08: LOST

 The Universal backlot is like a giant playground. The studio tour is a myriad of dead-ends and cul-de-sacs, featuring renowned places where great movie events occurred like the "Bates Home" from Alfred Hitchcock's legendary classic thriller Psycho. But that's just the cover story they give you on the tour. Most of the area is occupied by less-than-remembered locations like the Cleaver House from the movie Leave it to Beaver.
 "It doesn't look like the Cleaver House..." everyone says when they see it. "That's because it's not from the television show, it's from the recent movie that no one saw," is the response. Then there is the house from The Munsters, also on Colonial Street. No, not the big spooky mansion we're used to seeing on the front of The Munsters black and white television show, but the house from The New Munsters, you know, that short-lived forgettable color remake of the classic TV show. You'll recognize it because it's right next to the sorority sister's house from Animal House.
 What brought me there was a referral call from Steve-O. He got a job with some guys I had met recently on The Cable Guy. After he received the call, he mentioned that I was available, and moments later my phone was ringing. The next morning we were carpooling through the Valley at 100mph to make a 5A.M. call.
 The picture was The Lost World, the sequel to Jurassic Park, helmed by the box-office king himself, Steven Spielberg. It was presumed this would be in the top-three all-time biggest-grossing pictures. Considering he had the top-two, with E.T. and Jurassic to his credit, it wasn't such a far-fetched idea.
 Surprisingly enough, with all that backlot available, most of the film was shot in a studio dressed to look like an exterior set. They had created a jungle inside. For the operation and maintenance of the multi-million dollar robots, they needed to be in an environment that would be entirely controllable. Like God, they had to be able to make it rain when they wanted to. While a beautiful day outside, the crew would park their cars and say good-bye to the sun.  They then stepped onto a dark soundstage filled with trees and dirt turned to mud from the sprinklers that would daily rain tons of water on the set.
 The director of photography was European, a young up-and-comer. He had won an Academy Award for Schindler's List; now he was Spielberg's number one cinematographer. Only a few years ago he was shooting pictures for Roger Corman, getting paid next-to-nothing.
 With this picture, they would be creating a techno-gadgetry world of million dollar machines created by Industrial Light & Magic. I couldn't help thinking about Welder, how excited he must be to be working on this one. He had hooked up with this cameraman right before all the praise came on for Schindler's. Now he was firmly tied in with him, and concurrently so, with Spielberg.
 This was the kind of photography he dreamt about as kid, playing with models and a super-8 camera between repeat viewings of Star Wars. For me, there wasn't that childhood fancy; rather, I found it contradictory. Ultra-sophisticated technology of the future to emulate pre-historic life of the past. Go figure.
 Welder wasn't the reason Steve-O and I were there. With this new, successful DP to give him work, he was slowly integrating a new crew to go with it. This guy was going places, and he was taking Mark along with him. I was impressed with Mark's success, I always knew he had it in him to go far; it's just too bad so many heads got chopped along the way.
 Mark never asked me to do the show. We hadn't worked together since Grace, after which we went our separate ways. I was busy doing 90210 with Rick Martinez most of the time anyway. It didn't matter. He was still a good friend, for all the times we shared as roommates, and all we had been through at film school. But now he was never around. When he was, he was always talking about work, or making some half-assed excuse for not calling for a job. I ran into him on the Universal lot not long after arriving, and he was so surprised to see me he didn't know how to react.
 "Hey-- Jack!! How are you, man? What are you working on? I've been telling Harry to call you-- he's been doing all the hiring-- there's all this political bullshit, because I have to hire these other electricians because they've been working with the DP forever. Are you busy, cause I think we got some days coming up..?"
 I didn't care for Harry, his new best boy, and he didn't care for me. Truth was, I suspected him of backstabbing me out of my position in Mark's crew. He had called me to work earlier in the show, I was glad to tell him I was busy. I'm sure it was at Mark's insistence, or when he ran out of other names.
