(PICTURE: Tom Ivy on a filming site survey at the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament, in Jerusalem, Israel)

Why Am I Blogging?

WHY AM I BLOGGING?

I'd much prefer to be standing beside a camera calling "Action" or in the director's booth of a giant arena, watching the stage manager call the cues to a big show I've designed... But when I'm NOT doing those things, I'm sometimes privileged to be asked to share some of what I know -- and what I'm still learning -- about this craft, about working with people in the entertainment business, and, more fundamentally about life in general... It's full of surprises, some of them delightful, some of them devastating, all of them capable of making me a better professional, a better friend, a better husband and father. So from time to time I'll share some of these 'lessons from life' with the particular slant of a guy who loves what he does and has learned some lessons (too many of them the hard way) about writing, producing, directing, and about this often-confusing journey called life. I welcome your comments and viewpoints in this conversation...

Tom Ivy

Friday, June 2, 2017

"Having Fun, Making Money!"

No...that's not my life philosophy...but it IS the intriguing sub-title to a new book I recently completed writing with a man whose life story we are telling, Jerry Zeitman, one of Hollywood's behind the scenes legends - the youngest talent agent in the history of television (started at 17!) - friend and confident to a ton of people, all of whom you will know, including his close friend and client of more than four decades, George Burns.  Liz Taylor, Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, Hugh Hefner, Lou Wasserman, the list is endless!  The book is titled  "HOLLYWOOD WONDERKID: The JERRY ZEITMAN Story."   The manuscript is ready for the publishers - a film version may be in the future. 

We've completed writing all of the exhibits and shows for a large new museum in Jerusalem devoted to the history of Christian Zionism, the Friends of Zion World Heritage Center.  Four floors of galleries, working with a cool company called Diskin Pro, Israel's leading exhibit and museum design firm.  Great people who've become terrific friends in the process.   The museum is now open and getting tons of good reviews.  There's a virtual tour on the museum's website.  We'll post more about it on our website:  www.theivycompany.com. as soon as we can stop working at what we do long enough to do it...does that make sense, sort of?

So we've been busy - but this blog is not forgotten - and there's some posts I'm anxious get down in writing....  Look for "The Dangerous Joy of Running".  I'm going to tell the story of some of the places I've run / jogged around the world - like Victoria Falls and around the Roman Colosseum and Vatican City and the Great Wall of China.  I need to confess how I risked getting shot to run up to the President's palace in New Delhi...and tempted fate on the streets of the old city in Jerusalem during Shabbat...  Running through the Forbidden City in Beijing just before dawn when there was NOBODY there - just after seeing "The Last Emperor" - now THAT was cool.  So...I'll get back here soon and see if I can't amuse you, hopefully encourage you, maybe even challenge you with more of my escapades through life as a director and a guy who really does enjoy life!

For now...forgive the absence of this blogger for so long between posts....  Over and out for now...  - Tom

Wednesday, May 24, 2017

"This ISN'T A Day To Be Happy...!"

Monday will be a holiday in the United States, Memorial Day.  My children are planning to go to Disneyland (ANY day's a day to go to the Magic Kingdom!).  My email in-box has been flooded for days with sales promotions  for all sorts of things I don't need.  Department stores at the mall have announced 'extended shopping hours' for my convenience, and the television screen keeps blaring announcements of the fantastic "Memorial Day Sales Event" at my local Toyota or Ford or whatever dealer.  Traditionally our family has celebrated Memorial Day with a big picnic or doing something fun together.  Along the way, we may catch a moment on the news showing the President laying a wreath at the tomb of the unknown soldier at Arlington Cemetery in Washington or find that Google has decorated their masthead with stars and stripes, but otherwise it's not a serious or even patriotic  occasion.

That changed for me while I was in Israel directing "Against All Odds: In Search Of A Miracle".  I lived in Tel Aviv for an entire year without leaving the country, which meant I experienced Israel's Memorial Day for the first time.

The day before the holiday, I was eager to show off to my Jewish friends and neighbors a new Hebrew word I had just learned, "Chag sameach" which loosely translated means "Happy Holiday".  As I returned from the Carmel market on the eve of  Memorial Day and was walking up the stairs to my apartment, I passed a young man in his mid 20's who was my neighbor in the building.  He was just entering his own apartment.  Eagerly, I smiled, called out his name, and greeted him with "Chag sameach", expecting him to reciprocate.  To my surprise, he stopped, looked at me with a troubled  expression on his face at my remark and declared, "This is NOT a day to be happy!"  In that moment I understood what Memorial Day is all about to these people, what it means to every Israeli.  They are keenly aware that their freedom, their very life, is owed to the men and women who have given the ultimate sacrifice for their country, and they are passionate about it.   I was both humbled and frankly, as I thought of my own behavior and that of my countrymen in America on OUR Memorial Day, ashamed, that most of us have lost, if we ever had it, our sense of what this day represents.

