Untitled, more Gossip Girl, the in-laws visit, and Ghosttown

Don't screw me over with my rate and I won't bail on your project.  That's the lesson to be learned after I recently left an indie movie I was on called "Untitled" after the first week.  Since then, I did a couple more days on Gossip Girl and now I'm on a Dreamworks picture called "Ghosttown" with Ricky Gervais, Greg Kinnear and Tea Leoni.

The people on "Untitled" called me a month before shooting started to offer me a job.  At first they enticed me with the promises of a better position like Key PA or 2nd 2nd AD, but then told me I'd be driving the G/E truck that I'd driven before at the rate of $125/day.  I took the gig because I figured they might be able to hook me up with a better position at some point.  A week before filming started, I found out they had decided to go with a bigger truck that needed someone with a CDL, so I got bumped down to just a regular set PA.  I didn't mind that so much until I found out, three days into shooting, that because I wasn't driving the truck they had dropped my rate down to $100/day.  Lame.  So, I bailed on them.  I figure if you don't show me any loyalty, then I don't have to show you any either.

So, now I'm working on "Ghosttown".  Today we're at Steiner Studios, but we have been doing a lot of location shooting on the UES.  I've really been surprised at how many people don't know who Ricky Gervais is (creator/writer/star of the original English "The Office" and the hilarious show "Extras"), but I guess it takes people a while to get the British shows.  They'll probably all end up on PBS in ten years... I love the show Extras, especially because I started watching it right after I had just started running background on films, so I found it paticularly funny and true.  When people would ask me what my workday was like, I would just tell them to watch "Extras" because it was so right on. 

This movie, "Ghosttown", is a comedy that seems to be like the movie "Ghost", only focusing on the Whoopi Goldberg-type character that's played by Ricky Gervais as a dentist that starts seeing ghosts, the main one who is played by Greg Kinnear who wants to talk to his widow played by Tea Leoni, and then becomes overrun with ghosts looking for help in the living world.

Otherwise, I've worked a little on Gossip Girl, which continues to be a fun gig, and I drove around my in-laws last weekend when they came up for a visit.  My father-in-law is in a wheelchair (he was a surgeon, but was paralyzed in a horse riding accident) so I had to drive the whole clan (Helen has 4 sisters + her mom) in a converted wheelchair van.  It was hectic but fun.  I think I won a couple of points with the fam-in-laws when I used my grip knowledge to put together a couple of ramps so that Helen's dad could get in to our apartment building. 

Anyway, that's all I got for now. 'Til next time...

P.S. Roger Waters...

How did I forget to put this little tidbit in? I mean...jeez I put it in the title of the last blog!
So, I worked the VH1 Save the Music Gala a week or two ago, and I got to shake Roger Waters', of Pink Floyd, hand!  He was singing "Another Brick in the Wall" with a symphony of kids from the program behind him as well as a little choir of kids in front of him.  It was awesome! I turned off my walkie and hung out through the entire hour long sound check.  Afterwards he talked to Conan O'Brian for a second and then started walking right past me, so I asked him if I could I could shake his hand.  It was kind of a drive by shaking, but cool nonetheless.  I don't get star struck by many people, but dude...Pink Floyd

