The Lead Dog

I've heard those word more times than I can count, and although the phrase hold an undeniable resonance when paired with an image like this, it's always seemed a bit glib to me.* After all, the lead dog isn't exactly running wild and free -- he's chained to the same heavy sled just like the rest of the pack.  Granted, his view is an endless expanse of ice and snow rather than ice, snow, and the butts of all the other dogs, but I'm not sure it makes much difference while every member of the team is working so hard.

Who exactly is the "lead dog" on a show?  Both best boys answer to their respective superiors, the key grip and gaffer, who in turn answer to the DP.  Like all the other department heads, the DP then answers to the director, who answers to the executive producer, who answers to the network or studio executives, who answers to a board of directors who are controlled by whichever rich scumbag owns the most shares of the corporation's stock. Does that mean the lead dog is the majority stock holder -- some smug, overfed A-hole who drinks Dom Perigon for breakfast and has a closet full of Brioni suits but nary a callus on his smoothly manicured hands?

I don't know and don't much cares.  It seems to me that everybody has a boss of one sort or another,  but even if there is no overall lead dog who enjoys the very best view, every department on and off set really does need to be led by someone who knows what he-or-she is doing.

There are no superfluous members of a film crew -- everybody has a role in carrying a show across the finish line. Still, it's clear that some people really are born to lead: due to whatever quirk of personality, they actually need to be out front ... and when they're not, things can get squirrely. 

When I first started as a gaffer, the position was handed to me: in essence, I inherited the job. I'd never harbored any big  ambitions on set -- I just wanted to do a good job with rest of our crew -- but when circumstance shoved me in front of my lighting crew, I tried to make it work.  It seemed to for a while, but being granted that nice view and earning it are two very different things, and I couldn't make it stick.  Still, I learned a lot from the experience, regrouped, and eventually came back to be a much better gaffer the second time around.  Even then, if being the lead dog of my little lighting tribe offered a better view, it came with a price.  As gaffer, I had to stand by the dolly all... day... long, watching, listening, and paying full attention to what was going in in front of the camera -- and on something like an eight day "Barbie" commercial, an intense focus on something so utterly absurd and ultimately meaningless really can turn a guy's brain to mush. A fellow gaffer friend of mine termed this phenomenon "content poisoning," and he was right. Maintaining my concentration on jobs like that was some of the hardest work I ever did on set.

At one point the best boy grip of our group began getting into petty conflicts with my crew.  I never witnessed them -- they always happened out of sight and earshot -- but I'd hear about them later.  I probably should have confronted the best boy myself, but the key grip and I had come up through the ranks together over many years, so I talked to him.  He dealt with it and things got better for a while, but the best boy eventually went back to his troublesome ways just as we landed a four day car commercial to be shot in a city a thousand miles from LA.  This time the key grip was booked on another gig, which meant his best boy would bump up to the key grip slot. Now, it seemed, he and I would finally have that confrontation ... but a funny thing happened on location: the trouble-making best boy morphed into an  excellent key grip. He was totally solicitious of me and my department for the entire job, always asking what else he could do to make my job -- our job -- easier.  This astonishing about-face confounded me until I realized the obvious:  he was just one of those people who couldn't be happy unless he was the lead dog on his crew -- and once in that position, his attitude and actions toward my crew did a full turnaround.  I literally could not have asked for a better key grip on that job.**

That said, people are different. The gaffer I worked with on the longest run of my television career -- a show called Melissa & Joey -- was one of the best.  He was smart, had a great sense of humor, never got stressed or rattled on set, and really knew his business. Working with him on that crew was a real pleasure.  We'd often end up day-playing together on other shows between seasons of M&J, and there he was just as good a juicer as he was a gaffer.  His approach to the two very different jobs was exactly the same: pay attention and work hard. That kind of professional flexibility is crucial to surving in the freelance jungle of Hollywood, because there's only room for one lead dog on each individual crew. If you're a gaffer or key grip and none of your DPs are working, you have to take whatever work is available, and you really do need to adapt to the new role in being exactly what your boss and department need.

 It all boils down to personality, I suppose, but the bottom line is this: a lead dog can't do it alone, and is only as good as his or her crew.  A good lead dog is essential, but those who work behind him in the shadows are just as important in their own way, whether they like the view or not.

* Kind of like "Don't sweat the small stuff."

** He then went on to have a long, very successful career as a key grip.

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Note: That was supposed to be the end of the March post ... but then Gene Hackman died, along with his wife and dog under circumstances that have yet to be explained. He was my favorite actor of modern times, so I had to say something...

                                           Popeye Doyle

I can't overstate the impact Gene Hackman had on me as Popeye Doyle in The French Connection.  Having committed to study film after a few years of going through the motions in school, I was enamored with the classics of old Hollywood: the films of Ford, Hawks, Anthony Mann, Budd Boettecher, and so many others, but other that "The Wild Bunch," hadn't seen much in the modern films of the early 70s that truly gripped me.  

