- Hunter S. Thompson
When I was a kid movies were my thing. I didn't make home videos and little productions with my friends. I wasn't president of a movie club or anything. I was however completely obsessed with the world of a movie and on some levels believed that I was living out my own movie. I loved movies about legends and I wanted to become one. I did on some levels become a legend....but not in a very good way. Instead of becoming famous I became infamous....which is how it had to happen I guess. I had no idea that one day I would actually be working in the movie business. It never occurred to me to work in movies - movies were a dream, they were magic - not an industry people making a living. I never lost that movie magic feeling.......although I know quite differently now.
The first movie I worked on I was an unpaid Location Scout. I found the gig on craigslist (of course) and was happy to get it. I was dead broke. The job didn't pay anything but I had nowhere to go but up so I took it. I also had a side job at Cafe Fresh on Broadway in Harlem near Columbia University. The Bitch who ran it was a racist Hungarian. Her two retard sons gave me the job and ended up screwing me out of two weeks pay after I cussed out their bitch mother. She claimed that I had stolen $600 from the register. I wish I had jacked those muh fuckas now......its been years but I still think about dropping a rat or two in their doorway and just running away....anyway I took the location scout job hoping for brighter skies working in my field. I worked for the Location Manager, a white cat named Alex that was younger than me. He had been working in movies for about 3-4 years and still hadn't finished school. Alex and his mom stayed in the Upper East Side. Alex was the bread winner and took care of the both of them on what he made in movies. He was the usual uptight Upper west side cracker you would expect - but he was about his business and he looked out for me later on. It was our job to scout locations for the movie we were working on "Lost". We worked mostly in Brooklyn and Queens but a few nights we shot in the city. Mostly I would go around to these locations and feed back information to Alex. Sometimes I would have to go down to the Mayor's office of film, theatre and broadcasting to get permits. For no pay it was a lot of fucking work. I was starting to get pissed until Alex told me that there was a job that he needed me to do that he could pay me under the table for. At that point I didn't give a fuck what it was as long as it gave me some cheese. The job was to stay on set all night in the equipment truck and make sure nobody fucks with the set. The set would be an entire street where we had set up construction cones to make sure no one parked there. Of course people don't give a fuck about that and the ones that do always seem to miss the 20 bulletins we put up throughout the neighborhood. In order to prevent a scene nobody wanted in the morning when it was time to shoot someone had to stay on set all night....in the middle of winter...inside the equipment truck...in some abandoned neighborhood in the middle of New York. The job paid $100 a night so I told him I was down for that shit.
I'm glad I never I went to a formal film school. When I was in college I remember the teachers basically telling us we were on our own once we graduated. There was no set path they said. You just gotta go and make it happen. We had a great Faculty though. The sad thing is the really talented students ended up staying in Kansas while all the jerks and assholes moved to LA or NY and got busy. We had a cool class though - most of us......Artists are generally assholes though. It's a good thing...but not always.
The first night I stayed on set I brought enough weed for 2 days. I had my Ipod and had gotten dinner and snacks for later. The equipment or "cube" truck is huge. Driving it around New York narrow ass streets was a disaster waiting to happen. There's been incidents....... however tonight I managed to get to my spot no problem. I smoked out most of the night and jammed to my Ipod having a blast. I've always been a night owl so for me it was dope. It was January so I ran the truck all night blasting the heat. On the first night I stayed up all night kicking it like I was throwing a party. The next night was a different location in Queens which was a more busy area. Alex dropped me off and I set out for another night of trees and music. An older woman came up to the truck and asked for a cigarette. I gave a her a few and she asked what I was doing. I told her about my job and what I had to do. She was.....intrigued. She was an early 40ish Latina probably from the DR. She was telling me about the Dominicans in the neighborhood and how I should be careful. I told her I would be and said peace. An hour later she comes back with some booze and joins me in the truck.
When you're working on the set of a movie production there's a certain hierarchy that has to be followed. Everyone going to film school wants to be the Director - but the Director would never get his job done without the 1st Assistant Director and 2nd Assistant Director. These are highly coveted positions being occupied by all those assholes that I mentioned before that I went to school with. Being an asshole is a pre-requisite for these positions because its their job to "run" the set. If you're smart you'll stay out of the 1st AD's way - or end up on the unemployment line. You have to watch what you say on a film set...and watch who you say it around. Don't trust the talent. Don't even fuck with the talent. The Talent is a bunch of Bitches.....and they WILL get you FIRED. Even if they are the coolest cats in the world - don't trust 'em. You can't trust the talent because in reality they run the set. Without the talent the show can't go on - and if a production is already been running for 2 months the actors can't be replaced - without losing millions of dollars. So if there is a problem between the talent and you....guess who's gonna get fired? The #1 basic rule of working on a film set is to treat everyone like they are your next meal ticket - because they just might be.
After a few shots my new name was Poppi and hers was Mamacita. She was a very open soul...a giver. She told me about her family throughout New York. She had a son not too much younger than me that was locked up for assault that she was really worried about. The cops had rushed her son when he was just hanging out on the block....didn't put the blunt out fast enough and got busted. We comforted each other in our grief over the tragedy of inner city injustices that plague the ghettos of New York. The truck was too small to make any real moves and her house was out. I couldn't take her anywhere so we hugged goodbye and she went home. The next day I thought about telling the Locations Manager about my adventure with the natives but I decided against it. He couldn't really be trusted either. Loose lips.....
I think about her every now and then. My little mamacita in Queens. I wonder if her son ever
got out.....
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