Instead of a Starbucks on every corner, there were unisex barbershops or clothing stores that sold sleeveless cowboy shirts.
Just when I thought I knew everything about the sexual proclivities of the city, I came across a building with the sign saying: “HUMAN RIGHTS COALITION: GAY, BI, AND PANSEXUAL.”
I almost drove off the road. I stopped my car. I studied the sign to see if I just read it wrong. No, there it was: “PANSEXUAL.” What was a pansexual? I’m no dummy. I am a man of the world. I was in the delivery room when my wife had a caesarean. I have a liberal arts degree. Maybe if I broke it down into its component parts. I knew a pan was either something I used in the kitchen to heat sausages or the Greek prefix pan meaning “everything or universal”—like pantheist, panorama, or pandemic.
I was reeling. How much sex were these people having? There wasn’t enough oxygen here for me to climb a staircase, let alone search for other pansexuals to have pansex with. They clearly didn’t want to be lumped in with bisexuals who by definition will sleep with anything that walks on two feet. Pansexuals considered themselves different. They had their own human rights center with their own name on the sign.
I tried to understand the needs of a pansexual. What were they in search of? Here is what I found out for the pan-curious out there. If my research is wrong, don’t blame me. My only reference materials were the personal ads in a free newspaper.
If you believe in past lives, as do lots of people in Santa Fe, those past people inside you might have a different sexual orientation than you do. I am a white middle-aged man, but in one of my dream states I could be an aging stripper from the 1930s. If I were to have sex with my wife, it could be the stripper that’s having sex with her and not me. My wife would then be having a lesbian affair behind my back. It’s all very complicated, which is why they have to have their own human rights center. Bottom line: I’m not secure enough to be a pansexual.
If you are in Santa Fe for any length of time, you will be moved by its beauty, charm, and how uncomfortable the furniture is. The reason for this is the entire city has dedicated itself to celebrating the trappings of Native American culture. Many of the restaurants, hotels, spas, and movie theaters have chairs made of antler horns. You may have to sit on logs. You may have to crawl into stores built like teepees, and interact with salespeople wearing beads and feathers.
For the shoppers, Santa Fe has hundreds of stores. All of them sell turquoise necklaces. The soundtrack in the background of every hotel lobby, of every shopping mall, of almost every restaurant is that irritating, breathy, echoey Indian flute music. Even the original Native Americans got stoned on peyote to listen to that crap. I pleaded with the assistant manager of our hotel to switch to easy listening in the elevator. No avail.
And as the Native American languages were highly nuanced, it is almost impossible to read a menu in Santa Fe because of all of the adjectives.
For breakfast: Geronimo-style enlarged yolk, organic brown Copper Creek hen eggs with pinyon pine chipolata-smoked triage of peppers and fingerling range-wood-seared potatoes with Montezuma greens.
And at two dollars an adjective, it’s pricey.
Santa Fe has the strictest drunk-driving laws in the country. And they need them. At several restaurants they didn’t put tequila in the margaritas. The owner explained to me, “People would just drink it.” I asked at the hotel bar if I could have a glass of wine at nine thirty p.m. on a Friday night. They told me “no.” The bartender had a party to go to. This was not an aberration. I went to several bars that closed early. As my waitress speculated, “Most people here don’t go to bars on the weekends. They prefer to drink in the privacy of their cars.”
And finally, the spa scene deserves a mention. It is big business in Santa Fe. People come here from all over the world for health treatments.
The most talked-about of all the spas was a place called Ten Thousand Waves. They specialize in expensive massages where they put hot rocks on your back or rub you down in sea salt. They give you bathrobes and invite you to enjoy the clothing-optional coed hot tubs where you get to hang out with naked Japanese men.
