by Luis Fuerte
We were on Sunset Boulevard, close to the KCET lot, when Huell turned to me and asked if I would like to be the cameraman if the funding went through. I didn’t give it a second thought. I said, “Yeah, I’ll do it.”
That’s how I got hired to be the cameraman on California’s Gold: a show that was still up in the air, really just an idea, but that would go on to become one of the most beloved public television programs in the country.
And it all started with Nita and Charlie.
CALIFORNIA’S GOLD TAKES SHAPE
When I accepted his offer to work on California’s Gold, Huell explained the deal in greater detail. For starters, I’d be working on the show full-time for a year, and he’d pay me directly through his program’s budget. He also said I’d have to ask KCET what it thought about me leaving to work directly for Huell. I said I would, but added that we should wait until he got the series funded. Huell agreed, but I could see he was confident that I’d be talking with management soon.
The big questions filling my mind were about my medical benefits and seniority at the station—protecting my family was my number-one priority. If the funding went through, would KCET give me a one-year leave of absence and allow me to keep my medical benefits? Would the station (and the union) let me keep my seniority? Would KCET and the union go for a deal that would be completely new to them?
I was in the field operations office one day when Huell dropped by. He sat in the chair across the desk from me and leaned forward with a small grin on his face. In a cool voice, he asked if I remembered that I’d have to take a leave of absence from KCET for a year. I said, “Yes, I recall that.” Then he asked if I was ready to do the show we had talked about. It finally hit me: I asked if he had gotten the funding, and he smiled all big and said, “Yes, I got the money from Wells Fargo, and we’re ready to go.” I reached out and shook his hand and congratulated him. I was excited! We were going to do his new show all over California—if I could get it past the chiefs. I told him I’d discuss the deal with management at the station and with the union, and he told me to get it done as soon as I could, because he was ready to get out there and shoot.
A man lesser than Huell may not have been able to pull off getting funding for the show. I don’t remember exactly when, but later I learned that Wells Fargo had made a stipulation in the contract that required Huell to get all thirteen California public broadcasting stations to agree to air it before they’d turned over the money. Huell took on that task on his own, driving up to Eureka and working his way down the state to visit all the PBS stations. At each station, he pitched his idea about doing a series on California and its many wonders, and every single one of them agreed to put the show on the air. He took the agreements to Wells Fargo, and the bank released the funds.
I followed up quickly on my part of the bargain. I talked with my boss, the chief engineer, and he said it was fine with him. KCET’s management liked Huell’s program concept and was enthusiastic about me shooting the program, so they gave the go-ahead for the leave of absence and allowed me to keep my medical benefits and union seniority. I was so relieved that things had gone my way without a hitch.
WE GET TO WORK
It was now the second half of 1990, and Huell and I were ready to start on the first California’s Gold episode. About three weeks after we had finalized the deal, I was on the lot in the engineers’ office when Huell’s secretary called. We exchanged pleasantries and then she said, “Louie, Huell wants you to come and pick up the Ford Explorer and take it in to get it serviced.”
I sat up in my chair and said, “What?”
She repeated what she had said about getting the car serviced. I asked her for the direct number to Huell’s office and hung up.
I called and Huell picked up.
I said, “Huell, what’s this? Your secretary says you want me to take your car to get serviced?”
He said, “Well, Louie, it’s not my car. It’s really our car, the one we’ll be using to drive all over California when we shoot.”
I said, “Huell, I’m sorry but you know that car is not parked in my driveway at my home. You’re going to have to make other arrangements to get the car serviced, because you hired me to do camera, sound, and lighting. If my not servicing your car is an issue, we may have to move on.”
I got the feeling that something was going on at the other end because he didn’t say anything for a while. I remember thinking that he was probably staring at his phone in disbelief, saying to himself, Did Louie actually say that? Did I really hear him say that?
I realized that he actually might call off our deal and fire me before we even rolled the camera on the first shoot.
He broke the silence, saying matter-of-factly, “Okay, I’ll take it in.”
He did, and he never once mentioned our little incident again.
That conversation helped set our boundaries. I think at that point he gained more respect for me as a person and as the show’s cameraman, and I’d always had respect for him. That mutual respect permitted each of us the freedom to contribute the best of our individual talents to the shoots, and I think that’s what made us so successful. I still believe the respect we had for each other allowed Huell to be comfortable and open with me, and in turn that helped our shooting to be seamless and creative.
When we were out shooting, I don’t think he ever worried about how he was going to say something to me or how his words would affect me personally. Typically, when he told me what he wanted in a shot or setup, I felt like he’d left the door open for me to express my opinions. He wanted to know what I thought about how we should get the look he was after. That was respect. I couldn’t have asked for more from Huell.
He could be strong and forceful at times, and I’d seen and heard Huell impose his will on others. I wasn’t going to let him do that to me and affect my work. Knowing the technical end of things well, I had a good idea of what I could bring to the show, and I knew that he was exceptionally good at what he did on the other side of the camera. That was our dividing line, and this mutual respect held up for the twelve years we worked together.
