The Humble Nailbanger

I finally doped out how to order my damned blogroll, though I must admit I wasn’t really trying all that hard. What I was most concerned with is linking to some of the good folks and excellent sites that have somehow found and linked me. So please check out the sidebar and go see what some other knowledgeable folks have to say about the work we do:

OneNYCStagehand:  I link this site pretty regularly, but it merits mentioning again. One Stagehand’s view of things. With over thirty years of experience of working in NYC as a stagehand, I’m just another old geezer who spends a great deal of time in the dark.

News from the “Real World” – Community, Leadership, Experimentation, Diversity & Education: Pittsburgh Arts, Regional Theatre, New Work, Producing, Copyright, Labor Unions, New Products, Coping Skills, J-O-Bs…Theatre industry news, University & School of Drama Announcements, plus occasional course support for Carnegie Mellon School of Drama Faculty, Staff, Students, and Alumni.

Backstage at Backstagejobs.com: Life behind the scenes….

Theatreforté: Reporting live from our underground bunker in Columbus, Ohio, where we sift through the mass of theatre reporting from the entire country (and beyond) and serve-up the tastiest stories (sometimes with commentary) to whet your appetite for more from the best theatre resources online.

I’ll add more as I sift back through various links and comments…

I don’t get out much. The fact that the business keeps me busy or recovering mostly around the clock means that when I do get a day off, I don’t feel like doing much of anything. Add to that my natural semi-agoraphobic tendencies (I’m not at all agoraphobic, but if you knew all the details, it wouldn’t surprise you), and it might be months between nights when I go out.

So when I do get out, I’m already at a disadvantage. I’m a bit socially stunted, and all I really do is work or read novels and politics. Who wants to hang out with a guy whose only viable conversational topics are work and politics? Or, now, the latest doings in the world of mass entertainment, along with some obscure novelists??? What I need to do is get religion, and then I’ll officially be impossible to socialize with.

Just before Christmas, I got to get out to a party thrown by friends of the Mrs. I was really quiet and very, if not totally, over-aware of how little I felt like I had to talk about. Then a friend of hers (who I rather like, so I forgive him) asked me: “So, you still working at….?”

How the hell do I answer that?

Some of you know that this isn’t a regular business, either because you visit here or you have some personal experience. For those of you who don’t know, well….being a stagehand isn’t a regular business.

I’ve been working for one company for much of the last few months of my time…actually, one network. But just because I’ve been bouncing around one network for a while doesn’t mean I work for them in the traditional sense…I don’t “work for” them the same way that most people “work for” a company. I may know most of the crew, I may know my way around the studio. In fact, I’m in that situation to the point where I could pretty easily blend in in any number of studios…I know my way around, I know the nooks and crannies.

But I don’t work for them. I just work there, and I am asked back pretty regularly.

I don’t have a job with any network, or any theater. I don’t have a job, per se. I’m not really a freelancer, either. I mainly just bounce around, and go where the money is. The question is, how do I explain this in one sentence, so it fits within the bounds of party conversation?

And I guess another question: what is it that one might call being a stagehand, anyway? It’s a job, but not in the traditional sense: I don’t work for anyone, I don’t have a regular spot at which to show up (generally….we go in spurts, and those of us who don’t have regular positions might get 6 months here, 3 months there, etcetc). I’m not a consultant. Is this a lifestyle? A career? Or are we just mercenaries? Go where the money is, leave when it runs out?

More importantly, I know that I love doing what I’m doing, stressful as it may be at times.  And I love that I can take pride in my work, as can all my fellow stagehands.  It’s pretty cool, all in all.

I was talking to a friend of mine recently. He was telling me about the first (I think) person he had to fire, who was the second (I think) guy he ever hired. Basically it sounds like the guy had been around a while, and just started to become a prima donna…he would refuse jobs he didn’t want to do, and then go off and make phone calls. He’d show up late, drunk, the whole bit. Really nice guy. He’s a contractor, so he just told him to take a hike. And rightly so.

I’ve noticed this happening pretty regularly in the business, and I can’t really say what causes it. A series of bad days? The feeling that you’ve somehow mastered whatever it is you’re doing to the point where you no longer need to be doing it, and should instead be doing something way better, easier, yet higher-paying? I’m not sure, but I do know that these types can really be a fantastic anchor by which to yank the entire ship over the falls. Because as goes one asshole, so goes the crew.

This is how it goes down, generally:

Asshole A: “I’m not doing that.”

Normally-decent-worker B: [sees Asshole A, silently decides to himself] “Well if he doesn’t have to, I sure as shit don’t.”

Barely-competent-worker C: (who always says “I’m really a comedy writer, I just do this on the side,” but full time for about 4 years now): [thinks] “I wonder what’s on Comedy Central tonight?”

And so on down the line. A shit attitude really is more infectious than TB. If it sets in, it can get really dangerous.
Likewise doing things like arriving late. In situations where the pay is for the call, rather than for anything meritocratic, showing up 20 minutes late is pretty much like stealing from everyone around you. You’re forcing them to do your work, and then collecting the check.

