The Hair in the Gate

By Steve Meek

The Hair in the Gate is a fictionalized account of an actor's life story starting with his education, early training and what he had to go through to be noticed in a very competitive field.
This culminates in his landing a supporting role in what becomes a major science fiction phenomenon in world cinema.
Not related to anything that ever happened.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Steve Meek
• Release date: Apr 15, 2016
• ISBN: 9781310119675

Steve Meek

Steve Meek was born in East York suburb of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He studied English Literature and Dramatic Arts at Glendon College at York University.He is a professional actor on stage as well as on television and in tv commercials since 1972.He was the stand-in for Chewbacca (played by Peter Mayhew) in two of the Star Wars movies - "The Empire Strikes Back" and "Return (originally revenge) of the Jedi."He worked in England as an actor from 1976 - 1987.

Book preview

THE HAIR IN THE GATE

An Unauthorized Autobiography

STEVE MEEK

What follows is a work of fiction, and anyone who thinks they recognize themselves, or anyone they know, ought to be ashamed.

Steve Meek

HAIR IN THE GATE

When raw film is run through a motion picture camera it is exposed in an opening known as 'the gate'. At the end of a good take the assistant director instructs the camera operator to 'check the gate'. The gate pivots out from the camera to be checked for clarity. Ninety nine times out of a hundred it's clean, and the call is 'Gate's clear'. Sometimes there is a foreign body in the gate. The technical term for this body is 'Hair'. Then everyone hears the dreaded phrase 'Hair in the gate.' That means the take is ruined (the hair is super imposed on the film) and everyone has to start all over again.

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Contents

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

PROLOGUE

Those fucking midgets want more money because they got wet, the second assistant director moaned as he entered the production office. It was six thirty on Friday night. End of the shooting day. And the extras were acting up (for the first time that day) about higher fees on their basic daily rates. As usual. Filming was already behind schedule as the result of a just recently resolved riggers' strike, and although pennies weren't exactly being pinched, they were being firmly fondled.

Roger Quigly, executive producer, looked up from his desk. It all depends on the source. If it was sprayed on or applied manually with a sponge, it comes under make-up, and they're entitled to 'wet money,' If it was applied externally by hose during the shot it's classed as 'special action, 'and they get a fiver on top.

The second raised his eyes to the ceiling in exasperation. The little mothers threw themselves into the lake on purpose.

Roger went back to his reports. Then tell them to piss off.

With such finesse were most union people handled, at least in the front office.

Roger Quigly was the kind of producer who'd tried to get the British film industry back on its feet. And he blamed the unions for putting it flat on its back in the first place. Ever since spiralling basic rates, more and more perks, and fewer and fewer statutory hours all came together to make studio based productions prohibitively expensive. It was now to the state of affairs where it was cheaper to hand pick a British crew (still universally acknowledged as the most skillful) and an American cast (the most bankable) and ship them off to locations somewhere in the third world (the cheapest and most easily exploited).

But Roger had a soft spot for Brixton Studios. Which was why whenever he was involved in the production of a major motion picture (does anyone ever produce a minor motion picture?) everyone worked in Brixton, The wrought iron gates, emblazoned with their world famous windmill, swung open, the brutes blazed anew, and it was magic time yet again.

After the second had gone away to do battle with the midgets, Roger 's eyes glanced out of his office window. The studios had been built to rival Ealing and Elstree, only south of the river. Back in the halcyon days all of them had strut their stuff here on the darkened sound stages. A young Laurence Olivier; an even younger Vivienne Leigh; Edith Evans's screen test; even Tallulah Bankhead in a two reeler done on a bet while she was still the toast of the West End. Technically as well, The Kordas cut their cinematic teeth here. Hitch pencilled his first title card in the art department over on 'D' Block, And everyone remembered the day George Bernard Shaw was fired because his first screenplay was considered too political! Big mistake, that. And the films themselves. They read like a history of the cinema, At least two were ranked in everyone's lists of the all time ten greatest pictures.

But that was yesterday, To-day was a much grimmer reality.

Only a handful of big pictures were made in England each year now.

Only ten in total last year. And the studios sat decaying day by day. The old, all purpose, all nation European standing city set had been razed, and on its once proud site stood a council estate that had been out of style months before it housed its first disgruntled inhabitants. They took out their frustrations in turn by taking out all of the street lights, most of the shrubs and flowers, and even a few of their neighbours.

Violence now seemed to be the word associated with Brixton in the public mind. Perhaps it was true. The people at the studio wouldn't know. Each night they got into their cars and drove the miles to the safer suburbs their inflated salaries afforded them. Inside the gates during the day, however, magic still happened, and miracles were the order of the day.

