Timing is Everything; Wild Fires, TGI Fridays and The Colonel - A Drunken Rant

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In three days I’m producing a feature with one of the most ridiculous directors, let alone people I’ve ever met. He’s eccentric, passionate, and 68… which has it’s own challenges. I’ve mused that it’s kind of like making a movie with your grandfather. It’s a joy, but there’s only so many times you can hear the same story told to every member of the crew before you want to claw your eyes out. To offer a brief glimpse into the type of movie; it's like the producers of ROCKY HORROR, decided to remake THE FIFTH ELEMENT. But I digress...

I bring up my grandfather, (aka Papa to me and “The Colonel” to my friends from college) because I recently worked a job in Texas for TGI Fridays. And since I live in LA and my family is in OKC, it was the closest I’ve physically been to them in years. Naturally, I rented a car and drove up to see them. When I called to “schedule and appointment”, or rather just let him know I was coming, he didn’t answer, and I sorta dropped the ball on that. It hurts to admit it, but maybe I could have tried harder to give him notice… but I digress. My secondary plan was to just drive to his house and surprise him. But FUCK ME if I didn’t compound the problem of sleeping in with giving into the temptation of the SONIC DRIVE IN I passed on the way to his house (for those who don’t know we don’t have them in LA) where I stopped, grabbed an Ocean Water (TM) and some Jumbo Popcorn Chicken and listen to the end of the Kevin And Bean Podcast I had playing. All that to say, I shouldn’t have been surprised when I pulled into his driveway, peeked in the garage mail slot and his car was gone. SO CLOSE was I to missing him that his damn garage light was still on. We’re talking fucking seconds.

I called.

He didn’t answer.

I called again.

No answer.

I guess this shouldn’t surprise me. He’s 93 and it’s hard enough for him to make a call on a cell phone, let alone answer one while driving, but it sucked because my plane was the next day, and this was the only window to see him. Fast forward 3 hours and he still hadn’t returned or answered his call. So I left. On to see my mom for a hot second and then back to sunny LA.

My timing fucked me.

Jump back to now and I’m working with a surrogate grandpa in the form of a director who’s main claim to fame is having made a movie so offensive people threatened to burn his house down, and what happens the week we were supposed to start shooting? Fucking Wild Fires.

Of the three wild fires currently burning in LA, two of them are on, next to or across the street from three of the locations we were supposed to shoot at. One note: Last week, we decided to push the week that was supposed to be this week… into January. That’ll come up in a second.

Upon seeing the batshit crazy videos of the hills surrounding LA on fire, I called the place we’re supposed to shoot this Sunday (day 1 of our movie.) A SFX artist named Roy answered in one ring and with more joy than I thought reasonable assured me that while the sky was black and the air thick with smoke and ash, it was “moving the other direction” and “the evacuation zone starts ACROSS THE STREET, so we’re fine. He also remarked, “I kept the garage door closed to the studio, so no ash could get in. It’ll all blow away by Sunday.”

It was then that I noticed that just up the road from this, a ranch that was supposed to be another location of ours, was literally under the “fire” icon on the map of the affected zones. Feeling it rude to call, I checked Facebook and what I found floored me.

Thank you all so much for your prayers-- Wed morn still don't know. We are still praying for a miracle. It started right above our ranch. On the hill above us is an electric power pylon. My mom was luckily awake at 330am and saw it. A cable broke loose with the wind and was arching over the mountain above us. Within seconds the entire mountain was on fire. My mom and my daughter were literally running for our lives. Our exit/gate was a tunnel of fire. We drove out through fire. We had not even a second to get anything. We have horses a dog, cats and other pets all trapped. Our property was already on fire when we left but we are praying for a miracle that somehow our animals are still alive and our homes are standing. Fire was jumping at a football field a second. My riding barn 5 miles away was over taken by the fire shortly after.

It’s a crazy tragedy what they lost, and they are lucky to be alive. Insane story of luck, quick thinking and the violent danger of fire. I mean to take nothing away from that, but I can’t help think about timing here again. Just 9 days ago, because of a cashflow issue, we decided to move our week 1 into January. The silver lining we thought at the time was, “Hey! We get another week of prep before we start shooting.” But consider this. Had we not pushed, we were scheduled to shoot AT THIS RANCH on Wednesday of this week. Had we loaded in the night before as planned, not only would the land and all her property have burned, but all of our gear, trucks, rentals, cameras, and props with it.

Timing, right?

I can tell you quickly, that there was some good news for them. They’re still looking for their dog, but one of their horses made it out and ran far enough to be rescued. Unbelievable.

The last thing I have to say about timing is this quick anecdote:

One location that we’ve been trying to secure for weeks is an apartment balcony in Hollywood, that if shot correctly, you can do a short pan from an actress on her phone, to the world famous Hollywood sign. It’s one of those found locations all over LA, that is just fucking magic. FOR MONTHS the director has said, “I’ll just over there, and introduce myself, and ask them if we can shoot.” And for months we’ve asked him if he’s done that. But, either because he’s too busy, or because he’s forgetting he hasn’t. And the location shoots on Monday.

So me and my 1st AD decided we’d just handle it. Loaded up the car, grabbed a Starbucks and prepared to have someone slam a door in our face.

As we arrived, walking up the steps to the door that led to the balcony we needed, a man exited his car, and started walking up behind us. Both my AD and I got this feeling, even as I went through the motions of knocking, that this MUST be the guy that lives there, and low-and-behond it was. I introduced myself, told I wanted to shoot on his balcony and asked what he thought. He then proceeded to tell us that he too worked in production and had actually been on a 3 month job. He’d been traveling for months, all over the country, and not a minute before we arrived, JUST THEN, he had finally returned home to his apartment.

Fucking timing, right?

I should end it there, but the last thing that comes to mind is that, since I’m freelance, and this producing job pays shit, I had to cash out my BTC a couple months ago, and now it’s skyrocketed to the f’ing moon.

Mother. F’ing. Timing.

Below is a link to the GO FUND ME page that Gail put up to try and recover after this fire.

Thanks for reading.

https://www.gofundme.com/fire-fund-for-gails-loss-of-home