There was a studio where one guy on the crew showed up 45 minutes late with appalling regularity. At that point, the floors had been swept, everything’d been prepped, the opening moves had been set up, the whole thing. And then he rolled in. He looked harried, sure, but…you know, show up on time, dude. Trains and roads run all night. Get up earlier. Not enough sleep is a curse of the business.

Or the guys who ritually only stand around and do the lowest caliber jobs – footing a ladder, sweeping, emptying the garbage – leaving everyone else to do the heavy lifting and work that actually requires thought or skill. They make the same money as the guys making the moves on the pieces, but have instead learned the secret…in some studios or theaters, you can skate by doing as little as possible, look busy, and get away with it. It really is too bad when it happens (and it doesn’t happen everywhere, thankfully) because it can poison the studio and quickly embitter the few crew members who simply refuse to go down the asshole path.

Actually, now that I’m thinking about it, I’ve worked in one studio where the asshole was the head. He would disappear for hours, come in late, leave early…essentially what he did was force his crew to act as de facto heads, because he was never there to make a single decision, while he collected head’s pay. What happened was that everyone but one guy just fell right into line and said “well, fuck him…I’m not breaking my back just to save his ass.” That one guy then killed himself picking up the slack, because he was too good a guy to watch nothing get done, and didn’t want to have to suffer rushing through everything later on in the day.

Talk about poisoning a studio…alright, rant over.

An observant person who was familiar with both can pretty easily see that there are a lot of things which the sailboat and the stage have in common. A big one is in rigging and knots. The rest? Well, I recently read something comparing stagehands to pirates that wasn’t too much of a stretch, so I think there’s probably a future post in there somewhere.

“Do you know your knots?” many of the old heads will ask you on your first call. I would hesitantly say that “most” stagehands do know them, which is why it’s generally only the older heads that will ask you. I’d confidently say that the guys that don’t know their knots usually don’t carry knives, either.

Basically, there’s two knots that stagehands will generally find themselves using just about every day: the bowline and the clove hitch.

I think it’s because the story of how I learned my knots is funny that I’ve always wanted to start asking the people I work with how they learned theirs. Was it on the job? Or were they clued in beforehand, and able to confidently answer in the affirmative when asked the all-important question I’ve already mentioned above?

Personally, I wasn’t clued in. Actually, I was clued in…it was attempted and I was just too scatter-brained to retain the info. I tend to not be so hot about learning things unless I’m really interested in what I’m being shown. And the chances of that were slim when I was in my teens, unless it involved Jack Kerouac, Hunter Thompson, Led Zeppelin or girls. The long and the short of it is that I didn’t know my knots when I showed up to my first call for carpenters.

I was a half-hour early. It was a cacophonic riot of moving dollies and shouting and gear. I was greeted by the owner of the gruff voice I had heard on the phone the day before. He sported a pompadour, a face older than his voice, a limp and a cigarette in his mouth while one sat ready behind his ear. He was arguing with two guys, both of whose bellies hung far beyond and below their toolbelts and who looked like they could bench press three of me. Each. I asked to speak with the man whose name I had been given.

“You the new guy? The college boy?”

I didn’t really know how to respond to that….I’d never been anywhere where having gone to college might be a bad thing. “I guess so, unless there are two of us starting tonight.”

“Did we speak yesterday?”

“Yes.”

“Then you’re the new guy, college boy. Thought you’d be smarter than that.” He laughed to the other guys, and jerked his thumb back in my direction. “He paid all that money just to not know that he’s the college boy who’s a new guy.” They both laughed as they ambled off.

“So. College boy. Tell me, do you know your knots?” The speed and manner of which he so thoroughly chewed his gum was especially intimidating, even above and beyond his rangy strength.

I vaguely remembered my father mentioning this, and showing me the two knots “I absolutely, positively needed to know.” His hands moved in flashes under the light and after he showed me three times how to tie each, he had me do what he did. I fumbled around until I got them right, and promptly forgot everything about them. What was good for me was that I quickly and correctly saw that I was doomed here, that nothing I could say or do would prevent me from getting kicked around for a while. Somehow, I internalized it, accepted it and decided to roll with it in one quick, shining and rare moment of adulthood. Rare for me, anyway.

“No sir, I’m sorry, but I don’t.”

He leaned in close to me. Though all around us was chaos and noise, he spoke very quietly. I didn’t miss a word as he growled them at me, delivering them aloft a quiet breeze on which I smelled the odor of every cigarette he had smoked that day, along with the slightest hint of mint. Judging by the pack he smoked over the course of that first four-hour call, there were a lot of sticks on that breath.

“Don’t call me sir, college boy. I work for a living. Do me a favor and save that shit for your professors, alrighty?”

“Ooooooookay. Yup, no problem.”

