The last full time union movie I worked on was a Warner Brothers release, “Just Cause,” starring Sean Connery. It filmed in Naples, Florida and in Miami.

It beat me almost to death. I took a break from full time crew work and became a vendor for shows providing props and services, shipping all across the country.

I would occasionally do a few weeks on a show payroll, but only in the South Florida area.

Fourteen-hour days and sometimes seven days a week were taking a toll. And I was tired of being away from my 4-year-old son for periods of time.

I was scheduled to go to work on the movie “Striptease” (thanks to my former boss Burt Reynolds who was in it), but Demi Moore decided she wanted another $6 million. They cut the art department from 14 to 3 and that was that.

“Just Cause” was an interesting work experience. A lot of stories and memories to look back on while working with many great people, at least on the crew.

In Naples we were preparing for the big swamp scenes at the end of the movie.

One of the strange things about filming is that scenes are often shot way out of sequence. The first stuff we did was for the ending scenes.

If you’re going to have a Florida swamp scene, you HAVE to have an alligator.

So they sent us a big mechanical alligator from Warner Brothers that would be dragged by a hidden wire with its mouth opening and closing. There was a shortage of storage space, so it was uncrated and perched near the big front doors.

Almost immediately, the jokesters went to work.

Every day we would show up to find Mr. Alligator with a cigar or cigarette hanging out of his mouth, or wearing sunglasses. Or wearing every imaginable kind of hat. Or sipping a beer. Hundreds of pictures were taken standing next to him.

When the production office got wind of it all, the phony reptile was moved there for safety.

Then the game started. Somehow, Mr. A. ended up at the front again every day… totally decorated. After a couple of weeks, they just gave up.

It kept us sane in an insane world.

Crew members discreetly carried personal cameras to show the folks back home their work and have mementos. I have tons of them.

In one of the swamp scenes, a fake “dismembered body” was laying in the murky water with lots of blood everywhere. It was gruesome and very real looking.

One of the greensmen who worked on the set took some photos of the gore for himself.

He dropped the film off at a Walgreens photo developing booth and came back the next day.

The freaked out greensmen found himself surrounded in the parking lot by a big group of police officers pointing guns at him. “You got some ‘splaining to do”.

Yes, they DO look at your photos.

One day they brought a Chevy sedan for us sign painters to fit out as a “police car.” Lettering, stripes, decals… blue lights on roof. It looked like the real thing. Too much so, apparently.

A teamster driver was dispatched to drive it up the interstate to the set in Fort Myers. He did not look like a cop. Teamsters tend to look like gangsters or bouncers at some bar in Brooklyn.

Several (real) police cars caught up to him, blocked off the highway and had him eating asphalt, handcuffed from behind. An unhappy boy to say the least. We laughed our butts off… we hated teamsters!

Thom Caraccio ([email protected]) is a retired musician and retired motion picture scenic artist living in West Palm Beach, Florida who hails from Columbus. He graduated from S.D. Lee High in 1968 and still considers Columbus his real hometown.