maker

The Maker

    A low-budget Matthew Modine and Mary Louise Parker vehicle that I got to work on as a production assistant when they needed an extra person to step in. I did some craft service (refreshments for the crew) a couple of days and cleaning up sets, working in the office, etc. -- basically a friend in the production office helping me out with needed rent money whenever she could while I was waiting for my next scripty job.

Craft service for pick-up nights

    I had a pretty wild work weekend. My friend Tracee called me in to work as craft service (drinks and snacks for the crew) on two days of pick-ups (when they go back to get footage of stuff they missed on principle photography) of that Matthew Modine movie, The Maker. Modine wouldn't be there, nor Mary Louise Parker, but the "up-and-coming" teenage Irish actor Jonathon somebody would be there and it was basically supposed to be half-afternoon/half-night shooting, but it turned into all night shooting both nights. The first night was a drag because they decided at the last minute to have me shop before crew call and then they changed call, so I was working from 9 a.m. to 4 a.m. and they didn't give me much money so the snacks were boring and the drinks were running low (and warm) early.

    The NEXT day (last night), I had borrowed the caterers HUGE Igloo cooler and bought TONS (50 lbs) of ice and a ba-zillion (one litre per crewmember) bottles of soft drinks. I didn't realize when I said to the cashier "And ten bags of ice, please" that the bag boy and I would spend 10 minutes trying to figure out how to fit it all into the car before it melted all over creation (Pasadena to the airport). Then I get there, the crew is split in different directions shooting stuff on the road, no one will come near base camp to eat or drink anything and since we were so close to the beach and it was twilight it was starting to get cold and NOBODY wanted ice, just hot coffee.

    It was pretty relaxing for me at that point--I had more food and drinks than anybody wanted, everybody was gone, and I spent a lot of time sitting by the runway on the hood of my car watching all kinds of international planes take off and land in front of me. Finally Jonny, the Irish kid, shows up and flirts with me mercilessly as he does with all females he encounters, and we all sat down to dinner to listen to some of the guys at my table tell Val Kilmer stories from previous movie sets ("We set him and his girlfriend up in this great place with ceramic fixtures in the middle of the game reserve, so he was pretty happy and always around." "On our show, at the beginning of every set-up, my job was to find Val." "Oh, he's a sonuva-to work for--he went through personal assistants like water!"). It was 10:30 and we knew we'd be there for hours, so the most tiring thing was watching the clock s-l-o-w-l-y push on through the morning (at one point, Tracee said "I think we'll be out of here by one," and I looked at her, she described later, "like she had twelve heads" and told her it wasn't going to happen--"Sure it will! What time is it now?" "Twelve-thirty-five." "Oh.")

    At dinner, Jonny's itching to leave. I tried to reason with him, "The next shot is your martini shot!" (The last shot of the night and in this case, show.) "Don't you want to enjoy this last bit? Then you'll be done and it will all be over." He looked at me, then leaned forward and shot at me, "Dat's whaht dey tol me farh weeks ago!" Of course it took them two hours to set up the shot.

    Later, they were filming drive bys (an ambulance speeding past the camera in one direction, then in another direction, a camera mounted on the hood of a car while Jonny drove through a stop sign, etc). B-camera director told me to ride alongside the driver in the ambulance, then changed his mind. I got a little bummed thinking I could have been in a Matthew Modine movie (as passenger blur, but so what), then got over it.

    Jonny's wrapped finally at 3:30 a.m., and I'm thinking this is a pretty easy night, I'm liking this much more than the night before. Then the 2nd assistant director walked up to me and casually said, "Will you drive the police car?" I casually said, "Sure," pretty pleased to do something on camera. Then he said, "Go to wardrobe and tell her you need the police uniform." Wardrobe! Cool! Although I'm regular person size, not rail-thin actor size, so I feared Wardrobe would turn me away with nothing in my size and that would be that. But Wardrobe was totally prepared and tossed me a police shirt (yea!) and said, "And you'll need to wear your hair up," and I realized I wasn't just driving the police car, I was doubling for Mary Louise Parker. Extra cool.

    The script supervisor messed with my hair and asked me how was I without my glasses and I said, "Blind," and she said Okay, it might be fine. Then the transportation guys showed me how to work the police lights and I positioned the car. The 1st AD gave me my instructions (Caprice drives through stop sign, on my cue you hit the head lights--high beam, since one of the low beams was out--pull out, hit the flashing lights and speed after him), your basic police chase choreography. Action, I gun it, the director Tim Hunter says, "Perfect. Cue the cruiser later on 2." Two more takes (on the last one, innocent on-coming traffic showed up on our deserted road while I was flooring it and the car was fishing, so brake lights showed up before he said Cut, but they said that was okay) and we've wrapped the movie.

    I think I'm sleeping through Labor Day - then I have to look for more work!

After the story -

    Jonny turned out to be the only up-and-coming actor I worked with (so far) who's up and got anywhere - he's Jonathan Rhys Meyers, star of a couple of miniseries, including impressive Golden Globe-winning turns as Elvis and as Henry VIII in The Tudors.

Production Journals - On the Set

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