The Dream in the Drawer

Secrets are a dangerous thing, Ben. We all think we want to know them, but if you've kept one to yourself, you come to understand that doing so, you may learn something about someone else, but you also discover something about yourself. I hope you're ready for that.

-Nick Sloan (Robert Redford)

The Company You Keep

Much of this series has been about the past. This one is about the letting go of the past to move forward.

Writer/Director Ray DeFelitta talks about having a script "in the drawer." It is something his father, Frank, also a writer/director, told him.

For me, that script was my first screenplay, Never Waver. It was my first screenplay, and one that was close to my heart for many reasons.

It took me longer than any other screenplay, and I dd a great deal of research to finish it. My ex-wife, Maureen, was incredibly supportive, helping me with the typing and formatting before Final Draft was on the scene. It led me on a number of adventures to try and get it made.

The story was one I was passionate about; the story of a journalist involved in an ROTC bombing in the 1960s in which a woman was killed. It was now the Reagan 80s, and this journalist had run to Canada, hiding and working under a different name. The bomb was not supposed to be  real, and the journalist - David - never knew who planted a real bomb. When as former political mentor - a professor and one-term liberal congressman from NY is killed, and one of the members of David's group is accused, David decides he must find out the truth, at risk to the life he now has.

If this plot sounds a little familiar, it is because it is very close to the plot of The Company We Keep, the new Robert Redford film. In his film, Redford plays a lawyer now living under the name Jim Grant in Albany, NY. When a member of the Weather Underground group (Susan Sarandon)  he was a part of is arrested while trying to turn herself in, his life is turned upside down. In 1971, that group was involved in a bank robbery where a guard was killed. Jim, then Nick Sloan, has been named as an accomplice all these years, When a young journalist (Shia LaBeouf) finds him, he must find an old lover and member of the group (Julie Christie) to make sure the truth comes out.

You can look up more about the film at the link above, or the book it is based on at this link

I first noticed it because it was a return of Redford to the screen, and when I read the synopsis, I had mixed feelings. The plot, and more so the theme, were so close to the plot and theme of Never Waver. I tried a number of times over the years to get Never Waver made, and it never happened. It's not that I think someone stole my idea - clearly the author of the book did not see my script all these years later. It just makes me wonder if I would have gotten my script sold if I just kept at it.

The story of the lessons from the 1960s that are lost on people today (or, when I wrote it, the Reagan 80s) is an interesting one to me. The older you get, the more you realize we really are doomed to repeat mistakes of the past by forgetting the lessons - or so it seems sometimes. The parallels are everywhere.

It was with all of this on my mind that I went to see the movie, which did not bode well for what my reaction might be.I was even prepared to get up and leave if I found myself getting angry at any point.

That did not happen.

The script, and the movie, are good - really good. Besides the themes above, it is also a treatise on journalism in the age of social media, and in the aftermath of the disastrous coverage by both traditional and new media of the Boston Marathon bombing, it proves to be very prophetic.

This is also a big issue for me, as most of my best college friends went into journalism in some form, and I don't see a lot of the values we talked about in many journalists today.

The cast of veteran actors, from Sarandon and Redford to the too-rarely-seen Julie Christie, Nick Nolte Chris Cooper, Richard Jenkins, Stanley Tucci and more, make you miss all the old pros who seem to be out of fashion (unless they are bringing them back for action movies to reprise themselves, such as Willis and Ah-nold)

The movie does a great job of showing the strain responding to big, passionate social issues takes on human beings and their personal lives.

The latter was also a theme of Never Waver, one that always haunted me from my days stage managing, and then stage directing, Hair, and the song "Easy to Be Hard"

And especially people
Who care about strangers

Who care about evil

And social injustice,

Do you only
care about the bleeding crowd?

How about

a needing friend?

I need a friend.

That song has always stuck with me, how fighting for what is right is so much easier if you can look past the human consequences and look past the sentient beings all around you. We humans are a messy lot, are we not?

As I was heading home, what struck me is what a better script The Company You Keep is than Never Waver - it just is. The difference is in the details, as it always is with writing.

I am a better writer than I was then, and it might have inspired me to take Never Waver out of the drawer and fix it, work on it, reshape it, and make it better. That did not happen.

What I felt on the way home was relief, the relief of letting Never Waver go. The underlying themes are something I might still seek to explore, but if I do, it will be in another script, another story. It is liberating. It is time to move on; it has been for some time.

Hanging on to the past can wait for the days when I'm in a retirement home somewhere re-living past triumphs and defeats. I am a better writer who has lived more of life and has more to give to my work. Whatever my writing becomes, it won't be re-hashing of ideas I suffered through a long time ago, I worked those emotions and feelings out once, I gave them life in those old scripts, and even though they lived a sheltered life, never got to spend time in the outside world, getting through them helped make me the better writer I am today.

It's time to move on, and let the dream sleep peacefully in that drawer.

(The Clip below is not because Cheryl Barnes is not amazing in the movie, but because it was written as the character of Sheila's song. They changed it in the movie, one of many things that I hated about the film version.)

I Will Not Be Ignored

Lucky Stiffs was in the can, so it was once again time to try to get my pet screenplay, Never Waver, produced.

JR and I talked about what it would take to produce it ourselves.  JR had the equipment and the talent.  Truthfully, though, it wasn't going to happen.  Even back then, neither JR nor I were ever into making a movie just to get it done.   Trying to make movies on a shoestring didn't start in the digital age.  In those days - we're talking 1992 or so - the big thing was either pre-sales to home video, or films done with credit cards (we're into Kevin Smith time, and all those stories) or the great deferred (everybody works and, theoretically, gets paid later - right).

