A Smile To Go Before I Sleep

"Rivers know this: There is no hurry. We shall get there some day."
-A.A. Milne. Winnie-the-Pooh

First, my apologies for not following up on the series based on the film I just line produced, which I called, "The Unattainable." As it is for all production people, especially my hard working fellow producer (who is never afraid to drive a vehicle herself, help lug equipment or remember to thank people for their work), the days seem to never end, and the weariness persists even once the shooting stops, as there is the dizzying process of wrapping.

Though I knew that there was not going to be the time to do my full posts, which I like to make as thoughtful as possible, it was my intention to do short missives as we went along.

Even this proved to be difficult, as if I had a moment to write such a short note, I felt guilt at the idea of using that time to write an indulgent blog post, as others on the team were working hard to keep us going and get work done.

We have wrapped principal photography on that project, and I will now look back at it with a little perspective and try to relate the experience while it is certainly much fresher in my mind than the other projects from my past.

Before I get into that process, I will offer this lesson that good things, indeed, do sometimes come to those who wait.

There was a period around 1994 where I almost worked on three seminal indie films of the 1990s - Welcome to the Dollhouse, Spanking the Monkey, and Mall Rats (not a seminal movie, but Kevin Smith is certainly one of those filmmakers who define that era).

One post discusses my disappointment in not getting to work with Todd Solendz, who I consider a genius.

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine - the actress from my play and short film - asked me to First AD a trailer for a short film.

She had done the play and the film for free, and I felt it only fair to return the favor, even if it meant working the day after we wrapped our film office on the feature. I was intrigued when she mentioned that one of the actresses was Heather Matarazzo, the lead in Welcome to the Dollhouse.

As my previous post on the subject tells, I felt there would be two difficulties shooting Dollhouse: finding a school that would agree to be represented in the movie, and finding a young actress at that delicate stage in our development when our egos are fragile enough to begin with who could handle the psychological abuse the lead character experiences.

When I saw the movie, I knew that the second problem proved no problem at all. Heather Matarazzo was brilliant in that movie, as good as any teen actress in any movie ever. As her career continued, she proved that this was not freak luck, that she was not only talented but willing to keep taking on challenges as an actress.

As with anyone who has been around as long as I have in this business, I've worked with many name performers, and names don't impress me. My Facebook page does not have the all-too-forced photos of me with these actors. This may not be true, but I always found it a little unprofessional to treat a fellow worker the way a fan might. Again, many of my co-workers do this, indeed, it is the norm, and this is probably just another one of my many personal quirks.

What does impress me is talent, and Heather is a unique talent. One fear of meeting someone whose work you admire is that they disappoint your higher expectations, that they are difficult to work with and not the special person you think they might be.

Luckily, this was not the case with Heather. She proved to not only be a wonderful actress, but a real trooper, dealing with the difficulties of working with a super-micro budgeted trailer and a very small crew in a very tight space.

After doing a feature where we had a big crew and a lot of equipment, working with one grip/gaffer/AC, one person who line produced and 2nd AD'd, one PA, and everyone else doubling and tripling up actually felt like a relief. Furthermore, having to not worry about the budget and just making the day proved, if not relaxing, a pressure that seemed less stressful.

Meeting and working with Heather made it all the better, and I did relate to her the story of almost working on that project many years ago. I did so very late in the day, so as not to take away from her focus on the work in front of us.  At this point. she had volunteered to discuss other acting projects, so I felt it would not be inappropriate.

In a nice surprise, I found that we were both touched in the same way by a film that was ostensibly made for children, but touched every adult I know who has seen it: The Last Unicorn.

All day, she agreed to do things like stand-in for lighting or do things herself that would be done by others on a bigger set, and her input into the scenes was always spot on.

The day before, I had spent a day in my office doing Purchase Orders and getting out last minute checks as well as managing money, a line producer's biggest responsibility. Last night, I got on a LIRR train home, exhausted not from the day but from the collective work and hours of the last two months, but it was a good tired. The producer (the friend previously mentioned) and the director (a new friend) could not have been more appreciative, the crew worked well together with nary a complaint (something I cannot always say on bigger crews) and the experience made me feel good about what film-making, on a very small level, can be.

When I agreed to do the gig yesterday, it seemed crazy, and as I rode out on the train after closing the office, going over the shot list, planning the shooting order, what sort of masochist was I? Wouldn't resting be a better use of my time?

Today, as I head out to my Zendo to return to a little bit of normal life, I realize that there will be time for rest, that we who work in an field we choose and get to keep working in a field we chose are blessed, that every project, even if it is only for a day, presents an opportunity to experience something new and wonderful.

