Last month, for the first time in over 5 years, I was officially back in the movie business, if only for few days. My friend Joeprops was in Atlanta, having taken over as propmaster of The Vampire Diaries. After completing a few small graphics jobs Joe pitched me on cool new project: illustrating a prop journal that one of the characters was slated to find in an upcoming episode (now known as “The Turning Point“, which aired on November 19, 2009). After thinking about the job for a day I agreed to have a whack at the drawings and spent the following weekend studying old woodcuts, peering through antiquated investigations of human anatomy, prying into the secret code of the Philosopher’s Stone, learning the vagaries of pentagrams, and generally trying to inhabit the mind of the book’s fictional author.

Next, I dug up my collection of Speedball inking nibs and a jar of good old-fashioned black ink and started in to drawing. Each drawing was done without penciled-in sketches – it’s just straight from the pen to the paper, just like in my real sketchbooks. I’m not a commercial artist, but neither was “Jonathan Gilbert” the character who supposedly created the drawings, and I thought the book’s drawings should feel genuine, not overly art directed (which is actually art direction in itself).

The prop department did some light aging to the pages but the grownups wanted them to look much older, so we employed my personal favorite method of aging paper which involves a strong brownian solution, a simple newtonian time machine and good timing. Out of all the pages we treated there was only one mishap – one of my ancient vampire curses lingered too long in our secret aging device and began smoldering with the hate of a thousand slain vampires until we doused it in the sink…. for the next 30 minutes every person who walked through the break room remarked on the lingering scent of charred vampire poop.

That’ll sure make your eyes water.

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Katrina Rice didn’t get a screen credit.

Now, those of you outside the film industry need to realize that this is something that happens all the time. Those credits at the end of the movie that seem to go on for days and days? They could last even longer!! Quite often the carpenters and scenics who lovingly craft those ancient temples and gleaming space stations and barnacle-encrusted pirate ships are left entirely out of the credit roll at the end of a movie, which means that their names won’t live on into “eternity”… and despite the fact that many producers use the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) as their guide to work experience, there’s no substitute to seeing your name crawl up the silver screen and knowing that thousands of people around the world will see it (trust me, this is a surprisingly emotional experience).

Yes, the carpenters and scenics think that it stinks that they get left out on a regular basis, but they’ve become accustomed to it and no one in Hollywood seems particularly interested in changing the practice.

Of course it isn’t fair, and yes, it does in fact represent a caste system that exists in Hollywood, but I’m not telling you anything you didn’t already know. I mean, you have seen Bowfinger haven’t you?

So when the credits rolled all the way through and the lights came up, we all started asking each other if anyone had seen Katrina’s credit. The answer was a unanimous “NO”.

Now it isn’t as if Katrina had been hammering together flats in a woodshop, far from the silent whir of Panavision cameras. In fact, Katrina was part of the shooting crew for the entire movie as Third Props and also worked as 2nd Unit Propmaster during certain sequences of the film.

From the Best Boy to Key Grip to Art Director, everyone on the crew knew Katrina Rice.

The film’s star, Woody Harrelson, knew Katrina Rice especially well because she’s the woman who perfected an entirely vegan replica of a Twinkie to suit his dietary requirements. I mean, the man talked to late night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel about those very same faux Twinkies!!

In her spare time at home, not even on the clock, Katrina worked through batch after batch of animal-free, organic confectionery treats trying to find a recipe that would suit Woody and match the look of an actual Twinkie onscreen. On the day the actor finally had to bite into her handiwork on camera he congratulated her on her success.

Toward the end of the film Katrina approached me and asked me to help her design a shirt for the ladies on the crew so I adapted a diagrammatic zombie head from one of the Art Director’s zombie warning posters and made the artwork you see at the lead of this post: the Zombiegirl Power shirts – shirts which a lot of the women on the crew ordered (I’m wondering if the show’s Producer bought one for the ladies in his life).

And then, the weekend of the film’s release, Katrina organized a huge Zombie Princess Party and had a metric tonne of pretty girls get dolled up in princess gowns and zombie makeup just to go see the movie. It was a spectacle for everyone in the theater, an absolute hit.

So… like… what up guys? Seriously. Explain to me how you leave off somebody like that. I know that everything is more expensive these days, right down to the length of a credit roll…. but come on. A few extra names is terribly stingy.

So this is where I need some help from you internet goons and goonettes.

When compared against all the hurt and suffering in the world it’s absolutely silly and petulant to worry about getting screen credit on a film, but do me a favor:

When you go to see the movie Zombieland I want you to remember to shout out “Katrina Rice” whenever you see Twinkies. Don’t do it just for Katrina. Do it for all the people who work on movies and never get credit (including Katrina’s boyfriend, whose nickname is coincidentally “Woody”).

And tell your goony friends to spread the word…. What do I care? I’m not worried about getting hired by these maroons. The only way I’m going back into the film business is above the line – that way I can make sure that my screen credit rotates in 3D and has dancing skeletons on top.

Go kids!
It’s time to nut up, or shut up.

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While Tim Burton’s film Batman may have been my first exposure to a big budget feature, Robocop 3 was the very first film I was paid to work on as a crewmember. Mind you, that pay came late in the day, as I’d been working for free as an intern before that. Being a intern to Props in the late 1980s entailed a lot of:

• getting blamed for missing props, even though you were blameless
• cleaning up the propmaster’s dog’s poop
• picking up beer for the crew
• looking goofy
• getting very little sleep
• videotaping crazy shit

And of course it was that last one that appealed to me most because it reminded me of the power I had as the Official In-School Photographer when I was on the Annual Staff in High School. As any “official photographer” can tell you, they’re given far-reaching powers that would not normally be afforded to regular mortals.

In the case of Robocop 3 it meant that the propguys and the effects guys would place me in great positions to video the crazy stunts and effects happening all around us. What I was doing on Robocop 3 was the forerunner to the documentary crews that infest most modern productions, except that our footage was personal and the producers didn’t give a fig about us doing it, as long as we kept our heads down and didn’t interfere with shots.

The video attached to this post documents a bit of the set-up that went into prepping an Effects controlled explosion of a “metal” fence which was actually constructed of soft wood (probably balsa). This scene was filmed near the Garnett Street Station in downtown Atlanta, just down from the African-American strip club Magic City. If you pay attention near the end you’ll see a MARTA train waiting to come into the station (left frame of shot).

