Amy Holden Jones on writing and directing “Love Letters”

Love Letters is an anomaly: It’s a dramatic, heart-felt, non-exploitative feature produced by, of all people, Roger Corman. 

Written and directed by Amy Holden Jones (who would go on to write Mystic Pizza and Indecent Proposal), the film stars Jamie Lee Curtis as a young radio DJ who enters into an affair with an older -- and married -- man.

Give me a snapshot of your background before you wrote and directed Love Letters.

AMY: I was young, for one thing. I had re-written and directed one feature for Roger Corman, Slumber Party Massacre. I had edited several features and had been a documentary filmmaker. 

Roger wanted me to do another exploitation film. He also distributed the Fellini pictures and the Truffaut pictures and so he had an art house distribution network. And it was just the beginning of home video and all that money. So, I convinced him that if he made a film for that art house outlet and for home video, that it would make back its money.

I wrote the film on spec. I pitched the idea to him and he agreed to the idea. 

His basic theory on low-budget filmmaking is one that I think is still true to this day. He felt you could make a film about just about anything, but there had to be some sort of commercial hook. I could write what he would term an art house movie, what would now be termed a festival movie, but it had to have a saleable quality to it. And by that he meant a degree of humor, sex or violence. Many of the major successful independent films have one of those qualities. Tarantino pictures, for example, have them all.

Love Letters is not a very typical Corman film.

AMY: It's the only art house film he ever made, actually.

How did Slumber Party Massacre come about?

AMY: Well that was kind of interesting. I had come out of documentary films and couldn't make a living in them. In those days, it was not the big scene it is now. I had won the American Film Institute student film festival with a documentary. Martin Scorsese was one of the judges of that festival and he used me as his assistant on Taxi Driver and then introduced me to Corman. 

I had no money and I had to make a living, so I became a film editor. I worked for a while as a film editor and was beginning to get successful at it. I realized that if I keep this up, I'm going to be typed as a film editor. I did several smaller movies, one for MGM and a small Hal Ashby movie, and I was going to do E.T. for Spielberg. 

I thought, I'll be a film editor unless I make a movie, so I went back to Roger Corman, who I had edited a film for when I was 22 years old. So I went back and said, “What would I have to do to be a director?” And Roger looked at the documentary and it didn't show him enough about what he wanted, because it was an art documentary in a way. He said, “You have to show me that you can do what I do.” 

I had never written anything, so I was looking for an existing script. I went into his library of scripts, scripts that he hadn't made, and I took several of them. I read one called Don't Open the Door by Rita Mae Brown. And it had a prolog that was about eight pages long. It had a dialog scene, a suspense scene and an action scene.

I rewrote the scenes somewhat to make it better, and then I got short ends from shooting projects -- my husband was a cinematographer. My neighbor was a soundman. We borrowed some lights, used our own house. I did the special effects, and I got UCLA theater students to act in it.

We spent three days and shot those first eight pages. Then I put them together at night on Joe Dante's system -- he was doing The Howling. I would work at night, after hours, on his Movieola and he gave me some temp music cues. 

Then I dropped off this nine-minute reel for Roger that had a dialog scene, a suspense scene and an action/horror scene, to show him that I could do those three different kinds of things which make up an exploitation movie.

He called me up and had me come in and asked me how much it had cost me to do it. And I said it cost about $2,000, which is what it had cost. He said, “You have a future in the business,” and asked me how much I would need to direct the rest of the script. The truth was, I had never read the rest of the script, all I had read was the first eight pages. So I just, out of the air, said “$200,000.” And he said, “Let's do it. You're directing this movie.”

I then finished reading the script and it was a complete mess.

I just took a leap. I called Spielberg and told him the situation and he was kind enough to release me from editing E.T. I rewrote Slumber Party Massacre in about four weeks as I cast it. And, indeed, we made if for $200,000. 

What steps did you take to re-write it?

AMY: I rewrote it to be producible. Once you know how little money you have and what the situation is before re-writing it, that focuses your mind -- a lot. You don't go writing scenes at a football game with thousands of extras. 

You start to think very logically about what you can do and what amount of time you can do it in. And my background as a film editor and a documentary filmmaker certainly helped.

Did you end up using any of the prolog that you shot on your own?

AMY: No, we never did, because none of the actors were Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and in the end we had to have SAG actors, so we had to toss it, which was too bad. But we didn't really need it, as it turned out. 

Where did the story for Love Letters come from?

AMY: My husband and I had written each other love letters. We had been apart after we first met; we met on Taxi Driver. He was the cinematographer and I was Scorsese's assistant. And then we were apart for quite a while. I moved to the West coast and he was on the East coast. So we wrote letters. That was four or five years before. 

I had our daughter when I was twenty-six and did Slumber Party Massacre when I was twenty-seven. I was casting around for an idea for an art film and I came upon those letters. And I thought, well this is really interesting. What would happen if our daughter someday read all of our love letters? How would that affect her? 

At the same time, I saw a movie called Shoot the Moon, which was about an extramarital affair and the traumas of the married man dealing with his wife and the girlfriend. I thought at the time, man have I seen this a zillion times. Forever I've seen the point of view of the man, torn between his wife and the girlfriend. You see it today in Match Point, for example. It's done over and over and over again. 

But I had never seen the story of the girlfriend and what it was like for her. I put that together with the love letters and thought it would be interesting if someone came upon the love letters and realized that their parents had had an extramarital affair; if the love letters were not in fact between her mother and father, as ours were, but between the mother and a lover. 

In other words, what would happen if you were confronted with an understanding of a time period in your parents' life which you never really understood -- none of us have a real idea of what our parents were like in their twenties. How would that affect your life? And I thought it would be interesting if that then thrust her into an affair with a married man, trying to replicate what she saw her mother had.

Basically, it was designed to be a movie about what happens to the woman outside of the marriage, who in fiction is usually painted as a terrible villain and often is a victim who gets left in the end.

Were you writing to a specific budget?

AMY: No, but I knew I had to make it inexpensive and one of the cheap ways to do that is a limited number of locations, because every company move takes up an enormous amount of time. 

You see this a lot on television today. You have something like ER or The West Wing, where they're wandering around those same halls over and over and over, and they're talking and talking and talking and talking. What they're doing is eating up page count. That is a much faster thing to shoot than it is to shoot activities where people move from place to place. 

If there's four different scenes in two pages, you have four company moves, where you have to move the entire company, re-set-up, re-light, re-do everything. And the company move itself takes half the day.

Slumber Party Massacre was all shot between a school and two houses, which were side-by-side. That was it for the locations, so once we had shot the ten pages that took place in the school, we were into those two houses for the rest of the 28-day shoot.

Love Letters had many more locations than that, but basically they were all in Venice. My own house is the main location, so I didn't have to pay for it. We were living in it at the time. So that kept the cost down an awful lot.

Why did you structure the film as a flashback?

AMY: I was doing an art film and unlike most people who seem today to only set out to do art films, I had been working in big commercial movies, like Taxi Driver and the two pictures that I had cut. 

I wasn't fancying myself to be Fellini or anything like that. But I went and read all the screenplays of Harold Pinter, believe it or not, because I felt that this would be high art, and there are some great screenplays in book form by Harold Pinter. Probably there was something in there that inspired the flashbacks, would be my guess. It's certainly an overused device now.

It was originally called My Love Letters. One of the big decisions you make in writing a script is point of view. Multiple points of view are more complicated for a novice writer than one person's point of view. So a lot of debut films tend to follow one point of view. 

For example, Rushmore. They're often coming-of-age stories or single person stories that have some sort of personal quality. The Squid and the Whale is another good example. You have scenes with the parents without the son there, but it's basically that son's story. The way he views his parents is the sensibility of that movie. 

Although you term Love Letters an art film, it’s not a leisurely film. It gets up and running very quickly. 

AMY: Well, I was a ruthless editor. I think of all the things I've done, the thing I was best at was as a film editor. That sounds like braggadocio, but what I mean is that I was better at it than I am as a writer or a director. It really suited my sensibility. I like things to move. To this day, I'm always thinking, "Why didn't I lift that out, why didn't I move it along?" I like to take an audience on a journey and go.

I think Love Letters is an interesting early film, compared to stuff I did later. It changed the way I work to a degree, because I came to see that it lacked humor. I don't enjoy many serious, dramatic movies that don't have, occasionally, some humor in them. I find that it can be too lugubrious.

Crash is a good example of a really wonderful, complicated arty, sophisticated movie, but it's also quite funny.

Life is funny, and I think it's a common mistake that people make doing their first features, to just be so terribly serious about themselves or their subject matter.

Well, the main character is clearly depressed and that affects the tone.

AMY: Well, there is that. Her situation was pretty bad. But when you screen it with an audience, you saw that they really enjoyed the scenes with Bud Cort and Amy Madigan a lot, and you realize that an audience really appreciates some relief from it. I mean, Hitchcock knew that: instead of unrelentingly going in one direction, provide some emotional relief.

How much backstory did you create for the characters? In particular, I'm thinking about the relationship between Anna (Jamie Lee) and her father, where there appears to be a lot going on, but it’s not really talked about.

AMY: I did create a lot of backstory for that. Roger Corman made everyone who directed for him take acting lessons, which I had never had even the faintest interest in. He made all the directors who worked for him take acting lessons with a wonderful old teacher, Jeff Corey, who was a blacklisted actor who taught. 

I would say those acting lessons are what enabled me to write. I didn't really ever study writing or think about writing or have any interest in writing. I was interested in non-fiction stuff, like documentaries, not fiction. I wasn't interested in theater, wasn't a film buff. But when I took those acting lessons, I discovered that the process that the actor goes through was different from what I thought it was and that it's essentially the same one that a writer goes through. 

It's not like you pretend to be the person. You find inside yourself some part of you that could be that person. It could be an axe murderer, but we've all wanted to kill somebody at some point. 

And once you do that with every single character, you try to inhabit their skin and then you sort of free-form write from that person's point of view. You're not standing outside that person and thinking, "What would this person say?" It's much better if you are taking the place of that person, trying to feel the sort of things that they would feel, putting yourself into that person's position. 

Anna’s relationship with her father was pretty crucial in motivating her to do what she did. Instead of being angry when she found out her mother had an affair, she was relieved for her, because the mother had this loveless marriage. So Anna’s basic feeling was that maybe she should be taking a chance, do something that is not typically considered the right thing to do, because it might be the right thing to do.

Do you start with a theme?

AMY: This is one of the few that I didn't start with a theme. I think I started with the situation and probably anger -- anger's a good place to write from. 

I was angry at seeing yet another movie from the husband's point of view, about how tough it was for him when he had an extramarital affair. 

That was an era that many people don't remember so much now, but all movies were from the male point of view. And that same anger on my part was partially behind Mystic Pizza, which was the next thing I wrote. At that time there were endless -- and I mean endless -- comedies, coming-of-age stories about a bunch of guys. Every studio did them all the time. It was the most durable genre and no one had ever done it about women. 

Mystic Pizza was specifically designed to be my Diner. I hoped to direct it and expected to direct it and wrote if for myself to direct. And it is, in many ways, a female Diner. It's about similar issues. 

Did Corman have precise direction on the amount of nudity in the film?

AMY: Yes. He wants sex, violence, or humor. He actually told me that lovemaking wasn't so much required as nudity. And he didn't mind if she could just be lounging around the house nude, but there had to be nudity. He had to have some way to sell the thing. 

It's actually the one thing that troubles me about it. I find some of the nudity really gratuitous. But it was the price we paid to get it made.

I was really impressed with the simplicity of the Polaroid scene. It's a lock-down shot, we don't see the couple, we only see each Polaroid photo he takes of her as he drops it into the shot. It said a lot about the relationship, but it was also very cheap to shoot.

AMY: That's one of my favorite scenes. That's a really good example of how you come up with stuff. Writing for a lower budget really focuses your mind. It doesn't necessarily mean that you're sacrificing quality.

I see so many really big budget movies, where they've had everything to spend and have covered everything sixty ways from sideways, but they never did the hard thinking about what was important in the scene. Because they had the time, they just threw spaghetti at the wall and covered everything. As a result, they never thought about what was actually going on. 

Another example of writing to a budget was your staging of the funeral scene. Instead of showing the whole funeral, with extras and lighting and all, you put the scene outside the church, after the funeral, which was cheaper to shoot.

AMY: Yes. You don't have to light the interior, it's a simple exterior. And the church that we selected was within a couple miles of all the other locations. So even if the company had to move, it wasn't far. The pool playing scene was shot less than half a mile from that church. And the house she lives in is less than a mile from there. So when we did have to move, we didn't have to go very far.

And when we were at a location, we'd shoot out the whole location. When we were in the back bedroom of the house, we shot everything that takes place there. Then we'd shoot everything that takes place in the living room of the house. You shoot everything that takes place in or around the house, then you move. Moving does eat up the most time.

So you were literally writing for locations you knew you'd be using?

AMY: Yeah, I think writing for locations is a good way to go. I really do. 

I remember being conscious when I wrote Mystic Pizza that it would cost more money because there were more locations, that it was a certain type of town. It had one scene that I knew would be very expensive, where there's a drawbridge and a boat.

Did you write the love letters that are read in the script while you wrote the script?

AMY: Yes. They were sort of finessed and re-written. I discovered how audiences pick up narration. They don't understand it unless it's extremely clear and simple. If it's convoluted it's hard to understand when you don't see a person talking at the same time.

Do you show drafts to friends while you're writing?

AMY: It depends on the script. I don't show them partial drafts. I usually do a full draft and it's a very select group of people that I might show it to. 

It's a dangerous thing, because not everybody gives good notes and everybody has a different take. There was nobody giving notes on Love Letters, except for Roger saying we needed more nudity. That one was one of the purest of them all.

Usually if I show a script to five people, I will pay a lot of attention to repeating comments. So if three or four of the five people say "The end doesn't work for me," then I know the end doesn't work. If one of the five says "It doesn't work for me," and four of the five say it's fine, then it's less of an issue. You do have to listen to other people's opinions. An awful lot of people fall in love with their own material when they really shouldn't.

More people should get actors together to read their scripts. That's a luxury you get when you're making a movie, you get your table read and you can re-write after that. And you learn so much when you have your first read-through.

I've done a read-through on all the films, except Slumber Party Massacre. It's really useful. And there are actors all over the place who will do it for nothing, who just love to come and perform. 

Did you get the cast you had in mind when writing Love Letters?

AMY: No, I didn’t get anybody that I had in mind, except for Amy Madigan. I wasn't necessarily thinking of Jamie. She fell in love with the script, and she was at the time a star, off the Halloween movies. 

I think my first choice was Meg Tilly. I was very lucky she fell out, because she was way too soft, really, for the part. Casting is something you kind of learn as you go along with directing. And Jamie was wonderful for it. She's just marvelous in the movie.

James Keach was not at all the first choice. We went to various people and had another actor, who shall remain nameless, who backed out. He was worried about doing a low-budget movie, he was a bigger-name guy who also really responded to the script. He backed out, inexplicably, seven days before we started shooting. He was quite handsome and he and Jamie had really wonderful sexual chemistry. So it was kind of a shame when he backed out. But what can you do? 

Keach was a late replacement. It was quite difficult to find a guy at that time period -- and I think it's still difficult today -- to find someone who will work as the second banana in a movie where the leads are women. They don't like that; they like to be the lead.

Did you do any previews of the movie before it was finished?

AMY: No, we did not preview it at all. Roger trusted his own judgment and he was wonderful about it, actually, both for Slumber Party Massacre and Love Letters. He decided I knew what I was doing and he left me alone. I don't think he made any changes at all, maybe a couple little trims here and there. He would take over whole movies from people who didn't know what they were doing. But he liked the movie and he was proud of it. 

He opened it in Los Angeles and New York first, and got mixed reviews. He was kind of heartbroken at that. Then somehow, and I don't remember how, Siskel and Ebert got it and reviewed it and gave it a rave. That encouraged him in his own opinion and he gave it a limited release. But truly its life has pretty much been on cassette or on television.

What did you learn on this script that you took to other projects?

AMY: First was not to take myself too seriously and put in more humor.

The other thing was painful at the time and this probably still happens to people. The movie is kind of sincere, and you take a big risk when you do dramas, because if it's not really good or if they're female-driven, reviewers make fun of them. The chick film, the weepie, and so on. They look down on them, whereas I think the equivalent of a chick film for guys is a Bruce Willis action film. It’s equally stupid, it just has testosterone instead of estrogen.

Your heart is on your sleeve a lot with a film like Love Letters. You're pouring yourself into it in a way that's very personal. And when it's attacked it can be very painful in a way that doesn’t really happen with a genre movie. That's a negative lesson, because it can make you afraid to take a chance and that's bad. You have to really learn to take those risks with your heart, I think. 

There are several big directors working today who are in the later days of their careers who don't take risks of any kind anymore. They have big budget movies and they are constantly covering themselves in the commerciality of those movies, more than they did in their early work, and not putting inner passion into it. Either the passion is gone or they are too afraid of failure. 

You can't really be that afraid of failure. In writing the script and in going forward with it, I think I had a wonderful youthful exuberance that would be hard to duplicate today probably.

Any advice to writers who are working in the low-budget universe?

AMY: Well, it's a different market in this day and age. It's a good era, in a way, for writers starting out on a low-budget project, because you can actually make a movie for almost nothing. 

I wish that I'd had the technology that young writers have now, because you can take all kinds of risks without risking all that money, if you are bold enough to write and start shooting.

I think the main thing that is still true today that was true then is that as you write you have to both tap into your heart but you also have to be aware of the very practical side of what it all costs and also what sells. It's an interesting mix. 

The world is full of festival movies that never get out or go anywhere. If people are trying to break into Hollywood movies and bigger movies, not make something personal that they're going to put up on the Internet, they have to look at the commerciality of their subject matter. They have to fit what they're trying to say into a framework that is in some form entertaining for people. It has to be meaningful or moving or exciting or funny or dramatic. It can't just be what you'd tell your shrink, you know what I mean? 

People perhaps don't realize that at festivals today, where all the agents go and circulate, they're looking for the movie about the couple who are left out to the sharks when they were diving. They're not looking for the next Love Letters, unfortunately.

If you're trying to break into Hollywood, you have to be aware of something commercial in the project. Take a look at some of the things that have sold out of festivals. For example, Hustle & Flow. It's about a pimp. It's about sex. And money. That’s an easy sell.

How do you write for a budget without cutting off the creative process?

AMY: There are ways to shoot big stuff so that it doesn't necessarily cost as much. If a car explodes in your script and you really want a car to explode and you don't have the money, you can go right to the edge with the car, swish pan around, see the person's face and make an explosion that impacts that person and throws them off their feet and then find the hulk of a car. If it's done well, you'll have the same effect as if you saw the car blow up.

There are ways to get around it and sometimes there are cleverer ways than blowing up a car. People have seen most things already, in special effects. Looking at somebody's reaction to what happened or looking at the aftermath of what happened or looking at it from a totally different point of view, there are a lot of different ways to see something. You don't have to eliminate it, you can imagine a different way to see it, too.

What’s your best piece of advice to someone starting a script?

AMY: Nobody does what I tell most people to do and that's to read a lot of scripts. That's the thing that has helped me the most in my career. 

I remember when I first had to write a horror movie, when I first had to write a comedy, when I first had to write an action film, I would get myself down to the Writers Guild library or the Academy library and I would sit down and read some of the best of the genre. 

If I was going to do a family drama, I would go read Terms of Endearment, or if I was going to go do a multiple character story, I'd read Syriana and Crash. Really read them. Instead, people go and look at the movie, and they think that did it. That doesn't do it. You have to read these scripts. You can study structure and see how really good people make it work.

No one would try to write a novel who hadn't read some novels. No one would try to write a play who hadn't read plays. But all the time people try to write screenplays who don't sit down and read them. The screenplay is a completely different form. 

The vast majority of young writers you tell that to, the way they look at you, you know they're never going to do it.

Dying to make a feature? Learn from the pros!

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• Robert Rodriguez: Sound thinking

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Alan Cumming on “The Anniversary Party”

What was your inspiration to do this movie?

ALAN: Well, first of all, Jennifer and I wanted to work together. We were in Cabaret together on Broadway, but we didn't really do anything together in the show. But we just got on and wanted to do something. We knew we wanted to explore working together, so it came from that.

And we wanted to write something about how we felt about relationships at that point in our lives -- something that was very current for ourselves and something that was honest and open. And also we wanted to use elements of ourselves, or experiences, and put that into a story.

How did you divide up chores of writing and directing?

ALAN: We didn't, really. People understand the notion that you can write together. I think people have more trouble with the idea of directing together. But it wasn't divided up; it was quite smooth. We both would talk. I would do of the shouting and general announcements.

But there were certain actors where we said, “You talk to him,” or, “I'll talk to her.” We were very aware that we get better results with one of us talking to someone rather than the other. 

It's not difficult to direct with someone else; it's actually really nice.

In a way the whole film, with its theme about openness, and it's very much an ensemble thing, and we were using everybody who were our friends and we were using elements of them in the story as well. And the crew, they were all doing it for, obviously, very little money.

It was very sort of democratic, with the crew and everyone. There were no trailers. We all ate together. If someone wasn't working, they'd just lie on the lawn. We tried to open out, ask people's opinion. It's easy to make people feel good about coming to work. You just have to make them feel involved and that you respect their opinion and it's not an autocracy. When you have that attitude, it makes it very easy to have two directors.

Were the actors nervous about doing a digital feature?

ALAN: No, I don't think so. If anything, they were nervous that they would look bad. We all rightly think of video as making you look hideous, shiny and awful. So that was why we got an incredible DP. We wanted to make sure that the film looked good, that was our main concern. 

As exciting as it can be to shoot on video and have that eavesdropping feel, the films that we had seen prior to making ours were ghastly. The technology, the process of transferring from video to film was still in its infancy, and it wasn't looking good.

The scene where the guests give out their presents is a pretty interesting scene. How much of it was written?

ALAN: For that scene, we asked the actors to make up their own speeches for that or to make their own things. We guided them about what perhaps their character might say, what their character's angle might be, but we left it up to them to make up their thing. It was really fascinating.

We shot their stuff and our reactions at the same time. We were hearing it for the first time, which was really exciting. And also, they were really nervous, like you would be really nervous standing up and doing that, because they were actually having to perform something that they had written for the first time, too. It was good -- it worked.

 What was the biggest lesson you took away from the experience?

ALAN: Biggest lesson; Treat people respectfully. There's a sort of vogue, and there has been for decades now, that the director is god and the director is all knowing. 

But when you say to someone, “I don't understand this and I'm asking your advice because you're better at it than me,” by doing that and involving people and making the film truly a collaborative process, you get much better results. You get a better film and you get happier people and get an atmosphere on the set that is truly creative.

CHECK OUT MORE INTERVIEWS AT “FAST, CHEAP FILMMAKING BOOKS.”

Dying to make a feature? Learn from the pros!

"We never put out an actual textbook for the Corman School of Filmmaking, but if we did, it would be Fast, Cheap and Under Control." 
Roger Corman, Producer

★★★★★

It’s like taking a Master Class in moviemaking…all in one book!

• Jonathan Demme: The value of cameos

• John Sayles: Writing to your resources

• Peter Bogdanovich: Long, continuous takes

• John Cassavetes: Re-Shoots

• Steven Soderbergh: Rehearsals

• George Romero: Casting

• Kevin Smith: Skipping film school

• Jon Favreau: Creating an emotional connection

• Richard Linklater: Poverty breeds creativity

• David Lynch: Kill your darlings

• Ron Howard: Pre-production planning

• John Carpenter: Going low-tech

• Robert Rodriguez: Sound thinking

And more!

Write Your Screenplay with the Help of Top Screenwriters!

It’s like taking a Master Class in screenwriting … all in one book!

Discover the pitfalls of writing to fit a budget from screenwriters who have successfully navigated these waters already. Learn from their mistakes and improve your script with their expert advice.

"I wish I'd read this book before I made Re-Animator."
Stuart Gordon, Director, Re-Animator, Castle Freak, From Beyond

John Gaspard has directed half a dozen low-budget features, as well as written for TV, movies, novels and the stage.

The book covers (among other topics):

• Academy-Award Winner Dan Futterman (“Capote”) on writing real stories

• Tom DiCillio (“Living In Oblivion”) on turning a short into a feature

• Kasi Lemmons (“Eve’s Bayou”) on writing for a different time period

• George Romero (“Martin”) on writing horror on a budget

• Rebecca Miller (“Personal Velocity”) on adapting short stories

• Stuart Gordon (“Re-Animator”) on adaptations

• Academy-Award Nominee Whit Stillman (“Metropolitan”) on cheap ways to make it look expensive

• Miranda July (“Me and You and Everyone We Know”) on making your writing spontaneous

• Alex Cox (“Repo Man”) on scaling the script to meet a budget

• Joan Micklin Silver (“Hester Street”) on writing history on a budget

• Bob Clark (“Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things”) on mixing humor and horror

• Amy Holden Jones (“Love Letters”) on writing romance on a budget

• Henry Jaglom (“Venice/Venice”) on mixing improvisation with scripting

• L.M. Kit Carson (“Paris, Texas”) on re-writing while shooting

• Academy-Award Winner Kenneth Lonergan (“You Can Count on Me”) on script editing

• Roger Nygard (“Suckers”) on mixing genres

This is the book for anyone who’s serious about writing a screenplay that can get produced! 

Peet Gelderblom – Re-Cutting “Raising Cain”

What was the very first Brian DePalma movie you remember seeing?

Peet: That's difficult. I was probably a little too young for it, but it may have been "Sisters.” Yeah, but I think the first thing I remember from Brian DePalma was that he was on television, because "Body Double" had just come out, and I saw the clips from "Body Double" and I thought, wow, that would be something I would like to see. But I was too young for it.

I wasn't able to go into the cinema and check it out, but immediately I made a mental note. And I think the name just stuck with me. And I started to check him out, and whenever there was something on television, by him, the BBC or whatever, I would definitely see it. So, it might have been "Sisters.” It might have been "Blowout," I'm not really sure.

My point of entry was "Phantom of the Paradise." It was first released in cinema, and I'd never seen anything like it, and then had to follow up with this guy, Brian DePalma, to see what he was going to do. And the next thing I remember seeing was "Carrie," and really loving it.

I remember it was showing maybe a couple years later at a University Film Society, and I wasn't seeing it, but I was walking by. I could hear what was going on, and I said to friend, “let's stand here for just a second, they're about to scream,” because the hand was about to come up out of the grave. And it was so much fun to just know that was going to happen. And then years later to read about how Paul Hirsch came up with that and the music choice that he made and all that. So, is there a favorite Brian DePalma film?

Peet: Yeah, I think "Blowout" is my favorite. It seems to be the one that combines all of his best qualities, you know, combining hot and cold and his formal expertise and his weird plotting and humor. Yeah, all of that.

He does have both weird plotting and very devious humor and all of those, I wouldn't say it's my favorite, but I do whenever it's on, I can't help it, watch "The Fury." Just because it's a filmmaker working so hard to make this work. The cast is great, and they're all giving it their all and you know, the story doesn't really hold up. But he is just throwing so much at it to make it work that I appreciate that.

Peet: That's a good summation, actually. Yeah, it doesn't really work, but it's just so much fun.

Yes, exactly. One that I have trouble finding that I just love and that I just looked it up (as I mentioned, I was just looking to see the order of things), and I'm surprised that “Obsession” came before “Carrie.” I thought it came after “Carrie.” And that's his first time working with John Lithgow, and it's from a Paul Schrader script. And apparently, the last third of the movie they didn't even shoot. There's another whole act of it.

Peet: Yeah, I think Paul Schrader is still a little pissed off about that. Even, more than a little.

Maybe more than a little. Well, and with every right. But I think what Brian DePalma ended up doing with that movie—particularly when you read in Lithgow's book about the difficulty he had working with Cliff Robertson, and how difficult Robertson was and how he sabotaged every scene he was in to make sure that he would get the close ups, which is such a weird thing to want to do. But I guess that's what he did. It's with that Herrmann score. It's just such a lovely movie that I wish I could find it more often, but it is hard to come across.

So, what did you think of "Raising Cain," the first time you saw it?

Peet: Well, I know it like today, it was yesterday, because I discovered him while he was in the middle of his career. And so a lot of the films that I saw were actually older films of his. And I really liked his thrillers and the films that really carried his own signature. And at the time, he had been doing some other kinds of pictures. I think "Wise Guys," was one of them, I didn't even bother to see that. And, of course, "Bonfire of the Vanities," which was not exactly praised.

It wasn't, but it's not horrible. It really isn't horrible. I rewatched it recently, and it's got some wonderful stuff in it.

Peet: Yeah, they always do. All of his films have wonderful stuff. But anyway, it was pretty clear from the promotional materials and interviews that he was doing something with “Raising Cain,” which sort of pointed towards the fact that he was starting to go back to the source, you know, he was going to do his own thing again. And I was completely ready for it. And I had a girlfriend at the time and I must have, you know, been enthusing a lot about it. And she went with me, when it was out in the cinemas. And I liked the movie very much because I was a die-hard, rabid fan. But my girlfriend, she was sitting next to me, and I could feel she wasn't liking it. And after, I think already about four minutes in, she turned to me and said, “what kind of crazy film is this?” And, you know, this was also in the cinema that we saw it, you know, this was the general consensus. It was like, what kind of crazy thing is this?

Now, would that have been the car scene with Carter, and the woman and Cain shows up in the window?

Peet: It's going off the rails really soon in the original version. I was ready for that because I was a Brian DePalma fan. So, I dug it. But I also could completely understand why the casual viewer would have lots of problems with it. So, that stuck with me. Of course, later I found out that Brian DePalma wasn't really happy with how the film turned out. And when I sort of guessed what he originally had in mind, I thought that would work much better, actually.

Yes, it's much more keeping with “Dressed to Kill” and “Psycho,” where you start the story one way andwe don't learn who the villain is until much later. With that in mind, and with enjoying the film, what was it that inspired the re-cut?

Peet: Well, I was hosting a website with a forum on it, that had a lot of the Brian DePalma fans, who actually made the jump from another forum that was specifically about Brian DePalma. So, there were a lot of Brian DePalma fans there, and they were discussing lots of stuff. And at a certain moment, there was this guy who was talking about an interview book he was doing with Brian De Palma. He must have mentioned “Raising Cain” and that DePalma had said in the interview that he wasn't happy with it. And that immediately piqued my interest.

And I asked Laurent, what was it about the film that he doesn't like? And Laurent said, well, he originally wanted to start with the story of the woman. So, that was the point where I thought, yeah, of course, then that probably means that he would start in the clock store, I immediately thought. So I checked out my DVD, and I tried—you know, the DVDs have chapters—so I tried to reorder the chapters to see how that movie must have played originally. And I couldn't really get it to work. But I still thought there might be a better film in this than was originally released.

So, with that in mind, how'd you make that happen?

Peet: Well, I left it alone for a few years. And at a certain moment, I guess it bugged me. The idea kept sticking in my mind, and I thought, well, why don't I just try it> And I ripped the DVD, and I am a director and editor, so I know how to edit. And I started asking around and Jeff who has a DePalma website knows a lot of stuff about the Brian DePalma. He actually had an old draft of the screenplay. It was called Father's Day at that time, and he was willing to send it over to me. So, I was able to read that. And indeed, the movie started the way I mentioned it, in the shop. But there were a lot of things different back then, because the screenplay wasn't completed. There were some really wild things in there that he just let go because it was too wild, or he went into another direction. But basically it laid out how the chronological order used to be.

It wasn't actually chronological. He made it chronological because, as I heard it, he started to second guess his own creative feelings when the movie was tested and people had a problem with it. He started to mess around some more in the editing, and he changed everything to a chronological order. At the time, he thought, well, this is probably better, because then we get to the action really soon. Yeah, we do. So, that is how it was released, but of course in interviews after that, he has mentioned a lot about the fact that he doesn't really like the film as it was released, and that it should have been different.

Before chatting with you, I sat down and rewatched both versions and took notes to try to figure out what the order was. And what throws it off for me a little bit is the opening shot in the theatrical cut of the park from high up is very much a Brian DePalma opening shot, you know, very close to what he did in “Carrie.” Whereas, the opening shot in the clock store is not really a DePalma shot. It's a little mundane. It's a wide shot. It's interesting, you know that Jenny walks up and sees herself in the heart shaped camera and all that--

Peet: It encapsulates the whole movie, but that's in a different way than the original did.

Yes, exactly. And then as I was going through—and I'm sure you ran into this, it's regardless of whether it's the re-cut or the theatrical one—it's a dream sequence with a flashback built into it. And so it isn't until you get out of the dream sequence that you realize, oh, that was a dream sequence. But then in your mind, you're going well, then, was the flashback real, or is that part of the dream?

And then they've added in narration as part of the flashback to help explain it, which I'm guessing was done in post. And so now they have a narration thing. So they have to keep that up. And then when they switch it around, when you did the version that was closer to what he wanted, it's still a bit wonky, regardless of whether you're chronological or not. And the audience has to go: okay, she's going to the hotel. Is this a dream? It must be a dream, because she's walking into the room and she doesn't have a key. That's the only clue, I think, that it's really a dream. And then obviously it's a dream, because she's killed and wakes up. And then you have the repeat of the thing with the gift and all that.

So, regardless of the order of everything before, that whole section, I think is always going to throw an audience off.

Peet: You're right, but the wonkiness, if you call it that, it is intentional. What he wanted to do, and he has stated this in interviews is, you know, normally with kind of police mystery, there is something going on and you don't know quite what. And then the detectives, they start to ask around. And you slowly assemble information, and it becomes clearer and clearer what actually has happened. And he really wanted this time to fuck with his audience, of course, because that's what Brian DePalma does. And he said, what if all the information the audience is getting is either a dream, it has never happened? Or they don't know if it's happened. Or, you know, it's an unreliable narrator. That was actually the game.

And he's so good at that.

Peet: He's really good at it, but of course you also need to get the audience so far that they're willing to go with you. Because it's a very manipulative way of telling a story. And some people don't like that. So, that's a very thin line that he was walking.

And I think in the editing, he got cold feet. He thought, well, maybe I went a little too far here, and maybe I should do it a little differently, help them out and make everything chronological, and it may have fixed some things. But it created other big problems. The flow isn't really right. It wasn't how he originally imagined it.

I think in a way he tested it, and it tested badly. And after that, they changed it around, and I think probably some of those changes were good, because he also shortened some bits, which were maybe a little too wild, judging from the screenplay that I've read. But I think changing the order was a bad decision. And I think he thinks that too, because as you know, he actually likes the version that I did and it's the "Director's Cut."

So, he fixed some things, and he made other things problematic. It's really funny, you mentioned Paul Hirsch earlier, and he's, of course, De Palma, editor. He originally wasn't the editor on “Raising Cain,: it was someone else or two other people, and it didn't really work out as the Brian DePalma wanted it. It says in the book. He was struggling with it in the editing suite, and at a certain moment, I guess, he fired the previous editor. And he made sure that Paul came in. And Paul, he read the screenplay on the airplane, and he didn't get it.

That's a bad sign.

Peet: And he read it again, still on the same flight still didn't get it. He went to the Brian DePalma, he asked about it and still did not get it. And while he was editing, I'm afraid to say he never really got it. And that was an eye opener for me. I realized that pretty late on, because that book came out sometime after thae "Director's Cut" had come out on "Blu Ray."

He was also asked, he was giving a Q&A somewhere, and somebody mentioned the Director's Cut, that it was edited by some random guy, and DePalma actually preferred that version. And Paul Hirsch said, well, he should have hired the random guy. Well, in a roundabout way I did it. But don't get me wrong, though. Paul is brilliant. He must have done a lot of things right as well, because I think the finale of the film, which all plays in slow mo, I think he edited that all over again. And that works brilliantly.

It does. If you remember what he did at the end of “Carrie,” and how he fixed the split screen issues in the end of “Carrie” and made all that work. The montage he put together in the middle of "Phantom of the Paradise," even the closing credit montage in “Phantom the Paradise” in which you really recap all the characters. That's a really good editor.

I understand that for legal reasons—in putting together your recut and making it what became the official Director's cut—you had to use all the elements from the theatrical cut. You had to use all of them, and obviously couldn't add anything, because you didn't have access to that. Was that tricky, where you had to use absolutely everything?

Peet: No, it wasn't tricky. I was just lucky. When I made my own recut, and De Palma wanted it to be part of the Blu ray, the lawyers of Universal also requested that the recut of the film would only be possible if it wouldn't add something and wouldn't take something away. And, yeah, I was just lucky that it works like that. The only thing I did was change the order around, and there's a little change in the overall length of the film. That's because I repeat something, and I make some dissolves little a differently.

That repetition is really helpful, to pull us back to where we need to be on the timeline. If you didn't have the scene that Jenny and her friend played by Mel Harris, I think you would get a little disassociated as to, okay, it’s the same time, they're in the park.

