Hollywood Invasion

By Jason Schwartz

Portraits by Yeheshua Johnson

Tracy Spiegel/Ethan Fox
Craft Services

Credits: Gone Baby Gone, 21, Dan in Real Life. Spiegel and Fox have been in the business for only 18 months, but they’ve already built a strong reputation. The newly married couple are responsible for keeping the cast and crew happy and well fed between meals (which are handled separately by caterers). With an average budget of $800 a day, they furnish everything from pastry platters to taco bars and dessert, as well as just about any type of coffee or tea imaginable. Their strangest request so far? One member of the Gone Baby Gone crew had a hankering for tea tree oil toothpicks.

Tom Williams
Production Sound Mixer

Credits: The Women, Evening, Underdog. As chief soundman, Williams decides how the mikes will capture dialogue, which means he’s also tasked with cutting out background noise. Humming refrigerators and ticking clocks are frequent sources of audio pollution, but his bane is the clip-clop of high-heel shoes—a problem on the stiletto-heavy set of The Women. To muffle the racket, he’ll affix neoprene or rubber to the bottom of shoes, lay down carpet, or, when all else fails, make the extras go barefoot. “A lot of times it’s as simple as saying, ‘Okay, background, take your shoes off,’” he says.

Scott Davis
Rigging Gaffer

Credits: Gone Baby Gone, 21, Mystic River. Gaffers are in charge of a shoot’s electrical engineering and lighting, a job that can get tricky: On Gone Baby Gone, Davis had to run 10 miles of wire across Quincy Quarries. “There’s this peak they wanted to have a bunch of lights on, and the only way to get them up there was to carry them,” he says. “Our stuff is not light.” With the aid of pulleys—and after a week of lugging—he had the spot ready for the shot.

Trish Seeney
Makeup Artist

Credits: Gone Baby Gone, 21, Bachelor No. 2. Seeney’s made everyone from Amanda Peet to Jason Varitek look good. But her aim isn’t always to hide blemishes—for Gone Baby Gone, she used smudged mascara and runny eyeliner to transform actress Amy Ryan into a drug addict. “She had to look awful, she had to look strung-out. It was not pretty makeup,” says Seeney, who’s been so in demand that she recently was able to buy a new house in West Newton.

Jamie Fitzpatrick
Second Asst. Cameraman

Credits: The Game Plan, Old Dogs, War of the Worlds. The care and maintenance of millions of dollars’ worth of camera equipment falls to Fitzpatrick, who assists the director of photography and loads the all-important film. He’s also the guy who yells out the take number and claps the slate before every shot. It’s a surprisingly visible gig, he says. “I’ve been on Oprah and a couple of other television shows because they always show you on clips.” —J.S.

Hollywood Moment
Set dresser Butch McCarthy on getting chased by an ax-wielding Daniel Day Lewis.

While working on The Crucible in 1995, McCarthy spent his days building 17th-century fences. It sounds like monotonous work, but he had company: Daniel Day Lewis, a notorious Method actor who got into character by pitching in. (He even joined the local union in order to get the necessary clearance.) But the Oscar winner’s inexperience made him a perfect mark for a practical joke. “We took the edge off his ax, so it was dull. He was sweating up a storm.” Eventually, McCarthy let Lewis in on the ruse. “He chased me around the woods,” McCarthy says, noting that the actor didn’t drop his ax during the pursuit.

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