This is the
email that started this whole project. I was emailing my friend Gretchen
McArthur, who is a photographer, about a friend of ours whom she was to do her
headshots. I mentioned that I worked with Annie on February 24, 26 & 27,
2006 on a cover shoot for Vanity Fair as a stand-in for Al Gore. She
asked for details. The following is the original email as I sent it to her:
Dear Gretchen,
So what’s it like to work with Annie Liebovitz?
Pretty damn memorable.
My antennae were up from the minute that I got the call. You said it yourself; she’s a household name, and a brilliant one at that. That, plus the fact that she was the last photographer to snap John & Yoko before he was shot... well, I wasn’t going to miss this one! I mean, how many times do you get to work with an icon? Gail & I packed my bags and I drove to my Mom’s on Long Island. That made it affordable for me to do the shoot & I got to see Mom for the first time since Christmas.
I got to the studio on Jane St. early that Friday. That would turn out to be a good thing, as they were sticklers for being on time, something I found out later. The studio had the set for the cover already set up, a brick wall covered in ivy, moss and leaves covering the ground. Another part of the studio was just plain white walls. Since this was Vanity Fair’s Green Issue, they had three or four “green” vehicles around, including George Clooney’s battery powered Tango. Also set up at various places were computer screens. Turns out that this was to be Annie’s first digital session. There were also tables and vertical metal racks with pictures on them, including the cover shots for the Rolling Stones Black and Blue.
The first thing you notice about Annie is that she’s tall. My height kind of tall, around 6 feet. Her assistant Katherine is also tall. So is her sister Barbara, who was filming a documentary about Annie for American Masters, which will be shown Sept 6th. The three of them standing together looked like the starting backcourt of a WNBA team. It’s always a bit odd at first, seeing a person you’ve only seen on TV or in a magazine acting like a living breathing human being right before your eyes, but once I got used to it, it was pretty much a day at the office. “Good morning everyone!” ”Good morning Mike!”
The first day was spent filling out forms (including wavers for the documentary), chatting with my fellow stand ins and people from Cadillac (they had a green SUV on the set, so I asked them about it and, since they were the people that brought that vehicle to the Super Bowl, I asked them about seeing the game and the Stones), getting fitted for clothes and doing some test pictures, both on the set and in the white area. There were a lot of clothing changes, searching for just the right look. We males had quite a few of those. Our “Julia Roberts” had this dress from Bill Blass that matched the set and the theme, so she stayed consistent. I took the train home to my Mom’s, while “Julia” & “Bobby Kennedy” went off for drinks & making out, according to “Bobby”.
Monday was more of the same. “Julia”, who was coming in from Jersey, was late due to traffic. Annie couldn’t wait, so her assistant/set dresser Mary Howard stood in for the stand in. It was kind of strange to see Mary in Julia’s dress, holding the cover pose, directing how things should be placed on the set. They sent our first Julia home and got a girl from Ford Modeling Agency named Stacy for the afternoon. Lovely person. Speaks fluent French and is an environmental activist. She made some calls to her activist friends after talking to the inventors of the Tango, who were on set that day. Nice guys with a great product. Check it out at http://www.commutercars.com. She’s also one of the shyest people I’ve met. Case In point: we all shared a dressing room in the back where Joe Z had racks of clothes ready for the shoot. Stacy, Joe Z, myself and a couple of dressers are in the back. Now I’m used to having coed dressing rooms, and I know the etiquette pretty well. Stacy wasn’t, and was quite surprised when I nonchalantly passed behind my back her bra, which was on the table in front of me. Anyway, when we went back on the set, a new element was added: a baby for “Julia”. I supposed that they were trying for a Mother Nature kind of vibe. It didn’t work and wasn’t used, but the baby was cute and a nice distraction. To get the child to smile his Mom stood in the back, jingled keys and called his name: “Hi, Thor!” Yes, that was the child’s name, like the god of Thunder in Norse mythology. Very strange.
