Pow! Right Between The Eyes! Andy Nulman's Blog About Surprise

What I Learned This Week: Shooting To Sell

Take a look at the picture above.  Incredible, no?

It's Quebec comedian Rachid Badouri playing to a human ocean of over 100,000 raving fans at Just For Laughs' outdoor site last Saturday night.

The photo is astonishing, iconic, tells a story and, most importantly, sells.

It sells an event, sells an emotion.  It will help Just For Laughs: 

• sell to sponsors ("Look how many people we attract!")
• sell to performers ("This adulation can be yours, too!")
• sell to the public ("Fun en masse!")
• even sell to itself ("THIS is why we do it!")

Thing is, this photo almost didn't happen.  Lemme tell you the story of how it did.

We had a perfect storm of magic last Saturday--gorgeous weather, a Pinkarnaval Parade that brought a few thousand more people to an outdoor site already jammed with thousands of fans waiting to see Rachid.  As is my habit, I alternate my watching of shows from "The Room" (in this case, the Place des Festivals site) and backstage, and on my way back, I noticed a young photographer at the side of the stage with the following image filling the screen of his laptop: 

I was knocked out, but told him that while spectacular, the image could've been taken anywhere--Club Soda, the St. Denis Theater, a conference center in Wyoming, you name it! I asked the photographer--a young man named Charles William Pelletier--if he had the chance to take a shot that included the crowd, which to me, was the story.

When he said no, I told him to gather his stuff, and took him with me backstage.

Once there, our timing was impeccable.  Rachid was in the wings, waiting to return to the stage as one of his invited performers was performing a guest set. I asked if he would mind if Charles would take to the stage and shoot from behind (this could freak some performers out...particularly if unexpected).

The answer was a fast yes, and the result sits atop this post.

So, the lesson in a nutshell?  Well, there are two (expand your nutshells!):

1) Consider what you're trying to "sell" when you take a photo...whether it's a major product launch or a mere vacation shot.  Is it the "look at me," the "I was there," the "look at this" or the "you won't believe this"?  Or something else altogether?

2) Change your perspective from time-to-time.  The obvious vantage point may not always be the best one.  

By the way, click on any of the photos here to see 'em in full-screen glory.  And with that, one last look at Charles William's magic Rashid photo, this time in dramatic black-and-white:

What I Learned This Week: Walking John Lennon

So...this is a strange one.  

Last Thursday, on my way to some sort of appointment at Juste pour rire (too many that day to remember precisely which one), I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror.  

My hair was long and unruly; I was wearing mirrored round sunglasses that accentuated the three breaks of my nose (hockey, baseball and a bike accident), and my manner was somewhat less-than-jovial (hey, it's stress season, folks!).  Here, take a look:

My immediate, instant reaction though was uplifting. 

"Hey," I thought, "I kinda look like John Lennon in that famous 'New York City t-shirt' photo!"  Here, take another look:

   

So, buoyed by this resemblance, I happily bopped along to my rendez-vous. Along the way, I was accosted by a woman working one of the Festival's interactive outdoor activities.  Trying to engage my participation, she pointed at me and shouted the following two ego-inflating words:

 

"Hey Ringo!"

 

So, the point here, the lesson?  It's an old one...but an important one, and well worth never forgetting:

It's your public that sets, and owns your public image.

There may be a massive disconnect between what you think you are sending and what's being received.

Or in other words, your walk may be John Lennon, but your talk may be Ringo Starr.

--------------------------

By the way, nothing wrong with Ringo Starr.  Nice guy, fine drummer, sweetheart and a Beatle.  It's just that...come on...I don't really look like this, do I?

What I Learned This Week: Don't Overlook The Obvious

Sometimes the simplest lessons are the toughest.  Or vice versa.  

One of the great--albeit superficial--joys in my life is spending every sunny summer moment I can driving my beloved 1960 Corvette (that's me inside it at left, and above as well, obviously).

Given its age, it's not as reliable as, let's say, my everyday car (a lil' Lexus 250), so what I decided to in October 2010 is swap out the old engine over the winter with a new one to ensure that I don't have to hold my breath every time I turn the ignition key (especially if it's late and I'm some godforsaken place far from home).  

I was referred to a mechanic, a specialist in classic cars, and we agreed on a fee and a delivery date--this April 15th, when I usually bring the car out in wishful thinking of an early summer.

And thus began an adventure--misadventure, actually--that only ended last Monday.

Let's see how I can make this interminable story as brief and painless as possible...

Well, throughout the winter, I received a whole bunch of photos of my car, hoodless, engine-area wrapped in towels as the block was removed.  It looked like my car was undergoing open-heart surgery. At times, I misted up.

