CrackBerry

cold comfort

2009-02-06T16:35:00.000-08:00

I think we become habitual, ritualistic, as we settle into life. I know that I've got my routines, and when they don't go right, it throws me off.

For example, I run every other day. If I miss a day, the ripple effect influences other aspects of my life: I'll be more prone to frustration, less energetic, and quicker to tire if I miss my run.

So the day I start a new job, if it falls on a running day, I have to get up insanely early if I want to keep the routine. Sometimes it just isn't possible: when you have to wake up at 4:30 am to make a six am call time, running just isn't an option.

That was the situation when I started on the HBO broadcast of the inaguration concert on the steps of the lincoln memorial. And besides, it was cold.

"Eleven degrees farenheit" is what the electronic voice said when I called the weather number. That didn't take the wind into account. When I turned the key in my ignition, I heard a little hesitation, a sluggish churn instead of the usual spritely start.

I had downed a big mug of coffee and filled it up again for the ride, knowing the inevitable would happen: at some point, probably sooner than later, I would have to use the bathroom.

Sometimes in these situations, the need will present itself at or near a gas station that is on my route, like the one at the airport- it's an easy stop, no highway exit necessary,no exit toll/ re-entrance fee.

No such luck. As I started to get near the bridges into Washington, I could feel the imminent need for a restroom.I began to picture the seemingly endless columns of porta-potties on the mall: not so appealing normally, but a far sight better than the nothingness of pre-dawn national monuments.

As I parked my car, the situatution was becoming urgent. I walked the hundred yards to the first plastic haven and opened the door. An odd fact is that if a porta john hasn't been used yet, it's not entirely unpleasant.

I clipped a small light onto my jacket zipper as I struggled through multiple layers of long underware. I sat there watching my breath in the pre-dawn darkness. Sheltered from the wind, I cherished this igloo of relief.

The chemical inside was a solid block of blue ice. Mildly amused by this oddity, I made my escape like a robber from a bank.

Looking across the river, I could see the sky beginning to get blue as the first fingertips of morning began to reach across the sky.

I felt like I'd just had eight hours sleep.

It Isn't Funny

2008-12-19T11:43:00.000-08:00

The story under this one is actually painful to tell, so it's going to unfold in a series of bulletpoints/snapshots (without pictures)

- We set up shop at the rooftop pool/bar at the Westin Canal and ordered everything we could think of to eat, drink and smoke (cigarettes are like $10 a pack from room service).

- There was a difference of opinion at a restaurant between members of the art department that continued out onto the street outside Storyville Restaurant and created a rift that still exists today.

- On the final day of shooting, the production company was unable to locate any members of the art department, and panicked family members back in Virginia by calling and reporting them missing.

- At check-out, there was great confusion and discussion over whose responsibility an $800 room service bill should be.

- During the journey back from New Orleans, a routine police stop included the phrase "I've gotten a lot of calls about this vehicle." One member of the art department vomited during the police stop. No tickets were issued and the driver's breathalyzer reading was 0.0.

And none of this is funny.

You can't handle the truth

2007-10-24T19:17:00.000-07:00

The truth is, I hired these guys because they're bad, not in spite of it. I knew we were heading out of town, out of state, working outside of our field, probably with a wealth of potential for graft, debauchery and general moral debasement, as well as fine dining and beverages.

At the time, I was enjoying a beverage on occasion. Kevin's a prolific boozehound and troubleboy Jason, well, he's that classic combination of fucked-up childhood, poor self esteem and pharmacologically enhanced mental derangement. It's a recipe for plenty to go wrong. Or right. Or both.

August in New Orleans is hot. It feels like a steam hose is spraying you in the face at 8 am. By 9pm, one is coated in salt residue from dried sweat that has reconstituted many times over. We'd wrap, go back to the hotel to shower, and head out for dinner before the kitchens closed, usually 10pm. Finished by 11:30 or so, we'd head into the city to walk dinner off.

About night three, we ventured into a strip club, and this is probably the point things became untenable.

The Battle of New Orleans

2007-02-01T17:51:00.000-08:00

Standing in a phone booth in the parking lot of of the Lewes Liquor store, it sounded a little shady, but in all honesty, about half of the things people say to me at the beginning of a job sound that way. People call me to find things they can't find themselves, or to oversee a situation they know is going to get out of control and they'd rather not get their hands dirty.

