Cover Those Tracks
Wednesday, March 16, 2011 at 7:12PM
NATHANIEL R in Lawrence of Arabia, books, on the set

My best friend recently moved apartments and I got one of his bookshelves in the move so suddenly I'm noticing my old buried movie books again that couldn't fit onto my previous shelving. I used to buy them in the 90s at garage sales or used book stores. This image is from "Life Goes to the Movies." published in 1975. It's basically just a picture book.

Caption:

In Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Peter O'Toole practices crawling to the resuce of a guide trapped in quicksand while two production crewmen stand by to sweep away the dry-run tracks before actual filming.

Never once while watching Lawrence of Arabia have I stopped to think  "damn, that's a lot of sand sweeping during production!" you know? Hee. Movie-making is so magical and mundane. Was that the least epic duty on that epic set? The sweepers undoubtedly had good tans by the end of production.

Article originally appeared on The Film Experience (http://thefilmexperience.net/).
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