Peet: Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. And this must have been one of those things where an editor can help a director to achieve what he wants. Because I can imagine that they tried out that order in the editing suite. And that they thought it wouldn't work, because it's too jarring, you don't know where you are in the story, whatever. And the little repetition that I added really helps to get the viewer—you know, it is still jarring—but immediately after that the audience realizes, “okay, it's this moment, right,” and then they get along with it again.

I’m wondering if today's audiences today might be a little more keyed into time jumps than they were back then?

Peet: Definitely, because since then, of course, we've had movies like "Memento" and "Pulp Fiction," which are, you know, messing around with traditional ways that stories are told.

I think part of the problem was that you have this huge flashback, and at a certain moment, the movie goes on again, after that flashback. But it's such a long flashback that Brian DePalma thought, well, maybe the audience will never understand that a flashback can last that long. So, let's not do it. And I think, you know, the movies that I'm mentioning, other ones might have helped to educate the viewer to the modern age where this is not much of a problem anymore. You know, you can, take people to amazingly difficult things. You just watch what Christopher Nolan has been doing, and they are willing to go along as long as you entertain them and reward them.

In comparing the two versions as closely as I did, your version, although it's just a tiny bit longer, it actually seems faster. Because once Carter gets on that Carter train where he has to go all the way to the end, that's happening more in the middle of the movie, instead of the beginning. That just gives it a propulsion that the theatrical version doesn't have because it starts with Carter, and then it goes to Jenny for a big chunk, and then it's back to Carter. You're getting a little surprise of, oh, John Lithgow is evil in the first five minutes. But it's John Lithgow, so how big a surprise is that going to be in a DePalma film, really? I don't think he's ever been in a DePalma film where he wasn't ultimately evil.

Well, it's true. And then switching it so that we're doing the Psycho/Dressed to Kill thing, following a character and then she suddenly dies. But then DePalma’s brilliant touch of, no she is not dead, when Carter sees her on the TV screen is a huge shock. And I think it’s more of a shock in your version than in the original one, and just because of the pacing of things.

There is still though in both versions my favorite moment, and it's one of those things where I wish I could go back and see it again for the first time: when the elevator door opens and you see "Dr. Nix" coming forward with the baby. And you realize he is alive, that he isn't a manifestation of Carter's brain. He's really there, and we've been toyed with all the way up to that point with obviously, “he's not there because he's never in the same shot with anybody else.” He's doing the same tricks that he does with Cain. It's just such a delightfully DePalma moment, that and the appearance of Jenny on the TV screen, are just great moments that only work because the filmmaker has brought us up to them so skillfully.

Peet: Yeah, you're right. You know, that is the original flow as it was intended. It's also funny to me that a lot of people at the time didn't really care for the story of Jenny, because you know, you were already on this track of John Lithgow doing his crazy thing, and then you all of a sudden get a love story. I loved it at the time, but it didn't play that well. So, it's kind of brilliant that if you start with it, it really gets the attention that it deserves, and people actually really like it, and then as soon as John Lithgow does his thing, like you say, it becomes really propulsive, the whole narrative goes toward that ending.

Yeah, it's just great, and of course, we can’t not that mentioned DePalma's lovely play on "Psycho’s," ending scene with Simon Oakland explaining everything. To have France Sternhagen do that same thing in her own way. And then, of course, that classic DePalma shot taking us all the way through the building for no other reason than the fact that he can, in fact, do that. And just watching it, thinking, wow, she's timed exactly where she goes off kilter, and they have to pull her back, and it all fits with the lines as she's saying them.

When he does that sort of thing, like he did at the beginning of "Bonfire," it's just so much fun to watch him do it because you realize not a lot of filmmakers can pull that off and keep the right pacing and make it work. It's just a great moment. He's such a devious, master storyteller.

And then let's just jump ahead: You make the cut, and you heard that he loved it. How did that happen?

Peet: Well, I think a year after I put it online on IndieWire. I talked about what I was doing, and I thought, wouldn't it be great if I make a video essay about my findings, and then it was posted on IndieWire. And he said, I think the whole version should be on IndieWire. And that, of course, you know, in terms of rights, we were thinking like, can we do that? Actually, you can't really, but we decided to do so anyway, and then put up that it was for educational purposes. And we just decided that whenever Universal lawyers would call, like, what are you doing, get this thing off? We would get it off. But it was on there, and I believe it's still visible actually.

They don't really care for Raising Cain at Universal, but Brian DePalma, he found it. And about a year later I started reading in interviews—I think there were at least five—that he actually preferred this version over his own version. And that was of course already completely wonderful.

Much later, I think about five years later, the Blu Ray was announced by Shout Factory. And all of a sudden Jeff from the Brian DePalma site—I mentioned him before—he got an email from DePalma. He said, “I just watched the Raising Cain recut and I think it's great. It succeeds in things that we couldn't get right the first time. It is what I originally wanted the movie to be.” And he thought it should be part of the Blu ray and he said, “Maybe you can make this happen? If I have to call somebody, then I will.”

So, that is how it happened. It was a big surprise for Shout Factory. I think they already finished the Blu ray, and then all of a sudden they got this call from the director, like okay, yeah, well, you have to add something.

There's now going to be a second disc.

Peet: Yes. I never talked to Brian DePalma, but he basically gave me free rein. He said, “Okay, I've liked this version, this recut and it should be on the blu ray.” So, Shout Factory asked me to make that happen. We used the original master, the same master as was on the normal blu ray, and we actually re-edited that according to the recut that I have made and put it on the blu ray.

That's an incredible story. What a thrill for you and what a vindication for him that somebody somewhere did this because of today's technology. It'd be like if you got a letter from Orson Welles, saying thank you so much for restoring "Magnificent Ambersons," that's exactly the movie I set out to make.

Peet: It’s still a little bit of a dream when I think about it. It's really great and I know I've emailed him after that to try to get, you know, some of the correspondence about it, but he's not the kind of guy who answers those emails. But I do know actually from Laurent who did the interview book that DePalma’s very happy with the blu ray as it is right now.

You feel, sort of, it has validated his film again. So, that feels great.

Dying to make a feature? Learn from the pros!

"We never put out an actual textbook for the Corman School of Filmmaking, but if we did, it would be Fast, Cheap and Under Control." 
Roger Corman, Producer

★★★★★

It’s like taking a Master Class in moviemaking…all in one book!

• Jonathan Demme: The value of cameos

• John Sayles: Writing to your resources

• Peter Bogdanovich: Long, continuous takes

• John Cassavetes: Re-Shoots

• Steven Soderbergh: Rehearsals

• George Romero: Casting

• Kevin Smith: Skipping film school

• Jon Favreau: Creating an emotional connection

• Richard Linklater: Poverty breeds creativity

• David Lynch: Kill your darlings

• Ron Howard: Pre-production planning

• John Carpenter: Going low-tech

• Robert Rodriguez: Sound thinking

And more!

Write Your Screenplay with the Help of Top Screenwriters!

It’s like taking a Master Class in screenwriting … all in one book!

Discover the pitfalls of writing to fit a budget from screenwriters who have successfully navigated these waters already. Learn from their mistakes and improve your script with their expert advice.

"I wish I'd read this book before I made Re-Animator."
Stuart Gordon, Director, Re-Animator, Castle Freak, From Beyond

John Gaspard has directed half a dozen low-budget features, as well as written for TV, movies, novels and the stage.

The book covers (among other topics):

• Academy-Award Winner Dan Futterman (“Capote”) on writing real stories

• Tom DiCillio (“Living In Oblivion”) on turning a short into a feature

• Kasi Lemmons (“Eve’s Bayou”) on writing for a different time period

• George Romero (“Martin”) on writing horror on a budget

• Rebecca Miller (“Personal Velocity”) on adapting short stories

• Stuart Gordon (“Re-Animator”) on adaptations

• Academy-Award Nominee Whit Stillman (“Metropolitan”) on cheap ways to make it look expensive

• Miranda July (“Me and You and Everyone We Know”) on making your writing spontaneous

• Alex Cox (“Repo Man”) on scaling the script to meet a budget

• Joan Micklin Silver (“Hester Street”) on writing history on a budget

• Bob Clark (“Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things”) on mixing humor and horror

• Amy Holden Jones (“Love Letters”) on writing romance on a budget

• Henry Jaglom (“Venice/Venice”) on mixing improvisation with scripting

• L.M. Kit Carson (“Paris, Texas”) on re-writing while shooting

• Academy-Award Winner Kenneth Lonergan (“You Can Count on Me”) on script editing

• Roger Nygard (“Suckers”) on mixing genres

This is the book for anyone who’s serious about writing a screenplay that can get produced!

James Davidson: “Hal Ashby and the Making of ‘Harold & Maude’”

Get us started, since I know nothing about you, except that you wrote this terrific book. Tell me your background: Where did you come from? What do you do?

James Davidson: Well, I grew up in St. Louis in the 60s and 70s. I went to Northwestern University for the radio TV film program, started in 1976, and graduated in 1980. So, I have a bachelor's degree from Northwestern and that's where I kind of got my interest in film study. I had two classes where we wrote papers and were encouraged to study films with a scholarly approach to them, so to speak. Then when I got out, I didn't pursue any graduate work or take that any farther. But I continued, of course, to be interested in seeing movies.

I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1981. It's really a great place to live in terms of film watching: the Pacific Film Archive and Berkeley, there's lots of great places in San Francisco to see movies. And it's also where Harold and Maude was mostly filmed, was filmed entirely, actually, I should say, although it's not really a movie that's associated so much with San Francisco, like Bullit or Vertigo.

I ended up starting a video production business and that's mostly what I did for 30 some years, but I just continued to be kind of an amateur film buff, sort of scholar on my own. I'm a big fan of Alfred Hitchcock. I co-administered a Yahoo Hitchcock discussion group for some years and that was fun.

Hal Ashby was just a long-time interest of mine. From high school, I saw Harold and Maude, and The Last Detail and Shampoo, sort of in a short period of time and I noticed that this name kept coming up in the credits as the director being Hal Ashby, who I'd never heard of. And, you know as well as I do that, before the internet came about, you know, it was difficult to get a lot of information about people. So, Ashby is kind of out there as this unknown figure to me. I mean, I got whatever information I could about him. But I really loved his movies and in the 90s, I did write an article about him in an online publication called Images Film Journal, just summarized his career the best I could and the movies. I hadn't seen them all at the time. Since the 80s, of course, some of them were kind of hard to see, you know?

They were. Looking To Get Out was a particular one for me. It's like, where can I find Looking To Get Out?

James Davidson: Yeah, I remember when it came out, and I saw an ad in the newspaper, and I thought, oh, great, a new Hal Ashby movie, and then it disappeared. Just like Harold and Maude, which disappeared very quickly from movie theaters. Same thing happened with Looking To Get Out and then it was available on a VHS tape for a few years.

Anyway, in 2009, a young writer named Nick Dawson wrote a very good biography of Hal Ashby and that sort of stimulated me to get going a little bit and maybe do some research on one of the films. I wasn't going to attempt to write a whole another biography, because Nick's biography was great. But in 2014, I just had some free time, I was working from home and I just decided, hey, you know, this is the time to do something. And Harold and Maude occurred to me, because it was a film that I knew that so many people loved and felt so strongly about, you know? So many people just seem to have a deep personal connection to Harold and Maude, and I felt like very little had been written about it.

Let's jump back. Can you think back on when and where you first saw Harold and Maude and what you thought that first time?

James Davidson: Yeah, I saw it on the first time it was rereleased. My parents had actually gone to see it when it first came out and I was only 13. I remember my mom coming home and telling me a little bit about it and I thought, well, what a strange topic for a movie which probably a lot of other people thought. But when it was released in 1974, and in a movie theater, it was given a major rerelease by Paramount in 1974, when it had been kind of growing in popularity. And a lot of college aged kids and colleges were requesting and renting the movie. And Paramount wisely, you know, to their credit, while they didn't handle the first release of the movie very well, they did continue to own the movie and they decided to give it a major rerelease in 1974, which is good.

It got out into the public and a lot of people saw it, including myself. I was 16 ,but a lot of people saw it I think then for the first time. And they rereleased it again a couple more times in the 1970s and I go over a little bit in the book how the money making was done and when Paramount's started making money on the movie. Which probably was much earlier than they told Colin Higgins and Hal Ashby and Ruth Gordon, all who had a back end on the profits from the movie. I found a very interesting letter to Colin Higgins from his accountant, written in about 1981, talking about Paramount and what they were telling him about the profitability of the movie, when the movie was going to make money. He seemed to be a little cynical about the expenses they were writing off on the film.

When you saw it for that first time, in that big re-release, what did you think?

James Davidson: I adored it. I mean, I thought it was a great movie. I wasn't offended at all by any of the subject matter. I thought it was funny. I thought it was touching. I thought it was serious. It had this wonderful way of going along between the serious and the comedic. I thought it was a superb movie and I was seeing a lot of great movies at that time. That was the time, when we were in high school, was a really good time for movie making.

I probably saw it a month or two after I saw Chinatown, which is one of my favorite movies and came out that summer of 74. But yeah, I adored it and I like Cat Stevens’ music, had been a Cat Stevens fan for several years and his music really enhanced it. And I was just curious about the movie for many years because, like I said, there wasn't much written about the movie, you know, where did this movie come from?

It's famous, or infamous as a movie that people see again and again and again. You know, it ran here at the Westgate theater in Minneapolis for over two years. At least one young man who at the time had seen it 150 times, I think and that's during its two-year run. How many times have you seen it?

James Davidson: That's a good question. It's hard to answer. You know, like a lot of people when I saw it in 74, then it was rereleased again, I think a couple years later, I saw it again on its re-release. But I didn't go multiple times. I mean, what I would do would be to take people and go, have you seen this movie? So, I’d go to see it with various friends of mine. I saw it probably in college, must have seen it once or twice, you know, and then when it was on home video, I bet I've seen it a couple dozen times.

So, you said that you had some time on your hands, I think in 2014, and you picked Harold and Maude as something to dive into. What was your research process, because even at that point, a lot of the main players on and off screen were gone? So, how did you approach it?

James Davidson: I started out by going to the Margaret Herrick library, which is in Beverly Hills, and made a trip down there. My wife and I made a trip down there and I did an initial day of research there, going through the files on the movie. And then I did a second trip. We lived in the Bay area at the time. So, I did a second trip down to Los Angeles shortly thereafter, because I hadn't gotten everything I needed. You know, I attempted to reach out and contact as many people as I could. Hal Ashby has been dead for a long time. Ruth Gordon, Colin Higgins, they've all passed away. I attempted to solicit Bud Cort for some help on the book. He was not responsive.

He is famous for that.

James Davidson: Yeah, and that sometimes happens. You know, it's hard to get people to participate even for a simple interview a lot of the time. I did contact Nick Dawson, who had written his biography on Hal Ashby and Nick was very helpful. Nick gave me all of his research notes to use, which were very helpful.

And I did get a hold of Jeff Wexler. He had worked on the movie as a kind of a prop master and general assistant to Hal Ashby and he was very helpful because he'd been there all through the making of the movie. The actors and some of the other people were there for a few days and Jeff was pretty much there the whole time. So, he was very helpful.

I talked to the woman who was Ruth Gordon’s stunt double, her stand in. I talked to her on the phone and talked to a fellow who was a just had a bit part in the movie. And I had some emails with Ellen Geer, who played Sunshine in the movie and Ellen gave me her recollections of the film. But it was a long time ago and, you know, for a lot of these people it was a week or two work, you know.

Nearly 50 years ago. What were you doing at work 50 years ago on a Tuesday?

James Davidson: Eventually my wife helped me locate Tom Skerritt who lives up in Washington State. Towards the end of my process, Tom gave me a call which was very nice of him. We talked for an hour or so about how and about the movie and that was great.

Your discussion with him that you touched on in the book, confirmed for me something I've thought for years. Because it took me a while to piece together who this M. Borman was in the film. And then I realized from the voice that it was obviously Tom Skerritt. And then in watching his scenes with Ruth Gordon, there's at least one point, maybe two, where he says something to her and her response has no connection with what he just said. And I realized finally, and you confirm that for me, that he was improvising with her. And Ruth Gordon doesn't do that. Ruth Gordon says the lines that were written.

And to have kept that in just added to their scenes together: he was on one plane, and she was on another. And I just think it's part of Ashby's genius that he allowed for that confusion for an audience member to go, he's saying one thing, and she's saying another, why is that? Did he talk about that at all?

James Davidson: Yeah, he talked about it to the extent that, you know, he was called into the movie kind of at the last minute. He wasn't supposed to be in it. I cover that in the book and I did find out some of the reasoning behind that. It’s in the book. It's one of the more interesting stories.

Just tell us quickly what happened to the poor actor who had the part before him?

James Davidson: Yeah, he cast an actor, his name escapes me at the moment, but he was going to play the motorcycle cop. The first time they got rained out. The second time they tried to shoot it, he took off on his motorcycle, and the motorcycle crashed because he hadn't put up the kickstand. And when he did turn it, it hit the ground. Very rough and he was hurt. He wasn't seriously injured or a long-term injury, but he couldn't be in the movie.

So, then they put the scene off again and then the last-minute Hal persuaded Tom Skerritt to come up from LA and do that part. So, Tom got the part at the last minute, he had to kind of come in quickly and learn his lines quickly. And he is just a more of an improvisational actor, and just came from a different generation and a different mindset for acting than Ruth Gordon did, who was a well-known Broadway actress, and you didn't diverge from the lines. A lot of the time she was doing, you know, Eugene O'Neill or somebody like that, and you're not going to start improvising on him. In this case, it was Colin Higgins.

And then there was also the issue of the fact that she couldn't really drive a car very well. So, her stunt double had to do a lot of her driving. So, a lot of the part where she's driving is her stunt double who is 20 years old. They created a rubber mask of Ruth Gordon's face for this young woman to wear while she's driving.

And it also explains why even when it's not raining, Maude will put up her hood before she starts to drive.

One of the other things you mentioned that it took me a long time to notice—and I am one of those people who'd seen the movie a lot—was during the motorcycle scene, the last one with Tom Skerritt, Bud Cort whacks himself pretty seriously in the side of the head with that shovel. And once you see it, you can't unsee it.

James Davidson: Right. I had never noticed that in seeing the movie and it was brought up while listening to the commentary on the blu ray. He doesn't break. He carries on the scene and Hal used it in the movie. It adds a degree of realism.

It does. I mean, they had to get going and so he just kept going. Was there anything else you found out in your research that sort of surprised you that you hadn't noticed before?

James Davidson: I guess one thing that surprised me was I ended up going back to UCLA to the Special Collections Library at UCLA. And I went through Colin Higgins papers. They're all held at UCLA. Hal Ashby's and the production notes are at the Beverly Hills at the Margaret Herrick. But it was really useful to go to look through Colin Higgins notes.

I guess one of the more interesting things about it is the fact that Higgins was a graduate student in UCLA. And he wrote this script intending it to be just a 20-minute student film. It was the last of his three scripts that he'd written. And then with the encouragement of a lady named Mildred Lewis, he expanded it to from 20 minutes to a full-length feature. And her husband Ed helped sell the film to Paramount.

And the film really got produced almost as it was, in the way he had initially written it. It’s kind of crazy to think that and I think it probably only could have happened at that time, in the New Hollywood era in 1971, that a script could get written by such a novice to screenwriting from an original not from any source and be taken almost word for word and transferred to the screen. No changes were made, there weren't any rewrites of any significance that I could find. The film was more or less made by Paramount the way he'd written it.

I was surprised there'd been a short script. I didn't know it started that way and I was really surprised that the very first scene in the movie, the long continuous shot up to Harold hanging himself, is right there in the short, described exactly as it ended up being in the film.

James Davidson: As a matter of fact, Higgins said the reason he knew he could do it as a student film is that he found a place that would rent him a camera and crane that was all in one, so that he could do that shot where the feet get followed and then the camera lifts up to be behind Harold as he hangs himself. But yeah, that's the one constant as he expanded it. I mean, the finished one is quite a bit different from the original one. Although the central story of Harold and Maude meeting and falling in love is the same basically. He did expand quite a bit. He added a number of characters. He had the entire bit about the computer dating and the three girls. He added that a lot of Uncle Victor, I don't think Uncle Victor was a character, he wasn't a character in the original.

Was Glaucus in that, in the original short too?

James Davidson: Glaucus, yes, Glaucus was. I think his name was different. But yeah, he existed at the beginning, because they needed somebody to kind of help them with some of the things that they did. But yeah, Glaucus was in it.

That was another thing that always puzzled me before I could find out anything about Harold and Maude was Why is Cyril Cusack so highly billed? And he has one line, which is I think, “whatdya want?” and even I knew that he was a pretty well-known British stage actor, because the theater I was working at the time when they stopped running Harold and Maude were running some Pinter films, and he was in one of those. So, it always puzzled me as to why would an actor of that stature come all the way to America to do one line. And then of course, I find out that because Hal Ashby got started as an editor, he was pretty fearless in editing.

James Davidson: Yeah, the original cut of the movie was three hours long, which is kind of amazing. If you think about it, it ends up being 91 minutes. And yeah, there were a number of Glaucus scenes in the in the script that were cut completely. And he apparently really tried to keep some of them in, but they just didn't work as they were. So, he ended up having to eliminate almost all of them except for that one scene where Harold comes in and she's being sculpted in the buff. And even then, his part is very brief and then they talked about him a few other times.

And then the other thing that was kind of surprising was there was an entire character that was completely excised from the movie, Madame Arouet. She had a pretty significant part in the original script. She's in a lot of the scenes with Maude and he just felt the character was unnecessary and it just got cut and cut and finally ended up completely excised from the movie.

Hal made some good decisions about he reordered some of the scenes, because there's a lot of discussion between him and Robert Evans, the production chief of Paramount that I found where he talks about the importance of getting Maude into the movie early enough, so the audience doesn't lose interest. Keeping her scenes, the right order so that you know, we don't lose track of Maude, because we do get off onto a lot of Harold stuff at various points with the computer dates and Uncle Victor.

But he does a great job of really keeping track of Maude and developing their relationship over the course of it's just a few days in the movie, of course, but really well done. I mean, he was such a brilliant director and I could go on and on about Ashby. There's a great documentary that Amy Scott did about how that, I'm sure you've seen. It's great that even you know, of course it's very posthumous. But you know, he finally gotten some attention with the biography and the documentary. Really nice that finally some attention has been paid. His films are so great, and unfortunately his demise was kind of quick and he's just never got the opportunity. I talked about that in the book a little bit. He didn't get the opportunity to get that career renaissance, you know, while he was alive to get that real appreciation, which he would have if he if he lived.

So, I'm guessing that if there was anyone you could have talked to who was gone by the time you started his research, it would have been Hal. Who else would you really like to have been able to at least ask one question of and what would that have been?

James Davidson: Well, I tried to contact as many people as I could. I would have liked to have had Charles Mulvehill, who was Hal’s associate producer contribute to the book. For whatever reason he didn't want to. And there were several questions at the time about things that happened during the making of the movie. There was one particular incident that I could only find sort of peripheral information about that had to do with some conflict with Paramount over a driver: somebody had called in the middle of the night and woken everybody. I touched on it in the book, but I couldn't get all the details that I wanted. That kind of thing is helpful to have, you know, people to get clarification on what exactly happened. There were a lot of the people though, that either I couldn't get or wouldn't participate in the book.  

A lot of them though, are on the record quite a bit for various interviews, and what not. Robert Evans and Peter Bart, both of whom were the Paramount production people, they've been interviewed extensively about the movie and the process of how it came about. I would have liked to clarify one thing: Peter Bart has said that there was a meeting before the movie started production where Hal Ashby came in with Cat Stevens, and they talked about making Harold and Maude into a freaky musical and this and that. I just don't think that happened the way he remembers it. Stevens was not picked to be the musical part of Harold and Maude until they were really making the movie. They were in San Francisco shooting it and he only came to the set in San Francisco where they were filming. So, I think he's remembering that wrong.

I do have one question about that and maybe you can answer it because, you know, we know that Cat Stevens came into the project late. They were still shooting and he did come up with two songs and one of them he taught to Ruth Gordon. But what's always puzzled me was—it's just such a dumb film techy question—when it came to Don't Be Shy, which Cat Stevens has said along with, If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out, were both essentially demos that he gave them thinking he was going to redo them later with more instrumentation. Don't Be Shy is exactly the right length for what happens in that shot. And I've always wondered: Did they have it when they shot it? Did they say to Cat Stevens, this is your slot, you need exactly X number of minutes? Do you have any idea how that worked?

James Davidson: I can't say for certain that I got out of anybody's mouth. But my guess is that no, they didn't give Cat an exact time and say, hey, you know, Don't Be Shy needs to be three minutes and 12 seconds or whatever it was. My guess would be that Hal edited the sequence to the song.

But Jim, it's all one shot. From the time Harold puts the needle on the record until the time that he kicks his foot off the stool and you can hear the rope swinging as he swings. The song ends at that moment. Which is why it's always puzzled me as to, you know—and it's like I say, it's a stupid film geek question. Did they get lucky? Or did they already have the song? Or what? So, it may be one of things will never know.

My other question that I would ask if I had Hal Ashby sitting in front of me and again, it’s another stupid question, is the point in the movie which the people in the Harold and Maude world called The Look, which is when Harold breaks the fourth wall and looks right at the camera. To my eye, it appears to be in slow motion. If you look at Vivian Pickles, she blinks, I think Harold blinks. It's clearly been slowed down a little tiny bit, which would have been something he would have had to do in post yet. Again, stupid film geek thing, you know, this is 1970-71 when they shot it. He would have had to make an inter-negative of it to do that and like all special effects at that time, there would have been a slight shift and there is none. Do you know anything about that moment?

James Davidson: I really don't. I know, they said that it was not planned, that it was improvised.

Well, next time you see it, look at it. I believe it he actually switches into slow motion in order to draw it out just a little bit longer to make that part work. But again, because it's over 50 years later, we're just never going to, we're never going to know. Do you have a favorite moment in the movie?

James Davidson: The closing sequence, the intercutting, between her going into the hospital and him waiting all night and then driving to the point in Pacifica, where the car goes over. And that was not done in the script that way. That was not written in the script that way. That was all done by Hal in the editing room.

Because there was dialogue in the hospital and that's clearly been cut.

James Davidson: Yeah, I love that sequence and it's set to of course very great piece of music, Trouble by Cat Stevens. And it's just a really, it's a great way to conclude the movie. And then you get the car going over the cliff, which they apparently had a lot of trouble with and there is that awkward still, which I guess he had to do. Again, that would be that would have been a good question to ask Hal, you know, I guess that had to be done maybe to match sound or something.

I think he was just trying to draw the moment out so that it was more of a moment that you had to watch.

James Davidson: Apparently, they only had one camera that got the—they had a ton of cameras shooting it—but there was some problems with starting the shot and some cameras rolled and other cameras didn't and some cameras had malfunction.

Yeah, that's every filmmaker’s nightmare.

James Davidson: And especially on that one scene where the car gets wrecked. Now, I should mention about the car that, after the book came out, I didn't have a lot of information about the car but after the book came out, I was contacted by a gentleman named Don Kessler and he works for a man who actually recreated the Harold and Maude hearse/limo. This gentleman expended quite a bit of money, doing an exact reproduction of the limo hearse. And he brought it to, we had a book signing in 2016 at the Western Railway Museum, where the rail cars located that was Maude's home. They brought the car, and I did a book signing and people could go through and tour the rail car.

Is the rail car still set up as her home?

James Davidson: It's not set up as her home like it is in the movie. Everything was taken out that they put in and it was reverted to what it is, which is a 1930s Pullman or something railcar. But the core of it, the carpeting and the some of the glass, things like that they are still there. You know, obviously a lot of the objects are taken out.

Right! Is there something that people often just get wrong about the movie that you think the book might help correct?

James Davidson: Well, one thing comes to mind, which is that some people have speculated that Cat Stevens does a cameo in the movie. And that's wrong, because the scene that they point out that he appears to be in was filmed before really Hal had even made a final decision on Cat Stevens being used. It's the scene at the at one of the funerals and she is standing there, and the camera looks across at her, at Maude, and there's a man standing near her who appears to resemble Cat Stevens: has a black beard and looks a little like him. And the timing of when that scene was shot, it can't be Cat Stevens. Aside from the fact that there's just no record of it. So that's, that's a minor point. I think that people get wrong.

Since the book has come out, since you wrote the book and it's been published, what else has come to light? Or who's approached you with new information? Or what has the book done to open up the world of Harold and Maude even more for you?

James Davidson: The most significant is Don contacted me about the car and all the work that was put in on the remake of the car. And they had some information about the original creation, the original Perce Jaguar car, you know, that they just couldn't be that forthcoming with it. It was apparently made by the same carmaker that made the Batmobile and some of the other crazy 1960s cars. I would have liked to have had more detail about that. I have talked with him some about it. I mean, I would probably if I was doing the book again, I would have more of an expansion on that.

Second edition? We need a second edition.

James Davidson: Yeah. Maybe it's not a huge part of the movie, but it is an interesting part of the movie.

And very well remembered by everyone.

James Davidson: Yeah, Colin Higgins originally wanted just a little British roadster, an MG. And Hal and the production designer for the film decided that a Jaguar would have more kind of punch, because they were very popular at the time.

You know, when the two-year anniversary of Harold and Maude at the Westgate happened here in Minneapolis, I was still in high school. But I had access to a lot of film gear, a lot of Super Eight film gear. And I also knew people who were working on the celebration. So, I was able to pretty much follow Ruth Gordon and Bud Cort around for the two days they were here and shot a documentary. I'll put a link to that in the show notes and I'll send you a link you can see. It's primarily looking at what they did when they got to the Westgate Theatre, but I did follow them around for two days. They would go from a press thing and I would run and get on a bus and try to follow them to the next press thing.

But because I knew the son of the film critic at the Star Tribune paper, I got to go to dinner with him and with Bud Cort. I don't remember a lot of it and I wasn't savvy enough to ask the right questions that I should have. Just because you know, I was 14 years old, 15 years old. What do you want? Give me a break. But I do remember Bud Cort saying the question that he is asked most frequently by anybody anywhere is, Did you really crash the car? And he would always say yes, the car is really crashed.

And so, all these years later, more than 50 years later, you've literally written the book on Harold and Maude. Why do you think it's survived and why it's so popular?

James Davidson: Well, people just are so personally responsive to the movie. They love it on a personal level. And I think that has something to do with the philosophy of Maude character. And a lot of people connect with that.

A lady came to the book signing who had a shirt that she'd made up that had some of the quotations that Maude makes in the movie. And you know, somebody brought Oat straw tea and ginger pie. They had a lot of these things. They really take it personally. They love those little touches. They feel a deep connection with both the Harold and the Maude characters.

And it maybe says something that, you know, this is a movie that's about death in a way and fake suicides and is a little morbid sometimes and has severe black humor to it, but people connect with it personally.

They love it and it's a great movie and it's a wonderful film and it's just got some quality that everybody connects to.

Dying to make a feature? Learn from the pros!

"We never put out an actual textbook for the Corman School of Filmmaking, but if we did, it would be Fast, Cheap and Under Control." 
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★★★★★

It’s like taking a Master Class in moviemaking…all in one book!

• Jonathan Demme: The value of cameos

• John Sayles: Writing to your resources

• Peter Bogdanovich: Long, continuous takes

• John Cassavetes: Re-Shoots

• Steven Soderbergh: Rehearsals

• George Romero: Casting

• Kevin Smith: Skipping film school

• Jon Favreau: Creating an emotional connection

• Richard Linklater: Poverty breeds creativity

• David Lynch: Kill your darlings

• Ron Howard: Pre-production planning

• John Carpenter: Going low-tech

• Robert Rodriguez: Sound thinking

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Write Your Screenplay with the Help of Top Screenwriters!

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Discover the pitfalls of writing to fit a budget from screenwriters who have successfully navigated these waters already. Learn from their mistakes and improve your script with their expert advice.

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John Gaspard has directed half a dozen low-budget features, as well as written for TV, movies, novels and the stage.

The book covers (among other topics):

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• George Romero (“Martin”) on writing horror on a budget

• Rebecca Miller (“Personal Velocity”) on adapting short stories

• Stuart Gordon (“Re-Animator”) on adaptations

• Academy-Award Nominee Whit Stillman (“Metropolitan”) on cheap ways to make it look expensive

• Miranda July (“Me and You and Everyone We Know”) on making your writing spontaneous

• Alex Cox (“Repo Man”) on scaling the script to meet a budget

• Joan Micklin Silver (“Hester Street”) on writing history on a budget

• Bob Clark (“Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things”) on mixing humor and horror

• Amy Holden Jones (“Love Letters”) on writing romance on a budget

• Henry Jaglom (“Venice/Venice”) on mixing improvisation with scripting

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• Academy-Award Winner Kenneth Lonergan (“You Can Count on Me”) on script editing

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This is the book for anyone who’s serious about writing a screenplay that can get produced! 

Editor Dody Dorn (“Memento”)

How did you get interested in film? Was editing what you always intended to do?

DODY: No. It wasn’t. I grew up in LA and my father worked in the film industry.  All of the female role models that I had were schoolteachers.  So, I just thought, I’ll be a schoolteacher.  It never occurred to me that I could do something other than that.

Aside from my father, everyone else in my family was the scientist of some sort.  When I got out of high school, I actually went to City College where I was taking math classes.  As a product of my times, I got interested in being in the workforce and not going to school.  So I started looking around for work.  And it became apparent that the film industry was a place where I could get a job without a formal education.

So, I did a lot … a lot … a lot of odd jobs in film. I was in extra, I was an assistant to props, I was a production coordinator, I did some scripts supervising, I was the location manager, a lot of things.

It sounds like a great way to learn how movies are made.

DODY: Yes it was.  It was great. I was the assistant to the producer and the assistant location manager on a movie of the week for Dick Clark productions call Elvis that was directed by John Carpenter, starring Kurt Russell.

When the film was over, they decided to make a theatrical version of the film and they brought in a different editor. The producer asked me if I was interested in staying on and working in post-production. I thought, sure. I’m curious. I’m just a curious person. So I said sure.

So I said yes to that and I self taught myself all of the things needed for being an assistant editor. From there I never looked back, because I really liked having such clearly defined skills. It was a very concrete skill set and it was marketable.

I wasn’t into film as a kid, I didn’t go see a million movies. But once I started working in film and seeing the alchemy, I fell in love with film and then I started to teach myself film history. Seeing classic movies. I’m still an avid classic film watcher. Most of the movies I watch are classics or art movies or foreign films.

I became fascinated by film and the magic of editing. And I took it from there.

You say you were self-taught as an assistant editor. How did you do that?

DODY: I called a friend and I said I’m getting this job as an assistant film editor, what do I need to know? And I learned over the phone the difference between the emulsion and base, how many perfs per frame, how many feet per second, etc.

I called the rental houses and learned all the names of the pieces of equipment that were used.  In those days, it was a pretty straightforward mechanical process, in terms of the gear.

The job of being the assistant editor, especially in a film that has already been cut--it was a recut basically--was that of being a librarian, along with distributing the materials to the other departments that they needed for completing their parts of the recut.

I learned the names of every last single part of every piece of equipment, probably in a couple of hours. I know it sounds very mundane, but that was what I needed to know, so I learned it.

And I was very active, going and talking to all the people in all the facilities where we were working. I learned all about the lab and what was in the lab and how things were done there. I just had really good communication skills with the providers of the services. Whatever communication I could have, I did have, and learned that way.

Did you have any union issues?

DODY: No, because I got into a union on my very first job.

How did you do that? When I talked to Carol Littleton, about half of our conversation was about how tough it was for her to get into the union.

DODY: I don’t even know how much of this is legitimate or not legitimate, but I was working for union company and I was gathering my days. I worked for long enough that I got my days and I went to the union and I got my checkbook out and I said, “Here are my days.”

I met with the field rep at the time and I said I’m ready to sign-up. And it went from there, I signed up and I was in the union. Because I was so forthright, just standing there with my checkbook open, maybe the field rep just thought, “Ah, she’s just a good kid.” I don’t know.

You said you self taught yourself film history. Do remember what you found to be the most useful?

DODY: There are so many great books out there about cinema, and I just went back to the early ones. Eisenstein and his theories about editing are fascinating. I was just voracious, watching and reading what I could. But that was later, by the way. The first two or three years, I was just doing my job and feeling good about having a marketable skill.

And then once I knew it inside and out, it became kind of boring, and I started to look deeper. And then I started working in sound, and when I was working sound I was examining the film in a different way. Because as an assistant film editor, you’re not really examining the film. You’re really more of a librarian.

Now it is easier to examine the film in its progressions. It wasn’t so easy in the days of 35mm. Because you’re handling the film with such kid gloves. You were just popping it up on the Movieola and watching the cut as it progressed. You, as the assistant editor, were cleaning it and repairing splices and making sure it didn’t get damaged. You weren’t necessarily in dailies, you weren’t necessarily in the discussions between the director and the editor. And that was the thing that kind of bummed me out. I was very appreciated as an assistant, but that is what I did. I was an assistant. I wanted to do more.

