The Wrap

Order from Chaos
















It comes down a lot quicker than it goes up...


The last day was the hardest. Not the longest or most tedious, but in terms of sheer physicality, definitely the toughest. During the initial rig, nearly three tons of cable had been laid in up high – a network of wooden catwalks thirty feet above the stage floor -- to power and light the pilot, and now it all had to come down. On the final day of the wrap, there were only three of us still on payroll, which meant two men up high and one down below.

Over the previous three days, we’d pulled at least two hundred and fifty lamps down from the pipe grid and set walls, dumped out the scrims, removed and stacked the barndoors, then wrapped the tail of each light back to the head and tied it off. As they came down, each lamp was stacked in neat ever-growing rows – 650 watt Tweenies, 1000 watt Babies, 1K and 2K Zips (soft lights), 2K Juniors, 5K Seniors, and a couple of big 10,000 watt Teners. Each lamp was “beeped out” with a continuity tester (to make sure the bulb was still good), then read with a bar code scanner and carefully loaded with the others into big steel baskets for return to the lamp dock. We worked at a steady pace, breaking once for coffee and again for lunch, making the most of each eight hour day. By the end of day three, every lamp, barn-door, scrim, feeder, stirrup hanger, pipe clamp, grumpy, offset arm, baby plate, splitter, adapter, gang box and stinger -- well over a thousand individual pieces of equipment altogether -- had been counted, crated, stacked, and trucked back to the lamp dock.

It's a lot of work.

Production's budget for extra help ran dry at that point, leaving just the three of us to handle the cable. Our task was to get all that cable down, wrapped, tied, and stacked in big plastic tubs for return to the lamp dock. The first order of business were the cables already dangling over the side – the easy ones. Those were lowered by tying a rope to the high end of each cable, then slowly lowering it as the floor man coiled it up. Less than a quarter of the cable could be dropped this way, leaving the rest to be wrapped up on the catwalks, then tied into compact black doughnuts the size of a car tire before being lowered with a hand line.

This is simple enough, in theory. Actually doing the work is something else, invariably turning into the sort of back-breaking ordeal that generates internal second-guessing along the lines of “I went to college for this?”

Well, no -- I went to college for the girls, the booze, and the drugs (a regimen I thought of as "Enculturation, Part Three"), and because young people on the home planet were expected to go to college at that point in life. But while skipping my merry way down the hedonistic highway of tertiary education, I was seduced by the magic of film: The Movies called and I answered, which is the short version of how I finally ended up in Hollywood.

What can I say? It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Reaching the top of the wooden stairs at 7:05 in the morning, the task ahead appeared monumental for just two people. There was cable everywhere, a swollen black river of heavy, inch-thick, hundred foot long cables snaking from the “waterfall” (the initial cable run from the dimmer packs down below) all over the catwalks. It was so thick in places I couldn’t even see the wooden planks beneath all that coal-black insulation.

Working a day like this forces a certain recalibration of one’s personal pain/pleasure spectrum. While nothing about a cable day will induce a giddy sense of euphoria, there are certain satisfactions to be had. These are not of the intellectual variety, but primal and physical -- the tired inner glow that comes from getting an onerous task done: a cluttered garage finally cleaned out, an overgrown yard trimmed and mowed, a field weeded, plowed, and made ready for planting.

On the relative scale of the misery/joy continuum, wrapping the cable occupies the low end, while dropping can be kind of fun. Using a three-quarter inch poly line (and wearing gloves, of course), one man “takes a wrap” – looping the rope once all the way around the catwalk rail – before the other man (or woman) ties the load on, then kicks it over the side. Taking a wrap allows for a speedy but easily controllable drop. Sending the fifty-to-seventy pound cables down two at a time, that rope whirs around the wooden rail fast enough to expel a puff of dust from within. The sharp scent of singed wood accompanies every drop, as the energy expended in sending those cables up high two weeks before is suddenly recovered in the form of heat via the magic of friction. As you warm up and get into a smooth working rhythm, it feels good to watch those tubs down below fill up with cable -- and as each tub is filled, another empty takes its place.

