See ya, Snoop and company. To say it was off the shizzle would be the understatement of the decade.

Bianca, Gary, Josh and Justin in Dogg's den.
See ya, Snoop and company. To say it was off the shizzle would be the understatement of the decade.

Bianca, Gary, Josh and Justin in Dogg's den.
My marathon work schedule soldiers on. I haven’t had a day off since I was in New York at the end of January for Lisa Loeb’s wedding. It has been 7 days a week and 16 hours a day ever since. Just ask my friends and wife, they barely remember me. I am so thankful for my other family, my art department peeps. They inspire me and keep me going every day. I am humbled by their greatness.

Elvis takes a nap

Shane takes a furni-pad hammock nap in the back of the truck.

Ursula decides the script will be a lot funnier if she passes out

Bianca multi tasks as a mom and an Art Director

Top Chef Lee Anne serves the art department a PLATE of bacon

and finally, seedy strip clubs on Hollywood Blvd are great...

...if you need a blow up doll in a hurry.

Top chef art department in kitchen with culinary Lee Anne

Shooting Top Chef at Universal Studios last Sunday

My Hollywood headache

Uncle Reo makes ribs for the Dogg After Dark crew

Bianca is bored during a meeting

Bianca leaves and Snoop sits down

The Soup is having fun with this appearance

My collection of parking tickets for the week

The guy on the right looks like a supermodel to me!
I don’t watch American Idol, but it doesn’t mean I am not aware of what goes on over there. First of all my friend Kara DioGuardi is one of the judges and Mike and Conroy swear by the show, so I am usually pretty up to date. Last night at dinner we talked about the newest contestant, Joanna Pacitti, and the controversy that is surrounding her this season. Joanna was recently dropped by her record label (just being signed to anything put her light years ahead of the sad losers that pass for singers on that show) and she also got dropped 10 years ago by a bunch of Broadway producers!
That reminded me that Chris and I did a bit about Joanna on our old public access show.
Enjoy this clip (click on the picture) which took over 10 years to sort-of be relevant again.
After watching that again after 11 years I really think Claudia was ahead of her time. Too bad American Idol wasn’t around in 1998 because the performance below (click the picture to watch) would get a ‘yes’ all around. I’d even ask Kara myself to make it happen.
Now, if I can convince Chris to move from Florida to Los Angeles we can revive this show and continue to taunt Joanna Pacitti.
Damn, that Annie is friggin’ hot!
I just looked at the buttons above and realized that they feature TWO cancelled shows. Mind Of Mencia and Chocolate News were cancelled, as well as Root Of All Evil. These were three Comedy Central shows I art directed and now is the first time since 2005 that I am 100 percent Comedy Central free!
Once I get the logos for the TWO shows I am doing right now I will ask Tea to switch them out.
Don’t you want to add more buttons instead of taking ones away? How are you going to know where you’ve been?
I am working on a show right now and we are loading into a huge warehouse space in Downtown Los Angeles. Julie and I are standing in the corner, over there is a group of new Production Assistants talking about how easy it would be to work in Art Department. One of them just said “it’s such an easy job, they just give you money to shop”. Of course I wanted to jump across the room and shake him- then I had to remember that the poor kid was new, probably his first job in tv. I should ask him if he wants to work with us for a few days, he would probably cry, pack his bags and move back to Kansas.
With that here is a another Mind Of Mencia before and after.

The script called for a kids show set in a third world country...here's my sketch.
This set involved custom made puppets, a talking Bono on a brick wall, a place for 3 puppeteers to hide and as usual the ability for it to load in in front of the studio audience in less than 8 minutes, and leave just as fast after the segment.

Here's Josh Ritcher making the Bono mouth.

Here he is testing the mouth!

Bono's mouth on the monitor while the "real" Bono speaks in the background.
So here’s how it goes. Monday afternoon we know nothing while we are out shooting a different field shoot, late Tuesday we find out this set is a go. The sketch, the approval, the shopping, decorating, building, graphics, puppets, building and tweaking all happen by Wednesday evening. Thursday we rehearse it all day setting it up and striking it 5 or 6 times until show time.
OK, now go back to the sketch at the top, see it. Below is what it looked like on set thanks to Bianca Ferro, Shane Passantino, Ron Woods, Josh Ritcher, Todd Daniels and Eric McGilloway. Of course it is nothing without Alison Freer’s costume design and lighting design by Christian Hibbard.

A wide shot of the set.

...with Ned, the puppets and actors.
The next day Nikki Kessler yelled at me for spending too much money. What else is new.
Like the Production Assistant said, we just get some money and go shopping!
HA! And the worst part is, all your hard work gets ripped down again afterwards!
At least mine stays up for a year or so, huh
What is this? Dirty Close-Up what? Let me explain.
My first encounter with the people that work behind the scenes in the entertainment business was almost twenty years ago, and to this day I still think that their stories and experiences are usually more interesting than the PR spin that any actor would reveal. On most shoots I hear the most insane stories about Hollywood in the location scout van, or at the craft service table and I always wanted to give these below the line types a place to share a few. The Dirty Close-Up interview is just that. I am starting them as written interviews and will be posting video interviews soon, both give a behind the scenes look at the personalities and quirky individuality that make up a call sheet on any film or television shoot. Oh yeah, in film slang a “dirty close-up” is a close up shot of an actor with a little bit of the back of the actor they are talking to in the shot…but I digress.
Meet Thomas (TK) Keith, my good friend who works as a 1st Assistant Director and 2nd Assistant Director on many of the projects I art direct. TK works hard, keeps his cool and from the moment I met him shared great tales from Van Halen music videos, the Seinfeld sitcom and multiple sightings of the Virgin Mary, so of course, he is my first Dirty Close-Up interview. Today we talk about the ridiculous “Hot For Teacher” video that was on MTV every 15 minutes when I was in high school.

