Beginners Mind, Beginning Again - or the Great Reboot

If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything; it is open to everything. In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities; in the expert's mind there are few.

Shunryu Suzuki-roshi, Zen Mind, Beginners Mind

After my operation and the frustration of not working while recovering, I was anxious to get back to work, and this time, really put my focus more on film.

My degree was in Dramatic Literature, and I had never studied film, and was starting to feel a little behind the curve on film sets.  I had worked my way up through every job imaginable in theater, and that was what made me so confident.  In film, I was on the production side, and always dependent on people with more technical knowledge.  With this new opportunity, I went back to NYU and took their Six Week Intensive, as well as a screenwriting course. 

Remember what it was like to be a freshman, the excitement of being on campus for the first time?  Being back on the campus of NYU, walking past students in Washington Square Park, but older now, all those feelings came back to me.   Even NYU’s ugly purple logos looked good to me.

I took a number of things from those few short weeks. 

One was our next to final project.  They would choose two scripts, and then split the class up to shoot two versions of each script.  In one night, I wrote a story of a bookie that desperately looks to collect money owed him.  It was, to be kind, homage to David Mamet.  Hey, it was a class project and we had little more than one night to write it.  I love Mamet’s style, the way he invents his own language that is a slang that we think we know but we don’t.

One of my favorite examples of Mamet’s dialogue is from American Buffalo:

"Lookit, sir, if I could get a hold of some of that stuff you were interested in, would you be interested in some of it?"

The other students loved it, and it was picked as one of the projects to shoot.

The catch was that whoever wrote the script could not direct it.  I am thankful for that to this day.  Watching someone else interpret my work gave me insight into the collaborative process of film, and respect for the fact that the written word is only one stage of the process.  One scene brought this clearly into focus.

The scene was one where the bookie goes to a priest who owes him money.  Yes, in my scripts, even the priests were a little shady.  The priest gives him a small part of what he owes.  The bookie is frustrated, but says to the priest “OK, Father, well, if you can’t pay me, at least pray for me.”  I think I wrote the dialogue a little better than that, but I don’t quite remember it verbatim right now.

One of the directors was French, and in his interpretation of the scene, he didn’t change a word of dialogue, but the action of the scene was different.  We open on a close-up of the bookie saying those same words, but, when we go wide, we see that he is holding the priest’s face over a steaming hot pizza.  He lets the scared priest go as he walks out angrily.

I never conceived of the scene this way.  It was my words but it wasn’t my scene.  It was better; much, much better.  I can’t tell you how much this has helped me not only as a writer, but as a producer working with first-time writer/directors .  The auteur in the independent film world is much lauded, but the collaborative process and the ability to bring others’ creativity into your vision makes for a better tapestry and more energy.  One of the great ironies of filmmaking is that it needs to be one person’s clear vision, but it also needs others input to achieve that vision. 

Then there is the issue of taking credit.  We had two German girls in the class, and they could not have been more different.  One was very serious and studious; the other, a model who wanted to be a filmmaker who could not be more flighty.  Stereotypes come from somewhere, and they both represented their own stereotype; the serious, unsmiling German and the ditzy model.  They were friends, and the serious one would sometimes admonish the model to be more serious, to which the model would reply, “Oh, don’t be so German.”  When you’re cute, you can get away with a good deal.

Writing something in English was difficult for them, and the more serious one asked if I would help them write the script they were to submit for the final project.  I forget how many final projects were chosen, but there were few, and if you wrote the project, this time you did get to direct.  I had written my own project – this one better than the last, and had the time to work with them on their project, which was more abstract.

Of course, their project was chosen, and mine was not.  No good deed…

It wasn’t entirely disappointing, though.  Once again, I got to learn a skill I would not have if I had directed, which was editing.  This was old school – you know, where you hung up strips of film?  You’ve heard about it, I’m sure.  I’ve edited on Final Cut, and, no, I wouldn’t go back to cutting film, but it did force you to make harder decisions.   This was the first time I learned a sense of pace and timing.  Overall, I would say it was a very satisfying experience.

There were other good things that came out of that class.  Our teacher, Thierry Pathe, had a very down-to-earth approach to filmmaking, which I always related to better than complex theory.  Sadly, Thierry passed away in 2002.  I also met a few people I would later work with, including someone who would become a great friend, Chris Kelley.  See, I gave his full name, so you know that good things are to come about him, and, indeed, we would work on a number of projects together for more than the next ten years.

In the Land of the Blind...

