Chain of Pain - Part 1 - Suckers at the Table

Listen, here's the thing.  If you can't spot the sucker in the first half hour at the table, then you ARE the sucker.
-Mike McDermott, Rounders

The AD is the person you fire when you can't fire the director.
- Raymond DeFelitta*




In his epic book on poker, Super System, Doyle Brunson talks about how what gut reaction really represents is all your combined experiences and observations, many of those observations being subconscious.

Shortly after The Rook wrapped, our AD Van was on to another project.  Three days before production started, he learned Annie, his regular Second AD, could not do the shoot.  He asked me to come on as 2nd AD.

One would think that if someone was a good 1st AD, they would automatically be a good 2nd AD.  That isn't necessarily the case, although it is often true, since inevitably one needs to have been a Second to move up to First.

I had done more 1st AD work on small projects, and had only been a 2nd on one feature, before I was 1st AD on my first feature, Walls and Bridges, so I pretty much was the exception to the rule.  The 2nd AD runs the backset, something I could do very well.  They also handle most of the paperwork, not my strong point. It's not that I don't know the production paperwork, I'm just not naturally a paperwork person.  Additionally, I wasn't the fastest typist in the world at that time (writing constantly has made me a much faster typist).

Van was undeterred.  Van was very much a details person, and a person who had set routines, and didn't like change.  He felt more comfortable with someone he knew.  What a long, interesting trip it had been, from Van not wanting to talk to me on my first day as production manager on The Rook, to feeling he needed me on this film as 2nd AD.

I loved working with Van, and thought we would be a good team, because our different styles complemented each other, and we were on exactly the same page about the big things, especially our belief that professionalism was not a function of budget, and that we could run even the lowest budget project in a professional manner.

Of course, on this film, we would not have any influence on the production side, and this turned out to not be a good thing.

My first day was the production table read meeting, which is sometimes called (I understand) an elements meeting.  I am a stickler for it as AD or LP, and I usually put aside an entire day for it.  The AD runs the meeting, and its mandatory for all production heads.  We go from scene to scene, read the scene, and then go around the table dealing with production issues with the department heads.  Scene reads "Billy gets into the car", the props master is asked if we have the car, what it looks like, etc.  We determine that the actor playing Billy can, indeed, drive.  DP is asked about car mounts, camera car, etc.  So it goes.

It's not as easy a meeting to run, and run properly, as most people would imagine.  Inevitably, people who are not as involved get bored, and everyone feels there is someplace else they need to be and something else they need to be doing.  If you hit a long stretch where one department is not involved, they want to just move on.  I have pretty much banned cell phones, so I don't have people walking off during the meeting taking a call, but its sometimes hard to do with the producer, for whom I make an exception.  Assistants or seconds can come in if something must dealt with during the meeting.

For all of that, it is important to hit each scene, cover each item.   This is the last chance you will all have seated in the same place without the pressure of making the day, and things that seem obvious are exactly the things that will screw you if you don't ask the question and don't deal with them.

At some point in this meeting, it struck me.  It wasn't anything specific, it was just a gut feeling, that the producer, who was a first-timer, was setting Van up to be the fall guy.

We were at the table for more than a half hour, but I knew we were the suckers.

I got the feeling that he did not respect Van or intend on letting Van run the set the way we both felt a set should be run, that he didn't really understand that the AD's job was not, as one person once described it to me, a grip with an attitude.

Van was not a screamer, and I had no patience for screamers, but clearly the producer saw the AD as simply some sort of wagon master whipping the crew to keep them at break-neck speed.

Van and I went for dinner that night, and I told him my feeling.  He didn't see it at all.  Van was always an optimist,  certainly more so than I am, and I hoped he was right and I was wrong.

Day One I learned how some of the cost-cutting done by the producer would hurt us.

The entire production office consisted of two people, the producer and his production coordinator.  If the producer had little experience, the coordinator had none, though he was as a much nicer person.  The producer was young, snippy, and arrogant.

Even at that time, the production office would typically have those five-line phones, and at least three phones.  This would be an absolute minimum, and most of my offices had more.  Those phones would "hunt" (that is the phone company's term for it), so if one line was busy, it would go to the next line.

