(Un)Lucky Stiffs - Part 3 - Hookers and Hussies

Least my previous two posts on Lucky Stiffs suggest that all was gloom and doom, I should point out that, with a good crew and Matt's calm direction, we had a number of good days.  It was, after all, a comedy, and comedies can have intended, and unintended, humorous elements.

This post will deal with some of the lighter moments.

When I came back to NY, Maureen and I were living in NY's Hell's Kitchen (although the city fathers would prefer I use the newer title Clinton, I prefer Hell's Kitchen and all the sordid history that went with it).  This is the Theater District and just south and all-the-way west to the Hudson River, where after the theaters were long closed, entertainment remained vibrant.

We started the shoot with some locations in Brooklyn, along the waterfront, and in New Jersey.  One of the more talented PAs I mentioned, Stacey, was assigned to pick me up and get me to set.  Although technically the 2nd AD is first-on-and-last-off, this was still early in my career and I was motivated (in no small part by fear of failure) that I had to oversee everything.  Capricorns.  As such, I wanted to get there before the crew vans to make sure all was well.

The rides with Stacey were great.  She had started out in theater as a stage manager - just like me!  All these years, I have loved to bring stage managers into the AD department; the temperament and skill sets required are very similar.  The differences can be learned.

The two key things I look for in potential production people are intelligence and enthusiasm.  Stacey had  both of these plus leadership skills, maturity, and the willingness to take responsibility.

The first couple of days of any shoot tend to be exterior day, and ours were no different.  This is for a couple of reasons, many of which are obvious to production veterans, but I will point out anyway.

As you go later in the day, it becomes harder to start early.  This is because, even with non-union crew, you want at least a ten-hour turnaround for crew, and must have twelve hours for cast. You want to get those beautiful sunrise (or magic hour) shots done early.  You also want to shoot  day exteriors early to avoid weather problems later on.

On lower-budget films, these scenes often use little or no lighting, only diffusion and reflectors to control "available light" (also known as the sun).  This means it's a good chance to get things moving while the crew and cast settle in.

This also means that your early shoot days have those un-godly call times, such as 5AM or 6AM.  We had our share of these, and Stacey would be picking me up in front of the brownstone I lived in before sunrise.

Hells Kitchen, in those days, had its own special brand of graveyard-shift freelancers, known commonly as hookers.  As I would sit outside, there was one hooker who always passed on the way home.  She later told me that at first she thought I was a detective, especially seeing me getting into the car.  She thought the cane might have been a prop.

After a while, though, she felt comfortable coming up and talking to me.  Yes, her first question involved a date, but after she realized that wasn't happening, she took to just chatting with me.  We would talk about how each of our respective jobs was going - her bad nights were worse than my bad days.

Stacey stoically would pick me up as my hooker friend would wave goodbye.  Stacey's evil grin grew day-by-day, along with her "I'm not going to ask, JB.".  Once we would get past the snicker, we would talk production, and she always got me to set calm and prepared.

Once on set, there were not only the production issues but the cast.  There was talent, and there was insanity.

One moment strikes me as indicative of the insanity that went on behind the cameras.

The script revolved around a jewel heist.  Two young slackers want to plan the heist, and they plan it with an older "experienced" criminal.  Turns out they could have made a better choice, as their veteran had issues.

He also had a moll.

I find myself using some older, classic terms in this post; moll, hussy.  Today, we tend to be more graphic or judgmental.

Hussy and moll are two phrases from a by-gone era, but they better represent the femme-fatales in this movie.

The older, experienced thief was played by "Broadway Bobby" Downs.  Sadly, Bobby is no longer with us - more on him later - but he had a wonderful "Moll," who I will refer to by her character name, Angela.

"Moll" was a polite term used in the old studio days for the girlfriend of a mobster.  It's origin is multi-fold; it comes both from the suggestion that she carries a gun, and "moll" is short for Molly, an Olde-world euphemism for prostitute.

See how it all comes 360 degrees?

Our "moll" was not a prostitute.  Angela's fatal flaw was that she had the bad judgement to be dating Eddie Minuchi, the older criminal.  In the script, Angela came off as a busty, sultry and alluring woman in her twenties.

The first scene in the movie in which she appears goes something like this: Eddie and Angela pull up in a cab, Eddie has bought her lots of expensive presents (this is how he keeps her).  She is about to get out of the cab, the young guys help her.  When they open the door, she drops the presents, revealing her ample cleavage.  The guys ogle her and lose track of what they are doing, impressed by her cleavage.

Do you still wonder why we weren't at the Oscars that year?


These, as I point out, are the light moments.  The real road bumps?  Oh, they are ahead.

(Un)Lucky Stiffs - Part 2 - Location Location Location!

In a perfect world, the assistant director would go into his or her fortress of solitude, where they would prepare the perfect schedule.

They would take every element of their breakdown into consideration, then the projected shot-list or story-board, think about both the creative and logistical elements, and emerge with the perfect schedule.

