed across the envelope was a large-font demand to "Watch for your new and improved bill next month" -- and that for a "sneak preview," I could visit their web site.

A "new and improved bill?" Holy Plague of Pederastic Priests, Batman -- now my life is complete! Jeepers, I can hardly wait to click on over to the Time Warner website for my "sneak preview."

Uh... on second thought, I can wait. Tell you what, Time Warner -- my idea of a "new and improved bill" would have you cut my existing monthly tab in half for a better channel lineup. Do that and I'll gladly watch for my new bill. Hell, I might even check out the "sneak preview." But unless the "new and improved bill" features lower prices and/or a wider spectrum of content -- if it's just a different piece of paper with the same bad news -- then I'll just have to restrain my giddy shrieks of ecstatic joy.

********************************************

When not paying bills and waiting for the phone to ring with actual paying work, I’ve been wallowing in the joys of more-or-less decent broadband. The Home Planet is a land of many virtues, but wireless is slower than pouring cold molasses up there in the woods, so I've been catching up on all the KCRW podcasts I missed while gone.* Rob Long posted several more pithy insider stores of life above-the-line at Martini Shot, while The Business offered this highly entertaining interview with Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant, better known as the creators and co-stars of “Reno 911.”**

In KCRW’s own words:

“Sketch comedians and screenwriters Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant are known for creating and acting in shows like Reno 911 and The State, but they've made most of their money writing big studio comedies. Their film credits include the Night at the Museum movies and, as they say "bona fide turdfests" like Balls of Fury. In their new book, Writing Movies for Fun and Profit, they use their trademark humor to share some of the very practical secrets to their success.”

Not being a screenwriter – and lacking any interest in becoming one – I have no idea if their advice is sound, but what they reveal in the interview is not only funny, but makes a lot of sense. Whatever your interest in the Industry, this interview is well worth your time. And if/when you follow that link, be sure to watch the two short video clips on the page.***

It's all good stuff -- but if none of that floats your summertime boat, check out these from Cracked.com: five gun myths, six deadly injuries movie stars survive but you would not, and seven myths about the police that routinely show up on screen.

All in all, the perfect antidote to another slow summer afternoon waiting for the phone to ring...

* Links to KCRW's Industry podcasts are over on the right side of this page, under "Essential Listening."

** According to someone I know who worked on “Reno 911” for a full season, that show was a totally disorganized pain in the ass to work on – but although I wasn’t a regular watcher, every episode I saw was really funny.

*** Just ignore the first five minutes of the show -- the "Hollywood Banter" -- which is rather dated reporting on the then-breaking Newscorp scandal in England.

The Off Season

2011-07-31T12:01:00.000-07:00

Over the wire and gone...

Until relatively recently, the television season in Hollywood followed a familiar routine. The new fall season geared up in mid-July with the construction of sets on dozens of stages at all the major studios, followed by rigging and lighting those sets for grip and electric. Meanwhile, all the other departments – props, set dressing, wardrobe, hair/makeup, camera, sound, and the various aspects of production -- were preparing for what everyone hoped would be a long season ahead. Filming commenced early in August and continued until a week or two before Christmas, shooting the first twelve episodes. Following the holiday break, the surviving shows (those that hadn't been cancelled by Thanksgiving) churned out their remaining episodes into March, completing a full season's work. As those shows wrapped, pilot season was busy ramping up to a full-throttle frenzy through April. By mid-May that too was over and done, with television production shut down for the off-season hiatus -- eight-to-ten weeks during which very little was going on.

That was the pattern in the late 90's when I left the single-camera realm of low-budget features, commercials, and music videos for the world of television. In those not-so-long-ago-old-days, the television hiatus was a good time to pick up day-playing work on features, but with the outgoing tide of runaway production over the past fifteen years, features are no longer a reliable source of employment in Hollywood. If you want to work on movies, go to New Mexico, New Orleans, or Michigan -- features just aren't happening like they used to in this town.

The rise of cable over the last decade has altered the television equation. Following the advice of "Wee Willie" Keeler to “hit ‘em where they ain’t,” the fledgling cable networks took advantage of the annual hiatus – when the broadcast networks burned off re-runs or weak mid-summer replacement shows -- by starting their much shorter season (usually ten to thirteen episodes) in early spring to run those shows all summer.* Although I’ve often been critical of cable productions that take full advantage of the cut-rate contract to grind their crews into the dirt, they do provide work at a time when there’s not much else going on.

There’s still not quite enough cable work to turn the television season into a true (and oft-rumored) “year-round schedule,” but that’s fine by me -- I didn’t get into this business to strap my nose to the bloody grindstone 52 weeks a year. I value my off time for the opportunity to escape Hollywood and do something different away from the down-and-dirty labor on set. Work is good and work is fine, but I’m not one who wants to work all the fucking time. The spring-into-summer hiatus is perfect for taking care of real-life matters -- personal or family vacations, or dealing with any lingering dental or medical issues that would otherwise require missing work. Most grips and juicers (and a few set dressers I've known) have to endure shoulder, knee, and/or back surgeries during their careers, and scheduling such procedures for the hiatus allows time to recover before the season kicks back into gear.

Sometimes such issues are forced upon us, though, ready or not. Not so long ago I ran into an old friend who – after suffering through an expensive divorce – hit a dry spell bad enough to lose his health insurance. With only a few months of coverage left, he spent his entire summer in a painful trek from one specialist to the next in a desperate effort to complete all the various surgical/dental procedures he needed before the clock ran out.**

All things being equal, my own preference is to head back to the Home Planet during the off-season. Ten months in LA is more than enough each year, but such lengthy escapes have not been possible the past few years. The show I recently wrapped is a cable production that started in the early spring of 2010 and ran on through the summer, fall, and winter to the following spring. Unlike every other cable show I’ve done in the past, it blew right through the standard ten-to-thirteen episode cable schedule to shoot thirty in a single year. That kept me tied to the whipping post all during the usual off-season hiatus, but if the show gets picked up later this summer for a second season -- inshallah -- that should put us back on the “normal” schedule of broadcast network shows.

Go figure. Just when I understand how the system really works, the deck gets re-shuffled for a whole new deal. Still, the lack of permanence or predictability in the shape-shifting terrain of Hollywood is the true norm for the Industry, and something those of us who choose to work here must accept lest we end up walking into the cold blue Pacific towards China while speaking in tongues.

The annual spring/summer television hiatus offers a sweet taste of freedom during the best part of the year, so if my little cable show comes back -- and the producers decide to run the same schedule as the Big Boys -- you won't hear me complain. When next spring rolls around, I'll be going over the wire again with a big smile on my face.

* Not every cable show plays this game. Shows with a very young cast (ie: Wizards of Waverly Place) often shoot up to thirty episodes per season. Those kids grow up fast, so the network has to crank out as many episodes as possible before the cast outgrows their roles. On the opposite end of the spectrum, shows featuring one or more exceptionally old cast members (ie: Hot in Cleveland) adopt the same strategy for a similar, if darker reason...

** I suspect we’ll be seeing a lot more of this kind of thing over the next couple of years, given the new 400 hour qualifying requirement for the health plan taking effect in August.

Cowboys and Aliens Clip

2011-07-30T18:11:00.001-07:00

You probably have to be on Facebook to view this, but it’s pretty cool. The guys at Lux Lighting built flying rigs (on cables) equipped with moving lights to simulate alien spaceships on the attack in “Cowboys and Aliens.” I haven’t seen the movie – and probably won’t until it comes to Netflix – but these guys did an amazing job with the “speeder” rigs. They should be proud.

It's great to see such real-world non-CGI effects in this era of increasingly digital everything -- old-fashioned bubble-gum-and-bailing-wire Hollywood effects brought to life with the most modern lighting equipment.

Thanks to Heather for bringing this to my attention. The clip is short and well worth your time.

Check it out...

Breaking Bad

2011-07-13T15:15:00.000-07:00

Fasten your seat belts. Here we go...

This summer is about to get a whole lot better, with Season Four of "Breaking Bad" poised to hit our screens this weekend. Viewers can argue about what show has been the best drama on television over the past few years, and "Mad Men" fans will make a persuasive case that Don Draper and Company hold the high ground -- but as much as I enjoy "Mad Men," it doesn't capture my imagination quite like "Breaking Bad." Nothing else does. This is the most breathtakingly original show I've ever seen on American TV.

That doesn't make it true, of course. As the saying goes, opinions are like assholes -- everybody's got one. And really, these two shows are so very different that there's no point in comparing them. Like apples and oranges, both are great in their own unique ways.

Still, I'm really looking forward to catching up with Walter White, Jessie, and Skylar - and I'm not the only one. As Tim Goodman leads off in his Hollywood Reporter review of Season 4:

"One of television’s greatest dramas goes unflinchingly into the continued transformation of its lead character from likable to something beyond despicable. It’s one of the most fearless and selfless gambits ever hatched in the name of enduring art."

Oh yeah. This is gonna be good...

Summertime

2011-07-06T12:01:00.000-07:00

Oh yeah...

(Note: With the Sunday Post on hiatus until August, I'll be wandering way off the Hollywood reservation when it feels right -- and today, it feels right...)

If you're young, and don't do something like this in the next couple of months -- okay, maybe something not quite so overtly suicidal -- you'll be missing out.

Me? I'm old, which is nature's way of clearing the decks for the next generation. So it goes -- I had my young and wild summers, but that was then. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Still, the memories remain.

It's your turn now.

Sure, unemployment is at record highs, the economy floats in the toilet, and jobs -- any jobs -- are hard to come by. The world is a mess, Mother Nature is turning on us in a big way, our political system is in a self-induced state of complete paralysis, and the long run outlook for humanity is trending down into the abyss. A clear-eyed observer can hardly be faulted for concluding that the future looks bleak indeed.*

And if you're fresh out of school trying to get into the film/television industry, it's a bitch.

Same as it ever was. The world has always been in a mess, and Hollywood has always been a tough nut to crack. None of that is going to change in your lifetime. The problems you -- and all of us -- face certainly do appear overwhelming, but appearances can be deceiving. Even if things get really ugly, life will go on one way or another.

Unless it doesn't, in which case nothing actually matters anyway.

So don't let it stop you. Do what you can to be part of the solution (rather than adding to the problems) and get on with the business of living. Summer is short. So is life. Get out there and make some memories.

Don't miss out.

* Which is to say, anyone not blinded by ignorance -- willful or otherwise -- or political/theological ideologies

The Killing

2011-06-30T17:07:00.000-07:00

Who did kill Rosie Larson?

WTF?

I fell for AMC’s new (and recently concluded) drama series “The Killing” right from the first damp episode. Everything about the show intrigued me: the endless Bladerunner-like rain, the slow-but-steady reveal of the various character’s hidden lives and secrets, and the stark contrast between Seattle as seen from above in serenely gorgeous aerial shots – a gleaming, beautiful city -- with the dark, messy little lives of the citizens down below, grappling with the moral ambiguities endemic to modern life in the post-Industrial Age. The production values were stunning, the acting sublime, the setting perfect.

Surface vs. reality has long been a staple of urban crime dramas, often using the sun-splashed cities of Los Angeles and Miami to underline the vast gulf between a glitzy public image and the sordid truth behind the palm trees. Setting the show in a dank and dreary Pacific Northwest allowed “The Killing” to till fresh, fertile ground. A city that became a major cultural force thanks to Microsoft, Starbucks, and an outpouring of great grunge bands during the 90s turns out not to be the Mecca of Everything Hip and Cool after all, but just another troubled urban dystopia riddled with corruption and populated by legions of wounded people enduring their quiet, desperate little lives -- which means that on screen, Seattle is a lot like every other big city in America. If Raymond Chandler was starting his writing career now, he might well have chosen Seattle rather than LA as the backdrop for his beautifully written, hauntingly atmospheric novels.

This show worked for me (and a lot of other viewers) during the first twelve episodes, but a surprising conclusion in the last minute of the season finale – which turned out to be no conclusion at all -- spun heads all the way around from coast to coast. Mine too. Those final scenes juked me out of my shoes and into the weeds, unsure just what was going on, and judging by the subsequent Internet shit-storm, my own confusion was mild. Many viewers went ballistic, and there was no shortage of critical commentary from the professional media. Tim Goodman (chief TV critic of the Hollywood Reporter) turned thumbs-down in his own post-mortem, concluding that “The Killing wasn’t able to save itself in the end.”

I’m usually in sync with Tim’s media criticism, but not this time. Although his analysis of what caused the love/hate audience schism on “The Killing” is (as usual) spot-on, to suggest that the entire 13 episode season was a failure simply because the ending hit a sour note – in the final minute of the final show -- strikes me as absurd. Having been fully engrossed every Sunday night for the previous three months, how could I dismiss the whole season over a last-minute fumble? To borrow a phrase from Jimmy Carter, this was no failure, but rather an “incomplete success.”*

My own views are more in line with those of Mary McNamara (LA Times), who ended her measured, sober analysis of “The Killing” like this:

”No show is going to live or die by its season finale. When you try something new, you're going to make mistakes; if you don't, you're not trying hard enough. For those who need closure, there are all manner of admirable crime procedurals on the networks.”

Nicely put.

It’s not that I don’t sympathize with those who feel burned by the trick non-ending of “The Killing” – I’ve had similar reactions to a movie or two over the years. The worst offender that comes to mind was No Way Out, a Kevin Costner spy/thriller from 1987 that ended with a whiplash-inducing twist which turned the previous 113 minutes completely inside out, and not in a good way.** Oh did that piss me off. Had the Internet been around back then, I’d probably have flamed that piece of cinematic junk until nothing was left but a smoldering cinder. “No Way Out” was an excellent description of the box canyon the script writers rode (and wrote) themselves into, then were unable to escape. It worked out fine for them – they still got paid – but in the meantime they screwed me and countless other ticket-buyers out of our five bucks.

Although I feel the pain (to quote another ex-president) of those now excoriating “The Killing” for a similar transgression, I don’t share their outrage. This isn’t a matter of logic – it’s just personal taste, which cannot be objectively quantified or explained. Yeah, the ending was a head-snapper, but not enough to ruin the series for me, and truth be told, I never really cared who killed Rosie Larsen. Like every other loyal viewer of the show, I expected the answer to come in that final episode, but it didn’t, and so what? Patience, people, patience. As one commenter responded to Goodman’s criticism:

“The Killing is a subtle, character driven-show with a SERIES question that explores how unspeakable crimes change individuals, the community as a whole, politics, legal and ethical boundaries, etc. This show is also about the fact that absolute truth - if it indeed exists - isn't easily knowable and is rarely clear cut. It was clear from episode one that we weren't going to get an easy, clean solution by the end of the season. I cannot fathom why so many viewers seemed to expect one. And for those who thought there were too many "red herrings" in the show - those are called leads. Even real life detectives know you follow them all - hundreds of them in fact - no matter how unlikely they seem.”

Yeah, what she said...

I didn’t much care for the way that final episode show ended either, but found the vehemence of outrage expressed by so many disappointed viewers a lot more disturbing. From the bitter tone of some comments, it sounds like a few of those people are ready to lynch showrunner Veena Sud for her apparently unforgivable sin. I’d never heard of Veena Sud before this show, but having thoroughly enjoyed the 12 excellent episodes of her show -- and 9/10 of that last one – I’m willing to cut the lady some slack.***

But slack is in short supply these days. There’s so much free-floating anger out there, like gasoline fumes just waiting for a spark – and as “The Killing” tempest in a teapot demonstrated, it doesn’t take much to ignite the firestorm. It's just a TV show, folks...