 I didn't know how to tell Mark it really didn't mean that much to me anymore; it was just a job, and there were others. Much of the romance was lost, and I preferred to work amongst friends, of which ours were quickly disappearing from his crew. I didn't expect to see Mark on a set anytime soon. There were plenty of other gaffers I could work for-- or, better yet, rigging gaffers.
 I was beginning to see that he was somewhat oblivious. 
 "Actually, Mark, I'm rigging on The Lost World."
 "Really?" He was surprised to hear it. He didn't realize I was working on 'his' show. So he asks, with one eye bent, "You know Capelli?"
 "Yeah, I met him on The Cable Guy."
 "You rigged on Cable Guy?" He seemed impressed for a second.
 "No, I worked first unit for a few weeks. Capelli put in all the rigs for us."
 "You worked on first unit? How'd you like working with Ray?" He was speaking of the gaffer,and seemed to be steering me off the subject. He wasn't though, he was just interested in the competition. Ray was well known in the field, and Mark was trying to get some insight.
 "I like Ray, he's really low-key, and good with the guys." I said, trying to be tactful. I didn't have to be overt, I thought. Mark always knew what I was thinking. But not this time-- it went right past him without so much as a smirk.
 "Good for you. I like Capelli, he's really thorough. I bet you like working for him. He put this rig for us, man it was so beautiful, a hundred par cans on this truss..." I felt like I hadn't seen Mark in ages, and there were other things we should be catching up on. But no, that's how it went the whole time, talking about the job and irrelevant things, like he had forgotten we were ever friends.
 I walked away feeling schmoozed. If you've never been schmoozed, let me tell you, it's not a good feeling-- and this was done for all the wrong reasons. "To Schmooze," as defined by the Hollywood dictionary, is "to fraternize with scum." Here was my former housemate, college chum and dear friend for years, whom I haven't seen in ages that lives practically next-door. He was stumbling to fill the air with words, making promises he had little intention of keeping. It's an ages-old story around here, it's been told a million times before, where the only thing that changes is the names.
 Hollywood has a strange effect on people. I thought about my first mentor in the business, the guy who started me on this path of set lighting. He was my cinematography teacher at film school, turned fledgling DP.
 After classes and Alexa, he stopped teaching and started shooting more low-budget pictures in New York. I introduced Welder to him, and we became his crew as we got out of school, working movies and videos. Then he left for L.A., to go where the work was. When I got out here a year or two later, I tracked him down and called, leaving repeated messages to say hello. He never returned my call.
 "I'll call you when I need you," is an unspoken truth in tinseltown. Unfortunately, it wasn't so easy for Steve-O, especially coming from a friend like Welder. Steve-O had recently broken in and learned the trade with Mark and I. He got his union card on Grace of My Heart with us. He didn't have near as much experience, at least not as an electrician. He dawdled in different departments while the rest of us were specializing in one craft.
 I think what Steve-O really wanted to do was special effects, like he did on King Of New York. That's his big glory-story. Get him talking about effects, and he'll tell you about that time in the car, driving over the bridge, how he was blowing off squibs cramped in the back-seat right up to the impact, and the guy getting smacked into the fire hydrant...
 Everyone in Hollywood wants to be doing something else. There is a flyer that circulates the sets around town periodically about how "the producer wants to direct, the director wants to produce, the grip wants to be dolly-grip, the best boy wants to be gaffer..." The list goes on, all the way down the line, and it is quite humorous. It's called "What I Really Want To Do Is..." and it lists the true preferences for every position on the motion picture set.  
 I was beginning to get the picture quite clearly; there was an equation to be made here with real life. "People in the movie business are naturally discontent" could be the paraphrasing. As soon as you make it to the next step, the thrill would soon wear off, and another carrot would appear dangling in front of your head. The irony was, here we all were, living a wonderful lifestyle, but still we all wanted to be doing something else. It really put it all in perspective. Maybe it isn't particular to show business after all.
