I was imagining being in the middle of a Senate session
nobody said anything to each other or me they spoke to the distance
it all bounced off the walls and of course I said what I thought
but no one would listen
no Democrat or Republican would hear my union songs
I wonder if they care what I saw in my 24 short years
If they respected my quarter century here
on this long island I was born they call New York
All my hard work
I heard late in the night the President I voted for extended the Patriot Act
can’t say I agree with that
what’s my freedom worth?
A million questions
I was imagining being in the middle of a Senate session
I was 20 years old. I’d been working in the film business 3 months. Up until that point I’d only been on small stages in regular size places moving a wall or two doing construction on sets. Learning. This WAS My first big job. I arrive at the Bedford Armory. It’s HUGE. If you live in NYC you’ve definitely seen the Armories - Marcy(in Williamsburg), Kingsbridge (in BX), Bedford (in Crown Heights) and there is one on Park Ave uptown in Manhattan. They look like castles. I think there are more but they are all National Guard buildings that as far as I know since 2003 they’ve been rented out for major film/tv productions. I’ve read that they want to make the Kingsbridge Armory (which is a place that will get a post of it’s own) into a shopping plaza. There’s a rumor that they’re all connected by underground tunnels. But that’s another story for another day.
I walk into the big bay doors in the middle of Union St. Here I am. In awe. A kid in the middle of all of this, I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. Picture Calvin[&Hobbes]. Gawking. Look at this huge production. I wish I had a camera then. My job? To clean the construction shop. Vacuum the saws. Sweep. Put away lumber. Keep things organized. Make sure no one trips on debris. Give the carpenters a hand when they needed to move something. Simple things. “Shop bitch”. I didn’t mind, I was a kid and I was learning. Happy just to be there making some money and watching it come together. It wasn’t easy.. there are no comfort controls in the massive armories. No A/C. We were starting at 6AM and sweating by 6:17. In the winter it was freezing cold no matter what you did. Here I am, I’m in the middle of 8 table saws going. Dust everywhere. A lot of it MDF (medium density fibreboard – another story…) – a toxic composite wood made of glued together sawdust. It was filthy. But from all this filth the set started to come together. The floor. Then the walls started rising. Then the carpenters added detail. Then the set dressers came in. The electricians lit it and the rigging crew had everything set. And then the shooting crew arrived. The cast. The exras. Craft service. Catering. Where did the star of the movie park their BIGGEST-EVER bus size trailer? INSIDE the armory right next to our carpentry shop. The armory, this HUGE armory, was EMPTY when I got there. By the time I had left we filled every inch three times over. We’d built sets, knocked them down, and built new ones, new floors on top of old, at the end of the job the floor we put down was 10 layers of wood and we used 2 forklifts to break it into huge chunks. At the end it was empty and cleaner than when we’d found it. And I saw it all.
One of the first mornings I was there, probably looking confused, “hair in my eyes”, a carpenter who knew I was new to the business said to me “C’mere kid I wanna show you something”. He turned me around and said “This is the first rule of the business” and pointed at the wall of our tool room – on it in huge letters was:
“SEE THE BIG PICTURE”
Sweeping is not just sweeping. If the floors don’t get swept the movie doesn’t get made. I applied that lesson to everything. I learned a lot from that carpenter. We did that entire job together and I didn’t see him for almost 2 years and he said he saw me working and he couldn’t believe how much I learned. I’m extremely lucky to work around people that are not just my peers but people who’ve lived life much more than I…. that carpenters name was Eddie Ferrara. He passed away 3 days ago of Lung Cancer. He was in his 50′s. A true character in the story of life.
Rest in Peace to all those we lost in 2009 and all of us left behind
Writing my 1st blog via iPhone. Halfway to Staten via L train to Manhattan and the X1 bus back through Brooklyn over the Verrazano. My first time going out since a nice little blizzard dropped almost a foot on the city. The night after the storm and the streets were clear, everything aligned in rows of snow at the steets sidelines. [Shoutout to the men and women in city sanitation and MTA people doing a good job. The higher ups give the crew a bad name.] The commuter-aisles bus riders have made through the icy barriers are the best. I’m in sneakers and I didn’t get my feet wet. Gotta know where to step. That spot might look like solid ground or it might be a sinkhole to a terrible fate, doomed by an icy wet foot. You don’t wanna be hoppin around on the dry one. I’m used to walking on thin ice.
//listening to – Alicia Keys “The Element of Freedom//
In the film business you have “above-the-line” and “below-the-line”. Above is the cast, directors (director of photography, maybe), producers. Below the line is everyone else : all of the other departments : Camera, Grip [Shooting - Rigging - Construction] (which is what I am – a rigging grip) , Teamsters, Electricians, Wardrobe, Scenic Artists, Hair & Make-Up, Caterers, Craft Service, Set Dressers, Props, Parking, Production Assistants, Assistant Directors, Sound techs, Video techs. All of those departments are below the line.
If you don’t know what a call sheet is, basically every day we get like a mission plan and it’s two sheets of paper. Page one is the scenes we’re going to shoot that day with info like a short description, cast in scene, length in pages of scene, location. Also are notes for the different departments below this plan for the day.