Then came The French Connection, which blew my young mind -- and nothing was quite the same.  That's when I knew I was headed for Hollywood come hell or high water.

There are good obits from various papers that tell his story -- like this and this -- better than I can, and they're worth reading.  As one put it: "Hackman’s career has so much gold in it that it is almost impossible to mine."

Indeed.  Thanks for the memories, Gene.  RIP

The Ten Foot Circle

Any O.G.s here at BS&T might recall a terrific two-part guest post from the keyboard of Peter McClennan, a retired camera operator, DP, and occasional director from the Great White North.  Although it feels as though "A" is for Aerials, "L" is for Lunch went up on the blog just last year, it was actually in 2014.

Damn ... this blog is starting to make me feel old.

If you missed that post seven long years ago, click the link and take a look -- then you'll understand why I've been hounding Peter to come through with another guest post ever since. And now ... drumroll please ... here it is.

                                            

                                 The Ten Foot Circle

                                                     by Peter McLennan

 Photo by Michael Uslan 

On every set you’ll find the ten foot circle, an imaginary radius of ten feet centered on the camera.  It’s the center of the action, ground zero for the entire cast and crew. In the past, to gain unquestioned admission to that holy ground you needed to be a focus puller, boom operator, dolly grip, an actor, a director, or a camera operator. It was a small, hardworking, intense and vital group, deserving respect from all who participated in the obscure, arcane, expensive business known as Principal Photography.

At the center of that circle is the camera operator. It’s not the hardest job, that title goes to the actor, but operating the camera is the best job on set, and possibly best job in the entire industry. The operator has the best seat in the house, be it on a cushy studio dolly, standing onstage between ZZ Top, or sideways in the open door of a helicopter.

Focus pullers share some of this “best seat in the house” aspect. There’s usually nothing but empty space between them and the actors, so they experience actors' performances like few others. The camera operator shares this intimate experience, but with the added input of directly controlling how the audience sees. Of course, as some wise man said, “With great power comes great responsibility,” but there also comes great job satisfaction.

Many of the top-tier directors of photography refuse to give up operating, and for good reason. Roger Deakins insists on doing all his own operating, only excluding a few specialties like Steadicam. Emmanuel Lubeski (“Chivo”), the only DOP to win the Cinematography Oscar three years in a row, also operates, and for good reason. The degree of creative input is intoxicating, and the instantaneous, real time interaction with action and performers is addicting.

As an operator, I learned what I came to call “The Seven Word Rule.”  When the director calls “CUT!”, everyone on the set would turn and look at the operator to see what happens next. If the take is good, it’s the operator’s responsibility to approve it because nobody saw what the camera saw except the operator. That’s why the Society of Operating Cameramen uses the motto “We see it first”.

If it’s not a good take, the operator then has just seven words to explain where it went wrong and what needs to be done to fix it. Seven words, after which nobody’s listening.  Concision is mandatory, as is knowledge of the other crafts.  “The smoke’s too sourcy,” “The fireplace fire doesn’t match the master,”  “A stray hair was distracting,” “The boom dipped in,” “An extra looked at the camera.”  Or sometimes, “I need another one.”
 
The timing of lines or bits of business by the actors can vary from take to take. An important part of the operator’s job is to note where, when, and how things went wrong, or where a happy coincidence resulted in something special.

In addition to controlling, monitoring, and reporting on the technical issues that can affect a take’s quality, the operator is privileged to offer creative input, especially with the actors. Actors are not robots. Their performance can vary subtly from take to take. Their position in the set with regard to background, lighting and other actors changes with each performance.  and can greatly alter the character and quality of the product, rendering some takes useless and some superb. It’s part of the operator’s job to be aware of all of these factors and to offer input to all, including the director and the actors, to continuously improve what the camera sees. The English system, where the operator and the director work closely together, honours this shared responsibility and that’s why Mr. Deakins insists on operating.  It's another of the reasons why the operator has the best job on the set. Creative input.

But the job has changed, and from the operator’s perspective, not for the better. New technology has leached much of the fun from the job, but if the arrival of the digital movie camera cemented these changes, the beginnings appeared long before the death of film thanks to a long-ago intentional and unnatural act. Back in the early eighties, some bright spark decided it’d be a good idea to put a tiny television camera inside a film camera, and from that day life in the circle began to change. With the on-board television camera linked to an on-set monitor, everyone could see exactly what the film camera saw and the mantra “We see it first” was forever invalidated.  As a result, a large part of the operator’s technical and creative input was suddenly irrelevant. Now that everyone could “see it first,” everyone became an expert on actors’ performance, camera moves, lighting changes, smoke, density, random microphones in the shot and, yes, operator errors.

