In 1998 we were doing a pharma job in San Diego. Dale Ward recommended Angus to me because, shall we say, the schedule, the venue and the budget were all somewhat challenged?
After Dale got me Angus’ contact number, I rang him up, introduced myself, the client, the venue and the challenges, and trust me here, the challenges were almost insurmountable! Anyhow, fast forward to the day of load in, incidentally, which happened to fall on a Friday, you got it, Friday the 13th to be precise. I remember walking in having only spoken with Angus on the phone, and like so many others, walked in to the venue filled with 50+ people, was able to instantly pick out Angus. I introduce my self to Angus, expecting some sort of warm reply or return, WRONG! what I received was a dissertation on what the right thing to do was as far as having crew beverages on hand at load in. Pretty funny by the way, especially when Angus a few clicks later brought me a hand written pice of paper explaning in clear detail the total estimated lost cost to the show, the budget and especially the time line for NOT having the proper beverages ready on hand throughout the run of show.
Needless to say, the load in, the show, the strike and Angus’ invoice all went well, matter of fact, I need to go look for that invoice as the time being 1998, email was barely being used.
Like many others here, a great and ever-lasting lesson was learned by me that day. As a matter of fact, he taught the lesson so well that on the very next show, shall we say the crew F&B was so over-board, the price was greater than some entire electrics budgets on shows even by todays standards. Oh, and in case you are wondering, yes, Angus was on that show as well and still had some commentary on what could be done better!
Angus, you will be missed, never forgotten nor will those small life (and show) lessons ever be forgotten.
Posted on July 30th, 2008 by sjmccarthy
Filed under: Uncategorized
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