And so I went over to sound. At the time, a lot of people said, why you moving into sound? It was looked upon as a step down. For me, I am just curious by nature, I like to learn new things. So I felt I had learned as much as I could as an assistant editor, and I didn’t see myself getting into the room with the film editor and learning about cutting from that.

So I became a sound assistant. And very shortly thereafter, I was cutting sound. When you’re cutting sound, you see the editor’s version come through and then the new version comes through and you see what’s different and you begin to understand what the impact is.

My main things that I cut were dialog and Foley. And cutting Foley was very instrumental in teaching about editing because it’s all about rhythms. And again, because you’re watching the same material over and over and over again.

When cutting dialogue you also learn about rhythm, because you see how the cuts are made. Sometimes because they made them in the middle of the sentence. You saw which parts of which sentences could go together, and where you can make those joins. And what the impact of those things was.

So this lateral move was a very conscious choice on your part?

DODY: You know, I’m not all that sure that it was. I’m not sure that it was conscious. Mainly it was a form of appetite, more than a maneuver. I think of myself as a naïve person. In terms of politics and how to get ahead. Positioning has never been one of the things that I wanted to do. I figured I should just do what I do as well as I can. And see what happens.

But because I’m so curious, and so willing to go sideways or down or up or around, I learn a lot more.

So how did you move into the position of editor?

DODY: The same way. I was a sound editor, and then I was a supervising sound editor, and then I started a company. At some point, again, it became kind of boring, because I was doing the same thing, doing it by rote.

And then I wanted to move back into the picture department. I had been a sound editor and a supervising sound editor, by then, for 10 years. I couldn’t go and be an assistant editor. So I started to look for work as an editor. And I found that I couldn’t get arrested. So I went back down to the bottom, and started working for free. As a picture editor.

I worked on shorts and low budget features. I did something in Germany that was not for free, but for low pay. If it needed editing and I found it interesting, I would edit it. I was not making the salary important. That wasn’t important to me. It was important that it was interesting to me.

Do you feel that you were not getting opportunities that guys were getting?

DODY: I have to say I did not perceive that, if that was true. I did hear, once in a while, someone would say, “Oh we’ll hire him, he’s got a wife and kids.” And that would gall me. Because I did not feel that should be a criteria for filling a position. Especially a creative position.

And I have to say, I struggled quite a bit to become an editor. By struggle, I mean I worked a long time for low or no pay. And it was difficult to get into a position where I was considered.

By then, with all my work on sound, I had worked with some great directors. But those directors were not interested in giving me a shot as a picture editor. So that was frustrating, but I understand it – you need to know that someone can do what you need them to do. It’s a really important position.

What was the first movie you worked on as an editor?

DODY: I did a movie called Floundering. Peter McCarthy directed. He was a producer. He produced Sid and Nancy. And that was a no pay job. After that I did an extended cut of Terminator 2 for Jim Cameron.

And then I did Guinevere with Sarah Polly and Stephen Rea.

Looking back on it now, do you recommend the approach you took, the whole process of learning?

DODY: I do recommend it. I have recommended it to quite a few people. One thing about life is that it is not a thing where you just work and you arrive. It is a series of ups and downs. It’s a journey. To look at the goal as an endpoint, I think can cut you off from a lot of opportunities. If that makes sense.

Have you seen the results of that advice?

DODY: One guy in particular, Matt Clark, who has cut several films for Kirby Dick. And Matt is a guy came to me with a question that most people have, maybe not expressed this naïvely. He called me up and he said, “I want you to tell me how I can get work at the Studios.”

And I thought oh no. And I said, “Are you sitting down? Have you got a pencil and a piece of paper? Never ever ever ever ever call anyone ever again and ask ‘How do you get a job at the studio?’”

And then I gave him my recipe. It’s not really a recipe, it’s my advice. And I was very forthright about it. And he followed it pretty aggressively. And he became a film editor.

One of the things that I said--and I learned this from somebody else--when I was fresh out of high school or looking for work, I had one of those very similar conversations. I was meeting somebody that I’ve known from my father’s business. And I said, “I’m thinking of working in film.”

And he said, “What do you want to do?” And I said, “Oh I’ll do anything.”

And he said, “Never say you’ll do anything. Say you are a this or you are a that.”

And that is something that I took forward and I take seriously. I am a film editor.

With Matt I said, “You want to be a film editor, do you have any money? Do you have enough money to live for a year without working? Will your parents help you out?” It was that kind of conversation.

Because what you need to do is, you need to edit. You need to edit whatever you can. You just keep editing.

I wasn’t just editing anything that came along when I was working for no money. I always made sure that it was something that I would be proud to have on my resume. If at all possible.

There is one film on my resume where I noticed that the director changed the credit to an Alan Smithee film, so that must’ve been one where I needed to pay my rent. But for the most part, I tried to make sure that I was making my decisions based on the project and not on the money.

What project do you think you learned the most from or that provided the most challenge?

DODY: That’s interesting, because I feel like I’m learning all the time. I think I’m in a state of constantly learning.  I’ve learned on every project, so it’s a hard thing for me to answer. It’s like saying which one is your favorite child?

Okay, let me ask this: While you were teaching yourself film history, were there any films that really jumped out at you?

DODY: All That Jazz was really remarkable. Also I would say Bonnie and Clyde is another one. There’s a kind of poetic quality to the editing that I think is really exciting. I think it also took a lot from the French New Wave.

I still see a lot of foreign films, and I see a lot of classics. I’m not, for some reason, all that interested in contemporary films.

Are you an editor or an audience member when you watch these films?

DODY: Oh, I’m an audience member. If I’m watching the technique, I feel that it is self-conscious. On the other hand, in my career when I’m reading a script, I’m always looking for scripts where the editing gets to be a character.

Like in Memento, the editing is a character. I did another film, Guy, where the editing is a character. It’s a point of view film, and the point of view was a cameraperson who is a character. And so that person is a filmmaker and a cameraperson, making a documentary. And the way it is cut has to represent that person’s personality.

Self-conscious editing, if it’s justified, I love. Just to be self-conscious for no good reason is not interesting to me.

Requiem for a Dream was, I thought, self-conscious. I did not enjoy the self-consciousness of that. But I felt they were pushing the envelope for a reason. But it wasn’t something that I responded to.

And now an example of where the self-consciousness worked for you?

DODY: Well, All That Jazz is a great example. The way the editor and the director together placed the sound and the image, it does grab your attention. When the sound drops out during heart attack scene, there’s not a person in the theater who isn’t wondering what happened? What’s going on? They’re suddenly conscious, and thinking that the projector is no longer making sound. At least, that’s what I think happens. That’s the way I felt when I was watching it.

It is certainly a wake up call. It wakes you up. You’re not just rolling along.

You see, there’s this funny thing about editing. It‘s all supposed to be invisible. And I think there is value in that. That’s what the match cut is all about. But it is equally valid to have a strong hard cut that jars you, if it has a narrative purpose.

What were the special challenges you’ve dealt with on Memento?

DODY: Among the things that Chris Nolan and I talked about were, How much of the repeated material needed to be shown in order for you to understand that not only were you seeing the same thing again, but it was the exact same moment again? Because those are the clues that were laid that told you that things were going backwards. Nobody says or announces, there is no subtitle upfront, that says this is going to go backwards.

We did things with sound and music that were very identifiable. So if it was Muzak in the bathroom, it was a very identifiable piece of music. But we also use the exact same pieces of film. They weren’t necessarily the same length. They were often much shorter. And we wanted it to be ever shorter and shorter throughout the course of the film.

And so we were just kind of testing that, to see how little it could be before you to recognize it. And of course once the pattern is set, then there’s a rhythm about how fast we were jumping back-and-forth.

And the other funny thing about it is, that it is not really backwards. It is something that is folded in half. So you are going backwards in the color and forward in the black-and-white. And so the beginning and the end are the starting point of the story and as you are marching forward, you are getting to the middle.

And so just understanding that was fun. It was a very frustrating script to read, because you have to keep flipping pages back-and-forth and back-and-forth, because it’s confusing. But that was enthralling to me.

It was fun. It was really fun. My mother was a mathematician, so I have that in me. It was kind of like a puzzle. Like I was doing my own little puzzle. And it really required a lot of intense focus, but it was very very well laid out in the script stage. We only rearranged one scene. Everything else was exactly as it was structured in the script.

What did you rearrange?

DODY: There was a point in the middle of the script where the jumping back got too frequent. So we join two sections, and dropped one repeat.

Did you do any audience testing with Memento?

DODY: No. We showed it to some people, but it wasn’t really a test. And I think that was the right decision. It is not the kind of film where you could gather a response from the test. People always come out of that film looking like they’ve been hit on the back of the head with a 2 x 4. And I think that’s one of the most gratifying things about it. Because the whole film is a wake up. It wakes you up.

And there are some people who are really irritated by it. And I liken that irritation to something I said to Chris in our first meeting. It reminded me of the book called If On A Winter’s Day A Traveler.

In that book, at I think close to the end of the first chapter, some of the text is repeated. And then the author addresses the reader straight out of the page, saying “Oh, and now you’ve noticed that some of the text is repeated.” And I thought, hey I don’t want to hear this, I just want to read a story. But I wasn’t the editor of that book. Reading the script of Mementoand thinking that I might have the opportunity to be the editor of that, that was very exciting.

But as a viewer, I can understand how some people might be irritated by it. It’s a matter of taste, if you want to be played with like that. Many many people just go into the theater and they want to be carried down that stream, they don’t want to be woken up.

Have you had any experience with any of the films you’ve worked on being tested with audiences?

DODY: Yes I have.

How do you like that process?

DODY: I don’t like it.  Things need to be tested to be sure that audiences are following and that they understand. It depends on what kind of the film it is. So if you want people to understand, you might have to test.

I think I don’t like it, because I don’t like all the politics involved. It’s a stressful process.

Any final advice? For someone wanting to get into the business?

DODY: The clearest advice I would give is do your best to find projects that you can believe in and work on those. And the rest may or may not follow. It’s a very tricky business. And it’s a tricky life. On some level, all you have is now. So you better make sure that what you’re doing now is something you enjoy.

Dying to make a feature? Learn from the pros!

"We never put out an actual textbook for the Corman School of Filmmaking, but if we did, it would be Fast, Cheap and Under Control." 
Roger Corman, Producer

★★★★★

It’s like taking a Master Class in moviemaking…all in one book!

• Jonathan Demme: The value of cameos

• John Sayles: Writing to your resources

• Peter Bogdanovich: Long, continuous takes

• John Cassavetes: Re-Shoots

• Steven Soderbergh: Rehearsals

• George Romero: Casting

• Kevin Smith: Skipping film school

• Jon Favreau: Creating an emotional connection

• Richard Linklater: Poverty breeds creativity

• David Lynch: Kill your darlings

• Ron Howard: Pre-production planning

• John Carpenter: Going low-tech

• Robert Rodriguez: Sound thinking

And more!

Write Your Screenplay with the Help of Top Screenwriters!

It’s like taking a Master Class in screenwriting … all in one book!

Discover the pitfalls of writing to fit a budget from screenwriters who have successfully navigated these waters already. Learn from their mistakes and improve your script with their expert advice.

"I wish I'd read this book before I made Re-Animator."
Stuart Gordon, Director, Re-Animator, Castle Freak, From Beyond

John Gaspard has directed half a dozen low-budget features, as well as written for TV, movies, novels and the stage.

The book covers (among other topics):

• Academy-Award Winner Dan Futterman (“Capote”) on writing real stories

• Tom DiCillio (“Living In Oblivion”) on turning a short into a feature

• Kasi Lemmons (“Eve’s Bayou”) on writing for a different time period

• George Romero (“Martin”) on writing horror on a budget

• Rebecca Miller (“Personal Velocity”) on adapting short stories

• Stuart Gordon (“Re-Animator”) on adaptations

• Academy-Award Nominee Whit Stillman (“Metropolitan”) on cheap ways to make it look expensive

• Miranda July (“Me and You and Everyone We Know”) on making your writing spontaneous

• Alex Cox (“Repo Man”) on scaling the script to meet a budget

• Joan Micklin Silver (“Hester Street”) on writing history on a budget

• Bob Clark (“Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things”) on mixing humor and horror

• Amy Holden Jones (“Love Letters”) on writing romance on a budget

• Henry Jaglom (“Venice/Venice”) on mixing improvisation with scripting

• L.M. Kit Carson (“Paris, Texas”) on re-writing while shooting

• Academy-Award Winner Kenneth Lonergan (“You Can Count on Me”) on script editing

• Roger Nygard (“Suckers”) on mixing genres

This is the book for anyone who’s serious about writing a screenplay that can get produced! 

Coleman Hough on writing "Bubble"

What was going on in your career before Bubble came about?

COLEMAN: Before I started Bubble, I had written a movie for HBO about the life of Katherine Graham and I was developing a TV series with some producers in Los Angeles. The thing for HBO, I was hired to do it, I did it and it was completed, but it's never been produced. It's still in development. Apparently, one of the re-writers is Joan Didion, which is kind of cool. If you're going to be re-written by anyone, Joan Didion's the one.

I went to Los Angeles and was developing this TV series. I ran into Steven and he wanted to know what I was doing. I told him and we started talking about working together again. He said that Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner had commissioned him to do six films in this new format, day-and-date release. And he said, "Why don't you write the first one?"

I was thrilled. And then he said, "I don't want to use actors, I want to use just people in the town. And I want there to be no scripted dialogue; I want it to be all improvised." So then I thought, well, what am I going to write?

He had an idea; he wanted to do a tale of jealousy that took place in a factory, a love triangle. So I said, "Well, what kind of factory?" And he said, "I'm thinking about an animal testing facility." And then we started talking about the political implications of that and we decided we didn't want that overlay of political implications.

We started brainstorming about other factories. I was researching industries in the Midwest, because I knew he wanted to film in the Midwest because it was during the re-election and Ohio specifically was such a hot swing state. I found two doll factories in Ohio and Indiana, the only two remaining doll factories in the country.

I started making some calls. I didn't tell them what I was doing, I just said I was interested in making dolls and I wanted to know if they did tours of their plant. So I went with a location manager and it was this fun research trip for two weeks, with a week in each town. It was really great; it was like working as a site-specific playwright. I fell in love with the Ohio town, because it was right on the Ohio River.

From the people I met in the town and the feeling I got from the town, just by observing the life that I had landed in the middle of, I fashioned this story. And then I presented it to Steven and he liked it. We made some adjustments and that gave us our shooting outline.

The fun thing, the great discovery, was that he wanted me on the set every day, because he wanted to be constantly incorporating the stories of the actors into the story.

So I found my job to be the best job of all, because I was there to put the non-professional actors at ease. Steven called me The Human Green Room, because they would hang out with me. I would listen to their stories and we'd share stories and we'd talk about things we'd done and I'd ask them a million questions.

Their stories were so great and so rich. So, whenever I would see Steven, on a break or whatever, I'd say, "Okay, I've got a good one. You've got to get Debbie to talk about …" whatever story they had told me that day.

So you really established give-and-take with them -- you told them stories from your life as well?

COLEMAN: Exactly. For example, the scene where Rose is taking a bath in the house she's cleaning is a story from my life. I've always wanted to put that scene in a movie because I used to take baths at parties. When I was in my 30s I went through this weird phase where I would just disappear and take a bath at a party, because my idol Zelda Fitzgerald used to do that.

I've always wanted to put that in a movie and I thought, what if she takes a bath in the house where she cleans? And so, that day Misty, the actress, was very apprehensive about wearing the nude suit and being in the bathtub. So I told her that story from my life and it put her at ease. She just thought it was so funny and it just made it more delicious for her to do it.

How did you create the characters once you had the story roughed in? And did it change once you cast the non-actors?

COLEMAN: I had a clear idea of the characters before we cast the actors. We cast the actors based on the characters I'd imagined. When Steven and I were reviewing the audition tapes, the criterion was, are these the people that I imagined? So we didn't have to make any adjustments to the story, because they were the characters.

 So, Debbie just jumped out, she was Martha, and Misty was Rose. They couldn't have been more perfect. We found them, they found us.

How difficult was it for you to not write the dialogue and let the actors make it up on-camera?

COLEMAN: It was very hard for me at first, because that's what I write. I'm a playwright and dialogue is what I love to write.

I felt a shift -- Steven always talks about a writing head and a making head, which is developing a film and then actually making it. And it's true. So I got to experience that in terms of listening to their cadences and pointing out to Steven the things that really spoke of their characters. Like Misty would say, "Oh, yeah," that was one thing she said that was so much a part of that character.

We filmed in the bait and tackle shop for a long time. I would listen on the monitor through all the shooting, and I was thrilled when that woman said, "The darker the water, the darker the bait." I said, "Steven, you have to start there. It's such a great line."

So it was kind of like writing it as I heard it. It was such an honor, because it was like not making it up in my head, but listening to it and catching it. Which is what you do when you immerse yourself in a world or a culture, you start to hear certain phrases or certain intonations. That was a challenging adjustment to make.
I always thought dialogue was so important to me in writing scripts and I couldn't imagine what that would be like to relinquish the control of that. But it was thrilling. On the first day of shooting, we did the lunchroom scene, where's there's an awkward silence and then Rose says, "Do any of you all smoke?"

I got chills when I was watching that, because of the silence. That's what I love to write; in fact, in a lot of my plays the stage direction says, "There's an uncomfortable silence between them." And the fact that they just trusted that silence, and the sub-text in that line "Do any of you all smoke?" I just couldn't have written anything better than that! Just by putting them in that situation, it was amazing to see the organic response.

There was a deleted scene on the DVD, where the police detective talks to a doctor about Martha and we learn about her brain tumor.

COLEMAN: I never signed on to that. That scene was an explanation about why Martha had headaches and why she committed the murder.

Was that scene in your outline?

COLEMAN: No, not originally.

It reminded me of the scene at the end of Psycho, where the psychiatrist, played by Simon Oakland, takes us through a completely unnecessary explanation of what's wrong with "Norman."

COLEMAN: The scene was not organic to the feeling of Bubble.

How aware were the actors of the story, and the murder, as you shot it?

COLEMAN: They knew something was going to happen. We filmed in sequence, so that they would live the story. So they only knew as much of the story as they needed to know that day.

One time Debbie, who played Martha, came in and said, "I know I need to set this up, because this thing is going to happen later …" And I said, "Debbie, don't worry about that. You know as much as you need to know today. It's fine. It will all take care of itself."

And I think that was the beauty of working that way, because it allowed them to immerse themselves in the whole thing and be in the moment with it. Especially in the interrogation scene. We did that in one take. One take. We used two cameras and it was just this incredible dynamic between Debbie and Decker.

There's a lot going on in that scene for Debbie, because as her character she is denying a murder that she, as an actress, really didn't think her character did.

COLEMAN: That's the thing about Debbie. As a person, she is so in the moment, so alive in her guilelessness. She's an incredibly guileless person, loving, good, and she wants to look for the good in everyone. So I think in that moment when she saw those photos of what she'd done to Rose's neck, she truly was shocked. It made her cry, which made all of us watching it on the monitor cry.

Did the story change at all while shooting?

COLEMAN: Yes. It wasn't originally in the outline that Kyle's mom would be hired at the factory. That was an idea that came while we were shooting.

And I love that the manager of the factory introduces her as "Kyle's Mom."

COLEMAN: I also wrote in the outline that the scene in Kyle's bedroom between Rose and Kyle was written as a make-out scene. Steven and I discussed the possible awkwardness between them, and I said, "Misty is so comfortable when she talks about tattoo parlors, she loves to hang out in tattoo shops. Since Dustin has tattoos, why don't you get her to touch Kyle's tattoo and maybe that will spark some sort of seduction?"

And what happened was even better. That was one of the scenes that I could never have written that way, it was amazing, the tension between them. That tender awkwardness. It was lovely.

And Kyle's Mom was also not supposed to talk in the scene where the police tell Kyle that Rose is dead?

That was another example of the power of filming in sequence, because at that point she was so in the scene that she just said, "What? Something happened to Rose?" She just piped in. Laurie Lee, who played Kyle's Mom, definitely entered into that scene.

But then there's another scene, the scene that followed it, where she says to Martha, "She was killed; she was murdered; she was strangled last night," or whatever. And that's because I didn't hear anyone say that Rose was murdered. We kind of left that out. So I said to Steven, "I don't think anyone's said ‘murder’ or that Rose was murdered yet."

And that's why Laurie Lee emphasizes it in that take.

What was the benefit for you of having Soderbergh edit the movie while he was shooting it?

COLEMAN: It was great, because he was open to suggestions from me. Every two or three days he'd show me what he'd done, and we'd go over the story and discuss where it was going.

It was really fun, it was such a collaboration. It filled me with total confidence about directing something of my own. I really learned about the whole process of trusting the story.

Were there any other lessons you took away from the experience?

COLEMAN: Trust was the biggest one. It was also an experience about instinct: finding the doll factory, finding the story, trusting that not writing dialogue was going to be a rich experience.

But the thing I took away from Bubble was trust: trusting the process of filmmaking.

Why did you call it Bubble?

COLEMAN: That was Steven. When he said, "Let's write a film," he also said, "Let's make a movie called Bubble." And that informed my search for the story. Bubble is open to interpretation; it means a different thing to each person. But to me Bubble represents our stories, the fragility of our stories.

How did you feel about the film being part of the grand experiment of releasing a movie to theaters, pay TV and DVD all on the same day?

COLEMAN: I think the whole day-and-date release idea is an amazing idea. Why should we be forced into the business construct of a two-hour movie with movie stars? People aren't going to stop going out to movies just because they can see them at home. They'll see more movies.

I just think it's a window that opens up more opportunity for young filmmakers to experiment and not use movie stars and have a way of bringing their films to more people.

What the best advice you’ve ever received about writing?

COLEMAN: I’s funny. When I was sixteen, I took a course in my school called Global History. And my Global History teacher said that the art of letter writing was dead. I challenged him on that. He said that the art of letter writing was dead because people reported, they didn't tell stories anymore. So I took that as a challenge and that was the beginning of my writing.

What advice would you give someone who wanted to create their own outlined-but-improvised movie?

COLEMAN: I'd say listen. And trust what you hear.

Dying to make a feature? Learn from the pros!

"We never put out an actual textbook for the Corman School of Filmmaking, but if we did, it would be Fast, Cheap and Under Control." 
Roger Corman, Producer

★★★★★

It’s like taking a Master Class in moviemaking…all in one book!

• Jonathan Demme: The value of cameos

• John Sayles: Writing to your resources

• Peter Bogdanovich: Long, continuous takes

• John Cassavetes: Re-Shoots

• Steven Soderbergh: Rehearsals

• George Romero: Casting

• Kevin Smith: Skipping film school

• Jon Favreau: Creating an emotional connection

• Richard Linklater: Poverty breeds creativity

• David Lynch: Kill your darlings

• Ron Howard: Pre-production planning

• John Carpenter: Going low-tech

• Robert Rodriguez: Sound thinking

And more!

Write Your Screenplay with the Help of Top Screenwriters!

It’s like taking a Master Class in screenwriting … all in one book!

Discover the pitfalls of writing to fit a budget from screenwriters who have successfully navigated these waters already. Learn from their mistakes and improve your script with their expert advice.

"I wish I'd read this book before I made Re-Animator."
Stuart Gordon, Director, Re-Animator, Castle Freak, From Beyond

John Gaspard has directed half a dozen low-budget features, as well as written for TV, movies, novels and the stage.

The book covers (among other topics):

• Academy-Award Winner Dan Futterman (“Capote”) on writing real stories

• Tom DiCillio (“Living In Oblivion”) on turning a short into a feature

• Kasi Lemmons (“Eve’s Bayou”) on writing for a different time period

• George Romero (“Martin”) on writing horror on a budget

• Rebecca Miller (“Personal Velocity”) on adapting short stories

• Stuart Gordon (“Re-Animator”) on adaptations

• Academy-Award Nominee Whit Stillman (“Metropolitan”) on cheap ways to make it look expensive

• Miranda July (“Me and You and Everyone We Know”) on making your writing spontaneous

• Alex Cox (“Repo Man”) on scaling the script to meet a budget

• Joan Micklin Silver (“Hester Street”) on writing history on a budget

• Bob Clark (“Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things”) on mixing humor and horror

• Amy Holden Jones (“Love Letters”) on writing romance on a budget

• Henry Jaglom (“Venice/Venice”) on mixing improvisation with scripting

• L.M. Kit Carson (“Paris, Texas”) on re-writing while shooting

• Academy-Award Winner Kenneth Lonergan (“You Can Count on Me”) on script editing

• Roger Nygard (“Suckers”) on mixing genres

This is the book for anyone who’s serious about writing a screenplay that can get produced! 

Lee Wilkof on "No Pay, Nudity"

Tell me what it was that made you decide, hey, at this point after stage and TV and movies, I want to direct.

LEE WILKOF:  It was something that was gnawing at me for the last 10 years, just something that I always wished I had done. I never said I wish I wasn't an actor, and I wish I had been a director. But it was something that I just felt that I thought I could do.

And I would say oh, maybe nine years ago, I was in a kind of a fallow period and I had been friendly with this young man, Ethan Sandler, we had met at this theatre festival, the Williamstown Theatre Festival. We've done a play together. He was a young, in his 20s, maybe, maybe early 30s. And I decided, I said I think we should I have this idea for a story. Let's write it together. And let's direct it together and then we'll write it for me. As it shook down, you know, I'm not, it wasn't for me, I decided it was not something that I didn't want to direct it and be in it.  And then I realised the character was I was not really, the right character for it. And then as it turned out, we didn't end up co-directing it and he got the screenplay credit. And that was kind of how it played out.

But it took it took and we wrote it I think together eight years ago and then it sat in my on my computer for at least five years and then I dusted it off when I was doing a play in Chicago, and I was free during the days and I looked at it and I said, this is good.

I happen to be working with Nathan Lane. And we were doing a play at the Goodman “The Iceman Cometh.” And I said, I said, would you read this, this screenplay that I wrote. And I was hoping he'd get back to me eventually. And he got back to me the next day. And he said, This is really good. And I said, would you play Herschel, if I got this made? And he said, Yes. And that's really when the ball started to roll.

Why did you decide you weren't right to play the part? Because it kind of feels like you would be. I mean, was just you didn't want to direct and act?  

LEE WILKOF:  I didn't want to direct and act. To say that I wasn't right for it, I think, didn't mean, as it turned out, I wanted more of a leading man. But it would have worked, I think with a character actor, but I didn't want me directing my first film. I just couldn't do double duty. I admire those people that can, but I just I just couldn't. I couldn't multitask to that level. And maybe this had a little to do with it. Although I think I'd already made the decision by the time the investors came on, and they wanted a name, and I was certainly not a sufficient name. I was not. I was not and I'm not a name. So, we started making some inquiries about some names.

So, what was your process for that? I mean, you already had one name, who had said yes.

LEE WILKOF: I had Nathan, and that was they wanted for the lead, they wanted a name. But we made some offers to some prominent names. And one was one was very interested, but his wife was ill. Several didn't get back to me. One other prominent name just was on the fence and decided no, and then I got a casting director, involved and gave me a list of a number of names. And Gabriel was on it, Gabriel Byrne, and it, sent it to him. And he responded immediately. And he wanted, he wanted to do it.

He understood it, he got it. And I couldn't be more fortunate that it worked out that way. If you would have said to me when I started the process, and we were going to make this film, that Gabriel Byrne would be playing Lester Rosenthal, it was not something I would have not believed it possible. I would have said to you, I don't I'm not really positive that he's right for it. And you know, these kinds of accidents happen. And it was so fortuitous that we got Gabriel, I think he's just fantastic in the role.

Did you find that once you had everyone in place, did you tweak the script at all to fit?

LEE WILKOF: Yes, to some extent, although the Gabriel, the fact that Gabriel is you know, there's a line that when you first, when he runs into the girl from high school, she said when you first got here, your accent was so fascinating. That's the only reference to the fact that he has a not necessarily an American accent. It's not quite fish or fowl. And we didn't find that it was a problem.

When he first called me. Our first phone conversation was I was at the Jazz Fest in New Orleans with music blaring. And he was in Norway, shooting I think it's called the Vikings. And we spoke, I could barely hear him. But he said I think I'm going to keep my accent. And I didn't quite know what to say. I didn't know him. I didn't want to say no, I don't want you to but by the time we started shooting, it was kind of vague, and it never seemed to be an issue. So, we didn't necessarily tweak for the particular person.

Now, some of the actors wrote some things for themselves. Nathan contributed a fair amount of his dialogue, which I encouraged. And then there was an incident where somebody brought in dialogue for themselves and I did not care for it. And it created the only real conflict during shooting. And I insisted, with the help of my producer, insisted that the actor speak the words written and it I think it enhanced the performance because the actor was so upset. And the actor didn’t speak to me for a couple of days.

But there was tweaking all along. The role Nathan plays was originally written for actually another actor, an actor friend of mine who had passed away in between the time it was written and we shot it. It was written with, I wrote it with Maury Chaykin. You know, Maury…

Yes indeed.

LEE WILKOF: Maury Chaykin. He and I did our first play in New York together like 44 years ago. And he was just physically and such a, such a wonderful actor that Herschel was I just wrote it, we wrote it for him. But as I said, he passed away. And Nathan stepped into it brilliantly, I think.

I agree. So, with all your time on the other side of the camera, what was it like to step behind it? And how easy a transition was that for you? I mean, you probably know how to talk to actors, or at least how not to talk to actors…

LEE WILKOF: I had spent many years in Hollywood on TV and film sets. And I probably would have paid way more attention if I knew someday I was going to be directing. But I always was paying attention.

I wasn't like going up to the DP and saying, You know what size lens you're using? But I was I was like, I watched and I listened. And I also had the I had the great pleasure and the great fortune of working with Sidney Lumet twice. And I didn't do a movie with him, but I'd worked with Bob Fosse. I mean, I've been around some, some very amazing people, and I observed them as closely as I could without being in their way.

So being on the set itself, physically, was not was not intimidating at all. Speaking to the actors. No one was with the exception of that one little set-to with the actor that rewrote their lines, the actors were very, I didn't have to give many notes. But when I gave notes, I was surprised that not only were they well received, but they were well understood. Because I've been directed. I'm an I'm an actor that needs as strong a good hand as possible by a director. So, I've had many directors have to talk to me to get me to what they need to do.

And there was like, just like maybe two or three times. Gabriel had so much to do, there were times where I had to, like, maybe guide him and another just a little nudge, and he liked to talk things out. He probably would have wanted to talk things out longer, but we just didn't have the time. That's just how he works.

One of my actors would call me up at night, and just need to be stroked. And he's a good friend of mine. And I was able to do that. I had worked with him in a play and knew that that was something that he needed. And I was sincerely telling him how wonderful he was because he was and that was useful.

The first scene in the movie with the veterinarian's assistant, I cast this woman I love this actress. Her name is Janine Serralles. I don't think she'd be embarrassed by this story. She was a student of my wife, my wife used to teach at Yale Drama School. And she was somebody that I was aware of her, and my wife cast her in a lot of plays. She came in with an interpretation that was completely and it was completely valid, but it was not what I wanted her to do. And I think I like said maybe two sentences to her. And she's such a great actress, she made the adjustment. And I surprised myself by being able to communicate that to her. But luckily, I had an actress that could take it, you know, take it in and make that quick adjustment.

So, I cast the film with such fine actors, that I didn't have to tell them too much. But when I did, they got it.

Right. Did you have rehearsal time away from the set? Or was it just like, like a TV show where you just show up and block and rehearse?

LEE WILKOF:  We did read through the movie for about four hours, I think a couple days before we started shooting. And we talked it through and we would rehearse on the set.

But my DP, my wonderful young DP, named Brian Lannon. He was he was 26 years old. I met him I had done a couple episodes of a show called High Maintenance. And he was the DP and I loved what I saw. And I hired him and he and his crew were a little, I have to say this, and I think he knows is they were a little slow. Andnd they were slow because they were, you know, immaculate with, with their setting up. But we had a little more time sometimes than I wanted. So, we were able to rehearse.

And the actors, all the actors, the first nine days of the shoot, were in the lounge set that we built the Actors Equity lounge, and the actors would be in a holding area, and they would work on the stuff while I was on the set, you know, getting things set up.

Was that the only set you built?

LEE WILKOF: We built I think we built another set. I believe you are required to build a set on certain sound stages that are designated by the state in order to get your tax credit. So, we were required to build a set. It was one of the plays that was getting done. We could have found a theatre to do it at, but it was the one that was most easy to build. So, we built that, we had some raw space down in Wall Street. And that's where we built the Actors Equity lounge. And then we built one other set for the two-hander play that Lester attends.

The lounge set is terrific. It looks, I thought oh, yeah, it's you're actually on location.

LEE WILKOF: Yeah, we wanted to use the real Actors Equity lounge, but it was in a state of transition, it was finally being renovated. And it just timewise we couldn't use it. But luckily, I had a friend of mine is one of the, I think I know most of the officers there. My friend is a vice president and they were really helpful.

But I had a young production designer Maki Takenouchi. And she put that together in three days. It was the last location that we found. It was the most crucial location, it was driving us insane, that we couldn't find the space we liked. But we finally settled on this. And they threw it together. And I don't mean throw it together. They put it together in three days, her and her crew. And it really was effective.

How many days did you have to shoot overall? You said you spent nine days in the lounge?

LEE WILKOF: I believe it was either 24 or 25 days. And I wanted to read I had a scene that I wanted to end the film with that I wanted to add, and we would have had to have a day of shooting but we just didn't have it in the budget. There’s nothing that I miss.

Okay. Was it always planned that the character of Herschel would narrate the story?

LEE WILKOF: No.

At what point did you decide to include that?

LEE WILKOF: When certain people thought it would be a good idea.

Okay. I'll move on.

LEE WILKOF: Some people weren't as comfortable with silence as I was. So, some compromises were made to be perfectly blunt. I'm assuming you wisely got it that it was added on. I believe film works with it. And I believe the film would have worked without it.

And that's exactly what I'm feeling to it. It certainly didn't hurt, it kind of it filled in some gaps. But it didn't feel to me like when you sat down to write at the very first thing you thought was, okay, I'm going to have this character narrate it

LEE WILKOF: No. But it was I've had people that watch the film like it, and people go, Yeah, you don't need it. Okay, I'm glad you know, I feel fine about it either way. It is. It's what we have.

Yeah. Do you want to talk about the Kickstarter campaign and...

LEE WILKOF: It was not successful. I'm assuming you know that. It was very highly, highly ambitious. I think it was, uh, if memory serves me, it was like $450,000, which is a ton of money for a Kickstarter campaign. And we did nicely, but we didn't succeed. I think we got close to $200,000, which is very, I was, I was, I was touched by all the generosity, but it didn't work out. But because of the Kickstarter campaign, certain people became aware of the film. And then were able to communicate their knowledge of the film to some other people that came aboard and invested in the film. So, the Kickstarter campaign had value.

Also, I did circle back to some people on the Kickstarter that had that had committed money to the Kickstarter campaign and said to them, would you still be willing to, to help me out? I'm not going to give the same kind of perks. But if you can give me, if you can help, a couple people got associate producer credits, everybody got their name in the credits, everybody got a video, no matter what the level, so that was helpful.

But it was not the amount of money that, I didn't go to back to everybody. I just was like, at that point, I had had my hand out for so long, I couldn't go, like with my hand out to every single person. That was more stressful than making the movie.

So, I was going to ask, what advice would you give to someone who is considering Kickstarter now that you've tried to get that and then end up going with more traditional investors?

LEE WILKOF: I would say don't ask for so much money. But don't go nuts with the, with the perks. People are really, I don't believe, giving you, being generous for little rewards. Or I don't mean to belittle the rewards, but they're doing it out of the kindness of their, you know, belief in you.

Some guys I know, did a Kickstarter campaign to do in a documentary film about something to do about my hometown. And they did I think, a 40-day campaign, and I said, Don't do it, it's too long, and you'll have like a nervous breakdown. And they did it and they raised the money. So, what the hell do I know?

I noticed that you had Ann Roth credited for a special custom consultant. What? What way did she help you guys out?

LEE WILKOF: Ann Roth is as to me, she's, you know, the premier costume designer of the second part of the 20th century, Edith Head and then Ann Roth into the 21st century. I had worked with Anne on a couple plays. I did The Odd Couple with Nathan Lane on Broadway and Ann designed that.

But we had a very nice, warm relationship. And I told her, someday I'm going to direct a film and I want you to be the costume designer, and then she would if she could. And then as it turned out, she agreed to and then she got busy. And another lovely woman that works in her with her, became the costume designer. Michelle Matlin who did a great job.

But Ann specifically worked with, because she's done so many shows with Nathan, they work together on his look, and Gabriel's look. And I said to her, I hope you know, I hope this is not a diss to Michelle and I don't believe it was, but I would like I would like you and to give you some sort of credit. You're Ann Roth. I mean, it's and she said whatever you want to give me. So, we gave her that title.

