All in the Family: The Making of Town Diary - The Final Cut

"I don't try to guess what a million people will like.  It's hard enough to know what I like."
-John Huston

After JR's death, there was a definite mourning period. He was cremated, and we got together on a beach in New Jersey and spread his ashes, joking as we could amid the tears.

Of course, Jack and I were as determined as ever to finish the project, and we collaborated as much as we could with Jack in Chicago, where JR's editing suite was located, and me in New York. Jack did the editing with JR's assistant editor, which added another dynamic to the process. In theory, it was good to have a fresh set of eyes. In reality, since he had only been an assistant editor, it meant Jack did the first cut pretty much the way he wanted to do it.

My first reaction to the first cut was that it was slow, but that's not unusual. I assumed that we could pick up the pace. I knew the problem started at home.

From the first reading of the script, through listening to sides at auditions, it occurred to me that, despite my best efforts, the script was too "talky." I have a great love for dialogue, and ever since Town Diary, I have pushed myself and the filmmakers I produced to pare down the words. Talking is great on stage, but it is hard to sustain it in film.

There are exceptional writers who can get in a great deal of dialogue and keep a story moving; Aaron Sorkin is my hero in this area. The difference is that the dialogue is always active, always moving the plot forward, and he does a great job of having his characters on the move as well.

Our story was about a filmmaker with regrets, battling his own past and that of a town's. Too often, I felt the scenes were telling and not showing. Worse yet, they often were reflective, which works better in novels than it does on screen.

Part of that was Jack's rather straight-forward style of shooting, which made the dialogue too precious, but I have to take responsibility for laying that foundation for him.

One scene in particular bothered me. The main character, Brian, has a strained relationship with his father. At one point, he discusses it with his mother. This is an adult man in his 40s trying to come to terms with his relationship with his parents.

It worked on paper, but when I watched it, I realized that it was not only reiterating something we had already established (his issues with his father), but it was at a point in the film where we were following a mystery, and it stopped it dead in it's tracks.

I asked Charlie, our cameraman and now de facto DP, to take a look, and he agreed, not only with the scene, but with the pacing as a whole.

Jack and I were past the arguments - JR's death made all that seem trite - and we tried to work out the problems. Jack agreed with some changes, but he felt that the mother-son scene was too good to lose. It was odd - a writer protesting to a director that a scene should be cut, and the director responding that the dialogue and performance made it indispensable.

In the end, the biggest change for Jack was that certain scenes just didn't work, and we needed to do a reshoot. I wasn't sure, but Jack  raised the money on his own to do it. 

We did the reshoot the following June, with Charlie as DP. The scenes we reshot certainly were better than what we originally had, including one in a newspaper office which I completely rewrote. We never found a good location for the original newspaper office, and built it in a studio. It looked awful (not the fault of our designer - there were budget and time limitations).* This time, we found a little underground newspaper office that was perfect. We also cast a long-time character actor named John who I knew from, you  guessed it, West Bank Cafe.

An aside on John.

John had one of the more revealing off-screen lines during the shoot. Word spread on set that Jack Lemmon had just died. When John, an older character actor, heard, his droll response was, "It's just as well. His work was going downhill." John wasn't kidding. He really felt that, if an actor didn't have his work, there was not much reason to stick around. Tells you a lot.

Back to the movie.

Shortly afterward, we had a screening at Tribeca (we rented the space). A table was set up with photos to honor JR, and certainly, much of the party afterward was a celebration of stories about working with JR, as it should be.

The screening itself? I sat with my assistant on the film, who knew me and my feelings better than anyone. She was the one who had to listen to all my complaints about how Jack was missing the main points of the film, how our lead was wrong, etc. Bless her, she helped me get through the entire thing.

The final product, in my opinion, is slow. I sat there, proud to see my name in a writing credit for the first time, but disappointed.

The film you screen is never the film you shot, or the script you wrote. It's rare that it is everything you wanted under the best of circumstances (see "Director's Cuts" and the Coppola's endless retelling of Apocalypse Now); and low budget films are never the best of circumstances. There is a line - and each individual has to find it - where the film that you screen is a true expression of the story you were trying to tell, or it is not. For me, it didn't make it across that line.

That experience has propelled me as a producer. I work with a lot of first-time directors, and, on low-budget, there are always compromises. A point I always stress is that you really need to know what things you would like and what are essential, and fight for the latter.As a line producer, it's a hard balance, but I really have fought on every film since not to have another filmmaker have that sinking feeling watching your baby and realizing that she is not as pretty as you thought.