At the end of what felt like a very long day, the catwalks were clear and clean, while down below, half a dozen of those big tubs were brimming with tightly wrapped coils of cable. It really does come down a lot quicker than it goes up: what took us two weeks to load in and deploy for one night of filming had been fully wrapped in four busy days -- order once again salvaged from chaos.

That felt good, as though we'd actually accomplished something.

In a way, the pilot process is a bit like building and furnishing a home just to throw a kick-ass house warming party, then tearing the whole thing down, leaving only a bare concrete slab on the suddenly barren lot. The sheer physical labor that goes into every pilot is immense. The process is a sweaty, bruising, frustrating experience every time, but it’s also a team effort with lots of laughs along the way. All that work culminates in the creation of a show – a few hours of glimmering magic and laughter that may or may not prove good enough (or lucky enough) to be picked up. But the next morning, all that bubbling, buoyant energy is gone, dissipated into the ether along with the cameras and craft service table. Only the sets, furniture, and lighting equipment remain, silent and cold. Bit by bit, truckload by truckload, that too disappears, and in the end, the cavernous sound stage again stands empty.
















Wrapping a show or pilot is always a bittersweet experience, and this was no exception. In a way, the whole thing seemed a bit unreal -- with all the sets, equipment, and people gone, it was almost as if none of it had actually happened at all. But there was nothing unreal about the aches in my back, neck, arms, and legs as I shouldered my bag and headed for the parking structure. Thoroughly whipped, I felt as though I’d just spent four days undergoing “enhanced interrogation” at the hands of the Spanish Inquisition. The next morning would be stiff and sore, but easing the pain (with the help of Advil) was the knowledge that my work was now done for a while. The holidays loomed, then a brand new year -- and hopefully, another pilot or two.

Troubled Stories for Troubled Times

Remember, Mother Nature bats last...

As anyone who reads a newspaper, surfs the internet, spins through the A.M. radio dial, or tunes in the TV news these days can attest, this is one spooked country. At every level of society disappointment, fear, and anger abound. Whatever sweaty flank of the great Red/Blue sociopolitical-cultural divide you cling to, there’s plenty to be angry about: a political system steeped in corruption, mendacity, hypocrisy, and incompetence, an economy hogtied by endless war and a loss of our once-strong manufacturing base, the dark specter of terrorism here and abroad, and a looming avalanche of environmental catastrophe that -- given the political realities of our times -- we seem powerless to avoid.

It's hard to take a serious look into the future and not conclude that we're riding a slippery chute to Hell in the proverbial hand-basket. And when Beelzebub finally greets us with his big toothy grin, it will be to a very real hell on earth rather than some fire-and-brimstone Narnia conjured up by the Grand Poobahs of organized religion.

Most people have a general awareness of what's going on -- that although things keep getting worse, our current state of politico/cultural polarization is preventing any meaningful action from being taken -- and this pisses them off. When so many people are that angry, anything can happen, and under such volatile circumstances, no politician is safe. I almost feel sorry for our political Brahmins, flicking their long forked-tongues into the ever-shifting breeze, desperate to find a position that will put them ahead of the pitchfork-and-torch carrying mob without getting trampled in the process.

Almost...

So if you’re feeling some of that anger, join the club.

"But what," you might ask, "does any of this have to do with Hollywood or the Industry?"

I'm getting there -- and although it may be a three-bank pool shot off the seven ball into the corner pocket, there is a connection. Remember, this being a mid-week post, the rules are much looser here than my usual Sunday bleat.

Today's question: where does all our fear and anger go?

(Other than teabag parties and Fox News, that is...)

