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"What screw?"

"The screw that holds the camera on the tripod."

"You’re kidding! This is supposed to be the best crew in all of Chile!"

Grove glanced back at the crew.

"Chile’s not that big, Dave."

I love Vermont. I have lived here all my life. My family is here. My business, Edgewood Productions, is based here. It has served as a wonderful backdrop for the three feature films I have directed, as well as numerous other productions and hundreds of television commercials. When I meet people at parties, they inevitably ask, "So when are you moving to Hollywood?" This is an opportunity for me to expound on my theory of zigging when others choose to zag, of the unique perspective that Vermont gives me as a filmmaker, and of my aversion to earthquakes since experiencing the last big one in Los Angeles. (I took it as a sign from God to stay in Vermont.) So what was I doing in Santiago, Chile, last July, freezing my butt off, filming a movie in the middle of the Andes mountains?

Last summer, my partner in Edgewood, Peter Beckwith, and I were preparing our latest epic, a feature film called Pressure Point. One of our specialties has been producing action-adventure films that look like they cost a lot more than they really do, ensuring a profit for us and a continuing career as a film director for me. (I am the only one not working in the family construction business.) Our plan at that time was to film the bulk of Pressure Point in the middle of summer, then shut down the production till winter and shoot a spectacular James Bond-style opening sequence at a neighboring ski resort, adding variety and production value. This plan held until our largest investor and the star of the film, Don Mogavero, came up with a better idea. He had a contact in Santiago who could let us film at a resort in the Andes Mountains for only the cost of travel and airfare. It seems the Chilean government was dying to get any foreign production it could into the country and Don’s friend had a uncle who was a high-ranking general who could offer us use of military troops and vehicles. The next thing I knew I found myself on an endless l7-hour flight with Don, his wife, and cinematographer Grove Hafela, himself a veteran of many faraway location shoots.

So, now I get to do the two things I hate most; film somewhere other than Vermont, and fly. The flight isn’t helped by the fact that Grove is also a pilot, and he makes a point of showing me all of the unsafe conditions aboard our Aerolineas jet; "Jesus, this is an Airbus 210, the Yugo of the sky, I did a shoot in the factory where they assemble these, I saw 12 year-olds putting these planes together", "Do you realize we have only two engines and will be flying the entire length of the Amazon?" I try to calm myself by joking with Grove, telling him that if we crashed Alive in the Andes, no matter how hungry I was, I wouldn’t eat him. He didn’t laugh. He told me not to make promises I might not be able to keep.

We land the next morning to be greeted by Don’s friend, Alex Flores, and his assistant, Rodrigo. "We have the best crew in all of Chile ready for you!" exclaimed Alex. He proudly showed off the 50 rolls of motion picture film he picked up at Kodak in Chile. We spent half an hour explaining that we had ordered 15 rolls, not 50. He proffered our VISA receipt and, lo and behold, we were only billed for 15 rolls. Hey, we could almost shoot the whole movie with 50 rolls, so we decide to keep quiet. We’re a small production; if Kodak wants to bonus us over four thousand dollars in film, who are we to refuse? Maybe it’s a local custom.

We bounce in a small van through Santiago headed towards the Andes. Immediately, I notice a curious thing. We had just traveled to the other side of the planet, literally, and I’m watching JC Penny’s, McDonald’s, Nike, and Home Depot zoom by my window. I was prepared for Chile to be exotic and foreign, but now I don’t feel very far from Vermont at all. No Wal-Marts though… at least, not yet.

We travel another two hours up to our lodging in the Andes to become acclimated to the altitude for a day before the filming begins. Some people have trouble adjusting to the thin atmosphere; one can get nosebleeds, hyperventilate, or basically freak out. I immediately started testing my body’s reaction by mixing the thin air with the local cerveza (beer) and found it to be the perfect sleep tonic. On my way to bed, I stopped by Grove’s room to see him organizing a massive array of toiletries, medicine, and vitamins. From Melatonin to Pepto Bismal, the one thing Grove learned in all of his years of travel was to be prepared. "Do you have anything in there for hypochondria?" I asked him. "You don’t really care how much of the film is in focus do you?" he replied. I headed for bed.