On the eve of Memorial Day in Israel at precisely ten o'clock, a siren is sounded for one minute throughout the entire country.  Wherever people are, no matter what they are doing, they stop.  Cashiers stop ringing up sales.  Waiters stop serving tables.  Office workers push back from their computers or put down their phones.  On the streets pedestrians stop walking, conversation ceases.    Every car, truck, bus, motorcycle, taxi, everyone stops wherever they are, even on the crowded freeways.  People get out of their vehicles and stand in silent reflection.  For one minute this continues in every corner of Israel.   The emotional power of this moment is palpable, even to a casual visitor.

On the day itself, by law no business occurs in Israel, no stores are open, no grocery stores or kiosks or gas stations or restaurants, nothing.  There are no trains, no buses, no taxis -- the streets are peacefully quiet...the nation has made this day truly one of remembrance.  

I have now experienced several Memorial Days in Israel, each time moved by the experience and more deeply appreciative of the sacrifice this day represents, impressed by the honor bestowed by a grateful nation on those who have given their last full measure of devotion to the cause of freedom.  I have come away from those experiences determined to never again take our Memorial Day for granted.  I've committed myself to making sure I find someone who has served our Armed Forces in the past or presently does so, and to make sure I thank them for their service that makes my life and freedom possible.

I refuse to condemn my kids for wanting to go to Disneyland or my family for wanting to have a picnic.  We can still do those things if we take the time to remember that the REASON we can enjoy this day together is because of what others have done.   As for the sales and the shopping, I have personally chosen to boycott all sales events on Memorial Day.  Maybe if enough of us stay away, they'll decide it isn't worth it and close, allowing more of us to take this day to honor our servicemen and to commemorate their sacrifice by being with those we love and cherish.   This ISN'T a happy day in a frivolous sense....but it IS a day to celebrate and to honor courage and devotion to America by those whose sacrifice has made my life of freedom a 'happy day' indeed.  

Friday, February 17, 2017

"It's Base Out, Stupid!"

This is a story out of the memory archives of embarrassing lessons learned...

Something was VERY wrong!  The images moving through the Moviola viewfinder all bore a strange halo around every light fixture.  The lab really screwed up, but how?

Rewind...

The 16mm film dailies being screened by yours truly in the middle of the night in the USC Film School Editing Room was footage from the first night of shooting on what USC grads will know as a 310 two-man film project  (a required production course for film majors in the School of Cinema/TV at the University of Southern California).  During the semester you pair up with another student and one of you directs and edits while your partner runs camera and does sound design.  Then you switch.   My 310 partner was a fantastically creative guy named Jim Barr.   Since we had no budget for graphics or process shots, Jimmy came up with the idea of putting our main titles on slides.  He set up a screen and two slide projectors (do they still even MAKE slide projectors?) with a dissolve unit on the floor of his tiny apartment in Hollywood.  We filmed the screen with a locked off camera. It looked on film like we had spent a ton of money to create a major title sequence at the lab.  Brilliant!   That was Jimmy...

I, on the other hand, have never been known as mechanically inclined - unless pounding a hammer will fix it. (Just ask my wife Gloria and my kids...It's true!)  My son David on the other hand can fix ANYTHING and seems to enjoy tinkering with the insides of almost anything.  My dad was a finish carpenter and loved making stuff with his hands.  That gene skipped my generation...  A demonstration of this truth is about to be told  (the title of this blog should be a hint!)

So, I had to pick a topic for my film project.  At the time, besides going to school I was also working as a young TV director for an ad agency whose offices were directly across the street (to the east) of the famous Graumann's Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard.  (Since then, the building I was in has been torn down and replaced with a shopping complex and the Academy Award Theater where the Oscars are handed out each year.)  In those days there was only an open parking lot between my office window and the theater.

The side of the theater facing my office was a solid brick wall, maybe 50 feet high and half again as wide.  Every few weeks I would see a team of billboard painters hang their rigging on the side of the theater and begin a familiar process of 'painting' a billboard poster on the brick wall... They weren't pasting up photographic sheets.  They were literally painting a poster and doing it so well it 'looked' like a photograph.   The same poster was in the Hollywood Reporter and Daily Variety on my desk.  I was amazed by the artistry of these billboard painters.  But how did they do it?   I decided this would be my film.

