Read Online Stories I Only Tell My Friends: An Autobiography by Rob Lowe - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Rob Lowe
Tags: Autobiography
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perspective) had nothing to show for it, she said, “I don’t write for a result. I write for the process and what it teaches me about myself.”
Meanwhile, I wasn’t acting at all (unless you count our homespun Six Million Dollar Man ). There was no setup for local theater in Southern California. Back in Ohio, I could do summer stock and plays at the community and university theaters. But L.A. was different. (To this day the theater scene is an afterthought.) Until I cracked into “real” show business, I would have to be content to sit on the sidelines and be satisfied with chance encounters with people who were already in the game—the sort of thing that can only happen in and around Hollywood.
Steve’s brother and sister-in-law visited us from time to time and told us stories of their adventures as starving artists in the bohemian world of avant-garde filmmaking and rudimentary animation. Both graduates of the prestigious CalArts, they were among a small group of animators pioneering a new process known as rotoscope, which in 1977 was the CGI of its day. For months they bitched about their latest job, a cheap, low-budget movie that they described as a “cheesy Western” set in outer space. Regardless of their complaining, a movie’s a movie and I wanted to check it out.
On the big day, the family piles into our Volvo station wagon. (Whoever sold the American public on Volvo being the standard of safety and reliability never drove our car. It sucked!) We drive to a seedy, run-down industrial area of the San Fernando Valley, populated by Mexican “chop-shops,” porn distribution warehouses, and abandoned garages. Finally we are let into a large cinder-block building through an industrial metal sliding garage door by a guy who looks like Jerry Garcia. Inside, my stepaunt and uncle are waiting.
“ This is where you’re shooting the movie?” I ask. The place looks more like a hideout for the Symbionese Liberation Army. Jerry Garcia explains that shooting for the movie itself is finished and this is where the special effects are being added.
“Why does it smell bad?” Chad asks.
Jerry and my aunt and uncle laugh. “Yeah, it does reek, doesn’t it? It’s the costumes. They are pretty dirty and gross at this point.”
We enter the main area of the warehouse. Suddenly people are everywhere; the room is filled with energy. “Tonight we are shooting footage for the climactic battle scenes,” somebody explains. In front of me is a giant platform about chest high and easily forty yards long and twenty yards wide. It is covered with monochromatic battleship-gray miniature towers, buildings, trenches, gun portals, and radar dishes. I see that it is constructed with spray-painted egg cartons, elements of model battleships and tank parts, and other pieces of toys and everyday items. But in the hands of these crazy hippies, it looks like the surface of an absolutely enormous alien planet. “What is this supposed to be?” I ask, amazed. My uncle looks at the gigantic layout and smiles. “This … is the Death Star.”
“Action!” yells the cameraman. A specially built (the first of its kind in the world, I’m told) camera is lowered into the main trench of the Death Star. It moves at a snail’s pace down the crevice running the length of the platform. “Later, we will speed the film up and add the spaceship flying over this shot we are making now,” says my uncle.
“I wanna see the spaceship,” I say.
“It’s right over there,” he says, pointing to another corner of the warehouse. And there, sitting in front of what I will learn is a “blue screen,” is a six-foot-long model of the coolest spaceship I’ve ever seen. “It’s called the Millennium Falcon .”
I run my hands over it. Chad stares, too, slack-jawed.
“Well, why don’t you come look at some rough footage on the big screen?” Garcia says.
We file into a filthy, makeshift screening room. I’m introduced to my aunt and
Meanwhile, I wasn’t acting at all (unless you count our homespun Six Million Dollar Man ). There was no setup for local theater in Southern California. Back in Ohio, I could do summer stock and plays at the community and university theaters. But L.A. was different. (To this day the theater scene is an afterthought.) Until I cracked into “real” show business, I would have to be content to sit on the sidelines and be satisfied with chance encounters with people who were already in the game—the sort of thing that can only happen in and around Hollywood.
Steve’s brother and sister-in-law visited us from time to time and told us stories of their adventures as starving artists in the bohemian world of avant-garde filmmaking and rudimentary animation. Both graduates of the prestigious CalArts, they were among a small group of animators pioneering a new process known as rotoscope, which in 1977 was the CGI of its day. For months they bitched about their latest job, a cheap, low-budget movie that they described as a “cheesy Western” set in outer space. Regardless of their complaining, a movie’s a movie and I wanted to check it out.
On the big day, the family piles into our Volvo station wagon. (Whoever sold the American public on Volvo being the standard of safety and reliability never drove our car. It sucked!) We drive to a seedy, run-down industrial area of the San Fernando Valley, populated by Mexican “chop-shops,” porn distribution warehouses, and abandoned garages. Finally we are let into a large cinder-block building through an industrial metal sliding garage door by a guy who looks like Jerry Garcia. Inside, my stepaunt and uncle are waiting.
“ This is where you’re shooting the movie?” I ask. The place looks more like a hideout for the Symbionese Liberation Army. Jerry Garcia explains that shooting for the movie itself is finished and this is where the special effects are being added.
“Why does it smell bad?” Chad asks.
Jerry and my aunt and uncle laugh. “Yeah, it does reek, doesn’t it? It’s the costumes. They are pretty dirty and gross at this point.”
We enter the main area of the warehouse. Suddenly people are everywhere; the room is filled with energy. “Tonight we are shooting footage for the climactic battle scenes,” somebody explains. In front of me is a giant platform about chest high and easily forty yards long and twenty yards wide. It is covered with monochromatic battleship-gray miniature towers, buildings, trenches, gun portals, and radar dishes. I see that it is constructed with spray-painted egg cartons, elements of model battleships and tank parts, and other pieces of toys and everyday items. But in the hands of these crazy hippies, it looks like the surface of an absolutely enormous alien planet. “What is this supposed to be?” I ask, amazed. My uncle looks at the gigantic layout and smiles. “This … is the Death Star.”
“Action!” yells the cameraman. A specially built (the first of its kind in the world, I’m told) camera is lowered into the main trench of the Death Star. It moves at a snail’s pace down the crevice running the length of the platform. “Later, we will speed the film up and add the spaceship flying over this shot we are making now,” says my uncle.
“I wanna see the spaceship,” I say.
“It’s right over there,” he says, pointing to another corner of the warehouse. And there, sitting in front of what I will learn is a “blue screen,” is a six-foot-long model of the coolest spaceship I’ve ever seen. “It’s called the Millennium Falcon .”
I run my hands over it. Chad stares, too, slack-jawed.
“Well, why don’t you come look at some rough footage on the big screen?” Garcia says.
We file into a filthy, makeshift screening room. I’m introduced to my aunt and
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