Of course the live video (and audio) feed has obviously improved the overall results of the shoot. The ubiquity of video village proves that, despite its complexity and significant expense. Now that everyone sees it first, problems are more readily apparent and easy to communicate. Many eyes are better than one.  And, like “We See it First,” the seven word rule has become irrelevant.
 
Freed from the necessity of peering over the operator’s shoulder, directors and DPs can relax in a comfy chair while seeing and hearing precisely what’s been recorded. In fact, anyone with access to the village can now experience the rare and special privilege once reserved for those behind the viewfinder.   

The biggest loser from the advent of video village is the camera operator, whose job has transitioned from one of a high status position requiring significant and continuous creative input to being a much smaller cog in the same machine. In fact, the operator is sometimes banished from the ten foot circle altogether and can be found in video village, operating the camera far from the action.

Gone is the electrifying close presence of the actors and gone is the commanding view from the best seat in the house right behind the lens. Gone is the delightful “ride at the fair” aspect of a seat on the camera crane.  And gone too is the cozy, private intimacy with the focus puller.  A tiny team of two, separate from the rest of the crew, working just inches apart, they experienced a unique shared viewpoint on the proceedings. Now they often work far apart.

For the camera operator, first the live “video assist” feed and now the digital cinema camera have removed much of the fun stuff and left all the hard stuff. Their on-set presence is still demanding and unrelenting, they still carry significant responsibility and they still have all the stress of the demands of unerring accuracy and repeatability, but with much less direct creative input.

It's a shame, really, but inevitable, and it all began when that guy put a TV camera inside a film camera.

It’s just an unnatural act, that’s what it is.

Just for the Hell of It -- Episode Fifty

I've long since forgotten who posted this photo or where it was taken - otherwise I'd give him credit here - but I  like the look of this location rig...

Attentive readers will note that this is going up a week early, as my habit has been to post on the first Sunday of each month - which is not until next week - and that it went up three hours earlier than the usual 12:01 p.m. time slot. The reasons for this are unimportant, and may or may not be repeated.  Hey, the only constant in this life is change...


                                 Quote of the Month

This, from the opening of San Francisco Chronicle film critic Mick LaSalle's review of the Tilda Swinton/Dakota Johnson film Suspiria:

"If life were infinite and leisure eternal and if the only challenge were how to fill the endless hours with something, anything, that might divert us even slightly, "Suspiria" would still be something to miss. Centuries and even millennia might go by, and it would still make sense to say no to this movie, because there's just never a good time to see anything this worthless."

Ouch, babe. I don't know if Mick is right or wrong about Suspiria, and since the genre of supernatural horror films no longer interests me, I'll never find out -- but jeeze, that opening almost makes me want to see it just to find out if a movie can really be that bad.

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I've said it before and I'll say it again -- nothing comes easy for anybody in the film and television industry -- but actors have the hardest job on set, if only because it's so difficult for budding actors to get started and make a living in the biz. Consider the early career of Rami Malek, who achieved fame with the lead role in Mr. Robot, then was cast to play Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody. In this interview, Malek describes how he went about getting his first significant role (and an agent), a story that you really have to hear to believe. He goes on to discuss the effort that went into fleshing out and fully inhabiting those roles, which goes way beyond punching the time clock each day on set.  It's a fascinating interview, well worth your time.

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When I rolled into LA forty-plus years ago, the sheer volume of production (along with the lack of industry activity elsewhere) and relatively cheap housing made it the place to get started in the film and television industry... but times have changed. A sobering piece in the Hollywood Reporter explores the current situation in LA, where ever-escalating costs of living are driving an increasing number of young industry professionals to live in their vehicles rather than bunk up with a dozen roommates or pay a king's ransom to rent a halfway decent apartment.  I knew an old grip back in the day who lived in a motor home parked on the lot of a small stage in Hollywood, a rarity at the time that may -- the way things are going -- become routine at some point.  Someone else will have to testify to the cost of living in the other tax-subsidy states that host a thriving film/television industry these days, but LA no longer seems to be a user-friendly incubator for young people attempting to kick-start their industry careers. The first few years can be very lean for beginners, who -- given the escalating economic realities -- might be better off aiming towards one of the other film industry towns... or be prepared for a nomadic life on the streets of LA until they begin earning serious money.

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Every fan of Orson Welles has been intrigued by the release of his final film, The Other Side of the Wind. We've been hearing about it for decades, and here it is at last, the project brought to completion in no small part by producer Frank Marshall, who worked on the first-unit crew as 25 year old production assistant during principle photography in Arizona back in the early 1970's.  Now at age 72, he's closed the circle as producer overseeing the final edit and release. That's quite an accomplishment -- and you can hear all about it in this interview.