A day later we arrive at 6 am on a mountain road to start filming. The scene is supposed to be a simple shot of a limousine carrying the Chilean ambassador up to a resort for a party. The Andes are spectacular. We watch the sun rise over them. This is starting to look like a great idea. Grove muses that the morning light is perfect, and if we can get shooting within the next hour, the footage will be gorgeous. It’s 9 am, the best crew in all of Chile has not arrived yet, the gorgeous morning light is going bye-bye and we have a long day ahead of us. Worse, there is no coffee. I don’t mean on the set, I mean in the entire country. All I could ever get was weak Nescafe. I tried getting an explanation why they didn’t have coffee but all they would say was: "We don’t trust the Colombians." Grove muses that he never could get a straight answer on what camera the crew was going to bring. He also suggests that I use his sunblock and chapstick. By 9:30 one small box truck pulls up and parks in front of us, the camera car. A man gets out, the camera assistant, he proudly opens the back of the truck which is completely empty except for one case. The camera! It is an Aaton, just fine for what we need. Screw it, we’ve got film, and maybe Alex will show up with the lime. "Let’s set up." I say.

By 10 am more trucks begin to arrive and crew-looking guys get out and stand around. Normally I would be very happy about this, but Alex, who was supposed to be our translator, has not yet arrived and my Spanish is limited to: "Uno mas cerveza, por favor". Slowly we communicate through hand signals and a small Berlitz dictionary and begin to get ready. Finally Alex arrives, with a Mercedes instead of a lime. He explains that the lime wouldn’t make it through the switchbacks up the mountain. "Where are the actors’ doubles?" I ask. "Doubles?" questioned Alex. This was the beginning of a very annoying little game we played. I would ask for something that we had agreed upon by fax, but when I arrived and asked where it was, Alex looked at me blankly. "Screw it, Grove, shoot this baby as wide as you can, let’s go." I lie to myself that we should be showing off the beautiful Andes in the shot anyway. We get the car in position, but there is an argument around the camera. Grove strolls up to me with the news, "They forgot the screw." "What screw?" "The screw that holds the camera on the tripod." "You’re kidding! This is supposed to be the best crew in all of Chile! " Grove glanced back at the crew. "Chile’s not that big, Dave"

Finally, we get the car into position around a corner in front of us. I call for action, but the car doesn’t come. No one ever charged the batteries in the walkie-talkies that we are using. We have to send another car to get the Mercedes. I look off to the sky. The beautiful early morning light is completely gone by now.

By noon we finally get the shot and everyone applauds at the great spirit of international cooperation that allowed us to spend half a day shooting a wide shot of a Mercedes driving by in lousy light with the camera duct-taped to the tripod.

We arrive at the resort by IPM and begin to set up a scene where the ambassador is hustled out of the resort by his security force. "OK, Alex, bring in the security guards. "Security Guards?" Ski instructors from the resort are recruited and filming resumes until take four when the instructors decide that moviemaking with us is too boring and repetitive. They figure we must not be doing it right so they leave. That’s OK, the rest of the shots involve mostly Don anyway. Don seems to be the one thing that is working out better than expected here. Even in the thin atmosphere, he runs, he jumps, he does his own stunts, and he looks really cool. Every time a stunt comes up, Don offers to do it, then five minutes later, his wife approaches me and asks "Don’t we have stuntmen for this?" "Yes" I reply "we have the best stuntmen in all of Chile. They’re relaxing in the ski lodge sipping Nescafe. there is an argument around the camera. Grove strolls up to me with the news, "They forgot the screw." "What screw?" "The screw that holds the camera on the tripod." "You’re kidding! This is supposed to be the best crew in all of Chile! " Grove glanced back at the crew. "Chile’s not that big, Dave"

Finally, we get the car into position around a corner in front of us. I call for action, but the car doesn’t come. No one ever charged the batteries in the walkie-talkies that we are using. We have to send another car to get the Mercedes. I look off to the sky. The beautiful early morning light is completely gone by now.

By noon we finally get the shot and everyone applauds at the great spirit of international cooperation that allowed us to spend half a day shooting a wide shot of a Mercedes driving by in lousy light with the camera duct-taped to the tripod.

