DQ, TC & me

I have a neighbor who always asks what I'm working on. She loves the stories, however mundane, and was excited to hear that I was going to be on this project. You have to get me an autograph, she gushed at her holiday party. I explained how that isn't done between and among film crew and stars. We treat them as co-workers with an important job to do that needs no distractions. It just isn't done.

And this unspoken etiquette and protocol applies to all film sets. So I was surprised to find myself in Dairy Queen standing next to Tom Cruise. Hey, we were just two guys who happened to have the same idea: I was at the hotel next door, too drained and exhasted to go find a proper dinner, giving into urges to consume ice cream. He was driving by and saw a Dairy Queen, evidently a favorite place to go for him.

I came around the corner from the adjacent convenience store, and there he was, at the counter, signing autographs and taking pictures. I stopped and leaned against a trash can, just enjoying the experience. His personal security sidled up to me, probably sensing someone who doesn't belong. He chatted me up in a friendly, threat-assessing way. I decided to make a move.

Can I get an autograph for my neighbor? I asked the guy, who nodded to the publicist. The star was neither happy nor annoyed to fulfil the request. Who's this for? he asked. My friend Stacey I said. He scribbled, turned his back and my audience with him was over.

The publicist and security looked at me silently, the message clear.
There you go, thanks, see you later. I made a hasty exit, skipping back towards the hotel. Looking back, I could see the DQ glowing brightly from the star's million-megawatt smile.

iceland

The muddy ruts have turned to frozen waves of brown. The grips have built a road out of rough-sawn oak planks lag-bolted to 2x10s
that stretch for at least a hundred yards, past the enormous catering tent complex up to where picture vehicles are staged. The plank road looks like something out of world war II, something that leads to a frozen eastern front.

While last week, everything floated on, and sank into endless seas of mud, this week everything is locked into place with a frosty chocolate mortar. If you dropped something last night and found it this morning, you'd have to kick at it with your heel to dislodge it from the ground then scrape it clean of the dirty icy coating.

And there's a lot to drop. In my entire film experience, I've never seen so much stuff. Not just equipment, not just set dressing and props, but everything: There are three separate basecamps each with a city of circus tents and at least a dozen generators and work light towers. There's one area that's only military vehicles- more humvees than I can count, each with 50.cal armaments attached (and wrapped in furniture blankets oversheathed with trash bags in an attempt to defeat the single digits temperatures overnight).

And extras, between 400 and 1000, depending on which day, all of whom are in distressed wardrobe and make-up and carrying belongings
a la the end of the world refugees in Deep Impact. When we shot that one, the opposite was happenning- we were on a brand new highway in August and people were collapsing from heat exhaustion, cars were overheating, general malaise and fatigue were from heat. Today, it's from the cold.

Standing in a field in the pre-dawn glow, no one can find their departments, because all faces are obscured with hats and ear muffs and scarves. We look like an army of mishaped snowmen wearing high-tech cold climate wardrobe. Everyone's trying to look enthusiastic, and as the sun is almost over the ridge, a cacophony begins: The director is helicoptering in to put us all to work.

no joy in mudville

It's a complete mess. A fiasco.

There are all these huge trucks rumbling down tiny country roads, the production a gigantic bumbling monster unaware of it's own conspicuousness. It's been raining for days,
and the mud produced between the grip trucks, the stakebeds, the five-tons and all the trailers is prodigious, if not biblical.

Today at work, our first task was to go into an old lady's house and remove her furniture so that (Big Actor) and (Huge Director) could bring in their own rented furniture, not as a shooting set, but as a production office/ video village/ green room/ hiding place. The homeowner, named Mary, showed us photos of the house in the 1920's, her father having bought the house in 1907.

Almost immediately, one of the set dressers inadvertently tracked cat shit through her house. Mary has about eleven barn cats, and it was raining like hell, and before anyone realized what was happening, someone mentioned that the house suddenly had a peculiar odor. While I cracked a window and moistened some paper towels in an attempt to minimize the pungent mess, the porta potties arrived outside on a trailer.

As the driver backed into the very soft lawn, the tires sank into the deep green bog until it began to bleed brown. Brownish red really, as the dirt in these parts has a high red clay content.

Mary asked me if we had ever done this before, and I struggled to not look sheepish, but it didn't sound very convincing, even to me.

patio screen door

Patio looked like he'd just stopped a bullet with his chest. He held the phone in front of him, waist high, viewing it like an old-time pocket watch, or something that he didn't want near his head. He looked pale and stunned, which was rare.
Patio was not easily stunned. His jokes were often scatalogical, his demeanor brusque but loveable. He had endeared himself to the English-language-challenged production designer by being frank and truthful to a fault. The designer would look to him and in the thickest of french accents say, well, Pat-tee-oh, what you you sink?

To which Patio invariably replied, I think it looks like shit.

So to see him stunned by his phone could mean only one thing: He'd just caught a raftload of shit from our fearless leader Louise.

Louise was an LA leadman whose twin distinguishing characteristics were that she weighed at least 350 pounds and had purple hair. She also spat vitriolic commentary to any and all who challenged her authority, or anyone who could be perceived to be doing so.

On this day, we had reported to a dock in Baltimore harbor at 5am to strike a yacht, the Anson Bell, which we had dressed the previous week. The yacht had been shooting all night, and the early call was necessary because we had to have everything out of the boat, and the original furnishing restored, before noon. This was a drop-dead time, the boat was leaving, God help us if we weren't finished by then.

And Patio had just been shot through the eardrum with a shit filled rocket. I could see it in his eyes. This was not a shy guy, not one easily rattled. There he stood, silent, mouth dry, eyes blank, motionless, which was not helping with the urgent task at hand.

What did she say? I ventured, gambling that by opening this line of questioning, we could laugh it off, and continue as if a traumatic exchange had not just occurred.

He considered the question, I think, and slowly, the light began to return to his eyes. He blinked a few times and started climbing down from the truck he was standing in. I was glad he was moving again.

She told me, he said, thankfully starting to laugh, that today was the wrong day to have my head up my ass. He was grinning again, that shruggy grin, that who-gives-a-fuck grin which is essential equipment when your boss is a 350 pound woman with purple hair.