John Travolta, Boston MA, 1997. So I showed up to shoot John Travolta in Boston for a movie. This was the public garden in Boston Common, and it was December, so it was really cold...but there was no snow. The producer of the movie Scott Ruden was like, “This picture—I want snow in the picture.” Like it was a given...like we could just conjure it out of nowhere. Well, there wasn’t any snow. So that morning we rented a snow machine and a truck full of ice, and for eight hours, my assistants shoveled fucking snow all over Boston Common to make this picture.I set up my frame with this large format 8x10 camera camera I was using which allowed me to preconceive the shot—obviously, we couldn’t cover the whole park in snow—so we had to plan out exactly where we needed to place the stuff. And you know, we’re in a time crunch—snow melts. So all day long, these guys sweated and shoveled in fresh snow while we waited for John to show up. He finally came in at dusk, after 8 hours of shoveling. Perfect timing, actually. That soft winter light, end of the day, just the right kind of glow, and I got these pictures. There are a few others from that day, but that one… that one tells the story. All that crazy planning, all that fake snow, just for a single frame. But that’s what you do. Only in Hollywood.