I am reminded that on every project. whether it goes well or not so well, good things happen, good people are met, there are reasons for smiles. Yesterday, on a shoot that was over for me in less than 10 hours, meeting the the talented Heather Matarazzo and working with some truly selfless, easy-going people brought me a relaxed smile as I drifted off into sleep on a Penn Station-bound Long Island Railroad car.

The Indie Aesthetic - Then and Now - It's More than Just the Budget

"You cannot be a producer unless you accept that it's all your fault"*

-Christine Vachon

The making of movies has always been a large part craft as well as a large part art. I won't even attempt to offer percentages. So, it is only natural that those attempting to break new ground often met at the crossroads of new ideas and new technology.

Film history professors can talk about pioneers like Samuel Fuller, or any number of the noir guys who took those big, bulky cameras outside of the comfort of the studios and into the streets. Like most art, it's history of renegades is as old as the history of the art form itself. You can call Chaplin a pioneer  for the work he did outside of the studio system, and go forward and backward from Fuller's contemporaries to people as diverse as John Cassavettes and Roger Corman.

Then, there is the whole Easy Rider Raging Bulls crowd.

Those film history professors can break all of that down much better than I can; it's territory better left to them.  Suffice to say that learning to do more with less did not start with the digital era.

What I can talk about first-hand is my peripheral connection to the indie world from the late-1980s through today.

A number of things converged to make this the right time to write this post: my covering a pivotal year, 1994, in my last few posts; a wonderful interview with real producing pioneers, James Schamus and one of my personal heroes, Christine Vachon; and a post on Reddit about "no budget movies."

I remember the day Vachon became one of my personal heroes; it was when I read her quote, "It's all my fault. Now, can we just move on." It was like being hit with a proverbial stick by a Zen master, that moment of enlightenment. More importantly, it exactly put into words my description of line producing, which Vachon had done. It was one of those quotes that I wish I had said.

In their article, they very clearly address the cause-and-effect:

3. Consider your relationship to the dominant culture. The conversation started out with James and Christine remembering the first projects they worked on together: The Golden Boat, Swoon, Poison and Safe. In the ’80s, they remembered, no-budget filmmaking necessitated an almost counter-cultural aesthetic because it was impossible for these films to look like mainstream movies. Now, James said, DSLR production values mean that it’s easier for films to look good — “like good TV.” It’s also easier for films today to uncritically adopt the language of the dominant media culture. Independents should think carefully about whether that’s a good thing for them to do or not.


I don't know how many of those films you may be familiar with, but they all had an aesthetic that transcended budget, yet, the budget limitations played into that aesthetic. The two worked hand-in-hand.

If given a bigger budget by a Hollywood studio, the Leopold-Loeb story would never have been handled the way director Tom Kalin does in Swoon. Alfred Hitchcock's Rope, the closest to a "Hollywood" film to reference it (albeit only by inspiration) takes an entirely different focus.

Neither of Todd Haynes' films mentioned, Poison or Safe, have big budget Hollywood counterparts.

For all of the "real world" today's reality shows try to portray, do any of them do a better job of taking  us inside another world than another of Vachon's producing successes, Larry Clark's Kids?

I don't think it is at all a coincidence that Haynes, Kalin, Clark, and their contemporaries like Todd Solendz are still making movies outside the mainstream. Kevin Smith is distributing outside of traditional sources. Joe and Harry Gantz, for all the success of "Taxicab Confessions," are currently raising money for their newest documentary on the unfulfilled American dream on Kickstarter.

It's important to note that for these pioneers, Indie film was not some form of "minor leagues" from which they hoped to be plucked for the "show," that "big league" being Hollywood. The budgets reflected a different sensibility for each of them, though not one they necessarily shared. If the digital revolution had never come along, they would still be finding their way in whatever system existed.

To a great extent, their budgets were, and remain, a reflection of their art. Unlike the Grunge movement in music, and the Punk movement before it, they were never co-opted by the mainstream; unlike the Easy Rider Raging Bulls crowd of the 70s, they didn't go on to become the trend-setters and new moguls, either.

The discussion of an indie aesthetic is important because there is no magic budget number that makes a movie a true indie. I have worked on films in SAG's lower budget categories - the Modified Low and, more recently, the Ultra Low - that were indies solely because of their budget. Their directors would have made bigger (and often better) films if they had a bigger budget - they just didn't. Nothing about the scripts themselves actually broke new ground, or separated them from their bigger brothers and sisters.

Conversely, most of the lists of best "indie" films of the 90s include films that, while commendable and often exceptional, were the "middle-class," where funds really didn't limit them or impact their look. Among them are all Coen Brothers films after Blood Simple, Pulp Fiction, The Usual Suspects and American Beauty.

So, where does that leave the filmmaker coming up in the indie world today? As Schamus and Vachon suggest, it leaves them with big choices to make.

