So, I’ve watched a good share of television over the years and have even worked in that too…
First off, I had a few TV appearances when I was a kid…
1980 – TV Powww! – An interactive call-in game show (rather like Pong) segment of Cap’n Mitch‘s afternoon kid’s show cartoon parade.
I won a gift certificate to a local toystore in the Arden Fair Mall. I had wanted to get Electronic Battleship, but it was priced well beyond my GC. I considered the other toys around and picked out Electronic Detective instead. I liked it better (I had played eBattleship preiously). I was rather good at eDectective, maybe that’s why I later liked the Law & Order, CSI and NCIS TV franchises and detective/police procedurals (Columbo, NYPD Blue among them) so much.
Barely a couple of years later, I met another well-known local personality, Harry Martin (who was sort of a predecessor to “Cap’n Mitch” as Captain Sacto”). See below:
1982 – At age 12, I was shown on KCRA-TV (local NBC affiliate channel 3) getting for the re-release of Disney’s Peter Pan (1953) at the old Arden Fair Mall (before the mall was renovated in 1986), I think…
Channel 3 personality Harry Martin (1927-2008) was giving free tickets to Peter Pan and interviewing some of the lucky people who had lined up for them (I think this is when the movie theater at Arden had renovated some four years prior to the rest of the Mall). I got interviewed for a second by Martin. This was about three years before my family got our first VHS recorder, so I don’t have a recording of it, but saw it on the later news.
Harry Martin was a local TV personality known for his affable and easy to talk with persona. Martin had worked at KCRA-channel 3 for about 33 years, from 1956 through 1988, first anchoring the nightly news and then later as the entertainment reporter. Long before the advent of entertainment-based syndicated shows like Entertainment Tonight (which premiered in 1982), Harry Martin was doing Martin at the Movies. In 1973, KCRA-3 premiered the innovative entertainment magazine show The 7:30 Show (which was renamed Weeknights in 1976) which starred Martin and former weather reporter Betty Vasquez.
Martin had interviewed some 2,000 celebrities, including Johnny Carson (1925-2005), Clint Eastwood, Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks, Goldie Hawn (her first interview), Bob Hope (1903-2003), John Lennon , Ronald Reagan (1911-2004), Burt Reynolds, Sylvester Stallone and John Wayne (1907-1979). Martin was also the first to film at Hugh Hefner‘s Hollywood Playboy Mansion.
Harry Martin was also the very first to interview Leonard Nimoy (1931-2015) as “Spock” during the first season of Star Trek in 1966. Nimoy had said that this was the only time he had done an interview in full costume and make-up with the ears on! Here’s another early interview with Nimoy (out of costume this time) from before the classic Spock-centric Season 2 episode “Amok Time“. Martin was also the last person to interview Boris Karloff (1887-1969). Here’s another cut of the ’66 Spock interview that starts out with William Shatner as “Captain Kirk” (in costume for the Season 1 episode “What Are Little Girls Are Made Of“).
In the ’50s and ’60s, before he was on the local news, Harry Martin starred as “Captain Sacto” and hosted the children’s cartoons on TV for seven years. “Capt’n Mitch” (noted stage actor Mitch Agruss, formerly “Captain Delta“) was sort of a successor to the local kids’ show host on (pre-FOX affiation) KXTL, local channel 40 (there were others over the years in-between Cap. Sacto and Delta/Mitch) – see my 1980 TV Powww! “appearance” (via phone) above.
2000-2002 – Net-Raiders – An unaired TV pilot. Created by Rob Paletti.
Directed by Joe Gillis (who had previously created the very Buster Keaton-inspired 1995 short film 9 Items or Less and adapted the 1982 Peter Dee (1939-1999) play Voices From the High School into a feature film released on video in 2002).
Back in the dim early 2000s, when internet entertainment was barely a thing, Net-Raiders was trying to be a thing! Somewhere in-between The Muppet Show (1976-1981) and Mystery Science Theater 3000 (1988-1999) crossed with Futurama is where you’d find Net-Raiders style-wise. I still want to see N-R become a series! Qapla’!
I worked mostly behind the scenes (as an occasional Production Assistant, Assistant Set Painter, Set Grip, Auxiliary Puppeteer, Continuity/Script Supervisor and Actor), but had two on-screen appearances (neither of which might make it into an eventual final cut – the rampaging villagers in particular, as the lighting and film angle were said to have been bad and wasn’t re-shot). A third cameo is detailed below and is viewable.