It was really on Monday that I really got to watch how Annie did things. It reminded me of how I heard Frank Zappa worked, in that she knows what she wants, but allows for happy accidents to occur and incorporates them into the work. If something doesn’t quite happen she doesn’t throw a hissy fit, but she moves on. For instance, she asked the builder of the Tango if one of the back windows could be taken out of it so the four of us could all hang out of the window. Unfortunately, those windows are glued in and cost $10K to replace, being that it isn’t a production car. So the inventor told her “no”. She did ask a couple of times if it could be done, but in the end, she let it go. She also wasn’t afraid to do whatever was needed to get the shot she wanted. I spent some time in a pedal car that had the seat removed while she straddled it, standing on stacks of boxes, snapping away. I must have had to change clothes about 15 times and went through lots of Dippity Doo to give my hair that Al Gore look. She was polite, professional and nice to everyone. We worked up until George & Julia showed up, around 4ish. George is as nice as they say, Julia was shyer than Stacy. No intros were made; in fact, we were supposed to have been out of there already but George & Julia showed up early. We very discretely made our way out of the building.
Tuesday was the last day, but still full of surprises. We started the day on a tugboat in New York Harbor. It was cold, clear and windy. The tug had no back on it, so when we went into reverse a lot of water came up on the deck. I laughed as the water came up into the knee-high boots I was wearing. Annie’s assistants were struggling to keep all of the electrical items off the deck, to keep them from shorting out. Barbara’s film crew had less trouble, but they kept bumping into Annie’s assistants. My worst fears were realized when the side of my face that had Bell’s palsy literally froze up. I couldn’t move it at all. I was really worried that Annie wasn’t going to get what she wanted. She told me that it was OK; that she got what she wanted. Whew! What a relief! Funnily enough, I had Paul Simon’s American Tune going through my head that entire time. Seemed appropriate
with the Statue of Liberty in my line of sight.
Back at the studio, we did a final series of shots on the set. Stacy climbed back into Julia’s dress, which for some reason was being held together on one side of her bodice by a row of safety pins. Sort of like “Bill Blass as done by The Sex Pistols”. They weren’t there the day before. Odd. I had a nicer surprise waiting for me on the computer monitors. Seems that they took the previous night’s shots of George & Julia, put a Vanity Fair logo on it and photo shopped me into it, just to see what it would like. Boy, I wished that I had a copy of that! I did walk away with Annie’s compliments and an autograph on my copy of Rolling Stone (the one with John & Yoko on the cover). She dug me, Vanity Fair was happy with me and Sylvia Fay was happy. I’m surprised that I didn’t fly home, being that I was on Cloud Nine already.
So that’s my Annie Liebovitz stories. I hope that this answered all of your questions. Maybe someday I’ve have my “what was it like to work with Gretchen McArthur” stories to tell. Later.
Peace and Love,
Mike Russo.
Pretty damn memorable.
My antennae were up from the minute that I got the call. You said it yourself; she’s a household name, and a brilliant one at that. That, plus the fact that she was the last photographer to snap John & Yoko before he was shot... well, I wasn’t going to miss this one! I mean, how many times do you get to work with an icon? Gail & I packed my bags and I drove to my Mom’s on Long Island. That made it affordable for me to do the shoot & I got to see Mom for the first time since Christmas.
I got to the studio on Jane St. early that Friday. That would turn out to be a good thing, as they were sticklers for being on time, something I found out later. The studio had the set for the cover already set up, a brick wall covered in ivy, moss and leaves covering the ground. Another part of the studio was just plain white walls. Since this was Vanity Fair’s Green Issue, they had three or four “green” vehicles around, including George Clooney’s battery powered Tango. Also set up at various places were computer screens. Turns out that this was to be Annie’s first digital session. There were also tables and vertical metal racks with pictures on them, including the cover shots for the Rolling Stones Black and Blue.
The first thing you notice about Annie is that she’s tall. My height kind of tall, around 6 feet. Her assistant Katherine is also tall. So is her sister Barbara, who was filming a documentary about Annie for American Masters, which will be shown Sept 6th. The three of them standing together looked like the starting backcourt of a WNBA team. It’s always a bit odd at first, seeing a person you’ve only seen on TV or in a magazine acting like a living breathing human being right before your eyes, but once I got used to it, it was pretty much a day at the office. “Good morning everyone!” ”Good morning Mike!”
The first day was spent filling out forms (including wavers for the documentary), chatting with my fellow stand ins and people from Cadillac (they had a green SUV on the set, so I asked them about it and, since they were the people that brought that vehicle to the Super Bowl, I asked them about seeing the game and the Stones), getting fitted for clothes and doing some test pictures, both on the set and in the white area. There were a lot of clothing changes, searching for just the right look. We males had quite a few of those. Our “Julia Roberts” had this dress from Bill Blass that matched the set and the theme, so she stayed consistent. I took the train home to my Mom’s, while “Julia” & “Bobby Kennedy” went off for drinks & making out, according to “Bobby”.
