What's My Genre - The Selling of Paper Blood and The Rook

A while back, I watched a documentary that followed a few filmmakers at a film festival trying to sell their film.*  Some did, some did not.  Among those who did not get his film sold at that festival was John Sayles.

It was difficult to watch someone who wrote and directed films as good as Lone Star and Return of the Secaucus Seven standing on the proverbial street corner, skirt hiked up, hoping for customer.  If that can be John Sayles, how many of us are really ready to move up to call girl.

I was reminded of this after posting my production experiences on Paper Blood and The Rook.  While they were very different films with very different producer/directors, they had some common issues.

Most of my career has been spent on the spending side of the film production equation; my “elevator speech” explanation for what I do as line producer is have other people raise the money and I spend it.  The shopping analogy makes it sound like fun, but leaves out the part where you get to the register and your card is declined, and all those people are looking at you.  In my business, the people looking at you are the people who raised all that money who were sure that it was enough.

I had nothing to do with the raising of the money on either film, and in both cases, came on after pre-production had started.  I had nothing to do with the budgeting of either film, so the amount of money – or lack thereof –that I had to work with was not a result of poor budgeting on my part, but rather two sets of filmmakers determined to get started with their project and hope that their estimates on cost were correct.

While I can’t recommend that way of going, I’d be remiss to knock it.  In the independent film world, if every filmmaker waited until they had the amount of money they felt would comfortably complete their film, many wonderful indie films and careers would never have been launched.  Even on the Studio level, Coppola’s quote “There’s nothing creative about living within your means”  speaks to the gambler mentality that many filmmakers have, and often need.

Everyone knows the people who make the big bucks in the film business are those who can raise the money, and I don’t have a problem with that.  It’s true that I don’t particularly enjoy that side of the business, but it’s also true that I’m not very good at it.  It’s easy to envy those producers who put up the money, see their names up there in big, bold letters and then get to stand at the podium when awards are handed out.  It’s not as envious to be them when they are being turned down, or when they get the fourth investor only to have the first one drop out, or when the guy they took to lunch three times still can’t seem to get around to signing the check.

It takes a salesman’s mentality to be a producer at that level, always having your hand out, both to shake and to accept the check.  That is far from my strong suit.

All of that said, it also takes a lot of that same mentality to sell an indie film once it is completed, assuming financing did not come with distribution, and it often does not.  I have been a part of that on a number of occasions, not because I am any better at it, but because at that point, I was involved with projects and people I really believed in and was determined to see them get their films to a wider audience, and also have the opportunity to get to the next project. 

Inevitably, these were relationships with people like Donna and Phil and Eran and a few others that went beyond a business relationship to a friendship.

The frustration on the selling end can be even worse than on the investment end.  When you are raising money to shoot a film, you are offering a dream, a vision, a possibility of what could be.  Once you get to the actual selling and distributing of the film, the product is there for everyone to see.  Now, when they turn you down, they are not rejecting your dream, they are rejecting your consummation of that dream, your child.  This can be a lot harder to take, emotionally, for everyone involved, not to mention more frightful because, in the cases of Paper Blood, The Rook and other projects I’ve been involved with, producers have dipped way deeper into their pockets than they planned, and now recouping some of that money has a real impact on their life, on such questions as whether the mortgage or the car payments get paid.

Being involved with both films in a rather short period of time, I was additionally frustrated by the logic, or lack thereof, in those who chose to pass on the films.

Although I posted the stories in reverse order, I worked on Paper Blood first.  While the film had a mob element to it, and a heist element, it took a lot of clever twists and turns, and had a very “indie” feel.  After all, first efforts like Blood Simple and Reservoir Dogs could both be described as “genre” films, as heist-gone-wrong films, which is what Paper Blood is at its core.  Still, both were lauded in indie circles.

While good, Paper Blood is certainly not on a level with those films.  The point is that simply being a certain genre should not eliminate a movie from indie circles.  Still, when we approached many of the major indies, the response we got was they were looking for edgy, challenging films, and “genre” films like Paper Blood would do better in the direct-to-video market.  Similar responses came from many indie film festivals.

If this were true, The Rook should have been the darling of the indie circuit.  You don’t get more challenging in terms of story and look than The Rook.

While The Rook did have success at some festivals, many others turned their heads and, like those customers on that same proverbial corner, drove on by, looking for their pleasure elsewhere.

A good deal of the feedback suggested that the unique plot and look made it hard to categorize, and that was a problem.

But, wait?  Didn’t people tell the producers of Paper Blood that it’s clear definition and category made it not quite an indie film?  Shouldn’t the lack of specific genre have been a plus on the indie circuit for The Rook?n

The word we got back, often, when being turned down for festivals was "edgy" - they were looking for something more "edgy".  We got similar feedback from indie distributors.

The beauty of the word "edgy" is that it has no meaningful definition when it comes to trying to write, direct or produce a film.  If it means "different", well, every filmmaker thinks their film is unique.  Simply because the film is being made by a different filmmaker, the most derivative movie will be different.  If it meant that the film dealt with worlds or individuals ignored by the Hollywood system, both films would have qualified.

Frankly, I defy anyone to tell me why one film is "edgy" and another is not.  Hell, if exploring different worlds qualified, Hobbits would count.

Another similarity with the two projects was that in funding the films and preparing for production, both producers had gone with leads that should have helped them with distribution.

Eran cast Martin Donovan in the lead of The Rook.  Not only is Martin a talented and incredibly subtle actor (and now director), but he was what we liked to call "indie hot."  He had been featured in two of indie hero Hal Hartley's films, Trust and Simple Men.  While Hartley is hardly a household name, he was highly regarded at the time as a leading indie filmmaker and someone to watch.

The Sopranos, and the phenomenon it became, had not yet happened, so casting Frank and Vinny Pastore did not capitalize on any of that popularity, but Frank's name and face were certainly known from the Scorsese films.  If Paper Blood were a genre, film, then Frank's mug on the cover of the poster should have meant something.