I don't pretend to be enough of a visionary to know what those new indie ground-breakers will look like. I do know that the fact that it is shot on digital alone will not make it new and different.  Many of the Hollywood blockbusters that are using the same formula they have always used are using digital, and many of them, not so well, in my book. It always amazes me when I see a movie in a theater today with a lazy special effect that was done better when the technology was not what it is today. I fear that laziness will set-in and become a mindset.

As line producer, I get many scripts from first-timers who tell me how much they can do now that they can shoot on their beloved RED or some other new camera. Then, I read the script, and it's the same script I could have read ten or even twenty years ago. Imitation and more imitation.

That is not to say there is no innovation in the movies coming out today; I just have yet to see one that stands tall at that crossroads of technology and creativity that I mentioned at the beginning of the article. Most of the  truly original movies I've seen the last few years were original because of the content, and could have been produced on film just as well.

I omit the horror genre altogether, not because it's not worthy, but because it's a genre that has always done more with less; digital just makes it much less. If you think a surveillance cam and "Paranormal (fill in the number)" is the new aesthetic, then the makers of The Blair Witch Project deserve a lifetime achievement Oscar. As borderline un-watchable as I find Blair Witch, I have to credit them and admire their imagination - and that was on film.

One movie that points in the right direction was shot on film, and is now almost seven years old, and that is Brick. Personally, I hate the term neo-noir, because if you look at how many times that segment of the crime drama has been re-invented, we are certainly onto neo-neo-neo-neo-neo-noir by now.

One of the choices director Rian Johnson made on Brick was to open the doors of of a genre that spent most of its time in dimly-lit rooms and long alleys in the dead of night, draped in keenly crafted shadows. Johnson let the genre play outside in the daytime, opening up the possibilities of working with available light, something that can still be done on film with the right cinematographer. If you want to see what can be done with film and available light, including interiors, check out Whit Stillman's Metropolitan (1991)or Jon Jost's All the Vermeers in New York (1990).

Johnson took his financial limitations and turned them into advantages. We had seen all the great shadows and creepy interiors and hard men and loose women. Johnson moved that sensibility to high school, and in one of my favorite scenes, puts a typical cop/PI scene into detention hall, and moved much of the murder and mayhem outside in broad daylight.

I'm sure one day soon, there will be the definitive cellphone camera movie; I just haven't seen it yet.  I will be the first to embrace a truly original script that marries perfectly with the new technology. I should also point out that I don't spend a lot of time running to some of the edgier film festivals out there, and if a reader has seen what they think to be this perfect marriage, I would love for them to share it here.

A new indie aesthetic will rise, that's for sure. I'll be waiting.





*If you're even thinking of being an indie producer, and you haven't read Shoot to Kill and A Killer Life, then don't be surprised that many of the answers to questions you will always find yourself asking have already been asked and answered.

1994-The Wonder Year:The Ones That Got Away - Pt. 2 - "Welcome to the Dollhouse"

"Yo, Weiner, you better get ready, because at 3 o'clock today, I'm going to rape you."

-Brandon, Welcome to the Dollhouse

I can't swear that the line above was exactly as it appeared in the movie, Welcome to the Dollhouse, when I received a script to consider, then entitled Middle Child, in 1994. I remember there being a reference to meeting  by a tree, but, in any case, it was not the mere appearance of the word rape that caught my attention.

Other scripts, both theater and film, had dealt with the subject of rape, but rape was not the subject of this script. In fact, what caught my attention was not the threat of rape, but rather that, in the context of the story, it was not a threat at all, but more akin to a date with the hot guy at school, and a date that Dawn Weiner, the 7th grader to whom it was directed, was actually hopefully anticipating.

Coming of age stories are grist for the mill of films in general, especially indie films. One wondering about the insanity that is our business would also wonder if anyone who made a film actually had a happy adolescence, but I guess all those people went on to become CPAs, or something akin.

So many things made this script stand apart. First, this unattractive, unpopular girl is the victim of the type of emotional abuse both at home and at school that she makes Carrie look like a head cheerleader. Any attempt to deflect this abuse is only made worse by the fact that her older brother is almost, if not more, unpopular than she is.

I was being considered as line producer because I had a mutual friend with one of the producers (at the time), Jason Kliot. I had the reputation of being able to do a lot with a little, and producers Kliot and Joana Vincente had a similar reputation with their company, Open City Films. Ironically, I firmly believe that this would be reason why I did not get the job.

I had made good movies, mediocre movies, and, well, a few clunkers.  What I had not worked on was a movie that was a critical success on a big scale, even for the burgeoning indie movement. 