So who killed Rosie Larsen? Who cares? I'm happy to wait for Season Two of "The Killing" to find out.

* I borrow only the words. Carter was referring to a disastrous attempt to rescue the Iranian Embassy hostages, which ended in the fiery deaths of eight people. That was a very bad day.

** Yeah, I know – Kevin Costner... but I met him back when he was still a kid sweeping stages at Raleigh Hollywood, and will always give a break to anybody who manages to rise from such humble beginnings.

*** Kim Masters interviewed Veena Sud on The Business, provoking yet more outrage from disgruntled viewers. Being up in the hinterlands – and thus unable to access the podcast – I haven’t had a chance to listen to the interview, so can’t comment.

The Red Light is On

2011-06-26T12:01:00.000-07:00

I was amazed to see this sign outside the door to the stage where "Parks and Recreation" (a television comedy starring Amy Poehler, for those who don't know) is shot. Studio protocol has always required people outside a stage to wait until the red light goes off -- signalling that the cameras have stopped rolling and "cut" has been called -- before entering. It's common courtesy to everyone involved, ensuring that the sound for a take isn't ruined by some oblivious and/or self-important idiot blundering through the door while yakking on his/her cell phone.

This protocol was established many decades ago (long before cell phones), despite the fact that most sound stages were equipped with double "airlock" doors that allow a relatively silent entry. Newer stages are rarely equipped with double doors these days -- that would cost money. As I recall, the "Parks and Rec" stage has at least two single doors like the one in this photo -- doors that slam shut with a very loud bang if not slowly closed by someone who can read and actually gives a shit.

It's their show and their soundtrack, but I hate to see a discipline that was once standard throughout the Industry fade away like this. The red light means "stop" -- or it used to. Nowadays, many people just blow right on through the stage doors whether or not the red light is on -- either they don't know or simply don't care.

And that's just one more thing that pisses me off. Yet another straw on this aging camel's back...

The red light still means "stop" here at BS&T -- and given that I'm back in the forested boonies of the Home Planet, that's what I'm going to do for a little while. Stop, that is. Internet access is sketchy at best up here, which makes posting a time-consuming ordeal in the best of circumstances. Besides, it's the heart of baseball season, which means I'll be doing a lot more listening to the radio than staring into this screen.

Hey, it's summertime, and we all have our priorities.

It's just as well -- you probably need a break from my increasingly cranky and didactic blather as much as I do. I'll probably put up a post or two over the next month (or more in the unlikely event that inspiration strikes with overwhelming force), but am putting the regular Sunday Post on the shelf for the next few weeks. With any luck -- inshallah -- BS&T will be back up and running by August.

Have a nice July...

Follow Your Instincts

2011-06-19T12:01:00.000-07:00

Because...

“A man’s got to know his limitations.”

Clint Eastwood as Harry Callahan in “Magnum Force”

Back on the Home Planet a few years ago, I attended a lecture by a marine biologist who had spent many years studying the feeding behavior and migration patterns of Great White Sharks. During a Q&A after the talk, he offered some advice to any surfers in the audience.

“If you sense something strange out on the water -- if you get spooked for no apparent reason -- pay attention. It might be a good idea to paddle in. We don’t understand how these things work, but following your instincts out there could save your life.”

I've yet to worry about Great White Sharks on set, but the essence of that advice came to mind recently while reading a post over at The Black and Blue concerning an on-set incident that resulted in a dropped camera lens. Fortunately for the camera assistant involved, no real damage was done.

Like the bumper sticker says, shit happens, and it doesn't always end so well.

While crewing on a student film in my post-college years, we were working on the rugged rocks of a coastal breakwater when an expensive zoom lens came loose and fell off the rented 16 mm camera at a very bad moment. The writer/director was scrambling over those rocks carrying the camera at the time, but it could just as easily have been me -- I'd been lugging it around most of that weekend. With the lens ruined, our day was done.

Youth and inexperience were the main culprit -- we knew very little about the arduous process of film-making or the need to continually check our equipment -- but it also happened because the director was pushing a little too hard. With daylight fading and the weekend closing out, he was desperate to get every possible shot in the can before dark. The cold logic of numbers was on his side, but sometimes you have to know when enough is enough, and my gut feeling was that we'd hit the wall. It was late, everybody was tired, it was time to wrap. The director felt otherwise, and paid a steep price for his attempt to get that last shot. The repair bill from the rental house blew a huge hole in his borrowed-money budget for the film.

Thus did the Joe Frasier School of Higher Education mete out another harsh lesson in reality.

I can't claim to have seen it coming -- I didn't -- but watching that lens bounce down the rocks towards the ocean taught me something about the wisdom of listening to my own instincts.

Accidents usually happen when someone is rushing things and/or not paying attention. Given the stress that crackles through every set, it's all too easy to move a little too fast. If you remain calm and work at a measured pace -- all the while paying attention to your gut instincts -- you can minimize the odds of causing or becoming the victim of an accident.

The same concept applies to young people on their way up the career ladder: don't rush things. You can’t be afraid to step up and accept more responsibility -– succumb to fear and you’ll never get anywhere -- but it’s important to be ready when opportunity presents. If you miscalculate and perform a painfully public belly-flop, it will be remembered (and the story told...) by everyone who was there to witness.

There are no hard and fast rules here. Each individual progresses according to his/her own learning curve and degree of ambition, but whether you're on the fast track to success or not, it helps to have good instincts in the first place and the sense to follow them.

Late in my own transition from griptrician to juicer, I got a call from a Key Grip asking me to Best Boy for him on a small commercial. Typical of such jobs, it would just be the two of us on the grip crew. Work is work, but I took the gig with some reluctance. Having concentrated on juicer work, my grip skills -- never that strong to begin with -- were pretty rusty by then.

The morning got off to a bad start at the location, a dusty ranch well north of LA. A little nervous and eager to get going, I grabbed a cup of coffee from craft service, then managed to spill the entire contents down my left pant leg -– a pair of white cotton painter’s pants I'd worn for protection from bugs, cuts, and the fierce Southern California sun. Feeling like a clumsy doofus, I tried to make up for this minor-but-embarrassing blunder, but was off my game. After juicing for the entire previous year, grip equipment suddenly felt awkward and alien to me. Nothing went easy all morning, so when it came time to move the camera -– a big Arri BL mounted on a tripod -– I hung back. I knew I should just grab it and go, but something didn’t quite feel right to me. Noticing my reluctance, the Key Grip came over to show me how it's done. Displaying textbook form, he squatted down, tucked his shoulder under the fluid head, then stood up and snapped the tripod legs closed in one smooth motion.

Before he took a step, the camera slipped off the mounting plate and fell five feet, slamming into the hard dirt of the corral. A moment of stunned silence followed during which I muttered a silent “thanks” to whatever had held me back.

Another camera was rushed in to keep us going through the rest of that long day, but the atmosphere on set remained a bit frosty until wrap.

I had no idea that camera would fall -– my knowledge of cameras and mounting plates was very sketchy to begin with, which is probably why I held back -– but heeding the unfathomable mystery of my own gut instincts saved me from a major professional humiliation. To this day, thirty later, I can still see that camera plummeting to earth in the highest of hi-def/3-D/mind's-eye resolution.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – some things you just don’t forget.

It's a fine line to walk. You can't build a career by standing back to let others do all the challenging work -- and the time will come when you really do have to make that leap of faith, but it's important to have some idea what you're doing before you jump. Learning to listen to and trust your own instincts can keep you out of trouble as your career unfolds, and just might help you avoid becoming the subject of someone else's on-set war story.

Two Way Street

2011-06-15T12:01:00.000-07:00

"There is dignity in all work"

Caine, from Kung Fu

(With summer knocking on the door, things are slow in town right now -- time to take a break from the down-and-dirty world on set and have a look at how other people make a living...)

This space has never been a one-way street. When a reader takes the time to submit a comment, question, or suggestion, I pay attention. Late last September, a reader named "Rhys" recommended two books he felt could provide some ideas how I might structure a book based on this blog.*

I took a look, then ordered both books. The first -- "smile when you're lying," by Chuck Thompson (that's right, no caps...) -- arrived in a couple of weeks. The other -- "Would You Like Fries With That?," by Prioleau Alexander (pronounced "pray-low" according to the text) -- took a full six months to find its way into my mail box. I'm not sure what caused the holdup, but it was worth the wait.

"smile when you're lying" is in many ways the coming of age story of a professional writer. The narrative bounces around in time, detailing how Thompson got into the field of travel writing in the first place, the many adventures his free-lance career lead to, and offering sage advice for anyone who likes to travel on a dime. Thompson's writing is "bright and tight" as they say in the newspaper biz -- crisp, vivid, and funny -- while his insights on the travel industry, travel writers, tourists, and life in general are worth the price of admission. Once I got started, this one was hard to put down.

I judge a book by how good it is at taking me far, far away from the All Homeless, All the Time Laundromat where my most challenging reading is done. If the writing is good enough to make me forget where I am and transport me to a much better and more interesting place -- thus rendering me blissfully unaware of all the preening, yammering, narcissistic, self-obsessed, cell-phone yakking, flea-scratching Angelenos all around me -- then that book earns top honors here at BS&T with a three star rating.

I am happy to award "smile when you're lying" all three stars.

********************************************

"You Want Fries With That" is aptly described by its subtitle: "A white collar burnout experiences life at minimum wage." Sickened by a meaningless and duplicitous white collar career as an advertising man (working forty years after the smoky, sex-and-booze-fueled era of Don Draper), Prioleau Alexander finally quit to embark on a march through the world of minimum wage employment. He delivered pizzas, scooped ice cream, worked construction, made strenuous efforts to land a job in a Big Box store, endured a spectacularly horrifying week in a hospital Emergency Room, flipped burgers, and tried his soft, white collar hand at being... a cowboy.

As a concept, this struck me as a bit of a stretch -- more like the end result of a clever book proposal than one man's honest quest to find meaningful employment. The first chapter on his brief experience delivering pizzas didn't resonate with me, probably due to my own youthful stint in a pizza parlor long ago. Still, some books are slow starters, and you have to give them a fair chance. I began to warm up to this one in the next chapter detailing Alexander's experience in an ice cream shop, then fell head-over-heels in love with the section on working construction, aptly titled "Why the Roofer Wants to Kick Your Ass." This ruthless dissection of the construction trade is as entertaining as it is eye-opening. The narrative got even better when Alexander suited up in scrubs to work a hospital emergency room -- a chapter that will make you so grateful for your own job, no matter how bad it might seem on Monday morning.

The default prose setting is loose and informal, occasionally veering towards juvinelia. Like most swords, this has two sharp edges -- some of his humor comes across as flippant and silly -- but when he really gets going, Alexander is very good indeed. The three-and-a-half page intro to the ER section ("10ccs of Sanity, Stat...") features a brief history of medicine that just about killed me -- I was laughing so hard it hurt, all the while shaking my head in admiration at the pace, rhythm, and phrasing. Good stuff.

I really enjoyed this book, which taught me a lot I didn't know about each of those jobs and left me with a little more respect for those who do them for a living.

"You Want Fries With That?" is a bit uneven, but managed to carry me far away from that hot, oppressive laundromat. Three stars.

*******************************************

Both these books are are great summer reading -- thoroughly entertaining page-turners that offer occasional scalding (and spot-on) commentaries about modern life. Thanks, Rhys, for pointing me in their direction.

Those are my picks 'o the week. Check 'em out...

* I'm still toying with this idea, noodling around with an introduction and first chapters. We'll see how it goes...

Getting Started

2011-06-12T12:01:00.000-07:00

“Be careful what you wish for, it might come true.”

(This is something of a companion piece to a post I put up a couple of weeks ago)

A fellow blogger who goes by the e-name of “12 pt” (short for 12 pt. Courier) replied to a recent post in which I'd gone on a rant about the long hours endured by those who toil in the abusive world of episodic television.

“All I'm trying to do right now is actually GET on set. 15 hours seems awesome to someone green with an open schedule and bills to pay.”

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, I was in 12pt’s shoes: on the outside looking in, desperately eager to get on set – any set – to begin learning enough so that one day I would truly belong. My chance came working for free as a PA on a no-budget feature with a tiny lighting crew – just a Gaffer and two grips.

You can imagine how low the budget was given that the Gaffer didn't even have Best Boy...

I did a little bit of everything on that movie – schlepped strange looking equipment with equally strange names (“C Stand?” “Nine Light?”), brought coffee to the director, cleaned up cigarette butts on location, drove the set dressing five-ton, was drafted to appear on camera, synced up the film dailies as an assistant editor, and got my first taste of hauling cable and powering/adjusting lights.

I worked through a few long nights, too – movies ‘til dawn, we called them – in the process of receiving my first lessons of what would be a long and arduous continuing education in the realities of Industry life. At one point, two of us ran all the cable and set every lamp for a night shoot inside the Bradbury Building in downtown LA, a location that would later become famous as a key location in the classic film "Bladerunner."

And at the end of that long night, the two of us then wrapped every single lamp and every foot of that cable in the bright light of dawn. It was a bruising experience.

The upside was that I had a blast on that movie, which is a good thing since I sure as hell didn’t make any money. All my on-set labor was done for “non-monetary compensation” – the opportunity to learn. Being greener than the new grass of spring, that was fine with me. Back then I could bore you to death talking about the visual style of Hitchcock, John Ford, and Howard Hawks, but had no clue how to set a flag, tie a clove hitch, run power from a genny to the set, or operate a carbon arc lamp -- which meant I was worth every penny of my non-existent wages. Still, I had bills to pay like everyone else, which is why I reluctantly left the set to take the assistant editor job when it was offered. Even then the pay was minimal: fifty bucks a week, or around $180 in 2011 dollars. It was even less after deductions -- $43.77.

Yes, nearly three-and-a-half decades later, I still remember my first Hollywood paycheck. Some things you don't forget.

I also remember emerging from my celluloid cloister a couple of weeks later to find a contentious meeting between the director, producer, and the entire crew. After working a succession of 16 hour days for miniscule paychecks, they were pissed. Led by the Key Grip, they wanted something more for their pain and suffering. The discussion went back and forth, voices rising, until the Key finally rose from his chair shouting “I’m not an animal!”*

That got the producer’s and director’s attention. They had to do something... but with a threadbare budget, there was no slush fund of cash to quell a rebellion in the ranks. All they could do was offer the crew a symbolic victory of sorts – an acknowledgment that the situation was indeed untenable -- which they did by awarding everyone on the core crew a point and a half of any eventual profits. Although everyone knew such points were essentially worthless, the gesture calmed the storm.

The crisis was over.

