Kicking Down the Door: Working in Television

I left off last time talking about the conclusion of my military career and my foray into the world of film production. About halfway into my first assignment as an Army lieutenant, I realized that my passion for the military lifestyle was disappearing, as my desire to do something creative with my life was growing. I decided I wanted to be a filmmaker. As luck would have it, I landed my first film job just as I was wrapping up my military career while stationed in Fort Benning. I caught wind that Mel Gibson was on base, scouting locations with director Randy Wallace for his upcoming film that was to be based on the book, We Were Soldiers Once…And Young. Armed with this information, I made it my mission to find Mel and Randy and pitch my services to them as a Military Advisor. I searched the base for several days and eventually met up with them, just as they were concluding their visit. I introduced myself and was pleased to find out they had intended on hiring a group of active military and/or prior service guys to serve as trainers during the “bootcamp” that was to be conducted prior to filming. The purpose of the bootcamp was to whip the actors into military shape, so they would look, sound, and act like military men when the cameras rolled.

Within several weeks I found myself out on an Army range, teaching Mel Gibson, Sam Elliot, Greg Kinnear, Barry Pepper, Dylan Walsh of “Nip/Tuck,” and the rest of the cast how to be soldiers. Over the next two weeks, we ran morning PT, patrolled through the woods, fired our weapons, threw hand grenades, and conducted long road marches. I had the time of my life. To this day, I remember sitting in the woods between training exercises, eating an MRE and swapping stories with Sam Elliot and Mel Gibson. A young man’s dream to be shooting the bull with two huge “man’s-man” film stars. And when filming began, I was on the set everyday, making sure the actors looked the part. I even got to join the cast, earning a one-line speaking part and appearing in several scenes.

When the movie wrapped, I moved to New York City and moved in with my fiancee. I attended New York Film Academy, and after cutting my teeth in the tv biz as a production assistant on the gameshow, “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire,” I was accepted into the Director’s Guild of America Training Program and worked on several other film projects, including M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village.

A brief word here about this movie. Ironically, I also got a chance to run a “bootcamp” with all of the actors prior to the onset of principal photography. For about two weeks, I joined Joaquin Phoenix, Sigourney Weaver, William Hurt, Adrien Brody, Judy Greer, and Ron Howard’s daughter at a farm in Pennsylvania where we learned how to live like 19th Century folk. I chatted with Joaquin about vegetarianism and talked politics with William Hurt, who assigned me the moniker, “The Captain,” due to my military experience.

Later, I remember my first day at work during pre-production, when one of the senior crew members handed me the script for the film, which was then titled, “The Woods.” After reading the script, she asked me what I thought of it. It was one of those “Emperor has no clothes” moments, in which you’re not sure whether you should tell the truth. I said it was “interesting,” and left it at that. I think she got my meaning and we said nothing further about the content of the script until after the film was released. What my “interesting” comment meant, though, was that the script was poorly written (from a simple grammatical perspective, and filled with spelling errors) and the plot of the film was juvenile, contrived, and pulled from a discarded Twilight Zone episode. I couldn’t believe that this guy was the highest paid screenwriter in Hollywood at the time. The dialogue was laughable and there was this awkward feeling on the set all the time when the actors struggled through their stilted lines. I will say that the crew loved the guy. They were very loyal to Night, as he is called, as he chose to base his production company and work exclusively in the Philadelphia metro area, providing these craftspeople with a steady flow of work every few years. His sets were also merciful in terms of number of takes and the length of our shooting days. And every week he ran a lottery in which he gave away a free trip for two to one lucky member of the crew. And these weren’t trips to Atlantic City. They were trips to Europe, Hawaii, and other amazing vacation spots. It was a classy move and inspired his crew to work hard for him. Personally he was warm to me when he learned I had also worked with Mel, but cooled off for some reason later in the shoot. I liked The Sixth Sense, and really liked Unbreakable when I first saw it, but I feel that Night became a prisoner of his own devices at each successive outing, believing that he must create a twist-ending to make the work satisfying. It’s hard to not allow success to get to one’s head, I can only imagine…

But back to my path…following that film, something unexpected happened. Instead of continuing my film career, I received an offer to be a “writer” for reality tv (yep, they have those). The gig paid a lot more than my film jobs, and I was going to get a chance to flex my creative muscles (instead of standing around yelling, “quiet on the set,” writing production reports, or wrangling extras on film sets). My first job was as a story editor for the MTV show, Making the Band 2, starring P. Diddy. Then I worked on MTV’s Made, where I stayed put for about four seasons, writing that series’ highest rated episode (“Girly Girl,” earning a 3.1 in July ‘05). Definitely the ONLY former Airborne Ranger who has written a tv show about a 16 year-old tomboy who wants to be made into a “girly-girl” just in time for the big high school prom! While on Made, I also had the opportunity to get behind the camera and into the edit suite as post-producer for a handful of episodes. You can check out my IMDB credits here. It’s cool for me to note here that my great-grandfather also has an entry on IMDB, which I find interesting, considering we both began our careers in the military.

During this time, I also joined forces with my wife, Lauren, and a boarding school chum (you can check out his website, Jed’s Jaunsy, at the links section) to produce my first documentary film, called Swing State Ohio, about the 2004 Presidential Election in the battleground state of Ohio. Here’s an article about the film, and a review here. It wasn’t exactly a financial success, but was a great “learning experience” in more ways than one. For me, the highlight of the experience began with an intimate sit-down with Rep Dennis Kucinich the day before the election, followed by a night of feverishly driving through a torrential downpour on Election Day in Cleveland, Ohio, filming Dennis as he went from polling place to polling place, trouble-shooting the lack of working voting machines and the excessive long lines that were rampant in the lower-income areas of Cleveland.

My last job in reality tv was to be Supervising Story Producer on the ABC show, Wife Swap, although I didn’t know it at the time. It was on that show that within the span of four weeks, I was informed that my season on Wife Swap was prematurely over, was called up (illegally) to return to military service and attend the festivities in Iraq, and most significantly, found out that my wife was pregnant. After a small legal tussle (which cost us not a small amount of money, in my opinion), the military dropped their case.

A few weeks later, we were pregnant and wondering what the heck we were going to do for money with me unemployed, both of us without health insurance, and a little one on the way…

To be continued…

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