Hello, Sixty, My Old Friend

“Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

The hope was that the search for a good quote for turning sixty would offer something unique and clever, so imagine my horror when most that I found online were dull and uninspiring. 

Bad enough that the fear of any artist is that not only is the "spark" gone, but that it will never come again. Never. No spark.

"You are not turning 60. You're just turning 20 for the third time." (Pretty random. Why not 10 for the 6th time? 30 for the 2nd time?)

"Celebrating he 39th anniversary of my 29th Birthday" (More fun with numbers. And, if we want to carry the Jack Benny joke, why not the 21st anniversary of my 39th birthday."

And, the dreaded....

"Keep Calm You're Only Turning 60."

Nothing is more like nails on a chalkboard to me than the misuse of the British Government's poster at the outset of World War II. This one doesn't even rhyme!

Neil's Young's "Old Man"? Not exactly on point.

"You can't be 60 on Sugar Mountain." Switching 60 for 20 doesn't make any more sense than those bad "Keep Calm" quotes.

I could have gone with Neil's "Better to Burn Out than to Fade Away," except I've been there and done that - five years ago when I turned 55! (Neil seems obsessed with age, doesn't he?)

And that's the point.

As my AD of many years once said to me in a cab after a long day, "JB, it's a young man's game." He's in his forties, and I met him when I was in my forties, and I felt old then.

The exuberance of youth is visible everywhere in film, from the emergence of ideas that come from developing minds, to the strength that comes with youth that helps move all that gear and keep you going on long days, to the beauty of youth that is so sought after in front of the camera.

Especially on low budget indies, where budgets do not always allow you to hire seasoned professionals in every position, there are constantly young people coming taking on jobs for the first time.

I've been one of the "old guys" for about the last twenty years now, so sixty is not likely to be much different than they have been.

Yes, the long days feel longer, and the early calls seem to come earlier, but the process is gradual. Monday -the day after my birthday - will not be a Dorian Gray moment. I don't expect to look in the mirror and be shocked that I look older. That happens already on those early mornings.

The blend of young people on set and those of us with a few more years is exciting. It's part of the magic, at least for me.

I try not to be that "get off my lawn" guy, or the guy who keeps telling you how we did it in the old days.

I'm not always successful at those two above, but I like to think I have enough mindfulness to at least see that I'm doing it when it comes up. The most important thing is that I keep on listening. That's important for all of us. Zen mind is Beginner's Mind. Always be the student.

David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross may have offered us the ABCs - Always Be Closing - but, our lesson is to Always Be Listening. Always Be Learning. Somehow, ABLs is not as alliterative.

I've just started prep on a movie where the director/producer is about a year older than me. We have a lot of years between us, but as it's an Ultra Low Budget movie, we will be relying on a lot of younger people to keep it going. He is also a teacher, and a mentor, and I'm really excited and looking forward to the experience. A fire a number of years ago has limited his mobility some, but certainly not his ability. I'll be proud to walk along side him with my cane (which I've used since in my thirties - so that's nothing new).

When John Huston was directing The Dead, his health had deteriorated, and he was in a wheelchair and had the aid of an oxygen tank. Asked if he was embarrassed, given the reputation he had gained as an adventurer in his rugged youth, he said that only vanity would have kept him hidden in his current state.

"I don't like the part of being bound. But I've never discovered an answer to that question of what does freedom really consist (of). If you aren't fettered by one thing, you're fettered by another."

"I'm not hungry or thirsty. I'm not lovelorn. I'm just at the end of a piece of plastic tubing. And we're all hostages in one way or another." 

As for the spark, I had the opportunity to do a page-one rewrite of a script that I was set to direct, until it got postponed.  That was only a month or so ago, and it's some of the best writing I've done in a while. It was done in a short time, and that came with the craft, the experience.

I was on the phone the other day with "The Ex," who regular readers know is a lot wiser than I am. "Well, I turn 60 on Sunday," I told her.

She passed that mark in August.

