The Location Managers Guild International (LMGI) is the largest organization of Location Managers and Location Scouts in the motion picture, television, commercial and print production industries. Their membership plays a vital role in the creativ
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16 • LMGI COMPASS | Summer 2020 over my head but it was the opportunity of a lifetime. Supervising location manager (now producer) Lydia Dean Pilcher came down to Mississippi for the project. I was assigned to drive her over the entire state, scouting locations for the film. Lydia taught me so much about understanding the importance of a location to telling a story. She taught me how to scout. I still marvel at the incredible luck I had in that time to find someone who wanted to teach me and who gave me so much time in doing so. A few years later, Lydia would give me the opportunity to leave the film office and work on my first film, as an assistant location manager on Mississippi Masala. After Mississippi Masala, I made the decision to move to Atlanta. It was the early nineties and the town was on fire with film production. After assisting on Freejack and Alan Pakula's Consenting Adults, I was hired as the location manager for the 2nd unit on RoboCop 3. Again, way in over my head. I learned a lot—mainly that location managing was really hard work and I needed more experience before pursuing another job with that title. So, lucky me, took an interview for a little independent movie called Fried Green Tomatoes. During that time, it was customary for the assistant location manager to come on as the location scout and continue through the film as the ALM. I joined in the early scouting days and was rewarded with my second great teacher, production designer Barbara Ling. Working with Barbara and producer/director Jon Avnet was a wonderful experience for me and a highlight of my career. I knew enough to work hard and contribute but I was green enough to be motivated to always prove to them I could do the job. I learned so much from that experience. I remember the feeling that we were making something special, and that it perhaps was the best movie experience I would ever have. Now decades later, I think I may have been right. By the mid-nineties, Atlanta was caught up with the 1996 Olympics and film production seriously declined. I made the decision to move to Los Angeles. Martin Huberty, who produced Fried Green Tomatoes, offered me a place to stay and I drove out with no job prospect. Shortly after arriving, I contacted Lori Balton/LMGI, whom I had met on Alan Pakula's Consenting Adults, asking if she could help me find work. Well, lucky me again. Lori not only found me a place to live, but she got me a job researching oil rigs in the Gulf Coast for a top-secret Disney film. Eventually, with Lori's help, I got into the Local 399 Hollywood Teamsters union and my research position turned into scouting the oil facilities. I got the experience of a lifetime when I was assigned the offshore oil rig and the NASA facilities at Johnson Space Center in Houston and Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, for the movie Armageddon. Nothing will ever come close Fried Green Tomatoes 1991. L to R: Co-producer Martin Huberty, DP Geoffrey Simpson, LM Maida Morgan. Armageddon 1998. 200 miles off the Louisiana coast in the Gulf of Mexico, Garden Banks Oil Rig.