Hard Times in Hollywood: Then, Now, and Always

Even Astro Burger isn't hiring these days...


“You can do it if you really want, but you must try,
try and try, try and try,
‘til you succeed at last...”

“You Can Get It,” by Jimmy Cliff


One of the eternal truths in life is that for a young person without connections, breaking in to the film/television industry is hard -- always has been, always will be. It doesn’t matter how earnest your intentions are, how smart you might be, or that you carried a 4.0 GPA all the way through your many bong-aided years of higher education. These noble virtues doubtless fill your mom’s heart with teary pride, but the hard truth remains that nobody in Hollywood gives a shit. What’s worse (from you and your mom’s point of view), not a single soul in the film industry with any real power is the least bit interested in what they can do for you, but rather what you can do for them -- and for a newbie fresh out of school (even one of those fancy-schmancy, very expensive, don’t-you-realize-I’m-an-auteur? film schools), that is precious damned little.

You might well possess boundless potential, but with no track record or professional experience, that adds up to zero credibility. At this point, all you can offer a prospective employer/production is hustle, a good attitude, and the willingness to learn – and any freshly-minted grads who don’t possess these essential attributes won’t stand a snowball’s chance in Hell at succeeding in Hollywood. In that case, rather than come to LA and get in the way of everybody else, do yourself a huge favor and find another line of work.

For the rest of you, don’t despair. Down the road a year or three or five (after you’ve been kicked around enough to learn the Industry basics), your keen intelligence, quick wit, and protean creativity will doubtless prove a valuable asset to anyone smart enough to hire you. At some point your future will be limited only by your own imagination, ambition, ability to overcome whatever obstacles are in your way, and that most crucial of intangibles, luck. But until that happy day, your problem is getting from where you are now – which is nowhere -- to being able to grasp the lowest rung on the Hollywood ladder of success in the form of your first paying Industry job. In the meantime, you’re just barking at the wind. Lacking gold-plated contacts, nobody will open the Industry gates and invite you inside, but the dirty little secret of Hollywood is that there are countless hidden doors around the back, and all you have to find is one. They’re not easy to locate or tease open, but a smart, motivated young person can always find a way.

In a recent post, the Anonymous Production Assistant laid out this harsh reality for a couple of newbies seeking advice on jump-starting their own Hollywooden careers. To his credit, Anonymous didn’t mince words or offer false hope. Without connections, this is a tough industry to crack, and if you lose hope at the unfairness of it all, there’s always someone right on your heels ready to seize the opportunities you failed to see. It’s a cruel Darwinian process, but you can endure and prevail if you’re prepared to exert a maximum effort until you finally do break through.

You really have to want it. That’s how the system works for outsiders – it’s all on you.

It certainly wasn’t easy when I rode into Hollywood from Santa Cruz in the late 70’s. After floundering around for a good four months (during which I blew through most of my savings just getting by), I managed to stumble into my first job as a production assistant -- unpaid, of course – working on a shoestring-budget feature. That first job was the key, though, after which one thing eventually led to another all the way up until today, thirty-plus years later. There have been as many bad years as good ones since then, but although I seem destined to play out the string on my so-called career in a humble capacity as a juicer, I had a few moments in the sun. More importantly, I learned who I am along the way, and what I need from the Industry to be relatively happy. Figuring that out isn’t always easy, but the sooner you do, the better off you’ll be.

If the Hollywood circus was a tough nut to crack back then, it’s a lot harder now. From what I read and hear, the competition for entry-level jobs these days is fierce. Although the imagination of my generation was sparked by an explosion of interesting movies in the late 60’s and early 70’s (“Chinatown,” “The French Connection,” and “The Wild Bunch,” among others), a Hollywood career wasn’t seen as a viable option for every kid who grew up playing with mom and dad’s video camera. For one thing, there were no home video cameras back then – home movies were shot on Super 8 film, and if you’ve ever tried editing Super 8 (at 72 tiny frames per foot), then you know what a painful labor of love that is. As laughable as it sounds, I became interested in film at a time when going to Hollywood was generally viewed as “selling out.” The indy scene, such as it was, consisted of obscure “art films” by Andy Warhol, Scott Bartlett, Stan Brakhage, Bruce Connor, and the tediously strange work of Michael Snow. The Kuchar brothers were making some interesting (if bizarre) films out in New Jersey, along with many others making their own very personal films out on the fringe -- but there was no central core of cutting-edge independent film. The Maysles Brothers documentaries, French New Wave and the angry young men of England caught our attention (Peter Watkins did some stunning work in The War Game, Battle of Culloden, and Privilege), but it would be years before Sundance really got going, and “Sex, Lies, and Videotape” came along to change everything. The closest thing to an American indy hit I can recall was “Easy Rider,” made with the help of a few young Hollywood insiders with the vision, guts, and clout to see the project through. By the time I got to Hollywood, a handful of low budget producer/directors like Roger Corman and Greydon Clark had perfected the art of turning a profit by grinding out cheap exploitation movies. There was nothing particularly hip or artistic about working on such highly forgettable crap -- the work was hard, the days (and nights) very long, and the money was terrible -- but these films provided a valuable training ground for an entire generation of above and below-the-line Industry people.

