7/28/24
Newsletter #633
The Crack of Dawn
In Anne Tyler’s book, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (which I read about 40 years ago, but I read it twice), the grandma of the family becomes extremely agitated and begins to desperately search through her belongings. Concerned, her grown kids ask what she’s looking for, but she doesn’t know. Finally, she finds an old photograph of herself as child, covered in mud, holding a trowel and smiling. That’s what she was looking for. Her kids ask her why she needed to see that photograph so badly. She says, “I knew that there was at least one moment in my life when I was completely happy.”
This isn’t the same thing, but I have an oddly warm memory of a two-day shoot that I worked on in L.A. as a production assistant in 1991. This was Billy Connolly’s first HBO comedy special. Previous to this, no one had ever heard of Billy Connolly. Having no idea who this guy was, in my mind he was some young upstart, hotshot—except that he was already 49—and now he’s knighted, is Sir Billy Connolly, and he’s 81.
Honestly, who the comedian was on this shoot meant absolutely nothing to me. I had worked for this company a couple of times, and they primarily shot live music events, and were very good at it. I had also worked for them on Sting’s 40th birthday concert at the Hollywood Bowl, and Ted Nugent with Damn Yankees in concert. In any case, my first job as the one and only PA on this Billy Connolly show, which was shot at the “historic” Wilshire Ebell Theater in L.A. (dating all the way back to 1927) was to do nothing except to answer a telephone, should it ring. My job began the day before the show. A yellow phone line came out a window connected to a yellow phone. I was assigned to sit on the lawn of the Wilshire Ebell Theater on a beautiful, warm, clear day and answer the phone. Should anyone, like caterer, or an equipment company, or whatever, want to know anything about the show, my job was to tell them. In any case, there weren’t very many calls. I had the whole day to read.
So I read all of Alice Hoffman’s book, At Risk. It’s a very moving, well-written story about a young girl getting a bad blood transfusion that results in her death, and it made me cry. I don’t cry easily, and I was surprised at myself. Sitting there alone on the green lawn of the Wilshire Ebell Theater with a yellow telephone beside me.
Just an old, stray memory.
Nice Piece. -I too find it worthwhile to enjoy warm memories. a