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This afternoon I began porting old video from a cache of VHS-C tapes sequestered deep in the bowels of the Drewcave. One of the first tapes I wanted to “take digital” was footage we captured from the 1991 production of the movie “Robocop 3″, a lackluster sequel to the original blockbuster. This footage is from actor Robert Burke being sealed into the RoboSuit by the RoboTeam.

Robert’s imitation of a Russian Cosmonaut (or a company exec from Destructotech Ltd) is particularly funny, and don’t miss 1st AD Tommy Archuletta getting in his joke in the background. Fans of Robocop should really enjoy seeing this part of the process, and I fully expect the RoboMad Frenchman who runs the “Robocop Museum” to go ga-ga over this footage…. but you know what? I have more footage to pull, so stay tuned!

(Note: I am aware that there are some frames which didn’t render correctly in the transfer, I hope to sort out that problem before uploading subsequent clips from this camcorder footage. Thanks!)

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The year was 1998.

The place was a bend in the Yellow River, just south of Porterdale, about 40 miles east of Atlanta.

The movie was False River, a film best viewed while intoxicated, being savaged by weasels or in the throes of a malarial fever dream.

We had just returned to work after a weekend of torrential rain and the river was high. Really, really high.

Remarkably high.

Dark shapes keep appearing along the top of the churning, rock-strewn rapids then slipping below again.

Those were turtle heads.

Snapping Turtle heads to be precise…. and they were everywhere.

Dozens of them covered the width of the wide bend in the river where we’d be filming that day.

By our fifth trip across the stupid river, it hadn’t gotten any easier to navigate the twisted jumble of rocks that lined the riverbottom from shore to shore. Two steps forward, you were up to your knees, two steps forward, you were up to your neck. Every five feet you hit a hidden rock shelf, bashing and bruising what you’d once proudly claimed as your shins. I didn’t check with any of the others who were making the crossing, but my anticipation of being bitten by a snapping turtle was running higher than the river and it didn’t help that I was pulling along an old-fashioned water-heater/barrel the scenics had made to look like some sort of giant corroded “nuclear” battery.

Finally we were ready to shoot.

The cameras and most of the crew were all back on the bank where we first started, more than 50 yards away, but it was out here on the rocks where the action was set to occur. All I had to do was stay hidden in the rapids behind a rock out-cropping and release the “nuclear battery barrel” into the current on cue, so that it coincided with our actors Salvator Xuereb and George Faughnan as they dove into the river to escape their fictional pursuers. Tied to the barrel was a safety line, which I was supposed to use to pull the boys back to the rock when Director Rex Hauck called ‘cut’.

I knew this, and the actors knew this. We all knew this.

With radio confirmations back to shore that YES, we fully understand the plan, the actors were instructed to go to their start marks inland from the bank, at which point I moved 20 feet upriver and dropped down onto a slippery shelf behind one of the big rocks in the whirling rapids, all the while running through a mental rehearsal of the timing of the barrel push. I really want to get my part right.

At the last-minute an order arrived from the far shore that we would not, repeat would not, be using the barrel on this take.

“Do NOT release the barrel, Drew…. got that?”

Got it.

This was an important piece of information, and I assumed that the actors heard the update wherever they were back amongst the trees.

Not so much.

BOOM!!

Cameras rolled, ‘Action!’ was called and the actors came running out of the woods and hit the water……first one…. SPLASH!! …..then the other…. SPLASH!!

They started to splash around (George’s character had been shot in the neck, so Salvator was forced to play the lifeguard and keep George afloat).

From my vantage point I could see the boys sloshing around in the current, and suddenly I realized that Salvator was operating with old information. I could tell that he still thought that he would be getting the barrel because he started glaring in my direction, obviously wondering why I’d missed my cue.

I couldn’t very well yell at him that they’d told me not to send it, partly because there was probably a microphone on the bank, but mostly because they couldn’t possibly hear me over the sound of the churning water and bobbing turtle heads…

So I did the only logical thing a person in my situation could do: I pointedly began to ignore him.

Instead of watching our actors flop around in the water, I allowed myself to become completely engrossed with a leaf floating past, hoping that the actors might forget about me and pay attention to not drowning. I studied the spider webs in the crevices along the water line. I watched some clouds drifting by overhead. After a moment I cut a glance over toward them and could plainly see that not only had they not forgotten me, they were both now convinced that I’d forgotten the entire reason that we’d been sent out into the rapids in the first place. I could feel their eyes on me, filled with anger and a certain horrible retribution to come. They’d also started to look waterlogged.

“This had better be looking really, really good on camera,” I thought.

Salvator finally managed to splutter a command…. “Drew, give me the barrel”.

But….. but….. the Assistant Director had plainly instructed me NOT to send the BARREL to the actors, so I kind of shook my head at Salvator with a tiny, desperate “go away” grimace on my face, never quite looking him in the eye… the equivalent of saying “I’m not here, you can’t see me, please stop looking at me”.

Salvator’s eyes kind of bugged out when I did that, which was embarrassing because it was such a funny expression that I nearly busted out laughing when he made it…… if he could only see his own face!! I mean, surely we’d all get a laugh out of this one at the end of the day!!

Of course, at this particular moment, as he was flailing around in the strong current, Salvator didn’t have comedy on his mind.

He wanted a barrel, and he wanted it now.

So again he commanded (this time with a little more force (and gurgle) in his voice), “GIVE me the BARREL!!!“.

Nope, nope, can’t do it.

I just shook my head some more, hoping he’d give up at this point. I mean, honestly… my attempt at getting the actors to ignore me hadn’t helped the first time around so this time I just gave them a blank stare. Surely one of them might take the hint.

Convinced that I was the stupidest prop guy he’d ever worked with, Sal now bellowed, “DREW, GIVE ME THE GODDAMN BARREL (glug) OR I’LL KILL YOU!!!!!!!!!!”

Sal was clearly building a convincing case for me to send the barrel in his direction.

Just at that moment, picoseconds into a daydream where I was explaining to the police why I hadn’t saved two actors from drowning, someone barked a command over the radio.

Finally, my cue!