 Steve-O was really looking forward to working with Welder as a first unit juicer, being around the camera on such a big picture as The Lost World. He felt he had made good as a lamp operator on their last show back east, kind of as a favor-payback to Mark. After seeing so many get fired, and he made it to the finish of the show, he thought he was in line for the next one.
 He took several weeks off while back east, thinking he would come back when shooting started with Mark. Then he got the call. He told me about it as we went to work one day.
 "I'm there in Philadelphia, and I get this call from Welder, the day before I'm leaving to go back. I ask him when the shooting starts, and there's silence on the other end. A few uncomfortable seconds, and then he tells me-- 'You didn't make the cut'. Can you believe that? I didn't make the cut."
 It was an unfortunate position to be in, both of them. In a way, I understood Mark's place. I think he felt he didn't want to be let down by one of his friends, and he didn't want any of them to have the opportunity to do it. I was glad to be out of the loop. It has been said "they call it show business, not show friendship."  Touche.
 I encouraged Steve-O to make a fresh start. Get some new work connections, take hall calls (getting dispatched by the union hall), whatever. The best worker is one who's work is appreciated. "You're good, Steve-O, you work with some of the best in the business," I told him. I could tell he was at the crossroads, but I couldn't tell where he was going.
 As he hung in the balance, he got the call to rig on The Lost World, and soon passed it on to me. For now, we were off to work rigging the "Mobile Lab."
 The Mobile Lab was an interesting place to be. A let down for Steve-O, he was rigging on a picture he thought he was to be on the shooting crew for. A latent reminder of where all the big-budget thrills would be occurring, while we rigged peacefully elsewhere. Now we were wiring the fixtures in the motorhomes and trailers that housed the dinosaur-chasing scientists. Roughly a hundred units in each vehicle-- recessed overhead lights, fluorescent toe-kicks, headlights, taillights, emergency lights, fixture lights, fog-lights, tivoli-lights, sconces... The list was endless, and there was about ten vehicles in all. It kept us busy for a while.
 I took quickly to the solitary discipline of rigging. We weren't next to the camera, under the guidance of the director, beside the stars. I had had so much of that before. It seemed like it wasn't worth the battle scars to get the glory; star-quality tantrums, creative-control power-plays, confrontations with other departments, tedious hours, miserable working conditions. I told Steve-O, I had had enough already. "When it comes to glory, my plate is full. I couldn't have another bite."
 I was getting fed up; jaded by the business. It wasn't some huge dramatic breakdown, but it was taking it's toll. I had come so far, and seen so much. The whole studio episode with Allison and Grace weighed heavily upon my mind. I wondered if I even really wanted what I had come out here pursuing, now that I was close enough to see it, and what it entailed.
 For right now, I was happy to simply rig on The Lost World. It was a comfortable pace, doing rigging tasks and learning installation. It was one of the bigger pictures being shot in town at the time; we were behind the scenes, where the scenes were being built. It was interesting to witness the construction of props and sets in the creation of The Lost World; like making the batter from scratch. Two parts foamcore, one part hardcoat, red and green paint plus dinosaur mix. We would often rig electrical circuits and lighting around the effects crew as they prepped for the many technically intensive stunts.
 I didn't realize how much I would be seeing these effects guys in the future. Effects was a busy industry these days, with all the high-budgeted disaster movies coming out of Hollywood at the time. This was the first time I was exposed to such elaborate workings, with exorbitant budgets. I discovered just how frugal Spielberg's production people actually were. They were smart in the same way Corman was with Concorde Pictures, in a much higher-budgeted manner; they didn't want to pay for an expense unless it would be seen on the screen.
 Still, they managed to spend multi-millions. The complexity of the nature of the beast made it so-- that was where Spielberg excelled, ever since he had opened the mouth of his first mechanical shark. If you could see the inner workings of the dinosaur computer-brains from Stan Winston's creature effects shop, you'd know why. Each dinosaur was hundreds or thousands of tiny motors with a lifelike skin stretched over it, connected by an umbilical cord to a computer that controlled it's programmable movements.