In February, after making my second payment, the mechanic started to question whether we buy or re-build, deciding on the latter.  Fine, I said, as long as it's more reliable.  I just wanna drive the damn thing.

Well, a multitude of false turns, false hopes and miscues later, it's May 15th, and I'll I've got is this new picture of my car:

Well, I lost it.

"FORGET IT!," I roared.  "Back to square one!  Just change the goddamn engine!

Not as easy as I would've liked, but a few weeks--WEEKS!--later, we find one, and schedule putting it in.  It's now June.  I've been paying for a phantom parking space for this phantom car since April.  Luckily, the summer weather thus far kinda sucks, which is the only saving grace of me not going completely postal.

I don't get it; what could be so difficult?  This is an engine circa 1960.  Even Fred Flinstone's car, with it's Pterodactyl-driven motor, was more advanced. 

Anyway, finally!, we get the new engine in.  The car's ready!  It's the end of June.

Well, not so fast.  There's a carburetor problem.  Need to find one that fits and doesn't overpower the engine.  But there's a holiday, and it won't be here until next week so...

The second finally!  Wednesday, June 29th, the car is delivered to the garage of my gym.  I pick it up and drive it home.  Ten minutes of heaven!

The next day, I drive it to work.  ten minutes of heaven again!  And that night, after a late-night dinner with my family, on the eve of the Canada Day/July 4th long weekend, I drive my son Aidan home in it.

He remembers the car as it was back in 2010--a little of a rough ride, heavy idling.  We both marvel at how smooth the engine is as we drive it home...

...just before it shudders and conks out dead one block from the garage in my building!

Dead.  Lifeless.  It's throaty roar silenced.

No amount of coaxing, key-turning, battery-boosting or praying could start it up again.  

"Do you have gas?" Aidan asks.  

"Don't be stupid, of course I have gas, damn it!" I snap back.  "Almost a third of a tank!"

Slightly more than 24 hours after getting it back, after the sum total of 25 minutes of driving it, my car is rendered invalid.  Worse yet, despite being a mere 100 metres from my house, Aidan and I couldn't push the car uphill to my garage. Too steep.  And given the three-day weekend, no way I'm leaving it crippled on the side of a downtown street.

So...1:30 a.m., I call an emergency tow truck.  

At first, the driver doesn't want to touch my car; something about classic cars being too fragile and insurance and what have you.  But after enough begging and pleading, he finally loads it onto a massive flatbed, drives a distance that was about three lengths of the truck itself, and tucks it away in my spot. (There's a whole other story about how we actually got it into the tightest spot in my building's garage, but that's another nightmare I'd like to forget.)  I finally get to bed, frustrated, seething and exhausted, after 3:00 a.m.

Anyway, I wait until Monday to call the mechanic, and I guess I did a good job of corking my volcanic rage, because he agreed to hike over to my place while I was at work and take a look at the patient.  

About two hours later, he calls.

"Are you sitting?" he asks.

Not a good sign.

"You won't believe what's wrong with your car..."

Not a good way to start a conversation with me at any point...but especially that Monday.  I told him, simply, to hit me.

"You had no gas."

Seems like there was a problem with the gas gauge.  In retrospect, Aidan was right.

Which brings us to what I learned after all this:

Never dismiss the obvious... no matter how ridiculously obvious it might seem.

Just imagine how much easier my life would've been had I just hiked over to the gas station down the street and picked up a gallon-in-a-can.  Yes, it may not have been the solution...but in this case, it was indeed.

Reminds me of a Just For Laughs story of 2009, when the legendary John Cleese hosted one of our galas.

We were doing three om-stage numbers, each one more complicated than the other.  The show closer involved an on-stage wedding, the middle act was a telethon, but the opener was a simple, little piece we called a "slide show."  In essence, the slide show is a monologue where the jokes pay off via images projected on a giant screen centre-stage.  A technical and logistical no-brainer.

So, cut to the show, and it starts majestically.  Cleese walks out to a raging standing ovation, greets the crowd and launches into the opening number.

It works like a charm.  The first four "slides" pay off with huge laughs...

And then the screen goes dark.

Panic ensues backstage.  Yelling, running, screaming, finger-pointing.  Cleese, abandoned without a life-raft, tries to kill time by dancing a silly jig and speaking in pseudo-intellectual German-esque gibberish.

But to no avail.  This bit is dead.  It has ceased to be.  He introduces the show's first act, and walks off stage into a sea of red faces and mea culpa apologies.

Nobody could figure it out.  Engineers, heads of tech, lighting directors all scratching their heads until intermission time, when Thierry Francis, responsible for projection, climbed his way into the balcony, followed the wire coming from the projector all the way to the theatre's far wall...where he noticed that the plug had inadvertently been pulled from its socket by some clumsy shlub walking by (we think...).

