A couple years ago when I was living in LA, about a week before Bridge Day, I get a call from Jimmy & Marta (Mimmy? Jarta? Anyway...). "Hey, man. What are you doing next week? You going to Bridge Day or will you be in LA? You'll be in LA? Cool. So, we got a call from a casting guy for CSI New York. They're doing some episode where a jumper dies in the beginning. Want to go in and be investigated for the rest of the show? They should pay you well and it'll probably be pretty fun. We'll give your number to this guy. You should get a call soon. Let us know how it goes." ...The conversation went something like that. About an hour later, I get a call, get asked a few questions, but basically get told what Jimmy said above. And something about pigeons. Wait. What?
A day or two later, I'm pulling into the lot in Studio City, CA and go walking in to find this casting guy. On the way in, I run into some freefly/swooper pros from Perris. Kinda funny to see them, cause I know they've worked on films before and I've had neither an interest, nor an opportunity like this ever before. This just seems funny and though initially I wasn't too sure, it only took a few minutes for Abbie to talk me into it (and to advise me like an agent...c'mon, he's one of my Jews).
So, here I sit with these guys, an aspiring stuntman who was there for the same thing and some EXPN moto-cross winner of some sort who could rattle off the names of more sponsors and awards than we could count or verify. This guy would later tell me the whopper of all whoppers when it came to his BASE experience. He's up first and the rest of us sit in the room, just kind of chuckling amongst ourselves about all of the awards and sponsorships. "Think he's practiced that routine before?" someone said. We all had some pretty good laughs.
Maybe 5-10 mins go by, he comes back into the room and I'm asked in next. There's about 20 people, including an executive producer, writer, two directors, casting, props, special effects...I lost track. A couple of those comic-book-type storyboards were setup on easels, a parachute clearly visible in a few frames...and something really weird going on with it.
I get introduced as "the real deal" and the questions start coming in. "You've jumped in LA? Where? Would we know what buildings?" I stay quiet on details and tell them all how generally small and secretive the BASE community is. "Where else have you jumped?" I tell them about some travels around the world, Europe and Malaysia. It's kind of cool, because they're asking some pretty pointed questions and it seems they're beyond the normal superficial interest. And then it takes a wild turn to the weird...
It quiets down for a second and the writer looks at me with an intense and dramatic stare and says: "What would happen if you jumped off a building, and all of the sudden 40 dead pigeons fell and hit the top of your parachute?"
I'm sorry. What? Completely befuddled, I look around the room, then back to the storyboard. "Is that what those are, hitting the canopy?" as I point.
"Yeah."
"Oh...in that case, absolutely nothing. They'd bounce off and I'd have a really funny story."
"But wouldn't they like... I don't know, wreck your chute?"
"Are we talking 40 separate pigeons or are they all frozen in a big block? Because THAT would suck. Look guys, I can show you video of a body falling into an open parachute and they still recovered. It was shitty, but they didn't fall to their death."
I spent the next 30 minutes explaining how a canopy was "two-ply" (their words, not mine), inflated to form the shape of an actual wing, and the general principles of lift that allowed us to fly, not just fall. After what was probably 45 minutes, I went back into the room to some annoyed and bored actors, but I was asked to stick around while everyone else went through their auditions. When it ended, I was asked to sit back down with the writer and executive producer, going through a series of questions about how they might shoot some of their scenes where the jump, birdstrike, malfunction and going-in was concerned. I left and they said they'd give me a call and let me know what they'd decided. I had no illusions of being cast. Any of you who know me know that I'm a yuppie. Clean cut, short hair, not a piercing or tattoo on me. I didn't fit their stereotype, but I didn't care...I wasn't sure I wanted to be a part of this, anyway.
A day later, the executive producer called me back and invited me to join them for a few days a s a Technical Advisor. We negotiated my rate, which I will say was a loss compared to what I made in private consulting, but it seemed like it was going to be a funny experience. It didn't disappoint.
I picked up the rig they'd bought from Apex, as well as a second set of lines for a simulator and spent a few days on the set. Never met Gary Sinise--who I'd heard was pretty cool--but got to observe a lot of shoots, met and had a pretty cool conversation with Eddie Cahill who plays one of the detectives. Turns out I was sitting in his chair, although he didn't give a shit. I'd seen him in a few movies and he was a pretty cool dude. Everyone was a little taken aback when they asked who I was and what I was doing on the set and I replied with "Technical Advisor". Eddie explained that they all thought I was a cop that had been hired on as a TA, and it was that I was so young that made him press for details. Everybody was pretty damn cool. The directors treated me like I was a VIP on a tour, setting me up so I could watch and listen to the shoots and explaining how they did everything. The special effects dude, too, showed me all the shit they did with flyover footage, greenscreens and how much of the show was digital. The rigging guys were probably the coolest, just because they had a real, practical and quick answer for anything. There were no problems...they didn't last long enough to be problems. These guys just had an answer and could produce anything in a moment. I'd kill for one of their trailers. For not liking LA or Hollywood, these folks did a good job of turning my opinion.