What this office had was two phones, and, in one of the best examples that we were in trouble, the producer  chose to NOT get call waiting, because it cost a little more.  This was a classic example of being penny-wise and dollar-foolish.  Of course, with the high cost of cell phone rates at that time, they weren't going to pay for a cell phone on set, so I had a beeper.  In the beeper days, an emergency call (something that absolutely had to be dealt with) would get a "911" at the end of it, to distinguish it from just suggesting that you call back when available.

The combined result of these cost-saving measures was that I would get pages from the office with 911 at the end of them, have to find the closest working pay phone, then call, only to get a constant busy signal because there was no call-waiting.  Often the busy signal was actually a result of the coordinator paging me again.

This process meant I often got important information very late, in some case, I didn't get it until someone was actually sent to the set with a message from the office.

We had barely improved on the carrier pigeon.

It was ridiculous, and would have been laughable if it wasn't so frustrating. 

The least favorite part of the 2nd AD's job for me was preparing the call sheet, as it was for most people.  The process, for those who don't know, is that you prep the call sheet with all the information you have from the schedule and the breakdown of the elements, and propose call times to match for crew and cast.  You then show a draft to the AD for their input and approval, and make changes until it gets approved.

Often information throughout the day leads to changes; long days to call time being pushed back, scene missed needs to be added, along with its elements, etc.  Information needs to go back and forth not only between people on set, but also with the office.

Not being able to contact the office meant that getting the information I needed was delayed, and getting the call sheet to Van was delayed, and anyone who has ever been a 1st or a 2nd knows how frustrating that is for both people.

Additionally, I had to coordinate company moves, and I had no UPM or location manager or other help on set.  Of course, I had one passenger van to do the moves, so I was constantly sending 1st team ahead, and having to wait for that van to return to get the next group there, and, inevitably, this lead to delays.  Surprisingly, though, we were not far behind schedule as the end of the first week approached, but we were behind.

If we were struggling on set, the coordinator was so far over his head that he was struggling even more.  Nothing ever got to set on time from the office, in no small part because the coordinator was doing too many things at once and would often have to wait for the producer to get off the phone to make calls that needed to be made.

One morning, as we waited on something we needed to start shooting, I explained to the producer that this could not continue, this for maybe the umpteenth time.  This producer was one of those people who was more concerned about who was to blame than how to get things fixed, so he finally agreed to add a person, if he could find someone with experience that would work for the low rate.

Luckily, I knew just the person.  I called Stacey, my friend from the films I had done with JR.  Stacy, who had worked as location manager and 2nd AD with me, had also worked as production coordinator in the meantime.  She was incredibly well-organized, was capable of turning chaos into order, and she knew how I worked.  All of this made her perfect.

I woke her at about 7AM, and she was showered, dressed and in the production office about an hour later.

Stacey took hold of the office, and things got slightly better, but now that the office was covered, albeit with a slight increase in cost, the producer would focus on anything Van did as an excuse for why we were behind, including rookie errors by the director.

This set up some interesting days, and one so frustrating that it still is clear in my mind all these years later, a day that had everything, including four company moves, rain, overtime, and children, and an overly-chipper new PA.



*Follow the link with Raymond's name for his perfect description of "the chain of pain."

The Bet (or The Fall of Love) - Part 5 - Back(Ground) and Forth

Pool parties (in the movie, that is)

The Bet was the easiest and most enjoyable of shoots for me as an Assistant Director, one on which I gained a good deal of confidence and experience on a movie that stayed on schedule and on which I had a good deal of input.

Making The Bet even more fulfilling for me was that while it had a number of intimate scenes with just a few characters, it also had it's share of party scenes.

I know ADs who love the challenge of stunts or action sequences, and I absolutely understand that take, but for me, I've always prided myself on having the background that looks real, adds dimension to the frame, but never takes away from the action in the foreground.

Those are elements that always catch my eye during a movie, the result of years as an assistant director and probably one of the reasons I don't get a lot of movie dates.  I tend to talk later over dinner about how great background looked, or rather, how it looked dull and boring, the crosses were straight across and not at angles that broke up the frame, or about how one background actor or another did something to stand out and take away from the main action.