As you were editing the movie, I know you've you were very in from the beginning on the writing and then I've obviously there for the directing. What was your process for finding the movie in the editing? How, how precious were things to you? How willing were you to move things around or change?

LEE WILKOF: That is a very, we're opening. We're opening a very interesting can of worms. Editing was the most difficult part of the process for me. I'd never been in an editing room. My editor and I, I think sometimes we didn't see eye to eye. And I didn't really sometimes know how to communicate what I wanted.

The producers got involved in the editing room. I mean, the you know, the money people, were not thrilled with the editing. And we brought on another supervising editor. And it got a little more complicated. And I was doing a play at the time. And the editor was the supervising editor was doing some editing out in California while I was in New York. And there were some ideas that were had, that I did not agree with. And there are some things in the film... Boy, I’m just opening a can of worms.

Then open it as far as you’re willing to open it.

LEE WILKOF: There are some things in the film that it was it was suggested that we edit it a different way. And I was adamant not to. And, and those things are in the film. And there's a few things that were not my idea. And that I learned to live with.

Ultimately, we ended up with I think, a pretty damn well edited film. It was a somewhat of a difficult journey, the post production, I think, where we got in, I think, I probably got us into a little bit of a little bit of jams, because I didn't do the sometimes the coverage I should have done. Yeah, if I had the opportunity, if I get the opportunity to do it again, I will. I've learned I learned a ton from that. That's where I learned the most, what I needed for the editing room.

So, there's two questions I always ask at the end, do with these what you will. The first question is two part: what's the smartest thing you did during production? And what was the dumbest thing you think you did?

LEE WILKOF: The smartest thing I did was getting Nathan and Gabriel on board, deciding when Maury wasn't available to get Nathan, and not saying, I don’t think Gabriel Byrne. And the stupidest thing I'm not going to say. I won't.

But you learned from it.

LEE WILKOF: I learned from it. I learned from it. And that's all I can say.

So, are you going to do this again?

LEE WILKOF: I’m really getting itchy to do it. There's another script that I wrote with the same young man, it's called Teenage Waistband. And it's about growing up in Canton, Ohio my junior, sophomore year high school. Was at a junior? In late 60s in Canton, Ohio, it's period and it would cost a fair amount of money. I'd love to do it. But I wouldn't want to do it under the certain same circumstances. I don't want to do it. I don't want to put my hat in my hand and have to go ask a zillion people for, you know, $1,000 here and there. So, I don't know. But I hope to do it again. I'm trying to figure out what to do next.

Before I could let him go. Lee was kind enough to spend a few minutes talking about two early-stage successes, Sondheim’s Assassins, and the original off-Broadway production of Little Shop of Horrors.

So, I had a couple questions for you about just that whole experience, because having talked to Roger Corman about the movie, the original movie.

LEE WILKOF: Yeah, I did it in Los Angeles and met him That was thrilling. Actually, opening night in Los Angeles, Roger came, Jackie Joseph came who played Audrey, and I forget the guy's name. Yes. I forget his name. Anyhow, anyhow, what do you want to know?

Well, Corman was so, I tell the story all the time to filmmakers, because he was he's a great interview. He's an engineer, and he speaks like an engineer and perfect sentences. And I had 20 minutes and I had to talk about five movies with him, because I was doing five different. And I asked him, I said, So you shot a little shop in three days? And he said, Well, technically, yes. But there was some pickups. I had the actors for five days, and we rehearsed for three and shot for two. And that's what I tell people all the time is you think you think rehearsal is not important? The cheapest man in the world, spent three days rehearsing. And then he said, I shot it with two cameras. He said it really was more of a stunt. I've never do that sort of thing again. But how did you get involved in that project?

LEE WILKOF: I could go on for hours. Anyway, I grew up in Cleveland. I grew up in Canton, Ohio. This is a little background because you just talked about the film, grew up in Canton, Ohio, on Friday nights. In the late 50s. Early 60s There was a guy that did the horror movies. His name was Ghoulardi his name, Ernie Anderson. His son is Paul Thomas Anderson. If you see Paul Thomas Anderson's films called Ghoulardi films. And he showed horror movies.

One of our favourites, we would have like sleepovers with you know, 12 year old boys and we'd stay up late and watch. And one of our favourites was always Little Shop of Horrors, the original Little Shop of Horrors. So, I grew up knowing it, loving it, being, just thinking it was amazing. Didn't know when I was a kid that it was shot in three days, but it was primitive. You know, it was great. It's crazy. It's one of those movies. It's so bad that it's great. It's brilliant. It's not bad movie. It's just production values when you look at it now, of course, two days, you know, the scene with Jack Nicholson, this that fell over and they stopped shooting this.

So anyway, okay, I was familiar with it. I did a play in New York. The play with Maury Chaykin and I met our stage manager, who had a girlfriend who was a casting director. And I knew them personally.

I moved to California a few years after doing that first play in New York, and I was pursuing my Hollywood, that pursuit, working sporadically and playing nerds on TV. And I got a call from this woman. The woman who was the girlfriend of my stage manager. We're doing a musical written by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman, and I knew Alan Menken from a revue I did in in New York before I moved to California. And it's called Little Shop of Horrors. I said, I know this, I know Little Shop of Horrors. I grew up watching it, somebody's turned it in to a musical. That's amazing.

So, I was very excited. I flew myself into New York. And I was auditioning for the role of the dentist for some reason or another and I , in those days, when I was in California, I was I was I was wearing I was trying to get jobs with wearing a toupee.

I was bald when I was 17. And I walked into the audition. And Alan Menken knew me from this revue that I did as bald and he started laughing, and I got so embarrassed, I tore off my toupee. And Howard Ashman said, You are not a dentist, you're Seymour, you're you know, you're a potential Seymour.

So, I auditioned for the role. And it, I got a call back the next day. And it was between me—this is a story I've heard years later—but the story was it came down to me and another actor. Nathan Lane, between me and Nathan and Howard Ashman had an assistant, a young woman who suggested to him that I was probably a better fit, for one reason or another. And she is my wife. I married her, I met her on the show, and married her. Her name Connie Grappo. She subsequently directed it all over the world.

And so, I played Seymour. We opened it in New York, it was this tiny little show, I would take the flyers for it to people. And they would like, you know, look at me, like what the hell was this. And then, a month later, they were begging me for tickets, because it was such a huge hit. It was the hottest ticket in New York. And it was in a little 99 seat theatre, and then it moved off Broadway ran for five years, but I didn't do it for five years. I did it for like six months, and then six months in Los Angeles, where it didn't do so well.

And then I fille in over the years for different Seymour’s that would go on vacations. So that was that. My wife directed it all over the world. And then there was a production in Florida that was Broadway bound about 12 or 15 years ago, and I played Mr. Mushnik in that. So I have played Mr. Mushnik. But I did not come. It came to Broadway but I did not come in with it for all sorts of different reasons. But I would like to play this. I'm certainly old enough.

Yes. It’s finally time.

LEE WILKOF: It was 35 years ago, it was just about now. We were in rehearsal. 35 years ago, we opened the end of April or the beginning of May in 1982. And it was you know very, it was very profound for my career. Because it was a huge hit. And it got me. You know, people came to see it. And I met my wife on it. So it was it was very significant.

You know, people say to me, what's your favourite thing you've ever done? And they all think I'm going to say Little Shop of Horrors. And it's Assassins.

Assassins is, is the greatest experience I ever had. It was not a huge smash hit. But I was, you know, I was in A Sondheim musical, which is a gift that I got. And the cast. I loved the cast. And for me a lot of doing it any show is who I'm doing it with. Of course, you know, the material is really important, but I, it was just a great cast.

And the part was really challenging. I think that was a show like the director didn't know what the hell to help me do and I was kind of on my own and I kind of, thank God, found my way.

I don't have a lot of stories except we did the album. Nowadays  you do a cast album, you do it in like, you get one take.

On Assassins, we had three days. And the first number up was the number that I had the most singing. My character really did monologues and didn't sing. I played this guy Sam Bick, who tried to kill Richard Nixon by crashing an airplane into the White House. He was shot in the cockpit. But anyhow, he did these like rants. He did these taped rants.

But I had the song that I had to sing and it was the first number up and I was nervous and I was tight. And Steve Sondheim had a broken ankle so he couldn't come in like to the studio. He was in the in the control room. And I was I was just struggling with it. I came in during a break to hear it and Steve Sondheim said to me, yeah, it's tough for you guys that can't sing.

And, you know, I wanted to disappear. But we finally got it. They told me to try to sound like Jack Nicholson. And I think it's who I tried to sound like.

And then years later I did another thing with Steve Sondheim, this workshop of thing called The Frogs. And I did have a number and I sang. And he forgot that he told me I couldn't sing and he was very complimentary. So, in the presence of him was just like, the most intimidating, the most. It was, it was thrilling, but he's very intense. It was just a great experience. My greatest joy and the thing that I cherish the most.

Dying to make a feature? Learn from the pros!

"We never put out an actual textbook for the Corman School of Filmmaking, but if we did, it would be Fast, Cheap and Under Control." 
Roger Corman, Producer

★★★★★

It’s like taking a Master Class in moviemaking…all in one book!

• Jonathan Demme: The value of cameos

• John Sayles: Writing to your resources

• Peter Bogdanovich: Long, continuous takes

• John Cassavetes: Re-Shoots

• Steven Soderbergh: Rehearsals

• George Romero: Casting

• Kevin Smith: Skipping film school

• Jon Favreau: Creating an emotional connection

• Richard Linklater: Poverty breeds creativity

• David Lynch: Kill your darlings

• Ron Howard: Pre-production planning

• John Carpenter: Going low-tech

• Robert Rodriguez: Sound thinking

And more!

Write Your Screenplay with the Help of Top Screenwriters!

It’s like taking a Master Class in screenwriting … all in one book!

Discover the pitfalls of writing to fit a budget from screenwriters who have successfully navigated these waters already. Learn from their mistakes and improve your script with their expert advice.

"I wish I'd read this book before I made Re-Animator."
Stuart Gordon, Director, Re-Animator, Castle Freak, From Beyond

John Gaspard has directed half a dozen low-budget features, as well as written for TV, movies, novels and the stage.

The book covers (among other topics):

• Academy-Award Winner Dan Futterman (“Capote”) on writing real stories

• Tom DiCillio (“Living In Oblivion”) on turning a short into a feature

• Kasi Lemmons (“Eve’s Bayou”) on writing for a different time period

• George Romero (“Martin”) on writing horror on a budget

• Rebecca Miller (“Personal Velocity”) on adapting short stories

• Stuart Gordon (“Re-Animator”) on adaptations

• Academy-Award Nominee Whit Stillman (“Metropolitan”) on cheap ways to make it look expensive

• Miranda July (“Me and You and Everyone We Know”) on making your writing spontaneous

• Alex Cox (“Repo Man”) on scaling the script to meet a budget

• Joan Micklin Silver (“Hester Street”) on writing history on a budget

• Bob Clark (“Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things”) on mixing humor and horror

• Amy Holden Jones (“Love Letters”) on writing romance on a budget

• Henry Jaglom (“Venice/Venice”) on mixing improvisation with scripting

• L.M. Kit Carson (“Paris, Texas”) on re-writing while shooting

• Academy-Award Winner Kenneth Lonergan (“You Can Count on Me”) on script editing

• Roger Nygard (“Suckers”) on mixing genres

This is the book for anyone who’s serious about writing a screenplay that can get produced! 

Mark Decena on “Dopamine”

What was your filmmaking history before making Dopamine?

MARK: I'd done a couple of shorts and the first one was in Sundance in 1993. I did another one in 1996. , and shortly after that Lynn Auerbach gave me a call and asked if I had any feature-length scripts. I, of course, didn't, but I said I'll definitely start working on one.

And she kept calling every three months or so ('How's the script going?') and I finally started to get afraid that she'd stop calling and so I really sat down with my writing partner at the time and we drafted a script, and then got into the Labs in 1998, which was a transformative experience.

What was that script?

MARK: It was a very different version of Dopamine. We had a meeting with one of our advisors, Peter Hedges, who wrote one of my favorite movies, What's Eating Gilbert Grape?, and he basically sat us down and said, 'Why do you need to tell this story?' 

He basically told us we'd written a clever script, but that you can't write a movie just because you want to be a screenwriter or you want to be a director. You have to have a need to tell a story. He gave us the parable of going into a dark tunnel and not being afraid about where you're going to come out. It really pushed us to go back and find the core of the story.

The genesis of the story for me was when we had our first child. It's different for guys; when a baby's first born, mothers bond immediately, but dads sort of take a while, because the kid just cries and eats and wants their mother.

But I remember the day when I fell in love with him and that chemical rush that I felt was very similar to when I fell in love with my wife. And that triggered this dialectic that I could see in a story, with one person believing that love is magical and unexplainable, and someone else who believes that it's physiological and chemical.

At the same time, every other week there seemed to be some article about how we were deconstructing our body and how we were attributing certain chemicals to this and that. Every February there's the article about why we fall in love. And they always mention Dopamine and all the chemical triggers.

That created the conflict for the two characters: one who believes that love is eternal and the other that love is conditional and physical.

What was production like?

MARK: Once you go into production, you start getting barraged with all these questions from the script supervisor and the art department. The reality hits you: 'Oh, my god! I wrote kids into this script? I wrote animals! I wrote computer animation!' That was the cold awakening, wondering what the hell I was doing with my first feature and have all that?

We were able to pull it off by hook and by crook, favors, knowing people who had an animation studio, kids that were in school, and just really good producers who were able to pull it off.

What was your budget?

MARK: Production budget was $900,000. Then we got into Sundance and realized the stakes were a lot higher in post. I think it's one thing to get a film accepted, and then to finish it is quite different. We had to throw some money at finishing the film. It ended up being just under a million.

Why did you decide to shoot digital?

MARK: I think the biggest reason for me to shoot digital was being a first-time director and not having to worry about burning film while you're trying to get a performance. I was able to run master shots and let the actors find their way, and let me find my way, and then pick off our coverage shots from that. It just allowed me that freedom to help the actors find their scene and let me focus on getting the performances.

How did you cast the film?

MARK: We did have the Advisory Committee at Sundance, so we called them and said, 'Do you know of any casting directors?' They recommended Gillian O'Neill. We were under the gun and we wanted to go for the Sundance Film Festival, and it was a late summer start. She said our best bet, with or budget, was to go after television actors who were off for the summer. And she was able to get the script out to Sabrina, who was very interested.

We had another actor lined up for the lead and he dropped out about a week before we started. And then she came up with John Livingston and said it was almost a blessing: he's great and looking for a good, meaty role. And he was great.

Was there time and money for rehearsal?

MARK: We had one week of rehearsal.

We started with a couple table reads, with the actors, to get a sense of how it was going to play. I spent most of the time with the leads. We did some improvs, kind of let them find the characters and play with the scenes. We were able to get onto one of our sets early, while they were building it, so we had that space to work in. We basically just had fun.

They say that 90% of directing is casting, and that definitely made my job easier. But the rehearsals let them get to know each other and get to know each other in character. And to be able to have that confidence about that character before you get on set. The set can be very distracting, very assaultive. I have the utmost respect for actors; I don' know how they do it.

What was the best decision you made on the movie?

MARK: The best decision I made was hiring the right people and let them do their job. Rob Humphreys, knowing I was a first time director, one of the things he set up for me was he would clear the set, I'd run the scene a few times. And then when we found it, he'd call the keys in and we'd run it again it and plan out our shot list. Even though we had a very specific shot list, he gave me the freedom to work with the actors and find it. And then he was able to help me plan out a spontaneous shot list.

Did you wait until after the shoot to start editing?

MARK: We were cutting as we were going. The editor was a day or two behind, because we had to send the tapes to Los Angles to get them down-converted. We saw a full assembly cut about three days after we finished shooting. It was insane.

We would shoot and I would come in at night and see the scenes. On the weekends, sometimes I would go out with Rob and some days he would just go out and grab B-roll of fog and the bay and a lot of the visual elements of the film.

What was the editing process like?

MARK: After the assemble cut was done, we realized we had to go back in and find the story, which is always disheartening. I think as a first-timer, you think, 'Well, I finished the script, and the script as it's shot is going to be great,' and then you realize that the story has to be brought out.

We ended up moving things around, opening with more of the flashback stuff between the father and the son and the mother issues, using that throughout as the voice of his conscience.

The opening scene was put into the middle of the film, which sounds really strange to script something and have the opening move to the middle of the movie, but it worked.

What did you take away from the entire experience?

MARK: It's important to be open to the storytelling process, which is completely collaborative in filmmaking.

You have to have blind faith that you're going to make it, almost a cunning naiveté. You know you're going to do it, and you don't know enough to know that it's really impossible. You have to be naïve, but you still have to be determined and almost cunning in a way to just know it's going to happen, regardless of all the things that fall in front of you, like money falling out at the last minute and actors dropping out.

You have to passionate about the material. It's got to be a story that you need to tell. A lot of artists have that drive. They don't paint because they want to; they paint because they have to. I was probably a little insane at the time, feeling I had to do this. The insanity is probably building again and I'll start another project.

Dying to make a feature? Learn from the pros!

"We never put out an actual textbook for the Corman School of Filmmaking, but if we did, it would be Fast, Cheap and Under Control." 
Roger Corman, Producer

★★★★★

It’s like taking a Master Class in moviemaking…all in one book!

• Jonathan Demme: The value of cameos

• John Sayles: Writing to your resources

• Peter Bogdanovich: Long, continuous takes

• John Cassavetes: Re-Shoots

• Steven Soderbergh: Rehearsals

• George Romero: Casting

• Kevin Smith: Skipping film school

• Jon Favreau: Creating an emotional connection

• Richard Linklater: Poverty breeds creativity

• David Lynch: Kill your darlings

• Ron Howard: Pre-production planning

• John Carpenter: Going low-tech

• Robert Rodriguez: Sound thinking

And more!

Write Your Screenplay with the Help of Top Screenwriters!

It’s like taking a Master Class in screenwriting … all in one book!

Discover the pitfalls of writing to fit a budget from screenwriters who have successfully navigated these waters already. Learn from their mistakes and improve your script with their expert advice.

"I wish I'd read this book before I made Re-Animator."
Stuart Gordon, Director, Re-Animator, Castle Freak, From Beyond

John Gaspard has directed half a dozen low-budget features, as well as written for TV, movies, novels and the stage.

The book covers (among other topics):

• Academy-Award Winner Dan Futterman (“Capote”) on writing real stories

• Tom DiCillio (“Living In Oblivion”) on turning a short into a feature

• Kasi Lemmons (“Eve’s Bayou”) on writing for a different time period

• George Romero (“Martin”) on writing horror on a budget

• Rebecca Miller (“Personal Velocity”) on adapting short stories

• Stuart Gordon (“Re-Animator”) on adaptations

• Academy-Award Nominee Whit Stillman (“Metropolitan”) on cheap ways to make it look expensive

• Miranda July (“Me and You and Everyone We Know”) on making your writing spontaneous

• Alex Cox (“Repo Man”) on scaling the script to meet a budget

• Joan Micklin Silver (“Hester Street”) on writing history on a budget

• Bob Clark (“Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things”) on mixing humor and horror

• Amy Holden Jones (“Love Letters”) on writing romance on a budget

• Henry Jaglom (“Venice/Venice”) on mixing improvisation with scripting

• L.M. Kit Carson (“Paris, Texas”) on re-writing while shooting

• Academy-Award Winner Kenneth Lonergan (“You Can Count on Me”) on script editing

• Roger Nygard (“Suckers”) on mixing genres

This is the book for anyone who’s serious about writing a screenplay that can get produced! 

The Last Broadcast – Lance Weiler and Stefan Avalos

What was the genesis for “The Last Broadcast”?

Lance: Stefan and I got excited about the prospects of being able to edit on your desktop. So we got the board and started messing around and built some systems and then started making this movie almost as a lark, to see how little we could make it for. And that's when we came up with the idea and the storyline for The Last Broadcast.

Stefan: We came up with a very detailed outline and we did script out a lot of scenes. But then we decided to basically do a question-and-answer role-playing game with a lot of the people for interviews. We would give them the answers to the questions and then we would keep asking them the questions in various ways, and sometimes ask them questions that they did not have the answers to. We would give them only as much information as their character in the movie would have. And since we were shooting in video, we would just let the camera roll, and we were able to get some great performances that way.

Lance: We wrote it knowing what we had access to, which I think really helped to keep it low cost. Everyone in it are friends and family. We knew that if we cast ourselves in it that we were guaranteed to show up. And we knew that we would work cheap.

We also structured the movie so that we would be shooting and doing a lot of the sound work ourselves; a lot of the movie consists of us actually on-camera and holding mics in the scenes. So, I think it was a very conscious effort to try to work within the limitations that we had. Stefan had already made a previous film, The Game, so he was well-versed in guerilla techniques, and we applied a lot of those to the making of the movie.

Stefan: We joked that the first thing we tried to get rid of when we made this movie was film, shooting digitally. And the second thing were the actors, because you have to feed them and hope they show up.

Lance: I think the most interesting part of the process was the freedom we had: Because there were no economic constraints hanging over us, we were free to really find those moments that moved us in some way.

Stefan: I came up with characters at about the same time that we came up with who could play the character.

Lance: I think a lot of time it's the details that convince people. There were things that would happen that helped, almost accidents. Everyone brought different things at different times; like the way Tony (playing a cop) put ATF on his shirt that day.

Stefan: We call it Theater of the Minimal. The psychologist is a friend of ours who does high-end carpentry. But we brought some psychology books, just a couple little things here and there --

Lance And that birdhouse.

Stefan: Yes, the cuckoo clock birdhouse. It's amazing how little it takes to convince people. Which is something we were commenting on in the movie: What's reality, what do you believe? And I found it amazing that people believed the movie, based on just a couple little pseudo-realities within the movie. I think a lot of documentary filmmakers were perturbed by that.

Lance: Not having any money made us be more creative. I think sometimes there's a tendency to fall back on money as an answer to a problem, where we found ourselves brainstorming and trying to find ways to make things work without the money.

Stefan: Having no money and really spending no money gave us a carefree attitude that I've never had before or since making movies. We didn't have a producer breathing down our necks concerned about a budget that was spiraling out of control. It's ironic that no having money gave us that freedom.

Lance: I remember the shock when we totaled up the receipts, to see what the budget at the end. We rounded up, but it was very close, maybe within 28 cents, of $900. And that was the first time we really knew what we had spent.

Stefan: We had wanted to make a movie for no money, but we missed the mark by 900 bucks.

What might you have done differently if you had more money to work with?

Stefan: We might have shot the end on film. That was supposed to look like film and have that Hollywood cinema look to it.

Lance: However, today if I were to pop it in and look at it, I'd feel really good about the way the ending looks, in terms of the rest of the movie it really jumps out at you in a positive way.

How long did it take to shoot?

Lance: It took 27 - 28 days to shoot.

Stefan: But they were very easy days. Those weren't crazy, full days like a typical movie. The talking head would take only a few hours to shoot, so it was pretty laid back. When we shot out in the Pine Barrens, that was three days and it was pretty cold. But as movies go, it was pretty easy.

Lance: It was designed that way. For example, my dad plays the coroner, and he came by and we shot his part in about an hour and twenty minutes.

And the editing?

Stefan: Editing took about 8 - 9 months.

Lance: Like a lot of documentaries, the editing really brought it all together. Stefan did a really good job of pulling the story out. I think in a lot of ways it really exceeded what we thought we could do. Post was so important; the movie could have been cut in some many different ways.

Stefan: I think it surprised us even, how well it worked, in terms of making people believe it. My girlfriend makes documentaries, and she was very skeptical, saying no one was going to believe it. And then the first time it screened, much to our horror, everyone thought it was real.

Lance: The movie really takes you on this ride. The point we were trying to make with the film was that you can't necessarily believe anything that you see. And when we twisted it at the end, we really wanted it to feel like a punch, to leave you breathless. And I think in a lot of ways, the people that don't like the ending got insulted by it in some way or felt that it let the movie down. And then the people that love it, they love it for the reason that it totally pulls the rug out from under them.

That's classic about media in general; everyone wants to feel that they're really savvy about things, and then when they're caught off guard by something--especially a movie like that. That was a very bold choice on our part, to all of a sudden break that wall and go into what was, effectively, a narrative.

Stefan: The ending was one of the first things we thought of for the movie, to do this genre switch. Instead of breaking down the fourth wall, we were putting the fourth wall up. We were really excited by that idea.  You have that a lot in movies and plays, were people start addressing the audience at the end. We just did the reverse. Who knows if it was successful or not, but I still love it. And that, again, is one of the advantages of making a movie with no money.

I'm amazed how filmmakers always re-invent the wheel every time they make a project, and they make the same mistakes that every filmmaker before them has made. That's the downside to the independent spirit--people are fiercely independent, 'Don't you tell me … that I'm headed right for the edge of a cliff.' We learned from our past mistakes, and we learned as much as we could from other people's mistakes.

Dying to make a feature? Learn from the pros!

"We never put out an actual textbook for the Corman School of Filmmaking, but if we did, it would be Fast, Cheap and Under Control." 
Roger Corman, Producer

★★★★★

It’s like taking a Master Class in moviemaking…all in one book!

• Jonathan Demme: The value of cameos

• John Sayles: Writing to your resources

• Peter Bogdanovich: Long, continuous takes

• John Cassavetes: Re-Shoots

• Steven Soderbergh: Rehearsals

• George Romero: Casting

• Kevin Smith: Skipping film school

• Jon Favreau: Creating an emotional connection

• Richard Linklater: Poverty breeds creativity

• David Lynch: Kill your darlings

• Ron Howard: Pre-production planning

• John Carpenter: Going low-tech

• Robert Rodriguez: Sound thinking

And more!

Write Your Screenplay with the Help of Top Screenwriters!

It’s like taking a Master Class in screenwriting … all in one book!

Discover the pitfalls of writing to fit a budget from screenwriters who have successfully navigated these waters already. Learn from their mistakes and improve your script with their expert advice.

"I wish I'd read this book before I made Re-Animator."
Stuart Gordon, Director, Re-Animator, Castle Freak, From Beyond

John Gaspard has directed half a dozen low-budget features, as well as written for TV, movies, novels and the stage.

The book covers (among other topics):

• Academy-Award Winner Dan Futterman (“Capote”) on writing real stories

• Tom DiCillio (“Living In Oblivion”) on turning a short into a feature

• Kasi Lemmons (“Eve’s Bayou”) on writing for a different time period

• George Romero (“Martin”) on writing horror on a budget

• Rebecca Miller (“Personal Velocity”) on adapting short stories

• Stuart Gordon (“Re-Animator”) on adaptations

• Academy-Award Nominee Whit Stillman (“Metropolitan”) on cheap ways to make it look expensive

• Miranda July (“Me and You and Everyone We Know”) on making your writing spontaneous

• Alex Cox (“Repo Man”) on scaling the script to meet a budget

• Joan Micklin Silver (“Hester Street”) on writing history on a budget

• Bob Clark (“Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things”) on mixing humor and horror

• Amy Holden Jones (“Love Letters”) on writing romance on a budget

• Henry Jaglom (“Venice/Venice”) on mixing improvisation with scripting

• L.M. Kit Carson (“Paris, Texas”) on re-writing while shooting

• Academy-Award Winner Kenneth Lonergan (“You Can Count on Me”) on script editing

• Roger Nygard (“Suckers”) on mixing genres

This is the book for anyone who’s serious about writing a screenplay that can get produced! 

Chris Kentis on "Open Water"

Why did you decide to shoot digitally?

KENTIS: That was the whole reason we wanted to do the film. We were really excited about the technology that was out there, and truthfully, kind of inspired by the Dogme 95 films. We just wanted to get out there and experiment with this new technology.

Right after we made our first feature, Grind, which was made in much more of a traditional way -- we had a crew and shot on 35mm and all -- our daughter was born. So, we were excited about trying to make a movie in a very different way. The idea of working without a crew, the idea of being able to take our time (which meant working on weekends and vacation times), being able to include our families. Also, the idea of collaborating with actors in a certain kind of way.

We were really anxious to try to make a movie in a different way, to try to stretch and challenge ourselves creatively.

Most films aren't suited to that particular look that you get when you shoot digital, especially where the technology was when we took on Open Water. It's amazing how rapidly it's changing. Now the quality is far superior and there are a lot more choices of what kind of look you can get.

Besides the financial reasons, what were the other advantages of shooting digital?

KENTIS: The real advantage of digital, aesthetically speaking, is that you get a sense of realism and immediacy. And that dictated everything about the project: we wanted a project that would benefit from that. This story that we'd heard about years before came to mind as something that we thought would work well.

So much about the project was trying to do things in a different way, and we wanted to take the medium somewhere where we hadn't seen it used before.

Had we shot this story on 35mm, I think it would have been way more difficult, working in a traditional way on the open ocean then it would with this equipment.

What were the advantages of being able to take your time?

KENTIS: The first advantage of taking our time was that I was able to work full time and help finance the film.

Another advantage is that movies tend to be rushed, especially if you look at the things coming out of Hollywood today and the schedules. Ironically, two of my favorite filmmakers were not very prolific: Stanley Kubrick and Terrence Malick. I think there's a lot to be said for taking the time to get it right, and I think most films don't really have that advantage. It's a process of refinement.

What do you thing it takes to become an independent filmmaker? 

KENTIS: Being an independent filmmaker requires a certain amount of discipline.

Other career paths, whether it's a doctor or a lawyer or any kind of career path, generally what you need to do is all laid out in front of you. It's still difficult, but you're going to school, then onto an internship, whatever. 

For an independent filmmaker, you could argue that people can move up the ladder by working on a crew or things like that. But in general it's kind of a difficult thing to break into, and requires a certain kind of discipline.

Especially if you're working alone, it's very easy to let a project slip away. You need to have the discipline of maintaining a certain kind of forward motion.

The movie works and yet I think, from the outside and at the beginning, a Hollywood person would have said it’s never going to happen.

KENTIS: So much of the film was trying to take perceived disadvantages and turn then to our advantage. The use of unknowns was dictated by the fact that we wanted to be as realistic as possible. And certainly if we enlisted recognizable actors, let alone movie stars, I think that would have shattered that illusion.

There's not a film that's been made that doesn't require reshoots at the end of editing. With our first film, it was such a pain in the ass to get that together, because you have to go through unions, you have to get the crew together, you have to get the actors together -- it was like starting up production again just to get a few shots.

The philosophy here was if we need something, you just pick up the camera and grab it, literally, Whatever you needed. The cloud shots I shot from the roof of my apartment in Manhattan.

It was the same with the actors. We'd just call them up, we'd have an idea and we'd go and explore it and try. That whole spirit of trying things and experimenting, it wasn't such a big deal. It wasn't like having to call their agent and go through the union and draw up contracts and bring the actors in.

How tough was it to keep the ending you wanted?

KENTIS: Not tough at all, because that was the whole point of the project. To not have to answer to anyone. None of the choices were made because they were the most commercial choices; they were made because this was the film we wanted to make.

Because the film was based on a true story, that was going to be the ending from the get-go, from day one. Now the specifics of what happened to her evolved during the course of the process, but there never was going to be any other ending. To the credit of Lions Gate, and all the distributors that were interested in the film at Sundance, it was never questioned.

I'd say that the majority of people really responded to and loved the ending, and yet there's this perception out there that you always have to have a happy ending. It's interesting how that happens. In the 70s, I think it was more common for the main character to end up dead, even in a romantic comedy often the main character would end up with a tumor and die. That's the other extreme.

The whole impetuous behind this story was when I read about the true incident, it deeply affected me, and so it was to try to capture that. To have the audience have the same kind of emotional response that I had when I read the story. You can't help but ask, 'What if that were me and Laura? What if it were us?'

Our hope was that when people watch the movie is that, hopefully if the audience is with the movie, they'll ask themselves, 'What if that were me? What would I do in that situation?' and experience it that way.

What was the best decision you made on the project?

KENTIS: The best decision was to not to try to second-guess what an audience was going like, because there was no guessing that anyway -- Hollywood's still trying to figure that out. To stick to our guns, to stick to our vision.

It's really hard work, and it took a long time, but it's a really, really good way to spend a couple of years. It's time really well spent.

Dying to make a feature? Learn from the pros!

"We never put out an actual textbook for the Corman School of Filmmaking, but if we did, it would be Fast, Cheap and Under Control." 
Roger Corman, Producer

★★★★★

It’s like taking a Master Class in moviemaking…all in one book!

• Jonathan Demme: The value of cameos

• John Sayles: Writing to your resources

• Peter Bogdanovich: Long, continuous takes

• John Cassavetes: Re-Shoots

• Steven Soderbergh: Rehearsals

• George Romero: Casting

• Kevin Smith: Skipping film school

• Jon Favreau: Creating an emotional connection

• Richard Linklater: Poverty breeds creativity

• David Lynch: Kill your darlings

• Ron Howard: Pre-production planning

• John Carpenter: Going low-tech

• Robert Rodriguez: Sound thinking

And more!

Write Your Screenplay with the Help of Top Screenwriters!

It’s like taking a Master Class in screenwriting … all in one book!

Discover the pitfalls of writing to fit a budget from screenwriters who have successfully navigated these waters already. Learn from their mistakes and improve your script with their expert advice.

"I wish I'd read this book before I made Re-Animator."
Stuart Gordon, Director, Re-Animator, Castle Freak, From Beyond

John Gaspard has directed half a dozen low-budget features, as well as written for TV, movies, novels and the stage.

The book covers (among other topics):

• Academy-Award Winner Dan Futterman (“Capote”) on writing real stories

• Tom DiCillio (“Living In Oblivion”) on turning a short into a feature

• Kasi Lemmons (“Eve’s Bayou”) on writing for a different time period

• George Romero (“Martin”) on writing horror on a budget

• Rebecca Miller (“Personal Velocity”) on adapting short stories

• Stuart Gordon (“Re-Animator”) on adaptations

• Academy-Award Nominee Whit Stillman (“Metropolitan”) on cheap ways to make it look expensive

• Miranda July (“Me and You and Everyone We Know”) on making your writing spontaneous

• Alex Cox (“Repo Man”) on scaling the script to meet a budget

• Joan Micklin Silver (“Hester Street”) on writing history on a budget

• Bob Clark (“Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things”) on mixing humor and horror

• Amy Holden Jones (“Love Letters”) on writing romance on a budget

• Henry Jaglom (“Venice/Venice”) on mixing improvisation with scripting

• L.M. Kit Carson (“Paris, Texas”) on re-writing while shooting

• Academy-Award Winner Kenneth Lonergan (“You Can Count on Me”) on script editing

• Roger Nygard (“Suckers”) on mixing genres

This is the book for anyone who’s serious about writing a screenplay that can get produced! 

Ken Levine - Television writer and director

Was being a writer always a goal?

Ken Levine: I don't know if it was always a goal. It was something that I always did. Honestly, I did not get a lot of encouragement in high school. I was a cartoonist. I still am. And I was a cartoonist on the school newspaper. And I said, “Well, I also want to write. You know, can I cover sports or do a humor column or something?”

And they said, “You're the cartoonist, just stick to cartoons.” And I said, “Well, I really want to write. And if you won't let me write, then I'm going to quit the paper.” And they said, “Then fine, quit the paper.” So, that's how much my cartoons were even valued.

They called your bluff on that one, I guess.

Ken Levine: They called my bluff, yeah.

Just as a little tangent—just because I'm a big fan of your cartoons—did you have a couple of cartoonist heroes when you were growing up? Guys that you looked at and went, that's the kind of writing I want to do?

Ken Levine: Well, my cartoonist heroes were more due to their cartooning than anything. Al Hirschfeld, who did the caricatures of the New York Times, was my god. And Mort Drucker would be another. Jack Davis. A lot of those Mad magazine guys.

Originally, I wanted to be in radio. I mean, I really loved radio. And a lot of my comic influences early on were disc jockeys, you know. Bob and Ray and Dan Ingram and Dick Whittington. So, radio was a goal. I got out of college and became a Top 40-disc jockey.

Let me back up. When I was in college, I got a job as an intern at KMPC in L.A. We're the big, full-service radio station. They had the Angels and the Rams and the Bruins and, you know, they were big music personalities. And their afternoon drive time jock was Gary Owens, who was on Laugh In at the time. You know, “From beautiful downtown Burbank.”

And I would write comedy material for Gary, for him to use on the air. I never charged him for it. I mean, I was just so thrilled that someone of the caliber of Gary Owens would use my material on the radio. And one day I get a call to appear in George Schlatter’s office. George Schlatter was the producer of Laugh In. And this is when Laugh In was getting 50 shares.

And I'm like, what does George Schlatter want with me? So, I go to the meeting obviously. And apparently, unbeknownst to me, Gary submitted my comedy material to him. And George Schlatter offered me a job as a writer on Laugh In. And it's funny, we laughed about it because George is still around and he was a guest on my podcast, and I talked about this.