I jammed the barrel into the channel between two rocks, giving it a special twirl to make sure that it caught the current and curved directly to Sal and George, who then climbed aboard and drifted down river a ways.

After Rex called CUT I found out that the cue I’d heard wasn’t a cue to release the barrel, it was just some sort of random remark on channel 1… that maybe somebody had slipped and triggered their radio… it seemed pretty weird to me. Maybe it was my little voice, maybe it was God, maybe it was Lloyd Bridges of Sea Hunt fame (who did die that year). Regardless, whatever happened that day, it very likely saved me, Drewprops, from becoming the infamous prop guy who drowned two actors.

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Fox is about to release a remake of the Hollywood classic “The Day the Earth Stood Still” in a week or so and I realized that this is as good a time as any to tell you the story of my connection to the original 1951 version of that film. Be warned: it is a long and rambling story, filled with teenage nudity, a strip club, a Waffle House, Poppa Smurf, two famous science fiction actors and my own patented brand of cluelessness.

The story begins in my friend CeCe’s living room, poised moments from a teenage adventure to infinity and beyond… no, no… sadly, it was not nookie on our minds… well at least it wasn’t on my mind.

All I could think about was a science fiction convention…. Mister Sulu was there!!!

And we were late.

The only thing keeping us from departing for Geekville was CeCe’s Aunt Patricia, who had not traveled all the way out East just to miss visiting with one of her favorite nieces. So we were invited…. encouraged… um, well, pretty much forced to sit in the front room and visit with Aunt Patricia for a spell.

As we spoke she spotted an atlas on one of the nearby tables and pulled it into her lap to discuss places we’d been, things we’d seen… I must say that it wasn’t boring conversation, and I’m rarely at a loss to speak to people at length about anything under the sun…. but I was LATE for some serious nerd stuff that was going down, and it felt like Aunt Patricia was drawing this whole visiting thing out a bit.

Perhaps she suspected that CeCe and I might be dating and wanted to know more about me.

I mean, it wasn’t like CeCe and I had been intimate or anything… well, except for that one school trip when we lay naked together under the sheets in a low-rent motel in Nashville. That was our special moment together, our teenage ummmm…. I can’t, I can’t lie.

It was actually a game.

Naked CeCe and Naked Drew were just the earliest losers of a game of Strip Trivial Pursuit, part of the adventure and excitement that comes with being on a field trip with your classmates from the Yearbook Staff…. all of whom were making “woooooo” noises, now that CeCe and I were naked in bed together.

See, I knew that was exactly the sort of dirt Aunt Patricia was trying to get out of me.

Luckily, I didn’t tell Aunt Patricia that the very first person in Nashville to greet our high school tour group had been a dumpy balding man of indeterminate sobriety wearing a dingy short-sleeve dress shirt.

Let’s call him “Arnie”.

Our class had just started carrying our bags up the stairs to our motel room when our pal Arnie tumble-stepped out the back door of a seedy looking building on the other side of a chain-link fence which ran the entire length of our side of the motel property.

Arnie yelled up to us (well, mostly to the girls), “So you finally got here!!?? Come on over as soon as you can!!”

All of us kids froze on the stairs, looking at Arnie, trying to figure out what in the seven hells he was talking about, when one of the girls went “Oh wait, look… it’s a strip club.”

Oh… yeah. Neon silhouettes of nude women was a dead giveaway.

“We’ll be right over!!” sang our pal Angela in her most enticing fake lilt.

Arnie nodded in satisfaction, raised his arm in a half wave, and stumbled back inside the club.

Now that… THAT is the sort of story that dear old Aunt Patricia was probably looking for… but I wasn’t about to tell her that sort of thing because it wasn’t the sort of thing you tell a nice older lady who has a world atlas in her lap. I’m from the South, I know my manners.

I know that you don’t go and tell Aunt Patricia about how you and her dear Niece CeCe wandered into a Nashville Waffle House in search of your classmates. You know that old story, the one about how you find all the girls sitting at a table finishing up their midnight snack?

About how, as you’re all standing at the counter as the waitress rings up the bill, a strangely inbred looking fellow (whose face was seriously, absolutely and suffocatingly blue) declares something to your friend Angela. About how your friend Angela blanches, replies stiffly to the blue man, and drags everyone out into the parking lot and begins marching back to the motel room.

What did he say??
What did he say??

“He SAID,” replied Angela, her neck held haughtily, “he said: ‘Do you know who I am?’….”

Yeah??
Yeah??

“To which I said: ‘I have NO IDEA who you are.’ ”

Yeah??

“To which he said: ‘I’m Poppa Smurf’. ”

Adventure could certainly be described as an old blue guy trying to hit on high school girls, which are exactly the sorts of stories that Aunt Patricia was trying to pry out of me with all of her fancy atlas-talk. But, no dummy I, I was on to her game, and began giving CeCe the signal that perhaps it was time to get moving.

CeCe’s mom looked satisfied with the length of our “visit”, and Aunt Patricia seemed amused and content and in short order CeCe and I were on our way down the road to the Festival of Dorks.

On the way there we laughed about our “audience” with Aunt Patricia and probably discussed any number of postulations about all the cool stuff and famous TV actors with whom we’d soon be mingling. Maybe we talked about school, about college… I may have even been on a real date and was just too stupid to know it…. I mean, I usually am.

On this occasion my stupidity would be thrown into sharp relief, for, as we strode into the hotel, rife with the heady scents of alcohol and Trekkies in estrus, I was struck with a sudden realization.

Like a thunderbolt from the blue it hit me… I froze in my tracks and turned to look at CeCe.

“What?? What is it??” asked CeCe, alarmed by my behavior.

“Your Aunt Patricia….,” I began.

“Yeah? What?? What about her?”

I had forgotten one very important thing that CeCe had told me about her Aunt Patricia, several years before. Something that went in and was only just now emerging from the dark recesses of my brain….

“Didn’t you say that she was an actress one time?”

“Yeah. She did a lot of movies.”

Blam. It hit me.

I’d just spent the morning with one of the most accomplished actresses of American cinema, the heroine of the legendary film “The Fountainhead”, a recurring guest of “Playhouse 90″, the lead actress from “The Day the Earth Stood Still“…..

