Captain Phil Harris

by Josh Harris

  Thom laughs at the idea that some scenes in Deadliest Catch are staged, an accusation leveled at other reality shows.

  “You think Phil would have ever gone along with that? Never,” said Thom. “There’s no way any of the crab boat crews are directed to do anything. We pride ourselves on the authenticity of our show.

  “A lot of programs at some of the smaller networks simply do not have the budget to make impactful television. If they only have two days to do an entire show, they may have to tell the people in front of the camera, ‘Here’s what you have to say.’ The luxury we have is to be able to shoot four hundred hours for every hour that gets on TV. We have the time to develop authentic stories. You can see the difference between a show that is kind of fake and Deadliest Catch. That’s why Catch wins Emmys.”

  On the crab boats, trying to waver from authenticity for even a few words can be a problem. If an engine starts sputtering loudly, a producer or cameraman may say to a captain, “Could you repeat what you just said?” But the reaction is often “Fuck you, I already said it.”

  “I know, but we didn’t get it,” the producer will insist.

  “That’s your problem, not mine,” the captain will tell him.

  The same might be said when it comes to danger at sea.

  “Nobody mollycoddles our guys,” said Thom. “But that’s not necessary. They have been on those boats for so long, they’re like part of the crew. Everybody is equally at risk.”

  While the focus of Deadliest Catch is the courage, work ethic, and daredevil nature of the fishermen, the same could be said for many of the cameramen who get the shots that captivate viewers. If maneuvering eight-hundred-pound pots along a slippery, gyrating deck into a menacing sea and then pulling them out, often under arctic conditions, is a scary way to make a living, how about the cameraman perched above the fishermen on a crane, hovering over that storm-tossed sea? How crazy is he?

  Like the deckhands they shadow, Deadliest Catch cameramen have not always come home unscathed. Film crew members have suffered broken ribs and arms. Two have been airlifted off crab boats due to dehydration. “We have paid for two sets of new teeth,” said Thom. “In both cases, our people did face-plants on the deck.”

  But that hasn’t stopped them from stretching their limits.

  “Nothing motivates a cameraman more than the possibility of winning an Emmy,” said Thom. “Deadliest Catch has won several for cinematography. There’s real competition over who can get the coolest shot.

  “You are never going to see our cameramen working The Biggest Loser or The Apprentice. These are guys who just love adventure.”

  With more personnel and more cameras, the Deadliest Catch film crew has the whole boat adequately covered. Nothing that happens anywhere on board escapes the eye of the lens.

  “When I was out there the first time,” Thom said, “if a wave came over the ship, by the time you got the camera in place and pressed the record button, that wave was already gone.”

  While most cameramen on board are thinking about how an Emmy would look in their dens, there are a timid few who are more worried about making it back to their dens, their houses, and their families. Filming aboard a crab boat might have seemed like a great adventure when they were standing in Dutch Harbor, but the reality of standing on deck being buffeted by monster waves is quite another thing.

  One cameraman, assigned to the Aleutian Ballad, used the satellite phone to call Jeff at the Original Productions studio in Burbank to complain after the sea became especially ferocious.

  “Listen, man,” the cameraman said, “it’s not worth it for me to be out here for what I’m getting paid.”

  For Deadliest Catch producers, it’s not worth having a cameraman on a crab boat if he doesn’t want to work in rough seas.

  “That’s what makes the show,” said Jeff. “It’s TV gold for us. That’s when we want our cameramen and producers to put off their sleep and film, film, film.”

  Jeff didn’t argue with the disgruntled cameraman because he will never force an employee to put himself in harm’s way.

  “But it really burned me,” he said, “because I always try to discourage people from doing this job before they ever get on a boat. I describe to them how miserable they are going to feel, how frustrated they are going to be because the harsh conditions will prevent them from being able to work as efficiently as they normally do, and how scared they are going to be because they will face danger to a degree they have never experienced before. I assure them that, no matter how much they’re getting paid, they are going to feel like they are getting ripped off.”

