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THE WORLD OF HOLLYWOOD
A voice for the
techies
Beneath the din of star talk, a caustic blogger speaks up for the
town's well-shod crews.
By
Mary McNamara
Times Staff Writer
December 4, 2005
HER arms are covered with dime-sized burn marks and her left
wrist is popped out of its socket, but this is not a bad thing.
Injuries are part of the job; injuries mean she's working
steadily, and as any electrical lighting technician or grip,
gaffer or best boy in Los Angeles will tell you, that is not
always the case.
An electrical lighting technician, she is one of the thousands
of dayworkers who make up the stage crews at studios and set
sites around Southern California. The work itself is incredibly
varied she can spend one whole day sitting, wrapped in a
sleeping bag, minding a light 70 or 80 feet above a set, another
dodging rats as she runs cable under a Beverly Hills mansion
but two things are not. The days are almost always long 12
to 14 hours and whatever she's doing, it's bound to involve
lifting things that are very heavy and often very hot. Hence the
burns. She doesn't make the credit list often, and she won't be
buying a house in her West Hollywood neighborhood any time soon,
but she likes the life well enough to have lived it for 15
years.
"But someday," the woman says, "I am going to
make a chart describing how darn heavy some of the things
are."
When she makes the chart, you will be able to read it online at www.filmhacks.blogspot.com.
Because on top of being a steadily working lighting technician
and a budding independent filmmaker, Peggy Archer is also a
blogger.
Peggy Archer is, in fact, her nom de blog; for almost a year,
her Totally Unauthorized site has offered one of the few truly
behind-the-scenes looks at the film and television industry on
the Internet. In cyberspace, where everyone can hear you kvetch,
Hollywood blogs abound, written by personal assistants,
low-level agents, publicists, journalists and, most often,
screenwriters. Names are dropped, salaries estimated,
unflattering celeb photos posted, and swimming-with-sharks
encounters mercilessly, and often hilariously, described.
There is a blog devoted to stupid pitch letters, another
detailing bad plastic surgery, a site where you can read about
famous bad (and good) tippers from the waiters who served them,
down to the dollar amounts. And when all else fails, there's
always Defamer, fast becoming the IMDB of industry gossip.
But if you want to know what it's like to work on a set, there's
no beating Totally Unauthorized. Archer has a clear voice, a
good eye for detail and a deadpan delivery. She also patiently
explains the lingo of her profession, from the crew list (a
gaffer is the head of a lighting crew, a best boy is the
gaffer's assistant) to internal slang ("jumping" is
when you leave one show for another before the first has ended,
a "kick" is a hard light that shines on the back of an
actor's head, and "getting peeled" means being worked
to death).
Over the last year, the growing popularity of the blog is
obvious from the number of responses to each post; comments
range from nonindustry types grateful to understand a bit more
about the film and television shoots they see around them almost
daily to commiseration from other below-the-line workers to
technical questions from people just starting the business and
looking to Archer to provide something of a primer. Over the
past few months, some of her posts have been picked up by other
sites, including Defamer.
With a few exceptions apparently Michael Bay screamed so
much on "The Island" that at one point he lost his
voice and then had to use a megaphone to keep screaming
Archer doesn't trash anyone by name, and she leaves the talent
alone entirely. Actors, she says, rarely mingle with the crew
and that's fine both groups are busy doing their jobs. The
only thing Archer and her colleagues ask of stars is that they
show up on time, know their lines and then get the heck out of
the way when the director yells "cut" and "move
on" (which means move on to another scene).
"The good ones, the professional ones, go sit in their
chairs between takes," she says. "Some people think
this means they're snobby, but it doesn't. They're just smart
enough to realize they are working on what is essentially a
construction site, and their chair is a safe place to be."
Still, the general obsession with celebrity can intrude. When
she was working on "Mr. & Mrs. Smith," it was
weird to see women standing at the gates screaming for a sight
of Brad Pitt, but she didn't give it too much thought until a
photographer tried to sneak onto the Red Bull truck.
"Which meant no more free Red Bull," she says.
"Which was quite a bummer."
While you won't find traditional dish on Totally Unauthorized,
you will find an insightful chronicle of the often back-breaking
labor that makes all the Hollywood magic.
"Then the dimmer board went down," she wrote recently
from the set of "Bones." "Twice. We continued to
run like crazy at one point, I was standing under the
catwalk, and I felt something dripping on me. I thought it was
an overturned water bottle. I looked up, and it was one of the
other juicers [lighting technicians] sweating like he was in a
sauna. Of course, every time crafty [craft services] brought
food, he'd do it right when we were lighting, so by the time we
got done, the food was gone
. I ate about half a rancid salad
(when you're running around and sweating, you can't eat anything
heavy like a burger or spaghetti or you'll throw it up. All of
us have learned this the hard way)."
