Have Broadax-Will Time Travel

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PLOWBOY: All right!

UNDERHILL: Yeah, I felt so good about that accomplishment that I had a beer. Now I usually don't drink . . . but it was a hot day, and I'd conquered the bees, and we had some people over, so I drank a beer.

Then the phone rang, and it was the TV station. The pilot had gone over like gangbusters with the national PBS network. They were ready to start filming it. I said great.

I don't remember whether I had another beer or not, but I was so excited I probably did. Then ten minutes later, Colonial Williamsburg called, saying they wanted me to start work as soon as I could. Within half an hour, I'd gone from the bottom to the top. So that's my message to your readers.

PLOWBOY: When you're feeling low, go sit in the top of a box elder?

UNDERHILL: Well, a box elder or an oak. Perhaps the message is that if you can survive a swarm of bees, things are sure to turn out right. Actually, I suppose I mean that good things happen to you when you're ready to handle them. Maybe the times before when I'd gone into the network and said, "Do I have a TV show for you!" I wasn't really ready for it. As it was, I was just barely ready for the show when it happened.

Anyway, I started building the housewright program at Williamsburg and working on the TV series at the same time. So I've spent the past five years going back and forth between centuries: the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries for my work at Williamsburg and the projects I'm demonstrating on the show, and the twentieth century when I'm dealing with publishers, TV cameras, and contracts.

PLOWBOY: How is your show put together?

UNDERHILL: I work out what I'm going to do beforehand, sometimes only the night before, since we're on a really tight schedule. I walk through the show by myself, block out the camera shots, and set the tools down where I want them. There's no script—I have what I want to say in my head—but I place the tools so that there is a natural progression. I walk from one tool to the next and hope I'll wind up in the right place, having said everything I needed to say. Then, the crew brings the cameras in and sets up everything. I run through my moves and monologue so they can line up their camera angles. Meanwhile, Geary Morton, the director, makes some adjustments and shows me which camera will be doing the close-ups.

PLOWBOY: It must be difficult to keep camera positions in mind when you're trying to explain how to build an eighteenth-century toy with hand tools.

UNDERHILL: It really is. Sometimes I wonder how we made it through that first year. It was just bananas! A lot of things went wrong at first. Actually, I think it's an incredible feat whenever we get a show to turn out right—to get all the equipment to work for 26 minutes and 27 seconds and, at the same time, for me not to mess up my part.

PLOWBOY: Tell us about the time you gashed your hand on the show and started bleeding all over the place.

UNDERHILL (moaning): It was one of those shows where everything was going wrong. First, let me explain that unlike most TV shows, "The Woodwright's Shop" is not edited; it's shot at one whack in its entirety. Because of our tight shooting schedule, the most takes we do is three. Sometimes when I seem kind of breathless on the show, it's because it's the third time in a row I've done it. So, if I'm going to be demonstrating with expendable materials, I bring three of each item needed. In the show you referred to, I was planning to split a log, so I came prepared with three that I felt pretty sure would split the way I wanted them to.

On the show in question, we'd already blown two takes. A microphone came off the first time we tried to tape, and something else flubbed up the next time. During those two takes, I'd already used up two of the logs I'd brought. So here I was, down to my last log. And since the equipment and crew were already set up, I couldn't say, "Well, things aren't going so hot . . . let's do it another day." That third log just had to be it.

Well, the tape was rolling and I was explaining what I was doing, while chopping away with the hatchet. I saw some blood on the hatchet and looked down. Sure enough, there was blood gushing out of my hand.

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