He turned to a bin full of bundles of white rope, grabbed one, spun and unraveled it all in one fluid motion that showed he had done it tens of thousands of times, all while keeping his eye on me. “OK Plato, there’s just two knots you need to know for now, alright? The first is the bowline. I’m gonna tie it for you once or twice, and then you’ll do what I do.” He reached back, grabbed another coil of rope and tossed it to me.

“See, you just make this little loop, then bring this thing here around it, back to the front, and then through it. Pull this end here to make it tight. There you have it, a bowline.”

The temptation I always have to break into a smile in situations as ridiculous as this had, very luckily I think, deserted me completely. It left in its place a creeping feeling that I was in completely over my head.

“Want to see that again?”

“Please, if you wouldn’t mind.”

“One more time, and then you do it. Hold it like this to start. Then there’s your loop, there’s it going around, back in here, through, and pull. OK?” He seemed to be enjoying himself. And now, in retrospect, I know for a fact he was, because we’ve since joked about it.

“Your turn.”

I looked down at my hands, which compared to his were awfully soft. And clean. The ability to control what they were doing seemed to have left me. “Yup. So I start out by…”

“Switch hands. You a lefty?”

I was. Sometimes. But it was complicated. It took me going for tests with the gym teacher as a kid to figure out which hand my parents should buy a baseball glove for. I never really knew which way to hold a bat, which hand to throw with, nothing. Now, I’m older and wiser and comfortable with the fact that there’s nothing wrong, I am just totally incompetent when it comes to anything related to sports. “It depends.”

“It depends? Is that something I need a diploma to decode? What the hell could it possibly depend on?” Standing under a No Smoking sign as well as the hand lettered, all caps “ABSOLUTELY NO SMOKING IN THE STUDIO” one below it, he sighed out an impossible lungful of smoke, and looked first left, then right over his shoulders. He leaned in a little closer, but didn’t talk as quietly as last time. “Tell you what…do you know what hand you tie your shoes with?”

“Lefty.”

“Alright. Then do the opposite of what I do. Take the short end in your left hand. That’s called the working end. You know why they call it that?”

“No.”

“No? Boy, you’re really getting your money’s worth at that college. Alright. Take the working end in your left hand, and the standing end in your right. I don’t supposed you know why they call it that, either, yes?”

‘Christ,’ I thought to myself. The call hadn’t even started yet, and already I wanted to crawl under a rock. “Yes. Well, no. I don’t know why.”

“Didn’t think so. Now follow me. Make this loop. Take this thing, go around the loop. Then go through it. No, the loop. No. Through. The. Loop. That’s it. Now pull it tight. No, the other thing. Yeah. And there you have it.”

I’m sorry, what was it I have again, apart from a fistful of fear and regret and a simmering desire to go disembowel the old man for getting me into this?

“Do it again.” The second time was a little better, though not much. He only had to show me where I messed up once. Two more times, and I was pretty sure I had it.

“Now do it behind your back.” I did, with some effort. Then he grabbed my right hand. “Do it one handed.” I fumbled around for a minute. Two minutes. He let my hand go. “Alright. Another day. Come with me.”
He walked over to a Genie – a sort of open elevator device. It’s kind of like a cherry picker that can only go up and down…a platform that’s about two and a half feet square, surrounded by bars at foot and a half intervals, keeping you inside. He lifted the chain that was stretched across the entrance. “Hop in. Now move over. More.” He hopped in next to me. “Press the green button.”

I turned slightly and pressed the green button. The box started to rise, slowly, with a whine that indicated that it was laboring under the strain of perhaps more weight than it was designed to lift.

We went up, up through the grid, at about 19 feet, the height to which I had become accustomed on lighting calls. On past that, I was looking at the network of pipes and then the thick, dusty cables that powered the whole thing. Up further, and we were going past the air-conditioning ducts, with holes punched here and there by some of the studio equipment that hung from the grid. Past that, the genie whining ominously and the whole thing swaying back and forth like a ship caught in a hurricane, we stopped. We were higher than I’d ever been in my life. And I’d never been very high because I was terrified of heights.

He put his palm on the ceiling. “So this is the whole studio.” I looked around. “You might be spending a lot of time here eventually, but you won’t see if from up here very often.”

Being terrified of heights and up that high in what is essentially a phone booth without the safety of enclosure, I really wasn’t seeing too much anyway. I was really only good for a nod and a smile.

Then he pulled a short section of the same rope out of his pocket. “This is a clove hitch.” He whipped through the knot, going under, over, under then over, through, something, I couldn’t keep track. He pulled it tight and turned to me.

“Got it?” he asked, with a sly grin.

Um, yeah. It was easier than the last one…what was it called again? But at this height, it could be that old shoe knot and I would have trouble. “Once more, if you could.”

He heaved a sigh, untied and retied the knot. “Your turn,” he said, untying it and holding it limply between two fingers at eye level.

I took the short length and started to do what I thought he did. Then the bucket began to sway. I turned and looked at him, he had a wickedly leering grin on his face. It was swaying because he was rocking from side to side! What a crazy fuck!