Huell and I began shooting the first California’s Gold in November of 1990, with a projected airdate in January. The schedule gave him more than enough time to edit (and perhaps re-edit) the show after we’d finished shooting. I think it was particularly interesting that the first show featured three segments shot in different parts of the state, which required a lot of travel time, and all three were as different from one another as night and day. I didn’t really see any central theme or focus connecting them.
The first segment of that very first show was a story about a town near Sacramento called Locke, and the Chinese immigrants who settled there in the 1800s. For the second segment, we traveled to a small town just north of San Diego called Vista, where we shot an old-time tractor show. The concluding segment was a piece we shot in Banning, almost a hundred miles east of Los Angeles, that featured Native American songs by the Cahuilla Bird Singers.
I think Huell was influenced by Videolog (the short stories we shot that were shown in between regularly scheduled programs as fillers) when he decided on the organization of the first California’s Gold. The three unrelated segments in that first show—a new series that promised to show the wonders of California and its people—might have stemmed from a lack of confidence that he could hold the audience’s attention with a single story. Or it may have been that he wanted to lead off the series with as many different California subjects as he could reasonably put in the half hour, perhaps to show the sponsor that he was, indeed, presenting California’s diverse wonders. I always regret not asking him about that, because before long, the show settled into the form it was meant to have: a full thirty minutes devoted to one story theme or location.
The second California’s Gold took place in and around San Luis Obispo. We shot at four locations: the mission, a place that claimed to be the world’s first motel, a saloon that had been a former stag
ecoach stop, and the Dunitas, sand dunes on the coast just outside of town. To me, the segments didn’t seem to have a lot in common, except for the fact we had shot them all in and around San Luis Obispo. I felt that Huell was going quickly from one place to another to try to move the show along and keep it interesting.
We shot the third episode, called “Lost Sierra”, in a town called Downieville in the Sierra Nevada. Unlike the first and second episodes, which were purely location based, this one consisted of three segments tied together by the community’s history and isolation.
The fourth California’s Gold had only two segments: the first was about the Los Angeles Watts Towers, and the second took us to the Bay Area, where we shot a segment on San Francisco’s sourdough bread. Huell may have felt that those two subjects were what the cities were famous for, but, personally, I thought if that was the theme of the show, he could have chosen subjects in each city that had something more concrete in common.
Show number five, which aired in May of 1991, was called “LA Adventures,” and we shot it all over Los Angeles. We shot so many different stories that day: an old grapefruit tree in Little Tokyo that was still bearing fruit, the La Brea Tar Pits, the famous arching Encounter Restaurant in the Theme building at LAX, Grand Central Market in downtown, and, finally, the buried bridge on the UCLA campus. Huell drove us all across town, and I shot him covering unrelated subjects that each lasted only a few minutes.
On location for the “Trains” episode.
The sixth show seemed to be the turning point. Huell hit his well-known long form in the show called “Trains,” which we shot at Railfair ’91, located at the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento. Huell got into a groove on the historic trains and was truly wowed by his discoveries. Even through the viewfinder of the camera, I saw that he was genuinely enthusiastic and at ease. He brought out his guests’ love for trains, encouraging them to express their feelings, asking the right questions, and moving the show along. We ended with a train ride in a restored old locomotive through the scenic Mother Lode foothill country. The program flowed beautifully. I still don’t know exactly what did it. Perhaps it was Huell acting like an excited little boy, playing with his trains and getting lost in them. Whatever it was, Huell had finally hit the California’s Gold stride that you all know and love.
The following years, Huell and I shot hundreds of segments that captivated his audiences. Whatever and whomever we shot, Huell’s take on them was always what the shows were about—his wonder and his perspective on people, events, and things. As he learned to relax and take his time with the material, the shows became more compelling. Huell seemed to be having more fun with his guests, and we began to see more of his remarkable gift for getting his guests to open up and tell us the one-of-a-kind stories that were simply amazing.
By then, Huell could do a whole show about a carrot and you wouldn’t change the channel, because he made that root so darn interesting.
From my perspective, Huell wanted only the bare minimum amount of information from his staff—just enough to know what the show was about and what he hoped to get from it. Otherwise, he wanted to learn the rest during interviews so he could make his discoveries on camera. His trademark phrases of, “Oh, wow!” “Golly!” “Oh, my gosh!” and “That’s amaaazing!” followed by a friendly, “Louie, take a look at this!” were genuine, and you heard them more and more as we continued our work together. Yes, it’s true that Huell’s astonishment bar was set pretty low, but I believe his viewers and fans went along with this because they knew he was sincere in his love for his discoveries.
That was the real Huell; it was just a part of his style, and it was entirely genuine. There was a little Gomer Pyle in there, but it worked well for him. I don’t think anyone else could have been as successful with the material as he was, with his small-town talk and inquisitiveness wrapped in a Southern drawl that played so unexpectedly well in big cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco.
