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.

Plaster - Part 1 - Don't Let the Honeymoon Fool You

"Don't Believe What They Tell You at Denny's"

I mentioned the quote above in a previous post to highlight how easy it is to be enticed by the good first meeting, to believe that the folks you are about to work with actually get it, that they will listen to you when the time comes.

The reference further suggests that at first meetings (often at Denny's in LA at that time as I understand) everything seems peachy and cool.

In many ways, this is not unlike a honeymoon. Honeymoons are accepted as the happiest times for a couple, but if you examine them closely, even the best of them have hints of problems to come. Whether the couple gets past them is another story.

My mom tells a story of taking a vacation in Florida with my Dad, and that my father would chat with other pretty women and allow them to give him their numbers. She would often say, "I should have left him right there." (Note: They never divorced - they were married right up until my Dad's death). My Dad's version of the story is a little different; that he was just being "polite"and that my Mom over-reacted. Knowing both of them, there is enough truth in both; my Mom was overly-jealous, and whether he followed up on it or not, my Dad really enjoyed flirting.

The truth is that the hint's of problems usually exist right from the start, but the warm handshakes, jovial laughter and nodding heads of the producer/directors coming on the job lead you to believe what you want to believe from the bottom of your heart. These are the right folks; this is the right script, we can do this together.

When I met the producer and the producer/director for Plaster*, they had an interesting script, which basically took place in and around one run-down apartment building in the Bronx. As I think back on it, the script was a little cliched, and a little generic, but I thought it had enough going for it that a director who understood the material could bring it out.

Both the producer - we'll call him Joey, and the director - let's call him Jean-Baptiste, were excited to have me on as line producer. I had been referred by folks as having experience doing low-budget, urban films. 

The origin of these reps are interesting. Later in my career, I happened to make a mob film or two, and people thought that was a specialty. The rep here came from doing Walls and Bridges and from my relationship with John Rosnell, who had done Matty Rich's Straight Out of Brooklyn.

At one point, it had gotten confusing enough that, while in LA, I was called to a meeting for Assistant Director in an area of LA that was mostly Black and Hispanic. When I walked in the door, there was surprise, which I soon learned was from the fact that I was not African-American. This was an assumption the folks made. There was no bias - just surprise, enough so that they insisted on driving me home (not driving, I took the bus) out of fear for my safety walking in their neighborhood. I found this odd, that they were making assumptions about me walking through the neighborhood I would never make. I explained that I lived on the Upper West Side in a mostly Dominican neighborhood in NY, and did not ever consider it a problem, but driving me home made them feel better, and, hey, why turn down a free ride.

My understanding was that Joey and Jean-Baptiste were co-producers. Later, Joey would insist that only he was the producer and that Jean-Baptiste was only the writer and director.

Here, a seed was planted for a problem to come. They had a production company set up, an LLC, as is required, but had not had the the production company option the script. In cases like this, where the writers were also principals of the production company, often the option would be just a token formality, like buying the rights for a dollar.

For those new to the business side of film, unlike other forms of writing, once the film is optioned, the production company - and not the writer - own the copyright. As far as I know, film is the only art form that does this, and it says something about what the industry thinks of writers.

Formality or not, it must be done. SAG insists on seeing a Chain-of-Title (to know that the company signing as signatory is indeed owner of the property). Further, you never want a writer to be able to pull the product later.

While they claimed not to have a problem with this, actually getting an agreement signed took weeks. The more they put it off, the more I sensed there was some hesitancy on both parts, to settle on the terms of the agreement. They would up signing a very vague agreement just to get the chain-of-title done, but one that would later lead to disagreements between the two.

They knew that I was friends with Charlie Houston, who was the gaffer on The Rook. Charlie and I had done some commercials and shorts where he was Director of Photography, and I knew him to be a brilliant DP, as well as a great guy to work along side. I was more than happy to bring my old friend Charlie onto the project, and also brought his wife on as production manager. I had worked with Sally (not her real name - for her protection, not because she wasn't fantastic) before, and thought the fit would be good.

I never regretted hiring Charlie. If anything, when the bad days came, it was nice to have him at my side. Charlie was the first person to sense trouble. Among his favorite expressions was that, in this business, if you aren't paranoid, you aren't paying attention. How true this has turned out to be.

For my First AD, I chose a guy - John was his name (real, but hey, there are a ton of "John's" who are ADs, so it hardly reveals who he is.) John and I had been a great team on a previous project, and I thought we would be on this one as well.

That turned out not to be the case. More on that in the next post.

Both Joey and Jean-Baptiste had backgrounds in acting. They were also friends. Joey considered himself an equal creative partner; I don't think Jean-Baptiste always saw him that way. Joey assumed Jean-Baptiste would have little say on the financial side; needless to say at this point, Jean-Baptiste felt differently. Oh, he was fine with staying out of the day-to-day financials, but he wanted definite input into budget as it affected his pay and where money was to be spent. 

How much of Joey's money was tied into the project, I don't know. Clearly, he brought most of the money, though, again. Jean-Baptiste often claimed that his rep as an actor (no, he isn't famous) attracted some of the investors.

If there was a lesson to this post, it is to look honestly at potential problems right from the beginning; not to be fooled by the sense of comradery that arises at first impressions. If there is a question or concern, deal with it, if not at that first meeting, very soon afterwards.  I am much more of a skeptic now than I was then, and Plaster is certainly part of the reason.

This is a delicate balance. If you offer them nothing but negativity and suspicion in initial meetings, they would be right in being leery of you. The challenge is to earn their trust - and earn it quickly - so that when you push them to make decisions they are putting off, they understand the need.

