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Print Interviewed by Kent d Curry A few weeks ago, as ninetyandnine.com was expanding its cultural coverage, I sent emails out to numerous friends for their ideas and contacts. One had more to say than the others and that’s how I discovered Eric Roemheld, who currently works on CSI: New York. When I finally talked to him on the phone it was immediately after his Home Friendship Group meeting, so he was tired, but gracious. Over the next 80 minutes he shared his career track, conversion story, and exuberance over becoming a father, as well as what he hopes to do next in ministry. His unique vantage point in life gave him insight into an industry, and a ministry, that has yet to be fully explored. I’m confident we’ll be hearing more from this man and his ministry. This interview took place on January 24-25, 2006. ---------
THE HERE & NOW 90&9: What is your title in Hollywood? 90&9: Okay. What does a set dresser do?
90&9: How long have you been working in
Hollywood? 90&9: How did you get involved in the
industry? I told the people I was going to enroll and I did. And about two weeks later I went up there and started taking lessons; and simultaneously I had another caterer that was set up that had a commissary next door to a real working motion picture makeup studio and she just passed my name to them and they said, “Well why don’t you just have him come over here and work with us?” And so it kind of became worth the knowledge… So I quit the school and I stuck with them and they were kind of doing a low-budget independent film and so they just sent me over where that was happening. I made a lot of friends, and then just starting going from place to place, and kept making friends…and there was work at the time, and there was always a place for me, so that’s how it happened. 90&9: That strikes me as the typical
Hollywood story where friends tell friends, a door opens… 90&9: How does a set dresser get a job?
How do you go from a movie to a TV series to a movie? It doesn’t seem like
there’s an easy career path between them? 90&9: And how do you know about these
jobs? 90&9: How did you start working on
CSI: New York? And I had just finished up Mr & Mrs. Smith, a big, big, huge feature although it wasn’t a very great movie; it really, really taxed me to my limits. So when someone’s offering me a TV show I said, “Sure.” I kind of gave them a sort of a tentative agreement and then, by the time eight months rolled by I was like “I’m in and I want to stay here.” And we’re in the second season, where I’m at now. And that’s how that happened, just by word of mouth. 90&9: What’s the average work week like? 90&9: So what does the average work day
look like for a set dresser? The day before (shooting) we dress a location, such as a rooftop with a water tower, and we had other things going on, and this is all going down in Los Angeles, so we jump into this big truck and we’re down there and we open up the set and make sure everybody’s happy. So in that instance, a group of us would all just take off immediately from home base, probably the studio or the stage, and/or then we can go to maybe the next days location and dress the set or we’re going to go dress the set, if it’s a big set all of us will go over there, and start hanging pictures and bringing in big couches and anything that’s dressing the set. If it’s a home, we’ll be bringing kitchen stuff and pianos and couches; if it’s like a courtroom then we’ll be bringing in benches and flags and things of that nature. So, that’s probably how the day would start out. Usually we drive to various prop houses in a big truck that the decorator previously visited, selected items, tagged them and then we bring it back to where we are dressing the set. That’s kind of what we do all day. 90&9: Is there ever much interaction
with the actors or do you do your thing and they do theirs? So sometimes, we don’t usually get to hob knob too much with the actors unless for some reason we actually stay and baby-sit a set with the on-set dresser, the liaison is called the on-set dresser and he’ll stay onset we leave. He stays there and does everything that they need that involves moving furniture or changing things or taking down pictures, to whatever whim or desire the director has or anybody else that has any sort of say on the set, so we have an on-set dresser and then you have us who usually show up first. To answer your question, I can if I stay there for a little while, like CSI: New York is an ongoing thing so you can’t help but keep bumping into people. I know one in particular was a guitar shop set that I did and they gave me free reign and I made friends with one of the main actors. It’s one of those things when they walk by and say, “Hey man, how’s it going?” So they do remember and once in a while you do make friends. 90&9: Is there a difference between just
working on an average show and working on a “hot” show like the CSI: New York? When they know they’re on a good show people work harder, they try to produce a better product and they feel good about what they do and I think that kind of shows, it carries everybody. There’s sort of a buzz through the whole set—that might be the difference. 90&9: Do you watch the show with your
wife and say, “Hey that’s my guitar shop!” Or are you, “No, I don’t have time.”
