The Pig

I was the release coordinator/APOC for a reality tv's aftershow. One of the cast members spent the whole season trying to find a pig to buy as a pet, but never found one. The producers decided it would be a brilliant idea to surprise him with one at the aftershow. I had to escort the pig and her two handlers into a room off the stage to keep her a "surprise". When I finally got the cue from the stage manager to get the pig ready, the pig got nervous and freaked out. It started squealing and making a ton of noise so the stage manager tried to call her on earlier. This made the pig even more nervous, causing her to poop as she walked up to the stage, leaving a trail of pig shit from her room all the way through the studio and the stage. (Did I mention that the stage was a bunch of sand?)

Once they wrapped shooting about 15 minutes later, I escorted the pig and her handlers out of the studio and then rounded up a couple of PAs. Between the three of us, we spent a good half hour cleaning up the pig shit. Later, when I went to watch the episode, the pig didn't even it make the final edit of the show.

Yup.

The Shopping Cart

So, for one of my production jobs, I was given the task of getting a shopping cart for our shoot. To make a VERY long story a little shorter, there is a lot of red tape involved in getting a shopping cart if you want to own one.

After calling a bunch of places to see if we could buy a shopping cart off of them, I was almost ready to give up. We packed up the van to head off to our location, and the producer looks at me and says, "If you see a shopping cart on the side of the road, let me know".

After driving for a while, I see a dirty shopping cart chained to a pole that looked like it belonged to a homeless person. I laughed and said, "What about that one? Haha". The producer told me to stop, and we went over and looked at it. My next job? To get something that could cut the chains.

Before I could even walk to a Home Depot, a homeless man walks up to us and starts shouting and protecting "his" shopping cart, which he mysteriously did not have a key for. We offered him $60 for his shopping cart, which he gladly took. We cut the chain, and put it in the van to bring back to our location.

As a humble PA, I was given the job of cleaning it and making it camera ready. I went out and bought some bleach and gloves. Unfortunately for myself, I had dressed a little nicer that day.

After finding a hose in the streets of NY, I start cleaning out the cart. I pull out newspapers from the late 90's, and as I pull out the last paper, I see a milk carton with a hole in it. Then it hit me that this was the man's toilet.

After about 30 minutes of bleaching, scrubbing and gagging, I brought it upstairs to the producers.

They didn't even use it.

The end.