Movies that break through for little money have a way of making their way into indie lore.  It was 1992, and the famous ones were Kevin Smith's Clerks, and Rodriquez's El Mariachi.  The stories of shooting on short ends (unused film raw stock that was then resold cheaply) and getting equipment using your friend's film school ID were everywhere.  The problem is then, as now, the handful that got distribution received all the publicity, while, for most, to quote my friend and colleague Chris Kelley, the only projector they ever saw was Rank Cintel.  For the rest, there were credit card bills that still needed to be paid, and crew still waiting for their checks.

Lore gets ahead of reality, and the El Mariachi you may have seen in the theater (ok, you're too young to have seen it in a theater, I don't really hate you) did not cost $10,000.

As Ransom Scott says in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, when the legend becomes fact, print the legend.

Film school kids have that t-shirt that says "What I Really Want to Do is Direct."  While I have a drive to direct, what always attracted me to anything, from radio to theater to film, was writing.

I had sent out the script to people in New York, with little response.  I had done the LA thing (They Also Serve Who Paint Houses).  I wasn't ready to give up,



 I didn't want to make it on a shoestring, and I didn't like the idea of continuing to knock my head against closed doors.



Sorry, couldn't resist throwing in one of my favorite movie scenes, favorite because all of those characters, from Bill Murray's lovable loser playwright to Teri Garr's neurotic eternal acting student ("I cant play her.  She's a...she's a..woman) to Hoffman's too-Method actor are people with whom I was extremely familiar.

I went back to what I knew, and what I knew how to do inexpensively, and that was using the stage.  I decided that I would do a staged reading of Never Waver that I would direct, rent out a theater, and invite literary agents, producers, production companies, and actors I wanted for the roles.

One of those actors was Martin Sheen.  Oddly enough, on one of my LA trips, I actually met Martin Sheen in a coffee shop.  I can't remember which one right now.  Now, I wasn't stalking him.  This wasn't Martin Landau in Mistress, chasing Ernest Borgnine through a parking lot.



I think of that old David Letterman skit "brushes with greatness," where people told stories of meeting big stars that were funny.  The thing is, in our business, you meet big stars all the time, and it really is no big deal.  I was lucky enough to work on a set with Lauren Bacall, sat at a dinner with Tennessee Williams, and  have worked with lots of "name" actors.  It's just not something that phases us.

This was different.  This wasn't about a "name" actor.  This was about being face-to-face with the actor I wanted for my lead.  Of course, I had a copy of my script with me; the entire point of me being in LA at that point was to get my script produced.  I wasn't a fan looking for an autograph, or an actor looking for a job.  I screwed up the courage to walk up to him, briefly told him that I thought he was perfect for the lead, told him the characters name, and said I wouldn't bother him further as I set the script down and walked away.  As I recall, he smiled, and was very polite.

I am reminded of a horror scene an actress/bartender friend related.  She was with her aunt in a restaurant in NY, where my friend worked, when James Earl Jones sat down with his wife for lunch.  My friend's aunt was very impressed, and insisted on going over and speaking to Mr. Jones, who was very courteous.  That wasn't enough.  She dragged my friend over, and introduced her niece as a "very talented actress that you might want to work with one day"  My friend wanted to dig a hole and bury herself as she shook hands, but never so as much as when, reaching for an autograph Mr. Jones kindly signed, her aunt spilled his drink all over him.

This, and the "cool" factor, is why those of us in the business don't bother people in public.  In any case, I never heard back from Martin Sheen.

I was going to get my shot the old-fashioned way.  I was going to earn it.  I managed to put together most of the cast I wanted for the reading, but was still in search of the elusive young girl who is inadvertently killed in a ROTC bombing gone wrong in the 60s.  The girl had to leave an impression, as she causes the protagonist in the film to kill a Congressman/mentor, setting the action of the script in motion.

I finally settled on a model named Natasha*.  She was tall and all legs, and she just had this smile that was infectious.  I could see my protagonist being unable to get her out of his head.  Despite her chosen one-word moniker, she was not Russian - I think she was some Irish-American kid from Queens who thought Natasha was exotic.  Never mind, she was my ingenue.

The reading went well, but was sparsely attended, though many of the major players (those same guys who sent those form letters years earlier) sent whoever was available from their office who couldn't  talk their way out if it.  Hey, I was proud of what we did, and I kept in touch with many of those actors for years, getting some of them cast in films I worked on.

Even in my young, single days, models were never my type; too cold.  Still, there was something fascinating about Natasha.  We kept in touch, and I coached her some on her acting.

This was during a period where I was supplementing my income by doing some acting coaching.  I liked the term coach; I avoided the term teacher.  I don't know that I was able to teach very much to actors, at least not like the acting teachers I had met when I was coming up as a struggling actor, or as my friend Annie was now doing in LA, having studied under the venerable Sanford Meisner in Bequia.  I felt more like a personal trainer who was just pushing them to do what they instinctively knew how to do, but better and more effectively.

One of my students was a dancer at a place nearby called Flashdancers, and, no, it was no relation to the movie, as in the movie, the girls kept their clothes on.  These ladies did not.  One of the girls was - surprise, surprise - an aspiring actress, and she so thought my coaching was helping, she recommended me to her co-workers.  I'm pretty sure there was a period in the early 90s when I coached more strippers than any acting coach in NY.

I don't think they give out awards for that sort of  thing.

If you are wondering at this point what this has to do with a career in film, those connections are to come, one quite quickly, as JR and I were to soon strike up the band one more time and work together on a film that was shot in the Fall of 1992, what I call The Fall of Love, for reasons you will soon discover.


* I made the point many times in this blog that I have no intention of ever embarrassing anyone.  From what I can tell -and I've done some research -  the model/actress has since changed her moniker, or is no longer in the business.  Using her name here in no way will affect anyone's career.