Last week as I completed my 57th trip around the sun, I couldn’t help but recall some of my birthdays from year’s past. They’ve been generally good but a few have been memorable. My 20th tops the list. That was the first time I ever went out with my wife. Years later on another birthday, she kidnapped me. Instead of driving us to dinner, she took us to a local Bed and Breakfast that she’d secretly booked. That was memorable too. But there was also the time I was out of town working on a Hidden Valley Ranch commercial, which as the title suggests, was both the worst job and almost the worst birthday I’ve ever had (so far).

I’d been hired as a Second Assistant Director/Production Assistant (2nd AD /PA) by a production manager I’d worked with many times. She’d hired an excellent group of PA’s, but through no fault of hers, other key positions had been filled with people that were, shall we say, less than excellent. A lot less.  Together they formed a cast of cretins that really had no business being on a set of any kind.

Not that any of them were innocent, but I suppose we’ll have to change the names to protect, well, the cretins. The Director was a perpetually hung-over, red-faced asshole. Since I’d rather not use “asshole” repeatedly, we’ll just call him “Rude.” He was rude to the crew, rude to the location (doing donuts in a rented Cadillac through someone’s field is actually beyond rude), and rude to the actors. At one point I watched him berate an elderly actor in front of everyone for no reason at all other than possibly his own amusement. “Rude” is probably too nice a word but we’ll go with it anyway.

Rude was a Director/DP and he brought along his camera assistant who we’ll call “Vile”, so named because for the entire shoot, if his mouth was open, something vile came out of it. Working with just those two would have been bad enough but they hired an Assistant Director (AD) to run the set, who quite possibly had never actually been on a set before. Since, “Lucky I didn’t strangle her” is simply too much to type, I’ll just call her “Inept.” Those were the charming people I spent the majority of my 30th birthday with.

Fittingly the anniversary of my trip around the sun began before the sun had risen. We’d assembled for a sunrise shot at O’Dark-Hundred and Vile was already in rare form. While waiting for the sun to come out of it’s trailer, Vile taunted the PA’s with a series of rants about their supposed sexual practices. This continued throughout the shoot much to the delight of “Rude.” The PA’s, myself included, nervously laughed it off while secretly plotting to run him over with the production truck.

After the sunrise shot, the company moved to a house, where we shot some exterior shots in a garden, followed by some product shots inside the house. When the product shots were over (a product shot takes somewhere between an hour and forever), the entire company packed up yet again to move to a still another location.

Every bit of furniture in the house that had been moved had to be put back into place, so while the rest of the company drove away, the PA’s worked to put the house back to together. “Inept” had impressed upon us the need for speed, as we were already way behind schedule.  And she continued to tell us that while she was driving away by making constant calls to us on the walkie-talkie for updates on our progress. Here when I say “constant”, I mean it in a literal, every fifteen seconds kind of way. Naturally those calls impeded progress because every time she called we had to put down whatever heavy thing we were carrying to answer. Eventually we chose to ignore her. It was either that or jam the walkie-talkie down her throat but that seemed so messy, and we’d likely be the ones to clean it up anyway. So far, this had been neither a good shoot nor a good birthday.

While we reassembled the house, the rest of the company arrived at the next location, a farm, and enjoyed lunch. Unfortunately, by the time the intrepid PA’s (that’s right intrepid, my story, my birthday, we were intrepid) arrived, lunch had ended. Moments (and I mean nanoseconds) after we arrived, “Inept” had me jump into a minivan to drive some talent to the top of a hill. My protestations about not eating lunch fell on deaf ears and the next thing I knew I was barreling up the hill with the talent (a young kid), his Dad, and the studio teacher. “Inept” kept screaming about the kid being in the very next shot and that we had to “go, go, go” so we “went, went, went.” Of course when we got to the top everything changed. “Rude” suddenly decided the light wasn’t right and the shot with the kid was no longer next, next next.. You’d think that since the shot was no longer a go, go, go, we would simply drive down, down, down (and maybe get some lunch) but you’d be wrong, wrong, wrong. Inept refused to let us come down the hill because the new next shot was not designed to feature a mini-van driven by an underfed-birthday-celebrating PA. So we sat and waited for “Inept” to give the okay to come down. And waited. And waited some more.  Fortunately we passed the time by listening to my stomach growl, which was eventually followed by me actually growling until hours later we were told to drive down the hill.

But while we were up on the hill, there was plenty of action down below. The producer (who could easily have been called “Inept” as well) told the Production Manager they were so far behind they’d need to add some shoot days. “That’s great”, she said, “but you won’t have any PA’s.” She went on to list the various abuses suffered upon the PA’s and told the Producer, the PA’s had no intention of working beyond the initial booking. The producer was stunned (perhaps “Oblivious was the name for him). And then he broke down and cried. I missed it of course, being stuck in a van on a hill. It must have been a sight. Then he apologized and offered more money if we’d work. Most of us did it but not for the money. We did it for the PM who would have been in a bind without us.

The day would never get better and not surprisingly, despite the sun thankfully settling below the horizon, there was still time for it to get worse. We made it back to the production office at the hotel where, Inept insisted that every sleep deprived PA had to stay until I finished the production report. No amount of protest managed to change her small mind and I remember feeling like I was in the second grade with a teacher standing over me correcting every error while the rest of the class watched. I will admit I might have finished sooner had I not been distracted by simultaneously calculating the odds of finding a hit man via the yellow pages.

When the report was finally done to her satisfaction, we quickly bolted for our rooms, pausing only to glare at Inept on the way out. I’d only been in my room a few moments when the phone rang. I thought, “Now what?” But fortunately it was only the PM who wanted me to pop over to another PA’s room for “something.” The something turned out to be an impromptu birthday dinner (I never did get lunch). The stellar production staff (my story, my birthday, they were stellar) had arranged for pizza and beer. We regaled each other with a variety of impressions of the cretins and we sang Happy Birthday. It was exactly the sort of release we all needed.

The following days of the shoot were no better and although there've been a few close calls, that one still counts as the worst job I've had. It probably would have been the worst birthday too had it not been for the pizza and beer along with the friendship and camaraderie of the production department.

Back in 2017, I’m happy to report there were no sunrise shots, no kidnappings, and definitely no cretins. Instead there was beer and raw fish with my wife, which is exactly what I wanted. For me that’s memorable enough.