A woman so famous that they named a movie after her titled “The Patricia Neal Story”… an actress far more celebrated than any of the people I’d been so anxious to see at this Convention of Misfits.

I’d met Patricia Neal.

Holy Zarquon Singing Fish!!

The next day, when I went to pick up CeCe at her house, I found myself once again in front of Aunt Patricia, who was lounging in a bathrobe and nibbling the last bits of her toast. I seem to recall experiencing sudden pangs of shyness and an initial inability to make intelligent conversation…. but Aunt Patricia was Aunt Patricia and she put me at ease.

What wonderful perspective this experience ultimately gave me.

Whenever I find myself impatient to “get through” a visit with someone, I try my best to remember the lesson of Aunt Patricia. Sometimes there are important people right in front of you.

Sit down and visit with them.

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On that first day we shot a breakfast scene with Urich, he was complaining about his watch, complaining about his prop food, twitching about resets and generally grinding in his heels with whatever Joe brought him.

People are funny.
We tend to form stereotypical images of people based on their face, their skin color, their teeth, their hair, their demeanor, their names, their clothes… anything characteristic you can imagine. Sometimes, through no fault of our own, stereotyping can bleed across from people we resemble…. people can treat you strangely because you remind them of a childhood bully, or a girl who dumped you, or the weather lady, or a scary character from a television show.

As crazy as it sounds, there are instances on film sets when you can run across these types of prejudices based entirely on a person’s role on the film crew. You’ll find an actor who doesn’t like sound people, production designers who have it out against prop guys, directors who don’t respect their hair and makeup departments. It was never worth trying to get to the bottom of these tiny vendettas, and in the case of Robert Urich, there may have been mitigating circumstances.

He was often slow to get to set, and didn’t like to be there until things were really close to being ready to shoot. Word was that he was suffering from really bad arthritis. Unfortunately, as we learned several years later, it was revealed to be an unusual form of cancer that attacks the body’s joints, leading ultimately to Urich’s death.

As frustrating as Urich’s behavior toward Joe was, I know that Joe felt terrible when we eventually learned of Urich’s passing.

I can’t help but remember the last day that Urich worked with us on the show. He was particularly run down that morning and we’d been awaiting his arrival on set for fifteen minutes or more. I can’t remember the exact wording, but chatter on the radio indicated that he was having trouble walking. Without hesitation, Joe leaped up into the back of the prop truck and grabbed a furniture dolly, some tape, some rope and his fireman’s boots.

Lashing the boots to the furniture dolly in an upright position and tying the rope to the front of that rig, Joe raced onto set, tossed the “boot sled” down and demonstrated how he could PULL Urich through the shot… he was that eager to have the weight of Urich’s constant nagging lifted!!

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Due to the untimely demise of actor Heath Ledger and the recent one-car accident by beloved entertainer Morgan Freeman, the American mass media has gleefully started pushing the idea that the latest Batman film “The Dark Knight” is cursed. And, while I do have my own infinitesimally tiny connection to Tim Burton’s original Batman picture, I know nothing about this latest Batman show and its potential damnations. I do, on the other hand, have the scoop (including photos!) on a Patrick Swayze film that was absolutely, positively cursed†; from an aneurysm at the beginning to an accidental explosion near the end that injured three crewmembers, eventually resulting in the death of one of them (as has been alleged by off-the-record discussions amongst crewmembers in years ensuing the accident).

What movie am I talking about?

SPOILERS BELOW THE NEXT IMAGE!!!

No, no, that’s a fun postcard from the Director’s Assistant after the film was complete.

The actual title of the movie I speak of is none other than Black Dog (1998), a jaunty tale about a trucker who sees a spectral black dog (infamous in trucker circles, and apparently, to sailors as well) in the road causing him to swerve to avoid it, hitting a pedestrian in the process. As a result he loses his license and goes to jail. After being rehabilitated, this now-unlicensed trucker accepts an illegal long haul job from Atlanta to Maryland in order to avoid having his house repossessed. Along the way he discovers that the load he believed he was carrying (toilets) is something far more sinister (illegal guns), and that he’s caught between the southern mafia and the FBI. Along the way much tractor trailer related mayhem ensues.

While most fans of the truck driver sub-genre know that Black Dog is the only film in existence featuring Patrick Swayze, Randy Travis and Meat Loaf onscreen at the same time, far fewer know that Swayze was hired as a replacement for television actor Kevin Sorbo of “Hercules” fame, who was originally slated to appear in the lead role and actually went through prep and early shooting with the crew.

Fewer still know the behind-the-scenes story of Raffaella De Laurentiis‘ hellbent, headlong mission to reclaim her family’s credibility amongst the Hollywood elite…. her prime motivation for producing this brainless crash-em-up. Yet, I don’t believe that the chain of events plaguing our film can be placed entirely at Raffaella’s feet. In the decade following our production of the film I’ve come to believe that the legendary “black dog ghost” (referenced in the film’s insipid plot) was somehow summoned into reality and stalked our film production like some “giant stalking thing“‡.

I’ll leave any further theorizing on the supernatural forces at work on our film to you experienced spiritualists and will instead focus on documenting 10 Bad, Weird, Tragic and Bizarre things that actually happened on our movie:

1. Rogue Car Crash (bad)
The Black Dog Curse struck the 1st Unit in the first month of production when a vehicle (I think it was a white van) evaded a police roadblock and slammed into the truck towing the process trailer (a low-slung trailer on which you place a car, which is then towed down the road to give the appearance that the actors inside are actually driving – which they can’t do since there are cameras and lights arrayed in front of them). Crewmembers were flung like ragdolls from the back of the process truck, resulting in a variety of injuries which continue to plague some of our Atlanta crewmembers to this very day. This accident resulted in 1st Unit shutting down for at least one month, partially related to the crash and partially related to #2…

2. Kevin Sorbo Pulls Out (smart)
Just a few weeks into filming we learned that lead star Kevin Sorbo had found it necessary to pull out of the project due to health reasons. According to the official reports we were given, he was suffering from an aneurysm in his shoulder. Of course none of our crew had heard of such a thing, so we laughed and decided amongst ourselves that his departure was based less on health reasons and more on having been handed an incredibly inept (and possibly career-damaging) script.