“C’mon, Aristotle. Tie the damn knot so we can get down. Don’t you know I’m afraid of heights?”

With some pointers from him, I worked through it as we passed through states varying widely from perfectly vertical. Thankfully, he started us on our long descent with a touch of his thumb. “Now tie the bowline again. Behind your back. You should be tying that fuckin’ knot twenty-four seven until you can tie it without looking, upside down and with one hand. Got it? I’m going to check you every night when you leave the studio to make sure you have a few feet of line to practice.”

We hit the ground with a slight thud and he climbed out to go have another smoke. Props was done with most of their strike in the first set.

All we had to do was wait for the clock.

OneNYCStagehand put up a brilliant post about the massive disconnect today between “book learnin” and real-world, hands-on knowledge. Hopefully he won’t mind if I quote liberally:

In my mind, the set I’ve just loaded-in is representative of the disconnect between the so-called information society and the rest of us. Framed out of tubular steel, it produces the illusion of being very slender while still being very strong. It’s also been designed with a CAD program that is a marvel of functionality. It allows for 3D views, cut lists, cost estimates and multiple color combinations that the client can approve of without every leaving their office. It is also usually “drafted” by someone who is much more familiar with a hard drive than a drill press, with the language of software than the language of truck drivers. And when the lack of familiarity with the shop process collides with the computer process, it’s the language of truck drivers that is heard the loudest when bolts holes don’t line up. When the inexperienced don’t account for the build up of welds when making joints, things can get loud and profane. It’s the workman’s skill that makes the real the symmetry of the beautiful drawing on the dirty, sagging floor of the studio.

Yes. YES! It dovetails neatly with this piece I just wrote a week or so ago…there are people in the business, particularly designers in this case, who are working with a limited range of knowledge, and that limit is a large part of what makes the business dangerous and frustrating. They look at a set of plans for a studio and see that, for example, something is 30 feet wide, so it must really be thirty feet wide. There’s no understanding of how a studio operates, what’s required of the studio space beyond the scenery, because they’ve never actually done any of this. They’ve read about it, if we’re lucky. They went to school, got their degree, yet only spent a minimal amount of time with their feet on a stage, and they just don’t get it. They go back to their computers and design things that are too heavy, too wide, to tall…pick a dimension or quality about scenery or the demands of a studio, and they’ve missed on some crucial element.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not running down people who learn things in school. I have a college degree. It’s in no way related to what I’m doing, sure, but what it does allow me to do is see the problem with the cloistered set…those who go to school and enter the world with no practical knowledge, no calluses, no dirt on them. What it does is pretty much set them up to hurt people. It also, to put things into a perspective that suits and ties might understand, costs lots of money to fuck things up in ways that only ignorant designers can.

I worked a loading this past summer where design flaws easily added three or four days to the process. Scenery needed to be hacked to fit into the space, and to fit to itself. Surfaces didn’t look right together because the designer had never done it, he’d picked them off a menu and they looked pretty on the screen. The end result? We spent days and days futzing and grunting and cramming and sawing and made it work. But it cost the company thousands of dollars in manpower and overtime. And not just in stagehand labor costs….while we were doing that, there were crews behind us waiting to start what they needed to do…adding audio, computers, cameras, whatever. All on the clock, all standing around.

Mind you, I’m not complaining…I worked more hours in three weeks than most people work in two months, but I also made some decent money. The bottom line is that this designer was hired by the same gang of suits who will then turn around and badmouth stagehands when contract negotiation time comes around, and blame us for making loadins and loadouts last so long. Those very same guys in ties, however, will get big fat bonuses at the end of the year, because whatever happened and however spectacularly over budget the loadin may have been, the set was built and the show’s on the air. The guys who actually built it and got it on the air? Most of them aren’t even working there anymore. They’ve been forced to move on, and that was five jobs ago. Besides, they’ll say, “we got you pizza that one day.” Two pies for 15 guys.

It really makes you love working with a good designer that much more…some of the designers have been around forever, and have seen it all. They know to visit the shops, they understand everyone’s roles and their respective requirements, they buy lunch at the loadin because they understand you’re there for 16 hours a day and don’t feel like walking anywhere, they know where the jacks go and where the cameras hide at the end of the day. They very rarely fuck anything up. They’ve worked the hours and have earned their stripes, and it’s a relief when they walk onto the floor while you’re shoving and begging and massaging and cursing at something that’s not right. And most of all, they know the magic words when something just isn’t working, for whatever reason: “Just make it work, honey. Cut it, lose it, I don’t care how you do it. You know what you’re doing and I trust you. We’ll bill ‘em for everything.”

I’ll leave you with a brilliant one from my last loadin, concerning scenery that was not designed to take into account the building it was being loaded into. We had multiple pieces that couldn’t be wedged into the freight elevator, no matter how hard we tried. We even tested opening up the emergency hatch and removing the lighting fixtures. No go. So, what’s the answer then? Yup. Carry it up the stairs. Five floors, ten flights of ten steps each.