One place is Hollywood. Movies have a long tradition of offering an endoscopic view of the troubled American psyche. Scholars and other mere mortals have covered this subject pretty thoroughly – some in a lighthearted vein, others taking a more serious approach – but the gist is that many of our deep cultural fears bubble up to the surface through the shared dreamscapes of the silver screen. The Film Noir movies of the late 40's and early 50's are thought to have reflected the insecurity of life in the post-war era, among other things. The unfathomable violence of World War Two shook everyone involved right down to their core, unleashing emotional traumas that still resonate today. Film Noir expressed a dark vision of humanity, along with the fear that although the demons of human nature can be stuffed back in the bottle, we're never really safe -- sooner or later, they'll break out again to wreak havoc. The dawn of the atomic age that ended WW II created even more societal angst, particularly after the Soviet Union got The Bomb in 1949, spawning a series of giant monster and science fiction movies that tapped our suddenly very tangible fears of nuclear weapons and radiation.*

A similar degree of sublimation is evident in the current wave of movies with apocalyptic themes, from “The Day After Tomorrow” right up through “2012,” and I suppose one could make a case (admittedly thin) that the alien invasion movie “Independence Day” -- silly though it was -- presaged Al Qaeda’s assault on the American mainland on 9/11. In that film, the studly-but-beleaguered President of the United States asks a captured squid-creature from space “What do you want from us?.” The beast from beyond replies “We want you to die...”

Osama Bin Laden couldn’t have put it better.

What I hadn’t really considered is how these troubled times are (and have been) reflected by our ever-present cultural mirror, the television. A recent LA Times piece pointed out a number of television shows in the past few years dealing with the anger and fear gripping our society in these increasingly grim times. Someone could probably write a great doctoral thesis on the subject, and although this isn’t quite up to such levels of scholarly analysis, it’s a good place to start.

It's a good read, too, and food for thought as we stumbled into the cold gray mist ahead.


* Some fine examples of the genre:

The Day the Earth Stood Still
The Thing from Another World
Them
Tarantula
Attack of the 50 Foot Woman

The Grammys

Get off my lawn...























Now that's entertainment...


I tried to watch the Grammys. Really, I did. After years of sneering at this most meaningless and lame of all Hollywood award shows, I figured I should check it out to see what the music industry considers worthy of celebration these days -- other than gross receipts and paid Internet downloads, that is.

Having been raised in a society that worships extremes of all kinds (landing on the moon, monster trucks, the World’s Biggest Twine Ball), I share our cultural affinity for the "biggest and best," and a lingering fascination with spectacles of wretched, bloated excess -- the Grammys landing squarely among the latter. Besides, being adrift in the horse latitudes of unemployment leaves a lot of time to kill, and only so much of it can be spent staring into this computer screen. And so like a flower turning towards the nourishing warmth of the sun, I turn my eyes to the pale flickering glow of the Cathode Ray Gun.

The Grammys' opening act was an energetic-if-ludicrous number featuring a bizarre creature called "Lady Gaga." Dressed like an angry green butterfly from a children's picture book, she shouted a duet across twin pianos with 1970's relic Sir Elton John, who appeared to be channeling Liberace's evil twin having a really bad acid trip. The resulting cacophony seemed to go on for hours, for no apparent reason -- much sound and fury signifying nothing.

But this was only the opening barrage of an evening devoted to highly-orchestrated nonsense. Green Day played a decent song, although it was unclear to me exactly why a punchy power trio famous for creating taut, urgently propulsive songs needed to share the stage with what appeared to be several dozen singers, musicians, and dancers. At some point, Beyonce (apparently the New Queen of whatever it is she sings) came marching down the aisle backed by an army of black helmeted storm troopers. I'm not sure what that was all about, or what she was singing, for that matter. With all the caterwauling going on, I couldn't tell whether she was wailing about the pain and sorrows of a broken heart, or bemoaning the burning agony of severe hemorrhoids.

I don't suppose it really matters -- pain is pain, regardless of the cause.

Somewhere amid all this confusion, a pale, bony little waif named Taylor Swift came up on stage to gush into the microphone. She seemed like a nice young lady, although I'm told she can't really sing very well. But everybody in the audience seemed to like her anyway, and since the Grammys have never been concerned with actual musical talent*, then Miss Swift has as much right to go home with a handful of statues as anybody else.