Frank isn't a star, you say?  Let me introduce you to the funding world we were dealing with in the early to mid-90s.  When you were trying to get pre-sales - something that rarely happens today - you were told to go out and get a "name", which, on the low budget circuit, normally meant finding a supporting actor from bigger films or television.  Lance Henriksen and has-beens like Eric Estrada were high on the list of people you were meant to attach.  The Bruce Campbell's of the world paid their bills from this sort of advice. These second (or third) stringers still had clout in foreign markets, which drove sales for many a project funded from those sales.

In this decidedly low-rent version of "names", Frank's should have come shining through.  It did not.

None of this is new to the film business, and I point it out here not because I am shocked that it existed, but more to point out to some of the (undoubtedly) innocent eyes out there that think there is a beautiful and loving indie-film world that welcomes the new and the different with open arms, that is above the coarse machinations of Hollywood that the "indie" world can be every bit as crass as the Big Guys.  As JR and I used to say, we knew we were hookers, we just wanted to be call girls one day.

All of this talk of "what genre is this" got me thinking of the old TV show "What's My Line," and one of the fun guests on that show, Alfred Hitchcock.  (Do check out the clip above) As you surely know, Hitchcock never received an Oscar as director** for any of his films, and his only personal acknowledgement from the Academy was the "we're sorry we screwed up before" Lifetime Achievement" award he received.

Much of this was due to the fact that his movies were considered genre films, suspense films and thus somehow beneath the voters of such awards.  Of course, this is ridiculous, but the movie industry, big and small, has never been as good at anything as it is at shifting the ground beneath your feet.

You played by the rules and we still don't like you?  Okay, we'll change the rules.  That still remains true today.

Hitchcock, by many standards, was an indie-filmmaker.  His budgets were far below those traditional studio films for much of his career, and even at the height of his success, the Studios saw him as more of a hired gun than one of their own.

People who saw either The Rook or Paper Blood can add their own opinions of the final product.  If selling is not my strong suit, being objective about films I've worked on is.  Paper Blood is not on the level of the very top crime dramas, and The Rook does not stand with the very best experimental films.  If they were not great films, they were, at the very least competent films (I would argue that both were better than competent - I'm trying to be objective here), something that I can't say for both many genre films that found quick sales and many indie films that received much praise.

One final common ground between the two films is the issue of the title, and it says something about the respective filmmakers.

The Rook was filmed as The Circle in the Square.  Told by many prospective buyers that the title was too confusing, Eran chose a simpler title, though, in terms of telling the story of the film, it's equally confusing.  That was Eran's usual reaction to being told what to do.

Paper Blood was sold to its original distributor as West New York, and can still be found under that title in some places.  Paper Blood had duel meanings; the paper (securities) that Frank's character sold led to blood, and when spoken, the title sounds like "Pay for Blood", not an accident.  This, too, seemed too confusing to prospective buyers; somehow putting "New York" in the title, and then suggesting that it was somewhere geographically outside of it, made it more appealing.  Don't ask me to explain it.

The markets are certainly different and more varied today, though the skeptic in me thinks many of the old systems still exist, even if in different forms.  Just like before, though, the struggle doesn't end when the cameras stop rolling, and I thought a snapshot of what it was like at that time would be enlightening.

Just remember that film-making is a world where breaking the rules will lead to one set of obstacles, but following the rules doesn't guarantee very much more.





*I cannot find the title, having looked on Sayles' IMDB of films where he is featured.  Maybe it was part of a TV series.  Sorry I don't have more info.

**Yes, Hitchcock's films did win Academy Awards in other categories, notably Rebecca, which won Best Picture.

Go "Pope of Greenwich Village" on Them - Unwritten Rules, Etiquette, and Put Down the Phone

This blog deals mostly with a life sentence served in low-budget production hell, and I try hard not to deviate.  On rare occasions, I feel we both deserve a weekend pass, and while this post deals only tangentially with working in film production, I think the opportunity to talk about a now-overlooked film and film-watching etiquette is worth the exception.

Much like baseball, where there is the rule book and the "unwritten rules" that have little to do with actually playing the game (don't talk about a no-hitter in progress, don't steal a base when way ahead, etc) there are rules about how to act on - and sometimes off - set.

The wonderful blog "Totally Unauthorized" covers many of the more common ones.

The list is probably a lot longer, and I'm sure I would miss many.  As a matter of fact, I would encourage readers to add to the list here.

One of the things for me as line producer or AD on sets that are often non-union in terms of crew is to keep the rules of courtesy from the union world that should be honored regardless of if there is a union rule to mandate it.

They include such things as making sure meals are no later than six hours from each call, that meals provided are legitimate hot meals (no, pizza and Chinese take-out do not count) and a vegetarian alternative does not mean salad.

Whether there are meal penalties negotiated (and smart non-union crews get this out of the way up front on most shows), you never have a crew wait for a meal, even if you are in a shot, without asking the designated shop steward (a term I use even on non-union sets) for a "courtesy".

Production eats last when meals are served.  I've spoken before about how I rarely eat lunch when working - my preference - but on the rare occasions when I do, I eat after the AD department and PAs have eaten.  There are a lot of people in first team who cannot get away from camera, and they shouldn't have to compete to get a meal, and I feel as line producer, its on me to set a good example for the PAs.

The blog mentions that "Quiet" does not mean you continue to talk in a whisper.  It should be added that many ADs, myself included, will often add "Settle Please", a sure indication that the noise you make walking or moving things is just as bad for production sound as your talking.

It amazes me that I would even post such obvious things, but the digital world has brought out a ton of first-time producer/directors that actually need to hear even these basics.

Here, I would like to address one of the more obscure ones, so obscure that it actually takes place not on set, but in a movie theater.  That is the rule that you sit through credits, all the way through credits.

Like most unwritten rules, it certainly has a basis in courtesy and common sense.  The people whose names are up on the screen worked hard to get there, in positions behind the camera just like the one you hold, and they deserve to have you sit there while their credits role.  As I write this, it sounds both natural and ludicrous.