3. High Speed Director (funny)
Not exactly a supernatural phenomenon, but the film’s Location Manager did witness a fog-enshrouded chase by the Georgia State Patrol of a mysteriously appearing head.

4. Car Chase and Crash (bizarre)
While we were shooting in Morgan County a car chase was instigated by one of our traffic lock-ups. Someone apparently mistook the traffic lock-up for a roadblock license check and decided to give the law the slip. We listened in on the police radio with one of the local law officers until the chase ended in a crash. All because of the Black Dog curse.

5. The Monte Carlo Crash (random)
Two of our stuntmen found themselves upside down in the ditch during one high speed sequence. No word on whether the driver saw the Black Dog, but it’s quite likely he did (though he really didn’t). Happily, no one was injured. This time around.

6. Unexpected Stigmata (unprovable)
While shooting on a stretch of road well east of Atlanta, Tony Bradley, one of our local special effect technicians was burned by the exhaust pipes of the hero Camaro. I could thrill you by saying that his burn marks were rumored to look exactly like a dog, but that wouldn’t be true…. though this wouldn’t be the last time that Tony would be injured on the film.

7. An ACTUAL Black Dog Sighting (true and terrifying)
The most frightening thing (for me) on the entire show happened on a rainy morning in north Georgia as I drove myself and set PA Michelle Long from our hotel to the set. It was a chilly November morning in the mountains and a mist was layered through the trees. The road was slick and my windshield wipers were fighting to keep the rain clear while the defroster chugged away at the condensation on the inside of the windshield. In the faint blue light of morning a form detached itself from the brambles on the left side of the road and tumbled out toward the road. We were closing on it in a bizarre sort of slow motion, fascinated and repelled by the unnatural movements it made… almost as if it were unfolding as it moved. Suddenly it assumed the shape of a great, enormous hound… totally black… misshapen by the fat rain drops peppering the windshield…. in that instant I was terrified beyond words… it was impossible what we were seeing, and yet it was happening. Coming toward us from the opposite direction were some cars… maybe two, maybe more. I tried to think of how I would miss this terrifying hellhound, when it gathered momentum and height… and suddenly it became obvious that this unholy spectre wasn’t a dog… it was a deer… and it crossed the road and disappeared into the dark underbrush on the right side of the road as we reached where it had stood only moments earlier. I can’t even remember if we talked about it after that day… it really creeped me out though.

8. Mass Firings (sad but true)
When we returned from the Thanksgiving holiday break we discovered that a chunk of our 2nd Unit crew had been replaced. I can’t remember the order in which it happened, but it eventually involved the AD crew and the stunt team. Needless to say that you won’t find many of the names of stunt players who worked the Georgia sequences listed among the credits for Black Dog on the Internet Movie Database. You will, however, see plenty of pictures of these guys in the Black Dog photoset I’ve made over on Flickr.com.

If I recall correctly, the motivation for the mass firing was based on the perception that things on 2nd Unit had been going far slower than necessary. In fact, our schedule was dragging so slowly that it’s obvious if you ever make the ill-advised decision to watch the movie. Observe how the mountain forests shift from brilliant fall foliage to dead grey during one single chase sequence through the mountains. What was imagined to have been able to be shot in short order by the producers actually took an entire leaf change season to accomplish, something that the original AD team likely realized when putting the boards together for the movie.

9. The Infamous Accident (tragic)
After the Georgia sequences were complete the film picked up and moved north to Wilmington, North Carolina, where three of our crewmates were burned in a freak accident, when an explosion detonated underneath a big rig just prior to a safety meeting. One man, a great guy from the UK, was hurt far worse than the other two crewmen and eventually succumbed to his injuries, according to those who had remained in contact with his family after the show. I believe that the accident was determined to be human error; a simple, tragic miscommunication.

10. The End of Kevin Hooks’ Feature Career (silver lining)
This last one might actually be a good thing if it’s really true. Director Kevin Hooks made a big screen directorial splash with the exciting (though badly aging) Wesley Snipes picture “Passenger 57″ and was thought by many (myself included) to have a burgeoning big-budget feature film career in store. But, the curse of the Black Dog seems to have forced Mr. Hooks to swerve permanently into the realm of episodic television and, as a fan of the Fox series “24″ and the ABC series “Lost”, I count this as a blessing. Having people like Kevin, who can translate big action storytelling into the small screen episodic format, is a prime reason that television is more exciting than ever, and I’ll just bet that he’s happy to stay “in town” so that he can keep up with his family instead of spending months and months away from his home.

Like my friend Joe Connolly, 2nd Unit Propmaster of Black Dog, all we can do is pray (though perhaps not in the same get-up) that the heinous legend of the Black Dog is never again revisited cinematically, lest more people fall prey to the strange and unfortunate circumstances surrounding that keep truckers hiding underneath their blankets at night.

† of course there’s no “curse of the black dog”, it was all just dumb luck
‡ to quote Sir Edmund Blackadder

(Please note: this article was published in August 2008, before I’d ever learned of actor Patrick Swayze’s diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, and we are so not going to “go there” with our little “curse of Black Dog” game. In the last ten years the Atlanta film community suffered the loss of two of our members to pancreatic cancer and my own grandmother died from complications associated with her treatment for the same illness. It’s a very private matter and I wish Patrick and his family peace and togetherness, out of the media spotlight and the blogosphere penlight.)

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This is a photo of actor Jeff Garlin holding a box of doughnuts, standing next to Leo Murphy, the Propmaster from Robocop 3 (shot here in Atlanta back in 1991). Now, I know that it’s Jeff Garlin, because I remember taking the photo. But… there’s no way that you can tell that it’s Jeff because the film was “skunked”, obliterating part of the image, which was often the case of Polaroid film on set..

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Okay, in the first part of that video you saw a chair’s upholstery being sucked up into a vacuum cleaner, right? Well here’s how it worked….

The engineering for this setup involved finding an existing chair and stripping the upholstery from its frame. The next step required us to fabricate an upholstered “breakaway skin” that wrapped around the chair’s frame, however, we couldn’t use velcro to secure the skin in place because we needed to be able to YANK the skin down through a hole in the floor as the set for both of these chair commercials were built on an elevated stage so that the chair wranglers could be poised underneath to yank the upholstered skin through a small hole cut in the deck of the stage (for the first commercial) and to spin & flip the “bucking” chair (in the second commercial).

