Poor Man’s Pile-Up

Poor Man's Pile-Up

One day, during the first season of the Aaron Spelling television series “Savannah“, we found ourselves faced with shooting a scene between the characters Dean (David Gail) and Lane (Robyn Lively). The scene was set at night and featured our two actors sitting in a parked pickup truck beside a moderately busy highway. The problem was, it was in the middle of the day and we were inside the old lumber warehouse that had been converted into our ersatz stage.

We were going to have to fake it.

To simulate a busy highway in the out-of-focus background, it was decided that we’d use a clumsy Continue reading Poor Man’s Pile-Up

Give Me the Barrel

Give Me the Barrel

The year was 1998.

The place was a bend in the Yellow River, just south of Porterdale, about 40 miles east of Atlanta.

The movie was False River, a film best viewed while intoxicated, being savaged by weasels or in the throes of a malarial fever dream.

We had just returned to work after a weekend of torrential rain and the river was high. Really, really high.

Remarkably high.

Dark shapes keep appearing along the top of the churning, rock-strewn rapids then slipping below again.

Those were turtle heads.

Snapping Turtle heads to be precise…. and they were everywhere.

Dozens of them covered the width of the Continue reading Give Me the Barrel

Honeywagon, How I Do Love Thee

The Only Way to Poop!

Hey! It’s a new podcast, the first in a long time… download it now!! This summer will mark my third year away from the film business and even though I visit enough film sets around town to satisfy my craving for the scent of diesel, I realized around the end of 2006 that I’ve been missing a different sort of smell…. the honeywagon; rolling porta-potty of the film industry.

Mobile shithouse to the Stars.

The trailer that launched a million poops from a thousand wannabe Brandos.

So I started in to write it all down in an article for the website but as I’ve been so all-fired busy lately it was much simpler to toss a recorder in the car and start talking off the top of my head. Please forgive the recording quality (I threw the accent in for free).

A Lot of Questions

The following is an email that I sent out to the list back in mid-March, just now making it onto the website.

“Do you miss it?”
I keep hearing that question echo through my mind.

“Are you coming back?”
We all know that very few get away clean.

*Do* I miss it? More than you know.
The water-slicked streets, the low background rumble of city traffic, the electric jolt of adrenaline knowing that your next decision could affect billions of people around the world.

Am I coming back? Eventually. Somehow. I have to.
Continue reading A Lot of Questions

Medical Investigation (aka, Scooby Boo)

I admit that I only caught the last forty minutes of the new NBC drama “Medical Investigation“, but that doesn’t change the fact that this program shows every sign of being cane-bait.
Continue reading Medical Investigation (aka, Scooby Boo)