It was my first BIG shoot, even though the budget was, and still is, the smallest of my career. I had no idea. I didn’t care. We were shooting sneaker spots in Lake Tahoe. They were the salad days. Lakeside hotel room, beers on the pier every night, location scouting on dirt bikes, snowboards, 4WD and wake boats.
And then there was the plane.
We needed a dry lakebed location. And so the rough plan went like this. The director, who had his pilot’s license at the time, decided, rather than drive the 3 hours out to Black Rock and back, let’s just rent a Cessna for an hour, hire another pilot and fly out there. We’d land in the dry lakebed, scout it out, and be back with enough time for a couple of ice cold ones.
Now, if you’ve ever flown in a 4 seater Cessna and you still say you’re not afraid of flying, you’re full of shit. Taking a jump seat on a paper airplane probable feels more confidence inspiring than this thing. Besides the fact that our co-pilot was also my director who was also the guy showing us the ‘nightlife’ in Reno. Not an auspicious beginning.
So, a few underwear changes later, we arrive at our location. The pilot, the ‘real’ one, makes a low pass over the area to scope it out. Seeing as how it had rained the night before, he wasn’t too keen on landing on the lakebed as it quickly turns to snotty glue. Which means if we did land, we’d bury the nose and do a few ass over teakettle flips, which, if you didn’t know, isn’t good for small aircraft.
What there is is a road. Two lanes of dry, cracked, desert road, running parallel to it. Perfect. A makeshift LZ.
This guy maneuvers this thing down onto the ground safely, after which he makes us push the plane off the side of the road, tail first, in case any cars decide to drive by. Now Cessnas are small. And light. A lot smaller and lighter than I ever thought one might be. So when we push it off the road, we got a little excited. And we buried the tail into the dirt. The pilot was not happy.
Fuck it. I’m there to location scout, not worry about some silly bent tail rudder could do to roll or yaw or whatever . So my AD and director and I traipse out onto the dry lakebed. Turns out the rain was a bit more than we anticipated and it was more ‘lake’ than ‘dry’. Definitely too wet to shoot on and way too soupy to land a Cessna on. We had an alt location that we knew was dry, so we were good.
Time to go.
As we walk back to the plane, we noticed our pilot has made some new friends. Two guys from California DOT. Striking in their bright orange jumpsuits, they seemed bothered. A couple of minutes later our pilots loped back over to the plane, climbed in and fired it up.
He quickly informs us the looks on their faces were indeed troubled. They were, in fact, pissed. I guess California DOT doesn’t take kindly to random aircraft landing on their property. But he’d concocted some story about engine trouble and having to set down somewhere safe to throw them off. Hey, I’m from New York. Whatever works Cap’n Sully.
We taxi towards the ridge in the road, which he planned to use it as a boost to help us take off. As we crested said ridge, we couldn’t believe our eyes. An 18 wheeler barreling towards us. On OUR runway. Remember, this is a road in the middle of fucking nowhere. What went through that truckers mind as he saw a small plane driving towards him I’ll never know. He locked his brakes and his rear tires danced all over the road, pouring out acrid smoke and rubber chunks.
We get our ‘Kia with wings’ flipped around and the pilot punches it. As he pulls back on the stick and we ascend gently into the air, I looked out the window to see us gliding over the DOT guys, who at the time, are on their radio calling god knows who.
That can’t be good. As descended to the Tahoe airport, I knew it wasn’t.
Flashing lights all over the place. The runway. The airfield. The parking lot. Even though I didn’t know, I knew. They were there for us.
We land and park the plane as the cops move in. All this for ‘engine trouble’? Our director quietly tells us to get out and keep walking. One fucked up story is better than four totally different fucked up stories. Yes. We left our pilot hanging. But it was all his idea.
Next day we get a call from Cap’n Sully. Turns out we’d landed in an area known for drug runners who dump their wares into the desert where mules then come pick them up. Apparently the DOT guys didn’t believe our pilot and he was hauled in, questioned and released.
And we'd make it back in time for beers. Alls well that ends well.
A (not quite) weekly installment of riding spots I'd like to go back to.
It was T.S. Eliot who once said, “Mediocre writers borrow; great writers steal”. And with that, I’m stealing a post idea from one of my writing inspirations from my first job at Chiat/Day, Rich Siegel (insert shameless blog plug http://roundseventeen.blogspot.com/). He’s much funnier, more insightful and expresses his rage much better than I would ever dare to (I decided to keep Randumb World positive for fear of truly unleashing the bile that lives inside me.)
Rich recently wrote a few posts about some of the celebrities he’s had the pleasure/displeasure of working with in advertising. Pat Riley. Andy Richter. Ricardo Montlebon.
Me, I’ve got Ed McMahon.
I’ve worked with several ‘celebrities’, but Ed was the only true Hollywood legend I’ve had the pleasure of working with. I’ve never been a star fucker, but this guy was the real deal.
The story goes, we get invited to pitch American Family Publishers. Having spent the last few years at Deutsch working off and on on the more well known brand Publisher’s Clearing House, I had a pile of scripts and plenty of thinking ready and waiting.
A quick education: Publisher’s Clearing House has the Prize Patrol, the guys with the balloons and big checks and tv cameras who knock on you door to tell you you’ve won. American Family Publishers had Ed.