I was watching footage from a movie shot in Cambodia on which I was post production supervisor recently, and one scene always bothered me, but I assumed it would be trimmed at some point.  The original editor (we replaced him for other reasons, but missing things like this were among them) kept two characters in front of the lead in the shot after they were done at the counter, and one of the characters kept looking back at the lead for no good reason.  It was distracting and screamed "look at me" and we eventually trimmed the scene to remove it.  Drives me crazy.

I have to credit Adam with dealing with me as a collaborator in these areas; we would spend time discussing these scenes over cognac the day before shooting.  Of course, how we shot those was largely JR's influence, and there were places where everything worked just great.

One was a decadent pool party that took place partly in the main character's head while he was hallucinating.  JR had the idea of shooting it from overhead, looking down at the party.  I proposed staging the action around the pool in something of a Marx Brothers-inspired sequence, where one action would lead to another and that one would set off the next.

I spent way too much time planning and laying it out the night before (I think I recall JR mockingly asking me "How is it going, Herr Director?").  In Europe, AD is considered a stepping stone to directing, but in the US, it is much more a path to producing, and ADs who show interest in direction are often seen as overstepping their bounds.

I have had directors who have gladly had me show them background, and then made mild adjustments, and directors who insisted on choreographing even the most minute part of the background.  It's all within their right, though on a DGA film, a director giving an actor direct instructions can lead to a costly upgrade.  There is a story around about Coppolla insisting on individually directing over 100 bg extras during a scene, and the SAG rep on set being able to get them all an upgrade.  How much of that is lore and how much is true I don't know.

Most ADs I talk to take pride in their background, and while anything that falls on frame part of of the directors vision, we love when we are shown enough trust to make it happen.

Part of this art, on low budget films, is making a handful of people look like a large number of people.  I remember once getting a rather small showing for what was planned as a big night club scene in a film, and I'm still proud that we made about 40 people look like a packed crowd in a rather large nightclub space.

We are also, still, responsible for staying on schedule, so while it may be okay for the director to tinker endlessly with his blocking for principles, the AD doesn't - and shouldn't - have the same free reign.  If the First AD appreciates being given some room by the director, he should also give some of that same room to the 2nd AD, who is often responsible for actually manipulating many of those background players.

I was lucky, as Stacey's background was also as a stage manager, and she and I thought alike and were on the same page in terms of blocking and terminology.

It worked well on most days, but the pool scene was just a step or two off, enough to make it seem forced.  I knew it, and I wasn't going to be the reason it we feel behind.  As I stood on a third floor porch, frantically on the walkie to Stacey to make changes as we did rehearsals and finally runs, Stan came up to me.  he watched a take that seemed worse than the last, and asked what I was doing.

I explained what I was trying to do.  He thought for a moment, then made a suggestion of a change I could try in the sequence.  It worked perfectly.  Wow, how did I miss that.  I started thanking him, and all he said was "you would have seen it eventually," and walked away.

That moment stuck with me over the years, in a business that is so often about celebrating "me," Stan was always willing to give the credit elsewhere.  This is something I have tried to emulate as I got to his position, the ability to support without taking credit, the ability to step aside and give the credit to someone else.

While things were going great for me, they weren't going as well for Stan and Dianne.  We stayed on schedule and were, for the most part, on budget, but there were things Adam and Isabella had not anticipated in their original budget for the film.  This is natural, and today, I always insist on any film I work on as line producer that the budget we work from be one I prepared.  I understand that the bottom line number needs to stay at a certain place, but all too often, directors who are first-time producers have prepared budgets that simply leave out things out of wishful thinking (I will go into budgeting in more detail in posts about line producing).

This was the case with Stan on this film, and he and Dianne, who were also living in the Big House with Adam and Isabella, and Stan soon became persona non grata with them, and by default, because she would support Stan, Dianne was as well.  I discussed this with Stan after the film, and we talked about how someone needs to be at fault for things the producers overlooked, and it would usually be the line producer or production manager.

