The Prank

The last few years of my production life, I've spent a great deal of time with one celeb-reality family in particular. My first gig with the show and the family was spent wrangling talent, meaning an abundance of time with the cast. Over the years, we've all become one big family. I have countless stories to share, but I thought this one might be worth writing.

One weekend, some time ago, the crew followed one of the male cast members and a group of his friends to Vegas. It was a fun one, but on the last day, as we were filming a scene around the breakfast table in the hotel, our favorite cast member decided it would be hilarious to pull one of the biggest pranks of all time on me in particular.

For starters, let me just tell you, I was working as the Release Coordinator at the time, and spent most of the scene running around getting background folks to sign releases. I tell you this, because, well, it's part of the reason the prank worked so well. I was totally oblivious as to what was about to happen.

As I frantically run after someone to get them to sign a release, I feel my phone vibrate in my pocket. I didn't bother taking it out to look, but then I feel the vibrate again. And again. And then I pull out my phone. In one minute, I've had 11 missed calls and 30 something texts. I attempt to slide open my iphone to unlock it, and then my phone just freezes. The calls and the texts just keep coming in, and they won't stop.

Then I look over, and I see everyone, and I mean EVERYONE on the crew and the cast laughing hysterically and watching me. I'm so confused! The texts that I can see (for about half a second, before the next one comes in) say something like, "Cheer up!" and "It'll get better."

Finally, someone explains what's going on. This favorite cast member of mine decided to post MY phone number on his Twitter with a message saying, "My friend is having a hard day, you should call and text her to make her feel better". (At this current moment in time, the guy has 3.3 MILLION Twitter followers.)

So... when all was said and done, my phone died in about 10 minutes from the non-stop text and phone calls. For a few days, I had to keep my phone plugged in to to the charger to even attempt to use it, and I ended up with hundreds and hundreds of texts and calls. Pictures of people defecating, people yelling at me to get over it because the Tsunami in Japan had just happened, plenty of uplifting messages, just so much crazy! I STILL get them to this day, and that was a couple of years ago. Mark that down as one of the most successful pranks EVER.

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.