"JUST" A P.A.

Not too long ago I ran into my local café to grab a cup of joe when I heard that sound come from behind me while I stood in line. “Oh hey, David. Do you remember me? We met at the blahditty blah blah.” Now I’m never rude. There are worse things in the world than being a little late. So I feigned recognition and pressed flesh. “Oh yeah. Of course. How ya doin?”

And the guy proceeded to introduce me to his table mate who is a filmmaker from the neck up. The guy wanted to know how he could get his hands and legs involved. “Well,” I asked him, “what’s your end game?” And the guy leaned over, speaking to me in hushed tones, so closely he was breathing my air. “I’m actually a writer. But I’m willing to start anywhere. I’m willing to be just a P.A.”

KAHTHUNK.

And I smiled my smile. Some folks refer to it as THE smile, but only when I’m not in the room. I’ve been told it’s a kinda scary thing to see this “smile” of mine. In my head it’s just a reaction to me shutting down. It’s a little flashing of the gums before the switch flips to the off position. On the inside I’m hearing a pristine “click.” On the outside I’m just showing my teeth in a grin that doesn’t quite reach the eyes. I guess that could be creepy.

A lot of folks hold strong to the romantic notion that they can get their break in the film business by starting as a production assistant. That somehow getting that job is so easy because anyone can do it. “I’ll start at the bottom; I’m willing to get coffee.”

Again the cliché.

Let me tell ya, getting coffee for a crew at three in the afternoon after they’ve been shooting seven hours isn’t as easy as all that. There’s an art to getting the orders, calling the order in, picking it up and getting back in an hour. First off, don’t bother asking for who takes what in their java. What you do is make sure that you bring cream back with you to the set. And as for sugars, or Sweet & Lows, or what the hell ever, you make sure every cup has a cup cozy. You take the coffee stirrer and you put it in the cup cozy, and then you jam two of every single sweetener known to man into the space between the stirrer and the cup. Who cares what the drinker takes in their coffee? You’ve covered all your options. That’s what good production assistants do—they know they are doing a job with limited information and so they anticipate and compensate. It’s really so much more than “just getting coffee.”

See, believe it or not there is in fact a career path in film. If you want to be a director, then make your movies. Make them by yourself, make them with your friends, but make them. You can start by being a P.A., work up to being on set, and then work up to being an assistant director. Make no mistake, though—in order to become a director you’ve gotta have work to show. It doesn’t have to be huge, it doesn’t have to have crane shots or zollies. It just has to be good, complete in its vision and void of needed caveats when being watched. If you want to be a storyboard artist or an art director, then learn to draw and become an art department assistant. And so on and so on and so forth.

However, if you come to me and say, “hey… I want to be a production assistant,” the first thing I’m going to ask is “Why?” Being a P.A. is a tough job. You’ll be standing in a neighborhood street telling people they can’t get into their own homes until you get the “all clear” over your walkie. You’ll be spending long nights in the office waiting to confirm the package has arrived in London and is sitting on someone’s desk on another continent. You’ll be making reservations for the producer, then making sure his itinerary is waiting at the front desk in all the hotels on his three-city tour. (That way when he—as in me—loses the copy you originally gave him, he doesn’t have to call in the middle of the night to ask “Where am I supposed to be?”) You’ll be making sure the theatre staff has pictures of your producer ahead of time… so when he walks through the door of a theatre he’s never been in before, people he’s never met will say, “Hello, Mr. Light Of My Life. We have your seats reserved for you in the theatre.” You’re going to have to pick up garbage after all the extras have trashed the stadium. I’m going to give you my soaking-wet lap top and tell ya to get the data off it because it slid off the boat I was on last weekend.

KERPLOOSH.

But if you get it right, then you’re agreeing to come into the family. You’re part of the small crew that is, in fact, the tail that wags the dog. As a P.A., you become a representative of Production. You are the producer’s proxy, his or her eyes and ears. You are part of the crew, but also set apart. You are Production, anointed. Good production assistants are worth their weight in gold. They’re going to help make a hard job that much easier. They’re going to take care of the job, and the crew, and me… and in return, I will take care of them. I will go to dinner with other producers and brag about my P.A.s. And the first question asked is, “When are they available?”