 And lifelike it was, to remarkable effect. I remember when first I saw the T-Rex on stage at Universal. There were two of them, because that was what the scene called for; a mom and a dad. They were scale to size and very impressive.
 I walked over to one beast as it was leaning over and being attended to by a dinosaur wrangler, or creature effects guy. He was cleaning the eyes out with a can of pressurized air, blowing stuff off the realistic eyeball. Meanwhile, another creature-effects guy sat at a computer terminal punching in commands.
 I looked at the two technicians, working together with the dinosaur as it blinked it's eye and rolled it around in it's socket, seemingly annoyed by the pressurized air. I had to stop for a moment, to disassociate and isolate what each guy was doing, to make sure the dinosaur was not real. Excepting the fact that the beast had no lower quadrant or hind legs, I felt I had just come about as close as I ever would to the experience of being face-to-face with a real dinosaur. I might say that's about as close as I'd ever like to-- extinction suddenly didn't sound like such a bad idea for them.
 The extent of the effects ran rampant, above and beyond the dinosaurs. It was hard to keep track of what each was doing, but be certain they were necessary. The more intricate the effects called for, the more creative and inventive they had to get. That's why there are so many names at the end in the credits.
 The FX guys were the quintessential alchemists of the movie set. They took air, chemicals, and elements, mixed them all together in specific amounts to produce the desired effects. The stuff we did as lighting technicians with the natural phenomena of electricity was dangerous, but essentially predictable. These guys got crazy with nitrogen and all kinds of other combustible materials.
 One relatively simple rig they used caught my attention. They used it to make ripples in the little tidepools, to show that the T-Rex was coming closer, giant footsteps vibrating the earth. To achieve this, they ran a network of pneumatic tubing that would push pressurized air into valves within the puddles. Circular contraptions at the valves would expand and contract with velocity, causing ripples of waves to form within the water. It took some fudging at first, but they made it work quite well.
 This movie was about effects, and the T-Rex was the star. It certainly had little to do with the book that it was based on; I had heard that the script was being written before the book was even completed. If you saw the film, you realize that there is virtually no trace of Michael Crichton's ingenuity other than what was instilled in The Lost World's prequel Jurassic Park.
 We all wanted more dinosaurs from Jurassic; but let's be careful what we wish for. We got just that, with lots less story in this sequel. In fact, that's all we got from The Lost World; dinosaurs, dinosaurs, dinosaurs. Spielberg packaged the prehistoric era, and sold it back to the world millions of years after extinction! Brilliant!
 That was the Lost World merchandising scheme; you name it, anything they could put a dinosaur on, they would package and sell back to you with a velociraptor-like smile. What I want to know is, how did Spielberg let that big purple one get away, you know, kids love him...
 Fortunately for me, I read the book by Michael Crichton while we were making the film, so I had the luxury of making my own version in my head. I'll admit, it beat the heck out of illustrations, being surrounded by life-like dinosaur robots in the locations that you are reading about. At times, fantasy and reality seemed to merge in a surreal surrounding.
 Like the one evening we had a special night call to come on set after the first unit shooting crew had finished their day. The motorhome and trailers that were working in the shot needed to be repaired overnight. We got there and everyone was leaving, except the dinosaur creature effects technicians. They had had some response problems with the baby T-Rex, and needed to do some repair work as well. We worked side-by-side within the confines of the trailer.
 It was again very realistic, watching these technicians perform with surgical skill fine robotics adjustments beneath the synthetic skin of these replica beasts. All the while the baby T-Rex lays there, eyes wandering, a still patient.
 After a few hours of tinkering, the effects technicians left for the night. Suddenly, everything was quiet, save the occasional creak-- or was it a cricket? I looked around, from inside the trailer. Outside, we were surrounded by dense plant growth, with the giant eye of a tyrannosaurus rex peering in the window at me. There we were, a bunch of electricians alone in the Lost World.