One cameo was as myself as “Silent Bob“, who, with “Yoda” (a puppet constructed by Net-Raiders creator Rob Paletti) at a space station bar that Rob and the Dweebs (puppet characters) go to (recorded at Loree’s Little Shack By the Tracks in Rocklin). “Bob” and “Yoda” were only seen with their backs turned to the camera, but they were part of the local color within the space station, which included various costumed aliens.
A second on-screen appearance was with Odin Abbott (set constructor/actor) and Johnny Bilson (writer/puppeteer/voice of robot “Chip”) as a trio of angry villagers that lived in the cargo hold of the enormous Net-Raider space ship that chase the puppet characters at one point in the pilot.
A third cameo for me in this test footage/pilot was in the Protect and Serve footage shown during robot “Chip” (Johnny Bilson) interviewing “Mr. Alien” (Drew Perez in the costume and Rob Paletti as the voice) during the Night Life with Chip segment.
Here’s an old cut of the original preview trailer for Net-Raiders (an updated one is being reworked)…
I also helped created a show bible and episode guide for future use… hmmmm needs a bit of updating eh? Maybe sometime soon, there will be an IndieGoGo campaign to bring Net-Raiders to your screens soon…? Stay tuned!
Post-Script: During the Warp 11 concert shoot for the dreaded Trekkies 2 (2004), I met a certain huckster of a producer who seemed interested in Net-Raiders… Rob and the guys created a neat package of materials (including a video, an mock-up of a carded/blister-packed action figure, art, a show bible and other items… This producer promised much and delivered LIES and more lies and delays. Strange. Eventually, Rob left a very honest phone message for this dude, which included a comment along the lines of “…it’s con-artists like you, that keep aspiring creators like us from getting good shows on…” (something along those lines, but better sounding). Thanks for getting our hopes up for nothing. This was after repeated fake-outs, like he’s on vacation, he’s away blah blah and some *LOL* BS about his secretary – which, during a later call to his office revealed that his co-worker or someone there laughed and told Rob that dude has NO such secretary working for him and never did! Nice. Why lie to us and string us along thik this? So freakin’ WEIRD. *SIGH*
Only then, after Rob’s final phone message, were nearly all of the materials were returned… though I think that the video wasn’t… (something was not returned, likely the vid). Originally, this producer had PROMISED to begin with, SAYING that if he didn’t help us bring the show to screen, then he’d happily return the materials so we could try elsewhere. instead, he strung us along, needlessly lied to us and ultimately WASTED OUR TIME for no reason.
A few years afterwards, I saw this same producer acting all sorts of con-man-esque on a certain TV show about aspiring movie-makers. Go fig!
2003 – elimiDATE – Six episodes of the syndicated 2001-2006 TV dating show that would record episodes in different cities and states. They came to Sacramento twice that I know of. I only worked on the first group of episodes.
For elimiDATE, I worked in several areas as a Production Assistant: Base Camp Manager, Video Tape Logger and the Unit Production Manager’s Driver. Johnny (Net-Raiders) also worked with me on the show.
One, if not the best production assistant (P.A.) experiences I’ve ever had! An experience only marred by the brief meeting with our local “film commissioner”.
