Beth George met everyone just inside the studio. She had a look on her face that would have scared the Gestapo out of Poland.
Beth: “Nobody f$%king move.”
We all froze, including Jason Chin, the game supervisor from Lucas, who had a thousand pound desktop computer under each arm. Nick No Last Name, the prop department intern who talked me into working on the project, started giggling like a fourteen-year-old at a Bon Jovi concert, didn’t stop walking and found himself face down on the floor. Beth had him in a hammer lock.
Beth: “No one walks on that floor without these.”
She stuffed a pair of the dreaded clean room booties into Nick’s mouth. The poor guy, so traumatized by his first encounter with an experienced P.M., did not wear regular shoes for a month after the job finished. I went back to visit him at his regular job at Kinko’s. When I heard the shuffling noise emanating from the supply closet, I knew he still wore the accursed footwear.
I hate booties. I also hate clean room masks, coats, gloves, and pants. Add hardhats to the list, along with steel-toed boots. Over the years the enthusiastic Safety Overlords, have trussed film crews up in every capability killer imaginable. It only took one job in one high-tech chip manufacturing facility to make me swear off entering any similar business.
Oh, I’d take the job, but only at the point of gun would I ever slide one of those dopey white jumpsuits over my clothes. Not after seeing the employees walk in to these supposed sterile environments carrying a Sloppy Joe lunch and smoking black cigarettes.
But Beth would not be denied. We all changed our shoes. Oddly, production and folks on flat rates put them on so quickly we went back in time. The hourly hires took most of the morning to do the same thing which neutralized any positive use of the clock.
And there we stood, surrounded by the photo above.
Me: “I really like what we’ve done with the place.”
****
During the two week shooting schedule for Jedi Knight, I lived at the Van Nuys Best Western. I endured about a dozen shooting days of one way conversations with my deaf DP. The soul-crushing interactions continued with the, ahem, Vanities Department. See the short list below.
1. Coco and her colleague, Igor, both of whom were forced hires because they were LucasFilm employees, delivered a grand total of Zero of the 14 principal wardrobe pieces on time. Early on I told them I would NOT be taking them to southern California for the shoot and was assured everything would be finished in time for me to ship and/or drive said wardrobe to set. The first people that greeted me at the hotel? Coco and Igor. They had just finished dinner and wanted to know about per diem.
Me: “F$%K off.”
2. The efficiencies of Coco and Igor necessitated the hiring of a full-time seamstress to both finish and adjust the wardrobe. Now, I paid for and schlepped several members of the Vanities Department to a fitting. Two as a matter of fact. Two fittings. Not one. Two. And in the interest of elucidation, I had one wardrobe per actor. Not two. one. Despite the theoretical calculus employed by the Vanities Department our lead bad guy looked like someone had taken half of Siegfried’s costume and half of Roy’s and sewn them together in an ugly Yin/Yang combination the size of Totie Fields. His henchman, a part-time bouncer for the southern California mob, took one look in the mirror at his getup after this fitting. He called Billy Barty and joined The Lollipop Guild.
Coco: “Looks like we were slightly off in our measurements.”
The last time I heard someone say that, an actor took a joy ride through Central Park while tethered to a medieval catapult launcher. Images of Coco and Igor landing in the Loeb Boathouse Lake, like the aforementioned performer, drifted delightfully through my head. Also, holding them underwater for several hours made me giddy.
Me: “Would you like another fitting? My current record is two unnecessary fittings per outfit, and there is a personal best is in my future. I can feel it.”
Coco: “I don’t see any other way.”
In order to avoid raiding petty cash for bail money, Beth and the director carried me out of the fitting room while I screamed, if memory serves,
“I’ll tell you what else we could do. I could go back in time, and abso-f$&king-lutely refuse to hire any of the slugs that draw a paycheck signed by George Lucas.”
The job finished on-time, only $10,000 over budget, and without a homicide.
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