Hollywood Confessional

The Porn Car

• Ninth Way Media • Season 1 • Episode 3

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What happens when the production office of a reputable network TV show shares its studio space with a softcore porn production? Get ready to hear an absolutely wild tale of hijinks, hilarity, and unforgettable characters from this chaotic environment that will have you questioning everything you thought you knew about Hollywood.

We explore not just the outrageous moments, but also the valuable lessons learned about surviving a toxic work environment and the importance of being human to each other even in the highest-pressure situations. We also give a shout-out from comedy writer, actress, and producer Amy Baklini to one of her favorite people in the industry, indie film producer Matt Miller. Buckle up for this rollercoaster ride of an episode that's sure to leave you entertained and enlightened.

This episode is brought to you by THE RESTORER, a supernatural YA podcast in the Ninth Way Media family, available anywhere you get your podcasts!

The Restorer on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-restorer/id1621618762

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Hollywood Confessional is a Ninth Way Media production, produced by Meagan Daine and J.R. Zamora-Thal.

Sound Effects and Music provided by Zapsplat and Pixabay.

Keywords: filmmaking podcast, film podcast, screenwriting podcast, entertainment podcast, Hollywood, filmmaking, writerslife, actorslife, setlife

Porn Car


[cheerful music]


Confessor: Let me tell you a little story about being a young, hungry person in the movie business. 


J.R.: That’s my favorite kind!


Confessor: It starts with me looking for a change. I’d been working in post-production for about ten years. That kind of work was drying up. And I wanted to learn about film and TV by being the low man in all the different departments that I could so I could understand how all this stuff worked.


Now, there's unions, so you can't be a grip and you can't be an electrician, you can't be make up, stuff like that. But there are a lot of non-union positions in each of the tiers of moviemaking. Sort of the entry level job, where you pay your dues, get the coffee, and you learn about what people are doing here and how all this stuff works. 


I wanted to find a job like that. So I started asking around, and someone referred me to a job in the production office on a show for a reputable network. 


[music shift]


Now, the person who referred me to this job held a lot of sway. And the person who hired me in the production office felt they had a lot of power but did not.


J.R.: I think you just described 98% of Hollywood.


Confessor: My boss-to-be was a woman. I'm a pretty big guy, and she was bigger. Straight up physically imposing. And it started, you know, she was very friendly, which was like, great, this is going to be a great job. She described how we all treat each other like family here. I learned 15 jobs later, every time someone says that, run.


Meagan: Yeah, major red flag.


Confessor: But at the time, I'm excited to go to work for this big, loving family.


[cheerful music, typing, phones ringing]


It started out reasonably well. I was a paper pusher. Doing communications and echoing communications for the most part, and a little bit of paperwork, but it was mainly being there to answer the phone, stuff like that. A little boring, but it is what it is.


It was very long hours. It was like, we're going to work seven days this week for 14 hours a day, and then we're going to come in next week and we're going to do it again. We would occasionally get a Sunday off, but it was sort of like, that was our lives. This was partly because it was a low-budget production.


Meagan: Right. They pay you less, so they can screw you harder.


J.R.: Production logic at its finest.


Confessor: Now, because it's a low budget thing, one of the corners they cut was the studio that they were going to shoot it at. They made this remarkable deal at this studio that was going to be the perfect size. So everyone was excited to get this place to shoot the show on a low budget. But then we get there, and we find out part of the reason they got this remarkable deal was because the studio manager was probably an ex porn star, almost certainly on drugs the entire time.


J.R.: Love it. Love it.


Confessor: Not only was this stage manager difficult. She double-booked the stage with a softcore porn. So you got this great deal, but you have to share the stage with these people who are making, like, sex noises during your takes.


[SFX: erotic moaning, “Quiet on the set!”]


Meagan: So wait, wait, wait. How did you come to find out this was happening? I mean, did you just, like, walk in one day and see people doing it?


[SFX: Door opens, dude says “Morning, Frank,” erotic grunting, “Ooh, is that fresh coffee?”]


Confessor: It wasn't a big stage. We would show up in our parking spots, and there would be like 150 people there. Coming in with like stripper clothes on. And they would do casting sessions with porn stars. We would look them up and be like, I think that's this one. I think that's this one. And we'd sort of like follow them around and stuff. And, you know, some of them are pretty big stars. You know, one of them may have hung out with Charlie Sheen.


