Jeff talks We Are the World with Emmy Award winning cameraman Ken Woo

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Welcome to my eighties show podcast.I'm Jeff Stevens introducing the amazing Emmy Award
winning cameraman Ken wu coome On,Jeff, how are you up there?
Well, I am pretty good,and I am let me just say,
right off the bat, super jealousthat you get to be a fly on
the wall for what I think isone of the most incredible sessions, probably

(00:21):
of all time. I believe you'reright in a fight there was a newbody
who could be considered the luckiest guyin the room. It would definitely have
been me. And all I alwayssay is like, who knew? Yeah,
right, who knew? And letme just say so, Ken,
First of all, so impressive twentyseven time Emmy Award winning cameraman. You

(00:41):
have shot Super Bowls and Olympics andthe Masters in the Final four, and
the Triple Crown and NBA Championships,on and on and on. But you
were also asked to essentially shoot thissession back in the day. So how
did that all come about in nineteeneighty five? Well, in nineteen eighty
five, was living in la workingin Hollywood. I was on staff at

(01:03):
CBS Television City, so I wasdoing entertainment at that time, and the
first guy that ever hired me wasDick Clark Productions Nice. So I did
a lot of those music shows.I did the Grammys and the AMAS and
Country Music Awards, so I kindof ran around in those circles before I
moved over into the sports world,where in the sports side of it,
I did live events. But thething that I really liked is I did

(01:26):
all the documentary stuff, the profilesand the even interest stories, and that's
what really interested me. But backin the Hollywood days and it was all
about the entertainment. So were youactually on the schedule to shoot the AMAS
as well and they just pulled youinto this or how did that work?
No, Well, the way itworked out, I'll try to be as
quick as I can about it.Is. Two weeks before the AMA Awards,

(01:51):
I had been working with two producersfor Columbia Pictures, and those two
producers had gotten hired by HBO toshoot what was going to be a one
hour documentary about the making of thisWeird the World and it would be the
same footage that will be used inthe music video. So I got a
call on the Friday before the AMA'sfrom one of the producers saying Michael and

(02:15):
Lionel had written a song that they'regoing to bring in a couple of their
artists, and band Aid had beenout a few months before. It's going
to be kind of a band aidthing and they're raising money for famine relief.
Are you available? And I said, well, yeah, sure,
that sounds great. And I saidyeah, so just tell me the time
and where and they go, well, we can't tell you either one,
but stand by, we'll call youMonday. They didn't call me till like

(02:38):
eleven thirty that morning, and whenthey did, they go, it's on
the AMN Studios four o'clock. Don'tbreathe a word of this, just be
there. Wow. Yeah. Becauseas I'm watching the documentary The Greatest Night
and Pop, which is out onNetflix now, fascinating. I urge everybody
to go watch it if you're amusic lover at all. It is just

(02:59):
fantastic. But it's the secrecy thatwent around this because I didn't think about
that. As they're pulling in youknow, Stevie Wonder and they're trying to
get Springsteen to show up, whowho you know, wasn't going to be
at the AMAS and all the differentlittle nuances. They said, the minute
that a bunch of you know,a list celebrities start pulling up, this

(03:19):
thing's going to blow up and everybody'sgoing to know about it. And instead
it was amazingly kept secret until ofcourse afterwards, you know, yeah,
that is and in fact it couldbe because it was such a short time
frame. It was only like threeor four weeks from concepts to the night
they recorded. But actually, inwatching the documentary like the second or third
time, because there was so muchinformation, one of the things that came

(03:42):
out is somebody in Ken Craigan's officewho was Lionel's agent, kind of leaked
it to somebody, so the wordwas out a little bit, just no
details. In fact, in partof the documentary you see him questioning Lionel
about this this song, and thenalso Huey Lewis. But the fact that
they kept the lid on it.If it had been today, it would
have never happened because all the iPhonesand everything, it would have just blown

(04:05):
up right away, and there werea lot of artists would not have shown
up. Oh absolutely. When yousee that, anything happens in TMZ immediately
has a video. TMZ doesn't missanything, so exactly exactly, I mean,
because there was no press arriving.I mean, you can imagine Lou
Springsteen pulls up across the street andwalks into the studios. It's like that

(04:26):
could have never happened. Was therehave been all those great satellite trucks and
cameras waiting. That wouldn't have happened. Right, there was no drone footage
in eighty five, Right, therewas no drone footage. And I'm trying
to remember do we even had Yeah, I guess we did have cell phones,
but I think they were all thesize of the concrete block at that
That's right, that's right, talkingto Ken wu Here, the twenty seven
time Emmy Award winning cameraman who shotthe entire Weir of the World session.