"Yeah. The thing about turning sixty is it's better once it's over. You spend all this time thinking about it leading up to it, and, then, when it comes, it's not a big deal."

Seems the spark isn't gone with her, either. Many bows, Maureen, for offering me the quote I was looking for.

Wondering what this post will look like when I turn seventy!

The Moving Target - A Line Producer Looks Back at 2013

I have decided I am no longer going to produce films for my living.  To do so requires me to deliver quantity over quality. Or to not contribute as fully as I like since I won’t be fairly compensated.  Or to make something that is virtually guaranteed to not have the cultural impact it warrants.  Those are three things that I am refusing to be part of.
-Ted Hope, Truly Free Film

Last year at this time, as my birthday approached, I offered this somber look back through the words of Neil Young. This year, I reflect back through the words of Ted Hope above, and also my own experience this last year.

Much as I lamented last year, the business is still changing; more specifically here, I am referring to the business side of our business, the side of raising money and selling movies. My own small part in this process over the years has been as a line producer helping folks to raise money for a film.

This process is confusing to many people. The answer to "how much will it cost to make my movie" is not a simple or straight-forward one.

My first response is always, "How much can you realistically raise?" Without that answer, the rest of the work I do is meaningless.

On the indie scale, most scripts presented could be done on any one of a number of levels. There is the bare-bones level, the full-blown budget (if you had everything on your wish list), and any series of numbers in between. The answer usually lies in the middle somewhere, and I often discuss it in terms of the different levels of the different unions, if one is to even use union workers.

The union that is relevant to most projects is SAG, which has modifications of it's guidelines for New Media (web series and such), Ultra Low, Modified Low, and Low. A quick check of the SAG INDIE site will explain all this in more detail; suffice to say here that you can still work with union actors for less than general scale, depending on your budget.

The important numbers for this year to me are as follows: 34 budgets prepared, none has yet to raise the money. The other important number is 1: one feature that I actually shot this year, which I refer to here as The Unattainable, raised it's money from a budget prepared by the producer on the Modified Low Contract.

I know how people used to sell films on the indie level: regular investors, pre-sales, direct-to-video, etc. I don't know how they do it today, with distributors seemingly only being interested in no-budget projects they can pay insultingly-low fees to acquire, or larger budget films. One of the producers on this movie assures me there is a path in between, and I hope she is right, as she has done it before.

What all of this means is that work for folks like me is scarce, at least as it comes to actually line producing a film. I have no interest in line producing a film on a budget that requires me to bring on mostly film students and get almost everything for free. Additionally, one of my maxim's is that the work is just as hard on a bad movie as a good movie, so you might as well make a good movie. Too many of the extremely-low budget projects are just not very interesting projects, and at my age, if I'm going to put the effort into it, I want it to count.

On many of the budgets I prepared this past year, the numbers kept moving; hence, the moving target above. People would hire me to prepare a budget on one level, then get investors who swore they were ready to invest if they budget were either higher, or lower. For some people, they experienced both.  In almost all these cases, after chasing this moving target, the so-called investors did not come through.

As Ted Hope regularly points out, this is no way to sustain either an investor class for film, nor encourage experienced producers to make their living producing features. Almost all have the need to create some other form of "content" to keep afloat.

Two of the young people on my feature have approached me on learning line producing. Sad that they are afflicted with this dreaded disease to actually do this for a living, I will help them anyway.

Most crew seems to thinks producers make lots of money for less work than they do; on this level, in fact, the exact opposite is true. The producers on this film would have made more money and worked significantly less days and hours if they had worked crew. Money cannot possibly be the motivation for them; it is that determination and possibly-naive belief that this may be "the one," as a love-lorn friend of mine used to describe almost every boyfriend she dated for more than a few weeks.

In this atmosphere, I feel lucky to look back at my 55th year to have worked on one great feature where I worked with a great team, read some incredible scripts (which I still hope get produced), had the opportunity to work with some great actors and actresses and directed my first project, a short. My producers and director on the last project proved they valued experience that comes with age, and that was a nice thing to see.