One day, Isabella "accidentally" locked Stan and Dianne out of their make-shift office for hours of the day in an instance of spite that did nothing but make work go slower.  Producers can do things that, in the long run, go against their best interests if it makes them feel good at the moment, yet another instance of one of the hardest parts of the job being when the people you are working for become one of the main obstacles.

So things went, until we came toward the end of a shoot we all enjoyed just a little too much.  In the next post, I will talk a little about dailies and the putting together of The Bet, and the final screening.

The Bet (or The Fall of Love) - Part 4 - Love (or Something Like It)

In the first part of the tale of  The Bet,  I spoke of the almost idyllic surroundings of our location, a large estate on the outskirts of New Paltz in Upstate New York.  

The shooting days were relatively easy by independent film terms, with the days normally running ten hours, sometimes less if Adam, the director, was happy, and no more than twelve.  The script had no night exteriors to speak of, and a lot of day exteriors, which meant we started early, but not brutally so, usually around 7AM, and were wrapped by 6PM or 7PM.  The First Triumvirate had everything under control, equipment was stored on site and didn't need to go anywhere at the end of the day, so by the time we were picture wrapped, the crew was close to being wrapped as well.

By indie standards, this was like half days, so the crew would end the day with a good deal more energy than would normally be the case after a brutal shooting day.

Take a bunch of city kids, bring them to the country, give them easy days and long nights off, lodging at a motel  just outside of a college town in a pleasant Fall season away from their own environs, and the results are  predictable. 

Part of the equation was drinking. * I was mid-thirties by this time, and drinking was no longer a contact sport or an endurance test, but this wasn't true for a good deal of the crew, many of whom still had the amazing recovery powers of youth.  For the most part, I enjoyed spending time with Stan and Dianne, who did not drink, and JR and Stacey.  JR's drink of choice was Zinfandel, not the robust reds that have emerged today, but those God-awful (my take) blushes, and I don't think I ever saw him have more than two.  A few Jack Daniels, known as sipping whiskey for a reason, with considerable water back, were more my style at the time.

For the crew, drinking was neither the only contact sport nor endurance test.  Film sets are notorious for lust and romance, the natural outcome of high-strung people spending long hours side-by-side.  The Bet had a particularly intoxicating air to it, not only in terms of drink but crew members not just engaging in casual flings but red-hot romances.  It was an amorous game of musical chairs, a twentieth-century Midsummer Night's Dream, with each of the crew members rushing to pair up before the music stopped.**

Jeff, our gaffer, was the romantic of the bunch.  He didn't just fall in lust, he fell in love, the problem being that his passion burned so brightly that the flames soon died and spread to other dry and fertile ground, so he would fall in love at least once a shoot, if not more.  On this particular shoot, his passion found Sonya, our wardrobe assistant, a "relationship" that lasted midway into another shoot,  before Jeff couldn't help himself but fall in love again,

That break-up, on a subsequent shoot, was one I remember, because I was marginally involved.  Jeff was on a shoot with me that Sonya was not on, and it was a day off, and I get a call from Sonya.  We were all one big family, and used to talk to each other all the time.  Sonya asked me to give Jeff a message, and I said I wouldn't be seeing him, because it was a day off.  The silence on the other end of the phone revealed that this was news to Sonya.  I was Jeff''s excuse on this particular day, but Jeff had forgotten to tell me.  I didn't have to guess where Jeff was, and neither did Sonya.

For the duration of The Bet, however, Jeff and Sonya were the perfect couple.

Vera, our sparkly make-up artist, took to our boom operator, Chris, who, while about ten years her junior, had nothing on Vera in terms of passion.  They eventually moved in together and stayed a couple for at least a year, if not a little longer.

Our two lead art department people were already a couple.

A few other long-term and short term relationships came out of The Bet, including at least one or two swaps right out of Fleetwood Mac territory.  (How is it that Fleetwood Mac got the reputation as the Sodom and Gomorrah of Rock and Roll, while the Mamas and the Papas, who did just as much partner swapping over the years, are remembered as sugary sweet?)  The curious thing about The Bet was that not only did it have it's share of flings, but also flowers and dinners and all the trappings of true romance.

