Doing my job right was crucial but unfortuntely I learn this after the facted. It's something my boss Paul Schneider tried to get through to me for what seemed to be all 51 days of production but it was tough when your job consisted of getting hair and make-up breakfast or lunch when they could have gotten it themselves. My follow PA's would tell me that I shouldn't have to do that. Early on I would screw up food orders by trying to memorize them. Enough so that Catlin gave me a pocket note pad to write the orders down.
It was tough to believe the impotance of my job when it was hiding behind a bush just in case a neighbor would come out of a house when we shot in a hollywood neighborhood. During the last week the crew was treated to a ten minute tease of the film and one of the scenes shown was where I was "the bush man". As I watched the clip besides being astonished that something I worked on was on an actual big screen, I saw the bush I was behind was very visible and it would have seriously affected the scene if someone was to pop out from behind it. Now this is one incident of many I could use as an example of how my job might have seemed unimportant to even me but was far from it.
Paul gave me opportunity after opportunity to prove myself and I often let him down. I hate letting anyone down. Makes me feel crummy. My performance was so bad as to have been a second job for Paul to look out for me and see what I was up to. I became a liability. I would have to warn the crew or anyone around the set to keep quiet or to avoid walking in a certain direction and I'd drop the ball. Someone would walk by or talk when they needed to be quiet. It wouldn't happen all the time but way to much. Now it didn't always happened out of complete carelessness from my part. There were times that I did warn people but to my surprise they ignored my cries. I think part of it had to do with the fact that they were grown ass people in their 30's and 40's who didn't take to kindly or respected a 19 year old punk kid telling them what to do. I would have to admit I also lacked that courage to persist and be confrontation when it called for it.
When the weeks drew closer to an end and I was given more chances to get closer to set, I'd find a way to screw it all up. The worst part of it was that the blame when not fall on me but on my boss Paul. When you screw up and get blamed for it thats one thing but when you screw up and someone else gets blamed for it well thats another thing. I took offense to that. I was really hard on myself. Even when I tried to be clearful I'd screw up. I lost count how many times I would get called on the walky talky the crew had and I wouldn't hear it because I was talking or paying attention to the wrong thing. "SOTO! SOTO! SOTO!", they would say. Soto because we had 3 other Chris's working on the film; Chris Bateman the Electric, Chris Samp the standby painter and Chris Gutierrez the location assistant.
"The better you do the more I'll have you do" Paul would say when I would become discouraged at the kind of job's he'd give me. He would give me advice and point out what I was doing wrong. He would give me a hard time and be brutality honest with me which I took constructively. He wouldn't have bothered with me if he didn't care about me or didn't see potential. When he would share personal stories with me about the times he was a PA I knew he was relating with me because he might have done the same mistakes I did.
Some of the other PA's might not have liked Paul and there were times were he was a real hard ass but I could say I really appreciate all he did for me, good and bad.
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