A Tribute to Jim Henson Part 3: John Denver, Harry Connick, Jr., Shelly Long, Harry Belafonte

John Denver

We were set up at a park off of Sunset Blvd, in the Pacific Palisades. It was a warm, sunny morning (big surprise) and we set up on a pleasant hillside. Because it was a hill, and because they just had to have a moving shot, they set up this elaborate dolly track that had to be put on some kind of an elevated platform. What a waste of time. I remember everybody working fast because John Denver was just going to saunter up to the location at a certain time and do his lines and leave.
The John Denver section starts around 5:30:


And that’s what happened. He showed up looking just like you remember John Denver looking. He went over his lines a few times, standing in front of this idyllic backdrop. These segments were supposed to be remembrances of Jim Henson, but most of it was scripted. I’m not sure how that worked. I guess there was this canned script that the talent started from and then I think they went off into their own memories of working with Jim Henson. This shoot went quickly and we were out of there in a matter of hours. John Denver seemed like a very nice guy, in a hayseed kind-of-way, but also canny and professional at the same time.

Harry Connick, Jr.
We shot in a post-production bungalow on the Disney lot. Harry was more of a musician than an actor in 1990, so he was with his jazz band in this studio; pleasant, lots of windows and warm morning light. Harry, for those of you who don’t know, plays piano and croons a bit like Sinatra. At this time he was sporting the slicked hair look of his crooning idols. He was also known to young men around the world as the guy that was dating Jill Goodacre, a Victoria’s Secret lingerie model. And I learned, while Mr. Connick and his band were getting ready, Jill was there! She was out in a sitting room. I, of course, had to sneak a look. She was at the height of her powers at this time and indeed looked as good as she came across in photos. If more petite.

This was an interesting job because Harry needed his glasses to read the text on the prompter and he didn’t want to wear his glasses. I tried making the font size larger, but it didn’t help. For whatever reason, he just couldn’t make it happen without his glasses. So, they ended up scrapping the prompter and Harry winged it. He was a nice guy, deprecating, and had a gentle, easy repartee with his band.

Which turned out fine. Often prompters aren’t really necessary. I mean, I’ve worked on commercials where, for individual shots (commercials are often broken down into quick individual shots), there is not a lot of dialogue. Maybe a line or two. And really, any actor worth her salt will be able to memorize her lines and not need the prompter. Harry's segment is another that didn't make into the finished show.

Shelly Long
Now, I shot Shelly Long on the Disney lot, but I’m not 100% sure that it was for this Jim Henson tribute. She’s not listed in the credits (like Dick Van Dyke), but I’m almost positive they shot her for the tribute because I don’t remember being on the Disney lot for any other shoots. So, let’s just say that, yes, this was for Jim Henson.

Sometimes my boss, Pamela, would give me special instructions or warnings before I went out on a job. And before I went out to do Shelly Long, Pamela warned me that Shelly had a reputation for being kind of a bitch, hard to work with. I always hated to hear this kind of stuff. I’m sure Pamela was just trying to prepare me for the worst, but it always set me on edge.

I showed up on the Disney backlot that morning and found that we were shooting a couple different exterior locations around the lot. Outside shoots are always more difficult, in general, but for a teleprompter in particular. I always needed power. And if I was placed away from power, I needed to bother a crew member, whether a grip or electric, to run me my own extension cord, or stinger. I always brought my own stingers, but sometimes the equipment I was sent out with wasn’t quite enough.

When working outside you have much less control over things like lighting and sound quality. In southern California the sun shines almost every day. So, this regularity of light helps. The day I shot Shelly Long, we started around ten o’clock on the sidewalk and lawn before a row of bungalows. Another particular problem with using a teleprompter outside in the sun is that the talent may have a difficult time reading the text. One piece of equipment I often needed, and which I never had, was a flag. A flag is a piece of heavy dark cloth set in a frame. You put a flag on a stand in front of a light (or affix it to the light stand or light itself) and move it in front of the light to cut if off, and otherwise manipulate the angle, direction, and strength of the light. Well, flags can also work other ways. One of these ways is to put it over the top of the camera lens to help ensure the lens is in shadow at all times to avoid flare.