Sometimes that's all it takes: a simple (if symbolic) acknowledgment of what the crew is going through and doing for you. As the saying goes, “if you’re gonna fuck me, at least give me a kiss” – and this time that little paper kiss was just enough. **

The shoot went on to suffer several more crises (including one in which our ex-stunt man producer engaged in a twenty minute screaming match with the male lead behind locked doors) until principal photography was completed. A month or two later we did a couple of weeks of pickups, during which I left the editing room to work with the gaffer on the night shoots. It was only then that I realized just how much I’d missed working on set, and how I hated being cooped up in that editing room all day long. There are people who love that kind of thing -– and God bless 'em, because it has to be done -- but it was suddenly very clear to me that my own Hollywood destiny lay elsewhere. Still, I couldn't bring myself to quit my first paying Hollywood job, and stuck it out in the editing room for another couple of months. Finally -- in one of those rare win/win scenarios that make everybody happy -- the production laid me off. They no longer had to pay me and I was suddenly freed from that dark, miserable prison. The icing on the cake was that having been laid off the job (rather than quitting), I was eligible to receive unemployment checks while hunting for my next job.

How sweet that was -- and another valuable lesson in the real-world dynamics of Hollywood life

The contacts I made on that job led directly to more work in the coming months. It took an enormous effort over the next few years to build a reputation and network of potential employers sufficient to keep my phone ringing. In essence, I had to work extremely hard to earn the privilege of working even harder.

This is how most newbies get started: making contacts on each job and gradually building a solid base of referrals and potential employers. They call it “networking” nowadays, but back then it was just what you did to keep moving forward. Few people come to Hollywood -- then or now -- with the talent to light up the sky like a meteor, and even those blessed souls can’t do it all by themselves. Everybody who succeeds at any of the myriad occupations that make up the film industry needed and received help of one sort or another along the way. They worked their asses off too, because unless you’re seriously connected in this town – in which case you’re certainly not reading this blog -- nothing will come easy.

12 pt. Courier is only beginning to learn how hard this business really is. From reading his blog, it seems his goal is to be a screenwriter, an ambition I never shared and -- no offense -- wouldn’t wish on anybody. If there's no escape from abuse below-the-line, life isn't exactly a picnic in The Writer’s Room either. Writers get paid a lot more than the rest of us when they manage to find work in Hollywood, but landing a spot on a writing staff -- or selling a spec script -- is a very high hurdle to overcome. The truth is, life for most writers in this town is considerably more uncertain and unstable than that endured by those of us who pull the oars below decks.

Still, miracles do happen, so 12 pt -- and you, should screenwriting be your dream -- may as well give it a serious shot and hope for the best. If not now, when? The only way to make sure the miracle doesn't happen is if you don't try. So by all means go for it -- and go hard -- whatever your goals in Hollywood might be.

Just remember, when those long 15 hour days start coming hot and heavy, that's exactly what you wished for...

* Thus beating The Elephant Man to the punch by a good three years...

** The movie never made a dime, of course. Like the gold dust at the end of “Treasure of the Sierra Madre, those points were gone with the wind...

What, Me Worry?

2011-06-08T12:01:00.000-07:00

And the Wednesday picks 'o the week

It never rains in Southern California...

Just back in town, I woke up, hopped on the bicycle and headed down to the bank’s ATM to replenish my alarmingly thin wallet – and along the way came across this deluxe homeless rig. Anybody who thinks homeless people aren’t creative and resourceful should take a good look: a nice big mattress with pad, sheets, blankets, and pillows crammed in and atop two shopping carts along with all the necessities of life on the street.

This rig is a veritable Sidewalk Winnebago -- and if not exactly rain-proof, no worries. Just listen to the song.

Still, seeing it made me glad I’ve got a job and am working during such hard times... oh, wait a minute -- actually I don’t have a job and am most definitely not working at the moment. With no word yet on whether the show is coming back, that puts me (like so many Industry free-lancers during the slo-mo Hollywood summer) just one or two degrees of separation from hitting the bricks with my own shopping cart street-mobile.

Sobering thoughts as the sun rises earlier and sets later every day.

Ah well, something will come up. It always has and always will, I suppose -- until it doesn’t. Then I’ll just have to drive off that bridge when I come to it.

***************************************************************************

I’ve always wanted to put a time-lapse camera up on stage to capture the crazy process of making a pilot, but lacking such a camera, my grand plan has forever drifted on the big puffy clouds of Fantasy Land. Someone with a lot more energy than I have (and a suitable camera) went to the trouble of bringing this vision to life on a pilot that was built, rigged, shot, and wrapped over a recent three week period. Penny – my favorite stand-in who tells her Hollywood stories over at “One Red Cent” -- worked on that pilot, and posted the two-and-a-half minute clip on her blog.

The Sunday LA Times ran an interesting piece on the recent migration of noted film directors from the world of features to television – cable television, to be precise. Given that the big-money feature world is now ruled exclusively by brain-dead corporations – who much like certain dogs I’ve known, make a habit of eating their own shit, then passing it on to the paying public – you can’t blame accomplished, talented directors for fleeing to television. The broadcast networks offer no refuge; with rare exceptions, all they seem capable of these days is producing one giant steaming formulaic pile after another to stink up your television screen at home.

But hey, what do you expect -- it’s free.

That leaves cable, where the creative environment could hardly be better for people who are more interested in doing edgy, groundbreaking work than making the big paychecks that come with ushering yet another comic book to the silver screen. Adding fuel to this fire, the cable world is currently engaged in a creative arms race of sorts, each small (and some not-so-small) cable outfit trying to outdo the others in attracting fresh eyeballs to their channel. Such competition is a good thing for discerning television viewers and picky directors alike.

The opposite side of this ever-spinning coin – a well-respected but not particularly bankable art film director signing on to do a monster comic-book movie – only serves to underline the dearth of creative energy in the corporate feature world. Patrick Goldstein’s recent LA Times column describes how the producer of "Thor" -- rather than take the safe, cover-your-ass corporate approach -- followed his gut instincts in offering the directing chores to Kenneth Branagh. Given Branagh’s lousy recent track record at the box office, this raised eyebrows throughout Hollywood. I haven’t seen the movie, but the strong debut of “Thor” would seem to erase any doubts as to the wisdom of that choice.

But will the soulless corporations ever learn? Never...

And finally I must once again draw your attention to the work of Robert Lloyd, who offers up this brief-but-thoughtful meditation on Gordon Ramsay, the volatile celebrity chef and Reality Television icon. Like all of Lloyd’s writing and observations, this one is well worth your time.

Those are my picks ‘o the week. Check 'em out...

The Elephant Door

2011-06-05T12:01:00.000-07:00

Big enough for, well, you know...

One of the more distinctive aspects of a real sound stage* is the big elephant door -- so called, I presume, because such doors are more than large enough to allow the entry of an adult pachyderm. I'm not sure there's any particular dimensional standard for such doors, but although they are seldom called upon to admit real live elephants these days, they must be large enough to allow 14 foot high set walls to pass through.**

These doors are massive -- six to eight inches thick (for soundproofing) and extremely heavy. Nowadays, most of them use electric motors to slowly open and close, but at the studio where I first started, many of those doors were operated manually -- shoved open or shut by the strong backs of the crew. Gravity provided the locking mechanism, with a wheel or chains employed to engage a mechanism to raise or lower the door as required. The strangest elephant door I ever saw was at the back of Stage 32 at Paramount (the "haunted" stage where -- I was told -- the original Star Trek television show was filmed), which was opened and closed using water power. How this actually worked remains the deepest of mysteries to me, but halfway through the season something went wrong, and that door stayed shut from then on.

Electric and gravity doors have their own strengths and weaknesses. When an electric door has a problem (and it happens more often than you'd think), it usually ends up stuck open, bringing production to a screeching halt. This does not make the producers happy, which means the studio has to kick into high gear to get the damned thing fixed ASAP. Although gravity doors don't have that problem, they're not immune from the perils of Newtonian Physics. Early in my career, I slammed a gravity door shut with enough momentum to bounce it off the track -- and for a briefly horrifying moment, I thought the whole thing was about to topple inward, crushing me and several other hapless innocents whom fate had brought to the fatal crossroads of The Wrong Place and The Wrong Time. Fortunately, this stab of raw panic proved groundless -- that big door was solidly frozen in place and going nowhere.

My problems weren't over, though. Still trying to earn my spurs and build a reputation as a useful, reliable griptrician in town, I'd instead demonstrated poor judgment in a manner that was impeding the production -- so I was greatly relieved when the stage manager appeared with a forklift a few minutes later to lift the big door back on its track, thus taking me off the hook.

Another bullet dodged.

During winter, the elephant door keeps the cold and rain on the outside and the heat on the inside. In the fierce San Fernando Vally summers, massive air conditioning units maintain a comfortable working temperature on stage while the rest of LA broils in 100 degree heat. When walking or riding a bicycle down the alleys between stages in that suffocating summer heat, a deliciously cool wave of refrigerated air flows out from the occasional open elephant door -- one of those slow-motion sense memories I'll take with me to my grave.

Without those big stage doors, those of us who do the heavy lifting in Hollywood would be a lot more miserable.

In many ways, the elephant door defines a sound stage, sealing it off from the outside world and setting the tone for what goes on inside. When wide open, filming stops. Lots of other things can be going on -- rigging, wrapping, building/tearing down sets, or simply a break in the action -- but actors are rarely performing for the cameras when that big door is open.*** Everything is more relaxed then, as crew members grab a quick smoke, make a phone call, or simply stare up at the blue sky and the great outdoors. But when that door slowly glides shut, the outside world of sunshine and sky vanishes as we return -- like Morlocks -- to a world of darkness, artificial light, and make-believe.

Then it's time to get back to work, and the business of Hollywood.

* As opposed to one of the many insert stages found in industrial areas all over the LA Basin -- which typically consist of a thin, decidedly non-soundproof shell with a pipe grid hung from the rafters. Insert stages have their uses, but I'll take a real sound stage every-time...

** Just once, during my brief career as an LD (Lighting Director -- basically a glorified gaffer making a much fatter daily rate -- did I see an elephant walk through one of those big doors. Three elephants, actually, two adults and a baby, on Stage 5 at Raleigh Hollywood. That was impressive... and shades of D.W. Griffith's Hollywood.

*** There are always exceptions to every rule. The crew of Samantha Who? often built their sets right out the open elephant door and into the alley. That was one very expensive half hour comedy, which led to the show's premature demise. As I heard it, the network demanded a cut in production costs of $500,000 per week if the show was to return for a third season. When the producers balked, the axe came down.

Gunsmoke

2011-06-03T16:01:00.000-07:00

Chester, Miss Kitty, Marshal Dillon, and Doc -- the original cast of "Gunsmoke" in happier times.

James Arness is dead. I don't expect that will mean much to most of you -- certainly not to any twenty-somethings out there, and probably not many people at all under age fifty. He began his signature role as Marshal Dillon with "Gunsmoke" during 1955 -- two full years before my family got our first TV -- and finished up twenty years later in a world that by then had turned itself inside-out.*

It's hard to overstate the impact "Gunsmoke" (and Westerns in general) had on my generation of young television viewers. In those days, NBC, ABC, and CBS had the airwaves to themselves, and "Gunsmoke" was a colossus.** Everybody I knew watched it, and we kept on watching down through the years as cast members were replaced and the seemingly safe, simple world of the 50's gave way to a decade of violet turmoil and immense social and cultural upheaval. Through it all, "Gunsmoke" stayed the course, Marshal Dillon dispatching the evil doers of the Old West every week while dispensing object lessons in humanity and morality along the way.

I didn't stay tuned until the bitter end. After ten years of "Gunsmoke," I reached an age where television dropped far down my list of urgent priorities. There were girls, there were motorcycles, there were -- ahem -- "controlled substances," among other things to explore, and I was hungry to learn about them all. I don't know if I saw any of the last few years of "Gunsmoke," but even through all the smoke and confusion of the late 60's and early 70's, the iconic image of James Arness as the man with a badge and a gun never quite left me. Arness fully inhabited the role of Marshal Dillon -- he was everything a Law Man was supposed to be, and then some. In all the ways that mattered, he was the John Wayne of the small screen, but without the cultural/political baggage that followed Wayne through the twilight of his movie career.

He played other roles, of course, most notably the merciless monster from space in "The Thing," but it was as Marshal Dillon that he made his mark, and for which he will be remembered.

Now he's gone, having carved out a solid career and a quiet life in a town that has chewed up so many lesser souls over the years. I never had the chance to meet him, unfortunately, although I often work on the studio lot where "Gunsmoke" was made. Some of the real old-timers around the lot were on the show, and in talking with them, I've never heard a bad word about James Arness.

In a town that loves to dish the dirt on anyone and everyone, that's something.

Thanks for the memories, Marshal. Rest in peace...

Addendum: LA Time’s TV critic Robert Lloyd wrote a brief but deep appreciation of James Arness for Saturday’s paper. It’s really good, and very much worth reading.

* I was a fan before we got that TV, having listened to the radio show of the same name for as long as I could remember. Saturday mornings were good, as "Gunsmoke" ran back-to-back with the radio version of "Have Gun, Will Travel," which later made for another good televised Western starring the inimitable Richard Boone.

** Hard though it may be to believe, there was no "Oprah," "Jerry Springer," "Maury Povitch," or professional bass fishing on TV back then -- and in that, we might have been better off. Then again, there was no "Breaking Bad," "Mad Men," or "The Wire" either, so I guess the last 55 years haven't been a total waste of television viewing time.

Everything's Fine...

2011-06-01T12:01:00.000-07:00

The Picks 'o the Week

...down on Melrose.

While catching up on the various Hollywood-oriented offerings over at KCRW, I tuned in to a recent podcast of "The Business." The first segment is a great discussion on the importance and process of casting for television with two network casting directors. Casting is crucial to the success of any new show. No matter how tight and well-crafted the script, how tense the drama or funny the jokes, none of it matters if the casting clanks off the rim – that show is doomed. An excellent cast can keep a show afloat despite less-than-stellar writing -- for a limited time, anyway -- but even the very best writing can't overcome poor casting.

It's the kiss of death.

Well there is one remedy – re-cast the roles that aren’t working – but by the time a new show hits the air, several episodes are already in the can. Re-casting a key role at that point is a bit like trying to fix an airplane’s damaged engine while the plane is still in flight. It can be done, but is a very tricky endeavor requiring patience from the audience and a nervous network alike.

Fine-tuning the casting is one of the many functions of the pilot process. On the show I just finished, one of the four principal roles was re-cast after we'd shot the pilot -- the Powers That Be replaced a young actress before we began shooting the scheduled ten episodes. This worked out for the show, which ended up filming a total of twenty-nine additional episodes in that first season, but it was a tough blow for actress who lost the part. Imagine how she felt getting dumped, then seeing the show go on to film for the better part of a year with that other actress playing her role.

Our show made another change mid-way through the first ten-episode order, replacing a non-core actress in a recurring/secondary role. That was hard on her and the crew – we really liked her a lot, and hated to see her go – but it wasn't long before we all understood what a good fit the new actress really was. Whether the impetus for that change came from the show’s producers or their Network Overlords remains unclear, but it was the right call.

This is just one more reason actors really do have the toughest job in Hollywood. Writers come in a distant second in that dismal race, facing rejection and failure based upon the perceived quality and marketability of the words they put on paper. That has to hurt, no doubt about it, but compared to what most actors go through -- standing up to repeated blunt rejection of the most intensely personal kind -- writers have it easy. Actors are constantly being told they're not good enough, that the producers want somebody else -- somebody better -- for the part.

