The Best Of Crew Life
- Andrew and Melissa Curtis
- Jul 2, 2023
- 5 min read
If you’re going to work in TV and Film you’re going to have to learn to love traveling. While it sounds lovely to every single, 20-something, there are downsides to trying to see the world.
If you spend enough time running around you’ll eventually find hotels with bed bugs, airplanes that never leave the tarmac, middle seats on long flights, and disagreeable people. Basically, all the makings of a lackluster experience will have you wondering why people travel at all.
This isn’t that story, but there will be some notes on some of the best things I’ve experienced.
Hotels…
For example, the Hard Rock Hotel in Hollywood, Florida is lovely. On my first visit, as I was in line waiting to check in, I was eyeing the hotel lobby full of old rockers’ clothes and instruments when I noticed an elderly couple at the concierge trying to find a dinner spot. Suddenly the husband turned and vomited on the floor in front of both of them. The wife glared, and the concierge just kept listing off restaurants while snapping to a bellhop to get the mess cleaned up, without skipping a beat. There was no doubt in my mind that my weekend would be seasoned with “Florida”.
Later in the week (when I was finally able to get outside of the casino) I wound up eating my lunch at a bar in the middle of the pool. It was surrounded by water on all sides, a water slide, and waterfalls. It wasn’t “too hot” Florida, it was overcast, “could be a storm brewing” Florida, but there was no need for a jacket and at least it wasn’t sweltering. Across the pool, in my line of sight, a woman was vomiting into a bucket that housed the fuel for her current state. I watched with mild amusement and waited for lunch as emergency services showed up, put her on a stretcher, and wheeled her out. Florida!
Still, the pool was a delight and they let you play guitars in your room (guitars they will deliver to you!) until your little heart is so full of song you couldn’t possibly strum another note, so that’s pretty cool.
The term, “at least it’s not someone on the crew” was constantly uttered by people from the top all the way down to the ones at the bottom. A sort of secret prayer made out to the Universe asking for protection for those of us who made a home on the road.
With every city, every hotel, and every bed an adjustment was required. It was not uncommon to get a new kink in your neck or a sore back from a different mattress or pillow combo. For some reason, I’ve never been comfortable in hotel beds. I think I’ve seen far too many abandoned mattresses out in the streets. I imagine each one as a different, abstract memory of bodily functions, and that has forever stained my mind. I sleep on top of the sheets, fully dressed, wearing a sweatshirt with the hood up. I then rely on the showers to power wash all the sweaty, filth-ghosts off of me.
To say I feel the heebie-jeebies in a new space is an understatement that can only be furthered by the times I have seen spiders congregating outside my window.
Slowly but surely over the years, I’ve become the person that will buy their own bedspread and towels, depending on the length of the shoot and the condition of the hotels themselves.
Flying...
First class is garbage once you’ve flown private. Private is an amazing experience that everyone should strive to have! Don’t pretend that you’ve done Private if you have a pilot’s license, either. I’m sure being at the helm, whisking through the air is incredible, but so is lying on a couch, sipping espresso, with no seat belt on and no one within three feet of you.
The air at 45,000 feet is silken glass. Keep your hot cookies and your 35,000 feet cruising altitude all you want! Down there your full stomach will be accompanied by turbulence rocking you all over the place. Up above the others will float cozily asleep in their beds on their whisper-quiet Gulfstream G800.
Don’t even get me started on the differences between airport arrivals and departures in Private. They’re not comparable.
First class arrival has its perks. There are different lines that get you through quicker, and there are little extra nice tags with the word “priority” printed on them that go on your bags, so you know you’ll get yours first. And of course, on long enough flights, you’ll get meals, but it's like shopping in a Ross Dress-For-Less and commenting about how much better Nordstrom is.
The truth of the matter is when you fly private you drive onto a private airfield and the plane is just there. Next to the private relaxation area with free food, tv, games and all the magazines and newspapers that might spark your interest. I found myself reading a cinematographer magazine along with a Wall Street Journal and wondering how fast I’d grow bored of this lifestyle.
Imagining myself months into this experience, eating freshly-baked muffins, trying to recapture that little red ball of excitement that is now just a hollow shell, devoid of emotions. The only fuel that gets it started now is pure anger. Anger at the powers that be for not keeping the fridge stocked with Moutain Dew Code Red with Zero Sugars. Anger that the bedding on my flight only has crappy blankets and not crocheted cashmere. Anger that I have to drink the swill they call coffee instead of my cherished Jamaican Blue Mountain…. The list never ends.
I say everyone should strive to try it once, but know it will ruin flying forever. Better yet, try it and immediately get yourself onto a Spirit Airlines flight with two carry-ons (or check in extra late to a Southwest Flight going out of LAX) so you can immediately taste the bitter flavors of a nice humble pie. At this point that private jet will seem like some crazy fever dream dreamt up by the matrix.
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Food…
The rest of the travel involved finding food spots. It sounds easy, but trusting a Casino in Oklahoma to have enough variety to enjoy three times a day for the week is asking far too much.
It’s not limited to gambling houses either. There are plenty of cities I’ve visited where I ate at the same spot twice a day for a week. At that point, it’s not about good food, as much as it is about just surviving. To this day I can’t see a Smashburger or a Chipotle without my stomach turning over on itself. On a job that lasted 10 weeks, there were three spots to choose from and there’s only so much guacamole you can stomach.
The flip of this situation is that I have eaten some amazing food. In my mind now there’s a treasure map of hidden gems I’ve sampled. If I’m lucky enough to get back to those places, there’s a tiny feeling like coming home again for that one good homemade meal I can’t seem to make myself. Or that Holiday Meal only your Grandma can make perfect every time.
In acting it's called Sense Memory (a technique developed by Stanislavsky) and it relies on one’s ability to muster up certain emotions by invoking the senses. The warm hug we all feel when a good meal is about to be eaten. This works for me as soon as I smell a Grandma-style pizza from Godfather's in East Hanover, or a smothered burrito with cheese and onions from La Frontera in Salt Lake City. There's an immediate calm that melts over me when I know that I’m about to eat something with fond memories attached and flavors I can’t make on my own.
This is all a far cry better than the haunting sense of cosmic dread I feel when I get one whiff of the cleaners they use in the Extended Stay Hotel chain. I know they all use the same ones because the Extended Stay in Burbank smells exactly like the one in East Hanover, and I know from experience.
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