Notorious for not doing much at all to promote SacTown as a locale for such productions (as opposed to say, El Dorado County, which DOES have a film commissioner who actively attract shows) – as she’s too busy with her original job (of managing local tourism or something, which seems to be more of what she cares about) – her greed at doing two jobs, has let the film/TV thing SUFFER and so have the locals in the industry). So, one of the last nights we were recording (on the top floor swim pool of a local hotel), she comes to set – dressed up like for the freakin’ opera to meet the Queen of England or someone – with some dude (that she definately WASN’T with-with) and proceeded to act like the locals (her team in a fashion) were totally BENEATH her when we introduced ourselves. Made us feel like unwanted garbage. Nice. Real nice. So disappointing. And weird. I thought film and TV was some sort of wondereous co-op of creativity…
Boy, was I wrong… political, dumbly greedy and stupid is how I’d sometimes describe certain people in the industry… even at low levels – just like retail…. hmmmm there’s grist for a lengthy post there if I was really bored and want to relive horrible, horrible jobs (that actually tie-in and overlap with my P.A. jobs in film and TV!)…
Many years before this, the “commish” was nearly outsted from that job, but due to some political ties, she remained – and so did the problem of SacTown being thought of as a second-rate place to do productions (I remember years ago now, when the then-FOX show Cops (1989-2013 on FOX, then on Spike from 2013 through the present) first came to “Sacramento” – it was really mostly chasing rogue cows out in the boons of Rio Linda (Sacto area, but still, they made a big deal of it being shot here in the area at the time! Later, Cops returned to Sacramento and it was more focused on crime in recognizable city areas). *SIGH*
Even though some notable productions have come through here, more can be done to bring out-of-town productions here and to help local shows. I love how every time she’s interviewed, she STILL refers to two crappy flicks shot in the area – Phenomenon (1996) and Lucky Numbers (2000)… like they were the only ones she even cared to know about… even when several other productions had been shot in the area well before and certainly well past those two productions! (Side note: Both films star John Travolta, so maybe she’s a Travolta fan? I just wish she was FILM fan or at least was a real film commissioner!)
I only worked on the first set of episodes record in Sacramento. When the show returned to Sac, like a year later, I was lucky NOT to work on it then – they had a different unit production manager and crew and word was that they did not run as smoothly as the one I worked with, to say the least!
2003 – Safeway American Beef – Three commercials with an Old West setting filmed up in Placer County.
Truly one of two horrid shoots I’ve ever worked on! Neither started out that way, but in both cases, the person in charge, both up from Los Angeles, grew quickly to be truly horrible beings! Before things got weird, I was as a utility P.A., I was a driver (picking up mail, supplies, etc.) and set guard. I was hipped to something being up when Rob Paletti (Net-Raiders), who was already working on it – that he was leaving after that day was over. He told me why (“I don’t want to dissuade you, being as it’s so close to Christmas, but here’s why I’m leaving”, he told me – or rather “here’s the person why”), though I soon found out the true horribleness first hand…
When I first met the lady-in-charge of the three-ad production that I had been warned of by more than one person, she greeted me with, “Ohhhhhh, you look just like Kevin Smith!”, but that soon turned sour. She seemed to have a crush on “Silent Bob”, something that I hoped wouldn’t translate to me as a local proxy! (And me being a Kev Smith/Silent Bob fan!) Her inner crazy that I had heard so much about, soon came roaring to the fore! Where did it start? Hard to pinpoint… I was hoping that I wasn’t going to have to deal with her much, if at all, but departing locals sick of her wacked behavior left openings that new recruits in the pre-Christmas weeks were eager to fill… to a point! (aka there’s a line AND she done criss-crossed that more than once and a while!)
At one point, I had just arrived to start my shift and found her in the office room of the hotel looking for some keys to one of the passenger vans out front. I hadn’t even been there the day before (being off the prior day) and she had a flip-out moment where she sees me and accuses me of TAKING the keys! WTF?!? I just got there and she’s screaming at me with non-sense!! She proceeds to DEMAND that I give her the keys (to what, I don’t even know at first, as she’s NEVER given me any keys to use prior) and then when I tell her I don’t have them and don’t even know what she’s talking about, she proceeds to SHOUT that I’m a LIER! *WOW* Holy Prozac Batman! Get your shrink on the danger money – NOW!!!
The desks were super cluttered with papers, folders and much junk… I took to helping her look for them amid the massive debris field of the office and I found it under some papers right under where she was freaking out! She snapped them up with such an ungrateful and angry scowl, I thought she was gonna blame me for not finding them even quicker! I. Didn’t. Lose. Them in the first place! Oh and before you ask, there was NO APOLOGY offered from her (which I would have accepted). Wow. Whatever. Girlfriend gone all cray-cray! What a piece of work! And it didn’t stop there.
She was the talk of the locals for sure! The thing that pushed me over the edge of not wanting to be there came later…
I a few hours earlier than my start time to drop off someone who had to go with the main film crew to the location a few miles away from the hotel… When the Madame Lady Cra-Z sees me, she FLIPS OUT about how late she “thinks” I am (which, I wasn’t). Again, NO APOLOGY!
