Dreams and Scenes From Working-Class Hollywood : For the Crews, It’s Another Day at the Office

A sharp crack from the rifles of a police color guard echoes through the neatly aligned rows of tombstones in the Los Angeles National Cemetery in Westwood . . . again and again and again.

It’s a scene from “Seven-Year Storm,� a political/police thriller starring Steven Seagal and Kelly LeBrock. Shoot. Repeat the scene. Set up the scene again.

Properties man Sal Sommatino handed out police badges to a platoon of extras and later dispensed Kleenexes to the same extras dressed in funereal black, sweating in the afternoon sun.

Not a particularly glamorous side of Hollywood; rather, it’s the anonymous side of Hollywood.

The Warner Bros. film isn’t scheduled to appear in movie theaters until next year. But for the bulk of the crew gathered at National Cemetery, the end is three days away after nearly three months of shooting. By the time Seagal and LeBrock gear up for the promotional push to help “Seven Year Storm� at the box-office months from now, most of the crew members will already have one or two other completed projects under their belts.

It’s a typical cycle for Hollywood’s blue collar workers.

Christine Loss initially was driven by a desire to work in Hollywood . . . .but it took equal parts fate and hustle for her to become a stills photographer. When a film she was working on as a script supervisor in Utah didn’t have a still photographer, Loss volunteered to do double duty and had a new career.

“It gets down to being a job and some are more fun than others,� she declared. “I worked on this picture called “Hot to Trot� about a talking horse--this horse’s mouth moved to the words it was saying--and we had a great time although it made no money at the box office.�

“I worked on “Who Framed Roger Rabbit� and I was shooting things with Bob Hoskins holding an imaginary Roger Rabbit in his hands. That was a challenge and he was able to get across that he was dealing with imaginary, non-existent creatures with his body language.�

“Sometimes, the still photographer is the scapegoat for everyone’s frustration,� she said. “You’re trying to get your shot and the director says please move out of the way or the star says you’re in my eye-line or the director of photography says you can’t stand there.

“I worked on ‘Raging Bull’ with Robert De Niro and he never wanted to see a still camera pointed at him. It just made him totally nervous so I’d be hiding behind the camera and shooting around things in order to get my shots. He liked everything I shot and asked for me on ‘True Confessions.’ �

There’s not very much work for gaffer Patrick Blymyer to do at the cemetery.

Blymyer, 51, is in charge of the crew’s electricians and meeting the lighting requirements of the cameraman on a film. But Matt Leonetti, the director of photography for “Seven Year Storm,� is using only a couple of reflector boards to augment the naturally bright sunshine.

Thirty years ago, Blymyer was visiting an acquaintance on the set of the “Adventures in Paradise� television series to see how films were made. He signed up with the union that afternoon and got a call to work on a rigging crew four days later. Within four years, he was a gaffer.

“It’s an interesting business because something different happens all the time,� he reflected. “I’ve been all over the world working on pictures and met a lot of people I’d never meet screwing nuts on bolts at Lockheed Aircraft.

“The only thing wrong with the picture business is the hours are too long,� he said, sounding a common complaint. “Being at work at 6 o’clock in the morning and working until 10 at night 6 days a week and the next week work from 4 in the afternoon until 7 in the morning--I don’t think it’s very glamorous.�

This is Blymyer’s last day on the set. He’s leaving the shoot early to return to his New Hampshire home, near a small country inn that he and his wife (who worked in the film industry as a hairdresser) actively owned and operated for a few years.

“I usually do a picture, go home for 2 or 3 months, and that’s the way I’ve worked the last 10 years,� he said. “I don’t like to work one picture after another. I’ve never had any problem getting a job when I wanted one, truthfully.�

There was a personal stake involved for dolly grip Dave Merrill when he moved into the industry.

His father was a film editor who died when Merrill was very young, cutting off a string of family involvement in the movie business from the ‘30s through the late ‘50s. Merrill began looking to break into the business in order meet people who had known his father.

