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.

Up in the Air

Up in the Air

“…Your brothers, your sisters, your children, your parents and finally your husband, your wife, your boyfriend, your girlfriend. You get them into that backpack, feel the weight of that bag. Make no mistake your relationships are the heaviest components in your life. All those negotiations and arguments and secrets, the compromises. The slower we move the faster we die. Make no mistake, moving is living...”

Ryan Bingham, Up in the Air

You can’t log ten million miles between New York and Boston, and even if People Express or New York Air or any of those now-defunct carriers put your name on the side of a plane, it would have been painted over by now.  The theory, though, was the same.  Keep moving.

Years earlier, I developed a love affair with Cape Cod, so much so that I not only went there for getaways whenever I could, but I also took theater jobs in Boston, a town I also got to like.  If you’re from the rest of New England, Boston is truly the “Hub,” a place you aspire to live and work.  If you’re from New York, Boston is provincial and, most of all, manageable. 

In those early days of no-frill airlines, flights between NY and Boston-Logan were cheap, $19-$39 cheap.  That made a transient lifestyle not only possible, but desirable.  Maybe it was being an only child that instilled something that teetered between independence and a refusal to grow up. 

I kept a room in a transient hotel on the Upper West Side when they still had transient hotels and they were cheap enough that you could hang there.  I had a nicer place in Boston, also transient, but in a city where your age is determined by whether people ask you what school you go to, or where do you teach, transience is the norm.  The New Yorker in me had to get used to a “T” that shut down at midnight, creating a Cinderella-like dash for the Green Line back to Brookline from Faneuil Hall.

Boston had a theater scene that allowed me to work regularly, while still coming home to NY between shows to be in the city I loved.

It was on one of those trips back to New York over the holidays that my life changed forever.

On this trip back to New York, I interviewed for a job as director for an absolutely crazy middle-aged British woman who ran Royal Court Repertory.  If you remember the rules of the blog, I don’t generally name people when the reference is negative.  In this case, I’m not naming the name only because I can’t remember it. 

This Royal Court had nothing to do with the real one in London, and I’m sure this woman never worked there.  She was nothing more than a bitter, failed actress running a two-bit theater, but, hey, it was directing work, and when she offered me a chance to direct a horrible whodunit called “Kidnap Kaper,” I took it.  Auditions wouldn’t begin until mid-January, so I would have one more trip up to Boston after the holidays to finish a gig there and then come back. 

I’m not good with dates and times and years at this point, but this date I do remember, if not the year.  If was December 30^th, the day before New Years Eve, and I was hanging at a usual haunt of mine on the Upper West Side that was then called Tuba City Truck Stop.  I looked down the bar and saw a very animated group ordering drinks, including more than a few attractive young women.  I sent over drinks, and motioned for one of them to come over.  In one of those happy accidents in life, the “wrong” one came over, and we started talking.  She was a cheery, cute redhead named Maureen, and I learned that she lived someplace I previously had never heard of, Chatham, Ontario.  She and her friends were teachers on vacation.   

One thing led to another, and I don’t think I left her side for more than a few hours over the next few days, hanging with her and her friends, though never alone.  I was completely smitten, and when she said I should come up and visit her sometime, I’m sure she thought that I would agree but never make it.  She was wrong.

Chatham is about an hour or so past Windsor, Ontario, which, for those who don’t know, is right across a bridge or tunnel from Detroit.  In the world of cheap airfares, adding one leg to the NY-Boston run was pretty cheap, and I told her that I would see her the following week.  I think she was more than a little surprised when I called and said I had a ticket, and would she pick me up at the airport.

My subsequent time getting to know her and her family friends has made me averse to Canadian jokes, but my first trip to Canada was too ironic to overlook.  She picked me up at the airport, and as we crossed the border, the road got icier.  For those weak on geography, Windsor is actually south of Detroit, so it’s not like the temperature had dropped, but just that the snow and ice was getting worse.  It was in the midst of this discussion about American misunderstanding of Canada that we spun out, went across the other side of the highway and wound up in a slight ditch at the side of the highway.  Neither of us was hurt, but the car needed to be towed.  My first trip to her town was in the front of a tow truck.

Our time together?  Again, from Up in the Air:

Ryan Bingham: You know that moment when you look into somebody's eyes and you can feel them staring into your soul and the whole world goes quiet just for a second?
Natalie Keener: Yes.
Ryan Bingham: Right. Well, I don't.

Before that, I didn’t either.   Over the next few years, it would happen.  We would fly back and forth to see each other.

Meanwhile, back in New York, I am auditioning people for this horrible play.  Headshots are laid out by character, and the largest stack was for the young ingénue.  I was always an impulse buyer with little time for shopping around, and in those days, I auditioned in much the same way.  When I finally found the perfect ingénue, I told this wonderful young actress that she had the part, and proceeded to audition for the role of what can only be described as the Margaret Dumont character.  If you don’t know who Margaret Dumont was, think of the stuffy, matronly woman who always wound up with a pie in her face in the old Marx Brothers’ movies.   Ms. Dumont certainly deserves to be remembered for more than that, but if you need a quick reference, that should work.  You still don’t know?  Ok, you can go check who she is on IMDB – I’ll wait.