I was married at the time, but about to go through the first of what would be two separations.  The film business is not built for relationships, and I admire those who have successfully had long-term marriages in the business, I really do.***  Anyone who has watched any Lifetime shows know that marriages require communication, and spending long hours apart, and being exhausted when you are together, does not foster communication.  Additionally, the freelance life-style means too little time together when you need it, followed by too much time together when you don't.

Love, or the love of love, was not wasted on the young on The Bet.  On one of the last days before heading off for the shoot, Stan and I were going over schedule and planning.  Suddenly, he looked at his watch.  "Gotta go," he said. When I asked if he wanted to get through a little more prep, his answer was, politely, that the prospect of good sex was on the horizon.  "Priorities," was the last thing he said before leaving.

Stan was, as I have suggested before, old school, which included ways that would seem chauvinistic by today's standards.  This was not to suggest that he ever acted as anything but a gentleman with the younger ladies who worked for us; he was, in fact, quite charming.  I do remember, though, one funny incident on Lucky Stiffs.

Stan was a stickler for budget, as is a line producer's want, so I was surprised when, after filling our quota of production assistants, he told me that we had one more.  As AD, I was hardly going to complain, and understood when I saw our newest addition, a fit and attractive young Asian girl with a big smile.  When I looked at Stan for an explanation, he said "You know.  Someone for the grips to play with."  He meant it mostly in jest, but later told me that male crews worked better with pretty women around, as it made them want to show off and work harder, and generally kept them happier.   I can't say that he was wrong.

Adam, our director, was happily married at age seventy, and he and Isabella were clearly an amorous couple, but he had not lost his eye for the young ladies.  Indeed, while he was pleasant on most days, he was in especially fine spirits on days that Debra, our lead actress who was quite attractive, was working.  Additionally, when he told me that they had a large pool of potential production assistants, he originally failed to mention that so many of them were co-eds from one of the local college.  My crew had no shortage of play companions, as Stan would have suggested, and they were quite the happy lot.

In this atmosphere, I thought I could bring happiness on more than a few fronts.  Natasha, who had acted in my staged reading, was a model who was quite pretty and all legs without the insane heels she wore on even casual occasions. I suggested that if she came to set, there might be the possibility of getting some background work, as we were shooting a party scene that required attractive extras.

Natasha jumped at the opportunity, and told me that she could do me a favor, and drive me up to set. I was happy to hear she had transport, as I never much liked crew rides.  I was even more pleasantly surprised to see her pull up in a late-model sports car that seemed out of her price range on her earnings as a aspiring model, and I was correct.  The car belonged to one of her sugar daddies.

It may have been while we were discussing one of them that she slowed as we approached our exit, and by slowed, I mean took us from warp speed to Mario Andretti on a practice run.  We couldn't have hit the exit at anything under 65 mph, when I heard a siren.  She smiled at me and surmised, correctly, that we should pull over.

New York City police can,on occasion, be forgiving; state troopers, not so much, and so it was that I was worried when the lone male trooper asked for the obligatory license and registration.  Natasha handed him her license, and then suggested I look in the glove compartment for the registration.  A quick search of the glove compartment, passenger sun visor, driver sun visor, and, then, with considerably heightened concern, other areas of the car, failed to produce registration.  When the trooper asked her if it was her car, she explained that it was not, it was her friend's.  The trooper looked at me sternly.  Not this friend, she explained, another friend.

While the trooper was considering exactly how many "friends" Natasha had, he asked us to step out of the car, which is usually not a good thing.  In this case, though, it proved to be to our advantage.  Natasha took off a sweater she had on, and, when she got out of the car, heels, legs, short tight dress and all, the combination had a surprisingly numbing effect on the trooper.  She was talking, but I don't think he actually was comprehending any of the words until she got to "if I can give you my number" (followed by the now irrelevant "I'm sure we can clear this all up").

As Natasha got back in the car, she smiled at me in that knowing way that suggested she had no doubt of the positive outcome, one I am sure she had encountered before.

I wasn't wrong about Adam's reaction.  Natasha not only got background work, but he added lines and a scene for her.  At one point, JR turned to me and said, "Like he wasn't distracted enough.  Did you have to bring her?"

