The Bet (or The Fall of Love) - Part 6 - Love The One You're With

Well, there's a rose in the fisted glove
And eagle flies with the dove
And if you can't be with the one you love honey
Love the one you're with
-Steven Stills

Goodbye to our Idyllic Fall of Love

In light of the previous posts on the carnal adventures on The Bet, the title and lyrics I chose to start this post might seem redundant, yet another indulgence of amorous excesses of a crew on location in a picturesque location.

Actually, it's not that at all, but rather an ironic confluence of past and present.  Last night was the festival premiere of a film I adapted from a stage play for a former student of mine, who directed it.

The circumstances of the film were less than ideal.  The director had decided to shoot it pretty much like a play, without considering the consequences of trying to do all those set changes and making it look real.  Representational sets work in theater, but the camera creates a situation too real to make this work.  Additionally, stage plays are, by nature, dialogue-driven, and the long stretches of dialogue that may have been hilarious in the play drag in a film.

To say he was working with a micro-budget would be kind; his plan was to shoot the film for less than I make most shorts.  Additionally, he was close to shooting when he contacted me about it.

All of this led to me rewriting the script on the fly, sometimes the night before scenes were shot, sometimes the morning of.   Less than ideal.  We should have done a page-one rewrite, and maybe even thought of a way to make it surreal ("Tell them it's a dream sequence").  Maybe we should have picked original material altogether.

The fact is, we did none of those things, and the movie we made is the movie - that's it.  We tinkered in post as much as possible with the material we had, adding some fun found footage.

In the end, we would up with a zany comedy that is still funny, though the director and I find it hard to see the humor, having poured over the footage endless times since it was first shot.  Also, too much dialogue remained even after my cutting and the volume of new lines I gave the cast at the last minute led to us having days where it took forever for the actors to get the lines right as we shot on a schedule that required us to knock of chunks of pages per day because of the budget.

Not a good combination.

As the producing team, we remember those long days, the endless takes, the botched lines, hour eleven on set where it seemed that nothing funny had happened all day.

For a long time, I had a hard time just saying "I wrote the screenplay."  It wasn't, in a perfect world, a "JB" screenplay, not the script I would have written if I were to chose to write a script.  Last night, as we were discussing the screening coming up, the director said, "Don't worry, we'll be at another screening  for another movie we do that's good."

Right then, what we both had known all along crystallized.  This was not the perfect movie, our ideal movie, that movie that is in our mind at one point that we are sure we can make.

Well, kids, grow up, and I direct this as much at myself as the director or anyone out there.  That movie you had in your head rarely gets made, at least frame-by-frame the way you saw it.  You have let others in on that dream - actors, crew, etc, and they have added their dream, and circumstances, especially on a low-budget indie of any level, mean you couldn't just keep shooting until you got it exactly the way you saw it.

The one thing, you can do, though, is stick to your vision, keep fighting for your vision, even if in the end, it doesn't come out exactly they way you imagined.

"Is a dream a lie if it don't come true, or is it something worse?"  Bruce Springsteen's line from The River may be true for a life unfulfilled, but how many of us really live the dream?  We start out with a dream, and we make it the best we can.

The same is true for our movies.  The irony is that you need to fight hard every day for your vision of the film as a director, or it won't even come close, grab and claw and fight to put that vision out there, and in the end, you have to love what you make, even if it isn't quite that.

I started the saga of The Bet with JR and I joking at the screening, commenting on how melodramatic the movie seemed, and to this day, I still think it is.*  We stifled laughs for all the wrong reason.  We had drinks and joked about it afterwards, dismissing Adam's vision, but, you know what?  There was Adam, sitting at that screening, and I'm sure many screenings afterward, enjoying the hell out of it.

JR , Christine and I, as well as the entire crew, had done good.  We helped Adam make the movie he wanted to make, melodrama and all.  As I think back, the same could be said of Lucky Stiffs, a movie I'm sure Matt still holds dearly, and Uzo before him on Walls and Bridges, who made a movie that seemed too real and too tough.  They all made the movie they wanted to make.

A director needs to surround himself with people he can trust, and needs to listen to them when they offer good advice, and take that advice in, and consider it carefully.  That's his responsibility to the project.  Those who advise him or her have a responsibility as well, to keep the director's vision in mind when offering advice; you're making their film, not yours.  Sometimes it can be a fine line between overstepping your bounds on the advice side, and stubbornness on the director's side when they wont listen to those with good advice.  It's a balance you probably never get exactly right, but you need to try.

The movie is your child.  You brought it into the world, now it's your responsibility to see it grow up right, even if it's not as pretty or as smart as you hoped it would be.  You have a responsibility to see it through and give it a good life.

Adam, I know, did that with The Bet.  He got small distribution, enough to make it worth it for him, set up sales for it online before many others were doing that, and came out with something to add to his other accomplishments in life, his jackal of an assistant director or DP be damned.

So, this is a little reminder  to all of you as are in the middle of what seems like it can't be the film you set out to make, on the worst day on set, when you are sure that this is never going to be what you thought it would be - slog on.

Oh, and that screening last night?  To quote my director, "They laughed.   There were genuine laughs." Sure they did.  They didn't know the road it took to get there, they didn't slave over the footage.  They just came to enjoy a movie, to maybe laugh a little.   Isn't that what a comedy is about?  Gotta love that kid!













*While the nature of the film was melodramatic, none of that falls on the actors.  The dialogue tended to lead in that direction, and they were quite talented and grounded the movie as best they could.  The result is miles ahead of what it would have been with a less talented cast.

And now, a little treat from the 70s for those of you who only know them as old men, when their voices and their chops really were that good.

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?