Now, you think to yourself “ok fine, so you carry it up the stairs.” And I could forgive you for that. But think about how a stairwell is built in a building where most people are expected to use elevators. Solid handrails, waist high. Lots of concrete, kinda narrow….only as wide as codes require. These pieces had to be flipped, spun, held overhead, passed from man to man, wrestled over those damned handrails again and again by a group of men who had already worked 3 or 4 sixteen hour days. And they weren’t light…have I mentioned that yet?

We finally get it to the floor we need, barely fit it through the door, and walk it out onto the floor of the studio. We knew where it went, but we were interested in the reaction of the designer, a young kid just out of college who had obviously fucked up. We plopped it down right in front of him, and he took in the sight of 5 sweaty, exhausted men into whose lives he had just contributed no small measure of misery.

“Where do you want this?”

“What happened to you?” he asked, and I’m not lying or stereotyping for effect here, he pushed his glasses back up onto the bridge of his nose.

“Well, these didn’t fit into the elevator, so we had to walk them up the stairs from the loading dock.”

“Wow, really? They didn’t fit?” He then ran his hand over the surface of one of the pieces, seemingly inspecting it for dents and dings. “They go over on stage left. Thanks.”

Occasionally we get to talking on set, as there can be some significant downtime during rehearsals and blocking and taping.  There are millions of stories in this business…stagehands tend to be misfits and ne’er do wells, and as such we often associate with really (really, really, really) colorful characters….guys who’ve done some amazing things (opening historic shows, working really renowned gigs), criminals, killers, travelers, thieves.

Today we got to talking about a soap that was on a few decades ago.  Part of the storyline was a bar, which was an actual functioning bar….there was a deal with a brewing company and, as a result, there was always a steady flow of beer on set.  Seriously…kegs every day, multiple cases of cans and bottles a week.  And everyone pitched in to make sure that the supply didn’t outstrip the demand…production staff, cameramen, stagehands, everyone.

And man, the stories!

Like the crew member who was so loaded one night that he walked out the door of the “bar” to the backdrop, which was a shot of a street, and tried to hail a cab pictured on the left side.

Or the tech who drank and drank and drank until he literally pissed himself, sitting there.  The guys told him what he had done…you know…”um…hey man, you just….um….wet your pants.”  He looked down at his soaking wet lap and said “No I didn’t.”

Then he looked again…”Oh wow, I did.  Gimme another one.”

And this guy was at work….and not just physically in the building, but on the clock.

Or of a cameraman who had had more than his fair share and had gotten to thinking…

“You know,” he said, “I’ve been eyeing that bottle of scotch all night, and I really think you need to pour me some.”

The stagehands looked over the shelf, searching out the bottle he was fixated on.  It was a top-shelf label, sure, but inside was nothing but water and some food-coloring.  They tried to dissuade him:

“It’s not what you think, man, really.  Don’t bother.”

But he insisted, so they figured “what the hell.”  They got the appropriate glass and poured him a double.  He picked it up, knocked it back and gave his head a half-shake.

“Man, that’s smooth,” he said.

I wrote this a few months back…it was sitting there as a draft, mostly ready, when the strike occurred and I realized that reporters from the NY Times were reading this site and I suddenly became…shy. Strange. Anyway:

The Mrs and I had a pretty decent fight the other night, started as a result of my being a total ass about – surprise! – sleep, a subject much discussed around these parts recently. Basically, I go to bed fairly early each night in order to make early calls each day; 9pm is a regular bedtime around here, and that leaves me most nights with 6 hours, at the most. On this particular occasion, I was pissed about one of the house printers not working (to print crossword puzzles, natch…it’s always something so mundane) and took it out on her, lashing out about shit that we’d already worked out and talked to death.

When all was said and done, I was lying in bed – alone. I decided I needed to take a broad general view of things. For, as William Burroughs said:

You’ve got to take a broad, general view of things.

It was 11pm, I had to get up at 430am, and I was lying there just hating myself and that inexorably ticking clock. And HP for making a shitty product. And myself for stressing and letting the life/lifestyle I chose turn me into a raging asshole.  After a half-hour of fairly regular tossing and turning, I started to take stock of what was keeping me awake. Stress, worry about the looming day’s 10 hours of fatigued work and being pissed at myself all came up early, of course. But then I noticed how much I had a sort of dull background ache in a number of different parts of my body.

First, I hurt my right rotator cuff on a turnaround two years ago. Initially it was pretty bad, but I’ve never been able to take time off to let it heal. I stopped with the heavy work for a month or so, and it mostly healed up. It’s still there, and it’s cost me a good bit of sleep since. The constant pain has abated, but I still have a somewhat limited range of motion. If I don’t move it regularly, it starts to throb. Also, it “clicks” when I move it past a certain point, about even with my shoulders. The left followed a year or so later, probably because I was favoring the right one. It was never bad, but now they both bother me to the point where I’m always conscious of both of them. My knees are bad, my feet tend to hurt because I’m on them a lot, and I did something to my back last week that has been annoying me. And all of this was keeping me rolling around at midnight, just a few slim hours before I had to be up.