The billboard (like thousands of others across America) had the name "Foster & Kleiser" underneath.  I called them up and arranged to meet a Mr. Hank Seidel, one of their managers.  He and his staff got totally on board our project.   At F&K, billboard art is not only a business, it's a passion for a dying art form.  They even started a school to train young artists how to paint these giant images that we see but for a fleeting moment as we pass them on the freeway.   Considering the work involved, it is no wonder most billboards today are either photographic sheets or increasingly, LED digital video displays.

I needed something that I could show at every stage of the process without taking days to film.  Turned out, the only multi-billboard campaign running through the shop was a Salem cigarette campaign.  In deference to my mom who would never have approved what she would have seen as a 'glorification of smoking' (she never knew about my pipe smoking days in college!) I said, "Great, when can we start?!"

Visually, the campaign was a head and shoulders colorful painting of a good looking smiling guy.  He wasn't even holding a cigarette.  The artwork was beautiful.  The first day's shoot began in the art department at F&K with an original portrait being painted from a photograph of the model's head.  When I saw the artwork being created, I knew I had my title.  I would call the film "Portrait".   We ended the first night of shooting with the art director walking through the dark and cavernous paint barn where roadside versions of the billboard were being painted onto wood panels that would be hoisted along the freeway in a few days.   We then filmed my little Volvo (supposedly with the art director driving it) as he passes one of these giant billboards on fashionable Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills late at night.


The next morning I turned our film into the USC film lab. When we got the footage back and screened it, I knew we were in big trouble!   (There's probably stronger words to describe our reaction, but I have since dropped them from my vocabulary - something to do with being a dad, I think!)

 Before proceeding you need to know how the USC film school controls film (at least in those days).
 Each student was issued a precise amount of film stock  for their 310 project (1,600 ft as I recall).  To insure honesty, the film stock used could ONLY come from the USC lab and could only be processed by the USC lab.  The stock was engraved with edge numbers which were registered and compared at each stage of the project - including an examination of the final film.  The 400 ft roll of film we shot that first night amounted to 1/4th of our film stock. 

 So when we saw the film dailies with these weird halos around every light fixture in the frame, we complained to our faculty adviser.  How could the lab have screwed this up so badly?!  The workprint was inspected.  The negative was checked.  That's when the hard, cold, embarrassing truth came out.  The film stock had been loaded into the magazine (in all fairness something that is done by FEELING inside a lightproof camera changing bag) with the base out.   Simply put, 'base out' meant the film images had to pass through the plastic celluloid backing before being captured by the silver halide particles that make up the 'photographic emulsion'.   The base functioned as an unwelcome light diffusion, slightly softening the focus of everything  - but creating a halo around every light. I had just screwed up one fourth of our film stock - on the first day of filming! How much more stupid could I be?

Apparently, not much!  The Cinema School faculty had a big meeting to discuss the "Ivy" problem.  After much debate it was decided to take pity on this poor schmuk (my term, not theirs) of a filmmaker.  Totally against the standing school policy, they issued me and my partner a replacement 400 ft. roll of film.   To my surprise, they didn't make us return the 'defective' footage.  What we did with our mess was up to us!

We finish the shoot. I start to edit.  In those days, the USC School of Cinema was housed in a white clapboard building complex that had one time been the faculty horse stables and carriage barn (a few generations before I arrived on the scene!)  When I was there film students still shot their projects using real film cameras and real film stock.  Editing was done on workhorse Moviolas (the same way they'd been edited since the machines were invented in 1924 and Douglas Fairbanks bought the first one!)   The 'editing room' at SC was a giant open-air space with about 30 of these noisome machines that clacked and clattered 24/7 in eight hour shifts as cigarette smoke wafted in through the open windows (no air conditioning - are you kidding?!!) from the now legendary courtyard and its single tree, the eventual demise of which was probably due to smoke inhalation all those years!

Parked next to each Moviola was a student's 'Trim Bin", another editing essential of a generation ago that thankfully went the way of the Moviolas.  Trim Bins have been known to elicit streams of unmentionable expletives from the most pious of students, especially when a two frame "absolutely have to have" trim fell from its hook, landing somewhere among the hundreds of such clips that filled the bag below. 