J.R.: Should we bleep that?


Meagan: I don’t know. He wasn’t saying it was Charlie Sheen. Just that an unnamed person might have hung out with Charlie Sheen. Oops, we just said it three times.


J.R.: It’s your classic Beetlejuice situation.


[SFX: devilish laughter]


Confessor: But yeah, it was very clearly a porn. It was not hidden. And it was a shared stage. We all had to know because we had to know. “They're going to be using this side of the stage today. So we're going to change our schedule to go to a location.” “Oh, we can't change our schedules for this day. So we're going to have to shoot on the same stage and trade takes, so that they're going to be shooting for one take. They'll cut. We're going to shoot another take. We'll cut.”


So, you know. Hijinks and hilarity ensue, obviously.  Like, for example, they had their own craft service table, and we would occasionally go steal their stuff because we were low budget and the porn stars had good food. 


But then one time a buddy of mine was like getting some stuff, and there's, you know, like bowls of like nuts and chips and whatever out on the craft service table, and you know, like the good shows, they'll have, like a scooper or something so that people with dirty hands aren't going in there or whatever. And my buddies are getting like a granola bar or something, and all of a sudden this woman wearing absolutely nothing but flip flops, walks up and reaches her whole greasy hand into the bowl of nuts and just takes a handful of nuts and walks away.


J.R.: Was Handful of Nuts the name of their show?


Confessor: Maybe it was all a shocker reality show.


Meagan: I would a hundred percent watch that.


[music shift]


So meanwhile, the stage owner also had this sort of parade of employees. She would hire people, have them work for her for two weeks, three weeks. And when she wouldn't pay them, they would eventually leave. So the janitor leaves, and the trash cans are overflowing, the toilets are disgusting. And the security guards leave, so people could kind of just walk in. A rental house across the hall from us got about $500,000 worth of cameras stolen at one point.


J.R.: Holy shit.


Confessor: Now, because of this, some guy – I don't remember his name, and I'm not sure I would share it, because he didn't seem like a very savory guy – he came to help. He was from this stage owner's past. And he was an Italian guy from New Jersey who might remind you of a lot of characters from The Sopranos. 


And he became the security guy and the janitor. And so he's like cleaning toilets and stuff. Well, he happens to have a side gig. And he's telling me and my friend about it. He's an armored car broker. He wouldn't get into details about his past business, but it seemed like he might know a lot of people who would be interested in buying armored cars. And he showed us a couple of them. It looked like just a regular Escalade, but it's got, you know, metal inside the wheels and all bulletproof of different grades and all that stuff. So he’s taking care of the stage owner. And then –


J.R.: Wait. Why do you think he was taking care of the stage owner?


Confessor: That's what we always wondered. What about their past?


Meagan: Why would he come and clean out dirty toilets?


Confessor: He was the nicest guy to us, you know, but he definitely seemed like the kind of guy that you wouldn't want to be on the wrong side of. So he was holding it together. The toilets were mildly clean and there was water added to the soap dispensers. But the downward spiral of the stage owner continued. And sometimes you would hear stories of, you know, drugs, alcohol, just very, very strange behavior.


[ominous music]


In the production office, the two bosses, the UPM and line producer, had doors, but above the doors there wasn't a wall. So it wasn't very private. We would hear all their phone calls.


[SFX: Phone rings, someone says “hello?”]


My job was to sit there and answer the phone while they were on the phone with other people. I was a liaison of communication. This was a position of trust. And it’s a little scary telling these stories. All this is outside of my NDA because it's about the process of making the show, not about the show. But still, it’s a little scary, and there are some things I don’t feel comfortable sharing even now.


Meagan: You have great integrity. I admire that. Let’s bring it back to you. You're in this crazy madhouse of a place, in a really boring job that's taking over your entire life. You're working 14 hour days, seven days a week. Why did you keep going?


Confessor: Because I felt obligated to the person who recommended me.


Meagan: Oh, wow.


Confessor: This person went out on a limb for me to put me in a position that he thought would be beneficial to everybody, including me. I didn't want that to come back and bite that person, because he's good to me, you know?