I mean, it might be cool that my Aunt Marion sees my name up on the big screen, but does anyone really care, and do I really care if someone in Iowa sits there and sees my name on screen while others are filing out of the theater?  Does a small hair on the back of my neck go up every time someone "disrespects" me and heads for the exit after the final frame of a movie I worked on?  Not really.

Still, it's now a part of my DNA, and I cannot walk out before the last "thank you" has come and gone, and, for reasons that are entirely irrational, I look upon those who file out during credits as boorish miscreants.

My adherence to this code has annoyed my share of dates and even an ex-wife.

If this unwritten rule seems somewhat whimsical, others are not.  Movie theaters have even taken to reminding people to shut their cell phones and refrain from texting during the movie (the latter being redundant if the former is followed, but clearly some people need very explicit instructions).

So it was the other day that I was in a theater, watching a movie, when the woman across the aisle from me and the woman next to me felt a need to text from almost the opening credits.

As far as I could tell, neither one of them was a heart surgeon on call for emergency transplants, and neither was carrying "the football" referred to in all those Cold War movies that needed only the President's finger to even the score in the event of a nuclear attack, the only excuses that I could think of that would excuse this rude behavior.

It made me wonder in a world where we are accustomed to all of our entertainment being "on demand" in one form or other how much longer people will appreciate the shared experience of sitting in a theater and watching a piece of entertainment from start to finish together.  Yes, it's great that we can watch the latest Adam Sandler movie on our iPhone or Andoid device on the bus on the way to work (or at work, for that matter - there is nary an Adam Sandler movie that requires that much attention).  Still, there is something special about sitting in a theater with other people and sharing the laughs, the gasps, and sometimes the tears.

That experience should be respected.  Text, play Angry Birds or do your nails for all I care if you are watching a movie on your own.  When in a theater, respect that others would like to suspend their disbelief and their contact with the world outside for a brief period of time.

However, as that shared experience still exists, people choosing to participate in this communal event should at least have the basic courtesy to suspend their incessant texting or Facebooking or whatever they are doing until the movie is over.

As I fumed, one of the best examples of pulp entertainment of my generation came to mind - The Pope of Greenwich Village.

Some movies transcend time, others are milestones for their era but fade soon afterward.  The Pope of Greenwich Village shares a place with movies like Ragtime as big hits during their time that are often forgotten today.

Pope was a screenplay by a hilarious writer named Vincent Patrick based on his novel of the same name.  It takes place in NYC, and deals with a heist by bartender Charlie (Mickey Rourke) at the encouragement of his cousin, Paulie (played in the movie by Eric Roberts).

This was before both Rourke and Roberts needed to see their careers "revived" after a string of bad movies and bad off-screen choices; indeed, anyone judging from the reaction to the film at the time would have thought both would go on to stellar careers.

The book caught my attention because I could relate to these characters, and, specifically, the character of Paulie.  Paulie was the type of guy my dad used to describe as someone who "could screw-up a wet dream."  We all had a relative like that, for me, it was my cousin Bobby, who I loved dearly.

Bobby served a short time in Vietnam before my uncle pulled strings to get him out and got him a job with the NYPD.  After crashing more than one police car, and somehow failing at even desk duty, Bobby moved on to other less-successful ventures.

Paulie was that sort of screw-up.  Shortly after the heist, Barney, a safecracker, is appalled to find that Paulie may not be smart enough to not spend all the money right away and keep his mouth shut.  Charlie tells Barney an entertaining story in the book about how Paulie would hand toll-booth collectors a hundred dollar bill and tell them to "keep the change" in order to impress dates.

It should be noted that Barney was played in the movie by the late Kenneth McMillan, a favorite character actor  of mine who contributed in a big way to movies like Ragtime (where he plays the guy who starts all the trouble) and True Confessions, (where he plays Robert Duval's chatty partner).  Both of those are also movies long forgotten by most

The movie also boasts one of the best performances as an Irish "broad" in a movie.  A cigarette dangling from her mouth as she she sips her morning drink and examines the Racing Form, Oscar-winner Geraldine Page has two scenes in the movie that, on their own, are worth the price of admission, as she gives a spot-on portrayal of some of type of older Irish women I knew in Hell's Kitchen.  In one, she tells a pair of crooked detectives that her son, Walter, was "tough as nails, and he didn't get it from his fatha"

If Rourke was trying to be a Paul Newman in the movie, Roberts was doing his best James Dean.  After the heist goes horribly wrong, a local mob boss decides to punish Paulie by deforming him in a most original way, a modern version of cutting off a thief's hand.

This led to a scene that became noteworthy not only for its importance to the plot, but for Robert's serious over-acting.



"Charlie, they took my thumb" became almost a parody of Method acting where it is least called for, and a moment that had the exact opposite effect on Robert's career than he might have imagined.

In another pulp movie, a character refers to "get(ting) Medieval on " someone's ass, and I couldn't help but think, while watching these two ladies texting, that the appropriate punishment might be for someone to "go Pope of Greenwich Village" on them.

BTW, they both walked out during the credits.

Paper Blood - Part 3 - Just Say Yes

Some posts have easy, magical inspiration for their theme, something that lifts them beyond merely being the bucket into which another week of venting blood is spilled.

Some posts need a little help. 

As I was putting together this post, which concludes my time with Paper Blood, I was facing one of those awful times when no theme actually came to me, and I was staring down the barrel of a gun loaded with the prospect of putting up a post that simply said, “..and then I did this, and then I did that”

You, my reader, and I were spared this fate when I did my weekly reading of one of my absolutely favorite blogs on anything, but especially production, Michael Taylor’s Blood Sweat and Tedium: Confessions of a Hollywood Juicer.

Writers sometimes say that a work is “inspired” by another work to give credit to the other work; other times they say that to prevent a lawsuit when the original source would be obvious even to most casual reader.  Others avoid the obvious altogether; I dare anyone with knowledge of Leonard Melfi’s  play “Birdbath” to not cite it as the source of the play, “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune” later adapted to a Al Pacino/Michele Pheifer vehicle.

