Insults

A friend of mine wrote in response to yesterday’s post:

What’s the difference between a grip and a PA?

A PA can spell “grip.”

Now, I like grips, but I had to laugh at that.

It’s strange how making fun of each other is a way of bonding on set.  People are constantly busting each others’ chops.  Within a department, between departments, up the chain, down, whatever.  And man, you should hear what our writer’s assistant says to the showrunner.

Just the other day, my boss showed me a picture of his kids.  I said, “Cute.  Take after their mother, do they?”  He gave me a little swat on the back of the head, but was clearly amused.

Why does this work?  Shouldn’t I be fired for something like that?

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On a completely unrelated topic, you should check out the On Set Podcast.  It’s a great little program where they interview real crew working on real movies and TV shows.  It’s fairly new, so there’s only a couple of episodes yet, but still worth checking out.

They actually asked to interview me at one point, but I said I needed one of those voice modifier things.  They felt that wouldn’t fit well with the general tone of their podcast.  Alas, you’ll have to wait until they find some other exceptionally eloquent and erudite PA to interview.

Useless

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again– nothing we do in Hollywood matters. We’re not doctors or soldiers or police or fire fighters. No one’s going to die if we make a bad TV show.

There are a few individual exceptions. People can get hurt if a grip or an electric or a stuntwoman doesn’t do her job right.  Interestingly, these are the same people who will survive the inevitable zombie apocalypse.

The face of inevitability.

Everyone else on the crew will be only so much fresh meat. Above the line? Dead. Camera department? Dead. Hair and make up? Dead and dead.  Almost nothing they do bears any resemblance to actual, necessary life skills.

The same goes for me. I don’t know how to fight or shoot a gun. I don’t even know first aid.

I went to film school for four years. What am I gonna do, dazzle them with a trenchant analysis of Michael Bay’s oeuvre? All that knowledge is just gonna make my brains tastier.

One might argue that writers will be necessary in the post-apocalypse. Someone must bear witness to the end of history, right?

Sure, but that’s a secondary skill. It’s what Michael Taylor will do while taking a break from building his zombie trebuchet.

Just Joking

When you’re carrying something big and heavy around a corner or down some stairs, it’s usually good form to call out a warning, like “Points!”, to make sure you don’t smack someone in the face. It doesn’t really matter if it’s pointy or not; it’s just what you say.

Sometimes people try to come up with some more clever, though. I knew this one grip who would shout, “Free dental work!” when carrying track around.

It was funny the first time I heard him say it. It was even mildly amusing the third or fourth time. At the end of the first week, it was still a charming quirk.

But after three or four weeks of this incessant repetition, I couldn’t take any more. “Dude, seriously, get a new joke.”

“What are you talking about?” he asked. “It’s not a joke.”

I took a moment to consider his objection, and reconfirmed my original claim. “Yes, it is. It’s a facetious statement intended to illicit laughter.”

“No. If someone doesn’t get out of the way, I’ll smash their teeth in with the track.”

“If I punched someone in the face and broke their nose, would you call it rhinoplasty?”

He asked me what rhinoplasty was, and after I explained the big, scary, polysyllabic word (and, subsequently, “polysyllabic” (and “subsequently” (man, some grips are dumb (apologies to Dollygrippery)))), he once again claimed he wasn’t kidding.

It was at this point that I realized he really didn’t understand that it was a joke. Somebody, somewhere made this crack once, he heard it, misunderstood, and decided he liked the idea of rearranging someone’s teeth with a C-stand.

I didn’t talk to him much after that.

Ridiculous Names

A throwaway joke in yesterday’s post prompted a few questions. Thankfully, Michael the Hollywood Juicer had answers, as usual.

Someday, I hope Mike does a post on all the silly, strange, and just plain confusing nicknames we have for our equipment. In the meanwhile, here’s mine.

As Mike said, names of items differ from place to place, time to time, and even set to set. I’ve heard the heavy bags used to hold stands in place called, variously, “dirtbags,” “sandbags,” “beach,” and, in the case of one memorable Jewish DP, “Mel Gibsons,” due to his “Jews started all the wars” comment. (Why this incident alone, in the long history of crimes against the Jewish people, merited renaming “dirtbags,” I don’t know; I’m not sure he does, either.)

I’m told that, before my time, many terms used to be racist, sexist, or both. For instance, black fabric stretched over a 4′ by 4′ frame is now called either a “solid” or “negative fill.” (If there’s an extra piece of fabric that hangs down to 8′, it’s called a “floppy.”)

Apparently, these used to be called “blacks,” but the name changed for fear of offending someone. This seemed ludicrously PC to me, until I heard the following story.

An old (white) cinematographer was shooting a Spike Lee commercial. The room they were filming in was very white. Logically, the DP needed a lot of solids to control the light.