It took a while, but that the flashlight I was using in trying to gain that “broad general view” settled on something I felt was pretty relevant: there I was, in bed around 11, 1130 pm; angry, having lashed out at someone I love; in pain, all over my body and, finally, anticipating having to get up earlyearly to go to work. And in…a…certain….building….

Holy crow. I’m becoming my father.

Now, if you are a man, or if you know a man, you either have or should know that we have all heard “all men become their fathers.” That I had done so to such a stunning degree was, embarassingly, something of a revelation. I’m not totally blind – it happened by degrees – but I can honestly say that I hadn’t really given it that much thought, and taken all the necessary components into consideration up until that point. But that’s as may be. And it’s perfectly fine with me. The line of people who love and respect the man is very long, and growing. I’d love to be even half the man that he is, and it’s no problem to detail why…he has a warm heart; a phenomenal work ethic; a simple, offbeat, down-to-earth sense of humor…the list goes on and on. The fact that I very rarely saw much of that for years? Water under the bridge. These things happen, and I’m just as responsible, if not more…I never did the math. This lifestyle, all the hours, it just eats us alive, literally.  He did what he had to, and I’m a better man as a result of everything he sacrificed.  It doesn’t matter now, except that I have finally come to fully understand, respect and love him for it.

So what’s the thing that’s so obvious and embarassing about it?

As bluntly as I can say it, did my father see what an intolerant, angry, unpleasant, total motherfucker he was all those years and was somehow helpless before the force of it? Did all that stress and negativity just bulldoze him again and again until it wore him down and eventually knocked all the assholery out of him? I really don’t think so. Some hateful, crazy, unusually awful and uncommonly bad shit swirled about the family for a while, resulting (ultimately) in his retirement, a year or more early. Another piece of all the stress was surely things that he saw in me that he didn’t like. Whatever it was, he’s a different person since he retired. I’m not sure if it’s all the sleep he’s getting (he told me with pride, a year or so after he retired, that he slept “past 6 o’clock”), not working all those hours, being in a place he loves (they’ve moved from the house I grew up in) or even dealing with tv people has to have a lot to do with it.

So. All women fall in love with their fathers, right? I hear that again and again. Do all women also love their fathers-in-law? Or is my situation unusual, in that respect?

What happened to him that resulted in his losing all that anger and impatience and left only the loveable milquetoast my wife today worships? I mean I’m sure that that guy is in me, somewhere…we’re very different, as people, but what do I have to do to learn whatever lessons the big guy has learned so that I can internalize them now?  Or does it take being retired from the shitstorm before you can really become what amounts to basically just a really pleasant, loveable and loving, pleasant guy?

All questions that I’ll answer over the next 20 years, no doubt.  But it won’t stop me from asking them.

The Mrs and I were visiting my parents for Christmas and, as sometimes happens with family visits, we got to talking.

As I’ve mentioned here before, I’m a third generation stagehand. Without getting into the pros and cons of “third-generation anything” or getting into the story of how I got in vs how others might have, my father and grandfather were both stagehands, mostly carpenters.

So during Christmas, we were all sitting in the living room, surrounded by empty boxes and balled-up wrapping paper and whatnot and my father asked about the loadin I had been working on. We discussed it for a few minutes, he started telling some stories. Now, the Mrs is starting to become interested in woodworking, I think because of the wood she’s been painting on. So she dove in and asked a few questions, and somehow we got onto the topic of “prop crates.”

I should backtrack. When we talk about “props” in terms of scenery, the definition is pretty broad: furniture, drapes, pictures on walls, dishes, etc. Think of it as anything you would call a “possession.” In terms of scenery, there’s the walls (carpenters), the light that allows you to see (electrics) and everything else (props). Props, in many cases, come in crates and big hampers on wheels, both of which make turnarounds easier….after the scenery for the carps comes in, the crates and hampers for props start to arrive in the studio. They’ll generally contain large items which need to stay clean, are fragile, or which need to be locked up: couches, grandfather clocks, televisions, tables, etc.

The props aren’t just delivered fresh from the factory in these crates, however. What happens is this: the designer designs the set and everything in it. The plans for the scenery go to the shop, where they are then executed. The designer orders the furniture, which then is delivered, also to the shop. The carpenter will then sit and mull over all the props which need crates, with an eye towards minimizing the number of total crates that need to be delivered – this saves money on trucking, storage etc, which the suits just drool over – and may physically move the furniture around in his work area to try to see how best to build the crate so it can both be easily loaded and unloaded as well as maximize the usable space efficiently. Pretty interesting, and kind of like Tetris.

From there it’s designed, fabricated, padded, fireproofed, stenciled (for identification…show name, crate number) and reloaded.

