This is my favorite assisting story. A friend of mine, Dillon, was assisting Chip Simons in New Mexico. He had been assisting him for a few days a week for one or two months. Chip lives on some land in New Mexico and he had some sheep.
When Dillon arrived at the studio one morning, Chip had killed a sheep for a photo shoot. The sheep was in the studio. He handed Dillon a spoon and said, “I want the eyeball.”
Dillon considered his options.
Dillon left the studio.
Dillon never returned.
Greg has asked me to share a story of my own, and after thinking about being eaten alive by mosquito’s in paradise, flying with heli-skiers up to the Juneau ice fields, stories that should only be told with drunken company or in the boudoir, I decided to tell a story that was relayed to me some years ago by the famed Phillip Dixon.
So as the story goes, he was shooting in a castle in France, where they were also staying for the duration of the shoot. One night, being bored and rowdy, he and his assistant decided to go on a covert mission to find some booze in that place. After searching high and low, they finally found a bottle of what turned out to be real Absynth. The kind of stuff that is illegal in many parts of the world. Not knowing what it was at the time, and not caring, he and his assistant started their quest to polishing off their new treasure. Now for those not in the know, Absynth is supposed to be mixed with water and sugar, and the effects are supposed to be hallucinogenic. At times, it is referred to as the Green Genie. It is also supposed to be consumed moderately, both of which they failed to do. Now somewhere in the middle of the night, drunk as a skunk, Dixon’s assistant starts crying for hours until he has to actually be taken away, the caretakers are mad as hell, and when Phillip wakes up the next day, he quickly realizes that he passed out with his eye open, which is now glued to the pillow case. Now I can’t quite recall what happened after that, and would be taking liberties with the story if I went any further, but I can assure you they were not invited back.
This is just one of the many stories you get to hear or be a part of in this absurd, adventurous career. I also think it goes great with Greg’s eyeball story. All the best to whoever is reading this, and keep it coming Greg.
Jeffrey Dean
John Engström relayed this assisting story:
In Africa I got my leatherman out, and gutted the stork. It smelled worse than the rotting giraffe with the beetles all over it that I got a whiff of in Moscow. We stuffed it with salt, put it in the ground covering it with a piece of plywood so the hyena’s couldn’t dig it up. We had to preserve it- as the model that was going to be holding it wasn’t flying in for one more week.
I’d do it.