Then the explosive finale… I arrive one day with some supplies, I barely get out of the car when Crayzers tells me I to wait at the office for a package to arrive – film via airport and courier – I was to deliver it to the set location. I get a phone call and while I juggling bags and other items, to hustle and get stuff into the office (though no one was there, so there wasn’t much need for ultra rush, but I didn’t know when the package would arrive), I accidentally LOCKED my keys in my car! *GROWN* A panic moment subsided and a calm, “I’ll handle this!” came to me. Quickly getting over the dumbness of it all, I called AAA (triple-A), which as my luck would have it, was just around the corner and down the street from the hotel! *Sweet!* The sitch (situation) be handled! My car was Triple-A opened and my keys recovered, all was well and took no time at all! What DID seem to last for excessive amounts of chronological moments was awaiting the package… But at least, I was away from the set… and her…!! Ah, but twas not to last…
I think I told Linda (our local locations manager who was working on the shoot) about my triumphant level-headed thinking and she found it amusing and cool that I handled it, but she-beast heard about it and for some reason FLIPPED OUT at me. My key problem was momentary and resolved without delay to anything. In a way, she was to blame for both incidents and I was the solution (in finding HER lost keys that SHE lost HERSELF and retrieving my accidentally locked in the car keys). She threw a fit – the woman who lost her own keys and blamed others who weren’t even around when they went missing! Needless to say, that was my last day on that production!
Dunno what mental problems or drug issues she had, but she was an odd one – it was Winter and rather cold (even some snow on the ground) and she usually showed up in weird thin stirrup pants, high heals (not the best for navigating the location set we were using!) a semi-revealing top and a fur (dunno if it was real or not) wrap. Strange outfit for the climate, one would think…! Along the way, before I left, she had made her friend, who was working as her main assistant CRY! Made her friend cry! WTF! I remember local location manager Linda telling me that she herself had to comfort the assistant/friend after that. Nice. Super nice.
Sometime before my grand finale on the shoot, I was assigned to guard the entry to the farm area that lead to the location set. I was stuck out there ALONE for HOURS on end without the promised partner and mostly way out of radio range. Fun. I rarely saw anyone go to or from and of course when I could no longer hold in the pee that was going to forth, THAT’s when I finally had a spat of traffic – first some extra crew or something, then a food truck. Luckily, I was able to amble to a very nearby tree as to not abandon my lone post. Seriously, one guard guys? No radio contact, no relief – well, until the food truck – THEY at least were cool! I thought to myself, not all productions are ran by super crazy self-absorbed coke-headed mental patients! Not. All. Of them… Right? Ah, but then, read on…
2004 – Gone But Not Forgotten – A two-part (4-hour) TV mini-series adaptation of Phillip Margolin‘s 1993 novel. Directed by Armand Mastrioanni. Starring Brooke Shields, Lou Diamond Phillips, Marilu Henner and Scott Glenn.
The TV version was set in Sacramento (as opposed to Oregon, as the original novel was), where it was being filmed, at the suggestion of local location manager Linda Emmons (with the blessing of the author and producers). GBNF was shown in other countries starting in 2005 before premiering in the U.S. on the Lifetime network in 2006. Also known as Phillip Margolin’s Gone But Not Forgotten, possibly to not to be confused with the feature film romantic mystery drama Gone, But Not Forgotten (2003).
Though listed as a Production Assistant, I was really mostly a guard – guarding the equipment/special effects trucks stationed outside the Sacramento Court House downtown. This was better for me than working on the set proper – I always wanted to take those type jobs, so I could watch stuff go nowhere while I wrote my own stories. In this case, I was mostly guarding at night, in my own car at the time (a nifty big blue ’80s mobile!), with my notebooks, disc player, lots of music and a cooler stocked with foods and waters.
The guarding was rather uneventful, except for the very late on the very first night – when two very drunk dudes, who had just come from one of the nearby clubs came staggering towards the effects/props truck (which, for some reason, was left wide open for me to guard! *Meft*). I was able to use friendly persuasion to get them to leave… they did peep a “dead body” prop and were freaked a bit, but then looked like they were headed towards their cab, but not before deciding if they should steal one or more of our safety cones around the trucks… (They didn’t, as one quickly convinced the other that it wasn’t a good idea!).
