TV Commercial Production Exhaustion

An edited excerpt from my TV Commercial production book Circumstances Beyond my Control. All the talk about long hours reminded me of this life threatening event.

This shoot [Matts Beer] turned out to be another marathon – who the hell remembers why – and we found ourselves ordering Chinese food at 9:00 PM the last night when we should have been heading back to the City. I was still in my vegetarian period and Betsy Reid went to great lengths to be sure there was plenty of stuff I could eat. While I greatly appreciated her efforts the spare ribs smelled so good that I couldn’t resist munching down on a couple of them.

Well, don-cha-know, Ms Reid threw a fit. She probably was not nearly as pissed off as she acted but I was forced to defend myself by explaining the little known fact that the Chinese sparerib grew on a bush. It was all washed down with a lot of laughter and free beer.

Utica is 240 miles from the City, under normal circumstances about a four hour drive. Several members of the crew had jobs the next day so we had to get home that night – morning, actually. Joe Babas, Harry Drennan, one or two others and I set out in the station wagon around 2:00 AM. Having all worked an eighteen hour day, we were tired. Some of us had consumed several beers over the last few hours and some had smoked some reefer. This ill advised journey promised to be torturous, at least for the drivers.

I was straight (one beer, no grass) so took the wheel for the start of the trip and after a couple of hours was beginning to notice a tad of fatigue so Babas, who had been napping, took over. Joe was among the most dependable people I knew and we were all comfortable that if he said that he was okay to drive then he was okay to drive. And he was… until he fell asleep.We got off the NY State Thruway and took Route 9W south and just before we reached the traffic circle at the north end of the Palisades Parkway Joe dozed off.

Traffic circle at north end of Palisades Parkway

He came to a few yards before we hit the circle, and hit it we did: over the curb and right across the grass. Fortunately Joe had sense enough not to try and make the turn. Had he taken the turn we would have rolled over for sure since we were traveling at over 50 mph. Luckily for us the curb was low and the grass was high so it aided in decreasing our velocity.

The car (and all its passengers) was unharmed but I think Harry lost a few brain cells and maybe a few years off his life from waking up and finding himself hurtling across the grass at high speed. We all stayed wide awake for the remaining forty-five minutes of the trip.

More exciting, funny and informative tales of TV commercial production are to be found in Circumstances Beyond my Control.

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