Frank Gehry & Me

But Really, Shelley Long & Me

The relatively recent death of artist/architect Frank Gehry calls to mind the time I was hired to sketch his Standing Glass Fish sculpture in the Walker Sculpture Garden for a TV movie named When Rabbit Howls starring Shelley Long. (Wikipedia and IMDb list it as Voices Within: The Lives of Truddi Chase. When Rabbit Howls is the book by Truddi Chase it’s based on. Must have been its working title because that’s the title lodged in my memory banks.)

A former producer for the PBS science-for-kids show Newton’s Apple, (a program I was creating graphics and animations for at the time) contacted me to create a sketchbook of drawings Shelley Long’s artist character would hold as a prop in the movie. The former producer took me to meet the director and show my portfolio.

We met him in his hotel room in downtown Minneapolis. I remember him as a tall grey-haired man smoking a cigar and wearing a purple silk dressing gown with a paisley design. This is how I remember him. He may look nothing like I’ve depicted here. He was a talented and accomplished actor and director earning two Emmys and five Directors Guild Awards. He looked at my portfolio and I was hired.

The shoot took place in the winter. They’d wanted snow––like several other movies that chose to film in Minnesota. (The Mighty Ducks comes to mind.) But alas there was none, so when I showed up at the Sculpture Garden to hand over the sketch pad, snow-making machines were spewing the white stuff all around the glass house that housed the big fish. Movie Magic! Exciting! I was offered craft services. Also exciting! So exciting I spilled my coffee, the exciting liquid flying perilously close to the sketch pad. It thankfully missed––hurrah!–– but it was close. I believe this to be the reason my nascent career as a movie prop artist never took off.

I did get to see Shelley Long however. She arrived on set minutes after The Coffee Incident. Like other celebrities I’ve seen in person, she glowed. I don’t know if this is charisma or product, but some celebrities glow. (Meryl Streep is another one.)

I watched the movie months later, eagerly awaiting my drawings and my name in the credits of an actual ABC network program! One of the Big Three! But, somewhat like my extra work in the movie Fargo, my drawings don’t appear, just the sketchpad. And it was the shortest credit roll of all time, so I didn’t show up there either.

And that’s what Frank Gehry means to me.