Grammys 2013 Adventure Part 3

Pack your passports, we’re finally landing in Los Angeles for “ET Canada’s Grammy Awards Red Carpet Special.” A Toronto snowstorm and the Western world’s most boring airport tried to crush my sanity, but here I was in the City of Angels… 36 hours late.

There’s something completely satisfying about leaving LAX’s arrivals area and discovering a driver holding a sign with your name on it. “Yeah, that’s me!” Within thirty minutes, we were dropped off at our Luxe City Center Hotel. Within five minutes, I was walking the streets near Staples Center looking for some action.

It was past midnight, everyone I knew in L.A. was in bed, the crew call was 9am, and I was wired. My choices were limited. The hotel’s bar was empty. The two nearby nightclubs (and I use that term loosely because one of them was a bowling alley that subbed as a dance club on Saturday nights) charged expensive covers and required short skirts and/or desperation.

I retreated for my hotel room, opened a hotel room bottle of red wine, and ordered pizza (“I don’t have a menu so just bring over your deluxe.”). I also had the presence of mind to iron my Grammy clothes and pack a bag for what I needed to bring the next morning to the red carpet.

Any messages on my phone for a change in the crew call time? Nope. So it still must be 9am. I set my alarm for 8am.

••••

Fortunately, I woke up at 7:30am. I checked my phone for messages. “John, where are you?! Did you get the message that the crew call time was now 7:30am?” Uhhhhh, nope.

Good thing I had the foresight to iron my clothes and pack a bag. Too bad my shower and its temperamental showerhead caused a bit of a flood on the bathroom floor. I used every towel to soak up the mess. I almost used the terrycloth bathrobe too…

So I arrived late for the rehearsal. And by the time we sorted out our headsets, and our technical issues, and carved out a suitable section of the red carpet to safely contain all our equipment and props… it was lunchtime?!

Sure, we did a few fake interviews to simulate the red carpet experience, but it was really quite inadequate. To be fair, we were supposed to do this on Saturday. But we completely lost our Saturday.

••••

So there are potentially 100+ artists that could walk down that carpet. And you have about 30 seconds to get ready to interview them and try to engage with them with relevant information.

“Ne-Yo’s coming! Are you ready?” So you madly flip through a production book to find his Grammy bio and then have a quick discussion with the reporter to determine the essential facts about that artist.

And then the production truck changes the name of the artist. “Forget Ne-Yo. Now it’s Janelle Monae. Are you ready?” More mad flipping, more quick whispers. “Oh, wait, Janelle’s moved on. Who’s next…?”

It’s chaotic in rehearsal. It’s worse when it’s live.

I barely ate that lunch. But I did drink two soul-nourishing cups of coffee. And after that lunch, it was showtime!

••••

The smaller stars arrive early, so you interview them when you can and record it for later use. While the production truck is busy doing something else, you keep track of the interview on a stopwatch, and then tell the truck how long it is when you’re done. And when you have a free moment, you also record intros for the ET Canada show that airs on Monday. There are not many free moments…

I was sequestered in ET Canada’s secondary position farther down the red carpet in between Rolling Stone magazine and Access Hollywood’s secondary position. They were all nice people just doing their jobs, but once in awhile, you had to get a little territorial. “Umm, you’re in our shot. Could you stand, like, two feet to the right? Ow, that’s my foot…”

So which stars did we interview? Welllll… Ashanti (good side boob?), Jack White (what’s with the white powder makeup?), Pauley Perrette (from NCIS, one of the many crime shows that I don’t watch), and Ziggy Marley (you’ll always be in the shadow of your father, bud).

That’s it. Oh, there were many close calls and potential stars. But that’s it.

The other ET Canada position – the first position – got LL Cool J, Carrie Underwood, Neil Patrick Harris, John Legend, Miranda Lambert, Carly Rae Jepsen, Ed Sheeran, the Lumineers, Keith Urban & Nicole Kidman, Gotye & Kimbra, and Drake.

Oh. But it’s a team effort, right? Right?

Overall, we honestly interviewed all the big-name stars who walked on the Grammy red carpet. Now while I saw Mumford and Sons, Chris Brown, Jennifer Lopez, and Beyonce, they weren’t talking to anybody! (And Elton John, Coldplay, Taylor Swift, Adele, Justin Timberlake, Rihanna, Maroon 5, and the Black Keys were nowhere to be found.)

If that earlier rehearsal was a blur, the live show was even faster. A few minutes ago, I was laying white towels on my flooding bathroom floor. Now the show was suddenly over.

••••

While the technical crew packed up their gear, the rest of us reconvened at the nearby ESPN Zone restaurant for drinks, food, and a chance to watch the shows: both our red carpet special (conveniently burnt onto a DVD) and the actual Grammys.

Sounds like a great bonding time, right? Wellllll… the Grammy show began at 8pm. And by 9pm, virtually everyone had gone back to the hotel to sleep/chill out alone. All that remained was our web girl, an ET production assistant, and me. By 10:30pm, it was just me.

Since it was a Sunday night in downtown L.A., my options were severely limited. Fortunately, the hotel bar was filled with Grammy show refugees (mostly TV types waiting for their friends). I selected a bar stool and proceeded to chat with one of the young nannies for drummer, Travis Barker. (Yes, he has three. And they all have shifts.)

I shared TV stories. She shared domestic stories about taking care of the children of a rock ‘n’ roll drummer.

And then at midnight, another of Travis Barker’s young nannies barged into the bar and interrupted us. “Your turn!”

Fortunately, some old friends arrived and we chatted for another hour. By the time I returned to my hotel room, it was a respectable 1:30am. I had new towels. I still had an open bottle of red wine. And I had chips.

And I had a new appreciation for the reporters/producers/technicians who work on award show red carpets. It’s a friendly war out there. And you’re all short on time and ammunition. And it’s a blur.

When I later lay my head on my fort of pillows, I finally reflected on my whirlwind L.A. weekend. And to be honest with you… I thought more about the Toronto snow than the L.A. stars.
 

For more adventures at ET Canada, check out:

https://www.johnmeyerbooks.com/grammys-2013-part-1/

https://www.johnmeyerbooks.com/grammys-2013-part-2/

https://www.johnmeyerbooks.com/the-view-from-my-desk/

https://www.johnmeyerbooks.com/unusually-thicke-common-people/