Another commercial production on the books, and another reminder...
Rambo Van Halen@RamboVanHalen
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Oct 09, 2026
~3 min read
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Another commercial production on the books, and another reminder about why I don't want to do this work anymore.
This should have been an easy shoot. With competent leadership it would have been easy. But unfortunately we had a production team (management) comprised of scatterbrained menopausal women. They couldn't handle the stress and lost their fucking minds.
"Losing their minds" isn't the right term. I've seen this many times over. There's something about extreme stress and cortisol that shuts down higher brain function and puts people into a state of fight or flight.
So instead of relying on their prefrontal cortex and working in a logical and rational way, they reverted to their amygdalae. Now their female lizard brains were running the show.
As such these chicks had no concept of the big picture and were freaking the fuck out over inconsequential details and every minor stimuli became a life or death crisis.
Example:
We're furiously trying to load gear into the location. We had a lot of equipment trucks and only one loading dock. So it takes some planning to get everyone in and unloaded in a particular order so things don't bottleneck and stop the load in.
I'm standing on a street corner next to a public trashcan trying to facilitate traffic. The scatterbrained production manager walks up, points to some blueberries on the sidewalk next to the trashcan, and asks "Why are their blueberries?"
Obviously someone tried to throw away some blueberries and missed the trash. There were no berries at catering, so I knew it wasn't one of our crew. Probably just some random passerby. Whoops and oh well. Simple explanation right?
I didn't tell her all that. I just said "I have no idea." Because trash on the ground wasn't my concern. We had a big job to do and very little time to do it.
But Scatterbrain didn't like that answer. She raised her voice repeated the question "WHY ARE THERE BLUEBERRIES??"
I raise my hands and tell her that I have no fucking clue.
But she didn't listen.
Instead she goes on a rant about blueberries. She starts screaming.
"WHY ARE THERE BLUEBERRIES? SOMEONE COULD STEP ON THEM!"
And then she takes her foot and starts stomping on the blueberries.
"WHO LEFT BLUEBERRIES HERE??"
She's smushing all the berries. WTF man?
Then she stops, and she gets quiet. Then she takes a step towards me--right into my face. But she's short, so she's looking up.
Her face is contorted. She cocked her head and whispered "Why are there blueberries"
And I just fucking walked away. Because at this point in my career I can no longer deal with crazy bitches.
That set the tone for the rest of the day. The bitches would be trippin (yo) and the men of the crew had to ignore them to actually get our jobs done.
We wrapped out 14 hours later. I was fucking exhausted from too many hours on my feet. We had the same bottleneck issue as the load in, but we were getting it done.
I was standing by the same trashcan and looked down at the sidewalk.
Yup. The smushed blueberries were still there.
And I still had no idea where they came from.
This should have been an easy shoot. With competent leadership it would have been easy. But unfortunately we had a production team (management) comprised of scatterbrained menopausal women. They couldn't handle the stress and lost their fucking minds.
"Losing their minds" isn't the right term. I've seen this many times over. There's something about extreme stress and cortisol that shuts down higher brain function and puts people into a state of fight or flight.
So instead of relying on their prefrontal cortex and working in a logical and rational way, they reverted to their amygdalae. Now their female lizard brains were running the show.
As such these chicks had no concept of the big picture and were freaking the fuck out over inconsequential details and every minor stimuli became a life or death crisis.
Example:
We're furiously trying to load gear into the location. We had a lot of equipment trucks and only one loading dock. So it takes some planning to get everyone in and unloaded in a particular order so things don't bottleneck and stop the load in.
I'm standing on a street corner next to a public trashcan trying to facilitate traffic. The scatterbrained production manager walks up, points to some blueberries on the sidewalk next to the trashcan, and asks "Why are their blueberries?"
Obviously someone tried to throw away some blueberries and missed the trash. There were no berries at catering, so I knew it wasn't one of our crew. Probably just some random passerby. Whoops and oh well. Simple explanation right?
I didn't tell her all that. I just said "I have no idea." Because trash on the ground wasn't my concern. We had a big job to do and very little time to do it.
But Scatterbrain didn't like that answer. She raised her voice repeated the question "WHY ARE THERE BLUEBERRIES??"
I raise my hands and tell her that I have no fucking clue.
But she didn't listen.
Instead she goes on a rant about blueberries. She starts screaming.
"WHY ARE THERE BLUEBERRIES? SOMEONE COULD STEP ON THEM!"
And then she takes her foot and starts stomping on the blueberries.
"WHO LEFT BLUEBERRIES HERE??"
She's smushing all the berries. WTF man?
Then she stops, and she gets quiet. Then she takes a step towards me--right into my face. But she's short, so she's looking up.
Her face is contorted. She cocked her head and whispered "Why are there blueberries"
And I just fucking walked away. Because at this point in my career I can no longer deal with crazy bitches.
That set the tone for the rest of the day. The bitches would be trippin (yo) and the men of the crew had to ignore them to actually get our jobs done.
We wrapped out 14 hours later. I was fucking exhausted from too many hours on my feet. We had the same bottleneck issue as the load in, but we were getting it done.
I was standing by the same trashcan and looked down at the sidewalk.
Yup. The smushed blueberries were still there.
And I still had no idea where they came from.
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Anyway, if you like these kinds of stories then please check out my memoir. Now available on audiobook. audible.com/pd/Hollywood-S…