We sat in my CD’s office and read through the brief. The task was simple: get people to look for the AFP envelope. They had sent us all of their mailing materials to study, you know, the junk mail stuff you‘d normally throw away. Funny thing was, on all that stuff was a creepy black and white xeroxy-looking image of Ed.
But not all of Ed. Just his head.
We’re talking about ideas and staring at the disembodied head of Carson’s sidekick when I say out loud, “What about ‘Have you seen Ed’s head?’”. Stupid idea really. Really stupid. Take the floating head, put it on the envelope, tell people to look for it. Stupid.
We do the work, pitch the account and incredibly, win. And Ed himself will do the VO for all the spots.
Day one of shooting is going well on the Universal Backlot. Incredible director, great cast, really fun crew. We’re having a blast. Out of nowhere this all-black, Mexican President Mercedes rolls up in all its V12 glory. And Ed steps out. What happened next is burned into my brain, and unfortunately my retinas, forever.
Ed smiles the whitest smile I have ever seen in my life. His veneers were so white he should have handed out sunglasses every time he smiled. And they were HUGE. Almost scary, in a way.
But then we start talking. And Ed is so nice, so personable, and so genuine that you instantly forget the smile and feel like you’ve known the guy forever. He spends an hour or two on set, cracking jokes, telling stories and having a good time. But before he leaves, he invites us to dinner at The Palms steakhouse. This was about 11 years ago, when The Palms was still good and a somewhat legendary Hollywood haunt I’d heard about.
So we meet Ed for dinner, which was good. But the company was better. Ed sat there and regaled us with stories of backstage at Carson, old Hollywood and even his days as a Marine pilot during WW2 and the Korean War.
Next day comes the record. Me and Ed. Me directing Ed McMahon. Still sounds funny, but it happened. He was great. So easy to work with. TV, radio, done and done. No temperamental voiceover attitude or “I’m giving you exactly what you’re asking for” when you’re really not bullshit.
I click the button and lean over to the talkback mic and say, “Okay Ed, I think I’ve got everything I need.”
“So is that a ‘Thank you, Mr. McMahon’?” he says.
“Thank you Mr. McMahon” I sheepishly replied.
I deserved that.
A long time ago, in what now seems like another life, I rode bikes. Not to say I don’t ride today, but back then, it was my passion as well as my job.
I’d been making the transition to the business side of things for a few years and was now in a halfway position with Mongoose bikes. Half sponsored rider/half industry hack. Luckily for me, I had 2 of the best mentors in the business, Harold McGruther and Bob Margevicus. Harold is a product of the early days of the Florida pro BMX scene. Bob is a product of, well, the bike industry. This guy’s forgotten more about bikes than I will ever know about them. Anyway, I was a team rider/team manager/wannabe product manager who realized my future in the sport was behind the scenes.
So I somehow convinced both Bob and McGoo that we should take the combined Pro BMX and Freestyle teams on a tour of West Coast skateparks and do a couple of bike show demos on the way with the launch ramps we had. We would have Brad McDonald come along and shoot photos for a magazine story. Not a bad promotional idea, I thought. I get to ride some skateparks I’d never been to, Mongoose gets some coverage in the mag, all good.
Now back then, skateparks were just that, SKATE parks. ‘No bikes’ signs were all too common. We hadn’t reached the period of détente we’re in today. Back then, we were the barbarian hordes, invading worlds in which we had no place.
BMX then was also not the BMX of today. The sport was headed underground. Big contests were dying like the dinosaurs they were. The sport was reinventing itself using, of all things, skating as a model. A sport of the people for the people. This was an ideal that had never truly been tested in our industry. Contests run by riders. Bike companies’ run by riders. Magazines staffed with riders. Uniform, leathers, even helmets were dead. We were doing wall rides, grinds, hitting launch ramps. It was a new world.
We started the tour in Tijuana. I’d heard about the skatepark there for years but had never been. It was in a gnarly section of town, so we figured the best way to get there was to ditch the team van on the US side and ride in hot, cocked and loaded, get in a good session and get the fuck outta dodge. And we did.
So to celebrate our first notch in the park belt, we did what every touring team did. We went to Denny’s to eat. As one of their monthly promotions, Denny’s promised you’d get your meal within 10 minutes of ordering it or else it was free. They put one of those digital timers on the table once you ordered, to keep everything honest.
Now, in those days no one was getting rich off BMX. And touring teams were on a per diem. And since I’d organized this tour, I wanted to keep costs down and coverage high. So, we did what anyone in his or her right mind and on a budget would have done. We stole one of the Denny’s clocks.
So, now every time we went to Denny’s, which wound up being every day, one of us would have our clock in our pocket, which we would start a minute or two early. Then once we ordered, we ‘d make the switch, taking the fresh clock out to the van, hiding it for safekeeping. When the waitress would come confidently strolling back with our meals, she would inevitably be stopped in her tracks once she saw how late she was. Stunned disbelief was the usual response.
While it worked, it worked well. We ate like kings because we ate for free.
We worked this setup at every Denny’s all the way up through California, milking it all the way until our last stop in San Francisco. There we finally met up with a Denny’s owner who would not believe us. He was SURE we’d somehow switched clocks. So he called the cops and then called us liars.
With no evidence to prove our guilt, we ate our last meal of the trip on him.
And he ate his words.
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