The lesson is an important one, despite these two tales.  Often, when things go wrong, we think the worst and search way too far for the answer.  Equally as often, the answer is something simple, stupid and an easy fix.

Basic medicine works in that manner; doctors go down a checklist, from simple to complex, knocking off possibilities along the way until they make their diagnosis.

We frequently do the same...but problem is, we reverse the order of checklist.

------------------------

(P.S. Thanks to long-time buddy and pop-up photog Matthew Cope for both pix in this post.)

What I Learned This Week: No, Things Weren't Simpler Back Then

I celebrated and shared a fairly impressive milestone with one Peter Frampton on Thursday night.

Thirty-five years ago this very week, at the tender age of 16, I broke into showbiz by writing an article about said Mr. Frampton for a weekly newspaper called The Sunday Express.

I'll try to keep this releatively brief, but here's the story:

I had scored a Saturday job in the paper's sports department starting July of 1976, and since I was way more into rock music than sports, I tried--ultimately, quite successfully--to worm my way into the entertainment section with a collection of what I'll call "large white lies."

Given that Frampton was the hottest act in the world at the time, riding high on the "Frampton Comes Alive" phenomenon, and given that he was playing a show at Montreal's Place des Nations the following week, I asked the paper's entertainment editor if I could write a piece on the golden-tressed guitarist. Well, I actually asked if I could "adapt it," since it was an article that I had ostensibly written earlier that year for my college newspaper, but was unfortunately never published due to a teacher's strike.

Now, truth is that I hadn't yet ever been to college (as I mentioned, I was only 16 and just out of high school), and had never written anything in my life other than the perfunctory school essays.  

But given the ever-so-slim nod yes by a woman named Rosa Harris, I got to work that night, sat for three hours at the kitchen table in my parents' place, stole some quotes from Circus and Creem magazines, and banged out an acceptable piece--my first ever--on my father's noisy portable typewriter, which found its way into the paper with my byline the following Sunday.

That piece opened doors, established me as a rock 'n' roll critic, led to interviews weeks later with '70s staples like Chris de Burgh, Loggins & Messina and Chicago, and in the fall, at the age of 17, enabled me to replace Rosa as Entertainment Editor.  

Crazy, huh?  I still have the piece framed, and look at it every now and then to remind myself of what a long, strange trip it has mos' def been.

So while I was sitting smack-dab centre at Place Des Arts last week, warmly listening to the tunes that engulfed AM (!) radio and an entire generation back in '76 as Frampton re-created them with perhaps even greater energy three-and-a-half decades later, I couldn't help but sighing and thinking that "Things were so much simpler then."

That's what feel-good nostalgiac music does to you.

But stop those touchy-feelies right now.  Like a drug, the music's effect is pleasant, but unreal.  

Fact is, the music perpetuates a myth, one that's kinda harsh, but ultimately settling:

Things are NEVER simpler.

With deeper reflection that night, I thought back to the way things REALLY were back then.  Despite the Cameron Crowe-like position (remember "Almost Famous"?  That really was my life), I was 16 and filled with the usual high-school, "How do I get rid of this acne?" / "Does Bonnie really like me?" / "What if I flunk Chem Study?" teenage angst.  

Five years later, the subjects changed, but not the worry, the pondering, the insecurity.  And 10 years later, and 20, and well...35 years later.

Now I'm not complaining.  Time has treated me well.  Like everyone else (Oh Christ, here comes that music again...), I've had my share of life's ups and downs.  But such is the power of music that it can erase the rough spots and bumps and let the past remind you of what you are not now.  Despite the tender glow of familiar Frampton, THESE are the good old days...not then.

So here's what I learned this week:

It's wonderful to reminisce.  But don't be blinded or lulled into a false sense of time-travel envy because of it.  Time heals all wounds, and time wounds all heels, but it doesn't change the fact that things then were the same as things are now...and vice versa.

People often say to me: "It's so much harder being a teenager today."  No way.  It's hard being a teenager period.  In any era.  Read David Hadju's brilliant "The 10-Cent Plague" for a fascinating look at teendom in the '50s, when comic books were the equivalent of today's Internet.  Or see the musical "Spring Awakening" for the late 19th Century version of teen tumult.

It also ain't easy being a 30-something. Or middle-aged.  Or golden aged.  Or whatever-aged.

It ain't easy. But it ain't that bad either if you just live for the moment and enjoy today.  Or (oy, more music!) don't look back.

And when you celebrate a milestone by revisiting your point of showbiz inception with the same guy who took you there 35 years ago, sit back and enjoy the ride...instead of spending the evening pondering your lesson-of-the-week.