To make the “breakaway skin” fit the chair properly required endless adjustments to the way the flaps were sewn, adjustments to where bits of padding were added, consideration given to the resistance of the fabric on the texture of the padding… just a jillion little never ending adjustments. Even though I felt like the only person working on this gizmo there were actually a number of guys who had a hand in it and I just realized after watching this video that Michael Benedict (now with the Atlanta Opera) had worked on this gag as well!!

On the day of the shoot there were three of us below the deck for the vacuum commercial.
There was a hole cut into the floor directly in front of the chair and a vacuum cleaner was pushed up to the hole. A balloon was fitted inside the vacuum’s fabric bag and an air hose snaked out of the vacuum’s beater bar area down into the hole and up to an air compressor. A thick rope of cords and strings went from underneath the chair down that same hole.

Now, remember when I said that we couldn’t use velcro?
Well we couldn’t. However, we could (and did) use T-pins to hold certain bits of the skin in place.

Everything else depended on timing.

When the cameras rolled and the director called “action” it was my job to pull strings connected to the pins, releasing the skin from its hold on the wooden frame. The man operating the air tank (Paul Huggins, co-owner of Scenario Custom Scenery) would begin inflating the vacuum cleaner’s bag while the “Yank Guy” (Jesse) frenetically pulled the cords connected to the bulk of the breakaway upholstered skin.

We must’ve done the gag a dozen times or more and the final product looked great on camera.

Have you seen the commercial?

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You know, that dumpy 40 year-old black metal box at the end of the driveway? Mailbox? The thing into which my Federally-sanctioned mail carrier typically inserts the mail I love (paychecks, magazines and the occasionally mis-delivered Frederick’s of Hollywood catalog) and mail I do not love (bills, bills and bills). But lately, our mail carrier (let’s use a little creative license here and call her “Betsy”)…. Betsy has started bringing me the most unusual mail for the past week or so and I must confess that I’ve become quite hooked.

Of course, for you folks who don’t enjoy episodic serials like “LOST“, and may think that J.J. Abrams is a local DDS, this may be a concept that’s lost upon you… but here’s the premise:

As best I can tell, it’s a soap-opera told in installments, one letter at a time… and by letter, I mean a paper thingy in an envelope.

Confused? Don’t worry, I was too, though I have to say that the first few letters I got made sense. They were simple, straightforward solicitations for my support in helping their writers in winning various offices in a local film union to which I belong.

This was keen, this was novel… it was very Seventh Grade Civics Class.. very Dobie Gillis… very “square”… very ME.

I felt like putting on my good suit, my good hat and driving ’round to the local polling station to pull a lever and cast my vote for all of these erstwhile guardians of the democratic ideal. I knew at that moment that we were all good American citizens, and pride was erupting all over me, like boils of freedom on Uncle Sam’s pimply buttocks.

And then I received the next installment in the series…. dum, dum, DUMMMM (insert scary music here)

Oh, but this letter was different… it held a TWIST!!
This letter was the unexpected character in the soap opera…. it was: the “Mysterious Letter Which Casts Suspicion”!!!1 (even more dramatic music here)

And the best part?? The sender was ANONYMOUS!!
I knew it would be asking a lot but I secretly hoped that they were also someone’s twin brother, suffering from amnesia.

Like Hercule Poirot, this letter gathered us all into its dusty Drawing Room so that it could regale us with “secret”, intimate information about one of the incumbents who was running to keep their elected position. This “Mysterious Letter Which Casts Suspicion” impishly impugned that incumbent’s lifestyle, it implied misdeeds and skeleton-filled, cowboy-hatted closets and sly business dealings (which were admittedly short-putts). This letter was wickedly funny, brattily brash and oozed with so much 7th Grade Dramaâ„¢ I felt sure that it might explode like one big zit right in front of my face, which is why I held it at arm’s length, howling with laughter and glee at its impropriety, while simultaneously beginning to wonder at its mean-spirited wit…. I mean, if your opponent has this many flaws why wouldn’t you just run a straight by-the-facts campaign instead of running a guerilla-action, junior high school newsletter expose?

I mean, you guys had me at “I’m running for office” and “I’m an agent of change”…. why all the extra effort? And by “extra” I mean “batshit crazy”. Do you realize that you had my vote simply by running? I was all Zellweger for you, but now…

Now I was in serious drama overload by the time I got to the end of the “Mysterious Letter Which Casts Suspicion”…. I mean, by the time this Postal Poirot got around to telling us that the incumbent had singlehandedly wrecked the North American film industry (with a lead pipe, in the library, along with that bastard Colonel Mustard) I fully expected the author to jump out from behind a bush and yell “Ta Da!!!”

Come on people, buy a stinking Clue!
“Gotcha!” politics is the realm of the 11 year old girl who didn’t get picked for the lead in the school play. It’s offputting and tells me that you’re more obsessed with bringing down someone than taking care of me.

But still, Politics is Politics, right?
It ain’t fun until the mud starts flying and by now I was addicted to the game.

Then there were a few days of respite.

The letters had stopped. I was back to leering at New-Age-For-Slutty-Girls catalogs for “The Pyramid Collection” and quite happy with my lot in life. Minxy girls with golden ringlets wearing great cloaks, thigh-highs and faery bikinis suits me just fine. I figured that the Producers of this letter series had finally wrung out the last of their Melvillian, Ahabian angst… you know, “from Hell’s heart” and all that “stabbing at thee” business? I guessed that they’d shown the Mobyness of their dicks and had gone away to leave me alone.

But of course that wasn’t the case at all.
Oh nooo… I had mistaken their quiet industry for clearer-thinking minds…. and soon enough I felt a right fool. As it turns out, these campaigners had been spending a few days learning to skip the snail mail route and go straight for my email inbox… straight for my digital juggler vein.

KHAAAAAAAAAANNN!!!!!!!!!

Yeah, so now the emails are flying…

But they’re not just emails from union members seeking office… these unsolicited emails I’m getting now are from outside forces who apparently believe that they have a vested interest in the outcome of our tiny little union’s impact on our state’s film industry.