An excerpt from tomorrow’s call sheet:
Special Requirements : **HEATING TENT FOR CAST**
…… word. it’s not said but – the message is – NOT FOR THE CREW. guess who picked up the heaters that aren’t for us to use…. we did! Guess whose responsibility it is to provide heaters? Not my department! Guess who was doing this as a last minute favor? We did. Guess who’s going to benefit? Everyone above the line. Guess who will get no thanks? We who are just the guys who stand around smoking cigarettes. We’ll get a wrap gift and a party but in reality you’re not a human being you’re a simply appeased and replaceable drone. There are lines drawn that are made very clear. It’s going to be 23 degrees and 20-30mph winds tomorrow night and we’ll be right on the east river. It took me 3 years outside working 4 seasons in #NYC to really learn to dress for any weather. There is no quarter for the crew. I love my job. I love doing what I do. I enjoy the challenge and the benefits of working outside. But all of that is nothing when I’m constantly reminded of the lines that are drawn between people.
‘Donuts’ save me today
thanks Dilla for putting me on to this while I write my time
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land; Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. “Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
I grew up listening to hip-hop (naturally as a New Yorker born in the mid-80′s) and whatever my parents listened to. Most of my earliest memories involve music. I always remember hearing Michael Jackson with my mother. My father as a kid in the 60′s / 70′s naturally listened to Rock / Soul / R&B of that era. I’d always known the Beatles from Q104.3 … I’d never really been into them. If any band I really got into through my father it was Pink Floyd. But I knew who the Beatles were.
In November of 2005 I was looking for a birthday present for my father. I’m at the BestBuy in Staten Island and I see this :
...
And at this point I know that John Lennon was a Beatle. I know that my father liked the Beatles. And if I were to call anyone a ‘Working Class Hero’ (I’d at that point never heard the expression or the song) it would be him. But things aren’t so simple in any life and especially not in mine. My father on getting the gift says he doesn’t want it. Maybe the statement was too much. We’re a family of men, my father, my brothers and my saint of a mother. We don’t typically do very sentimental things for each other. And my father doesn’t want much – he says – ‘I want you to take care of yourself’. A true good man. Was then and still is my hero and grateful to have him.
But here I am with this John Lennon 2CD album called “Working Class Hero”. Now myself, a young working class man just starting out in the film business, always a lover of music, never a returner of anything, I decided to open this up and listen to it. I’d never listened to a full Beatles album before. I’d never listened to a John Lennon song and I’m pretty sure the only one I’d ever heard is “Imagine”.
And I listened. And I learned. And I sang along. And it’s been with me like I knew it all along. There is so much more to say. I work in a business where we are at different locations all the time, for instance last week on each day I started in 5 different places around the city. Tomorrow and tuesday of all places I will be working just up Central Park West from the Dakota where he lived and died… on the anniversary of his death.
How little I knew just buying what I thought was a gift for my father. There are people who will tell you with certainty that I am the reincarnation of the man. I’m not saying it. I want to say tonight that I’ve been thinking about it and though I wasn’t born until 5 years later, as I put his whole life, the world, and the events together I still can’t believe it. How could someone shoot John Lennon? How could someone kill someone like me?
There is so much more to every story…
love & peace
we have to say that no one remembered ever truly dies
I started using this tag on twitter a few weeks ago. For as long as I’ve known about Afghanistan I’ve had an interest in it. Obviously being a lifelong New Yorker the events of 9/11 made it a topic. I was 16 when The first War started(before Iraq). #sidenote I think many forget that there are in fact TWO wars going on, THREE if you count the equally as death producing drug war. Tora Bora. Osama’s in the caves with a dialysis machine and his trusty doctor. Dead or Alive. The Hindu kush mountain ranges. Northwest Pakistan. Taliban and ancient civilizations where any who wish to take refuge must be sheltered. Places no mechanized vehicles have operated on. The tapes, the fuzzy bootleg video recordings. Some say Osama is a fake totally fabricated by some conspiracy master plan. Some say Osama is dead. Some say Osama is real and masterminded these terrible acts of violence. Some say Osama drives a cab in the city. My opinion? I don’t know, so I won’t say.
What I do know, and what I can say, is what I’ve read about the situation and the lives of the people there. The pictures i’ve seen. The stories i’ve read. The documentaries, the articles, the movies based on, and one book that may have been written (in my mind) specifically for me. And not just the people, the country, it’s animals, it’s history, it’s mountain ranges and natural habitats. Besides being important to me because we are currently at War with the country – besides that – I see an Afghanistan that is filled with remarkable natural life like Snow Leopards, mountain ranges, fields, kite controllers, weevers of incredible carpetry clothing and art. And I know that there have been talks and the president I voted for is considering sending 40,000 more of my peers, young American men & women into a place filled with a civilization of people who have endured foreign weapons and bloodshed for 30+ years.
I love New York City. That is unquestionable in my every thought and action. What happened on 9/11 has made me who I am more than anything in this world. By saying we should leave Afghanistan am I giving up on the vengeance of my city? Am I saying they died for nothing because we never found Osama? No. In the Godfather Pt. I after Sonny Corleone is killed the Don calls a meeting of all the families in the mafia and he says “I forgoe the vengeance of my son” because he realized that no one else needs to die. GIVE PEACE A CHANCE.
My grandmother revealed to me today that my father was talking about Afghanistan when he was my age. 30 years ago. And we’re still there.
