Step Off!

22Drinking with the General

I briefly mentioned in the Introduction of the book, how blessed I was to have the opportunity to star in a CBS series with the legendary George C. Scott. Our friendship was one that many people easily responded to by saying, “What the hell would these two even have in common? I guess, George can talk about his Oscar and Dan can talk about…George's Oscar, too.” The truth is, we had a helluva lot more in common than you'd think, although our evolution to get to that realization was not your typical one.

The series we starred in was called Traps, a one-hour cop drama shot in beautiful Vancouver, B.C. For those of you who don't know, the working hours on a one-hour series can be extremely long and demanding. Because of that, George had it in his contract that due to his age, health, and the fact that he was an Academy Award winner, he would work only eight hours a day and not one second more…literally.

As soon as the director would call action on the first shot of the day, George would reach down to his old-school Casio digital watch and start an eight-hour timer. It didn't matter if he was in the middle of the greatest take in Hollywood history, when that watch chirped to alert him the eight hours had passed, he would immediately, yet politely excuse himself with a “Goodnight, everybody.”

That was a great perk for George and deservedly so, he had earned it. It was not so much a perk for me on the other hand, especially since we were in almost every ...