The Off Season

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 years 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.