Xochi Blymyer:
My Life as an A.D.

The summer after Time Cop 2, I had to have surgery on my knee…injury from falling half into the sewer set on The X-Files! Once I was back on my feet, literally, I worked here and there a day or week at a time on a variety of shows. I helped out on the features The Girl Next Door, Van Helsing and others.

I was hired to work on the 2nd Unit of Johnson Family Vacation. We were assigned to shoot all the background plate shots for the movie. I traveled to Sedona, Arizona, a place I had only heard about. It was just as beautiful as the pictures you see. I ended up on a mini shooting unit and we went to the edge of the Grand Canyon for one shot, we headed down an Arizona Highway to shoot cacti. It was one beautiful location after another. Very cool!

My next adventure was Reno 911! This was a new television show for Comedy Central. The show is a spoof on "Cops". All of the actors are comedians and very funny and silly. All the dialogue was made up while shooting and it was hard for the people behind the camera to not laugh out loud and ruin the sound!

After Reno 911! I was hired as the Key 2nd AD on Without A Trace. Back to the FBI. It was an interesting show about finding missing people or finding out why they went missing. We worked at Warner Bros. and all around town depending on the episode.

A friend of mine was asked to work on a very, very low budget movie, Comedy Hell. It was a horror movie. I was "hired" as the UPM/Line Producer which was a new position for me. I learned a lot on the show and learned how nice it is to work on shows that have a much bigger budget.

I took the late summer off and then returned to work on American Dreams, a show I had watched the last two seasons and now I was working on it. It's a show about a family in the 1960's and the issues that people dealt with back at that time. Every episode we shot American Bandstand, and had some great musicians performing as the great musicians of the 60's. Unfortunately, the show was cancelled. It was a lot of fun working with all the fashions and cars and props from the 60's…fun for me to see, challenging for those departments that had to make it all happen but it was well worth it.

My friend John Hockridge gave me a call for a couple days on The Longest Yard additional photography. I had a very rough day on the golf course, having lunch at the country club, the director flew in from Los Angeles on the camera helicopter, we did one shot and my day was complete. Thanks for the "work" John!

Pilot season came along and I worked on a pilot called Second Chance. It was about a fertility clinic and the husband and wife that ran the clinic. It didn't get picked up to make into a television show but there was a lot of competition for new shows. My friend Nina Jack was the 1st AD and we enjoyed working together.

I worked on a movie called Material Girls. It was produced by Madonna's company, Maverick Films. It starred Hilary and Haylie Duff as two snobby "celebutantes" who due to a variety of mishaps become poor and solve the mystery of what happened to them, becoming better people in the end. And they lived happily ever after. I met some great people on the crew, a lot of folks who had worked with my mom and dad long ago. We shot all around Los Angeles in some of those places you wouldn't normally find yourself visiting!

Being a member of the Director's Guild of America, I have attended the DGA Awards Dinner that is held once a year. It's a black tie event and we honor the Directors and their Assistant Director teams. It's a fun time to dress up and hang out with friends, see and be seen. Carl Reiner has been the Master of Ceremonies each year I've gone. Luckily the awards are not televised so he can say whatever he wants. He's very funny!

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