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::::::::::::::: Our previous interview was the grip master himself, Jared Larson. Jared requested that the next interview subject be Charlie Cline, who now resides in Pittsburgh, PA. Known to most as "Baby Legs," Mr. Cline is a true gentleman.
A: Me llamo Charlie Cline. I was the second unit director on the film. I also edited the Spank Williams commercial, painted a school bus, wrangled boy scouts, and played a reporter in the flashback. I never try to guess the motives of the inscrutable and mysterious Jared. Q: What were your thoughts upon approching this film? What were you expecting based on what you knew about the film and crew? A: I was really looking forward to this film. My summer had been pretty terrible - I'd been temping to make a little extra money and I was anxious to quit that racket and do something fun. I was not disappointed. I had a great time. It was a great crew. The people I already knew were among my favorite people to work with and all the new people were fantastic too. Almost every day of shooting had something crazy going on that you'd never seen before. And my job personally was very varied. I was doing something different all the time. It was a great way to spend a month. Q: Working on the 2nd Unit you saw a lot of things none of the other crew members saw...can you share a few stories? A: I saw dogs pooping and dead animals. I saw a lot of power lines. I saw Ethel Firecracker breaking highly symbolic eggs in a kitchen and crouching in the dark in a highly symbolic birthday hat, and lighting highly symbolic matches.We spent a lot of time out at three mile island - shooting the power lines and getting irradiated.On our first day when we were out looking for ways to represent the power outage there was (coincidentally) an actual power outage. We shot some footage at an intersection where the stop lights were out and traffic was being controlled by volunteers. One of the volunteers was an older gentleman. He was very friendly and we chatted for a while. He told us about his service in World War II and other aspects of his life, including repeated references to Irish whiskey. At one point he suggested that maybe he should pour Irish whiskey on himself to keep the flies away. I (playing along) said that maybe the flies would like that - that maybe the flies could use a "pick me up". He misinterpreted what I was saying (apparently) and stepped over to me, grabbed my by the waist, and lifted me off the ground. There's something very surreal about an 80 year old man lifting you into the air for no apparent reason (and not without noticable effort either - it didn't seem easy). The strangest thing about it is that he apparently thought I told him to "pick me up" and he did it without a moment's hesitation - as if it were the most natural request in the world. It was a great way to start second unit. Did I mention the dogs pooping? Q: Can you tell the story of your bloody finger? A: I was decorating Ivan's school bus with Doug and Tim. It had already been a rough day, involving multiple jump starts and trips for supplies. By the time we started the actual decorating, the sun was going down. I was using my knife to open a container of industrial strength adhesive for gluing the fake jewels to the bus and in my haste I forgot the first rule of knife usage - always cut away from yourself. The knife slipped off the glue container and into my finger. I yelped out a profanity and quickly grabbed my finger. Blood was already gushing around it. We kept decorating as I attempted to apply direct pressure with a rag. As we were running low on other supplies, I decided to pick up some bandages while I was out. Before going I looked more closely at the cut and realized that the knife wound had an entry and exit would - it had gone in one side and out the other through the meaty part parallel to the bone. As I arrived at the drug store, I realized that my wounded right hand was covered in blood and so was the rag I was holding. My left hand was too from attempting to deal with it. I imagined how shocked the poor clerk at the drug store would be if I came in covered in blood and bought bandages. Wanting to avoid this I washed the blood off in the only convenient place I could find - a puddle in the Eckerd's parking lot. As I was doing this I realized what a delightfully low point this was.When I bought the bandages I'm pretty sure I overplayed the casualness (as I hid the blood covered rag behind my back), sending out that "Everything's fine - no gaping wound on MY finger" vibe...I think I talked too much about the wound on-set. It has seemed like a big deal and freaked me out. I was so paranoid about infection I was overzealous with keeping it covered and disinfected. When it didn't end out being as serious as I thought I think I seemed like I'd been bellyaching over nothing. Q: Which GH actor are you most fond of? A: That's a tough call. So many great ones. Jared already picked Rich Schreiber. Ken Byrnes was fantastic too. I guess I'll go with Will Oldham, because I thought that he brought a lot to the role of Donald. Q: If you could erase one person or moment from the shoot from your mind forever, what or who would it be? A: Every moment of the shoot is precious - from the previously mentioned washing of the hand in the puddle, to filming dogs pooping (did I mention the dogs pooping?) to helping drag the wheelchair up into the tree, to helping blow up the fake dog - every second was priceless. Q: If you could have one person in all of history beheaded, who would it be and why? A: I guess I'll go with the old standby answer and say "Joel Schumacher because of those two terrible Batman movies." Q: What movies should we be watching as we wait for the final cut of Guatemalan Handshake? A: "Monty Python's The
Meaning Of Life", "The Phantom Of Liberty" (by Luis
Bunuel), "The Incredible Two-Headed
Transplant" (starring Bruce Dern and Casey Kasem) and "Crypto"
(by Jeff Hemphill). Q:
What's this I hear about the short film you recently finished? A: Well, you can come over to my house and see it if you want. Just call first. It's called "Archive". It's six minutes long and is black in white. It was shot on Super-8 by our own Richie Sherman and was hand processed. The only sound is music taken from wax cylinder recordings by the Edison Company from the beginning of the last century. It's not online yet or anything. I'm sending it around to festivals and hopefully it'll get in somewhere. I'll keep you updated. Q: Your script notes you gave for the film were the most thought out and detailed than anyone else's. How did the footage you saw match up with what you read and originally imagined? A: In script form it's very
open to interpretation especially in terms of mood - it can fall
anywhere from bleak to wacky
depending on how you interpret it. It was cool to see which decisions
you were making (in rewrites and in directing) and
the way these decisions were affecting the product. A lot of things
worked better in reality than they did in my imagined
version. Q: Did you experience any moments of pure rage on the set? A: No, not unless I'm forgetting something. And I typically do experience moments of pure rage on most sets. Lots of them. But that's when I'm working with a bunch of assholes - not cool guys like the GH crew. Q: If the same cast and crew was given 10 million dollars, what would you do differently? A: I would have replaced Jeff Hemphill (as the used car saleman) with a computer generated Jeff Hemphill with bunny ears and a lizard tongue. Q: What are your hopes and dreams tonight? A: I hope for a better future for mankind - a future where there is no war, and everyone has unlimited access to freshly-baked banana bread.
11.16.04 |