Chalk this up as the first of the above options, to the extent that I have chosen as my sub-title the Juicer’s own title for the article.  As they say, in for a penny, in for a pound.

The below-the-line perspective the original article offers is that there are many instances when it is not only easier to accommodate a request from another department than to rather than find a reason why you shouldn’t be doing it, but that it also reflects better on your boss, which in turn, makes everyone look better.  The bigger perspective was that on a well-oiled crew, things like that just happen naturally, and the result is a better experience for everyone involved.

My perspective as line producer and assistant director is a little different.  I may inform prospective employers that “if they want good news, they should hire family,” but the truth is, they are still writing the check, and while it remains my responsibility to let them know when something is either beyond the pale of what is possible or wise, I owe it to them to at least try.

In order to be able to say “no”, you have to have delivered “yes” at least a few times when it would have seemed impossible.

Donna and Phil had not heard “yes” a lot before I came on to Paper Blood, and often they saw “no” after being told “yes”.

I was at an interesting point in my career, way past the invincibility I felt early on, where I saw my talents as capable of overcoming every obstacle because I had beaten back so many, and not yet at the stage where I had tasted defeat so often that I saw nothing but the pitfalls of every course of action, and certainly at my current stage, where I have more than a little perspective to navigate the highs and lows.

Paper Blood came right on the heels of a Korean mini-series that I will address in subsequent posts.  For now, suffice to say that “winning” was defined as moving forward every day with everyone in one piece, and a big factor in that was Peter, a young production manager who still believed anything was possible.  I wisely brought Peter with me on Paper Blood, and it made for a good mix.

One of the usual bug-a-boos was locations; with promises made to Phil or Donna that didn’t come through, or came through with strings that made “good deals” not such good deals. 

Sometimes line producing is about knowing when to delegate, because it is impossible to do everything at once, and if you try to do everything, important things will get missed.  The flip side of that equation is that there is nothing that is not your responsibility, so when a location falls through, it is unacceptable to look to the location manager.  It needs to get done, and with Peter’s help and my contacts, we did.

Like many actors who spent much of their time as character actors, Frank Vincent could be difficult as a lead.  This was a pattern I’ve seen over-and-over again across the years, the constant supporting actor feeling a need to throw his weight around now that he was the lead, the way he had seen other leads do.  For Frank, this covered everything from big-picture items like plot points, to day-to-day concerns like craft service.  One of my favorite Frank-isms was “The water budget on Goodfellas was more than the entire budget for this film.” There is nothing better on a low-budget film than to be reminded that you are not only low-budget, but really low budget, especially when you are providing more than the minimum in creature comforts.

Thinking back on Frank in that film now, I have to laugh.  Things that seemed very difficult to me at the time seem minor now; the funny moments remain.  One was Frank explaining the trunk scene in Goodfellas – you know, the one where Pesci stabs him in the trunk after he realizes he isn’t dead yet.  Frank told one of the very-impressive PAs, “That looks easier than it really is – getting stabbed, shot and beat-up like that.”  If my old partner had described Steven Hill as a great chair actor, maybe someone should credit Frank as a great trunk actor.

Vinny Pastore also offered a funny moment.  I had the pleasure of working with Vinny on another movie, albeit one that was never completed, named Two.  It’s a shame that movie never got done; Vinny had a chance to show off his “non-mob” side as a blue-collar husband. 

One day I was headed to set, and Peter shared a message the office had for someone on set.  “Tell Vinny that his wife called,” is what I heard.  The message was actually for Victor Collechio.

I met up with Vinny on the set that day, which was a golf driving range.  Vinny was playing a mob boss who was angry with Frank’s character, and he was supposed to show his anger in his golf swings.  The appropriate anger was there, but not necessarily at Frank’s character as much as Vinny’s style was pretty much Charles Barkley on a bad day.  Any contact between club and ball was purely coincidental.  In the movie, the scene works really well, even if not as intended.

After I passed the message to call his wife along to Vinny, he almost dropped the club, and responded, “My wife?  I haven’t heard from her in years.  Did someone tell her I was working?”  Vinny was referring to his ex-wife, who, I understand from Google, he is working with again these days.  The reaction was still priceless.

Paper Blood was distributed under another name, and, for a well-made genre film, took quite some time to sell, though it did get distribution. The completion of Paper Blood led immediately to Phil, Donna and I trying to get funding for one of the other scripts Phil and his writing partner Steve had ready to go, but that would not materialize for many years. 

Paper Blood - Part 2 - The Dossier Scene

I'm going to share a secret with you, but I suspect that, in one form or another, it's a secret that many people carry with them.  By sharing, I hope that others can come forward and tell their stories.

When I approach putting together crew on a film as line producer, I think of myself as Jim Phelps from the old television show Mission: Impossible.

Let me be clear: at no point do I think of myself as Ethan Hunt, the Tom "this-is-me-as-a-serious-driven-person" Cruise character who updates the IMF team.  To be honest, I had forgotten that in Season 1 on television it was Steven Hill as Dan Briggs, before the producers decided that they could not deal with Hill's insisting that as a devout member of the Jewish faith, he could not shoot on the Sabbath, covering after sundown on Friday through Saturday. (Many years later, Law and Order creator Dick Wolf found a way to make it work, and Hill's Adam Schiff, clearly modeled on longtime Manhattan DA Robert Morgenthau, is still the most believable, New York District Attorney and the one I think of when I think of L&O). A film producing partner of mine once called Hill one of the great "chair actors" of all time, largely because unlike actors who like to strut their stuff, most of Hill's best scenes seemed to take place when he was seated.

Everyone remembers the opening, the Lalo Schifrin theme, the match, and maybe even the weird places Briggs and, later, Phelps, would go to listen to that tape that would self-destruct.  Fewer may remember my favorite scene, one that was even given a name - the Dossier Scene.