I’d fully intended to try my luck with Roger Corman, but other opportunities arose, and by the time I ended up doing a Corman picture -- "Planet of Horrors," was the working title (later changed to something equally lame), filmed at Corman’s bubble-gum-and-bailing-wire studio at the old Hammond Lumber Yard out in Venice -- it was too little and much too late. I’d long since graduated from the ranks of production assistants to working as a grip-trician, and was no longer interested in the pitiful flat weekly rates Corman paid his film technicians.

For me, this was a dead-end. Others on the crew took a more charitable view, and it paid off. At one point, the gaffer had me take a few lights back to the “Black Hole” – Corman’s crude special effects shop – for the young Jim Cameron, who was then serving his pre-directorial apprenticeship learning the tricks of the trade. He wasn’t the only one who went on to bigger and better things -- two of my fellow juicers on that crew eventually carved out successful careers in features, one as a gaffer, the other as a D.P. – but I’d had a belly-full of the low budget feature world by then. After two memorable (read: miserable) weeks, my phone rang with an offer to work a ten day commercial for $250/day, and I walked away from “Planet of Horrors” without a backward glance.

Adios, Roger Corman, and the horse you rode in on -- I was off to the lucrative world of commercials, where I happily stayed for the next fifteen years.

I don’t know where the Cormans of today are making their movies. Many low budget features are filmed in other countries these days (particularly Canada and Eastern Europe), while many that do film in the US are lured from Hollywood to the thirty other states that offer generous tax subsidies to film productions. Even in the late 80’s (when I made a brief return to low budget features), non-union productions would fly an entire crew from Hollywood out to locations all across the country. I don’t think that happens much anymore -- with capable film crews living and working across the nation, producers only have to bring in the key personnel, who then hire and oversee a local crew. This makes it harder than ever to break into below-the-line Hollywood, especially during the current and apparently endless economic troubles. With so much production going on elsewhere, I woudn’t advise young people interested in any of the crafts to follow the sun west towards the Hollywood sign. The best place to learn the basic skills of any film craft is on a working set, and it doesn’t matter if that happens in Yazoo City, Mississippi or Studio City, California. Most young people seeking a career working below-the-line would be better off looking closer to home.

Those who aim to work above-the-line (which probably includes most of those asking The Anonymous Production Assistant for advice) face an even more daunting challenge. Unless you’ve written an absolutely brilliant and stunningly original script (and harder still, manage to get it into the right hands), making progress above-the-line is a very nebulous process. If you knock on enough doors, you’ll eventually land a PA job, but moving up the career path as a writer, director, or producer is another story. The competition for even entry level jobs can be intense, and as the laws of economics dictate, when supply exceeds demand, the per-unit price plummets – which is why so many PA’s end up working for free, job after job. That’s awfully tough when so many young industry wannabes emerge from the cocoon of college saddled with a heavy debt load from college loans.

It wasn’t like that in my day. The cost of a public college was relatively cheap, and few of my fellow graduates ended up owing more than a couple of thousand dollars in student loans. That seemed like a lot at the time, but when adjusted for inflation, represents somewhere around seven or eight thousand of today’s dollars. There weren’t any jobs back then either – unemployment was running over 7% nationally, and in Santa Cruz was closer to 30%. Inflation was on the rise as well, ramping up from 7% in 1977 to over 13.5% by the end of 1980, as the country staggered through the post-Vietnam economic quicksand of “stagflation.”

There were no personal computers, Internet, or cell phones when I was working my way up. Although that seems unimaginable now, life was a lot cheaper without having to buy a new computer every few years, upgrade the software, and pay the monthly tab for Internet access and a cell phone. Granted, we spent a lot on vinyl records – four to six bucks a pop at the time, which (adjusted for inflation) was more than most CDs cost nowadays. As I understand it, kids today don’t bother with CDs anyway, simply ripping their music from the Internet or buying cheap MP3downloads, but if the music is cheaper nowadays, everything else from rent to food was much less expensive back then. We could pay our share of the rent and phone bill, put gas in the car, eat three meals a day, drink/smoke ourselves into a stupefied oblivion on a nightly basis, and still have a very active social life while working a minimum wage job – and nobody had to move back home with our parents. I’m not sure that’s possible anywhere these days, and certainly not here in LA.

Along with a diploma, many of today’s college graduates are handed a bill for twenty to fifty thousand dollars worth of student loans. Carrying such a horrendous burden of debt, the newly-minted graduate with his/her eyes on Hollywood has to get out here, find a decent place to live (and good luck scoring an apartment for less than a thousand bucks a month), and maintain a reliable car with insurance.** Those are just the basics. Everything else – utilities, computers, cell phones, health care, gas, food, and entertainment -- comes on top.

