With these certificates of mechanical and electrical merit, I somehow found myself in the film industry. Working with generators that I also struggled to fix, I eventually ended up doing lighting for films back in the ’80s. Again in the company of wolves, but this time, the wolves just seemed to be a lot sneakier about it. There I stayed for the longest time as I worked my way up the ladder and traveled across Europe, Africa, and North America, working on films and upsetting people with my mischievous ways and irreverent English wit.
Working on pretty much everything from huge films and TV shows to commercials, pop videos, and an infomercial where I told some guy trying to generate interest in the internet that it would never catch on. I think the only area of the industry I did not enter seemed to be porn, but there's still time.
Throughout it all, I hung out with actors, both good and bad, quickly uncovering their 90% insecurity ratio that most never see. I discovered that the same percentage are incapable of having a conversation about anything other than themselves.
I got told to f**k off by some guy named Stephen for deciding that my idea of lightning flashes at the castle in The Last Crusade was better than his. I was also screamed at by a few divas who wished to look twenty again and believed I had the magical powers of a plastic surgeon.
I was also cussed and sworn at by a different Steven with the same surname as a coastal bird. I’d been sent to his suite to light him so that the man could 'look good,' as he put it, in his full-length mirror. Somehow, though, while he was doing just that, I managed to smash the Buddhist shrine he had in his suite to the floor.
I was also called an asshole by an actor who has the same surname as a popular car—twice, actually. Both times were for ignoring his tantrums. Then there was the time I sat as vegetables rained down on me and an ex-English footballer turned movie star in a courtyard in Sofia after he decided to sing his rendition of 'Danny Boy' at two a.m.
