Episode: Strong Arm of the Law

Strong Arm of the Law

Whoa! I missed the boat getting my behind the scenes memories of Strong Arm in during the actual discussion! Whoops! A week can go by really quickly when the list doesn't go down! In any case, belatedly:

Strong Arm of the Law had as its first day of production Monday, September 18th, 1995. The crew had a 9:30 am call, whereas I had an 8:15am call.

The first scene of the episode reads
EXT TOWN SQUARE/STREET (Ben and Cecil are humiliated)

This episode's director was Mike Binder, who directed AG executive producer Sam Raimi in a very entertaining movie called Indian Summer. Mike has experience as a stand-up comic, and provided us many laughs as he stood behind the camera, periodically puffing on a large cigar.

Another thing about Binder: being a feature film director, he really liked to let the camera roll and roll, not bothering to cut when a take went bad,
giving advice to the actors, etc, all while valuable film was burning through the camera, and valuable sound stock was burning through Richard Van Dyke's recording equipment. He would then send the actors through another complete take or two, running the camera crew (and especially Richard) nuts. Richard would try to warn him of this with a call of "Still rolling!" from his sound cart, trying in vain to get Mike to cut the scene for a fresh new go at it. Richard then applied this to his list of running jokes, and sometimes, long after this episode had aired, Richard would at the most inopportune and incongruous moments yell out "Still rolling!", breaking us up as most of his running gags did.

I enjoyed all four of the actors who played the Stokes gang. Matt Craven (Barrett) was a friend of Binder's, and had appeared in Indian Summer; I
had worked with Richard Edson (Lowell) previously, on Super Mario Bros., and I was very pleased to see that he had calmed down some of his "wild living" since then, making this a much more pleasurable experience; Joseph Lindsey ("Charm School" Earl McKeever) was the least outgoing of the four--pleasant, but quiet; and Jim Gloster (Just Eddie) a very very nice guy that I really enjoyed working with. Jim is a family man who was really looking forward to getting home to his wife and children, and was so totally opposite his role of the dimwitted and thuggish Just Eddie that it was amazing to watch him perform it.

This episode gave the crew another highly enjoyable morning watching Nick Searcy get his clock cleaned by the thugs in lots of coverage and angles.
At no other times did the the crew feel closer to each other than these special moments.

That scene also led to my second on camera contribution to the series.
After Deputy Ben is whomped and humiliated, the thugs are seen sitting on the boarding house porch, laughing and berating Ben. Well, the scene's first line in the script was Earl saying "I hear the Deputy is trading in his gun for a loaf of bread." which is, I think you'll all agree, a pretty
lackluster and silly line. Well, as we were shooting that scene, I was locking up at the end of the block, keeping pedestrians from walking into
our shot. And apparently that line of dialogue was bugging both producer David Eick and director Binder. Well, the next thing I know, someone says
on the walkie talkie "Look out, Craig, David Eick is headed your way." I can't figure out why he's coming all the way down to me, and then he steps
up to me and points to the "trading gun for loaf of bread" line in the script he's holding. "Can you come up with a better line than that?" he asks me out of the blue, perhaps remembering how quickly I had written the copy for the talking museum display in the previous episode. I quickly tossed off a couple of alternate lines, neither very good, and Eick shook his head and walked away. I watched him walk back to the porch, and finally it hit me. I walked down there as quickly as I could, stepped right up on the porch in the midst of everyone and told David I had the perfect line. I delivered my new one, and he and Binder looked at each other and laughed, their eyes lighting up. "That's it!" they both said, and I was thrilled!
So, now the camera comes around on Earl as he says my line "Hey, I hear that deputy is having his groceries delivered from now on!" Huzzah!

This episode marked Gary Cole's birthday (September 20th); and with a late afternoon call of 3:30 we spent the daylight portion of our workday
shooting the funeral scene, then proceeded over to another location where we worked until the wee hours of the morning shooting the finale to the
episode, with Buck and Ben stopping the fleeing Stokes Brothers from escaping Trinity. At our "lunch" (at 9:30 that night) I lured Gary out of
his trailer with some lame thing about one of the producers needing to speak with him, and got him to the catering tent where the crew sang Happy
Birthday and presented him with a birthday cake.

Watching the Stokes Boys' car go up in a ball of flame was a lot of fun that night. But again, ol' Mike Binder kept that camera rolling during one
of the takes, until the gas jets used to simulate the flames really did set the car on fire! Yow! They quickly got the car doused, but not before the
flames had melted some of the broken windshield glass into the pavement of the road! (It's still there--and if you ever visit Wilmington--I'll take
you and show it to you!)

The series made it's network premiere during the production of this episode (Friday, September 22nd, 1995). We were shooting in the hospital set, the emergency room scene where Lowell is brought in when American Gothic appeared on the TV sets of America. We never paused for anything, (though someone did pop a tape into the VCR in production manager Ric Rondell's office to tape the episode) and we CONTINUED shooting until our camera wrap time of 4:26 am (!) By the time the crew finished loading the trucks to go on location
Monday morning, it was 5 am, and the producers tried in vain to trap a few crew members to eat some cold snacks and drink champagne while watching the pilot episode. I think about three people stayed. (I didn't--went home and
fell into bed).

The original title of this episode was going to be Law and Order, which was apparently going to be a running gag for the show (to have an episode titled like another series on the air). It's a Wonderful So-Called Life was the next one with a joke title, but by the time these episodes aired, the joke was killed and the episodes were known as Strong Arm of the Law and Rebirth.

Sam Raimi apparently made mention of a draft of this script with an alligator in it, but as best I can remember, no version of that script made it to us in Wilmington.

It has been mentioned (rightly so) that this episode's finale rips off Mad Max. We of the crew all knew that as soon as we read the script, but we
shrugged and shot it, because it was the ending they gave us to shoot.
Given that connection, I think it is STILL a darkly fun finale for the episode...