The guy was telling me that the job was in New Orleans, it involved a motorcycle chase, there was already a stunt coordinator on board, and he and I would set the whole scene up, then, he, the voice on the phone, would swoop in and direct the thing. Pretty straighforward.

I'm going to need a couple guys I said. I always say that because it's always true, especially if I'm going to be so far from all regular sources for things. Everything's harder on the road.

He paused, well you can probably bring one, at a hundred, maybe $150 a day. I let him know that I was going to need technicians that I know and trust and their rates were way above that. And I need two of them. Lemme get back to ya, he said.

I should have been excited, hell, it sounds like a paid vacation on the heels of my regular vacation. but I didn't like it- it wasn't a movie or a TV show, it was an "Introduction Video" for a new CEO of a big computer company to be shown at its annual meeting in New Orleans. It was an Event, a dirty word in my biz. These guys are known to be sketchy, unaccountable, prone to stiff you on the bill if you're not careful...

When he called me back, he had changed his tune: you can bring two guys, we'll fly you down.. What about our tools I interrupted? It was agreed we would rent a minivan, pack it with gear and ride down a day early. This was probably my first mistake.

My second was hiring a guy I'll call Jason. This guy had been my protege a while back, by which I mean he pestered me into hiring him, volunteering on a pay-less indie film until I owed him a favor and got him into the union and onto a big movie. Now his true nature was coming out more: lazy, surly, drugged and drunken and quite possibly mentally ill. But on the plus side, he was available.

So he, myself and the great white shark, Kevin Quick, piled into a rented minivan and drove 18 hours into the heart of darkness, the city that stews in its own crapulence and where corpses wash into the streets when there's a heavy rain, you guessed it..New Orleans.

(part 2 coming soon)

The reel story

2006-05-13T11:27:00.001-07:00

So here's what happened: I went to an open call for a Pepsi commercial near Bristol, TN while I was living a post-college arrested adolescence/self-imposed exile. I had always wanted to work in the film business, but had no idea how to get started.

After a half-dozen call-backs, I was cast as "guy on motorcycle". Director Michael Ritchie(!) told me I was the only guy in Tennessee without a moustache, and probably would have given me a speaking part if I had a SAG card. The shoot was three days, and my part was on day 1.
[here's the :30 version, which has no motorcycle guy]

Walking onto the set in the pre-dawn haze, I felt it instantly, the energy of a shooting set. I knew that I was in the right place. Everywhere, a busy army of guys and girls with headsets on were scurrying around. I want to do that, I told the 1st AD, who had kindly befriended me. No you don't he said. That's the worst job there is.

But I wouldn't listen. I got hired as a PA for the additional days that I wasn't shooting. My duties included yelling "Quiet!", looking for people (sample assignment: the radio would crackle, "yeah, there's a girl in yellow named Becky, we need her at camera" so you'd go to every girl in yellow and say are you Becky? and they would all say why, yes I am...

But then the job was over, and the trucks pulled out, and I was left wondering, where is the next commercial going to shoot, the answer of course is: not here.

Years later, I was living in Crystal City, and I saw a '64 Plymouth Fury painted like a DC cop car parked at a warehouse across the street from my apartment. I figured it was a prop for America's most Wanted, knowing that the show was based in Bethesda.

I circled the block on my bike, scoping out the situation. I read the parking passes
in the windshields, sorta stalking them. When a lone figure wallked walked across the lot, I rode up to her and broke into the bit; excuse me, I said, are you with forrest gump? The person, a blond lady with a slight smile said, yes, I'm the art director.

I introduced myself, told her I had experience as a PA and pointed up to the building across the street. I live right there, I said, so you have to hire me. Surely there's a job too dirty or boring for everyone else, and it's almost impossible for me to be late. She thought that was funny and referred me to Willis who does the hiring.

This is where the trail goes cold: to begin with, Willis was never there. It became clear that this otherwise anonymous warehouse in crystal city was the wardrobe, set dressing, props and construction departments, and in my subsequent trips into it in search of Willis, I met most of the staff: production designer rick carter, propmaster ian kelly, leadman polarbear shaw and his band of happy set dressers, including but not limited to the affable billy alford.

When I finally met Willis, he said he couldn't hire me unless he'd worked with me, or if someone he knew had worked with me. Then he asked for my resume. I didn't have one.....with me I said. Willis dismissed me into the ether to fetch my papers, but not before waving a stack of resumes at me and saying these are the people ahead of you who want a job.