...they say the one-eyed man is king.  Don't know the similar analogy for legs.

In a previous post, I referred to an injury that affected both legs. 

The pain increased, and after meeting with a number of top doctors, we realized the only realistic option was an amputation below-knee on both legs.  My prognosis for a normal life was much better with prostheses, and, indeed, I have never regretted the decision.  I could not have moved on in my previous condition.  I will spare my readers the entire rehab process, but will share one incident which drove me.

When I was in rehab, I saw a man with his wife and two children being helped up onto a board.  He had been sitting on his stoop one day, and was the accidental victim of a drive-by shooting involving a drug deal gone bad.  Wrong place, wrong time.  He would always be paralyzed from the neck down.   I was determined that day that I would never complain about my situation, as I was going to walk out of that place.

I was going to move on from this, but realized that by doing so, it would seem like I was avoiding the subject, so let me deal with all here, as opposed to dealing with it in every other posts.

Frankly, it’s been a source of pride over the years that while I know actors and other craftsman that were bi-lateral below-knee amputees, I don’t know anyone who worked as a First Assistant Director who worked with prostheses.

In the beginning, I wouldn’t discuss it with potential employers, though I walked with a cane.  I used to make a joke that I couldn’t catch PAs, but I could trip them.   OK, I never actually tripped a PA, but I thought about whacking one with it (and definitely a production designer or two).

That was a joke I made because I felt I had to address it during interviews.  Film is, in many ways, a bastion of stupid prejudices.  I remember having women who worked with me as 2^nd ADs who couldn’t get respect from male crew because they weren’t used to taking instruction from women.  I have a friend who is a very talented AD who I know for a fact was turned down for one job because he was Black.  This was with an established television actor who was directing.  Thankfully, both of these things would be rare today, but they point to the fact that in many ways, film can still be an old-boys network.

I rarely had problems with people once on set, though.  As I got older, I would feel more comfortable taking a chair when AD on an interior.  In the early days, I would never take a chair, and if I got really tired, would pull up an apple box, which seemed more manly and acceptable.  The reality of prostheses is that they don’t hurt – I mean, they’re hard plastic and steel – and my legs got tired where the prostheses rested much the same way an AD without prostheses would have their feet get tired after being on them all day.   I once read that the Directors Guild of America had done a study that ADs had a life expectancy of something like seven years shorter than the average male (this was when most of them were male), and much of this came from time on their feet, stress, and inability to use rest rooms when needed.  None of this was different for someone with prostheses.

I was an AD on a feature once where the main character’s father had lost his leg in an accident.  This movie was shot near Walden Pond, and was especially difficult for me as it involved a good deal of going up and down hills and time on sandy shores, neither of which are particularly good for prostheses.  Still, I never failed to get anywhere on time.  In fact, I had a habit of pacing a lot, especially on this shoot, where the director and I did not get along at all.

One day we were doing a scene where the father, who was not really an amputee, had to put on an artificial leg.  He had no idea how to do it, of course, and they had chosen a very old model that no one would use anymore anyway.  I took the actor aside before the scene and showed him how to work with it.  When we did the scene where he was to walk with the prosthetic, the director made a comment how someone with an artificial leg (only one mind you) couldn’t possibly do stairs.  This amused the actor, and many of my regular crew, who had seen me go up and down stairs and hills with two artificial legs over and over.

I will share the funnier stories having to do with my situation when I can tell them in context, especially given the characters involved.  For the time being, suffice to say that I consider myself lucky to have worked in this business my entire life, and given everything and obstacles others have, I have no complaints.

They Also Serve Who Paint Houses

“I’ll think about it” means nothing in L.A.

-Karen (played by Rene Russo).  Get Shorty

So here’s the thing.  If you work in film or theater, there is this constant comparison between New York and Los Angeles.  You know all the clichés.  People in LA are plastic.  New Yorkers are heartless.

Like everyone else in this business, I spent time here in NY and time in LA.  Like everyone else, I had a screenplay, or, like everyone else, should I say I had screenplays.  Though I was born and bred (I always loved that term – what am I, a racehorse?) in New York, these two incidents, years apart, represent my interaction with the differences in the screenwriting scene in New York and Los Angeles.

I found myself in theater because I loved English and I loved writing.  I loved everything about writing.  I loved, and still love, research, and I think I loved research more when “google” was not a verb, not a word, not even a thought.  It is easier, but it’s not about easy.  It’s about the whole process;  having one book in a library leading you to another in a bookstore to some microfilm in the main library on Fifth Avenue in New York.

