You'll Never Work in this Town Again

We'd been dug into a suburban mega-church for the better part of the week. I don't think there was so much as a squeezer left on the G&E trucks. The main company had moved from shooting in the massive space of the sanctuary to the cramped and stuffy confines of the pastor's office.

Passing back through the atrium from base camp I observed Juicers and Hammers lugging out the metric tons of miniutae we'd spend four days hauling in one and two bits at a go. They were making good time considering the single fire door that everything had to pass through.

As I delivered paperwork to the first AD in the sweltering cocoon of the set he said, "Go out in the lobby and see how long they're going to take to finish loading out."

Nodding, I answered, "They're about eighty-five percent done. I'd give them another forty five minutes."

He stared at me as if I had just told him the moon really was made of cheese or that clouds were albatross farts.

"Really, I just came through there." I said, "They're about forty-five minutes away. Maybe an hour."

Dropped the folder to the ground and belted, "Damnit, Thomas!" With this the whole crew halted in place as our AD, normally so reserved and soft spoken, barked at me near the top of his lungs. "How dare you know the answer to a question before I can think to ask it! You're going nowhere in this business! You're fired!"

Meekly, I took of my headset and laid my radio on a lens case and started back down the hallway in search of a time card with head slung low.

I'd made it not twenty paces when the AD called out, "Alright, I need someone to go back to base and run the safety memos." He glanced around the room and found that all the other members of the department were elsewhere on production missions of one kind or another. "Damnit, Thomas! You're re-hired."

And that's kind of how this business goes, sometimes.