  Finally, Jeff tells them, “If you’re not willing to accept the fact that you are choosing to do something that could kill you, then don’t go.”

  Before getting on a crab boat, every producer and cameraman is offered an airline ticket home from Dutch Harbor “with no questions asked,” according to Jeff.

  No one has yet taken him up on that offer.

  “That’s because, until they are out there, they don’t believe it could be that bad,” Jeff said.

  The first sign that a cameraman realizes that it is indeed as bad as he was told and that he wishes he had taken the ticket home is a malfunctioning camera. Not one or two, but all of them. A cameraman will head down into the galley time and again, claiming his equipment isn’t working. After the first few times, the producer realizes it is not the camera, but the cameraman who is breaking down.

  “We had one cameraman who started to freak out after the boat was under way,” said Thom. The cameraman’s angst was increased when the boat caught fire. It returned to port, was repaired, and went out again, with the cameraman still on board. But then, the ship responded to a distress call from another crab boat, the Big Valley, as described earlier. Upon reaching the crisis site, the crew found the boat had sunk and there were bodies floating in the water.

  “That was enough for that cameraman,” Thom said. “He suffered a total meltdown. He announced, ‘I’m done,’ went into the room he was sleeping in, locked the door, and didn’t come out for the remaining five days of the trip except to sneak some meals. The next time anyone saw him was when the boat was back in the harbor.”

  Early seasons or the current season, old equipment or new, it’s never easy being on a crab boat film crew. “It’s like one big cocktail of misery,” said Jeff. “You suffer from sleep deprivation. At best, you get two to three hours in a row. The cold weather makes you constantly tired. Your whole world is moving in ways that you have never experienced before.

  “Even a simple thing like walking down the steep, narrow steps to the galley to get a bottle of water could take fifteen minutes. You start thinking about anything else you might need down there because you certainly don’t want to have to make that trip a second time.

  “All these mental games require so much additional brain energy. When I talked to others in my film crew, I could see they were only operating on about eighty percent of their brainpower because they were so exhausted from just trying to function on the boat.”

  The realization of the effect the voyages were having on film crews caused Thom to order them to start calling in to the studio every twenty-four hours.

  “We wanted to hear the story lines every day,” he said, “what was happening on the boat, because, with the lack of sleep and the exhaustion, they get punch-drunk out there. They start to forget the stories they’re tracking.”

  A reality show like Deadliest Catch costs between $400,000 and $600,000 an hour to produce. Much of that money goes to replacing equipment. Whether it’s the cameras or monitors or the vast network of cable running through the ship, so much of it has to be thrown out at season’s end because of the irreparable damage caused by seawater.

  “We lose at least half a million dollars’ worth of equipment every season,” said Thom. “The minute we expose a camera to the Bering Sea, despite the fact we wrap it in gaffer’s tape and bag it and do so many other things to prot
ect it, we know that, ultimately, it will be fried.”

  Even items like computers can become casualties of the voyage, sent crashing to the floor by a boat-rocking wave.

  Discovery Channel officials have tried to keep the budget relatively stable from season to season, but they have been receptive to paying for added elements when necessary. For example, Thom pushed for chase boats, vessels that would follow the crab boats in order to give the audience a view of the entire ship from the perspective of the sea.

  “That’s a big expense, running extra boats through a whole season,” Thom said, “but I couldn’t just rely on the happenstance of one boat going by another.”

  He also convinced Discovery to add helicopters for aerial views of the fleet.

  “And with all that,” said Thom, “I still haven’t gotten the shot I’ve been looking for through the entire eight seasons the show has been on. I obtained the money to try for that shot twice, but I couldn’t get it. It’s the view of those balls of crab, a million of them, going across the ocean floor. I would love to see that. I’ve had cameras down there, but I still don’t know how those crab travel along the bottom of the sea. Nobody does. Where are they going? Where do they come from?

