November 14th, 2011
Got Home Alive has almost wrapped for the season, but I continue to get regular work as a Safety/Medical/Rope Rigging Dude. This segment is about a hunter who got stuck in mud and almost died before being discovered. All the outdoor segments of this show seem similar, but it’s cable. And The Travel Channel is the low end of cable. And it pays okay, so what the hell?
Some of the actors on this show have been a little flaky, but this guy is awesome. He spent two days in a wet tub of water, covered in mud, freezing his ass off and never complained. I kept bring him hot chocolate to keep him from getting hypothermic.
The most crucial scene was a snake that crawled right past him. If this season has proven anything, it is that animals are highly unpredictable on camera. Sunday morning the snake handler arrives just as the actor is fully buried in the chilly mud which is supposed to simulate a hot day in Tennessee. The handler gets Snake #1 from a nice warm box keep warm by a heater and places him in the water just off camera and kinda points him at the actor. No dice, the snake takes off in a different direction. Two more tries are equally unsuccessful and the handler proclaims the snake is too cold to continue, and puts him back in the warm box.
Actors! They gets just a little bit of success and they get all picky about their work environment! Meanwhile the human star is still in his mud pit as it takes way too long to get him installed in it for him to take a break, and Snake #2 is in Wardrobe, getting all gussied up for his big scene.
When the handler lets Snake #2 go, he swims directly at the actor and does an Oscar-worthy job of slowly slithering under the actor’s chin then, as if the director had called “Coverage!” Mr. Snake turns and slowly slithers back the other way to let the DP get a different angle. Snake #2 must be a method actor, as he was totally in character the whole time.
Check out the teaser here on the Travel Channel’s website.
But for one more location shoot in Griffith Park, I think this is about it for the season.
