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.

All in the Family: The Making of Town Diary - ...The Ugly

"Please forgive me. I forgive you. Thank you. I love you."
-Dr. Ira Byock, From his Book "The Four Things That Matter Most" on what you need to say to loved ones before they die.

My mom used to visit her mother every day in the hospital. My grandmother was relatively healthy right up until her death in her late 80s. One day, as my mother was leaving to go home, my grandmother, sitting comfortably in a chair by the window, said "Goodbye, Margaret."

My mother was all the way to the bus stop before she got a chilling feeling. My grandmother would always say, "I'll see you tomorrow, Margaret" - never goodbye. My mother thought to go back, but, it was late and getting dark out. She still had to get home and make dinner. She was sure it was nothing.

Mom wasn't home more than a few minutes when she got a call from the hospital telling her my grandmother had passed.

A lot of books and articles have been written on preparing for death, both for the person dying and the the loved ones who are left behind. Many a novel - and likely more movies - have ended with two people reconciling in those final precious moments before the last breath. A popular tear-jerker of a novel from my youth was made into an even more tear-jerker of movie, Love Story, with the syrupy tag-line: "Love means never having to say you're sorry."*

Yeah, but it wouldn't hurt.

......................

Near the end of our shoot, two days stuck out in my mind.

One was the day of a scene where Brian goes to the home of his assistant and she makes dinner. It was a scene I wrote intended to show that there was at least some sexual tension between them. Brian was played by a man in his late 40s; his assistant, Veronica, was played by a lovely young actress and singer who is still stunning today.

I've previously pointed out that the actor Frank (Brian) had become rather boorish, and by this point, Brette (Veronica) was put off by him, as were some of the other actresses. There really was not much chemistry between them, but I still liked the idea that there would be some romantic interest, even though I never wrote a scene where anything more than the suggestion happens.

Jack (director) had made it clear he thought Brian would never become involved in a romance with his assistant. My point was not that he did, but that it had, at least, crossed his mind, even if he thought better of it later. It was hardly an unreasonable assumption, and it added some heart to the story.

Jack thought the steaminess would come from the major sub-plot - that a teenage girl had drowned under mysterious circumstances during an evening skinny-dipping with her boyfriend (who turns out to be a character close to Brian in his childhood).

This wasn't quite a noir, but it was meant to seem like a crime and cover-up might have occurred. Still, I thought a romantic interest for the leads would add an emotional warmth to a story that seemed, as we were shooting it, rather cold.

At Jack's request, I had rewritten the dinner scene from one where it is suggested that they wound up in bed (though not shown) to one where it was made clear that they did not - but that Brian and she think about it.

On the day of the shoot, after agreeing to my rewrite, Jack completely ignored me and shot the scene as if there was nothing between them - making a clear point to both actors that there was nothing there.

What was the point of the scene, then? I didn't need to see two characters eat! Yes, I would have fought him if had told me of his intention, but by avoiding a discussion we needed to have, he gave me no options.

I was incensed as producer and writer. Both of these things should have been discussed with me. Writers get their material changed all the time. Directors get final decision (in indie films, anyway) but producers should always be in on such a discussion that changes a feel of the film significantly. In the end, I would have made the case for shooting it with romantic overtones, and then seeing if it made sense in post. We were set to shoot it, we had the location rented, etc.

Instead, we wasted half a day on a scene that no longer made any sense. When I made my case to JR afterwards, he basically shrugged and said he didn't understand, either, but it was Jack's decision.

If I felt alienated before, I felt more alienated now.

JR was definitely weaker from the chemo. Thankfully, he trusted Charlie fully as operator and to make decisions about the photography. We all suggested that JR could go back to his room early whenever he wanted, but the professional in him would not allow it. Unfortunately, on some days, the chemo got the best of him, and he would rush through set-ups or suggest we could cut coverage.

All of this was sub-conscious on JR's part. I knew it was not intentional Still, on one day when I really thought we needed more, JR insisted it was fine. I don't remember my exact words, but they were something like this:

"Great. We're just going to compromise and accept average again. That's just great."

It was one of those things you say out of frustration. I know JR never stopped giving his all, and I could not imagine what it was like to be dealing with minutia while literally being sick to your stomach.

The three of us went through the rest of the shoot - this was the last or next to last day - saying little, and I didn't have any real discussions with JR after that, and Jack and I dealt only with what we had to discuss.

JR and Jack went back to Chicago, where JR, with his now-trusted assistant editor, would begin editing. As the days after wrap went by, it occurred to me that when we got to the point where we were close to final edit and I was scheduled to go out to Chicago to join Jack and JR, it would be good to get back to the three friends we were.

One morning - maybe a week or two after we had wrapped - Jack called me.

"Are you sitting down?" he asked.

What a silly question. Just tell me what you need to tell me. Anything about the movie that needed to be fixed....

"John's dead," he said.

JR was told he was in remission, and all was going well. That morning, JR was getting dressed after taking a shower, and Jack went to the ATM to get some cash. Jack would only be gone a few minutes. Jack said JR seemed fine and healthier than ever.

When Jack got back, just a few minutes later, JR was on the floor. The EMTs later told him that John was already dead by the time Jack got back, and we later learned that his body was filled with cancer.

From that moment until this one - more than 14 years - my last words to JR stay with me, the unintended meanness that I never got to undo.

Stacy, JR's girlfriend, flew out to Chicago to see him before he was cremated. She and Jack flew back to NYC where his friends gathered and each of us tossed a few of his ashes into the ocean near where he had grown up in New Jersey.

At some point, I took Stacy aside - it might have been that day, or later. You think you're going to be supportive for that person. but I could not hold it in. I started crying as I told her that I could not forgive myself for having the last thing that I said to a dear friend, to someone who was so instrumental in every step of my development as first an AD, and then, after introducing me to Stan, as line producer and UPM, not to mention the love and support we shared.

No thank you for all he had done for me and had meant to me.

No 'I love you', though I certainly did.

He had nothing for me to forgive him for, but I would have liked to have taken back faulting him for what were much bigger problems.

Certainly, no "Please forgive me."

Like JR, Stacy was reassuring, and said that JR had never even mentioned it to her, and, knowing him better than I did, that there was no way he took it to heart. I hope she was right.

I could not find an obit, and his IMDB does not begin to tell his story. John Rosnell never thought of himself as a mentor, but there are a gaffers and grips and make-up people and others that he helped get a leg up, valuing loyalty and hard work over resume or even previous experience. Oh, and one First AD and line producer. My post about when we met - aptly titled "When JB met JR - The Birth of JB" - tells it in a bit more detail.

There are a lot of us who remember him. He fought cancer not once, but twice, and the disease may have finally laid him down, but could never take away the tenacious, loving person he was, though I'm sure if he were here, he would scoff at the latter.

I like to imagine JR and I talking over a glass of wine (he still with his white zinfandel, God love him) at his favorite Italian restaurant, both laughing at what a sap I am to make such a big deal out of one bad day for both of us, among so many bad days on set, where things that are said out of weariness or frustration are allowed to dissolve and disappear like bad frames cut from a movie.

So, I won't burden his spirit out there with a pathetic request to forgive me - I hope he has better uses for his energy now. I will just leave it at - thank you, and I love you, man.






..................

Next post, the editing, a re-shoot a year later, and the final product (as you might have imagined, that might be more than one post)


* Tear-jerkers are a genre that go back to the silent era in film. As they play on emotions we all have, they tend to work. Beware, images on the screen are sometimes more shallow than they appear at first viewing, JR would get a real kick out me using this clip in a post about him (or, more likely, kicked me). Enjoy, JR!

Got Here Straight from a Crooked Path

How do you go straight ahead on a narrow mountain path that has ninety-three curves?

-Old Zen Koan

Budgeting project after project that has yet to see funding as a way of making a living can make one rather jaded, not to mention a bit loopy, but sometimes, the concentrated focus leads one to think about aspects of your life and career.

In the last series on the film Double, I briefly mentioned that the director was mostly a commercial director, and I was known more for features; more specifically, low budget features.

