Xochi Blymyer:
My Life as an A.D.

As I finished up "Sommersby" I got a call from Texas. My dad was working on a movie there called "Leap of Faith" (see also here) and the producer, Ralph Singleton, was looking for a 2nd A.D. to work on the 2nd Unit of the show. Instead of heading back home to California I ended up in Amarillo, Texas. My 1st A.D. was John Hockridge and in the 100+ degrees of Groom, Texas we shot around town and fields in our cowboy hats and had a good time. After Amarillo, the company moved to Dallas, Texas to shoot the huge tent scenes with 1000 extras and many, many cast members. I continued to work on the 1st Unit helping to run the cast and extras.

I briefly worked on the 2nd Unit of "Demolition Man". The rumor is that most everybody in Hollywood worked on that show!

Next I was off to Moab, Utah to work with Walter Hill once again on "Geronimo". Josh McLaglen was the 1st A.D. and Doug Raine was the 2nd A.D. This show also introduced me to a 1st A.D., Tom Archuleta. What I remember of this movie is the beautiful locations, the blazing sun, the great cast and crew and our days off being full of adventures!

We were barely able to take a breath when we were off to Boston, Massachusetts, to work on "Blown Away". Jeff Bridges and his dad Lloyd were a pleasure to work with and we got to work in all the hot spots of Boston. We blew up a ship in Boston Harbor that the locals are still talking about to this day!

The next year was my first introduction to Television. Tom Archuleta who had worked as 2nd unit 1st A.D. on Geronimo gave me a call to work on "Melrose Place". This was definitely a whole New World. We did the same kind of work, just much, much faster! And every seven days we started over. I did a few episodes of that show and then a new television show was started called "Models, Inc". I ended up doing a whole season of this show working as both the 2nd 2nd A.D. and 2nd A.D. It was both nice and difficult to have work for 9 months at a time!
 

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