J.R.: I think there's an important point there. People can try to do good, and then there's people in the middle who are not doing good, and it's through no fault of the person in higher power. It really amounts to, anybody with any amount of power can abuse it.


Confessor: Which is a great lead-in to my boss, [Bleep], who thought she had power and made this deal with the stage owner.


[music shift]


[Bleep] had kind of a chip on her shoulder about me. I would later find out she considered me what they call a “must hire,” which means that I was put onto her, and she was forced to hire me. So I couldn't get fired. 


This actually wasn’t the case. This was an incorrect assumption she made, which there were a lot of. But that colored our relationship.


So like one desk lunch early in the show, she calls me in her office and says "I'm done."  I was confused.  She then points to her takeout trash scattered on her desk.  I was still confused.  "Take this away, I'm done" she says. It was a major flex. Part of the gig was being takeout busboy I guess.


[SFX: restaurant clamor]


Meanwhile, the work environment just kept spiraling. We show up to work one day, and there's no electricity and the entire building. You need electricity to make movies. You need lights, you need air conditioning. You need sound. You need all kinds of electricity. So what's going on? Power's not on anywhere. 


We see the location guys on the porn. They were always on so much cocaine, you could just tell by like how fast they talked and their eyes were just moving in weird ways. They were just always on cocaine. Pretty much everybody over there was. They had been locked out because they hadn't paid the stage owner what they were supposed to pay her. So the stage owner locked them out of their sets, so they got a Sawzall and sawed a hole through the wall next to the door to break open the door so they could start their shoot day, and they sawed through an electrical main wire and almost electrocuted themselves.


Meagan: Oh, my God.


J.R.: This is the craziest story I have heard.


Confessor: We had to figure out how to fix it. 


But fixing things was not high on my boss’s agenda. She was more interested in controlling them. For example – I drive to work every day. So one day I show up to work, and I get approached by the transpo captain, who manages all the cars on set union job. And he says:


MAN: We were doing some scouting. We think your car would be a good car for the lead character. 


Confessor: And I was like, Cool. How much are you going to pay me? I'm broke and I need money. And he said –


MAN: Well, you got to work out your deal with [BLEEP].


Confessor: So I start calling around. I know people who are in the movie business and, you know, totally disconnected from this crew. And I’m like, “I'm told that they're interested in renting my car. I don't want to rake them over the coals. It's a low budget thing. But like, what should I ask for? Is $500 a day too much? Is $20 a day too little?” 


I had no idea what to ask for. And after doing some research, including getting quotes from car rental houses, it was like, you know, good cars are 300 to 400 a day. Car like mine would probably be 200, but I would do like 175 in the name of the low budget and being a team player. 


You know, so I'm waiting at my desk for this to happen, just doing my job, and transpo captain really wants to get this going. So he comes in, he's like, What's the deal? And he goes into her office and I hear some whispering over the wall. And then they both come out and she's like:


SCARY WOMAN: Congratulations! I heard they want to use your car!


Confessor: And I was like, Well, yeah, it sounds like a good deal. So then she says:


SCARY WOMAN: You’re so lucky. I am going to give you $500 for your car to use it for the show. 


Confessor: And I said, Okay. How many days? She turns to the transpo coordinator and he goes, I don't know. 5 to 8, maybe. And so I was like, Well, that's about $100 a day. A hundred dollars a day is pretty low, I've looked around. But it's a low budget show, I'm here because of (BLEEP), and I would be ok with $100 a day I've looked around. And she leans over my desk, so imposing, and she's like:


SCARY WOMAN: It's not $100 a day. It's $500 for the whole show. You’re telling me you don’t want $500?


[ominous music]


Confessor: I really needed $500. Like, let's not kid ourselves. But every siren was going off in my head, like don’t do it, man. Don't do it. And so then I just sort of like leaned back, and I was like, Yeah, that's what I'm telling you.


[music spikes, woman yells, doors slam]


And talk about control. She loved control, and she could not control me at this point. She’s so mad. Slams the door. Transpo guy just kind of looks at me, shrugs and  walks away. So I'm just kind of sitting there like, What the fuck just happened? And then I hear over the wall:


SCARY WOMAN: GO HOME!