GK: So, for everyone who doesn’t know what an AD is, or even an Assistant Director give them a description.
TK: In a very simple description, the 1st A.D. makes the schedule and runs the set with the director. The 2nd A.D. communicates with the crew and cast to help accomplish the days work. All A.D.’s get a lot of help from every department. Each department head acts as it’s own assistant director.
GK: I know you have done some really cool shoots over the years, I think I was most excited to hear about the Van Halen ‘Hot For Teacher’ video shoot. Tell me about Waldo, the crappy lip-synching, teaching the Van Halen brothers to dance, the strippers and the endless guitar solo table in the library.
Here’s the Wikipedia about the video.

TK: No one could have taught Van Halen to perform a choreographed dance. They were terrible but they worked at it for hours. That scene wasn’t part of the original video. It was added on after the original four day schedule, and there was no energy left from anyone.
GK: What about those teachers, were they actual strippers?

TK: Those “teachers” dancers were models and not strippers. They were very excited about being in the video, and got very pumped up by all the screaming 13 year old boys.
TK (continued): The kids that played the band members, at a younger age, turned cocky fast. At one point, David Lee Roth came up and told me to get the kids out of their motor home. He said, “They won’t leave and they’re drinking all our booze.”
During prep I walked in on a meeting with the director and David Lee Roth; David pointed at me and said, “Waldo”. I didn’t think about it again until the first day on the set, the 1st A.D. told me David (Lee Roth) wanted to use my glasses on the kid playing Waldo.

TK and his "Waldo" glasses
GK: Was Hot For Teacher a multi million-dollar shoot or down and dirty?
TK: I wish I had held on to the budget. It wasn’t much money at the time. We only had one motor home. Everyone else (makeup, hair, etc) set up in classrooms at John Marshall High School. We had just one grip/camera truck and the art department had two trucks. I don’t think there was video assist at that time. It was unusual to have a four day schedule for a music video. I remember some of the crew were smoking pot at the end of the first (15 hour) day. I walked past them and reminded them the call time for the next day was in eight hours.
I remember we damaged the hot rod car on day one. One of the kids kicked a dent in the door as he was climbing in. On another day, one Van Halen member made a disparaging remark about one of the make up departments sexual orientation. This was September 1984. Their crew almost walked out.
GK: I saw this video a million times when I was in high school, Van Halen seemed so cool, watching it again it is such a campy cartoon, but your take on it makes it cool again (in a campy 80’s video kinda way). I guess the only thing left to ask is what about drugs, is that something look the other way for just to get the shoot done? And before we move on to other gigs, tell me about tantrums, fits, breakdowns and insane demands?
TK: One of the crew on the “Hot For Teacher” video was in charge of crew drugs, from what I heard. The band only asked for a couple of bottles of Jack Daniels and a case of malt liquor in the tall cans.
I’ve had one time when a well-known actor broke down in tears about lunch. Another actor called me at the production office phone to cuss me out and then hang up. He called and hung up seven times. He was drunk and never said a word about it the next day on the set. A famous director yelled at me about lunch not being ordered. I’ve discovered that lot of the anxiety on a set usually revolves around low blood sugar!

Here's page 2 of the production report! Thanks TK.
Later this week TK tells me about working on the Seinfeld sitcom and his never ending encounters with the Virgin Mary!
i love this video i like david lee roth
I finally got my Vimeo page up and running, and the Sixteen Blue Productions Vimeo page is linked there too. I put the Ike Turner, Kara Dioguardi, Celebrity game show and Shut Up Stella presentations up last night and will add a bunch more later.
There have been so many interesting meetings, pitches and inquiries about these projects in the past few days that having them here to easily view is better than sending a dvd. The stories behind these videos are unreal.
I need to write about the blood, sweat, tears and kidney stones that go into trying to sell a project.
I’m so proud of my husband!
Tomorrow I start on the new Top Chef spin-off for Bravo called Top Chef: Masters.
The art crew you know and love with be there too!
Julie Drach (Assistant Art Director), Josh Ritcher (Leadman), Shane Passantino (Swing) and Angela Clubb (Buyer) will join me for the next eight weeks with some long stretches without a day off. We’re all excited to be working together again after the holiday break (last year we did nine shows together…NINE!).
Everyone I know is really excited too, even friends and family who normally don’t care one bit about what I am currently working on react like I just won the lottery. Top Chef is so loved by all of my friends, heck, Kay has even volunteered to PA or whatever she has to do to be a part of the show.
Click on the picture below to read a blurb about the show from some reality tv blog.

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