THEN….it’s delivered to the studio. It’s opened and photographed with Polaroid film – never let it be said that we are in all ways cutting-edge – both the crate as a whole from a distance and each individual piece. Those photos are then stapled into the interior of the crate, because it won’t always be opened by someone who has a good idea about how it needs to be reloaded. And thus it enters it’s useful life.

What struck me, though, was that I spent years loading and unloading those crates, and didn’t really have any idea that my father had built them (crates, not necessarily the crates I’ve used). It reminded me of opening up some scenery for a show I worked two years ago and seeing my father’s handwriting on the back. I got a little teary-eyed, and then called him as soon as I had a free minute. It was a very cool and nostalgic experience, and reminded me when I used to be able to visit him in the shop after a call, or seeing him on a random work call in a studio he didn’t know I was working in…I had precious few of those experiences before he retired, and the thought that I might have had another one and missed it kinda irks me.

Either way, that’s my life, and the life of a prop crate.

I recently worked a loadin that was a pretty big deal, if the population of men with ties standing around having worthless, conflicting opinions can be used as a measure. Actually, that’s not really fair. I know for a fact it was a huge deal. The fact that there was an endless parade of management in addition to the usual producers, directors, designers, advertising people and everyone else just made it more ridiculous. I could never truly comprehend how many assholes in suits one could actually sandwich into each square foot of a studio before, I think because I needed to actually see it…mere visualization wouldn’t suffice. Turns out it’s a whole hell of a lot, and some of them are actually so soulless and vapid that they can occupy the same space at the same time. Einstein was wrong. Management defies physics.

The best (read: worst) part of this scenario is that they all have the power to tell you to change something. This is made further infuriating by the fact that none of them agree, none of them consult on what they want, and all of them can be overruled by someone who thinks that their opinion trumps all, and isn’t afraid to tell you to make huge changes to anything.

A loadin is a crazy thing. There are a huge number of plans…the basic plan for the studio and where all the scenery will land, to within an inch or less. These may or may not be relevant depending on whether the designer knows how to use the measuring tape usually stuck to his belt. (This is a purely random factor, if within the definition of random you include “two chances: slim and none”). Then there’s lighting plans, plans for monitors, audio gear, wireless setups, computers to run projectors, the network plans for the computers…it’s endless. Literally endless.

But all of that is beneath a man in a suit. He will walk in the room, cast his sharp management eye about the studio and everything else be damned: he wants it moved, and he wants it to be moved now. No matter that cables have been run, or we’re hampered by inconvenient elements of the building we’re all standing in…..why isn’t it moved yet??!

“Why isn’t it moved,” he’ll ask, and then repeat himself to you like you’re a moron. This is to show you that he has all the power in this particular conversation, and to infuriate you as much as possible. It’s a good thing, and he knows it…for he, as a manager has been trained to impart fury to the working man, as it allows him to channel this fury and thus accomplish bigger tasks with fewer people. It’s all about the bottom line, after all.

“I just wanted it moved. I asked for it to be moved. They said it would be moved. ‘It’ll get moved,’ they said. ‘It’s no problem to move it sir,’ they told me. ‘We’ll move it right away,’ they said. But it’s still not moved. Is this such a difficult thing to move?”

Never mind that the piece is 800-900 pounds, top-heavy, cables have been run through it that must be disconnected and laid aside (causing some other tie to chime in “why was that unplugged????”), other still more massive pieces are in the way, and that the guys must be pulled off a bunch of other “absolutely imperative” jobs assigned by other men in suits. Oh, and it must be slid across a floor that we have been sternly warned not to mar in any way, because it was just painted.

And never mind that this is the like 4th assistant to some guy who is himself the man behind the man behind the man behind the man who actually met the man that they are all behind once. And that was just in passing, and the guy insulted him in front of his wife.

Inevitably, we move the piece, reconnect everything, and his boss walks in, looks at what we just changed, and says to the head carpenter “Who told you to move that? It’s all wrong. Move it back,” leaving the original guy (the prime mover?) looking sheepishly off into space, whistling quietly to himself.

There was another set of pieces they couldn’t stop shuffling about as well. They were not made to be moved as much as they were, and the base pretty much immediately started to fall off, scratching the floor and leaving two guys holding it in the air, grunting under a couple hundred pounds (full disclosure: I was one of those guys) as a quick solution was improvised.

As I was standing there shredding my fingers, I got to thinking back to the strike, when stagehands on Broadway were accused of “featherbedding,” basically padding out the crew so there would be less work to go around, and to give more guys room to “suck off the company teat.” Yet there I was, looking around at a room full of men in suits standing around for hours just watching us work and forming opinions. God save me from men in suits with opinions. They are forever wrong, and will make you do things just out of spite. They will also stand around doing their level best to radiate importance, yet all over the building and throughout the organization, these men’s desks were empty, their work presumably not being done.

