My old buddy Bill Cotter read my piece on sneaking into NBC many years ago and sent me this…
Carry a clipboard, act official, and the world is yours.
I thought you might get a smile out of a related tale. I spent 14 years at Warner Bros. and parked on the lot, but I often had meetings and eventually a second office in the "Glass Building" across the street from the main lot. I would walk through the main Administration Building, and return there, and the guards pretty well recognized me from all the trips so they would just look at me as I walked by.
One day a friend of mine named Lloyd Friedman from New York came out for a visit. I was sort of surprised when he walked into my office as the gate hadn't called to tell me he was there. As we walked out through Admin later for lunch, the guard called out "Have a nice lunch, Mr. Friedman." That stunned me a bit and I walked over to the guard and said "I have been walking in and out past you for years and never once have you called me by name. Lloyd is here for exactly 30 minutes and you call him by name. What's up?"
The guard replied, "Why, that's Mr. Friedman from New York." By now, I was more than a bit confused, as he not only knew Lloyd's name but where he came from.
Well, Lloyd and I figured out what was going on over lunch. When he first arrived he had said "I'm Lloyd Friedman from New York to see Bill Cotter." At that time, Warner Bros. was owned by Warner Communication in NY, and the guard had added 1 + 1 and arrived at 3, assuming Lloyd was some sort of executive out from the parent company, so out came the red carpet treatment.
Yeah, crack security for sure. Somehow I doubt that would work today, but perhaps if Lloyd came back today with a clipboard…
There are a lot of stories about folks sneaking into TV studios and onto movie lots years ago. It was a lot easier than everyone thought. And for every one of those stories, there were three about guards at the gate not recognizing Jimmy Stewart or Barbra Streisand. When we were doing Pink Lady, there was no drive-on pass for Sid Caesar one day and the guard — who was far from a young kid — didn't recognize him. Sid just backed his car out of the driveway and went home. Someone from the security staff had to phone him there, apologize and promise he could drive right in thereafter before he'd agree to come back for rehearsals.
I don't think a clipboard would work today. In the last ten years or so, whenever I've been to a studio, I have to show I.D. and even if there's a pass waiting in my name, they call someone and triple-check, plus I sometimes I have to let them inspect my trunk on the way in and/or out. I think I used this line before but they almost put you through the same procedure Goldfinger had to use to break into Fort Knox. Some say they've gone too far, security-wise. Then again, we don't know about some of the attempts that have been made. Maybe there's a good reason.