* Here is a lesson I have learned more than once on low budget: when in doubt, go with a real location. It always sounds enticing to build to your needs, but if you don't have the budget, manpower, and time, too often, the result looks cheap.

N.B. This could have easily been three posts - one on the aftermath JR's death, one on the reshoot, and one on the screening. This series has run the better part of this year, with interruptions and I thought it was time to move on, both for myself, and those who are good enough to follow this blog.

The Great Man Directs - Part 3 - Bring On the Cooks

"“The first thing he discovered is that the creative architects knew how to play. They could get immersed in a problem. It was almost childlike, like when a child gets utterly absorbed in a problem. The second thing was that they deferred making decisions as long as they could. This is surprising."
-John Cleese on Creativity*

SPOILER ALERT: This story has a happy ending. It just takes a dark and twisted path.

I've always liked Iron Chef, though I still prefer the original Japanese show on which the Food Network show is based. It was more amusing precisely because they seemed so much more sincere, and the concoctions seemed more out-of-reach, as did the ingredients. The level of concentration and commitment on the part of experts who had reached the peak of their professions interested me.

Conversely, I have no interest in most other competition shows, especially food shows with waitresses, firemen and other semi-pros attempted the same thing.

There is a trope that goes something like this: too many cooks spoil the broth (soup).  I've come to believe it isn't too many cooks that spoil the broth, but, rather, the wrong combination of cooks.

On The Yellow People, the short I directed, there were definitely overlapping skill sets.

My producer, Dennis, is also an accomplished director in his own right. On a reality webseries a year earlier, he helped guide me in story editing a series from a factually-accurate but rather tedious snore-fest that was only missing John Cleese mocking BBC documentary voice-over artists to something that was quite entertaining.

My two actors. Chelsea, my lead female, had directed and been the lead in a short I had helped line produce and First AD. Subsequently, she had become a true producer on her own. James, my male lead, was also an accomplished editor.

Then, there was my respect for the process I had for Adam, my DP.

Finally, there was me, the long-time producing and production pro and novice film director (I had done a good deal of stage direction). While I was watching the creative side, the First AD that lives in my head kept one eye on the clock. Were we losing light through the window behind the actors? When was the best time to break for lunch? Which angles should we shoot out first and what would be most efficient.

While most of the experience mentioned above is a good thing, in another situation, it could have been awkward. Chelsea's experience has led her to direct herself, and, to some extent, to also direct her fellow actor (who in this case was also her fiance, just to make it more complicated).

James is an editor, so whenever we would move camera, I could see James calculating whether we had enough coverage from that angle.

Both actors were very sharp with continuity, sometimes reminding me of which hand had picked up a cigarette or whether they thought these two angles would cut.

Also, because the I had talked with the actors about motivation and the meaning of different moments for the weeks leading up to the live play, I felt it wasn't necessary or even healthy to keep beating those points. More extensive rehearsal before this would have been too much, and I very much agree with Tennessee Williams' belief that the film version of a play has a different life**, and I wanted that to be able to breath and grow.

It is also in keeping with what Cleese talks about in terms of creativity; that balance of being prepared but also being open to the moment, to trust yourself that you will be able to fix certain things as they arise. The extreme of this, of course, is not being prepared, and I was careful to make sure this wasn't true.

Everyone involved tossed their ingredients into the stew, but, thankfully, also knew just how far was reasonable and what would be crossing the line.

Yes, enough pepperoncino to bring out the taste, and, yes, maybe just a pinch more to connect with the heat, but not so much as to mask the flavors.

All of this compares and contrasts with my belief that filmmaking is at once a collaborative art and a dictatorship. To quote from Peter Brook's belief in The Empty Space, where he describes the Good Director, the Bad Director and the Deadly Director, the Bad Director is one where everyone can see that directing isn't happening, so everyone else jumps in. My own version of this theory is that someone will direct on set; if it isn't the director, it will likely be the DP, the producer, or the lead actor (or actress).

It's why I believe there is another fine line between welcoming input and cutting it off, something I try to be aware of when I AD or line produce if I see people disrespecting the director's space.

Finally, there is the editing.

My first look at the editor's cut through me. This isn't the film I directed? It seemed almost every cut and angle was the wrong one!

Of course, a deep breath and subsequent viewings made me more comfortable with the cut. There was no way it was going to come out the way I saw it in my head; that was an unrealistic expectation.

In working with the editor, I kept sending notes, and he kept making changes. The process was informative, There were key story points and transitions that the editor could not have known I was going for, and those (as well as the original music, which was way too on the nose) needed to be changed.

There were other places, though, that after I asked for a change, I realized I liked the editor's original cut more than my idea, that what he had done, while different from my idea, worked in a way to bring a fresh look at the piece, exactly in keeping with my theory on collaboration.