I will send you on your way and your success will be a source of pride for me. Just as you started, I started… and just as someone taught me, I will teach you. The lessons learned are handed down and you become the embodiment of an entire generation of producers who came before you.

So why do you want to be a P.A.? There really is only one answer. Here's a hint. The word "just" ain't in it.

THE LESSON OF SNACKS

We’d been shooting at a record pace and the crew, though green, was really rising to the occasion. They were actually pretty amazing. We were shooting in an elementary school kitchen and who knew that they didn’t build those things with electrical outlets? We had to run miles of extension cords out of the kitchen into the auditorium right next door. And because we were in tight quarters, we had to make sure the boom didn’t keep dipping into frame.

“Boom’s in! (pause) Boom’s out! Thank you!”

The day was dragging on when the Production Manager came up to me with her baseball cap a little askew and said, “David, look. We have to get this moving. The talent is losing interest and just bouncing off the walls. Sound is ready to go, but they’re getting antsy too. They’re waiting on the camera guys, and it’s getting really hot in here with all the lights.”

“So,” I answered, leaning over the camera and not listening, “lets make a coffee run and . . .”

“Dude, we don’t drink coffee.” She said, interrupting as she was often prone to do. She looked down at her clipboard as if to confirm. “You’re weird.”

And I stood up then to focus on the person in front of me who was all of three feet tall. “Is it snack time?”

“Yeah. That’s a good idea. You know . . . we need our snacks.” She turned on her heels and padded away to break the crew for snack time where all the assortments of apples, trail mix, juice boxes and granola bars would be retrieved from colorful, overstuffed backpacks and devoured. It’s like a travelin’ craft service table but you know . . . healthy.

Kristin Fairfield walked up to me smiling. “This is going well, huh?”

“Totally,” I answered, looking at the crew sitting down in a circle on the floor to eat. “They are totally working as a production crew. Except, you know, they’re ten years old. “

“Eight, nine and ten,” she corrected.

“Oh, yeah. THAT!”

See, when Kristin first asked me if I wanted to help teach a video class for her Piedmont Performing Arts School (www.piedmontperformingartsschool.org) students, I thought this would be a great way to pay it forward. I was filled with do-gooder arrogance because I was going to “give back.” What didn’t dawn on me, as I charged forward into sainthood, was that the relationship you have as a teacher with your students is utterly reciprocal. And classrooms . . . well, they don’t all have chalkboards and desks.

Not too long ago I was producing a shoot where everything that could have gone wrong went wrong. We were shooting in a garage and Mother Nature had decided that was the day to make up for the long dry spell she had bestowed upon northern California. She obviously felt bad, because she gave us an entire season’s worth of rain all in one night. The roof was leaking, fuses were blowing and the generator was sputtering. It was one of those shoots where getting the shot was like waging a war and we were on the march. The crew was pissed off and wet, the actors were both wet and temperamental because they had been waiting around all day. Everyone was wet. Everyone was pissed. I decided to take a moment to myself, you know, one of those moments you just NEED to take. I ducked outside for just a moment. A moment when I could make the decisions I needed to make. Looking skyward, the cold drops hitting my face, I remember thinking, “this is what they mean when they say shit raining down.” Inhale. Exhale. Inhale . . . interrupt.

“Uh, David?” I heard my name and looked to see the director shuffling over to me in a fashion that telegraphed he was losing his way. “David, can I talk to you for minute? I just feel a little lost. It’s not what I had planned. It’s looking really different and I don’t know if I can do this.”

I looked at him and was slightly awestruck at how much drier than me he was. In my head I heard the sound of chains being dragged across a cement floor and an animal growled somewhere.

“What do you mean?” I asked, and wondered if I spit right then would my saliva burn a hole in the ground?

“Well . . . it’s just . . . it’s all so different and wot wot, wot wot, wot waaaaaaaat.” The director became Charlie Brown’s teacher and as I looked past his head, I saw a huge spider trying for all it was worth to repair and rebuild its web. How weird.

And I started to laugh. Laugh at the rain, laugh at the spider, laugh at the pissed-off actors and the smoking generator that had a puddle pooling beneath it. We were all going to get electrocuted. And I laughed. And I muttered to myself. “I’m weird.”

