Interview with a Cameraman

What brought you to Buenos Aires?
The daily grind! I was working 22 days a month just to break even. It really began in England. We were pub crawling on a canal boat through the Midlands during a film festival when I was chatting with some friends.

We were talking about how if Bush was reelected in ’04 that I was going to leave the states. Well, he was reelected and I began to make plans to leave. I wanted to go someplace south of the equator, so when the fallout came I’d be far enough away. I needed an international airport with direct flights for work, so it was down to Sao Paolo, Lima and Buenos Aires. I hate Sao Paolo. It reminds me of Houston, Tx, except in Brazil. Lima is a bit too dangerous. So here we are.

I had actually been here before, 30 years earlier, while my sister was studying here. I decided to make 4 trips to Buenos Aires before I made the big move. I networked, researched job opportunities and then liquidated everything I had in the states.

What got you started in the cameraman business?
I was 12-years-old on a field trip at Loyola Marymount University in L.A. and we were visiting the Television Department. Milt Kamen, an old comedian was running the place and let us play around with the equipment and the cameras…I was hooked.

My first job came from a class at UCLA. There was a visiting professor that made a deal with the class. He said, “Anyone who gets an A in my class will get a job at NBC.” Me and one other guy got A’s and we both got jobs. My start was in the Broadcast Operations Department. I sat and monitored the feeds from all the shows and news to the other NBC locations, basically just watching several TVs for 8 hours a day.

George Schlatter started doing a pilot of “Real People,” a TV series for NBC, and on break I used to go down there and talk with the associate producer. I told him, “If this show gets picked up, I want a job.” Sure enough the show got picked up and I went down there and said, “Ok, the show got picked up, can I have a job?” I ended up being a Production Assistant getting lights, batteries and other stuff from different rental houses. I became buddies with the location manager there and he let me play around with all of the equipment. Eventually he began to train me and convinced the boss to use me as a field PA. For one shoot, I was sent to El Campo, Texas to help with a story about a Green Beret that had lost his benefits. They always brought two cameras and one cameraman. Next thing I know, they asked me to grab the second camera and get a shot from the roof during a parade for the Green Beret. I was given a PK-39, just a boat of a camera, weighed about 40 pounds. It had a separate recorder and battery belt. The belt weighed about 15 pounds and the recorder was another 25 pounds, but I did well, I suppose. They liked my shots and eventually made me a location manager.

What other companies did you end up working with?
“Real People” was cancelled and I partnered up with an old buddy. We started doing music videos at the Universal lot and got to shoot Tina Turner, Genesis and a bunch of others over a year. Universal offered me work in their production department and that lasted until the ’87 writers guild strike. ’88 there was no work so I went back to school for a masters in Semiotic Linguistics in San Francisco. I scored a job in Oakland as the head of production for a documentary production company and that lead to freelance work as a cameraman. I started picking up jobs with Fox News (ugggh), CNN, Outdoor Channel, Sci-Fi, Discovery… mostly, I worked for CNN.

What countries have you been sent to while on assignment?
I can’t remember them all. At last count I’ve been to 86 countries, most of Asia, Europe, parts of the Middle East, Africa and the Pacific Rim.

What was the most dangerous situation you were put into?
Palestine was pretty bad, but I think South Korea. We were sent there in the middle of winter so all the troops were on edge on both sides. It was freezing so tempers were a lot shorter. And to make things worse, there were riots going on outside our hotel in Seoul. Everyday we would have to make our way through police lines and rioting students just to get inside the hotel. That was tense. Colombia in 2000 had a general danger about it, too.

Did they compensate for the danger?
Most of the networks pay double time outside of the US. There are all sorts of bonuses for necessary travel and dangerous situations. You get time and a half for 6 days weeks, declared war zones you get hazard pay, which happened a few times. We used to joke that if you worked the war zones it was effectively your retirement fund!

Who are some of the more famous people you have worked with?
Eric Idle (Monty Python), Santana, Robin Williams, Genesis, Phil Collins, Tony Bennett, over the years I must have worked with a couple hundred celebrities and politicians…I was there for the last interviews of Faye Raye (from the original King Kong ) and Sir Anthony Quinn. Tony Bennett was actually really shy come to think of it. Metallica in their rehearsal hall…most of these were done in hotels. I spent a day with Sammy Hagar in his house in Mill Valley California. While we were there, Bob Weir from the Grateful Dead stopped by. We ended up drinking Margaritas made with CaboWabo tequila, Sammy’s personal brand. I left that shoot with an autographed bottle of Sammy’s CaboWabo tequila.

My last five years in the states were mostly filled with a lot of entertainment news. I was there for the Michael Jackson and the Scott Peterson trials. You sit outside for 12 hours just waiting for one shot, not fun.

Who was the coolest?
Eric Idle was definitely the best. I showed up early to the hotel and told the reception that I was there for the interview. They told me he was at the bar and to go up there. I show up and there he is drinking tea at the bar and I introduced myself. We sat and talked for an hour or so and then did the interview. He was really funny, joking around the whole time, he really entertained the whole crew. Afterwards we hung out for another hour. He’s really a nice, funny guy!

Was anybody difficult to work with?
Schwarzenegger. He was, to put it nicely, difficult. I didn’t have the best opinion of him in the first place, but he was difficult. We were shooting a behind-the-scenes for Around the World in 80 Days back in 2003 in Berlin, Germany, and we were getting shots of Jackie Chan, Kathy Bates and Schwarzenegger. Schwarzenegger’s team, his “handlers,” everyone was just rude. They prevented us from filming.

Later, when he was elected Governor I was there shooting when he was meeting Gray Davis [the previous governor of California and Schwarzenegger’s opponent in the election]. All the other camera guys and I were laughing about how it was going to be titled “The Terminator Meets the Terminated.” When we went to do the sit-down with him, he was just as unfriendly as he was in a Berlin.

I understand that you just finished a documentary about the paper factory that is being built in Uruguay. What was that shoot like?
It was a 3-year project called Paper Trail . It started when I was filming the riot in Mar de Plata (Bush’s welcoming to Argentina). I got a call about this bridge being cut off by a protest that Maradona was going to participate in. I did some research and it looked interesting. A lot of people said it wouldn’t gain enough attention, that it wasn’t big enough. But it turned out to be pretty important! I got in touch with Steve Armstrong, a fantastic editor and we went for it.

Can we plan on seeing this anytime soon?
Hopefully, Discovery Green is considering purchasing it. We might dub it in Spanish and try to sell it locally in Argentina. We’ll see.

What are the pros and cons of your job?
The jobs are always different. There’s no office. You go to places that few people get to go, meet great people along the way. You see the world in a new light. The bad side is as a freelancer your next job is not guaranteed. Then again as a freelancer you get to choose your jobs. The staff guys get sent into hurricanes for footage and can’t say no to it. But all-in-all, there aren’t many cons!

Now that Bush is out of office and Obama is in, are there plans to return?
I did get an email from that group of guys I was with when I made that decision. I wrote back that I’m not returning until all the Bush voters are gone too!

Rex Racer
LPBA Staff