There's some brilliant work in Other Side of the Wind (I could watch John Huston chew up the scenery on screen all day long), and there's a scene filmed in a car at night in the rain that's something special -- not the least because it was filmed in bits and pieces with different actors over the course of several years -- but all things considered, I enjoyed the "making of"documentary They'll Love Me When I'm Dead a lot more.  If the life, work, and story of Orson Welles interests you at all, this is one you really don't want to miss.  Last I looked, both of these films were available for streaming on Netflix.  I'd recommend watching the feature before the documentary, but that's up to you.

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Here's a good interview with Matthew Heineman, who made the riveting documentary Cartel Land before taking the reins of his first dramatic feature film, A Private War.  That's a quantum leap for a director to make, and although I haven't yet seen the movie, everything I've read and heard indicates that Heineman stuck the landing.

Next, another good conversation with the ever-entertaining Joel and Ethan Coen, discussing... well, a lot of things anybody who like their movies will find interesting.  Check it out.

In this piece, David Simon sits down for a print interview talking about what he does and how he does it. If there ever is a Television Hall of Fame, Simon has already earned his first-ballot plaque on the wall for the brilliant series The Wire, which (along with The Sopranos) helped change the face of television dramas and usher in the current tsunami of Peak Television. He went on to craft four seasons of Treme, and two seasons thus far of The Deuce.  With these shows, Simon has cemented his status as the resident genius of dramatic, meaningful television -- everything he touches turns to artistic gold -- which makes this one worth a read.

This is a fascinating interview with Peter Jackson describing how his post production team was able to restore, synchronize, colorize, and add sound to silent, hand-cranked film from World War 1 that had been locked in the vaults of British film archives for nearly a hundred years. After five years of painstaking work -- which included using forensic lip readers to decipher what was being said in those ancient films -- the result is They Shall Not Grow Old, from all I've read and heard, an astonishing film. It's easy to regard history as dry, dusty, and having no relevance to modern times when viewed through the prism of jerky, black and white silent films, but the effect is very different when that same history lives and breathes like a modern movie. Your mileage my vary, but this is one I'm definitely going to see.

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On a personal note, one of the truly good guys of Hollywood passed away recently. Tony Askins was everything you could want in a Director of Photography --  knowledgeable, supremely competent, and easy going. I worked a twelve-episodes-and-out sitcom with Tony at Paramount called Love and Money, then came on for the last two seasons of the original Will and Grace as their extra-juicer for lighting days and shoot nights. Never once in all that time did Tony raise his voice.  He always got the job done -- and did it very well -- without ruffling any feathers. Tony Askins was smooth as silk, a gentleman in every way, and although I hated to see him leave the industry back in 2005, he'd earned his retirement, and enjoyed another dozen years before the lights finally faded to black. It was a privilege to work with him.

You were the best, Tony. Thanks -- for everything.

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That's it for January -- a short post, I know (which may be a relief to the few die-hards out there who still tune in), but I'm cobbling it together a few days before Christmas, which (with all due respect to Johnny Mathis) comes in second only to the weeks leading up to April 15 as the Most UnWonderful Time of the Year.  I recently resumed breaking rocks in the hot sun (figuratively speaking) on a project I've long blathered about -- a book based on this blog -- and there's only so much time I can sit at this keyboard.

That said, I wish all fourteen of you a very happy New Year, and hope 2019 will be an improvement over the rather dismal annus horribilis of 2018 now slinking out the back door.

In that spirit, I raise a glass of cheap champagne in a toast to better times ahead...

Just For the Hell of It: Episode 45

                                 Ashtray outside Stage 26, Paramount Studios


Other than a couple of years in the fast-food business when I was fresh out of college, all I've known is the film and television industry, so I can't say if there are more smokers working below-the-line than in other occupations -- but as you can see from this photo, smoking remains a powerful addiction in Hollywood, particularly among the rank and file.

Smoking is strictly prohibited on sound stages nowadays, most of which were built seventy to eighty years ago from wood that has born the brunt of withering heat from thousands of incandescent lamps ever since. After so many years, that wood is now as dry and ready to burn as Donald Trumps parched and shriveled soul... but rules are made to be broken, and if you go up high on any stage in Hollywood during the ongoing run of a show, you'll find a few cigarette butts here and there.* This drives production managers crazy, but human nature is a difficult beast to subdue.

I was a pack-a-day smoker when I rode into LA back in 1977, where the long hours and stop-and-go nature of working on set ramped up my consumption in a big way. While working on a Brothers Johnson music video a few years later, I burned through three full packs of Marlboros in a single long day -- all the while toiling in a thick haze created by a member of the Art Department, who carried a 35 mm film can full of some mysterious flaming white powder around the set every couple of hours, producing a harsh, acrid smoke that made that stage (and my lungs) feel like we were in the midst of a raging forest fire. Then, after twenty straight hours of this pulmonary abuse, I drove home through the smog-thickened atmosphere of Los Angeles... which is when it finally occurred to me that I really ought to stop smoking at some point.