This, for me, is what qualifies as glass-half-full. If it sounds less than optimistic to you, then you don't know me very well. The folks from my last film characterized me and my production coordinator with this picture below, from Despicable Me 2.

My coordinator was a cheery redhead. You can imagine which one I am.

Cheery is not the description of a person whose role is to very often say, "no," as is the case with a line producer. Crew thinks you give them too little; producers think you give crew too much.  Making people happy? Not as often as you like.

Every year, I wonder, as Danny Glover's character used to say in the Lethal Weapon series, if I'm getting too old for all of this. Every year, I find myself like Michael Jordan, threatening to quit more many times before it actually happens.

As Michael Corleone once famously said, "Just when I thought I was out, they PULL me back in." I expect I will be pulled in a few more times next year.



NB: Yes, I will still finish the Series "The Unattainable." I am trying to put a little distance between the end of the project and when I look back at it in order to have perspective, and with the added difficulty that as a line producer, NDA or not, so much of what I do is proprietary and I feel it is a breach to share, even if I don't mention the film or people specifically. Still, there are stories I can share, and I will in the days and weeks to come.

Floating: A Swim in the Woods: Drop Me in the Water

"Some are reputed sick and some are not. It often happens that the sicker man is nurse to the sounder"

-Henry David Thoreau

Ok, when we move on from this movie and the pond, I will move on from Thoreau and Emerson. Promise. 

As the title of the movie might imply, a lot of the time was spent in the water; specifically, Norman spent a lot of time in the water.  Both Norman and Chad's characters were talented high school swimmers, and besides spending time lounging by the pond, their characters also competed against each other swimming. It was part of how they bonded.

There must be something about male adolescence and water. From a young Al Green wanting someone to  Take Me to the River, to Neil Young shooting his baby Down By The River, to Springsteen remembering Mary's body tan and wet as they went down to The River and wondering if a dream's a lie if it don't come true, or if it's something worse, right up to The Decemberists filling their cup Down By The Water  (see, and you thought this old guy didn't know any modern music!)  there is something mystical about the creek, the river, the pond, the reservoir.

Maybe it goes back to the biblical  image of baptism and rebirth, or maybe it's just about young men with over-active hormones seeing what young women look like with wet bodies. Probably it's a little bit of both.

We kept putting Norman in the water, and it wasn't biblical or stimulating. Western Massachusetts in the Fall can be chilly, and the water was downright cold. Add to that a very physical shoot and working long hours, and near the end, it was really draining for Norman.

Because of turnaround (the time needed between wrapping one day and starting the next, for those not in film) a lot of the night shoots by the water were near the end of the shoot, when it was even colder. According to a doctor, Norman was very close to having what used to be referred to as "walking pneumonia." Whatever it was, he was sick.

This is an important point for young filmmakers: actors are not moving props. When you decide to work ceaselessly, it takes a toll on actors, especially if they are expected to be doing physically draining scenes. Norman was about as fit as anyone I have ever met, but it was still a lot to handle.

We set up a few tents, and heaters, and did the best we could to keep him dry and warm between takes, but the reality was that we needed a lot of footage of him in the water. Not only did he never complain, he refused to slow down, pushing himself pretty hard to make our days.

I tried to walk that fine line between fulfilling one of the first responsibilities of the Assistant Director - making the schedule - and fulfilling "the prime directive" - safety.

In the end, much as an athletic coach sometimes has to trust an athlete's ability to manage pain, it was clear to me that while Norman was pushing, he was also realistic about his limits, resting whenever he could while still getting in all the shots.

Of course it wasn't much fun for us to be out in that weather either, and a string of night shoots is never fun. Your body clock never really adjusts to working at night and sleeping during the day; the answer is more just about breaking your body clock so it stops complaining.

Believe me, none of us were going to complain with what Norman was working through, remembering that all the while, he had to play a tough, strong, athletic young man on screen. He kept us going.

For people who are fans of Norman now from Walking Dead, it is hard to describe what it's like to see an emerging artist just starting to be aware of their powers. Much like young writers, musicians, etc., the work may become better crafted and more mature as time goes on, but there is still something special about that early work, an energy that is hard to describe.