(04:50):
So when I'm watching it and it'sit's Lionel and Michael basically at Michael's house.
Were you were you there for thattoo? You know? No,
I wasn't there. The only partI shot was from the night of the
studio. It was just myself andthree other cameramen, and I can only
remember one of them, Hector Ramirez, but lesser Heart they've all passed I

(05:12):
was the youngest cameraman of the bunch, so I'm actually the last man standing
from that crew. Wow. Andso the footage that we see in the
Weird of the World video, that'syour footage. Yes, yeah, all
the studio footage is mine and theother three guys. Basically we showed up
and we had a director there,and basically we had a two minute camera

(05:33):
meeting where the director goes, look, there's no way I could direct you,
guys. It's going to be happeningall around you. We're just going
to roll and record everything you doand we'll sort it out later. So
go for it. Wow. Atwo minute meeting to prep you. That
was Oh my gosh. Well,no wonder. You've won so many Emmys.
You're like, Okay, I justgot to take this and run with

(05:54):
it right with very little direction.Oh absolutely, And you know what,
it's kind of I think I mentionedto somebody, so I could have closed
my eyes and pointed that camera anywherein the room. But it's gonna be
a great shot. Because I wasin the middle of forty five of the
greatest artists of our time. Everythingaround me was a great shot. So
we've just got another minute or twohere, ken, But so is there
anything that jumps off that you remember, Like seeing that is just like so

(06:18):
behind the scenes, Like you know, there's a whole thing about Diana Ross
telling Daryl Hall she's his biggest fan. I mean, did you see some
little fly on the wall things likethat that you really remember? Well,
it was interesting, you know.Lionel said it best when he said it
was like first day of kindergarten becauseit was just the artist in the room,

(06:40):
which was unnatural because normally they travelwith an entourage of a manager and
an agent and a publicist and blahblah blah blah. But since they were
all thrown in this room and theydidn't have any support people, it was
just all on them. So theinteraction really started very slowly. Only people
who knew each other kind of atfirst were interacting, But after that it

(07:01):
just kind of warmed up and everybodyreally got into the whole spirit of the
thing. And my best recollection isjust Stevie Wondering Ray Chearl sitting at the
piano and just jamming together when theother artists were on the bathroom break and
they would just yucking it up andthey're like how how incredible is this Stevie
Wonder and Ray Charles play together?Goodness? Yeah, I'm I cannot tell

(07:23):
you how jealous I am. I'msuch a music guy. And and that
was my senior year of high school. So that song just hit like right
at this, you know, bigmoment in my life too. And and
then of course that led to Liveeight over the summer the and I thought
it was interesting as they were putting. I saw where they're you know,
they're making like the the circle ofthe artists and they're trying to figure out
whose voice is going to sound bestafter whose voice because I've often thought like

(07:47):
the part where it goes from likeKenny Logins to Steve Perry to Daryl Hall
is perfect. It's like, well, how did they think to put And
obviously that was calculated. They theyreally thought about that stuff ahead of time.
Well that's interesting. Tom Baylor wasthe guy that put all the artists
together, and he researched all oftheir voices. He was a very good

(08:07):
friend of Quincy's and he's the onethat did you. He was a vocal
arranger, so he's the one thatkind of laid it out because he knew
what everybody's range was, and hekind of fit them to that voice.
I mean, he had did anabsolutely flawless job, and it was so
funny. Those names were written onthe floor, yeah, Tate down before
any of the artists came in,So it was interesting to see the artists

(08:31):
come in and see whose name wason the floor. So it was kind
of like, oh, did Imake the cut or did I not make
the cut? And there was alot of disappointment in the room when they
didn't see their names right. It'slike, yep, you're the background choir
and and dan Ackroyd, what areyou doing? I did always wonder that
At the very beginning of the documentaryon Netflix, They're like, and I

(08:54):
really want dan Aykroyd, and Iwas sitting there scratching my head, going,
well, no disrespect to dan Ackloyd, but why exactly? Yeah,
now I can understand he brought somethingI guess from Blues Brothers. Yes,
well that's true. I mean,you know, you're sitting there talking about
Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie and StevieWonder and you know, step carrying it
and then dan Aykroyd. I waslike, uh, okay, but well

(09:16):
there's a couple of guys in there. Could never figure out who they were.
And later on and I goes,oh, that's the news. I'm
like, yeah, Huey Lewis broughthis guys the news. Yes, right,
very true, like those guys areknown as the news. Okay,
the news. Oh man, Ken, I could talk to you forever.
I am so jealous, but Iam so thankful that you captured all of

(09:37):
this on camera and we can watchit on Netflix. The greatest night in
pop ken Wu. Huge thrill totalk to you, man. Thank you
so much for taking the time.Thank you. You'll have a great day.