It’s no wonder so many actors go crazy in this town.

The second segment of the show ignited a prairie fire of commentary, largely due to CNN picking up – and in classic cable news fashion, utterly misrepresenting – a sound clip from the interview with Hillary Swank. An interesting discussion between the show host, Hillary, and her producing partner was lost in the subsequent smoke and flames as a mob of outraged (and seemingly demented) fans stormed the barricades in protest.

Like so many goings-on in Hollywood, this one brought to mind the classic novel about life in Hollywood: Day of the Locust -- and reminded me that the word “fan” is often short for “fanatic.”

Still, whether you decide to plow through the post-show commentary of unwarranted vitriol or not – and I don’t recommend it -- the show is worth a listen.

There's more good stuff over at the "Martini Shot" pod-cave, where Rob Long gets itchy while discussing the relative virtues and attractions of candy vs. homework in making television viewing choices, then works up a serious sweat pondering the ultimate harsh reality of Hollywood as recently discovered by Charlie Sheen – that none of us who toil in the shadows of the big white sign are so special that we can’t be replaced.

It’s a lesson worth remembering, and three minutes that are definitely worth your attention.

And now for something completely different. Kurt Sutter (“Sons of Anarchy”) is the only showrunner I know of who also runs his own personal show-related blog, and it’s an interesting read. When he’s not ripping someone – or occasionally himself – a new one, Sutter likes to pull back the curtain and explain his process of writing and managing the show. He recently posted a few short video clips, the best of which are segments called What the Fuck?, where he answers questions from readers/fans. The lead clip is video from a photo shoot promo that will appeal to civilian fans of the show, but I found the second clip a lot more illuminating. And here, Sutter composes a wonderfully smooth-and-snarky ode to agents and managers.

Those are my picks of the week. Check 'em out...

Hollywood: Is It Worth It?

2011-05-29T12:01:00.000-07:00

What do you think, Howard?

(photo courtesy of Aviation Explorer)

While hanging lamps high amid the pipes late one afternoon during the last few weeks on the show, one of set dressers walked out into the middle of the set where I was working and gave me a Meaningful Look. I paused from my labors to meet her gaze. Being that she was -- and is -- a very attractive young woman, this wasn’t hard to do.

"Hey, Scooter -- what's up?"

“Are you okay?” she asked, her head cocked to one side.

“Sure. Why?”

“I read your last post. It was pretty dark.”

“Dark?”

She nodded.

“I didn’t really see it as dark,” I shrugged. “That’s just how it is.”

The look on her face made it clear this was not a satisfactory answer.

As it turned out, she’d compared notes with another member of the crew who had a similar reaction to the post, and both were wondering if something was wrong.

Well of course something’s wrong: I’m getting old. The relentless process of aging -- everything I once took for granted now slipping through my fingers -- is the last great and enduring insult life has to offer. After a certain point, aging ceases being a joke and morphs into an endless series of stinging bitch-slaps, each stiffer than the last, from which there is no comeback, no recovery, and no lasting relief. The sole remaining refuge from this rising black tide is a good stiff drink or three, the temporary palliative effects of which allow me to face the ugly truth that the only thing worse than getting old is not getting old.

Perspective is everything. The rictus grin of the Grim Reaper that awaits us all will materialize soon enough, and I’m in no hurry to grasp his cold, bony hand.

Okay, now that’s getting a little dark...

But driving home with the existential post-shoot blues? That’s not dark -- that’s just another swing on pendulum of life. Same as it ever was.

A reader named Emilio left an interesting comment about that post.

“I'm just finishing up school and plan on moving to L.A. to start a career in the industry, and blogs like this one really keep me going. Where others might see negativity in a post like this one, I am very much looking forward to it. Working on student films the last couple of years, I have felt these post-wrap blues myself plenty of times. It's definitely bitter-sweet to get that rest but have the realization that you're not going back to that same environment. The question I would ask of a professional such as yourself is: is it worth it? Would you rather be doing something else?”

Emilio doesn't fuck around – he asks the Big Questions.

Every life is a long and winding road of decisions, compromises, triumphs and disappointments. Playing the cards you’ve been dealt, you'll win some and lose some, reacting as best you can to each new situation along the way and hoping you made the right choices. Work is just another zero-sum thread in that unfolding tapestry, where the act of choosing one career path precludes other possible choices, leaving those paths unexplored. None of us has the time to do it all in life. We have to pick and choose along the way, and some of those choices – including a select few that mark real turning points – are made on the fly, without much forethought. It's human nature to dream and scheme about our potential futures, but life and careers sometimes pivot on chance and happenstance. One day you open the door to find a totally unexpected opportunity ready to shake your hand, and suddenly everything changes.

No matter how carefully you might plan and maneuver, success is often just a matter of being at the right place at the right time -- and being prepared.

I didn't head for Hollywood chasing dreams of becoming a juicer. I didn’t even know what a “juicer” was –- or a grip, or a set-dresser, or anything else about the reality of working in the biz -- but with a zeal born of desperation, I was determined to find a way to work on movies for a living. I hit town a young man on a mission, and if things didn’t work out, I’d just have to go with Plan B.

Except... there was no Plan B. In the great tradition of the Westward Expansion in the 1800’s, my own quest was pretty much Hollywood or bust.

After several months during which my savings dwindled to nothing -- just before the tide finally turned, I had all of eight dollars left in the bank -- I caught a break in the form of a job working for nothing on a shoestring production making a very low budget feature. I called home to borrow a couple of hundred bucks, then put my head down and got to work. During the course of that job I met two people who would, each in a different way, help me get paying industry work down the road. The production secretary called a few months later with a tip that led to a PA job on another feature, this one with a much bigger budget. On that movie I met a lighting crew that needed an extra pair of hands to help them shoot three straight weeks of all-nighters. Seeing my willingness to hustle, they took me under their collective wing and taught me the basics. Over the next couple of years, both the Gaffer and Key Grip hired me to work occasional low-pay jobs, and eventually I learned enough to earn a spot on their regular crew as juicer.

It took two lean and hungry years of hustling hard and jumping on every opportunity, but I was finally on my way.

I think it's a lot harder for new arrivals to make any headway in Hollywood these days. Being smart, clever, and ambitious isn’t enough anymore. With so many bright kids emerging from college hell-bent on carving out their own Hollywood careers, a newbie has to mount a serious full-court press just to catch a break and get started – and that’s only the first step on a long, hard road. The real work of building a career comes later.

This is the nature of free-lance life. If you're looking for steady employment and a regular paycheck, take a job at the Post Office. You're unlikely to find either in Hollywood.

But I digress.... To get back to Emilio's question: has working in the belly of the Hollywood beast, riding the roller-coaster of highs and lows over the years and enduring the insecurity and uncertainty endemic to the biz really been worth it?

I’m not sure there’s a simple answer. Had those timely breaks not materialized, and helping hands not reached out to give me a boost at so many crucial stages along the way, I'd probably have had to find another path in life. God knows what that would have been, but it’s possible everything would have worked out fine, leaving me fat, prosperous, and happy at the far end of the rainbow. Then again, I might have ended up in some dead-end office job living out a life of quiet desperation, or worse, made enough bad decisions to spin off the rails and tumble down among LA’s legions of urban unwashed living under freeways and huddling in cardboard condos beneath the Sixth Street bridge. It's not that hard to do -- people smarter than I'll ever be have stumbled and fallen through those cracks.

For better or worse, living out any of those scenarios would have meant missing the chance to climb from grip-trician to juicer to Best Boy to Gaffer, then slide back down the slippery ladder of success to where I am today, a juicer again.

I'll never know what might have happened -- all I know is what did happen, and for me, things worked out in Hollywood.* All I can say with reasonable certainty is that I’d never have lasted slaving away in a cube farm – strapping on a suit and tie to toil in the corporate grid pattern was not for me -- so I probably ended up where I belong.

Leaving all the pointless “what if” speculation aside... yeah, I think it was worth it. This business flew me all over the country working on features, commercials, music videos, and industrial films, at a time when air travel was still fun and easy. I watched a sunrise bathe the snow-capped Grand Teton Mountains in a golden glow, saw another stunning dawn emerge from the blackest of nights over the Pyramid of the Sun outside Mexico City, and once got to sit in Howard Hugh’s pilot seat aboard the Spruce Goose.** During my time in this crazy business, I’ve seen a lot, done a lot, and met so many truly amazing people over the years -– behind and in front of the cameras -- all while getting paid for it.

If some of it felt like blood money, that doesn't matter anymore. The pain (and the money) are long gone, but the memories remain.

Would I rather be doing something different? It might have been nice to play lead guitar for the Rolling Stones, or patrol center field and bat cleanup for the San Francisco Giants, but those cards were never in my deck. All in all, I'm okay with the way my years in Hollywood unfolded -- and if I wasn't, it's a little late to do anything about it now.

The business is changing fast, the old ways crumbling under the sledgehammer of the digital revolution. Although the current challenges I face are in some ways very different than those that confronted me thirty years ago -– I’m on the way down now, no longer heading up -- some things never change. I still have to prove myself every single day on set. The moment I start slacking off under the assumption that being a veteran means I no longer have to carry a full share of the work load, my days in this town will be numbered. With that in mind, maybe I’ll be able to keep answering the bell long enough to leave Hollywood on my own terms, and not get kicked out the back door.

The free-lance Industry life isn't easy, but life is hard no matter what path you choose. If you decide to heed the siren call of Hollywood, work hard, have fun, and be ready to grasp opportunity with both hands when it appears. Do that, and some of your dreams will likely come true -- maybe not all of them, but enough so that when you finally look back, you'll feel it really was worth it.

* More or less. It’s not as if I came, saw, and conquered, but I’ve managed to make a living in this town for thirty-plus years and have some fun in the process. That may not be much, but it counts for something.

* Yep, the very same pilot seat in the photo above. Having grown up crazy about airplanes as a kid, this was a big deal to me at the time...

Picks 'o the Week

2011-05-25T12:01:00.000-07:00

Back in LA

I spotted this on the way to the post office this morning while carrying a fistful of overdue bills. The hammer and camera... I have no idea who's behind this image, but I like it.

*********************************************

It’s morning, foggy and cold, but the wood stove is full of ashes. Hasn’t been emptied for a week. I fill the bucket with light, fluffy gray ash, then build and light a fire. Once the orange flames have caught, I carry the bucket -– now growing warm from embers buried within -- outside to the hose. As the water penetrates to those glowing embers deep in the ash, small geysers of hissing steam shoot the fine gray powder up and out over everything in a three foot radius.

I’ve learned the hard way to stand back from this bucket of tiny volcanoes, lest I too end up coated in a thin layer of damp ash.

I grab a stick and stir the milky gray soup for a couple of minutes – you really can’t be too careful when it comes to fire -- then carry the now-brimming bucket down a wooded path far away from the house. Where the trees end, a thick blue mist of Forget-Me-Nots hovers over a lush green meadow. Brilliant magenta spears of Foxglove rise up from the dense sea of green, and in the midst of it all stands a doe, not thirty feet away, grazing in the early morning silence. Her head jerks up and freezes, fixing me with an unnervingly steady gaze. Those big ears and liquid black eyes stare with an intensity borne of the need to survive in a world without mercy, where instantaneous reactions can mark the border between life and death.

There are mountain lions in these hills, and this doe knows it.

She also knows I’m not a lion, but isn't sure if I pose any kind of threat, so she stares at me – and I at her -- for what feels like an eternity. A breeze filters through the trees, shaking loose a rain of foggy dew from the branches above. I flinch as one very wet, cold drop hits my neck and slides down my back. The doe doesn’t move a muscle, a perfect statue chiseled out of flesh and bone, utterly focused on me, this sudden stranger who does not belong.

She wins the stare-down. Unable to meet that quietly intense gaze, I laugh softly, then swing the bucket to send the slurry of ash and water out over the forest floor. That’s enough for the doe -- with a single effortless leap she’s gone, a tawny shadow melting into the thick curtain of trees.

I carry the bucket back to the house, no longer aware of the damp morning chill. The fire is going strong now. I pull a chair close and watch the flames consume dry wood, slowly turning it into ash. Outside the fog is beginning to lift, revealing a patch of blue high above.

Somewhere out there, the doe has stopped running.

**************************************

No longer shackled by the horse-and-buggy of dial-up Internet, I've been catching up on some of those things that help make living in Southern California more tolerable. This week’s The Business on KCRW features a terrific interview with Jimmy Kimmel, describing his recent appearance and apparently much-anticipated performance at the upfronts in New York. I don’t watch much late night TV and am not particularly fond of talk shows, but have heard good things about Kimmel. Having never seen it, I can't say whether his nightly show is worth watching or not, but the interview is definitely worth tuning in.

Robert Lloyd -- one of the LA Time’s most thoughtful TV critics – wrote a really nice commentary on the crazy process of the upfronts, and how that once-quiet event has moved into the spotlight in recent years. It’s a short article that won’t slow you down, but might make you think. Besides, Lloyd is always worth reading.

Another good read comes from the fertile keyboard of Mary McNamara, the LA Time's other good television critic, in a wry multi-dimensional analysis of the End of Oprah. For me, Mary is another "must-read" TV critic, regardless of the subject matter.

And of course, any compendium of entertaining/informative television critics has to include The Hollywood Reporter's own Tim Goodman, who offers his own perspective on the quasi-departure of television's resident She-God. As usual, Goodman tells it like it is.

Last up is another of KCRW’s offerings, a lively interview with Paul Feig, courtesy of Elvis Mitchell on The Treatment. Feig has some interesting things to say about being in “movie jail,” the process of writing comedies, and the importance of utilizing a solid narrative built on a firm foundation. In other words, do it right, with no quick-and-dirty cheap shots just to get a laugh. I haven’t seen any of Feig’s movies, but his latest (“Bridesmaids”) is being pushed as something of a chick-flick comedy with balls.

If the movie is as good as the interview, it just might be worth watching.

Those are my picks of the week. Check 'em out...

Oops...

2011-05-21T18:01:00.000-07:00

Never mind...

Well, it's one minute after six p.m. here on the West Coast of the United States with no sign of the Rapture. No crushing earthquakes, no monster tsunamis, no tornadoes of fire -- just a pleasant spring day coming to a close. Looks like the Big Show has been kicked down the road a ways.

As Gomer Pyle used to say, "Surprise, surprise, surprise..."

Anybody out there sorely disappointed that our world has not yet come to a disastrous end -- and that you didn't leave all your clothes, cars, IPhones, and plasma screen TVs behind to join the Chosen Ones in their ascent to Heaven while the rest of us heathens and infidels suffer a thousand years of flaming torture -- might take some solace in this.

Just don't forget to bring a sense of humor.

If I didn't consider all those wild-eyed, much-too-sincere religious crackpots to be on the far end of complete insanity, I might feel sorry for them in their hour of spiritual letdown. But hey, don't get too depressed that our oh-so-troubled planet kept right on spinning through space despite all the Doomsday prophesies -- there's always next year.

Keep trying, and one of these days you're bound to be right -- after all, even a blind squirrel stumbles across an acorn every now and then.

***************************************

Enough of this foolishness. Vacation's over. With any luck this space will be back with something more pertinent to Industry life in Hollywood next week.