At the time, I was probably more concerned with just getting it all done, but I was still lucky to have been there for that, and I will always admire Norman for it.

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

For my part, this shoot was one of the few times that my own challenge became an advantage.

The character of Norman's father, played by Will Lyman, had lost a leg in the car accident that killed his wife. Bitter and feeling useless, he had spun deeper into depression and alcohol, acting very much the invalid, refusing to do much outside his wheelchair and spending a lot of time feeling sorry for himself.

Will did an incredible job of not making this a caricature, always letting his entire personality shine through. One challenge for him came in a scene where he tries to learn to walk with an artificial leg.

Whatever issues of frailty came up for Will's character I had long since gotten over with my own condition as a bi-lateral amputee below knee. The mechanics of putting on a prosthetic I knew very well, as it's something I do a number of times a day.

The prosthetic the prop folks got for Will was a very old one, one that was no longer being used even in the late 90s, no less the better ones we wear today.

The one they got him was one which used a strap, which is only used today in certain situations, replaced by a suction device that is actually more secure.

older leg

Newer leg with suction cup and lock

In any case, this was the leg we had, and almost no one knew exactly how it worked.

Some of the crew knew I used prostheses, some thought so but weren't sure, some did not. Because of the cosmetics, unless I roll up my pant legs, it isn't obvious.

I have never made an issue of hiding it, nor have I felt the need to announce it, but this was a time it came in handy.

On a break, I took Will into another room and showed him how mine worked, and how he would put his on. Mystery solved.

One of the humorous notes at this point was Bill, our director. I didn't ever tell Bill, and he didn't know. As we were not on particularly good terms, I didn't see us needing to bond over this point. Once the character had the prosthetic, Bill would constantly ask if it were possible, say, for him to walk up steps with it, or other simple tasks that any amputee learns early on in rehab.

Will, to his credit, would just smile, having seen me go up and down not only steps but hill and dale around our beloved pond. Some of my crew would chuckle. No one filled him in.

One of those moments when, as Thoreau mused, the sicker man was nurse to the sounder.


For my younger readers, another blast from the past.

Not Fade Away

"It's better to burn out
Than to fade away
My My Hey Hey"

-Neil Young

Neil Young wrote that when he was not even forty, in fact, still mid-thirties, in response to feeling that maybe his music was outdated in the face of the growing punk movement.

Young has always had a fixation on age, or maybe he was just more open about it in his writing than others. Aging is a fear for most people, but for artists, there is always the fear that the red-hot flame that burned brightly is not quite as bright.

Most people just call it simple mid-life crisis, but artists, well, we have to make it more existential, don't we.

In the famous Saturday Night Live skit, "Don't Look Back in Anger" (actually one of the Schiller shorts), an elderly John Belushi visits the graves of his fellow Not Ready For Prime Time players; ironic, of course, because of his opening:

"They all thought I'd be the first to go, because I was one of those, 'Live Fast, Die Young, Leave a Good Looking Corpse' types. I guess they were wrong."

When I watched it again recently, it really struck me, not because of the irony that Belushi actually was the first to go, but because my father always used that line. My dad didn't accomplish what he set out - he struggled with cancer for years before he died.

I have joked for years that I'd screwed two of those things up as well.

Neil Young's lyrics seem to me less about literally dying - though it has certainly been used that way over the years - than about being relevant as an artist. Is it alright to just linger and not lead? If Young felt that way then, one can only imagine how he feels more than thirty-five years later.

For me, now, there is a two-fold question: what have I accomplished, and just how relevant am I?

If you haven't already guessed by now, this is a birthday post. I will turn 55 on Christmas Eve 2012 (tomorrow, as I write  this).