He said, “I need you guys to hang blacks along all the walls. I want to see blacks hanging all around me.”

You’ll be surprised to learn that Spike didn’t hire this DP again.

Do Me a Favor

Hollywood is built on favors, but some people don’t seem to realize that.

I’m making a short film. Just about the only way to make a decent short, without going broke, is to borrow equipment and get your friends to work for free.  In exchange, you offer them free food, their name in the credits, a copy of the movie, and the expectation that you will return the favor some day.

In quick succession, two of my friends violated this very simple barter system, much to my chagrin.

Tuesday, we needed a camera for about six hours at the beach.  A DP friend of mine owned the right kind of camera, but refused to let us borrow it; he insisted on charging us $150.  For six hours.

He said it was because he was afraid we’d get sand in it (we shot at the beach).  Now, first of all, I used to be an AC.  I ACed for this guy.  He knows I take care of cameras.  Plus, paying him money upfront doesn’t protect his camera.  Insurance (which our production has) does.

Worse than that, though, is the fact that I ACed for him as a favor.  He simply refused to do me a favor back.

Now, here’s the nutty part.  The producer found the same camera for $120.  So, we went back to my friend, and he still wouldn’t bring his price down.  The producer (who was also friends with this DP) called the next day, to ask if he rented is camera to anyone else.  He hadn’t.

Can you imagine that I would ever work with this DP again?

Two weeks earlier, the production was shorthanded.  I called around, and a buddy said he would grip for us, if I paid him a $50 kit fee.

Grips don’t have kits, by and large.  They have gloves and a diddy bag, maybe.  We were renting our gear from Castex.  So, basically, the guy wanted to get paid when no one else on the crew was.

What he didn’t seem to realize was, once I give him money, he’s no longer a friend doing me a favor; he’s an employee doing a job.  He knew we desperately needed people, and he exploited that fact.

Both of these guys used the excuse that they’re out of work, and they needed money.  The thing is, everyone is out of work.  Everyone needs money.  But if you can’t get money, you should at least get a favor in return.

These two have totally burned bridges.  They’ll need help in the future, and they won’t get it, from anyone involved in this production.  How do they not know this?

I Want Answers!

In this blog, I generally hold court on the few topics I’m an expert at. I am just a PA, though, and there’s a few things I really don’t understand. Maybe one of my kind readers knows the answers.

Why is the props department in charge of the director chairs? Not that I want more work, but isn’t that kind of a PA job? Or craft services maybe? Hell, the DIT makes more sense, since they’re at least sitting by the monitor. In what way is a director chair a prop?

Why do the grips pack the set walls? D (of Dollygrippery) theorized that local 80 was just looking for more hours for its members, but under that logic, why didn’t the construction union fight for it? It’d be like the camera department cleaning up the set lights. (Like that would ever happen.)

Lastly, why are UPMs in the DGA? If you knew nothing about the process, and you just walked into a production office, you would assume a production manager is a step up the ladder from production coordinator. It’s easy to see how a best boy relates to a key grip (or gaffer); same with the various levels of camera assistants. But a UPM’s duties are vastly different from an AD’s. It’s weird.

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These links don’t relate at all.  I just thought they were funny:

The 6 Most Pointlessly Elaborate Movie Murder Plots.

The X Most Blankiest Somthings in the History of Whatever.

Lastly, Patton Oswalt on screenwriting:

Boredom

A lot of time on set is spent sitting around, waiting for other people to do their jobs. You gotta wait for the actors to block the scene, then wait for grips and electrics to light it, then camera has to set focus marks, then hair, make-up, and costume have to fix up the actors, because they’ve been sitting under the hot lights too long, and then you actually roll. And roll. And roll.

Keep rolling!

You gotta find a way to fill all the time.

Some common ways are football pools, or the dollar raffle (write your name on a dollar, and whoever’s bill gets drawn wins the pot). But there are some esoteric games unique to each department.

The grips have the C-stand game. What you do is, you crane the stick up as high as it can go. Then, you loosen the knuckle, letting it fall, and tighten it just before hits the base (or your hand). The closest to the base without hitting it wins.

Camera assistants play with the time code, or footage, meter. See, at the beginning of a tape, you’re supposed to roll 30 seconds of bars and tone. (In film, you roll 5 or 10 feet of a color chart.) Once again, whoever can get the closest without going over wins. This is much easier in film than in video, as you might imagine.

In the office, we have a game involving paper. When we get revisions, we calculate how much paper we’ll need (say, 23 green pages X 75 copies = 1725 sheets). Then, we try to pull out exactly that much paper (three reams, plus approximately a half). The goal is to come out with as little colored paper in the tray as you can.

As I was writing these, I came to realize how lame most of these games sound.

