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.

The Black Box

In the wake of an airplane crash, the National Transportation Safety Board searches for the black box, which hopefully tells them what went wrong, and helps to prevent future crashes.

Movies are a little different. We have production reports, which should accurately detail how each and every day goes.  Good 2nd ADs and 2nd 2nds keep detailed notes, and I have always encouraged them to write it down, even if they aren't sure.  If I am the 1st AD, I will call out notes (privately on Channel 2, or as private as Channel 2 is when other departments aren't spying) as they occur for my 2nd, because I may not have time to write it down.  Better to have a record of it than not - we can always sort out later if something noted is important or not.

There are other clues I look for as line producer or UPM, also from the production reports.  Set-ups, of course, are crucial.  I also look closely at the script notes: how many takes are we doing, how long are scenes running, what does the coverage look like, and, if we are shooting film, how much film are we exposing.  All of these things can give you clues, but they don't give you the answer.  Much like the Black Box, it's all in the interpretation.  Thankfully, on a movie, you (hopefully) have live witnesses you can interview to get more information.

Unlike plane crashes, we try to analyze the crash while the plane is still spiraling to the ground.

It's amazing the little things you will notice from production reports, especially the script supervisor's notes.  For instance, I line produced a film where I noticed that, for a scene that would run, say, one page, the masters would run two minutes or more.  Hmm, no matter how you cut the coverage into the master, that means the scenes will run a bit long.  Not a big deal for one scene; definitely a big deal when it's every scene.  I had a first-time feature director who had done shorts and music videos and thought he could just fix it all in post.

After two or three days of this, I sat the writer/producer/lead actor, exec producer, and scripty down and discussed this.  Indeed, her timings, and the way we were running, would mean the entire screenplay would run over 4 hours!  The time to fix this was now.  We needed trims to the script, I needed to see better shot lists, and we needed to get this under the control.  The director blew it off, and the writer/producer was unwilling to cut anything from the script.

Long-story short: the film, which I left because if they won't listen to you, there is nothing you can do, was a story with a past, a present, and a future.  It ran almost twice the length of the original shooting schedule and triple the budget (yes, the line producer who replaced me was very competent and the AD was very good - there is only so much you can do).  Worse, the final film cut out almost all of the past and future and just used the present; they only used about 40 percent of the movie they shot.

This was all predictable and avoidable.  They wouldn't listen.

I choose this point in the blog to address this because of the problems noted on Lucky Stiffs, and the eternal question we have of why things go badly at times on film sets.  Like in a plane crash, there are mechanical problems (like the dolly mishap, or, on other shoots, REDS freezing - they like to do that).  Also as in a plane crash, there is often human error.

Note that I say human error, not pilot error.  Depending on how you look at it, pilot error on a feature film is either the director or producer.  On studio films, the producer can fire the director.  On indie films, the director often is the producer, so that's not going to happen.

Also like on a plane, though, it may be the pilot that seems at fault, but it may begin somewhere else, a mechanic missing something faulty in the working of the plane earlier, for example.  By the time gets the pilot, it may be too late.

The  Hollywood Juicer , in his wonderful blog, has a classic article called The Circle of Confusion, that shares three disaster flicks - the happenings on the shoots, that is - that happened earlier in his career.  He also notes his surprise, coming from it originally as a naive kid in film school to these Hollywood shoots, that professionals could make these sorts of mistakes.

In the indie world, we look at problems on set and bemoan our lack of money, or sometimes write it off to the smaller budgets meaning smaller or maybe less seasoned crew, but is it really that?  Francis Coppola, who produced one of the most successful and, by most lists, one of the best films ever made ( be it Godfather I or Godfather II - you choose - I know it wasn't Godfather 3), took American Zoetrope through some very shaky financial times, with film after film that went over budget and did not recoup their money.  Spike Lee, an admired filmmaker, went  over budget on Malcolm X and  the bond company took it over for a time.

I could go on, but clearly having talented professionals and boundless money does not solve the problem.  Why, then, are movies so damned hard to make?

I go back something Martin Scorcese was quoted as saying in the book, Scorcese on Scorcese.  I'm paraphrasing, but it was something to the effect that 'every time I come on set, and I see all these people and all this equipment, I think to myself, I'm not qualified to do this.'  Granted, this was shortly after he had close to a nervous breakdown but right before Raging Bull.

The point remains that there are a lot of moving parts, mechanical and flesh and blood, on a movie set.  We try to have contingencies for everything - cover sets for rain days, more than enough equipment if something goes down, etc.  It is even standard to build a contingency into a budget.

However, when you take all those mechanical moving parts, and add them to human beings at the control, the possibilities for delays and overruns are endless.  Oscar-winning actors can have bad days, where take-after-take may not work.  The hero car that got to set fine doesn't start.  The DP and director have the same idea in their head for the shot, but it just doesn't look like they drew it up, and a re-light is in order.  The art department ordered the prop in more than enough time, but Fed Ex broke it in shipping.  The costume designer is breaking up with her husband and her distraction is leading to sub-par costumes that have to be redone.

