Attention on Dreck

Like a Navy SEAL dropped into an enemy compound, the veteran photog doesn't stop until the target is acquired. Okay, so according to the latest intelligence, running around shooting news is nothing like offing lofty despots. Still, we do get to take down the occasional slumlord -- and that's after we rake him over the coals in an overly-promoted special report featuring flashy graphics and ominous drones. But I digress. What I really logged in to talk about is the heavily-seasoned 'slinger: that guy (or gal) in your shop who was dragging glass around this town when you were still mastering your multiplication tables. They're not exactly the Greatest Generation, but they are a cut above your modern day news combatant, and I say that not just because I myself wear the stripes of a lifer. Okay, that IS partly why, but you'll understand if I boost my own kind, won't you?

Just look at the specimen above. The graying hair, the taut muscles, the fierce of look of concentration... "Did I turn the camera on?" he's probably asking himself. I dunno, Chief, you're the one who grabbed the reflector and tried to burn the talent's retinas out. Figured it was some kind of old school finishing move. Hmm? You need to me to work the overnight shift the rest of the week? Lemme pile on some accolades. The grizzled news shooter is part Poet. Plumber. Pirate. They are hoarders of moments, harbingers of horrors and dispensers of whimsy. With a dedication to frame rivaled only by their knowledge of local eateries, they are a fierce opponent and a staunch ally. And they're fun! Older photogs don't take anything too seriously - except their next deadline. Get in the way of that and they'll fillet you with a rusty Leatherman. If they can find it.

So, no - being a stateside news shooter is nothing like being a member of the special forces, though both require the deft touch of an operator. Whereas SEALS rappel into hostile territory and spray lead everywhere, we park our boxy transports on the edge of peril and bitch until the voices in our head(phone)s tell us it's time to go home. Ain't America grand?    

Schmuck ALERT: Just Go Away!

Calling All Cars! Calling All Cars! Proceed to Sycamore Avenue. Sergeant Pornstache has skipped his meds again and is now accosting a photog. Witnesses say he pushed the cameraman back a block, ranted about his thirty year career and threatened to go viral. The camera's red light glowing. Repeat, the red light is glowing! Apprehend immediately! The repeated use of tasers HAS been authorized...

Sadly, that dispatch came too late. Before reason could be restored to Suffolk County, a member of the local media got locked up and a veteran cop proved himself a complete tool. It started where it ended: Long Island. A photog named Phillip from Stringernews.com responded to a police chase turned car crash and quickly fell out of favor with the force. It's unclear if any officers were injured in the wreck, but judging from the pulse of one Sergeant, Robocop himself was pinned under a couple of Hummers and the TV truck had just backed over the jaws of life. "GO AWAY!" yells Sarge - the first of thirteen times. Phillip does so, slowly - all the while being told his just being there threatened a perfectly good investigation. It's hard not to notice kids ambling by the crash scene as the credentialed photog is forced back a block. Near the end of the inevitable Youtube clip, we see the angry officer swooping in by squad car, whereupon arrests Phiilip the photog for obstructing an investigation some distance away... Can't we all just get along? Apparently not. Ya know, it only makes so much sense to argue with a guy who's packin' heat, but I would like to ask Sergeant Neckvein there just what America looks like on his watch. From where I stand on a public street, it doesn't seem to matter whether I'm holding a fancycam or a dandelion as long as I stay out of the way. As a guy who finds himself at just such occasions, I dread the day I come across a deputy so bedeviled by my presence. SCHMUCK!

Lenservention

You there, with the leisure wear and thinning hair... Just look at yourself: forty four years old and still running your hands over complete strangers in the shadow of some skeevy newscast. What would your children think? Oh, that’s right. They think you’re a cable installer. It’s probably best that way. For if they could see the way you spend your day: scouring the hinterlands for a minute-fifteen of fluff, pursuing that minutia as if it held the very keys to the planet, ruing the day you staggered into that first affiliate... it’s all just so predictable. Would life have not grown rosier has you instead stumbled into some hallowed hall of higher education? That way your world outlook would have been shaped by a sheltered expert, not a revolving door of lead investigators, ghetto preachers and gassy passers-by.Who knows what heights you could have reached had you not burdened with yourself with a Sony you didn't even own. I don't wanna tell you how to live your life (or mine), but twenty some years into this silly gig and you're just now realizing you got the world's most interesting dead-end job?

