The Anonymous Production Assistant’s Blog

PAs are often in the office (or on the set) before anyone else, and they’re the last ones to leave. It’s fun, because the inmates are in charge of the asylum, at least for a little while.

One of my favorite things to do at those times is to walk around the set. It’s a bit disconcerting, like being in someone’s house when they’re not there. The fact that the set is a house only accentuates that feeling.

Then you look up, and there’s no roof. Outside the windows are bare walls or green screens or fake-looking back drops. The c-stands and grip carts are just hulking shapes in the dark.

Now that I think about it, it’s so creepy, I’m not sure why I do it.

My other favorite off-hours activity is to take a surreptitious tour of the writers’ room. (Our show doesn’t have any Lost-type security. I hear they erase their boards every night, and their poor writers’ PA has to re-write the notes every morning.)

The walls are lined with dry-erase boards, and these are covered with notes. Sometimes they look like outlines, with act breaks and other things. Other times, they’re indecipherable gibberish. (What the hell does “Walk the monkey AFTER” mean?)

These are some of the best times I’ve had as a PA. I get to look at the ideas while they’re still half-formed. Later, I’ll read the script, watch the shooting, and even go down the hall to post to see the edit. There’s really no better way to learn how TV is made.

Although, “Walk the monkey AFTER” still didn’t make sense after that script came out.

I’m bad with names. I know, I know, you’re bad with names, too. But really. I’m bad with names. Comparing your memory to mine is like a high school student who says he’s really good at basketball, then builds a time machine to travel back to 1991 and play Michael Jordan one-on-one.

I write notes to myself like Leonard in Memento, otherwise I’ll forget to do just about everything. If I need seven reminders from my wife to make a dentist appointment (which reminds me, I should do that), then there’s very little chance I’ll remember your name.

I’m bad with names.

This tends to be a problem in a number of ways. First of all, there’s a lot of turn over in the film and television business. I’m working on a new show every three to six months, and each show is a new crew of a hundred or more to meet. That’s a lot of new names.

It wouldn’t be so bad if I was in one of the departments. When you’re an AC (like I have been in the past), you really only need to know the half-dozen people in the camera department, the AD, and the PAs. Everyone else is someone you nod to while waiting in line for catering.

The problem with being a PA is that you’re there to help everyone, and so everyone knows you. And if they know you, they assume you know them.  People frequently refer to me by name, and I barely know what department they’re in, let alone their actual name.

What I’m really afraid of is when I’m no longer a PA. I eventually want to be a writer/producer, which means everyone on the crew will know who I am. I really don’t want the crew to think I’m that jerk who’s too important to learn the names of the little people. I’ll have to make flash cards or something, with pictures on one side, and names/titles on the other.

Maybe I’ll have a PA do it.

Since I had so much fun bagging on actors yesterday, I thought I’d do it again today. I’m petty like that.

Really, since I’m Anonymous, this blog is about the only place I can vent my feelings about actors. Everyone treats actors like small, fragile children. They’re never allowed to hear any bad news, under any circumstance. I think many actors would be surprised to hear what the crew thinks of them. They certainly couldn’t bear to hear that they’re helpless, and a little bit dumb, from a PA.

Of course, actors also often act like children. For example, just the other day, one of our guest stars got into an accident and totaled his car. This being three days before the shoot, he obviously had no time whatsoever to rent a car. (Being an actor who’s not actually acting can be very hectic, I understand.)

On the day of the shoot, he had no means of transportation. Naturally, he took a taxi. In LA. Fifteen miles. I’m going to go out on a limb and assume he had the production pay for the ride.

At the end of the day, he demanded a ride back. Since he’s essentially a spoiled child being raised by parents who won’t say no, the producers had a PA drive him home.

I wonder what would happen if I got into a car accident this weekend, and then didn’t have a plan as to how I would get to and from work?

(So, basically, like normal cats.)