In that scene, Phelps (Briggs is pictured above) sits in his very nice apartment and pick his team from a dossier that had many pictures (it never seemed weird that most of them were professional actor head-shots?).  The ones he did not choose took on added meaning over the years, becoming a status symbol for people involved in the studio and production to be included among them.

Week after week, he inevitably chose the same people.  After all, neither the lovely Cinnamon Carter or the elusive Rolland Hand (real life husband and wife Barbara Bain and Martin Landau, respectively) were ever rejected.  Spock (Leonard Nimoy) showed up after a time, and there were the other regulars, but if a new person was chosen for the mission, that person inevitably became like the non-starring character beamed down from the Enterprise on Star Trek - doomed to be the one who didn't return just to make the point that not everyone makes it back.

While I don't think everyone thinks of themselves as a the leader of the IMF, I suspect that many people go about their business thinking about fictional characters that might represent them.  How many dissatisfied postal workers thought of their boss, "he wouldn't like me when I'm angry," or cheap private detectives following cheating husbands saw themselves as Sam Spade, or people writing obits on some small town newspaper wonder if their editor realizes that they have a "spidey" sense.

For me, it was Mission: Impossible, except that unlike Briggs and Phelps, I sometimes picked the photo that I should have set aside.

Many people don't appreciate how much crewing a film is like casting a film, finding the right mix of people who complement each other.  It is not just about collecting a group of "all-stars," as there are times when talented people have different styles or personalities that make them a bad fit, and to some degree, I was guilty of ignoring this on Paper Blood.

Phil, the director, was a talented shooter in his own right, not to mention an excellent editor.  On smaller corporate projects, he could work as a one-man band, and that allowed him to move quickly without
having to explain what he was looking for to many people.  Jonathan, his cinematographer, also worked best with few assistants.

I was brought on the project by Greg, who was associate producer and first assistant director.  He was also friends with Phil and Donna, Phil's wife who was also one of the producers, along with Steve, who wrote the script.

I came on board late in pre-production, and I immediately fell in love with Phil and Donna.  They were generous and kind people who cared about the people around them.  We shared basic sensibilities about how people should be treated, something that was not always the case on other projects, where ego led certain producers and directors to think they had been annointed by some film god to make a movie, and all others should be happy to serve them.

Ray was a gaffer who I had known from the time he was a best-boy electric, and he worked with some members of JRs crew, notably Jeff, JR's gaffer.  Our running joke about Ray was that he could find juice (electricity) in the desert, and I don't doubt that he could.  Ray was an expert and a perfectionist,, and people on other projects loved Ray.

Ray also loved Ray, and was very aware of how good he was.

Like many a gaffer, Ray saw himself as a cinematographer down the road, and he had shot some small projects.  As such, he considered himself a partner with the DP, Jonathan, an artist.

Jonathan and Phil considered him a gaffer, and that led to some issues.

For one, while Ray was very good, he would often take a little extra time to do something special.  I remember one night in particular when I thought we were lit and ready to go, and Ray was still lighting.  Ray and I got along well, so he shared with me what was causing the delay - a gobo of a bird and nest in a tree.

This may not sound ridiculous on the surface, but if you knew Jonathan, and especially Phil, this type of thing would drive them up a wall, and I couldn't disagree with them.  For one, I could barely tell if it would even read in the scene, and it wasn't something Phil cared about in the least.  Phil felt this sort of thing was costing him time with his actors, which was his main concern.

Another problem that developed was that while Phil and Donna tried to be inclusive, Ray very much thought of the grip and electric department as his team, and they felt the same way about him.  A very unnecessary feeling of "us" and "them" developed, where the grip and electric team felt that they knew better than Jonathan and Phil, and that wasn't healthy.  Phil, for his part, didn't see why, as director,  he needed to impress the grips and electrics, and, of course, he was right.

It could have made for an ugly situation, but as I was close to both parties, I was able to smooth things over, with the exception of one time when I seriously thought Phil and Ray might come to blows.  They did not, and the tension I described would not have been obvious to anyone who was on set for a short period of time.

Phil developed a dislike for big crews, something that would surface again on the second project I did with Phil and Donna years later.

Ray was good - very good - he was just not a good fit for that project.

Sometimes I worry that I am have a little dinosaur in me, and my love for traditional crew set-up ignores what can be accomplished with fewer people.  Slowly, I'm getting over that, but at the time we did Paper Blood, I was still a big believer in the big, full, crew, and if I'm honest, I don't think it served the film well.

While I remained close with Phil and Donna for years, there were other places where our styles didn't meld, and other challenges, which I will cover in the next installment.

Paper Blood - Part 1 - I See Dead Mafioso

Film critic Roger Ebert famously coined the term Dead Teenager Movie, and though he has expanded on it over the years, the simplest description I heard was when he shared a show with the late Gene Siskel, and that was movies that started with a lot of live teenagers, and ended with a lot of dead teenagers.

Mafia movies have a similar arc; I mean, when was the last time you went to a movie featuring Mafia characters where a significant number of them didn't wind up dead?  Let's call them Dead Mafioso Movies.

Mob movies go back a long way, but I like to distinguish Mafia movies from mob movies, where said mobster can be of any ethnic persuasion, or, as is now becoming the custom, all of them. Call it the Rainbow Mob movie, where every ethnic group is lauded or demonized, depending on your perspective, equally.

Think Boardwalk Empire or Hoodlum.  There is no confusion on the nationality of the mob guys on Mafia movies.

My first personal encounter on a Dead Mafioso movie was an incredibly positive one, as I got to work with a husband and wife director and producer team who came to be like family, only without your aunt's dry ham on Easter and your cousin who talks about the joys of asbestos removal.  That "family" line came up in a funny reference with a member of the cast years later.

I also got to work with one of the contemporary acting pioneers of the genre, the man who set bad things in motion when his Billy Batts character told Joe Pesci's to "go home and get his (expletive deleted) shine box. " No way someone wasn't going to wind up dead after a line like that.