As for the first question, if you were to ask me what I've done that's important, I would hope it was the influence I've had on younger people I've worked along side. Besides a stint teaching at New York Film Academy, I have always tried to mentor younger assistants, interns, and the like. I think it is part of my responsibility, all of our responsibility, as artists, because none of us can truly say we didn't have someone do that for us. I don't kid myself that I am the reason any one person will make it in this business, but I like to think a number of people have a little more skill and a little more insight because they worked with me.

Along the way, I've certainly had an influence on some projects I consider important, projects that fill me with pride. Still, the cynic in me says all of those would have gotten done without me.

I am currently in a phase where I'm trying to focus more on my writing than production, and hopefully, I still have a mark to leave there.

The second question is harder for me; how relevant am I?

Hey, you combine holiday blues with angst of a birthday, and it can get pretty dark, you know?

The indie movie business that I have been a part of is at a crossroads, and many of us feel the sands shifting under our feet. I used to have a template for post production; now, its more like a proverbial Chinese menu, with one from Column A, and two from Column B, or maybe the other way around, or maybe some different combination.

The same is true of equipment and crew size; there is no doubt we can certainly do more with less in both areas, but can we do it and maintain quality? The logical answer is yes; but I'm not sure we are always accomplishing it.

I remember talking about a certain project recently, and thinking how the HVX-900 might be the best alternative, because it was often preferred for those doing a lot of hand-held because of it's balance. Then, I had to remember, I should be thinking of the HDX-900, it's newer counter-part, because few would chose video when they could go digital.

As I read the articles that constantly suggest that the digital cameras that were the darlings of cinematographers in the Spring seem dated by the Fall, I feel like we have truly reached that perfect Apple world, where, by the time you get this model computer out of the box, it's obsolete.

Obsolete. Now, there's a word that scares me just a bit, and I'm not thinking of equipment here.

I'm a practicing Zen Buddhist, but Sunday mornings for me is still a time I dedicate to practice, whether it be attending a service at a temple in Brooklyn, or dedicating a few hours to meditation and Dharma talks online. This post is an extension of that practice today. While I knew I had to write it from early this morning, I have let the words and themes come as I wrote it, not pre-determining how it will end and where it will go.

If I dig myself out of the birthday blues long enough, I can objectively see that the sands are shifting for everyone, and those younger don't have the perspective that time and experience brings.

Over the past year, I've spent more time keeping up on changes in the technology, not to mention distribution and all the rest, than ever before. I go back to some people I consider truly vanguard, like producer-turned-San Francisco-Festival-Director Ted Hope, but also, I try to listen to young people who keep up with this sort of thing.

Listening. It's an important skill. Actors are taught this early on; the good ones excel at it, the mediocre ones never get it.

I like to think that when I prepare a budget and/or a battle plan for a project now, I am taking into account the needs and limits of both people and equipment from past experience, and the possibilities of what lie ahead.

Sand shifting beneath us didn't start in the digital age, though it seems to be shifting faster now. I often refer to  a quote by the great John Huston who, upon seeing Jaws, said that was the way he should have made Moby Dick. When told that the technology didn't exist at the time, he brushed it off, insisting, "We should have created the technology."

That quote fills me every time I am faced with a dilemma or challenge whose answer doesn't come from my experience. It's alright to look back, as long as you don't keep your head in that direction for too long, and, to borrow from the aforementioned skit, we don't do so in anger.

As the date of my birth tells you, I am a Capricorn. One of my favorite horoscope parodies for Capricorns is that we're not stubborn, we just know we're always right. There's a lot of truth in that. This is a business that requires ego if you are going to survive and get past all the doubt that the barrage of problems, miscues, and disappointments that are inevitable in a world where you are in some ways constantly reinventing the wheel.

I started to write that I am sorry if this post is even more schizophrenic than most, but that isn't true. I've come to take that as part of my prose writing style (it doesn't serve as well in screenplays). One of the advantages of getting older is you become a little more comfortable in your (not as taut) skin.

For all those days when I feel burnt out, I'm determined not to fade away.

Below, a link to the Belushi video.

http://www.hulu.com/watch/97833

Next post will return to the story of the film, 1999.


N.B. Very sorry for those looking for a review of the new David Chase movie.