Dealing with actors is one of the least pleasant tasks of a PA. Just shuttling them from one end of the studio to the other can be a sisyphean task. They want to stop at crafty, they want to swing by the production office, they have to talk to their agent. All the while, the AD is yelling at me over the walkie, demanding to know what’s taking so God damn long.

I’m not sure if self-centered morons are attracted to acting, or if acting makes them conceited and stupid. Maybe if I spent the whole day with people doting on me and paying attention to my every whim, I, too, might think highly enough of myself to stop worrying about things like self-improvement or other human beings.

Just a quick example of what I’m talking about–

This morning, there was a message on the production office voice mail from a background actor (”extra”) who had worked the day before. He left his name, said he had left his ID, bank card, and $84 in his wardrobe, then asked us to call him back.

He didn’t leave a number.

This is amazing, since it covers both the stupidity and the narcissism. First of all, who leaves every piece of information needed to steal your identity in someone else’s pants? I wonder if his social security number was written on one of the dollar bills. He probably wrote it on all four, in case he lost some.

Secondly, why would he assume we’d know his number? He was one of about sixty extras. His contact info is in a pile of paperwork somewhere between here and Central Casting.

You’d think he’d want to make it as easy as possible for us to get back to him quickly. You’d be wrong. Actors don’t think that way. They think like this: “I want something. Someone will bring it to me.”

That someone is usually a PA.

If, by “succeed,” you mean get a job as a PA. Beyond that, I can’t really help you.

Lisa Klink had a post yesterday about what us assistants look like when you’re a big time TV writer. (Okay, she’s not J.J. Abrams-type big time, but she’s certainly more impressive than me.) She wrote that she was never an assistant, and thus had no experience in becoming one.

That’s where I come in!

You’d think it’d be easy getting a crappy job at the bottom of the food chain, but they’re surprisingly competitive. There’s always more applicants than jobs available, even among assistants. This is, of course, even more true among the higher-prestige gopher jobs. It’s much harder to be an agent’s assistant than an office PA, and getting on a network show is more difficult than getting on a low-budget indie.

So, how do you get into these low-wage, low-status, low-self-esteem jobs? Work on a no-wage, low-statues, low-self-esteem job!

If you’re in college, apply for an internship at a production company (or an agency, if that’s your thing). If you’ve already graduated (or just plain skipped that part), you’re still going to have to work for free.

Peruse Craig’s List or Mandy.com, and look for no-budget movies in need of PAs. You won’t get paid and you won’t eat well, but you’ll meet a lot of people and learn a heck of a lot. Since there’s no union rules, you’ll just as likely be pulling cable or holding a boom as taking on the usual PA duties of shushing people and trying to look busy. It’s the best film school there is. (Trust me when I say this; I went to one of the best.)

The thing about low budget movies is that everyone is there to advance their careers. The DP may work as an cameraman or a gaffer normally, but she’s willing to take a pay cut to get a better title. Pretty soon, though, she’s going to have to pay the bills back to less prominent positions on shows with bigger budgets.  The same goes for the production designer, the AD, and everyone else.

And when they go, you can ride their coattails on to a whopping 115 a day.

The agency I once worked for was across the street from a high school. My boss said he liked the location because it reminded him of the old saying, “Hollywood is just high school with money.”

(His other favorite saying was, “Farmers farm, plumbers plumb, and agents lie.” I learned more from him than he intended to teach, I think.)

The high school analogy is trite, but rather apt. Everyone is in a little clique, only we call them “guilds.” You’ve got your cool kids (actors), your nerds (writers), your jocks (grip & electric), and so on. There’s even a faculty that nobody likes and no one would listen to if they weren’t in charge. They’re called executives.

As for the PAs and assistants? We’re the freshman class. Everyone picks on us, no one listens to us, but before you know it, we’ll be running the school.

Like all freshmen, we get wedgies. These Hollywood wedgies come in the form of getting screwed for no particular reason.