That was enough -- when the next wall of commercials hit, I bailed. Thirty minutes of high-voltage histrionics couldn't hide the fact that for the Grammys, nothing means more than huge sales numbers and mass popularity. If you sell a gabillion records and make boatloads of money, you win a lot of Grammys, period -- same as it ever was. According to the next morning's paper, Beyonce and Taylor Swift together collected a dozen or so trophies. Good for them, I guess. I didn't read far enough to find out if that "Lady Gaga" creature won anything, although from where I sat, she and Sir Elton both deserved awards for Worst... Costume... Ever.

Surely that's worth a Grammy too.

I did find it fitting that this steaming pile of television managed to beat "American Idol" -- the fabled Death Star of television -- in the ratings, if only by a hair. That so many Americans sat glued to the Toob enthralled by these two glitzy, well-produced, and magnificently empty extravaganzas reveals much about our shared culture, although not necessarily in a good way.

Still, after catching the Grammy performance of a young woman named "Pink" on Utube a few days later, I kind of wish I'd stuck around to see the rest of the show on "live" (read: tape-delayed) TV. She was very impressive, and although I'm not sure what all those astonishingly fleshy aerial gymnastics had to so with music or singing, I couldn't take my eyes off her. So hey, toss that young lady a Grammy. She put on a better show than anybody else.

There's a lot I don't grasp about modern culture, but I'm not sure it's worth the effort. There just doesn't seem to be much “there” there. Maybe I'll try again next year, and with any luck, might be able to make it all the way through the entire first hour of the Grammys.

Baby steps.


* For those who feel otherwise, I have just two words: Milli Vanilli.

Picasso on the Gridiron

Pablo's girlfriend watches the Big Game...

As mentioned before, I’m not much of a football fan. Yes, I watched three games this season (the Brett Favre Saga intrigued me), and will probably tune in the Stupor Bowl at some point on Sunday – hey, it’s not like I’m not a communist or anything -- but neither do I obsess over which way the pigskin bounces or what Tim Tebow writes on his face.

Still -- being unemployed and all -- I like to skim through the sports pages every morning in search of interesting tidbits, which is where I came across this altogether unexpected passage:

“I’ve always been fascinated by Picasso and how he would look at a single image through multiple perspectives and from separate moments in time,” Sabol said. “He would look at a woman’s face and he would see almost a three dimensional look even though it was a flat canvas. I thought, well why couldn’t we do the same thing with a football play?”

I’m not sure I’ve ever heard the terms “football” and “Picasso” used in the same article before, let alone the same paragraph – but much to my surprise, that’s what Monday’s LA Times came up with in its piece on Steve Sabol, who started and still runs the legendary NFL Films, a small production company specializing in capturing stunning slo-mo game footage. Sabol’s cameramen are justly famous for their skills working with very long telephoto lenses – and whether you love the game of football, hate it, or remain indifferent, there’s no denying these guys come up with some truly astonishing footage. Pablo Picasso may be spinning in his grave as I type these words, but in my experience, it’s always worth taking a look at something that’s done really well. This article explains how the distinctive aesthetic created by Sabol and NFL Films came about, and -- surprisingly enough -- has even managed to influence Hollywood.

It’s an interesting read. Check it out.

Radio Silence

What DID Happen to the Anonymous Production Assistant?


















APA, RIP?

(Photo courtesy of this generous person.)


Like many of you, I’ve been reading “The Anonymous Production Assistant’s Blog” ever since his first post (Why Would Anyone Want to be a PA?) began with these words:

"The hours are lousy, the pay is worse. No one respects you. If anything goes wrong, it’s always your fault. And everyone tells you you’re lucky just to be here."