At points in my career, it has gotten even more specific than that, doing a number of mob related films that led folks to believe that was a "specialty" of mine. Some of my "specialties" were only in the eyes of certain folks, as in the time in Los Angeles when I was brought in to interview as AD on a movie with Black filmmakers because, having seen from my resume that I had worked a number of films with DP John Rosnell (J.R.), who had shot Matty Rich's Straight Out of Brooklyn, assumed that I was a Black filmmaker. Of course, this misconception started with the erroneous belief that JR was Black.

Type-casting is weird enough when it is related to actors. I am currently producing a short for a bright and talented writer who is a first-time filmmaker who cannot seem to see actors as doing anything other than the type of roles they have done in the past, and he is not alone in that regard. One would hope that trained actors could step outside not just specific types, but show sides of their personality they had not previously.

Certainly when it comes to production people, we should and can make any type of movie. When people ask me what my favorite movies are, I usually say, simply. "good movies." You make it well, and it's my type of movie.

All of this leads me to answering here a question I get from time-to-time when people get past first knowing me and feel comfortable asking: Why did I continue to do low-budget movies and not move on to bigger features as AD, UPM or line producer?

As with most of my career, it was not part of the plan. This was not for a lack of planning; indeed, I made many many plans. It is just that as quickly as I made plans, other things happened.

Lily Tomlin, who I think is one of the most creative comedic talents around, (and, to prove my point about type-casting, someone who has done some great dramatic work) used to do a sketch about a waitress who became a successful actress, when her real goal was to become a better waitress. Every time she got a chance to move up as a waitress - say, from a diner to three-star restaurant, or from a three-star to a four-star, her career path as a waitress would be interrupted by another (always big) acting gig. Playing against the stereotype of the a waitress who really wants to act, all this actress (who eventually becomes more and more successful as an actress) ever really wanted to do was be a great waitress.

Below is one version of the sketch, performed at the 1977 Tony Awards



Much like that waitress, I knew, at every point in my career, exactly what I wanted. When I went to NYU, I was going to be a psychiatrist, just like the priest who I had for Psych 101 at Cardinal Spellman H.S. in the Bronx who I greatly admired. When I got to NYU, I also wanted to write for the newspaper, but they were not open, but the General Manager of the radio station, which was on the same floor, recruited me for the radio station. That was it - I was going to go into radio! I worked in the music business for a while, before becoming bored and getting cast in a play (my roommate made me go and read with him because he needed a partner), which got me into theater, where I met my stage manager mentor, and stage managing got me to directing theater, until eventually, I met up with my stage manager mentor again, who got me my first film job, which got me into film.

That's the abbreviated version - the early posts of this blog will fill you  in on all of the above in greater detail, if you really wish.

Once in film, and with my love for writing, I thought I would wind up in Hollywood as a screenwriter (and maybe director, as I had directed a good deal of theater). That didn't happen. though not for lack of trying.

As I started working in production, I worked a lot, often going from one film as AD or UPM or line producer to the next. I was getting paid decently, working with some good people, and one day, I looked up and I was about forty and doing one low-budget movie after the next.

At this point - and I will explore this in future posts - I tried to get some projects of mine off the ground as producer and/or writer with a number of people with whom I was working. After getting hit in the head enough times, I learned that raising money was not my strong point, in some part, I guess, because money, for the sake of money, was never that important to me. (This says a lot about why I am divorced).

By this point, I am passing forty years of age, and getting "old" in a business that is geared toward youth. You look up one day, and there you are. I was too old to start at the bottom and work my way up in Hollywood, something I did not have an inclination to do and, even if I did, someone my age would not have been welcomed in those starting positions. No one in Hollywood wants someone working for them who has done things their own way for years - they want to train you to do it their way. As they are paying the bills, that is fair, but it was not for me, and would not have been for them.

When I did eventually get to actually produce a feature that I wrote, it was on a scale that my partners and I could raise, and what we knew, which was low budget.

So, as a long way of answering that question from earlier, I didn't decide to stay in low-budget films, it was just the way things turned out, and the same is true for why I did more features than commercials or music videos, though I did some of those as well. I guess when people were looking for people to work those other mediums, they looked for folks that had done those things before, and, hence, the self-fulfilling prophecy.

No, I did not start out aiming to be a low-budget feature line producer, UPM and AD; no one is that masochistic. There may still be bigger budget projects on the horizon. With all the craziness, I have met some great people and gotten a lot of satisfaction along the way. There is no point in re-tracing steps, and I certainly don't regret what I did, even if I might advise someone else coming along now, when the indie world is very different from when I was starting, to do things differently.

All of this was triggered, innocently enough, but the convergence of my breaking down the third script in recent months with the same exact character, and the previous series of posts on working on a feature with a commercial director.

As for that character: I recently posted on my Facebook page that "This Thug # 1 guy must be some sort of muse." Truly, I had broken out "Thug # 1" in about three recent scripts. As I also pointed out, he is loyal, because he often brings along his dear friend, "Thug # 2." Hell, he even seems to have a following.

And a popular video game, whose nickname is THUG.

It would be easy to just suggest that this is a case of amateurs making the usual mob or gang movie or just a case of sunspots aligning to make the same type of movie, but at least two of these scripts are fabulous and unique and based on absolutely true stories. It would be nice if they actually got made (both groups have had other films made, so I have reason to believe this could happen, but, then again, I'm the guy who is not good at raising money, so what do I know.)

I wonder if these projects do get made, and someone sees that I budgeted them (or, if I'm fortunate enough to be the line producer), whether people will then surmise that I have a special knack for movies involving gangs, that I have some insight into how to budget a gang movie.

If they looked more closely, they would see that it is just me moving as straight ahead as I can on that crooked path. As the koan says, how do you go straight on a crooked path?  In truth, life is nothing if not exactly that crooked path, and as I went straight on that path, this is where I landed - at least, so far.

Regenerate Me - The Horror! The Horror!

He had summed up - he had judged.  The horror! The horror!
-Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness



I recently revisited a favorite author, Joseph Conrad, and specifically, Heart of Darkness.  Most film fans know this was the basis of Coppola's movie, Apocolypse Now.  Conrad's Kurtz was an ivory trader in uncharted Africa whose zeal had led him to make personal armies of the natives, who looked upon him as something of a god.  When Conrad's narrator gets to him, he is a gaunt, ghostly figure who is looking into the abyss.

Kurtz's death in the novel on a couch in the cabin of a tiny steamer encompasses the true nature of horror.  The narrator, the captain of that vessel who has become fascinated by Kurtz, leaves the cabin after his final words and is not even in the room when he dies.  The reader can feel the chill in the room.

"It was as though a veil had been rent.  I saw on that ivory face the expression of sombre pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror - of an intense and hopeless despair....He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision - he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath.  The horror!  The horror!"

Both Kurtzs had come with good intentions, and done things that were horrible - the hanging of heads comes directly from the novel.

Conrad's story about the darkness in the human soul should be the the heart of the horror genre, and it is in classic horror.  The real monster in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is not the creation, but the doctor who goes beyond the desire to save lives to creating life from death.  Dr. Jekyl, and those around him, must come to deal with the darkness in his - and all men's souls - in Mr. Hyde.

Somewhere along the line, the horror genre de-generated (the puns start here) to any excuse to have humans and former humans do horrible things.  So it was with Regenerated Man.

The one-line plot description is "Thieves force a scientist to drink his own formula, turning him into a deformed, monstrous killer."  There isn't really more that you need to know.

John Rosnell, my old friend JR, was DP on this show with his usual crew.  Originally, the director and producer's didn't want to bring on a production manager, and I heard JR complain often about this terrible shoot that he was on.  Remember, JR was more than a DP - he was a vendor.  It was his equipment, and he brought the camera and G/E crew, and he did not take lightly to his crew being put in bad situations.

This was around the time I was leaving the movie with Van, and Stacey kidding me about leaving her on a lousy movie, and me kidding JR about how he was still on his own lousy movie.  As was our way, JR started "threatening" to bring me onto Regenerated Man.  Since there was resistance from the producers to pay an additional person they didn't think they needed, I didn't really think it would happen.

It happened.