The human equation is not theoretical, and not so easy to determine.  I had two experiences hiring people who had previously been wonderful who turned out all wrong on another shoot.

A 1st AD who had just experienced the birth of his first child.  On our previous shoot, he was energetic and detail-oriented.  On this one, small things were slipping, and it culminated in a tech scout where he seemed to not know what scenes were being shot where.  It turned out the baby was keeping him up and he was getting no sleep.  One of the most unpleasant experiences of my career was this person whose wedding I had attended.  More on that in a future post.

The other was a location manager who had come on and saved a shoot I had taken over.  On this shoot, she was about three months pregnant, but assured me that it would not be an issue.  Once again, the blessed event of childbirth reared its ugly head to hinder the clearly more important task of making a movie.  Her mood swings made her impossible to deal with as a co-worker, and she wasn't finding us any locations.  Her foul spirit at the time made her termination a little more easy to bear.

If Dante was correct, I wonder what circle of hell line producers who fire pregnant women and fathers with newborns occupy.

Oh, and for the record, I discourage any crew or staff member of mine from quitting smoking during the course of our shoot.  I will gladly be supportive later; for now, smoke 'em if you got 'em.

Multiply these sorts of things times the 30-40 crew people on even a small indie shoot, plus the cast, and you get the idea of what human error can look like.

Certainly, all of this should lead us to despair, right?  Maybe not.

I have worked on far more movies that came in on budget than over budget.  I have worked on many films I am extremely proud of, including post supervisor on a movie shot in Cambodia on a 5d for less than $300K that looks like a million bucks just recently and films that have had major distributors and won major film festivals.

I told students that I learn on every movie I work on, and if you ever kid yourself that you have nothing more to learn, it's time to get out.  Each script is different, and has different challenges.  Your last film had lots of stunts, and you figured out how to do all of that?  Great, this film has no stunts but most of the cast are children.  Next movie is filming in the Gulf Coast during hurricane season, or animals abound, or you name it.

There is no cookie cutter, no template, no one-size-fits-all.  There are tried-and-true procedures, and you lean on them for all they are worth, because while there is no template, there is no need to reinvent the wheel either..  (Have I used up my quota of metaphors and analogies yet?  Now you know why I have trouble with Twitter).

What can you do?  It starts with taking time with the hiring process.  Find not only good and talented people, but people who want to be on this particular job, and are a good fit with each other.  The best DP in the world is not gonna work when you have a limited budget and he can consistently needs 60 minutes to get the shot "just right."  That AD might be very talented, but if his or her personality somehow doesn't mesh with the director, there are going to be problems.  We are humans, and we bring issues to the table.  In a business full of freelancers, otherwise known as people who have trouble with routine, authority and convention, let me tell you, the table is pretty overcrowded with issues.  I often say that my 'usual suspects,' my preferred crew, have their own issues, but since I know what those issues are, I find a way to work with them.  A good  team  means checks and balances, and someone will likely be there when an oversight occurs.

Some I have worked with might suggest I have issues, but I can't imagine that to be the case.  At all.  Really.

Those of us in production should be trying to find the right balance of rigidity and openness; no, I will not do something I have seen fail a dozen times before because you think it's a cool idea.  I believe in most of the conventions of film-making, and standard production procedures and practices. They have been developed over years, and those that stuck did so because they work.

There is, however, something to be said for the fact that you need to know the rules in order to break them.  There are times when the standard doesn't work or doesn't apply, and then you have to be able to adapt.

Hopefully, there will be more lessons along the way.  I will put out there all the things I know that work, and all those I have seen not work, so others can learn from mistakes already made when possible.  We will have a little fun along the way.  Stick with me, and you will learn everything you wanted to know about working with draft horses, snakes, the wonderful world of "mob actors" and a whole lot more.

Most of all, remember that the light at the end of every tunnel is not necessarily an on-coming train.  Matt, for all our problems, loved the final result of Lucky Stiffs.  Did you see that smile in the last post at the opening?  The same can be said for the people who made that movie where the final product was only 40 percent of what they shot; they got distribution and some nice reviews.  People don't tend to remember the days when everything went right, and, at the end, an audience  doesn't care, as long as the final product is good.

What if you are not the director or producer?  What do you have to look forward to on difficult shoots?  On even the worst shoots I have been on, I have met good people who I brought onto future shoots, good people who brought me onto future shoots, good people who became lifelong friends.  On other films I  learned something I used on future shoots.

Forget if the glass is half-full or half-empty and enjoy the water (ok, it's rarely water) that's in it.

Get all of that data from the black box, then get that next plane up in the air.  We have places to go and movies to make.