Hollywood Confessional

Don't Want My MTV: Tales from a Music Video PA

• Ninth Way Media • Season 3 • Episode 14

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Hippie chicks. Jam sessions. A bomb on wheels. In this quintessential "Hollywood coming of age" story, our confessor finds themselves in one wild situation after the next, starting with their cross-country road trip to LA.

"It was the middle of the desert. And it was the middle of the day. And we saw like a big, old pickup truck coming up behind us really fast. I can still picture it getting larger and larger in the rearview mirror. We barely had time to react before it rammed us from behind." 

 After miraculously surviving one near-death experience moving to town, our confessor soon found themselves in another while hustling as a production assistant on music videos.

Join us for a #TBT discussion of life in the early days of MTV, when rock bands would sometimes serenade crews and Kool-Aid was the most delicious drink ever. It's a story of resiliency and finding your way in this crazy industry... and it's also a damn good time!

Also be sure to check out the quick teaser of our upcoming oral history: Portrait of a Survivor at the end of the episode! 

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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

Speaker 1:

In nomine Cinema e TV Espiritu Streaming. Amen. Hello Hollywood. Faithful Welcome back to another episode of the Hollywood Confessional. I'm your podcast priest, jair Zamora-Thal.

Speaker 2:

And I'm Megan Dane. Thank you guys so much for joining us again. We're super happy to have you with us today and some interesting times.

Speaker 1:

Interesting is one word for it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, in Hollywood and beyond. But yeah, we're still here, we're still doing the hustle and JR. So how's that fun employment thing going for you? Is it like still fun?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you know, the fun is no longer in all caps but, we're still doing our best.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, a little lowercase.

Speaker 1:

Fun employment, yeah, it's really nice because I haven't had a chance to work on my own projects in a long time. Thankfully, because I've been very employed, I had an incredible run of just you know constant things to be doing, but now is the time where, if I want to level up in my career, I need to work on my own projects and prove that I can do the job, and so it's been nice to get down to that and just kind of sink my teeth into something that's purely for me.

Speaker 2:

Oh, that's fantastic.

Speaker 1:

It is really nice, but even nicer than that is getting paid.

Speaker 2:

Oh yes, this is always a good thing, and so when we're all out here hustling looking for jobs and whatnot, it's like, I mean, you never really know what you're going to get, right, oh my God, Is that true?

Speaker 2:

I recently picked up a part time gig which I am really quite enjoying and I'm super happy about it. And the funny thing about it is it's very similar to many other gigs that I've had in the past that turned out to be fucking nightmares and there was no way to know. Going in, I'm just like, well, I guess I'll take that leap. You know what I mean.

Speaker 1:

Well, at least you're getting some enjoyment now.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, exactly. But you know you, just you got to take the leap and see what's going to happen, and sometimes that's how you end up in situations like our confessor today, who ended up with like a Bomb on wheels.

Speaker 1:

I really am ready to hear about that.

Speaker 2:

Should we step?

Speaker 1:

into the confessional booth.

Speaker 2:

Let's do it.

Speaker 3:

Let me take you back to the late 1990s.

Speaker 2:

Yes, please 90s.

Speaker 3:

Yes, please. I was moving to Los Angeles, driving cross country with a friend of mine in his 83 Rabbit. The idea was that we were going to split the drive from the East Coast to LA, which is about 3000 miles, but I did not know how to drive a stick.

Speaker 1:

Always good to start a road trip without knowing how to drive the car.

Speaker 3:

Before we left, my friend and I went to a parking lot near my parents' house and he's like I'm going to teach you how to drive stick. And of course I didn't get it right away. He thought I was going to burn out the clutch or something and he was impatient to just get going. So to this day I still don't know how to drive stick. He just drove the whole way. We did the trip in about five days, sort of crashing with friends and hanging out in different cities, and along the way we had my first of two near-death experiences.

Speaker 1:

That is two more than any road trip I've ever taken.

