Follow-up: Working with a Big Hollywood Production Company

This is a follow-up to my last post in which I explained how my abnormally shabby visage was exposed to a national TV audience. I also hinted that I would be doing some additional work with a different and much larger production company based in Hollywood.

The first thing I learned was, in the movie business, everything remains a great big secret until the very second you need to know about it. They almost act as if you are a spy and if you knew any specific details you would immediately run off and report it. They are extremely paranoid. However, while driving up to our hotel and after several cell-phone conversations, we were able to put the pieces together enough to identify the blockbuster movie we would be working on, and for us, the news could not be better: we would be working on the new James Bond film. Of course, no one would confirm this.

We were able to make this determination based on these known variables:

1. We were to create a scene involving a Hot-Air-Balloon disaster.
2. The hero would drive up to save the occupants which were to be several beautiful nude women (including at least one well-known actress).
3. The hero would be driving a highly-secretive prototype car.
4. Although he claimed to know nothing about the current project, the aviation consultant we were working with admitted he had recently been involved with several scenes from the new James Bond film.

We were told under no circumstances were we allowed to bring any cameras or even cell-phones if they had a camera. There were three prototype cars on the set and any photographic evidence would be probable cause for lethal injection. These prototype cars, we concluded, must be the famous Aston Martin DBS that James Bond drives in nearly every picture.

After we checked into the hotel, we received instructions on what to do first thing in the morning. According to the “call sheet” we were to be the first to arrive on the set at 5:45 a.m. This early hour is not a problem for us since we usually get up pretty early when flying balloons and are used to it.

The next morning we were sent “on location” to a sparsely populated town several miles north of Los Angeles and onto a private ranch of many thousands of acres. Once inside the gates we traveled another 15 – 20 miles to the spot where the filming would take place. We met up with the set builders who helped us set-up the hot air balloon in a crash position. The basket was tilted at the top of a ravine with the envelope (the colorful fabric) draped over a guardrail and onto the asphalt road. We placed pieces of balloon fabric in the high branches of an old, dead tree. The scene looked extremely realistic for a balloon crash.

Unfortunately, when the director arrived, it was not at all what he wanted. He had us reposition the basket so it was sitting square in the road standing right-side-up and the envelope was laid out across the road away from the guardrail and up a fairly steep and rock infested hill. The pieces of fabric in the tree had to be removed as well. Not a problem, with all the help we had, everything was done in about twenty-minutes.

Soon, an unbelievable amount of people and equipment arrived. There were people taking our order for breakfast, people offering throat lozenges, Chapstick, sunscreen, water, coffee, just about anything you could think of. Semi trucks festooned with all types of camera equipment, fancy rolling restrooms, catering trucks, transport vans—one especially fancy truck was called “The Shotmaker” and had a trailer with a vehicle on it covered by lights and cameras and screens and drapes and curtains where you couldn’t even see the vehicle. I later learned that this vehicle is where they would shoot the interior scenes of the moving car while it was occupied by the actors.

We noticed the prototype cars arriving. They drove these around with a cover on them to hide their appearance—even on this closed set! Only the windows were visible. We also noticed that they weren’t really the right shape for an Aston Martin. Our hearts began to sink as we realized this may not be the new James Bond film after all.

Once we met the actors we knew, without doubt, it was not going to be the new James Bond movie. The nudists arrived (all were covered-up to the shoulders) and they were all grey-haired character actors—only two of which were women, and no “well-known actress” among them.

It turns out that we were shooting a commercial for the 2009 Honda Pilot. Naturally, we were disappointed, but as the day wore on and we saw how clever and funny the commercial was, we were still delighted to be a part of it.

I can’t tell you too much about it since I’ve been somewhat sworn to secrecy, but you will know for sure it is our commercial when you see it because of the details I’ve given you already. And, most importantly, when you do finally see the commercial and notice a bunch of aging nudists in a balloon basket, you will be able to point to it and say, “See that balloon basket? I know the guy hiding behind it with an inflation fan.”

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