Movie sets can sometimes be a reflection of the genre of the movie; comedies can be fun on set, dark subject matters sometimes leads to tense sets because of many emotional scenes that require crew to be quiet and stay clear of actors trying to portray unspeakable things.

Horror films, to me, fall into the category of most genre films - sci-fi, horror, mob films (something I know very well, and which I will explore at some length in good time), etc.  They tend to become more about the gadgetry of film-making, whether it be special f/x, blood, props, etc.  Acting tends to take a back seat, as does craftsmanship like cinematography.  Surely, in the hands of masters like Scorcese or Tim Burton, this is not the case.

That was not Regenerated Man.

We were very much about the SFX make-up of the deformed doctor, a really pleasant actor named Arthur Lundquist.  Don't take the lead in a film where you will spend as much time in the make-up chair as you will on camera unless you're a trooper, and Arthur was.

I came on after the film had started as production manager - nothing new for me at this point.  The producers expected that if they were going to have to pay me - and none of us was getting paid well - I better show them where I was saving them money.

The "money" people on this film weren't movie people - one of the biggest contributors owned a deli that was additionally providing the food for set.  It took a great deal of prodding to get them to understand that cold cuts is not an acceptable lunch for crew.

For up-and-coming filmmakers let me make this clear - an acceptable lunch is a hot meal.  It's the least your cast and crew deserves.  There also needs to be a vegetarian alternative - and that should not just be pasta every day.

It can sometimes be a struggle to get film caterers, who understand how to do this, to service small crews on low budgets.  That means often being creative with other meal sources - restaurants and delis who think of catering as big parties and not the way crews work.

On at least two occasions, I had very good experiences with friends or parents of the director providing the catering - in both cases, they cared, they listened, they responded to suggestions and corrections.

These guys - not so much.

Two of the producers were also playing small parts as thugs in the movie, and if they understood such things, there would have been a lot of sense-memory they could have brought to their parts.

They were the type of producers who loved the title, but thought that paying people meant you owned them, and resented every penny they had to spend.  I got into a number of heated arguments about the catering and their thoughts on my crew.

JR is the only reason I remained - I wouldn't quit and leave him, and the producers wouldn't fire me because they know JR would have pulled the crew.

Throughout Conrad's work, the nature of honor is examined.  In the film adaptation of Lord Jim - absolutely one of my five favorite movies of all time - a sailor who was on a ship where the crew abandoned the passengers - tries to earn back his honor on his own scale.  He finds himself on an island where he helps rid the locals of a thieves who are robbing and abusing them.

He marries the daughter of a high-ranking official of the locals.  When they capture one of the thieves, he makes the decision to let him go, and says if he is wrong, he will pay with his life.  The thief does try to return with others, and while they repel the robbers, the son of the official is killed.  That night, the official makes Jim an offer - leave that night, and he will make no attempt to follow him.  If he is still there in the morning, the official will be forced to have Jim honor his word and be executed.

Jim stays.  For him, running - again - is not an option.  He dies with his honor restored.

There is little heroic about production managing, but I feel just bringing the film in on time and budget is only the basics - you owe it to the producers to make the best movie possible - maybe even better than they deserve or would have thought.

This was the only time in my career where I abandoned that creed.  I was so appalled by these people that my only concern was finishing the movie on time and on budget and moving on.  I specifically remember a funny incident with JR.

JR was lighting the set with Jeffrey, our gaffer.  Now, JR was not a DP you had to rush - he rushed himself.  He would work to help get the lighting done himself.  At one point, I asked what the delay was.

"I'm just need to add a few touches to get the look (the director) wants."

"But are we basically lit?  I mean, it would look ok, right?"

""Well, yeah, but it doesn't ...."

"JR, I dont care.  I'm tired of these guys complaining about how much they're spending and how the crew doesn't work hard enough.  If you've got a key light, shoot the damn scene."

JR understood, and we hurried the lighting.

When the film was done, I asked my name not be in the credits.  What is funny is that it later became a cult classic.  I take no credit for that.

Genre films can be trashy, but they can also be a lot more, and my next experience with a genre film was a mob film, one of many I would go on to do, with a better plot, better actors, and a great producer/director team.

Chain of Pain - Part 1 - Suckers at the Table

Listen, here's the thing.  If you can't spot the sucker in the first half hour at the table, then you ARE the sucker.
-Mike McDermott, Rounders

The AD is the person you fire when you can't fire the director.
- Raymond DeFelitta*




In his epic book on poker, Super System, Doyle Brunson talks about how what gut reaction really represents is all your combined experiences and observations, many of those observations being subconscious.

Shortly after The Rook wrapped, our AD Van was on to another project.  Three days before production started, he learned Annie, his regular Second AD, could not do the shoot.  He asked me to come on as 2nd AD.

One would think that if someone was a good 1st AD, they would automatically be a good 2nd AD.  That isn't necessarily the case, although it is often true, since inevitably one needs to have been a Second to move up to First.

I had done more 1st AD work on small projects, and had only been a 2nd on one feature, before I was 1st AD on my first feature, Walls and Bridges, so I pretty much was the exception to the rule.  The 2nd AD runs the backset, something I could do very well.  They also handle most of the paperwork, not my strong point. It's not that I don't know the production paperwork, I'm just not naturally a paperwork person.  Additionally, I wasn't the fastest typist in the world at that time (writing constantly has made me a much faster typist).

Van was undeterred.  Van was very much a details person, and a person who had set routines, and didn't like change.  He felt more comfortable with someone he knew.  What a long, interesting trip it had been, from Van not wanting to talk to me on my first day as production manager on The Rook, to feeling he needed me on this film as 2nd AD.

I loved working with Van, and thought we would be a good team, because our different styles complemented each other, and we were on exactly the same page about the big things, especially our belief that professionalism was not a function of budget, and that we could run even the lowest budget project in a professional manner.

Of course, on this film, we would not have any influence on the production side, and this turned out to not be a good thing.

My first day was the production table read meeting, which is sometimes called (I understand) an elements meeting.  I am a stickler for it as AD or LP, and I usually put aside an entire day for it.  The AD runs the meeting, and its mandatory for all production heads.  We go from scene to scene, read the scene, and then go around the table dealing with production issues with the department heads.  Scene reads "Billy gets into the car", the props master is asked if we have the car, what it looks like, etc.  We determine that the actor playing Billy can, indeed, drive.  DP is asked about car mounts, camera car, etc.  So it goes.

It's not as easy a meeting to run, and run properly, as most people would imagine.  Inevitably, people who are not as involved get bored, and everyone feels there is someplace else they need to be and something else they need to be doing.  If you hit a long stretch where one department is not involved, they want to just move on.  I have pretty much banned cell phones, so I don't have people walking off during the meeting taking a call, but its sometimes hard to do with the producer, for whom I make an exception.  Assistants or seconds can come in if something must dealt with during the meeting.

For all of that, it is important to hit each scene, cover each item.   This is the last chance you will all have seated in the same place without the pressure of making the day, and things that seem obvious are exactly the things that will screw you if you don't ask the question and don't deal with them.

At some point in this meeting, it struck me.  It wasn't anything specific, it was just a gut feeling, that the producer, who was a first-timer, was setting Van up to be the fall guy.

We were at the table for more than a half hour, but I knew we were the suckers.

I got the feeling that he did not respect Van or intend on letting Van run the set the way we both felt a set should be run, that he didn't really understand that the AD's job was not, as one person once described it to me, a grip with an attitude.

Van was not a screamer, and I had no patience for screamers, but clearly the producer saw the AD as simply some sort of wagon master whipping the crew to keep them at break-neck speed.

Van and I went for dinner that night, and I told him my feeling.  He didn't see it at all.  Van was always an optimist,  certainly more so than I am, and I hoped he was right and I was wrong.

Day One I learned how some of the cost-cutting done by the producer would hurt us.

The entire production office consisted of two people, the producer and his production coordinator.  If the producer had little experience, the coordinator had none, though he was as a much nicer person.  The producer was young, snippy, and arrogant.

Even at that time, the production office would typically have those five-line phones, and at least three phones.  This would be an absolute minimum, and most of my offices had more.  Those phones would "hunt" (that is the phone company's term for it), so if one line was busy, it would go to the next line.