I've watched directors give over their work in post, and I've watch directors smother editors to the point that I wondered why they hired an editor at all. I was determined to do neither.

An assistant editor who worked with Coppola on Apocolypse Now Redux quotes him as saying: "It's not finished, but it's done."

I know how he feels.

I still have some ideas for music, and will want to sit with this cut and also run it by my smart actors for input, but for now, thanks Hussein, for a nice job editing.

Here it is - feel free to share your thoughts. I know many of my readers are directors in their own right, and welcome the input.






* Cleese, a founding member of the brilliant "Monty Python" comedy troupe, has some great videos on the process of creativity. Only one linked here - there are more.
**While there is no one quote where Williams says this, he discussed it often. A look at Elia Kazan's book "A Life" will show how Williams wanted his work to be adapted.

The Passion Project

"Really, Dr. McCoy, you  must learn to govern your passions. They will be your undoing."

-The Wisdom of Spock (Star Trek II - The Wrath of Khan)

Sometimes doing budgets is just work, with not a lot of concern for whether the projects get made. Other times, I become attached to projects.

Years ago, I read a script by Dan Lauria (probably best known for his work as the dad on "The Wonder Years," though he has done other cool work.) I won't say what it was about (hopefully he gets it made one day), but it was written for an famous actor friend of his, and it was brilliant. I did the budget for this script, and really wanted to see it made; alas, it was not. Years later, when I met him, I had the pleasure of telling him how much I enjoyed the script.

Much like foster parents, it is probably better when I do not become too attached to projects that I budget, but, inevitably, if the people making it are nice, I do. I hate to see the pain and heart-ache that goes with putting years of your life into getting a project you believe in made, and paying people like me to help get the funds raised, and then not seeing it ever get to the screen.

My skills are in knowing how to make the best use of the dollars you raise, and how to get that money on screen. As I stated in the last post, raising the money has never been a strong point for me.

Four of the budgets I am currently working on are from filmmakers coming back with the project for a second time. To be clear, I do not charge folks for slight alterations - these are people who have rewritten and rethought their project - often more than once, and often at different budget levels.

One paid me to put one of three different potential budgets for him in a completely different template, even after I tried to discourage him (from having to do it, and from paying me to do so), because, well, it needed to be done for a specific investor.  Anyone who has dealt with budgets knows how tedious and exasperating this can be; on one budget, for instance, craft service might be under "set  operations," on another, under "location." Matching all of these up is tedious; hence my need to charge again.

Two of the scripts are based on true, heart-breaking stories.

It's probably why I get annoyed when I see folks doing no-budgets say their project is a "passion project," and thus, somehow more worthy, and professionals should work on it for free.

These folks who are trying to raise money for their films are every bit as passionate about their project, let me assure you. The project my partners and I did took years of us setting money aside from mind-numbingly boring projects to fund, and we took two years to develop the script.

Folks who were dear friends of mine spent almost five years before they got to see their dream project done,  spending the money he made from editing to continue in development. When it finally got done, it was re-thought for a smaller budget than we originally planned but, as with the film my partners and I produced, everyone we brought aboard was paid.

When I see the sacrifices made by people at all levels to get their project made - including a director who was ready to mortgage his house to finish a film - I take offense at folks who are ready to shoot their film the second they type FADE OUT and expect other professionals to donate their time and sometimes equipment to make it happen.

Let me be clear: you want to make your film with your buddies and your collective equipment, go for it. You want to spend time collecting resources such as locations, trading favors, etc., I wish you the best and will even offer free advice.

What bothers me is the tone of those who choose to use the term "passion project", the suggestion that because you are willing to not make a profit on the project, complete strangers who you solicit online should jump on-board.

Your script is special? As I said, I have read incredible scripts that did not make it to the screen, some with name attachments. Note that none of the folks I am talking about were shooting for the stars - the budgets ranged from the very high at $16M, to the low at $200K. Most fell in the range of the SAG LOW or Modified Low, $625K and up, so these folks were not poised to get rich on these films.

Lack of budget does not suggest more passion; Plaster was only one project I did where an inexperienced director on a low-budget project was not willing to put the work necessary into doing the job right. The opposite is also true; just because you have a lot of resources, it doesn't suggest a lack of passion. Coppolla's decades dedicated to the Apocalypse Now story certainly was not motivated by money. I knew some people who worked on Redux, and they said his determination to get the story told "right" bordered on manic.

Look, I know there are people who go into this business to get rich, but, for the most part, they fall by the wayside. At every level, making movies is hard work, and, at the financial level, unless you have a cushy studio job, your "success" is only as real as your last box office.

