Curveballs

On the baseball fields of my youth, I could never hit a curveball. Truthfully, I had trouble hitting a pitch of any kind but that’s another story. This is about the curveball, a pitch I now hit on a regular basis, but instead of the ball field, I’m hitting them at work. In film production, that's what we do.

Sometimes the curve is relatively minor. Recently, when a production assistant parked his car right where one of our trucks was due to park, it was only inconvenient. But when the key broke off in his ignition and the car couldn't be moved, that became a curveball. The production team managed to hit that pitch. They got the PA's mom (Remember, when all else fails, call Mom), to come to the location with an extra key.

Other times the curve is simply unusual. For example, I once got an email whose subject line read:

“Two Words.”

Those two words turned out to be:

“Butterfly wrangler.”

The director suddenly wanted a butterfly in the shot; so naturally, I set out to find a butterfly wrangler. In the past, I’d worked with a long list of animals including a bear, a lion, an elephant, an orangutan, and even a blind kangaroo. I reasoned there were trainers for those creatures, so why not one for a butterfly? And as it turns out, there is a guy who does just that.

He’s a bug guy. The bug guy, as his name suggests, works not only with butterflies but also with all sorts of insects. I’m sure you’re wondering, as I was, how does one train a butterfly? Well one, (not even the bug guy) doesn’t. Instead, the bug guy shows up with lots of butterflies, and when it’s time for the little thing to perform, he ties a tiny piece of monofilament line to it and just like that, the curveball is hit and a star is born.

Of course, there was still another curveball coming. It turned out that our lead actress had some sort of butterfly phobia. I always say you couldn’t make this stuff up if you tried. Fortunately for us, she overcame her fear and we got the shot.

One of the bigger curves came years ago on a Little Caesar’s commercial. In the spot, a little girl writes to Little Caesar wanting to share a pizza with him. Suddenly a helicopter lands at her house and whisks her off to meet Little Caesar. When she does, Little Caesar turns out to be George Burns.

You might think that the curve involved getting George Burns but that was relatively easy. Mr. Burns agreed to be with us for ninety minutes of filming, ultimately stayed a bit more than two hours, and was absolutely charming.

While getting George Burns was easy, landing a helicopter in a neighborhood was not. Our location scout eventually found a suitable house in a San Jose, CA neighborhood with enough space to land a helicopter.  We secured permission from the homeowner, the FAA, and most of the neighbors.  And that’s when we got the curveball.  One neighbor threw a wrench into everything.  Not only did she refuse to sign off on the project, she began to call every government official she could find to shut us down.  I think she even called the post office. But it worked.  This was more than a curveball.  With very little time left before our shoot date, we were back to square one.  But production people are used to this sort of thing.  Our scout went back out on the road and miraculously found a new house, ninety miles north of San Jose.  This time the neighbors were cooperative; our shoot went off without a hitch and another curveball was hit for a home run.

There are countless other stories I could tell.

We shot two women playing tennis in a city bus (while it was moving), went all the way to Mexico to shoot a cat food commercial (on a boat), and threw a camera out of a plane to get a shot (the chute didn’t open).

The fact is everyone in production has similar tales. And while we like to think that nothing is impossible, I will admit that we don’t hit every single pitch. There are occasional swings and misses.

But somehow we seem to hit most of them and when we don’t, I guess we can always call Mom.