If you entered film making in the digital age, you don't know what you missed.  I almost did.  By the time my son went to USC, all this was gone.  But when I was there, it was a crazy, wonderful time to be a film student at USC.  I covet for today's students the kind of camaraderie and fun making movies in the middle of the nightly chaos that we all complained about yet thoroughly enjoyed.  Great memories!  While I appreciate the ease with which today I can edit a picture, change my mind and see the finished result instantly (and do that over and over again all day long then send it to London or Tel Aviv for instant screening!)...and despite the ton of other reasons why editing today is so much easier and better, nonetheless... I do miss the physicality, the smell of film stock, the sensoral 'touch' that you can only understand if you've actually held film negative or even workprint in your hands and physically cut it...If you know what a 'hot splicer' is or a 'sound block' or a "Nagra". All gone...and in some crazy ephemeral way, I do miss it all.  (It's the same reason I sometimes to this day still write my first draft scripts with a pen on real paper, then transfer my scribbles to the computer to polish.)   If you don't understand, that's okay!

So one night while I was editing "PORTRAIT", I pulled up a 'scene' from the Trim bin and ran it through the Moviola to check it and set edit marks before inserting it in the film.  But as I started running the scene, I realized I had grabbed the 'wrong' film, the version of the scene that I had shot that first night with the 'base out'...the one with all those strange halos around the lights.  Suddenly I realized how 'artistic' this looked, this 'defective' footage.  I pulled more of the footage from that first night.  "This is great stuff", I said to myself.  When I showed Jimmy, he agreed.  We decided to use it.  The school didn't say we couldn't.

When the day came for screening our films for the entire Cinema school (the most brutal of audiences are film students), we waited for the inevitable.  Almost every film screened before ours had been met with catcalls, hoots, and laughter (not the kind intended by the filmmakers).  When our film ended and the credits began, we expected more of the same.  Instead, the audience began to applaud and when the lights came up, they looked back at us and cheered!   Jim and I both got an "A" for the class.  His 310 film (I loaded the film magazine correctly for his project!) was a deeply moving drama about a young woman and her dying mother.  Of course, part of what made it beautiful was the casting of my young wife Gloria as a star in the film.  What can I say?  Jimmy had a good eye for talent - and for good looks, too!

Unbeknown to us,  a few weeks later the University submitted "PORTRAIT" to the national student film competition of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences  (the same folks that give out the Oscars).  "PORTRAIT" won second place in the national competition.  Some felt that had we been allowed to shoot in color it would have placed first.  But still, not bad!  Perhaps more gratifying on another level, the folks at Foster & Kleiser liked it so much they ordered 30 prints to send to all their regional offices across the country.

My 'base-out' film loading mistake reminded me that everything we do - even the small things - have consequences.  It also taught me that sometimes what seem to be disasters are actually a road to something beautiful.  I'm told that J.C. Penny, the great entrepreneur who founded the company that bears his name, experienced 12 bankruptcies in assorted business ventures before he came up with the idea for his successful department store.  Penny once observed that 'one cannot learn how to live with success until one has learned how to cope with failure'.   Sometimes our failures provide the necessary ingredients of our success.

"PORTRAIT" may have been a fine short film without my stupid mistake.  But the resulting mystical, almost ethereal quality those images achieved BECAUSE of my mistake, made it undoubtedly a greater artistic achievement.

So the next time you screw up big time (we all do sooner or later) take heart!  It may be an indication of great things ahead.  (But now that you know better, just don't ever load the base out, okay stupid?!!!)


Friday, January 6, 2017

"Friends are NOT Forever..."

Recently, I've been co-writing the memoirs of a prominent Hollywood executive whose circle of friendships over the decades reads like a 'who's who' of the motion picture and television elite.  I'm having a blast sitting with him hour after hour as he regales me with his personal stories of Hollywood's legends.  There's only one shadow over all these fantastic memories.  My friend is 84 years old.  Almost everyone he has known in the most intimate of friendships is gone.  He has his memories and they are a rich source of his satisfaction in life now, true!  But he can't pick up the phone and talk to them or take them to lunch or join them on the tennis court or on the golf course.  They can't plan a night at the theater or get together for dinner and cigars (as he did with George Burns every Thursday night for over forty years!)   Every day that we work on the book together, I'm reminded of a powerful truth....Friends do not last forever!

We never know how long we have with our friends.  For my co-author, most of his friends lived long and fruitful lives, leaving behind a lifetime legacy.

But I am reminded of a personal experience that was different.