And I said, “Can I do this part time or from home?” And he goes, “What? No, this is a job. You come to the office every day. We're paying you a lot of money to write the number one show in America.” And I said, “I would lose my 2S deferment and I would wind up drafted in Vietnam.” So I couldn't take it. I had to turn down Laugh In. So, I was almost a writer six years before I actually broke in.

Okay. So how did you end up then meeting up with David Isaacs?

Ken Levine: Like I said, I became a disc jockey out of college. My draft number was four. And like I said, I was at KMPC and one of our disc jockeys, Roger Carroll, was one of the main AFRTS disc jockeys.

I shopped around looking, is there a decent reserve unit I could join that would keep me out of the army? And I saw that there was an armed forces radio reserve unit in LA. And through Roger, he helped pull some strings and got me in the unit. You know, it's like one of those things where you get a call saying, “Okay, there's an opening in the unit, but you got to go down to Torrance and sign up for it tomorrow.” And so, you don't have time to think, “Boy, do I want to risk this? Is there a way I can get a medical thing?” And it's six years. It's a six-year commitment. Go.

So that's what I did. I got into that unit. And we were at summer camp three years later and somebody new to the unit was David Isaacs. And we met and started talking and we both kind of had desires to be writers. And when summer camp ended, I was at the time working as a disc jockey in San Bernardino. I got fired, which was a frequent occurrence. And I came back home to live with my parents in LA. I called David and I said, “Hey, remember me from the army? I want to try writing a script. You want to try writing it with me?” And he said, “Okay.”

And so, we got together and decided to partner up and we wrote a pilot. But we didn't know anything. We had no clue what we were doing. And I had to literally go to a bookstore in Hollywood and on a remainder table were TV scripts. And so, for two dollars I bought a copy of an episode of The Odd Couple and looked at that.

Oh, Interior Madison Apartment Day. That’s what that is. This is the format, and this is how long they are. So, David and I wrote a pilot about two kids in college, which was the sum total of our life experience back then. We were both 23. And it didn't go anywhere, obviously, but we had a good time doing it. And we then learned the way to break in is to write spec scripts from existing shows.

So that's what we did. And eventually we broke in.

So, had you written anything with him before that or seen any of his writing? What was it that made you think this is the guy?

Ken Levine: No, no. He just seemed like a funny guy. Neither of us had written anything. Neither of us had any writing samples for the other. No, we just sat down together and just tried doing it. It probably was a help that we were both starting from the same place, which was nowhere. You know, it's just kind of one of those happy accidents where you go on a blind date, and it turns out to be your wife.

How many years did you guys write together?

Ken Levine: Well, we're still writing together, if somebody would hire us. Fifty years.

Congratulations.

Ken Levine: October of 73 is when we started.

And I'm trying to remember, was it The Tony Randall Show or The Jeffersons where you sold your first script?

Ken Levine: The Jeffersons.

And how did that happen?

Ken Levine: Well, we had written a spec Mary Tyler Moore and a spec Rhoda, and another spec pilot. Which was better but didn't go anywhere.

And one day my mom is playing golf with a guy who says he's the story editor of The Jeffersons, a new show that just came on. My mom says, “Oh, well, my son is a great young writer.” And he's like, “Oh Christ.” And he says, “All right, well just have him call me.”

So, I called him, and the guy says, “You have a script?” And I said, “Yeah.” And he goes, “All right, send the script. If I like the script, we'll talk.” And I sent off our Mary Tyler Moore Show, and I got a letter back saying, “Oh, this is a really good script. Make an appointment, come on in and pitch stories.” And we pitched stories, and they bought one. And so that's how we got our assignment. 

Thinking back, is there one moment that you felt like was really pivotal that officially launched you guys?

Ken Levine: Yeah, doing that first MASH episode. We had done The Jeffersons, we had done episodes of Joe and Sons, which was a terrible show on CBS. We had done some stories for Barney Miller, but Danny Arnold always cut us off before we got to script. We did a backup script for a pilot that didn't go. And then we got MASH And our first episode of MASH, which is the one where the gas heater blows up and Hawkeye is temporarily blind. And that script was like our golden ticket.

It's a very memorable episode.

Ken Levine: Oh, thank you. I remember it.

I spoke with—I don't know if you know her—April Smith, and she said she learned everything she learned about writing in a room from Gene Reynolds. Where did you learn about writing in a room?

Ken Levine: Well, I don't know about writing in a room from Gene, because we never worked in a room, really, with Gene. But, I learned more about storytelling, and more about story construction, from Gene Reynolds, than everybody else combined. I've been very lucky to have a lot of great mentors along the way, or to work with, you know, really talented writers and smart enough to just shut up and listen and learn from them. But if I had to pick one true mentor, it would be Gene Reynolds. I cannot say enough about Gene Reynolds. I owe my career to Gene Reynolds.

What was his special gift?

Ken Levine: First of all, he was very much a gentleman. So, when he would give you notes, if he didn't like a joke, he wouldn't go, “Jesus, guys, what the fuck?” He would go, “And, um, you might take another look at this. You might take another look at that joke.” Okay.

Gene had a great story sense that was combined with a real humanity. It had to be more than just funny. It had to be grounded. There had to be, like I said, some humanity to it and the humanity and nice moments and things had to be earned. And he was very clever in constructing stories where things were set up and then got paid off in a somewhat surprising way. You know, look for inventive, different ways of finding a solution.

It's why to me, storytelling is always so hard, because each time you tell a story, you want it to be different. You don't want to just keep retelling the same story over and over again. And Gene would look at a thing and go, “Is there a better way of conveying this? Is there something more interesting that Hawkeye could do once he learns this information?”

You could give Gene an outline, and everyone can go, “Okay, well, this doesn't work.” Gene could go, “This doesn't work, and here's why. And here's how you can fix it. If Radar knows this, and then HotLips does this, then you could do a fun thing where it's a thing and….  And you're going like, man, he just, you know, just solved it. Just, just solved it. I thank him for that.

He was very tough on story, which I took from him. And again, there's the humanity aspect of it, which normally you think, well, okay, that's just part of it. But when I see shows today—and I know I'm going to sound like an old guy, “get off my lawn”—but when I see shows today, like White Lotusand a lot of these other shows that are just mean spirited, where the laughs are coming from watching horrible people do horrible things to each other. And, look, comedy changes and, you know, society changes, et cetera. But to me, there has to be some heart to it. There has to be some, some humanity. And that was so drummed into me by Gene.

Gene also talked about the value of research, which I have learned a lot.

You know, you go off to write a project about whatever. You're going to do a pilot about the Department of Motor Vehicles. You sort of know a lot about the Department of Motor Vehicles. You've stood in the lines and everything.

Gene would say, “Go there. Talk to those people. What is that job really like?

What do they really do? And immerse yourself in that world.” And that's what I've always done since.

Jim Brooks, who worked with Gene on Room 222, would say the same thing, that he learned the value of research from Gene. And when Jim Brooks did Broadcast News, he spent a tremendous amount of time in newsrooms, talking to those people, getting a sense of authenticity. It requires work, it requires a lot of extra legwork, but it makes the scripts richer and more authentic. And it’s worth putting in the time and effort.

I just had Michael Conley on as a guest on my podcast. And one of the things I asked him—he does the Bosch books and The Lincoln Lawyer and he’s my favorite mystery writer—and I said, “So with all the detectives out there, what's so special about yours and your books?”

And he said, “The authenticity.” He spent years on the crime beat at The Los Angeles Times and really got to know the inside working of the LAPD. There is an authenticity to his books that you don't get with a lot. It makes a difference.

Research pays off. Okay, one more TV question. What inspired your move into directing?

Ken Levine: I'd been a writer for many, many years. A lot of those years I was on staff of a show, and years when I wasn't on staff on a show—since I'm a good joke guy—I would get a job as a consultant on a show. Meaning, I would work one night a week, which was always rewrite night.

What a great gig.

Ken Levine: It was a great gig. You worked long hours, but it was a great gig. And at the time the pay was ridiculous. There was one season I was on four shows. So, I was working basically four nights till two, three o'clock in the morning. And it got to the point where I would go down to the stage and I would kind of dread going down to the stage, because all I was worried about was, “Okay, let this not be a train wreck. Okay, let this be in good shape, so that I can go home at 10 or 11 or 12.”

And I thought to myself, “There's something wrong here. You get into the business, you should want to be on the stage.” So, I thought, be a director and be on the stage and play all day with the actors. And then when it comes time for rewriting, “Good luck guys. You go to the room and rewrite, and I’ll go to a Laker game.”

So that was my motivation. It should be fun. If you're in television and you're in multi-camera shows, you should look forward to going down to the stage. And if you don't, then it's time to change things around. So, that was my motivation.

Did you feel like you had any advantages as a director because of your background in writing and your understanding of scene construction?

Ken Levine: Yes. Number one: The writing served me very well. I was talking to Jim Burrows once, who is the Mozart of TV comedy directors.

And I was asking him about shots and this and that. And he said, “Look, if the story works, you can have one camera and just shoot the master of the whole show and it'll work. And if the story doesn't work, you can have all the camera angles and cutting you want. It's not gonna save it.”

So yes, it was a big help to me, having that experience, being able to say to the actors, “Okay, I see what's wrong here. You need help with the script. You need a few more lines before you can get this angry. Okay. The reason why you're having trouble here is you have to go from zero to 70 in two lines. And you need help here.”

And I was also able—this is something Jimmy did and no other director I know of other than me would do the same thing—and that is, we would go back to the writer's room after the run through and I would sit with the guys while we discussed what was wrong and what needed to be fixed. And I would kind of help them along that line as much as I could, which proved to be very helpful.

And also, it was very helpful because you go down to the stage the next morning and you have your table reading. And you're able to say to the cast, “Okay, this is what they did last night. These were the problems. This is how they addressed it.” And there were certain things where actors would go, “Where's my joke?” And you're able to say, “The script was long. It was not you. You did a good job with the joke. The script was really long. It's a joke that was easily liftable as opposed to something that was more integral to moving the story forward. That's why you lost the joke.”  So, it helped in communication.

Also, by that time I had been a showrunner. So, I was used to coming down to the stage, and if I saw something I didn't like—with blocking or something—I'd go, “Wait a minute, why is she here and she over there? This is a private conversation. Put them together. Why are they standing back there in the corner? Why did you put them at this table? The audience can't see them over here. You put them over here at this front table, and then we can have background and you can have some depth and geography.” And stuff like that.

So, I have that aspect. I also spent a lot of time editing these shows. So, I would work with the editor, and I'd say, “Okay, go to the wide shot where we see the full costume.” And he goes, “We don't have it.” “Wait, what? It's a costume joke. He comes in dressed like Mr. Pickwick and you only have it up to here?” So, as a director, I go, “Okay, this is what I need to make this joke.” And also reaction shots are so important.

You know, when the director is directing a multi camera show—which is like directing Rubik's cube—you have a camera coordinator who works with you, making sure that all the shots are rights. And so, he'll go down the script and it's like, “Okay, Kelsey's line. All right, we have Kelsey on camera A, and then his line we have on camera C, and then Roz we have here.” And he's making sure that everything is covered. But I also want reaction shots. They aren't in the script, but I know when Sam says this, you're going to want to cut to Diane's reaction to it.  So, I had that going in my head.

And also knowing like, “Okay, this show is running a little long. I suspect that they may cut this section of a scene.” So, when I block it and when I set my cameras, do it in such a way where you can make that lift. Don't have somebody cross the stage during that section, because then if you lift it, the guy pops onto the other side of the room. Don't just have a master, so that there's nothing to cut away to.

So, there's like all kinds of things that are going through your head, besides just directing the actors, that my experience was able to help me with.

Well, you said Rubik's Cube, and that's what it sounds like: a Rubik's Cube on stage.

Ken Levine: You’ve got five, six people on stage, and you have four cameras. You want to get a master and singles and reaction shots, and two shots. And it's all happening fluidly while the scene is going on. And then when somebody moves around the couch, then the cameras have to move, and are you covered? And those guys are amazing, the camera people in LA, if you're nice to them.

I remember there was an episode of Becker that I was directing, and it was in the diner. And somebody had to go way upstage in the corner to the coat rack. And so, as I'm camera blocking that scene. I'm saying, “All right, I'm going to have to do a pickup. Fred, I'm going to have to send you way up the line to give me Ted in the corner there.”

And he said, “I can get there.” And I go, “Fred, you have like a line and a half, because I’ve got you on Reggie. And then they cut away to Bob saying, ‘I looked at my lunch pail and I didn't have anything.’ That's all the time you got. You got three seconds to get up there and frame it and do it.”

And he says, “I get it. I can get it for you.” And for them, that was kind of part of the fun, was sort of the challenge. If they like you. If they don't like you, good luck.

Dying to make a feature? Learn from the pros!

"We never put out an actual textbook for the Corman School of Filmmaking, but if we did, it would be Fast, Cheap and Under Control." 
Roger Corman, Producer

★★★★★

It’s like taking a Master Class in moviemaking…all in one book!

• Jonathan Demme: The value of cameos

• John Sayles: Writing to your resources

• Peter Bogdanovich: Long, continuous takes

• John Cassavetes: Re-Shoots

• Steven Soderbergh: Rehearsals

• George Romero: Casting

• Kevin Smith: Skipping film school

• Jon Favreau: Creating an emotional connection

• Richard Linklater: Poverty breeds creativity

• David Lynch: Kill your darlings

• Ron Howard: Pre-production planning

• John Carpenter: Going low-tech

• Robert Rodriguez: Sound thinking

And more!

Write Your Screenplay with the Help of Top Screenwriters!

It’s like taking a Master Class in screenwriting … all in one book!

Discover the pitfalls of writing to fit a budget from screenwriters who have successfully navigated these waters already. Learn from their mistakes and improve your script with their expert advice.

"I wish I'd read this book before I made Re-Animator."
Stuart Gordon, Director, Re-Animator, Castle Freak, From Beyond

John Gaspard has directed half a dozen low-budget features, as well as written for TV, movies, novels and the stage.

The book covers (among other topics):

• Academy-Award Winner Dan Futterman (“Capote”) on writing real stories

• Tom DiCillio (“Living In Oblivion”) on turning a short into a feature

• Kasi Lemmons (“Eve’s Bayou”) on writing for a different time period

• George Romero (“Martin”) on writing horror on a budget

• Rebecca Miller (“Personal Velocity”) on adapting short stories

• Stuart Gordon (“Re-Animator”) on adaptations

• Academy-Award Nominee Whit Stillman (“Metropolitan”) on cheap ways to make it look expensive

• Miranda July (“Me and You and Everyone We Know”) on making your writing spontaneous

• Alex Cox (“Repo Man”) on scaling the script to meet a budget

• Joan Micklin Silver (“Hester Street”) on writing history on a budget

• Bob Clark (“Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things”) on mixing humor and horror

• Amy Holden Jones (“Love Letters”) on writing romance on a budget

• Henry Jaglom (“Venice/Venice”) on mixing improvisation with scripting

• L.M. Kit Carson (“Paris, Texas”) on re-writing while shooting

• Academy-Award Winner Kenneth Lonergan (“You Can Count on Me”) on script editing

• Roger Nygard (“Suckers”) on mixing genres

This is the book for anyone who’s serious about writing a screenplay that can get produced! 

Jim Meskimen — Character and Voice Actor

John Gaspard: Today, we're going to talk about your life as an actor and having a diversified pool of things to draw from to be a working actor. I listened to a couple other interviews with you, and there was one point they kept coming to that I wanted to avoid, which was immediately talking about your mother. My connection is, and was, that we went to the same high school, Southwest high school in Minneapolis. So, I thought, well, that's my great connection. And then my friend Jim here, who is … one of the reasons he's here is because he is a working actor as well, but in a much smaller market here in the Twin Cities. So, I thought having him as part of this chat would be interesting. Jim, what is your story?

Jim Meskimen: And he happens to have the name of Cunningham.

Gaspard: Well, we're gonna get to that. Here we go.

Jim Cunningham: Therein lies the story. Your mother made an appearance along with some other famous TV moms at, you know, we're very proud of the fact that Spam is produced here in Minnesota.

Meskimen: That's right. That's right.

Cunningham: And there is a Spam museum. It's that important to us, Minnesotans.

Meskimen: Yes, I know she's been there. We had some Spam swag that she gave us one time.

Cunningham: Well, there, it was from that. She came as a famous mom, along with some other famous TV moms, Barbara Billingsley, and--

Meskimen: And Florence, maybe? Florence Henderson?

Cunningham: I think so. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And I was the emcee of that event and I was interviewing them as they arrived on the red carpet. And I said to your mother, Oh, I'm just so thrilled to meet you because my last name is Cunningham. And more than that, my dad's name is actually Richard Cunningham. And so is my brother.”

Meskimen: Oh, my gosh.

Cunningham: During the height of the Happy Days craze, we literally had to have an unlisted phone number because every third call was, “Is Fonzi there?”

Meskimen: Oh my God. Oh my God.

Cunningham: And your mother said to me, “You have to prove to me that your name is Cunningham.” So I took out my wallet and showed her my driver’s license. And she said, “Oh, you poor darling.” And she gave me a nice hug and a peck on the cheek and it was just, I cherish, I cherish the memory.

Meskimen: That's really sweet. That's hilarious. She challenged you like someone would make that up, you know, so she had to really get to the bottom of that one.

Cunningham: But your mother was just charming and a delight.

Meskimen: That's great.

Cunningham: Yeah. Sorry. We got off on a tangent.

Gaspard: We've given the elephant in the room some peanuts. Now we're shoving it off to the side for you.

Meskimen: Well, if I may say it is, it is no problem at all. I love to talk about my mom. She has blazed such a path for me, not in terms of, you know, any kind of practical nepotism, but just because everyone loves her and loves what she represents. And so I find it very easy to make friends with strangers in this way, because you're already kind of disposed to, well, you must not be such a schmuck, you know, he’s got this mom. And so I'm always very happy to talk about her. She's a delight and she's 93. She lives very close by and she's very happy in enjoying her retirement.

Gaspard: Excellent. All right. So we want to talk about being a working actor, but before we dive into the acting part, I know when you started out, you were focused maybe more on art and cartooning and that. How did you make the switch from that to acting?

Meskimen: Well, I kept both plates spinning. I studied, I taught myself to cartoon and illustrate, enough to be a professional, you know, not enough to be a super genius, kind of in demand, tremendous demand person. But enough to work. And I did that in New York city. And I had this need to perform. And so, I also did plays, I would do little projects.

I would perform, you know, when I could. When I went to college, I didn't take theater classes, but I would do plays, you know, people would audition. And if there was a guy — I was very good at accents. So, you always needed a funny guy with an accent. Sometimes, you know, I could get the part of the old man, the old French guy or whatever. And that I just was always a few clicks above the rest of my fellows there.

So I really kept both these activities going while I was sorting out which one was gonna be the path. Cause I really honestly wasn't clear on what I'd be doing. And, I felt strong feelings about both, but I didn't feel at that time, I didn't see how I could mesh them together. I didn't see how one was going to be, how I’d have to jettison one completely.

And it took me a while to figure that out. And when I did, it was a big relief and I went, okay, I know why I want to pursue acting. I know what's honorable about it. I know why it's right for me at this time. And so I'm going to go for it. And then I went with full energy towards that, but I always, I mean, I haven't forgotten how to draw or paint and I do it now. I'm older, I'm 62. That was when I was 23.

So at this point in my life, I wouldn't mind sitting home and painting a little bit and being away from everybody. But at the time I felt like I needed a more social existence, a more social career that would have more collaborative aspects.

Cunningham: As you look back on things, do you remember some of the first things that you got that were maybe, you know, of note?

Meskimen: Yeah. I started off, I came to New York and I started a bunch of things all at once. Cuz New York is a great place get started, you know, and start things and be a starter. So I was studying acting and I was studying improv. I had a false start. I went and studied at the Stella Adler school for a while, which was a disaster. And I vectored off of that as fast as I could. And I got into improv, which was much more suited to my temperament and I think is better training in general.

So I was doing that. I was looking for an agent and I was also supporting myself as an illustrator cartoonist in the meantime. So I didn't have to be a waiter. I could have a pretty decent job.

So the first things I got had to do with my ability to do impressions. And be a voice actor. So my improv group that I was in had a gig weekly doing what was then a regular feature of the old McNeil Lehrer report, if you ever remember that show?

Gaspard: Oh yeah.

Meskimen: The McNeil Lehrer report, which was a news show. It was like a hard news show, but it had a funny section every Friday. They would take the political cartoons of the day and just by kind of zooming in and out and changing panels, they would sort of, you know, semi-animate them statically. And they would add voices to it.

And then they hired us to do the voices of, you know, Boris Yeltsin, then Reagan and whatever was happening on the time. And we’d go in every Friday. It was my first AFTRA a job and I think I made $114 bucks a week, but it was $114 bucks a week, you know, back then when a ride on the subway was 50 cents.

That was like, this is okay. So that was a nice, kinda like, oh, that's a stability, you know? Cause I think I did, we did a whole, I don’t know, a season or more of it. And every week, you know, it was kind of cool.

My biggest breakthrough came in the area of on-camera commercials. And I had remembered that my mom, when she was a single mom, she would, every now and then before Happy Days, she would get guest spots on things like Mannix and Mission Impossible and Hawaii-5-0. But those were pretty few and far between. And then, if she booked a commercial, it was like, oh, you know, thank God because it would generate enough income, through residuals for her.

And back then commercials paid very, very well. Today it's more rare, as you know Jim. It's kind of a disappearing thing, as things go on the internet. But a network commercial back then could help you stay alive. So, I had that in my mind. I was like, you know, I need to get into commercials.

So, I auditioned and eventually, after a couple of years, actually two years at least going on a lot of things as a young man, I started to get into commercials.

And there was one very, very lucky day that changed my life completely. And it had everything to do with whatever else I was studying, because I was studying communication at that time. I was studying improv at that time and those things came together in a beautiful way.

I had an audition for a grocery chain out of Texas called Skaggs Alpha Beta, the euphonious name of Skaggs Alpha Beta.

And they were looking for a spokesman to interview people in the store. And they had had some market research that told 'em that, you know, you call yourself the friendliest place in town, but you're not so friendly. So, they wanted a friendly spokesman who could talk to people, actual real people and have fun and whatever, you know, and be clean and not insult people.

And that was what I had been studying in improv, you know, clean comedy. Supportive comedy, you know, not cutting the legs off of people. So, I got this audition. I went physically and did it and they said, “oh yeah, yeah, that's great. We're gonna hire you.” I'm like, great. It's three commercials and three regional commercials, which is not a huge deal, but for me it was like, well, this is great.

Then after we did those three commercials, they came back about a month later and said, “all right, we want you to be our spokesman to do all our stuff all year long. We'll give you a contract, radio, TV, photo, you know, put you in the newspaper, the little circulars and billboards and what have you.”

And it was like, forty grand. And I'm like, oh my God, I didn't even know this existed. My mom never had anything like this. This is like new territory. Well, I did that for five years for that company. And every year, the price went up, the contract got sweeter. By the end of it. I was making, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars a year just on that job, which would take about seven days a year to do.

And that changed my life, because it gave me tremendous confidence, because I created all the material, I improvised every second of it. Maybe not every second, but you know. And it gave me the wherewithal to exist in New York comfortably without having to really sweat the day job and to do plays and to do things that, you know, if you have time, you go and you do improv shows and you don't worry about, am I making any money? You don't sweat it.

And then I actually got known because the footage, I would take the footage and I would cut it into reels and I would send that around and I got more spokesman jobs. So, you know, it was like a side business that sort of developed outta nowhere.

Off of one audition. Sometimes it makes me scared to think: what if I was late? What if I didn't make it that audition, life would be so different.

Cunningham: Somewhere in the multiverse, that's happening.

Meskimen: That poor sucker in the multiverse but he probably has all my hair. So it's fine.

Cunningham: Did you do any Happy Days with your mom? I was just thinking as a young kid, did you do any? You know, walk-ons or extra work on any of the shows your mom was doing?

Meskimen: No. The only time when she became Marion Cunningham—your pseudo mom—she got me into an episode and my sister, not the same episode. She exercised a little bit, you know, and it happens to be one of the most famous episodes of Happy Days that I was in.

I'm a young man, 17, on the beach looking buff. And I come and announce the fact that they've caught a shark out in the water. And then the rest of the show is about how Fonzi’s going to jump the shark.

Gaspard: But it sounds like growing up, that you learned the life of a working actor because you've lived with a working actor, is that safe to say?

Meskimen: A hundred percent.

 I think one of my primary advantages in my life has been that I saw what it is, you know, and what it isn't. And I saw it. My mom also was particularly driven and also focused and intent, you know. She's a high achiever. So, whereas a lot of actors go, well, I'm waiting for my agent to call and I don't know, I can't do anything, you know, until they give me an audition. Maybe I can, blah, blah, blah.

And I realized that's like a losing attitude. Because what I saw was a woman who went, Hmm, uh, who can I call? What can I do? Who must I reach out to? Who must I meet? Should I do a play? Absolutely, I should do a play and I should let everybody know that I'm doing this play. And even though it's a crappy play and I'm getting no money, I'm gonna do it.

And I looked at that and went, okay. I see. You need to promote yourself. She hired a PR person. She always had a PR person and would utilize that in any way that she could. And then, how do you live and raise kids and pursue this weird career that is so herky jerky, what do you do? And I saw how she did it. She would economize and we hired out—she always remembers this—we rented out one of the bedrooms in our house. Mind you, we have three bedrooms.

We hired out a third of our house to a college student, because, you know, that was 60 bucks a month or something she would get and shared a kitchen with this person. And, she would do plays and she would volunteer for things and she would push it along, push it down the road.

I remember vividly seeing her rehearse lines for an audition over the sink. We were getting ready to have dinner or lunch or something. And she's going to take off in a minute in the car and drive to Hollywood and do this audition. You juggle, but she was a hustler, in the sense of a hard worker. She was a depression child and I think that came as just part of the territory back then.

But even more than other people her age that I observed, she was just intent. And it came from this vision that she had of as a girl of seeing her name on a marque and changing her name too—so it would look better—and just being like, I'm gonna do this. Which I recognize now from my life experiences and for my own philosophy that it's a very smart way to go about it.

Gaspard: Yeah, it really is. You know, it's interesting in looking at your career and then looking at my friend, Mr. Cunningham here, who I've known for 30 some odd years.

Meskimen: Oh, wow.

Gaspard: And seeing that you both have a very similar mindset when it comes to not saying no to things. I learned that from Jim. Don't necessarily say no to something right away. Listen to what it is. A lot of times you're gonna accept stuff just because you're not doing anything else and why not. And you never know where it's going to lead. You both have this living in sort of a limbo world of: I don't know what's coming next, but because you've said yes so often, and because you're easy to work with and because you bring the goods and because you have so many different threads, there's almost always something coming in. Because you've just kept the streams open. And that's why I wanted Jim to meet Jim, because you both represent the same thing just in different towns.

Meskimen: Soul brothers!

Cunningham: Exactly. Well, I'd like to think.

Gaspard: But now you have an online course to help actors become working actors. Because there's a real difference between an actor and a working actor. I’m in the low budget movie world and there's a difference between being a screenwriter and a screenwriter who's working or being a director and being a director. You can say your thing, but to actually be working at it on an ongoing basis, doesn't necessarily just happen. And it sounds like in your course, you're going to walk people through that process.

Meskimen: Yeah, I've really tried to do that. That's exactly right. You can break down a career, and I'm sure Jim understands this very well, like you have the production side of things, which is the rehearsing, showing up, acting, great.

And everybody's focused on that. You're like, that's what acting is. Well, that's right. That is one sliver of the job. The other sliver is marketing. There's also a kind of a sliver that's having the big goal and the vision and sort of the planning and being the visionary of the organization, because you're an organization. There’s finance, there's paying bills, there's keeping one's self fit, medical things. There's a lot of different moving parts to it.

And, and most of us think of acting as like, oh yes, there I am on the stage holding the skull. Giving the speech to Yoric. Okay, that may happen, that may be part of it, but that's like an eighth of it or a 15th of it. So, in my course, I've tried to share what those other parts of the organization that I do.

Because I was paying attention, thank God. It didn't just happen by luck. It happened very concertedly and very determinately. So I know what we did. And I say we: I've got a little team of people, with my wife and now my daughter helps me, agents, managers, other people to actually keep it rolling, because it is that kind of life, the freelance life.

And there are many different kinds of freelancing lives that people can lead. But in an actor freelance life, you don't know the next week. Like, I looked on my calendar yesterday. And I went, wow, there's a lot of blank space on that calendar. And yet there is no blank space in, you know, my bills summary--I'm going to have to pay whether there's something or not.

So now today, because of all the promotion that I do during the week, now I have a couple jobs. I never sweat it because—probably like Mr. Cunningham—I know that these are the actions that I have to do. I know that schedule's gonna fill out. It's gonna fill out ahead of me almost like a train track rolling out in front of the steam engine.

So, in the course, yeah, I've composed a bunch of different videos where I talk about certain things about auditioning, about promotion, marketing, and other very important aspects of keeping the career rolling. I don't teach acting. I'm not going to go there. My wife has a wonderful acting school and anybody can check that of out if they want to. It's called The Acting Center and they run online courses as well as in-person here in LA.

I'm not teaching anything, but I'm sharing. What did I do? And what have I found after 35 years of doing this are the important steps to take, the important actions to always keep in, and what might happen, and how I've bobbed and weaved and kept things going so that I didn't have to take another job.

I never had to back up and go, well, I retreat, you know, now I'm gonna go and just go into teaching or now I'm gonna go into, you know, real estate or nothing wrong with that. And I know a lot of actors have done it, but I have not had to. And I'm a little bit stubborn at this point. I'll go kicking and screaming into any other, non-artistic field.

Gaspard: Good for you. Without giving away too much of the course, we’ve got a couple questions that I'm always interested in when it comes to this sort of career. What's the biggest mistake that beginning actors often make?

Meskimen: I think the biggest single mistake is to have the right mindset concerning who is creating the career. Because we come seemingly with hat in hand, as actors, to the audition, to the theater, to meetings, interviews, we can fall into the trap of thinking, I'm waiting for someone to give me something. When we're really desperate, we're really like beggars and it can get pretty bad. And as any actor who's been begging knows, it just doesn't work very well. It's very unattractive. Unless they're hiring a beggar. For the role of the beggar, you know, then it's okay.

All other times it's really anathema. So, I think it's a viewpoint of like, I am gonna create this career. That's what I saw my mom do. And that's what I exercised too. I totally mobilized that, because I'm a creative person, I like to create. So, it was kind of like, well, here's a good excuse: You want an excuse to create? Guess what? Your whole career is up to you.

What you wanna do, what you're good at? How much you pursue it, how well you do, how fast you go, how much you get paid. It's really kind of up to you. And that may seem counterintuitive or stupid, or, you know, bewildering to people as they just start out, because we are looking to collaborate. We are looking to fill a hole that someone else has created.

You know, somebody is out there right now, writing a part in a show that will need to be cast. And the casting director will be looking around for that person. That hole didn't exist until that writer came up with it. So, in a way, they have created that, they've created that opportunity, that position that needs to be filled. But we can always sort of be ready for those things. 

I believe in sort of deciding and picturing things and putting things out there in the universe. So, I do that sometimes I'll go, you know, somewhere someone is writing a great part for me and, it's very difficult to actually link that to cause and effect. But the fact is I've been working as I said for a long time.

So, I think it's just a mindset of: you have to take the hat out of your hand, put the hat on your head or on a hook and go, you know what? I am the guy in charge. So, how much money do I wanna make? What do I wanna do this year? Take charge. Don't go, well, I hope, if only, well, maybe if things go well, somebody might possibly grant me…

No, no, no. That's a losing attitude. That's an expectation, you know, and being the effect of something rather than actually trying to cause something. So, it's a hard lesson to tell people, because so much of life is sort of dictating that we behave like people that are created upon. You know, we are marketed at, you know, come and watch this movie, sit in the dark while we tell you a story and feel this way and laugh at this part and, you know, and pay this money and, oh, okay.

We get that all day long. There's stuff, just shooting at us all day long and at some point, the artist has to kind of shake it off and go, what do I wanna make? I'm gonna make it, you know, I'm gonna produce it, I'm gonna create it.

And so that's what I think is the biggest change. The biggest mistake that could just go through a whole lifetime or a whole career of a person is like, they're thinking like, God, the agent will give me the thing. And then I might, if I possibly do well, they will give me the part and then maybe they'll keep all of it in and not edit out all of it.

And, and then maybe they will pay me and you know, all this kind of awful , you know, slave kind of mentality. As much as you can turn that around. You'll notice that the very big actors didn't take no for an answer. They developed their own projects. They were fussy. Sometimes they were saying, I won't do that, but I'll do this, you know.

They're demanding on themselves and, and many of them have created their own things. I always think about Billy Bob Thornton, would Billy Bob Thornton have the terrific career he does today? He's a great actor, but do you have the career that he has today if he hadn't decided, man, I'm gonna write this script and star in this Sling Blade thing myself.

I don't know. I doubt it. And there's lots of examples of people like that, because he wanted to do it, cuz it was something he observed in life or had this idea, I think while he was on another shoot and he turned, you know, the material of his life into this project that he believed in and miracles happened. And a lot of stories like that.

Gaspard: So you had the advantage of growing up, watching a working actor. So you had probably a bit better sense of that world than someone coming in from the outside doing it. But was there anything that you were surprised by once you started being a full-time working actor?

Meskimen: One lesson that I learned very quickly was: I probably would've had a commercial career about two years earlier, but I made a mistake. A strategic error.

There's a lot of potency to beginner's luck in show business. We hear a lot of stories. They're almost like legendary stories about people who went well, you know, I wasn't, I didn't even have the audition. I went with my buddy and my buddy didn't get the job. And I did. And you hear that there are gazillion stories like this.

Right? Same thing happened to me. I went with my friend to visit a girl who was working for Barbara Shapiro casting in Manhattan. And I went to say hello to this girl. And she said, “oh, by the way, you know, we're casting for this beer commercial.” So I got a call back. I got a second callback.

I got a third callback and they pay you for the third callback. But in between the second and third callback is where I made my error. This is funny, because it was related to impressions and impressions has always been a door opener for me. It was a Miller beer commercial with guys sitting around at campfire.

And I went well, I'm playing a guy who stands up and does a John Wayne thing. That was me. They kept calling me back, kept calling me. And then I had some stupid conversation with the girl that I had been going out with at the time. And she said, “why don’t you do Henry Fonda?” And I went, “yeah, I'll do Henry Fonda.”

That was the end of that. So the lesson I learned is a very important lesson. Most actors pick this up very quickly, but I just kind of screwed up. It’s that if they keep calling you back, don't change anything. It's going right.

If they ask you on the day: Okay, we saw your John Wayne. I wonder, can you do any other voices? That would've been the perfect time to whip out your Henry Fonda, as they say. But I screwed that up. Two years before I got another really good opportunity. So, I never change anything now. I learned that lesson very quickly.

When I did finally book a commercial, I had gone in and I got a call back and I remembered on the day I had like a headache. The day I did the first audition, I was cranky. And on the day I got the call back, I'm like that day, I'm like, well, I feel great. Well, I'm not gonna act like I feel great. I'm gonna be cranky.

And I went in and I booked that job. By applying this do not change anything.

Cunningham: Smart. A lot of people don't think that through, boy. That's a really good tip. If you're an actor listening, that's the price right there. You just got gold just dumped right into your lap. 

Meskimen: Yeah, it would be like, if you went to a restaurant and you had the halibut one time and you go, oh my God, this halibut's great. I'm gonna come back. And if they serve you the halibut and now it's in a totally different sauce. You're like, what the fuck? I came for the halibut. What happened?

Cunningham: What happened? As you think about, you know, actors like me, can you point to some, you know, sort of generic, “Hey, this is here's another trap don't fall into this one?” Something that you see other actors kind of making that mistake again and again?

Meskimen: Sure. And it's related to my first comment about what's the biggest challenge in changing this mindset of who's in charge and being in the driver's seat, if you will, of your career. And I think I wind up talking to a lot of people, particularly guys our age who maybe have not made their peace with social media.

But for me it was a major breakthrough to finally have the discipline to get onto YouTube and begin what has become the last 11 years of really, just an interesting chapter of my life, where I have something that I would've loved to have in New York, which is this access and ease of production.

Anyway. Not to talk too much about myself, but just the fact that most actors are underutilizing, I think, the technological reality of today, of being able to share performances with the world and to generate interest in what you do. And to also creatively expand and reach out and come up with content yourself that may not at first have any kind of monetary value to you, but as a product, as a promotional activity, is virtually free and can create great windfalls and attention.

Are you doing anything on YouTube or anything?

Cunningham: You know, I'm really not. And not only am I not doing it, but you're the first person to suggest that if you were to use that in some way, that there would be a benefit there. Now, I'm not a great actor. I'm better as myself than I am as anybody else in general.