Frankie Vincent is a member of a group a bartender friend of mine used to jokingly refer to as the "Perfume Mafia," actors who weren't really mobsters but played them in movies and television.  The core of the group was Frank, Vinny "Big Pussy" Pastore and Tony Sirico, and, yes, they all appeared on The Sopranos, and that is not a coincidence.  Another regular notables are the highly-talented and under-rated Arthur Nascarella,  and the incredibly versatile actor, musician and writer Victor Coliccio, (he's been shot by Jodie Foster and penned Spike Lee's Summer of Sam).

While Sinatra and Martin's Rat Pack was known for carousing, the Perfume Mafia (they DO NOT refer to themselves by this name) functions as an actor's networking and casting group, a loose and informal arrangement that hit the ultimate height with The Sopranos.  

It's often said that you aren't a real actor in New York if you didn't appear in at least one of the Law and Order shows.  If you were an Italian-American actor living in New York and didn't make it onto The Sopranos at some point, well, you were doing something wrong.  I know Tony Sirico, who I have never had the pleasure of working with, is very influential in bringing on Italian-American actors to projects he works on, and I understand this was no different on The Sopranos.

One certainly doesn't need to be of Italian heritage to play an Italian; James Caan's Sonny in The Godfather is as convincing as any performance (albeit Brando's, not so much).  For me, though, there is a difference when the characters playing the part has a face that my mother used to describe as "the map of Italy."  You know the look - Tony Sirico definitely has it.

So do the old guys playing bocce (or bocci - both spellings are used) in the Bronx.

Working with any of these guys is fun, and we had a number of them on this film; Frank, who was the lead, Vinny Pastore, Victor Coliccio, and Dan Grimaldi.  We also had a guy named Mikey "Scuch" Squicciarini.

Scuch, as we always called him, was a big man.  I don't have a picture (I will try to correct that at a later time), but the guy he most reminded me of was Lenny Montana, the actor who played hit man Luca Brasi in The Godfather.  I knew Lenny - his mother was my grandmother's neighbor - and like Mickey, who was 6'5" and 305 lbs, he was a big guy who was as nice as he could be off camera.

Scuch, which is slang among Italian-Americans for someone who needles others, was one of those who, like Tony Sirico, actually did have a criminal past, and had served time.  I'm not revealing any secrets here; Tony has been quite open about this in his own bio, and Scuch's background sadly became public after his death.  Both big men were done in by their size and had their heart give out.

Everyone who ever met Scuch loved him; his wake was standing room only the entire time.  He would work long days on set then go home and take of his parents, and I had the pleasure of being the person who cast him against type in Man of the Century.  In that movie, he played Maurice, a big bodyguard who turned out to be very gentle and recited Shakespeare sonnets.

Two of my favorite Scuch story actually comes from Man of the Century, which I will cover later, but I think it appropriate to tell here.

The first was Scuch one day in make-up talking about coming back from being "on vacation" for a few years.  One of our younger make-up girls heard this, and wondered what type of wonderful job he held to be able to take a vacation for a few years.  Those familiar with mob vernacular are aware he was talking about time in prison, and watching Scuch try to not upset this young girl and finding a polite way to explain it was quite cute.

The funnier story was Scuch preparing for his role, specifically, reciting the Shakespeare sonnet.  This was certainly much different than Scuch's usual dialogue in films - there were no threats of violence in it -  and he found memorizing it and the cadence of iambic pentameter difficult.

I showed up on set the day of that scene to find Scuch pacing and reciting his lines.  He was there over two hours before cast call - he showed up at the crew call time, and I was afraid someone had given him the wrong info.  Scuch insisted that was not the case; rather, that he had shown up early because he was determined to nail the scene and not disappoint me for recommending him, and the director and producer, who he liked.

I tried to assure him that he would be fine, and the final scene is wonderful.  However, his explanation to me was priceless.  

"JB, I know how to memorize lines, but when I do this sonnet, I have to go 'somewhere else.'"  When he said 'somewhere else,' his eyes went up to the heavens.  I always joked that I expected to see Scuch on The Actors' Studio, explaining this to James Lipton.  This obviously never happened, a great loss to the acting profession, for I would have loved to seen Scuch sharing his expertise with the students.

The combination of that, and seeing Scuch having tea with his pinky extended while holding this tiny cup, was  worth the price of admission, as they say.  

A good article on Scuch can be found here at the following link.  http://observer.com/2000/06/its-retarded-hell-suck-your-lungs-out/

This brief introduction to some of the players on a film I will call Paper Blood - it's original title - will hopefully give a feel for working with these folks.  There are more tales to come, and I want to give this particular movie it's due.

Roger Ebert got a lot of blow back from the horror community for his Dead Teenager Film comments.  Ebert always contested that simply being a horror film with dead teens doesn't make it a Dead Teenager film, and that there are films with this plot that are good.  Ebert's issue was with the cookie-cutter, generic ones that had only the formula and little else going for them.

When it came to Dead Mafioso Movies, Paper Blood was anything but cookie-cutter.  Frank played an ex-cop who was now making some money on the side by moving a small number of securities whose destruction he was meant to oversee.  He gets in deep, pays the price, and his son and his son's girlfriend wind up seeking revenge.  It's a very original plot, and was, in my opinion, an under-rated film.  More on the plot, the making of the film, and some other fun moments in subsequent posts.

An Ace in the Hole

I was preparing a blog post on my first mob film when I received a link from a student filmmaker to a short he wrote and directed.  It seems a perfect introduction to this genre.

The short was the story of a female drug dealer who plays a game of poker with another female customer for money owed.  It's a heads-up match with a male dealer.

The crime drama has always been among my favorite genres.  Those noirs that graced my television in black-and-white were filled with flawed characters, but what fascinated me most was the struggle to have honor in dishonorable situations.  The actors who embodied this most for me as a kid were Bogart and especially Robert Mitchum.

Mitchum's embodiment of evil in movies such as Cape Fear and Night of the Hunter were riveting and specific, not just a monstrous psychopath but one with depth and dimension.  His chiseled appearance, both in face and body, made him the perfect tough guy in numerous films.  The fact that he had once spent a short time in jail for marijuana possession just made him that much more like a real guy than a movie star to me.