I liked his caustic, pithy writing style right off the bat, along with the no-bullshit manner in which he described the view from the very bottom rung of the show biz ladder. Having been a PA myself way back when, I learned the hard way what all PA's know -- that in such a lowly position, you find yourself looking up at a lot of assholes. But this post of November 13, 2009, was the last we’ve heard of him. For a blogger who occasionally posted several times a week, two and a half months of silence is an eternity.

So where did he go?*

Good question. The first thing that leaps to mind is his cover at work was blown -- and being revealed as the infamously snarky APA could certainly have cost him his job. Non-disclosure agreements are part of the start-up paperwork we're all required to sign when taking a job nowadays, and even though the APA's posts are careful to avoid naming names in relation to embarrassing incidents, no production wants to see unauthorized tidbits about their show leak onto the internet. Relatively minor breaches of this written (and unwritten) code of silence wouldn't necessarily damage one's career prospects in the long run -- unless you really screw the pooch in telling tales out of school, of course -- but for those who lack a bank account full of money (which includes everyone I know), the short run is all that really matters in Hollywood. This is a town where today, tomorrow and next week light up the radar screens like a Christmas tree, but anything beyond remains a silvery illusion dancing in the heat waves on the far horizon. In an Industry where nearly all employment is temporary by definition -– once a given project is completed, your job vanishes into the ether -- the important thing is to handle your day-to-day business in a thoroughly professional manner. If you take care of the short run, the long run will take care of itself. In the event the APA was outed to (or by) his employer, and that boss has a sense of humor (not always a given in the self-important world of Television), he may have had to ceased posting as the price of hanging on to the job – a job which would then be dangling by the thinnest of threads.

But if he did get outed and fired, wouldn't that make a great blog post? Sure, but word gets around Hollywood pretty fast, and being known as the Anonymous Production Assistant would make landing the next job much harder. In that case, his PA career could be on hiatus for a long while. The silver lining in this otherwise dark cloud? Being a PA is in no way a “career” -- it’s a temp-job purgatory where dues are to be paid (and paid, and paid, and paid...) until you finally generate enough momentum to get over the wall and start a real Industry career. In that case, being booted off a show for blogging could provide the motivation crucial to getting his writing career in gear – and it’ll make a great story to tell when he’s being interviewed in the future by Charlie Rose, Tavis Smiley, or Terry Gross.

It's also possible the APA simply got tired of doing the blog. Being the Answer Man for film school wannabes from all over the world yearning to lead a life of glamorous poverty as a Production Assistant in Big Bad Hollywood could easily morph into a full-time (and highly-unpaid) job. Then again, a recent stab at snarky humor seemed to backfire when at least one reader took umbrage and accused the APA of being an “elitist prick,” among other things. Personally, I find it hard to believe such minor sticks-and-stones hounding would be enough to convince the APA that his blog was no longer worth the aggro -- unless, of course, he'd already had enough and was looking for an excuse to quit. All of us who blog about the Industry do so for our own reasons, and I don't know that anybody plans to continue posting indefinitely. Everything comes to an end (logical or otherwise), especially here in LA, where anything fresh and different and good seems to fade back into the smog after a year or two. Life changes, priorities shift, people move on. Quitting the blog cold-turkey, with no explanation or goodbyes, could be the APA's way of leaving nothing but ripples on the water -- an enigma to be puzzled over by the rest of us.

A glass-half-full explanation for the APA’s disappearance would have some sharp-eyed producer spotting his talent and offering him a writing job, thus liberating him from the purgatory of PA-dom and eliminating the raison d’etra for the blog. That’s the one I’m hoping for. The glass-half-empty version ranges from cloudy-bright to very dark indeed. The nature of the blog-o-net imposes a certain distance between all of us – those who write and those who read the blogs. There’s a freedom in all that empty space, but it’s also something of a vacuum -- and as we all learned from the movie ”Alien”, in space, no one can hear you scream.