When you arrive they give you a menu of facials. One of my favorites was a $125 half-hour facial massage utilizing extra-virgin olive oil, avocado, and pureed tomatoes. Why pay? I give myself one of these every time I eat a submarine sandwich. The most expensive massage was a $200 half-hour facial. The active ingredient was organic nightingale poop. For real. One of our makeup ladies got this facial. She reported that it was very nice. Not at all what she expected. What did she expect? I wondered. And if she expected dung to be rubbed into her face, why did she request it? Why did she pay for it? This sweet woman seemed to embody a mental pathology so disturbing that I can only describe it as very “Santa Fe” and just the thing you would expect in the Land of Enchantment. Just on a personal note: if you’re going to pay someone to rub bird poop into your face, go ahead and spend the extra money for the organic poop. It’s not the time to economize.
THE FIRST SCENE I shot in Wild Hogs took place in the desert. We shot it over three excruciatingly hot days. I had no lines. I had to sit on the wooden fence of a corral and watch other actors talk. I was what they call “background.” That’s a show business term for an “extra.” Your purpose is to “fill the frame.”
I could see from my lofty perch atop the corral that the camera was over two hundred yards away and pointed in the opposite direction. That’s when I guessed I was not even “background.” I was what’s referred to as “deep background”—a show business term meaning “we probably won’t see you in the shot but wear your costume just in case.” One of the advantages of being deep background is you can text your friends during a scene and no one will notice.
I was playing the role of Sheriff Charley. I always hope that my character has a last name. There is an unintentional hierarchy in the parts written for actors. At the top are parts Harrison Ford gets: Richard Kimble, Han Solo. These characters have first and last names. Writers have thought about these characters a lot. Consequently, during the movie, Harrison Ford characters do almost anything: eat, sleep, read the newspaper, drink coffee, shower (from the back only, waist up), get dressed, drive to work, shave, run for their lives, shoot guns, deliver stirring oratory to alien warlords.
The next level of characters in a script are called by one name and a job description. Interestingly enough, in comedies you are more likely to get the job description and a first name: here I was Sheriff Charley. In my career I have also played Ranger Bob, Ringmaster Bob, Dr. Ted, Dr. Bob, Father Jon, Father Joe (actually, the two Fathers were the same part in two different versions of the same movie: Trevor). Once in a TV movie, Last Flight Out, I was Tim for the first part of the script and Jim for the last part. Richard Crenna, the funniest man who ever lived, would always call me TimJim during all our scenes. No one noticed.
In a drama you get the job description and the last name: Agent MacLaren, Dr. Andross, Detective Keefe. I’m not saying this rule is hard and fast, but it happens a lot. Usually, if the writers have not imagined you with two names, they have also not imagined you with a car, a girl, or a life. They have just imagined you as a vehicle to get someone with two names from point A to point B (or point R to point S, as the case may be).
There is a level beneath the characters with one name. These are characters with no name at all. And I’ve played these, too. Sometimes it’s just the job description. I have played TV Clerk, Professor, Doctor, Hotel Clerk (I almost got fired from that one), and the unforgettable Butt-Crack Plumber.
The only thing worse than characters with just a job description is a character with a job description and a number: for The Love Bug 2, I read for and did not get the role of Cop #2. But I have played Homeless Person #2, Teacher #3, Government Man #2. These roles are so low on the totem pole, you are sometimes mistaken for the cleaning crew and chased off the set.
So, as I was saying, in this scene, I was sitting on top of a six-foot-
tall circular corral watching our leading characters, played by Tim Allen, John Travolta, and Martin Lawrence, slap a live bull on the ass and try to run out of the ring without getting killed.
A crucial element in shooting a scene such as this safely is the principle that to the human eye all bulls look alike and can be substituted at will.
We had four bulls. Bull One had a name. He was Zorro. Zorro was a huge old bull. He was extremely docile. Practically catatonic. You could hit Zorro in the head with a shovel and he wouldn’t move. This bull was put in the ring when the real actors had to be in the same shot with him. I was shocked near the end of day one when the bull wranglers told Walt Becker, our director, that they would have to switch bulls. Zorro was getting tired.
Tired? All Zorro ever did was stand and chew. He would do that off the set. I was curious as to what the warning signs were that Zorro was near exhaustion. I asked the bull wrangler. It turned out to be a matter of science. Because Zorro was black (as were all the bulls), he was absorbing heat (it was 104 degrees that day). The wrangler noticed Zorro was sticking his tongue out farther than usual when he licked his own face. That was a sign of dehydration. It was advised that he be removed from the ring.
