“It’s a small world…”

So I post something on Tuesday, March 3 about my friend production designer Gary Frutkoff. That very same day I show up to work and there is a 70 person crew doing a massive green screen shoot in our studio’s big soundstage for the new version of “Guitar Hero.” They’re filming four college basketball coaches — Rick Pitino, Roy Williams, Mike Krzyzewski, Bobby Knight — doing their version of Tom Cruise’s famous dance scene in the movie Risky Business:

Where’s the small world part? Turns out the director for the shoot is none other than Brett Ratner, director of movies like Rush Hour, The Family Man, X-Men: The Last Stand. He also directed the pilot for the TV series “Prison Break,” which as I recalled was production designed by… Gary Frutkoff! 

So driving home, I give Gary a call.

“Hey, Gary. It’s Myers.”
“Hey, man.”
“Listen, didn’t you do Prison Break with Brett Ratner?”
“Yeah, the pilot.”
“Do you know where Brett is today?”
“Nope.”
“He’s at Trailblazer Studios.”
“You’re kidding!”
“Nope, I just saw him.”
“Oh, the Guitar Hero thing.”

Okay wait, the world gets even smaller. Gary tells me that he’s in his car driving to a script meeting on another TV pilot called “Cop House” directed by… Brett Ratner! 

So in a weird bit of harmonic convergence, Gary and I are 3,300 miles away from each other, he’s working on a Brett Ratner project, while I just left Trailblazer Studios where Brett Ratner was shooting stuff for the next version of Guitar Hero.

As comic Stephen Wright says, “It’s a small world… but I wouldn’t want to paint it.”

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