Memory #1: Snow Storms and Little People
Decades ago, very early in my career, I got a job as a Production Assistant on TV commercials after a two-year stint working for the Oscar-winning Producer Julia Phillips (“The Sting”, “Taxi Driver”, and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”) as her second assistant. While Julia held the rights to the book “Interview with the Vampire”, her deal at Paramount fell through after she published the best-selling book “You’ll Never Eat Lunch In this Town Again”, exposing industry secrets, calling out Hollywood indiscretions, and naming names. She didn’t eat lunch in town again, and her production company closed.
My good friend from high-school offered me a job as a P.A. at Dektor/ Higgins, one of the top television commercial companies in the US, working for Leslie Dektor. I was going to be a “Set P.A.” No one explained what this entailed, other than I would be on set for a shoot, so I put on a sports jacket and tie, and my most expensive shoes at the time, and showed up to work. I was widely mocked for my fashion choices. The production manager led me to the wardrobe trailer, and I was redressed in more casual clothing, all of it oversized. (It was a football commercial wth athletes.)
One of my first assignments was to do a Starbucks coffee run (Starbucks was relatively new in L.A. at the time, and considered fancy. How times have changed.) in my beat-up old car, which was parked all the way across the street on the top floor of the parking structure (not priority parking, I assure you) and get something like 14 specialty coffees.
When I returned from the run, which took way longer than necessary, as I spent most of the time trying to figure out how not to spill the coffee all over my car, I signed back in at security at Raleigh Studios. There was special security that day as First Lady Nancy Reagan, about to leave office with her husband, came to visit Michael Jackson, who was filming a new music video at the studio. There were secret service all over the place, and black pipe-and-drape tenting covering most of the main parking lot on the way to MJ’s stage.
In the far corner of the lot, outside another stage, a huge Olympic ski run had been built, with blue screens behind it, and snow machines blowing wildly, as the 4-foot tall Energizer Bunny puppet was coming down the run. The number of people handling the setup must have neared 50. It was a beautiful sunny day, and the far corner looked like the Swiss Alps in Winter.
To the left of the main entry lot, there were about a hundred Little People (back then, there was another word for them), standing around waiting in line to audition for something. They were a rowdy bunch, all ready to dazzle and shine in front of the casting people in some room somewhere.
It was at that moment, with the snowstorm on the right, all the little people on the left, and MJ and the secret service agents straight ahead, and me hoping not to spill the two big bags of Starbucks, I realized how much I wanted to be a part of this crazy train, and start building a career.
The next day, I came back to work, appropriately dressed in jeans and sneakers. It’s become my uniform since.