Worse yet, you been at this so long, there's really no hope for recovery. It's not like you could go out and get a real job! No, you'll never be promoted to Vice President of Stapler Arrangement with that limited attention span of yours. You know, the one you fractured years ago with all those disposable vignettes you've foisted on an unsuspecting public. And that driving record of yours? No church will ever ask you to cart around their flock, that's for sure. But perhaps the most troubling aspect of your diminished condition? That half-baked notion you've seen it ALL. Look, two decades of putting every type of person and predicament on the news does not an education make. For insight like that, you have to rise in the corporate ranks, get a teaching fellowship or at least be put in charge of a french-fry vat or two. Only then can you possess the kind of enlightenment that comes with random letters behind your name, or a good ole fashioned hairnet. So, do us all a favor there, Fellini: Back off that deadline. The only thing you're killing is any hope your Mom and I ever had of you becoming a professional bowler.  She may still claim your kind, but me...

I can’t even look at you.

The Iceman Slummeth

Great filmmakers have tried and failed. Now, the dude who made Cutthroat Island is tackling the photog psyche. Sigh. Now, don't get me wrong. I hope 5 Days of War will be a bold and brainy blockbuster, but something tells me it's gonna be more like that wretched Godzilla remake than the next Broadcast News. Then again, we TV stevedores have been taking it on the unshaven chin for as long as Hollywood has seen fit to feature us. Whether it's a romantic comedy or a political thriller, the guy (or gal) behind the glass usually comes off as some thwarted doofus more comfortable with cameras than conversation. Okay, so that's not so far from reality, but still, movie-makers seem to go out of their way to deride the role of the television news photographer. What with our odd job and sensible shoes, we're natural bit players, comedic foils, roaming props. I get that, but when the most textured interpretation of a TV News cameraman belongs to Chris Elliot in Groundhog Day, you know your profession has been cinematically shortchanged.

Now this... a glossy thriller about the Russian-Georgian War, as seen through the lens of an American news crew. I'd feel better if it were some animated schlub holding his camera the wrong way. Maybe then, we could chalk any and all discrepancies up to technical mistrust between the trades. Otherwise, we're going to be forced to defend the cross-cultural bumblings of a fictional camera crew - as envisioned by the genius who brought you The Adventures of Ford Fairlane. How could THAT go wrong? It's not like the Finnish wunderkind went out and bagged some has-been actor for a pivotal role... Wait a minute - is that Val Kilmer?  Sure, he made for a mean Morrison and his Doc Holliday was tops, but a photog? Was Richard Dean Anderson unavailable? Don't answer that; just know that we here at The Lenslinger Institute don't hold out much hope for a slick flick about a messy war helmed by the guy who tried to wrap a pirate franchise around Geena Davis.

In fact, we're delegating this whole messy matter to broadcast archivist Amanda Emily, who after hanging out with these losers, knows a thing or three about cameraman semantics. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to gather some rotten fruit for the premiere.

Master and Commander

If you ask him about 'that train wreck', he'll tell you to be more specific.

He takes his live truck funk with justatouch of pretty reporter hairspray - yet he hates the taste of catch-up.

Politicians, cops and models slow their roll whenever he looks their way.

He can drive blindfolded at night on a mountain highway, but won't park a call in the newsroom for love nor money.

Judges, bums and drum circles play to HIM.

He's backpedaled before Presidents, bum-rushed the funkiest of dumpsters and bodily jostled rock stars. All without changing his socks.

He can smell darkness.

If he happens upon a picket line, protesters remember what they're mad about.

Many a waking bailiff has wish him dead.

He's escorted more gorgeous females to their lunch table than a Hollywood agent.

He's the reason Dog the Bounty Hunter dresses that way.

His very best stories, he keeps to himself.

He's not even The Most Interesting (Camera)Man in the World, but dude's survived lunch meat riots, crashed landed hot air balloons and mastered his craft before most of his cohorts put down their Sippy Cups.

Stay thirsty, my friends.

Noyz in the Hood

It was stupefyingly hot on Wednesday so of course I spent it outside. After all it’s part of the Photog Credo: “Neither rain, nor sleet nor oven door heat will stop me from venturing out in the names of news.” Seriously, I covered some spot news in the inner city that felt like a scene from Cool Hand Luke: everyone sitting around trading bromides while glistening in sweat. In this case however, it wasn’t an egg eating contest at the center of attention. It was a gas leak. Not one of those foisted on family members by a flatulent fourteen year old either, but an unauthorized dispersal of natural gas. Seems the copper tubing at the bottom of an abandoned house was too much for the crackheads to ignore, so they shimmied underneath in the middle of the night and made off with the metalwork. One wonders if they smelled the gas as they took apart the tubing. Neighbors surely did. By daybreak, the fumes were overpowering along Bessemer Street. Someone called the PO-leece, who called he fire department, who made so much noise about it on the scanner that a certain grizzled lenslinger was torn away from his morning cup of joe and told to beat feet toot sweet.

“Hey neighbor!”