This is not to suggest that you don't require passion from the folks you bring on board. With any of the "Key Creatives (there are certainly other creative crew people)" - DP, production design, costume design, editor - I want to know on a low-budget project that they really feel they can bring something special to the project, that it speaks to them in some way that will hopefully translate on screen.

Beyond that, I find that most other below-the-line  crew bring a passion as well. While the Best Boy Grip might not be excited about your script (most likely he didn't read it, and he doesn't need to), those who toil in these positions bring a different passion - pride in their work. I've seen that passion on the face of a grip who successfully levels track over difficult terrain, or an AC who nails a focus pull.

Most of us bring passion to our work; especially on the low-budget indie level, no one in their right mind is just doing this for the money, so when you say your project is a passion project, truly, I have no idea what you mean.

Any project worth doing has passion. I have no idea of knowing what karma you may or may not have accumulated, and I don't know what the Universe owes you, but I am pretty sure it does not owe you a movie, just as I'm pretty sure it doesn't owe me a movie. What is good advice for directors and screenwriters is also good advice in looking for collaborators; don't tell me about your passion, show me.

Lawrence of Digital

Lawrence of Arabia 50th Anniversary Event: Digitally Restored


This afternoon - almost all of this afternoon, by the way - I sat in a theater and watched the digitally-restored version of one of my absolute favorite movies, Sir David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia.

There was a time I would have assumed no film person would not have seen this great film, but recently, I seem to encounter many people in the film industry whose knowledge, appreciation and interest in film leaves them thinking Quentin Tarantino is "old school."

If you follow the link at the top of this post, it will take you to some information on how the digital restoration was done. In one of the segments leading up to the presentation in the theater, there was a segment on the process, and why scanning it at 4K delivered 'as much of the information the filmmaker intended' as possible.  As Sir David is no longer with us, and the post facility mentioned nothing of mediums, I took from the clip that this process did more to bring the original information that is on the film print than any other process can do.

My background is in production, not tech, and while I fully understand both the process that delivered the original print (I've actually edited on film, and regularly worked with the best labs in the world on films I line produced or produced) and the basics of the post process, I usually leave the "tech talk" to geekier and better-trained people than me.

Google geek-dom away, and feel free to offer techie insight in comments.

I was not old enough to have seen the movie when it first came out in theaters; my parents were wise enough not to take a 5-year old to a movie that ran more than four hours with intermission.

I was neither as wise nor as compassionate 24 years ago when I dragged my (then) wife to the restored showing on film in theaters. No, it was not the reason for our eventual split, at least not directly.

Trying to compare the two experiences is difficult. I cannot trust my memory to match images over that span of time, and as much as I love the film, I see no chance that I will watch a digital and film projection back-to-back any time soon. As my (now) ex suggests, I have too much free time, but not that much free time.

I can say that watching it today, there were many things I had not noticed before. Some were technical, some were elements of scenes I did not remember.

My ex noted at the time that for a movie that long and expansive, there was not one woman in it. That amazing fact always stuck in my head. Watching it today, there are, indeed, no speaking roles for woman - not a one that I noticed, and I was looking. There are women up on a hill in one shot; and there are women with their backs to us when they come to Auda's (Anthony Quinn) tent the first time. The other women I noticed did not speak, well, because they were dead, bodies at the site of massacres.

OK, this is the point in the post where I need to do this, remembering that there will be those here who have not seen it.

********SPOILER ALERT**************

Don't know if protocol is needed for spoiler alerts fifty years after a movie premiers, but, now, you can't say I ruined it for you. Guilt assuaged.

There are certainly elements that I do not remember from the last time I saw it, which was more recently than that time in 1988 but at least five years ago.  The detail of things like the composition of the desert floor and the wardrobe is clearer than I remember, especially the changes in the texture of the desert from sand to harder surfaces. The lighting, especially on faces, is amazing, and this is not because of some post trick, as is often the case today, but because of the brilliance of the original cinematography, at a time when gaffers and cinematographers had to depend on light meters and their understanding of how film is processed to get a desired affect. The digital restoration process certainly serves these elements incredibly well, probably better than a new print might do at this point.


*********CRABBY OLD GEEZER ALERT****

For those who worry that this is the point at which I start to talk about how much better things used to be, you are correct, to some extent. Shoot me (but know you will not be the first person to have thought of doing it).

Hey, as a production person on set today, I love the fact the WYSIWYG in digital monitors today. It makes it easier for me - and everyone - to see what you are getting. It has also, from my experience, made some - and I stress some - DPs, gaffers and such lazy. It just has. There, I said it.