Risks in revelation
ARCHER started her blog on a bet. A friend who is not in the
entertainment industry sighed once too often about how
fascinating and glamorous Archer's job must be. To prove her
wrong, Archer began chronicling her days on a blog, promising
her friend that no one would read it. And just when it looked
like she was right, people began posting responses.
A few months ago, Totally Unauthorized was listed on Craigslist
Top Ten Hollywood blogs, and when Archer recently posted that
work had her so wiped out she was afraid she would be too
incoherent to blog, the overwhelming response was that
incoherence was much preferred to silence.
"I guess people like to hear what it's really like,"
she says. "At least I am putting my overpriced education to
some use."
Still, revealing the world she inhabits is not without risks;
she does not want to be photographed or described, for fear that
if her identity became public she would lose work. Already, she
has heard through the grapevine that one television show won't
be hiring her again because of Totally Unauthorized.
"If people are really reading closely," she says,
"there is enough on the site to give me away. Fortunately,
most people who work on a set are too tired to do much Internet
surfing."
That she is now a top industry blogger is no more surprising to
her than that she is a lighting technician. Archer grew up in
L.A. surrounded by the movie industry, but she got her master's
degree in art. "That's nothing," she says. "I
know a grip who's a lawyer; another one's got a degree in
electrical engineering."
In her 20s, Archer directed music videos, but the pressure, she
says, quickly produced a bleeding ulcer and a personality change
that she describes in language that cannot be printed here. So
she looked around for something else to do.
She didn't have to look far.
"The grips and electricians all seemed like they were
having a great time," she says. "And they had all this
great stuff belts and tools, very cool."
Archer soon realized she could never be a grip, a job that
requires the ability to build a set from the lighting
perspective. "To be a grip you have to be one of those kids
who built the Eiffel Tower out of Legos," she says.
"You have to see things where there is nothing. It is not
an entry-level job, and it is not something I can do."
Twenty years ago, it might have been odd for a woman to be on a
crew at all. These days it is not as uncommon of the 2,000
members of the lighting technicians union, Local 728, 68 are
women. Archer is not a large woman, and there are a few things
she is physically incapable of doing on the job. "I have a
hard time lifting anything more than 50 pounds over my
head," she says. "But the union will tell you even a
big strong guy shouldn't be doing that."
For the most part, gender is not an issue on set.
"I guess when women first showed up, there were guys who'd
say, 'Oh, I'll get that, honey,' " she says. "And if
someone said that to me I'd be like, 'Great, you go to your
chiropractor.' But it doesn't happen much. The guys," she
says with a grin, "have caught on."
Trips to the chiropractor are part of the job description. So is
the emergency room and occasionally the surgeon. On her blog,
Archer has chronicled the trouble with her constantly popping
wrist (the doctor says the real problem is her elbow), her feet,
her knees, her back. She works in $400 boots that she has
resoled a few times a year, but footwear is always an issue
tennis shoes are out, but so are steel-toed boots. "Drop
something on a steel-toe, the steel toe will give," she
says. "The steel toe gives and you're looking at a smashed
toe. You really would prefer the toe be cut off than smashed.
Because if it's cut off, they can sew it back on."
Painful lessons
ON her site and in person, Archer is matter-of-fact about
the physical damage crew members face. "This is why you
never see an old electrician," she says with a laugh. It's
also why she gets so angry when the sore subject of runaway
production comes up.
"It makes me crazy when I hear some producer who's making
$7 million say they have to take a movie out of the country
because labor here is too expensive," she says. "I'm
making $29 an hour, which is the lowest on the set, but it's
electricians and construction guys who are doing the hardest
work with the biggest risk of injury."
In a September entry, Archer explained how a permit worker (sets
are allowed to use nonunion members with permits in busy time)
nearly cut his finger off pulling cable.
"He should have: a) been wearing leather gloves, and b)
grabbed for the coiled cable in the center of the coil and not
at the rope directly under the pulley," she wrote.
"I understand the desire not to loop one's arm through
center of the coiled cable. When you're 40 feet up in the air
with the safety rail removed (so the cable can easily be swung
over to the walkway), the last thing you want to do is grab onto
the very thing that might pull you off the catwalk to your
death, but that rope/pulley/hand combination is bad news.
"It really is true that you learn something new every day.
Our permit learned how not to catch cable. We learned not to let
a permit catch cable."
Humor aside, Archer found the incident upsetting. "This
permit is the greatest guy," she says. "And he can't
work now, hasn't worked for two weeks. The equipment looks
simple, but it's deceptive," she adds.