But there is one game that sounds totally awesome– gay chicken. A long time ago, I saw a production designer and DP play this game the time. It basically involves two guys taking turns touching each other. You start someplace innocuous, like the shoulder or arm, then work your way closer and closer to the other dude’s junk, until someone drops out.

I’m still not clear who’s the winner in that game…

How Many Members of a Particular Demographic Group Does It Take to Perform a Specified Task?

A finite number.  One to perform the task, and several others to behave in a manner stereotypical of the group in question.

I love these jokes.

How many grips does it take to change a light bulb?  That’s an electric’s job.

How many script supervisors does it take to change a light bulb?  You can’t change it, we already got it in the master.

How many editors does it take to change a light bulb?  You can’t change just one.  If you change one, you have to change them all!

How many writers does it take to change a light bulb? Seventeen, but only two get screen credit.

This last one only works when you see it–

How many PAs does it take to change a light bulb? Five.  Wait… [pauses, listening to headset] No, one.

I know there’s more, but I can’t remember them.  Any else got any?

Telling Stories

In keeping with this week’s sexual deviancy theme, I thought I’d finally get to the “…And then he woke up with a dick in his mouth” story.

In the film and TV business, you meet new people all the time. You’re regularly expected to exchange pleasantries with strangers. This kind of small talk bugs me, so I’ve come up with a set of stock stories and jokes that I can use over and over. It saves me mental energy, and hey, it’s new to them.

For instance, I have a Manchester United jersey, which I’ll usually wear sometime in the first week of show. Inevitably, someone says, “Are you a soccer fan?”

To which I reply, “Nah, this was a gift. I didn’t even know who they were, until some Australian guy yelled at me, ‘Man U sucks!’ And I was like, ‘M-man, you suck!’”

I must’ve told this story a thousand times. My wife is sick of hearing it. Whenever I retell an old joke, she whispers, “Man, you suck.” But like I said, it’s new to them, and it always gets a laugh.

But there are some stories that you can’t tell to just anyone. Stories that end with, “…and then he woke up with a dick in his mouth,” for example.

Then came that magic day. I was drinking with some G&E boys after wrap, and, as usual, the guys were talking about sex. It seemed like a fine time to tell them how my buddy learned that he was bisexual, the hard way.

I started telling the story, and they were enthralled. They laughed at all the right parts, or cringed, as the case may be. When I got to the punchline, they just exploded. They couldn’t believe anyone would do such a thing. Then a camera guy came into the bar, the key grip insisted I tell the story again.

That seemed to be the end of it, until the next day, when I saw the key grip talking to the gaffer. The key grip waved me over and said, “You gotta hear this guy’s story. It’s unbelievable. Go on, tell him!”

So, I retold the story. Later in the day, the sound guy asked me about it, so I told it again. And again and again and again, for about a week straight.

Man, you suck, indeed.

It got to the point where I was starting to get a reputation. People thought I led this alternative lifestyle, full of sexual escapades and comical misadventures, based solely on this one story that happened to a friend of mine (no, really) four years ago.

Taken aback by his interest, I asked the key grip, “Doesn’t everybody have a story like this from their college days?”

He shook his head vigorously: “No fucking way, man. I’ve never heard shit like that.”

“Huh. That’s weird. You do seem awfully interested in it.” Everyone chuckled, until they realized he wasn’t laughing.

His usual friendly demeanor grew cold. His eyes narrowed to slits, and he jabbed his finger at me. “Sometimes, you stick your neck out, and you get it chopped off. You reading my mail, buddy?”

I wasn’t quite sure how to respond. Or what he meant, really. But, his nonsensical threat did have the terrifying effect I think he intended. When he told this monkey to dance, oh, I danced, and nevermore intimated that he was a closet homosexual.

(Which he totally was.)

I’m Important

Everyone thinks their department is the most important.

When I was a young loader, the first ACs would constantly tell me about how the film was gold. Everything everybody did that day came down to the canister of film in my hand. Without the camera, it’s not a movie, it’s a play. It’s like they didn’t realize the footage was going to be edited at some point.

They looked down on the other departments, but especially the “soft crew”– departments like hair, make-up, and costume. They would mock the make up girls, saying no one who showed up wearing flip-flops and a skirt was there to work.

Of course, the make-up department had to arrive about an hour and a half before us, and didn’t leave much earlier than we did.

One day, I heard an MUA talking about lights. People go on and on about how important lighting is for making the actors look good, as if the make up had no part in it.

The truth is, everyone is necessary. Without cameramen, it would be a play. But without the grips and electrics, there’d be no way to expose the film. But without the art department, there’d be nothing to light, anyway. But without the actors, it’d be a pretty room with nothing happening. But without the writers, the actors would have nothing to say or do.

And so on.

You may think I’m talking out of my ass, but there’s another very good reason to believe that every single person is important– producers are cheap. They wouldn’t hire all these people if they weren’t absolutely necessary.