In fact, the AD can do that.  Then, they wake up.

Once you have the perfect schedule, you start dealing with the other issues.  You try to bring the director on board with the schedule.  Unless they have some major reason why they cannot make it work, you try to show them why it will be the best flow.  Once the DP is aboard, you might work out a few more of the specifics.

You really want a crane?  Hmm, can we schedule both crane shots for the same day so as to not rent it twice?  Is that worth the budget difference of having the crane on two separate days because other factors don't make shooting those two locations on the same day cost or time-effective.

If you are doing a feature, and working with SAG actors who you are, of course, paying, you should not be dealing with actor availability.  On any budget above SAG Modified Low, you are dealing with drop/pick-up days - but that's for another blog.  Assume they are available all through the shoot, and the schedule allows you to shoot them out in the most efficient manner, which usually means the least number of days.

Once you have done all of that, you talk to locations.

In your perfect schedule, you shoot the hospital on Day 3, the deli on Day 5, and the nightclub scene on Day 10.

Locations informs you they have finally found the perfect hospital, the perfect deli (they will shut down for us, the aisles are big enough, and the price is right) and a nightclub the DP has shot before that could have come right out of the script.

The hospital administrator must be there, and Day 3 is a Saturday - they need it to be another day.  The deli is cool - as long as you can shoot at night - you are on a day schedule on Day 5 and turnaround won't work.  The nightclub already has their hottest band booked for your Day 10.

Your perfect schedule just became not-so-perfect.

The two basic schedules that get distributed are the shooting schedule, which is the long breakdown, and the more common one-line schedule, which gives everyone just the basic facts.  Because this paperwork gets revised, and to prevent confusion, the original color for these schedules is White, with subsequent revisions running Blue, Pink, Yellow,Green Goldenrod, Salmon, Buff and Cherry.  Sometimes the colors after Goldenrod can be slightly different based on paper available, preference, etc.

Colors are fun in pre-school.  On a film, it means things are changing, and unlike the 2008 Presidential campaign, Change is not good.  It means logistics have to change, people have to actually read the changes and adjust to them (as an AD, I can't wait until we go digital and can just install chips each of the crew members brains where we can make the change simultaneously. )

On Lucky Stiff, we had a hard-working location manager named Glenn, who had us working in locations in NY and NJ, with the help of the NYC Mayor's Office of Film Theatre and Television (MOFTV) and the NJ Film Commission, which even then had the great Davis Schooner.

The permit system in NY is relatively similar to back then, with some minor differences (some would call them major).  Briefly, you needed to lay out exactly where you were shooting, where you needed to hold parking, what you were shooting, and if you needed NYPD or NYFD assistance.   If your schedule changed, someone had to go to the MOFTV to change it.  Today, some of that can be done with a fax.  Then, it was not allowed.

Suffice to say changes meant lots of work and paperwork.

As an AD, I want to lock the schedule, and that requires locking locations.  That means signed agreements and guarantees.  They came slowly on Lucky Stiff; as such, as we got closer to principal photography, I was juggling to move locations we had to the beginning, regardless of whether it was the best order.  I just didn't want to find myself not knowing if I could shoot the day as scheduled a few days ahead (changing equipment, actors, extras, etc.).

My apologies to veteran crew who know all this - I try to write the blog for both pros and curious others.

Additionally, I had an art department that could not assure me that locations would be dressed for when I needed them.  Certainly, part of this had to do with the location issues.  However, coordinating the logistics of seeing that these locations got cleared and prioritized fell on the production manager.  Nothing was more important, or so one would think.

Rody, as most UPMs when there is no line producer, was responsible for managing the budget, and I certainly know how hard that is.  However, the process of monitoring the budget should never slow the process down - you make decisions and you move on.  Rody was slow in this area, in part because she did not have two key skills for the position; the ability to prioritize and the the skill to delegate responsibility.

A UPM has many responsibilities.  We did not have a huge budget, but we had enough PAs, and there was enough money to have hired a production coordinator, who could have freed Rody up.  That, however, would have required her to a) communicate what was already being done with another person, and b) be able to explain what needed to be done.  Both required trust, and Rody was afraid that any admission that something had not been done was admitting failure.

All of this would have been frustrating enough if she had not decided that, having not done her job, she was going to interfere with mine.  She had never scheduled a feature film, yet would come up with her own ideas on schedule publicly after we were in motion on my schedule.

This requires some clarification.

I've said it before - ADs are possessive of their schedules.  That is because they have to take a ton of elements into account to produce the schedule, and the person who makes suggestions is usually just reacting to one or two elements.  If a move looks obvious, it often means there is some fact you don't know.

When I became a line producer and UPM, I gave prime responsibility for the schedule to the AD.  It didn't matter than I had been an AD - it was their ship now.  If I had suggestions, I made them in private, after hearing why they had it another way.  I did this, mind you, when in at least a few cases, the people who were now 1st AD for me had been 2nd AD for me before.  It didn't matter.  Prime responsibility now fell to them, and I respected it.