 But it didn't end just there. The Lost World took me to an even stranger "lost world", the lost world of the grandeur that Hollywood once was. On one of the functional shooting stages at Universal, still stands the opera house set from the original 1925 production of Phantom of the Opera. The construction department from Lost World had built walls dressed with rock and foliage to cover the ornate theater that Lon Chaney's ghost still haunts. We would have to climb through the opera house balcony booths to get to the perms (permanent catwalks), then look out below to see the dinosaur-chasing Hunter's Camp set. Sometimes I fancied I would get to the top, and look out and see Chaney's phantom, swinging from the rafters, screaming bloody murder.
 Instead I would see Capelli, barking out orders in his typical militaristic fashion.
 "Pekonick-- what are you doing?"
 "Stripping the insulation to wire the Hubbell--" Slick would respond, with typical contempt.
 "And what are you using to strip the ends? Your dykes!?"
 "What's the difference? End product's gonna be the same-- Hubble's gonna get wired either way!"
 Slick Peckonick had a way of speaking that made everything he said offend like a curse word. All that with a voice that sounded like gravel crushing a beer can, plus the scents of an adverse diet I will not attempt to describe (though you can be certain he would boast about a huevos rancheros breakfast in the wake of it, as he laughed and watched your expression turn wretched).
 "Go get a proper stripper-- if you don't have one, there's a few in the work box, use one of those. And if you don't know how to do it, I'll personally show you how. But on this crew, we use wire strippers to strip wires, and not
dykes-- with dykes, your liable to cut the insulation or trim the copper conductor-- understand, Peckonick!?"
 With a snarl Slick says in an audible mumble, "I understand that you might cut the copper or the wire, if you were doin' it, but I wouldn't, because I know how to use a mother-fuckin' set of dykes, you know what I'm sayin'?"
 By the time he's finished, he's already at the workbox getting the wire stripper. As much of a hard-ass as he is and loves to be, he's already here today and his start paperwork has been processed, and he needs that check coming in every week as much as or more than the next guy. He may as well come back tomorrow. It was easier to laugh and take it as much as you could than to go look for another job-- it would all end soon enough, anyway, and we'd all be off to the next one.
 Capelli didn't like Slick, and he didn't hide it. One look and it was obvious they were drawn from a different deck. Slick was dirty stinking rotten, everywhere you looked. Prison-tattoos covered him, with experiences and stories to go along with it, which he would proudly tell to rivet you and get you scared. Capelli, on the other hand, was like an ex-marine-- all business, tough about it, and do it right or go home. Oddly enough, Capelli didn't dislike Slick all that much either. He was a good rigger, that was the bottom line, so he would be asked back every night to work the next day on Capelli's crew.
 Capelli handled his crew that way-- "You can all be replaced," was his work ethic, and though he was a good leader, he lacked the personality to foster any loyalty. "Every day could be your last" was the feeling we all had, and the show was frequently referred to by us as "Capelli's World." Jokes ran rampant about it-- it helped to ease the tension we operated under, as there was a revolving door policy with people frequently leaving for better jobs as an offer came in.
 At first, I couldn't stand Slick. I despised everything about him. Steve-O was my only breath of air (no pun intended), and it seemed we three were watching everyone else come and go. We all wore identification tags with that patented Jurassic Park logo that bore bogus names of people formerly on the crew, now moved on to a better deal. The paperwork and process to put your name on a pass with the Jurassic logo took longer than the term of employment for the average Capelli employee.
 Then, one day, they came. Out of nowhere they appeared, and Capelli gave them to us, the big red dinosaur head with our names officially embossed on them, with a silver-beaded necklace (the kind that comes with a seventy-nine cent keychain nail clipper) to hang it from your neck. We couldn't believe it-- we three had been on the show for more than a month, why bother now?
 I made a joke, looking at the collection of obsolete name tags hung in the office.
 "This thing is like the death-card! As soon as you get it-- zzziippp-- termination!" and everybody had a laugh.   
