It seems that weird weather is going to be our fate, at least for awhile. After we'd gone to bed last night the rain started yet again and pelted the old tin RV for at least an hour or more. Then the wind started up and though it wasn't northern Nevada strong, it still had us a swaying a bit. This morning, when I stepped outside the comfy confines of our home away from home, it was just darn cold, cold enough to require a jacket if I had wanted to dig under the tilt-up bed frame and extract one. Then, when we had left our camp north of Santa Fe and were searching for the camp we had chosen for our two-day stay near the downtown area of New Mexico's famous capital city, it actually starting hailing on us. Windy, cold, and spitting ice, the weather seemed intent on making us roll on south to the Mexican border or something to find summer.
The downtown RV park turned out to be something of a challenge to locate, and at one point had us going opposite directions seeking the same destination, but we finally did the requisite number of u-turns and rolled into the Los Suenos RV Park (photo top left) just before noon. We visited Wally World for groceries, well, most of them. Next we had to locate a Smiths since the older Wally World had no deli. Finally, just before lunchtime, we had everything set up and turned on and had moved into clothes-washing mode. Simultaneously the blue skies arrived and it appeared as though the weather was going to give as a break.
One of the things I saw as we drove in was a really, REALLY vintage travel trailer. Once we were set up and Concetta had started in on the lunch prep, I wandered over to snap a few photos of a rig which I figured must be no newer then the 1940s (photos 2 and 3). I had just finished shooting and was walking back to the rig when a SUV drove up and stopped next to me.
"Hey," the driver called out the window. "I see you've got one of the new Nikons."
I bent down and looked in the window and saw a thirty-ish chap in a ball cap and dark glasses. He looked friendly enough, so I said, "Yeah, just got it for this trip. It's the new D7200."
"Ah," the the driver said. "I use the D610 myself. Well, and I shoot Canon as well."
After that beginning, I and the chap, who introduced himself as Lucas, launched into stories of our respective lives like we'd been buddies for months. Turns out that Lucas is a semi-professional photographer, massage therapist, and college student, as well as a support person in the movie business.
"Movie business?" I said with surprise.
"Sure," Lucas said. "Latest job was with Longmire."
Now he had my attention for sure. "Longmire!!!!" I said, my voice rising a couple of octaves. "At one time that was our favorite TV show. Was until the idiots took it off the air."
"Yeah, I know," Lucas said, shaking his head. They went over to NetFlicks." And then he went on to tell me how the head of A&E had gotten greedy since she had her own film production company and wanted to throw more money their way.
Our conversation bounced around after that, but always came back to photography. "How long you going to be here?" Lucas asked at one point. "We could go out and do some shooting together. I could take you guys into Santa Fe and really show you the good places to shoot."
"Just two days," I said.
When he looked disappointed I hastened to say, "But why don't we go out tomorrow?"
Lucas thought for a moment, then said, "Yeah, I can do that. I'll put my college studies off a day."
"Why don't we get together right after breakfast, then?" I said.
"It's a deal," Lucas said. He thrust out his hand. "Glad I stopped to talk."
We shook hands. "Me, too," I said. "I'll see you tomorrow."
Lucas drove off toward his shiny Airstream travel trailer and I stood there looking after him just in awe of how life can send you off in a new direction at the drop of a hat. Lucas had told me that many of the interior shots for Lou Diammond phillips on Longmire had been done in his Airstream. The exteriors were shot of Lou's much shorter trailer, but the interior shots required more room.
Most people think that working in the movie business is a cakewalk, but once upon a time I found out differently. I moved to Carson City, Nevada, back in 1974. My parents had moved there while I was in the Naval Air Corp and my intention was to live with them, make some money, then head out on another adventure. At the time I had just come from a job on a sixty-foot yacht (photo right) that was based in the Mediterranean area, one of Spain's Balleric Islands. My job was to work as boat crew and film crew for a self-made millionaire who had decided HIS next adventure would be film-making. I and my buddy John Riise spent over a year helping to make a documentary. That's when I found out that the movie business is most times just plain hard work. Schlepping equipment, repeated takes, underwater work, impossible shooting schedules -- you name it. The job is fun at times but always exhausting. Plus you have the stress of limited budgets and the overarching need to get things right in the shortest possible time.
Once I had lived in Carson City for 18 months and I had earned, I thought, enough money to go and seek out another adventure, I moved back to the L.A. basin and took up residence with my buddy John and Dennis, our underwater photographer from the Mediterranean documentary. Soon I was recruited by a another chap who wanted to shoot a movie western and who wanted me to help him build a movie set which which would be a saloon interior. I wasn't making any real money -- about ten dollars a day -- but I hoped that it would do until I decided where I was going next.
The man that employed me to help build a saloon did have some movie credentials. He had been in charge of the "second unit" photo crew for the movie, "Jaws." He was the one who shot the boat interiors where the shark is banging on the outside of the boat hull and water is spurting everywhere from the loosened seams. He also did second-unit work in the movie, "Lucky Lady." I'm sure there were many other movies, but those are the only ones I remember.
Anyway, Mike the cinematographer who had me building a saloon decided one day that we were going out on the Mojave Desert somewhere to do some exterior shots. When the sound tech didn't show up to do his part, I was drafted to do the sound work. "Me????" I said. "I don't know jack about sound work."
Don't worry about it," Mike said. "You'll get the hang of it. Just lower the sound boom into the frame until I can see it through the camera viewfinder. When I see can it I'll tell you to raise it up a bit. Then all you have to do is keep it there. Nothing to it."
Well, it sounded easy enough. Trouble was, when we went to Universal Studios a few days later to take a look at what we had shot, some of the takes included just the very tip of my sound boom. Man, I thought Mike was going to rip the arm off his chair and kill me with it. It was then that I began to doubt whether I was entirely suited to the movie business. Some time later when mike announced he wanted the two of us to fly to Costa Rica and scout locations for a war movie he wanted to shoot I decided to seek my fortunes elsewhere. I figured that Mike's hot temper would probably cause us to run afoul of some central American government and would certainly get us locked up. And thus ended my short, but semi-sweet career in low-budget films.
Still, I know I made the right decision. Even though Mike had promised to get me accepted as a trainee in the cinematographers' Union if I stayed as his assistant, when I left him and traveled back to Carson City I almost immediately met Concetta in a local Laundromat. Had I stayed in Hollywood and become a cinematographer I would have missed out on the woman of my dreams (photo above left). As you can see, it was good that I let fate have its way.
Tomorrow if the weather isn't awful, Lucas will come by and we'll head into Santa Fe for what we hope is more adventures. Stay tuned and, of course, we wish you Happy Traveling.
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