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?

(Un)Lucky Stiffs - Part 8 - The High Cost of Free

Stan Bickman had a long career in low budget films.  In many ways, he was the master of low budget films, having left the Studio system in the late 1950s to produce for Roger Corman.  As far as low budget resumes go, it doesn't get much better.

I came to learn a lot about Stan, and you will, too, as this blog continues.  I thought rather than start with Stan's war stories or colorful bio - and it certainly is that - I would let you meet Stan the way I met Stan, knowing only that he was now in charge of production of Lucky Stiffs, that he and JR had worked together on a low-budget horror film, and that he started working with Corman

Stan set up in his own office in the production office, with Dianne now coordinating.  Dianne was a producer in her own right, but loved working with Stan and, as much as any of us would, loved Stan.  The first time I went into the office to talk to Stan, Dianne led me in with a smile.  She had been going over the details of the accounting and how vendors and other issues were set up with Rody.  Stan would watch the big picture; Dianne the details.  White manila folders newly labeled were everywhere.

Stan asked Rody and Dianne to leave, so he and I could talk alone.  Stan was short of stature, with short hair and bifocals.  His classic stance was arms folded, looking over his bifocals at you.

He and I had a lot to discuss.  As previously mentioned, JR, Matt and Stan had been talking privately, and I felt left out.  I was 34 years old, but in many ways, after years in both theater and film, this was early in my career.  A DP I often worked with once said that in this business, if you aren't paranoid, you aren't paying attention, and in the game of hangman, the AD always has a couple of lines drawn.

Rody had no set experience, Matt was quiet, and JR liked having me worry about keeping the set moving, so I had grown accustomed to running the show.  It was clear that falling behind in the schedule and the new regime meant that was going to change.

Stan and I started talking about schedule, and although I don't remember the exact discussion,  I know I was a bit defensive.  Stan put that all to rest with a balance he had perfectly tuned: no-nonsense honesty  and the ability to acknowledge fault and move on.  Once something was fixed, it was not discussed again, and it wasn't held against you.  This is a balance that I have sought to replicate my entire career.

Stan said something like this: "Look, I wouldn't be here if everything was going right.  This is a mess. You've let your second fall behind on the paperwork - get that fixed.  The schedule isn't working.  JR told me all about the location and budget problems, and those are my problems now.  The schedule problems you and I are going to fix together."

Stan took out the stripboard, and he and I started going over it.  Stan had not only been a producer and UPM, but an AD, and he was good at analyzing schedule.  The more we worked on it, the more comfortable I felt.

The second thing I learned about Stan was he had absolutely no need to take credit.  It was amazing how empowering it was to have someone who clearly knew more than I did make you feel like decisions he was heavily involved with were your own.  That was something that later served me not only with ego-driven directors, but with production people moving up that I was instructing.

He would hear nothing of my disagreements with Rody.  Past was past and there was no time for it.  This was something I learned later in the shoot when he caught a mistake on the call sheet that I had missed.  My second had written it, but it was my responsibility to approve the call sheet before I gave it to Stan, and I had missed it.  I never mentioned the 2nd and said it was my mistake and it wouldn't happen again.

Stan smiled, handed the call sheet back to me with the mistake circled in red marker, and said, "Good.  There's no competition for the dunce cap today.  Tomorrow someone else gets it."  That might not sound reassuring, but, again, it was no-nonsense acknowledgement of a mistake and then letting it go.  In a business that has its degree of back-stabbing and a permanent stake in the blame-game, it felt great to know where you stood, something else I strove to emulate throughout my career.

As far as the budget was concerned, Stan found places to cut the budget, but also places where we were being penny-wise and pound foolish, and it was costing us time.  Stan had a production car at his disposal so he didn't need to rely on one of the crew vans when he was needed somewhere.  In an era where you couldn't change the call sheet in Google Docs on your smartphone, this was very important, and something else that became a staple for me on films I line-produced.  Time is your biggest cost, and don't nickle and dime yourself.

Once Stan and I had cleared the air on the past and settled on how to move forward with the schedule, the biggest hurdle remaining was still locations.  Stacey was now location manager; one of the beauties of low-budget filmmaking is that talent can rise quickly, and Stacey was talented.