Back?  Good.

Now, I’m sitting through a handful of slightly-older actresses when this extraordinary woman in her early twenties walks in.  Her name is Annie.  I look down at the headshot, and then back up to her, then back to the headshot, which was so bad that I had added it into the pile with the character actresses.  Not only was she lovely and spirited, but she was an excellent actress.  I couldn’t have her audition for the character actress, but I had her read for the ingénue.  Yes, that ingénue, the one I had just cast, the role I had told an excited young actress was hers.  As I watched her audition, I knew she had to be the person for the role.  

Don’t ask how uncomfortable the phone call to the first actress was.

The diva who ran the theater hated her, in no small part because she was not only more talented than she had ever been as an actress, but she was lovelier as well, an absolutely stunning redhead.

Ok, I know where you think this is going, but you’re wrong.  Annie and I became close friends for years to come.  Ironically, she grew up in London, Ontario, not far from where Maureen lived.  The three of us became fast friends, a bond cemented after I pulled the cast from that horrible show after the diva who ran the place screamed at my cast one time too many and “accidently”  pricked Annie with a safety pin while helping with her costume.

Annie later studied with Sanford Meisner in Bequia and later Los Angeles, where she is still a working actress and highly-successful acting teacher.  She would also go on to appear in a movie I co-wrote and produced called Town Diary years later.  

We’re not there yet.  Be patient.

In the next couple of years, I did some stage managing, and directed a version of “Children of A Lesser God” for a college theater company in New Jersey, a production I am proud of to this day.  My proudest moment on that play may have been a night when a group of deaf students came to see the show.  The show had to be cast entirely from students, and there were no members of the company who were deaf.  This was a tricky situation, as the author, Mark Medoff, had made clear his preference that the role of Sarah, the deaf student, should be played by a deaf actress.  Our Sarah was not, but we did everything in our power to be authentic, and watching the deaf students give my cast a standing ovation was a moment that will be with me until the end of my life.

Meanwhile, Maureen and I found the commuting back and forth to be frustrating, and I still have an image of her at the top of an escalator at Detroit’s airport, waving goodbye to me as if was the last time.  We knew we either had to make a commitment, or break it off, and the latter was unthinkable.  We made plans for her to move to New York, a city she loved, but there was still one more hurdle.  She was not going to be able to work here, and that wasn’t going to work.  We looked into all sorts of options for her to get working papers here.

Remember that immigration attorney I met in Washington D.C.?  The one who met my Hair troop at the rally and turned out to be the brother of one of my radio station pals?  I contacted him, and the long and the short of it was that the easiest thing to do was to get married.  I was fine with the life commitment, but the rebel hippie in me hated the formality of the ceremony, piece of paper, etc.

So it was in the Spring on 1987 that I was working as associate designer on a great theater project, the 1987 Ensemble Studio Theatre Marathon.  The Marathon is a very prestigious event in the New York theater world, and I got to work with some wonderful directors, including the casting directors Risa Bramen and Billy Hopkins . 

Once again, I got to be involved with the work of a great writer, Keith Reddin.  Keith wrote what was clearly a dark version of the “Cat in the Hat” series, but the Dr. Seuss people had a decidedly negative view of having their character be seriously more than mischievous.  Many changes were made to avoid legal problems.  Here is the review:

http://www.nytimes.com/1987/05/20/theater/stage-2d-bill-of-new-one-act-plays.html

Yes, the young boy was Macaulay Culkin, who later went on to “Home Alone” and other film notoriety.  Given the bad press he and his parents later received, I should make the point that both he and his parents were fun and cooperative, not to mention he was incredibly talented. 

It was near the end of tech week for the opening, and I was flying to see Maureen that weekend.  We had decided that at the end of the school year, she would move in with me, but had not even discussed actually getting married.  I was in the set shop at EST when I called Maureen.

“Hey, Mo, can you find out what we would have to do to get married on a weekend?”

“This weekend?”

“Yes, this weekend.”

The next day, she told me the procedure.  It involved a Justice of the Peace.  He could fit us in on Saturday morning.  This was Wednesday.

Me: “So, do you want to get married?”

Maureen: “OK”.

That was it.   I flew up there that weekend, and her friends threw together a party on Friday night and a reception on Saturday after the ceremony, one where the Justice of the Peace kept informally asking me questions about how we met.

So began a relationship that would last a lifetime, even if the actual marriage significantly less time.  For those wondering why so much of the last two blog entries centered on relationships, it is because it’s impossible to understand the career changes that were to come without understanding where I was in my life.   Have no fear, though, as subsequent entries will not be filled with the intricacies of relationships, as I never figured those out.

The next few years would begin a partnership that would include a life-changing operation, and a rebirth as a person committed to the independent film world.