One of which Roger eyed as he came back to the present. His highly prized (and polished) Oscar looked back at him from the marble mantle over the Queen Anne fireplace. The inscription was engraved on his heart as well as the base; 'Best Picture - 1976 - Time Warriors - Producer, Roger Quigly'.

Time Warriors had changed his life. It had also taken it over. Filmed on a budget of seven million and geared exclusively to the Saturday matinee trade, it had been acclaimed by the adult public at large, and turned into a multi-million dollar industry that spawned everything from T-shirts to paperback novels to bed linen to talking alarm clocks and even a rip off television series that in turn had spawned its own multi-million dollar law suit in America.

The response had been so great that Roger had contracted its young writer, Alan Pettibone, to do a sequel, Return to the Stars.

That in turn had done almost as well as the original. And now, millions of dollars to the good, Roger was busy overseeing the third in the Time Warriors saga. He felt it in his bones that this was to be the last. The studio moguls of old would have said quit while you 're ahead, but the bankers who. ran the studios to-day had changed the cry to stick to a good thing. More importantly, however, things were not running smoothly, and Roger was beginning to feel like Frankenstein about to be destroyed by his own creation.

Once the financial bandwagon had started to roll, everyone had come running to leap aboard. It had been all right on Return because the front office had been riding high on the crest of a wave. But when the returns weren't as great as anticipated, he had been told to be careful this time. As a result, the crews were griping about the lack of lucrative overtime, the large crowd scenes had suddenly been rewritten as more intimate, and things like the midgets throwing themselves into lakes and then demanding more money because of dangerous 'special action 'were occurring each and every day.

Poor Roger found himself in the middle as the miser who was refusing to dole out the millions of dollars to the masses who all knew it was there and were expecting their share of it.

And it certainly wasn't fair comment. Because of the scarcity of work, he could hand pick his team at union minimums, but he chose to get his people and pay as high as was possible under the conditions. As usual, though, those who had gotten onto the picture were now going to kill the goose that laid the golden egg. In order to make up for lowered incomes last year, people were submitting highly padded expense claims to get more cash. This would in turn lead to fewer productions next year, and so the spiral would continue to plunge even deeper.

People never learned.

But Roger had. In days gone by he would have allowed the midget incident to get to him. Now, however, he allowed the assistant to get on with it, and thought about the evening ahead. A quiet dinner in Chelsea; a gentle stroll along the Embankment; and then, well there was no limit to the possibilities.

Not to mention the memories.

CHAPTER 1

George Stephens never asked to be special. And God knows being born in Toronto was a terribly inauspicious start. However, he overcame even that horrible handicap, and as the years went on, his various qualities became apparent.

At seventeen he was six foot six inches tall, medium blonde, and had a face that, although not strictly a classic beauty, was definitely well on its way to being average. That is; two eyes, a nose, and a mouth, and all more or less in the right places.

Acne was a stranger, and his complexion was nice and clear.

By no means an athlete, he had managed to acquire an average build (or at least as average as one could be at six foot six) that was spread over his frame so that, when not standing next to something of comparable size, he was in proportion. Otherwise average in most respects, it was his height that proved to be the bane of his existence. The most obvious aspect was verbal, and he'd learned not to flinch when called stretch, lanky, slim, that long drink of water, and a dozen others that went straight to the marrow. And the obvious remarks like what's the weather like up there, or do you get nosebleeds, or you must get good views of football games that he heard at least ten times a day. All by idiots who thought they were being terribly clever and original.

It didn't bother him, much. Why did everyone else feel it was their duty to draw attention to his height?

And clothes. Thank God he never tried to be trendy. He was lucky to ever get anything that fit properly. And the specialty shops charged outrageous prices, and they knew they had the only show in town. As a result, he had a nice conservative wardrobe of plain colours and no style at all. In fact, he found himself dressing like a middle-aged man, watching the fashion parade go by, and quietly waiting for his body to catch up with his ward robe.

It was a good thing he was patient. Patience, along with height, seemed to be the only things he'd been given in abundance.

More by lack of anything better to do rather than hard work he managed to pass through High School with honours. This in turn led to acceptance at a small liberal arts college (teaching High School English seemed as good a way as any of passing his life away) and the first foray into the real world outside of his parents' home and the High School system.

And what a revelation. Although it was the fall of 1969, and the Swinging Sixties were already a pleasant memory, they had somehow managed to pass him by. Not a gregarious person, yet not a true loner, George had few friends. And they were like himself. Quiet and narrow visioned. All of a sudden he found out that things like alcohol and women were real, not just in the movies. And smoking pot didn't rot your brain and land you in jail for the rest of your life. And life could be fun if you only relaxed!