What this office had was two phones, and, in one of the best examples that we were in trouble, the producer  chose to NOT get call waiting, because it cost a little more.  This was a classic example of being penny-wise and dollar-foolish.  Of course, with the high cost of cell phone rates at that time, they weren't going to pay for a cell phone on set, so I had a beeper.  In the beeper days, an emergency call (something that absolutely had to be dealt with) would get a "911" at the end of it, to distinguish it from just suggesting that you call back when available.

The combined result of these cost-saving measures was that I would get pages from the office with 911 at the end of them, have to find the closest working pay phone, then call, only to get a constant busy signal because there was no call-waiting.  Often the busy signal was actually a result of the coordinator paging me again.

This process meant I often got important information very late, in some case, I didn't get it until someone was actually sent to the set with a message from the office.

We had barely improved on the carrier pigeon.

It was ridiculous, and would have been laughable if it wasn't so frustrating. 

The least favorite part of the 2nd AD's job for me was preparing the call sheet, as it was for most people.  The process, for those who don't know, is that you prep the call sheet with all the information you have from the schedule and the breakdown of the elements, and propose call times to match for crew and cast.  You then show a draft to the AD for their input and approval, and make changes until it gets approved.

Often information throughout the day leads to changes; long days to call time being pushed back, scene missed needs to be added, along with its elements, etc.  Information needs to go back and forth not only between people on set, but also with the office.

Not being able to contact the office meant that getting the information I needed was delayed, and getting the call sheet to Van was delayed, and anyone who has ever been a 1st or a 2nd knows how frustrating that is for both people.

Additionally, I had to coordinate company moves, and I had no UPM or location manager or other help on set.  Of course, I had one passenger van to do the moves, so I was constantly sending 1st team ahead, and having to wait for that van to return to get the next group there, and, inevitably, this lead to delays.  Surprisingly, though, we were not far behind schedule as the end of the first week approached, but we were behind.

If we were struggling on set, the coordinator was so far over his head that he was struggling even more.  Nothing ever got to set on time from the office, in no small part because the coordinator was doing too many things at once and would often have to wait for the producer to get off the phone to make calls that needed to be made.

One morning, as we waited on something we needed to start shooting, I explained to the producer that this could not continue, this for maybe the umpteenth time.  This producer was one of those people who was more concerned about who was to blame than how to get things fixed, so he finally agreed to add a person, if he could find someone with experience that would work for the low rate.

Luckily, I knew just the person.  I called Stacey, my friend from the films I had done with JR.  Stacy, who had worked as location manager and 2nd AD with me, had also worked as production coordinator in the meantime.  She was incredibly well-organized, was capable of turning chaos into order, and she knew how I worked.  All of this made her perfect.

I woke her at about 7AM, and she was showered, dressed and in the production office about an hour later.

Stacey took hold of the office, and things got slightly better, but now that the office was covered, albeit with a slight increase in cost, the producer would focus on anything Van did as an excuse for why we were behind, including rookie errors by the director.

This set up some interesting days, and one so frustrating that it still is clear in my mind all these years later, a day that had everything, including four company moves, rain, overtime, and children, and an overly-chipper new PA.



*Follow the link with Raymond's name for his perfect description of "the chain of pain."

The Bet (or The Fall of Love) - Part 4 - Love (or Something Like It)

In the first part of the tale of  The Bet,  I spoke of the almost idyllic surroundings of our location, a large estate on the outskirts of New Paltz in Upstate New York.  

The shooting days were relatively easy by independent film terms, with the days normally running ten hours, sometimes less if Adam, the director, was happy, and no more than twelve.  The script had no night exteriors to speak of, and a lot of day exteriors, which meant we started early, but not brutally so, usually around 7AM, and were wrapped by 6PM or 7PM.  The First Triumvirate had everything under control, equipment was stored on site and didn't need to go anywhere at the end of the day, so by the time we were picture wrapped, the crew was close to being wrapped as well.

By indie standards, this was like half days, so the crew would end the day with a good deal more energy than would normally be the case after a brutal shooting day.

Take a bunch of city kids, bring them to the country, give them easy days and long nights off, lodging at a motel  just outside of a college town in a pleasant Fall season away from their own environs, and the results are  predictable. 

Part of the equation was drinking. * I was mid-thirties by this time, and drinking was no longer a contact sport or an endurance test, but this wasn't true for a good deal of the crew, many of whom still had the amazing recovery powers of youth.  For the most part, I enjoyed spending time with Stan and Dianne, who did not drink, and JR and Stacey.  JR's drink of choice was Zinfandel, not the robust reds that have emerged today, but those God-awful (my take) blushes, and I don't think I ever saw him have more than two.  A few Jack Daniels, known as sipping whiskey for a reason, with considerable water back, were more my style at the time.

For the crew, drinking was neither the only contact sport nor endurance test.  Film sets are notorious for lust and romance, the natural outcome of high-strung people spending long hours side-by-side.  The Bet had a particularly intoxicating air to it, not only in terms of drink but crew members not just engaging in casual flings but red-hot romances.  It was an amorous game of musical chairs, a twentieth-century Midsummer Night's Dream, with each of the crew members rushing to pair up before the music stopped.**

Jeff, our gaffer, was the romantic of the bunch.  He didn't just fall in lust, he fell in love, the problem being that his passion burned so brightly that the flames soon died and spread to other dry and fertile ground, so he would fall in love at least once a shoot, if not more.  On this particular shoot, his passion found Sonya, our wardrobe assistant, a "relationship" that lasted midway into another shoot,  before Jeff couldn't help himself but fall in love again,

That break-up, on a subsequent shoot, was one I remember, because I was marginally involved.  Jeff was on a shoot with me that Sonya was not on, and it was a day off, and I get a call from Sonya.  We were all one big family, and used to talk to each other all the time.  Sonya asked me to give Jeff a message, and I said I wouldn't be seeing him, because it was a day off.  The silence on the other end of the phone revealed that this was news to Sonya.  I was Jeff''s excuse on this particular day, but Jeff had forgotten to tell me.  I didn't have to guess where Jeff was, and neither did Sonya.

For the duration of The Bet, however, Jeff and Sonya were the perfect couple.

Vera, our sparkly make-up artist, took to our boom operator, Chris, who, while about ten years her junior, had nothing on Vera in terms of passion.  They eventually moved in together and stayed a couple for at least a year, if not a little longer.

Our two lead art department people were already a couple.

A few other long-term and short term relationships came out of The Bet, including at least one or two swaps right out of Fleetwood Mac territory.  (How is it that Fleetwood Mac got the reputation as the Sodom and Gomorrah of Rock and Roll, while the Mamas and the Papas, who did just as much partner swapping over the years, are remembered as sugary sweet?)  The curious thing about The Bet was that not only did it have it's share of flings, but also flowers and dinners and all the trappings of true romance.

I was married at the time, but about to go through the first of what would be two separations.  The film business is not built for relationships, and I admire those who have successfully had long-term marriages in the business, I really do.***  Anyone who has watched any Lifetime shows know that marriages require communication, and spending long hours apart, and being exhausted when you are together, does not foster communication.  Additionally, the freelance life-style means too little time together when you need it, followed by too much time together when you don't.

Love, or the love of love, was not wasted on the young on The Bet.  On one of the last days before heading off for the shoot, Stan and I were going over schedule and planning.  Suddenly, he looked at his watch.  "Gotta go," he said. When I asked if he wanted to get through a little more prep, his answer was, politely, that the prospect of good sex was on the horizon.  "Priorities," was the last thing he said before leaving.

Stan was, as I have suggested before, old school, which included ways that would seem chauvinistic by today's standards.  This was not to suggest that he ever acted as anything but a gentleman with the younger ladies who worked for us; he was, in fact, quite charming.  I do remember, though, one funny incident on Lucky Stiffs.

Stan was a stickler for budget, as is a line producer's want, so I was surprised when, after filling our quota of production assistants, he told me that we had one more.  As AD, I was hardly going to complain, and understood when I saw our newest addition, a fit and attractive young Asian girl with a big smile.  When I looked at Stan for an explanation, he said "You know.  Someone for the grips to play with."  He meant it mostly in jest, but later told me that male crews worked better with pretty women around, as it made them want to show off and work harder, and generally kept them happier.   I can't say that he was wrong.