If I managed to do something irredeemably stupid on a job – say, taking a fatal fall from a high ladder, or getting myself electrocuted – very few of you would ever hear the news. In time, Peggy Archer over at Totally Unauthorized might hear the news through the grapevine, or maybe “D” from Dollygrippery -- although the three of us don't know each other personally, we swim in the same Hollywood waters -- but that’s about it. Unless one of them chose to pass on the rumors/news of my untimely demise in their own blogs, nobody beyond my immediate family and co-workers would know what happened. Readers of this blog might wonder where the hell I went, and why I wasn’t posting anymore, but eventually they'd get tired of finding the same old stale crap under these worn-out gloves, and stop coming by.

“Blood, Sweat, and Tedium” would fade to black, and me along with it.

The dark possibility that Something Bad might have happened to the APA can’t be ignored. Shit does indeed happen in life – more than four hundred thousand Americans have died in automobile accidents alone in the time since George W. Bush first sat down in the Oval Office – and sometimes it happens to people we know. Or sort of know, like a blogger. I really hope something like this is not the case. The APA is smart and funny, with real writing talent -- and a family, too. His professional and human potential is enormous. I’d hate to see all that wasted in the twisted metal, deflated air bags, and shattered glass of a car wreck. There are countless ridiculous ways to die in this world, but getting killed in traffic because some idiot couldn't resist yakking on a cell phone or texting behind the wheel is one of the most meaningless ways imaginable to exit stage left.

Given the APA’s air-tight seal of anonymity, there’s not much chance any of us will know what happened unless he chooses to break radio silence. Until then, the possibilities – good or bad – are endless, and speculation futile. All we really know is that for the time being, the APA either won't or can't post on his blog.

And I hope that changes soon.


* for the purposes of this post, I’m assuming APA is male, although “his” occasional references to having a wife could certainly be the handiwork of a female PA shape-shifting to cover her tracks in an effort to remain truly anonymous.

Oops...

Crop circles on Mars? Nope -- just the setting sun raking across the concrete swirls of the studio parking structure.


(Ahem -- this post can now be ignored, since the problem it addressed has been resolved thanks to a very helpful reader -- check the "comments" if you want the boring details...)

Okay, I screwed up: today's post (Radio Silence) can be found by scrolling down past last week's post -- the one with the picture of the cowboy hat.

"Say what?" you might ask. "How could such a breach of the time/space continuum possibly happen -- the present seemingly occurring (and dated) in the past?"

Excellent question, and however much I'd love to point the stinky finger of blame at Blogger -- and indeed, this host site does have some odd protocols -- I'm familiar with these oddities, and know very well how to maneuver in, over, around and through them.

I spaced out, is all. Mea Culpa.

See, if you write the first draft of a post on Blogger today, then modify and edit throughout the week before clicking the "publish" icon next Sunday, it will post with today's date rather than the day it actually hits the Internet -- and be filed on the blog accordingly. Thus this week's blog appears to have been written and published last Monday, when it actually was finished and posted today, January 31.

This has been an irritant ever since I started the blog -- and really, I don't understand why Blogger can't come up with what would seem to be a minor software remedy -- but hey, the whole thing's free, so who am I to complain? I generally avoid such problems by doing most of the writing in a MS Word document, then cut-and-paste into Blogger on the appropriate day for the final edit and publishing. The other option to correct the date (which I've learned the hard way...) is to cut-and-paste the HTML code of the draft to an MS Word file, delete the draft from Blogger, then paste it back to Blogger on the chosen day to publish.

But that's just too stupid for words. Sorry for the confusion.

The Story Behind the Myth

Do the gaffer a favor and leave the hat at home...


I caught an excellent show Monday night on “American Experience,” the long-running PBS documentary series. “A.E.” documentaries are usually interesting and informative, and this one – about legendary lawman Wyatt Earp – was no exception, shining a hard light on the dusty half-truths, myths, and typical Hollywood distortions surrounding this icon of the Old West. I never knew there were actual photographs of Earp, his brothers, and their equally legendary nemesis Ike Clanton – but although photography was still in its infancy, a few surprisingly crisp images of these people were recorded on film. For a kid who grew up watching black-and-white western movies and TV shows, this was a fascinating program.