It would take a while to summon up the discipline necessary to quit this nasty habit, and in the meantime I took a job on a one-day shoot starring the late Tony Randall, who -- when it came to smoking -- was every bit as prissy and neurotically fastidious as the Felix Unger character he portrayed in The Odd Couple.  While he was still in wardrobe and makeup, the crew on stage was warned not to smoke, because Randall simply would not tolerate the scent of a burning cigarette.**

"What an asshole," I thought, being young and entirely too full of myself.

So when he finally emerged, all buffed, puffed, and ready to dazzle the camera, I retired to a dark corner at the far end of the long stage, where I sat down and lit up. Moments later, Randall stopped what he was doing, cocked his head, and looked up.

"I smell a cigarette," he said, in a whiny Felix Unger voice.

"C'mon, guys," sighed the First A.D.

I took one more drag, then stubbed it out and slogged through the rest of the day, grumbling everytime I had to walk off stage to service my addiction. A year later I hit the ripe old age of 30, and leveraged the occasion to quit smoking for good. It was a struggle, but I did it -- and once I'd shaken that nicotine monkey off my back, I never smoked again.

Did I miss it? Sure, for a couple of years during which I had lots of dreams about smoking. But after that, not at all. Quitting smoking remains the smartest thing -- maybe the only truly smart thing -- I ever did...

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Football has been in the news of late, and not for the usual reasons. I won't delve into the kneeling-during-the-anthem kerfuffle -- you can get your fill of that on social media -- but it seems to have distracted people from the more lethal issue of CTE destroying the brains and lives of so many players after they've left the game. Ex-agent, producer, and occasional director Gavin Polone recently weighed in on the issue, discussing the reality of the situation and his own apparently unavoidable complicity. I suspect he has a lot of company in this. Whatever you think of Polone -- and more than a few industry people don't much care for him -- his columns are worth a read.

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In other news --it seems film isn't quite dead after all.  A number of accomplished directors still use their clout to shoot film rather than digital, and that's a good thing. The steady march of digital technology will never allow film to occupy more than a niche in the cinematic world, but I'm glad it continues to survive.  CD's were supposed to consign LPs to the dustbin of cultural history, but vinyl continues to thrive among those who appreciate its qualities, so maybe film too will survive the digital revolution.

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The internet blew up last week over the comments of an actress who dared admit to the Emmys that she prefers reading books to watching television. I have no idea who Shailene Woodley is or what show she's in, and I literally could not care less about the Emmys, the Oscars, the Grammies, or any of the other bloated, meaningless award shows the entertainment industry bestows upon itself. Other than the fact that this young woman was nipping the Hollywood hand that feeds her, I fail to understand what's so terrible about prefering books to television. Books were TV before there was TV, except the show played out inside the readers head rather than on screen. Besides, reading books exercises a persons mind and makes him/her think in a way that very few  television shows can. 

If Shailene Woodley was just blowing smoke -- inventing her preference for books over TV in an attempt to appear smart to a jaded audience of agents, managers, writers, directors, and fellow thespians -- that's another matter... but in the absence of evidence to the contrary, I'll assume her comments were sincere. So good for you, Shailene. Keep on reading.

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Tim Goodman, chief television critic of the Hollywood Reporter, posted a good column on the value of a show having a great cast recently.  It's worth reading the whole thing, but here's the salient quote: 

"When a cast can overcome either sloppy writing or writing that's been pushed and bent into untenable directions by, say, a broadcast schedule that ridiculously calls for 22 or 24 episodes, you really have something special.  Actors are fascinating.  They can elevate words and they can destroy words.  Beyond that, I've always keenly enjoyed the fact that acting is a sort of artistic witchcraft, where a person leaves their body (while still in it, but you know what I mean) to become someone else.  A known quantity -- an actor or actress you've seen for ages, populating all the late night talk shows, etc. -- suddenly morphs into something completely other and you believe it. Like Hugh Laurie.  You know Hugh Laurie.  Well, none of us do, but we think we do (except for stupid Americans who never learned he was known for comedy before House).  Anyway, if Hugh Laurie stands in front of you, you know him.  And then he does The Night Manager.  And then he does Chance.  And you can't shake that transformation -- particularly if you've seen A Bit of Fry & Laurie, Blackadder, Jeeves and Wooster and yes, Stuart Little and House and Veep and maybe a piano player on jazz album you once heard -- and you think, "My God, this man is not the man I thought I knew; this man is a chameleon, transformative, abnormal. And you would be right because he's an actor.  Same for Helen Mirren. And countless others,"  

Agreed.  I've said it before and I'll say it again: actors have the hardest and most important job on set.