To put it in context, it seemed like the time of miracles.  All around me, I saw films with minuscule budgets and sometimes razor-thin plots succeed on what seemed like nothing more than an edgy "feeling". Brothers McMullen, Clerks, and El Mariachi were all examples of this.

My resume was starting to get long, and it was getting to that point where I started to think, "What am I doing with my life?" I was starting to feel like Jack Lemmon (or later, the actor his spirit invaded, Kevin Spacey) in all those mid-life crisis movies (which seemed to last forever, from about The Fortune Cookie to Save the Tiger).

It goes beyond the feeling that life is slipping by, that the hourglass on your masculine prowess (and, with it, your physique) is getting bottom heavy.  You are in a field where people make their mark in their twenties, and you are already past the age where you can be a wunderkind.  

What ever happened to those heady high school and college days, when you were often "the smartest guy in the room" (or, at least you felt that way).

It was with this unhealthy attitude that I approached my interview with Jason, Joanne, and Todd Solendz. 

A line producer needs to be a take-charge guy, and I'd learned to turn interviews around, to take charge of the interview by coming in prepared with how I was going to navigate this ship, asking more questions of them than they did of me. 

This often worked very well, giving the exact impression I wanted - "Wow, this dude knows what he's doing.  We better hire him"

If it were the right approach, it was the wrong room.

First, although I only met Todd this and one or two other times, anyone who has met him knows that it is unlikely that that are the smartest guy in a room with him.  Todd has all those things you expect in a great artist - both book knowledge and a keen insight into the human condition, a perfect compliment of head and heart, and certainly a very agile mind.

Jason graduated summa cum laude from Amherst, and was a Fellow at Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris; Joana had  Masters Degree in Philosophy from The Catholic University of Portugal.

Beyond that academic prowess, all three were veterans of the film wars.  Todd had survived an unhappy fling with studio films with his first feature, Fear, Anxiety and Depression. Jason and Joana were two of the real pioneers of not only getting creative small budget indies made, but distributed with Open City.

To take the other side of that old poker maxim from Rounders, if you look around the room and everybody there can be the smartest guy in the room, well, you, are the "other guy".

I started by expressing how much I admired the script, which was not the least bit flattery. I had never read anything like it. It was clear that the writer and force behind the script had a great intellect, but also that this man who was only two years younger than me clearly had an ear for the cruel language of middle-schoolers in a way that seems familiar all these years later, but was rarely if ever seen in any film at the time.

When they got around to what I thought would be the difficulties of the logistics of the script, I mentioned the two that struck me; where would they find a school that would let us shoot there if they read the script, and where would they find a girl the right age who had the self-confidence during her own puberty to handle the image-shattering action and dialogue of the script.

The answer to the latter clearly came in a remarkable actress, Heather Matarazzo, who later has made public her own personal struggle in school with the lack of acceptance of her sexual feelings for other girls.  Clearly, this, and naturally strong character, had toughened her for anything the script offered.

More importantly, she saw, as Todd did, Dawn's strength and confidence and pride in being different.

My background in Dramatic Literature and love of structure usually makes me pretty good at understanding both the spine and themes of a script, but missing this was only one of my misinterpretations.  Upon meeting Todd, I immediately assumed that he "was" the character of the older brother, the "king of the nerds." 

Gender had confused me here, and I missed the obvious; that much as Tennessee Williams is Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire, Todd is Dawn. He is not the victim older brother, but the fighter "middle child".

The school location did turn out to be a problem, but the line producer who eventually was hired, Priscilla Guastavino, was a tough lady who I would later work with on a few projects. She got it done.

There was one area that I turned out to be correct, and that was in questioning Jason and Joana's suggestion that it be shot on 16mm to save money. My work with JR and on other projects had convinced me that the cost-saving measure many used at that time - shooting on 16mm and then getting it blown-up to 35mm if it got sold - was a bad choice, one that seemed to invite failure.

I had a good deal of success shooting 35mm using resold raw stock, which has to be differentiated from the even cheaper "short ends" method.  I would only use stock that was still sealed and resold back to a broker that I knew, not those that were repackaged from full loads. I had a very reliable broker, and had never had one frame of bad footage  (a fear many producers had with even resold).

I made an argument for not shooting 16mm, and though I turned out to be correct, and the film was shot on 35mm, I could see in the eyes of Joana and Jason that if I hadn't failed the interview before, I had certainly lost them here.

Other producers ultimately came aboard; with them, a bigger budget and shooting on 35mm.

As a postscript, a few weeks later, Todd called me, asking for a reference for Van, the AD I had worked with on The Rook and the ill-fated Corman film. Of course, I gave him a glowing reference; of course, he didn't get the gig either.

Of all the projects that slipped through my fingers, I most regret not working on this ground-breaking film with a great indie pioneer in Todd Solendz.