In the case of the prompter, a flag helps keep the text in shadow so it’s easier to read. I often had to improvise a flag if the grips didn’t have an extra one, or if they were assholes and wouldn’t let me use one of theirs or help me find one. To make my own I’d find some cardboard and tape it to the prompter—basically extending the black covering part of the prompter (the mirror was encased in a black triangle which often acted as enough flag). Sometimes when I did this, it could be seen in the lens. Meaning, I’d gone too far out over the lens, and the edges of it actually could be seen in the shot.

Back to Shelly Long. The sun wasn’t a problem for the prompter. We were in shade and Shelly was patient and seemed very nice and read her lines well and the shot was in the can. Then we moved down the block and the sun had shifted and was stronger now (that famous L.A. haze generally burns off around lunchtime) and poor Shelly had to strain to read her text. But, she was a trooper and got through it okay. I don’t remember if I had to use a flag or not. So, that part was okay. But I was plugged into a junction box (a remote box of usually four regular outlets at the end of a heavy-duty stinger) and for some reason the connection was loose. Every time somebody walked on this stinger my power cord running the whole contraption would unplug for a second and it would take a minute or two to reboot. We were in a hurry because the sun was moving and if they didn’t get their shot the way they had set everything up, they’d have to start making adjustments for the sun which would slow down their progress. So, I was holding them up.

I’m not always great in a pinch. I get confused as to the best course of action. I should have said, “Don’t step on my singer; keep away from this junction box.” And/or taken a minute out of my schedule to tape everything down with some gaffers tape. I did finally say, don’t step here after the very nice director said something embarrassing like, “Is there anything we can do to help?”
Bottom line: they got all their shots and Shelly Long was very nice. A trooper in this crappy situation with the sun in her eyes.

As a side note, this Disney job was unionized. Meaning that all the crew members belonged to unions. All except me. The company I worked for was non-union. 98% of the time this wasn’t a problem, but occasionally we ran into trouble. Unions are very touchy about what they perceive as non-union workers taking jobs away from their union members. And many other teleprompting companies were unionized. Turns out, for one day of this Jim Henson shoot that my company couldn’t work (maybe a last-minute day when all our prompters, including myself, were booked) Disney had to go with another teleprompting company. This other company was unionized. The prompter (the little shit) knew the situation and made a stink with Disney over using a non-union teleprompter company and blackmailed the production, saying, “Use my unionized company or I’ll tell.” So, for a couple weeks I didn’t work with the Jim Henson crew.

Turns out, this other company wasn’t very good. And, behind this other company’s back, Disney ended up hiring us again because we did a better job. It was, however, a strong introduction to the whole union dynamic in Hollywood. And it was not the first time I was looked upon as a scab worker in a town controlled by unions.

Teamster joke: How can you tell when a Teamster’s dead? He drops his donut.

Harry Belafonte
This one was shot in some schoolroom in some random school. It was a quick shoot: we set up and then when the crew was set, Harry came in and it turned out that he couldn’t read the prompter very well, so he ended up just kind of winging it. He seemed like a nice guy. He did not sing.

The Harry Belafonte section starts around 2:15:


I also worked with Steven Spielberg for this, but I ended up prompting with him two other times as well, so I’ll cover that in another post.

Jim Henson, Carol Burnett, and Teleprompting 101

Jim Henson died in May of 1990. A few months later Disney started putting together a tribute for him called The Muppets Celebrate Jim Henson. My company ended up being the go-to teleprompter company for this shoot, which went on for a month or more. Although looking at the credits of the show on IMDB, it doesn’t appear that they used all the segments that they shot for the show.

