About 15 years ago I was working as a production assistant (PA) on the set of FOXFIRE starring such foxes as Angelina Jolie, Jenny Lewis, Hedy Burress and others. It was about 5am in Portland, Oregon and we were about to shoot something on a bridge. As I walked to the catering truck with the amazing First Assistant Director, Mary Ellen Woods, I told her that when I started work as a PA there were no books about how to get your first job in film production. I'd been to look up production in at the public library and all I got was "Mass Production: See Henry Ford."

I told her that it would have been great if someone had written all this production stuff down, all the nuts and bolts. She ordered a breakfast burrito and then looked at me, and in her distinctly clear voice said, "If you don' t do it somebody else will." And then I ordered a breakfast burrito and from that day on I wrote down every single thing I saw on set, how it functioned and who did what to whom. About a year and a half later, somewhere in the middle of shooting DANTE'S PEAK in Wallace, Idaho, while working for the awesome and amazing Gale Anne Hurd,  I finished the book. It was published about a year later. The book is ready for a Revised Edition and will be coming someday soon, hopefully before the Apocalypse, but for now, here's a link to the remaining copies. Kind thanks to Jeff Black, Beth & Joan, Lone Eagle, all the PA's, AD's and Producers that contributed stories and anecdotes. And to Jeff W. and Jeff O.  It's really all their fault.

http://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Entering-Landing-First-Production/dp/0943728916