Hi everybody. Welcome to the past again. I'm coming over from the blog where I talk about the Present. I'll have my friend here leave you the link. Anyway, I'll tell you a couple confessions.
You know when you lie on your back for so long it's good to think about things from the past. One thing I'm not so proud of, I was, well, I was the worst photo assistant you could imagine. A photographer I worked for reminded me of this. He said I was the worst assistant, but I turned out to be a good photographer. You know, I guess I'm hard on my assistants now because I was a bad assistant. Some of the things I did I'll just tell you real quick. I'll throw a few words out there because all of the things I did could make a whole other chapter! Let's see. I almost backed a car into a harbor. I tried to… Oh! skip that, I can't tell you that story. I had another car crash. (It was a rental.) I left 2000 rolls of shot film in a bar. A whole job. I dropped a lens out of a helicopter. It was only a $3000 lens. What's the big deal? We had insurance. Another story I can't tell you. Let's see… There's another helicoptor ride where we landed the helicopter on the front lawn of the hotel in the morning. Totally illegal.
One time, a photographer threw a camera at my head. Almost took my head off. His wife had to separate us because we were involved in a fist fight. Another car crash. When you take a meter reading, when you're shooting film, you have to be very very particular. One time I was chatting up the model and not paying attention to what I was doing. I basically took a meter reading of the sky. The film was so dense the photographer had to make a 4 stop adjustment. In other words, it wasn't good. Anyway, I could go on and on and tell you stories, but I guess I learned at other people's expense. Sorry you guys. There's probably a wanted poster for me up in some lab somewhere.
I keep thinking about the time I lived in Australia. It was great. What a great place to live. One of my favorite places was Western Australia. Just below Perth there is an area called Margaret River. It's a great wave for surfing. Great wine. The area had great white wine. It was beautiful down there. No one there too. If you ever get a chance to go to Australia, go to that area. Mind you, from here it's the furthest place on Earth you can get to. But it's worth it.
I'm feeling kind of melancholy right now, so I'm gonna leave it at that. I hope you guys have a good one. Oh, I just found out, it's gonna snow again! How unusual. Oh my god. It snowed here like 3 days out of the week for months. It's crazy. At least my daughter likes the snow. It'll make her happy to see it. She's gonna be here in a week. How cool is that. Anyway, talk to you guys later. Love, B. Nice
Hi everybody. Welcome to the blog where I talk about the past. You know, thinking about the past has got me through the present. At the present I'm messed up.
An old friend emailed me the other day. An art director. I used to do great shoots with her. I was lucky. I had a lot of great friends I used to work with. I'm going to go off on a tangent here. One time I was shooting and I saw the one and only art director I didn't get along with. I was on another job and this art director I didn't like was on another job. So what did I do? I went in my mobile home and dressed as best I could. I dressed up as a homeless man. I saw the art director I didn't like getting some coffee so I went outside, I rolled around in the dirt and went over to the coffee shop she went into. I reached into my pocket, put some change in my hand and when she came out, I pulled my hood over my head and hunched over, growled at her. I held out my hand of change and leaned in on her. She screamed, "Get away from me!" and I chased her all the way back to her location van. She kept screaming something about a freak. I thought it was pretty funny. She never knew it was me. I went back to my van laughing.
Anyway, I didn't like her and she didn't like me, but other than that one person, I liked everyone I worked with.
I'll get back on the subject of my friend that emailed me the other day. People often ask me what was my favorite location. One of the best spots that I ever went to was in Cabo San Lucas. It was great. Basically it was a hotel the brat pack went to all the time. It hadn't been renovated since then. It was like going back in time. I had my own house with it's own swimming pool and steps that went down to a private beach. The house was amazing. It had a wooden bar and it was made of wood and stone. We all had villas like this. What a great spot. The main hotel had very tall ceilings. It was also make of exotic woods and stone. It was on the peninsula that overlooked the ocean. The main restaurant was like a giant lanai, open to the ocean. The bar was beautiful exotic woods. The whole place was amazing and like going back in time to the 50's. You expected James Dean to walk in at any moment. Oh yeah! I forgot to mention the gift shop. It was surreal. All the items there were from the 50's, including the woman at the register. My friend here asked me how long I stayed there, and I usually stayed there for 10 days to 2 weeks and if the timing was right, we got to see the big whales that came right in front of the hotel. But I heard they tore the whole thing down. There is a new hotel there now. Too bad. Oh yeah! I forgot to mention, there was an airstrip right by the hotel, so members of the brat pack would fly in from LA or Vegas and then cross the street, check in at the hotel. What a great life.
Where was I, oh yeah, anyway, that was one of my favorite spots. It was also right near one of my favorite surfing spots so overall, it was a great place to shoot.
One other thing I want to mention, my friend asked me to set her daughter up in modeling. The girl's pretty, but I strongly discouraged it. You see, it's a tough business. Often the girls end up uneducated and getting little work. You see, the models start when they are like 15. You know, the time when you really need to be educated. And it's very competitive. There's a lot of people trying to do the one thing. If you do make it, you're career span is very short. So, overall, it's not worth it. Here I am saying that after saying chase your dreams. But it's just my observation. You know, I've been in this business since 1984. And it's rare that you become very successful. You're better off with a good education and being just a pretty woman. That's my opinion anyway. I don't know what the solution would be if you wanted to try. I just hate to see uneducated people. It's a dead end street in this business.
Well, it's Valentine's Day coming up. Have a good one you guys. I'll talk to you next week. Love, B. Nice