Speaker 3:

We were on a two-lane blacktop outside of Albuquerque, new Mexico, yeah, and we were in the middle of the desert. It was the middle of the day and we saw like a big old pickup truck coming up behind us really fast. I can still picture it getting larger and larger in the rearview mirror. We barely had time to react before it rammed us from behind. Oh my God, I don't know if the guy was like drunk in the middle of the day or like he saw that we had a New York plane and was like God damn New Yorkers. I have no idea, but it was a hit and run and he hit us so hard that we drove off the road into a ditch and the car flipped over. It was sort of like in slow motion, like they say your life flashes before your eyes and things slow down. We kind of slipped over. We were both wearing our seatbelts, so now we were upside down and I just remember the tape deck, whatever we were listening to, fucking Susie and the Banshees or something was still going. It was just this surreal moment. We were looking at each other to be like, are you okay? And it's like yeah, and then I guess we sort of unclipped and dropped down and got out the car and pretty soon after some guys drove by and the first thing they did is they helped us flip the car back on the road, like I don't know if you've seen one of those cars, you know it's basically like a tin can. So it was like, you know, four or five guys could actually physically turn it over.

Speaker 3:

Then they drove my friend to town to get a tow truck. This was the pre-cell phone era. So they had to drive into town to get a tow. And I'm just standing there by the car and then a family drives up. I guess they saw that I looked kind of shell-shocked. They could tell I was just in an accident because the car was like bashed in on one side. So they stopped and they're like do you want some Kool-Aid? Like they had a cooler in the back of their station wagon or whatever and it was like, yes, and I don't know if it was low blood sugar or what, but that Kool-Aid tasted so good it kind of like snapped me back into reality. Eventually my friend comes back with the tow truck and we towed the car into town. We had to stay overnight to get a part and the car was drivable the next day with like a piece of cardboard duct taped over the back window. So we kept on going to LA.

Speaker 1:

This is the craziest how I got here story I have ever heard. All I did was hop on a plane.

Speaker 3:

Well, I remember rolling into the city at like four in the morning and the car was like really starting to struggle. We were kind of like, oh no, are we going to make it? We finally did roll up to our friend's house in Hollywood where we were staying and we just like parked in front of their house and you know the end of the Blues Brother movie where they get out the car, slam the door and the car just like falls apart. It was sort of like that, like that was it. The car never moved again.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to LA Elwood Right.

Speaker 3:

You know, the funny thing is my friend didn't end up staying. He had met this guy back in Tempe, Arizona, and when we got here he was just like, oh my God, I sort of like this guy, I think I'm going to go back. So he went back to Arizona and that guy ended up being his husband. They've been married for like 20 something years.

Speaker 2:

Oh, this is the best how I got here story I've ever heard.

Speaker 1:

The one that ends with. I immediately left and lived happily ever after.

Speaker 3:

So my friend left. It was just me, and I moved out here with basically nothing. I had a duffel bag full of clothes, my bass guitar and a cowboy hat.

Speaker 2:

Pretty standard LA survival kit.

Speaker 3:

I had graduated with a film degree but it was like a lot of film theory. I didn't know anything about the industry at all and I don't think I was super ambitious back then as far as, like, I'm going to make it in Hollywood. I was just looking for gainful employment. It was really like I'm going to find an apartment and pay rent. At the time, kids there was this thing called MTV where they played music videos.

Speaker 1:

Never heard of it.

Speaker 2:

You shut up, Also cue the song.

Speaker 3:

So the first gig I got was as a production assistant on music videos. In the hierarchy of Hollywood, I think it would be like feature films, TV shows, commercials and then music videos. They were like the bottom of the barrel. The pay was like $100 or $150 a day. We would never work less than 12 hours a day, or 150 bucks a day. We would never work less than 12 hours a day. If you did the calculation, it was definitely less than minimum wage, but it was actually kind of a cool experience in that I had some brushes with fame, Like I once worked in a music video with and I was a huge fan. Unfortunately, before the shoot, a guy came out who was like his manager and I think also his brother, and he instructed the whole crew not just to not make eye contact with but don't even look at him. So what we ended up doing we would go in and do our setup and then leave and then they would shoot. So I never saw him the whole time.

Speaker 2:

Oh, what a bummer it was like a little disappointing.

Speaker 3:

But then I got to meet who was the exact opposite. He just wanted to hang out with the crew the whole time. And then a sort of similar story. I worked on a video. We rented them instruments and amps and whatever and they would pretend to sing and play, but they ended up saying like, yeah, we're just going to play some songs, and they played like a 25 minute concert for the crew. It was like 50 people and I like to think that was the beginning of their tour.

Speaker 2:

Amazing.

Speaker 3:

So that part was a cool experience, but it definitely was not all glitz and glamour. A lot of my job as a PA was just driving trucks. Like the day before shoot I would drive around town in a cube truck doing pickups, drive to a rental house you know they would load up the dolly or whatever and then I would drive to set. I did that for about a year and then I got a job on this particular music video that was shooting out in Malibu on the beach, which is where I had my second brush with death.