And that's where the bulk of my work comes is being me in front of a camera, or on stage. The challenge has been thrown down now: what could I do on YouTube? And could that effect, because as you mentioned, as you get older, the opportunities decrease.

They're looking for a 30-year-old, they're looking for a 40-year-old, and I'm not that anymore. I always used to tell people what you want is the number of auditions to go down and the number of jobs you're doing to go up. That's the goal. And now I'm finding that's no longer true for me. It's inverted now.

Meskimen: Yeah. Well, I can speak to a couple of points to that. So, I understand about playing yourself and being like a spokesman or being like something, a character that is more or less how you appear to other people. I would suggest that you're much bigger than that.

You're much more various than that. Your possibilities and potentials as just a human being are far beyond what your body might dictate: how you look and how you think about things, even some ideas you have. I think you're bigger than that as an individual. And one of the things that I love about acting is that one gets to occupy a completely different point of view.

(as Ian McKellen) For example, this is why I do a lot of impressions is because sometimes I can just change into another person and look at things completely different point of view.

That's sort of the magic of it. I mean, the expectation of an actor generally is that they can do different things. You wouldn't buy a Swiss army knife and find that it has one blade and go, I'm really happy now.

You'd go, wait, where are the scissors? Whereas the ballpeen hammer or whatever. To be an actor means I can play a lot of different characters. I can play a lot of different roles. Now, as we get older, maybe, you know, that gets narrower, but we can certainly always push. Push it out. And I think you can surprise yourself by what you're actually able to do.

You've got a lot of wisdom now, you've earned that over the years, you've met a lot of different kinds of people, and I think it's probably something to take a look at. An actor, if you look at the job description, if there is such a thing it's like knowingly taking on another point of view to help tell a story, that's kind of a quick definition of what it would be like. 

So if you are facile and ready to occupy other viewpoints, to look at things from the point of view of someone who's, you know, just physically exhausted or someone who's been just kicked around their whole life or someone who's just won the lottery. You know, if we practice this, which is what they do at the acting center, just kind of changing viewpoints and looking at things from different points of view, then you discover that, you know, I can do a lot of different things. Because a human being is like that. A human being can adopt all kinds of different viewpoints and feel all different kinds of ways and express different kinds of emotions.

And there's a great freedom in that. I think you'll blossom if you start to have a little try at that.

Cunningham: I like that. That's good advice. I like it a lot.

Gaspard: You know, it's interesting. You mentioned social media and we're all of a certain age and feel like things might be passing us by, but Jim Meskimen, your use of social media, your use of YouTube—I found you on TikTok—your promotion of yourself does not seem like promotion. It does not seem like marketing. It is just you, having fun, doing the things you do. And then in some cases it's impressions. It's other cases, it's you doing characters that you've created. And I think that's sort of the secret to promoting yourself on social media is: Do what you love and eventually people will find that and want to be part of that.

Meskimen: Yeah. And there's an example. Thank you for noticing that. I appreciate it. And I'm having the best time. Two things I wanna say about that. one is: I don’t know if you've ever heard the entrepreneur, Gary Vaynerchuk?

He said something very, very helpful about branding. Because branding, when we talk about branding, it immediately sounds like something we don't wanna have anything to do with. But branding is reputation. That's another good synonym, your reputation. And we prove our reputation all the time. By how we talk to people, what we do, what choices we make, it's pretty simple.

So if we let people know, Hey, I was at this concert and I had a great time. Well, we know that about you. We know that you love Fleetwood Mac, you know, and that you had a great time on last Wednesday. That is your reputation too. If you create a character or you go to a play or you just say, God, you know, this is on my mind and I have to say something about it. That's your reputation too. That's your brand. People get to know you that way.

And the other point I wanted make was in terms of the volume of what I do and how it doesn't seem like branding. It's just me having fun. And that is indeed entirely what it is.

There was a guy when I was kicking around New York, back in my twenties, in various subway hubs, like grand central station or times square in the subway downstairs. Every now and then I would walk past this young man who was a drummer and he was banging on—not drums—he had like a joint compound bucket. And he had, I swear, I remember one time he had crisper from refrigerator—you know, the shelf, the drawer.

Anyway, he was banging away those buckets and those instruments, which obviously did not cost a lot of money. And the sound just racketed through the subway. And it sort of integrated; when you walked through to that drum beat. You were kinda like, yeah, I'm in New York and I'm walking.

Not for nothing, this is the right soundtrack for this little part of my life right now, you know? And how many people would walk by this guy every day? Was in the hundreds of thousands, probably, right? So, there is a guy—this is a great example, if you think about it in terms of social media—this was a guy who was drumming for a massive audience every day.

And were people giving him money? I never gave him a dime. I mean, he couldn't have made more than, I don't know, 75 bucks a day. Who knows, maybe made more than that. But that wasn't the point. The point was 10 years later maybe, or earlier, there was a production, called, Bring in the Noise, Bring in the Funk.

This guy got hired. He was seen by the director. He was in a Broadway show. He was performing seven nights a week. I can guarantee he wasn't making $75 a day. And it just was like: oh, look at that. That's a great, very easy example of like, okay, this is what obviously he loved to do it.

Nobody said here is the way to the Broadway: Get your bucket of joint compound young man. And go thee to Times Square. No, not a chance. He loved rhythm. But he made it go right. And I don’t know where he is today. I don't even know the guy's name, but I know that it was the big start of something with tremendous potential for him, you know.

Gaspard:  Follow your bliss. Like they say, you never know. I have two working actors in front of me right now. Tell me about rejection and dealing with rejection and how you deal with rejection

Meskimen: Oh, good question. Yeah. Rejection is like a kind of a shock to the beginner, because we kind of know it's coming, but it still hurts.

And the fact is that it's something that you have to kind of make friends with, which sounds really, really impossible. I just watched a video of a guy who—I think it was Joe Rogan. I watched a little on TikTok. Joe Rogan was talking about this ice-cold bath. That you know, it's now a thing to do these super cold plunges to try to handle inflammation in the body.

And I watched him because I want to see you go in that bath. And he went in. I'm like, how long is he going to stay in that thing? It's 34 degrees, just above freezing, but he was in there. I lost interest. So he went on for minutes and minutes. And being judged and being rejected is like that cold bath.

Now, Joe Rogan said that the first time he went in that bath, he could do it for about a minute. And then he got the hell out of there and went into a sauna. Probably. Now he can go in for 15 minutes. So, it was like that for me with rejection. Because, you know, you prepare something it's—and when you're an actor, it's different than other jobs. Because other jobs, if you're producing, like, even a piece of artwork, you know, it's exterior to you.

It's not you. It's that piece of paper. It's that object that you've created. With an acting job, it's like, oh, it's your hair, your body, your face, your tone of voice, your presence, your smell. It's all what you're offering, you know, whether you want to or not, it's there. Especially in the pre-Zoom days.

So, the levels and the dynamics of you being judged are just exponential. You know, you're like, wow, oh, you didn't like it the way I sat, you didn't like the way I said that one word, you know. There's all these swords to die on. But if you recognize and get familiar with the procedure, then after a while, that bite that it had originally does start to taper off.

And at this point— and early on for me, I'd done hundreds of auditions—I'm like, some I get, some I don’t get. Unless somebody says something really cruel, which is a whole different category of thing. There is just a natural judgment and evaluation. That is part and parcel of being an actor, where they go, “thank you very much.”

And you never hear from them again and you go, wow, that's one thing. If someone says, “yeah, you know, you're not quite right. You're not quite good enough. Boy, we were really expecting something better or, wow, that sucked.” I mean, there's a whole range of othernesses. Then that that is something that you don't necessarily get comfortable with.

But after a while you kind of gird your loins and go, well, that comes up, I have a different response to that. You know, I'm gonna say a little something or I'm gonna make a mental note: This casting director is an asshole. But that's different. The everyday kind of, “thank you very much for coming in rejection,” that's just something that if you do it enough and if you're not too precious about it and you don't take it personally, cuz it is not personal, it absolutely is not.

You know, one good thing too is to—if you're an actor and I have not done this, so I'm giving you this advice that's kind of secondhand—but go and participate in a casting process where you're not being cast. Watch other actors come in, be a reader or something, and observe the variety of people that come in and what is attractive and what is unattractive and what is distracting and what is not distracting.

And it'll give you some reality on like, oh, okay. We've interviewed or we've auditioned 15 people for this role, 12 of them could do it. They were fine, but this one's hair is this way. And this one has a little better this and you know, and I don't know, I met this guy before, I'll work with him again.

They're arbitrary, small kind of gentle reasons why the person gets hired. And it's not the Roman arena where they go, Thumbs down. You're dead. Now it’s thumbs down, you are a failure. You—it's your turn to be eliminated. It's not that. It's like, yeah, you're great. You're great. I got nothing to say except the director wanted to work with this guy.

And you’ve got to make your peace with that and go, yep, I would do the same thing if I was a director. I wanna work with this guy. Who cares? It doesn’t matter.

Gaspard: I still remember William H Macy saying once he was on a TV show and went up to the producer/director, the guy in charge, and said, “thanks so much for casting me in this.”

And the guy said, “yeah, it was between you and another 5,000 people, but you’ll work.”

Meskimen: I just found out—this is interesting—I got a role in a show that I'm gonna work on next week. And I was like, wow, great. You always, you know, these days, Jim, you know about this, you do these at home self-tape auditions, and it seems fake. It still seems kinda like I'm not in show business. I'm just doing it in the back of my house, but they call you up and they go, you know what? We want you for the role. And I'm like, oh, okay, great. And I'm all chuffed about it, you know, excited.

And the wardrobe man, when I went to the wardrobe fitting, for reasons of his own I'm sure, told me that, “Yeah, they originally hired another actor to do this part and then the schedule changed and so he couldn't do it.” And so then I found out, you know, in that sort of covert way that I was not the first choice.

I still get to do the job. But that's another aspect of things that could come in and sour things and you can start to feel sort of like a victim a little bit. But you know what? I just look at, what am I trying to do? I'm trying to get bigger and better parts in bigger and better shows. So that like, like Jim said, maybe I don't have to do so many auditions. Maybe they come to you and say, we have an offer. I love that. That happens sometimes, but I am also very happy to audition. I'm very happy to meet with people because for me, I look at an audition is a performance.

Especially these days when they expect a performance. I don't hold the script. I memorize it. I work it out. I spend hours and hours and hours getting that show together and shoot it to the best of my ability, put the best sound on it that I can and fire it back as quickly as I can.

And it's fun for me. I like the activity of acting. I like the activity of portraying a different person, of trying something out.

And that's, that's the joy of it. And the chore of it.

Dying to make a feature? Learn from the pros!

"We never put out an actual textbook for the Corman School of Filmmaking, but if we did, it would be Fast, Cheap and Under Control." 
Roger Corman, Producer

★★★★★

It’s like taking a Master Class in moviemaking…all in one book!

• Jonathan Demme: The value of cameos

• John Sayles: Writing to your resources

• Peter Bogdanovich: Long, continuous takes

• John Cassavetes: Re-Shoots

• Steven Soderbergh: Rehearsals

• George Romero: Casting

• Kevin Smith: Skipping film school

• Jon Favreau: Creating an emotional connection

• Richard Linklater: Poverty breeds creativity

• David Lynch: Kill your darlings

• Ron Howard: Pre-production planning

• John Carpenter: Going low-tech

• Robert Rodriguez: Sound thinking

And more!

Write Your Screenplay with the Help of Top Screenwriters!

It’s like taking a Master Class in screenwriting … all in one book!

Discover the pitfalls of writing to fit a budget from screenwriters who have successfully navigated these waters already. Learn from their mistakes and improve your script with their expert advice.

"I wish I'd read this book before I made Re-Animator."
Stuart Gordon, Director, Re-Animator, Castle Freak, From Beyond

John Gaspard has directed half a dozen low-budget features, as well as written for TV, movies, novels and the stage.

The book covers (among other topics):

• Academy-Award Winner Dan Futterman (“Capote”) on writing real stories

• Tom DiCillio (“Living In Oblivion”) on turning a short into a feature

• Kasi Lemmons (“Eve’s Bayou”) on writing for a different time period

• George Romero (“Martin”) on writing horror on a budget

• Rebecca Miller (“Personal Velocity”) on adapting short stories

• Stuart Gordon (“Re-Animator”) on adaptations

• Academy-Award Nominee Whit Stillman (“Metropolitan”) on cheap ways to make it look expensive

• Miranda July (“Me and You and Everyone We Know”) on making your writing spontaneous

• Alex Cox (“Repo Man”) on scaling the script to meet a budget

• Joan Micklin Silver (“Hester Street”) on writing history on a budget

• Bob Clark (“Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things”) on mixing humor and horror

• Amy Holden Jones (“Love Letters”) on writing romance on a budget

• Henry Jaglom (“Venice/Venice”) on mixing improvisation with scripting

• L.M. Kit Carson (“Paris, Texas”) on re-writing while shooting

• Academy-Award Winner Kenneth Lonergan (“You Can Count on Me”) on script editing

• Roger Nygard (“Suckers”) on mixing genres

This is the book for anyone who’s serious about writing a screenplay that can get produced! 

William Greaves on “Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One”

How did you get your start in filmmaking?

WILLIAM: I taught acting for quite a while in Canada, from the Actors Studio in New York. I went up to Canada and worked on the National Film Board of Canada, on the production staff. I also, concurrently, opened up a studio that was modeled on the New York Actor's Studio, and taught acting. 

One of my actors became very wealthy in the real estate business in Miami, Florida. He said, “Listen, you're a very talented fellow and you have a lot of ideas. You're just as good a director as anyone coming out of Hollywood. Why don't you do a feature?”

And I said, “These things cost money.” And he said, “What does it cost?” And I told him and he said, “Do it. I'll back it.” 

So I asked him what sort of subject he wanted me to concentrate on -- a whodunit or a romance, or what?

And he said, “Anything you like. Whatever you want to do, Bill, you do.”

So, with that blank check I reflected on a lot of things that that I had been thinking about over the years. One of them is the creative process, as it relates to the actor and the director. Having been a product of the Actor's Studio and Lee Strasberg, Kazan, Stanislavsky and those people, as well as having been involved in psycho drama, by way of J.L. Moreno, who was the pioneer of psycho drama, it came to me that it would be interesting to shoot a film that had some of these elements. 

I thought it would be interesting to do several screen tests and to look at the creative process that actors undergo, in conjunction with the director, to show their talents at the highest level.

So that was the beginning of Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One?

WILLIAM: That's how it all got started, initially, but then other elements came into play. For example, the Heisenberg Principal of Uncertainty, for which the analog to the electron microscope is the motion picture camera, which is looking down into the psyche and soul of the actor while the actor is performing, and often times it tends to stiffen and destroy the spontaneity and truthful feelings of the actor as the character they're trying to portray. I thought that would be an interesting element to think about, artistically, creatively.

One of the hallmarks of the Stanislavsky system is to try to be as honest in what you're doing, in performance, as possible. One of the things that kept bothering me about a lot of Hollywood movies was that the acting was very stiff and lacking in spontaneity. Having challenged myself as an actor to be more realistic in my acting -- and having looked at the work of people like Marlon Brando and Julie Harris -- people at the Actor's Studio whose work was very spontaneous. 

It came to me that this was a wonderful opportunity to test the limits of my credibility as a person in front of a camera, pursuing this particular screen test with these actors, but trying to not act for the camera.

Talk about your character, the director of the screen tests.

WILLIAM: One of the elements of my characterization was my inscrutability. Try and try as much as they could, they couldn't decode my motives. That was calculated to elicit a degree of tension and anger and anxiety in the crew. They couldn't decode my motives, and I didn't want them to decode my motives, because I wanted to see if it would be possible to generate as much conflict in front of the camera as possible.  Conflict being the hallmark of a really good drama.

I come from a wonderful high school here in New York, called Stuyvesant High School. That learning experience was very focused on science and the scientific method, and I've fallen in love with a lot of scientific principles, one of them was the Heisenberg Principal of Uncertainty. It seemed interesting to see how I could mix all of this.

I put all these ideas into a big pot and stirred these all of these diverse, disparate elements together and heated it up with conflict and served it up to the audience.

How much was the movie a product of its time?

WILLIAM: The sixties were a period of tremendous rebellion on the part of the youth of America, and I was in harmony with that kind of thinking. When one works at a place like the Actor's Studio, one becomes very critical of the work that is being done in front of the camera or on the stage. So I felt that it would be wonderful to apply Cinema Verité techniques to the spontaneity that the Stanislavskysystem encourages in the actor's work.

I was hoping to have any conflict to what I was doing played out in front of the camera by the crew challenging me in what I was doing or criticize me or whatever. But this did not happen until the last scene in the movie, of the crew on the grass, screaming and shouting and shrieking at me because I was doing a lot of what they considered to be bizarre and unorthodox things that were not in lock step with traditional Hollywood feature filmmaking.

You must have been surprised to learn that the crew shot footage of their own, of them talking about you and the way you were working.

WILLIAM: I didn't think that they were challenging me enough during the course of the shooting, but then they gave me the footage that they shot on their own. I didn't know that they had done this palace revolt, it was something that they surreptitiously stole away and did at the end of a day of shooting after I went home. 

They had this closet revolt and it was terribly exciting to me, because I was afraid that the film was not going to work out well, because it didn't have enough conflict. 

But when I saw this material I was just elated and I knew that we had a very good film on our hands -- something that would be very fresh and delight audiences, particularly those who were reasonably conversant with the filmmaking process.

Tell me about the title and what it means to you.

WILLIAM:  The title is, for me, a very attractive title. I tend to be in love with scientific thinking of one kind or another, and I came across a book called Inquiry Into Inquiries;: Essays In Social Theory, which was written by a very knowledgeable social scientist named Arthur Bentley. 

He conceived of the milieu that human beings find themselves as the symbiotaxiplasm. And this symbiotaxiplasm represents those events that transpire in the course of anyone's life that have an impact on the consciousness and the psyche of the average human being, and how that human being also controls or effects changes or has an impact on the environment. 

So there's a dialectic or a dialogue that goes on between the action and behavior and thinking of human beings as they move through the events in their lives. 

I had the arrogance, the temerity, to introduce the term 'psycho' in the middle of symbiotaxiplasm, making symbiopsychotaxiplasm.

Symbio represents the existence of similarities of one kind or another. Psycho is the mind. Taxi is how the mind reacts and responds to arrangement of reality. And Plasm being the human being. I'm over-simplifying it; you'll have to read the book yourself.

Find more Film Interviews HERE.

Dying to make a feature? Learn from the pros!

"We never put out an actual textbook for the Corman School of Filmmaking, but if we did, it would be Fast, Cheap and Under Control." 
Roger Corman, Producer

★★★★★

It’s like taking a Master Class in moviemaking…all in one book!

• Jonathan Demme: The value of cameos

• John Sayles: Writing to your resources

• Peter Bogdanovich: Long, continuous takes

• John Cassavetes: Re-Shoots

• Steven Soderbergh: Rehearsals

• George Romero: Casting

• Kevin Smith: Skipping film school

• Jon Favreau: Creating an emotional connection

• Richard Linklater: Poverty breeds creativity

• David Lynch: Kill your darlings

• Ron Howard: Pre-production planning

• John Carpenter: Going low-tech

• Robert Rodriguez: Sound thinking

And more!

Write Your Screenplay with the Help of Top Screenwriters!

It’s like taking a Master Class in screenwriting … all in one book!

Discover the pitfalls of writing to fit a budget from screenwriters who have successfully navigated these waters already. Learn from their mistakes and improve your script with their expert advice.

"I wish I'd read this book before I made Re-Animator."
Stuart Gordon, Director, Re-Animator, Castle Freak, From Beyond

John Gaspard has directed half a dozen low-budget features, as well as written for TV, movies, novels and the stage.

The book covers (among other topics):

• Academy-Award Winner Dan Futterman (“Capote”) on writing real stories

• Tom DiCillio (“Living In Oblivion”) on turning a short into a feature

• Kasi Lemmons (“Eve’s Bayou”) on writing for a different time period

• George Romero (“Martin”) on writing horror on a budget

• Rebecca Miller (“Personal Velocity”) on adapting short stories

• Stuart Gordon (“Re-Animator”) on adaptations

• Academy-Award Nominee Whit Stillman (“Metropolitan”) on cheap ways to make it look expensive

• Miranda July (“Me and You and Everyone We Know”) on making your writing spontaneous

• Alex Cox (“Repo Man”) on scaling the script to meet a budget

• Joan Micklin Silver (“Hester Street”) on writing history on a budget

• Bob Clark (“Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things”) on mixing humor and horror

• Amy Holden Jones (“Love Letters”) on writing romance on a budget

• Henry Jaglom (“Venice/Venice”) on mixing improvisation with scripting

• L.M. Kit Carson (“Paris, Texas”) on re-writing while shooting

• Academy-Award Winner Kenneth Lonergan (“You Can Count on Me”) on script editing

• Roger Nygard (“Suckers”) on mixing genres

This is the book for anyone who’s serious about writing a screenplay that can get produced! 

"Grand Theft Auto" — Roger Corman, Rance Howard and Nancy Morgan on the making of this low-budget classic

Like many of the other top directors of his generation, Ron Howard’s directorial debut came via Roger Corman. Not only did Howard direct Grand Theft Auto, but he also starred in the film and co-wrote the script with his father, actor Rance Howard.

RANCE HOWARD: Ron had acted in (Corman’s) Eat My Dust, and it had been a huge success for Roger. He wanted to do another car chase/car crash film. Ron said, “I will do another movie for you, with one additional job added.” And Roger said, “What is that?” And Ron said, “I want to direct.” And Roger said, “Well, Ron, you always looked like a director to me.” 

How did you and Ron come up with the idea?

RANCE HOWARD: Roger already had the title. He had tested it. It was going to be called Grand Theft Auto, and it was about young people on the run. He said, “If you and your dad could come up with a story like that, we'd have a deal.” So, we sat down and put our heads together and started kicking ideas around. We did a treatment first; Roger read the treatment and loved it and we went right to script.

NANCY MORGAN: I was told that Roger had a certain formula that was applied to this type of picture.  There were a certain number of explosions that had to happen, there a certain number of recognizable names that had to be worked in.  There were elements that were almost like Julia Child's recipe for making money.  The bases were covered methodically.

RANCE HOWARD: I was fascinated with the demolition derby. At one time, Ron, Clint and I went to see a demolition derby, and it was just fascinating. At that time, I had considered writing a script about a demolition derby. Then with Grand Theft Auto, it just seemed perfect for the car to end up in a demolition derby.

NANCY MORGAN: Ron told me, during the shoot, that Roger had told him when he made this deal, "If you do a good job for me, you'll never have to work for me again."

One thing I’ve heard from many directors who’ve worked with you on their first films is that, before getting started, you take them out for what is called The Lunch. This is where you distill all the best advice about how to successfully execute a low-budget Corman film. What are the elements of that conversation?

ROGER CORMAN: It's too involved to get into here. But the most important thing that I point out over and over is preparation. On a ten-day shoot, or a 20-day shoot, you don't have time to create from scratch on the set. As a matter of fact, I don't think you should do that anyway. My number one rule is to work with your actors in advance, so you and the actors are agreed on at least the broad outline of the performance. Then to have sketched out, if not all of your shots, most of your shots, so you have a shot plan in advance.

How did you first hear about Grand Theft Auto?

NANCY MORGAN: My agents were contacted by Ron!  Can you imagine?  When he was casting for this role, he was looking for someone who, first and foremost, he didn't have to pay a lot.  It couldn't be a star—it had to be an unknown.  At the time, one of my first movie that I'd ever acted in—in fact, one of my first acting jobs ever, because I came to Hollywood untrained and unprepared—was a movie called Fraternity Row, with Paul Newman's son, Scott Newman, in his first and only picture.  And it was out in the theaters when Ron was casting, and he liked my performance in it and found my agent.

What was the audition process like?

NANCY MORGAN: Back then I used to say to myself, “There are a lot of people here who know a lot about acting, but all I really know is that you just have to pretend that it's happening.” And so, during the audition process, I did as close to what I felt a human being would do under the circumstances, and that was to say the lines like I meant them, and then when Ron was talking to me, react to what he was saying.  And that was about as much acting as I knew. Ron later said to me, “You know, I interviewed a couple hundred girls.  Did you ever wonder why you got it?  Because you were the only one who, when you weren't speaking, was still listening.” That was something that forever stuck with me as one of the things that was important and not everyone's top tool.

Once you had the script and cast in place, what was the next step?

RANCE HOWARD: I always knew that preparation and rehearsal are extremely important. But this experience drove that fact home and really solidified that. Preparation is really, really important. Pre-production, really being prepared.

ROGER CORMAN: I'm a strong believer in rehearsals and in pre-production and preparation. I want to be able to come onto the set and shoot. Ideally, everything is worked out in advance; practically, it never quite works that way. You always are faced with new problems, or maybe you get a better idea. But at least you have your framework before you shoot. If you don't have time for a full rehearsal, I like to have at least a reading with the actors, in which we read and maybe do some improvisations and do some loose rehearsals—not on the set—taking at least one day before shooting for that.

NANCY MORGAN: The cars rehearsed.  The stunts rehearsed.  And the explosions rehearsed.  We basically just had to know our lines and pretty much bring it to life.  We would run through the scene once or twice, but really rarely for the acting of it.  Ron knew what he was doing, so he didn't really need it.  

ROGER CORMAN: What I do, and what I tell my directors working with me, is that you waste a lot of time after you get a shot, where you're congratulating everybody, discussing the shot, and so forth. And that shot is already yesterday's news. You've got it. So, what I do is I say, “Cut, print, thank you.” Then maybe one sentence saying how good it was to the actors. And then, “The next shot is over here.” And we're on to the next shot.

With Ron’s focus on directing the movie, what was it like to act with him? 

NANCY MORGAN: Looking at the script, there appeared to be a thousand interchangeable scenes of Ron and me in the car, talking about this and that.  I understood enough about story to know that it had to build and climax and resolve.  And so the first thing I did with my script was to break it down into an outline and had an understanding of where Ron and I were in our relationship, from the first scene to the last. Ron, on several occasions—since he was in charge of the whole picture, directing everything—he realized that I had done this and that I was aware of where we were in the script at any given point in terms of his and my relationship.  He would sometimes say, “Where are we?” And I would say, “Well, this has happened, and this has happened, and this has happened, but this hasn't happened yet, so we do know about this, but we don't know about that.”  And he'd say, “Okay. Got it thanks.” My breaking it down was something that I could do that was helpful to him and that would orient him as to where we were in the scene, and then Ron just acts—he doesn't even to have to worry.

The production really was a family affair, wasn’t it?

RANCE HOWARD: I think any director likes to use people that he is familiar with and that he can trust and has confidence in. Both Clint and I fit nicely into those categories. And his mother, at that time, had been working quite a lot coordinating extras for other filmmakers. And so, she coordinated a lot of the extras for that film, in particular the senior citizens on the bus. Involving his mother, and his brother Clint—an excellent actor, and who was at that time, almost as big a name as Ron—in the film just made good sense.

NANCY MORGAN: The other thing I learned on that movie is that there's nothing like family to pull this together.  On this film, Cheryl did a lot of the cooking.  His mom was in it.  His brother was in it.  And Rance, of course, co-wrote it with Ron.  There was no partying for them.  You never found them in the bar, sitting around, schmoozing with people.  At night they were in their room, looking at dailies.  They were looking over every single moment of this and discussing it like you would discuss an art project.  They wanted it to be the best car picture it could be.  

Was there any improvisation on the film?

NANCY MORGAN: The only improvisation was our kiss.  Although it was written in the script, we didn't have a clue how to go about it.  And that was the time where the whole, entire family got involved. Cheryl was standing by the side, with lip gloss and breath spray. And Rance was coming up and whispering in my ear, “Just go for!  Go for it!”  Which was his only direction to me in the entire film.  So, it became my responsibility to just lunge for Ron and just, like, smack him.  With everyone in the whole family standing around.  That was probably the most improvised moment.

ROGER CORMAN: Be flexible. Even though you've done all your preparation, don't stick absolutely to the preparation if it doesn't seem to be working. Know that you've got the preparation, but situations change, so be prepared to change with the situations. 

RANCE HOWARD: You need to be tenacious; you need to stick to your guns, but at the same time, you have to be prepared to compromise and negotiate. That was really driven home to me, the importance of compromise. There are a lot of aspects of making a film where you can compromise. In some places, you can't. You need to know what compromises can be made and what compromises can't be made. Coming to that realization is important: understanding that you're not going to get everything you want, you're going to get part of what you want.

What was the preview process like?

ROGER CORMAN: I'm a firm believer in putting the film, at least one time, before an audience.

RANCE HOWARD: We had the film assembled as a rough cut. Roger started going through and taking all the humor out of it; he didn't realize that Ron and I had designed a comedy. So, we rented a screening room over at Warner Brothers and invited some people to come and see it, along with Roger. The crowd saw the humor and they absolutely roared. When it was over, he came over to us and said, “You guys have a funny movie here.” After that screening, when we proved that we had a comedy, we had one or two more test screenings before we locked it up. 

What was one of your biggest take-aways from the experience?

RANCE HOWARD: Stand up for what you believe in. For example, if we had allowed ourselves to be easily talked out of it being a comedy and cut it as a straight action picture. And filmmaking is a team effort, it's really teamwork. We happened to have a great team.

Dying to make a feature? Learn from the pros!

"We never put out an actual textbook for the Corman School of Filmmaking, but if we did, it would be Fast, Cheap and Under Control." 
Roger Corman, Producer

★★★★★

It’s like taking a Master Class in moviemaking…all in one book!

• Jonathan Demme: The value of cameos

• John Sayles: Writing to your resources

• Peter Bogdanovich: Long, continuous takes

• John Cassavetes: Re-Shoots

• Steven Soderbergh: Rehearsals

• George Romero: Casting

• Kevin Smith: Skipping film school

• Jon Favreau: Creating an emotional connection

• Richard Linklater: Poverty breeds creativity

• David Lynch: Kill your darlings

• Ron Howard: Pre-production planning

• John Carpenter: Going low-tech

• Robert Rodriguez: Sound thinking

And more!

Write Your Screenplay with the Help of Top Screenwriters!

It’s like taking a Master Class in screenwriting … all in one book!

Discover the pitfalls of writing to fit a budget from screenwriters who have successfully navigated these waters already. Learn from their mistakes and improve your script with their expert advice.

"I wish I'd read this book before I made Re-Animator."
Stuart Gordon, Director, Re-Animator, Castle Freak, From Beyond

John Gaspard has directed half a dozen low-budget features, as well as written for TV, movies, novels and the stage.

The book covers (among other topics):

• Academy-Award Winner Dan Futterman (“Capote”) on writing real stories

• Tom DiCillio (“Living In Oblivion”) on turning a short into a feature

• Kasi Lemmons (“Eve’s Bayou”) on writing for a different time period

• George Romero (“Martin”) on writing horror on a budget

• Rebecca Miller (“Personal Velocity”) on adapting short stories

• Stuart Gordon (“Re-Animator”) on adaptations

• Academy-Award Nominee Whit Stillman (“Metropolitan”) on cheap ways to make it look expensive

• Miranda July (“Me and You and Everyone We Know”) on making your writing spontaneous

• Alex Cox (“Repo Man”) on scaling the script to meet a budget

• Joan Micklin Silver (“Hester Street”) on writing history on a budget

• Bob Clark (“Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things”) on mixing humor and horror

• Amy Holden Jones (“Love Letters”) on writing romance on a budget

• Henry Jaglom (“Venice/Venice”) on mixing improvisation with scripting

• L.M. Kit Carson (“Paris, Texas”) on re-writing while shooting

• Academy-Award Winner Kenneth Lonergan (“You Can Count on Me”) on script editing

• Roger Nygard (“Suckers”) on mixing genres

This is the book for anyone who’s serious about writing a screenplay that can get produced! 

Gary Winick on "Tadpole"

Why did you decide to shoot digital?

WINICK: There's the economics of it, which is obviously a big deal. There's the time factor, which is actually a bigger deal, and there's the fact that now actors and distributors will take low-end digital filmmaking seriously. It's not discriminated against at all, in terms of getting actors or in terms of distributors wanting your film.

How open was the cast to working this way?

WINICK: Not only were they open to digital, they were actually curious and looking forward to it, because digital is a performance-oriented medium. Sigourney said, 'I hear it's like a hybrid between theater and film and I want to try it.'

Did you write to the budget?

WINICK: It was written for a shooting budget of $150,000, knowing I was going to shoot it in digital, and knowing that I was going to shoot it in New York. So, the way I approached the story was, what are you passionate about, what do you want to say? 

Then you think about, how many actors, how many locations? If you do a single-point of view movie (which are the kind of movies I like to do), then you can have two or three big locations where you have a lot of page count, but then you follow your character--which can just be you and the actor around, getting him from one location to the next, and all of a sudden your movie appears bigger than it is.

Another thing is you want to do it where you have as few continuity days as possible. The less costume changes the better. So, the idea of the Thanksgiving holiday gave us four days.

What was your scripting process?

WINICK: We came up with the characters first, and then thought of what sort of situation that we could put them in that would support a low-budget, 12-day shoot.

If you have nothing to say, don't say it, but if you have something to say, say it with passion, because that will move audiences.

I've had a film that took five years to get made, and if you weren't passionate about the story, I could never stick with it for five years. I can't be passionate about, "Oh, great, this all takes place at night and the actor doesn't have to change his costume." That's not going to keep me going for five years. So it all comes back to story.

Tell me about your process for shooting the dinner scene in the restaurant.

WINICK: I knew the blocking, because that's the thing about table scenes: you know the blocking. And I watched all these great table scenes, that weren't subject-appropriate, but just table scenes. From Rosemary's Baby to Apocalypse Now to Father of the Bride, just to see how the great filmmakers did it and to see if anything applied to what I was doing, story-wise.

Then I sat four interns down at a table and gave them the script, and I worked out all the angles. And because it was a 13-page scene, I knew that I had to come up with inventive ways to vary the scene and get from transition to transition. It took a day and half to shoot. We owned the restaurant and the extras are (of course) all crew and friends, mostly crew.  We shot with two cameras, sometimes three.

How did you accomplish the 360 transition shots?

WINICK: I went to a Toys R Us and bought a Sit-And-Spin. I used Susan, my editor, who weighs a lot less than me. And I went into the restaurant while it was full and said, 'Can we just sit in the restaurant for five minutes?'  And I had Susan sit in the Sit-And-Spin and I spun her around. I actually took the concept from Citizen Kane.

Where did the idea come from to use text screen with Voltaire quotes?

WINICK: The Voltaire quotes idea came in post. I had a really, really, really unfortunate experience with my cinematographer on this movie. The camera wasn't on sometimes, so I'd get back to the edit room and the script supervisor had these shots that said that I shot, but yet they were never recorded. I had focus problems, camera operating problems. When I got in the editing room and found out that my DP/Operator did such a poor job, I was left with some really hard, clunky ways to get from scene to scene. And that's when I came up with the Voltaire quotes. So, it came out of necessity.

How did you find the quotes?

WINICK: I went to Barnes & Noble, because I'm not an Internet guy, and went through some Voltaire quotes, and I was like, 'Oh my god, this is going to work great.'

What’s the secret to making a successful low budget movie?

WINICK: When you're making a low budget film, you really only have one focus, and that focus is story. Because costumes and lighting and design and all that stuff, you can never either afford it or have the time to do it right.

So, you really have to focus on the one thing that you know that the audience is (hopefully) going to respond to, which is the story and being engaged with those characters on screen.

I have 84 million dollars now for Charlotte's Web, and I have huge effects, and computer people, and Stan Winston and all this stuff … but it all comes back to story.

Dying to make a feature? Learn from the pros!

"We never put out an actual textbook for the Corman School of Filmmaking, but if we did, it would be Fast, Cheap and Under Control." 
Roger Corman, Producer

★★★★★

It’s like taking a Master Class in moviemaking…all in one book!

• Jonathan Demme: The value of cameos

• John Sayles: Writing to your resources

• Peter Bogdanovich: Long, continuous takes

• John Cassavetes: Re-Shoots

• Steven Soderbergh: Rehearsals

• George Romero: Casting

• Kevin Smith: Skipping film school

• Jon Favreau: Creating an emotional connection

• Richard Linklater: Poverty breeds creativity

• David Lynch: Kill your darlings

• Ron Howard: Pre-production planning

• John Carpenter: Going low-tech

• Robert Rodriguez: Sound thinking

And more!

Write Your Screenplay with the Help of Top Screenwriters!

It’s like taking a Master Class in screenwriting … all in one book!

Discover the pitfalls of writing to fit a budget from screenwriters who have successfully navigated these waters already. Learn from their mistakes and improve your script with their expert advice.

"I wish I'd read this book before I made Re-Animator."
Stuart Gordon, Director, Re-Animator, Castle Freak, From Beyond

John Gaspard has directed half a dozen low-budget features, as well as written for TV, movies, novels and the stage.