I remember that one day (though I was mostly guarding at night), I was supposed to get a lunch delivered out to me as the crew inside the court house was doing lunch… I was asked what I wanted and then like, forever went by… Then a dude known as “Shoe” (forgot his actual name now), who was a mechanic or something for the trucks on the show) came by (we had said hello a few times before), asked if they had gotten food out to me. Needless to say, he made sure I got served as well! Cool dude! See, out-of-towners aren’t all bad… But. Wait. Read on through the next few credits…
Another spot of odd trouble on Gone But Not Forgotten was when I had to take my hours slip to the accountant (whom I had briefly met a week or so before and thought that maybe he was a little weird aka coked-out or something) at the Hilton by the freeway uptown. When I get there, the dude isn’t in and won’t be back that day… Hmmmm weird. Was like the last day… I didn’t want my pay to get screwed up… There was one lady milling around the office room area who told me that I should probably “Just slip it under the door so he’ll get it in the morning…”.
That sounded rather stupid to me, as I had seen the inside of the office previously – it had all sorts of paper and trash on the floor in various spots… That’s what I want my payslip with my info on it just tossed on the floor to thrown away…! This lady left and when she did, I noticed this other woman from the production that told me that she could get a key to let me in so I could actually place my payslip into the proper basket on the nearly neat desk! She said something about how she “Knew how they were working here…” (implying some of the things that I had heard behind the scenes – like how one of the producers quit and was replaced by the relative of one of the execs, but didn’t know what they were doing…. a lot of non-intelligent micro-managing going on and other weirdness… Oh well, I was done and I did get paid and credited to boot!
2004 – U.S. Airforce: Careers in Weather Forecasting – A national TV commercial – the one where a little girl is seen fascinated by the tornado coming towards her farmland house when her dad takes to shelter in the basement. Filmed in Wheatland, California. Previously used as a schoolhouse, this multi-story home had recently been moved to this farming area where we shot the commercial. Johnny (Net-Raiders) worked on this one with me too.
The unit production manager (or was she the location manager? – who had past credits on The X-Files – of which I was and am a fan), chose me to be lead P.A. for the end of the shoot – head of the trash collectors more or less. After the commercial shoot, my set boss (name I can’t remember and might wanna forget anyways), invited me to hang out with her friends (she seemed to be interested in Rob‘s Net-Raiders)…
Her husband was also in the biz. He later went to film (as a director of photography? or maybe as assistant dir? or even director?) something out-of-state. While he was cool and we connected on topics like film, sci-fi and comic books (we had previously went to some of the local comic book shops – something that didn’t seem to interest her – even then I noticed a sort of weird attitude when she saw that she wasn’t the absolute center of everyone’s attention), she acted sort of weird and even, I dunno, jealous of how her friends seemed to did me. Weird. When I left, I had accidentally forgotten my jacket there, in her van (she had picked me up before her friends arrived). I had called to schedule a time to retrieve my jacket, but she got all weird about it… even to the point of lying to me that she wasn’t home (inviting me over to get my jacket and PRETENDING not to be home when I could hear her inside! W.T.F.?!?) and finally that she placed it in her apartment’s lost and found (which when I checked, the office knew nothing about it)… W. T. F?!?
Dunno why she left The X-Files after a few seasons, but I now wondered… This cray-cray behavior was during when hubby left for that out-of-state project – his big break… So, dunno if that plus her being alone with their new baby had something to do with it. Ultimately, after being lied to and treated like a turd, she left a message that my jacket was in her van and it was unlocked so I could just go and get it myself! W. T. F.?!? Part II: Wacko Boogaloo! It had appeared that my jacket, that was said to have been taken up to her apartment had never moved at all! It was drapped on the back of her van where I had accidentally left it MONTHS before! WOW. Whatever, at least I got it back before someone broke into merely opened the van door and took it from the parking lot! Grrrrr! Good luck to them, but get her some meds to even out!
2005 – Pacific Fusion – A PBS TV series that focuses on Asian-related topics and personalities of the Pacific Rim and California, etc.
I was a general P.A. for a two-person crew that was, besides myself, an interviewer and a cameraman (I mostly helped the cameradude, though they originally thought I was gonna be the driver, which I wasn’t and they were supposedly told this).
The focus of this episode was the family and restaurants founded by Frank Fat. I got to meet Lina Fat and see three of the Fat Family restaurants. Each one (one in downtown Sacramento (Frank Fat‘s, which celebrated its 75th anniversary in 2014), another in Old Town Sacramento (Fat City, which I had been to before for lunch and dinner) and one inside some casino in the hills – each has a different theme and menu – all GREAT! Each one also had a sampling of their menus for us to munch as well as film (separate ones, silly). OMG! All so good!!