Dispatch from the Home Planet

2011-05-18T12:01:00.000-07:00

Take me to your leader...

Still back on the Home Planet, far from the gravitational flux of Hollywood and the LA Basin. The natives here on this remote outpost have taken to worshiping a strange new god -- I tried to get a closer look at this modern-day Golden Calf, but recoiled when a strident cry from deep within the fiendish device began shouting "Danger Will Robinson!"

It was all I could do to snap this quick picture, then run for my life as an angry mob of locals came after me with pitchforks and torches.

Who knows what all this means? We are indeed living in the strangest of times -- and friends, the Cosmic Shit has only just begun to hit the Almighty Fan...

Hobbled by my anemic dial-up Internet connection (here on the Home Planet we still communicate with empty soup cans connected by string) I will not resume serious posting -- whatever that means -- until I make my flaming re-entry to Southern California. I can only hope my ship's heat shields hold up...

Meanwhile, you could do a lot worse things with your idle time than to click on over to my own favorite blog and read this. It has nothing to do with Hollywood or the film industry, but everything to do with real life -- and is one beautiful piece of writing: short, bittersweet, and to the point.*

You'd better read it fast, though -- if the True Believers out there are right, time is running out...

* To fully grasp the meaning of this piece it will help to know a little something about Khe Sahn. Click here for a brief-but-succinct Wiki-explanation.

A Case of Mistaken Identity

2011-05-15T12:01:00.000-07:00

"Let me make one thing perfectly clear..."

(Photo courtesy of Flavorwire)

I promised never to do it again – refer to myself in the third person in this space – but sometimes you just have to break the rules...

While perusing the user statistics for this blog, I noticed a recent series of hits from a site called “DVXUser.com, the online community for film making." Following the comment thread back to a question about building a pipe grid for lighting on stage led me to the source of those hits, a link from a DVX member named “Slondon” embellished with the following comment:

“This blog is a wonderful read and she has links to a bazillion photos she's taken, many inside studios and sound stages.”

Although I appreciate such kind words, particularly when coupled with a link to BS&T, it’s abundantly clear that they were not aimed at me. Yes, the URL is mine, but although I’ve been accused of many things over the long roller coaster ride of my Hollywooden career, being a “she” is not among them. I'm not particularly proud of being a guy -- having been born that way, I had no say in the matter -- but it is what it is and I am what I am.

And that, my fellow Americans, is a he.

Slondon seems to have confused my blog with that of the wonderful Peggy Archer over at “Totally Unauthorized” – a terrific writer/juicer who is most definitely a she, and does indeed “link to a bazillion photos she’s taken, many inside studios and sound stages.”

Alas, I do not. Any DVXUser readers who followed Slondon's link here and remain puzzled by what they found should click on over to Peggy's blog, where the writing and stories are indeed as good as the photos.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming...

Summer Re-Run Number 1

2011-05-08T16:04:00.000-07:00

Technically speaking, it isn't quite summer yet, and in this era when Reality Television dominates the summer months, I'm not sure there's any such thing as "summer re-runs" anymore. But the concept was burned into my brain a long time ago, and if old dogs have trouble learning new tricks, they don't forget the old ones.

At any rate, it just didn't seem right to leave this space blank on a Sunday, even though I'm back on the Home Planet, many parsecs from Hollywood -- thus, the Summer Re-Run. I may do this again and I may not. It's all in flux right now.

This one from August 2009 is a true story about a young man and a goat on a summer afternoon -- uh no, not that kind of story -- and a seemingly great idea that didn't quite work out as planned.

Let's just say a very valuable lesson was learned...

Nobody much liked it at the time (except for a solitary anonymous commenter and AJ over at "The Hills Are Burning" -- for which she earned my undying gratitude), but I figure there must be some new readers since then, so here you go, for better or worse...

*******************************************

The Golden Carrot

It seemed like a good idea at the time...

(photo courtesy of Woodhow Farms)

In a recent post, the Film Industry Blogger’s “Hollywood Development Executive” opened up with a basic fact of life in the biz:

“Our whole industry is based on a Bugs Bunny Cartoon. That silly wabbit was constantly being led around by a carrot on a stick placed strategically just out of grasp, though it seemed so close. This is the very essence of Hollywood and why thousands of people – from the homecoming queens to the techie geeks – swarm towards Los Angeles every year.”

HDE is right – many of those lured to LA by the prospect of an Industry career arrive with big dreams that great things will come their way down the road. Most play it coy at first: reluctant to hex their ambitious career goals by angering the Gods of Hollywood (sometimes pride really does goeth before a fall), they avoid trumpeting such big plans to the world, but the vast majority of wannabe writers, directors, producers, and actors have already envisioned their names in lights. Some below-the-liners harbor their own lofty ambitions, which a very few actually do manage to achieve, lifting themselves out of the oily Swamp of Toil in which the rest of us shall labor until retirement finally drags us back onto dry land.

If we live that long, at least -- an image of all those saber-toothed-tigers and mammoths sinking to their doom in the La Brea Tar Pits suddenly comes to mind, but this is not a comforting thought...

There’s nothing wrong with ambition. Dreaming big is often the first essential step towards achieving truly big things, and those with the fire burning inside are destined* to walk that path, win, lose, or draw. But there’s nothing inherently wrong with thinking small, either, although people in this town tend to give a double-take of disapproval to anyone who openly admits a lack of personal ambition. Our culture pays lip service to the “whatever makes you happy” philosophy of life, but most people who take that road-less-traveled don't come to Hollywood. Those who do choose to walk these smoggy streets without Big Plans in their back pockets are often viewed with a puzzled suspicion.

If you don’t want to BE somebody and DO big things, then why the hell are you here?

That's a good question, but it's useful to remember that nothing comes free in life. Big ambitions come with a very high price, and that assumes you've got what it takes to succeed. But if for whatever reason you aren't able to fulfill those career dreams, does that make you a failure? Can you live with achieving – in the immortal words of then-President Jimmy Carter – such an “incomplete success”? And even if you do hit that highest of notes, what then? Where do you go once you've finally caught and eaten that indigestible golden carrot? How do you fill the suddenly yawning void within?

Strange mystical/crackpot religions?

The wild-eyed, dead-end hedonism of all the sex, drugs, and booze money/fame can buy?

Yet another trophy wife or boy-toy, depending on your personal predilections?

Serial adoption of foreign babies?

Scientology?

All of the above, I suppose, if the behavior of so many past and current Hollywood A listers is any guide. Not that a mere juicer would know anything about such outlandish success, mind you, but I can tell you from personal experience that although the carrot-on-a-stick works well as metaphor, it doesn't always translate to the real world.

Like any kid, I watched a lot of cartoons during a mis-spent youth. Sure, they were in black and white (color TV was unobtainium for all but the rich back in the Pleistocene), but the message came through loud and clear – and to my ten year old eyes, that carrot-on-a-stick thing seemed an irresistibly brilliant idea. When I discovered a rusty old wheelchair down in the basement one fine summer day, a light bulb clicked on over my head. Being that my family lived out in the sticks with a barn full of animals, I had the ingredients to bring this cinematic fantasy to life, with one slight deviation from the cartoon blueprint: rather than use a carrot as the lure, I tied a fat handful of green alfalfa to a string at the end of a long pole. The propulsion system for my experiment was to be one of our wonderfully docile milk goats, and although goats will eat pretty much anything from work gloves to poison oak, this particular animal had a serious jones for sweet alfalfa.

My mind’s eye saw something right out of “Tom Sawyer,” with me seated in the wheelchair being drawn along a country road at a brisk pace by the goat as she followed the tantalizing scent of that eternally unattainable alfalfa. My plan -- as far as I'd thought it out -- called for me to make the goat aware of the aromatic green hay, at which point I would climb into the wheelchair and we’d be off. When I finally got bored trotting around the roads of our rural neighborhood, I’d let the goat eat the alfalfa as a reward for her service. In this gauzy Norman Rockwell vision, I saw a win/win scenario in which both the goat and I would get what we wanted.

What could possibly go wrong?

Unimpressed by the dazzling genius of my cartoon-inspired plan, the goat waited patiently as I tied the rope around her neck, then to the wheelchair. Ready for launch, I grabbed the long pole and swung the alfalfa bait out in front of her nose, certain that my triumph would soon be complete.

But as with so many of life’s more meaningful experiences, the fun stopped at the exact moment all my anticipatory preparation ended -- which is to say, the instant reality took charge. Much to my surprise, the goat’s ears flew up in sudden alarm, then she bolted down the road dragging the wheelchair behind, leaving me standing there holding a suddenly useless pole. I watched for what felt like a very long time as the tragic flaw in my plan became immediately apparent: rather than observe a delicious meal floating gently towards her waiting mouth, the goat perceived an unknown object hurtling through the sky directly at her head. Interpreting this as a potentially lethal threat, her golf-ball sized brain triggered an instant flight response -- and that goat was gone.

So was the wheelchair, now bouncing on its side across the rough pavement with a tremendous racket, the sudden drag jerking the rope tight around the goat's neck. Feeling something clawing at her throat and hearing all that noise behind her, the goat ran faster, desperately trying to escape whatever was chasing her – but the faster she ran, the louder the noise grew, and the more violent the squeezing of her throat.

It was then that I first encountered an entirely new concept: the positive feedback loop. Such feedback loops result when a cycle of events are set in motion such that each acts to reinforce and increase the magnitude of the others. Compound interest is beneficial form of positive feedback loop that can, over many years, generate great wealth for those smart enough to start saving early and often. But in the physical world, positive feedback loops often have extremely negative consequences -- absent some outside force of control, many real-world feedback loops end in disaster. Nuclear fission** is created through a positive feedback loop of unleashed neutrons in a rapidly accelerating crescendo culminating in the near-instantaneous release of energy we know as an atomic explosion: the mushroom cloud of death.

I ran after the terrified goat, who by now must have thought the hounds of Hell were hot on her heels. Thirty yards down the road, she veered off the road into the brush trying to escape her pursuer. She didn’t get far – the wheelchair caught in that dense brush like a boat anchor, and by the time I got there, she was down on her side, eyes wide, tongue out, bleating frantically in stark terror.

I felt awful. My brilliant plan – spawned by those cartoons – had nearly broken this poor goat’s neck, and came close to scaring her to death. I managed to calm her down, then freed her from wheelchair bondage and led her back to the barn for all the nice green alfalfa she could eat. The goat didn’t seem to suffer any discernible aftereffects from her not-so-excellent adventure, and being of a particularly social breed, didn’t hold a grudge against me.

In that, she was more forgiving than I’d have been, but all things considered, goats have better manners than most people anyway. She taught me a valuable lesson that day: that the world of cartoons is not to be mistaken for reality. A few years later, I started building home-made rockets down in the basement, and if I hadn’t already learned the difference between cinematic and physical reality, it's entirely possible that I'd have ended up strapping on a pair of rocket-powered roller skates like those from the Acme Corporation.

I’m sure that would have ended well... but I avoided the fate of Wile E. Coyote because I’d already learned my lesson the hard way: even though life may indeed resemble a cartoon at times, it isn’t.

Not even in Hollywood.

*Or doomed, depending how you look at it.

** The fission reaction in a nuclear power plant is controlled by cadmium rods that absorb those rampaging neutrons. To speed the reaction up and increase power, the rods are pulled out. To slow it down, they’re pushed back in.

On a darker note, some of the world’s more gloomy environmental scientists consider global warming to be an ongoing example of a positive feedback loop. As the warming oceans continue to melt the polar ice caps, huge areas of white ice (which reflects the sun’s rays) morph into dark water, which absorbs the sun’s energy. Less ice = more water = increased warming -- and eventually, no more ice caps. Those ice caps are the world’s cooling system, and once gone, the pace of warming will accelerate. Organic material long trapped in the frozen permafrost will decay as things warm up, releasing even more methane and carbon dioxide, two potent greenhouse gasses. Adding fuel to the fire, we humans will burn ever more fossil fuels in generating electricity to keep us cool in our warming world, thus releasing yet more of the heat-retaining gasses that started the problem in the first place.

It's not hard to see where this is headed -- and it's not a good place to be. If those scientists are right, we’re well and truly fucked. Even the mighty Iphone won’t have an app cool enough to save our sorry asses...

Stupid vs. Gloriously Stupid

2011-05-04T12:00:00.000-07:00

Then there's just being lazy, in my own gloriously stupid way...

Hundreds of movies come out every year, very few of which I ever see. I can’t even remember the last time I saw a movie in a theater,* but when a feature does catch my eye, I add it to my Netflix queue for eventual viewing at home. Sometimes a particularly compelling trailer (on TV or the Internet) will pique my interest, but for the most part I depend on film reviews to guide my quest for cinematic quality – and a well written film review is a treat in and of itself.

Having seen the trailer for “Fast Five” a number of times on television, I can safely say it’s unlikely to end up in my DVD player. I’ve nothing against high-octane car chases, bloody gunfights, or lots of sexy, scantily-clad young women gyrating on screen, but there’s a time in life to fully appreciate such spectacle – and that time is between one’s 18th and 34th birthdays, the demographic most prized by every studio’s marketing and distribution department.

That said, reading Mick LaSalle’s review of “Fast Five” almost makes me want to see the movie. LaSalle is a terrific writer and one very smart guy, but he’s not a film snob. He doesn’t allow his personal cinematic predilections get in the way of a review, giving a fair shake to every film on its own terms, be it an art film or action movie. If a movie sucks, he'll tell you exactly why it missed the mark, rather than simply trash it as unworthy of your attention.

I don't agree with Mick every time -- some films he loves left me cold, while others he panned I enjoyed -- but his reviews are always a great read. Here's a passage from his review of "Fast Five," drawing the distinction between “Stupid” and “Gloriously Stupid”:

“Lin has also found the tone that eluded him in "The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift" and "Fast & Furious." He has finally made the transition from stupid to gloriously stupid, which is all-important in action movies. "Stupid" is when a movie offers something ridiculous but takes it seriously - and expects you to take it seriously. "Gloriously Stupid" is when a movie offers you something ridiculous and knows it's ridiculous - but then promises to go way beyond ridiculous and surprise you with how insane and grandly ridiculous a movie can be while keeping a straight face. "Fast Five" does exactly that.”

If you like this kind of writing -- and are curious about the rest of Mick’s review -- click here.

Turning to the small screen, Hollywood Reporter Television Critic Tim Goodman is just back from vacation (or as he calls it a "work stoppage") loaded for bear with another of his wondefully snarky “Everything We Know We Learned From Television” columns. These were a regular feature during his glory days writing for the SF Chronicle, and he’s brought the tradition down I-5 to the Big City on a very occasional basis for the Reporter. Whether the current “Everything” columns will prove the equal of those from his Chron days remains to be seen, but I can say one thing with certainty – back then, he was never moved to compare watching a television program (the Royal Wedding, in this case) with having shards of bamboo jammed through his penis...

Ouch. Tim Goodman holds strong opinions about television, and has never been afraid to speak his mind -- which is one reason he's always worth reading.

Check it out.