 Oddly enough, it was true. At lunch that day, Capelli tried one of his little power-plays with me, regarding some fast-food venue I had no choice to eat at.
 "Where we going?" I asked, reluctant to get in, as the stakebed truck pulls up with a payload of hungry riggers.
 "We're going to eat MEAT, RED MEAT!" Peckonick offers, knowing that I don't eat animals. He has an unabashed way of getting right to the heart of the matter.
 "Never mind, we'll get you something to eat, just get in the truck." Capelli says in a very uninviting and bossy manner.
 Now, I don't mind that yes-sir/no-sir master-and-servant shit at work; in Capelli's world, it takes away the guesswork, and makes the tasks you're performing even easier. But the last thing I want is some gaffer trying to gaff my lunch into some Fastburger joint, where the closest thing they have to vegetarian is lard-fried potatoes.
 You can imagine my chagrin when we pulled up to In-n-Out Burger, which I knew was the inevitable destination. Capelli held the door open as the team filed in. I shot him a glance backward as I walked right past him out onto Lankershim Boulevard.
 "You can pick me up at the sandwich shop down the block," I said, in a take-it-or-leave-it tone.
 "Fine, Jack-- I hope you have bus fare to get yourself back to the stage!" I heard Capelli's words get carried away in the wind as I tried to pay him no mind.
 I negotiated a meal nearby and walked back to the stage, not bothering to wait for Capelli, but the experience did not sit well with me. I saw the crew come back from lunch after I had already made my return.
 "Where were you? We looked for you on the way back, to give you a ride," Capelli said.
 "That's all right-- I got myself to work this morning, I can get myself back from lunch."
 Capelli tried his back-handed nice guy routine as far as he went with it (not very far). It was too late-- he crossed the line. Now I was looking for another job.
 Precise timing once again came to my aid-- I got a call when I arrived home that afternoon, still bitter from my ordeal with Capelli. It was Frankie, a fella I had met on 90210 last season.
 "Jack, what are you doing? You want to come rig a show with me? It's a thing that just got to town, it's a rigging job that goes right up to Christmas-- oh, and it's at Sony!"
 Enough said. I got right on the line with Capelli's best boy to tell him I was leaving. It came as no surprise to him, he was used to filling spots. I think he was surprised I even stayed on as long as I did.
 But now, I had a better offer. It got to the point where anything was a better offer, but this one actually turned out to be a pretty sweet deal. First and foremost, it was at Sony Pictures Studios, formerly Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which was on the Westside and closer to home.
 No more driving clear across town into the Valley to Universal. That in itself was enough reason for change. Commuting in L.A. was getting to be a hated thing for me-- I wasn't turned on enough by car-culture, and being stuck in traffic with no alternative is anathema. Now, I could ride my mountain bike to work, for a nearby jaunt through the historic streets of Culver City.

*****

 Looking around Culver City, you can still witness testament to that once-great era when loftily deco'd cinemas stood proudly like landmarks. Back then, Californians would dress in their weekend finest and travel from far around to come here to see the pictures the studios were releasing, and maybe catch a glimpse of a star.
 It was a different world back then, certainly now a lost world, when movie stars were great and the pictures they starred in even greater. This was the ghost of Hollywood past that haunted us today. You could catch glimpses of it, behind the scenes, running through the catwalks, if you watched keenly. You could hear it's chains clanking and hideous shrieks in an old-timer's story, as you weed out fact from fiction. The old photographs that adorned the studio walls were worth thousands of words, as you could see the intransience of certain spots on the lots where you could stand and feel the presence.
 Then there were the memories that could not be forgotten, forever kept alive and retold through spoken lore. Listen to a guy with forty years in tell you what it was like when the MGM lot was still MGM, made famous for producing The Wizard of OZ and Gone With The Wind. Where once a great relief of the golden lion roared over the gates on Overland Avenue that gave entrance to Louis B. Mayer's studio, now replaced with the stoic letters S-O-N-Y.