Confessor: We had been talking all week about how we were going to work all weekend AGAIN, and it's going to be a holiday on Monday, and we're going to work through it all. And so I was like, did I just get fired? I wasn't sure. And so I kind of sat there for a second. It was a Friday. I was like, Well, do you want me to come in tomorrow?

 

SCARY WOMAN: NO!


Confessor: Do you want me to come in on Sunday? 


SCARY WOMAN: NO! 


Confessor: Do you want me to come in on Monday? 


SCARY WOMAN: YEAH, YOU BETTER BE HERE ON MONDAY. IF I WAS FIRING YOU, YOU’D KNOW IT. GET OUT OF HERE.


Meagan: So you were basically like….hell yeahhhhhhhh!


[SFX: feet running, car zooming away]


Confessor: Yeah! I'm like, God, I can take a break from this  porn addled, cocaine addled insanity for like a couple of days and maybe even get some sleep. 


And so I go home, I come back on Monday. [BLEEP] acts like nothing's happened. What they ended up having to do was rent a car from one of these production facilities that ended up costing about 350 a day. And they used it for like 27 days. 


[cha-ching!]


From that point on, I became the one to yell at when shit went wrong. And I kind of just took it because – I meant, I wanted to do the whole, fuck you, fuck you, you're cool, fuck you, and I'm out. But I didn’t, because the person who put me up for the job, I couldn't do them like that. 


Meagan: Oh, wow. You felt like you had to keep going to repay them for recommending you.


J.R.: How long before the end was it when this happened?


Confessor: This was before we started shooting. So the nightmares continued throughout the entire entire show. Which, by the way, turned out to be amazing.


[joyful music, record scratch]


J.R.: Wait, what?


Meagan: How is that possible?


Confessor: It was. It was amazing. And I went to the wrap party, you know? I'm still Facebook friends with [BLEEP]. Like I don't think she knows how bad it went. 


That’s the thing. To anyone who's listening to these crazy stories, it's hard to tell what you're going to get when people are always saying, “Oh, we're like a big old family here.” You find out after you work for them for six months or a year, it's like, is this the kind of place where I can find any upward mobility or not?

This one was clearly no. And so, you know, I stuck it out, but eventually I moved on, and I ended up doing the production office a few more times. So I got the sort of well rounded, low man on the totem pole look at all the different departments in production.

And eventually, there was a job that was difficult for external reasons – not because of the producers, who did treat people like family. And – actually, I never even considered this, but I will bet that the skills that I learned through this process probably contributed to my ability to perform incredibly well under immense pressure for this other group, who then brought me into the fold and got me closer to my ultimate goal of becoming a writer.


J.R.: That’s awesome. Super encouraging.


Meagan: So let's imagine that you run into [BLEEP] on the street today, and you can say whatever you want to her with no consequences. What would that be?


Confessor: (thoughtful beat) I hope you're doing better.


I think that there are people who project their stress outwardly and take it out on other people. And I think she was one of those people. Genuinely, I think that she did mean well underneath a lot of misplaced arrogance for power, and I think that she was humbled by the entire process. I don't wish her ill will. I think professionally she did a terrible job in that instance, and I don't know how she did professionally otherwise, but the show ended up being really good and being very successful. 


There's a saying, like, you don't want to know how the sausage is made, and you don't. 


J.R.: I think you don't want to know how the sausage was made when you're sitting on your couch watching the TV show. But for a lot of people who are listening to this podcast, they want to be the sausage makers, and the sausage maker has to know how the sausage was made. And I think you learned the hard way.


Confessor: Well, the thing is, there are easier ways to make sausage. Like, we can all live, like, normal people and treat each other with respect. And you know what? There are groups that live like normal people to a degree, treat each other with respect, despite the fact that we are essentially professional athletes. Like, we are trying to make the big show and one of the highest profile careers that there is. And so we have to act professionally and be professionals. But we can still be humans to each other within that realm, you know. And I have now found several groups in my journeys that are that way, and they are usually the ones who are the least trying to sell you that they are that way.


Meagan: That's awesome. That's a great story.


J.R.: Let us all go in peace, my children.