"Lights, camera, smoke and mirrors."

      Lou watches John Ruhl strut into the hanger.
      "Check this guy out. He's got that leather jacket shit going on. Thinks he's Mr. Tough-guy fuckin' Vietnam helicopter pilot. Check him out. His fuckin' head is huge, man. Look at him. Mr. Fuckin' Vietnam Vet! Come on!"
      An hour later John Ruhl is at the sticks, piloting the throbbing monster over the desert into the Abajo Mountains.
      I feel a slight twinge as I sight an eagle diving into the trees below dodging the downward blast of the rotors.
      John shouts over the intercom, "Hey, look, there's a herd of deer down there. Must be a hundred of them."
      I cringe as the copter dives, scattering the large herd across the rugged terrain. The fragile deer are stumbling and running in every direction in panic.
      Today John Ruhl, Mr. Fuckin' Vietnam, is giving The God of All Helicopter Pilots a ride. In the cockpit next to him sits Jim Gavin, legendary eggbeater fly boy for the big Hollywood twits. Jim's worked on everything, been everywhere. His poot don't stink. Speilberg's copter guy. His smile is charming and wide. His resume is big. His ego is HUGE. He could sweet talk a snake out of a hole. Jim's words ring with authority. He knows everything about the movie business. Just ask him. If he gets it wrong, he blames it on you. If you screw up, same deal.
      In the passenger compartment with me is the producer, Alec Lorimore, the doomed "type A" with a hardcore case of painful, asphyxiating gas that will put him in the hospital two days later. His eyes are swimming, rolling, traveling in two directions at once. I can't tell if he is looking at me or out the window. I remember what a production assistant said, "Hey man, both of his eyes work."
      I'm leading these guys to a mountain where, as Alec tells me, the film will end as George Harrison, if he signs off on the deal, sings, "Here comes the sun. Do do do do. Here comes the sun. Do do do do. I say, 'It's alright'. Do do dee dee, doo dee dee, do dee dee, do do do do."
      The sun is shinning and something definitely smells like do do.
      Alec's gas is fogging my vision. My throat is burning. In my mind I am screaming for John to land the copter before I get lung cancer from this dude's horrible flatulence, but I bite my tongue and stare out of the window trying not to make one-eyed eye contact with Alec, the source of the foulest smell I have ever witnessed.
      The snowcapped mountaintop below is like an altar to Beelzebub as I gaze through the mist of Alec's horrid bean and potato burrito methane.
      As we swing around the peak, eroded earth stretches to the horizon where the distant Henry Mountains rise like blue and white angels, above hellish red monoliths and scarred canyons.
      "Great spot!"
      "Forest Service land," I echo.
      "BOOM!" Score one for the location guy!
      "Pbbbughtttt!" Alec's asshole has the last word.
     Tears are streaming down my face.

     Days into the production schedule, the very tan stars of the film, Ed and Paula Viesturs, arrive fresh from a Caribbean cruise on some adoring fan's private yacht.
     The first shoot with the "real" people is in Arches National Park.
     Here's the scene: The couple are riding on the paved main highway in Arches aboard the ugly, heavy downhill bikes, in mean and serious downhill gear, going five miles an hour on the flat road, with a famous camera guy pedaling an electric cruiser bike along side dressed like a cyborg in a steadicam rig. They got a cop backing up Winnebagos for a mile as the film crew rides ahead with the car mount. The steadicam cyborg guy on the bike follows and circles the oxygen depleted brain-damaged hero from Mt. Everest and his adoring wife as they peek out from under their Speed Racer helmets at the scenery.
      They visit Double Arch.
      They stop on the road and stare out at the "petrified sand dunes" and the La Sal mountains. Just a couple of folks in knee pads, shin guards, rain slickers and Speed Racer helmets, on forty pound downhill bikes, cruising on a solitary ride through Arches National Park checkin' out the scenery.
      Not a Winnebago in sight.
      Is this priceless, or what?

      I manage to convince the director to spend an evening on the lip of a red Entrada sandstone canyon rim, shooting the stunt doubles descending sandstone bowls, blasting across slickrock bumps, down steep ledges, dodging the solution pockets and cryptobiotic soil crusts just like real Moab mountain bikers.
     This place has potential, but I have a hard time convincing the crew that things not in the shot are environmentally sensitive, and my time is taken up protecting the desert flora and fauna from the ignorant. They make fun of me the whole time. It really pisses me off.