And relax he did. By the time he went home for the Christmas break his parents didn't know him. They remarked to each other on his new casualness, and that night his mother cried herself to sleep with the realization that she'd lost her baby.

Back at college, George discovered that he was expected, as an English major, to participate in the Dramatic Arts programme.

This was because the majority of males on campus were either jocks or drunks, or ideally, both.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained. He launched himself into the schedule with a vengeance, and proved a dab hand with a paint brush, hammer and saw, and even a needle and thread. It was unfortunate, however, that the only part he was suitable for in the first season was the title role in Harvey, so he was never actually on stage. His only chance came when he played a fairy in a review sketch take-off of A Midsummer Night's Dream. The student paper called his debut the biggest puck this side of Maple Leaf Gardens.

His real chance came in his second year when they decided to do Of Mice and Men as their major production. He got to play Lennie because he was the biggest male in the company.

Padding was necessary to augment his bulk, which led to his second review (leaves George Stephens looking like Santa Claus in Tobacco Road.) but it was already too late. The acting bug had bitten. The academic world lost what would have been a perfectly good teacher.

And a star was born. Or at least conceived.

Angela Wentworth, nee Lynda Lee Swackhammer, stood by the side of the highway outside of Flagstaff, Arizona, waiting for the greyhound bus that would take her to New York, fame, and fortune.

Shit, she thought. If this was really Bus Stop and I was Marilyn, I'd have three dressers, make-up, a hair dresser, and four flunkies. Instead she had a genuine second-hand card board suitcase (a nice touch that took four weeks of junk shop prowling) a one way ticket to New York, forty dollars in cash in her brassiere, and a heartful of dreams (who said life isn't a pop song?).

Angela/Lynda left school at sixteen and got a job in the diner her uncle ran in Flagstaff. She needed every cent to get to New York where she knew she was going to take Broadway by storm. Hollywood was closer, but she hated the heat, and besides, a Broadway star had acting credibility, and Hollywood would then fly her back over Arizona so she could spit out the window, and hopefully wash Flagstaff off the map.

If only she knew Hollywood would go first!

She'd arrived in the Big Apple in the fall of 1966 and been swallowed whole. Luckily her good looks and easy manner got her through interviews easily. And her experience at her uncle's diner got her behind the counter of Chock - Full - Of - Nuts.

There had followed five years of lessons and auditions and hard work. There was a stint in summer stock, a break as a house wife singing the virtues of toilet paper in a commercial, and then three lines in a bad play that ran for exactly two and a quarter hours.

Period.

She had been seen by a grand total of thirty seven people (most of them paper) and one agent. There had been a phone call, a meeting, and Angela was signed and truly on her way.

Chuck Clifton (now there's a name to be reckoned with) knew talent when he saw it. Or at least if not talent, a very sellable product. They took a cab to Bergdorf's, and he bought her, her first new outfit in five years. Two hours later, all the price tags carefully cut off, they were ushered into the offices of Trans-Global Entertainment Productions (Television) and the presence of Roger Quigly, fledgling producer.

There was an on camera interview, a very liquid lunch at Sardi's, and by four o'clock Angela had been signed to play the bitchy new long lost daughter, Loretta Winger, on Trans-Global's terribly (that being the operative word) popular soaper, Yesterday's To-morrow.

Meanwhile, back in Toronto, George was struggling along selling shoes by day, and working in fringe theatre by night. Money at the theatre was scarce, and the low point in his fringe career came when his fee as an assistant designer (any job in theatre was better than none) went through the books as a phone bill.

However, once he'd been tagged as a designer, no one would consider him as an actor.

But, as they say, every dog has his day. There was a new show by Canada's musical whiz kid, Bernie Shapiro, being produced at the theatre. It was a musical adaptation of the works of the Marquis de Sade entitled Bound For Glory. George would have loved the lead, and went so far as to audition (under an assumed height) but was asked to do props instead. This was a challenge (if not an education in itself) but not the real thing.

Three days before the official opening, they still hadn't managed to borrow the complete leather outfit for de Sade (the budget only ran to leather look plastic, but the director insisted on the real thing). On the off chance, George phoned a local motor cycle club, and found someone who was willing to lend them an entire leather wardrobe. When he and the director and the erstwhile star arrived at the biker's apartment (they thought it bizarre that the door mat was leather)they were staggered to find he was six foot eight, and built like a bean pole.

After a frantic phone call to the producer, it was decided on a quick rewrite so that George, who was the only one who could fit the outfit (if the costume fits, you 've got the part; an old show business adage) could narrate the story in a non-singing role.

