Poooof! I'm an MTV STUNT DRIVER

I got a bit lost again on my way to the West Broadway randez vous with the music video crew. Walked upstairs to the director's apartment... they were just starting to get "organized" (read: come to) and the whole place was full of cigarette smoke. Apparently, they didn't get to crash until 4 in the morning! I told the director, Will, that I would go and get breakfast while they got their stuff together. He was glad I made the gesture, took an envelope, wrote my name on it, gave it to me and mentioned that I should collect and give him all of my receipts for reimbursement. Sounded pretty fair to me. So I left and went down the block to the original audition cafe, The Cupping Room. This time I would be a paying patron and not just someone passing through. Had my cup of tea and pastry, read my paper, checked out the other patrons... and basically killed 45 minutes at a leisurely pace. Very mellow. Headed back to their building, and as I started to open the apartment house door, Will and Justin, another member of the crew was just coming out. His van was parked in front and as he inspected the window there was complete and utter amazement at the fact that he did not get a ticket for his overnight parking fete in a restricted zone. He let me sit in the van and I offered to watch it for him while the rest of the crew went back and forth for packing their equipment. As they trickled down with various sizes of camera boxes, I got to meet them one-by-one. Each seemed to have a different accent. Interesting...in an exotic sort of way. Everyone crammed in -but this time I avoided the contortionist routine by sitting in the front seat early. After cursing about not having any cigarettes, Will stormed out of the van and upon return, tore-ass out across the Williamsburg Bridge enroute to our DUMBO location. Unfortunately, he got lost and we pulled over to a drunk dressed in fatigues to ask for directions... Whoa! The guy leaned into my window with a breath that could have turned into a flame-thrower had anyone lit their cigarettes... he could barely muster a few incoherent blabberings of "turn at the corner and then turn back and...[a long "where's-my-brain" pause]...and then turnaround" -complete silence for another minute as we all anticipated him to just plop on the ground while his alpha-rhythms baselined. Oh well, guess we'll just follow that sign over there that says "Brooklyn Bridge". That worked out swimmingly well and we found our way to the spectacular site. We were literally under the Brooklyn Bridge with a terrific view of downtown NYC in the background. Excellent location scouting! It was cold near the East River waters and we all found ourselves bundling up or shivering, like the leading man, Jerome, was doing. Jerome was a French dude, and strangely enough, resembled a young Billy Baldwin (or maybe I just had Billy Baldwin on my brain from the day before). I believe most of the crew was French and after demonstrating my poor high school foreign language capabilities, they had no problems with speaking French in front of me. They figured I didn't understand a word of it! This attitude turned out to be somewhat overconfident on their part later on. The plan was for me to drive down the cobblestoned street while Jerome cuts me off riding his bike -and I stop short while cursing the hell out of him. Hence, the "ANGRY DRIVER" role. All this was to be set to music later on by a somewhat wellknown band for whom this video-story was being created in hopes of publicising their newest album. Lucky for Jerome that I was a NYC taxi cab driver during my college years... the sublime perfection of which, has never left me. The camera would be attached at numerous precarious locations on the vehicle each time the French DP wanted to get a different angle of my cursing cruise down the deserted street. It was fun but dangerous. One of the camera guys sitting next to me bumped his head on the camera as I was directed to stop short. He told me that worse things have happened to him: Once he fell out of a tree with a camera!!! I suppose only an "injured" guy would continue to do this kind of crazy work. After a dozzen or so takes, the DP and the director were satisfied with the accumulated results and I was told that "We're done!". I gave Will my envelope with the receipts and asked for the reimbursement. A short conversation in French took place between him and the DP. I understood enough to realize that Will was willing to pay me $20 but the DP had convinced him not to pay me just now... that "Eet would be better like zis!" I realized that although Will was the director, apparently he wasn't the man in charge... the French DP had the Svengali influence. Will took me aside and said that he would send me the money later when he got my name and address squared away. Since I was having so much fun on the set, I kind of took it in stride and allowed it to pass. After all, they haven't given me a "release agreement" to sign yet. Apparently they forgot -and that would be my "ace in the hole" later on! They arranged for me to get a ride back to Manhattan from Olivia, the friendly PA who ran their errands. Her constant cell-phone conversations and blackberry scrollings in the middle of NYC's rainy streets made the SUV ride a bit harrowing -especially when she almost ran through a red light and into oncoming traffic! I played my "angry driver" role well for the video, now I wondered if I would become an "angry passanger" before we reached Penn Station. Naaaaaaah... I was too sleepy.

Epilogue: They never did pay me. But a year later I ran into Jerome (the bicycle rider) near MSG and he mentioned YouTube as a possible source for seeing a clip of the short.