     The director wants wilderness, but only where the camera is pointed. If it ain't in the shot the crew wants to be able to trample at will. It seems like the director is doing his best to kill the riders and the crew is frustrated with not being able to fuck up the landscape, but at least they let me insist on some slickrock riding for their stupid film, but they don't get it. Not even the doubles get it. They aren't slickrock riders.
     It's like I speak a different language or something.
     "We're making a MOVIE here," Director Greg insists loudly. It's helicopter chase mode for best light. He's got the doubles bombing over five foot ledges and two foot gully g-outs at speeds where the copter can do that car commercial chase thing. Chase. Reveal. Chase. Reveal. Cheese. Danger.
     Jennifer Nelson almost eats it trying to follow Lou fast over stuff that might look flat from the air, but is really, really gnarly. These near death experiences seem to have little impact on anything other than Jennifer's confidence.
     I'm worried.
      At the end of the day, John Ruhl, Mr. Fuckin' Vietnam, returns from the hanger to pick up the last remaining crew, which just so happens to be the stunt team and me, the day's stunt coordinator. I climb into the cockpit, buckle up and don the radio headset, looking forward to another awesome glass-bubble sightseeing trip over the Behind the Rocks area. It's a Wilderness Study Area, so no cameras please. We can scare the hell out of the wildlife, but I guess it would be a real "no-no" to film it--no evidence, I guess. I am also looking forward to watching the hikers give us the finger as we ruin their wilderness experience.
      The riders settle into the passenger compartment behind me.
      John shouts, "ARE WE BUCKLED UP AND READY TO GO?"
      "YEA!"
      "You bet."
      "LET'S ROCK!"
      John is wearing an evil smile as he tears the helicopter off the cliff in one swift, thoughtless motion, and dives straight down the vertical sandstone face of the Tusher Mesa.
      The stunt team shrieks in unison behind me, "AAAIIIIIIEEEEE!"
      "I've got to have some kind of fun with this damn job," John says, grinning.
     I speak to John through the intercom, "A few days ago when I asked if the Spacecam helicopter would dive into a slickrock bowl to follow the bikers, I was told, 'Helicopters don't dive. They have a problem. They crash.' What's going on with that?"
     "That's bullshit. I don't know about their equipment, but how's this?" John snarls.
     My head bumps the top of the cockpit. The safety harness tugs hard at my waist and shoulders.
      "ALRIGHT!"
     I watch the ground grow closer and closer, then rush by less than a few feet below my shoes. I hear Crash DeSario yelling behind me, "He's going to go through THAT?! Oh, shit he's going to go through THAT!! Hey guys, he's going to go through THAT!"
      John heads for Termination Towers, sandstone spires two hundred feet high, no more than fifty feet apart. He tips the copter on its side, passes through the gap, drops to the slickrock, and skims across the surface of Courthouse Pasture as if the copter were on wheels.
     In the back seats the stunt team is wailing like two fat chicks and a couple of drunk rednecks on a rollercoaster ride.
     We barrel toward Monitor Butte, veer up at the last moment, then John simply lets the beast fall down the other side. My stomach is in my throat, but I love it.
     Just past the fins of Upper Bull and Long Canyon, John throws both sticks forward and dives into the Day Canyon chasm, better known in the helicopter business as "Star Wars Canyon." The copter drops like a bowling ball in a vacuum, picking up breathtaking speed. John pulls out of the dive and begins to bank the copter hard through the tight S-curves of the canyon. The walls rush by at either rotor tip.
      Grinning from ear to ear, Mr. Fuckin' Vietnam personally narrates each brush with death, "I usually take the S-turns out to the river from here, but this will be a little more interesting."
      He flies the copter directly at the cliff in front of us, a vertical wall of Wingate sandstone. At the last moment he slows the copter's forward motion and creeps vertically up the cliff face. The rocks of the rim pass under my feet just inches below the skids.
      "I love making people shit their pants," brags John.
      I ain't shitting. I am thrilled. I'm hooked. I want more. I wish I hadn't been such a snoot about that Vietnam War thing. I could have learned how to fly one of these things.
      Back at the hanger I thank John profusely, gushing with that same bonded feeling hostages experience with their captors, "I would have paid a thousand dollars for that ride. Thanks a million, man."