The book covers (among other topics):

• Academy-Award Winner Dan Futterman (“Capote”) on writing real stories

• Tom DiCillio (“Living In Oblivion”) on turning a short into a feature

• Kasi Lemmons (“Eve’s Bayou”) on writing for a different time period

• George Romero (“Martin”) on writing horror on a budget

• Rebecca Miller (“Personal Velocity”) on adapting short stories

• Stuart Gordon (“Re-Animator”) on adaptations

• Academy-Award Nominee Whit Stillman (“Metropolitan”) on cheap ways to make it look expensive

• Miranda July (“Me and You and Everyone We Know”) on making your writing spontaneous

• Alex Cox (“Repo Man”) on scaling the script to meet a budget

• Joan Micklin Silver (“Hester Street”) on writing history on a budget

• Bob Clark (“Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things”) on mixing humor and horror

• Amy Holden Jones (“Love Letters”) on writing romance on a budget

• Henry Jaglom (“Venice/Venice”) on mixing improvisation with scripting

• L.M. Kit Carson (“Paris, Texas”) on re-writing while shooting

• Academy-Award Winner Kenneth Lonergan (“You Can Count on Me”) on script editing

• Roger Nygard (“Suckers”) on mixing genres

This is the book for anyone who’s serious about writing a screenplay that can get produced! 

George Romero on his vampire classic, "Martin"

Where did the idea for “Martin” come from?

GEORGE ROMERO: Initially I was thinking of doing a comedy. I just got one of those ideas that comes to you in the shower: If there really were vampires, they'd have problems living hundreds of years. They'd have to keep changing their passport photos, they'd have all these practical problems. So I wanted to do a comedy about the practical problems of a vampire in today's age.

I had started to keep a notebook on it. One day it just occurred to me that I could do this a lot straighter and I could do a thing about somebody who's not a vampire at all.



I just thought that that would be more -- not romantic -- but it would be, in a way, more of a tender story and a whole new spin that was not comedic. I wanted to just spin a vampire yarn a bit differently and leave the door open as to whether he is or is not a vampire.

You left it open for the audience, but did you decide going in that he wasn't actually a vampire?

GEORGE ROMERO: The decision that I made was that he was not. 

In my mind, Martin is not a vampire, he's a kid that's been fucked up by family and mythology and movies and whatever else has influenced him. You just have to make that decision in the dark room somewhere and keep both doors open.

Like your other films, Martin isn't really about what it appears to be about on the surface. It's not really a vampire movie, just like Night of the Living Dead is more than just a zombie movie. They're really more reflections on the times we're living in.

GEORGE ROMERO: That's what I try to do. I try to use the framework and use the genre, because first of all it's the easiest way for me to get financing. 

Really all my films are people stories. Even at the heart of Night of the Living Dead, it's really about the people and how they screw themselves over and can't get it together.

I like that theme tremendously, the lack of communication, the idea that people are still working their own fiddles and have their own agendas even faced with sea changes in the world.

I also like that "monster within" thing, which is in the zombie films and in Martin to some extent. Even in a couple of the things I've done that Steve King has written. The ones that I'm drawn to are those, like The Dark Half.

Martin is even sympathetic in the sequence where he goes to kill a woman and is surprised that her lover is there, which is a remarkable scene.

GEORGE ROMERO: That's my favorite sequence. I think it's the most successful sequence I've ever done.

I like its complexity. It's a very complex situation and you have to be watching the movie closely to get everything that happens in it. But what I like the most about it is the execution of it. It's very close to what I had on the page and I was able -- again, because of the small, dedicated crew and all their cooperation -- to do it, make all the shots. There are a hell of a lot of shots in that sequence. And the geography is clear, you don't get lost.

You can't do that sequence without a lot of shots and these guys moved fast and we got it. It was great. I still think it's maybe the best-executed thing that I've ever done.

Find more Film Interviews HERE.

Dying to make a feature? Learn from the pros!

"We never put out an actual textbook for the Corman School of Filmmaking, but if we did, it would be Fast, Cheap and Under Control." 
Roger Corman, Producer

★★★★★

It’s like taking a Master Class in moviemaking…all in one book!

• Jonathan Demme: The value of cameos

• John Sayles: Writing to your resources

• Peter Bogdanovich: Long, continuous takes

• John Cassavetes: Re-Shoots

• Steven Soderbergh: Rehearsals

• George Romero: Casting

• Kevin Smith: Skipping film school

• Jon Favreau: Creating an emotional connection

• Richard Linklater: Poverty breeds creativity

• David Lynch: Kill your darlings

• Ron Howard: Pre-production planning

• John Carpenter: Going low-tech

• Robert Rodriguez: Sound thinking

And more!

Write Your Screenplay with the Help of Top Screenwriters!

It’s like taking a Master Class in screenwriting … all in one book!

Discover the pitfalls of writing to fit a budget from screenwriters who have successfully navigated these waters already. Learn from their mistakes and improve your script with their expert advice.

"I wish I'd read this book before I made Re-Animator."
Stuart Gordon, Director, Re-Animator, Castle Freak, From Beyond

John Gaspard has directed half a dozen low-budget features, as well as written for TV, movies, novels and the stage.

The book covers (among other topics):

• Academy-Award Winner Dan Futterman (“Capote”) on writing real stories

• Tom DiCillio (“Living In Oblivion”) on turning a short into a feature

• Kasi Lemmons (“Eve’s Bayou”) on writing for a different time period

• George Romero (“Martin”) on writing horror on a budget

• Rebecca Miller (“Personal Velocity”) on adapting short stories

• Stuart Gordon (“Re-Animator”) on adaptations

• Academy-Award Nominee Whit Stillman (“Metropolitan”) on cheap ways to make it look expensive

• Miranda July (“Me and You and Everyone We Know”) on making your writing spontaneous

• Alex Cox (“Repo Man”) on scaling the script to meet a budget

• Joan Micklin Silver (“Hester Street”) on writing history on a budget

• Bob Clark (“Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things”) on mixing humor and horror

• Amy Holden Jones (“Love Letters”) on writing romance on a budget

• Henry Jaglom (“Venice/Venice”) on mixing improvisation with scripting

• L.M. Kit Carson (“Paris, Texas”) on re-writing while shooting

• Academy-Award Winner Kenneth Lonergan (“You Can Count on Me”) on script editing

• Roger Nygard (“Suckers”) on mixing genres

This is the book for anyone who’s serious about writing a screenplay that can get produced! 

Director Stuart Gordon on "Re-Animator"

Director/Writer Stuart Gordon came to an interesting realization a few years after the success of his first feature: He suddenly had a new middle name. Any time he was mentioned in print, his name now read “Stuart “Re-Animator Gordon." Be assured, there are worse fates in the film business.

 His new moniker came about simply because he (and his stellar team of actors and writers and creative folks) had taken the standard horror film and given it a much-needed jolt. 

Re-Animator, based on short stories by horror master H.P. Lovecraft, used all the standard elements of the horror film – mad scientist, pretty girl in distress, able lab assistant, lumbering monster/creature – and then gave the whole genre a surprising (and surprisingly funny) twist. 

What was going on in your career before Re-Animator came about?

 STUART GORDON: I was doing theater. I was the Artistic Director at the Organic Theater Company in Chicago. When I started working on Re-Animator, the original guy that I collaborated with was William Norris, who was an actor in our company and had written several of the plays that we had done.

Originally, we were going to do it as a limited series for television. That sounds kind of insane, but that was the plan. H.P. Lovecraft had serialized the Re-Animator stories, so there were six little stories. So our plan was to do six half-hour shows. Lovecraft's original stories are set in the past -- the first one takes place around the turn of the century, and then the episodes go through about a thirty-year period. So the first draft was set in period. 

We tried to sell that idea, based on the first episode, and had no luck. Then someone told us that half-hour shows were not really the way to go and that we should do an hour. So we went back and combined the first and the second story.

Around this point, Bill Norris was kind of losing faith in the process, so he dropped out and Dennis Paoli came in. When we wrote the second script, the hour-long version, someone again told us that setting it in period was making it a harder sell. It really should be set in the present day. So we shifted it into the present day, but were still unable to sell it.

At that point a friend introduced me to Brian Yuzna, who wanted to finance a feature. We showed him the hour version that we had developed and talked a little bit about how it could be expanded into a feature. We thought we could use the third story, and he said, "Why don't we use all six of them?" I said, "Well, what if we want to do a sequel?" And he said, "Let's just worry about doing as good a movie as we possibly can."

And that was the script that ended up becoming the film Re-Animator.

Why did you decide to work with the Lovecraft stories in the first place?

STUART GORDON: It began with a conversation I had with a friend. This was in the early 1980s and there were all these vampire and Dracula movies being made. I said, "I wish someone would make a Frankenstein movie," because I always liked Frankenstein better. This friend said, "Have you ever read Herbert West, Re-Animator by Lovecraft?" I had read a considerable amount of Lovecraft and I had never heard of this story. 

It piqued my curiosity so I started looking for it and found that it was out of print. I eventually ended up going to the Chicago Public Library and found that they had a copy of it in their special collection. I had to fill out a postcard requesting it. A few months later they sent me a note saying I could come to the library and read it there, but I would not be able to take it out of the library. When I got there, they handed me what was essentially a pulp magazine that contained the stories. The pages were literally crumbling as I was turning them, so I asked if I could photocopy it and they allowed me to do that. The stories had been out of print for many years.

Were the stories in the public domain?

STUART GORDON: They were. All of Lovecraft's work is now public domain. This was something we didn't know at the time. We believed that we had to get the rights through Arkham House, which was the publisher of the stories. 

What you usually do when you're working on something based on existing material, you do a copyright search, just to make sure that the people you're dealing with do indeed have the rights to it. We discovered that the material was public domain and that Arkham House did not have the rights. When we confronted them with this, this just sort of said, "Oh, well." They didn't argue about it at all. They knew that they had been trying to pull something. 

Was one of the attractions of the piece that it was in the public domain?

STUART GORDON: That made things a lot easier for us. We were prepared to pay something for the story. If they had asked for a lot of money, that would have been difficult, because our budget was small. Finding out that it was public domain was great, it was one less thing to worry about.

Once you decided to do it as a feature, what was the process for determining what elements you'd use from the six stories?

STUART GORDON: One of the things that emerged was that the whole story was being told by West's assistant, in the first person, describing what it was like working with West and so forth. We realized that this character was really key to telling the story, because all of the other people that you meet in the stories are these insane characters. This guy really is, in a sense, the audience who's witnessing all this stuff. 

We really got into the idea that we had to make this character very sympathetic and very normal. He would be like the audience, asking the questions that the audience wants to know and be someone that they could relate to. It also added a lot of contrast between this guy and all the eccentric types that populate the story.

In addition to reading through the stories, did you do any other research before you started writing?

STUART GORDON: I did. I went and visited some morgues, which was very helpful. I talked to several pathologists and even got thrown out of some places. I went to the University of Illinois pathology department and as soon as I told them I was working on a horror film, the professor started screaming at me to leave. They threw me out.

After this happened, I talked to a friend of mine who's a doctor, because I was kind of nervous about going to go to talk to more pathologists. I said, "Will they talk to me?" And he said, "Oh, yeah. They’re the loneliest people in the world. No one ever goes to the morgue." Not when they're conscious, anyway.

It turned out to be true -- the pathologists that I talked to were great. It started with a meeting with a guy named Dr. Stein who ran the Cook County morgue. He took me on a tour of the morgue that I'll never forget. At that point I had never really seen a dead body, other than someone at a funeral who had already been embalmed and made-up. The stench was just unbelievable. The bodies were just piled on top of each other on gurneys in these walk-in refrigerators. They didn't have those drawers like you see in movies; I've never seen that in any morgue. 

Stein had a very dark sense of humor, and I found out that this was pretty common with these pathologists. If you're going to do that job, you really have to maintain some kind of distance and keep a sense of humor about it all. That worked its way into the screenplay as well.

The attitude about the dead was really interesting. The idea is that a doctor, when you're alive, will do everything he can to keep you alive. But as soon as you're dead, you become toxic waste. You're garbage. You're not dealt with in a loving way at all. The corpses that we saw in the Cook County morgue were literally in garbage bags, black plastic garbage bags. The ones that had been in operations still had all the tubes and everything still in them. They didn't even bother to pull those things out. It was like, "Why bother?" 

It was an eye-opener and that also worked its way into the story. There's a sequence in Re-Animatorwhere he's trying to re-animate this corpse and it's not working. The assistant says, "We failed." And West says, "I didn't fail. He did." And then he smacks the corpse.

Why did you decide to do a horror film as your first film?

STUART GORDON: First of all, I like horror films. I've always liked them. But it was also because I was told by a friend that they were the easiest kinds of movies to find financing for. The wisdom, and I think it's still true, is that no matter how badly a horror film turns out, you can always sell it to somebody and the investors will get their money back. 

Did you bring any tricks from your theater background to help keep costs down?

STUART GORDON: I would say that 99% of the effects in the movie were done as live stage effects, what they call practical effects. They were the sorts of things that we could have done on-stage, to a large degree. I think there are only a couple of opticals in the whole movie. And this was before CGI or any of that.

I also rehearsed with the actors the same way I would when doing a play and that was very, very useful.

What’s the value of rehearsing?

STUART GORDON: The main reason you rehearse when you're doing a low-budget film is because you don't have a lot of time on the set to be talking about motivation while the whole crew is standing around waiting. So it's a way to work out a lot of stuff beforehand. 

But it was also good to hear the script read aloud. It amazes me that that is almost never done. We could see which lines sounded kind of clunky or other lines that weren't needed. In a couple of places we found dialogue that we really did need that was not in the script and we had to fill in some things. 

Can you think of any examples of dialogue you created in rehearsal to fill in a gap?

STUART GORDON: In the movie, West kills Dr. Hill who is trying to steal his secret of re-animation. He beheads him, and then he re-animates both the head and the headless body. They both come back to life and end up attacking West and stealing his serum. 

We had his assistant coming back and -- in the screenplay -- West didn't tell him any of the stuff that had gone on. The audience already knew this stuff, but the actor playing the assistant was asking, "How do I already know all this? Wouldn't I be asking him what happened?"

We didn't want to have a long scene where West tells us what we already know. And so it was one of those things where we had to find a way to explain it very quickly. So West says something like, "He wanted my serum. I had to kill him." And Cain, the assistant says, "He's dead?" And West says, "Not anymore." And that was it. That basically filled it in.

That's my favorite exchange in the film; it really encapsulates the tone of the movie.

STUART GORDON: There's always some key piece of information you always leave out in a script, too, I've noticed. Something you always take for granted and assume that it’s there, and then you realize that it isn't.

Did you screen other genre films before you started scripting?

STUART GORDON: I looked at a lot of films. Brian Yuzna sat me down and for weeks we screened every horror film that had been made in the 1980s, just to get an idea of what was out there and what had been done. 

One of the things that you have to do when you're making a horror film is that you have to somehow set it apart from the others. You have to go further or do something differently that really makes it unique. So it was important to see what else had been done and to get an idea where we could go, some uncharted territory that we could mine for the film.

With Re-Animator it really had to do with the sexual content. There were a lot of horror films out there, but most of them had the monster trying to devour the victim. That's a very typical thing. So the idea that the monster wants to have sex with the victim was something that was very seldom done. And if it was done, it was something that was very non-explicit. 

You found a way to make it explicit and at the same time different and amazing and something no one had ever seen before.

STUART GORDON: Yes, we set up that Dr. Hill was in lust with the Dean's daughter and he finally has her, but now he's a headless corpse. But he still wants to have his way with her, and the question was, how's he going to do this? 

I remember having discussions with Dennis about that. One night he called me up and said, "I've just written the world's first visual pun." It was the scene that everybody talked about in that movie, which was referred to as the "head gives head" scene.

How did you share the labor in the writing process?

STUART GORDON: Bill had written the piece as a period piece, but some of that language survived even into the modern versions of the script. It was almost Victorian language. West says things like, "That infernal beast," and things like that. No one uses a word like "infernal" anymore, but West does and it seemed right for him. Dennis modernized things a bit more. And the experiences that I had in the morgue worked their way into what became the final version of the script. 

How conscious were you of budget limitations as you were writing?

STUART GORDON: With low budget, it really has to be minimalist. You have to have as few sets and locations as possible and as few characters as possible. You really have to determine what's really essential and what do I really need to tell this story. If it isn't essential, it usually will get cut.

There are no night exteriors in the film, except for some establishing shots. Was that by design?

STUART GORDON: Shooting outside at night is a very expensive thing to do. If you're outside, you need to light it and that can become very pricey.

The establishing shots were done later, because after looking at the movie we realized that we needed to go outside some times. So we just added establishing shots of the buildings.

I remember you saying once that you never worried about what the critics would say about Re-Animator, because you always knew they would hate it.

STUART GORDON: That's true. I assumed that the critics would hate it and that the people I was really thinking about were the fans. I had seen all these other films and in my mind I knew that I had to outdo them -- somehow. But I just wrote off the critics. In a way, that was a very healthy thing, because if you're worrying about the critics it can paralyze you or you'll get too self-conscious about what you're doing. To just be able to ignore them completely was actually a very healthy thing.

Did you think about the special effects at all while you were writing?

STUART GORDON: One of the most difficult things was the idea that there's a character walking around carrying his head through half of the film. That was the major special effects problem. So I sat down pretty early on with the effects guys and we talked about different ways of creating that effect. I also ended up storyboarding those sequences, once I knew what the techniques would be and what approach we'd use for each shot. 

We used a variety of different gags. We resisted the idea of just having a guy with his shoulders built up, because what that does is make his arms look like he's a gorilla. So that was one technique we did not use.

The simplest technique we used was when we would shoot from the back. We would just have the guy who was playing the headless body lean his head forward and we had a fake neck stump on the back of his neck, and that was what you saw when it was shot from the back. You just had to make sure you didn't see his head at all. That way, we didn't have to do anything to his arms.

The one that was the most complicated was where we built an entire fake torso. That allowed the actor, David Gale, to stick his head through the torso and then the other actor could reach his hands around. That was the most complicated thing.

When it came time to cast the film, you didn't really follow Lovecraft's description of Herbert West.

STUART GORDON: West in the story is a blonde; Lovecraft refers to him as a towhead. But when Jeffrey Combs came in, he had the right attitude: a brilliant guy who is completely focused on only one thing and everything else is really not important to him. He captured that kind of drive. It was pretty clear from the first audition that this was Herbert West.

Was there anything you learned while working on that script that you took to future writing projects?

STUART GORDON: One of the things was that when you're working on a horror film, every single scene should have some tension in it. That was one of the things we really worked on with Re-Animator.  You really can't have any scenes with people just sort of sitting around and relaxed. You have to find the tension in each scene. There needs to be something scary about every single scene in the film, otherwise you're letting the audience off the hook. What you really want to do is to keep people on the edge of their seats all the way through.

Is that something you brought to the process from your work as a theater director?

STUART GORDON: It's funny, one of the things that I always did when I was staging a play was, I would very seldom have characters sit down. People sitting down and talking is, I think, one of the most boring things you can do. I would try to avoid that, because I felt that if you have the character sitting down, then the whole story sits down.

When I was doing theater, one of our patrons was an older woman and she would always bring her husband, who didn't really like theater very much. But she dragged him along to see our plays. He was notorious for falling asleep in the middle of the plays, and sometimes snoring. His name was Lester. So I was always, in the back of my mind, thinking "We've got to keep Lester awake. We have to have something going on every moment to keep Lester from falling asleep." And I think I'm still trying to keep Lester awake.

What's the best advice you've ever received about writing?

STUART GORDON: The best advice I ever got was don't censor yourself. That applies to horror films, but I think it applies to anything. If the idea seems like a strong idea, don't worry about what the ramifications are. Just go for it.

You should always use yourself as the test, the guinea pig, rather than thinking in terms of, "Well, marketing people say if I want to appeal to an audience of teenagers I should do this." That's a really good way to destroy  anything that's interesting. If it's something that you would like to see on-screen, then that's enough of a reason to put it in.

Also, although it's a cliché, they say that scripts are not written -- they're re-written. And scripts are not finished, they're abandoned. I think that's really true. You're going to end up doing many drafts of that script and really boiling it down to what's essential. Movies are really minimalist, I think. Every single line of dialogue, every single stage direction is going to be questioned at some point -- "Do we really need this?" So it's really a question of getting a sense of what you absolutely have to have and getting rid of everything that you don't.

One of the great things that Lovecraft said was "Never explain anything." I always thought that was a really good note, especially in horror films. It's really interesting when you look at a movie like The Ring, and then you look at the Japanese version of it, Ringu. Ringu is really spare and simple and they never explain anything. Whereas in the American version there's this tendency to want to explain everything -- to the point where you kind of take away all the magic. Lovecraft's precept is a pretty good one to follow.

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Magician and Filmmaker Lance Burton on his low-budget feature debut, “Billy Topit: Master Magician.”

John: I loved Billy Topit, both Jim and I did. I've made a number of low budget movies in my life, about a half dozen of them and the driving force behind them has almost always been, let's get together with some friends and make a movie. I got the sense that that was kind of part of the DNA of Billy Topit. Is that right?

Lance: Well, yes, I just have to correct you on one thing: Billy Topit was not a low budget movie. It was a nobudget movie. We literally just decided, you know what, I'm not going to spend any money. Everyone volunteered. So, if it ever makes any money, I'll go back and pay the actors.

John: Well, okay. But as someone who has done the same thing, I’ve done that a half dozen times with the no money. The results you got, given the no money status, were great. Your sound is exceptional. One of the things that's normally a big sign that it's a low budget movie is the sound is not good. It's a hard thing to get right and when you do get it right, it makes it sound like a big budget movie. The cinematography is terrific, the editing is fantastic. I don't know if you bought the music, or if someone did the music, but whatever it was it fit perfectly, and it just sailed along. So, for a movie that had no budget, you did an exceptional job of making a real movie.

Lance: Oh, thank you. You’re right, the sound is the one thing you really don't want to skimp on, because that's something you really can't fix in post a lot of the times. So, we did try to pay attention to the sound recording. As far as the music goes, some of the music was from my show that I already own. Some of the performance pieces, some of the music we use just for the movie, was rights free music that that I got from a company called Digital juice. They have all different sorts of music and it's searchable. So, you can find you know, rock and roll hard driving music, you can find, you know, instrumentals, you really have everything.

Then there was a couple of pieces that a friend of mine, who's a musician wrote and recorded for me. And one of the pieces in the film, my lead actress, Joelle Rigetti, she had actually recorded an album a couple of years ago and she gave me the album during the production. She said, “Hey, anything on here you want you're welcome to use.” And I listened to it and there was one track, I went, this is perfect for this one scene I have. It's that it's the scene where the whole cast is waking up on the second day, brushing their teeth and getting ready to go out. That's actually the lead actress singing.

John: The stuff you picked all really meshed well together.

Lance: Oh, thank you. It was during the post-production process when it really struck me—as we were editing and doing that—how much the music adds to a production, not just a live show. I already knew that for a live show. But as I was making the film, it really just struck me again, you know, wow, music really does add a whole new dimension to the movie or live show.

John: Yeah. So, where did the idea for the movie come from?

Lance: Well, I'll tell you exactly where it came from. When I was a kid, there was a television series on TV called The Magician starring Bill Bixby. It only lasted one season, because the network got a new president that came in and he just, you know, cancelled all his predecessors’ shows. But it actually did good in the ratings. But it only lasted 22 episodes.

The magic consultant on The Magician was Mark Wilson and so when I moved out west, I met Mark Wilson, and became friends with him. Then when I was shooting Knightrider, guess who they hired to provide all of the large illusions and props for the episode? Mark Wilson. He was sort of the magic advisor on that television show. So, Mark, and I got to hang out for seven days on the set as we were shooting. He's actually in the episode. You can see shots of him. He's sitting in the audience during one of the opening performances. In fact, I get him up on stage at one point as a volunteer. So, anyway, one day after filming, Mark and I are going out to dinner and we're in his car and we're driving along. And he says to me, “Lance, how do you like doing this work?” And I said, “What do you mean, Mark? You mean like this episode?” He says, “Yeah, how do you like, you know, acting on this, this TV show?”

And I said, “I'm having the time of my life. I get to do magic. I get to act. I get to work with a stuntman, and this is great.” And he says, “Well, you're doing a good job and you ought to think about doing more of this.” And I said, “More of this, so what do you mean?” He says, “You ought to start a notebook, start keeping some ideas of how you could incorporate your magic into a TV series or movie, you know, like with the Bill Bixby series.” And I thought, Oh, that's a good idea. So, I did, I started writing, every time I had an idea about how to use magic within the context of the drama series, or, you know, a story, I would write it down.

So, after a few years, I had all these sort of clever things that I came up with, to use magic and propelling the story forward, or to get out of this sticky situation or whatever. And every few years, I've pulled that out, and I'd go, “You know, I'm going to try and go pitch this,” and I would go to Los Angeles and set up some meetings. And I was trying to pitch to do a series every few years and we got close a couple of times, but we never were able to sell it. But the area I was working in was so similar to things that would pop up on my TV screen later. I kept thinking, “Man, I've got something here, I just need to, like any kind of magic trick, you know, I get it in my head and it's frustrating, I just I gotta get it out, I got to put it on the stage because it's like in my brain is like scratching the inside of my skull and it's really annoying.”

By that time, the technology had progressed to the point where we had these high-definition cameras that weren't, you know, astronomically expensive. And we had editing software so that somebody on their laptop could put out a professional looking product. So, I finally just said, hey, you know what, I'm gonna do this. And I called my buddy, Michael Goudeau and he came over and we fleshed out the story. And then we wrote the screenplay within, like two or three months. And then we eventually just started casting it and shot it. So, it all goes back to Bill Bixby and The Magician from 1973.

John: Well, most things do. Most things do go back that. Were you always planning on directing?

Lance: You know, directing and acting at the same time is really difficult. But I had been doing it all my life, you know, with my live show. And we started in on this thing and then at some point, I heard an interview with Barbra Streisand, and someone asked her that question, and they said, “Is it difficult to act and direct in the same production?” And she had a great response. She said, “No, it's easier that way. That's one less person I have to argue with.”

Jim: She's right. Absolutely right. So, talk a little bit about how the movie changed, you know, from your initial script and then through shooting and editing. Were there a lot of kind of, oh, let's do this. Oh, that didn't work.

Lance: I'll tell you what: when I first had the idea, I didn't have a real clear idea of the tone I wanted to take, you know? As far as it could have been a drama, it could have been a comedy or whatever. But I started chatting with my buddy, Michael Goudeau. Now, Michael worked in my show, as my special guest star. We've been friends for, you know, since the mid-80s and Michael said, this was his idea. So, I gave him credit.

He said, we should write this is a family film and I said, why is that? He says, because I have two small children and about two or three times a year, I have to take them to the movies and we have to pick a family film, and they're always horrible. That's why I'd like to see a good family film. Something good, we can take the kids to see. And I said okay, that's fine. You know, that fits. Magic's always been considered a good family entertainment.

So, we chose to write it as a family friendly movie, and as a comedy, but I give credit to Michael for that, and it didn't alter that much. Once we had the script completed, the idea was, you know, to keep to the script as close as we can within reason. Now, there were some scenes that were improvised and there were some things that I added during the course of the movie.

I'll tell you one thing that we added: the film starts with a dream sequence, with Billy floating a lady in the air. And then he wakes up in bed and you realize, oh, that was just a dream. He doesn't really have a big Las Vegas show. He's a birthday party magician and that was the first thing we shot.

So, as we were shooting, I read a book by Robert Rodriguez about his experience shooting El Mariachi. That was recommended to me by Rory Johnston, who played the bad guy in my movie. When I explained to Rory what we were going to do, he said, oh, you're doing like a no budget movie, like Robert Rodriguez. And I said, Who's Robert Rodriguez? He said, he is just a director, he started out by making this movie called El Mariachi. He had $7,000. That was it and he made a whole film.

And so, I bought the DVD to watch. I wanted to see what a $7,000 movie look like. And then I read his book and he had some really interesting advice and thoughts. He was talking about the power of three—which magicians will do also—where you have a callback, or something keeps popping back up, and it happens three times. In El Mariachi, there's like this sort of dream sequence. But it happens three times. And I started thinking, he's got a really good point there. So, I started thinking, where else could I insert, I need two more dream sequences? And I’ve got to find a place to insert them. So, we wrote two more dream sequences and found the right place to put them. And we shot that, but that kind of happened once we started once we started shooting.

Jim: You know, John, as he's mentioned, has shot some low budget movies here and there, populated largely by friends of John. And I get the sense that, in watching your movie, that these people are all your buddies, that they're all your pals, these are all your friends.

Lance: Oh, yeah, they're all my friends. The only time there were people in their movie, really, that I didn't know, like extras in the restaurant. We would just ask people, do you have any friends that you can come over and be background actors? And a lot of them are my friends. Like the birthday party scene: those kids are all kids of friends. Like, hey, if you got kids, bring them over to my stage manager's house.

John: It really looks like you guys are having fun throughout the whole movie. I don't mean to denigrate it in any way, but it's a really goofy movie. It is surprisingly silly in a really fun way.

Lance: It's a silly movie and a lot of that stuff is Michael Goudeau. Everybody loves Michael and loves his comedy and kids especially love him. So, that's we wanted to go for. For instance, when we were writing the date scene, you know, that was a silly scene and they were doing the game with the milk, the little milk containers. And Michael said, listen, when I take my kids to a movie, when it gets to the romantic the date scene, they are bored. They are like, oh, they're falling asleep going, oh, when is this over? So, let's beef this up with something silly. Hey, great. That sounds great. So, again, a lot of that stuff was just the purpose of the movie was to keep everybody's interest.

John: And that's probably something you've learned from being on stage forever, is feeling when the audience might be getting bored and being ahead of them.

Lance: Yeah, you don't want to get to that point. You want to keep it moving.

Jim: Your friend Michael is in the movie?

Lance: Yes, he is in the movie. He's one of the jugglers.

Jim: Okay. But the taller one or the shorter one?

Lance: The shorter one. He was my co-writer on the screenplay and also co-executive producer.

Jim: At the very end, in the credits, there's some very clever, funny, little teases about the possibility and it was sort of like, gosh, I hope there is a sequel. Is there talk of that--?

John: And I will say, I'm going to speak from my podcast partner here. We're standing by ready to help you if you want to do.

Jim: Absolutely. I’ll drop everything.

Lance: Billy Topit Part Two, The Empire Strikes Back. Billy Topit Part Two, the Search for Spock. I tell you, that was just me getting at the end of the editing process and doing the credits and it's just going out. This will be funny. Just me just making up silly stuff.

John: And the image of you doing that of sitting on a computer and editing, do you have the filmmaking bug now or you going to it doesn't have to be a sequel, Billy Topit, but...

Lance: I've enjoyed. Here's the thing that I enjoyed the most on the whole process was learning to edit. My good buddy Bob Massey was our photographer and our editor. But in the process of editing, I would go over to his house, and we would work on it and then he'd have to go do something. I was like, do we have to stop? And one day he said, you know, I can give you the software. I bought this and I can put it on two computers legally. So, if you want to, I'll show you how. I went, yeah.

So, I went out, I bought this and I put this stuff on, and I started to learn how to edit. Bob was there to help me, show me. I really loved it. I really, really loved the process.

And a lot of it is very similar to magic. I'll give you a good example of that: There's a scene at the end of the movie where they've opened the big show and I do the sawing a couple into eight pieces. So, we got the two, the boy and the girl and they get sawed apart and they come out of the boxes at the end. And the boys were in the girl’s clothes and they chase each other offstage. And then they run past the camera and then the second shot, you see them run into view in the wings. And then they have a scene in the wings.

Well, we shot the first part, with the doing the trick, and then running past the camera. We shot that at the Monte Carlo hotel in 2010. And the scene in the wings, we shot in 2013, on the other side of town at Rory Johnson's church that he went to. They allowed us to shoot there. So, the two scenes that are supposed to be at the same time were shot three years apart in different locations.

As we were shooting the first one, I knew in my mind what I wanted to do: I wanted him to run past the camera, and then I would pick it up. And the rest of the cast hadn't even been cast yet by the way. I didn't even know who the other actors were going to be. But I knew there was a scene over there. So, as they run past, I'll pick it up. Whenever we get to that three years later, we shoot the thing.

Now I'm editing it together. So, now I take the music from the first part of the shot, playing during the trick and the audience reaction. You get the audience applauding and cheering, and they run past the camera and we go to the second shot. But you still hear the audio, you still hear the music playing, and you hear me out on stage going thank you and the audience applauding. And so now when you put it all together, it's like it's seamless. No one knows that that scene was shot three years apart. It's like a magic trick. It's an illusion. There's a good example of how the sound helps enhance the illusion. And there are a few magic tricks that we do on stage where sound is a very big part of the illusion.

John: I don't know at what point in the process you read Robert Rodriguez’s book, but he based El Mariachi on what he had available. He wrote the script based on the town, the bar, the tortoise, the dog, all of that. You seem to have done a very similar thing, in that I'm guessing you already had some footage you on stage or was it a relatively easy thing to get. For an average person, that's a really hard thing to get.

Lance: Exactly. And I had to shoot all that before the show closed, because we were getting ready to close the show. So, we captured all of that all the stuff that had to be shot in the theatre, we captured that.

John: But for the average person writing a script, to write that in a scene, you can't shoot that. The lights alone in the ceiling are more than your budget.

Lance: And I was well aware that. I had this opportunity that we'd written it into the script and it's like, okay, I gotta shoot this now, because if I wait another two months, it's all going to be gone.

John: Exactly. And I felt the same with the scenes in the casino, which would be I think, normally a difficult thing to do. But you obviously had a relationship to make those happen.

Lance: The casino scenes, those were all shot afterwards. That was my buddy, John Woodrum, who owned this little casino called the Klondike. We wanted it to be a locals type Casino. I talked to a few of the casinos and some of them were like, yeah, we'd let you come in here and shoot, we have a coffee shop. How many days do you need it?

And I'm going to myself, I don't know how long this is going to take to shoot. I never shot a movie before. And then finally I went over to see my buddy, John and I said, John, I've got this movie I'm shooting, and some of the action takes place in the casino. And there's a coffee shop and you've got a coffee shop. What would you think about a shooting here? And he looks at me says yeah, whatever you want. Come on in. I'm like, what? Come on, anytime. That's like, Okay, I found this. I found our location.

John: You are a low-budget filmmaker at heart. You got all the tricks that are necessary to be good at this and you did it on your first movie. That's exceptional.

Lance: It was a fun process and it's not dissimilar to shooting a television special or a TV show, but it is a little different. There is obviously magic in it. But you know, there's also the whole second element of the story and doing the scene and the acting and getting all the actors on the same page.

John: And speaking of the actors, I was thrilled to see our friend Louie Anderson in there. He was a Twin Cities guy who I knew back when he was here and I had the good fortune of working with him a couple times in the corporate arena. And to see Johnny Thompson obviously having so much fun, it was just great. And then to see Mac kind of turn up. I don’t want to spoil it. But he does turn up

Lance: Mac turns up there near the end of the film. It was great fun, being able to work with Johnny. To be able to direct your mentor is a really special thing and that was just so much fun working with Johnny, and he was just so good in this role.

John: He was such a good actor, he really had that ability to turn it on.

Lance: And Pam too.

John: Oh, yeah, Pam was in there as well. It was just so much fun to see them just pop up like that.

Jim: A delight, the whole thing was from start to finish was a delight. I watched it by myself after my wife went to bed and I just was giggling through the whole thing.

Lance: Thank you. Here's my favorite story from the whole process. I had this idea to do the trick on the telephone, The Wizard, that that anybody that is amateur magician knows the trick. Well, when Michael and I were coming up with a storyline, I had this idea of using The Wizard as part of the kidnapping thing, to find out where the assistant was being held. In order to do that, of course, I had to show what The Wizard was.

The reason I wanted to include that was I wanted kids especially to be able to watch the movie and then after the movie, I wanted them to be able to perform The Wizard for their friends. After we had our premiere, my wardrobe lady from the Monte Carlo—and she also did wardrobe on the movie—she called me like a week later. Her stepdaughter, who was in junior high school at that time, the little girl had gone to school the next day and had performed The Wizard for her friends. And when I heard that, I was like, yes, touchdown.

John: Mission accomplished.

Lance: Mission accomplished. It's exactly what I wanted. I wanted kids to go and actually perform a magic trick for their friends.

Jim: But I really liked how you then turn it around and use it as a plot device.

Lance: It's integral to the story. Yes, and those are those are especially the kind of things I like with magic in movies or TV shows: where you can take something and bring it back in later as a practical device.

Dying to make a feature? Learn from the pros!

"We never put out an actual textbook for the Corman School of Filmmaking, but if we did, it would be Fast, Cheap and Under Control." 
Roger Corman, Producer

★★★★★

It’s like taking a Master Class in moviemaking…all in one book!