  “You ask the crab boat captains and they’ll smile and tell you, ‘We don’t know. They just keep showing up.’ ”

  • • •

  Once it was established that crab fishing in the Bering Sea is extremely hard work under terribly dangerous conditions, that sometimes there are tons of crab to be found and sometimes there are none, there was a danger that constant repetition of the same routine, no matter how initially thrilling, would become a ratings killer.

  So how did the producers advance the story? They turned to the people manning the boats and delved into their lives.

  “Catch has always had the backdrop of extraordinary weather and extraordinary circumstances,” said Clark Bunting, “but what has kept it on the air so long are extraordinary characters.”

  “The show went from a series about adventure on the high seas to a soap opera,” said Thom. “I think it was the first soap opera for men. We’ve had the trials and tribulations of several deckhands struggling with drug issues or family issues, the disappearance of the father of Northwestern deckhand Jake Anderson, the pain of deckhands being separated from their families for long periods, the birth of the children of deckhands, and all sorts of other personal matters.

  “We focus on the people willing to risk their lives in order to better their lives, to make more money than they ever dreamed of. That’s really the essence of these shows.”

  Yet while it is the revolving cast of characters that has driven Deadliest Catch in recent years, Thom is amazed by the ongoing appeal of one lingering constant.

  “I can’t believe that, after eight seasons,” he said, “when that crab pot comes up from the ocean, people are still fascinated by what’s in it. How many times in each episode of each season does that pot come into view? Twenty? Yet viewers around the world still lean forward every time, as if they can beat the camera and get the first look. Their brains may tell them they’ve already seen this over and over and over again, but their hearts keep telling them there could be something in there they’ve never seen before.”

  And so, like the fishermen themselves, the viewers keep coming back to gaze into the dark waters of the most dangerous and unpredictable body of water on the planet.

  CHAPTER 12

  A STAR RISES IN THE NORTH

  I’m just a fisherman. Why do people care?

  —Phil

  Something was wrong.

  That was Hugh Gerrard’s first thought on the day in 2005 that he got a call from Phil in Alaska. Hugh rarely heard from him when he was fishing.

  But only a few words into the conversation, Hugh realized this call was about good news.

  “He was so excited,” said Hugh.

  Phil had been selected for a role in a television show on Discovery Channel called Deadliest Catch and he thought it was the coolest thing ever.

  “He told me I had to watch it,” said Hugh.

  When Phil came back home, he invited Hugh to lunch in Seattle. Phil gushed that he couldn’t go anywhere without people asking for his autograph. He said that total strangers wanted to talk to him about “all kinds of wild shit.”

  Hugh could tell Phil was really into it. He loved the idea of becoming a celebrity.

  When Phil and Hugh reached the restaurant, Phil predicted that at least ten people would approach him inside, asking him to sign something or to just give them a minute of his time. Phil sat there, anxiously eating and drinking while constantly turning his head, waiting for his audience to surround him. But not a single soul came up to the table.

  Hugh laughed and laughed, rubbing it in while Phil sat there mystified and embarrassed.

  Ultimately, however, Phil had the best laugh. That was the last public lunch he would enjoy without having to appease his adoring public. He didn’t mind. He ate up the adulation.

  Another close friend, Dan Mittman, got his first taste of Phil’s sudden fame while sitting in an upscale Chicago bar. Dan hadn’t seen Deadliest Catch yet and was getting his first look at the show when it flashed unexpectedly on a few screens in the bar.

  As he watched, fascinated by the idea that a face and voice he’d known so well for so many years was suddenly up there, larger than life, on a big screen two thousand miles from home, he mentioned to a few of those on neighboring stools that he knew Phil, knew him very well. It might seem a bar like this, one catering to a Ferrari clientele, wouldn’t be the kind of place where fishermen in the Bering Sea would make a big splash, but Dan quickly learned such seemingly logical thinking did not apply. As word spread about his personal connection, he was mobbed by people who wanted to know more about the instantly famous crab boat captain Phil Harris.