If you take a good look at the show and the way it’s structured, you’ll notice that there’s nothing fancy about the style of shooting we developed. The method was straightforward—really, just an extension of what we had done on the Videolog shows, except now Huell had the opportunity to do it in a longer form.
Huell used a couple of specific phrases to describe the look of California’s Gold and the way we shot it. One was, “This ain’t brain surgery.” But his favorite phrase to say about the look of the show and his style of delivery was, “This isn’t rocket science.” I still remember the times I’d be setting up a shot, taking lots of time and probably over-thinking it, when he’d walk up and give me the rocket-science bit. He was usually right, and I learned to love those words of wisdom.
Once he embraced the half-hour California’s Gold format, Huell could really dig into a story, which allowed him to grow as a storyteller. Those short Videologs were confining, and I think their limited length quashed his creativity. We all knew he had a lot more to say.
When he had exceptionally good material (for example, our Golden Gate Bridge shoot), Huell used the half hour to lay out a story with an exciting flow that kept viewers anticipating each new shot and each insightful bit of information.
As the show finally took shape into one thirty-minute story, I realized that the work really wasn’t full-time. I had a lot of down time, because some months we only worked between six to ten days out of thirty. I wanted to keep working to keep my skills sharp, so I talked with Huell about the possibility of working on outside productions when we weren’t shooting California’s Gold. He agreed, but with the stipulation that he’d have first dibs on me when we had a show to shoot.
So during that first year, when I wasn’t shooting California’s Gold, I was staying busy as a freelancer doing all kinds of shows. Heck, I even got hired by KCET for other camera work. In that first year, KCET’s scheduler (who knew my California’s Gold schedule from Huell) put me to work when I was available, so I really never got completely away from the studio and the people I had worked with over the years.
At the end of the first year of filming, Huell and I sat down and talked about the shooting situation for the next year. We agreed that I should go back to KCET full-time, but with the same agreement; that he’d have first call on me when he needed me to do camera on California’s Gold, as well as his other shows.
KCET management loved the show and the impressive ratings it was pulling in, so they went along with our plan and agreed to have me working as a full-time engineer on their productions, then loaning me out to Huell for the many shows he was doing. That deal between Huell, KCET, and me held together for the entire time I was shooting for Huell. The schedulers automatically assigned me to any show that had his name attached as producer. It was a win-win for all of us.
Shooting on the banks of the LA River.
OUR WORKING RELATIONSHIP
Huell and I had an excellent relationship that enabled us to work well together, and a lot of that resulted from the strong mutual trust we had in each other—but it took a little time to develop that in the field.
During our first few shoots, Huell would always end his interview (or whatever he was doing) by coming over to look at the monitor to see if I had gotten what he wanted. It was a cumbersome way to shoot—Huell would have to break to go back and forth, and I’d have to stop and hit replay to show him the images I’d taped.
It was his prerogative to check the tape, as he was both the field producer and the talent, but I couldn’t help but find it irritating—it showed me that he lacked confidence in my ability to get the look he wanted. I had shot with him many times before on Videolog, and he knew my work well, but on the first few California’s Gold shoots, he kept insisting on checking the tapes himself.
Eventually, he realized I knew how to deliver what he wanted to see, and he stopped breaking to come check my footage. Instead he would just smile, maybe nod his head, and purse his lips in satisfaction at what he’d just accomplishe
d, and then we’d move on to the next thing. In fact, once he finally allowed me to be the judge of the quality of the footage, he’d look at me after a take to see if I’d give him the nod that he’d done all right. He’d say, “What do you think, Louie? Did it look okay?” Of course, ninety-nine percent of the time it was right on. The show was his baby, and I was shooting it just as he had envisioned it.
On most shoots in the field, Huell knew what he wanted in a shot pretty much right away—and he was never afraid to tell me what he wanted. I’d check the spot he wanted to stand on, the sound and lighting situation, the background (to see how it would work in the frame), and then I’d set up and shoot. Sometimes, however, he’d have a harder time figuring out what to do, and he’d take some time trying to come up with the shot he wanted. (His line about California’s Gold not being rocket science got thrown out the window like the proverbial baby with the bathwater!) He’d walk around and think, sizing up the options and possibilities. When he couldn’t make up his mind, he’d finally ask my opinion: “How do you think we should shoot this, Louie?”
I’d ask what he was trying to achieve, or what he was looking for in the shot, and after he told me, I’d think about the layout, composition, and how he’d envisioned it, and I’d come up with a shot that I thought would work. Usually, he’d take me up on my idea and we’d shoot it as I saw it. He trusted me because he knew I could get the shot, and because he knew my suggestion was made with his vision in mind. We were there to tell the most interesting and well-shot stories we could, and our collaboration enabled us to do just that.
But every now and then, even after we’d talked about a shot and agreed to a particular plan, Huell didn’t always follow through. He’d be holding a microphone with his guest, or setting up to make a comment about something, and I’d see him hesitate—his face reflecting the wheels turning in his head. I’d think, Uh, oh—you’re thinking about changing the shot. What are you going to do, Huell?