Now, I know many many many incredibly talented folks in both those areas today, but I also know people who today call themselves directors of photography who could not have been third electrics when I first started.

When the movie ended, I spoke with two ladies who enjoyed the movie while sitting behind me. One mentioned that there were a few shots that she originally assumed were CGI before remembering that process did not exist in 1962. They were rather knowledgeable film-goers, and pointed out how amazing the back-lighting of characters was.

There is, indeed, one shot that I can remember in this version, where Lawrence walks indoors from outside, where he is so skillfully separated from the desert that it does, indeed, look like it was shot on a stage with green-screen behind him. Anyone who knows the history of the production of Lawrence of Arabia knows that was not the case, and the incredible hardship the cast and crew went through working on location in the deserts of Jordan.

The other thing that has always struck me about the movie-making is that, unlike many "epics," the film works both as a big, sprawling story and an intimate look at a man being torn apart by the difference between his image of himself and the reality of who he is. As Omar Sharif's Ali reminds him, he is just a man.

This got me thinking of yet another difference between an epic like Lawrence of Arabia, and what separates it from both the epics of yore and the video games/studio blockbusters of today.

It has patience. It takes time. There are a number of scenes that give an idea of the expanse of the desert, that allow things to happen in close to real time. A modern studio mogul, or, more likely a committee of eggheads who understand nothing about movies they don't rent, would say that an audience will not sit through it, and cut the length of those scenes. Doing so would remind us that we are watching a movie, and not give us credit for appreciating the way the unfolding action holds our attention. No one in today's screening seemed bored at any moment.

Those who know the film know there is a scene where Peter O'Toole's Lawrence is tortured by the Turks. The actual torture scene is thankfully left mostly to the imagination, which makes it so much more effective than a lot of blood and gore. When blood appears some time later on the back of his uniform back in Cairo, the horror of realizing that these wounds, both physical and psychological, have not healed is that much more powerful.

The way that scene plays shows another aspect of Lean's brilliant story-telling. Dryden, the politician played by Claude Rains, is standing behind Lawrence. He first notices the blood. The British general, played by Jack Hawkins, is in the process of reprimanding Lawrence for not wanting to go back to "Arabia." Instead of Dryden saying "hey, his back is bleeding," or acting shocked, he merely calls Lawrence's name. When Lawrence turns to address him, the general can then see the blood, and his mood changes. No one had to remind Lean to show when he could tell.

It got me thinking of the latest Christopher Nolan Dark Knight effort. Better certainly than the cookie-cutter video game/movies that permeate the landscape today, it's attempt to delve into the mind of it's tortured and beaten lead is nowhere near as powerful.

No, I am not knocking Nolan's film-making. He is very talented. Truth is that Lawrence is the exception even for movies of its era, and before. It's also true the larger part of the audience for spectacles like Dark Knight would not appreciate or have the patience for it. The irony, I think, is that the true aficionados that made the whole Batman series popular to begin with would probably eat it up.

When you're spending a couple of hundred million on a "project," those numbers would not be enough.

My experience in the film-making process also drew my attention to something Martin Scorcese said in the into to the film, which is that Sir David was trying to re-edit the restored version right up until it made it to the screen in 1988.

This reminded me of something I heard many years ago from a friend who was an assistant editor on Francis Ford Coppola's own sprawling epic, Apocalyse Now Redux. Coppola's multiple endings and original fight over the first release of the movie, and then Redux years later, with the "director's cuts" in-between, are testament to the fact that a director on any film, from Studio to Indie, sometimes has trouble letting go.

The assistant editor shared she once heard Coppola, near the final stages, say, "It's not over, but it's  done." Anyone who has tried to convince a director that they didn't need to re-cut their movie one more time can relate. This goes for everything from the quirky feature I worked on, The Rook, to a short I worked on more than two years ago that the producer tells me went through three edits and is still not done.

The phrase that comes to mind is: just because you can, doesn't mean you should. At some point, someone needs to say, "Step away from the editing console."

Lawrence of Arabia will soon be out on Blu-Ray, and the current version is certainly well-worth watching. Hey, the good folks who made the movie don't need me to hype it for you, and it is no fault of their's that the experience will probably not match today's theatrical presentation. In fact, I saw it at the Regal Union Square Cinema, and the sound could have been better and may be better in your home.

Some things are destined to never be as good as you remember them. For me, the feelings I had today were just as strong as the first time I saw this film. Young filmmakers, do not take from this post that Sir David Lean did something you cannot do; don't put it up on a pedestal to be shown at museums, rather, I just encourage you to set your sights higher than the fare that passes for "great" in many corners.