7/23/23
Newsletter #405
The Crack of Dawn
When I was little I used to love watching my mother put on her makeup. She was extremely good at it, and the blending of shades was the most important aspect. It is really odd that I’m not gay. Also, my mother was at her sharpest when putting on her makeup, and was happy to explain what she was doing, or just gab. Furthermore, it was just a way to be with her on my own, without my noisy sisters around. Anyway, I suppose I was seven or eight, and I saw that the little case from which she was getting her powder had MF printed on it. I asked, “What does MF stand for?” Before she could say, “Max Factor,” my dad, not known for his rapier-like wit, hollered from the bathroom, “Motherfucker!”
On a movie set there are several crucial relationships with the director that the director must establish very quickly, know where they stand, and stick to it. First of all is the 1st Assistant Director. Most people don’t realize this but the director does not run the set; the 1st AD does. The 1st AD is in charge of everybody on the set (including safety, so why isn’t the 1st AD charged in the Alec Balwin case?), and answers directly to the production manager (now called the UPM, meaning, “unit production manager”) and the producer, with whom they are in constant contact by walkie talkie all the time. The 1st AD is constantly reporting how much of the shooting schedule has been achieved. This issue would happen to some directors every day, but only happened to me a few times in eight years — falling behind.
I don’t wear a watch. Nevertheless, I have a drawer full of them, and I absolutely wear one when I’m shooting. Being a film director, but even more so, a TV director, makes you the time-management expert on the set, along with the 1st AD, although you’re in slightly adversarial positions. Here is an invaluable piece of information I learned from an experienced 1st AD – you can’t get a shot in less than 30 minutes. Many directors have believed that they could get a shot faster than that, and they were mean near always wrong. Therefore, a shooting day is 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM, giving you twelve hours. Except that you lose an hour for lunch, and in New Zealand, we lost another half-hour for afternoon “tea.” OK, twelve hours immediately becomes ten-and-a-half hours. At 30 minutes a shot, that’s 21 shots, if you’re cooking and moving fast. Getting a hundred people in the cast and crew to do what they need them to do quickly and well, 21 times a day, is a trick. That’s why I wear a watch on the set and look at it constantly. Bruce Campbell’s imitation of me directing is of me turning my watch back and forth on my wrist, where it feels unnatural, and is the constant issue.
When you shoot, you bleed money. We were spending a million and a quarter an episode, back in the 1990s.
OK, as I said, this only happened to me a few times in eight years. Maybe five times. But it happened to the other bozo directors almost every day. When you fall 15 minutes behind, the 1st AD certainly mentions it. On Xena, when you fell 30 minutes behind, you’d glance over your shoulder and there would be the co-producer, Liz Friedman, who might smile and wave, meaning, the Sword of Damocles was now dangling by a hair over your head. Should you then fall another 45 minutes to an hour behind, you would glance over your shoulder and there would be the producer, Eric Gruendeman, conferring with Liz and the 1st AD. Now you were in trouble. They would all come walking over, looking grim, and ask, “What are you going to do?” If you don’t have an answer for that question, you’ve just said, “I don’t want to be a TV director.” Unlike most of the other yo-yo directors, I always had a plan. I put a mark next to everything in the script that I didn’t like; the lines or scenes that the producers and the writers wouldn’t cut because they loved them so much for no good reason. When the power trio — producer, co-producer, 1st AD — surrounded me and asked, “What are you going to do?” I would go to any marked scene that I didn’t like and physically tear it out of the script, throw it on the floor and say, “There, now I’m back on schedule.” Thus, the crappy scenes were eliminated without a discussion, I was back on schedule, and all was well with the world.
Therefore, it’s important to have a good relationship with the 1st AD, attempting to get them on your side so they’re not just a rat for the producer.
One bad habit I had to get the ADs on Hercules and Xena to break, which they would pull on me and every other director all the time, was having to shoot the very end of the show on the first day. Often, the elements of the first scene are the same as the last scene. For instance, in Hercules in the Maze of the Minotaur (1994, I include the Australian video cover, which says, Hercules and the Maze of the Minotaur), Hercules and his buddy Iolaus leave from Hercules’ house, go on their adventure, then return to Hercules’ house. There’s a logic to scheduling both scenes on the same day, at the same location. However, it burdens everybody else with a needless problem – where are the bruises and the blood in the ending scene? You just have to guess, then spend the whole episode trying to hurt them in those places where you thought they might get hurt. It’s ridiculous. So, the third time this was done to me, I called George, the excellent, thickly bearded, 1st AD, and said that it was really stupid to shoot the last scene on the first day, then explained why, and he went deadly quiet. We were both DGA members. 1st ADs make schedules; directors shoot them. On TV, rarely shall the twain meet — it’s stepping into another person’s space. Finally, after a lengthy silence, George said, “Just for you. To make you happy.” In my sunniest tone I said, “Isn’t that your job? To make me happy?” He didn’t agree to that, but he did see my logic and changed the schedule.
Wait. I’ve used up my space, but here’s another George the AD story on that same movie. The camera operator, Ian “Turts” Turtill, was a real dick, obviously hung over and constantly making loud snide comments to everybody. As scenes are shot – 21 a day – I wait for everything I need to shoot the scene – actors, costumes, props, etc. – and when I believe I have them, or enough of them, I tell the actors what I want, and we shoot. Mostly, just like actors and extras, I wait. So, when the costumed actors arrive, I have my short moment to direct. Right at that moment, Turts bellowed, “Get out of the way!” I turned around and he repeated himself, louder, “Get out of the way!” I said, “I’m talking to the actors.” Turts now hollered, “Get the fuck out of the way! I’m trying to focus!” I was aghast, but just walked away, fuming that I didn’t get a chance to do my thing. There was George with his big beard having seen everything. I said to him, barely containing myself, “What happens if I hit the camera operator over the head with a C-stand?” George gave the perfect 1st AD answer. He said, “I’m sure it would slow us down.” So, I didn’t do it.
Aloha.