*****************************************

Out of work for the moment -- and out of town for a while – I won’t be posting much over the next three or four weeks. With Hollywood a distant speck in my rear view mirror, real life is now imposing its own set of demands, and I'm currently feeling neither the energy nor the motivation required to stare into this screen and conjure something out of the ether. Call it a hiatus, a time-out, or just a period of uncertainty – maybe I’ll post, maybe I won’t. If I knew, I’d tell you, but I really don’t know. All I can say is that it's time to sit in front of the fire for a while and gaze into the flames.

To wallow in warm mud of cliché, I’m just gonna go with the flow and play it as it lays...

* For many reasons, none of which are worth discussing...

Ashes, Ashes, All Fall Down

2011-05-01T12:00:00.000-07:00

"Parting is such sweet sorrow..."

(From Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Scene 2)

It's over...

A lot can happen in a year. The price of gas can rise from two dollars-and-change to well over four dollars per gallon. A deep-water oil rig can blow out and kill a dozen people while devastating the environment, economy, and lives of an entire coastal region. A monster earthquake on the ocean's floor can hurl a thirty foot wall of water against a densely-populated island nation to obliterate entire cities, kill tens of thousands of people, and trigger the worst nuclear accident the world has seen in the past 25 years. In a moment of enraged despair, a solitary citizen of a repressive Arab country can immolate himself on a public street, thus sparking a human earthquake across the Middle East that rapidly topples two powerful, long-standing dictators and seriously threaten the reign of several others. In the course of an average year, a hundred and forty million people will be born into this world, while nearly sixty million die.*

All that in just fifty-two short weeks.

On a vastly smaller scale, a sit-com in Hollywood can gear up to shoot thirty episodes (including the pilot), during which – among other things -- this juicer maintained his unbroken streak of losing every single Dollar Day. Some things never change... and now that we’ve wrapped the show, there's nothing left but dust in the air and a year's worth of memories on a suddenly empty, cavernous sound stage.

If these latter events didn't register even a momentary blip on the radar screen of The Big Picture over the past year, they had a big impact on me. With my little cable-rate sit-com finally over, we who did the heavy lifting all season long can only cross our fingers and await the network’s decision to bring us back for Season Two, or consign our show to the overflowing garbage can of Hollywood history.

We shot five straight episodes to finish off the season, and the last three were serious ball-busters for almost every department. It was a long slog, and if some of us took more of a beating than others, we all pretty much got our asses kicked. The final week was particularly grueling, and early on, none of the crew I spoke to expressed much interest in attending the wrap party, which would take place immediately after the show at a location several miles away.

I felt the same ambivalence. The last thing I wanted to do was drive even farther away from home after putting the final show in the can, but simply walking away at the season's end didn't seem right. This crew got along pretty well, all things considered, and if certain directors brought out the best in us, while others -- who were for whatever reasons less successful in generating a supportive, positive atmosphere on set -- well, that's nothing new. Through all the ups and downs, this crew's spectrum of very different personalities meshed surprisingly well over the long haul, enabling most of us to have a reasonably good time in the process. I really like most of those people, and didn't want to miss this last chance to let our hair down together.

Still, slogging through Friday night traffic on a very busy street to a Laser Tag emporium (?) after the last five long weeks didn't sound like much of a wrap party to me or anybody else I talked to. But as the week wore on, most of the crew slowly, one-by-one, RSVP'ed the invitation. Figuring that it was better to leave my options open, I too signed on. What the hell -- if I changed my mind at the last minute, I could always blow it off and head for home late Friday night.

Besides, as one of the set dressers sighed: "Yeah I'm going. I've got to represent."

She was right. Although thoroughly whipped by the time the final show wrapped, I soldiered on through the traffic towards the party. With no interest (or energy) for Laser Tag, I was drawn to the bar like a moth to the flame. In the relieved-and-relaxed atmosphere, it was easy to converse with the actors, their spouses, and so many other people I rarely interact with on set. After a glass or two of a surprisingly good Malbec, I was feeling no pain. I got the chance to say a few goodbyes, then sat there in the warm night breeze outside with most of my lighting crew.

A wrap party can be many things (and a minefield for the unwary), but the primary purpose is to celebrate the group effort it takes to successfully navigate any production, and provide a sense of closure. It was nice to relax in the company of so many former strangers, now friends, and like all good things it ended too soon. Everybody gathered in one big room for the viewing of the gag reel, a compilation of out-takes from the entire season featuring our actors flubbing lines and add-libbing like mad. After this long haul, whatever energy we still had was expended in the next few minutes of emotional release, sharing the laughter one last time, just as we'd shared it -- along with the pain -- all year long.

Suddenly very, very tired, I joined the exodus once the gag reel faded to black, down the escalators, into my car, and out onto the street heading for home. One more drink and I'd have been a menace to society, but at this point I know my limits, and observe them. Still, I took the back route home, staying off the main drags. No point taking chances...

After yet another too-short weekend, we began the wrap on Monday, given a few days to tear down everything we'd just spent the better part of a year building. By the time we had all the lamps and cable down, leaving the pipe grid naked, only the front door and a solitary header (pictured above) remained of our "permanent" sets -- a suburban house with a wide front porch, large living room, two stairways, a sitting room, dining room, kitchen, and a driveway/garage. Soon that too was gone, pulled apart and loaded up to be hauled into storage. On our last day, the stage barren at last, it was time to say final goodbyes to my fellow juicers and the other remaining crews I liked so much, the grips, set dressing, and props.

With a brand new ten episode sit-com coming in to build and rig over the next couple of weeks -- with another crew -- the eternal cycle begins anew: one show dies and gives way to another being born. Given any luck, we'll be back in mid-July to start another season after that show wraps, but if fate turns her back on us, the hunt for another gig will begin in earnest.

Time will tell. Until then, the void beckons.

So it goes in Hollywood.

* According to Wikipedia, anyway...

The Meat Grinder

2011-04-24T14:40:00.000-07:00

War Without Bullets

We've all been there, minus the lovely blond...

(Note: I'd planned to foist another pilot season re-run on you today, but that plan -- like so many in life -- was hijacked by the subsequent flow of events. If you're interested in those posts, click here, then scroll down to "The Making of a Pilot.")

If you haven't read this post over at Dollygrippery, you really should. In his detailed description of one typically brutal work week on a cable episodic, "D" turns over the rock to let the world see just how mercilessly demanding this kind of work really is. Although he's describing his job as a dolly grip, he may as well be speaking for the rest of the departments on that show. Grips, juicers, set dressing, props, craft service, hair and makeup, transpo -- they're all getting hammered.

Near the end of his post is a particularly poignant and revealing passage:

“I have unfortunately reached the point where I have a hard time showing interest and I'm starting to let little things go. I don't like working that way.”

There are very few truly easy gigs in this business -- working below-the-line is pretty much hard and harder -- but as far as I'm concerned, episodic television is the worst. There's a reason I refer to episodics as "war without bullets." Many (if not most) of those one-hour dramas chew their crews up and spit them out over the course of a few seasons. Given the money that can be earned working such horrendous hours, people hang on as long as they can, but a high rate of attrition and turnover among those who do the heavy lifting is not at all unusual.

When you sign on for an episodic, you're walking into a meat grinder.

Some are worse than others, of course. I'm told the crew of "Medium" often worked very reasonable hours, which can be attributed to at least two factors -- it was a broadcast network show paying full union scale (meaning the producers had to pay double-time -- which they absolutely hate to do -- after 12 hours), and the show had a really good DP who knows how to light with a minimum of equipment and effort. Unlike too many DPs I've worked for, this guy doesn't grind his crew into the dirt trying to re-invent the wheel each and every day.*

But as you'll read in D's post, a hard episodic can be unbelievably tough. According to a piece the LA Times ran a couple of years ago, the crew on NCIS was working 17 to 18 hour days before a shakeup above-the-line restored some sanity to the production, bringing work days down to the normal zone of 12 to 14 hours/day.** The cable contract negotiated to give HBO a break back when that network was still young and struggling allows cable shows to work their crews 14 hours before double-time kicks in. With lunch and drive time, that means 16 to 18 hour days are typical. Word through the grapevine has it that the HBO vampire drama "True Blood" pushes their crew extremely hard all season long.

Working such a relentless pace week in and week out is brutal. Yes, the crew can make good money working those long hours (except on cable shows, where the bad news starts with a 20% pay cut, then continues on through those fourteen hour days)) -- but at what cost? Is the larger paycheck at the end of the week worth being turned into a work-bot zombie with glazed eyes and a thousand-yard stare?

Although I got my IA card too late in life to fully experience the grinding tedium of episodics as a member of the core crew, I've done my share of day-playing on one-hour dramas, and did several extremely demanding two-to-three week stints of pickups for "The L Word," during which multiple-location 16 hour days were the norm. Before finally getting that union card, I slaved on many low budget location features, enduring two to three months of six-day work weeks on each one -- weeks that often exceeded a hundred working hours.

That was rough, but still not as bad as crewing a truly tough episodic. There's always light at the end of the tunnel on a movie -- most are over and done in three or four months -- but a broadcast network episodic can run 22 episodes, which works out to nearly nine solid months of more-or-less ceaseless toil.

The worst of it comes when you hit the burnout phase ("Burnout" being the very apt title of D's recent post), so worn down by the merciless process of cranking out each day's coverage that you slowly lapse into doing only what's absolutely necessary to get the job done. When the grinding pace is such that a solid, experienced pro like "D" can no longer fully meet his own high standards -- and he starts letting the little things go -- then something is very wrong indeed. We've all been there to one degree or another, but in the suffocating fog of the moment it's hard to realize just how vulnerable and dangerous that zone of terminal mind/body fatigue can be.

So my heart goes out to "D" and the rest of his besieged crew running the long grueling gauntlet of episodic television. At this point of my life and career, I couldn't do that kind of work even if I wanted to -- a couple of weeks on that schedule would put me in the hospital.

If I was King of the World, episodics would adopt the multi-camera tactic of shooting three weeks (roughly two episodes) before taking a week off to give the cast and crew a chance to recover, then I'd revoke the 14 hour provision of the cable contract so that producers would think twice before allowing undisciplined, self-indulgent young directors to push their crews past a 12 hour work day. Yes, the season would stretch out a little longer and cost the production companies a bit more -- and each crew member would bring home less money each month -- but by not flogging those crews to within an inch of their lives, working episodics would become less of a meat grinder and more a sustainable way to make a living.

Not that the corporate overlords who now run our Industry (and increasingly, our country) give a flying fuck about that, mind you -- but it's something to think about.

* Full disclosure: the DP of "Medium" and I worked together for more than fifteen years doing features, music videos and commercials before our working world was turned upside-down by the stampede of runaway production from LA to Canada in the late 90's. At that point, our paths diverged in the world of television, where he went into episodics and I chose sit-coms.

** I tried to find a link to that article, but it proved elusive...

Pilot Season: A Blast from the Past

2011-04-17T12:00:00.000-07:00

The bonfires of pilot season are burning hot and bright this year, but it looks like I'll miss the whole thing. By the time we've shot our final episodes and wrapped the stage on my current show, the only thing left will be ashes -- and soon enough, those too will be gone with the wind.

That's okay by me. When you've got nothing, landing a pilot is manna from heaven, but the non-stop work of making the damned thing is a bruising uphill slog all the way. At the moment, I don't need the aggravation or the inevitable beat-down of suffering through another pilot.

But that's just for now -- if my show doesn't get picked up for a second season (and there are no guarantees in this business), then I'll be more than happy to take whatever I can find, pilots included.

I wrote a short series of posts on the pilot process a couple of years ago, describing a show that was to have been called "Madison Lumber," starring a newly-svelte Valerie Bertinelli. It was a good pilot -- lots of people liked it -- but turning it into a series was apparently beyond the budgetary reach of the cable network that green-lit the project in the first place, and no other takers came along to save the day. Like so many pilots before and since, "Madison Lumber" sank beneath the waters without a ripple. All that work, all that effort, for nothing.

Well, not literally "for nothing" -- after all, I got three paychecks out of the deal -- but the series we all wanted (and the steady work it would bring) did not come to pass. So it goes in Hollywood.

Although I'm a big fan of recycling in real life, I've managed to avoid the practice here at Blood, Sweat, and Tedium -- but the past four work-weeks have been considerably longer and harder than usual. Thus short on time, energy, and inspiration, I've got nothing new ready to post... which is why I'm reaching back into the archives for this one. I have no way of knowing how many people actually bother to plow all the way through the list of "greatest hits" (cough...), and since the following reprint -- detailing the realities of working on a pilot -- lies near the very bottom of that list, it seems a timely choice.

If you are among the few who have read it, sorry about that. For something current, click on over to "Martini Shot" and listen to Rob Long's brief commentary on the creative insanity of pilot season. It's a good one.

I don't want to make a habit of recycling posts here, but this may not be the end of it. With the next couple of weeks scheduled to deliver yet more ass-kicking, I'll just have to go with the flow...

Gulliver's Travels: a Pilot Unfolds

Martian War Death Machine, or Sony Studios Watertower?

I've been posting a lot about television pilots lately, mostly concerning what happens before and after the pilot is made. In looking back over some of those posts, I realized that many of you have no way of knowing what it's actually like to work on such a pilot. With that in mind, the next two or three posts will take you through the messy, frustrating, and ultimately exhausting process of making a sit-com pilot -- the very pilot I wrote about in last week's post. I won't name the show (which didn't have a real name anyway -- just the "Untitled So-and-So Project") nor the star, for fear of jeopardizing my spot on the crew should it get picked up. Producers exercise tight control over any and all publicity for their shows, and most definitely do not appreciate anyone who talks out of school. To that end, we have to sign all sorts of non-disclosure agreements prior to starting work, which means I must be careful what I say.

Here in the house of the hangman, we do not speak of rope...

Day One: Wednesday

It's 6:45 on a Wednesday morning, and our sound stage at Sony Studios is a churning cauldron of chaos. Construction crews have been building and painting sets – working 12 hour shifts -- for several days now, and until today, had the stage to themselves. Not anymore. Today this pilot moves into the next phase as the grips and juicers arrive.

That the sets are nowhere near being finished doesn't seem to matter. Those who control the purse strings have decided it’s time to start lighting.

Sony rigging grips have already prepared the stage for us, hanging an interlocking grid of two-inch diameter steel pipes from chains running up to the “perms” – a immensely sturdy framework of heavy wooden beams thirty-five feet above the stage floor. The pipe grid is laid out in four distinct sections following the rough contours of each set, three to four feet above the set walls. Most of the lighting equipment -- our lamps and the grip's flags (deployed to cut and shape the light) -- will be hung from this grid. Rigging juicers ran enough power on stage to energize six big dimmer packs, each the size of a refrigerator, then put in “the waterfall” -- a thick black river of heavy cables running from the dimmer packs all the way up the perms. There, some of our crew will run those cables out along a network of catwalks and drop power down to the pipe grid as needed. By the time we’re ready to film, close to 250 lamps of all sizes will be hung and adjusted to light the four sets currently under construction, each lamp powered by an individual circuit controlled by one man at the dimmer console.