For instance, just a few hours ago I received an email from a legislator who (I was informed by a local producer) was legislatively blocked from trying to engineer a sweetheart deal with a “studio” built way out in the piney woods (think: butler buildings in the middle of nowhere). I personally have great affection for this particularly remote shooting location but was incensed (as only soap operas stories can make you) to learn that this same legislator was they guy who was foiled from creating some sort of boondogglish plan to swindle the state out of several million dollars in exchange for re-badging that failed studio as some sort of film school thingy. Wasn’t this the same guy who tried to engineer this deal in the midst of our industry’s desperate struggle to enact serious tax incentives at the statewide level?

Why was someone with such lofty political aspirations and sneaky political machinations so interested in replacing our dirty little incumbent? What was the angle this time around? Oh my wonderful little soap opera was a writhing nest of vipers by now… each of them dirty, secret-laden and seething with passion… this was better than anything on HBO!!

A serious aside: why do all of these outside forces have such a keen interest in the staffing of our tiny little union at this point in time? Did our union chase away all the work? Did this one incumbent make an industry leave all by himself?? Oh I know all too well that he has personal agendas and can may not pursue the more subtle paths in his business dealings and that he’s not always looking out for my interests… but at least we’ve got a handle on him. The unspoken (and spoken) accusation from these outside forces is what captures my attention. They say: “This guy is killing our business. Your union is the reason that there’s no work here now. We demand change. We’ll engineer change for you if you can’t do it for yourselves.”

I mean, when people approach you in that manner it gets your attention.

And you know what?

Maybe this guy is bad for our image.
Maybe the union is killing the business.

Look at what’s happened in the airline industry, the auto manufacturing industry… even the local electrical union is running radio ads to make the union less oppresive and more business-friendly. Unions are losing their power all over the place and are increasingly seen as obstacles by people within and without. There are certainly enough of us who belong to this film union who only joined in order to play in the big league and to ensure fair work conditions. It wasn’t because of any misplaced Marxist solidarity issues… I mean, do you remember being “right there” behind the steel workers when they were shuttering the plants in the northeast? What? You weren’t there for them? Yeah, me neither I was pretty young.

How about IT outsourcing movement then? That’s pretty recent. Surely you stood up when it counted, to help IT professionals keep their jobs here in the States? Wha??… you didn’t help those guys? Me either. We’re so bad.

Hey… are you just in this for yourself or what??

Truth be told, like you, I didn’t lift a finger to protest the movement of customer service centers to strange nations halfway around the globe where they speak in hoots, clicks and whistles and as a result I constantly find myself in two hour telephone conversations, struggling to understand lyrically-accented people, like “Janet” who seems suspiciously unable to pronounce my last name without turning it into a large jungle bird primarily associated with the sale of a popular, sugar-packed North American breakfast cereal, when all I’m trying to do is order a part for my damned dishwasher.

When Megacorp can hire skilled computer systems engineers in Bangalore for five dollars an hour why do you continue to believe that Hollywood producers won’t be able to find skilled dolly grips in Sri Lanka? Are you stupid?? Heck, do the producers even care if they’re even skilled? Not really, they’ll learn… after all, you did.

So you see, this whole “runaway production” issue is a sign of systemic change… it’s happening everywhere. Any other conversation is smoke and mirrors and wasted time. If you want to change the union from the inside out… if you want to engineer a takeover that brings real, measurable change to the lives of the people in that union you cannot do it from a position of “Gotcha!” and then open up the union’s dirty laundry to everyone on the outside.

Now we see our tiny local, part of an international film union, embroiled in a contentious race for elected positions while accusations darken our skies in Thermopylaen fashion and outside players and powers insert themselves into the drama unbidden. The outcome of this election is yet to be determined, but there’s certain to be one lasting artifact from this race: rancor and distrust.

I now distrust the people who are running for office as much as I’ve distrusted the people who already occupy it.

Congratulations guys. You have met the enemy, and it was you.

.

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Like any good disruptive technology, the introduction of computers decimated a goodly number of traditional specialties around the world including longheld positions in the film industry, one of which was the manner in which title sequences and interstitials were created. In mainstream Hollywood credits went from simple title cards with limited information to increasingly elaborate animated sequences. I’m not sure where Troy’s Bolex 8mm Film Titler fell in the world of 1950’s filmmaking but suspect that it was aimed at students and the atomic age equivalent to today’s videographers.

This is exactly the kind of thing that I would have spent months playing with in my early teens, back when I had patience and before I knew that my pokey-peeky Atari 800XL would someday be replaced by a jacked up Macintosh.

Even though I know it was made in the 50’s it really screams 1930s as it has elements of streamline design. The website BolexCollector.com describes the Bolex 8mm Film Titler thusly:

In 1955, Paillard introduced a titler for pocket size cameras. In order to provide accurate framing with these non-reflex cameras, a unique D mount device was designed to project a circle of light through the lens onto the titling board. The Basic Titler consisted of the titling board with a field frame and centering card, support stand and camera base, and precision centering device with 4V lamp and wire with alligator clamps for attaching to a battery.

A full accessory kit could be purchased, which included two adjustable lamps, horizontal and vertical “Flip Flap” boards, drum, disc, scroll title device and 10″ extension legs; all effect devices, apart from the scroll, were covered with black velvet.

Those “Flip Flap” boards, drums, discs and other velvet-covered gee whizzes are designed to accomodate tiny little letters that you must arrange by hand. I was dumbfounded to realize that those letters are made of felt!! How in the world they managed to trim out tiny letters from the white, felt-like cloth boggles my mind… I mean, they must have created incredibly fine die-cuts but WOW!!

I used a swizzle stick from Trader Vic’s to push some letters into a message and shot a very short sequence on my Canon SD400 digicam to thank Troy for the very cool gift (the video is posted on YouTube, click here to watch it). I didn’t notice until later that a letter “s” fell off the second word in the second line. Getting those felt letters to line up is impossible!

The special bayonet-style lights designed for this system are still intact and probably work although…

…the electric plug appears to have been designed for an electrical system other than anything I’ve encountered in the United States. I’m unsure if there was some additional piece of equipment meant to go between the lamps and the electric socket or whether there was a competing standard of electric plugs around at the time that this device was in production. The “Made in England” stamp on the tip of the plug makes me think that it might in fact have been engineered for an entirely different set of mains.