SPIRITUAL BIRTH 90&9: How did you come to the Lord? So he kind of switched gears and began focusing on me a bit and then he gave me a Bible study and although I reluctant at first I went to the church in Bellflower. I now live in Bellflower, but I used to live in Pasadena. So I would drive out to the church in Bellflower and check it out and I kind of liked what I felt, but it wasn’t for me completely. I still had other things that I wanted to do, and little by little I kept coming back and feeling like I needed to be there, and I found myself spending a whole lot more time at church than I was spending on anything else and it was all a result of this man witnessing to another person and it ended with him witnessing to me; his name is Dallas Walton. 90&9: How old were you when he first
started witnessing and how old were you when you got the Holy Ghost? How long
was the process? 90&9: What keeps you grounded in your
walk with God, despite your job is Hollywood which is supposedly all sin? There are other factors. Just seeing how raunchy things can be around my job. A lot of times I just have to walk away, and shy away from it and, you know, recite something from scripture or just to talk to God or ask Him to forgive what’s happening at that time there, like with a big blanket prayer, “Lord, I know that this is not good to do, and help me to get through this and help the guys I work with,” that sort of thing. And then it goes deeper, and there’s different aspects. Of course, there are the relationships I’ve developed with these men over the years. Of course, I’ve told you they get on things and call me. I’m blessed that I’ve actually made friends with people of the world who consider me their friend and they talk to me and they want me with them. Therefore there’s a bonding there, there’s a relationship there, it’s like the slow cooking method of salvation rather than rushing in and being too brash about things. I like to work with them and let them get to know me and try to be a living example. 90&9: Do you think it’s harder to live
for God working in Hollywood than in other, less glamorous businesses? Once in a great while there’s something that they do that’s pretty exciting. Oh my goodness, wow, that’s really great! But for the most part it’s a job and to me it’s where I’m supposed to be. But someone else might be swept away by the whole idea. I could see it. There was one time when I was working on the movie Godzilla, just to let you know how I feel the job thing fits in with God. It was right after I got in church, I’m working on Godzilla, and I felt like I’m in this den of sin and I need to get out. This is wrong. I’m born again. I don’t need to be here. And I really started dogging it in my mind, and murmuring so to speak, “Lord, this isn’t good for me and You need to get me out of here.” He sort of took away. And all of a sudden I found myself with this house and all of these bills and this huge overhead and I had nowhere to go. I do remember one time finally I got to a point . . . I got on my hands and knees and humbled myself and cried and I said, ‘Lord I will do anything, just let me get a job again’ and I’m telling you that within a half an hour, not even a half hour the phone rang and I got the call to work on Stuart Little. 90&9: Oh wow. 90&9: Have you ever had to justify your
work to other Christians? When I first came to church I was so blown away by the power of God, and knowing my ability and the things that I’ve learned from where I work. I took a month off, I went into the office where I was working, which was a TV show that was going nowhere, but still it was my source of income, and I said, “Guys I need to take a month off before Halloween for a Halloween drama.” And spent a month at the church, every single day, so many people were there for me and I learned from them every day what it was to be a Christian. So that was a good thing. They all know what I do at work; hence, I can take my ‘gift’ or talent and use it for God and do the dramas at our church. That’s my ministry and it’s what I love to do. 90&9: That’s Apostolic Entertainment
Ministry (AEM)? 90&9: Have you been able to share any
of that work you've done with AEM or the dramas with people in the industry? I bring invitations and flyers and I get a few people, “Oh yeah, I’ll come to this.” You know how that goes, it’s usually not a big turnout. Now, because of the movie portion I actually have things on DVD and I bring them into work and watch them on the computer. So, that’s kind of cool. 90&9: Do you see this growing as a
bigger part of your life? 90&9: Do you find the TV/movie industry
hostile to Christians? What’s been your experience inside the industry? To me, the guys that I work with are extremely nice, thoughtful caring people, just from the get-go. They’re just wired that way I guess. And so they just kind of embrace me and there’s no problem there, they’ll bow their head if they see that I’m praying, and many times I get to talk to them when they’re going through something, I kind of point them in the direction of prayer in their life. I just try to getting them to be praying. Then they come back and say, “I did.” And if something great happens I say, “Well see what happens? You prayed and something did happen, right?” It’s sort of like, leading them through that. So there’s always a little spot where nobody talks about and when it gets kind of rough they know where to go to. I was working on Spiderman, this day I was working with other guys, I was putting up lampposts because it was an exterior; the location was down by my house, it was the Boeing factory that had gone under. We were building Times Square. I’m moving around and I’m on a golf cart with these other guys and we’re setting up these lampposts, and above me, and I’m not kidding you, directly above me, they had this Condor or cherry picker, like a basket on a big (metal) arm. Well they had one of those in place and they were putting up these huge metal grids that they were going to stretch vinyl billboards over it. These metal grids were like 20" by 20", and they were very heavy. I usually never call in sick, but the next day, I called in sick for some strange reason. Then, later on I was informed that they were working right above where we were the day before when my boss came to where we were working and said, “Hey you guys, lets get out of there, they’re working above you where the conditions are unsafe, let’s go.” There was a forklift on big tires, it’s kind of a strange vehicle. This thing was handing off the huge Bill Board grid of metal up to them to lock it into place . . . So something went wrong with the thing that was carrying this big metal piece. It hit this curb at a wrong angle, everything slid over and a giant piece tilted over on the people and it killed one of them, actually beheaded somebody. The next day when I came back and I heard about this horrible tragedy that happened, they wanted me to say a little prayer. So we all gathered around and they gave me a few minutes to come up with something to say and I just tried to pray and keep everyone together. So everyone knows who I am and they don’t have any problem with it and they all just treat me like everybody else. As far as the acceptance thing it’s really great. I think there’s people a little more accepting where I work than where others work, factories or somewhere else. 90&9: I understand you won a co-worker
to the Lord? So he came on down and the next thing I know he was, in fact I don’t even remember it all, how it happened…he got baptized and filled with the Holy Ghost and his life is absolutely changed. 90&9: That’s wonderful! How long ago was
that? 90&9: I think that’s fabulous! And what
does he do on sets?
