Xochi Blymyer
Who says ADs have to scream to be effective? Soft-spoken Xochi (pronounced Zo-chee) Blymyer, a one-time University of New Hampshire math major, began her career as a PA inputting production schedules because back then her computer skills (on a pair of first-generation Compaq laptops) were so advanced.
Okay, that's not entirely accurate. Blymyer, who grew up on movie sets, earned her first paycheck in Hollywood as a stand-in on a movie of the week shooting on Catalina Island. "My mom was Natalie Wood's hairdresser for many years, and my dad was a longtime Hollywood gaffer. They met on a movie called The Boston Strangler," says Blymyer. Among her childhood memories: "I took classes in a three-room schoolhouse when my dad was in the Bahamas for The Day of the Dolphin," she recalls, "and flew into the jungle in a helicopter to visit him on the set of The Sorcerer in the Dominican Republic."
Decades later, crews saw the name 'Blymyer' on the work rolls and would ask her dad Pat if he was related to Xochi, whose body of work as a 2nd AD includes Mad Men, Prison Break, Without a Trace, and The X-Files. She just wrapped the new Steven Bochco legal show Raising the Bar. Blymyer has also been trying to make the transition to 1st, but moving up the ladder has not always been smooth. "Producers sometimes have the perception that where you are is best as opposed to how, if you advanced, you'd be just as good."
Still, opportunity has come calling on several occasions. For an episode of American Dreams, set in the 1960s at a large prom, the 1st AD came down with pneumonia and Blymyer finished the episode as a 1st, handling the period crowd scenes with her usual calm demeanor. "I learned that the crew will totally support you [as a 1st] if you give them information and ask for their help. If you work as a team, when you don't know something you can always figure it out and get the job done."
Blymyer recounts a similar situation on Prison Break: When the 1st AD was fired, she literally stepped in midstream. "We were shooting in a river, accessed by four-wheel drive that was two hours outside Dallas," she recalls. "We had three cameras and two actors in fast-flowing, waist-high water, and the crew had to pass equipment hand-to-hand like a chain gang, from one side to the other. It was the ultimate in teamwork and a great adventure, which is what I love most about the movie business. The following week everyone on the show came down with poison oak."
Blymyer has found that working as a 1st can present a new set of challenges. "I work closely with the director as the 1st, but it's often a case of having a different guest director each week. They are the king of the set for the moment, but there are 100 other people who are there all the time. So you have to support the director and the company as well, which is a challenge you don't really face as a 2nd."
And perhaps the best part of being a 1st instead of a 2nd: "You have more responsibility on the set but there's no paperwork," she chuckles.
Jacqueline Twohie
It's a well-known fact that New York City is divided into Met and Yankee fans and never the twain shall meet. But Jacqueline Twohie, who was born and raised in Queens cheering on the residents of Shea Stadium, recently celebrated her seventh season (that's more than 525 games) as an associate director for the Yankee broadcasts in the Bronx. So what gives?
"I started on the engineering side as a videotape and robotic camera operator at NBC where I met John Filippelli, who was then an AD," she recalls. Thirty years later when Filippelli was president of production for the fledgling Yankees Entertainment and Sports Network (YES), he hired Twohie as an associate director. Now she's a fixture at Yankee broadcasts and was there for the end of an era in September. "Who would've thought a tomboy from Queens would ever get emotional the day Yankee Stadium closed?"
Associate directors in live television are only as good as their stopwatches. Twohie has three—one analog and two digital—which she uses to count back to the broadcast from commercials, pitching changes ("exactly 1:30," she says), studio segments and the like. Twohie usually spends the entire game inside a broadcast truck. She jokes that the key to her job is "hydration pacing."
"I arrive four hours before each game to check the log, time out commercials, relay promos to the stage manager, and basically just keep the producer up-to-date," Twohie says. "Watching at home, I always thought baseball was slow, but in the truck it's definitely faster paced. A good day in the Bronx is no rain, a game under three hours, and the Yankees win."
Twohie says she's been crazy for sports ever since her stickball- playing days in the streets of Queens. In 1992, she won an Emmy on the technical side for NBC's coverage of the Barcelona Olympics, and then another as an associate director for Yankee games.
But her best on-the-job memory was on a bus. "This past June we had to work a Friday double-header, with the day game at Yankee Stadium and the night game at Shea," she says. "The first game in the Bronx went almost four hours, so we piled onto the media bus as part of a police caravan, where they closed the highways and the Triborough Bridge. I started my stopwatch when we left Yankee Stadium: It took 19 minutes and 50 seconds to get to Queens. We pulled up to Shea with the lights flashing, sirens blaring, and 10 minutes to go before we went on air."
David Blake Hartley
If you mistakenly thought that the largest soundstage on the East Coast might be in New York City or South Florida, you are forgiven your ignorance. After all, UPM David Blake Hartley didn't even know there was a film industry in Wilmington when he moved there some 25 years ago to study marine biology at the University of North Carolina.
"When UNC introduced its first film internship program in 1983, I put my oceanic studies aside and dived in to the industry," the state's busiest UPM explains from the set of his long-running TV series, One Tree Hill. "Until Dino De Laurentiis came to town around 1984 and fired up three to four projects at the same time—we're talking features like Blue Velvet and The Year of the Dragon—there was no [film production] infrastructure at all."
And as Hartley tells it, if not for the flamboyant and oversized ambition of said Italian producer, this diverse coastal city would not be constructing its 10th soundstage with a water tank and all. "Dino brought in creative heads like directors, DPs, and production designers from all over the world," Hartley continues, "so the crew base that started the industry in Wilmington, like myself, was exposed to all different kinds of filmmaking styles. That influence has lasted to this day and directors get an amazing variety of looks for such a small town. The facilities and crews are on par with New York or L.A."
Although Hartley's sister, a one-time TV producer in Charlotte, warned him to steer clear of the film industry because of its "nomadic instability," the UPM says he's been a homebody most of the time. In fact, more than half of his 25 working years in North Carolina have been spent on two hit series—Dawson's Creek and currently One Tree Hill.
Hartley says that no one who comes to town to shoot can resist
the area's laid-back coastal vibe, or the self-deprecating humor of Carolina crews. For instance, he recalls the time Arnold Schwarzenegger came to Wilmington to make Raw Deal in the late '80s. "He was playing a small-town sheriff who takes on a new identity to infiltrate the mob. In one scene, cameras are rolling, the elevator doors open, Arnold adjusts his fancy suit, takes out a fine cigar, lights it, and...boom! His bodyguard had 'loaded' the cigar with one of those small explosive charges that you buy at novelty shops. The cigar exploded like a cartoon and, of course, our crew all roared."
By David Geffner
Photos by Brian Davis, Mark Mahaney, Fred Norris