“What?” the director asked, holding storyboards above his head in an attempt to stop the rain from hitting his cerebellum.

“Have you eaten today?’ I asked.

“I had a little something at lunch. But look, I need to talk to you . . .”

“That was six hours ago.” Putting my arm around his shoulder I said, “Let’s get you something to snack on.”

SERVE IT UP

Basking in the afterglow of good work released unto an appreciating world, I thought it would be a good idea to announce I was starting a blog. You know, add my voice to the chorus of the hive mind. One little gnat amongst the swarm of locusts.

Bzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Of course, that was last week. Put a loud mouthy film producer drunk on optimism (and Maker’s Mark) on Facebook, and well, this is what you get! A bug-eyed insomniac hunched over his laptop on Sunday night? Evidently so.

How do I get myself into these things? Oh, yeah. See above. Big Mouth. Why’d I want to start a blog? Oh yeah, it’s that big mouth thing again. But it might be more than that. I was sitting around in a hotel bar with friend of mine who’s also a producer. The bartender asked if we wanted another round, which of course we did. He was a clever guy, in that bartender-clever sorta way, when he enlightened us.

“You know, there’s a rule somewhere that says you’re only supposed to have two of these,” he said as he shook another two Belvedere martinis to be served straight-up.

“Did you just start your shift?” I asked.

“Yeah” he said.

“Well, then I’m gonna lie to you and say this is only my fourth or fifth one.”

“Ehhh… I know you guys can handle it. You both producers?”

“Yeah. What gave it away? The blazer? The glasses?” I asked, recalling how awkward I felt watching Deniro in What Just Happened? wear the exact same thing on-screen that I was wearing in my seat.

“The satellite dish stickin’ outta your head. You guys all sit the same way. Like you may be takin’ a load off but that doesn’t mean you’re turned off.” And he slid the martini in front of me. “Enjoy.”

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.

See, we Producers are in fact a breed unto ourselves. The good ones, anyway. Sure, the field is crowded with childhood buds of the director, or prematurely promoted production managers. There are your nervous wreck producers, and your martyr producers and your smart-asses. There are also your know-it-alls and the occasional burn-out. But the good producers know that the weight of the world rests on their shoulders and they are neither put upon nor reluctant. They are the ones who move through crowded rooms giving everyone their undivided attention in ten minute intervals. A good producer is the grounding force that floats from one conversation to the next. While directors care about their vision, their story, their childhood and what the work is going to look like, producers care about all that and HOW the work is gonna get done—not if. Good producers don’t dwell on if. It’s the how that preoccupies us. And I think that’s where the calm comes from. When you know something is gonna get done, then it’s all about what cup you’re going to drink from. Will you and your crew sip rare wine from a gleaming silver chalice or will you all take big gulps from a bucket-o-suck? Either way you’re going to be pulling an Oliver Twist and asking for more.

Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.

The secret that I’ve learned after all these years is that how you start a show is pretty much how you’re gonna end it. To my producer peers I say in earnest—take breaks in between shows. Hug your wife, get your kids haircuts, and spend hours watching Little Nemo over and over and over. I mean, I knew I was burning out when my family and I went to the Grand Canyon and as I gazed upon one of the greatest wonders of the world, I started thinking “those clouds look contrived.” Yup. Time for a break.

When you’re starting a show, have a lil’ sunshine shoot out your whazoo. Even if you’re faking it. Make sure you go over-budget on food. Treat your crew well. Bring in a manicurist for the ladies and a barber for the men. And feed them REALLY well. Food is your friend.

And to the crews—remember that when you’re talking to your producer, he or she is a chameleon and you’re probably the sixth shade of green they’ve had to take on that day. Forgive the fact that they don’t know every line from Chuck Jones’s cartoons (although, pat, pat, I do.) And, give them props when you hear Jay-Z blasting from the production office. Give ‘em a point that it’s not Kanye. And if you haven’t heard from the producer or production team in a while pick up the phone. Remember, you’re a planet rotating around the sun. Not the reverse.

(pause)

Wow. Well evidently this blog thing is gonna work out just fine.

Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.