Broken but not beaten, I went to Kinko's to construct a history of association with entertainment that could be construed as previous employment. For example, I had been in bands, and carried my own gear. That made me a roadie, or, better yet a
stagehand/ technician. And so on.

Then I printed it onto the brightest florescent orange papaer I could find, the kind that hurts your eyes. I took it back to Willis' lair, but of course he was gone. I put my one page novel of mostly non-fiction on his desk, then grabbed a post-it and wrote- Willis, hire this guy! and signed it -E.

Then I did what seemed like the most logical thing- went for a long bike ride. Upon my return there was a message from Willis that said something like you lucky bastard- the art director says she can use a guy to help her, and asked for you by name.

So there. Glamour and glitz. My team cleaned out the reflecting pool so Tom Hanks and Robin Penn Wright could jump in and meet in the middle. I got my brother Chris hired for a couple weeks, but he was too smart to stick with the film business.

Not me.

Freakily Asked Questions

2006-03-01T18:17:00.000-08:00

1: How did you get started in movies?

I've been asked this so much that I've stopped telling the real story because it's too long. When I was working on Minority Report, Sammy Steward and I were approached by a reporter who asked us about working on the Speilberg project. His article described our "studied non-chalance" and "casual mastery".

Hey buddy, I don't have to study nonchalance- I've got it down. As for casual mastery, when you're in the art department, people can ask you for anything. I've had directors ask if I have a streetlight. The casualness I've mastered is in not looking suprised, not stammerring, and not spitting out a profanity-laden sarcasm bomb.

2: What exactly do you do?

It's like a game show- the rules are that someone can ask you for anything, and you have to figure out how, when and where to aquire, find, steal, alter, construct, fabricate or do without the items in question. It's also yourjob to know how much it would cost, and how many days you'll need to complete the list.

I get tired of the easy ones, like making a school look like a school. Plane crash on water is much more fun....

or Revolutionary War battle scene, complete with smoldering ruins...

3: Do you meet/ party with/ hang out with the stars?

Star avoidance is a keen art. They're called stars for a reason- get too close, you'll get sucked into their gravity and burn up. Best to view them like everyone elso, in a darkened theatre. Actors are trying to do a job, a difficult one at that, and don't need more distractions.

We'll discuss this further at another time...

Dad works at night (sometimes)

2005-12-23T18:15:00.000-08:00

Rolling up 95, I was really unsure what the first venue would be like. It's been a long time since I'd been to a punk rock show in a church basement. Last time was 1992, when Ad-roc and I went to Florida avenue to catch Circus Lupus, Trenchmouth (from Chicago) Tsunami, and some other band that we missed. It was an earnest affair, 5 bucks at the door, earplugs optional, Trenchmouth an amazing blur of polyrythmnic noise-core mixed with odd melodic wanderings. But that was then. Philly was now.
For reasons that remain obscure, there is no parking in the entire city. Until you finally pay for a lot, then there's an open spot right in front of the address you've been circling. That's one thing that makes philly so weird.

If you believe random things have meaning, what would you make of the following: a flyer taped to a pole that reads:" IF YOU WERE SENT HERE TO FIND SOMEONE- IT'S A SCAM! YOU ARE NOT A SECRET AGENT!" I was too dumbstruck to even snap a photo.

The First Unitarian church is a block-long monolith with stinky ginko trees in front of it. We shuffled down and in to the basement. Dudes were setting up, and we made contact with our guys. They gave us the skinny, we scoped it out and yada yada, the lights went down.

I climbed the stage left PA tower while Bentley crouched on the stage right stairs and fought a fistful of elbowy still photogs. Once The Dillinger Escape Plan came on, the place exploded.

Bobby's grumpy

2005-11-25T18:13:00.000-08:00

Normally, a key part of my job is avoiding actors. Not just for the sake of job preservation by maintaining distance from the focus of attention, but also because the mechanics of what the art department does dovetails with the actor's job. When we're finished with the set, they bring on the actors.

But the relationship between the us and the director is the exact opposite. It needs to be open, cordial, frank, clear, and nearly constant. We are his hands as he paints his canvas. He'll call our name a hundred times in one day. I learned a decade ago to watch the director's eyes, body language, tone of voice, to search for clues as to what else he's thinking, and therefore, probably going to ask for.