Given all the expenses of modern life, it’s a lot to ask these kids to start their Hollywooden careers working for free. Although my first PA job in Hollywood paid nothing to start, I moved into the editing department after a couple of weeks to sync up dailies (don’t ask -- this was way pre-digital) twelve hours a day for the sum of $50 a week. My next PA job paid $25/day, and it was on that film that I managed to hook up with the grip and electric crew, who taught me the basics and eventually began hiring me on small, low paying jobs. After a year or so, I was getting $100/day as a non-union grip-trician (on a flat, all-you-can-work rate, of course), and was on my way.***

Times are tough these days, maybe tougher than they were back when I got started. Although the added burdens on young people now make it harder than ever to get started in this industry, the demand for screened entertainment remains eternal. Hollywood will always strive to meet that demand no matter the economic conditions, whatever else is going on in the world. The film industry is constantly on the move, seeking new ways to take advantage of the changing situation. That means lots of “churn” here in Hollywood and elsewhere, which creates opportunity. The shifting tides of the market and increased competition for entry-level production jobs might obscure your path to success, but it’s still there.

You just have to find it.

To the young person contemplating a future in Hollywood, I can only say this: if you have a choice -- if there's any other path you can follow in life that might make you happy -- take it. Demand for budding investment bankers, stock brokers, or realtors might be slack these days, but if your aim is to carve out a meaningful career doing something that actually matters – say, trying to help make this increasingly troubled world a better place -- then stay far away from Hollywood. This town is a seething pit of greed, vanity, endless insecurities, turbo-charged ambition, and triple-distilled 200 proof mendacity. But if you still want to come, first sit down and ask yourself what it is you really want to do. Be brutally honest. Do you want to direct or produce? Do you want to act or write for a living? These can all be noble, well-paid professions, and should you succeed, you’ll make everybody back home proud -- but if you’re just curious to see what all the fuss is about, save yourself the headaches and do something else. This is no place for anyone with a crushing student loan hanging over his/her head, who isn’t fully committed to making it and willing to endure countless humiliating indignities every step of the way.

In the end, if your heart really is set on the Hollywood Adventure, then give it your best shot. The bottom line is in the words of that Jimmy Cliff song – you can do it if you really want.

Just don’t say you weren’t warned.

And good luck. You’re gonna need it.


* Example: in 1975, I split the rental on a small house with a fellow ex-student – a house with a big back yard just a few blocks from the beach. My half of the rent came to $65 a month.

** Car insurance wasn’t legally required when I first came to town, and thus remained an unaffordable luxury until I hit my mid-30’s.

*** Now I’m on my way back down, along with most of my Industry peers. For the last couple of decades, the IA has been getting shoved into a corner and mugged by the producers every three years when the contract came up for renewal. By the time I retire, I’ll probably be working for less (adjusted for inflation) than when I started as a non-union grip-trician.


For two blogs that might be useful to young Industry wannabes, click here and here.

Hiatus Week Six

The show I’m currently working on is taking a one week hiatus, and so is Blood, Sweat, and Tedium. I'll be back next week to apply a magnifying glass to the underbelly of Industry life here in Hollywood. Meanwhile...


Those of us who enjoy strolling through the Industry blog-o-sphere have found the pickings rather slim of late, and for good reason: Peggy Archer (“Totally Unauthorized”) is still suffering the effects of some very painful foot surgery, Scripty (“Script Goddess”) seems to be buried under an avalanche of television commercial work when not trying to get her own mystery project off the ground, and D (“Dollygrippery”) has been tied to the ball and chain of a cable episodic for the past few months, leaving very little time for anything else. The Anonymous Production Assistant’s usual multi-post weeks resumed only recently after a fallow period thanks to his/her own full employment, and “Burbanked” -– not strictly an Industry blog, but an old favorite from way back -- remains in a sad state of suspended animation while Alan searches for a new job*.

Leetal "Final Girl") has apparently been working too hard to post much recently, which leaves Ken Levine and "Polybloggimous" as the only frequent posters left on my blogroll -- and although Nathan's tales of the East Coast film biz are excellent, they come on a very occasional basis. The situation's even worse when it comes to "Below the Line" and the "Abbey Singer Blues" -- which is a real pity, since those two blogs are terrific when they do manage to post.

Apparently most of us are working more than full time or not nearly enough, which is typical of Industry life. Although I’ve been busy on my show, it happens to be a multi-camera sit-com -- my work of choice, thanks to the relatively humane working hours in an industry that usually rewards those who serve it by sucking the blood from their veins until they drop.

