Memories from the Set: Hank and Susan Van Apeldoorn Look Back on Showbiz Life

 you were to ask the average person where most American movies and television shows get made, they would likely say Hollywood — and they’d probably be right. But it’s also true that hundreds of popular movies and TV shows have been made not too far from here, in Atlanta, Georgia.

Hank and Susan Van Apeldoorn of Mentone worked for decades in the film industry there. As Susan tells it, “We got into the business in the 1980s just as it was starting to take off. We caught the wave. Atlanta was popular with filmmakers because the cost of labor was much lower there than California. Atlanta could also double for New York if you needed it to, or you could go around the area and find places to fit. If you need a rural location, you can be in the country in 15 minutes.”

They have witnessed enormous growth in the industry since the early days. “Back then, you were like family,” Susan says. “It was a very small community. We had enough people to maybe crew two small movies, which is what we got: the 20-day, Hallmark movie-of-the-week type things. I was president of IATSE (International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees) Local 479 for a time. There were 24 people in the union when it was formed in 1986. I was the sixth president in 1996, and there were almost 300 people by then. Now there’s 7,500.”

Hank adds, “At the beginning, we were working on projects that had as little as $250,000 in the budget to film a 30-minute TV show. At the end of our career, we were working on $300 million features. It takes a while to work your way up to the big stuff. The joke is we spent the first half of our career trying to get a job and the second half trying to get a day off.”

“It’s the best job you can have,” Susan says, “if you like to work 14 hours a day, six days a week.”

Job Variety

Initially, Hank worked as a grip. “A grip is one of the people who is on set all the time,” he explains. “Their responsibilities include using filters and flags as diffusion to direct and modify the light so it looks natural. The grip department is also responsible for everything that pertains to the camera, except for the camera itself. So whenever you see a guy pushing the camera on the dolly, that’s a grip. Sometimes we would do on-set carpentry. Perhaps there is a three-sided living room set and you want to shoot from the left to the right. You take out the left “wild wall” and put it back later. That’s also what grips do.”

Susan worked early on as a production assistant, often on commercials. “As a PA, I did whatever I was told,” she recalls. “I swept the set, I got cookies, I went to the store and bought props, things like that.”

Another of her job descriptions was craft services, which “provides nourishment for the crew while they’re working,” she explains. “Not the meals. That’s catering. Just drinks and snacks. You might be responsible for putting certain things in the actors’ trailers that they requested, whether it’s Cokes or avocados or whatever. If somebody wants something, you have to have it right there. You don’t have time to go to the store and buy it. I knew everybody’s preferences. Often at the end of the day, if someone is uncomfortable because they’re hungry or needs a cup of coffee, they can’t concentrate fully on what they’re doing. If you can get them that sandwich or a cold bottle of water, they’re more alert and can do their job better. That’s the reasoning behind craft service. You’re also responsible for safety issues, like making sure the set is kept clean and that there are trash cans around.”

Susan and Hank both worked a lot of overtime. “We always said that chaos breeds cash,” Hank recalls. “If we were employed on a production where the organization was somewhat lacking, we’d rack up plenty of overtime hours. The uncertainty was certainly stressful, but the large paychecks were welcome. Both Susan and I worked for Clint Eastwood on ‘Trouble with the Curve.’ I had previously worked for him on ‘Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.’ Clint is ultra professional. He knows what he wants. He is soft spoken and he gets the job done in a minimum of takes. Surprisingly, people would say, ‘I don’t like to work for Clint Eastwood.’ Why? No chaos. Hence, very little overtime! It’d be just a regular day. You wouldn’t make near the money that you would working for someone else. On a chaotic production there would be long days, sometimes well after midnight, often in the cold, driving rain or miserable heat when the director was insisting he needed to capture a particular shot. All you really wanted to hear was ‘That’s a wrap!’ but the director is doing take after take, and you just knew it was going to be the very first thing to end up on the cutting room floor.”

When their work on a production ended, they were often unemployed until the next job came along. It might be a couple of weeks, or it might be a month. ”We worried a lot,” says Hank. “We did a lot of stuff to fill in in between. If we got a long stretch and didn’t get employed, I would go out and work on pipeline jobs or deliver auto parts. I was also good friends with a guy who owned a concrete company that specialized in making septic tanks, so I delivered septic tanks to construction jobs in the area.”