So it was that Stan led a meeting with Dianne (who, as usual, was taking notes), JR, Matt and I.  For each potential location, Stan wanted to know every detail.  When he asked about the cost of one location, Matt assured Stan it was free.

In a moment that is burned in my mind, Stan slid his bifocals down on his nose, looked up over them and asked a question that was a definitive Stan quote that I have often repeated:

"How much is this free location costing me?"

Ah. free.  Don't we all love that word?  I'm not talking here about free as in freedom, as in our huddled masses yearning to be free, or free at last.

I'm talking about the "free" that goes against everything the Elders told us - that nothing in life is free.  We see evidence to the contrary every day, don't we?

If we buy one, we get one free!  Oh, right, if we are buying one first, it's not so free.  First one hundred callers get one free!  How come we dialed right away, and we never seem to be among the first hundred callers?  Online, we just click here, and we get something free!  Sure, we have to give them our email and get spam for the next hundred years, but it's free, right?

In low-budget filmmaking, there is no word that potential producers yearn to use more than free.  You look in their rough budget, and they are getting so many things for free; they must be, because they put zero next to the line item.  All those books about making your movie for a dollar a day - you've seen those books - tell you that you can ask around and get all sorts of things free.

Stan understood what he liked  to call "the high cost of free."  My friend can lend me his camera for free, but it only has one lens that goes with it.  Can you shoot a feature on one lens?   Need a 1st AC?  My friend will do it for free.  No, she doesn't have that much experience, but she did it in school.  Should be fine.

Nowhere, however, is free more freely used than in locations.  We can use my friend's store for the deli scene.  We can only shoot it for three hours at a time, and we need it for nine hours, so we'll have to go back three times, but that can't cost us money.  Oh. right, more like five times because of set-up and strike.

My sister's apartment would work for the scene, and she'd let us have it for free.  Her landlord?  Do we really have to tell them?  Sure, its their property, but it's her apartment.  What could they do?

Matt went through a few of these, and we decided what was worth the free and what was not.  Finally, we came to a house.  Matt knew he had Stan here.  His uncle in New Jersey had a house in NJ we could have for free.  Yes, it wasn't that close to the city, and there was gas and tolls, and time lost traveling and not shooting, but this was his favorite uncle, and he would let us have all the time we wanted.

Stan conceded.  Let's take this free location.  Evidently, it might have been his favorite uncle, but it was clearly not his favorite aunt.  She hated having us there, started freaking out before lunch, and we had to cut a lot of shots to wrap early before everything we did shoot was lost to continuity.

But, it was free.

I was reminded of this just a few years ago when I was production managing a short for a very experienced TV news producer.  We needed a house for 8 days (including prep and wrap) for a very good short she wrote, with the intention of using it to raise the money for a feature version of the same story.

After a long search, she thought of her childhood friend.  Both women were in their fifties. professionals, and had gone to elementary school together.  The friend actually suggested her house, and I was at the kitchen table when we discussed the deal.  I had suggested making a $500 offer, to cover the inconvenience.  We settled on no fee- they were dear friends - but the director handed her a check for $2000, to cover the deductible on the insurance, just in case there was any damage.

At first, the friend said it was silly and actually slid the check back, but eventually agreed, assuring us that it was just a precaution, and under no circumstances would she cash the check.

At the end of Day Three, she came up to the me and the director.  (Names changed) "Sally," she said, "I just thought I should let you know I cashed the check.  You folks work such long hours, and it's been just crazy for Jack (her husband) ."

Boom.  No damage to the house, and we had discussed the hours and the fact we would probably be in every room.  The best part.  "Thank you, Sally.  We gave it to Jill (her daughter) so she could have a little spending money on Spring Break.  You know how tight things are these days."

Sally didn't say much right then, but in her understandable rant to me later, she did say something about how she wouldn't be upset if Jill choked on a Jello shot.

Yes, the $2000 was a reasonable cost.  Very often, you can get very good deals.  Just don't assume anything will ever be free.

Now that you've met Stan, I will post a "guest blog" from Stan - if he were around to write one, and if he were to even consider writing a blog if he were.  Then, on to the conclusion of Lucky Stiffs (yes, it had a conclusion).