So when George Clooney glides onto a set, and a palpable hum settles over the set, I'm immune to it. I'm watching everything that's not an actor: the flowers, the tables, the chairs, the paintings. If he bumps into me, I'll say excuse me, if he says good morning, I'll repeat it, but there will be no meaningful exchange.

But when Robert Deniro is the director, I get a little tingle when he steps up to the monitor and starts barking out orders to the extras. He yelled at the extras to put down their drinks. You can go to Mc Donald's when you leave here he roared. Nice. Welcome to Bobby D's acting camp.

I kept hearing that voice while not looking at him, and it takes a second to remember that's your boss telling you to do something. I would get lost listening to the timbre and tone and not hear what he was saying. Not very professional, I suppose. But hey, c'mon Bobby, who wouldn't?

Besides, we were busting our ass on this show. To begin with, on our prep day, it rained like a flood out of the old testament. And since this is a period piece, we
have to change everything: the street signs, meters, cars, even the lines on the road.
I kept three raincoats on constant rotation. When one got soaked through, I hung it on a wardrobe rack we rigged up in the back of our truck. Fortunately, I had the best help an art department can get, a pair of rock solid set dressers who can keep a good attitude in the face of insurmountable conditions, as long as lunch is good, which it always is.

As wrap was called, and everybody wanted a piece of Bobby, he walked right toward me, as if to say thanks, good job, see ya. As it turned out, his driver had pulled up on the curb behind me, so moving my way was coincidence. I told him thanks for bringing the show to DC. He grinned in a way I hadn't seen the whole shoot and said, sure, you got it.

espresso stroke

2005-03-16T17:44:00.000-08:00

The idea was simple. The main character went to a cart on the street and got an espresso. I found the very best espresso cart in the city, and developed a relationship with the cart owner, who had newspaper articles posted that indicated what a great guy he was, how he had ovecome adversity in a war torn counrty to succeed in the competetive push-cart coffee product arena.

He was a flake. He didn't show. On the morning of the shoot, his call time was 7 a.m. Around nine, the Production Designer called me. Any sign of your guy? he asked in a knowing and disapproving tone. I responded in the negative. What's plan B? he wanted to know, his british accent snapping at my heels. Plan B is the Plan A works, God dammit.

I assurred him that a well constructed contingency plan was unfolding as we spoke. I hung up and called Shiffy. I was having a meltdown.

This had been a sure thing. A lot could go wrong on this show, like when the main character boards a train at Union Station, it's a rainy day, and when he gets off at Dupont Circle, it's sunny and dry. Then he calls his boss in virginia, and it's snowing. And Al Pacino's fingernails look like yellow gnarled toenails in a close up of his hand (what the fuck's up with that?), so by comparison the espresso cart should have been no big deal, but it was my Titanic, and it was going down fast.

Fortunately, the rest of the art department had basically fuck-all to do, so we swarmed on this crisis: Shiffy arrived to talk me down, and suggested we go solicit hot dog vendors on Constitution Avenue. Gordon tried to locate his elusive box of adhesive letters. Carol Flaisher, bless her heart, dispatched one of her "kids" to the restaurant where I waited tables years ago to borrow an espresso machine (that came with cups and accoutrements-thanks alex)

The crowning jewel was a piece of neon in the window of Kramer Afterwords (whom I may have promised mention in the credits, sorry guys) that had a coffee cup emblematically depicted alongside the word espresso. I basically said whatever it took to borrow the neon, which we wound up breaking (again, sorry) and paying to have repaired.

I told the 1st AD that the espresso cart operator had to be played by the real barista from Kramer who had tattoos and piercings that would scare your mother. He raged at me (in the style of new york filmmaking) Oh, now you're casting?

In the end, the scene is almost invisible. The key plot point that hinged on the espresso was droppped, I think, if not overshadowed by a clumsy relationship with the love interest or a ham fisted twist at the end.

The important thing is, we got the neon fixed.

DQ, TC & me

2004-12-18T08:38:00.000-08:00

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

2004-12-18T08:13:00.000-08:00

The muddy ruts have turned to frozen waves of brown. The grips have built a road out of rough-saw 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

2004-12-11T16:32:00.000-08:00

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

2004-12-10T18:01:00.000-08:00

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.