Private detectives, etc

You forget how absurdly violent TV was in the '60's and '70's.

I have an episode of Mannix on. The old private eye show. With fist fights and gun fights in every episode. I don't know how many people Mannix killed over the course of the series.

This was why The Rockford Files was considered realistic in its day. Jim Rockford would call the police if anyone assaulted him. But even working on that show, James Garner was a physical wreck. He had surgery on his knees every year when the show was on hiatus, this from working 16 hours a day walking around on cement wearing bad shoes. He should have worn nurses shoes. They could have filmed him from the knees up. TV was a close-up medium.

There was more curiosity about private detectives back then because of the TV shows. Real detectives had to explain in interviews that they didn't get into fights all the time, one said he only carried a gun because his clients expected him to, and that most of their cases involved repossessing cars.

There was a documentary several years ago about a poor guy who was in viral video---a viral video made before viral videos were a thing. It was a middle-aged man, a former TV news anchorman, who began making industrial videos. He was in Georgia or somewhere making a video for Winnebago showing the features for their vehicles that year. It was summer and extremely hot, especially inside the RV's which were sitting out in the sun. The guy had written the script himself. He should have kept it simple and to the point, but he had trouble remembering the complex dialog he had written for himself and they were doing retake after retake. And he became angrier and more frustrated as it continued.

Here it is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDQQfBrSUs0

Long before the Internet, long before YouTube, people were copying and sharing tapes of this poor devil. There was at least one comedy with a character modeled on him.

The poor guy had disappeared. No one knew what became of him. Filmmakers did a documentary about him called Winnebago Man in 2010. They had to hire a private detective to find him. It turns out that private detectives today just pay to join all those websites that let you search for people online. That's pretty much all the "detective" did.

They found him, retired and living in the country. He was cheerful. He knew about the videos and was amused by the whole thing.

When filmmakers went to see him again, he admitted it was all an act. The bastards who made copies of the tapes had stabbed him in back and ruined his life.

If you ever make an industrial film, or any other kind of film, keep the dialog mercifully simple. And try to be dignified when you know you're being recorded.

I'm generally on the side of the guys in front of the camera in cases like these.

I hate Lawrence O'Donnell on MSNBC, but there was video of him getting quite angry because---you know how they have earpieces on TV so that people in the control room can communicate with them while they're on the air? Someone left their mic on so, while he was on live TV, he was listening to a woman in the control room regale her co-workers with what she did that weekend.

O'Donnell was attacked and mocked for it and he apologized. But I don't know what for.

I hear that there's reason to believe that Christian Bale isn't a very nice person, but he probably had a point when he yelled at some poor devil on the crew of a movie who began screwing around with a light while Bale was performing a difficult scene.

And here's hint: if you're a celebrity and you fly into a fit of rage on a movie set, don't say you'll quit the movie as you berate a member of the crew. Because the studio will have to send the tape to their insurance company in case you actually do walk off the film, and then they can lose control of where the tape goes from there and it may wind up plastered all over the internet making you a laughingstock.

And, if you're on the crew of a movie, stand still while the cameras are rolling. That way you won't distract the talent and, if it turns out the camera can see your reflection or they can see you standing there on the edge of the frame, you'll be less noticeable.