Meanwhile, I’ve been keeping an eye on two interesting blogs from the "Film Industry Bloggers" website – a site I'm otherwise not overly fond of. A BST reader long ago suggested I sign up with the FIB, but I’ve never been much of a joiner -- growing up, I was the kind of kid who liked to play pick-up baseball, but had little use for the overly-intrusive organization of Little League. Playing ball with my friends on an empty field was fun. Having to put on official uniforms to play official games run by red-faced coaches under official rules imposed by official umpires in front of screaming parents wasn’t really my idea of a good time.

The whole scene was entirely too officious -- that wasn't "play," it was work.

I took a look at FIB early on, and wasn’t particularly impressed -- they had a key grip putting up some interesting posts, but the other bloggers didn’t really float my boat. The next time I stopped in, the grip was no longer listed on the blogroll. At that point, I decided that any site selling T shirts and hats hawking itself (ahem: uniforms) was kind of missing the point of an Industry blog in the first place.

But after making my usual blog rounds a few weeks ago and coming up dry, I tried again, and this time found two FIB offerings interesting enough to keep me coming back for more: The Standby Painter and The Hollywood Development Executive

A standby painter is a set painter who works with the first unit crew, usually alone, taking care of any last-minute touch ups on the set, be it location or stage. I’ve always been very impressed with the work of set painters in general –- theirs is an art as much as a craft -- with the standby painter a lonely but crucial part of the movie-making machine. The stories of this standby painter will resonate with Industry veterans (we’ve all been there...), while giving civilian readers or wannabes a feel for what the professional film making process is really like.

The Hollywood Development Executive offers a rare and fascinating peek into the mysterious world above-the-line. Since he (she?) is talking out of school, this exec must remain anonymous for obvious reasons. For all I know, the blog could be written by a 22 year old production assistant making it all up – but if so, that PA really should be a writer, because the advice he/she gives and the stories told have the ring of truth.

Both are very well-written blogs, which earns them a place on my blogroll. Take a look -- you might like what you find. Who knows, maybe you’ll love all the official Film Industry Bloggers – and if so, good for you and good for them.

Just so long as they don’t put on those uniforms...

You'll notice a new category here at BST beneath the blogroll over on the right side of the page, titled “Industry Resources.” The first two additions come from Rick Davis, a key grip I’ve known since my earliest days in commercials. Grip 411 offers a ton of useful information on grip equipment for any application, while Crew and Review is a new (and decidedly cheeky) print/on-line newsletter discussing the pros and cons of new equipment now being used on set. Crew and Review includes lots of photos showing you exactly how this stuff actually works. Check it out –- you might learn something -- and if nothing else, you’ll see photos of several grips I used to work with back in the day.

The only thing I can't figure out is how those guys all got so old since we last worked together...


*Hang tough, Alan. You'll find something soon.

Another Wednesday Photo

If you think using one of these "Star Waggon" (that's right, folks - two "g's") port-o-potties will make you feel like a star, then you really need to try it sometime. They're a lot better than using the bushes, though. These were in the parking lot at the CBS facility on Beverly, home of such televised garbage as "Dance With the Stars" and "American Idol."

They do at least one decent show here -- "The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson" -- so I guess the place isn't a total waste of space, money, and human labor.

And given the events of last week, I guess Bob Marley of USC will have to find another way to earn his bong money...

Day of the Locust, Part 12

I’d planned to take this week off – another in my periodic hiatus weeks – but the death of Michael Jackson and surrounding furor seemed to demand comment. Not that anyone has been (or should be) breathlessly awaiting my thoughts on the matter, but just to have my say. That’s what a blog is for…


It was early afternoon when rumors of Michael Jackson’s heart attack rippled through the set, and suddenly everybody on the crew (except me*) was staring into the blue glow of their cell phones. Being Thursday (our block and pre-shoot day), the entire crew was present -- grip/electric, camera, sound, set dressing, props, hair/makeup, and production -- and the stage was packed. Many people seemed stunned at the news, but I didn’t feel much of anything then or later when the confirmation of his death finally came. To me, Michael Jackson was freakish in every way right from the start – a prodigiously freakish talent that shot into the pop cultural heavens in the early 80’s, then, like Icarus (another young over-achiever) flew too close to the terrible heat of the celebrity sun, and plunged back to earth with a thud. There, he retreated like some warped hermit into his own bizarrely freakish Xanadu in the Santa Ynez Valley, replete with chimpanzees, amusement park rides, and young boys in the bed. My own brief encounter with The Gloved One was enough to convince me that this was no ordinary human, but rather someone so deep in the Golden Bubble of mega-success – and so consumed by the intolerable pressures inside that Black Hole -- that any hopes of having something resembling a normal life had long since been crushed.

Such limitless success opens the gilded door for her evil twin, boundless excess, which has a way of leading those so gifted (and afflicted) to an early death.

I still don’t feel much over the demise of Michael Jackson. His death is certainly a personal tragedy for his family, whatever friends still remained (a select group apparently including Elizabeth Taylor and Lisa Minelli, if no one else), and his worldwide legions of fans, but although the news came as a surprise, it was hardly a shock. The man had been in free-fall since the infamous Neverland trial a few years back, and even the planned fifty concert tour -– all fifty dates sold out, apparently -- seemed unlikely to restore him to fiscal or mental health. Fifty concerts is a lot to ask from such a seemingly frail man twenty-five years removed from his best days. With all he'd been through, you really have to wonder just how much he had left to give.