PERSONAL LIFE 90&9: I want to get to some of the
movies you’ve worked on, but first I have some personal questions. Rumor has it
you married the church secretary . . .
I remember just walking in and just looking at this choir, and if you’ll excuse me, but at that time I was just perusing the choir loft looking at women. “She looks about my age.” “She looks about my age.” “That one’s okay.” But I do remember looking at my wife Trina and thinking, “She’s really cute. She’s something up there.” And just from the very get-go we just sort of gravitated toward one another and, of course, it was in large groups and things like that; we’d always go out after service to Starbucks and what not. And little by little, my hair got shorter and I’m learning about God and growing and dressing up a little bit more, and finally came to the point, where—it was about three years later—and we started getting serious and were dating and I finally asked her to marry me—actually in Israel. Our church took a trip to Israel in 1997 and I proposed to her on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. 90&9: Great imagination on your part. So
how long have you been married now? 90&9: And I understand you have a child
arriving? 90&9: When is he due? 90&9: Do you think you'd allow your child
to work in Hollywood someday? A lot of time I think to myself, “People in Hollywood need God, too” and I’m there for a reason and there’s been fruit and it’s been good and I would probably give him all of the blessings if it was working out for him that way, sure.
MOVIES & ME 90&9: Let’s discuss some of the movies
you’ve worked on. You’ve been on some very huge-budget movies. You’ve mentioned
Spiderman and Godzilla. And as you mentioned Mr. and Mrs. Smith
earlier you said, “It was extremely hard work.” What did you mean by that? It was in a K-Mart kind of thing, so we just had, I’m telling you, the most incredible amount of furniture I had to put together, we had vendors that were bringing us their things with all of their advertisements, everything from lawn mowers to tents, I mean, there were at least 500 different vendors and names and things that had to make—every style of thing, including everything that might go in a home or garage. And with that, replacing all of that, there’s putting all the pieces together, there’s little things making sure there’s enough shelves, and all the shelves had to be cleaned and wiped . . . The ovens themselves had to be brought at particular times . . . there were giant truckloads of furniture that all had to be put together and trying to get all these people to get that done before the due date. It was just absolutely the biggest thing I’ve ever dealt with. What happened is, God blessed my efforts because I had good people working with me. I took care of them. I gave them breaks and rests, and the whole bit. So when the unit was putting things together our decorator, my boss . . . they would show up and they were almost in tears because they couldn’t believe how much work was getting done and how much we organized everything. We did a really good job, I must say. But then the shooting crew shows up and they destroy everything and make a big mess. Then they would say “Back to One,” which is pristine. So they want everything to look like it was when it just arrived, but they just blew up all of this furniture and all of the set direction and all of this kind of stuff, so that makes for a difficult job . . . as you can imagine, an impossible situation. Not to mention one of the big, big shoot-outs was where there was this set decorated with a group of Christmas trees, with ornaments, tons of ornaments, that are these reissued vintage ornaments and there’s just boxload upon boxload of these ornaments that are all over the place and they’re all sitting beautiful, and they’d destroy this set and everything, and they’d want everything “Back to One.” We were just tearing our hair out. I mean literally, I remember walking away from our set and sit out in the parking lot and just about fall apart. I held my head in my hands and I shook my head looking at this monstrosity—“What was I doing with my life?” It was like a meltdown, a mental breakdown. So that’s how tough that was. But if you want me to name-drop, I’ve got a lot of very big budget, really great movies that I worked on. 90&9: Yes! Name-drop! 90&9: Where have you been on location
shots—is it mainly in the United States or have you been all over? 90&9: Is that a good thing or a bad
thing? 90&9: Six weeks in South Dakota doesn’t
sound like heaven. He and his family and maybe two other families and they would meet at the convention center on Sundays at two o’clock and so there was actually (chuckle) Pentecostal, Holy Ghost Apostolic church going on Sundays for me. It was like—I can’t believe that God would actually work something out like that and I would find it. There was my bread that kept me going on. Bro. Geotch was really cordial and he’d call me up and every once in a while we’d go out to get something to eat. I had a co-worker over to his house for a Bible study while we were there, as I was working with him at the time. I was really amazed that that little work was going on out there. It couldn’t have been closer to me, closer to my hotel and all that. They were right there, just right up the street, living up there, providing, doing their thing and working. 90&9: Is there a movie that you worked on