      Sometimes you have to ignore the less-than-attractive things about a person in order to really appreciate his or her art. John Ruhl is that kind of artist. He wears leather jacket and flight glasses, smokes nasty cigarettes, and has been caught driving the get away copter for Indian artifact poaching rednecks, but if I ever have to get Humpty Dumpty down from the wall, I'll get John Ruhl to fly the eggbeater. I suspect that he may be the very best copter pilot anywhere. Hell, he's in the air more that he is on the ground.

      As the mode of operation goes from search to kill, chasing new locations and permits becomes my sole mission. The riders are soon without a stunt co-ordinator to protect them from the evil Director God. Despite my warnings they're mostly unaware that they are simply moving objects to photograph.
      Jennifer minimizes her predicament with an innocent, angelic, Northern California-spawned belief in the goodness that resides in the soul of Everyman. After a run on Fossil Point, Jennifer tells me she was knocked off her bike by Jim's rotor wash, but ends the story with, "He's such a nice man."
     She just doesn't get it.
      Crash DeSario, B-Team double for Ed Viesturs, minimizes the horror of the situation with nervous outbursts like, "Sure man, that's nothing," or "I do this kinda thing all the time," or "Hey, I know this place on Poison Spider Mesa where you can really rip."
      In their Hollywood-awed adrenaline frenzy, the stunt riders cannot foresee that cold eggbeater Jim Gavin is going to use them like pinballs to get the shot, even if they fly off the edge of a cliff and die a horrible death on the rocks below. If someone really takes "THE BIG DIRT SAMPLE", Jim will simply have another interesting story to tell the next production crew. It is not like it's going to be his fault. It is going to be my fault. I hired the "stunt" riders.
      I give the riders the facts, and let them go just like mama did.
      While I'm away chasing permits, the B-team woman double, Laurie Hutchinson, does the supremely professional thing. She refuses to ride faster on a dangerous run alongside a cliff face next to a thousand foot drop.
      Rather than slow the shot for "the girls," Jim Gavin dresses Crash, "B team" male double, in Laurie's costume, and sends him out to follow the much better rider, Tatoo Lou, down the hairy route on Jennifer's bike without an equipment check or a practice run.
     Jennifer throws a fit. "Just because I'm a GIRL, he takes my bike away and gives it to Crash."
     She's learning.
     That night I watch the video rushes in the hotel room with the producer, director, and Jim. I see both men stunt doubles blasting down the top of Amasa Back Trail like mad banshees on the edge of the cliff above Jackson Hole, like it's the Extreme Games or something. I remember Alec's words, "We don't want the doubles to be doing things that the main characters can't do."
      Just before the final shot on the video feed, Jim Gavin leers at the director as if the tape were some juicy porno, drooling, "Now, this is a really great shot."
     The shot is stunning--exactly what the director had in mind, but when I see Crash barrel into Lou and "crash" on the brink of the cliff at about 25 mph because Jennifer's brake levers were not adjusted to his hands, I go ballistic, "Jim, you may know everything about helicopter safety, but you don't know DICK NIXON about mountain bike safety. That was totally irresponsible! You got a shot of a pro downhiller and a BMX hot shot kid going so fast on the edge of a cliff that the director can't use it without lying about his subjects, and you risked my rider's lives to get the damn thing. Great! Just fucking great!"
      "If these riders are not qualified to do this kind of thing, then you never should have hired them," was the Typical Eggbeater Jim defense.
      I'm livid!
      This is what it's like to be in the film business.
      Director Greg backs Jim in the only way he could, "Well, you don't have to be rude about it," he says to me in his softest, most contrite grandma voice.
     I swear, the guy farts the same way. Very polite. Feminine. Somewhat evil. Have you ever heard a condescending fart? Like the Pope's toots; liberal enough to share it, but too conservative to admit he enjoys the fragrance.

      On the last day of the Moab shooting schedule, Brad, second unit director and cameraman, crawls on hands and knees through frozen Onion Creek under a blue plastic tarp. There he lies in the frigid, smelly wash, filming two mountain bikes splashing through the toxic salt waters, just inches in front of the lens. The high speed IMAX camera whirs for a few seconds then it must be reloaded. It eats film like daddy eats fried chicken.
      Brad emerges from the blue plastic cloak with disappointment on his face. For a thoughtful moment he stands and stares at the creek like a caveman, then looks up at the attentive crew and says, "We need a bigger splash. There's not enough water here. Let's get out the shovels and rakes and dig out the bed of this creek."