Speaker 1:

Uh, yeah, I'm going to need you to keep telling this story. Yeah, I'm going to need you to keep telling this story.

Speaker 3:

The band was sort of this hippie white reggae band not famous, shoestring budget and I don't know if it was like a beach party scene, but it definitely ended up with a sunset and a bonfire. You know they're sitting around the bonfire and jamming or whatever. So once we got that set up, that was sort of the end of the shoot and I didn't have anything to do. The plan was that I was going to drive the truck back, but it was getting to the end of the day and we had a generator truck that we weren't using anymore and the production manager wanted someone to drive it back to LA so they wouldn't be charged for a second day. A generator truck is basically a bomb on wheels.

Speaker 2:

Holy shit.

Speaker 3:

It was a very large truck that is full of I want to say, diesel fuel. I think you're supposed to have like a class A license to drive it, which I definitely did not have.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you didn't even know how to drive steel.

Speaker 3:

Well, this vehicle wasn't automatic, but I had never driven this particular truck, and one feature of the truck is that it had a driver's seat but no passenger seat, and I think the reason for that is that it's so dangerous, like you're not supposed to have a passenger I mean, that would be my guess so I had one seat.

Speaker 3:

To set the scene we were shooting on the beach and there was a crew parking lot a little further up and the production manager was like okay, I need you to drive this generator truck back and then, for whatever reason, it was, decided that the girlfriend, slash wife, slash baby, mom of the lead singer, who was visiting set with their newborn baby, would be riding with me. I want to say it was also kind of drizzling, it was gnarly conditions. So they had a baby sort of like swaddled, and the woman was super young, I want to say like 22 years old hippie chick in a peasant dress. I want to say she was also barefoot, but that might be an exaggeration. Maybe she was wearing Birkenstocks. Anyway, the idea was I would drop her off in the crew lot before I took the truck back. So we're in the parking lot. I got in the truck and I realized there was no passenger seat, so I'm in the driver's seat and she's literally sitting cross-legged with a baby in her lap.

Speaker 2:

Oh, my God.

Speaker 3:

And I'm already a little bit nervous because I'm in a vehicle I've never driven before.

Speaker 2:

No, I can't take this no.

Speaker 3:

And it's getting dark, no, and the roads were a little bit slippery, oh my God. So I'm like, all right, I'm just gonna shift into gear real slow. And then I realized the brakes are out.

Speaker 1:

How did you survive this?

Speaker 3:

The brakes are soft, put it that way. You stomp the pedal into the floor and it kind of rolls to a stop. It didn't feel right and I was nervous, so I'm just like you know what. I'm sorry, but I'm not going to do this.

Speaker 2:

Oh hell no.

Speaker 3:

So I parked and I walked back to set. I was a little shaken up at that point and I found the production manager and I was like look, I don't feel comfortable with this. And he was not cool about it. He was kind of mad and I was really taken aback. I was like OK, fuck it, I quit. I don't know if I actually said I quit, but I walked away and started commiserating with one of the other PAs and then I found out, not even an hour later, that the production manager had another PA to do it.

Speaker 2:

That motherfucker.

Speaker 3:

Without saying, hey, the brakes might be out. He just told someone to do it and he did.

Speaker 1:

God.

Speaker 3:

Now this is piecing together the story. The eyewitness was this off-duty cop, but I guess that PA came to the same conclusion I did that the brakes were out because he started driving it and he couldn't stop the fucking thing and he had to sort of bail out and the truck was still moving and it hit a palm tree and I want to say it was sort of like on the edge of a cliff like the Pacific Coast Highway, and it's like if that tree wasn't there it would have been like boom, fireball. End of an action movie, oh my God. So after all of this I sort of felt like wow, my life is worth less than a day's rental on a generator truck. I did go into the production office the next day and tell the executive producer who ran the company. She was actually very cool about it, but I have no idea if that PM got in trouble.

Speaker 2:

He probably didn't.

Speaker 3:

Well, I certainly never worked for him again. I want to say that was like my last PA job and I rolled off into the sunset. But that wasn't the case. It was more like in my mind I was like I'm done, I need to find another way to make a living. You know, I went to film school. I didn't come out here to drive trucks. Everybody has their own journey. But when I moved out to LA it was like intern PA or CAA mailroom those were your choices. So I'd just taken what I could get. But after this experience I realized I didn't want to do that anymore. So when an opportunity arose for another job, a job that did not involve driving trucks, a job that only involved me, my brain and my computer, I went for it. I didn't know where it would lead, I didn't know if I was going to be the next Martin Scorsese or Quentin Tarantino, but I did know driving trucks was not for me and the new job felt like a step in the right direction.