The first full-length piece I wrote was a play.  It was called “The Beast” and it was about Aleister Crowley.  Before you assume I am some demon worshiper, I was more fascinated with Crowley the man, the Charlatan, the guy who would do anything for a buck and use religion as his excuse.  It was the Eighties, and there was a lot of that (and still is) on the holier-than-thou preacher side, and I was fascinated by this guy who literally sold out his country, England, for a price to Germany in World War I, and got believers to put up money to support a “religion” he didn’t believe in for a moment.  He made money by being called the worst man in the world, and reveled in the attention it brought him.  He watched the woman he “loved” go mad after being bit by a bat, and though he professed himself a superior mountain climber, he abandoned a group of fellow climbers, leaving them to their death.

Crowley was a Mamet character running around in turn-of-the-century England. 

I researched a civil trial he instigated where he sued a newspaper for calling him the ‘worst man in the world’, not because he was offended, but because there was a possible buck in it.  The trial became about his character, which was in no way good for Crowley.  I found trial transcripts in the NY Public Library, saved on microfilm from an old London newspaper.  As a mentor of mine used to say, you couldn’t make this stuff up.  At one point, one of the opposing attorneys challenged him to turn him into an animal.  It was great stuff.

That said, “The Beast” went nowhere.

Undeterred, which is another way of saying I couldn’t take a hint, I wrote a script called Never Waver.  This time, I was shooting not for the small theater crowd, but for the big time – movies.   This was my first full-length screenplay.  Loosely inspired by a true incident when a one-term liberal Upper West Side Congressman is killed by a former student, Never Waver was a story of a former “true believer” from the Sixties who fled to Canada and remained in hiding after an ROTC bombing went terribly wrong and someone was killed.  He was not responsible, but he was the prime suspect.  He came back to “Reagan’s America,” where Abbie Hoffman now said he didn’t trust anyone under thirty to find the truth.

I still think it was a good story, but, hey, I wrote it, what do you expect me to think?  My reference to True Believer is because it is the film that most reminds me of the script, though the stories are very different. 

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098524/

I spent a lot of time writing this script in bars.  I wrote a lot in bars because it allowed me to observe other people and feed off that energy.  I also wrote a lot in bars because I liked to drink.  The romantic notion of writers feeling the pain of the common man with every sip worked for me as well.

Geisler: Mayhew, some help, the guy's a souse! 
Barton: He's a great writer... 
Geisler: A great souse! 
Barton: You don't understand... 
Geisler: Souse! 
Barton: He's in pain, because he can't write... 
Geisler: Souse! Souse! Can't write? He manages to write his name on the back of his paycheck every week! 

-Barton Fink

The script is finished, and I start sending it out.  I send it to all the “indie” film companies in New York, all the “indie” film companies in Los Angeles, and to as many agents as I think might like it in either city.  Maureen, ever supportive, helps me get the script typed and copied.  She is temping, and a much better typist than I am, and I’m not working with screenwriting programs.  This is somewhere around 1987, 1988. 

We get responses from New York that look something like this:

“Thank you for considering (company) for your project.  We are not looking for new material at this time, but please keep us informed about your progress.”

You get it.  They are never going to represent you or produce your film, but, on the odd chance that someone else thinks it is good and decides to go forward with it, hey, keep them in the loop, because then they will be interested.

This reminds me of something I once heard writer and director John Sayles say at a script-writing conference.  He had many short stories before his success with Return of the Secaucus Seven, and they were almost all rejected repeatedly.   After Return of the Secaucus Seven, many of the same publishing companies approached him, and a collection was published. 

Sayles’s quip : “It’s amazing how much better my short stories got once I was successful.”

From the Left Coast, I got a much more promising letter.  It was from a company that had a few indie hits, and although they had a big office in LA, their main office was in London.  They showed more enthusiasm, and when I suggested I could come out and meet with them, the person who sent the letter suggested that would be a great idea.

Wow.  They liked me.  They really, really liked me.

I was nervous before the first meeting, but not afterward.  The person I met enthusiastically told me how much he enjoyed the script, so much so, that he wanted me to meet with his boss, who subsequently met me enthusiastically, and set up a meeting with his boss.  This was all happening within a few days, and it had finally happened.  All those days and nights writing, all that typing and copying  and collating, and now, finally, I was going to be recognized.  Inside of two weeks, a meeting was set with the head of the company.

 

This was the guy whose name you saw on the door.  This was the guy magazines interviewed about the company.  He was the  guy, and he was in from London and was going to meet me.