 On a quiet day at the grip-dock there, it still feels like MGM. Old pictures from golf tournaments throughout the years adorn the walls, along with various prop-signs and articles from different pictures long-since past, including some of the stuff from the famed Green Acres TV show.
 The lamp-dock, on the other hand, is far more generic, having lost or never had any of the character found at the grips'. While some of the equipment has been replaced or put into less-frequent demand, still other elements of the trade have not been improved upon, or had not been replaced. Like, for example, many of the basic tungsten lamps produced by Mole-Richardson. These dinosaurs were proven workhorses throughout the ages, familiarly recognized by their distinctive maroon color. Also impermeable was the ancient heavy-gauge electrical cable used to power sets.
 This cable that Sony acquired with the purchase of MGM is older than I am. It is so old, it pre-dates to a time when they made the insulation of a basic material and it amounted to much more weight than the stuff manufactured today. Some of it may actually be as old as the stage itself-- there are no moving parts to wear out, and the condition speaks of decades of use. We quipped that some of these cables and lights had actually been used on Gone With The Wind, and we probably weren't so far from the truth. If only cables could talk...
 Then again, they didn't have to. Though they were steadily disappearing, there were still enough early generation descendants of Hollywood legacy who could hand down the stories. One such old-timer heard us there on the lamp-dock going-on.
 "What about these red cables? What era are they from? The Pleistocene, back when they ground the cable out of rock?" I quipped, hypothetically.
 "They're from before black was a color," Damonde added, seeing the humor in the situation. Damonde was another young upstart, with a punk-rock haircut and tattoos to go with it.
 The old-timer didn't think it was so funny. "You kids got an answer for everything, don't ya?" He scolded. "You never even seen a movie being made-- they don't make them the way they used to anymore! Now you got your Kino-Flo's, and your HMI's, and your Par lights. Didn't need none of them lights to make Gone With The Wind-- did it all with arc lights-- I bet you kids don't even know how to run an arc!"
 It was true, we didn't-- well, in theory, yes, but in practice-- they just weren't used frequently enough anymore. Little trick gadget lights were the rulers of the roost now, and the big brute-arcs had pretty much gone the way of the dodo. The film stocks had gotten faster (more sensitive to less light) and the technology more sophisticated. The arcs mostly sat on the shelves, and new younger guys came on the shows with newfangled lights. So that's where most of the old-timers were winding up now-- sitting on the shelves at the lamp dock, filling the orders for the new guys going out on the shows.
 I felt much esteem for the old guard, though they probably didn't care much for me. I was just a wiseguy who was taking away their job.
 The grey dog continued his tirade. "You think you know it all, huh? I'll tell ya something you won't learn in your film schools. That cable you're talking about, the red-jacketed stuff? There's about ten or twelve pieces of it still floating around in stock-- MGM had that stuff made up special back in the fifties, a whole mess of it. There was a big cable run to go in, and they didn't want to see it in the picture during the daytime, so they had that special color red made up to better blend in with the dirt. The scene was a chariot race to take place in Culver City, dressed up to look like Rome. The picture was Ben-Hur."
 My eyes and ears nearly departed my skull. Ben-Hur? Though the film pre-dates my birth, who could forget the famed chariot race? This was more than just making movies now, this was unearthing cinema history. I was an archaeologist at a living dig site, I realized, the more I looked at my surroundings.
 The studios are so steeped in history, you could walk by stuff everyday, oblivious to the significance of the origins you are surrounded by. Unless, you open your eyes and ask.
 There is a stage at Sony, for example, that looks just like any other stage on the lot, when you walk in it. Smaller than the others, if noticeably different. Look up, though, and you will witness an overhead network of tracks and hooks, like some sort of conveyors. Now take yourself back six decades, and you're on the MGM lot, shooting The Wizard of OZ. That rigging on the ceiling? State of the art movie magic, circa 1930's. That's where this particular stage gets it's nickname, which lives on to this day-- "the flying monkey stage."

*****