In that light, veteran LA Times music critic Robert Hilburn's perspective is worth reading. Then again, another piece in the Times reported that Jackson had been thoroughly energized by the ongoing rehearsals for his London concerts, preparing to once again take the pop world by storm and reclaim his self-anointed title as the King of Pop. If true, then perhaps he went to sleep at the end of his last day of life a happy man, filled with hope for the future.

Maybe that's the best any of us can hope for.

I have no axe to grind against Michael Jackson. Although I didn’t care for the Jackson Five’s music, when his solo career finally hit its stride, he created some of the most propulsive, dynamic songs in pop music history. In that brief window of undeniable brilliance, his presence on stage truly was magic. Yes, working on the video for “Billie Jean” was an extremely strange experience, but the song itself, like so many of his efforts from that era, was terrific. His best work deserves to be the legacy we remember him by, rather than the long dark path he subsequently descended. Michael Jackson had his share of problems, many of which he created for himself, but the same is true of the rest of us here on planet earth. To me, Clint Eastwood's character said it best in “Unforgiven," when he muttered “We all got it coming, kid.”

Indeed we do, and if Michael Jackson died too young, then so have millions of other young people all over the world in the past bloody decade –- and in case anybody missed it in the tsunami of All-Michael-All-the-Time media coverage, Farrah Fawcett got a pretty raw deal herself this week.

It was the sudden tectonic insanity of the media frenzy that bothered me more than anything else, as the News Machine did what it does best -- instantly commodifying a celebrity death to create yet another twisted scene right out of “Day of the Locust.” The now familiar sight of sobbing fan-mobs dominated the Toob, and once again I felt embarrassed to be a member of the human race. I don’t mean to be critical of those who were weeping in the streets when the media horde descended upon them like a pack of hungry wolves -- a powerful emotional response will bring the strongest of us to our knees -- but I will say this: if I'm ever overwhelmed by such all-consuming grief in public, and some media asshole sticks a camera in my face, I just hope I’ll have the presence of mind to turn away and force the bastard to get his/her sound bite somewhere else.


*Not that I wasn’t curious, mind you, but I seem to be the last person in Hollywood who doesn’t carry a cell phone…


(An attentive reader brought to my attention the lack of footnotes in last Wednesday's post. There were asterisks in the text, but nothing down below -- promises made and not kept. For anyone who cares, I've since added those missing (if rather inconsequential) footnotes to the post...

The Angel of Death Returns

The Angel of Death has been making his grim rounds in Hollywood again, stopping at the doors of two Industry icons. I’m not sure you could come up with two people as different as Ed McMahon and David Carradine, but each managed to carve out his own unique niche in our shared cultural landscape. I worked with each of them back in my low budget feature years, and although our encounters were brief, both men made an impression that lingers to this day.

Given the currently fractured state of late night television (an audience split between Leno, O’brien, Letterman, and Craig Fergusson), it’s not easy to grasp just how big The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson* really was, and Ed McMahon played a major part of that success. Johnny Carson was light years ahead of all his competitors (and his successors, IMHO), with big Ed right by his side every step of the way. Ed McMahon was the first real Hollywood celebrity I met in my nascent career.

Ed appeared in movies from time to time, including Full Moon High (1981), a hopelessly cheesy low budget werewolf comedy starring a very young Adam Arkin, with cameos by Pat Morita and Adam’s real-life dad, Alan. Ed McMahon played Adam’s father, and was with us on and off for maybe two weeks of filming altogether. Two of those days were spent two shooting in an underground bomb shelter beneath the back yard of a sprawling ranch-style house in Ladera Heights. To reach the set, we had to enter a big closet, pull up a well-hidden door under the carpet, then climb down a long row of metal stairs to a concrete chamber secured by a steel submarine door. Inside the shelter were bunk bed cots and shelves for supplies to wait out the nuclear attack so many Americans viewed as inevitable during the 1960’s. But by 1980, much of that paranoia had evaporated, to the point where the family who owned this home was willing to rent out their bomb shelter as a movie set.

The bare concrete walls of that cramped bomb shelter made for a very noisy location that must have driven the sound guys crazy – I can still hear Ed’s big booming laugh echoing up that stairway. Although the script was terminally ludicrous (writer/director Larry Cohen apparently fancied himself as the next Woody Allen -- but in that was sadly mistaken), Ed took the job seriously, arriving on set having learned his lines, then hitting his marks every time. A solid professional, he never complained about the long hours or crappy working conditions. More important (from my perspective), he was unfailingly gracious to the entire crew – not always the case with Hollywood celebrities – who never played the pompous Hollywood big shot. Ed McMahon was a very likable guy.