Adam, our director, was happily married at age seventy, and he and Isabella were clearly an amorous couple, but he had not lost his eye for the young ladies.  Indeed, while he was pleasant on most days, he was in especially fine spirits on days that Debra, our lead actress who was quite attractive, was working.  Additionally, when he told me that they had a large pool of potential production assistants, he originally failed to mention that so many of them were co-eds from one of the local college.  My crew had no shortage of play companions, as Stan would have suggested, and they were quite the happy lot.

In this atmosphere, I thought I could bring happiness on more than a few fronts.  Natasha, who had acted in my staged reading, was a model who was quite pretty and all legs without the insane heels she wore on even casual occasions. I suggested that if she came to set, there might be the possibility of getting some background work, as we were shooting a party scene that required attractive extras.

Natasha jumped at the opportunity, and told me that she could do me a favor, and drive me up to set. I was happy to hear she had transport, as I never much liked crew rides.  I was even more pleasantly surprised to see her pull up in a late-model sports car that seemed out of her price range on her earnings as a aspiring model, and I was correct.  The car belonged to one of her sugar daddies.

It may have been while we were discussing one of them that she slowed as we approached our exit, and by slowed, I mean took us from warp speed to Mario Andretti on a practice run.  We couldn't have hit the exit at anything under 65 mph, when I heard a siren.  She smiled at me and surmised, correctly, that we should pull over.

New York City police can,on occasion, be forgiving; state troopers, not so much, and so it was that I was worried when the lone male trooper asked for the obligatory license and registration.  Natasha handed him her license, and then suggested I look in the glove compartment for the registration.  A quick search of the glove compartment, passenger sun visor, driver sun visor, and, then, with considerably heightened concern, other areas of the car, failed to produce registration.  When the trooper asked her if it was her car, she explained that it was not, it was her friend's.  The trooper looked at me sternly.  Not this friend, she explained, another friend.

While the trooper was considering exactly how many "friends" Natasha had, he asked us to step out of the car, which is usually not a good thing.  In this case, though, it proved to be to our advantage.  Natasha took off a sweater she had on, and, when she got out of the car, heels, legs, short tight dress and all, the combination had a surprisingly numbing effect on the trooper.  She was talking, but I don't think he actually was comprehending any of the words until she got to "if I can give you my number" (followed by the now irrelevant "I'm sure we can clear this all up").

As Natasha got back in the car, she smiled at me in that knowing way that suggested she had no doubt of the positive outcome, one I am sure she had encountered before.

I wasn't wrong about Adam's reaction.  Natasha not only got background work, but he added lines and a scene for her.  At one point, JR turned to me and said, "Like he wasn't distracted enough.  Did you have to bring her?"

Having Natasha as a companion for a few days also made me a little more popular with the Adam, as well as the crew.

Haight-Ashbury may have been the center of the Summer of Love in 1967, but in 1992, the quiet town of New Paltz became home to the Fall of Love.

* For a very good examination of crew drinking on location, I refer you to Hollywood Juicer blog post, Have Gloves Will Travel - Working on Location

**I have stayed true to my code for this blog of not revealing people's personal lives.  The Bet was twenty years ago, and the flings mentioned are long past.  Discussing them here is like adults at their 20th wedding anniversary talking about someone they dated in high school - irrelevant and ancient history.  Even if someone were to realize it was their spouse mentioned here, and I still use only first names, it hardly speaks to their relationship today.
***For the absolutely best exploration of the toxic mix of relationships and the film industry, again, from the Juicer, Industry Romance

The Bet (or The Fall of Love) - Part 3 - Tell Them It's a Dream Sequence

I had some problems shooting that film.  I was having trouble with the crew.  I'd select a certain camera set up, and the crew would argue with me, saying that if we shot the film this way or that it wouldn't cut.  So I told Orson (Welles) this and he simply told me, 'Tell them it's a dream sequence.'  So I did that, and the crew starts to fall over themselves to help me.

- Henry Jaglom  on advice he got from Orson Welles


We used to joke that the two jobs that newbies can do on set without much experience are PA and director.  That is not entirely true, as production assistants must know walkie procedure, lock-up procedure, and more, but I've seen those skills picked up pretty quickly.

The director part is another matter altogether.

In Hollywood, writers are sometimes allowed to direct their own films, actors are given their shot, and that turns out just fine in some cases.  People with no film directing background like Nora Ephron often hit home runs right out of the box.  The rule of thumb is that the keys to a first-time director succeeding are a good First AD and a good Director of Photography.

In all of the arts, we shroud certain positions in mystery so as to deter the faint of heart from attempting to conquer them.  Directing successfully involves many challenges, high among them the suspension of disbelief, not only of the audience, but of the cast and crew.  Beyond actually being able to direct, you must look like you are able to direct.  Remember, on low budget indie sets, much of your crew is made up of aspiring directors, and each of them is silently (we hope) measuring you up to see if you are up to the challenge, or if they could do it better.

Over the years, one of my priorities as a First AD or line producer for a first-time feature director is to make sure they look good on set.  A crew will work harder and give more when they feel they are part of something special, and that the director knows what he or she is doing.

Why should it matter to the crew?  They are getting paid, and, after all, aren't they working for the director?   The answer, of course, is that in a perfect world, it shouldn't matter, and they should automatically be there to support the director, but since cast and crew are made up of human beings, they need to be motivated to do their best.

Nothing is worse than that moment when the cast and crew start to question the director.  You see it in little things, like an actor questioning playing a scene a certain way, or a DP making a face when the director asks him to set up a shot a certain way.  It's an attitude that spreads like a virus on set, and it does nobody any good.

It's why I can often be seen whispering in the ear of the director, literally.  I was working with a first-time director on a short once where the director was having a really hard time getting what he wanted out of an actor.  I made an excuse to get the director off set for a moment, and made a suggestion.  The director, a really good-hearted guy, shouts out, "That's a great idea!  Why don't you tell him.  You can explain it better."  He was being genuine, but I wish I could have put my hand over his mouth.  I didn't need the pat on the back, and I didn't need everyone to know it was my idea.  I would have much preferred if they thought it was his idea.

I've said it often; someone is gonna direct, and if the director doesn't do it, someone will.  Sometimes its the lead actor, or the DP, but someone will.

So it came to be that the First Triumvirate was formed on the set of The Bet, with considerable more success and much less blood than the first First Triumvirate.  This union was formed out of necessity, and it was one that made Adam, the director, very happy, even though he was often only an adviser to the ruling parties.

Adam was about 70 at the time, and his experience directing included a few stage plays and radio plays.  At the outset, he would stage the scenes much as you would a stage play, with the actors playing to a non-existent Fourth Wall.  This led to the problem of how JR could actually shoot this and have it work in a cinema.  It would mean playing many of the scenes in long, talky masters, with odd angles for coverage.

Adam's joy came from working with the actors, from discussing motivation and giving extensive background on the plot and the characters.  This is great for table reads and rehearsals during prep, but really time-consuming on set.  Still, it was Adam's money, and it was what made him happy.  What Adam did not enjoy was discussions of coverage.  This is how the First Triumvirate was formed, first unofficially, and, eventually, pretty overtly.

JR, Christine (the script supervisor) and I would discuss the scene.  I would block it so that JR could shoot it, JR would come up with the best angles, with Christine laying out the coverage.  While we were doing this, Adam could talk to the actors to his heart's content.  He actually seemed relieved that everything just seemed to be working so smoothly around him.

Everyone got used to the arrangement, although I insisted there were certain boundaries we would not cross.  We were shooting on 35mm film, and exposing more film than needed is costly.  Adam had a habit of getting so caught up in watching the scene that he would forget to call cut.  He asked me if I would do it, and I thought that was going a bit too far, so I would tap him on the shoulder for action and cut.  That worked out pretty well.