Strangely, this is the one show that I’ve worked on that I’ve never seen aired… Seems our local PBS station doesn’t take the show… Bummer, it did air on the San Francisco PBS station (Channel 9) though.
2005 – Meet Mister Mom – Episode #4 “The Wiesenfarths vs. The Myers“. A six-episode Summer try-out TV game show on NBC. I only worked on the fourth episode, which was recorded in the Sacramento/Roseville area. The working title during production was “America’s Busiest Families”. Two families (at least one family, the Myers, was a “blended” family, a la The Brady Bunch) are pitted against each other in fun and even silly contests – the catch – the moms were set off to a spa, while the dads lead the kids. Inspired maybe by the movie Mr. Mom starring future Batman ’89 Michael Keaton?
For this show’s Sacramento/Roseville-area episode, I was multi-tasking again as a Production Assistant – as a driver (to and from the airport ferrying crew and equipment), and Art Department Assistant/Assistant Set Constructor (with Johnny Bilson of Net-Raiders, we helped clear the land at this guy’s farm/ranch or whatever out by the airport to be used as a mini-football field for the families to game upon), Set P.A. and even appeared as an Extra at the game itself (you can see me in the episode!).
2007 – Kashi Foods “Snack Trade-In” – TV commercial filmed in Land Park, literally across the street from the Sacramento Zoo.
A nice shoot, except for one thing, well one person… A rather youngish lady who was in charge at some level, forgot what her credit was (most present woulda said PiC: Psycho in Charge, if they could without not getting fired!). One thing…? *Meh* Make that TWO things! It was hot as Hell that day! OmG! I had access to much water and electrolited liquids, but it didn’t prevent me from nearly getting heat sickness right at the end of the day! I literally began to halluscenate the shadows of the trees beginning to do interesting things as they fell across the sides of the trucks that I was guarding – and I was in the shade! Luckily, the day ended right about then! But (to borrow a line from the end of the opening narration of 1987-1990 Friday the 13th: The Series‘ prologue), “..before the REAL terror begins!!”
Upon arriving, this PiC type had it in for me (maybe I resembled her abusive father/brother/ex-boyfriend? Dunno), but she looked at the local (the crew was from L.A.) crew list and tried to say that I was some dude named “Don” and that they didn’t need me… until she was told that I wasn’t that dude and I crewed on by our local location manager, Linda Emmons. She seemed disappointed that she couldn’t get rid of me… Odd, as I’ve never seen her before. “Whatevers…”, I thought… The second bad encounter with this angry girl happened mid-day.
Earlier in the day, when I had been assigned to incoming traffic duty for arriving cast and crew, then sent to guard trucks after helping take equipment further into the woodsy park’s interior), I was shouted at (wrongly) by this petite and young ladything in charge (or whatever). She claimed (wrongly for whatever reason, maybe the heat got to her earlier than me?) that I had “ran out in front of arriving trucks and was just standing in the middle of the roadway or somesuch (none of which ever happened in reality, so that was weird!). I asked her assistant, a slim dude with a slight beard that seemed in fear of her (or her firing him at least) if she was always this angry and weird all the time. Even though she had exited the production RV and far out of earshot, he was visibly scared to respond much, but his look was all sorts of not wanting to speak his mind aloud for fear of the “mistress” catching wind of it… Jeebus. Another headcase, like that Safeway/American Beef commercial shoot. Not sure I wanna continue doing P.A. work with these type of wackos creeping into town and acting like the high dictator nutzo of the universe! *Wow*
The final bad encounter was ever so crazy and bitchy (Hey! Don’t judge – guys can be bitchy too! I seen that first hand! Not a gender-based attribute to be sure!). At the end of the day, right as I was beginning to feel all sorts of heat exhaustion, I went to the production RV to meet up with my ride, Linda’s friend who I rode with to set. At first, it seemed like he was going to have to take someone to the airport and I was going to go with him, but then die uber psycho frau exploded: “You can’t leave yet!!” She seemed determined to punish me for whatever imagined crimes he had in her tiny head: “If you leave now [after some 8-10, was it 12? hours on set, the Sun was beginning to go down], you won’t get your check!” I was like, WTF? Where are the other P.A.s local or otherwise? Nowhere to be found…? I faced having to stay downtown and being left there by myself to try and get back uptown to home! I took this forking job ’cause I was broke right then and had a RIDE to and from set – a ride that was LEAVING, or so it seemed. I didn’t nearly die of heat exhaustion and have to put up with cray-cray’s BS for a day just to not get paid! So I went with crazy’s go pick up all the garbage that the crew left – a crew, that mind you, was STILL FORKING THERE!!! They were just hanging out… not helping or anything.