Monday was more of the same. “Julia”, who was coming in from Jersey, was late due to traffic. Annie couldn’t wait, so her assistant/set dresser Mary Howard stood in for the stand in. It was kind of strange to see Mary in Julia’s dress, holding the cover pose, directing how things should be placed on the set. They sent our first Julia home and got a girl from Ford Modeling Agency named Stacy for the afternoon. Lovely person. Speaks fluent French and is an environmental activist. She made some calls to her activist friends after talking to the inventors of the Tango, who were on set that day. Nice guys with a great product. Check it out at http://www.commutercars.com. She’s also one of the shyest people I’ve met. Case In point: we all shared a dressing room in the back where Joe Z had racks of clothes ready for the shoot. Stacy, Joe Z, myself and a couple of dressers are in the back. Now I’m used to having coed dressing rooms, and I know the etiquette pretty well. Stacy wasn’t, and was quite surprised when I nonchalantly passed behind my back her bra, which was on the table in front of me. Anyway, when we went back on the set, a new element was added: a baby for “Julia”. I supposed that they were trying for a Mother Nature kind of vibe. It didn’t work and wasn’t used, but the baby was cute and a nice distraction. To get the child to smile his Mom stood in the back, jingled keys and called his name: “Hi, Thor!” Yes, that was the child’s name, like the god of Thunder in Norse mythology. Very strange.
It was really on Monday that I really got to watch how Annie did things. It reminded me of how I heard Frank Zappa worked, in that she knows what she wants, but allows for happy accidents to occur and incorporates them into the work. If something doesn’t quite happen she doesn’t throw a hissy fit, but she moves on. For instance, she asked the builder of the Tango if one of the back windows could be taken out of it so the four of us could all hang out of the window. Unfortunately, those windows are glued in and cost $10K to replace, being that it isn’t a production car. So the inventor told her “no”. She did ask a couple of times if it could be done, but in the end, she let it go. She also wasn’t afraid to do whatever was needed to get the shot she wanted. I spent some time in a pedal car that had the seat removed while she straddled it, standing on stacks of boxes, snapping away. I must have had to change clothes about 15 times and went through lots of Dippity Doo to give my hair that Al Gore look. She was polite, professional and nice to everyone. We worked up until George & Julia showed up, around 4ish. George is as nice as they say, Julia was shyer than Stacy. No intros were made; in fact, we were supposed to have been out of there already but George & Julia showed up early. We very discretely made our way out of the building.
Tuesday was the last day, but still full of surprises. We started the day on a tugboat in New York Harbor. It was cold, clear and windy. The tug had no back on it, so when we went into reverse a lot of water came up on the deck. I laughed as the water came up into the knee-high boots I was wearing. Annie’s assistants were struggling to keep all of the electrical items off the deck, to keep them from shorting out. Barbara’s film crew had less trouble, but they kept bumping into Annie’s assistants. My worst fears were realized when the side of my face that had Bell’s palsy literally froze up. I couldn’t move it at all. I was really worried that Annie wasn’t going to get what she wanted. She told me that it was OK; that she got what she wanted. Whew! What a relief! Funnily enough, I had Paul Simon’s American Tune going through my head that entire time. Seemed appropriate
with the Statue of Liberty in my line of sight.
Back at the studio, we did a final series of shots on the set. Stacy climbed back into Julia’s dress, which for some reason was being held together on one side of her bodice by a row of safety pins. Sort of like “Bill Blass as done by The Sex Pistols”. They weren’t there the day before. Odd. I had a nicer surprise waiting for me on the computer monitors. Seems that they took the previous night’s shots of George & Julia, put a Vanity Fair logo on it and photo shopped me into it, just to see what it would like. Boy, I wished that I had a copy of that! I did walk away with Annie’s compliments and an autograph on my copy of Rolling Stone (the one with John & Yoko on the cover). She dug me, Vanity Fair was happy with me and Sylvia Fay was happy. I’m surprised that I didn’t fly home, being that I was on Cloud Nine already.
So that’s my Annie Liebovitz stories. I hope that this answered all of your questions. Maybe someday I’ve have my “what was it like to work with Gretchen McArthur” stories to tell. Later.
Peace and Love,
Mike Russo.
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