Speaker 2:

I love that. Good for you for finding your path one step at a time.

Speaker 1:

I would say keep on trucking, but under the circumstances I'll just say go create peace.

Speaker 2:

There are so many things about this episode that make it one of my favorites of all time.

Speaker 1:

You weren't kidding, it was a bomb on wheels.

Speaker 2:

It was a bomb on wheels, yes, and thank God, I mean, you know, nobody was seriously injured in the making of this Hollywood Confessional episode. But yeah, I mean, what can we say? This kind of insanity seems to happen everywhere.

Speaker 1:

Oh, in every industry. I mean maybe not a bomb on wheels in every industry but there is insanity wherever you go.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, is there ever an example of somebody who gets an entry-level job and then sort of lives happily ever after?

Speaker 1:

I mean, I think you're talking about my family what AJ, my brother and our social media coordinator and editor he decided that he wanted to switch careers and you know I was super supportive because I also switched careers from engineering to writing. And when he didn't quite know what to do, first we had him start working on the podcast and he was incredible. He took it up super quickly, started editing, started making our social media posts If you've seen any of those crazy graphics online?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, the amazing graphics and videos that like are no more. And I'm really pissed about that, because he created like the most amazing and unique style and it's like nobody can imitate that. And then he's like, oh, I got to go get a job and I'm like, well, fuck you then.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, he needs 28 hours in his day or we need an actual budget. One of two, yes one of those two.

Speaker 1:

I'm sure he would have been happy to work for this, for us, full time if we had been able to pay him yes, appropriately but you know, he took the portfolio that he made on hollywood confessional and he went and got an internship at the american heart association, right, and he worked his ass off there for, uh, I think he had two or three internships with them consecutively. So he's been working with them for a minute now and, uh, he finally got his first full-time offer with them. What? And he is so excited and we couldn't be more proud of him aj it's awesome this is amazing.

Speaker 1:

I'm so excited that I'm hearing about this on the podcast and if he's listening and I hope he is you fucking better. I just wanted to know how proud proud I am of him and and it's so incredible to see him go from you know, trying to figure out what he's going to do to fully succeeding. It's so exciting. He even got rookie of the year at american heart association oh, that's so great yeah, he's really killing it. It's so exciting to see as an older brother. I couldn't be more excited.

Speaker 2:

Well, as a friend, I'm also super excited and just as a fan, because, like, what makes this story so inspiring is that AJ's. He's such a unique creative voice and he has such a vision. And I feel like, you know, a lot, of, a lot of us end up kind of compromising who we are to fit what we think are the needs of the market, and I don't think he did that, and so the fact that he was able to succeed in this way, by being who he is and like the fullest version of his creative self at least, I mean, maybe, maybe there's some things that it does help when your brother is the one giving you notes and you feel very confident telling him no, nice, he did not compromise because he did not want to compromise for me.

Speaker 2:

Oh, that's really cool, but anyway. So to see him succeed is like extra, extra cool.

Speaker 1:

Ah, thank you.

Speaker 2:

Yay, congrats, aj, and hey, congrats to any of our listeners out there who got a job recently. There are some of you and I'm super excited to hear about it.

Speaker 1:

Let us know about it. We want to celebrate everybody who's working these days.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. Hit us up at fessuphollywoodcom or, excuse me, fessuphollywoodcom Sure, you can email us, why not Old school? Or on X or Instagram at Fess Up Hollywood.

Speaker 1:

And in two weeks we've got a very special pair of episodes coming out. The first one's going to air in two weeks. It's an oral history where you're going to hear from multiple different points of view, and this one's called Portrait of a Survivor.

Speaker 2:

That's right. It's a story from, as JR said, many different points of view about what it's like to deal with a particular abuser who is still out there in Hollywood and the different people we're going to be hearing from the different people who were their lives were impacted by him and how they came to move on from that relationship. So it's going to be very, very moving, very intense, and we are very grateful to the people who have shared their stories with us and super excited to share it with you guys.

Speaker 1:

And until then, go create in peace. Go create in peace. The Hollywood Confessional is produced by Megan Dane and JR Zamorathal. Our cast for this episode, sean Redding, special effects provided by ZapSplat and Pixabay. Hollywood Confessional is a Ninth Way Media production. Follow us on socials, at FessUpHollywood.