11/28/22
Newletter172
The Crack of Dawn
Here’s a vague old memory of an unimportant event that probably wouldn’t happen this way now. I was riding my bicycle to Hebrew school. Given the house we lived in when this event occurred, I’d speculate that this was 1966. I stopped my bike at the crosswalk of Coolidge Hwy., a main road, waited for the crossing signal, rode out into the crosswalk and was hit by a car. I slid up the road about ten feet on my side. A man got out of the car, ran up and helped me to my feet, asking, “Are you OK?” A few other cars stopped to watch. My knee and elbow were bleeding, but not bad. My bike wasn’t in great shape. I told the guy, “I think I’m all right.” He said, “Good,” got in his car and drove away. So did everyone else. That was it. I rode my wobbly bike to Hebrew school and never told my parents.
And now for something completely different: on Xena we had a German makeup lady named Linda, which apparently wasn’t her real name that was unpronounceable. Linda was German and married to the French-Canadian set photographer, Pierre. At that time, I was not only listening to Beethoven’s 9th symphony every day, but I was also trying to learn the German lyrics phonetically. I would come onto the set in the morning singing the Ode to Joy, “Oh, oh, freude!” which means, “Oh, joy!” Linda often sat next to me at video village, and I would constantly question her about Germany, carefully avoiding the topics of both World Wars. I once asked, “Do you drive a Mercedes?” Linda appeared disgusted, “Of course not, I drive a BMW. I’m from Munich. Fuck the Prussians.” After many other questions about Germany, Linda finally said, “I don’t want to talk about Germany. I’m ashamed of being German.” I’d never met anyone who was ashamed of their heritage before, so I stopped asking questions.
In New Zealand, if you don’t pay your taxes they come, arrest you, and put you in jail. Early one morning on the set of Xena, cops arrived. They spoke to the 1st AD, who pointed to the DP, Donny Duncan. Donny was great. He was a terrific DP, had a lively, upbeat attitude, moved quickly, and often brought a small guitar to the set and would play songs. I believe he was in the midst of a song when the cops took him away for non-payment of his taxes. Well, one of the worst things you can do to a film crew is to take away the cinematographer. Both the camera crew and the lighting crew were now without a leader, and both crews looked truly helpless. The producers showed up immediately, but Donny was going to jail no matter they said. If I recall correctly, it cost $125,000 an episode, in U.S. dollars. So, it cost about $10,000 an hour to just sit there. Within two hours we had a new DP, Allan Guilford, a wonderful person and a really good DP (New Zealand had a lot of good DPs then), and all was well, then the power went out. It wasn’t the building; it was the whole block.
Since I tell these stories in a stream-of-consciousness fashion, some of them end up being told backwards. This was the first episode of the second season, entitled, Warrior…Princess… Tramp, which is both mine and Lucy Lawless’s favorite episode. The power was out on the whole block. Our soundstage was actually a warehouse in downtown Auckland, conveniently located between a car wash and panel beater, which is a bump shop, and just wonderful for sound.
So, the fates took away my DP, got me a new one, then killed the power for several hours. What are you going to do? Clearly, both of these delays were not my fault. I recall sitting on a strip of lawn beside the immobile car wash in the warm sun with Ted Raimi and Renee O’Conner. We were laughing heartily – it wasn’t our $10,000 an hour – with the crew playing hackysack. I probably felt as good as I ever have in my whole life (but didn’t know it).
Being a loudmouthed American jerk, which the reserved New Zealanders found quaintly amusing, I gathered them all together there in the parking lot (car park), during this power outage, and apologized to them. I said, “I’m sorry that I’m making the best episode of the second season first, so the whole rest of this season will be downhill, but that’s how it goes, mates.”
And a new day dawns.