We arrive at the resort by IPM and begin to set up a scene where the ambassador is hustled out of the resort by his security force. "OK, Alex, bring in the security guards." "Security Guards?" Ski instructors from the resort are recruited and filming resumes until take four when the instructors decide that moviemaking with us is too boring and repetitive. They figure we must not be doing it right so they leave. That’s OK, the rest of the shots involve mostly Don anyway. Don seems to be the one thing that is working out better than expected here. Even in the thin atmosphere, he runs, he jumps, he does his own stunts, and he looks really cool. Every time a stunt comes up, Don offers to do it, then five minutes later, his wife approaches me and asks "Don’t we have stuntmen for this?" "Yes," I reply "we have the best stuntmen in all of Chile. They’re relaxing in the ski lodge sipping Nescafe."

One of our biggest problems with the large Chilean crew is that they seem to have adapted the specialized-task, Hollywood-crew way of working, i.e. a grip won’t touch the camera, and a camera assistant won’t move a light, even an inch. I hate this way of working, and I discourage it on my sets in Vermont, but since I don’t know who does what on this crew, I have to translate my orders three or four times to get anything done. We solve this problem by writing the position of each crew member on large strips of gaffer tape and labeling each of the crew’s jackets.

Around 2PM things start moving along at a pretty fast clip until Alex arrives with the media. Alex had told them that a big Hollywood film crew was filming "Pressure Point" and they bought it. I guess if you’re filming internationally and you are from America, you are "Hollywood". One local TV station even hired a helicopter to get shots of us filming in remote parts of the mountains, ruining numerous takes on us. "What brought you from Hollywood?" they asked. "Earthquakes." "How do you like working with Chilean crews?" I tell them something pithy about how much better Chilean crews are compared to my experience with Hollywood crews. (Ha! No lie, I’ve never worked with a Hollywood crew!) When the news came out days later, I discovered that we we’re working on an HBO movie budgeted at over one million dollars and that Alex was directing. Don’t believe everything you read.

Rodrigo ferries me in one of the snowmobiles to the spot outside the resort where the crew is setting up filming our last shot of the day. The crew is hard to transport to this location, so I’m carrying up the most delicate cargo, lenses for the camera. While scaling one of the steep slopes, the snowmobile sputters and the clutch gives up, sending Rodrigo and I back down the hill backwards at increasing speed until we capsize and slam into a snow bank. The lens case goes flying. I make the world’s deepest faceplate. We are all right but most of the lenses are toast, forcing me to shoot the last shot with a 80mm whether I like it or not. I walk the rest of the way.

When we planned the original sequence, we ended it with a chase through the snow that ends in the fiery destruction of the hero’s snowmobile. In Vermont, we would have just bought a used snowmobile for 100 bucks and set it on fire. To do the same thing in Chile, where there are no old snowmobiles, we had to ship our $100 snowmobile there at a cost of $3,000.

"You are going to love this, David, they want to show you a test, they are the best explosives experts in Chile" Alex hustles me over to a group of men who are surrounded by gas cans and car batteries. They ask me how big I want the explosion. I’m no dummy. "Really big, Hiroshima big!" "No problem", they say. We back far away to where the rest of the crew waits. A small puff of smoke spurts from the ground. The experts look sheepishly in our direction. "What the hell was that?" asks Grove "That," I snicker, "was the work of the best explosives experts in all of Chile. By 5PM we are losing the light, We have only one chance to get the destruction of the snowmobile or it will be too dark to film the scene today, and we must be in Santiago tomorrow. The experts must have heard us mocking them because the explosion they set off shakes the ground, blowing apart our $3100 imported snowmobile in a ball of flame that shot high into the sky. "Cool!" Many tourists at the local resort panic and call police, assuming that the news helicopter has just crashed. "That’s a wrap!" The crew understands this universal signal for quittin’ time and moves faster than they have all day, packing the equipment up and hopping on the snowmobiles. I am beat. "Only six more days to go," quips Grove as he jumps on a departing snowmobile. I seriously consider calling my brother Peter and asking for a position in the family construction business. To top it all off there was an irate Kodak sales representative waiting for me at the inn wanting to know who stole 35 rolls of film.

So now, when people ask me why I stay in Vermont, why I keep returning to it as a location, why don’t I validate my filmmaking by moving somewhere bigger, just smile and tell them stories about how supportive the local community is, which is true. But there are other reasons. .. Know any good stories that could be filmed HERE next summer?