Have you ever wished?

[old school]

Any day of the week I would hop in the wayback machine and work on "Giant" if for nothing more than that cast. Great movie. George Stevens knew the camera and composition as well as any of the masters due to his background as a cameraman. The 1st time I saw "Giant" was on the big screen at USC in Drew Caspers class and it was epic. Still love that film and all the performances. RVD, if we ever get a timemachine, you mix n I will boom it.

CrewC

[Matt McGowin]

I never heard of this movie before you mentioned it

I wrapped up a shoot tonight and settled down to this classic and watched it. Its a good one

-exit train,boots down..

"Maybe you could come out and see it if you get a chance"

" And I read about Texas till 5 this morning..."

I Guess I'll be off

Matt

[old school]

Glad you enjoyed this historic classic Matt. Some films get better with time and for me "Giant" really does.

CrewC

[studiomprd]

" retrieve the radio mic from Bob Lemon who was in the manager's office with his jersey off   "

Micron?? Vega?? Sony lav?? Mini-mic??

how did the wireless rig take the dowsing??

ah, memories...

[old school]

RVD, I too think back on that gig with great fondness. RVD filled in for me on game 6 when they won it all. I think I was headed to Austin Texas to do a movie called "Roadie". I did games 1 n 2 and sat where RVD sat. Bob Lemon said nothing the whole time either, but what a difference my experience was. The Dodgers won both games 1 n 2 and all the talk was of a Dodger sweep. Reggie had a chance to win game 2, but struck out in the 9th inning and was furious. He threw his bat into the dugout and all hell broke loose as he and Thurmond Munson got into a fist fight as they went towards the locker room. I ran after Lemon to get my transmitter. As I got to the door Yogi Berra stopped me and said that I should let things cool down before I went in there. So I stood with him until the yelling,cursing, and banging stopped. Then he walked in with me and we went to Lemons office. Yogi said I was there for my microphone. Lemon said nothing as I took it off him. It was all so surreal. As much as that is embedded into my memory, the thing I remember most was "The Captain and Tennille"  singing the National Anthem as the wind made Curt Gowdy's hair piece stand straight up. Thanks for firing up the old timemachine RVD.

CrewC

[Jim Gilchrist]

One film:

"The Long Hot Summer" with Woodward and Newman.

Best regards,

Jim

[old school]

I hear ya Jim. Cast alone would make me want to be there. I also saw this movie in film school the 1st time. Haven't seen it in awhile but I bet it is still good.

CrewC

[Jim Tanenbaum, CAS]

I don't know if anyone reads these older posts now, but here is the explanation for the credits on "Bonfire".

I was hired in Los Angles to mix the show, including the NY sequences. Then Warner Bros got cheap and wanted to use a local NY mixer. Brian said. "no, I want my regular mixer (me)." WB found Les, who had worked with Brian before, and insisted Brian use him. Les warned WB that he had a previous commitment, and had to leave at a certain date. One Night, I got a panicked call from NY -- they were way over schedule, and losing Les. I packed up my gear and flew to NY with the gear as baggage (very expensive, overweight baggage). Les did the opening shot (an amazing piece of production sound work), all the courthouse scenes, and the teacher interview. I did pretty much everything else, including the reshoot of the accident scene. We shot most of the show in LA, including the reverses of a driving shot that some locals chased us out of the Bronx in the middle of filming.

[Chase Yeremian]

I would of loved to work on "WIlly Wonka and the Chocolate Factory". I grew up watching that movie and imo anything with Gene Wilder would have been amazing.

[Ferdinand Almalvez]

RVD, how was mixing Forgetting Sarah Marshall? Must of been nonstop laughter, love that movie.

[Olle Sjostrom]

Being Swedish I'd have to say I wish I worked on any Bergman film. But first and foremost his last (and best imo) feature Fanny and Alexander. Anyone here seen that? It's five hours long. Feels like two.

Other than that I'd say Lost in Translation. Fantastic movie. One of my greatest experiences and still gets me. Amazing flick. Must have been a killer shoot.

Apocalypse Now as well. I hear it was crazy, but it's still a masterpeice. Have seen the Eleanor Coppola "behind the brains"-movie heart of darkness I think it's called. That was awesome. Would love to be a part of that insane-ness. Great actors

Back to modern day again I'd also say Babel by Alejandro Inarritu. Brilliant. Lots of environments n locations allover the world, fantastic performances by all the actors, MUTE story. Omg.

Written on a messy iPhone in the cold. Sorry for any typo or otjer text anomalies.

[Mark LeBlanc]

While there are many movies, Two scene sticks out for me. The Godfather when Michael Corleone "Turns to the darkside". He is sitting in the chair talking with Tom and Sonny after getting pounded by the crooked cop. The camera does a slow dolly in as he calmly explains that he wants to kill McCluskey and Sollozzo. Love that moment..