I’m not sure the current generation -- brought up on “Star Wars,” “Survivor,” and “Jerry Springer” -- would share my interest. By the time my family finally got a TV (when I was 8 years old...), it seemed there was a western on every night of the week -- shows like “Have Gun, Will Travel,” “Gunsmoke,” “Sugarfoot,” “The Rifleman,” “The Rebel,” “Maverick,” “Rawhide,” “Wagon Train,” “Tombstone Territory”, and “Bonanza.” There were cop shows, war shows, doctor shows, comedies, and variety shows too, but on television and movie screens, the western was the primal stage upon which the classic American themes of individuality, self-reliance, and personal honor (laced with lots of gunfire) played out.

Two of those movies were “Gunfight at the OK Corral” (starring Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas, among many others), and “My Darling Clementine” (Henry Fonda, Victor Mature, and a spectacularly vile Walter Brennan), both of which spun their own Hollywood myths around the lethal showdown between the Earp brothers, Doc Holiday, and the Clantons.

Having grown up steeped in these myths, I assumed they were essentially true -- but myths have a way of leaving out any inconvenient or messy facts that might smudge the nice clean Hollywood version. Personally, I find it oddly reassuring to learn that people in the Old West were much like they are today. Technology evolves with stunning speed, but we humans are very slow to change in all the ways that really matter. Now as then, we’re the same haunted, deeply conflicted, utterly flawed and occasionally magnificent creatures as always.

So even if you didn't grow up on a steady diet of westerns, check this show out when you have a chance. It never hurts to learn a little of our shared history, and the story is a good one.

Just one thing irked me about the show. There were lots of wonderful old photos woven into the narrative and inter-cut with talking-head interviews featuring several Western Historians, all of whom seemed to know and revere their subject. At least two of them, however, wore cowboy hats during their interviews. Perhaps they thought this would somehow add to their authenticity, but to me it was ludicrous on a couple of levels. It’s one thing for a cowboy poet to wear a hat while performing, since spoken word poetry (regardless of how silly it might be*) is still theater, and costumes are the norm in the course of a theatrical performance. But an interview for a serious historical documentary? I don’t think so. It just made these guys look silly.

No wonder “Western Historians” aren’t taken seriously – if Doris Kearns Goodwin strapped on a stovepipe hat and phony black beard every time she sat down to discuss the life and times of Abe Lincoln on camera, nobody would take her seriously either.

The other historians in this show – those with the good sense to leave their cowboy hats outside with their horses and six guns, I suppose – came across as serious people telling a serious story.

The DP and gaffer on this show deserve a little sympathy and respect. Depending on the nature of the project, there are lots of ways to light a talking head, but a subject who insists on wearing a broad-brimmed cowboy hat (typically pulled low over the forehead) presents a major problem. The eyes are crucial in a talking-head shot – they have to shine to connect with the audience – and when the subject wears a cowboy hat, the key and fill lights must physically drop much lower than normal to dig in under the brim and illuminate those eyes. In addition to making it impossible to acheive the classic Rembrandt Triangle** portrait look, such low lighting often creates problems with nose shadows. These can be solved by adding an obie light or bumping up the fill enough to minimize the shadow, but that can result in a relatively flat, boring look – and if the subject wears glasses (as one of these Western Historians did), then all these low lights can cause reflection problems.

So many problems, and all because the "talent" just had to wear a stupid hat...

The lighting crew did a good job solving all the problems in these interviews – I doubt any civilians watching this show noticed what was going on in those talking head shots -- but their job was made a lot harder by these knucklehead historians couldn't resist playing cowboy for the camera.

So the next time you get called in to do an on-camera interview, leave the cowboy hat at home. Believe me, the gaffer and DP will thank you.


* I realize some people love the stuff, but you’d have to pay me good money -- and lots of it -- to sit through an evening of “cowboy poetry”...

** For another example of the Rembrandt Triangle in action, click here.