Fuck Jay Leno

’s show.

From what I’ve heard, he’s a nice guy.  Also, he supported the writers’ strike, and now the guild is screwing with him (which is totally unfair).  He may be the most middle-of-the-road comedian in history, but he’s still a lot funnier than most of the guys in the office who hate him.

Despite all that, fuck his show.

The LA Times has a story about the many, many people who want The Jay Leno Show to fail.  (Thanks to TV By the Numbers for the link.)

One particular quote caught my eye:

NBC executives dismiss the notion that Leno’s new gig is robbing the industry of jobs. “The Jay Leno Show” will have a staff of 22 writers who belong to the Writers Guild, which is far more than the typical drama, the network points out.

First of all, there’s a lot more at stake than writers’ jobs.  A normal scripted show employs 100 to 150 cast and crew members.  Even if this variety show has that large of a crew (unlikely), that still amounts to around 500 people out of work.

On top of that, even the writers are getting screwed.  Scripted shows have a staff of between five and ten writers.  At the low end of that estimate, three writers are still out of work.

I will concede NBC has a point with what they said next:

The show will produce 230 episodes a year, as opposed to 22 episodes for the average drama, which means the writers will be employed longer. And the show will be locally produced in Burbank, thus preventing the flight of jobs to Vancouver, Toronto or one of the other out-of-state locations where many scripted series are now shot.

That’s great, but they’ll be shooting on the NBC-Universal lot 90% of the time.  All of the location fees, catering costs, and other ancillary businesses that depend on crew shooting in Los Angeles get cut out.

But here’s the thing.  No matter how much the industry cries and screams and moans, The Jay Leno Show will be a success.  How do I know?

My mom.

Sure, you could analyze the tracking numbers, or discuss how much the show costs versus how good the ratings are, but I’ve come to realize that the most reliable bellweather of success is my mom.

If my mom has heard of something, be it a book or a movie or a TV show, that means it has so permeated the culture as to be inescapable by even a grey-haired, retired school teacher whose favorite band is and always will be The Beatles.

Furthermore, if my mom’s eight old biddy friends all discuss a particular show, and profess a desire to watch it (like my mom told me they did last night), then that show will be huge.

And we’re all going to be out of work.

Holding Back

Many people seem to be under the misapprehension that we in the office like to hold on to things. Several times a day, I get calls asking if a prelim callsheet has been published, or if a package has arrived, or if the latest draft of the script is out.

You know what? No. If your package arrived, we would have called you. Hell, we probably would’ve just brought it to you. We will distribute the call sheets as soon as we get them. That’s what we do. Hell, it’s practically all we do.

Yesterday, I handed a schedule to our costume supervisor, and she had the gall to ask, “When did this come out?”

Lady, I just put it in your hand. Just now. You remember that, right? I sure do.

When do you think it came out?

Something’s Wrong

Every once in a while, when I’m delivering stuff to set, the crew starts rolling before I get off the stage, and I’m stuck until the end of the take (or takes).  Yesterday was one of those times.

With nothing to better to do, I watched the monitor.  After the fourth or fifth “Goign again!”, I stopped paying attention to the actors, and noticed the moon on the translight looked kinda fake. I went over to the 2nd AD and asked if that was due to the quality of the video tap, or if it would look that fake at home.

He shrugged. “If the audience notices the backdrop, there’s something seriously wrong with the scene.”

There’s a an old canard you’ll hear on any set when something goes wrong– “We’ll fix it in post.” Usually, they’re just kidding, like muttering, ”Yeah, but last time I didn’t receive a piece. I could set the building on fire,” at someone’s office birthday party.

But when someone claims, “If they notice X, we’ve got bigger problems,” they really mean it.  They’re saying, in effect, “Shut up, and let’s move on.”

Of course, it’s impossible to make a movie without any goofs, gaffs, or screw ups, and it is often a judgment call whether a technical error is egregious enough to destroy the suspension of disbelief.

But I hear this excuse a lot. I think it puts too much pressure on the actors and script, and doesn’t fully recognize the crew’s role in creating a world for characters and story to exist in. If we can see that that world is made of papier-mâché and chewing gum, it doesn’t really matter how good the actors are.

I like to use the phrase as a barometer for the quality of show I’m on. You’ll hear it employed far more frequently on a shitty straight-to-DVD movie than on a major scripted network show.  Thankfully, this was the first time I’d heard it on this show.

So far.

Late Night Tours

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.

Not In The Budget?

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.

A Clarification

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.

“It’s exhausting but fun.”

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’s what it seems like, from the perspective of one production assistant.

With No Power Comes No Responsibility

I’ve worked on some horrible shows. (One of the quaint anachronisms from the days when everyone in Hollywood was a former vaudvillian is the fact that everything, be it a movie, a TV series, or even a music video, is called a “show.”)

