Duron David - Louie, take a look at this!: my time with Huell Howser

Copyright 2017 by Luis A. Fuerte

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Names: Fuerte, Luis, author; Duron, David, co-author

Title: Louie, take a look at this! My time with Huell Howser

Identifiers: ISBN 9781945551031 (ebook)

Subjects: Huell HowserBiography. | Huell Howser and Luis FuerteMemoir. | Californias Goldtelevision.

Book layout and design by Amy Inouye, Future Studio

I dedicate this book to my lovely wife, Gloria,

for her support, inspiration, and encouragement,

and to all the people who have told their stories

to Huell Howser (and later, to me),

for without them this book would not be possible.

All you have to do is open your eyes and have a sense of adventure and go out and find them for yourself. Im convinced that if you put a spotlight on any person or any subject, and youre genuinely interested in them, you can make something people enjoy watching.

Huell Howser

CONTENTS

Table of Contents

I m Louie. Im the cameraman who Huell Howser called out to in KCETs beloved series Californias Gold. Viewers so often heard him exclaim, Louie, take a look at this! but I rarely went in front of the camera. My given name is Luis Alejandro Fuerte, but Im more comfortable with Luis or Louie.

This is the story of the twelve years I worked with Huell as his cameraman. Its not only the account of my personal recollections of the conversations, events, and experiences Huell and I shared during our years working together, but also the stories of the people we knew, both professionally and as guests in the shows. Most of all, its the story of two people with personalities and backgrounds so dissimilar, one wouldnt think the two of us could ever get along. Yet our differences are what made us so perfectly matched as the shooting team you knew and loved on Californias Gold, Visiting with Huell Howser, and many other television productions.

It is my hope that youll enjoy reading about all of these things as our story unfolds, and that youll find more than just interesting tidbits about Huell Howser. I also need to say that this project never could have happened without David Duron, a former producer at KCET and the man who helped me get these stories written, find photographs, and make the project happen. By the time youre done with it, I hope youll come away pleased that you got to know the big, smiling man from Tennessee as I knew him.

As I listened to Huell on our shoots, talking to people from all walks of life throughout the state of California, I came to realize that he was genuinely and deeply interested in the people he interviewed and their personal stories. He was truly fascinated with his discoveries, from the stupendous to the downright ordinary. They all mattered to him. And he especially loved the history of California, his adopted state.

Knowing how much Huell cared about all these people, and California, inspired and even compelled me to do the best I could as his cameraman, so he could tell his stories exactly as he wanted them told. I am still saddened by the unexpected passing of my old friend and shooting partner. Every time I think of him, I can still hear his friendly Southern voice and the exuberant reactions to his discoveriesmost famously, this rousing and endearing exclamation: Thats amaaazing!

T he year was 1987. In Los Angeles, KCET-TV was in the swing of the Golden Age of Television, and I was enjoying working there as an engineer. The public television stations big production stages were busy with both national and local programs, and remote units were stationed at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and other Southern California theaters to cover a variety of marvelous performances. It was a time of innovative, even daring productions that the areas dozen or so commercial television stations either couldnt or wouldnt ever consider doing. And then came a local KCET show called Videolog.

The idea behind Videolog was for a reporter-producer to make a three- to six-minute show about interesting people from all walks of life in Southern California. The stories were to be aired between regular programs when they ran short. In the television industry, these are called interstitial programs. We just called them fillers.

To put it plainly, these little shows were major pains in the butt for the engineers (thats what we early cameramen were, engineers) who shot themnot because they werent the high and mighty productions we liked to do, but because, more often than not, we had to go on all-day shoots with producers and came back with incomplete or half-baked stories. Often, producers would shoot everything in sight yet theyd still forget something and wed have to go back out to shoot the missing elementsall for only a few minutes of story.

Then along came Huell Howser.

I first met Huell that year when I was assigned to shoot a Videolog episode for him. I saw an imposing man: about six-four and handsome, with short blond hair and big muscles showing through a tight shirt. Add an even bigger Tennessee-flavored voice, and you had a man who stood out from everyone else. I had heard that he was on the lot before that shootthe word around the station was that hed been hired to shoot Videologs on the side while he also worked at KCBS Channel 2 doing short features that ran in its news programs. I wish I could remember what we shot on that first Videolog we did together, but we did so many episodes and saw so much that those early shoots are all kind of lumped together in my head.

Huell worked with many cameramen on his Videolog shoots, so getting to work with him was hit or miss. And we all wanted to work with him, because we saw that the man with the heavy Tennessee accent really knew his stuff. I recall that his style of shooting on Videolog was simple and straightforward. Im pretty sure that Huell came to shoots with the whole story already in his head; he knew what he wanted the story to look like, how it should flow and develop, and he did his setups carefully to make sure his vision would happen.

By working with Huell on the Videolog shows, a good cameraman who saw and understood his setups could get into the flow pretty easily. From just one setup, you could anticipate what hed want to shoot next and always be ready for him. One of the best things that came from watching how Huell executed his vision of a story was that you could suggest shots that could serve as a bridge (or cover his narration), and he would actually listen to your ideas. Better yet, if he knew that you shared his vision, hed be more likely to take the suggestion, and wed shoot it.