A PA on PE for a WE

During the weekend of April 26-27 I had the opportunity to serve as a PA for Universal Studios on their shoot of "Public Enemies" in Minocqua, WI. I doubt I learned enough to violate any kind of confidentialty agreement I signed, though I will try to avoid any such details that might cause Universal to sue me for "$5 million dollars and all my stuff," as they politley put it.

Normally, I do not answer phone calls from area codes that I don't recognize--those are usually the calls from collectors or phone companies that claim I owe them or their clients ghastly sums of money I will accept no culpability of owing. But, something made me answer this particular call as I stepped out of the shower... A curiosity as to whom I may now owe a ghastly sum of money, most likely. To paraphrase:

"Hey, is this Mike?"

"Yeah."

"Whaddup? Wanna work on Public Enemies?"

"... ... Yes?"

"Sweetness. Come to the Hilton by 5. Bring an overnight bag. Later, bro!"

Intrigued, and in no mood to go to my real job that afternoon (the matter of a $200 paycheck for a day's worth of work may have been mentioned), I called in to work.

"Hello?"

"cough This is Mike. I'm sick. cough See you Monday." -click-

After 12 more phone calls to brag to my friends who were not going to be working on a major motion picture that weekend, I proceeded to watch as much of the first round of the NFL Draft as I could--thank god for Public Enemies, I actually got to watch the Draft!

Somewhere between Keith Rivers and Ryan Clady I was informed not to be there until 6 PM, which was good news, as I could now attend the beginning of the cookout which I was origianlly planning on skipping work for (as it was the one day that week when it was really really really nice out--you know, before it plummeted into the 30s again that night). Unfortunately for me (more unfortunate, it would prove, as the night carried on), the food began its preparation just as I had to leave--I did net one Twizzlers Pull N' Peel, however.

I arrived at the Hilton at 10 to 6, when I was informed that our bus would be arriving "within a half hour."

...

...

2 and a half hours later we were on the bus. In this interim, no one involved really knew when the bus would arrive--it was in a perpetual state of being a half hour out, which caused me to put off eating. When I finally decided I should eat something--anything--before the bus got there, the bus arrived, and we were shipped on our way, five hours to Minocqua.

I had referenced, prior to leaving, exactly where Minocqua was--approximately Canada--and how to get there, which was to take 41 north to 10, 10 to 51, then 51 to Minocqua. Our bus driver had made no such previous inquisitions. He said later that if he had known where he was driving he "probably wouldn't have taken the job."

We passed 41... We passed 45... We passed Lake Mills... I was pretty sure we were taking the long route--at 45 MPH and floating between lanes. Later, we found out he had come to Milwaukee from lower Michigan (he'd hit Chicago rush-hour traffic, hence the 2 hour delay) and, by the end of the trip, had been driving 16 hours stright. These are things I don't need to know about my bus driver.

It had been recommended that we get some sleep on the ride, since we were going to have an early morning. Now, theroretically, we were riding in a "luxury" bus. That may have been true for anyone under the height of 5'4," but at my elongated frame, I couldn't even sit facing forward, much less find the room to sleep. When I did attempt to nod off, my head resting against the window, I would be reminded of the drver's fatigue every time he rolled over the rumble strip, bouncing my head rapidly off the glass. Luckily, I took this opportunity to ge to know my fellow compatriates, most of whom were quite a bit like myself, except for the loudmouthed family of rednecks and the quiet jazz musician and one-time saxophonist for the Violent Femmes who, until his revelation of musical association, reminded me of Wilford Brimley in Bizarro World.

The group included two UWM film grads (one formerly the Equipment Room manager), a film maker who is a UWM Art History grad student, a New Yorker who specifically came to Milwaukee for UWM Film, and a guy who works for a local television production company who will be entering his sophomore year in the film program. This group gave me a lot of confidence in this program--the confidence I had when I applied, but the kind that can wane when you're inside something without the outside perspective reminding you that what you're doing really is worthwhile.

Somewhere in the middle of nowhere--North of Portage, but not on the Interstate--our driver decided we should pull over at a rest stop so we could "stretch our legs." As soon as we were off the bus, he scambled to his atlas to figure out where he was. I did not quibble with the stop, however, because after a frantic search for a vending machine, I was finally able to derive sustenance from a $1 16 pack of vanilla-chocolate sandwich cookies and a Coke!

We set back out, travel agenda reaffirmed. After nearly hitting a black bear crossing the highway, we eventually reached Minocqua--where it was snowing. This mattered little at the time, as we were eager to sleep as much as we could before we met again at 6 AM.

Originally, we had been hired to drive crew members' cars to Milwaukee while they rode the bus, since they were pulling a 16 hour shift, after which they couldn't drive safely. When we awoke after our 3 hours of sleep, we were informed that the crew had decided to stay in Minocqua, and, rather than leaving at 7, we would be there until 10... and there was an open bar.

So, in essence, we were paid by Universal Studios to spend a night in a resort hotel and get drunk for four hours with the film crew before coming home.

If this is Hollywood, where do I sign up?

Intervention Upon Narrative in "Duck Soup"

In Duck Soup feel less that the Marx Bros. are intervening upon narrative as much as narrative is intervening upon them. Coming from Vaudeville, the Bros. were much more accustomed to the free-form revue format, featuring gags, sketches, and musical numbers loosely connected to one another through association from one to the next, with "context" existing as just another gag to be used or ignored as the situation required (for instance, it could be used as a means of self-reference common in this form of theater). Duck Soup plays in just the same fashion, except teh context is suddenly a limiting thing, that demands the players follow a central (if utterly flimsy) plot line through to the end. It seems, at times, like a struggle to contain all of their anarchic energy within the confines of the frame, which was no doubt a limiting thing for them creatively (though certainly a boon financially).