One Year of Reality and How It Nearly Killed Me: My Life Behind the Scenes (17 page)

I hung out with the travel department from time to time as they were handling the hotel arrangements and visas for the crew. I gravitated toward them because they were doing work to which I could relate, work I had done in the past. And they were much busier than I ever was. I wanted to help, but they didn’t seem to need anything from me. They were preparing the first crew members to arrive in advance of the rest of the team to set up shop. That would be me; Kristen, the head of the travel department; and one of the producers. We were going to Switzerland first.

The staff packed up the office supplies and equipment and shipped it ahead of us so that it would be there when we arrived, and we could get everything set up. The flight was long but pleasant, and we took a beautiful train ride up to the Alps to make it to our final destination, the hotel where we’d be setting up shop. The air was the thinnest I had ever experienced, but it was really fresh and clean. Since it was the off-season, many places were closed. There was no snow but the mountains were a beautiful green with pine trees dotting the landscape as far as the eye could see.

When we arrived, we met our facilitator from Germany. I had only spoken with him briefly once or twice and had some sort of image in my head of him looking like my uncle, 6’7” with curly brown hair, a big guy. But he was much more entertaining than I could ever have imagined.

He was a riot.

I can say this because I’m half German, and I saw characteristics in him that I had always ascribed to that side of my family. He was stern looking, and he had a way of speaking that always made him sound upset or off-putting. I had figured all of that out from my brief conversations with him. But what made him
seem so silly was the fact that he always seemed a little “off center” (some would think he was tipsy), and he was wearing what I call a “Swiss Miss” outfit. He had on some kind of overalls, a shirt, and what looked like either long socks or lederhosen. I don’t know how to describe the combination beyond saying that he looked like Shirley Temple’s grandfather in
Heidi
, only funnier and less put together. I also met his coordinator, whom I liked very much. She was cute, responsible and hardworking, and like me, she wanted to get the job done. I really looked forward to working with her.

But I had a lot to learn.

I had never set up a production office overseas, except in my own hotel room for only a couple of people, so I wasn’t sure how to go about it. And while I was aware that they have a different set up for electrical currents overseas, I had no idea that they used differently-sized printer paper in Europe than in the U.S. Can you figure out why that would be? Who said, “We have to be a little different from the Europeans, and we can do that by changing our paper!” I’d like to know the story. We were shipping our own paper to be used in the printer and copier we were getting from the facilitator. If I had known earlier, I would not have shipped office equipment or supplies. Instead,
I kept trying to make the “American” paper work in the European copier. For a couple of critical weeks, I just thought that the copier we had gotten from our facilitator must’ve been defective, not that the paper was the wrong size. I hate having flashbacks of my stupidity. Oh well, now I know. Ultimately, toward the middle of the shoot, I actually did get a better copier, and I went out and purchased a printer that would work with European paper.

A minor inconvenience compared to what was going to happen to next.

Everyone was starting to arrive, along with the rest of our equipment, and me and Kristen and the rest of the staff who had arrived early were still putting together the production office. The show’s executive producers and a couple of network executives also showed up for the first few days of shooting and for the big production meeting where we’d go over everything with the crew and staff. The network execs probably came to make sure everything was okay, or maybe they just wanted a reason to make a trip to a beautiful country. Either way, it was a big deal to have them there.

My boss was disappointed by the sloppiness of the paperwork, particularly the crew handout. It
was not a clean handout; it was lopsided and kind of dirty owing to the discrepancy with the paper size, and he was bitterly disappointed.

On top of that, the German crew was getting upset. I spoke to the one German I had been in touch with from the beginning, who had put the rest of the crew together. He was not happy about the rate we were offering for his services and for the rest of the crew. I always deal in flat rates, regardless of cost, and accounting usually backs that number into a twelve-hour day (when timecards are used). I had done all of this on the other shows I had worked on without a problem, even when I dealt with international crews. I mean, everyone wants to make money, but we only had so much budgeted. There wasn’t money for additional overtime. But he felt that the deal needed to be for either an eight- or ten-hour day with overtime after that. I told him that was not our deal, and the problem started to spiral from there.

I had to tell the line producer about this new, late breaking development. It was a few days before the shoot, and it wasn’t good that this was coming up now. I felt like I had done something wrong. I’m always ready to blame myself first rather than standing up for my actions. I think it’s easier to just solve a problem instead of playing the blame game. I would
always say, “Just blame me and let’s move on.” I hated to say that on this one, though, because I knew it would be another disappointment for the line producer. He wanted me to resolve the problem, but the only solution I could come up with was to get another crew, which didn’t seem so realistic this late in the game. The Italian crew jumped on the band wagon about overtime as well. So I definitely hadn’t made myself clear enough to solve this problem before our arrival.

I’m not sure how the line producer ultimately dealt with this issue from a budget standpoint, but it was another lesson learned. And since we had very, very long days, there would’ve been overtime anyway. There was no way that twenty-hour days would’ve been accepted at a flat rate. But then again, I don’t think anyone anticipated or wanted twenty-hour days. So either way, they would have to be paid overtime. And I felt that I had to really work hard to make up for that big gaff. Instead of looking forward to the rest of the shoot, from that moment on, I would replay every mistake that I’d made or thought I’d made. My mental game started to get the best (or worst) of me.

