On Location, or, It’s Beautiful in Hell

“On location” means different things to different people. If you have a family and a sweet little nest back home, being on location is a necessary evil, one you have to suffer through, sneaking back home on long weekends or flying your loved ones or significant other out to be with you so you don’t forget about each other or contemplate straying from your fold.  If you’re single and free, and you like to travel, location can be educational, fun, and even life-changing.   Of course it can be all those things even if you’re not single and free, providing you have the right attitude.

But being happy on location is dependent on at least one basic platform for anything else to work: your accommodations.  If you don’t have those, “on location” means “in hell.”  Like adding the phrase “in bed” to fortune cookie fortunes, if you don’t have a decent place to stay, you can substitute “in hell” or add it just about anywhere you would normally say “on location”.  As in: I just spent three months without a hotel room on location + (in hell).

A few years ago I was the set decorator on a low budget show where the producers had decided to film in a small town in Southern Oregon.  I’m not sure how the powers-that-were arrived at their decision.  Perhaps they felt that the best location would be a one-street town at least fifty miles away from civilization (and any kind of furniture, hardware, décor, or other sort of store).  Or they may have based their decision on the fact that there was one and only one hotel in that town, and that it was $180 a night.  They wouldn’t pay for the art department’s lodging, but the PA’s and the producers and the actors all got their rooms, which filled up the hotel, anyway.

The location itself was absolutely beautiful, although the kinds of landscapes where we ended up shooting could have easily been found just outside the city limits of Ashland or Medford.  Like many other facets of that show, reason and logic apparently had no bearing on any decision-making process.  One of the most obvious examples of this was the decision that everybody below the line was sent to stay at a single three bedroom house, which had no furniture or heat, even though it was November up there in the mountains.

I value my privacy more than just about any other aspect of my lifestyle, and I had brought a tent for the purpose of camping outside the house so I could at least have a “bedroom” to myself.  However, that didn’t change the fact that I would be sharing a shower and bathroom with a dozen or more grips, electricians, the production designer, the prop master, and the craft service team.

When I’m doing a job higher up in the art department hierarchy, like set decorator, I expect to be working endless hours to make a show happen, but I am one of those individuals who simply must get away for a few hours a night and decompress.

If I don’t get that opportunity to privately recharge and relax, I don’t know what might happen.  I don’t want to find out, either.  I’m good argument for gun control when I get into heavy traffic, and my level of profanity during such times has reached a zenith few humans could approach; so I’m guessing it wouldn’t be pleasant for anybody if I lost it on a show because I hadn’t gotten my private time or enough sleep (see my entry on “The Sorry Syndrome” for the medical evidence of the risks involved).

The first two nights of the show, one of the producers let me stay in a room in the hotel that had been reserved for an actor who hadn’t come into town yet.  I luxuriated in the warm, wonderful room with HBO and a view of the river both nights after work, and realized how great my good fortune was on a visit to the Big House where those other poor crew members were staying.

Six grip and electric guys were playing Halo or War and listening to bad ‘70’s rock at jet engine decibel strength, and there was a miasma of smoke in all the rooms.  It was a party 24/7, but that can wear on the nerves. There had already been some territorial disputes, and the prop master was threatening to ditch the show, so tensions were high.

Oh, I did so not want to give up that hotel room.

Well, one thing led to another, and what with my tipping the maids $10.00 a night, they helped me move from empty room to empty room throughout the show.  William Windom was late getting in, so I got his room.  Then he left, so I appropriated his room again.  Then I moved into Dee Wallace’s room after she left, took over Orson Bean’s room a week later, and then, when the director decided to give up his two room suite with kitchenette for a quieter room on the river, I slid into his two room suite after he departed.  And so on, switching from room to room until the show wrapped.

I don’t know if I could have lasted out the show if I had been forced to stay at the Big House, even living in my little privacy tent outside.  The prop master left her fiancé, who was another member of the crew, walking out on the show in the middle of the most prop-heavy scene of the film, because (like me, probably) she couldn’t stand the lack of privacy and zero get-away time at the Big House.

The only sticky part of the “musical hotel rooms” strategy was when the film’s lead actor asked to talk with me about how he wanted the upcoming set to be dressed.  He said he’d meet me in my hotel room after wrap that night to go over the details.  That night I was in the director’s fabulous ex-suite, and the actor came in, saw the fancy digs and said, “What the hell did you do to get this room?  I’m the star and the executive producer of this thing and my place is half this size!”  I backpedaled, hemmed and hawed and then, in an inspired moment, graciously offered to switch rooms with him.  He moved into the suite and I got his room, which had a balcony overlooking the river.  I stayed there for the rest of the show.  It wasn’t bad.

So, my apologies to William, to Dee and to Orson—and to you, leading man who won’t be named.  It may or may not have been underhanded.  But I really needed that me-time.