A friend of mine was making a run to our filming location, and he got lost. It was dark, and late, and we were shooting in the middle of nowhere. He wound up with an extra thirty miles on the odometer. (Did I mention he’s not good with directions?)

When the UPM saw his mileage sheet, he came to my friend and asked, “What the hell is this?” (Normally, the UPM wouldn’t know if a run should be seven miles or seventy miles, but in this case, he had the exact distance from the location department.)

My friend gave the honest answer– he was a dumbass and got lost. The UPM responded, “We’re not paying you to get lost,” and promptly deducted $15 from the mileage sheet.

Now, seriously. Fifteen bucks doesn’t sound like a ton of cash, but it’s more than ten percent of what us PA’s make in a day.

And this is TV! We’ll throw a hundred dollars at a Starbucks run for the producers. What kind of jerk would begrudge a lowly PA fifteen dollars?

So, to amend my former employer’s axium, Hollywood is high school with money, except when it comes to PA’s.

I was delivering a script over the hill (killing trees and generating about 31 pounds of carbon dioxide).

The actor’s house was in Venice, and I could literally smell the ocean breeze wafting through my open car window (with gas prices what they are, I sure as hell can’t afford to use the air conditioning).

Anyway, it was 70 and sunny, as it always is in Los Angeles, the palm trees were swaying in the breeze, and I just couldn’t help myself.

I played hooky.

I wasn’t out for long, maybe twenty minutes. Just enough time to squish some sand between my toes and dip my feet in the ocean.

It’s one of the few joys afforded to PAs and not the higher ups. I knew I wasn’t going to see the UPM or EP out there.

It probably doesn’t sound like a big deal, but I spend twelve hours a day sitting at a desk. Seeing the Pacific stretch on forever, I was able to remind myself that it’s just a TV show, and none of it really matters.

Then I got a phone call telling me I had to drive to fucking Culver City. Thanks a lot, universe.

John August has another one of his Scene Challenges up.

The goal is to write a scene where one character explains to another what investment derivatives are.  It was a difficult writing problem, since I have no idea what investment derivatives are.

I’m #48.

Yesterday, I said writing is not producing.  I didn’t mean that as an insult.

When I came to LA to attend film school, I thought the writer was in charge of the filmmaking process.  It turns out, I was wrong.  People usually laugh at me when I relate that bit of youthful naiveté.  Or they tell me I should work in TV.

After much soul searching (and ego suppression), I decided directing was not for me.  I still wanted to be a writer.

When you tell a friend you just saw an awesome movie, what do they ask?  “Who’s in it?” and “What’s it about?”  Since most movie stars play the same character over and over, what they really mean is “Who are the characters?” and “What is the story?”

And guess who is the progenitor of the characters and story.  That’s right– the writer.  Everyone else is just interpreting.

No, I didn’t say that about being a PA.  That’s Jane Espenson, talking about “producing.”

I produced a sitcom pilot in film school.  I asked my professor what, exactly, was a producer’s job.  My professor said, “The producer is the guy who, when something goes wrong, fixes it, even if it means picking up a screwdriver and doing it yourself.”  He happened to be, at that very moment, fixing something with a screwdriver.  He was a simple man.

His simple declaration was one of the most important things I learned in that class (that, and the fact that I’m a terrible producer).  But deciding who is a producer is not always that simple.  Studio executives, script doctors, and, God help us, managers have all tried to lay claim to the title, despite the Producers Guild’s best efforts.

But nothing violates my erstwhile professor’s dictum more than a television series.  The show I’m working on now has no less than a dozen folks with “producer” in their title– we have Producers, Executive Producers, Co-Producers, Co-Executive Producers, Supervising Producers, and Associate Producers.

About two of those people actually fit the definition of a real producer.  Most of them are writers with enough experience to demand a cooler title.  Of the eight writers on the show, only one has the word “writer” in her title.

Don’t get me wrong, I love our writing staff.  They do a great job, and work long, long hours.  But the work they do is writing, not producing.

At least, that what it seems like, from the perspective of one production assistant.