For three days I d-bagged and direct-deployed canopies from the roof of a 5-story parking garage. I built a jig for the harness and lower control lines to simulate canopy flight. I kited canopies in front of six 5' diameter ritter fans and on 25m stunt kite lines and relentlessly tried to persuade them to just find a crane ("I know where one is" ;-p ) and shoot me against the blue sky as a bluescreen. The special effects guy actually suggested a real jump and using the sky, but it never panned out, despite my willingness to do it for free and the executive producer's proclamation that he was the "cheapest producer in Hollywood". He asked. Shot down. Damn lawyers.
When we started shooting, I put 100lbs of lead weight on risers and started direct-deploying off the garage in front of a giant greenscreen. We got some good opening shots, shooting straight up from the ground. Then we got into the mal. I zip-tied attachment points across the canopy on the bottom skin, twisted up lines and deployed a perfect spinning mal that opened and turned right back into the building. They actually gave me a bit more credit and leeway than I expected from Hollywood. For a while... In the end, the final sequence of the impact was the biggest ball of shit. I wasn't proud of it.
The next day, we filmed the deployment sequence of the "jump" and pitch sequence. I'll let you guess who they picked as their actor and I'll start with...man, was this some funny shit. At one point during the day, I over heard him talking about his "BASE experience" with a few people on the set. I questioned him when no one else was around. He started skydiving when he was 12 and made his first BASE jump when he was 14, "off a bank building in San Fran". When I questioned him about how and where he got gear, he said he just used his skydiving rig.
His experience was evident when he went to put on the harness...backwards. Not backwards like on his chest. Backwards like...it's hanging from the jig I built, open and he tries to put it on w/ the inside of the packtray to his back. I think a few of the stage hands had figured out he was full of shit. When I coached him--somewhat patronizingly--"walk around to the other side, Jeff", they all just sort of snickered, along with one of the directors. She was really cool. He further displayed his knowledge when we spun him up in the jig for line twists and he fought about not holding his toggles until he was spun up and then having us hand them to him. It took longer than it should have to explain why they'd be twisted, too. More snickering.
This had all been fun enough, but the next part tops everything. It felt like the sort of thing that Jaap, Abbie, Russel and I would have come up with. Not something that any right-minded person would dream up, let alone as a plausible theory/setting for a parachute malfunction. On a greenscreen laid on the ground, I detached the lines from the risers, tied them to 40 lbs of lead each and kited the canopy in front of six 5' diameter fans. The special effects guy, a stage hand, a producer's assistant and I laid under the canopy, holding the tail of the canopy down in the fan-blast while the prop guys stood on a boom above the canopy and threw actual, once-alive, real dead pigeons at the top of the canopy. Still to the surprise of a few on the set, they bounced right off, staring cold and dead at us on the greenscreen. Under the canopy, we were all laughing hysterically and I couldn't help but think Team Splatula was missing from this nonsense.
Watching some of the sequences on the last day, I couldn't help but feel disgusted with myself. Part of it was that I'd simulated the death in a sport that had become so much a part of me and my life. It wasn't like a car accident, which we see in real life and don't bat an eye at when we see on the tube. I went so far as to walk up to one of the directors and verify with her that there was no weird, off-chance that somehow my name would end up attached to this. Laughing, she assured me it wouldn't. I think she understood what I was getting at.
In a parting shot of brilliance, I called the executive producer and asked him how cheap he really was. Cheap enough to give me the rig they'd bought and not pay me? He was all over it, but once again...damn lawyers. The CBS lawyers said something to this effect: "This guy jumps off of buildings with parachutes--illegally--and you want to give him a parachute *WE* bought?" That was the end of that. The parachute actually ended up in another episode, wadded up in a box, sent to the chick detective as an attempted pickup by some dude. Better than in an NPS incinerator, I guess.
Fast forward a couple of weeks and it airs. To all of you...it was a lot more fun and it looked a lot better while shooting than what was ultimately produced. If you see it, you'll note that the canopy is flying backwards after the opening (because they put the graphics on the topskin backwards) and before the birdstrike. The birdstrike itself is funny enough. After that...it's something only Hollywood could produce. I made it through the opening sequence, turned off the TV and went to bed. I've caught bits and pieces on rerun, but I still haven't seen the whole episode.
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Originally Posted by base935
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