“I had to get a journeyman’s card in one of the crafts to get into editorial (film editing) and I became a dolly grip and decided I liked it,� said Merrill, 32. “When the chance came to go into editorial, I wasn’t married yet and I stayed a grip. The woman who could have gotten me in passed away and that door was closed.�

Merrill outlined the job of a grip as “if it’s heavy or dirty or nobody else knows how to do it, it’s our job.� Grips are the muscle of a film crew, responsible for doing anything that will aid the cameraman get his shots.

The camera is mounted on the dolly and a dolly grip like Merrill physically starts and stops the heavy device that allows the camera to move with, or around, the action.

“I like pushing the dolly,� Merrill said during a brief break between takes. “Moving the camera, operating the cranes, keeping pace with the actors and being able to read their faces and moods, I feel I’m part of the creative end instead of the strictly technical.

Merrill hates the time his job forces him to spend away from his family but 14 years as a dolly grip has left him attuned to the uncertainty that comes with working in Hollywood.

“In a way, it’s like (being) a carnival performer--I don’t know what else to do,� said Merrill. “I don’t want to work 9-5 and drive to the same place to work every day.�

“All these people will be unemployed Friday--I can’t think of anyone that knows he has a show starting,� said microphone boom operator Lionel Lavallee later that afternoon. “It’s great for the first two weeks because you’re relaxing but always in the back of your mind, there’s the little kicker, ‘I’ve done something wrong or got somebody mad at me so I’m never gonna work again.’ �

Lavallee, 42, was dissatisfied with his work 17 years ago when a friend associated with the sound department helped him get work as a cable man. While he hopes to eventually become a sound mixer, a major appeal of his current job is the active role he plays in filming.

“When the camera rolls, the (camera) operator works, the first assistant (director) works, if we’re dollying, the dolly grip works and I work,� he said. “If I make a mistake, the shot doesn’t work so you’re right in the action.

“You get an affinity for working with the people and what works with people. An old boom man told me, ‘If they like you, you can make 100 mistakes. If they don’t, it only takes one and you’re dead.’ �

But Lavallee differed from most of the other crew members interviewed--he earned a degree in psychology before starting his Hollywood career and also left the business for three years to work as a news director at a television station.

“That was the best thing I could ever have done because you get to realize how much you bring to everybody else by making a movie. We’re not making any product that’s detrimental to people--physically, anyway,� he said with a laugh.

“This is a very nurturing business. The crews, generally, take care of each other. There are probably 45-50 crew members on this shoot but if a stranger walks on the set, they’re spotted immediately and it’s like a family: ‘Who’s (that) coming?’ We’re out here in a cemetery and this is like our house.�

“We’re going again, Sonny,� barked director Bruce Malamuth following one take.

“Again? With the exact same angles?�

Seated besides the camera with a bulky notebook opened in her lap, Sonny Filippini is the script supervisor on “Seven Year Storm.� In her own words, she’s “a writing camera,� recording the pertinent details of each shot, acting as liaison between the director on the set and the film editors who will piece the various takes into the finished movie.

“The hardest thing is that I have to be on all the time because the crew, producers, production managers, actors all come to me,� she said.

Filippini, 37, wasn’t entirely comfortable being away from the center of activity--during a brief interview, she periodically glanced towards the camera to make sure she wasn’t needed for anything. An aspiring dancer until an illness ended that career, she considered editing but the uninviting prospect of spending time in a dark room prompted a switch to the script supervisor role when she was 21.

“Many times, things aren’t correct and I will go to the director and it’s up to him to say that it can be a mismatch,� she related. “In my job, you bite your finger and go, Ummmm, because when your name goes up on the film, (people) don’t know the director told you the mismatch was OK. They assume it’s your fault.

“As a rule, I work non-stop by choice, unless I say enough,� she said. “I went straight from shooting ‘Karate Kid III’ to shooting this so I haven’t stopped in about 7 months. I’m taking a month’s vacation after this, no matter what.