The meeting went something like this.  He started by telling me that he hadn’t read the script yet, but all of his people told him it was very good.  I should be very proud of my work.  There was one catch – his company didn’t produce scripts like this – ever.  They had no intention of producing scripts like this any time in the near future.  If I ever had another script that was nothing like this script, I should send it to them.

Thanks for your time.  Handshake.  Nice meeting you.

It was the same brush off I got from the NY companies, only many meetings later.  I learned later what I should have known, that it was the job of these people to take meetings.  It’s what they did.  It didn’t mean anything.

That was my first taste of the difference between the business in New York and the business in Los Angeles.

So, it’s now some time later, and I have my second full-length screenplay.  It is called Chump Change, and it’s about a guy whose father was in the same union he was now in and the way the union was selling out the workers to the evil company.  It was On The Waterfront with skyscrapers.  It was very much a tribute to my dad and my grandfather, both of whom were honest shop stewards in places where honesty wasn’t always valued.

More time in bars.  More time typing.  More time copying.  More time mailing.

I am about to go out to Los Angeles for other reasons when I hear from an agent in Los Angeles.  He is sure that he can sell my screenplay.  No, he doesn’t want any money up front or anything sleazy like that.  He will, however, need copies of the script – lots of copies.  I don’t remember the exact number, but we are talking, I kid you not, boxes full of scripts.  Maureen and I sitting on the floor of our large Upper West Side studio apartment collating and binding in just the proper fashion, with the brads bent back so no one gets cut, etc.  Scripts stacked into boxes; boxes packed securely, boxes  taken to the Post Office. 

I’m in Los Angeles, I think for my friend Annie’s wedding, though I am not sure right now.  I know I’m not there just to meet the agent, but while I’m there, why not drop in?

Before I go out to see him, I remember watching this local news cast where they did a man-on-the-street interview segment with random people, asking them how their screenplay was going.  These are random people – post men, door men, shoe shine people, business women, women with their little kids, construction workers.  The great part is that so many of them actually do have screenplays.

What most of them don’t have, though, is an agent.  I have an agent.  

Geisler: Look, you confused? You need guidance? Talk to another writer. 
Barton: Who? 
Geisler: Jesus, throw a rock in here, you'll hit one. And do me a favor, Fink: throw it hard. 

-Barton Fink

I head out to the address on a slip of paper, and, a few buses later, walk up to a house.  Ed Begley Jr. and I are the only people who don’t drive in Los Angeles.  The New Yorker in me just never learned. 

Can this be the right place?  It’s outside of Hollywood proper, outside of Los Angeles proper, in a suburban house.  On the lawn by the driveway are painting supplies, not easels and watercolors and oils but rollers and ladders and paint pans.

Maybe he is remodeling?

I ring the door bell, and he is pleasant enough when he comes to the door, until he realizes who I am.  Then, he is a little embarrassed.  I am out here with no car, and he really has no choice but to invite me in.

Once inside, I see boxes, boxes like the ones Maureen and I had sent.  Our boxes were there, but so were other boxes, all of them with screenplays from authors like me.  The house was filled with them.  The guy explained that he really did have connections, and though he hadn’t gotten any sales yet, he just knew that he would get one soon.  Until then, he was paying the bills by painting houses.

He reminded me how much he loved my script.

In New York, I knew waitresses that wanted to be actresses, and bartenders that wanted to be directors and cab drivers that wanted to be rock stars. 

I had to go to Los Angeles to find a house painter who wanted to be a literary agent.

The Raymond Effect

“It’s alright to be subtle in film, as long as you’re obvious about it.”

If you think about books, movies, poems or songs that you love, many of them find a way of saying things that were right in front of you all along in a way that makes them clear.  The same is true of teachers, coaches or other mentors in your life.  Somehow, what they had to say just hit home.

These guides along the way in our life or career don’t come dressed in long robes, and they don’t appear out of nowhere with Yoda-like ease.  Hell, sometimes they are even younger than you.

This was the case on the same Columbia Thesis project I discussed in the last blog.  I was hired on as production manager, and Raymond was hired as First Assistant Director.  For those not familiar with the position of First Assistant Director, I will again paraphrase Raymond.  

He or she is the person you fire when you can’t fire the director.

Well, technically, that’s not the DGA (Director’s Guild of America) description.  An informal description might be the person who prepares the schedule, is responsible for keeping it, maintains that schedule on the set, and coordinates the work of the different departments.  The key tool is communication.