How does the company continue to operate and grow without the stern hand of management that this particular crowd of dandies must surely provide? And how might we expect the organization to bloom in their absence, when they are assembled here, as a crowd, nervously shifting around trying to justify their existence(s)? More importantly, isn’t that a strategic error? What if something should happen, and the whole gang of them crowded together was somehow wiped out? What would become of our organization then?

Oh, those were dark and evil days there, my friends. Too much management in such a confined area having thoughts about things is never good.

Anyway, then they cut the crew. “There are too many guys standing around here, what the hell are all these guys doing?” Never mind most of them were footing ladders…safety’s besides the point when the bottom line is in play. So, they cut the crew in half. I made the cut, so I got to see what went on the next day:

“I need that piece moved.” Yes, the same piece, again.

“We can’t move it. It’s too heavy.”

“What do you mean it’s too heavy? I want it moved.”

“You cut my crew down yesterday. We don’t have enough men to move it.”

“What do you mean not enough men. There’s guys all over the place around here. I want it moved.”

“Look. There are three of us here. That piece weighs 1000 pounds. Three men cannot move it the way you want it moved. The forces of nature dictate it. I’m sorry. I’d like to move it for you, but it simply can’t be done with three of us.”

A blank stare. The piece must be moved, for this, surely, is the whole show. “OK, fine. Bring in the rest of the guys.”

Guys who have all, pretty much, found other work. The men who come in instead are all tired because they worked the night before, or have no idea what’s going on, etc. This is another phenomenon with stagehands….we go where the money is.  Call us off a call?  Thank you very much, we’ll go find other work, hopefully within an hour.

Anyway, the piece got moved.

And you know what? After all that, we still got in trouble for scratching the floor.

This past Christmas, my father gave me the pocketknife he carried with him his whole working life. It’s still sharp as a razor – seriously, you can shave a patch of hair off your arm with it, which is typical of my father – though it looks kind of funny…it’s really half a knife. The other half has been so worn down from years of sharpening that it looks more like a paring knife than a pocket knife.

Now, stagehands as a whole really only need one tool: a pocketknife. We always need a knife, generally. Everything else we can keep a bag of tools for, or just a wrench or hammer or whatever specific thing we might need for the call. So this is a big deal. I’ve known stagehands to throw serious tantrums, complete with hurled objects, if they find their knives fell out of their pockets or were left on a table for a minute and stolen. I’ve gone through a few (I’ve detailed why below) so I’m not really among them (yet), but there are a large group of guys among us who’ve had their knives for years and have a John Rambo-level devotion to them.

These are the men who will lend it to you, but when they do will hold it out and then sort of snatch it back as you reach for it, fix you with a really serious stare and say “DO NOT LOSE IT AND DO NOT FUCK IT UP. Do you understand?” You know, the sort of thing you can really only respond to with an audible gulp as you reach for the re-proffered object with shaking hand…

The only problem with this gift, though, is that I can never carry or keep it for work.

Firstly, though all stagehands should carry knives, a fair percentage don’t. Those guys are quick to say “anyone got a knife?” and then use it to like pry scenery up off the floor, as a chisel (complete with hammer) or misuse it in some other horrifying and inconsiderate manner. I’ve had three knives returned to me chipped, broken or with the edge like shorn off it or something. I suppose I shouldn’t lend it out but, well….that’s just not me. If I have a tool and someone needs the tool I happen to have, I’m gonna lend it out. I’m also not the sort of guy who can pull off the whole threatening stare and stern recommendations for use I mentioned in the previous paragraph. So that’s not an option.

Secondly, what if I lose it? This is a guy who still blames me for a camp-king knife I swear I didn’t lose, and that was like 20 years ago. I’d have to go into exile in some nation ending in “-stan” and hope for a gory, dishonorable death if I did. Not to mention how I myself would feel, not having it anymore. On my dresser it will usually live, unless I’m out on the town in my jeans with the re-enforced pockets. It’ll be my “Steppin Out” knife. It goes well with a tux, too.

This is the second such gift he gave me. The first was my grandfather’s hammer. Now, to some of you this might not seem like a big deal, but if you’re in that group, imagine:

• a father (a lifelong carpenter)
• giving his son (setting out on a life of carpentry, among other things)
• HIS father’s (a lifelong carpenter as well)(also a man I personally worshipped, my grandfather)

his most useful tool, the one he always had on him (besides his knife, obviously). It’s like a torch passing, and it made him cry. At the time, I really hadn’t seen my father cry except when there was a pretty serious death in the family, and it really affected me. So much so that I asked him to hold it for me, because I was moving around a lot and didn’t want it to get damaged or lost somewhere. This year, when he gave me the knife? We both cried. I think my wife cried. I don’t know about my mother, I couldn’t see that far. I cried when I told my in-laws about it the other night, which was weeks later. Hell, I’ve had to stop typing this to wipe my eyes twice.

Can you believe this shit? Last week, I cut the cuticle on my thumb so deeply I practically had to glue it shut, and that barely rated an “ow.” My father gives me some tools? Cry. Ah yes, us blue-collar tough guys, I’ll tell ya.