GETTING A GRIP ON SUCCESS

PEOPLE You’ve laughed about those odd job titles that float by in movie credits-best boys, gaffers, key grips. But JOHN KNIGHT, a real-life key grip from Dallas, says the job’s no joke-especially when you’re trying to strap a 50-pound camera on the back of a raging bull who has no interest in a film career.

That’s what Knight did recently in Guthrie, Oklahoma, on location for Home Grown. The tale of a bull-riding rodeo star, featuring Ben Johnson, Scott Glenn, and Tess Harper was directed by Stuart Rosenberg and is scheduled for release next year.

Knight, a 1975 graduate of The University of Texas film school, has a host of hits on his resume, including Robocop and Love Hurts (shot in southwest Dallas County). In Home Grown, Knight’s assignment was to give the audience Scott Glenn’s point of view as he tried to ride a bull that had never been ridden before.

After sketching the project and having a machine shop create special parts, Knight selected a packsaddle as the base for the camera platform. Working with aluminum pipes and couplings needing no welding, he built the camera platform and attached it to the packsaddle with nylon webbing. Then professional film and rodeo wranglers put the bull, a bad-tempered behemoth named Thunderbolt, in a squeeze chute and strapped on Knight’s packsaddle.

“To get four or five seconds of incredible footage, our department put in two days of work and three weeks of planning,” Knight said. “Then we rolled the camera, the wranglers opened the chute, and Thunderbolt did the rest.”

That’s no bull. And when you see the movie, be sure to give credit where it’s due.