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<\/figure>\n\n\n\nI try to remain above that…<\/p>\n\n\n\n …but I’m only human. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Still. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Back in college, I worked as a stage hand (as well as acting in a few shows). The lady who ran the theater department had a long history working in show business of all kinds; she had been the first female theatrical producer in Los Angeles, had worked as a make up person on the original \u201cPlanet of the Apes\u201c (and had one of the masks in her office to show for it) and on and on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We had two productions back then that involved some sort of weapons work; in one, one of the actors (and a classmate) \u201cshot\u201c someone. The \u201cprop gun\u201c in this case was a starter pistol, borrowed from the track and field team. The chamber was only big enough to hold starter gun caps. The barrel was not a barrel; there was no hole down the middle for a bullet. The only way to kill someone with that pistol would\u2019ve been to beat them over the head with it – and even then, it would have been a long, slow process. Professor Lavin drilled us – the whole crew, not just the actor doing the shooting, since anyone onsince anyone on the crew might have to handle the starter pistol – on the safety rules like everybody\u2019s life depended on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The absolute ironclad rule was \u201cdon\u2019t point the gun at a person, even during the scene when you are \u201cshooting\u201d someone. The scene was \u201cblocked out\u201d (actors arranged about the stage) so that it would look like the gun was being aimed at the victim – but was in fact, pointing to a spot offstage with no cast, crew or audience. [1]<\/p>\n\n\n\n That was a piker, by the way, compared with all the things I had to learn to do a sword fight, when I played Henry II in \u201cLion in Winter\u201c.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This was all emphatically nonunion. Professor Lavin relayed all sorts of stories about how universal this knowledge was among Hollywood crews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/pbs.twimg.com\/media\/FCWQ-g4XMAcJZ9a?format=jpg&name=medium\")