Perhaps my favorite Mitchum role was as a former private detective who can't outrun his previous life in Out of the Past.  Much like Jim in Conrad's Lord Jim, fate seemed to toy with him, offering him redemption from past mistakes, only to take it away from him after he had tried so hard to do the right thing.

In my early attraction to English in grammar school, the concept of the tragic flaw always fascinated me.  My favorite Shakespeare character was Macbeth, an honorable and valiant warrior who is struck down by his vaulting ambition.  That was the phrase my English teacher, Brother Louis, used - vaulting ambition - and it stuck with me,  After all, weren't we supposed to be ambitious?  Ah, but vaulting ambition, that was different.

Classic heroes seemed indestructible, and even in my youth, I never felt that way.  I was never the best athlete, always one of the last kids picked on the team, the last guy on the bench on my freshman and JV football teams, teams I only made because of my grit.  Yeah, flawed characters I understood.

I also grew up in an Italian-American family, and gambling, cards, etc were part of the culture.  I made extra money while attending my Catholic high school by distributing and collecting money for football parlay cards my uncle would give me.  Kids would bet money, fill out a sheet, and, depending on how many teams they picked - they had to pick at least three but could go for more if they wanted to try big bucks - they could win money.  I'd give the money and the sheets to my uncle, and I would get a cut, a small percentage of the money bet.

If you grew up in a working class Italian and Irish neighborhood, this seemed normal.  My grandmother played the Brooklyn number (based on the last three numbers of the race track handle) with the local grocer.    None of us knew real criminals, just small time people getting by with a little hope for the something better.

My favorite columnist was Jimmy Breslin, then with the NY Daily News, pictured below.

Breslin was a crafty and skilled writer who looked like a regular guy, a little overweight, a NY accent, cigar in his mouth and shirt unbuttoned at the top.  He was one of us.

He always wrote from the perspective of the average Joe, including a beautiful piece after JFK's assassination from the point of view of the guy who dug his grave.  He wrote about mobsters real and fictional; the fictional mob boss Un Occhio allowed him to tell stories he heard from his mob informants without using real names.

When I entered a speech competition in high school, my choice to read was entitled Death Waited Here, and started with the line, "Five crosses, five crosses whose shadows lengthen in the evening sun.  Their presence announces that death waited here."

My first short screenplay in the NYU intensive class I took after my operation was about a bookmaker who had gotten in over his head.

When I saw an ad on Craigslist a few months back for someone to play a poker dealer, I was intrigued.  I certainly played my share of poker over the years, and knew how to deal.  I flirted with acting early in my career, but decided that the world could survive without one more mediocre actor, and so I moved to the production side.  I did pursue it long enough to have my photographer girlfriend from college, Sheila, do headshots for me.  One of those is above.

Clearly, pretty boy roles were not going to come my way, and even if had the perfect features to play them (I didn't) , I don't think I would have sought out those roles.  I didn't know those folks.

I did play Jesus in a comedic play my friend CK directed in the late 90s.  The play, written by an established TV comedy writer who was friends with CK, was about a talk show that had Jesus, a hooker (played by Natasha) and a gambler.  I actually lobbied CK to play the gambler, but he insisted that of all the people he knew, I was the one "who most seemed like he thought he was God."

It was scary doing a live stage play where I had to remember a lot of lines for the first time in a long time.  No second takes, no pick-ups.  I coached acting, and coaching is nothing like acting.  I can see very quickly what an actor brings to the table in a scene, and see how to get more out of him or her.  That is very different from doing it yourself.  This is why I always called myself an acting coach and not an acting teacher; everything I gave the actor came from the actor themselves.

In preparing for that stage role, I decided that I had to take a decidedly un-God-like approach.  Playing against text always adds dimension, so I decided on a Jesus who had done one-too-many talk shows, was bored, and a little snippy.  As much as I think I did a good job with it, it was still odd to watch myself on the tape of the performance later.

Now, many years later, this really nice film student named Gabriel met me for coffee where we talked about the role of the poker dealer, and the game itself.  I think he knew it mostly from television and home games, and wasn't familiar with how the game would be dealt.  We talked about it, a little about who the character was an his relation to the two female players, and how he would deal.

Gabriel is clearly one of those directors who thinks he will get more out of actors if they don't know the whole story, because he never gave me the entire script - just my scene.  He kept saying he didn't have a chance to write out the translation (he is French), and I now think that was a ruse to keep the rest of the script out of my hands.  I was amused when I saw the final product, because I never knew one of the characters was a drug dealer.  I don't think it would have changed how I played it, but it certainly didn't hurt.

I was in and out in about an hour and a half - I'm very thankful to Gabriel and his friend who was helping light for that.  He was organized and knew what he wanted.  Oh, Gabriel, if only more of my directors were like you!

I don't expect the final result to have my cell phone buzzing from agents, but it was a lot of fun and I'm really glad that I did it.  If I am ever given a mob film like the ones I worked on to direct, I think I might find a very small character just like this to play in a cameo.

One additional note - I also didn't know the title.  I haven't asked the director if he knew the title was shared by a noir by one of my two favorite directors, Billy Wilder, featured another flawed tough guy, Kirk Douglas.  I'll chose to think it is a happy coincidence.

Even in my radio days, I always hated my voice.  I am thankful this film required no lines on my part.

Below, my latest (and hopefully not last) stint in front of the camera.

http://vimeo.com/48986160

The password is coutou. Please respect as it is otherwise private.

Regenerate Me - The Horror! The Horror!

He had summed up - he had judged.  The horror! The horror!
-Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness



I recently revisited a favorite author, Joseph Conrad, and specifically, Heart of Darkness.  Most film fans know this was the basis of Coppola's movie, Apocolypse Now.  Conrad's Kurtz was an ivory trader in uncharted Africa whose zeal had led him to make personal armies of the natives, who looked upon him as something of a god.  When Conrad's narrator gets to him, he is a gaunt, ghostly figure who is looking into the abyss.