Every position on the set has a light bulb joke.  You know light bulb jokes: how many (fill in the blank) does it take to screw in a light bulb?   I’ve always been particularly fond of this AD light bulb joke.

“How many AD’s does it take to screw in a light bulb?”

“Light bulb?  Nobody told me there was a light bulb in this scene!”

This gives you only a small hint at the oxymoron that can be the AD’s life, as he is responsible for many things that he does not have ultimate control over.

See previous statement on person who gets fired when you can’t fire the director. 

In fact, as line producer, I have fired AD’s who were not the source of the problem.  I got one of my best gigs, years later, as AD, because someone who was quite a good AD left the job in mid-show by mutual agreement with the producers, but more on that in later posts.

Raymond knew how to AD.  In fact, he made it look easy.  The AD and the production manager work closely together (hopefully), and I was intrigued by how Raymond was able to spot problems on the set almost before they would happen.

This was, remember, a student thesis film, so we’re not talking about big crews and big staffs.  In fact, the lofty positions Raymond and I held gave us the opportunity to do such glamorous things as the craft service shopping and scouting the next day’s location.  I still didn’t drive, so Raymond did all of the driving, and in those long hours in the van, I learned a good deal about how to organize a set.  Raymond not only knew more about being an AD than I did, he also knew more about my job than I did, not that he ever held that over me.

The van rides also revealed Raymond’s sardonic humor.  Some people are described as people who see the glass as half empty, others, half full.   I have come to see myself as someone who asks, “Do we really have to use that glass?”

Raymond’s temperament was much the same.

One night we are driving up Third Avenue in Manhattan and make a left onto 14^th Street.   This is us still working after a long shooting day, long after everyone else is home sleeping.  We have an early call in the morning.  As we make the left, a police car pulls us over.  The police officer comes over and asks Raymond if he saw the sign that said; NO LEFT TURN.  Clearly, he hadn’t, and if you know the turn, there is no good reason why you can’t make one there.

Exhausted, Raymond just made the best argument he could.  “I’m from Los Angeles.  You can make lefts there.”

He wasn’t trying to antagonize the officer.  That’s just Raymond.  He sees the absurdity of life very clearly.  A little stunned by the simplicity of the reasoning, or maybe just confused, we got off with a warning.

It wasn’t until I became friends with Raymond after the shoot that I learned more about him.  His parents were both in the business; his father, a prolific writer and director, his mother, an agent.  There are many stereotypes of people who grow up in the business, and a lot of them are true.  Raymond was not the stereotype of someone who grew up in the business.  Rather than hanging out with the stars on his father’s sets, he took the time to hang out with the people who made everything happen.  That meant crew people and staff.  The fact that Raymond never talked about his background until I got to know him pretty well tells a lot about him.

Besides his talent in film, he also was an excellent pianist, and, I later learned, composer, with a great love and understanding of jazz.  I always had a place in my heart for jazz, and Maureen loved it, so we all got along great.

Sometime after the student film was over, Raymond told me he was making a short that he hoped would get him into AFI, and asked if I would do production work on it, including AD.  I wasn’t at all sure I could do it, but he assured me that I could.  He gave me pointers on breaking down a script, on using index cards to represent the different shots in the scene so you could switch the order around easily, on keeping the set moving.  Some of this later came more naturally to me than I thought; for instance, dealing with actors.  My years as a stage manager had made me different from many of my colleagues who had only worked in film, whose take on actors could be summed up from the exchange below from Mel Brook’s The Producers:

Leo Bloom:  You can’t shoot the actors.  Actors are not animals.  They are human beings!
Max Bialystock:  They are?  Have you ever eaten with one?

Okay, I have had more than one actor that I wanted to shoot.  In most cases, however, my background as a stage manager handling people and pressure came in helpful.

Raymond’s script revolved around the figurative and literal children of a blustery real-life novelist.  I don’t know if Raymond would want me to share the name of the novelist here.  Some of the better scenes in the short included the novelist coaxing a homicidal prisoner who was a talented writer to accept his offer to get him out of prison by offering to show him pictures of the Challenger disaster, and that same writer, when he got out of prison, stabbing a waiter for seemingly no reason. The latter incident mirrored one that actually did happen in that author’s life. 

You are allowed to do the math.

Yes, this was a comedy, and a very funny one.

There was another scene in the film that is relevant, and that is one where two lovers wake up post-coital to realize that they are both children of the same author by different mothers.  The girl was played by Annie, my friend from that bad melodrama years earlier.  I remember we shot most of that scene early morning, and with the hot lights, the early hour, and the fact that Annie played most of the scene in bed, she had all to do to keep from falling asleep between takes.

