THE OTHER HALF: Lucky Luciano

Cameraman Michael Luciano has risked life and limb to get the perfect shot

SOAP OPERA WEEKLY July 11, 1995 When Judi Evans (Paulina, Another World) married Michael Luciano a year and a half ago, she became Judi Evans Luciano, not just personally but professionally as well. While by no means universal, such a choice among performers is not unusual today. What may be unusual is her husband's reaction. Far from expecting it, he was flattered. "More than flattered," he insists. "Any woman who takes the guy's last name deserves a pat on the back." He concedes that he would find it difficult to change his name to Evans. "Not that it's a bad name," he hastens to add. "I guess it's that guy pride thing, you know?" Still, when the public sometimes calls him Mr. Evans he's OK with it. "It sometimes happens with people who knew her from when she first started," he says good-naturedly, "and don't realize she's changed it." He is prepared to accept the offer his wife made, however: to win another Emmy so he'll have his name on one. "That's the only way I'll ever get close to stardom," he laughs. A cameraman with CNBC almost since its beginning seven years ago, Luciano reports to their Fort Lee, N.J., offices every morning to get his assignment. For five of his six years there he has been a field cameraman--that is, working on shows shot outside the studio. "I work for a different show or a different reporter each day," he explains. "We have daily news stories and five or six reporters who have to get their stories out by a 4-5 p.m. deadline. "You get a chance to be real creative, and you're on your own a lot," he says, enumerating the pluses of his job. "It's kind of nice driving to different places every day. It keeps the work interesting." The downside, of course, is traffic. "Manhattan's the worst, although people from LA might disagree. I spend 99 percent of my time in Manhattan." Many of his assignments are relatively mundane, such as shooting at a Wall Street brokerage house for a story on the fluctuation of the dollar. Others are more exciting, such as the hidden camera gigs designed to uncover one scam or another. "I'll have on a ski jacket," he says, "and one lens of the sunglasses in my pocket will have a camera lens behind it." Sometimes they get caught, which he says is more embarrassing than anything else. A fun shoot was at the Waterfront Restaurant on Manhattan's East Side for the introduction of the Wonderbra's bathing suit line. "They had three models come into the restaurant on a speedboat," he describes, "and they had bathing suits on under their jackets. There were more cameras there than when the mayor of New York has something to say. Everybody was fighting for shots, and it got a little crazy." Most memorable, perhaps, and certainly more dangerous was the time he went to Harlem with a female reporter on a story about the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). "She had the bright idea of getting shots of people standing on corners, looking suspicious," he says, only slightly ruefully. "I had too much pride to say no; I didn't want anyone to think I was afraid. She was driving, and she stayed in the truck while I got out and shot." Finally he said, "You know what? This is not a good idea. We're asking for trouble." They agreed he would shoot from the truck, and eventually they came upon several men in front of a liquor store, openly drinking whiskey. "The camera lens is very strong," he notes, "and you can read lips if you want to. I had a very close shot of these guys, and I could see them say, 'Hey, there's a camera pointed at us.' They started cursing at me, and before we knew it they were chasing the truck. I said, 'You better get us outta here, now!' She starts to drive down a small side street, the light turns red and there's a car in front of us. I think: 'What am I gonna do now? I'm the only guy here, I can't fight seven guys, and I've got a $30,000 piece of equipment in my hand.' So I start yelling at her, 'Drive up on the sidewalk if you have to, but get us outta here!' Just then the light turns green, she tears out, and they start unloading the whiskey bottles on the truck. I decided that was the last time I'd go on one of these things with a woman. I need someone watching my back." Luciano met his wife when he was in college and she was on Guiding Light (as Beth Raines). They both boarded horses at the same riding facility and spoke briefly at that time, for about 10 minutes. "I recognized her because the girls always had Guiding Light on in the rec room at school," he says, "and I got hooked on it." However, when he met her again several years later at a local nightclub, he didn't recognize her at all. She tapped him on the shoulder and asked him to dance, at which point he said he knew her from somewhere. She thought it was AW, which she was now on, but instead he said, "Didn't you used to board a horse at Westwind Stable?" When she was about to leave she said, "Do you want my phone number?" "I said, 'Yeah, sure,' " he reveals almost sheepishly. "I was just so content meeting her and getting to dance with her I wasn't going to push it. I thought maybe this was God's way of giving me one last break and I was going to die on the way home!" Luciano says what he likes best about his wife, aside from her beauty, of course, is her kindness and sincerity. "She has a heart the size of Brooklyn," he declares affectionately. She is also apparently down to earth. Once she was recognized in a Kmart with him, where he was buying fish hooks. They asked, "What are you doing here?" and she said, "Where would you expect me to be, Beverly Hills?" What he dislikes is her bugging him to pick up his clothes and her capacity for deep sleep. "She's an absolutely comatose sleeper," he observes in mock outrage. "She'll fall asleep in the car and I'm tempted to leave her there. Once, I swear to god, she fell asleep at the studio, standing up. Just ask the people she works with. I think in another life she must have been a horse." # Return to Press Index