Having Natasha as a companion for a few days also made me a little more popular with the Adam, as well as the crew.

Haight-Ashbury may have been the center of the Summer of Love in 1967, but in 1992, the quiet town of New Paltz became home to the Fall of Love.

* For a very good examination of crew drinking on location, I refer you to Hollywood Juicer blog post, Have Gloves Will Travel - Working on Location

**I have stayed true to my code for this blog of not revealing people's personal lives.  The Bet was twenty years ago, and the flings mentioned are long past.  Discussing them here is like adults at their 20th wedding anniversary talking about someone they dated in high school - irrelevant and ancient history.  Even if someone were to realize it was their spouse mentioned here, and I still use only first names, it hardly speaks to their relationship today.
***For the absolutely best exploration of the toxic mix of relationships and the film industry, again, from the Juicer, Industry Romance

The Bet (or The Fall of Love)- Part 2 - A Room With A Few (Amenities)

Marian Crane: Do you have any vacancies?
Norman Bates: Oh, we have 12 vacancies.  12 Cabins.  12 Vacancies
-Psycho

I stood in what could potentially be my room for a few weeks of the upcoming shoot at a little roadside establishment called Mick's Motel, and I was, to put it mildly, underwhelmed.

"I know what you mean," Stan said, standing next to me.  "I figured I'd show you this room because it was the best one."  The best one?  The best room?

"Oh, not just the best room. The best motel I found in the area."

"What about hotels?"

"That's where I started.  The closest one is about a 45 minute drive from set, and the road to it has traffic in the morning."

The point of getting lodging on location is to be close to the location.  There is no good reason to be paying for lodging if you are also going to lose a good deal of time traveling as well.  Still, this place was disappointing.

Lodging crew, even on a low budget shoot, should have certain basics, among them safety and cleanliness.  I didn't see anyone dressed like their mother, and the sheets certainly seemed to have been changed in the recent past, but the cigarette butt just slightly under the bed suggested that the cleaning crew was manned by people who had failed the test at the Hilton.

I looked at Stan again.  "You should have seen the others," he says.

Stan and Dianne would be staying in spare rooms on the estate of the director, but I didn't envy them. Over the years, I have chosen to avoid that sort of situation at all cost, and Stan and Dianne's experience proved this to be good thinking.

When you are either the line producer or the assistant director, the place you want to be when the day wraps is as far away from the director as possible.  Yes, there should be ample time to talk with the director before, during and after the shooting day, but if you want to have a clear head, you must have at least a little distance, time spent not talking about the movie. If you are living right next to the director, you will spend all of your free time talking about the movie.  I firmly believe the mind needs a re-set, down-time.

On a recent film we shot in New Jersey, the director suggested taking a room with the Director of Photography so they could go over shots at the end of the day.  I still remember looking into the sunken eyes of the DP on set as he explained, "He never stops talking about the shots.  I mean, we have a shot list, and I know the shot list, and I spend all day looking at the monitor and through the lens, and then we wrap, and we talk about shots and look at more shots"

You see my point.  This is not healthy.

I see young "guerilla" crews  give this matter too little attention, with 4 to 6 people in a room, or having the crew camp out, or giving people a couch to sleep on.   I find this unacceptable.  If crew chooses to all hang out in a few rooms, doing God-knows what, that is their choice, but crews vary in age and preference, and the person who wants a quiet night of reading or watching television or whatever they want to do deserves that courtesy.

As line producer, I handle a lot of proprietary information - money spent on the budget, crew salaries, etc.  As such, I either chose a bunk mate carefully or take a room by myself,  I usually try to afford the same courtesy, if I can, to some of the keys, especially production designer and DP.  Our days don't end at wrap, and they need room to work.  At worst, I will put two people to a room.  I realize in the low budget world, this is considered a luxury, but I care about how I treat my crew.  Those reading this on bigger sets will recognize this as just basic givens for crew.  Nothing is a given on low budget shoots.

