Do you, too, want to be a fairly competent P.A.? Here's what you'll need:
A Valid Driver’s License
Both Full Stealth and my friend Victor, the main producer on the shoot, had let their driving licenses lapse (because who needs a driver’s license in New York City, right?) As a result, my major responsibility on this shoot was driving the van.
Maps
To be consulted before, rather than after, leaving the last location. In New York, there’s a tricky issue in which avenues run North and which run South. I prefer to figure it out before I get rolling. I like to carry Streetwise Manhattan and Brooklyn.
Sunglasses
Sunscreen
The Not-For-Tourist Guide to New York City
When I wasn't driving, I was a regular P.A. NFT was invaluable in finding a liquor store on a Sunday when the director and the band had to have some Petron for a shot (I mistakenly got him Citron instead, but he made do.)
Love for your Mirrors
I kept trying to check my blind spot through the rear windows despite the fact that cargo vans do not have rear windows.
A Ride Along
This is a person who's job is to ride in the passenger's seat, be a sounding board on my opinion about the route I'm taking and the actions of the driver in front of me, and help me parallel park. Indispensable, and surprisingly easy to talk to - I could give you a run-down on the careers of at least three ride-alongs from this shoot alone.
Two to Seven Dirty Words
I don't usually curse like anything but the most mild-mannered of sailors, but driving this van in Manhattan I was cursing at a level I usually reserve for Spurs games.
Because of how the New York is laid out, there is almost always someone pulling in to my lane. Saturday night, I dreamed I was in the van, surrounded by a sea of taxi cabs.
Sunday night, I dreamed I was parking.
A MetroCard
Driving made me realize that New York is a walking city. I’d known it before, but looking up the middle of an avenue at the beautiful canyon of buildings had made me suspect otherwise. Now I know that when I'm driving in New York, I can’t look at the scenery because I’m too busy waiting for someone to swerve in to my lane.
Respect
Actors’ jobs are harder than I thought. Facing a 6:00 a.m. call, I was considering the merits of picking up a copy of Backstage and heading for a cattle call. Acting seems easier than heavy lifting.
Not necessarily so. Film actors have to do the same thing 16 times in a row. You could argue that this is easy when the task is reliving the death of your dog to produce a simulation of the emotion of sadness, but you can't argue that it's easy when it's rocking out to a song (headbang injuries) or even climbing a flight of stairs in heels. That takes endurance.
A Sense of Responsibility, Not Liability
There is a fine line between asking for the information I need to do the job and being a whiny bitch. Producers are busy; the problem they assign to me is not the only one they have to solve. I can ask them the best way to get something done, but I learned there was about a five-minute limit to each discussion.
The worst thing a P.A. can do is to not act responsibly - show up late or high, crash the van, shit like that. But if you have a P.A. who is complaining that he can't do things when he can and who's not willing to be liable for his assigned problems, then he's just as useless.
Working knowledge of The A-Team
I'm happy to declare that A-Team is now a verb. It means to pull a van over in a place where parking is impossible, put on the hazard lights, have every available crew member load equipment in through all available doors, pick up a ride along (generally the assistant cameraman with the camera on his lap) and speed off in to traffic.
I know I found myself whistling the theme song, and I’m sure I heard Full Stealth doing it, too. Later, we decided that if we were the A-Team he would be Hannibal, Speedrail would be Murdoch and I would be Mr. T.
No Outstanding Warrants For Your Arrest
I had one very specific moment of paranoia on this shoot. I was standing just inside the Astor Place subway station with a walky and a beautiful young actress. My job was to cue the actress to walk up the stairs.
Suddenly, I felt like I recognized everyone coming down the steps of the subway but I couldn't place them. It took me a minute to realize that this was because everyone coming down the steps was trying to figure out who I was. I normally pride myself in blending in to my surroundings, but a walky and a beautiful actress make a man pretty interesting to passers-by.
Humility
To be a production assistant is to be a small cog in a medium-sized machine. It had been awhile since I had worked on a shoot that I hadn’t produced myself, and the biggest difference was that I did not always know what was going on.
The job of a P.A. is to solve problems, but because real understanding of what’s happening on a set is limited to the director, the producers and key crew members like the director of photography, it is often impossible to understand whether these problems are important.
At one point, I got back from parking the van and a producer told me that the D.P. had left his bag, which contained all the tape stock, in the van.
Because I am not what you would call a prodigy at parking, the van was two long avenue blocks away, where I had found a safe spot next to the cross walk. I hurried to the van with an image of the entire crew standing around, tapping their feet, awaiting this tape stock.
I found the bag, hurried back, rushed in to the studio, announced (rather loudly) "tape stock," and was immediately sushed by a room full of people who were happily making do with the remainder of the tape that had been left in the camera from the day before. Hi. My friends call me schmuck.
Another time I went on an errand to buy a smoke machine. I was not in any deliberate rush, but I took a cab back with a producer's consent and casually walked in with the smoke machine just before the next shoot was going to start. I was, quite to my surprise, the hero of the hour.
A Book
For fire watch. I'm reading the Fall '04 McSweeney's.
A Dotted Line
To be a fairly competent P.A., you must be willing to do the one thing that you don't want to do. For example, my cousin the revolutionary once put on an NYPD T-shirt and diverted traffic away from a shoot in Chinatown, which, by the way, is illegal.
One woman demanded his badge, then threatened to report him to the real cops. He just powered through it. In the rain.
My least-favorite thing to do on a film is returns. I hope I'm not outing anybody here, but it's a common indy film practice to buy something that we need, usually as set dressing, and return it after a shoot to save money.
I hate interacting with service people at all, and I hate asking for things from them even more, but I was the one driving the van, so of course I was asked to do returns.
I'm not going to talk about doing returns for this shoot, but I will tell you a story that I'm pretty sure has just hit the statute of limitations.
We once bought a bunch of sheets to rig a giant screen on a stage. The next day, I had to return the screen to a large store that will remain nameless.
I stood in line, I told them the sheets didn't look right on my bed, and I gave them back. I was asked about the industrial-level dust and filth that the sheets had collected from the stage. I said "my bedroom is really dirty." They took the sheets back, but you can see why this sort of thing leaves a bad feeling in my mouth.
Have the line you won't cross, but make sure it's a dotted line.
A Life (For Purpose of Flashing Before Your Eyes)
At one point I could have hit a family of three (man, woman, tram) while pulling across traffic in to a gas station. One of the producers was in the passenger's seat, a nice woman with her own company and everything, and she yelled “look out!” It was like a parody of a potential traffic accident. I had plenty of time, I slowed down, and I didn't come anywhere close to hitting anyone, but I won't be asking that woman for a driving job.
A Sense of Scale
Because I haven’t done that many of them, each shoot is still a life-changing experience for me. It's nearly impossible to explain to someone who has not spent the day working on a shoot what that day's shoot was like. If you watch Truffaut's Day for Night and Apocalypse Now at the same time, maybe you can come close.
A Couch
For collapsing after three days of this. I have a working theory that any finite amount of stress is okay if I know how many days of it to expect. I'll get to test it soon: I'm driving a grip truck for an indy feature, six-day weeks for one month, starting in just a few weeks.
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2 comments:
i am so sick of not being considered for the part of Mr. T.
sick of it.
Look: I like milk, I hate to fly, and I have a lot of bling. I am Mr. T.
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