I had to agree with the wrangler. I was sitting on the fence in the sun, and I was only wearing brown. I was absorbing a lot of heat, but I never thought to lick my face.
Buddy replaced Zorro.
Designated as Bull Two and termed “slightly more aggressive” than Zorro, Buddy would whirl his head around at approaching actors. So for safety, one of his front feet had to be tied with a length of chain and nailed into the ground with a spike.
We got some usable shots with Buddy until he got tangled in his chain and started to trip over his front feet. At that point the primary actors went to the air-conditioning of their enormous trailers. We resumed shooting with stunt doubles and Bulls Three and Four.
Bull Three had no name other than Bull Three. His minders described him as the “aggressive but smart” bull. He would kick and snort and bellow and then mount a single charge before looking for a way out of the ring. I’m not sure what part of that was “smart.”
I should mention that all of the bulls, smart or otherwise, were given commands with a single word: “Bull!” The bull wrangler yelled this at full volume. It meant a variety of things, including “Go,” “Stop,” “Don’t,” “Do,” “Now,” and “Look out, everybody, a bull is loose!”
Bull Three was good for getting the actual footage of a bull charge, but he steered clear of humans so he was not good for shots of a bull nearly goring our leading actors or stuntmen. For that, we needed Bull Four.
Bull Four was the “highly aggressive” bull. He was a full-sized, fire-breathing, murderous, man-eating bull. He bellowed. He roared. There was nothing in his eyes but mayhem.
The scene was going to be the release of Bull Four into the ring with the three stuntmen resembling our lead actors—and me, sitting on the corral fence watching. I was concerned that I was the only person without a stunt double. But then again, I was Sheriff Charley. One of the downsides of not having two names is that usually you don’t get a stunt double.
John, the first assistant director, came up to me. “Stephen, I’m not going to tell you anything that isn’t just plain old common sense. When we release the bull he’s going to see you on this fence. I figure you’ll have about six to seven seconds to jump off the fence and get clear before he reaches you. Anything on the inside of the ring will be crushed, fingers, feet, legs, anything.”
I looked across the ring at Bull Four. He was looking at me and snorting. I performed a mental calculus like a professional golfer with a thirty-foot putt. I estimated the size of Bull Four, adjusting for his stride when angry, as plotted against the diameter and slope of the bullring. I looked at John and said, “More like five seconds—five seconds before he reaches me.” John looked back at the ring and agreed. “Yeah. More like five. Anyway, I just want you to realize that it won’t be instantaneous. You have time. Be careful. Don’t rush and fall into the ring. Five seconds is plenty of time to get clear.”
They started all seven cameras, yelled, “Action!” and released Bull Four. I heard the roar. I felt the vibrations through the ground. I saw a cloud of dust and Bull Four heading straight for me. I swung my legs up and over the fence. Three seconds. I landed on a slight down slope and fell away from the fence. Four seconds. Bull Four recognized no barriers like fences and at five seconds, he slammed into the corral where I had been sitting. The force of the impact shattered the four-by-four timbers. Bull Four’s impact pushed the entire corral a foot toward me. He eyed me angrily through the slats of splintered wood. He wasn’t thinking, “I’ll get you,” or “Just you wait.” It was more vacant like, “Fence. Hard. Oh. You, deep background.”
During the shooting, one stuntman was hit by the bull and flung out of the ring. The other two barely made it over the fence. I then witnessed something I had never seen during the shooting of a film.
The stunt coordinator approached the director and said that there was time for another run with the bull. They had enough daylight, the bull was still “fresh,” and the injured stuntman wanted to give it another try. Walt Becker considered for a moment and said, “I don’t know. The guy can hardly walk, the other two stuntmen barely got out of the ring. I don’t know. I have a bad feeling about this. I say we call it a day.”
I tip my hat to Mr. Walt Becker, erring on the side of safety. I knew at that moment the movie was going to be a success. The angels were on our side.