So, Mick's it would be.  We had a shuttle set up to take crew to set and back, though some people chose to bring their own cars, which gave them some freedom.  Mick's would be able to accommodate most of the crew, but not all of the cast we were bringing up.  Stan and I desperately wanted to put cast in better lodging, but again, they would have to be far from set.  In the case of cast, we did give them an option, though all of them chose a closer motel option, which I will get to shortly.

First, the living arrangements at Mick's, at least for the beginning.  JR and Stacey were living together now in the West Village, so them staying together was no bother.  They had the room directly next to mine, and since we all socialized regularly, that worked out just fine.  JR was even a worse sleeper than I was, and his knock on the door would often be my cue to leave.  As DP, he didn't need to get there as early as I did, but he preferred it, and since Stacey was going to get to set first - the 2nd AD is first on and last off - JR usually chose to just go in when she did.

The rest of the crew pretty much paired up by department.

Remember when you were in those early elementary school grades, and teachers would have you choose a partner for field trips?  Remember how cool it was to choose the person who would share the experience?

Crew lodging on location is a little like that, and, depending on the crew, a little like a key party.  If the latter reference eludes you, I suggest a good viewing of  The Ice Storm , a movie worth watching for many other reasons besides it's historical reference to a tacky 70's experience in certain suburban communities.

Our experience would be no different, and it is the inspiration for the sub-title of the series on The Bet, the Fall of Love.

At the time, both Mick's Motel and the other motel, which I will refer to as Trucker's Motel because it was used mostly by truckers on short stays, and because I don't for the life of me remember the name,  which may have changed, because a quick Google search failed to jog my memory.

I won't cast aspersions on either Mick's or Trucker's and suggest I know who served as their main clientele, but both motels had at least a few rooms with magic fingers, and Trucker's had some young ladies out late at night who were not dressed for office work.

The latter presented our first problem, which was that our very attractive and young lead actress was going to be staying at Trucker's,  and we made a point of telling her that she was to wait in her room when being picked up and our PA would call when he was there.  Thankfully, she was no shrinking Violet - well, actually, her character's name was Violet - but Debra could handle herself.

"You better pick me up on time," she once said,"or I may get a better paying offer."

Before any of that could happen, we needed to get her settled in.  She started a day or two into the shoot, and it was after a shoot day that I sat in the office with Stan and Dianne, doing my usual post-shoot recap for Stan and discussing the next day.  Stan and I were relaxing and chatting, but Dianne was in a heated conversation on the phone.  Dianne never yelled, but she could be a stern librarian when needed, and she was having some trouble with the clerk and owner (they were the same person) at the Trucker's Motel.

Debra was originally scheduled to come up mid-afternoon on the day before her first day of filming, but she ran late, and called to tell us she would get there about 7PM.  The problem was that the owner planned to leave at 6PM.  Dianne was trying to stress how important it was that she stay.

"I don't understand.  Don't you have people check in late at night?......So, people just come in before 6PM?  That makes no sense......Look, she is our lead actress, and we need to get her settled in...Yes, we're doing a movie...Yes, we're the movie that is renting other rooms.   How many movies do you have there? .... Look, we are booking a lot of your rooms, the least you could do is stay a little late and make sure that my actress gets her key."

Stan and I couldn't help but follow the conversation, and, to be honest, take a little good humor from watching Dianne get worked up.  Just then, Stan looks at me and says, "What are they going to do?  Leave the key under a rock?"

As if precisely cut and edited in a major Hollywood motion picture, just as the words left Stan's lips, we hear the following from Dianne, who was not listening to us at all:

"What?  What rock?  How is she supposed to know what rock the key is under?  What if someone takes it?"

Stan and I burst out laughing.  We could not have timed it any more precisely if we had been one of those Vaudeville teams that used to comb this area.

In the moment, and not knowing what Stan and I were laughing at, Dianne scolded us as she put her hand over the mouthpiece.

"Would you two be quiet!  This woman wants to leave the key under a rock!"

Of course, her repeating it only made us laugh harder.

It took some time later for Dianne to calm down once she got off the phone, but she eventually shared the laugh with us, a laugh we shared for years.  The solution, of course, was to send a PA to pick up the key, and have the PA meet the actress.

Still, I'm happy she didn't think of that first, as it would have ruined one of my favorite location moments.