He went into immediate rehearsals, and the show opened on schedule. It was shaky, but in such bad taste that people flocked to it for months to see if it was actually true!

Six months later the producers decided it was time to take their triumph to New York. They were granted temporary green cards for the company to run this show only, and found an off Broadway theatre. So far off-Broadway in fact that it was above a book shop in Greenwich Village. But it was only a subway ride from Times Square!

The company was farmed out to various friends and sponsors around the city, and had a whole week to rehearse for their Big Night. It came on a Wednesday and most of the company were back in Toronto by Saturday. New Yorkers, unlike Torontonians, were so used to bad taste and smut that they stayed away in droves.

The experience gave George his first New York notice. A bit in the Village Voice. It said "Last night first nighters at the Theatre Downstairs Upstairs were treated to Amateur Night in Dixie; or at least in Toronto. It was a bit of tuneless dross that rejoices under the title 'Bound For Glory.' A more unfortunate name could not be imagined.

"Professional theatrical values were non-existent (what they do on those long winter nights up there?) and we only mention it here for one reason. That is the rather physically striking narrator, George Stephenson (close is better than nothing).

Dressed from head to toe in six foot six of black leather and a powdered. grey wig, he managed to hold the proceedings together despite looking like a half smoked black Russian cigarette.

As for the rest of the cast, we shall refrain from mentioning them by name in the hopes that they can return anonymously to Toronto and pick up useful careers as lumberjacks or ski instructors.

Encouraged by having one of his names spelt right in a New York review, George decided to stay, even if it was illegally, and get is bight of the Big Apple.

As usual, there was a worm lurking under the shiny red surface.

Meanwhile, in another part of town, Angela and Chuck were having a quick dinner after one of her chat show appearances. The show, and Angela's career, were doing very well, and this was by means of a celebration. At times various other New York celebrities wandered up to say hello. Some were work associates, some were on Chuck's books, and some were on the hustle.

To us. Chuck raised his glass, and awaited Angela's reciprocal gesture.

Her eyes narrowed, and she studied him across the small table. Us?

You 're always so suspicious. We've known each other two years now's all I meant. I think we've been good for each other. To us?

She quietly joined him, but offered no encouragement.

I don't see you so much these days. Are you happy? In yourself, I mean?

Sure. What's not to be happy.

You still puzzle me, Angie. Two years on, and I still don't know what kind of girl you are.

She looked down at her now empty glass, twisted the stem, and muttered under her breath, And you never will.

George had moved into his sponsor's small apartment on Second Avenue, near the East Village (so convenient for work and Christopher Street). When he said he'd decided to stay, Choppy Waters (I always say, if you 're going to go, go big)had invited him to move in til he got himself settled. It was crowded, but Choppy was property master for Joseph Papp's theatre complex at the Public Theatre, and had a lot of good connections.

Because he didn't have a valid green card, jobs he could do for pay were few and far between. Choppy used his influence, and got him a job in the workshops working on various props for various shows. The pay was low, but cash in hand. And he never knew who he might meet actually working in a New York theatre company. He even saw Joe in a corridor one day.

The first thing Choppy had told George was that he was gay, and if he didn't like it, tough. It never even occurred to George one way or the other, so there was never any problem.

One day George got a frantic letter from his mother (If you get caught, will you go to prison? Couldn't you come back to Toronto and do this acting as a hobby? What kind of a person is called 'Choppy? We both send Out' love.). He laughed at the last bit, and this led to an interesting discussion about parents.

Choppy told how he'd finally gone back to see his parents (somewhere in Armpit, Ohio) for Christmas one year, having decided to tell them they would never be grandparents. His mother had started to cry, and his father had ordered her out of the room.

If I get this correct, you're telling me you don 't go to bed with women.

That's right! Rd, I prefer men, But, but that makes you. Gay.

''No! That means you 're queer. That means I can call you a cocksucker!"

Well, I've always thought of you as a mother fucker.

He'd never heard from them since, and always assumed that they told everyone that he was dead. Which, as far as they were concerned, he was. But what a way to go!

One night Choppy said he had free tickets for a film a friend of his was in, and would George like to go. It was at a cinema uptown on Eighth Avenue. George's small income didn't allow for nights out (after food and a nominal rent there was just enough left to buy and scoff at an occasional edition of the Toronto Daily Star)but an evening out was an evening out and not spent looking at four walls. Besides, a film's a film.

They arrived at the Queen 's Cinema at eight o'clock. The signs advertised all male films (maybe his friend was in a war picture) and the cashier accepted the