Roger Waters, Gossip Girl, and a Painting Elephant

Where to begin... It's been a crazy few weeks since last I wrote in this.  Since last time, I worked in the wardrobe department on that Ashton Kutcher/Cameron Diaz film "What Happens in Vegas", worked a few days on that Glenn Close/Ted Danson FX show "Damages" where I got punched on a street corner for no reason, worked a few days on the new CW show "Gossip Girl" before and after it started airing (which made a big difference in the crowds that showed up), worked on the new Coen brothers movie "Burn After Reading" with Brad Pitt, George Clooney, and John Malkovitch, worked as a grip back on the Nickelodeon show "The Naked Brother's Band", had a day where I rode a carousel, saw an elephant paint, and ended up at a burlesque show where that English Travel Channel guy happened to be filming a bit for a show, and met two other Clark(e)s, one of which is another PA and the other is staying on my couch.
So, the wardrobe thing on "Vegas" was alright, but I decided I don't like working in the wardrobe department.  Fashion is just too silly.  Sure I got to see Cameron Diaz at her costume fitting, but dealing with $5000 shoes and $500 t-shirts makes me laugh too much.  Some people and some movies just have more money than they know what to do with, so they just pay retarded prices for things that they have no concept of how much they should be.
Working on "Damages" was alright.  My friend Soren, who I've been working with since "Satan's Little Helper", is key PA on it now, so she got me a lot of additional work on it.  One night when we were shooting Woody Harrelson dropped by to visit Ted Danson on set.  One of the grips said I should try to burn one down with him because Woody's a big pothead and later I heard the director, who, for this episode, was Timothy Busfield from that old "30-Something" show, say that he had to turn Woody down because "...You know I don't smoke anymore, Woody". 
A few days ago when I was on "Damages", some guy gave me an elbow to the chest for no good reason.  I was standing on the corner, and the weird thing was I wasn't even stoppin anyone at that point.  I was just standing there with my walkie in hand and this Big meathead-type dude comes by and whacks me with his elbow in my arm and chest, so I immediately got on the radio and said "Hey! This dude just punched me over here! Where's our cop at?"  So, I followed this guy until the cop we had for traffic control showed up (along with a good bit of the crew that wanted to see what was going on).  The cop told me the most I could get the guy for was a ticket for "menacing", so he just chewed the guy out and made him apologize to me.  All in all, it was pretty funny.  Hey Meatheads- Rule 1 - Never punch a guy with a walkie!
So, I also worked a bunch of days on the new CW show "Gossip Girl", which was a lot of fun.  The first day was the week before it premiered and was incredibly easy.  Nobody knew what the show was or who the actors were so we didn't end up with any crowds at all. The next week was a different matter.  We were filming on the upper east side, where the stories are based, and after only one episode had aired we had huge crowds of schoolgirls all talking at once and going crazy.  At one point I looked around at all the extras dressed in schoolgirl uniforms and all the real schoolgirls and said, "I really should be more specific about my fantasies. When I said I wanted to be surrounded by schoolgirls... this isn't exactly what I had in mind."
My work on the Coen brothers movie was fairly uneventful, to say the least.  I've probably said it before, but PAing on big budget movies is pretty lame.  They put you far away from the actual set on some street corner and leave you there to rot all day.  That's basically what happened on this one.  I was supposed to be with a cop to lock up traffic around Grant's Tomb up in Harlem, but my cop got called away to help with crowd control for the Iranian presidents visit to Columbia and they left me at my pointless lock-up for two hours then put me on an equally pointless one for the rest of the day.  Then they didn't break us for lunch... at all.  We don't even get paid meal penalties like the union guys. The only thing we get is hungry.
Working as a grip back on "Naked Brothers" was sweet.  Nothing like coming back on a job you were fired from at a hgher rate. :-)
I worked a couple of days on an HD docu-show called Artstar where we followed around some odd artist types as they tried to make it in the NYC art world.  On Saturday,  we shot at the DUMBO art festival where I had some hot chocolate at Jaques Torres, saw an elephant paint, and looked at a bunch of crappy "art".  Some of it was okay, but most of it just reminded me of that guy at school that tried to be goth but never really got it.
That night we hung out with some old friends for my friend Drew's birthday.  We had some drinks at a gay bar and then went to a burlesque show, which was a whole lot like a sideshow at a circus. There was a chunky belly dancing sword swallower, a juggler that kept dropping stuff (which became scary when he was juggling fire batons and dropping them), and an old lady host with a lot of incestual "Momma" jokes.  It was pretty fun and that guy, Ian Something-or-another from the Travel channel, was doing a segment during the show.
Okay. I'm tired of writing. I'll try to write more often, but I'm not promising anything.