I have to point out this was a strange and unique situation, and it's not something I've ever done since nor is it something I would recommend or condone.  The pure AD in me still cringes as I write this, because it strays into territory dangerously close to disrespecting the director.  In this case, the director was also the producer, and he was funding the film with his own money, and allowing him to go through all of his money and not make the movie or have a movie that wouldn't cut was not a very good option, either.

Plus, we had the advantage Orson Welles mentioned earlier, in that we had a number of dream sequences.  The lead character agrees to be imprisoned for ten years in order to collect on a bet, and he begins to hallucinate.  He dreams of many things, often of his girlfriend Violet in, among other things, angel wings.

No, she isn't naked there - it's a good costume -  but many of his dreams about her are carnal in nature, including wondering what she is doing with other men.  All of this is pretty much in a PG sort of way, as the sensuality is more suggested than shown.

Lest you think the director was a feeble, silly old man, he wasn't.  He was very sharp on other matters, a successfully published author and authority on literature.  This process served him well, and given that JR and our crew had worked so long together, it kept the ship running pretty smoothly.

This blog is far from the only one to share movie set war stories, and the key to war stories are the brushes with near disaster, and not like that fabled army report of "all quiet on the Western front."  What many of us don't remember is that the disastrous days are the exceptions, that if we are doing our jobs, most days the work gets done, and gets done properly.  There is little fun in regaling others in tales of work days when you shoot the call sheet with little problems. (OK, ADs love these stories, because it shows how sharp we are. "We shot 7 2/8 pages today and picked up some inserts!"  These are the little things that make us happy geeks)

A  majority of our days on The Bet went very well, which was good for The Bet if not as entertaining in the telling.  It was as if all of the bad luck we had on Lucky Stiffs was our debt paid, and we were collecting with relatively smooth sailing on The Bet.  If we were not exactly making great art, we were, to quote Shelly Winters from her complaint to Stan years earlier, making the schedule.(First, You Have To Make The Movie - Stan's Guest Blog))

Things were running pretty smoothly on set, while most of the drama was unfolding off-set.  More on that in the next post.

The Bet (or The Fall of Love)- Part 2 - A Room With A Few (Amenities)

Marian Crane: Do you have any vacancies?
Norman Bates: Oh, we have 12 vacancies.  12 Cabins.  12 Vacancies
-Psycho

I stood in what could potentially be my room for a few weeks of the upcoming shoot at a little roadside establishment called Mick's Motel, and I was, to put it mildly, underwhelmed.

"I know what you mean," Stan said, standing next to me.  "I figured I'd show you this room because it was the best one."  The best one?  The best room?

"Oh, not just the best room. The best motel I found in the area."

"What about hotels?"

"That's where I started.  The closest one is about a 45 minute drive from set, and the road to it has traffic in the morning."

The point of getting lodging on location is to be close to the location.  There is no good reason to be paying for lodging if you are also going to lose a good deal of time traveling as well.  Still, this place was disappointing.

Lodging crew, even on a low budget shoot, should have certain basics, among them safety and cleanliness.  I didn't see anyone dressed like their mother, and the sheets certainly seemed to have been changed in the recent past, but the cigarette butt just slightly under the bed suggested that the cleaning crew was manned by people who had failed the test at the Hilton.

I looked at Stan again.  "You should have seen the others," he says.

Stan and Dianne would be staying in spare rooms on the estate of the director, but I didn't envy them. Over the years, I have chosen to avoid that sort of situation at all cost, and Stan and Dianne's experience proved this to be good thinking.

When you are either the line producer or the assistant director, the place you want to be when the day wraps is as far away from the director as possible.  Yes, there should be ample time to talk with the director before, during and after the shooting day, but if you want to have a clear head, you must have at least a little distance, time spent not talking about the movie. If you are living right next to the director, you will spend all of your free time talking about the movie.  I firmly believe the mind needs a re-set, down-time.

On a recent film we shot in New Jersey, the director suggested taking a room with the Director of Photography so they could go over shots at the end of the day.  I still remember looking into the sunken eyes of the DP on set as he explained, "He never stops talking about the shots.  I mean, we have a shot list, and I know the shot list, and I spend all day looking at the monitor and through the lens, and then we wrap, and we talk about shots and look at more shots"

You see my point.  This is not healthy.

I see young "guerilla" crews  give this matter too little attention, with 4 to 6 people in a room, or having the crew camp out, or giving people a couch to sleep on.   I find this unacceptable.  If crew chooses to all hang out in a few rooms, doing God-knows what, that is their choice, but crews vary in age and preference, and the person who wants a quiet night of reading or watching television or whatever they want to do deserves that courtesy.

As line producer, I handle a lot of proprietary information - money spent on the budget, crew salaries, etc.  As such, I either chose a bunk mate carefully or take a room by myself,  I usually try to afford the same courtesy, if I can, to some of the keys, especially production designer and DP.  Our days don't end at wrap, and they need room to work.  At worst, I will put two people to a room.  I realize in the low budget world, this is considered a luxury, but I care about how I treat my crew.  Those reading this on bigger sets will recognize this as just basic givens for crew.  Nothing is a given on low budget shoots.

So, Mick's it would be.  We had a shuttle set up to take crew to set and back, though some people chose to bring their own cars, which gave them some freedom.  Mick's would be able to accommodate most of the crew, but not all of the cast we were bringing up.  Stan and I desperately wanted to put cast in better lodging, but again, they would have to be far from set.  In the case of cast, we did give them an option, though all of them chose a closer motel option, which I will get to shortly.

First, the living arrangements at Mick's, at least for the beginning.  JR and Stacey were living together now in the West Village, so them staying together was no bother.  They had the room directly next to mine, and since we all socialized regularly, that worked out just fine.  JR was even a worse sleeper than I was, and his knock on the door would often be my cue to leave.  As DP, he didn't need to get there as early as I did, but he preferred it, and since Stacey was going to get to set first - the 2nd AD is first on and last off - JR usually chose to just go in when she did.

The rest of the crew pretty much paired up by department.

Remember when you were in those early elementary school grades, and teachers would have you choose a partner for field trips?  Remember how cool it was to choose the person who would share the experience?

Crew lodging on location is a little like that, and, depending on the crew, a little like a key party.  If the latter reference eludes you, I suggest a good viewing of  The Ice Storm , a movie worth watching for many other reasons besides it's historical reference to a tacky 70's experience in certain suburban communities.

Our experience would be no different, and it is the inspiration for the sub-title of the series on The Bet, the Fall of Love.

At the time, both Mick's Motel and the other motel, which I will refer to as Trucker's Motel because it was used mostly by truckers on short stays, and because I don't for the life of me remember the name,  which may have changed, because a quick Google search failed to jog my memory.

I won't cast aspersions on either Mick's or Trucker's and suggest I know who served as their main clientele, but both motels had at least a few rooms with magic fingers, and Trucker's had some young ladies out late at night who were not dressed for office work.

The latter presented our first problem, which was that our very attractive and young lead actress was going to be staying at Trucker's,  and we made a point of telling her that she was to wait in her room when being picked up and our PA would call when he was there.  Thankfully, she was no shrinking Violet - well, actually, her character's name was Violet - but Debra could handle herself.

"You better pick me up on time," she once said,"or I may get a better paying offer."

Before any of that could happen, we needed to get her settled in.  She started a day or two into the shoot, and it was after a shoot day that I sat in the office with Stan and Dianne, doing my usual post-shoot recap for Stan and discussing the next day.  Stan and I were relaxing and chatting, but Dianne was in a heated conversation on the phone.  Dianne never yelled, but she could be a stern librarian when needed, and she was having some trouble with the clerk and owner (they were the same person) at the Trucker's Motel.

Debra was originally scheduled to come up mid-afternoon on the day before her first day of filming, but she ran late, and called to tell us she would get there about 7PM.  The problem was that the owner planned to leave at 6PM.  Dianne was trying to stress how important it was that she stay.

"I don't understand.  Don't you have people check in late at night?......So, people just come in before 6PM?  That makes no sense......Look, she is our lead actress, and we need to get her settled in...Yes, we're doing a movie...Yes, we're the movie that is renting other rooms.   How many movies do you have there? .... Look, we are booking a lot of your rooms, the least you could do is stay a little late and make sure that my actress gets her key."

