Hippie directs Republican icons

I promised myself not to release this photo until the passing of Presidents Reagan & Ford and so now is the time. That guy on the right is me directing this commercial for the Republican National Committee. The setting was Gerald Ford's home in Rancho Mirage, California.

Neither Ford nor Reagan were president at the time of production. Ford had just lost to Jimmy Carter and Reagan was a campaigner.

It was blazing hot in the desert that day and we made it hotter. We had a brand new $65,000 Hitachi video camera and my main video guy was sick that day. I was depending on a second stringer who didn't have a clue about the cameras inerts. The camera gains seemed to have malfunctioned and the unit needed incredible amounts of light to get a picture.

Trying to act as if nothing was amiss my hippie crew busied themselves like true vidiots while our lighting director, Craig Greene, installed a bank of 9 lights (that's nine really hot units in one fixture) outside beaming through each of the windows. The shear amount of light pumping in caused the room temperature to soar well over 100 degrees even with the A/C on full force.

At one point Ronald Reagan jokingly said something to the effect that he had been in forty-some movies and had never seen so much light. I did a bit of shucking and jiving and got the commercial shot. Incidentally, the other hippie in the background was my sound guy. I'm sure that that my conservative "talent" were in wonderment at the entire scene.

Bottom line was that we got the spot shot. Reagan was elected president and a dynasty began. No big message here except that all things must pass. After we wrapped I walked back into Ford's cooled down office and there sat the ex-president. There was something about him that made me feel very proud to be American. A steady patient quality that I will always remember.

The Videography Company went on to produce major documentaries for the Republicans including Proposition 13 which revolutionized California home ownership and the Kemp-Roth Tax bill that passed into law. Not bad for a bunch of anti-war pot smoking hippies. Oh well!