Kurtz's death in the novel on a couch in the cabin of a tiny steamer encompasses the true nature of horror.  The narrator, the captain of that vessel who has become fascinated by Kurtz, leaves the cabin after his final words and is not even in the room when he dies.  The reader can feel the chill in the room.

"It was as though a veil had been rent.  I saw on that ivory face the expression of sombre pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror - of an intense and hopeless despair....He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision - he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath.  The horror!  The horror!"

Both Kurtzs had come with good intentions, and done things that were horrible - the hanging of heads comes directly from the novel.

Conrad's story about the darkness in the human soul should be the the heart of the horror genre, and it is in classic horror.  The real monster in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is not the creation, but the doctor who goes beyond the desire to save lives to creating life from death.  Dr. Jekyl, and those around him, must come to deal with the darkness in his - and all men's souls - in Mr. Hyde.

Somewhere along the line, the horror genre de-generated (the puns start here) to any excuse to have humans and former humans do horrible things.  So it was with Regenerated Man.

The one-line plot description is "Thieves force a scientist to drink his own formula, turning him into a deformed, monstrous killer."  There isn't really more that you need to know.

John Rosnell, my old friend JR, was DP on this show with his usual crew.  Originally, the director and producer's didn't want to bring on a production manager, and I heard JR complain often about this terrible shoot that he was on.  Remember, JR was more than a DP - he was a vendor.  It was his equipment, and he brought the camera and G/E crew, and he did not take lightly to his crew being put in bad situations.

This was around the time I was leaving the movie with Van, and Stacey kidding me about leaving her on a lousy movie, and me kidding JR about how he was still on his own lousy movie.  As was our way, JR started "threatening" to bring me onto Regenerated Man.  Since there was resistance from the producers to pay an additional person they didn't think they needed, I didn't really think it would happen.

It happened.

Movie sets can sometimes be a reflection of the genre of the movie; comedies can be fun on set, dark subject matters sometimes leads to tense sets because of many emotional scenes that require crew to be quiet and stay clear of actors trying to portray unspeakable things.

Horror films, to me, fall into the category of most genre films - sci-fi, horror, mob films (something I know very well, and which I will explore at some length in good time), etc.  They tend to become more about the gadgetry of film-making, whether it be special f/x, blood, props, etc.  Acting tends to take a back seat, as does craftsmanship like cinematography.  Surely, in the hands of masters like Scorcese or Tim Burton, this is not the case.

That was not Regenerated Man.

We were very much about the SFX make-up of the deformed doctor, a really pleasant actor named Arthur Lundquist.  Don't take the lead in a film where you will spend as much time in the make-up chair as you will on camera unless you're a trooper, and Arthur was.

I came on after the film had started as production manager - nothing new for me at this point.  The producers expected that if they were going to have to pay me - and none of us was getting paid well - I better show them where I was saving them money.

The "money" people on this film weren't movie people - one of the biggest contributors owned a deli that was additionally providing the food for set.  It took a great deal of prodding to get them to understand that cold cuts is not an acceptable lunch for crew.

For up-and-coming filmmakers let me make this clear - an acceptable lunch is a hot meal.  It's the least your cast and crew deserves.  There also needs to be a vegetarian alternative - and that should not just be pasta every day.

It can sometimes be a struggle to get film caterers, who understand how to do this, to service small crews on low budgets.  That means often being creative with other meal sources - restaurants and delis who think of catering as big parties and not the way crews work.

On at least two occasions, I had very good experiences with friends or parents of the director providing the catering - in both cases, they cared, they listened, they responded to suggestions and corrections.

These guys - not so much.

Two of the producers were also playing small parts as thugs in the movie, and if they understood such things, there would have been a lot of sense-memory they could have brought to their parts.

They were the type of producers who loved the title, but thought that paying people meant you owned them, and resented every penny they had to spend.  I got into a number of heated arguments about the catering and their thoughts on my crew.

JR is the only reason I remained - I wouldn't quit and leave him, and the producers wouldn't fire me because they know JR would have pulled the crew.

Throughout Conrad's work, the nature of honor is examined.  In the film adaptation of Lord Jim - absolutely one of my five favorite movies of all time - a sailor who was on a ship where the crew abandoned the passengers - tries to earn back his honor on his own scale.  He finds himself on an island where he helps rid the locals of a thieves who are robbing and abusing them.

He marries the daughter of a high-ranking official of the locals.  When they capture one of the thieves, he makes the decision to let him go, and says if he is wrong, he will pay with his life.  The thief does try to return with others, and while they repel the robbers, the son of the official is killed.  That night, the official makes Jim an offer - leave that night, and he will make no attempt to follow him.  If he is still there in the morning, the official will be forced to have Jim honor his word and be executed.

Jim stays.  For him, running - again - is not an option.  He dies with his honor restored.

There is little heroic about production managing, but I feel just bringing the film in on time and budget is only the basics - you owe it to the producers to make the best movie possible - maybe even better than they deserve or would have thought.

This was the only time in my career where I abandoned that creed.  I was so appalled by these people that my only concern was finishing the movie on time and on budget and moving on.  I specifically remember a funny incident with JR.

JR was lighting the set with Jeffrey, our gaffer.  Now, JR was not a DP you had to rush - he rushed himself.  He would work to help get the lighting done himself.  At one point, I asked what the delay was.

"I'm just need to add a few touches to get the look (the director) wants."

"But are we basically lit?  I mean, it would look ok, right?"

""Well, yeah, but it doesn't ...."

"JR, I dont care.  I'm tired of these guys complaining about how much they're spending and how the crew doesn't work hard enough.  If you've got a key light, shoot the damn scene."

JR understood, and we hurried the lighting.

When the film was done, I asked my name not be in the credits.  What is funny is that it later became a cult classic.  I take no credit for that.

Genre films can be trashy, but they can also be a lot more, and my next experience with a genre film was a mob film, one of many I would go on to do, with a better plot, better actors, and a great producer/director team.