I’m Okay. You’re
Okay. Is that Okay?
“Form is not different than emptiness. Emptiness is not different than form.”
-The Heart Sutra
“Wherever you go, there you are.”
-Jon Kabat-Zinn
No separation.
It’s a major premise of Zen practice, that all things are
one. If you prefer Quantum Physics,
think that nothing exists in a vacuum, and the thing being observed is
intricately connected to the observer.
Don’t fret. This blog
post is not about Zen or Quantum Physics, because while I practice the former
and am fascinated by the latter, I’m not remotely qualified to blog on either.
What I do know is that it is impossible to compartmentalize
the experience that is our life, as if our life and our work are two islands
with no bridge between them.
On that fateful first ride up to Canada a few years earlier,
I told Maureen that my work was more than my work; it was a part of my life and
it would always come first. This isn’t
something that usually leads to deepening of a relationship, but she understood. It was not a comment on putting a
relationship behind my work; in fact, there was no way to disengage the two. That is the reason this blog, which I began
as a blog on life in the indie film world, has been so entangled with my
personal life. No intelligent way to separate
the two.
We were married on May 29th, 1987, and Maureen
moved down to New York a week or so afterwards in an attempt to finish teaching
for her school year.
While I was starting to work more on small film projects,
and old injury was catching up to me. I
had injured both ankles doing lighting design years earlier, and together with
other complications, they were getting worse, to the point where I was only
able to walk without a cane.
This was a condition I had when Maureen and I first met, so
she was very familiar with it.
My explanation that my work was my life was fine for me, but
now, it was Maureen’s life as well. She
was a musician, and had acted in community theater in Canada. For me, it was only logical that she would
come here and be an actress and work in the same business I was in. At first, she threw herself into my vision of
the two artists working together. She
took acting classes and dance classes.
This was going to be fun, right?
Not exactly. This was
my fantasy, and reality soon crept
in. Acting class wasn’t fun; it was all
this heavy sense-memory work. I vividly
remember her coming home crying one day.
In class, they had suggested that one way to cry was to bring up a
horrible memory from her past. She used
one where a beloved childhood pet was run over by a car. She still was not able to cry in class; now
home, she was unable to stop crying. Not
fun. Neither was dance class with teens
who had spent every post-partum moment in dance class.
She was, however, incredibly supportive of me. I took jobs that I thought would prepare me
to produce films, and that meant sometimes taking non-paying jobs on student
projects. Like always, I was more
comfortable being the big fish in a small pond.
I had never taken as much as one film class. I learned most of what I know on set. I applied what I had seen other producers and
production managers do when working on these projects, and learned by trial,
error and learning as much as I could from those who knew more.
Two projects clearly illustrate this process. Both were Columbia University grad thesis projects, and
I will address one in this blog and one in the next.
The first short film was about a grandfather who was about
to die. The actor was played by veteran
character actor John Randolph. You may
remember him as Al Pacino’s tough NY boss in Serpico, or Jack Nicholson’s
father in Prizzi’s Honor. Roseanne’s dad? I know that for many of
you, this is like ancient history. His early film career was interrupted because
his union activism led him to be blacklisted during the McCarthy Era. He never became a big star, but was certainly
a face you saw in scores of films and television shows. A link to his IMDB page is below.
Randolph was the first of many, many established older
actors who proved to be the epitome of professionalism. One might think that old veterans on small
jobs would be difficult, but this was rarely true.
Many had gotten past the ego that actors need
to drive them early in their careers and were very comfortable in their own
skin. John was not only professional but
magnanimous. I was the production
manager, and, as is wont to happen on small projects, also doubled as designer.
I earned the latter job in small part because I had done it in theater and in
large part because we didn’t have the money for a designer.
In the
film, John had to play himself both a little younger and healthy, and also at
the moment of his death. He had the
great idea of doing so by use of a scarf to cover his neck, which was rather
wrinkled. Scarf on he looked healthier;
scarf off he looked older and sicker. He
had me over to his apartment, and showed me a few scarves that were perfect for
the character. I chose one. He said, “John, that is the perfect
choice. You really know what you’re
doing.”
It wasn’t my great taste shining through, as John had only
laid out scarves that were perfect. He did all the work. Still, I remember how good I not only felt
then, but every time he complemented me.
I also watched as he did the same with the young director. He never showed her up or bragged about how
much more experience he had. Rather, he
would always present suggestions in such a way that it they seemed like her
ideas.
I learned not only the ability to be generous, but also
realized how much more effective you can be if a person thinks that something
is their idea. This is a lesson that has come in handy
hundreds of times over the years when working with directors. Film school mentality is so competitive that
people often never grow out of it, feeling a need to show how smart they are at
all times. This might feed their egos,
but doesn’t solve many problems.
John had experienced the power of a complement
first-hand. Older actors, like older
line producers, have lots of stories.
Hey, if I didn’t, where would this blog be?
This was a story John shared.
It came from the set of Prizzi’s
Honor, working with the great director John Huston. I have always been a big Huston fan, and
loved a biography that covered his life called The Hustons by Lawrence Groebal.
Lots of great stories there as well.
Randolph’s story surrounds a scene where he is walking with
the hit-man character played by Jack Nicholson.
Randolph plays Nicholson’s father, and in this scene on a Chicago subway
platform, he tells Nicholson that the heat is too much and Nicholson’s
character has to leave town. Nicholson
had convinced Huston to let them improvise the scene, and the camera and video
village with Huston were at the end of the platform.
When the first take ended, Huston looked at them and said, “That
was good. Do it again and they did. Second take, and the same thing happens, same
exact words from Huston. “That was
good. Do it again.”
This went on for a few takes, with long walks back to first
position. Nicholson and Randolph were
beside themselves. What were they doing
wrong, and if it was so good, why were they doing it again?
They do the scene one more time. Huston looks at them, and says, “Okay,”
joining his thumb and forefinger in a gesture that reiterated his point.
“That was it,” John said.
“That was all he said during that scene, and at the end, I knew exactly
what he meant. I felt like a million
dollars. This was the guy who said ‘Okay’
to Bogie and Bacall, and now he was saying ‘Okay’ to me. Wow.”
The really talented and professional actors and crew people
never lose that sense of wonder. John
told the story as if he were some stage-struck kid, when, in fact, he came to that
movie as a Tony winner who had worked with Orsen Welles, among many other major
actors and directors. He still had that
gleam in his eyes.
Lest this blog become all flowers and roses, the next blog
entry will talk about lessons from someone significantly younger. Like me, this next “teacher” embodied optimism
and cynicism.
No separation.
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