When the Force Was With Me

The only job I haven’t been able to get to by public transit was at Skywalker Ranch when I was working for Lucas Arts on a job for National Geographic. I had to carpool all the way up 101 (El Camino Real) to Marin County and then out winding Lucas Valley road to the Ranch. If it had been anything else, I would have passed on the job, but a bunch of my friends were involved and who can say no to working at the Ranch. 

The Main house.

The whole place is beautiful and each building was designed to have a different character. We were working in Brook House, which looked like a residence sitting off by itself near a creek. When you sat on the toilet upstairs and look forward towards the basin, you saw, reflected in the mirror, the grassy hillside high above the valley through a round window above the toilet. There was a carefully crafted view out almost every window. There were also lovely decks outside where you could sit and watch raptors circling or families of quail... 

... scooting around the structure looking for whatever it is quail eat. That is, you could see all this if you could manage to stay awake. It was so lovely and calm that I had an overwhelming desire to stretch out in the sun and go to sleep. In practice, Skywalker Ranch is a terrible place to actually work unless you are over in the Tech Building doing music recording or foley work.

When our little project approached completion, they wanted me to stay 24 hours a day to deal with any bugs that would crop up during testing. So I got to live at the Ranch for several days. There are several buildings set aside for people (usually “talent” like musicians and actors) to live on site as they record at Skywalker Sound. While I was there, Huey Lewis and the News were staying in the next building. I stayed in two different rooms, one had a Shaker motif and was pretty uncomfortable -- I spent most of my free time either hiking around the ranch or in the common living room and kitchen, which I seemed to have all to myself. The other room I think was called “The Country” and was idyllic. I invited all the people I worked with (who didn’t get to stay on site) over for a little party but mostly just to show off how gorgeous it was. Working there was pretty surreal: Once, while hiking, I ran into a bunch of fake Tucker cars junked near the lake they had created to provide water in case of a fire (the ranch has it’s own fire station). After sitting at the table next to Bonnie Raitt and Huey Lewis at lunch, I ran into the entire “News” band playing softball on my way home at the end of the day. My favorite place on the ranch was on the little road between the lake and the Main House. It was a marshy area where the swallows loved to hunt and if you stood still they would swoop around you fast and thick almost like a school of fish.

GTV

I don't know if this will stay up long, but here is the result of this project now on eBay. (If this link doesn't work search for "GTV National Geographic.")