The last I heard, he was doing rap videos and commercials in an attempt to extricate himself from an avalanche of financial disasters. Whether he succeeded or not is unclear, but I don’t suppose any of that matters now. His earthly troubles are over.

I pulled out my VHS copy of “Full Moon High” the other night, and there was Ed, hale and hearty in his late 50’s. It’s a truly awful movie – an incomprehensible mash-mash of lame clichés and over-the-top acting – but amid the chaos, Ed McMahon and Adam Arkin keep swimming against the tide, trying to make the movie work in spite of itself. Unfortunately, the script kills Ed off in the first half hour, abandoning the viewer to another sixty-five minutes of misguidedly manic confusion masquerading as comedy. This is not the cinematic monument Ed McMahon (or any actor) would have hoped for. Still, it was good to see him in his vigorous prime – and that’s how I’ll remember him, with his jovial, bigger-than-life presence of set, that famously big laugh, and of course, his thirty years with Johnny Carson. Sure, his career was mostly playing second banana, but that’s not as easy as it looks – and Ed McMahon made it look very easy indeed.

My experience with David Carradine was very brief – a single day shooting pickups for yet another Larry Cohen epic, Q, a horror movie about a giant winged serpent terrorizing New York City. Like most of Larry Cohen’s films, this one ended up filming pick-ups at his sprawling home up in Benedict Canyon, which is where we spent a long day shooting scenes with Carradine and two police detectives (one played by Ron Cey, the LA Dodgers third basemen on the DL with a broken wrist). While we worked inside, a production assistant was busy rolling several coats of blue paint on a twelve-by-twelve sheet of white canvas in the back yard. Near the end of the day – the paint finally dry – we hung this home-made blue screen up between two stands, lit it, then filmed David Carradine blasting away with a machine gun at the phantom flying reptile.

On stage, shooting a scene this would be no big deal -- but we were outdoors in a very tony section of Beverly Hills, an area not accustomed to long bursts of machine gun fire echoing through the canyons.** This didn’t faze Larry Cohen in the least, who ordered take after noisy take until he got what he wanted. That was our final scene with David, after which he and a lovely young woman – apparently one of his companions at the time – quietly left. We kept working late into the night, cranking out lots of simple shots required to properly edit the film, and by the time we were done, Larry Cohen had disappeared. The cameraman made out our checks from Larry’s checkbook. After he handed me mine ($125 for the day, as I recall), he took a look through the checkbook, then looked up with a smile.

“You know how much David Carradine made today? Four thousand dollars.”

That was my first lesson in the economics of Hollywood -- in a single day, he'd made a quarter of what I would earn for working the entire year. But hey, he was David Carradine, Mr. Kung Fu himself, and wthout him, the movie would probably never get made, which means I woudn’t have had day of work shooting pickups. That’s just the way Hollywood works. If that's going to get your knickers in a knot, you may as well complain about the ocean being wet.

You can read the details of his life, career, and death somewhere else: suffice it to say that even at 72, David Carradine was too young to die. In person, he was a very impressive guy, possessing a powerful presence that went way beyond mere confidence. Whatever it was, this mysteriously serene strength served him well through his long career. That’s how I’ll remember him – squinting into the wild blue-screen yonder while blasting away with a machine gun in defense of civilization against cinematic predators of all kinds. In his own way, David Carradine was something special.




*I never had the chance to meet Johnny Carson, but saw him once (at Schatzi on Main, Arnold Swartzenegger’s restaurant out in Venice), while on a lunch break from filming digital effects for “The Fifth Element.” There, in a secluded corner of the restaurant, was the man himself, having a quiet lunch with a friend. I’m not sure what I’d have said to him anyway -- nothing he hadn’t heard a thousand times before -- but a burly plainclothes security man stood guard (CIA-style earphone in place), discouraging anyone with a notion to approach. What the hell -– after living such a hugely public life, Johnny Carson deserved to have lunch in peace.

** Maybe the neighbors (and local authorities) were used to such outlandish goings on in Larry Cohen’s back yard -- the swarm of cop cars I expected to descend upon us never appeared

Feed the Beast

“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard…”

JFK speech, September 12, 1962

If it seems this space spends a fair amount of time complaining about the nature of working below-the-line, you’re not imagining things. Bitching about the frustrations, tedium, and the occasionally infuriating idiocy endemic to working below-the-line is as much a part of Industry life as anything else. Mostly I'm just venting to expel the evil spirits, an offshoot of the reflexive bonding act indulged in by workers in most vocations: a sharing of mutual pain that lays down another thin coat of psychic armor to deflect the slings and arrows raining down upon us every working day.*

Writing about the bad side of the job helps exorcise those demons for a short while, at least -- and every little bit helps, because tomorrow will likely bring another example of ego-driven uber-absurdity to make the job that much harder.