If the seeds of discontent were sewn early, as we got into pre-production, casting, and hiring, ominous and threatening saplings sprouted everywhere, as we will discuss in Part 2.

* As mentioned in previous post, names are changed here, except where indicated.

When JB Met JR - Part 1 - The Birth of JB

We now move into my work in the early 90s (you were how old?  no, I don't want to know).  It is the period that began to shape who I became as an AD, and later as a production manager, line producer and producer.

After all the talk of the lengthy prep work I discussed in the previous post, my first feature as an Assistant Director was on a film called Walls and Bridges, where I took over after shooting began for a young lady who was fired (you thought I was kidding about that getting fired thing?  This wasn't the last time, either!).

Now, there is an interesting twist to coming on a project to replace someone who was fired.  They want to like you, they really really want to like you.  Why?  Because the person who got fired gets the blame for everything that went wrong up until that point, which works well if you come on and everything goes  fine.  If, however, you come on and things still go badly, then everyone has to take a deep look in the mirror, and people would rather not do that.

I never met the girl I replaced, and what I did learn of her was from the Director of Photography, John Rosnell.  John and I would go on to become the closest of friends, and we would do four more features and countless commercials and PSAs together.  It was through John that I met the person I consider my mentor as line producer, and, later, it was with one of John's partners that I co-wrote my first produced feature.  Those connections mean that no one shaped my career more than John did, in so many ways.

John owned his own camera, a 35mm beast that was the same camera that has shot Clockwork Orange.  It was huge and heavy, and I joked with John often that we needed sherpas to move it.  John was part tough, rugged individual who carved his own path, part cowboy, part geek who invented or fixed or adjusted every piece of equipment he owned, part sci-fi nerd, and full time train enthusiast who had an elaborate train set at his warehouse in Hoboken.

Today's owner/operator DPs usually have digital cameras.  John had a 35mm camera, a 16mm camera, and an equipment list worthy of a small rental house.  One could shoot an entire feature using just his equipment, and John shot a number of them, more than IMDB lists because not every producer back in the day was up on including information.

John will probably best be remembered for the feature Straight Out of Brooklyn, by Matty Rich.  It was one of those feel-good stories (the movie, not the plot) of the early 90s indie scene.  Seventeen-year old Black kid from the housing projects in Brooklyn's tough Red Hook area raises money through family, friends, listener donations from a radio station plea and credit cards.  Lots of credit card movies back in the day, and while the urban myth often led to the reality of a movie seen only by family and friends, that was not the case for Straight out of Brooklyn, which won numerous awards, among them a Special Jury Recognition at Sundance.  The film's official budget was $450,000, though it was shot for a good deal less, and after release by Samuel Goldwyn company, it reportedly made close to $3 million.

Of John's cinematography, the Daily News compared the opening sunset over the city as the way the bigger-budgeted Dick Tracy should have looked.  John could do amazing things behind bear of a camera.

I worked with some other owner/operators of their own equipment in the 90s, and frankly, many of them were hacks whose only concern was the check they would get at the end of the show.  That wasn't John.  He fought hard to make the director's movie, and he watched out first and foremost for his crew, who often got paid before he did.  There were times on Straight Out of Brooklyn when John paid crew out of his pocket while Matty was raising money to continue.  That was John.

I don't think John particularly liked ADs.  It was part of John's personality to lead, and he always thought he knew the best way to shoot things, to plan things.  However, we got along immediately.  Unlike the previous AD, I did not have my head "buried in paperwork" as John would describe her.  I deferred to him on things technical, asked for his input on things, but kept the schedule running as smoothly as I could (more on that later) and, in the end, took a burden off of John.  He realized life could be good if he only had to shoot and not try to do my job as well.

That doesn't mean John didn't like to remind me of my place at times.  One day, when he assumed we were done, he said "that's a wrap."  I made it clear, in no uncertain terms and in a very stern message to the crew, that only the AD called wrap.  Indeed, on any set, this is true, but I think I went on about it just a little longer than I needed to.  Touchy, anyone?  When I belabored the point, John and members of his crew would take great joy in calling "wrap" under their breath at various points throughout the day.

John's crew became part of my first set of usual suspects, or, more accurately, I became the production guy on a crew of techies.  This is kinda like being the straight-man singer in a Marx Brother's movie.  

There is a lot more to talk about regarding this movie, but that will take a number of posts.  I thought it was important to introduce this important person in my career fully, so that later interactions will make more sense.

Among John's crew were the lovely Lorelei as assistant camera and general girl-Friday for John, a second AC, Joe, who had a hyena-like laugh, Russell, a key grip who seemed  more like a general handyman at times, and a young gaffer who has gone on to quite a career as gaffer and DP himself, Jeffrey Eplett.  Jeff had a great sense of the lighter side of set, and could crack the crew up at any time with anything from his dead-perfect Wookiee to his interesting impersonations of famous people doing lines in unexpected movies.  My favorite was probably Jimmy Stewart playing Frank Booth in Blue Velvet.  It gives an interesting insight to how Mr. Stewart would have delivered the line, "you get a love letter from me, you're fucked forever!"

It was also on that film that I became "JB."  As much as it might seem a reasonable assumption that I gave myself that name out of hubris, that is not the case.  Besides Mr. Rosnell and me, there were a few other "John's" on the crew and staff, and it got out of hand pretty quickly on walkie.  It wasn't long before I became "JB" and John "JR" while some other "John's" went by their last name.  Between this film and another I did with John, I started referring to myself as "JB" with vendors, and soon, that was it.  People knew me as JB and not John, and so it began.