Tignini cut a deal to be paid $250 a week. Unfortunately, the produc-
tion alternated between shooting five days a week, then six days a week,
while Tignini's salary remained the same. "I was young and wide-eyed. I
would pick the boys [the Coen brothers] up in the morning and drive
them to the set, then stay with them all through the dailies afterward. I
was putting in 16 to 17 hour days, every day. It was in many ways like
film school."
When the picture wrapped, Tignini moved to Los Angeles and landed
work as a PA through connections he had made on Raising Arizona. "You
build your reputation on word-of-mouth: people recommending you.
"I remember being very excited about my first big location job. They
flew me out to Pittsburgh to do a movie called Dominick and Eugene."
Tignini continued as a production assistant on numerous productions,
including 13 episodes of The Highwayman television series, which got him
into the Directors Guild. Although hired as a production assistant, the
duties of the second second AD were often delegated to him. "Someone
dropped a dime on the company, that they were using a production assis-
tant in an AD's capacity. A representative from the Directors Guild came
to the set and said, `Either fire this kid and bring in a real AD, or pay a
small fine and we'll upgrade the guy.' So they upgraded me. What I
didn't realize was, I had to complete 400 days outside of Los Angeles in
order to work back in Los Angeles as an AD, which is a long and compli-
cated rule of the DGA. It was torturous. It was very, very daunting to get
those 400 days, but it happened."
One of Tignini's career highlights was working on Forrest Gump. "It
was literally different every day because of the character's journey. We
would be duplicating part of the Vietnam war for a couple of weeks, and
then off doing a running sequence across the country. We filmed a protest
march at the Washington Monument with 2,500 background dressed like
hippies; we got to take over the whole reflecting pool area at the
Monument. We filmed outside the White House.
"I was brought in to help coordinate the military for the Vietnam
sequence. I went with military adviser Dale Dye (who also worked on
Private Ryan and Platoon) and the actors to train for four days and nights
out in swamps, dressed in full army gear. We ate rations and slept in
holes that we dug. We had our own little boot camp. It was fascinating
and educational; it was an adventure.
"It was also interesting to watch how Robert Zemeckis worked. It was
a big script, with big sequences where Forrest would move through a
crowd and pass Abby Hoffman and somehow wind up onstage in front
of 25,000 people. It was interesting to see how Zemeckis shot it. He's
really smart. He'd find a really creative, but economical way to shoot.
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