There is one other lesson I remember from that shoot, and it has to do with picking the right locations.  Our budget was limited, and keeping to it was part of my responsibility.  We found this one location that Raymond thought was perfect, but they wanted a little more than was in our budget.  To my eyes, it was just a big empty space, and we could find something like it cheaper somewhere else.  Raymond was sure that this was the right place, though, and worth the extra money, and when we screened the film, he was so right.  Over the years, I’ve developed the ability he already had then, to see locations not for what they were but for what they could be.  

It also was something that I grew to learn as line producer, that sometimes you need to find someplace else to save when something is going to make such a difference on screen.

A few years later, I was in Los Angeles looking to sell a screenplay that I wrote.  Raymond, who had grown up on both coasts, met me for lunch.   Raymond greeted me dressed in mostly black, still on East Coast attire.  When I commented on the weather, he said, “Yeah, another damn sunny day in Los Angeles.”

It was when we discussed his opinion on my screenplay that he offered the quote at the top of the blog.  He hadn’t gotten one of the points I was trying to make in the script, and my defense was that I was trying to be subtle about it.

“It’s alright to be subtle in film, as long as you’re obvious about it.”

Once I got past the usual defensive reaction we all have when someone critiques our work (Oh, c’mon.  Don’t lie.  You know you do!) I realized how right he was.  Over the years, it has really stuck with me, and its advice I’ve given on a number of occasions.

For all his talent, Raymond went on to do alright for himself.  He got into AFI, and his student thesis project, Bronx Cheers, went on to be nominated for best live action short.  His first feature as writer/director was the beautiful and powerful Café Society.  Two Family House won the 2000 Sundance Film Festival Audience Award, among others.   His hilarious City Island won the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival Audience Award.

Hey, I could go on with his bio, but I have a better idea.  See the blog list to the right?  Raymond DeFelitta's blog is prominently displayed for a reason.  It started as he chronicled City Island, and it’s a great look at the journey of making an independent film from the inside.  It’s also a lot more than that, because Raymond has not only a vast knowledge of film and its history, but for all his knowledge, he never makes it sound academic or boring.  I don’t think Raymond could write anything that wasn't entertaining.

If you paid for film school, his blog will expand on things you enjoy in ways you had never imagined.  If you didn’t pay for film school, well, stamp yourself your own degree when you finish his blog.

What the hell, if you spent all this time reading my blog, you would be out of your mind not to be reading his.

Oh, and that screenplay that I wrote, the subtle one?  There is a lot more on that one later on in the blog. 

Obviously.

I'm Ok. You're Ok. Is That OK?

I’m Okay.  You’re Okay.  Is that Okay?

“Form is not different than emptiness.  Emptiness is not different than form.”

-The Heart Sutra

“Wherever you go, there you are.”

-Jon Kabat-Zinn

No separation.

It’s a major premise of Zen practice, that all things are one.  If you prefer Quantum Physics, think that nothing exists in a vacuum, and the thing being observed is intricately connected to the observer.

Don’t fret.  This blog post is not about Zen or Quantum Physics, because while I practice the former and am fascinated by the latter, I’m not remotely qualified to blog on either.

What I do know is that it is impossible to compartmentalize the experience that is our life, as if our life and our work are two islands with no bridge between them.

On that fateful first ride up to Canada a few years earlier, I told Maureen that my work was more than my work; it was a part of my life and it would always come first.  This isn’t something that usually leads to deepening of a relationship, but she understood.  It was not a comment on putting a relationship behind my work; in fact, there was no way to disengage the two.   That is the reason this blog, which I began as a blog on life in the indie film world, has been so entangled with my personal life.  No intelligent way to separate the two.

We were married on May 29^th, 1987, and Maureen moved down to New York a week or so afterwards in an attempt to finish teaching for her school year. 

While I was starting to work more on small film projects, and old injury was catching up to me.   I had injured both ankles doing lighting design years earlier, and together with other complications, they were getting worse, to the point where I was only able to walk without a cane. 

This was a condition I had when Maureen and I first met, so she was very familiar with it. 

My explanation that my work was my life was fine for me, but now, it was Maureen’s life as well.  She was a musician, and had acted in community theater in Canada.  For me, it was only logical that she would come here and be an actress and work in the same business I was in.  At first, she threw herself into my vision of the two artists working together.  She took acting classes and dance classes.  This was going to be fun, right?