The next morning on the way to the set, in the distance I saw a swirling cloud of dust by the corral. Then sheer pandemonium. Extras were running for their lives. I heard screams. Then, through the dust, I saw three galloping cowboys going in every direction at once. The crowd of fifty or so people started running toward our Jeep. Then I saw horns. A bull was loose. It was running wild through the terrified mass of people and tables and camera equipment with three wranglers with lassos on horseback in pursuit. We stopped the Jeep. The bull charged toward us. He had a desperate energy. I recognized the glint in his eye. It was the smart bull. Bull Three.
One of the riders at full gallop lassoed the horns and pulled hard. The bull stopped and turned and gored the horse in the ribs. The horse reared, blood streamed down its side. The cowboy never gave up but continued pulling the rope tighter. Other cowboys got their ropes on the bull’s horns. They backed their horses up until the ropes were pulling in three different directions. The bull stopped. The wranglers ran in and led the bull back to its pen. Everything was still, and then everything went back to normal as we started to get ready for the next shot.
I had to find out if the horse survived. I saw the cowboy over by some rocks taking a drink from a canteen. I asked him how his horse was. He turned around and pulled off his hat and a cascade of blond hair fell down like in the movies. He was a she! She was the cowboy bull roper. She smiled. The horse was fine. She had cleaned up the wound and was giving him the day off. She’d be riding him tomorrow. I was relieved. I asked her how she got in this line of work.
“Oh. My granddad taught me how to ride. Been riding my whole life.”
“Was your granddad a cowboy, too?” I asked.
She laughed. “No. An actor. His name was Fess Parker. He played Davy Crockett. Maybe you saw him when you were a boy.”
I said, “I did. I still have a picture of me in the hat.”
“Did you have the rifle, too?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She licked her thumb and moved it across her invisible gun sight.
I smiled and headed back to my trailer, ready for another day of deep background, feeling that the world was a little safer.
Davy Crockett rides again.
5.
THE ALCHEMIST
WE DON’T CHOOSE our memories. Our memories choose us. Why certain thoughts rise to levels of importance and others vanish is not entirely obvious to me.
I will always remember the night in Boston when my father punched a bus. People could remember their fathers for lots of reasons. Dad taught me the alphabet. He would give me a different letter on a small chalkboard every day on his way to work. Then I would ask for something that became known as a “puffed cheek kiss.” He would fill his mouth with air and puff out his cheeks, and then I would kiss his cheek while he let the air out with a sort of expelling-air-but-not-quite-farting sound that made me laugh. And then I would demand that we do it again. And again. And again. Until he protested that he “had to go to work.”
When I was ten, Dad took me to the Lions Club midget go-cart races and put me in charge of the concession stand. I was ten! In charge of a concession stand! Talk about having the fox watch the henhouse. It may have demonstrated questionable judgment on his part, but it was great. There I was, unsupervised, in charge of taking in money and dispensing candy bars, popcorn, corn dogs, unlimited cola, and soft-serve ice cream. I went through half a box of soft-serve cones within the first hour. I was my biggest customer. And I was free.
The head of the event came over, red-faced, and scolded me. I don’t remember ever having been scolded by an adult other than my father or a teacher. It was a good preparation for television directors, but I didn’t know that at the time. He told me he was going to “count cones on me.” If I was short, I would have to pay him for each ice cream eaten.
Dad was embarrassed. I let him down. I was scared. I was ashamed—for about seven minutes. Then I figured out I could get around the prohibition on eating ice cream by just avoiding the cones altogether and dispensing the soft serve directly into my hand. No cone. No trail. No problem.
But if you were to ask me at a party what event I remembered most about my dad, it would be the snowy night in Boston. We were crossing the street. A bus waiting for the light inched forward into the crosswalk and Dad whirled around and punched it. He punched the bus. To the bus’s credit, it stopped. Not from the force of the blow but from the shock of the bus driver that some man would give a right hook to his bus’s grill.
The Dangerous Animals Club Page 5