that was your favorite, because of your work on it? And even though it probably has some of my best work, that I have done, I still haven’t watched it. Someday I’ll probably rent that movie and I’ll watch it and so far I haven’t. It’s been about 10 years since I worked on the thing. And one of the Batman’s that I worked on, the one with Mr. Freeze. I haven’t seen that one either and there’s a lot of good work on that. So it’s kind of like, just for some reason, it’s almost like that God has put some sort of thing in front of me that . . . It’s just not that important to me now. Now, like I told you, I do scrutinize what I bring into the house. I do like to watch movies. I have to be honest. I like it for the content or maybe there’s a movie that is known for its story or maybe the cinematography is great . . .if it’s within the confines of what I’ll allow, then I’ll watch it and enjoy it. 90&9: You’re in an unusual position
because when we think of Hollywood we think of the stars or stories or sin
involved or the great moments of hope, where you’re on the business end of a
film. You could set dress for a classic or something rude and crude and still
not be too aware of the content. Would you agree with that? This season that’s coming out now will come out next season on DVD, so I’m thinking there’s some stuff in there I probably don’t want to be involved with. Last season was, in my opinion, really good and didn’t really have much, it had some things, but I know not to watch that particular disk. Overall, I can understand what the story will be about and if there’s some stuff in there I will definitely pray about it. But I’ve been blessed with in that God’s kind of thrown me into these movies that are light-hearted—Spiderman, Batman, the super-hero genre movies. And not like Brokeback Mountain. Every time I think about that—I had that thought today—What if it was a movie like that and I was offered something that I’ve wanted to do, like set design, or production design or art direct. And I would have to say, “You know, I’m sorry but I just can’t.” I don’t want to put my heart into it, into something that I believe is wrong. I wouldn’t say that to them, but in my heart I wouldn’t want to support that. There is a line. I know it, usually. If I don’t, I’ll pray about it and make some sort of decision just based on where I’ve come from. Because you know that, obviously, it’s wrong, it’s bad, it’s scum. Thank the Lord I haven’t been faced with that. And then what I do do, it’s so much in the background, that I’m usually not involved directly—even if there’s something that’s questionable, which is nice. 90&9: Could you give it all up if the
Lord called you elsewhere? This is the thing—God has never let me down, He’s led me down some pretty strange paths. The big step of faith of buying a house out here when it opened up, for me it’s a huge step, and I just went for it, because I talked with God. I would think I’ve matured a little more in God and am getting to know Him more and getting to know more about His character and how He does things. There might be a different way that I’m not too familiar with. And if that is the case, then I’m really sure… I would like to say, “Yes. I would put it all away.” If the right way is standing right in front of me, then I’ll automatically go right down that path. To be honest with you, I’d like to progress in what I do to maybe art direction and or production design. So maybe the door will open soon. I pray about it a lot. I’m really not utilizing my talent and abilities at this point. 90&9: What advice would you give other
Christians who might feel called to Hollywood? I think it’s just to keep everything in perspective. It’s the little things: “The double minded man is unstable in all his ways.” You can’t serve two masters. It’s pretty obvious that when somebody is in the world, but not of the world . . . things like that. You’ve got to know where you’re going because if you’re not careful it can easily betray you. I would think that Hollywood could be like a drug to some. Especially to somebody that was easily swayed by the life of glamour.
I’ve got the desires of my heart right now—I’ve got a little boy coming, I’ve got a beautiful wife, there’s a home there that has been given to me, a great church and wonderful pastor. I’m basically living the dream. So there’s no need for me to live the Hollywood scene . . . I’ve already stepped away from that. I’ve got what I want. I’m living my dreams. I can’t wait to get home and be with my wife and get to the part of my life that isn’t about work. The advice to them is to hang on tight, and keep the world in check, and make sure you love God before you go. Above all, seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and He will lead you in the path you’re to take. ninetyandnine.com © 2006 Kent d Curry ----------- Kent d Curry is an executive editor of ninetyandnine.com. |
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90&9:
Do you create those props?
90&9:
I mean the stereotypical church secretary is the good girl who wants to do
something for God, so now she’s marrying the Hollywood rebel. How did that come
about?