Stan and I couldn't help but follow the conversation, and, to be honest, take a little good humor from watching Dianne get worked up.  Just then, Stan looks at me and says, "What are they going to do?  Leave the key under a rock?"

As if precisely cut and edited in a major Hollywood motion picture, just as the words left Stan's lips, we hear the following from Dianne, who was not listening to us at all:

"What?  What rock?  How is she supposed to know what rock the key is under?  What if someone takes it?"

Stan and I burst out laughing.  We could not have timed it any more precisely if we had been one of those Vaudeville teams that used to comb this area.

In the moment, and not knowing what Stan and I were laughing at, Dianne scolded us as she put her hand over the mouthpiece.

"Would you two be quiet!  This woman wants to leave the key under a rock!"

Of course, her repeating it only made us laugh harder.

It took some time later for Dianne to calm down once she got off the phone, but she eventually shared the laugh with us, a laugh we shared for years.  The solution, of course, was to send a PA to pick up the key, and have the PA meet the actress.

Still, I'm happy she didn't think of that first, as it would have ruined one of my favorite location moments.

The Bet (or The Fall of Love) - Part 1- Who Could Ask For Anything More?

Days can be sunny,
With never a sigh;
Don't need what money can buy.
Birds in the trees sing
Their dayful of song,
Why shouldn't we sing along?
I'm chipper all the day,
Happy with my lot.
How do I get that way? Look at what I've got.

"I Got Rhythm (Who Could Ask for  Anything More)"
George Gershwin




JR and I were sitting at the screening of The Bet, and one phrase stuck in our head; "What would you do for $40 Million Dollars?"

It stuck in our head because it was intoned by the voice over in the trailer in a deep, pretentious and ominous tone, almost a parody of screen voice overs.

"What would you do for FORTY...MILLION...DOLLARS?"

How did it all start?

It was August of 1992, and JR called me.  We had a gig.

Wait.  Does this sound familiar?  It's August, and JR contacts me and we have a gig for the Fall?  Starts in September?  Preps in Late August?  (Un)Lucky Stiffs - Part 1 - Bringing Up Baby

There are differences this time.  We are still working with JR's basic crew, though we have a new AC; Lorelei is not available.  Jeff and Russell, our gaffer and key grip, respectively, are on board.  JR, Stacey and I have dinner, and we talk about Stacey coming on as 2nd AD.  There is no doubt she is a good fit and can handle the job. Done.

This time, Stan and his coordinator, Dianne,  will be coming on board from the beginning.  This makes a world of difference.  This was JR and my third movie together, and we had done a PSA in between, and now we knew that production had our back.

The film was written and would be directed by a man named Adam, who lived on a nice-sized estate in the New Paultz region of Upstate New York.  We took a tour of his estate, along with his wife, Isabella, before bringing the rest of the crew with us.  Almost all of the movie could be shot on the estate; Adam had written it that way.

For an AD, this is heaven.  No pedestrians or traffic to lock off.  We control sound.  Complete cooperation from the people who own the property.  Ample area for art department to work.  No mass company moves.  Equipment will be easily and securely stored at night, meaning the 2nd AD was not stuck there forever.

Adam and Isabella were a charming older couple, Adam being 70 at the time.  He was an educator and widely published author, president of a society dedicated to the study of a well-known author, and expert in a number of areas of literature.  In our first meeting, I felt like this was someone who I could talk with endlessly, especially since we shared an interest in the author Joseph Conrad, in fact, the screen adaptation of Conrad's Lord Jim is on my short list of favorite films.    The better known Conrad adaptation, of course, is Apocolypse Now, loosely adapted from his Heart of Darkness. We shared a love of theater; he had written and directed a number of plays.  We shared a background and respect for radio; this and two other works of his had been performed as radio plays.

I remember heading back in the car to NYC from that first meeting thinking how idyllic and wonderful this shoot would be.  The cast and crew would have to be housed nearby, but I couldn't imagine that would be difficult.  Stan and Dianne had done some research and I had promised to come up and search out hotels or motels soon.

We would hire most of our PAs locally to save the cost of housing, and the art department were a boyfriend/girlfriend who were local.    We met Rick and Lorrie during our first trip, and they had already begun work on the project.  From the first meeting to the end of the shoot, it seemed that any time I saw Lorrie, she was in the middle of  working hard, dusting herself off from something she was either crafting or painting.  Effort was not going to be a problem with this art department.

Culling the best from everything we did, we brought Matt, the director of Lucky Stiffs, on board as the editor of this project, and he did a bang-up job.

We added some new people to our usual crew, some who would stick with us for shoots to come.  I sat in on the interviews with Stan and Dianne - they both were involved in the interviews.  As previously stated in talking about Stan and Dianne, Dianne was much more than his coordinator.  She was a trusted partner who offered a sounding board for Stan, and she could disagree with him when he wasn't seeing something.  This was later something I sought to surround myself with, either in my immediate support staff, or in a person in the position of "assistant to" the producers, or sometimes both.

This was part of my training as a producer or line producer.  Over the course of time, you will be called on to make many decisions, sometimes simultaneously.  We all bring our collective experiences and observations - more commonly known as our baggage - with us wherever we go.  It's good to have someone you can trust who is there to let you not follow your instincts when those instincts will lead you to mistakes.  The thing you will find about "yes people" is that when something goes wrong, they are nowhere to be found.

As an interviewer, Stan was a male Barbara Walters, chatting with potential crew members in a fashion that put them at ease, so he could get them to reveal more about themselves.  The resume pretty much tells you what they have done; the interview is to discover who they are.

Some of the new people included a bawdy make-up artist named Vera; of  "good Nordic stock", as she would say, Vera was a woman who was friendly and flirty and confident, blonde and statuesque.  She embodied what I would later look for in a make-up artist; which is this: any make-up artist I hire should be able to apply make-up well, it's the basic.  What most people don't recognize is that the make-up artist is  pretty much the first person cast deals with when they report to work.  If they had a good night or a bad night, if they felt good about the upcoming scene or not, if they had a pimple or scar that had chosen the worse time to appear, it's the make-up artists who is going be told first.

I want a make-up artist who can be the actor's confidante, but also know when to cut the conversation and get them on set.  They should be able to make the actor feel great.  They should also know how to protect the actor from the craziness of production, without making the first team PA (the PA with the responsibility of delivering actors to set) or 2nd AD the enemy.

Vera did all of this, and more.  She was my smiling face when I walked in the door, she would make sure my day started out well.  I felt like I was special to Vera, like she really cared for my well-being just a little more than everyone else.  Her magic, of course, was that everyone felt this way.

Vera would become a usual suspect.

We hired a local stage manager named Jane to be the 2nd 2nd AD.  I love me my stage managers, and having someone local was a good thing, someone who knew the area and could take care of things when we were away.

In today's budgets, the AD department is too often given the short end of the stick, and the importance of a 2nd 2nd, a good key PA, are lost.  If producers find the money for a good 1st AD, they then think that anyone can be thrown in as 2nd AD, and 2nd 2nd and Key PA seem like luxuries to them.  There is a reason there is an AD department, and the AD can no more do their job without a good staff than a Gaffer would want to work without a trusted Best Boy.

Another one of JR's sound people, Larry, came on as recordist, and he brought a young, virile kid named Chris as his boom operator.  The significance of this will become clear later.

Christine, our incredible script supervisor, doubled as wardrobe supervisor, with the costumes designed mostly by the art department.  Christine heading the wardrobe department while doing script may seem strange, but she requested it.  She had started her career in wardrobe, so she was more than qualified, and this gave her more creative input.  Her creative contribution in other areas would be even greater as filming went along.

Her assistant in wardrobe was a pleasant, pretty young girl named Sonya.

The script is based on a short story of the same name by Anton Chekhov, which has actually had a few screen adaptations, usually as shorts.  The best well-known one may be this one with Robert Prosky.



This script adapted the story to America.  The basic story line is this; at a costume party, a wealthy businessman makes a wager with a young law student that he will not be able to spend ten years in prison, and if he can, he will get $10 million, which can balloon to the aforementioned $40 million with investments .  This means the young law student must risk losing his pianist girlfriend.  There is a mix of fantasy and reality, and a reversal of fortune.  For a small film, there were lots of elaborate costumes and special effects, and we all wanted to make sure the look was realistic and not cheesy.