  “They were really impressed by Phil,” Dan said. “They were telling me, ‘I wouldn’t do that job. That guy is something else.’ ”

  That day in that bar, Dan could see how his friend’s life was about to change.

  “I called Phil,” Dan said, “and told him he was going to be a huge star. Phil had no clue.”

  Or perhaps he was still stung by the failure of those in that Seattle restaurant to recognize him.

  “Naaaah. Fuck no,” he told Dan. “I’m just a fuckin’ fisherman.”

  It got harder and harder for Phil to stick to that line as his role on the show grew.

  In Bothell, when he pulled his motorcycle up to the house of his old friend Joe Duvey, there was an autograph seeker who had somehow sniffed him out.

  Trips to the Tulalip Casino north of Seattle had been outings that Phil and the old Bothell gang had loved to make together, but now they had to share him with his growing legion of fans.

  “I couldn’t believe it,” said Jeff Sheets. “We’d be trying to play cards at the blackjack table and I’d notice people coming up behind us to stand next to Phil while a friend snapped a quick picture.

  “Whenever we’d go out with him after he became famous, we’d see the fans coming after him. It was like watching a school of fish going after bait.”

  “Phil would be at an intersection,” said Mike Crockett, another boyhood friend, “and a car would pull up and the driver would ask him to roll down the window for an autograph. We’d be riding motorcycles, stop for just a few seconds, and fans would surround him. Every time we’d go out on my boat, he’d do two live radio interviews while we were fishing. For him, the celebrity was constant, 24/7. He really enjoyed being recognized, even though he complained about it all the time.”

  Joe Wabey, the captain who gave Phil his first job on a boat, wasn’t surprised that his former deckhand enjoyed becoming a major figure on Deadliest Catch.

  “Phil always wanted to be a rock star,” Joe said.

  “I think, after all those years of fishing, it had become boring to him at times,” said Russ Herriott, Phil’s business manag
er, “but Deadliest Catch made it fun for him again.”

  Phil’s doubts about remaining a crab fisherman, the role that most defined him, had begun to creep in when he reached his mid-forties. He would tell his friend Mike Crockett, “I don’t want to go fishing anymore. I need to find some other way to make some money and be happy.”

  Phil tried to step back from crab fishing in the late ’90s, but he didn’t have a plan for what would come after. He talked about perhaps buying the RV dealership where Mike worked, but that was too foreign to the life he had known for so long.

  “He wasn’t sure what was next,” said Mike, “but he felt he was truly done going north to Alaska.”

  Finally, Phil settled on the idea of buying a gillnetter boat and fishing for salmon off the Washington coast.

  He bought a thirty-seven-footer anchored at Anacortes, seventy-eight miles north of Seattle near the Canadian border. He took his friend Joe Duvey up there, finalized the purchase, and the two of them began the voyage back down to Edmonds, just north of Seattle on Puget Sound.

  It was dark when Phil and Joe headed out. Powered by a diesel motor mounted in its wooden frame, the boat couldn’t go faster than seven knots. As it putt-putt-putted down the coast, Phil decided to spend the time housecleaning. Finding a full set of pots, pans, and dishes, he began tossing them overboard into the dark waters.

  “We don’t need any of this crap,” he said. “We’re not going to be doing any cooking. This is going to be a working boat.”

  All of a sudden, Phil started screaming. Joe figured it was because he had found still more cookware, but it was a lot more serious than that. Phil had discovered a fire radiating from the engine, located under the floorboards in the cabin.

  “When he pulled off those floorboards,” recalled Joe, “there were flames suddenly raging through the whole son-of-a-bitch boat.”

  The gillnetter was a mile offshore, a faint light flickering in the distance, growing ever brighter as the inferno spread.

  “Fuck!” yelled Joe. “We’re gonna die out here!”