I found a cardboard box at the Container Store that neatly holds both of the original paper-wrapped chipboard Bolex boxes and am packing the whole thing away for safekeeping. Don’t look for this package on eBay kids, its going into my museum! Thanks again Troy!

[tags]bolex, paillard, 8mm, film, titler, titles, desktop, movie, camera, stand, lamps, felt, letters, troy, miller[/tags]

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It was great fun to see James Best receive the Magnolia Award for well over 50 years of work in the film business; he’s as personable and good-natured as you might hope and I was disappointed that the screening ended so late because I would have thoroughly enjoyed asking him questions about working in the Golden Age of Television with some of my favorite cowboys like Gene Autry and Jimmy Stewart. During all those years I worked as an Assistant Propmaster I pointedly avoided initiating conversations with actors about their past work as it seemed an unspoken rule that it was somehow unprofessional (the same reason I never ’scored autographs’ for you guys). Looking back, I could kick myself and when/if I decide to get back into the business I’ll be sure to spend time prying war stories out of people like Mr. Best, after all, everyone loves to tell our stories from set.

While ‘The Dixie’ is gaining notoriety, it’s obvious that the Dixie Film Festival is still in its infancy and I’m not at all convinced that Georgia State is the best venue for the event as its urban setting must certainly intimidate people who are uncomfortable with visiting downtown Atlanta after dark. Locating an appropriate venue is a challenge for any film festival, regardless of how long it’s been around. The venerable Atlanta Film Festival has faced plenty of venue issues over the years, dithering between downtown and the exurbs.

Just like the independent films they screen, film festivals sometimes live in a perpetual swoon without a permanent corporate or celebrity champion. I am truly not well informed about the indie film scene, but I do know that Tribeca was an overnight success, in large part due to Robert De Niro’s leadership, but in no small part due to the passion of the community, stirred because of the attack on the World Trade Center.

In the already crowded market of independent film, festivals are also becoming a commodity. Where distributors can pick and choose the projects they wish to represent, filmmakers can be equally as choosy when deciding where they want to screen their films and I believe that it’s becoming important for festivals to provide a clear definition of their mission and their audience; a film about women’s issues would hardly be appreciated at a festival dedicated to wildlife films.

Part of Dixie’s challenge is to provide potential submitters with an idea of the audience it will provide them. It should be able to answer questions like: “Who is your audience?” and “Why would I want my film screened there?”

Ultimately, the success of any particular film festival relies on the active support of the local filmmaking community. If people really want something to succeed they’ll make sure that it does.

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Update: a little birdy has informed me that there will be a guy wearing a cardboard robot suit in a very recent rewrite of the ‘Nerds’ movie… homage or hijack? Time will only tell!

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As the nights wore on, more and more towels were needed and Mr. Jay was in constant demand. I found myself repeating the phrase “Go for Jimmy” to myself more and more often. Pretty soon I was doing it without prompting and one day Randy crossed the line on the radio with one of his most competent people and without thinking I grabbed my clip-on microphone and started asking Randy clueless questions in my newfound Jimmy voice, as if I were one of his dumbest PAs. I think he answered a few times but pretty soon realized that somebody was messing with him and stopped responding altogether.

But Jimmy didn’t.
Jimmy simply grew more powerful… and more popular as time went by.

By the time the Mr. Show movie “Run Ronnie Run” came to town Jimmy had made a lot of fans among the local crew and comedian David Cross seemed to appreciate that clueless PA. On “Sweet Home Alabama” 1st AD Louis D’Esposito became an enormous fan of Jimmy and openly pinned me as the source after a few weeks, forcing me to throw him off my trail with an elaborate scheme involving a tape recorder, Prop Truck driver Johnny Poucher and a pre-recorded message from Jimmy though I eventually fessed up during the last week of shooting.

I’m told that to this day there are people who have carried Jimmy along with them to other movie sets and am happy that he may well be my lasting gift to cinematography (though I’d hoped for a bit more).

About two weeks ago I stopped by the set of an indie-feature to drop off some artwork to the propmaster. While I was hanging out they wrapped for the day. I grabbed a radio and warbled “Go for Jimmy!” with glee. Within seconds somebody came back with an enthusiastic “HEY JIMMY!!!!! Where’ve you been???!!!!”.

As my hero Bill McNeil would say, “Good Times…..”… good times indeed.
Gaziza Jimmy.

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Director of Photography Andrew Dunn likes to “blow out” a room with light, which he accomplishes by having the electricians put a 10k or a 12k inside of the room, aimed toward the ceiling. Incredibly bright, they fill a space with light and help to bring a shot to life. Unfortunately they’re really, really HOT. A call came across the radio for someone from props to run a box fan over to the bank set.. I’m not sure if it was my co-2nd, George Lee, or 1st AD Louis D’Esposito. Regardless, I walked the box fan into the building, dodged under a tangle of C-stands and slipped into the space behind Mary-Lynn. They were really trying to get that scene finished and were rolling hot and heavy so I pulled up an applebox beside grip Gary Oldknow and sat quietly, contemplating an upcoming Christmas party that I’d been invited to by a girl I’d met earlier that year. Gary tapped my arm with the back of his hand to get my attention and when I looked up he silently nodded in the direction behind me so I pivoted around to look.

At first I didn’t see anything. When they called “rolling” I kept looking in that direction and suddenly realized that we had a great view of Mary-Lynn’s ass. She had on blue jeans and though they weren’t skin tight they were snug enough to outline her shape. Ding. In walks Reese from outside, trades comments with the security guard, walks to the counter. Ding. Mary-Lynn starts talking to Reese.

And her ass starts “talking”.

Every time Mary-Lynn spoke her butt muscles twitched. It was if her jaw muscles were wired to her tush. The way her ass pulsed was mesmerising, I couldn’t take my eyes off that ass. Glancing back at Gary, I received an ever-so-slight nod that I had spotted what he wanted me to see.

The next take? The same, maybe artsier twitching.

Mary-Lynn, you had me at “squishy-squishy”.

You can find photos from “Sweet Home Alabama” in my “Sweet Home Alabama” Gallery on Flickr! [thanks to traffic from Fark I realized that this link was broken - it's now repaired, enjoy!]

Your Pal,
Drew

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