Mark Cotone
After more than two decades in the production trenches, Mark Cotone modestly compares his craft to that of a flight attendant assisting passengers on an airplane. Extending the airline metaphor, he says a movie’s journey is usually bumpy, and occasionally, as in the case of his first job as a 1st AD, a matter of pure survival.
“The movie was Anna Karenina, directed by Bernard Rose, and shot in St. Petersburg, about five years after the Soviet Union collapsed,” he recalls. “It was literally the Wild West; the city was controlled by Russian mobsters and we had to pay the mafia protection money to stay away from our set.”
But that didn’t really work that well, according to Cotone. “The mobsters went over to our production office one day and, at gunpoint, robbed us of all our available cash. So we stopped paying the mafia and hired ex-KGB guys to perimeter our set, which worked out much better.”
Although he’s worked as a 1st AD for prominent directors such as David Lynch, McG, and Wes Craven, Cotone’s introduction to the job was as much practical as artistic. He was working as a production assistant for the PBS KIDS series Reading Rainbow at the time. “We were filming in the winter at the Delaware Water Gap and I was wrapping cable in the pouring rain in 35-degree weather. I looked over and saw the AD standing under the front porch of a house, dry and warm. That’s when I decided to find out what that guy did and how I could get his job.”
Cotone’s youthful epiphany was eventually fulfilled when he headed west to enter the DGA Trainee Program in Los Angeles. His mentor, longtime feature 1st AD Jim Van Wyck, helped Cotone get started down a similar path in features. “That led to working with some of the most inspiring people I’ve ever met, in or out of the industry,” says Cotone.
One was American History X director Tony Kaye, whose creative curveballs included taking star Beverly D’Angelo—unscripted and unplanned in the middle of a day’s production—down to water’s edge in Venice Beach to skip rocks. “If Tiger Woods wants to putt with his wedge, you don’t question it,” Cotone laughs. “This job is always about balancing the time and budget constraints of the schedule, which the AD puts together, with fulfilling the director’s creative vision.”
And knowing the boss’ workflow in advance doesn’t hurt, either. “I got to know David Lynch while prepping Mulholland Drive,” Cotone explains. “He’s an incredible gentleman, but extremely soft-spoken, and likes to direct with a bullhorn—even during the sex scenes. That kind of stuff could really throw the crew for a loop if I haven’t prepared them in advance.”
But nothing could have prepared Cotone for working on Tropic Thunder last summer in Kauai, which was shot in jungle terrain so inhospitable that roads had to be built just to reach many locations. “It had to be the rainiest place on earth,” he says. And unlike that cozy front porch in the Delaware Water Gap, no one stayed dry, especially the 1st AD.
Phyllis Digilio
Working with the crew, talent and producers in live television is a symphony that can be very dissident if just one person is out of tune,” observes Phyllis Digilio, a former vocalist and music major who knows a thing or two about creating “safety zones” for the world’s best performers.
As a longtime stage manager for the daytime hit The View, Digilio has shepherded more than her share of musical icons onto the set. And there was the time she had to stand in for one of The View’s hosts to help block a rehearsal with Ringo Starr for a version of “With a Little Help From My Friends.” “We’re just too busy during the show to think about the whole celebrity thing,” Digilio laughs. “But I remember saying for weeks after that, ‘Hey, I got to sing with a Beatle.’”
This past January, Digilio witnessed a piece of history when she worked the Neighborhood Ball for President Obama’s inauguration. “Here I was at this historic event standing in for Mariah Carey, in the midst of a cast that included Stevie Wonder, Sting, Mary J. Blige, Beyoncé, and Shakira. And all I’m thinking about is doing my job.”
And that is basically being the eyes and ears of the director on the floor. “We organize everything from the crew to the talent, and also help to make sure all the cameras are in position,” says Digilio. “We basically are there to fulfill the director’s vision for the show, whatever that may involve. Of course, we also make sure the talent gets to the stage, which has resulted in a few close calls over the years.”
For instance, there’s the dreaded “bathroom break,” that inevitably overtakes performers 90 seconds before their cues. “I have literally stood outside the door counting down the seconds wondering if I was going to have to actually go inside and drag them out.”
Despite live TV’s obvious pressures, Digilio says she thrives on the excitement. In addition to The View, her resumé includes stage-managing for Live from the Metropolitan Opera, The Tony Awards, and Live From Lincoln Center.
So which performers have left the most indelible mark? “We had Aretha Franklin come on The View to sing, and that was a remarkable experience,” Digilio says. “But my all-time idol, [jazz vocalist] Dianne Reeves, was standing right next to me when I worked the Hurricane Katrina benefit for Jazz at Lincoln Center, and that took my breath away. For a brief moment, I was a fan like everyone else.”
Manny Cabral
Those who claim broadcast newscasts resemble an NBA Finals game, with robotic cameras and HD graphics roaring across the screen, are vastly underestimating the world of live sports television. So says New York-based associate director Manny Cabral, who has worked in both arenas—sports and news—for what is now his 25th year with ABC. Cabral has been in the ABC-TV-3 control room, which longtime news director Roger Goodman once called the most powerful in the world. And he’s worked such world-shaking events as 9/11, Princess Diana’s funeral, and even the earthquake-interrupted 1989 World Series in San Francisco, which he remembers transforming from sports to news in 30 seconds.
“Our graphics operator, Nancy Ross, had lived in California,” Cabral remembers, “and when the quake started she told everybody to get out of the truck. I was like, ‘What do you mean, get out the truck, we’re on the air!’ We did live news until our baseball window was over. Then we supported local news, Nightline to the East and West Coast, and finally Good Morning America the next day.”
Cabral began his career in 1984 with ABC Sports and moved over to the news side in 1991. He worked as a director on America This Morning from 2003 to 2007, and is now an associate director on the same show, where he hunkers down in the control room with a cluster of stopwatches, “keeping producers honest,” letting them know time-wise if they are “heavy” or “light” throughout the show.
Cabral’s first exposure to oddball scheduling (his current shift runs from 3:30 a.m. until noon) came 20 years ago while covering the Professional Bowlers Tour. “We always had a car ready to whisk [broadcaster] Chris Schenkel to the airport immediately following each telecast. One time, in 1991, [a bowler] threw a gutter ball in the final frame to lose the tournament, and Chris went into the locker room to console him, at the risk of missing his flight. It was an act of human kindness that has stayed with me.”
Despite the constant assault of broadcast news by cable, Internet, mobile blogs, and other alternative sources, Cabral admits he still gets goosebumps covering a breaking event. “I often think about the six hours I was in the director’s chair when they moved Pope John Paul II’s body [prior to his funeral in 2005],” he says. “I was raised Roman Catholic, and to witness that was a very intense experience.”
By David Geffner
Photo by Brian Davis