      I elbow Hugh, the BLM monitor, who rises from his marijuana stupor at my side and shouts, "Ahhh . . , you can't dig out the stream bed. That's against BLM regulations."
      Brad instantly echoes, seemingly unfazed, "Like I said, we shouldn't be digging out the bed of this creek.'"
      Brad passes me headed for the camera van, gives me a thumbs down, squints, twists his face with effort, and farts loudly. On the way back he does it again and says, "What was that I said?"
      "Something about the bean and potato burritos?" I respond.

      "You can't always get what you want, but you get what you get."
      The Moab location wrap party is held in another horrid Moab eatery, and though the intestinal problems are not over yet, the Moab location shoot for the IMAX movie Everest is over, thank God. The Laguna Beach crew will be taking their gas to Snowbird in the morning to fake some cutaways of Mt. Everest.
      Hugh asks me over pizza, "What do filmmaking and taking a dump have in common?"
      "I give up."
      "You're not through until you've done the paperwork."
      I retort, "What do a tortoise and Micheal Jackson have in common?"
      "I don't know."
      "They both get there before the hare."
      As a goodbye present, I give Spacecam Brad three postcard photos of Brigham's Unit, a phallic rock formation just off the main road in Arches National Park in an area called the Pinnacles on the left just before you reach Balanced Rock. Check it out for yourself. It's pretty fantastic, one of the most remarkable rock formations anywhere, but it gets no respect. The fact that Brigham's Unit doesn't have its own sign, or even a formal pullout and a better name, like The Solar Prod, or the Love Beam, demonstrates a sad fact about being male in America in the later half of the twentieth century. Holes in sandstone are revered. Even Paul Bunyan's Potty and Prostitute Butte receive mention in a few travel guides. Everywhere you look it's the womanly arches that get worldwide attention, worshipped as sacred altars to the wonder and mystery of planet earth. Delicate Arch is an idol, while The Unit goes unappreciated. It's just a dick-shaped rock that the Park Service hopes you don't see. The worried Mormons obliterated little petroglygh Kokopelli's stiffy whenever they found the little guy's pecker pecked into the sandstone by artists one thousand years ago. The Unit, the symbol of supreme power, the Solar Beef, the Sandstone Meat Pilar, Mister Happy at Attention, stands tall as a solitary reminder to check our zippers lest our privates be cut off by those who deny, even fear the power of a big weener. It was an oversight on the part of the Mormons not to knock the damn thing down before the evil U.S. Government turned the place into a National Park. Hell, now scientists are cloning sheep and monkeys. The Unit is not only feared, it's becoming obsolete. Some day the world won't even need a prick anymore.
      Speaking of Pricks, I watch Brad wander around the party showing the Unit to everyone, like a fifteen year old kid with a picture of a naked lady with big boobs. Brad's joyful sense of humor is his most valuable asset. May he prosper. May he live a long, happy life, tormenting his nieces and nephews with neugies, snuggies, melvins, and frogs on the arm.
      I give our director, Greg MacGillivray, a Picasso Marble egg, a couple of dinosaur bone fragments for his kids, and invite him and his family to Moab for a week of hiking and biking.
      He says with a Hollywood smile, "I want to thank you for everything you've done to make this shoot go so well. Every shot I use from this shoot will be an A+."
      To me, right or wrong, the "polite" little thank you was a really a hollow goodbye after a thankless job, but the spirits of Thelma and Louise certainly smiled on this project in Moab. I have to admit the shoot was as successful as it could possibly be and I was very happy for Greg, despite his car commercial way of filmmaking, his smelly, Holy farts and his condescending thank yous.
      As the party winds down I ask Brad, "Remember that first day at Fossil Point?"
     "Yea."
      "Remember that raven that walked right up to me?"
      "Yea. I thought you should have given it some of your banana. It was dancing around like it was mighty hungry."
      "I gave it part of my banana, but it didn't eat it."
      "I didn't see that."
      "I gave it to him as an offering. I knew he wouldn't eat it. Ravens think bananas suck, but before I left the house that morning I said to my wife, Miki, whose real name is Raven, 'If a raven visits me today, the shoot will go well.'"
      Miki, standing at my side, nods, "You've got to watch those ravens. They're carrying messages."
      Brad rolls his eyes, says, "No shit," cocks his head, squints, wrinkles his face, and lifts his leg to fart on cue.
      His eyes widen.
     "Oh, shit!"