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Those who have been stopping by here for a while might recall this two-part guest post by Director/DP Peter McLennan (now retired), describing a stomach-churning day he suffered through while shooting aerials in a helicopter. For months afterwards, those two posts were among the most popular on the blog, and were shared all over the internet. Peter is very good at telling a story, and has some good ones to tell -- I encouraged him to start an industry blog of his own, but he had better things to do. Our loss, that. Still, every now and then he sends me a little gem, and did so recently with a vivid description of his adventures chasing the total eclipse that was the big story of the summer before all the hurricanes, earthquakes, and nuclear saber-rattling shoved it off the front page.

Like all of Peter's writing, it's a good read, so do yourself a favor and check it out.

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As the world knows by now, Hugh Hefner passed away last week. Like most young men back in the day, I was well acquainted with Playboy magazine, leafing through new issues in a hormonal haze, propelled by five hundred million years of Darwinian evolution and an enduring fascination with the female form. A few years after landing in Hollywood, I got a job wrangling lights for a shoot at the Playboy Mansion. There it all was -- the grotto, the koi pond, the underground aviary, the tennis courts and of course, the mansion itself. The shoot was all exteriors, so we never got in the front door, but with dozens of extremely attractive scantily-clad young women gliding in front of our lights and camera, that really didn't matter.

While we filmed a scene in the grotto, Hefner strolled out to watch the action -- the man himself, looking exactly as he did in the magazine. It suddenly felt as though I was visiting some strange X-rated Disneyland, with Hef appearing as another iconic character -- but instead of a Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, or Goofy costume, he was clad in his own trademark silk gown, puffing on the everpresent pipe.  

All in all, a strange but memorable day. Four decades later, after living a life millions have envied but none could really imagine, Hugh Hefner has gone the way of all things. Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

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Here on the home front, I've been busy dealing with thirty years of deferred maintenance on my shack up here in the trees. When you occupy a wooden dwelling, in the woods, amidst millions of tiny creatures who evolved to eat wood for a living, unfortunate and expensive consequences are inevitable.

Ah well, it's nothing cubic dollars and endless toil can't fix, and absent the former, I must endure the latter. As numerous people warned me when I pulled the plug on Hollywood: "Being retired doesn't mean you'll stop working -- you'll just stop getting paid."

At the time, I thought they were kidding, but they weren't.  

Live and learn...


* Stages are usually swept clean at the season's end, or whenever a show wraps.

** It was still legal to smoke on stage back then.

Rough Sledding

"How many days has it been since I was born, how many days 'til I die…"
Stranger in a Strange Land, by León Russell

       

                  Mike Kelly (and fellow stand-in Erin) in happier times...

The losses continued to mount as we hit black ice early in November, then skidded off the road and plunged headlong into the glittering retail heart of the Holiday Season. With a few notable exceptions (how about those Cubs?), 2016 will go down as one mean and ugly year from start to finish, and the last few weeks were particularly rough, taking so many cultural luminaries into the Great Beyond. The Famous Names were as numerous as they are familiar, but it was the deaths of Sharon Jones, Gwen Ifill, and Carrie Fisher that hit me the hardest -- powerful, supremely talented women in their professional prime, all of whom had so much more to give.

Their loss is incalculable, and leaves us staring into the new year wondering what -- and who -- is next?

I never had a chance to see Sharon Jones or Gwen Ifill in person, but worked on a sit-com that brought Carrie Fisher in as a guest star for one episode. That meant she was on set all week, so we got a good look at her -- and she was just great: smart, sassy, really funny, and a total pro. She made that whole week so much fun for all of us... and need I state the obvious? Princess Leia herself was standing there, right in front of me!

Yeah, I know how ridiculous that sounds, but I'm just telling you how it was.

Zsa Zsa Gabor left us too.  Although I never saw her except on TV, she and her sister Eva were a big deal way back in the day. Green Acres made an indelible mark on my youthful psyche, even if that was Eva rather than Zsa Zsa. It didn't really matter -- the Gabor sisters were sexy, exotic, diaphanous creatures who knew how to fire the imagination of the viewing public... and that of teenaged boys.

You can read about her famous encounter with a Beverly Hills cop (and the subsequent trial) if you like, but I prefer Robert Lloyd's thoughtful meditation on her place in the public eye during an era that was considerably less frantic and hard-edged than the Hollywood of today. 

Better still, here's a first-person account by Jack Beckett -- a very talented DP I was lucky enough to work with early in my career -- of his encounter with Zsa Zsa when he was a young camera assistant.

"Just a quick recollection on the passing off Zsa Zsa. I was nineteen, working on a movie called "The Glass Cage" shooting near the pony rides in Griffith park. We established Zsa Zsa dressed in a strapless red formal with endless petticoats of chiffon as she ran from the bad guy. Our director, who changed his name three times in the course of the shoot, had an overblown perspective on himself and the merits of the script, and because I tended the slate, I always checked with him early in the a.m. to make sure he was the same guy... and as I walked up, he was getting a heated dressing-down from Zsa Zsa regarding wrap time."

