... If You're so Inclined
Phil Lofaro, other than Richie Zeifman, might have been the most talented producer I worked with in the industry. Smart, hard-working, and FUNNY. From 1986 through 1993 my professional life was enhanced by his presence. Both coasts too.
Started with him in New York City, and continued when I moved to San Francisco in late 1987. Lucky for me, Phil and his significant other, Kathy, moved to the Bay Area a year later.
Phil had the ability, however, to attract every unusual job that included a non-human in it. Not just dogs or cats or birds, but a few others, both domesticated and wild. After he moved to Los Angeles to work for Disney in 1994, he transferred that, ahem, animal magnetism to me, since all the creatures he would handle going forward with were digital. In no particular order, jobs came my way which included wild and trained horses, a groundhog, a camel, honeybees, and butterflies. I dodged a bullet when I didn’t get the monkey job.
I also got to work with Don Johnson, but since a category for him has not yet been found, I cannot take credit for any official anecdotes.
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I worked exclusively for Big City Films during my last year in New York City. In addition to Phil, Patricia Dorfman, the World’s Greatest Boss, was my Executive Producer. If bribed sufficiently, she can bear witness to the following.
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Let’s name this entertaining anecdote “The Donkey, some Jackasses, and Juan Valdez.”
Howzzat?
I called Big City Films home from 1986 through most of 1987. A serendipitous collection of some of the most talented staff and freelancers on the planet, it also happened to be the brainchild of one of the quirkiest directors on Earth, Steve Steigman. Steve directed the famous Maxell ad that showed a man in a lounge chair with his long hair blown back by the incredible sound emanating from a pair of speakers in front of him. The audio provided by a Maxell cassette tape ostensibly generating the hurricane wind.
It’s an iconic ad. Big City made T-Shirts of the ad. I wore mine until it disintegrated.
Steve’s skills lay in comedy. As such, a parade of storyboards marched through our offices with such interesting props and topics as a walking/talking ATM machine, an airborne Clara Peller of “Where’s the beef?” fame, and a Rube Goldbergian contraption that allowed an actor to kick his own ass.
Save for the year spent on The Nightmare Before Christmas and the three Star Wars video games I produced for George Lucas (Yes, I know I’m a tease. I will cover these.), the 18 months I labored at Big City Films provided the best education and further prepped me for the rigors of line producing in the film industry.
To the donkey.
Big City Films, as well organized and proactive as I found the company, had the same constrictions as every other producer -- advertising agencies. If a job needed the time to level Kathmandu and rebuild it on a sound stage, at least a week would be given to perform the task.
Ad Agencies approach schedules with the same conscientiousness with which they deliver their product for their own shoots. And because of that pathology of the work ethic of nine-year-olds, Big City Films found itself with three days to produce a job that needed a donkey on set with an actor dressed like a Juan Valdez clone.
Those sage producers reading this are thinking three days is PLENTY of time. R&D on the “right” donkey starts immediately with a few entreaties to the usual batch of anti-social animal trainers in the NYC area. Crew/Gear/Studio Calls and Casting on Day One. Pre-Pro meeting on Day Two, which will consist of shoving a figurative rectal thermometer into the ¾” tape machine showing the 475 possible choices for Juan Valdez, and snide comments about the lunch provided.
Hyperbolic panic for most of Day Three since Steve Steigman will hate the agency’s choice for casting. He will also dislike the DP he himself requested for months because another director swears the guy is an asshole. Finally, Steve will refuse to work in the one studio we could secure on such a tight timetable where all this is happening.
And he will have a point on that last item.
The dearth of decent studio space in Manhattan during the 80’s is legion. The only option to us, a small photography studio in lower Manhattan, had just enough room to shoot the commercial, which fortunately did not require Juan and the Donkey to do much moving around.
Loading in and loading out presented the problem. The lone single door into the studio did not lead, oddly, into the studio. It led to a hallway ABOVE the studio. To access the actual studio, everyone and everything had to be taken down a ramp.
If the shoot is small enough, and the latest chubby agency doesn’t insist on a Hawaiian Luau for lunch, the studio is perfectly fine. It has a cyc (Don’t ask.). It’s clean. Has Lighting and Grip and a Dolly. Camera Gear, wardrobe, props, people, etcetera can all make it down the ramp with a pitch consistent with the Matterhorn, if you allow enough time, a concept foreign to ad agencies, but not to Big City Films.
But a four-legged animal weighing several hundred pounds?
Two producers on the entire planet could get that animal down the ramp, execute the shoot, and return the poor creature back up to his trailer.
Phil Lofaro and Richie Zeifman.
TOMORROW: HOW TO MOVE A DONKEY DOWN A SPIRAL STAIRCASE AGAIN
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