Not exactly.  This was my fantasy, and reality soon crept in.  Acting class wasn’t fun; it was all this heavy sense-memory work.  I vividly remember her coming home crying one day.  In class, they had suggested that one way to cry was to bring up a horrible memory from her past.  She used one where a beloved childhood pet was run over by a car.  She still was not able to cry in class; now home, she was unable to stop crying.  Not fun.  Neither was dance class with teens who had spent every post-partum moment in dance class.

She was, however, incredibly supportive of me.   I took jobs that I thought would prepare me to produce films, and that meant sometimes taking non-paying jobs on student projects.  Like always, I was more comfortable being the big fish in a small pond.

I had never taken as much as one film class.  I learned most of what I know on set.  I applied what I had seen other producers and production managers do when working on these projects, and learned by trial, error and learning as much as I could from those who knew more.

Two projects clearly illustrate this process.  Both were Columbia University  grad thesis projects, and I will address one in this blog and one in the next.

The first short film was about a grandfather who was about to die.  The actor was played by veteran character actor John Randolph.  You may remember him as Al Pacino’s tough NY boss in Serpico, or Jack Nicholson’s father in Prizzi’s Honor.  Roseanne’s dad? I know that for many of you, this is like ancient history.   His early film career was interrupted because his union activism led him to be blacklisted during the McCarthy Era.  He never became a big star, but was certainly a face you saw in scores of films and television shows.  A link to his IMDB page is below.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0709907/

Randolph was the first of many, many established older actors who proved to be the epitome of professionalism.  One might think that old veterans on small jobs would be difficult, but this was rarely true.

Many had gotten past the ego that actors need to drive them early in their careers and were very comfortable in their own skin.  John was not only professional but magnanimous.   I was the production manager, and, as is wont to happen on small projects, also doubled as designer. I earned the latter job in small part because I had done it in theater and in large part because we didn’t have the money for a designer.  

In the film, John had to play himself both a little younger and healthy, and also at the moment of his death.  He had the great idea of doing so by use of a scarf to cover his neck, which was rather wrinkled.  Scarf on he looked healthier; scarf off he looked older and sicker.  He had me over to his apartment, and showed me a few scarves that were perfect for the character.  I chose one.  He said, “John, that is the perfect choice.  You really know what you’re doing.” 

It wasn’t my great taste shining through, as John had only laid out scarves that were perfect.   He did all the work.  Still, I remember how good I not only felt then, but every time he complemented me.  I also watched as he did the same with the young director.  He never showed her up or bragged about how much more experience he had.  Rather, he would always present suggestions in such a way that it they seemed like her ideas. 

I learned not only the ability to be generous, but also realized how much more effective you can be if a person thinks that something is their idea.  This is a lesson that has come in handy hundreds of times over the years when working with directors.  Film school mentality is so competitive that people often never grow out of it, feeling a need to show how smart they are at all times.   This might feed their egos, but doesn’t solve many problems.

John had experienced the power of a complement first-hand.  Older actors, like older line producers, have lots of stories. 

Hey, if I didn’t, where would this blog be? 

This was a story John shared.

It came from the set of Prizzi’s Honor, working with the great director John Huston.  I have always been a big Huston fan, and loved a biography that covered his life called The Hustons by Lawrence Groebal.  Lots of great stories there as well.

Randolph’s story surrounds a scene where he is walking with the hit-man character played by Jack Nicholson.  Randolph plays Nicholson’s father, and in this scene on a Chicago subway platform, he tells Nicholson that the heat is too much and Nicholson’s character has to leave town.  Nicholson had convinced Huston to let them improvise the scene, and the camera and video village with Huston were at the end of the platform.

When the first take ended, Huston looked at them and said, “That was good.  Do it again and they did.  Second take, and the same thing happens, same exact words from Huston.  “That was good.  Do it again.”

This went on for a few takes, with long walks back to first position.  Nicholson and Randolph were beside themselves.  What were they doing wrong, and if it was so good, why were they doing it again?

They do the scene one more time.  Huston looks at them, and says, “Okay,” joining his thumb and forefinger in a gesture that reiterated his point. 

“That was it,” John said.  “That was all he said during that scene, and at the end, I knew exactly what he meant.  I felt like a million dollars.  This was the guy who said ‘Okay’ to Bogie and Bacall, and now he was saying ‘Okay’ to me.  Wow.”

