Olympic Games Let Film Maker Get Up Close and Personal With the World

In a sense, Don Shoemaker is on as fast a track as the Olympic athletes he films.

“I don’t think I could live an orderly life,” said the San Clemente resident, who has filmed an estimated 700 “up close and personal” profiles of Olympic athletes for television since 1972.

“I wake up in the morning and it’s a thrill because I don’t know where I’ll be from one day to another,” Shoemaker said. “Life is exciting. At times I’m in a different country each weekend. A 9-to-5 workday would be dull to me.”

Shoemaker’s Olympic coverage for ABC and NBC has taken him to every country in the world except India. “I’ll get there one of these days,” he said.

Assignments other than the Olympics include shooting a safari in Africa from a hot-air balloon and helicopter to filming a 28-man bicycle race across the United States with a crew of 33 people, eight motor homes, two camera cars and two camera trucks.

“It’s always a challenge,” he said. “When the phone rings, it usually means I’m off to someplace in the world,” and that usually means a trip for his wife, Emily, who takes care of the books for his Santa Ana-based company, Shoemaker Productions.

He is currently shooting car commercials. “That’s very lucrative,” said Shoemaker, 51, who considers filming car races his greatest joy. At one time he raced endurance cars. “Maybe I’ll get back to it one of these days.”

It’s not by chance that most of his work is outdoors. “When I got out of the Army in 1962, I aimed myself at sports because most of it is outdoors and that’s where I want to work,” he said.

Shoemaker doesn’t disguise the fact that he’s a workaholic. “The only way to have money is to work hard,” he said. While covering events at the Olymics, which he calls a special honor, “I basically don’t sleep for 2 weeks.”

His favorite Olympic film profile is that of shot-putter Hereinnhall Halldorssdon of Iceland.

“That man was a bus driver and would (train) at night and sometimes indoors because of the snow,” he said. “He wanted so much to be an Olympic athlete, and he lived in poverty. After we filmed him, we took him to a local restaurant. He had never been there.”

Although widely recognized for filming sports--he got an Emmy award for outstanding individual achievement at the Montreal Olympics in 1976--Shoemaker said he still tries “to get assignments that will look good on my resume.”

His Olympic coverage gives him a consistent income every 4 years. “But the good money is in commercials, so you have to hustle,” he said. “Everybody knows about my work at the Olympics, but you can do a lot of local commercials, and no one sits down and says, ‘That’s really great.’ ”

Besides filming, Shoemaker also edits, produces and directs his projects and expects to someday put together another educational documentary, such as his “Hidden World,” a film story on insects, which was made in the 1960s for National Geographic.

“Commercial television has lost something,” he said. “People love sports, but there ought to be more educational documentaries.”

Lester Stewart “fooled around with real estate” for 40 years and did pretty well. “I’m not broke,” he said, which is why he now buys different kinds of wood to make small picnic tables and benches to give away to children.

“I wouldn’t give them away if I was broke,” said the 79-year-old Huntington Beach resident, who has been building the furniture for 4 years. He once sent a vanload of furniture he made to Mexico.

“It gives me something to do,” explained Stewart, whose wife died 4 years ago. “Sometimes I go to the swap meet and buy bicycles so I can fix them up and give them away. I’m never happier than when I’m making something to give away.”

“We definitely had a logistical problem,” said Chelle Friedman, referring to the 425 gallons of matzo ball soup that went untasted by the 7,000 people at Sunday’s Israel Fair at the Orange County Fairgrounds.

First of all, the matzo balls sank. Second, the soup was cold. And third, health authorities had said that unless the soup was kept hot, none of it could be served.

The soup was in an 8-foot round hot tub that could only reach 108 degrees Fahrenheit.

“We still think the 425-gallon soup bowl is a record,” said Friedman, spokeswoman for the Jewish Federation of Orange County. “And we may submit it to the Guinness Book of World Records.”

Despite the problems, “everyone got a kick out of seeing what we think was the world’s largest matzo ball soup bowl,” she said.

“Too bad the matzo balls sank.”