Sometimes I wonder what this kind of work would be like if everything went smoothly: if all the decisions from on high were based on calmly reasoned logic, if all directors and cameramen were sane, if the budgets were fat and the egos thin, if every script sparkled with incandescent brilliance, if every actor could manage to learn his/her lines before the cameras roll, and if none of our days went long...

Would this be Hollywood Heaven?

It’ll never happen, of course, so there’s no real danger we’ll ever find out -- but even if we could live this Hollywood fantasy, all might not be sweetness and light. In coming down out of the trees and surviving for so many millennia without benefit of sharp claws, dagger-like fangs, or anything like the extraordinary strength our primate cousins have long possessed, humanity has had to contend with serious physical challenges on a daily basis. Trouble of one sort or another pretty much defines the human condition, and we evolved to handle it, which suggests that we might not be wired for the fat and happy life in the land of milk and honey. For all our trappings of civilization, we‘re just overgrown monkeys who traded our fur and prehensile tails for opposable thumbs and a more nimble brain. Given our shared ancestral heritage, it’s not unreasonable to assume we require a certain amount of tumult and chaos in our daily life -- mental roughage, if you will – just to stay sharp and feel alive.

One way or another, we’ve all got to feed the beast lurking deep inside.

Being human, of course, there’s no end to the trouble we manage to create for ourselves and everyone else. Sometimes I think the many absurdities of modern life serve as a means of providing us with an endless series of challenges to feed our inner beast – and at that, the film/television industry excels. A film set is a simmering stew pot of problems where things rarely go as planned, and every straight line invariably ends up pretzeled beyond all recognition, but where the job usually gets done in spite of it all. In the end, dealing with those constant challenges – solving the problems as they come and making it work – is what can make the job so satisfying.

A few years ago, I spent two long weeks helping rig a sit-com at the start of its second season. It was a tough job, putting in full ten hour days starting at 6 a.m. and ending at 5 p.m. It was all work, all the time, and although the gaffer at first seemed pleasant enough, it soon became apparent that he was afflicted with a terminal case of indecision. As a result, the whole crew did lots of double and triple work, hanging the lamps here, moving them there, and occasionally re-hanging them where they’d started in the first place. By the tenth day, I was whipped – and in the final twenty minutes of that day, the gaffer decided to add one last light. With several dozen lamps hung all over the set (each festooned with bulky grip equipment to cut and shape the light), there was no room to maneuver a man-lift up to the pipe grid. Other than climbing the set walls – strictly forbidden by Industry and studio safety rules – the only other option would be to take down several of those lamps.

And there's no way that was going to happen.

But the lamp still had to go up, so I grabbed a ten step ladder to get high up the set walls, then climbed to the top and carefully picked my way to a spot where I could hang the lamp on the pipe grid, sixteen feet off the stage floor. Hanging on to the grid with one hand and the lamp with the other, I was finally able to set, power, and adjust the lamp to the gaffer’s satisfaction – but after doing so much physical work for ten days, it took everything I had to get the job done. In so doing, I’d torn up all those safety rules to the extent that one of the grips (an experienced guy who knew his stuff) took a long look, then shook his head.

“I wouldn’t stay there too long,” he warned. “That joint you’re standing on isn’t gonna hold.”

Naturally, that was where I had to be to hang the lamp, but as soon as the gaffer signed off on it, I scrambled back down the way I’d come.

I had good reason to be pissed at this gaffer for putting me in such a position. For one thing, all of “his” guys – the core crew who would stay on the show after the rig was finished (a group that did not include me) – were off at the other end of the stage wrapping stingers and comparing plans for the weekend while I did their dirty work. That didn’t bother me as much as it might have, since this was a supremely crappy show run by idiots I had no desire to work for anyway -- but what irked me was that this gaffer had lit the same set a year before during season one, which means that lamp should have been one of the first to go up rather than the last. His dithering indecision is what forced me into such a dangerously vulnerable position. A fall from the top of that set could easily have ended in an ambulance ride to the nearest hospital, and since it would have happened while I was willfully violating the safety rules, I’d be on my own. The production company and studio would remain safely shielded from any legal liability.

Looked at on paper, this was a lose/lose situation for me.

But the work happens in the real world, not on paper, and at a certain point it hit me that as much as having to climb those set walls pissed me off, I actually enjoyed hanging that lamp precisely because it was so hard to do. The process of figuring out how to go about it, then doing the climbing and getting it done (factoring in the risk with every step) was enormously satisfying on a primal level. Successfully accomplishing something that at first appears prohibitively difficult -- especially when it involves such intense physicality -- feels really good.

It feeds my inner beast.

I put that JFK quote at the top not to compare sending three astronauts to the moon and back with hanging one stupid lamp for a thoroughly crappy TV show – the latter infinitesimally minor task is completely invisible in the immense shadow of the former – but the governing principle is the same. On a personal level, accomplishing difficult tasks helps you grow in all the right ways while delivering a delicious endorphin kick at the same time, which is what turned this apparent lose/lose situation into a win.