"Darlink no more just-one-more take -- at six I'm going home."

"She was as tough as she was beautiful, and in this movie her fate was to be eaten by a Polar Bear. Actually we were concerned for the Bear. So it finally came, the wrap shot where we have a full figure as she runs up in the outfit, her back against a tree, throws a look back, then runs out of frame. She gives him two takes, it is 6:03 and he says "Zsa Zsa, sweetheart, please just one more," whereupon she reaches around, unzips the gown, and in her panties and strapless bra walks a good three hundred yards right in front of the pony-riding kids to the makeup trailer, leaving us with a pile of chiffon."

"The director whose name would not fit on a standard slate, looked around dumbly and said 'Well, I guess that's a wrap."

"If any little kids riding ponies that day watched this devastatingly beautiful, half naked woman storm past it was not a prepubescent wet dream, but a Hollywood legend."

"Zsa Zsa worked for two days, and on the last day she had to lay at the bottom of the bear pit (LA Zoo) and look like she had been eaten. We shot the bear tearing the hell out of a dummy, then wrapped the bear and drained the bear pit. Now I'm the strapping young lad at the bottom of the ladder and here she comes petticoats et al. Half way down she does the "OH Darlink, I can't make it!!!"

"So I do the hero grab getting her in my arms and promptly step on a polar bear poop and we both slither down into the slime along with a stream of Hungarian vulgarity." 

Later when I recounted this to my father, he gave me a basic below-the-line truth:

'Never touch a star, kid." 

Good advice, that.

Not everyone 2016 took was a famous name -- there were others who worked quietly in the trenches of Hollywood who won't be with us as we walk into this New Year.

I did a sitcom called Ruby and The Rockits back in 2009, which completed ten episodes and was on track for an additional twelve episode pick-up until the diminutive star developed a severe case of Ego Inflatitus -- a personality disorder that led him to present a list of ridiculous (read: expensive) demands to the network, whereupon they promptly flushed the show and all of us on the crew down the Hollywood toilet.

Mike Kelly was among our crew of stand-ins who did their thankless, detail-oriented work that allowed the lighting and camera crews to prepare for every shot of every scene in every episode for the entire season. It's a humble but important job that's a lot harder than it looks, but as you can see from the photo, they managed to have a good time and keep us all laughing. Mike always had that bemused smile, as if trying to figure out just how the Hell he'd ended up here.

I don't imagine too many young people come to Hollywood with a burning ambition to work as a stand-in, but that's where a lot of wannabe actors wind up. Although the wages for a stand-in are subsistence-level at best (around $20/hour, I believe, which doesn't go very far in LA), at least it's a paying gig on set, where they can learn how television shows and movies are made, and hopefully make some useful contacts that might further their careers down the road. But it's a cruel twist of fate that puts those who so desperately want to be actors in front of the lights and cameras right up until the stars arrive freshly buffed, puffed, and coifed from wardrobe/hair/makeup... at which point the stand-ins retreat to the shadows and watch, all the while nursing the glowing embers of their own Hollywood dreams.

So near, yet so far.

While writing a post about stand-ins a few years ago, I e-mailed Mike and Erin for permission to use the photo above. Both agreed, with Mike adding "If you want to memorialize the worst days of my professional life, go right ahead" -- but as always, he said it with a smile. Coming out of Chicago's famed Second City, his own ambitions ranged far beyond working as a stand-in, but he never managed to make that quantum leap. One of the dangers in working as a stand-in is the very thing that makes it attractive: relatively steady employment in a notoriously insecure industry. But once a stand-in gets in the groove and is working, it's that much harder to act in an equity waiver play (read: an unpaid gig) or ride the utterly unpredictable roller-coaster of endless auditions -- but those are some of the ways wannabe actors are able to advance their budding careers.

Thus stand-ins often find themselves caught between the rock of economic reality and the hard place of trying to fulfill their professional dreams.

I never had a chance to work with Mike again after Ruby and the Rockits blew up, but I followed him on Facebook. Like so many would-be actors, he went into real estate -- a business that offers lots of flexibility and free time to make those auditions -- and just for fun, posted a series of his own short, casually comedic clips on Utube.*

I always hoped we'd work together again one of these days, but that won't happen now -- and not because I'm about to retire. Some godawful type of cancer got its teeth into him over the past few years, and finally took him down as 2016 faded to black.

Mike Kelly was a great guy, easy going and always with that smile. Even if he never quite made his own Hollywood dreams come true, he left his mark on those of us who knew him, and he'll be missed.

Thanks for the laughs, Mike.

Rest in Peace.

2016 was one bitch of a year, and I'm glad to see it go -- I just wish it hadn't taken so many good people with it...


* Here's a sample.