They got Carol Burnett for the show. This was one of my first solo gigs. The shoot was in a hotel room at the Beverly Hilton or the Beverly Hills Hotel. It’s strange that they would use a hotel room for a shoot. Why not just rent a stage for an afternoon? I guess it’s cheaper, and maybe free if they give consideration to the hotel in question? I was told to dress up for the job, business casual. I get there and I’m almost the best dressed person in the room aside from the director.

Here's a ten minute clip from the show. The section with Carol Burnett starts just after the five minute mark:


Let me back up a minute and introduce you to the way I worked.

When I went out on any teleprompter job, I was always sent with the following equipment:

• Small computer that ran teleprompting software
• Mirror contraption that was attached over the camera’s lens.
• A monitor that hung belong the lens.
• On metal plate that the camera would snap into
• Length of cable that ran between the monitor and my computer.

For every shoot I went on I’d find a place put my gear, always out of the way. My only request was that I had to hear the talent. I could be down the block, in the next room, or the neighboring building, but if I couldn’t hear the talent speak and take my cues from their dialogue, I couldn’t do my job.

I would need power as well, to plug in all my gear. After I had a place to work, I'd boot up my computer. While that was heating up, I’d work with the assistant cameraperson to attach the plate to the camera and then the monitor and the mirror. It was a bit clunky and over sized, but it almost always worked out. The camera crew would sometimes roll their eyes when they saw the prompter coming, but for the most part there was never a problem.

The monitor hung below the camera lens. The face of the monitor would display the text that I would scroll for the talent. This text would appear in the mirror (1 way) that was affixed directly over the camera lens. So that when the talent was reading the text off the monitor (referred to as the prompter) they were also looking right into the lens. This gave the appearance of a seamless performance. Well, unless you knew they were reading a prompter--then you could see their eyes moving back and forth as they read.

There were variations of this setup, with the monitor to the side of the lens. If it was a live show on a stage, then there would be plates of glass on stands at an angle that the hosts could read from but were almost invisible to the audience. Another type of setup was used for live broadcasts such as the Emmys, Oscars, etc., where huge monitors were set out in the audience which all hosts and presenters read from.

They still do this, so I shouldn't write it like it's all in the past. If you watch the Oscar broadcast tonight, in wide shots from the back or the balcony of the Kodak Theater, look for one or two huge monitors in the audience. They're there, and they're what the presenters and hosts read from when they're not staring at the camera. They are usually cloaked in black, so that from the back and sides they appear as black holes.

So anyway, Carol Burnett. She was very nice and professional. She came in the room dressed and ready to go. Maybe a little make up was applied on the spot, or maybe she had already been made up. There was a dolly move, so the camera was up on the dolly which was on one length of curved track. Remember, we’re just in a hotel room.

Carol didn’t say hello to me as she did the rest of the crew. But I was situated just behind the dolly track, the only place for me in this cramped space, and so, when the dolly moved along the track, Carol was revealed to me and I to her, and she flashed me a few smiles. It was nice to get a little reaction, a little acknowledgement. After this, I always tried to have some interaction with the talent because I was one of the few crew members whose job directly affected their performance.

Here's what the prompter looks like to the talent:

As I was to learn, the talent always had a different reaction to the prompter. Sometimes it was a godsend if there was a lot of text for them to read. Sometimes they didn’t want to use or rely on the prompter. More often than not they understood it was just part of their job. When you have a big actor like Mel Gibson or Clint Eastwood read off a prompter, there is an understanding that they are helping out on something that is probably beneath them. The feeling is that they are doing a favor, they’ve been roped into something by their studio or publicist, they just want to get it over with, and so will read whatever you put in front of them as quickly and professionally as they can.

The Carol Burnett shoot went very quickly. She only had a couple minutes of text to read, and she also threw in some personal remembrances. Then it was a wrap. She stood, said thank you to all, including me, seemed very pleased to be involved with the project, and left.

Breaking down never took very long for me. I would get the monitor and all ancillary equipment off the camera first, so that they could wrap the camera and I could get the plate off the tripod. This time it went quickly and I was in and out of the hotel in under three hours.