I worked on a horror movie about giant eels. I worked on a game show that required no more skill than picking a number and hoping for the best. I even worked on a Nick Nolte movie.

I’ve never worked on porn, per se, but I have PAed on movies with enough soft-core sex to make the program director for Cinemax blush.

After hearing of a recent trek into Mediocre Entertainmentland, a friend once asked, “How do you sleep at night?”

She had a point. I’ve dreamed my whole life of becoming a successful writer. I studied film and television for four years at one of the best film schools in the world. I spent the better part of my adult life working in the entertainment industry. All I have to show for it was a list of credits on films I can’t even show my mom. (“The Bloodening II? What’s that one about, dear?”)

So how do I sleep at night? Easy. I didn’t do it.

I recognize that, for the most part, a monkey could do my job. Not even a smart monkey, either. A surly, slightly retarded monkey could be a PA.

But more important still is knowing that, no matter how good or bad a job I do, it was no effect on the final product. None whatsoever.

I could be the best PA in the world, and the movie could still suck. (This has happened on more than one occasion.) The Wire may have shitty PAs, but you wouldn’t know it. Nothing any PA has ever done has ever wound up on any screen, big or small.

This all sounds depressing, I’m sure, but it’s really quite liberating. I can, and do, mock the shows I work on. Why not? I didn’t make it.

And here’s the best part– when you’re sitting at home, watching a terrible made-for-TV movie on cable, you might wonder what kind of idiot would make this garbage.

I know that idiot, and let me tell you, he’s even more dumb than you imagine.

Why Would Anyone Want To Be A PA?

The hours are lousy, the pay is worse. No one respects you. If anything goes wrong, it’s always your fault. And everyone tells you you’re lucky just to be here.

There is one advantage– free time.

We’re often busy, it’s true, but a lot of a PA’s job is simply to be ready. While we wait for some to actually need us, we sit around, reading old scripts, checking Facebook or, say, writing a blog.

The best use of this free time, though, is to figure out what you actually want to do when you’re no longer a PA.

Sure, you want to be a director, but odds are, you won’t be. Still, they say shoot for the moon and land among the stars. So which star do you want to land on? Do you want to be a cinematographer? A production designer? An editor?

Now is the time to figure out what department suits you best. Every department has its own personality. A grip is very different from a hair stylist, and neither are remotely like a script supervisor.

I knew an old gaffer on a game show who was the most racist, sexist, homophobic person I’d ever met. On a hot day, he would say, “Boy, it is hotter than Satan’s vagina out there.”

Inevitably, someone would respond, “But Satan doesn’t have a vagina…”

He would look at them sideways, and ask, as if speaking to a not-very-bright child, “Do you honestly think the source of all evil in the world is not a woman?”

I can’t imagine a make-up artist who would say that.

When I was a senior in film school, I met a freshman who asked me what classes I’d recommend. I suggested a cinematography course, taught by one of my favorite professors. The kid told me he wasn’t interested in cinematography. He wanted to be a director. He wanted to have a “vision.”

I asked him, “How do you know what kind of vision you have, if you don’t know how to turn on the lights?”

That’s why I think everyone should be a PA. Working in the office, I meet folks from every department, usually when they’re asking me to get something for them. In a position like that, you quickly learn the types of personalities drawn to each position. The ACs are very organized and very professional; the hair and make-up people are always friendly, but rarely know exactly what they want; the art department just wants everything.

Being a PA is the best opportunity to learn who everybody is and what they do. And, possibly, what you will do.

What The Heck Is A Production Assistant, Anyway?

A PA is all things to all people. By which I mean, any shit job that nobody else wants to do is given to the PAs. Making coffee, making copies, driving all the way across town to drop off a script and thus adding unnecessary greenhouse gases to our environmental crimes. (Seriously, e-mail exists. What’s the logic to hand-delivering scripts anymore?)

I had a friend who’s first job in the business was on a porno. At the end of the day, the AD gave him a box and told him, “Clean these.” It was a box of dildos.

(On an unrelated note, I don’t know whether I’m happy or sad that Firefox doesn’t know how to spell “dildo.”)

Most departments have their own PAs. They’re still gophers, just a specific kind of gopher. It’s a way of climbing up the ladder in a particular craft. (Personally, I’m trying to work my way up to being a writers’ PA.)

I should note that a production assistant is different than a personal assistant. Those poor kids have the fun of experiencing The Devil Wears Prada, Live!, every day. I did that for about a year, and I wanted to kill myself. The only thing that kept me going was a blind optimism in my future job prospects, and a healthy thirst for revenge.

But no assistant has it worse than the agent’s assistant. Watch the documentary Swimming with Sharks, and you’ll get an idea. (IMDb lists it as a comedy, for some reason, but I’m sure that’s just a typo.)