The really talented and professional actors and crew people never lose that sense of wonder.  John told the story as if he were some stage-struck kid, when, in fact, he came to that movie as a Tony winner who had worked with Orsen Welles, among many other major actors and directors.  He still had that gleam in his eyes.

Lest this blog become all flowers and roses, the next blog entry will talk about lessons from someone significantly younger.  Like me, this next “teacher” embodied optimism and cynicism. 

No separation.

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.       

A Life In The Theater

INT – JB’S APARTMENT – AM

Having finished his morning meditation and coffee, JB sits in front of his computer, reading intently what is on the screen.

ANGLE-ON – COMPUTER SCREEN

JB’s Blog is on one side.  JB’s resume is on the other side.

                                                                                                                                                                DISSOLVE TO:

…me, sitting here, deciding how to move forward with the blog.

When I kickstarted this blog a few months back, I pointed out that chronology had become a problem, so I wasn’t going to worry about it.  That’s not entirely true.  I find it at least somewhat important to give some sense of context.

So, here is my jump off point.  I looked through all the theater pieces I was involved with from the time I left Allentown, and none of them deserved their own blog.  Therefore, in order to get back to the film work, I thought I would do a two-part blog entry that covered most of the better moments I had in theater after that, and the important changes in my life that led me into a full-time career in film.   Some of these bleed into the time I was doing film, and even into my married years.  As I said, topic is more important here than a solid timeline.  Does that work for you?  Great! (You were nodding your head, right?)

When last we visited this blog, I was leaving Allentown after directing an evening of three one-act plays.

I got back to New York, looking to continue directing theater, and joined with some other theater friends to form a short-lived company called Catharsis Theater Company.  We had a small space on Theatre Row, but only got off one evening of one-acts.

It would be years before I did any serious directing in theater again, although I did spend one season as teaching artist and director for Theater for New Audiences, which brought Shakespeare to public schools in New York.  It was a great experience, and what I took from that was that working in poor neighborhoods was more fun than working in rich neighborhoods.  The kids in the poor schools appreciated the work and opportunity more than the kids in rich neighborhoods.  If that sounds clichéd, sorry, but it’s true.

I also spend some time directing opera singers for a company called Republic Artists that had a relationship with Lincoln Center.  It was truly fun to work with talented singers who wanted to learn more about acting.

For the most part, I returned to making a living as a stage manager, dabbling in set and lighting design.  

I also stage managed a forgettable production of Suddenly Last Summer that was notable only for this funny lesson I learned from an older actress.

The production was mounted by an actress who had inherited a nice sum of money from a deceased aunt.  She cast herself as Catherine, the young girl played by Elizabeth Taylor in the film adaptation of the Tennessee Williams classic play.  She hired her acting teacher to direct, and they cast a talented and feisty older actress to play the role of Mrs. Venable, done to perfection by Katherine Hepburn in the same movie.

Hepburn’s take on the role was so good that the actress in our production decided to pretty much mimic Hepburn, right down to her unique version of a New England accent.  No matter, the actress in question became our den mother on the production, keeping things focused when need be, comforting actors who needed it, and kicking butt when that was called for, as it was on this night.

There is a scene where a rebellious Catherine puts a cigarette out in the hand of a nun who tries to take it away from her.  The spoiled-brat of an actress who mounted the play had an annoying habit of playing most scenes with the Venable character as if she were chewing gum, even though she wasn’t.  On this night, the actress had influential friends in the audience, and decided she would get a more “method” response by actually putting out a lit cigarette in the hand of the actress playing the nun.

I was livid when I heard this in the booth, and at intermission, I stormed toward the green room, determined to tear this idiot a new one.  I was met outside the green room by the older actress, who looked at me with a smirk and said, “let me handle this.”  Something told me to that was the way to go.

The second act began with a scene between Venable and Catherine, and, as usual, the actress playing Catherine faked chewing gum.  Venable, completely in character with the no-nonsense Venable, put out her hand and said “Catherine, give me the gum.”  This was a complete ad lib, and the younger actress wasn’t sure what to do, but she mimed putting the gum in Venable’s hand.  Not good enough.  Venable looks in her hand, and shows Catherine (and the audience) that there is no gum there.  “Catherine, there is no gum here.  I told you to give me the gum.”  The older actress proceeds to figuratively undress the younger actress on stage, until she almost finished the scene in tears, and the audience was laughing out loud at her.   It was a much more public and embarrassing come-uppance than I ever could have achieved.

In the next entry, I will transition to love, marriage, and my last directing gigs for some time, which introduced me to another actor I would later cast in a film that I wrote.