The second is the opening scene with George C Scott as Patton!!

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=99f_1226701416

[old school]

I totally forgot about this thread. I'm glad it has been resurrected. So many films I wish I had worked on. Mostly I was talking about old films, but many contemporary movies I would like to of worked on as well. "Almost Famous, "The Big Lebowski", "O Brother", "Crash", come to mind. I love long form films, Sadly I work on 30 second films. Oh well, it is a living.

CrewC

[Olle Sjostrom]

A Woody Allen flick would be nice too. Lots of great dialog there. Deconstructing Harry even has a film shoot!

However I don't enjoy his latest films... They don't have that quirkyness..

Deconstructing Harry

Annie Hall

and then I can't think of the English name for the film i'm thinking about... Hm.

Small time crooks as well. underrated movie!

[Rich Van Dyke]

Hello Ferdinand, I'm sorry I didn't see your post before today. Yes, working on "Forgetting Sarah Marshall," was great fun. First you have the location, the North Shore of Hawaii at the Turtle Bay Resort, shooting for five to six weeks there with the weekends off. Then it's a "Judd Apatow" Production, at the time May of 2007, Judd was the current "golden boy" at Universal Studios and could get any film he wanted greenlighted. The interesting back story, "Forgetting Sarah Marshall," is based on actual events in the life of Jason Segal, who not only stars in, but wrote the screenplay along with the director, first timer Nick Stoller. Russell Brand's first film, a real great guy at this point in his life and very sweet, and could hang in with all the best "ad-libbers" we had.

Jason Segal, was a cast member on Judd's "Freaks and Geeks" short lived television series, and had remainded good friends with Judd. The story he told me was that Judd told him if he had any ideas for scripts to put them down and let him read them, Jason's first effort was the script for "Forgetting Sarah Marshall." Judd is an accomplished comedic director, "40 Year Old Virgin," "Knocked Up," and he has an even greater mind for the marketing of his films.

Judd's theory on fillmmaking, shoot the script until you get three takes you like, and then go wild with adlibs that pertain to the "idea" of the scene. We would always roll out the mags on the cameras for many many takes, basically a nine minute take. Of course adlibs are most challenging for the sound crew, who's going to say what and where? Most of the exterior scenes we used radio mics to attempt to control the background noise of the ocean and wind in the palm trees.

One of the funniest nights for me was the scene where Jason walks up to the bar and sees, Kahunu/Chuck the talented Paul Rudd, drinking with Darald the equally talented Jack McBrayer, while being served by Dwayne the Bartender played by Da'vone McDonald, who had his own great scene with Jason inside at the bar serving him drinks, "I can name every fish in the ocean......."

Of course one night in particular was special, maybe because my daughter was with me, the night that Jonah Hill couldn't remember to take the glass with him when he leaves the table, we kept rolling and everyone was laughing so loud the sound couldn't have been usuable, and of course after three or four times, Jason couldn't keep a straight face.

Great fun, but something happened with my relationship with the Apatow folks and I haven't done any work for them since, oh well. Comedies are fun, but dramas are the best to be on set for and listening to, in my opinion. Comedies take a certain talent level to perform, but I love to be under the spell of an actor not acting, but truly being in the moment with their performance.

Here's a clip of some of the outtakes from "Sarah Marshall," the eating cereal out of the giant bowl scenes were really hard to do, the seasoned camera operator Casey Hotchkiss was hand holding the camera and twice he was laughing so hard he had to set the camera down. Russ Alsobrook was the cameraman and it was one of the best "crews" I've ever worked with and everything went smoothly and with great co-operation, I was lucky enough to get "Big" John Reynolds for my third, he's an award winning mixer, and all of the locals were just such fantastic people, I miss them all.

Sorry, to turn this into my wish list, but I was responding to a question. Crew, you wouldn't have worked for the money on "Crash."

Cheers,

Rich Van Dyke

[Ferdinand Almalvez]

"I need to B my L on someone's face" omg so freaking hilarious.

RVD,

I wasn't expecting such a long response but thank you! That gag reel was just so freaking hilarious, even the boom made a cameo.

I'm glad it was such a great experience, one of my few fav scenes include Paul Rudd, that guy is just too funny (when he gave Jason his Hawaiian name) But I remember when i watched it for the first time, I was amazed as to how little of the waves crashing on the beach could be heard, especially during the scene where Jason steps off into the beach to meet the hawaiian worker from the hotel to have a beer. It was basically nonexistent. Anyway thanks for sharing your experience, I wasnt expecting a well written response and I thank you for taking the time to respond I'm sure if I was there I would probably just laugh nonstop the adlibs are too funny.

To get back on track, a movie I would of loved to work on would be Silence of The Lambs, Ted Levine's iconic scene during Goodbye Horses and Anthony Hopkins amazing portrayal of Hannibal Lecter, its just too good!