• Jonathan Demme: The value of cameos

• John Sayles: Writing to your resources

• Peter Bogdanovich: Long, continuous takes

• John Cassavetes: Re-Shoots

• Steven Soderbergh: Rehearsals

• George Romero: Casting

• Kevin Smith: Skipping film school

• Jon Favreau: Creating an emotional connection

• Richard Linklater: Poverty breeds creativity

• David Lynch: Kill your darlings

• Ron Howard: Pre-production planning

• John Carpenter: Going low-tech

• Robert Rodriguez: Sound thinking

And more!

Write Your Screenplay with the Help of Top Screenwriters!

It’s like taking a Master Class in screenwriting … all in one book!

Discover the pitfalls of writing to fit a budget from screenwriters who have successfully navigated these waters already. Learn from their mistakes and improve your script with their expert advice.

"I wish I'd read this book before I made Re-Animator."
Stuart Gordon, Director, Re-Animator, Castle Freak, From Beyond

John Gaspard has directed half a dozen low-budget features, as well as written for TV, movies, novels and the stage.

The book covers (among other topics):

• Academy-Award Winner Dan Futterman (“Capote”) on writing real stories

• Tom DiCillio (“Living In Oblivion”) on turning a short into a feature

• Kasi Lemmons (“Eve’s Bayou”) on writing for a different time period

• George Romero (“Martin”) on writing horror on a budget

• Rebecca Miller (“Personal Velocity”) on adapting short stories

• Stuart Gordon (“Re-Animator”) on adaptations

• Academy-Award Nominee Whit Stillman (“Metropolitan”) on cheap ways to make it look expensive

• Miranda July (“Me and You and Everyone We Know”) on making your writing spontaneous

• Alex Cox (“Repo Man”) on scaling the script to meet a budget

• Joan Micklin Silver (“Hester Street”) on writing history on a budget

• Bob Clark (“Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things”) on mixing humor and horror

• Amy Holden Jones (“Love Letters”) on writing romance on a budget

• Henry Jaglom (“Venice/Venice”) on mixing improvisation with scripting

• L.M. Kit Carson (“Paris, Texas”) on re-writing while shooting

• Academy-Award Winner Kenneth Lonergan (“You Can Count on Me”) on script editing

• Roger Nygard (“Suckers”) on mixing genres

This is the book for anyone who’s serious about writing a screenplay that can get produced! 

Tom DiCillo on writing/directing “Living In Oblivion”

You’re crossing a potentially deadly minefield when you attempt to take a short film and expand it into a feature. What was once sharp and clever can quickly turn repetitive and dull if you take a wrong step or make the wrong choices. 

Tom DiCillo successfully navigated that minefield when he turned his short, Living In Oblivion, into what is unquestionably one of the classic low-budget movies of all time. 

More importantly, he also took what at first appears to be a very narrow and “inside” story – about a director nearly losing his mind while shooting his movie – and turned it into a universal story about the creative process.

(Be aware that this interview contains spoilers about key plot points.)

What was going on in your career before you made Living In Oblivion?

TOM DICILLO: My first feature was film called Johnny Suede, starring Brad Pitt. I busted my ass on that one for at least four years to get it made. The film never quite found an audience and the distribution of it was, frankly, really disappointing. It made making my second film really, really difficult. 

I had written a screenplay called Box of Moonlight and could not get the money for it. Years and years went by, two, three, four, five, and I just reached a point of such maniacal desperation that I said, "I have to do something, no matter what." It was out of that intense frustration that Living in Oblivionwas born.

It wasn't born out of, "Hey, I want to make a funny movie." It really came out of one of the most intense periods of anger and frustration in my career. And, ironically, it turned out to be the funniest movie I've ever made. I think in some way that is part of what makes my humor my humor: It’s humor based upon real, human intensity, desperation, and foolishness.

To use a screenwriting term, what was the inciting incident that kicked off the creation of Living In Oblivion?

TOM DICILLO: I was invited to the wedding of my wife's cousin. It was a three-day event and on the first night -- you have to understand, I was carrying with me four and a half years of frustration -- I had a martini. 

I had never had a martini before in my life. And I said, "Wow, if that's how you feel after one martini, let's have another one." So I had two. And I said, "This is just unbelievable." And I had three. Later I realized that I should never, ever, ever do that again.

But it was after the third martini that this guy came up to me, who I vaguely recognized from an acting class I had taken maybe four or five years earlier. And he says, "Oh, Tom, it's great to see you, man. You're so lucky, you made Johnny Suede, you made a movie. Lights, camera, action." 

And I just erupted at him. I said, "Shut the fuck up. Making a movie is one of the most tedious, frustrating, intense experiences I've ever had in my life. And not even just getting the money. What about when you're getting ready to do a shot and suddenly something screws up and the actor's moment that they've been working on for hours just disappears and you never get it back again?"

Well, that's where I had the first idea. I swear, right there at that moment, I thought, "You know, that could make a little fifteen-minute film. Just confront an actor with an endless number of disruptions and see what happens." And that's where the idea was born.  

That first half hour just kind of jumped out of me. I went home and wrote the first half-hour as it exists, word for word, frame for frame in the final version. 

So Living in Oblivion was essentially based on a single idea that then later, completely by accident, turned into a feature film. You never quite know how something is going to turn out, and that one for some reason just all came together. I'm very proud of that movie.

What happened after you wrote the short script?

TOM DICILLO: Catherine Keener was visiting us at that time and I gave her the script -- it was about 25 pages -- and I just heard her laughing in this back room that we have. She was just howling. 

She came out and said, "We have to do this." And I said, "Okay, let's do it. Even if we have to shoot it on Super 8, let's make this movie."

The next thing I know, her husband, Dermot, said he would like to put in some money if he could be in it. He originally wanted to play Nick Reve, the director, but I said I had someone a little older in mind, and he immediately said, "What about Steve Buscemi?" I said, "That's a fantastic idea. You can play Wolf, the cameraman." He said, "That's great."

It was like a bunch of kids putting on a show in the garage. Anybody who wanted to be in the movie, who had a little money, got a part. That is how I cast it, I am not kidding you. Sometimes you agonize about casting, over and over for months trying to figure out which actor to choose. In this case, I never thought about it for a second. Never. And look how amazing those actors were.

So we started shooting. We had a five-day shoot in New York City and we had about $37,000 that my wife helped raise and that everybody put it. The cast and crew were amazed at how well it was turning out. On the fourth day we realized that it was going to end and there was a kind of depression that settled in on the set. People said, "Tom, you should make a feature out of this." And I went, "How? How? How would I ever do that?"

But it turned out so well that I thought, I have to somehow find a way to take this magical accident and develop it.

What steps did you take to do that?

TOM DICILLO: After it was finished, I submitted it to the Cannes short film festival, I tried a number of things, and I realized that as a short it wasn't going to go anywhere. First of all, it was too long. It was just under a half an hour. 

So I began to think about what was developed in the first section, the first third of the film? What ideas were kind of lurking in the background? And one of the ideas was that there was a relationship developing between the director and his leading actress. Another thing that seemed to be developing was a relationship between the cameraman and the First AD. 

And I began thinking about, "What's the one fantasy that I've always thought about?" And that is having the lead actor and the director get into a fist-fight on the set. And so that's how I came up with the idea of Chad Palomino and how he disrupts the shoot -- this Hollywood guy entering this little, dusty world of Nick Reve's independent film and totally screwing it up. So I had Part Two.

So then I said, "Where the hell is it going to go from here?" 

And my wife, very astutely, said, "Listen, Part One is a dream. Part Two is a dream. Why don't you have Part Three be them making a dream sequence?" And I went, "Oh my God, that is so fantastic." Instantly, in an instant, I thought of Tito, the dwarf, erupting on set, "You stupid morons! Is that the only way you can make a dream sequence, by putting a dwarf in it?"

The two new segments evolve perfectly out of Part One. The movie never feels like a short with stuff added to turn it into a feature.

TOM DICILLO: I put so much work into that screenplay. I wanted no one to think that it was just a short with two other segments tacked on to it. I wanted it to feel like it was seamless. And it took a lot of work to make that progression, to make that movement happen in the screenplay.

It sounds like you really drew from personal experience to write the script.

TOM DICILLO: I've had a lot of experience of being on a number of sets. Even when I was going to film school, when you're on the set of a student film, it's just the most insane chaos that you can imagine. Even then I noticed that the drama that was happening just off the side of the camera was a million times more interesting than the stale scene that everybody was so intensely focused on. I noticed that even then. 

And I swear to God, the very first time that I experienced room tone, everybody standing there like these living statues in this forced silence, I said, "I'm going to put that in a movie one day. It's just so bizarre, I'm going to put that in a movie."

I've always been fascinated with the stuff that happens on the set. Not that I'm trying to say that just because it's a film set it’s interesting. I don't feel that. But I do feel like there's a real crazy drama that happens when you get a group of people trying to do a task together.

I'm in love with filmmaking, but at the same time I also have moments where I absolutely despise it. The medium itself seems designed to thwart you whenever you really want to try to do something. Just when you're about to get a shot, a light goes off or a train goes by, a car alarm goes off, something. Everything is so fragile in the business. So I wanted to take my rage out on that, because it can be so frustrating at times. It was so liberating and freeing to do that.

It must have been bizarre, making a good movie about a movie where everything is going wrong.

TOM DICILLO: I swear the first time I had the actor intentionally drop the microphone into the shot, they didn't want to do it. They didn't want to do it because everything that we've been taught is to keep the microphone out of the frame. Don't put it in. 

I wanted to try to really peel back that curtain about what it's like to be on the set and the real struggle, because I think that struggle is what is interesting to me -- the struggle to somehow capture something on film. 

I also wanted to show the director in a way that I had never seen portrayed. I was really concerned about that. Most of the time the independent director, and directors in general, are shown wearing leather jackets and smoking cigarettes, brooding in a corner with sunglasses. Most directors that I've ever seen on a set of any movie look so desperate, so frustrated, so neurotic. So I wanted to address that and still let the director have some sort of dignity. 

I think Nick Reve is not a total fool, but the struggles that he faces are really, I think, rather archetypical: How do you get what you want in a business that is all about pretension and ego? The way he has to deal with Chad Palomino is a monumental struggle. Here's a guy where all you really want to do is beat the shit out of him, but you can't. You have to say, "Oh, yeah, man, you did a great take. Great take."

Part One ended up being the idea of the technical desperation and screw-ups. Then I wanted to see what would happen if you drop emotional complications in and that served to be the core of the movement for Part Two. It's all about how emotional entanglements happening off the set can affect what's being captured on film. 

For Part Three, I really wanted to bring the director to the point where he gave up. After all this frustration, I realized he would really get to that point. To me it was interesting to drive him to that point where he could not proceed -- he really felt like he was failing and that he was not a director -- and to see what would happen to him, to see how he would respond.

One of the things that makes the script so strong is that all the obstacles that you put in Nick's way are real obstacles that you've experienced in that position.

TOM DICILLO: Whatever you write, you have to tap into something personal for yourself. I used to have an acting teacher who said to me, "If it ain't personal, it ain't no good." There's something to be said for that. 

But at the same time, I don't want to ever make it seem like when I write that it's just about me. I'm not interested in that. Even with my first film, Johnny Suede -- sure, I put a lot of myself into that character -- but I also was very clearly trying to find a way to make it more objective, more universal, something that other people could relate to.

I absolutely believe that if you can find a way to tap into something that's very personal and then make a creative leap from there, that's the best way to do it. Anger by itself is not enough. You have to have the creative imagination coming into play as well.

How helpful was it to have Part One all shot when trying to get the money for Part Two and Part Three?

TOM DICILLO: I took Part One all the way to the point of a finished print, with a mix, with titles, music, everything. I began screening that for people after I had written Part Two and Part Three, thinking that people wouldn't get a sense of what I was trying to do if they only read the screenplay. So therefore, having Part One all finished, I thought it would be perfect, because they can see exactly the characters, the actors, the humor, everything. 

Well, it didn't happen. I had several conversations with all of the independent companies, and they all passed on the movie at the script stage. Completely. I offered it to Miramax for nothing and they said no.

Did they give reasons why they were passing?

TOM DICILLO: They didn't get it. I'm not complaining, because I'm probably guilty of the same thing, but until something literally comes up and kicks you in the head and tells you what it is, no one knows anything. 

They looked at this movie and said, "Why? Why should we put money into this movie?" And it's just bizarre to me, because most of the most impressive films -- the ones that really have stuck in the minds and consciousness of audiences -- are the ones that are absolutely original and have never been made before. Even Star Wars, for God's sake. He couldn't make that movie for years.

So, what happened was, I had put my wife's cousin and her husband, Hillary and Michael, in Part One -- Hillary played the script supervisor and her husband Michael played Speedo, the sound man -- and at the last minute Hillary called me and said, "We'd like to put up the rest of the money and make the film as a feature." 

And so they put up almost $500,000 of their own money and we were able to go off on our own, once again, and make the film.

This may be an apocryphal story, but I have heard that at the same time they offered you the money, you were on the phone with someone who had the money but with whom you didn't want to work.

TOM DICILLO: Yes, exactly. He was being a real prick. He was this completely ego-driven guy. He was going to own everybody, he was going to tell everybody who to cast, all that stuff. Completely antithetical to the way the film had been created. 

I was just about to make my travel arrangements to go out to LA to sign the deal with him, when my Call Waiting clicked in and it was Hillary and Michael. They were so apologetic -- "Would you mind if we suggested putting up the money?" I said, "You've got to be kidding?!"

It was one of the most magical experiences, from beginning to end, really. 

In Part One, how did you work with Catherine on the different levels of her performance? How did you map out the range she had to go through, from being just okay to being really good?

TOM DICILLO: I was concerned about that. I actually numbered the takes; I think there's 12 takes. Number one, on the scale of one to ten, should be a seven. Number two should be a five. We did something like that, but eventually what it came down to the two of us deciding what the degree of distraction she was feeling at that time. That's basically how it came about. 

How much rehearsal did you have?

TOM DICILLO: None. Absolutely none. 

I don't like to rehearse, anyway. My style of working is to just talk to people, get the costumes correct, talk a little bit about the character, and then just find it as the camera is rolling. 

What was so fascinating to me was that none of these actors auditioned and they were almost instantaneously their parts. 

Many people think Living In Oblivion is completely improvised, but there's only one scene that was improvised. That's the scene where Steve erupts at the crew at the end of Part One. Everything else was completely scripted.

What's your favorite memory of working on Living In Oblivion?

TOM DICILLO: Oh, man, there are millions. I think I would have to say that it was the look on people's faces the first time Peter Dinklage, who plays Tito, erupted into his tirade against the director. 

Most of the crew that we hired had not read the script, because we weren't paying anybody. And so we were getting people working for free and they might work one or two days a week. And so this crew was just standing by the lights, doing whatever they were doing, and all of a sudden Peter Dinklage, during a take, says, "I'm sick of this crap." He just erupted and everybody just turned and looked with their jaws open. They thought he was really saying it.

Then the laughter that erupted when they realized that it was just part of the movie, it was a fantastic feeling. It made me really feel that I had stumbled upon something and it was working.

Were there any things you learned writing that script that you still use today?

TOM DICILLO: Yeah. I have a tendency, if I'm going to write a joke, I set it up with a one, two, three punch. But I realized that most of the time, when I get in the editing room, I usually only end up using the one or the two, never the one, two, three. That's kind of an interesting lesson to learn: if you're going to tell a joke, just tell the joke. Don't do three jokes.

I also learned the idea of setting in motion something that, once it's in motion it has a life of its own and people are really instantaneously eager to find out what's going to happen. That's a crucial thing. 

Many screenwriting teachers will say a screenplay is all about tension and conflict. And, in some ways, that absolutely true. But if that tension and conflict doesn't arouse enough interest to have people really want to know what's going to happen next, then you're screwed. I think Johnny Suedesuffered from that a bit. It was my first screenplay and there's very little real dramatic tension in it. 

I like the idea of setting something in motion -- like a cart rolling down a hill -- that once it's going, you can't stop it.

What's the best piece of advice about writing that you've ever received?

TOM DICILLO: The very first thing that comes to my mind is less about writing than it is about the creative process itself. 

It was an experience I had when I went to Sundance, to the Director's Lab with my first screenplay for Johnny Suede. I had worked very hard on it and had just come from a rather negative experience at NYU, when I was there getting my Master's degree in directing. It was a very destructive process at NYU in terms of how they would critique you. Even though I did very well there, I still was quite aware of just how destructive it was and I was gun shy of that stuff.

So when I went out to Sundance for the Director's Lab, some of the more traditional guys out there were Hollywood, conventional guys, and they started giving me notes about the script that really bothered me and which were, again, destructive.

And then I had a meeting with Buck Henry, who was one of the advisors. He'd read my script and he sat down and just looked at me -- this was the first time I'd met him -- and all he said was, "Hey man, you're on to something. Go for it."

Now that wasn't specific, but what it completely did was just open me up to the fact that whatever you're doing, if you're trying something, just try it. Just try it. Things don't have to be instantaneously perfect or whatever, but if you really are trying something, then trust it and just try it. 

And I would say that to any aspiring writer: It's a combination of confidence and innocence at the same time. You have to have both; you have to have absolute determination, but you have to be an innocent in the utmost sense of that word, where you are completely free and open to anything happening and that everything around you supports you and loves you, like the world of an infant.

Because if you don't have that, this world is so brutal to any sort of creative failure -- Arthur Miller wrote a beautiful essay about how American culture deals with failure -- and that's a struggle that we all face. Everybody faces it: giving yourself the creative and imaginative playground just to go ahead and try your idea for God's sake. Try it. 

Find more Film Interviews HERE.

Dying to make a feature? Learn from the pros!

"We never put out an actual textbook for the Corman School of Filmmaking, but if we did, it would be Fast, Cheap and Under Control." 
Roger Corman, Producer

★★★★★

It’s like taking a Master Class in moviemaking…all in one book!

• Jonathan Demme: The value of cameos

• John Sayles: Writing to your resources

• Peter Bogdanovich: Long, continuous takes

• John Cassavetes: Re-Shoots

• Steven Soderbergh: Rehearsals

• George Romero: Casting

• Kevin Smith: Skipping film school

• Jon Favreau: Creating an emotional connection

• Richard Linklater: Poverty breeds creativity

• David Lynch: Kill your darlings

• Ron Howard: Pre-production planning

• John Carpenter: Going low-tech

• Robert Rodriguez: Sound thinking

And more!

Write Your Screenplay with the Help of Top Screenwriters!

It’s like taking a Master Class in screenwriting … all in one book!

Discover the pitfalls of writing to fit a budget from screenwriters who have successfully navigated these waters already. Learn from their mistakes and improve your script with their expert advice.

"I wish I'd read this book before I made Re-Animator."
Stuart Gordon, Director, Re-Animator, Castle Freak, From Beyond

John Gaspard has directed half a dozen low-budget features, as well as written for TV, movies, novels and the stage.

The book covers (among other topics):

• Academy-Award Winner Dan Futterman (“Capote”) on writing real stories

• Tom DiCillio (“Living In Oblivion”) on turning a short into a feature

• Kasi Lemmons (“Eve’s Bayou”) on writing for a different time period

• George Romero (“Martin”) on writing horror on a budget

• Rebecca Miller (“Personal Velocity”) on adapting short stories

• Stuart Gordon (“Re-Animator”) on adaptations

• Academy-Award Nominee Whit Stillman (“Metropolitan”) on cheap ways to make it look expensive

• Miranda July (“Me and You and Everyone We Know”) on making your writing spontaneous

• Alex Cox (“Repo Man”) on scaling the script to meet a budget

• Joan Micklin Silver (“Hester Street”) on writing history on a budget

• Bob Clark (“Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things”) on mixing humor and horror

• Amy Holden Jones (“Love Letters”) on writing romance on a budget

• Henry Jaglom (“Venice/Venice”) on mixing improvisation with scripting

• L.M. Kit Carson (“Paris, Texas”) on re-writing while shooting

• Academy-Award Winner Kenneth Lonergan (“You Can Count on Me”) on script editing

• Roger Nygard (“Suckers”) on mixing genres

This is the book for anyone who’s serious about writing a screenplay that can get produced! 

Nancy Savoca on “True Love”

How did you get interested in filmmaking

NANCY: My family says I started talking about it when I was really young, but I don't remember that. But I think it was in high school, during that last year when you can take whatever you want. I was taking things like Folk Poetry and Music Theory. And there was a History of the Movies class. That was the first time I understood what a director did. It was explained that there was actually one person who was in charge of putting all the different elements together in a film. 

And that was something that was really interesting, because I think in my teenage years I was really interested in the arts -- I loved music and I loved drawing and I loved watching actors perform. There were so many things that I loved, yet I didn't feel that I was particularly good at these things. But I was a great appreciator of good music and good performance and good photography -- I could appreciate it. 

So I realized, when I learned about filmmaking, that that's what a director does. They are the ones who say, "Oh, that's the piece of music we need to use," and "That's the take we need to print." Basically, we're there to cheerlead all these great artists and get their best work and put it all together. 

When I found out that's what it was, I was like, "Oh, sign me up! That sounds good. I can do that." I was about seventeen at the time.

So how did you make that happen?

NANCY: The thought was really scary, because I didn't have a clue on how to make that happen. I just knew that it sounded really good.

I didn't come from a background that had anything -- anything! -- to do with this business. My parents -- like most parents who have a kid who'd going to do something like this -- were horrified. They were scared for me. They just wanted me to get a good job at the post office.

There was no real plan. This was my last year in high school, so I went to the teacher and asked, "Where do I learn this?" And she said, "Well, there's NYU, but that's really expensive." And I said, "No, I can't do that." And so she said, "Well, there's Queen's College."

So I started at Queen's College and I took some courses. But they were the courses that every kid who was looking to goof off would take first, so I kept getting shut out of classes. Finally I met my husband, Rich, and he was going to NYU and he said "You should go here." So he started really helping me not be so fearful about stuff. He said, "Just do this, you'll figure it out." 

I was basically leaping into a void. There was no financial support, it wasn't coming from anywhere. So I just started doing it.

And at NYU I found, for the first time, a community of people who were doing the things that interested me.

I had gone to Queens College for two years, so when I went to NYU I was in my final two years, and film was all I did there. All I did was shoot. 

In order to enter the school, Haig Manoogian, who was running the program at that point, told me I needed to take this course called Sight and Sound. It was six of weeks of, I call it Basic Training, where you ate, slept, breathed, whatever, film. And you really couldn't do anything else, because that's all you had time to do.

The odd thing for me was that a week before I started that six weeks of basic training I got married. So here I am, this newlywed, having made a commitment to this person, and suddenly I was missing.

So Rich came looking for me and realized that I was having a really good time. As insane as it was, it was pretty amazing.

He was going to NYU for business. He used to show up just to help lug equipment around, but then he quickly realized that we were all flakey people and needed some kind of organization, which he was able to do. So he ended up doing things like production managing on student films, like mine in particular. Which was when we first started working together, which was really good. We just celebrated 28 years. But if we hadn't worked together, I don't think there's any way we could have survived, because we were coming from such different places.

We were out making our short films and the missing element always -- always! -- was how to manage time, so that we could get things done on time. No one really was teaching us that. We had a lot of enthusiasm and ideas, but we didn't have a lot of discipline. And Rich came along and he's very good at that. He'd say things like, "You know, if you shoot this first, you can actually do this all in one day if you switch the order of your locations." He actually should have been given credit as being one of our teachers, but he was our age.

How many people were in the class?

NANCY: Maybe twenty-five, twenty-eight people.

And how many were women?

NANCY: About four or five.

Talking about women in film, one of things that was sort of a blow to me, I was sitting in class one day with a teacher I really respected a lot. We were chatting about the great directors and the work they did and out of the blue (or, at least, it felt out of the blue), he said something like, "So the reason there are no women directors is that, basically, they get married and have kids." 

And I had gotten married a couple of weeks earlier. And when I made True Love, I had an 18-month old baby and was pregnant with my second child, so they do get married and have kids. Maybe.  

As a pregnant director, did you have trouble getting insurance for the production? 

NANCY: Yes we did. When we started Household Saints, Jonathan Demme was our executive producer and I think they had tried to make him the back-up director if anything happened to me. But they couldn't because at that time I wasn't union and he was DGA, so Rich was the back-up director. And all Rich kept saying to me was, "Don't fuck anything up. I don't want to be directing."

Let's back-up. What did you do when you got out of NYU?

NANCY: Right after film school was finished, we started writing True Love, that summer. I remember one of the things that sort of upset me were rules. Like people had these ideas, these rules. Like one person said to me that summer, "It's great that you're writing your first feature, but you usually have to direct two shorts to do a feature." And then somebody else said, "No, no, no, So-and-So just went out to LA. You have to get an agent and write two screenplays for other people, and then you get to direct your first feature."

And I thought, "Who made those rules? I've never heard of directors who follow these rules. Is someone making up new ones just so we can jump through hoops? This is stupid."

So Rich and I co-wrote True Love  in a couple weeks in a cabin in Vermont, which was so bizarre because we were writing about the Bronx and we were in the middle of nowhere in Vermont.

When we came out with it, basically nothing happened. We were showing it around; we didn't know. I didn't even have, at that time, the vocabulary to say this is an independent film or not an independent film. I just wanted to make this story because I hadn't seen it before. It was the old 'write what you know,' so I wrote what I knew, which was my experience, which happened to be right before we started film school: Which was that I got married, and that year that I got married, everybody in my neighborhood got married. So we went to a lot of weddings and witnessed a lot of the things that ended up in the script.

Basically it was just Rich and I writing down everything that we knew. We sent it out -- cable television was just starting up -- and we got the rejection letters. We were nobody, as they say in the Bronx.

So basically it was six years of trying this, that and the other thing. About every six to eight months we'd take the script out and polish it up. But for whatever reason, there was just nothing else I could think to do. I just knew that this was the story. Whether that was smart or not, I can't tell you. But it was six years.

During those six years we started working in film, in any capacity that we could. I started off as a production assistant for John Sayles and Maggie Renzi on Brother From Another Planet -- that was the first official film job I got after I got out of school.

For being the first person in my family -- and, for a long time, the only person in my family -- to get a college degree, I got to work for free on a movie. I think after I'd been there a couple weeks, they gave all of us who were volunteering a raise and we got five dollars a week, so we could take the subway to work, so we weren't actually out of pocket to work on the movie.

From there, what was fantastic -- and I say this to everybody who's looking to work in film -- do put yourself out there and just work on productions. Because that's where you're going to meet people. And sure enough, there's a very direct connection between the first job I ever had and my first film, which is John Sayles, who was one of our investors six years later.

Everybody's story is so different. Sometimes I hesitate, when we're in front of students or something, I say, "I'm going to tell you my story and you're going to think, 'Yeah, right, that will never happen to me.' And that's true, but you're going to have a different story."

But what does happen is that when you open yourself up and you let every single person on the planet know that you want to do this, and that you're going to do this, people start coming around out of curiosity or the people who are going to be drawn to you will start coming toward you because you're letting everyone know that you're ready to do this. And that's what I think started happening. 

But it took six years, and nobody likes to hear that. But in that time we honed our skills and we learned a lot about production so that by the time we made our movie, we had been on a lot of sets and worked in different capacities. I was a Production Coordinator, I was an Assistant Editor, for John Sayles I was at one point a Storyboard Artist, which was really fun because it was for Bruce Springsteen and I was such a fan.

So what was it that finally got True Love off the ground?

NANCY: John Sayles. 

What happened was I was sort of half-ass shooting this documentary that wasn't working. And one of my friends said, "What are you doing shooting a documentary? You have this script." And I said, "Yeah, but I need money to shoot that script and we don't have money." But it put this idea in my head and we decided to take what tiny little money we had to do the documentary and take that money -- which was basically all the savings we had at that time -- and do a ten-minute sample reel, which is sort of like a long version of a trailer.

So we put an ad in Backstage and did casting, found a crew that was mostly commercial people or people who had worked in independent films and were working a step below and wanted to step up. And since everyone was working at one level higher than normal, nobody needed to get paid, which was great, because everybody was doing it for their reel.

We shot over the course of a couple weekends, because everybody had day jobs. and then we thought, we should send this out instead of the script, because what we didn't know -- and I'm a Leo, so I think I'm great -- what we didn't know from my student films that did get good responses from people, that I could direct and I could grab an audience. And the script never shows that. It's like the difference between a map of Paris and Paris -- how can you explain? When you're writing a screenplay, you're basically being the best mapmaker you can be. But it's such a different animal to putting it on the screen.

So I knew by at least giving them a taste of what I could do with it, this material, that I could get more support.

So we shot this thing, we cut it, it looked great, the performances were great -- we got these great actors -- and we started sending it to all the people who had rejected the script, and we were universally rejected again. After spending all the money we had.

We were just depressed. And then we decided to do a screening in Manhattan and -- because, during those six years of working -- we had met so many people in the film business. So we just cast the net really wide and we invited everybody that we knew to invite everybody that they knew.

We had wine and cheese and ten minutes is painless. I don't know why, but people showed up. Diane Keaton showed up. I don't know why. But because it was New York and it was such a little closed community, for some reason, people showed up.

What happened after that was that I got a phone call from John Sayles and he said, "Look, if you want to do this movie down and dirty, guerilla style, I'll be your first investor."

We had also in those six years worked with Jonathan Demme. Kenny Utt, who was Jonathan's producer, said, "I'm going to be an investor." And he turned to Jonathan and said, "You better be an investor." And then Susan Seidelman was an investor. And so all of a sudden, something caught fire and I can't tell you what it is, and that's why when I tell this story people always roll their eyes and say, "That will never happen to me." No, it won't happen to you -- another story will happen to you.

But it can be that crazy.

So then we got all these -- we like to call them -- celebrity investors, and with a handful of celebrity investors we still needed more money, but these were names that we could use when we went to our friend who's mother's dentist wanted to invest in film. And he got to be an investor along with all these really great filmmakers.

So how did you feel on the first day of shooting True Love?

NANCY: Great. Nervous as hell. Ready to puke -- I couldn't tell if it was morning sickness. But nobody knew I was pregnant. Nobody knew because I found out two weeks before we started shooting and the one thing you don't want to tell everybody who'd investing in you on your first film is, "Oh, by the way, I'm pregnant."

I think today it might be a little easier. Or maybe not. Who knows. But I definitely knew to keep my mouth shut.

I was nervous on one level but also just like -- excited, but relieved. It was like, "Okay. Well here I am. Let's go." And it was that leap into the void of "Let's go. I don't know what's going to happen here, but I'm here. You're here. Let's go."

How did you find your cast?

NANCY: I knew exactly what I was looking for, and it was very difficult to find, interestingly enough for two reasons. One was that we didn't have the budget to go through the Screen Actors Guild. We couldn't afford to work with any sort of union, so most of the actors we were looking at were young actors who were somewhat inexperienced, but the ones who were really good had a theater background. Which was great and actually very helpful, because coincidentally they were coming in with the same background I had, which was theater acting classes.

The issue was finding experienced actors, and the problem was bigger with the older actors, because finding non-SAG actors of that age was very tricky. So we kept casting from the time that we did the ten-minute trailer until two years later, when we started shooting. We were always looking for actors. People used to make fun of me, saying, "Oh, you're still casting?"

With Annabella we were incredibly lucky, because she was one of the first people we saw from the Backstage ad we placed for the trailer. I saw her picture and said, "I hope she's good because she is right, she is who I'm looking for." And she walked in and read it and I thought, "Did she begin? Did someone tell her to start performing or is she just talking to me?" She was amazing. that started a relationship that lasted through the years and she was able to be in the film.

So she was around for two years and Ron Eldard we found I think two weeks before we started shooting. It was horrible. We could not find this guy.

And what was very interesting in True Love, because we weren't using SAG actors, all the actors we worked with -- with the exception of Annabella, who had done a TV movie -- no one had ever been in front of a camera before. And that's a big cast -- I forget how many people were in that movie, but it was a lot of people. 

And just about every other day -- sometimes it was every day -- we'd have a new actor working, and I kept wondering why things were taking so long. And then I remembered: "Oh, yeah, they've never been in front of a camera before!" And I'd have to go tell them, "You can walk from here to here, don't walk off camera, there's a light stand, don't do this, now deliver the line to his left shoulder." It was really about making people feel very comfortable so they could look like they weren't acting.

It's all about making them comfortable. Your job, especially if they're less experienced, they have to feel really good to let go and take a risk in their performance. 

Tell me about your experience at Sundance with True Love.

NANCY: It was pretty amazing but I wasn't there. I wasn't even there.

We finished editing the movie in late 1988. John Sayles said there was a festival we should look into, called the United States Film Festival in Park City. We did a temp mix on the soundtrack and sent it in and we go accepted.

The festival was the last week of January and my due date was the 27th of January, so I wasn't going to go. So one of the producers went, with my lawyer and the music supervisor.

I was at home and I started going into labor one evening. And the phone rings while I'm in labor. My husband picks it up and then he says, "Oh my God. Oh my God. I'll put Nancy on, but I'm not sure she can breath." 

So I take the phone and say, "What?" And everyone was screaming. It sounded like Beatlemania or something. Everyone was screaming. And someone was saying, "We won! We won!" And I said, "What?" And they said, "The film won!"

But I really didn't understand what had happened, because nobody could talk really, and also because I was hugging the wall and breathing. And so I said, "I have to hang up because this kid's going to be born." I hung up the phone and we went to the hospital.  

The next morning the baby was born. And the midwife said to me, "What happened to that little movie you were working on when you were pregnant?" And I turned to Rich and said, "Did we win something last night?"

We came home with my son a day later, and my house looked like a funeral. Everybody sent flowers. It was a small apartment and there were flowers everywhere. Disney sent a t-shirt for the baby that said, "My Mom is the world's greatest director." Every single major studio was acknowledging the award and the baby. 

I was flabbergasted because independent film, before that night, at Sundance, a new wave began for independent film. It was born in a different way that night. I didn't happen to be there, but I was a part of it. 

And that particular year, they changed the name from the US Film Festival to the Sundance Film Festival. I have a poster that says "True Love: Winner of the United States Film Festival," because MGM didn't realize that they had changed the name.

And that was the year that all the studio executives showed up. There had been rumblings; the year before a lot of great movies were there and they were saying, "Oh, I guess something's happening at Sundance, so we have to go." 

And that was the year that they all went. 

 Find more Film Interviews HERE.

Dying to make a feature? Learn from the pros!

"We never put out an actual textbook for the Corman School of Filmmaking, but if we did, it would be Fast, Cheap and Under Control." 
Roger Corman, Producer

★★★★★

It’s like taking a Master Class in moviemaking…all in one book!

• Jonathan Demme: The value of cameos

• John Sayles: Writing to your resources

• Peter Bogdanovich: Long, continuous takes

• John Cassavetes: Re-Shoots

• Steven Soderbergh: Rehearsals

• George Romero: Casting

• Kevin Smith: Skipping film school

• Jon Favreau: Creating an emotional connection

• Richard Linklater: Poverty breeds creativity

• David Lynch: Kill your darlings

• Ron Howard: Pre-production planning

• John Carpenter: Going low-tech

• Robert Rodriguez: Sound thinking

And more!

Write Your Screenplay with the Help of Top Screenwriters!

It’s like taking a Master Class in screenwriting … all in one book!

Discover the pitfalls of writing to fit a budget from screenwriters who have successfully navigated these waters already. Learn from their mistakes and improve your script with their expert advice.

"I wish I'd read this book before I made Re-Animator."
Stuart Gordon, Director, Re-Animator, Castle Freak, From Beyond

John Gaspard has directed half a dozen low-budget features, as well as written for TV, movies, novels and the stage.

The book covers (among other topics):

• Academy-Award Winner Dan Futterman (“Capote”) on writing real stories

• Tom DiCillio (“Living In Oblivion”) on turning a short into a feature

• Kasi Lemmons (“Eve’s Bayou”) on writing for a different time period

• George Romero (“Martin”) on writing horror on a budget

• Rebecca Miller (“Personal Velocity”) on adapting short stories

• Stuart Gordon (“Re-Animator”) on adaptations

• Academy-Award Nominee Whit Stillman (“Metropolitan”) on cheap ways to make it look expensive

• Miranda July (“Me and You and Everyone We Know”) on making your writing spontaneous

• Alex Cox (“Repo Man”) on scaling the script to meet a budget

• Joan Micklin Silver (“Hester Street”) on writing history on a budget

• Bob Clark (“Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things”) on mixing humor and horror

• Amy Holden Jones (“Love Letters”) on writing romance on a budget

• Henry Jaglom (“Venice/Venice”) on mixing improvisation with scripting

• L.M. Kit Carson (“Paris, Texas”) on re-writing while shooting

• Academy-Award Winner Kenneth Lonergan (“You Can Count on Me”) on script editing

• Roger Nygard (“Suckers”) on mixing genres

This is the book for anyone who’s serious about writing a screenplay that can get produced!