I was one of the few members of our regular crew that was married, but Maureen understood perfectly that there would be times the job would take me away on business.  As Adam was older, we didn't try and shoot six day weeks, as we often did to save money.  This meant I was home for the weekends.

We weren't working 9 to 5, but this was about as close to being on a gig came to being a "normal" job.

Fall is a lovely time in areas like New Paultz.  It has some of the feel of a college town, so there are the newly arriving freshman.  The smell of the Fall always brings me back to my early days at NYU, walking through campus.   The estate was beautiful, and there would eventually be the turning of the leaves, that slight chill in the air that took away the oppressiveness of August humidity.

For NY crews, shoots like this can be a little like summer camp, for better and for worse.   You have to stay on top of them a little bit more because it's too easy to become complacent and relaxed and distracted.  Oh, look, isn't that deer nice?  Look, his doe is following him, how cute.

Hey, we're working here, okay?

In the back of my mind, I knew this was something to keep an eye on.  Still, with everything we had going for us, it seemed manageable, and, after all, this crew always worked hard while still being able to have fun.

Peaceful surroundings, nice people to work for, our usual suspects and some promising new members as crew.  Who could ask for anything more?

When JB Met JR - Part 3 - We Must (Not) Shoot Today

"If you want good news, hire family."
- JB Bruno


Yes, that JB Bruno.  Me.

I'm not exactly sure what the rules of blogs are; after all. this is the internet, which is all about expressing individuality, and, lets face it, the arguable premise that what each of us has to say is important.  In that light, I think quoting yourself is just fine.

I connect certain quotes with certain production heroes of mine.  In each case, the quote expresses that person's unique style while being universal.  I will get to these in good time.  For this post, however, I have to stick to a quote that I know I originated.

Anyone who has ever worked with me has heard me use this line, and any former student of mine heard it in my introductory class.

I don't know if I started using it when I was an AD, or when I started line producing, but it was in my head for a long time.  Film is all about collaboration, but film runs like an army.  It's not a democracy, and after taking all opinions into account, one level head has to make a decision.

For different reasons, the AD and the line producer find themselves telling people facts they have to hear, but often do not want to hear.  If you want someone to tell you how great everything is going, your family is a good bet.  They are there to prop you up, to boost your spirits, to make you feel good.

The easiest analogy for  me is a doctor.  Imagine going to a doctor who didn't have the heart to tell you that you needed a new heart? Too literal?  Eh, maybe, but you get the point.

Making a decision means that if it's wrong, responsibility falls on you.  If you can't handle that, then you can't handle responsible positions.

Sometimes, you have nothing to do with the horrible problem, but are merely the messenger.  History tells you what happens to messengers of bad news.




A former Second AD of mine, who is now an incredibly successful First A.D., told me this question from the DGA Trainee test.  I think its a great example of the latter dilemma.

You are a DGA intern and are sent to the trailer of the director to get three questions answered.  When you get to the trailer, the producer and director are in a heated argument.  Because the questions are important, you knock on the door.  Although still angry, you get the director to answer two of the questions before you forget to ask the third.  You walk outside the trailer and, as the door closes, you remember that you had to get an answer to the third question.

What do you do?

The answer is easy and obvious when it's a theoretical question; not so easy when you're standing outside that door.

If you cannot immediately and unequivocally say that you would turn around and go right back in, maybe the AD department isn't for you.

My situation on Walls and Bridges was a combination bearer-of-bad-news and Murphy's Law.

A majority of the scenes on the film had limited characters, and we did a good deal of the filming in Nassau County, which is the closer Long Island county to Manhattan.  On this particular day, we were filming about as far out in Suffolk County as we had on any day, and we had a large number of extras.  Organization for the day had been in the works from early in prep, and all of those plans were working perfectly.  This would be one of the top two or three most expensive scenes in the film, but it was all coming together nicely.

Most of the extras were still signing in when things turned bad.  JR rolled on a smaller portion of the scene that did not require extras when we heard a funny sound coming from the camera, a crunching sound.

For those not technically proficient in 35mm cameras, crunching sounds are definitely not a good sign.

JR was a tech whiz.  He said he hoped he could fix the problem, and to let him work alone and uninterrupted somewhere.  I found a room and put a PA outside it with instructions that no one was to enter.

Meanwhile, I worked with my 2nd AD to make sure that once camera was back up, everything would be ready to roll.

Minutes passed, and minutes turned into more than an hour.  All the while, Uzo, who was not only directing this drama that was close to his heart but who also made a healthy financial investment in it, keep coming up to me.  We would be able to shoot today, right?

To be honest, I hedged a little.  I said that if the camera was workable, we would be prepared to make up the time lost.

The if went away in a heartbeat.

I went into the room that JR was sequestered in, and it was a sight I had not seen before, not seen since, and don't expect to see again.  There, on a series of  tables, were many, many pieces of the camera.  The lens had shattered, and the broken glass had worked its way all through the camera body.  Humpty Dumpty was in fewer pieces after that unfortunate fall off the wall.

It is amazing that JR could take a camera apart like that, and more amazing that he could put it back together.

I feared the worst, but without having to ask, I got my answer.  I think I only got as far as "So, JR...." when my good friend looked up from the patient and shook his head.  How long?  The answer was a few days.

I just nodded my head and did the first of many "dead man walking" trips.

"Uzo.  The camera is down.  I'm going to have to wrap us for today."

Denial is the first stage of grief.

"We are shooting today, right?" Uzo asked.

I was more specific.  We were not shooting today.  We were wrapped.  I had not called it yet out of deference to him, and as we were not close to a full day yet, no one was going into overtime.

Make no mistake.  We were wrapped.

Anger.

"We MUST shoot today!"

I started explaining to Uzo that we could not shoot without a camera (he knew that - but grief is a bitch).

"I DO NOT care about the camera.  We MUST shoot today!"

This may be one of my favorite all-time lines from behind-the-scenes of a film.  It is ludicrous on its face, yet completely understandable given the situation.

Bargaining.

Yeah, this is where it gets ugly.  An erstwhile PA, who had recently graduated from NYU, suggested that he could get us a camera.  Uzo loved this solution.

Problems?

First, we were almost three hours from Manhattan, so if  he got his school to agree (highly unlikely) it would be six hours round trip.  It was also a 16mm camera and we had been shooting on 35mm.  Conforming them would be ridiculous, but, then again, the discussion was ridiculous because we weren't doing it.

Uzo started talking enthusiastically to the PA.  At my suggestion, the 2nd AD removed him from the room.

I'd like to believe me opposition to capital punishment was without exception, but then I remember this incident.

"Do you realize what this will cost us?" Uzo asks me.

Depression, and, yes, I do.

I guess we got to acceptance, but I don't remember it right now.

Squashing dreams is not my business, but squashing unrealistic solutions that sound good at the time is part of my job.  There were other contributions from the peanut gallery, but my job now was to see that the day cost us as little as possible and to wrap us in an orderly fashion.

I've sometimes thought if this film thing didn't work out, I could hire myself out to hospitals to be the guy to tell the family that their loved one was gone.  Nah, there is no upside to that one.  At least movies have given me many happy moments.

Epilogue:


Ok, this isn't really an epilogue per se, but I always loved when "epilogue" would come up at the end of the 60s series, "The F.B.I" with Efrem Zimbalist, Jr.  All the Quinn-Martin shows used it at one point.  Never heard of the show?  Here's a peek:





Probably the most famous Quinn-Martin epilogue"





Today, I am working as post producton supervisor on a wonderful film shot mostly in Cambodia on a 5D that tells a great story and looks great.  The producer and director are anxious to get the post process finished, as am I.  Today, for the umpteenth time, I've had to tell them it will take a day or two longer.  After firing the worst editor imaginable, who was hired before I came on board, we have actually made good time, but not as good time as they would have liked.  It's costing them money.  I feel for them, but, again, today, I had to remind them that getting it right was the priority.  All these years later, doesn't make me feel any better."