Ready When You are, Mr. Coppola, Mr. Spielberg, Mr. Crowe

by Jerry Ziesmer

Ziesmer was an assistant director for over three decades before his retirement in the middle 1990s, working with some of Hollywood's best known directors and stars, and on such hits as Apocalypse Now , Close Encounters , and Jerry Maquire . Here he recounts his career and reveals the importance of a position that gets little recognition off the set. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Genres: Film, Memoir

426 pages, Hardcover

First published December 14, 1999

Reviews

[Ed · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ve never read a book written by an AD and there should be more because they are the total front line to how a movie gets made. Ziesmer has great stories up the yin yang but half of this is about Apocalypse Now. I’ve read and seen a lot about that famous production but this is the most granular account you could ever hope to find. This could’ve done with a tighter edit but it’s nothing if not authentic.

[DeMane Davis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great way to visit the film sets of APOCALYPSE NOW, SINGLES, SAY ANYTHING and ANNIE with a guy who just truly loved, served and wanted to make films that "mean something."

[Justin Decloux · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great on-set anecdotes. The chapter on ROCKY II is charming as hell. The stretch where the author worked with John Huston on ANNIE is probably the most moving.

[C.G. Twiles · Rating 4 out of 5]

You have to be a special kind of person to be an assistant director. You get most or all of the work of the director, but none of the acclaim, fame, credit, perks, or salary. Jerry Ziesmer—assistant director on many classic films including The Way We Were, Black Sunday, Apocalypse Now, Rocky II, and Jerry McGuire, is that special kind of person. The amount of outsized egos you need to be able to handle while also taking care of a million things while pleasing everyone is insane.

It was interesting to be on the sets of these famous movies—the movie with the most page-time is Apocalypse Now, no surprise as he ended up spending eight months in the Philippines with Francis Ford Coppola. (He also becomes famous for being the one to deliver the immortal line "Exterminate with extreme prejudice" in the movie.)

Ziesmer is an expert at being extremely diplomatic in how he describes his interactions with celebrities and directors. Some, like Robert Redford, you can clearly tell he did not enjoy working with, though he never comes out and says this. Who knew Redford would be more difficult to work with than Sly Stallone, who comes across like a regular, humble guy?

He also has a dry sense of humor that can easily slip by unnoticed.

There is some casual animal cruelty in the book that was difficult to stomach—the worst being that Ziesmer lived over the catering area during Apocalypse Now, so every morning he would hear pigs screaming in terror as they were being slaughtered. This was the crew's "morning alarm." Personally I would have immediately packed up and left (not before trying to save the pigs), so clearly I don't have assistant director in my future.

[Lydia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Charming anecdotes, and Ziesmer tells them well. He just seems so humble and considerate. The story about the "Bel-air witch" had me rolling.