My first P.A. gig (original post 7/2/06)

While I've been visiting my family in my hometown this 4th of July weekend, I found a journal in my old bedroom of the first day of my first production assistant job, that I thought I'd share:

2/22/00
Today was the first day of my job as a production assistant on Compulsive Pictures' short film "Here" starring the $6 Million Man and The Fall Guy himself, Lee Majors.

I arrived at the 3rd Street Holiday Inn in Niagara Falls, NY at around 3:30pm. Logan, the production manager, called me earlier to arrange the meeting time. When I got to the hotel, I took the elevator to the 6th floor, and walked down the hallway until I reached room 601. That is where Compulsive set up shop, their temporary Niagara Falls headquarters.

Logan came to the door and introduced himself to me, and then we proceeded into the room to a table where Susan, the producer, was sitting with her laptop. She introduced herself to me.
Susan put me right to work. My first job was to go down to the receptionist and ask if they placed a VCR in Lee Majors' room yet. (Majors has yet to arrive at this point. He's supposed to come in on Wednesday).

The receptionist gave me the key, or actually a magnetic card, to Lee Majors' room, which was room 801 on the 8th floor, where all the suites are, and you need this key to insert into a slot in the elevator in order to go up to the 8th floor.

Before I went into Majors' room, I went back to room 601 to get Susan, who requested earlier that she come with me to Majors' room.

When we hopped back into the elevator, I popped the key card into the slot and we began our ascent up to the 8th floor. The elevator key card was also the room key card and I used it to gain entry into the room.

Majors' room was a suite and had greater amenities than the regular hotel rooms. It had a jacuzzi, and he was to be getting a VCR, which is the main reason we went up there to check if it had been delivered yet, but it had not. I asked the bell hop (or whatever politically correct title to which I can't think of) to make sure Majors gets his VCR, plus to change a chair in his room which had a large white stain on it. (Perhaps it came from the White House- LOL).

After our Lee Majors' room excursion, we went back down to the production office in room 601 and Logan gave me a list of things to buy for Lee Majors and the crew.

For some reason, I only wrote in my journal the first day of production. If memory serves me, it was approximately a 5- or 6-day shoot. Some of my greatest memories:
- Picking crew up from the Buffalo Int'l Airport who arrived on the then brand new airline Jetblue.
- Driving Lee Majors and a few other cast & crew members over to the Canadian side in a 15-passenger van, and the falls were barely visible because it was so foggy.
- Ordering Moon Over Myhammies at Denny's for DP Maryse Alberti (Happiness, Poison)
- Getting to help make movie blood, and tasting it.
- But the top moment of all was probably the last day of shooting when I got to throw a red vest (one of the props in the film) into the rapids, which went over the falls.
For more info on "Here," visit IMDB at http://imdb.com/title/tt0281906/fullcredits

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