One exception to this on-again, off-again work schedule was Susan’s seven-year run (1988-1995) with the TV show “In the Heat of the Night.” She’d work on the show for nine months, then go on hiatus during the summer. To fill in, she’d pursue other productions, hoping to latch onto a commercial or TV movie.

Hank also worked on several series. He was a grip on the “Matlock” pilot in Atlanta and was certain the series would get picked up and be shot in Atlanta. Unfortunatley, the production went to Los Angeles. “I was crestfallen,” he says. After that setback, he switched to the transportation department and worked two seasons on “In the Heat of the Night” and three seasons on “I’ll Fly Away.”

Encountering the Stars

Naturally, Hank and Susan are often asked if they ever met the stars. Hank says when he was driving trucks, he occasionally had interaction with the actors. “Sometimes at lunch I would run into them. There is a certain bond they often have with the crew. The truck driver and the camera operator, the star and the person that’s preparing the food, we’re all doing a job. The hierarchy is suspended. Nobody is really better than anyone else. Interaction with an actor becomes acceptable. The stars are not apprehensive about ‘Is this somebody off the street and what do they want from me?’ You just have normal conversations.”

Susan adds, “Sometimes I would be assigned as an actor driver. When we did ‘Ant-Man,’ I drove a crew van, but occasionally they’d have me run over and pick up Paul Rudd. We’d chat, and he’s a real sweetheart. But like Hank says, with these actors you don’t approach them, you don’t try to cling to them. They’re working. This is a job. If you show them respect, don’t try to get in their space, they’re good, they’ll come to you.”

They say good things about Matt Damon, Reese Witherspoon, Tyler Perry, Queen Latifah, and others, including Carl Weathers (who played Apollo Creed in the Rocky movies). Susan says, “Carl came on ‘In the Heat of the Night’ when Carroll O’Connor had to have emergency heart surgery. They brought him in to replace Carroll during that time. We talked some, I got to know him, and he was just very kind. And I remember on the very last episode of ‘In the Heat of the Night,’ they had Peter Fonda as the guest star. I walked into the production office and the production secretary says, ‘Susan, you’ll never believe who our star is going to be: Peter Fonda!’ And she and I were both going, ‘Oh my God, oh my God, Peter Fonda!’ I called Hank and told him and he said, ‘Ask him about the Captain America bike,’ which is the motorcycle he rode in ‘Easy Rider.’ So I talked to him for about an hour about the Captain America bike.”

Personal Touches

Sometimes bits from their personal lives made it on camera. “Our dog Hamhock appeared on two or three episodes of ‘In the Heat of the Night,’ when they needed a dog,” Susan remembers. Hank points over his shoulder to an old blue truck sitting in the carport. “That thing’s been in a whole ton of movies,” he says. When a director said, “Get me an old beat-up truck,’ that’s usually what they had in mind.” They got paid a flat rate for such contributions. “The truck started out being $100 a day, and then it increased a little. If it was in a show and the show was 24 days long and the truck was in it 12 of those days, it was nice to have that extra money.”

When Susan was doing commercials, if they were doing an office scene for example, she’d “just bring in things off my desk like a wire basket or a stapler and write it down. ‘That’s two bucks a day’ or whatever.”

Susan even appeared on screen once. “In one of the last episodes of ‘In the Heat of the Night,’ there was a scene with an actress who was supposed to be in jail. By accident they had booked a male jailer, so they needed a female. I said, ‘I’ll do it!.’ So they put me in a uniform and did enough makeup to pass. And Charlie, who was the director of photography, a really nice guy, went to great lengths to light me properly. All I did was stand there while Carroll O’Connor talked to the prisoner.”

Do they ever watch the movies they worked on? “Sometimes,” Susan says, “but it can be hard to watch without remembering how they whined about the Cokes because they weren’t cold enough.”

“I’ve watched everything I’ve ever done,” Hank says. “However, once you know how the movie magic is created, it’s very hard to suspend your disbelief.”

“These days we prefer foreign films,” he smiles.

BY JAY S. ROBBINS