Rody never understood this line.  This led to confusion, and tension.

So, now the stage is set.  We are getting close to principle photography, and we have a schedule (revised multiple times before we get to Day 1) that has holes - scenes scheduled for which we do not have the location locked - or, in some cases, even agreed upon.

The first major decision I have to be involved with is whether we push back the starting shoot date.  There was a good reason to push back a day or two (I forget which it was) and we do that.  I do not, however, see how more time will change anything.  We have to start.  Pushing back seems easy, but I know it will bite us.

We know we will be done by, at latest, the second week in October now.  Someone makes a joke about Halloween.  Not funny.

We set sail.  We hope for fair waters, and to return safely to shore soon.

(Un)Lucky Stiffs - Part 1 - Bringing Up Baby

I got back to New York in mid- August, the hottest and most humid time in New York.  The good news was that we weren’t going to start on Lucky Stiffs  until early September, and by then, the weather would be better.  The better news was that my original estimate, before breakdown, would be that we would wrap by the first week in October, before the weather got too cold.

Perfect.

The first people I met were Matt, the director, and Rody, the production manager.

Matt's background was as an editor, though he had co-written and directed one documentary.  For a director, Matt was a good editor.  He had clear ideas on what he needed for coverage, and he had written a simple, comedic story that he could get a handle on.   He was a veteran, one who knew the traditional way to make films, and for the most part, that was how I liked to make them.  Sure, we were low-budget, and the execution was different, but the organizational structure remained the same.

Matt was a pleasant, nice and decent human being.  Those are not always qualities associated with directors, and not adjectives I would use for a few I've known and a few I've worked along side.  Matt was in his late 30/early 40s, and past the ego  that sometimes drives young directors.  He wasn't worried about his next movie, or making a fortune on this one.  He knew the latter was unlikely, given the nature of the business.

He did not have an ego that needed to be stroked, and he didn't need to be king.  He was a successful editor, and would have a career in the business regardless of the outcome of the film.  He was comfortable.

Comfort is not always a good thing for a director or a movie.  A movie often takes on the personality of the director, and comfort for a film crew can lead to overconfidence.  A movie in production develops a psyche, it really does.  Bits and pieces of the personalities involved go into that psyche the way parents,  relatives, teachers and environment go into the psyche of a child.

It took a number of years in the business for me to come to my take on a production's psyche.  Over the years, I have kept a close eye on how this forms, making sure things never got too heavy or, for lack of a better term, too light.  Mostly, I have tried to 'biologically engineer' this psyche through the crew I hired.

Was this film a good fit for them, and how would they work with the other keys?

So, Matt added quiet and pleasant to work with to the mix.  I was never a screamer as an AD, but I'm a Capricorn, and we tend to suck up air in the room.  I'm much more laid-back now; I was much more front-and-center at that time.

You know JR and his main crew by now.  If you missed it, check out When JB Met JR - Part 1 - The Birth of JB.

I had a Second AD I had worked with before named Julie, and I brought on Chris Kelley from my class as 2nd 2nd AD.  This was a working relationship that would continue for some time, and CK (as we called him) and his personality would definitely be a part of the mix.

We had an earnest young PA who tried very hard but who always managed to wreak havoc who CK dubbed Satan's Child.  You will see why.

We had a young PA who became location manager and later became an integral part of our team.  She later went on to become a successful DGA First AD.

I met my mentor.

We had a hero named Shane.  Really.  He even had a little kid calling to him.

The cast included an actress in her mid-thirties named Antonina trying to play mid-twenties, a featured actor playing the "experienced" hood named Bobby who was more of a character off camera than on, and two cool young guys in the slacker roles.

Rody, the production manager, had a background in documentaries and covering her back, the latter of which included working closely and secretively with the production designer who she had brought  on board.

The production manager and the AD must work well together.  There are many films over the years on which I was AD that not only was the PM a partner, but a Godsend.  You make each other look good,  When I moved to more work as PM and line producer, I was the biggest fan of the AD, because I had been there, and did everything I could to have their back.

Rody was figuring her job out as she was going along, which would have been fine, if she had asked for help.  Instead, she covered mistakes and kept things a mystery until small problems became big problems.

This was not the perfect AD and PM marriage.

There was a natural, but not healthy, tension that developed.  Me, JR and his crew were one team; Rody and her production designer was another.  To be fair, all sides tried to make it work, but it got tense at times.

The first challenge we faced was the schedule and locations, which, in a perfect world, is a symbiotic relationship.  They are intertwined, and in the next post, I will talk about the scheduling and location securing process, and the rest of pre-production.

We were in prep, the child was born, and the psyche was being developed.  Stick around for the formative (weeks) years.


*As a treat for having entered the world of Lucky Stiffs, the classic screwball comedy - and maybe Grant's best - Bringing Up Baby