All this will unfold over the days to come – the mountain ahead is high and steep – but today is mostly about receiving equipment. Lots of equipment. Everything from 200 watt “Inkies” to 10,000 watt “Teners” will be delivered from the lamp dock (the studio warehouse where lamps and cable are stored) to the stage. Every studio has their own way of handling this, in what essentially remains an equipment rental business. At CBS Radford (which used to be Republic Studios), a teamster-driven forklift delivers the lamps to each stage in huge metal baskets. Paramount just shrugs its shoulders, spits on the sidewalk, then lights another cigarette while each show’s lighting crew pulls, tests, and loads every lamp from Paramount storage onto stakebed trucks driven to the stage by teamsters. Disney – never missing a chance to squander a dollar if it means saving a dime -- washed their hands of this equipment rental business a few years ago by closing their lamp dock and selling off the lighting equipment. I’ve done commercials at Universal, but we always brought in our own trucks and equipment -- I have no idea how well Uni supports television shows in the shadow of that big Black Tower on Lankershim Boulevard. Here at Sony, the lamp dock juicers themselves bring the equipment to stage neatly stacked on rolling carts, using an electric tugger that also functions as a forklift.

Very self-contained, very civilized, very Japanese.

The equipment won’t show up for another hour, though, so we sit down to fill out our "start forms": deal memos, I-9 citizenship forms, time cards, and W-2 forms, along with the usual battery of sexual harassment and safety bulletins. It's all boilerplate stuff we've filled out a thousand tedious times before -- but in the dense, stilted prose of that last document is the following statement:

“Make sure you get the right help when lifting or moving heavy or awkward objects. Avoid lifting them whenever possible.”

This gets a belly laugh from the entire crew.

Earth to Safety Dude -- lifting and moving heavy, awkward objects, often without any help, pretty much defines the job of a juicer during these first frantic days on a pilot. Once the lamps are up, we can do the more delicate work of adjusting and fine-tuning them to properly light the set, but until then, lifting and moving heavy objects is what we do...

Shortly after we all finish scrawling our names, social security number, address, and signature a dozen times on half a dozen different forms, a train of big carts arrives from the lamp dock, each heavily laden with lamps. The first load contains a hundred and twenty "Studio Juniors” – 2000 watt incandescent lamps about the size of a five gallon water bottle. Subsequent loads will bring a a couple of "teners", a dozen “seniors” (5000 watt lamps), sixty “babies” (1000 watt lamps), forty “tweenies” (650 watt lamps), along with forty “inkies” and “midgets” (200 watt lamps). We'll also get a load of "skypans" and "pony pans", lamps shaped a like Chinese cooking pans, used to light scenic backings behind the sets.

All in all, it's enough equipment to keep us very busy for the next couple of weeks.

The real work of lighting won't start until tomorrow: today, our job is to hump all those lamps onto the stage and stack them in compact rows beneath the audience grandstand and out onto the stage floor. Carrying and stacking is mindless, sweaty toil, but at least this sort of work has a well-defined objective. The hard part will be hanging them over two biggest sets, one of which – at two stories -- is exceptionally tall for a sit-com set. The real work lies ahead. In all the ways that matter, this is the easiest day we’ll have for a long time.

There’s just one big fat fly buzzing in the ointment: the construction crew and painters. Carpenters are everywhere, turning raw lumber into sets, building and installing stairways, cabinets, and bookshelves.. Power saws, sanders, drills, impact drivers, and poorly-functioning vacuum rigs run full blast all day long, filling the air with the screams of tortured wood. Finely powdered sawdust drifts everywhere, thanks to those crappy vacuum rigs. Three boom boxes blare at maximum volume, each tuned to a different station, blending with the intermittent shrieks of power tools to create a deafening cacophony.

Meanwhile, the painters are busily painting everything in sight – brushing, rolling, and spraying -- filling the air with toxic fumes. Many wear respirators to protect their lungs and sinuses, and at least half have their ears plugged in to Ipods. Thus insulated from the noisy, stinking environment, they live and work in their own little music-video world.

In a way, I envy them.

The capper, though – and Exhibit A in The Sheer Idiocy of Sit-Com Pilots – is that some fool high up the food chain decided to have the floors installed today. That means a crew clad in industrial-strength kneepads is busy measuring, cutting, and installing hardwood veneer, carpet, and some kind of ersatz linoleum flooring on the various sets. These poor guys are trying to do their job in an extremely user-unfriendly environment – not only are the carpenters and painters all over the place, but now grips and juicers have been added to the mix. With so many different crews working at odds and in each other's way, life has been made infinitely harder for everyone. It's really a bitch for us juicers, who need to use 2500 pound manlifts and scissor lifts to hang most of our lamps. Turning the wheels of a manlift on this freshly installed faux flooring can carve big holes in it, which means we have to put down 4-by-8foot sheets of layout board (thick cardboard) to protect the flooring. Not only is this a time-consuming pain in the ass, but it doesn’t really work. The scissor lifts do okay on layout board, but the small manlifts -- essential for working in smaller sets and maneuvering in tight quarters -- are designed to operate on smooth warehouse floors, not over an uneven surface. When the layout board bends and folds – as it always does – the manlift suddenly refuses to go up at all. This built-in (and utterly infuriating) "safety feature" ends up making our work much more difficult, and occasionally more dangerous. We'll do our best to use the layout board whenever possible, but in the days to come, the flooring of each set will be damaged to one degree or another. Some of those floors will require extensive repairs before the filming can begin.

This is nothing new -- it happens every time. After paying for such do-it-again floor repairs in pilot after pilot, you’d think Somebody Important might understand that it makes dollars-and-sense to wait until the grips and juicers have finished the heavy lighting chores before having those floors installed. You’d be wrong. That kind of logic doesn't seem to apply in Hollywood, where they do what they do for reasons all their own -- and if you let it, the sheer stupidity of all this can drive you crazy. The difficulty of making a pilot isn't so much doing your job – although that’s hard enough, it’s only half the battle – but in all the additional maddeningly stupid little tasks one must perform simply to reach point where you can actually do your job.

It’s all part of the unique madness that is a pilot.

Truth be told, it’s a fucking zoo on that stage. Merely contemplating all that must be done – and how hard it will be to do -- is daunting. Trying to work in such a chaotic atmosphere is an exercise in terminal frustration. In a way, I feel a bit like the hapless Gulliver, tied down by a thousand tiny threads until he is finally rendered immobile. On Day One of this pilot, it seems impossible that any real order can ever emerge from all this.

Great reserves of patient persistence will be required from every member of the crew if any such order is to emerge -- but emerge it must.

And emerge it will.

The Anti-Queeg

2011-04-13T12:00:00.000-07:00

This model of an ancient Roman warship serves as a useful metaphor of the power/class structure in Hollywood, with the deck of the ship representing "the line." Above that line -- where the sunshine, fresh air, and big money are abundant -- sit the producers, directors, writers, and actors. Below the line -- doing the dirty grunt work essential to propel the ship -- are the grips, juicers, set decorators, prop people, wardrobe, hair and makeup, sound, and camera departments, along with the stand-ins, production, locations, and transpo, all of them them pulling hard on those heavy, splinter-riddled oars.

Hollywood is just a microcosm of society, where somebody has to call the shots while someone else takes out the trash, and for all its faults, the system works pretty well until you get a Captain Queeg at the helm, above or below decks. I've worked for several such insecure head-cases over the years -- directors, cameramen, and gaffers -- and learned first-hand just how long and miserable a day can be when the wrong person is in charge.

The only really good thing about such a negative experience is the renewed appreciation it brings for working with people who manage to do their jobs without turning into abusive ego-fueled monsters.

************************************************

In a comment on last Wednesday’s post about “Reality Television,” a reader who goes by the e-moniker of “John the Scientist” recommended Ken Levine’s recent scalding review of one of the same new shows. JTS was right – Levine peeled the hide off “Pregnant in Heels” and nailed it to the outhouse wall, once again demonstrating the beauty of his long-running blog.* Unlike the vast majority of those who offer opinions on television programming (including professional TV critics), Levine had a long and very successful career on the creative side of the industry. While most critics stand outside throwing rocks at the network’s windows, Ken Levine's tenure as an insider taught him exactly what it takes to nurture an idea all the way through the writing process into the white-water rapids of pilot season and beyond -- occasionally, far beyond.

That’s not an easy thing to do.

Levine’s career includes working on some of the biggest hits in television history -- "Mash," "Cheers," "Frasier," and "Everybody Loves Raymond," among many others, and he co-created “Almost Perfect,” starring the luminously beautiful Nancy Travis.**

If this space was a name-dropping douchebag blog rather than (ahem...) The Truth As I See It, I would now write something breezily smarmy like: “When Ken and I worked together with Nathan Lane and Joan Plowright on the sit-com “Encore! Encore!” for NBC back in the late 90’s, blah blah self-serving-aren’t-I-swell blah...”

Although technically true, a peek under the covers reveals the actual facts: yes, we “worked together” in the sense of having our names on the same crew list, but there is no creative collaboration between the director and a juicer. He had his job and I had mine -- and as one of many toiling in the service of his directorial vision, my position was so far down the food chain that Ken Levine wasn’t even aware of my existence. In the terms of this post's Hollywood metaphor, he walked the deck of the Roman warship wearing his captain’s hat while while I remained below decks chained to my station, pulling on that oar.

Still, he was a good director on set, unfailingly pleasant to one and all while running a tight ship. I wish I could say that about every sit-com director I've worked for, but I can't. He knows the business and where many of the bodies are buried, and loves to peel back back the curtain for all to see in his blog.

I used to read that blog every day, but fell out of the habit over the last couple of years. That was my mistake, for which I have no valid excuse. So thanks to John the Scientist for reminding me what I’d been missing.

Check it out...

* After you’ve read that post, read this one too -- not so much for Ken's random observations, but for the short commercial from French television he posted at the end. It's brilliant, and well worth your 80-or-so seconds...

** You’ll have to trust me on this one, since mere pictures do no justice to Nancy Travis. I did stints on two seasons of “The Bill Engvall” show, where she co-starred, and had the chance to talk with her many times. Not only is Nancy Travis one of the nicest people I’ve ever had the pleasure to meet, she’s stunningly beautiful in person -- an angel come to earth...

Down the Stretch

2011-04-10T14:53:00.000-07:00

Working, and then some...

On the long walk back to my apartment after another late Friday shoot-night, I came across this ancient Cathode Ray Gun -- apparently still in good working order -- left on the curb for the first willing taker. The image sums up my current situation rather nicely.

We're heading down the stretch on my little cable sit-com now, shooting the final episodes of Season One while keeping our collective fingers crossed that this is just the first of many. Four or five more seasons would work just fine for me, but right now I'd settle for Season Two.

One step at a time.

For reasons I don't understand (not that the "why" really matters at this point), our producers juggled the usual three-weeks-on/one-week-off cycle in favor of shooting the final five episodes straight through, with no hiatus weeks off. Once accustomed to working the normal sit-com schedule, anything else feels like a violation of the Geneva Conventions, which means nobody on the crew is happy about this -- but the reality is we're mere playthings of the Gods above-the-line who control our weekly destiny. When they say "jump," the only acceptable response is to ask "how high?"*

One of our core cast members probably had a conflict of one sort or another, so we took two hiatus weeks sandwiched around one week of work last month, and are now slogging through the Death March towards Episode 30. It hasn't been much fun getting our asses so thoroughly kicked the past few weeks. The scripts are more ambitious lately, with more and bigger swing sets, all of which must be treated to the usual level of lighting, tweaking, re-lighting, and yet more tweaking before being shot-out and torn down. My work days have been starting earlier and ending considerably later than normal, leaving me dragging my ass like a three-legged donkey by the weekend.

And that's my excuse for such a short and relatively content-free post this week. It's all I have the time/energy for, and with the next show's script calling for a similarly bruising load of swing sets, we're in for another long week.

So bear with me, people. No doubt I'll be back to my usual long-winded bleating eventually, but not until we finally crawl across the finish line marking the end of Season One. At that point I'll commence the burning of incense, chanting, and ritual sacrifice of small helpless animals in an effort to entice the Gods of Hollywood to grant us a Season Two.

Whatever works...

* Anybody toiling in the Killing Fields of episodics or features will snort derisively at this, and with good reason. But I've said it before and I'll say it again -- life in Hollywood is graded on the curve of one's own experience and expectations. Having done my time in the long-hour/late-night trenches over the past 34 years, I've got nothing left to prove.

More Un-Reality

2011-04-06T12:22:00.000-07:00

This nicely sums up our culture's obsession with "Reality TV"...

I've never hidden my dislike for so-called “Reality Television” -- from top to bottom (assuming such distinctions even apply to a genre dedicated to exploiting the lowest common denominator), I think it’s crap. When I want a dose of reality on TV, I’ll tune in PBS, Discovery, or a documentary of one sort or another -- actual reality delivered in a thoughtful, intelligent manner -- which I find a lot more interesting than the usual screaming, weepy histrionics typical of those highly-orchestrated "Reality" shows.*

But that's just me -- your mileage, as they say, may vary. To each his own.

Still, "Reality Television" has brought us at least one undeniably good thing: the reviews. When a good TV critic sinks his-or-her sharp canines into a new reality show, the resulting carnage makes for a very entertaining read. Two of Southern California's better TV critics (writing for the LA Times) leveled their guns this week at the latest offerings from the utterly unreal world of “Reality TV.” In this piece, Mary McNamara takes on two new shows from the She-God of Television Herself’s latest venture, the Ophrah Winfrey Network, or “OWN.” One show deals with people addicted to food (addiction itself becoming something of a media addiction), while the other plumbs the depths of the infamous Judd family. Again... While the Judds are doubtless interesting people leading full, rich lives, I've never understood America's apparently endless fascination with all the Naomis and Wynonas and whoevers. Then again, I’ve become accustomed to a state of eternal bafflement when contemplating the spectacle of “Reality TV.”

It is what it is.

Robert Lloyd opens his nuanced review of another new show like this:

“With “Pregnant in Heels,” premiering Tuesday, Bravo adds to its Theater of Schadenfreude yet another series about the helpless rich and their high-priced factotums.”**

That's classic Lloyd -- smooth as silk while packing a punch.

Both of these reviews are pithy and fun to read, offering a clinic in the fine art of good writing. They make it look easy -- and it's not.

Check 'em out. You'll be glad you did...

* The good news is we're living in a golden age for documentaries these days.

** Yeah, I had to look it up too...

The Post-Shoot Blues

2011-04-03T12:00:00.000-07:00

And the long drive home...

The rain eased up by the time we opened the elephant door and started wrapping three swing sets late Friday night. As far as I’m concerned, freedom from the elements is reason enough to work on stage, where neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night (to bastardize the unofficial credo of the post office) can stop the cameras from rolling. After three decades of working location shoots in pouring rain, long nights, howling winds, freezing snow, and extreme heat of the dry and humid variety, I'm happy to leave such character-building toil to the younger generation.

The deluge didn't stay on "pause" for long. Well before we finished the wrap, those fat, heavy clouds hanging low overhead opened up again, making for a long, wet walk to the parking structure -- and by the time I pulled out onto the street and headed for home, that rain was coming down hard.

This shoot night marked the culmination of another three week work cycle, and the beginning of our one week hiatus. Multi-camera sit-coms follow this three-weeks-on/one-week-off schedule to give the actors and writers a break from the daily grind of production and allow them to catch their creative breath. Still, just about everybody on the crew is ready for a little time off after three straight weeks of endless lighting, tweaking, re-lighting, rehearsing, filming, and wrapping.

