More tales from the film set.

A chore we were constantly doing was turning the boss’s helicopter and light plane into “SHERIFF”, “POLICE” and “FBI” air vehicles. Burt Reynolds rented them to the production company along with his sound stages at the B.R. Ranch, a common practice.

“Covering” the planes meant we had to cover every square inch with a thick latex rubber paint, wait til it dried and paint a second coat. This protected the surface, then we painted every square inch with whatever color you want it to be. Then, apply big vinyl lettering to read “FBI” or whatever the production required.

One of these jobs was getting the boss’s small prop airplane ready to become “the drug smuggler’s plane.” It was to be painted in camouflage colors. When they told me how much time we had, I went to BR’s pilot and ranch manager Logan Fleming and told him there was no time to apply the second coat of protective coating and that we would probably destroy the paint job on the plane.

He says, “Don’t worry about it…it needs a new paint job anyway.” So we did it.

What I didn’t realize is that Logan and BR planned to pull a fast one and get the production company to pay out the many thousands of dollars to get his plane repainted.

The Production Manager Jan Dewitt was not happy that all that money was sucked out of his budget and blamed me. I was only saved by my friend and art director Carol Wood verbally pounding him. Jan still held a grudge for a while. Just looking for an excuse to fire me.

Sign almost derails the scene

During the first season of Stryker, one of the episodes was called “Night Train.”

All the action happens on an Amtrak train going up the East Coast from Florida to New York and the good guys fight the bad guys inside the moving train.

It would have been insanely expensive to move the shooting from one town to the next, so we decorated the Amtrak station in West Palm in different ways to be cities on the way. Part of that involved hanging signs with the town name on it making an “establishing” shot at the beginning of each scene. I had gotten my orders from the art department and had made signs for 3 or 4 “cities.”

There was going to be a big P.R. event in real life when the time came for the train to do the West Palm establishing shot. All sorts of big wigs, including the city and county commissioners, state officials, mayors from all over the county, TV execs from ABC, etc. It was going to be on the evening news as a public relations ad.

A very complex agreement with Amtrak allowed an entire train to stop for 20 minutes starting at a precise time, 5:15. At 5:35 it MUST head into the station to film the train and the “West Palm Beach” sign. There could be no delays or starting over. When the crew was sitting ready but not able to film, tens of thousands of dollars were circling down the toilet. Being a peasant, I knew nothing about all this until later.

At around 5:00, I had finished touching up some signs we had mounted on the building, and I packed up to go to another set. My beeper (yeah…the old days) went off and it was our boss, Carol Wood, with a “911” code on it.

There was no sign! Someone had failed to send it over to me to get made. Behind the scenes there was great distress. Carol saw me across the way and ran over. She told me what happened so the two of us could join the Great Distress.

We had about 15-20 minutes to save the day…and our jobs.

I had stocked the props truck with sign materials in case the prop guys needed to do minor repairs if I wasn’t around, and one of the signs from a different “town” was still in the truck. Time was ticking.

I rounded up three guys from the crew and had them strip the lettering from that sign. Then we covered the face with black vinyl and I took a white marker and sketched out the words “WEST PALM BEACH”. Time was ticking.

Then I handed X-acto knifes to everyone and told them to cut along the white lines quick as possible. The words WEST PALM BEACH began to emerge as we stripped off the excess vinyl. Time was ticking.

The prop guys literally ran the 50 feet to the ladder to quickly hang the new sign.

As they finished and pulled the ladder out of camera view, the train’s horn blasted as it headed for the station. We had just made it…sixty seconds to spare. All’s well that ends well is quite true.

Later I was told that if we had failed that it would have cost the production about $285,000, never mind the world-ending embarrassment for the big wigs like Jan the Production Manager.

When Jan Dewitt heard what happened, there never was again a thought of firing Thom the signwriter. BR’s airplane was never heard about again.

I sent someone else to that other set I had been heading for.

Went home and drank a supersized bourbon and Coke.

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.