It’s not that I come to work jonesing for a maximum-effort, do-or-die task each and every day (I’d be lucky to last another year at that pace), but one a week seems to supply the requisite artery-clearing blast of adrenaline to keep me from getting too bored, fat, and lazy on the job. These little tests let me know I’ve still got it, that I can still do every aspect of my job -- and that’s important.

Working below-the-line offers ample opportunity for this sort of thing, but I really wonder how above-the-liners manage to sate their inner beast. Quenching that hunger requires a degree of physicality way beyond anything that can happen while sitting at a keyboard or making deals on the phone, no matter how big and stressful the situation. Some go to the gym, of course, or have personal trainers to keep them active, while others run marathons or play tennis – all intensely physical activities that definitely get the juices flowing. If it works for them, great. Personally, you couldn’t drag me to gym – that whole mindlessly repetitive sweat-for-the-sake-of-sweating, feel-the-burn routine reminds me way too much of P.E. class in high school. Marathons? Forget it. I've never been able to figure out if those addicted to such a peculiar form of self-abuse are running towards some tantalizingly elusive goal, or from something scary inside their heads.

As for tennis, geeze, it’s good exercise and all, but who’s got the time?

A lot of people consider working above-the-line to be Heaven in Hollywood. The money’s vastly better up there (by several orders of magnitude), but all in all, I think I landed where I belong. Working at a desk or being glued to a cell phone holds no appeal for me, nor does having to tell bald-faced lies on a daily basis or engage in the queasy struggle of trying to sell myself (or a script) to pay the rent. Instead, I just show up on set when I’m supposed to and do the best I can in dealing with the problems that come my way. Besides, I’ve never been able to figure out exactly what so many above-the-liners do in the first place, much less how they do it. Juicing, I understand, and if that makes me a lesser form of human primate than those who keep their hands clean at work, so be it. But in that case, I just wish my simian ancestors hadn’t been in such a hurry to discard their prehensile tails -- a tail like that would make it lot easier to climb those set walls and hang on to the pipe grid.

Then again, it’s the difficulty of the task that makes pushing through those tough challenges so much fun, so maybe I don’t miss that fancy tail after all.


* I think this applies across most types of work, but other than a three year pre-Hollywood stint in the fast food world, the Industry is all I know. And if you still aren’t buying this as a rationalization, re-read the title at the top of the page, which states the default-setting stance of this patch of cyber-space...

This Week on "The Business"

This week’s broadcast of “The Business” (a weekly half hour radio show about the film/television industry on KCRW 89.9 FM) featured three guests with a wealth of experience working below-the-line: a veteran film and television gaffer, a director of photography, and an agent who represents those elite below-the-liners who actually require such services.*

A half hour – actually twenty-five minutes or so, once the preliminaries were out of the way – is not nearly long enough to fully articulate the many woes afflicting Hollywood’s below-the-line community these days, but those three guests did a nice job sketching out the basics. Much of this has been covered here in some detail – runaway production due to tax subsidies luring work from Hollywood to other states and countries, the steady erosion of “union scale” work thanks to the profusion of sidebar deals with the Devil... er, cable, and the constant struggle of free lancers to find work as the pool of available jobs continues to shrink -- but in the little time he had, Kevin Brennan (the gaffer) explained how this new reality has impacted his own working life, and not for the better. Like a big overcoat, the basic outlines of his story could probably fit most of us.

The cameraman had some interesting things to say as well, but it was the agent (why am I not surprised...) who cast a dark pall of gloom over the whole show with her prediction of Armageddon coming in two short years. Hers was a good news/bad news scenario: 18 months of balls-to-the-wall production as the studios and producers stockpile "product" in anticipation of the Mother of all Strikes. Yes, SAG finally signed their new contract, but in that deal lie the seeds of a potentially disastrous confrontation with the producers when that contract expires in two years, along with the contracts of the WGA and DGA. Winning this two year deal (rather than the usual three year contract) was a major coup for the actors, who will finally have the opportunity to unite with the rest of above-the-line Hollywood in demanding more from the producers -- probably a lot more -- in the arena of New Media and the Internet.

I’m guessing the producers won’t want to give any of them more, and if they can’t cut a satisfactory deal beforehand, we could well face a complete industry shutdown by the summer of 2011. That cuts both ways, of course: the mere threat of such a Hollywood Armageddon might scare the producers into offering enough concessions to make a deal and avert disaster -- but it could just as easily lead to another pig-headed game of chicken in which those of us who work below-the-line end up the real losers.

Again...

This is hardly a cheery half hour, but whether you’re a veteran of the biz or just a young wide-eyed wannabe, it’s worth your time -- and you can listen to it right here.



*Needless to say, this category does not include juicers. If you make a minimum of four to five thousand dollars a week (like a DP), then you might need an agent. That's one thing gaffers, best boys, and juicers don’t have to worry about...