I started in, attempting to think of being somewhere else… At least the 105 or more temp (I think it was more like near 110)… Luckily, my ride (still can’t remember his name) ended up NOT taking whoever to the airport – thankfully – and he was helping me… I think ultimately it was mostly, if not entirely just us… and WTF? The out-of-town crew (still relaxing I think and LEAVING) left all sorts of needless trash and crap about – some ever near or NEXT TO trashcans – all of which we had to carry, drag, whatever to the dumpster near one of the bathroom buildings in the park. Fun times! Anyways, long hot and bothered story short, I got my check and my ride! This was for better or for worse, my last P.A. job. And more importantly, it was my last job on a show that I wasn’t a creative force for…
2008 – Music Box Sacramento – A TV pilot for a music-related series for Public Access Sacramento. My first (and only, as there was only one episode) guest band was Be Brave Bold Robot. Here’s a clip of the show (with the band’s review of the production – hint, they DID like me, but the technical stuff going on, not so much…!).
I was basically going to be my radio persona of “The Postman”, though leadman Dean calls me Dennis in the show and *LOL* the band came up with the fun idea of all of us wearing name tags with names that were not ours! *LOL* I was “Wayne” and Dean was “Randy”. *LOL* Great guys, great band, you should check ’em out: Be Brave Bold Robot! (Of note: As you’ll see in the clip, Dean details the probable origins of the band’s name).
Ah, what could have been…! I had previously created, produced and hosted a weekly radio series – The Wall of Sound (from 1999 to 2002 for over 200 hours of episodes and specials, a show I’ll cover in a later post) – for Public Access Sacramento Radio and figured doing a TV show featuring mostly local bands would be a good fit… It should have been…
BUT, Holy economic turndown of 2008 Batman! I had some trouble nailing down a band (even ones I already know personally) to appear… When the choice is between doing a TV show for free or a paying gig – in-between regular jobs during the willfully devastated Cheney/W. economy, I can understand. Real life gets in the way… But, the uber manager wanted a new show NOW! I didn’t think it would be so difficult to get guests that I wanted and when it came to completing the actual first episode (no real pre-show pilot), I think the expectation was something like a musical Tonight Show (such big-time network shows book guests MONTHS in advance!).
As it happened, one band that I had wanted to book did accept – Sacramento-based Be Brave Bold Robot! They were cool and liked me, but not the way the crew put things together… I think we got sort of thrown on, I wish we had more lead time and such, so who knows… I did take notice of the one young camera guy’s awesome enthusiasm doing the show taping… Forgot his name, but I really hope that he’s gone on to his own projects… his enthusiasm was the antithesis the rest of the more grizzled crew… Sound and editing weren’t the awesome for sure, for whatever reason. Anyways, the show didn’t quite come together how I would have liked, but BBBR was cool! They dug me, but not the way things went with the technical side of things…
But later, the promised premiere date came without it airing at first, then neither I or the band got their promised copy at first. I and the band had to request that be done. I got mine, but the band continued to not. I can’t remember if they did eventually now or not. I might have made a copy for them, I’ll have to ask BBBR lead Dean to refresh the memory (so this bit might get an update). Though the original promised airdate went by, Music Box Sacramento eventually aired – SEVERAL TIMES… I still like the opening credits we shot for it and the many clubs and records stores shown in it (the former Tower Records on Broadway and The Beat are both gone now).
Oh well. I had another show that I wanted to develop at the same time (in 2008) that didn’t even get to record. That is a story all by itself… It was to be called Fangasm! (Not to be confused with 2013 SyFy (formerly the Sci–Fi Channel) show). It was gonna be a sci-fi/comics/movies interview magazine show… A tale for another time, you’ll have to ‘gasm later…