If years of violating personal space with a TV camera has taught me anything, it’s how to approach people with a microphone and a smile. Seriously, if I’d been as successful at engaging strangers during my short-lived car selling career, I’d still be pushing Volvos, Jeeps and Beemers. But where I was never all that great at convincing people to drop coin on a pricey ragtop they didn’t need, I’m a certified Closer when it comes to bagging sound. “You there - with the housecoat and lump of snuff in your lip! I know you were forced out of your home at four in the morning, but wouldn’t you like to step in front of my lens and tell the Greater Piedmont Googolplex what it feels like to be displaced by some overly-jonesing yutz with a crescent wrench? No? how about your friend there with the tattooed torso and visible shakes? He looks like a talker!” Okay, so I wasn’t that brazen. More than anything I was nice and nonchalant in that southern kind of way that big city actors never quite master on screen. But I wasn’t just collecting quotes, I was making friends!

I mean that. For every drug-addled young plumber making unauthorized house-calls, there’s half dozen sweet grandmas shaking the heads at the gall of today’s kids. Not ALL of them will talk on camera, but unless you’re a monumental dick a few of them surely will. Of course it helps that whenever a marquee crime lights up the shady side of town, residents pour onto the street with lawn chairs, hand fans and I-told-you-so’s. Gas leak, homicide, alien spaceships on the horizon... it all draws a crowd in the ghetto. And while the very term “ghetto” is probably not politically correct, it’s what the good people I interviewed yesterday called their hood. “Hey Mr. news man! What brings you to the ghetto?” Upon hearing that, I made a beeline for the three hundred pound lady who wanted to know, for one of the first rules of soundbite acquisition is to quiz the curious. Example: you just pulled up to a drive-by shooting scene and while a few felons ducked their herads at your arrival, others are doping backflips to get your attention. Those are the folks you start with, for if a guy’s gonna stand on his buddy’s shoulders and hurl one-liners your way, there’s an excellent chance he’ll climb down ling enough to weigh in on whatever tragedy is at hand. Call it profiling if you will. But, please, let me start rolling first so you can say it on camera. For if I don’t capture it on tape, it never happened and courtroom sketch artists don’t ride along with us news types at midnight.

Pity, that.

Man Overboard

As a raving fan of The Deadliest Catch, I want to like Captain Keith Colburn. He's in business with his brother, takes advice from his adorable little girl and owns a kick-ass crab boat. But time and time again, this skipper had proven himself to be a dill-weed of the highest order. Those who watch the show know what I mean. The only thing more predictable than a shot of some greenhorn deckhand losing his lunch are extended sequences of Captain Keith losing his shit. I suppose it makes for good TV. After all, several (edited) minutes after launching into one of his nearly incoherent tirades, Cap'n Keith can be counted on to repent. Seriously, this guy delivers more sobbing apologies than he does King Crab. And it works! Just when you want to write him off as a psalty psychopath, he says he's sorry, all while reminding everyone within earshot what a tough gig he's got. As a viewer, I've cut him a blank check more times than I can remember. Yeah yeah... killer waves, bad crab, some dude sticking a lens in your face when you're trying to drive... it can't be easy! No matter that all those other captains seem to manage the same thing without berating their crew to the point of mutiny - he's just an emotional guy!

Well, this week a clip from an upcoming show surfaced that has forever erased any slack I may have granted this seafaring putz. In the video, Keith is seen lamenting his fate as a successful businessman when the wheelhouse telephone rings. It's a Discovery Channel cameraman asking for a co-worker. This is apparently against the Wizard's policy, as the commanding officer of said vessel promptly storms below deck to confront the offending lenslinger. What follows is an exercise in absolute gas-baggery. Keith hurls (irrelevant) insults, throws in a few threats for good measure and when the cameraman doesn't back down, frog-marches the two of them from stem to stern before crashing into a distant bulkhead. Even with Keith's history of hissies, it is an embarrassing display of a captain come undone. Of course a crab boat passageway isn't a board room and behavior deemed unacceptable on dry carpet is simply the price of business out to sea. But, Keith, really? Is Discovery putting a little something extra in your check if you promise to go mental every fifteen minutes? I guess it makes up for a lack of crab action, but you're establishing yourself as a villain on a show that really didn't need one.

Worse yet, you came dangerously close to incurring the first ever waterborne Schmuck Alert! Had their been an actual camera in that cameraman's hand, I would have had no choice but to throw the secret switch here at the Lenslinger Institute and bring shame to your entire fishing village. And really, what good is owning your own fishing vessel, appearing regularly on cable TV and starring in your own Sears commercial if much of the nation and every living TV photog considers you an utter tool? Something to think about the next time you're about to 'show your ass' on camera. Just look what it did to David Caruso...