one of those years where the 17-year locusts come out. We were ready to
start filming and all of a sudden there was this incredible noise of these
locusts; it was deafening. Everyone was looking at me, asking `Can you go
out there and exterminate them?' I'm like, `Yeah. Billions of locusts?'"
For the film Virus, Baxter was charged with moving a 600,000-foot ship
that no longer had an engine from one shipyard to another to have work
done on it. "The construction crew would come in from L.A. I found a
space for them: some hangars and a dock in Newport News. We were
ready to go and I get a phone call from the producer saying, `We're going
to have to bail out and regroup. We have to take three or four months off,
but we want you to stay on. I ended up moving the ship to a shipyard in
Norfolk and spent three months having work done on it to get it up to
safety and speed so we could film on it. Then I kept hauling it around to
different docks."
Baxter went on to turn a small Tennessee town near Brushy Mountain
Correctional Complex into a coal mining community for October Sky. His
challenge for The Replacements was to not only find and negotiate use of a
football stadium for shooting, but two additional football fields for actors
to practice on. "It wasn't as easy as you might think, because high
schools and colleges were getting ready to practice."
His next film was Hannibal,
directed by Ridley Scott. "That
was probably the best experi-
ence I have had so far in my
career of filming, without a
doubt. Ridley is so smart and
creative and funny. He's a
gentleman. It's an absolute
pleasure to work with the
guy--but talk about stress."
When Scott had initially
scouted Washington D.C.'s
Union Station, it contained a
carousel. When the time came
to shoot, the carousel was
gone and Baxter had to locate
another one and have it re-
erected in the same spot.
"Then I find out that Sue, the
Tyrannosaurus Rex from the
Chicago Museum, is going to
be erected in the main hall.
"I don't get
wound up and I never
accept `No'--I just
don't accept it. There
has got to be a way to
make whatever it is happen. I don't give up.
I find a way and am willing to negotiate."
--Charlie Baxter
"Compromise and don't take things
too seriously. Many of the people I know,
the stress absolutely fries them. You have to
find a way to not take it all too seriously.
Don't let the pressure that the production
company and other parties are applying
become insurmountable. Focus and let
common sense be your guide, and you'll
probably find out it's not as bad as you
thought it was."--Charlie Baxter
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