I was a senior in college and directing my first television series, a weekly inspirational program called "Right Now" on the local ABC affiliate in Tulsa.  Always on the lookout for talent, I invited a fellow student who was both a good friend and a brilliant classical pianist by the name of Todd Reaves to be on the show.  Todd's incredible talent, coupled with his dashing good looks, made him a fantastic performer.  We produced the 'live to tape' program on a Thursday night, as I recall. We finished the shoot and Todd hurried back to campus to study for an exam the next day. I took my two man stage crew, consisting of my present and past roommates at the time, Ken Smith and Phil Stetson, to dinner at the local Howard Johnsons.  (An aside:  I had to convince the producers to pay for my friends' dinner since they would have missed the dinner hour on campus.  The Howard Johnson's late night special was all we could afford on what we were given to eat on...but no one complained!)   Anyway, we had dinner and return to campus.  There was a note waiting for me.  My friend Todd never made it back to the university that night.  He was only a block away from campus when his motorcycle was struck broadside by a motorist running a light.  Todd was killed instantly.  The program we had videotaped a few hours before became a memorial to a brilliant young talent and a dear friend whose life was cut short at 21.  We never said goodbye!

One night my wife and I were at home going about a normal event-less evening, when the front door opened and our teenage son David stumbled into the entry hall, a trail of blood following him into the house.  His motorcycle had clipped the rear view mirror of a passing car on the freeway.  At 60 miles an hour, my son lost control of his bike and went tumbling across five lanes of speeding traffic.  That he survived was incredible.  That he walked in the door on his own two legs was nothing short of a miracle.   Some 'mom nursing' and David was soon back to normal...still amazing when I think about it!  It strengthened David's faith that God had an unfinished purpose for his life.  He should have been killed or maimed for life!   That incident reminded me how we never know from one moment to the next when we'll never see someone we care about again.   What if I had not told my son that day that I loved him?  What if a parting harsh word had been the last thing he heard from his dad this side of eternity?  Thankfully I will never know!  But the outcome of that night could have been much different.

I have one memory that IS a regret...an avoidable one.  I share it because it may help you to be a better friend to someone sometime.

One of my dearest friends in Hollywood was Romain Johnston,  three time Emmy-winning scenic designer for scores of award-winning television specials and national events.  His work was incredible and he was a beautiful and generous person as well.  Many years my senior, Romain and I shared a creative chemistry that grew into a deep friendship.  Romain designed the sets for some of my best television shows.

One year, Romain designed a Billy Graham Christmas special that we filmed at the Air Force Academy and on locations around Pikes Peak in Colorado.  Romain brought along an exquisite set of  very large nativity figurines that he personally owned to use on the set.  I commented how beautiful they were.   A few weeks later back in LA, Romain showed up at my office one afternoon with a large box.  In it was his nativity figurine collection which he insisted on giving me, despite my protests.  That was my friend Romain.  I think of him every year when I put up that Nativity scene in our home.

Some time later, I had a big television project coming up.  Romain had committed to design the sets.  One day he called me and, uncharacteristically,  asked me to give the show to someone else!   Then he apologized. His doctors had diagnosed a condition (he wouldn't tell me what) that would prevent his working on any stressful big project like mine for the next several months.  True to Romain's attention to follow-through, he'd already called a good friend who could take his place and arranged for us to meet.

Several weeks went by.  Then one afternoon that I shall never forget, I'm on the Hollywood freeway, driving back to my office.  I'm nearing the Cahuenga exit, near where Romain lives in the Hollywood Hills.  I think of getting off the freeway and driving up to see him in his studio.  I knew he'd be there.  He was always in his studio this time of the day if he wasn't on a shoot and these days I knew he would be home.  I entertained the thought, then decided I should get on back to the office.  I'd go see my friend on another day when I had more time...maybe next week.  I passed the exit and kept driving.

Of course, next week there were other obligations and responsibilities and distractions, and the week after, and the week after that.  Several weeks went by.  Then one afternoon the phone rang.  It was  Romain's wife calling.  He had passed away.  I hadn't even heard the news.  She was closing up his studio and knew I would want the drawings and models of the sets Romain had done for me over the years.  My mind raced back to that moment weeks earlier when I had passed up the opportunity to go see my friend, at a time he probably needed to see his friends, but would never have asked.  That also was Romain, not too proud, just too considerate of others to be a 'bother'.   I never had the chance to tell Romain one last time how much he meant to me, how much our friendship had enriched my life and my work, to give him a hug, to say 'goodbye'.  I live with that regret.

I have since determined that whenever a name or the face of a friend comes to mind, not to miss the chance to pick up the phone or write an email or just go see them.  It may be a prompting from God that I need to make sure my friend knows I still care, that I want to be there for them, that if they're going through anything, I'll be praying for them.  And if nothing is going on in their life, at least they will still know I value our friendship, and that's important, too!  I've said this elsewhere, and it's worth oft repeating: At the end of the day our friends and our families are the most important things we have this side of eternity.  Treasure them, nurture your relationships with them, never take even one of them for granted.  They won't always be there...Friends are NOT forever!