In the past year Archer, like many below-the-line industry
workers, has seen her work shift away from film to TV. While she
is grateful for any paycheck, TV is harder on the crew because
it is more work for less pay, worse food and fewer perks.
Or, as she wrote in August from the set of a television show:
"The dimmer board operator told me that last week they had
3 9-page days in a row. That's got to have something to do with
people leaving
. Movies shoot about 3 pages a day, TV shows
shoot from 5 to 7 pages a day; a page being about a minute of
screen time (with notable exceptions such as the infamous
'Atlanta Burns' from Gone with the Wind. 1/8th of a page, WAY
more than that on the screen). A 9 page day is just sadistic,
and more than one in a row ... is so far beyond horrible that I
don't think a word's been invented to describe it
accurately."
Making a movie involves a lot of hurry up and wait for everyone
involved, especially the crew. If the techies aren't killing
themselves to break down or set up, they're fighting boredom.
Graffiti is a popular hobby the rafters and catwalks on sets
are emblazoned with comments both useful "Hit Head
Here" and humorously obscene.
"There's a lot of time in between that stuff, and most of
it's spent waiting," Archer wrote in October. "Waiting
for talent. Waiting on camera. Waiting on lunch. Waiting to see
if they're going to move on. Waiting for the AD's to call 'cut'
so I can turn the page of the newspaper. Waiting on the sun to
go down so we can light the night exterior."
What really bothers her
STILL, ask Archer to list her pet peeves and her response
has nothing to do with exhaustion or boredom or strained joints.
"Perfume," she says immediately. "People wear
strong perfume on the set and they don't realize under the hot
lights the people around them cannot breathe. If I could, I
would ban Opium and Obsession from every set."
After that comes people who won't get out of the way. "Here
I come, I've got a 60-pound light on one shoulder, a 20-pound
bag in my hand and they're just standing there talking. I try
'excuse me,' 'coming through,' even 'free dental work,' and they
don't move. It's usually the studio people," she adds.
"Executives who haven't been on set much. Someone needs to
give them a workshop or something."
It also makes her crazy when the set designers don't seem to be
aware of the necessity of lights. "I've seen sets too small
for the light bases, or the lights themselves," she says.
On one TV show she recently worked on, there was no movable
wall. "There were only two points of entry to the set. When
the director calls 'rolling,' we all run out and when he yells
'moving on,' everyone runs in," she explains. "On this
set, it was a bottleneck every time. It cost them a lot of money
because it took so long for everyone to just get in to do their
jobs."
She doesn't appreciate that she recently had to pay for her own
hepatitis C vaccine, a protection necessary for crew members who
often have to crawl around alleys and basements and hedges,
coming in contact will all manner of garbage and vermin. Last
month, Archer was on a downtown shoot; after a break, she came
back to see a large rat sipping from her coffee cup.
"When you work downtown there is just no way you are going
to stay clean," she says. "Everything is filthy."
Archer wears gloves every day on the job leather for hot
work, a lightweight blend for the rest. ("Some grip
invented these great gloves," she says. "Made
millions. Now we all sit around figuring out what we're going to
invent to get out.")
But when she's working downtown, she puts a pair of surgical
gloves on first. Downtown shoots also usually mean a lot of
"L & D " lost and damaged especially when
it comes to electrical cable. Some of the cable is full of
copper, "so if we don't have an armed guard on it, it gets
stolen," she says. And homeless people often relieve
themselves on the cable that runs down alleys or through
warehouses.
"Then we just cut the connectors off, return those to the
rental house and leave the cable," she say. "The
rental house understands. Believe me. No one wants to deal with
that."
But the hardest thing about the techie life is the hours. This
is true for most people who work in the entertainment industry,
but for the crew, who are first in and last out on any set, it
is especially difficult. Archer's most recent romance, which she
chronicled on her blog, was with an actor, and it ended because
the two were never available at the same time.
"That's typical," she says. "I have a hard enough
time keeping friends who don't do this work. They don't
understand that I don't know where I'll be working on Friday or
how long the shoot will go, so, no, I can't tell you for sure I
will meet you at some bar by 10, and I may not be able to answer
my phone because I have shut it off because we are
rolling."
In the end, working on a crew has to be more than a job. For
people like Archer, it's a way of life, a community, almost a
counterculture, peopled by grips and gaffers and best boys, by
folks who may work their entire lives in Hollywood without ever
getting a mention in the trades or seeing their names more than
a few times in the end credits.
"We all share an inability to go to an office every
day," she says with a laugh. "We're modern-day carnies
40 years ago, we would have run away to join the
circus."
Contact
Mary McNamara at calendar .letters@latimes.com.
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