Shoot nights are very different from the rest of the week. After a final round of rehearsals, blocking, and pre-shoots, the crew breaks for dinner while a live audience is seated for the evening start of the show. The crowd comes in quiet, but after watching a 22 minute (and blissfully commercial-free) episode from a previous week, they're soon whipped into a hooting, screaming frenzy by the warm-up comedian and DJ -- and from that moment on, our quiet sound stage becomes one very noisy place, making communication of any kind difficult. Even with the Secret Service-style earphones we all wear, it's hard to monitor and respond to the walkie-talkie chatter from our ever-voluble DP over the cacophony of that crowd.

The actors love this, of course -- they feed off all that energy -- but after a long week of hard work getting the show ready, weathering this sustained aural assault wears the crew down. By the time the show is finally over three or four hours later, everyone is drained from the stress of working amid all that noise. Once the actors take their curtain call, the set goes dark, the house lights come up, and the audience quickly files out. In a matter of minutes everyone’s gone but a few set dressers rolling out the furnishings from the swing sets, the craft service guy cleaning up, and a handful of production people doing paperwork as the grips and juicers wrap their equipment. Set Dressing finishes first, with Craft Service and the grips the next to go. Since Grip and Electric work in an alternating mode -- we hang, power, and adjust the lamps, then they cut and shape the light -- their equipment (meat axes, flags, and teasers) has to come down before we can even get to our lamps on the pipe grid. As a result, the grips are long gone while we work on into the night. As the clock ticks ever later, it’s just us juicers working on a deserted stage while the Second AD and a couple of PAs huddle in their cramped office filling out production reports.

In most ways, this is a good thing -- absent all those other people, we can work unfettered, driving the lifts wherever necessary without worrying about crushing some innocent/oblivious bystander in the process. But if the work goes a lot faster on the empty stage, it always seems a bit strange. After a week on a stage full of actors and crew working together to create something -- capped with a shoot night energized by a high-octane crowd of 250 laughing, clapping, screaming people -- the sudden quiet feels eerily hollow and empty, as if the party suddenly left to carry on somewhere else without us.

Wrapping the swing sets before a hiatus week is all of that and more, compounded by the knowledge that we won't be gathering again the following Monday to begin anew the week-long process of pushing the big rock up the steep hill towards another show night.

The drive home is tense – between the pounding rain and glare of oncoming traffic, the painted divider lines on the road melt into the dark wet pavement, which is when I realize just how tired and bleary-eyed I really am. Dodging the late Friday night drunks in such weather is always a challenge, followed by the inevitable hunt for a parking space on the streets around my apartment; fifteen minutes of slow cruising (and soft cursing) before a spot finally opens up five long blocks from home.

At least the rain has stopped for the moment. I lock up the car, then pause to take a good look around so I can find it tomorrow morning. I’ve awakened on more than one groggy Saturday with a head full of fumes and no earthly clue where I’d left the car the night before. Inhaling a deep breath of sweet rain-washed air, I walk the dark, deserted sidewalks listening to hundreds of tiny waterfalls trickling down gutters and drip from rooftops. Streetlights shine in the puddles at my feet. Two blocks up, I cut down an alley and pass beneath a window jutting from a damp stucco wall. An amber glow from a light inside filters through the thin curtain. Three blocks from my own cold, dark apartment, a sense of urban alienation seeps into the bones of my soul.

It feels like the end of the world.

Armageddon will not come on this night -- the angst I'm feeling is just the post-shoot blues, a malady brought on by the accumulated weight of fatigue from a hard stretch of work. Those blues hit me at the end of every week, and all the harder when heading into a hiatus. The relief at having some time off is palpable, but even that small pleasure is undercut by a disquieting sense of being suddenly cut loose from the “family” we’ve created on stage for this show. After spending so much time together – and there’s nothing like shared suffering to unify an otherwise disparate group of people – we’ve formed bonds that are very real but at the same time exceedingly tenuous. Those bonds exist in a certain time and place, but that’s all – beyond the boundaries of the stage and the show, most of us remain strangers. Although it's certainly time we went our own separate ways, I almost hate to leave.

Unlocking the door, I pick up a pile of junk mail and bills left by the mailman, then trudge upstairs to my apartment. Off come the boots and on goes the heater, and soon I'm standing with my backside to the heat while sipping a healthy slug of 100 proof Kentucky Bourbon blended with a little water. The liquid warmth thaws out my inside while the flames of the heater roast the outside. Slowly warming in the quiet of my apartment, I stare through the rain-streaked window at the cold, wet night outside. Soon will come sleep, with no alarm clock to ruin the following morning. After three weeks of marching to the show's schedule, I'm on my own time now. Already -- and with every sip -- the post-shoot blues are starting to fade away. Come the dawn, after a decent night's sleep, they'll be gone.

And the world will be a better place.

TV Critics and the Modern Sit-com

2011-03-30T12:00:00.000-07:00

“De gustibus non est disputandum”

In the real world -- where people crawl home after a long day of beating their heads against the brick walls of a job they're grateful to have, yet hate in so many ways -- there will always be a place for clever escapist entertainment designed to distract us from work, politics, life in general, and the increasingly dismal state of a world lurching inexorably towards the abyss.

Every now and then we all need a mental time-out of one sort or another. Each has our own preferences when it comes to zoning out in front of the Toob, but over the last decade, so-called “reality television” – mutant bastard-spawn of the ancient Candid Camera show – shouldered aside the traditional multi-camera sit-com as the media opiate of choice for vast numbers of television viewers.

I don’t much care for the genre. From “Survivor” and “American Idol” to the odious “Housewives of Orange County” and their mindless young cultural kin along "The Jersey Shore," “reality television” remains a bleak wasteland of shame and humiliation. Still, a lot of people I know and respect are fans of these shows, and since there really is no accounting for taste -- what we like is not who we are -- I won't pass judgment on their viewing habits.

Despite drifting out of the popular spotlight, the old-fashioned multi-camera sit-com never really died. Kept alive by the astonishing success of “Two and a Half Men” (until Charlie Sheen’s recent meltdown, anyway) followed by “Big Bang Theory,” the flickering flame of sit-coms is burning brighter these days thanks to a resurgence on cable led by Betty White’s return to center stage in “Hot in Cleveland.”

For an old dog like me -- with work boots firmly planted on the turf of sit-coms in making my Last Stand in Hollywood -- that’s a very good thing.*

Two very eloquent critics of the medium recently addressed the state of the modern sit-com. Writing for The Hollywood Reporter, Tim Goodman discusses the “unexplainable surge in good sitcoms” currently on TV, while Robert Lloyd –- to my mind, the LA Times most thoughtful TV critic –- dissects the evolution of sit-coms over time, both as a genre and the manner in which an individual hit show tends to morph into something very different over its five-to-ten year life on screen.

Any student of modern media culture will find both columns worth a read.

My only quibble with Goodman and Lloyd is in their habit of lumping single camera comedies in with the traditional multi-camera shows under the term “sit-com.” This seemingly minor detail may just be a pet peeve of mine, but for anyone involved in making television, the term “sit-com” refers to a multi-camera show accompanied by an enhanced (“sweetened”) audience laugh track. Single camera comedies are typically shot out of sequence on stage or location in the time-tested, grind-it-out, 12 to 14 hour-a-day process pioneered long ago by feature films. Multi-camera shows couldn't be more different -- after a full week of lighting and rehearsals, most are shot sequentially in front of a live audience over the course of three to four hours. Nobody I've talked to in the biz (from producers and writers down to grips and juicers) considers single camera comedies to be “sit-coms” -- but TV critics remain stubbornly oblivious to this. The differences between these two forms of televised comedy are profound -- translated to the animal kingdom, one would be a Zebra and the other a Wildebeest; both four-legged ruminants that live and die on the veldt, but there the similarities end. I just wish our TV critics could wrap their undeniably talented brains around this notion.

Yeah, I know what you're thinking -- get a life, Mike -- but it's a little late for that...

* Not that I watch sit-coms any more than "reality TV" -- which leaves me in the rather awkward position of rooting for the success of genre on which my livelihood depends, but that I don’t actually, uh, "consume." From my point of view, "reality TV" is a highly exploitative medium based largely on the cruel dynamics of personal humiliation, while a quality sit-com is a balanced, well-crafted comedic effort worthy of professional respect, at least. Still, making such a show is one thing – tuning one in at home is something else altogether. In a world of limited time, choices must be made...

2011-03-27T14:09:00.000-07:00

By now you know what that blank billboard means – I’ve got nothin’. I can’t blame my really hard week, because it actually wasn’t all that hard, but at this point in life it doesn't take much more than a stiff breeze to stop me in my tracks. Given that life grades on an ever-evolving curve, I've come to realize that every week at work is hard in its own special way. There are no easy work weeks anymore -- just hard and harder. So that's my lame excuse, along with the minor detail I have nothing ready to post.

Such is life.

So until I do come up with something worth your time, click on over to “Martini Shot” and listen to Rob Long’s latest three minute commentary discussing Facebook, lying, and modern life in the media fishbowl. It’s a good one.

Directors: a brief return

2011-03-23T12:00:00.000-07:00

A recent post discussing directors prompted an e-mail from an old friend and fellow below-the-line veteran. Having followed the links therein to an earlier post on the subject, he wondered just who those two sit-com directors I mentioned – the pseudonymous “Bernard” and “Mr. Herman” -- really were. I e-mailed the answer, which was followed by his reply.

"Mr. Herman. Yup. I know that guy. Came out of theater. Nobody likes him. Except producers, I guess.

I've worked with Bernard too. Before he became a familiar face to millions on television, he’d been a cast member in a famous big-budget bomb that hit the theaters in the early 70’s when I was still in school. I liked that film more than most people because I was apparently one of the few college students living at the time who never read the 800 page book the movie was based on.

Still, even though I already knew a lot about the making of that big-budget bomb with the stellar cast, I was really, really curious to hear some first hand experiences from Bernard. So, I bides my time, you know, waiting for just the right moment to talk to him, so as not to bother him and all.

The second day of the two day shoot, as I was scraping my plate into the garbage can after lunch, I see Bernard sitting alone at a lunch table, finished eating, staring into space.

And I strike.

"Excuse me, Bernard, you know, I really enjoyed your work in The Famous Big Budget Bomb*, and was wondering if you could share a story with me of what it was like spending 6 months working with Mike Nichols and Orson Welles and Dick Benjamin and Paula Prentiss and Tony Perkins and Jon Voight and Alan Arkin...?"

He gave me a long, dead-fish stare.

A little panicked, I said, "Any special memories of working on that movie"?

"Naaah", he said.

Oh.

O.K.

Well, I guess I'll just slink away back to work now.

And that was my memorable encounter with Bernard...."

Having worked with that director more times than I cared to, this story came as no surprise at all. Fortunately, I haven't seen or heard of him for several years now, and I can only hope he's moved on to yet another career -- in which case, we're all better off.

* At this point in the e-mail, he used the actual title of the movie, which I changed to “The Famous Big Budget Bomb” (using his words) for the same reason that I won't print either of these directors real names. There’s enough information here for anyone sufficiently curious to figure out what the movie is, and who that particular actor/director might be...

The Tolling of the Bell

2011-03-19T15:38:00.000-07:00

“...never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

John Donne, Meditation XVII

Sometimes you just know. The phone rings at an odd time of day – say, 10:45 on a crisp, bright Tuesday morning – and some sixth or seventh sense tells you it isn’t just another wrong number, collection agency, or the Scientologists. Not this time. Reverberating all the way down the hall, the ring seems louder and more insistent than usual, like the tolling of John Donne’s bell.

Before I'd picked up the receiver, I knew that this beautiful sunny day -– a day that had been all mine a few seconds earlier, stretching out like spring break during our hiatus week from the show -– was about to be wrenched from my grasp.

It was a job call, all right, and not for tonight or tomorrow, but right now, as in jump into my work clothes, lace up the boots, and put the pedal to the metal.

Forty-five minutes later I walked onto another sound stage for a solid eight hours of hard, dirty labor. And as often happens in this oh-so-fluid business, one day morphed into three for a total of twenty-eight hours gainful employment, thus canceling whatever vague plans I'd made for my hiatus week in a straightforward exchange of time, sweat, and pain for money.

Such is the basic equation of life below decks in Hollywood.

The show was a big network multi-camera sit-com wrapping after the conclusion of a 22 episode season. The extra hands – mine and those of another juicer – were called due to a change in the studio's booking schedule that now had a pilot loading in on that stage the very next week. Even so, additional help beyond the core crew isn't ordinarily needed to wrap a multi-camera show in four days, but walking around looking at the very large and elaborate sets, I saw this was no ordinary sit-com. The dense lighting style of the DP required a truly massive quantity of lamps and assorted rigging equipment, every last bit of which had to be pulled down from the pipe grid, properly wrapped, sorted and matched against the Best Boy's paperwork, then returned to the lamp dock.

Looking up at this mountain of work, I understood the Best Boy's cry for help.

Much as I would have liked to turn the job down (I do like my hiatus weeks off), I couldn’t, for all the usual reasons. In the fading light of my so-called career, I’m pretty much hard-wired to stand and deliver when that bell rings with a job offer. After so many years of living with the uncertainty of intermittent employment, this is now my default setting, one that requires extraordinary circumstances to successfully override. Then there’s the matter of “hours” -- to maintain coverage under the union health plan, I have to accumulate at least 300 working hours per six month qualifying period.* Logging any less than 300 means dipping into the bank of hours -- excess hours compiled during previous qualifying periods -- to make up the difference. That bank only goes so far, and once exhausted, leaves an Industry work-bot at risk of losing the health care plan, which is the first step on the slippery slope towards financial disaster.

And that really sucks.

Finally, there’s the minor detail of income. My little cable show has provided a more-or-less steady stream of modest paychecks for the better part of a year now, but it’s break-even money at best. When your monthly income barely exceeds the monthly expenses, all it takes is something unexpected – a car repair bill, a red-light ticket, or catastrophic computer meltdown – and you're back drowning in red ink.**

I've often heard that a shark must keep swimming at all times to maintain the flow of oxygen-bearing water through its gills -- and if the big fish stops moving, it will die. Likewise the Hollywood freelancer must maintain forward motion or suffer a slow professional demise. Upward movement is not required (at a certain point, professional ambition gives way to practical reality), but the work-bot who does not keep working begins to spiral down into the dark abyss. This too has been burned into my brain over the years, and thus I didn't have much choice but to take that job. It was three days of dirty, bruising, physical work -- you'd be amazed at how much dust can settle on a pipe grid over the course of 22 episodes -- but thanks to a good crew (who had a big boom-box and good taste in music), I managed to have a few laughs along the way, and now another paycheck is in the mail.

That's what it all boils down to in the end: work means money, and money is life. Like the itinerant farm worker who rises in the cold and dark before dawn to harvest another crop in the fields, I too must take what's offered. Sooner or later the phone will stop ringing as the job offers go to younger work-bots -- and ready or not, my time in Hollywood will be done.

I'm not ready for that, not yet. And until I am, I'll answer that bell whenever it tolls.

* This will rise to 400 hours in August. That sucks too...

** Those red-light tickets -- increasingly enforced by automatic cameras at intersections -- now run close to five hundred dollars here in LA...