One of the most interesting parts of this show was the freebies we were given to use. I hadn’t seen this
on any shows I had worked on up until that point, but it’s what is now called “product placement.” We would get something free to use so long as we featured it prominently in the show. We had a few new cars as well as a hundred cell phones. We received these things in exchange for the free publicity generated from using them on air. The cars had to be picked up in Germany, and we had some of the crew go and get them. They were used in the show to transport the ousted contestants, and the execs and crew also used them whenever it was needed. One day, a couple of crew members driving one of the cars got a flat tire. What I remember was that it took a while to get a replacement because the cars had not come out yet, so there weren’t any spares available. That’s how new these cars were. Everyone used them except for me, since I didn’t know how to use a stick shift. Another mistake. The line producer didn’t seem too disappointed, but he did say that I should learn how to drive stick for the next international show I did. One night I needed to pass out call sheets for the next day, and someone had to drive me around to all the hotels, none of which were close together, to deliver them. No one is ever happy working late at night, so I had one very upset driver.

Unlike
Amazing Race
, this show was in its second season, which meant that they’d worked out most of
the kinks and problems in the first season. The one disadvantage was that most of the production team was not the original production team, so all of us new people were learning as we went. Still, it helped that it had been done before.

The other nice difference between this show and
Amazing Race
was that we had time. Time in one place, time to test out the games, and time to get to know each other and the contestants. Okay, not a
lot
of time, but certainly more than on
Amazing Race
. The two people I immediately hit it off with were the travel team of Kristen and Monica. Kristen had a great production background and Monica was a bit greener, but both of them shared my work ethic. And we just had a connection. We all had a fondness for Aerosmith, and on many a late night when everyone was gone except for the three of us, we would be blast the band’s songs out of our computers.

The schedule for the show became brutal in that the hours we needed to put in each day were horribly long. Again, everything looked great on paper until the shoot was executed. There were very few days, if any, when we didn’t work more than twelve hours. In fact, most of the time I probably didn’t go to bed until midnight or two in the morning, only to get up at 7 a.m. the next day. Thirty days of that sort
of schedule would have worn out anyone. But I think that coupled with the last shoot I had done and three years of working on
Wild Things
with only two weeks off, my mental game was off. I was beginning to feel the effects of fatigue. I think that when you’re constantly tired, you’re like a drunk, by which I mean you let your true feelings out without thinking about it. So if I was mad, I showed it; if I was upset, I said something stupid. I could hear myself doing it, but I couldn’t help it. I wasn’t myself. Some external force had overtaken my body. But I pressed on.

I tried to have a good sense of humor especially when I was in a dark mood, and overcompensated by trying to do as much as I could for everyone else. A couple of times I unloaded office supplies and equipment essentially on my own so that the other crew members could have a day off. I’d also deliver messages, make calls, or do anything I could think of to put a smile on someone’s face, hoping that in some way, the good karma would come back to me. I started to struggle with depression and constantly questioned my value to the production, second-guessing everything I did.

The first production office in Switzerland was set up in a hotel room that looked like an empty theatre space from elementary school, with a raised
stage and a large flat space where we set up shop. Along one wall was a “balcony” area where the producers and execs could meet and have some privacy. One time I was looking for a producer, and when I called his cell phone, it turned out that he was in the balcony area. I heard one of the executive producers scream down at me, “Next time look before you spend the money on a call.” Now, if my mind had been in the right place, I would’ve blown that off, but I was greatly offended. I gathered some paperwork for the producer I had called, stormed up to the balcony, gave him his paperwork, and handed the executive producer a nickel. I told him it was for the call and walked away. Later the exec came down to tell me that he’d only been joking. I still didn’t back down, and told him it wasn’t funny to joke about money in front of hard working people. Yep, it was one of those times when you watch yourself become an idiot.

Not everything was skewed. I did manage to do a few things right. We had a photographer from the network with us who had lost his passport. I helped him arrange to go to the nearest American Embassy to get a replacement, and I spoke with the ambassador’s assistant to make sure everything went smoothly. He was grateful, and I was glad to help him out.

I also wrangled a couple of things. We had contestant luggage, a hundred cell phones, and about seven of the new cars. And I was responsible for all of them. The cell phones were badly needed, but it was hard to keep track of them, and even though there was a list and the phones were numbered, people kept swapping them, letting other people borrow them, or losing them. It was particularly confusing when we had to travel between Switzerland and Italy. We had to keep some of the Switzerland numbers as we crossed over, while also attaining Italy numbers for when we arrived. At this point several people, myself included, had two phones. Even I lost one of my phones. The phones that weren’t used were kept in my hotel room, and I tried to account for all of them each day. I made people look for the missing phones they’d signed out, but usually it was to no avail. No matter what, a few walked away. A segment producer actually called the number of one of the missing cell phones and yelled at the guy to give it back. It was pretty funny. Out of a hundred, twenty ended up missing and four people admitted to losing them, including myself. So I don’t think it was such a horrible loss in the end.

The cars were another matter. The keys for the new cars were constantly being switched around and lost or misplaced. Too many people had keys, and I
was ultimately put in charge of them. The network execs and producers kept their keys, and the others were given out as needed. We also had vans that would transport crew and contestants, and we had to keep track of those as well.

One morning I was one van short. I couldn’t understand it. I had all the keys accounted for the night before, so to have a set missing put me in a panic, especially since the line producer wanted to use one of the vans to do a run. I looked everywhere, afraid that I had lost the keys or really botched things up. I asked my coordinator. She said she hadn’t seen them, and I had the travel people, Kristen and Monica, help me look for them. After a couple of hours it was lunch time, and I still hadn’t found them. I had to go to let my boss know. It was just another major disappointment in a long list. I really thought that at this point I would be fired. If he didn’t have any respect for me, this would be the clincher.

Just as I was telling him that I had lost the keys and didn’t know where they were or how they could’ve been taken, the coordinator came over to the lunch table and told us that she’d given the keys to one of the guys because the facilitator, who ultimately owned the vehicles, needed the guys to pick some things up from his house. Do a personal run.
I was furious that she had outright lied to me, but there was nothing I could do. I would have to wait for the van.