The Enemy Within

                                                Look at all the fun I missed...
                                             (Photo by Chris Elizondo)

So much for getting back to doing the "best part" of my job -- hanging, powering, and adjusting the lamps on set. My four days in Sick Bay took me out of the heavy lift to get the second half of this show underway, as four sets went out, replaced by four more, two of which were big and meant to simulate the Outside World. One was a huge woodsy set that required a 140 foot long scenic backing, several big artificial trees, truckloads of dirt, many large bags of leaves and pine needles, and dozens of potted bushes. The greens crew got a serious workout building this set, as did the juicers and grips -- because it takes a lot of lights to create a convincing illusion of an exterior set on a sound stage. 

The trick in this case was making sure they were placed properly, because once the dirt and trees were in, adjusting the aim of many of these lamps would be a very time-consuming effort requiring a big articulating lift. During the two rig days, this wasn't a problem -- the dirt and trees weren't all in place yet, so the juicers and grips were free to do their work. But once the shoot days arrived, all bets were off. Due to the fifty-pounds-of-shit-in-a-five-pound-bag nature of this show, there was no room on stage for that lift, so it had to be kept outside. If we needed it, all five (yes -- five) cameras, cables, and two big arrays of video monitors (along with two massive sound department perambulators) would have to be moved well out of the way, the big elephant door opened, the lift driven in, and all the necessary lighting adjustments made. Then the lift would have to be driven back outside, the big door closed, and all the cameras, cables, monitors and sound gear moved back in place -- a process that could easily consume half an hour. With the extremely tight schedule of this show, there just wasn't time for this, so those lamps had to be set properly the first time around.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is where the DP and Gaffer earn their money, and fortunately, we had a very good DP and Gaffer who got it right.

The other exterior set was a beach, complete with sand dunes, palm trees and real sand that came in eight of these huge bags, each of which weighed in at well over a ton.

                                                      Three of eight...

Being laid up in Sick Bay, I missed all the fun. By the time I returned to work on Monday -- the first shoot day -- most of the heavy lifting was done. There was lots of tweaking, of course, but that never ends until the cameras roll, and sometimes not even then.  

Scheduled for six consecutive shooting days -- several of which went 14 hours -- this was the hardest week of the entire five week job. By mid-week, we worked a day that started at 8:30 A.M. and ended at 11:30 P.M., then we had to be back on set ready to start another long day at 8:30 the following morning. When you factor in drive time both ways, shower time, and wake-up/eat-something/get-dressed time, there aren't many hours left for actual sleep. At my age, and still recovering from that cold (having lost my voice for two days), this was a serious grind. Day Six would be lucrative, of course (at time-and-a-half all day), but we were zombies by then -- dead men walking -- because all that accumulated fatigue truly is the enemy within. It wears you down, makes you stupid, and dramatically increases the odds of making mistakes. At one point, a camera assistant looked up and said to no one in particular, "I was driving home last night and saw all the lights on the houses... and realized I'd forgotten it was Christmas." 

I knew exactly what she meant, because the same thing happened to me every night on the way home from this job. When I pull the plug -- very soon, kiddos -- I certainly won't miss the all-consuming nature of the film and television industry, where we do little but eat/sleep/work until the show is done. The show becomes our world, with everything outside the sound stage seeming somehow not quite real anymore.   

It's no way to live.

I arrived on set that sixth morning at half-mast, acutely aware that my brain was not functioning well.  "Stay off the ladders today" was my first thought, because ending my career with a fall and in the hospital on my last shoot day in Hollywood as a core member of a set lighting crew might make a good ending for a lousy movie, but I had no desire to bring such bad fiction to life.
 
So naturally -- the Gods of Hollywood being famously contrarian at the best of times -- my first assignment was to climb that forty-two step steel ladder up high, inside the Tube of Death, to drop down power for one of the newer swing sets. Needless to say, I made that climb very carefully, holding tight to each and every rung on the way up and down, breathing hard all the way.

And once safely back on the stage floor, I was wide awake at last, once again proving that adrenaline is a lot more effective than coffee.

With that, the tedium resumed as another long day unfolded one slow hour at a time. We'd been told the producers wouldn't go past 10:30 P.M. no matter what, and they were true to their word. We plugged in the man-lifts to recharge, then did some minor clean-up around the stage -- "making it safe" -- and that was that. There will be a few days of wrap, and hopefully a little day-playing early in the New Year, but with the end of this day, my career in Hollywood is essentially over.  

Put it this way: my name will never again appear on a call sheet as a core member of a set lighting crew. That part of my life is done.

                                                  The last call sheet...

I'll have some thoughts on that and a few other things in the weeks to come, but for now I'll leave you with a little Christmas gift -- the same one I leave under the cyber-tree here every year: the great Robert Earl Keene's rendition of Merry Christmas from the Family. If you've never heard it, you're in for a treat -- and if you have, you already know.

Merry Christmas, and as always, thanks for tuning in...