Daniel Titley on the lost classic, "London After Midnight"

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So, Daniel, when did you first become aware of London After Midnight?

Daniel: I was about seven years old when I first stumbled into Lon Chaney through my love of all things Universal horror, and just that whole plethora of characters and actors that you just knew by name, but hadn't necessarily seen away from the many still photographs of Frankenstein, Dracula, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. And the Phantom was the one to really spark my interest.

But this was prior to eBay. I couldn't see the film of Lon Chaney's Phantom of the Opera for a year. So, I kind of had the ultimate build to books and documentaries, just teasing me, teasing me all the time. And when I eventually did watch a few documentaries, the one thing that they all had in common was the name Lon Chaney.

I just thought I need to learn more about this character Lon Chaney, because he just found someone of superhuman proportions just who have done all of these crazy diverse characters. And, that's where London After Midnight eventually peeked out at me and, occupied a separate interest as all the Chaney characterizations do.

So how did you get into the Universal films? Were you watching them on VHS? Were they on tv? Did the DVDs happen by then?

Daniel: I was still in the VHS days. My dad is a real big fan of all this as well. So he first saw Bela Lugosi's Dracula, on TV when he was a kid. And prior to me being born he had amassed a huge VHS collection and a lot of those had Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Henry Hull, Claude Rains, Vincent Price, what have you.

And a lot of them were dedicated to Universal horrors. And as a young curious kid, my eyes eventually crossed these beautiful cases and I really wanted to watch them. I think my first one I ever watched was The Mummy's Tomb or Curse of the Mummy. And it's just grown ever since, really.

You're starting at the lesser end of the Universal monsters. It's like someone's starting the Marx Brothers at The Big Store and going, "oh, these are great. I wonder if there's anything better?"

Daniel: I really had no immediate go-to reference for London after Midnight, away from one or two images in a book. Really clearly they were very impactful images of Chaney, skulking around the old haunted mansion with Edna Tichenor by his side with the lantern, the eyes, the teeth, the cloak, the top hat, the webs, everything. Pretty much everything that embodies a good atmospheric horror movie, but obviously we couldn't see it.

So that is all its fangs had deepened itself into my bloodstream at that point, just like, why is it lost? Why can't I see it? And again, the term lost film was an alien concept to me at a young age. I've always been a very curious child. Anything that I don't know or understand that much, even things I do understand that well, I always have to try to find out more, 'cause I just can't accept that it's like a bookend process. It begins and then it ends.

And that was the thing with London after Midnight. Everything I found in books or in little interviews, they were just all a bit too brief. And I just thought there has to be a deeper history here, as there are with many of the greatest movies of all time. But same with the movies that are more obscure. There is a full history there somewhere because, 'cause a film takes months to a year to complete.

It was definitely a good challenge for me. When we first had our first home computer, it was one of those very few early subjects I was typing in like crazy to try to find out everything that I could. And, that all incubated in my little filing cabinet, which I was able to call upon years later.

Some things which were redundant, some things which I had the only links to that I had printed off in advance quite, sensibly so, but then there were certain things that just had lots of question marks to me. Like, what year did the film perish? How did it perish? The people who saw the film originally?

And unlike a lot of Chaney films, which have been covered in immense detail, London after Midnight, considering it's the most famous of all lost films, still for me, had major holes in it that I just, really wanted to know the answers to.

A lot of those answers, eventually, I found, even people who knew and institutions that knew information to key events like famous MGM Fire, they were hard pressed to connect anything up, in regards to the film. It was like a jigsaw puzzle. I had all these amazing facts. However, none of them kind of made sense with each other.

My favorite thing is researching and finding the outcomes to these things. So that's originally what spiraled me into the storm of crafting this, initial dissertation that I set myself, which eventually became so large. I had to do it as a book despite, I'd always wanted to do a book as a kid.

When you see people that you idolize for some reason, you just want to write a book on them. Despite, there had been several books on Lon Chaney. But I just always knew from my childhood that I always wanted to contribute a printed volume either on Chaney or a particular film, and London after Midnight seemed to present the opportunity to me.

I really just didn't want it to be a rehash of everything that we had seen before or read before in other accounts or in the Famous Monsters of Filmland Magazine, but just with a new cover. So, I thought I would only do a book if I could really contribute a fresh new perspective on the subject, which I hope hopefully did.

Oh, you absolutely did. And this is an exhaustive book and a little exhausting. There's a ton of stuff in here. You mentioned Famous Monster of the Filmland, which is where I first saw that image. There's at least one cover of the magazine that used that image. And Forrest Ackerman had some good photos and would use them whenever he could and also would compare them to Mark the Vampire, the remake, partially because I think Carol Borland was still alive and he could interview her. And he talked about that remake quite a bit.

But that iconic image that he put on the cover and whenever he could in the magazine--in my mind when you think of Lon Chaney, there's three images that come to mind: Phantom of the Opera, Quasimoto, and this one. And I think this one, the Man in the Beaver hat probably is the most iconic of his makeups, because, 'cause it is, it's somehow it got adopted into the culture as this is what you go to when it's a creepy guy walking around. And that's the one that everyone remembers. Do you have any idea, specifically what his process was for making that look, because it, it is I think ultimately a fairly simple design. It's just really clever.

Daniel: Yes, it probably does fall into the category of his more simplistic makeups. But, again, Chaney did a lot of things simplistic-- today --were never seen back then in say, 1927. Particularly in the Phantom of the Opera's case in 1925, in which a lot of that makeup today would be done through CG, in terms of trying to eliminate the nose or to make your lips move to express dialogue.

Chaney was very fortunate to have lived in the pantomime era, where he didn't have to rely on how his voice would sound, trying to talk through those dentures, in which case the makeup would probably have to have been more tamed to allow audio recorded dialogue to properly come through.

But with regards to the beaver hat makeup, he had thin wires that fitted around his eyes to give it a more hypnotic stare. The teeth, which he had constructed by a personal dentist, eventually had a wire attached to the very top that held the corners of his mouth, opening to a nice curved, fixated, almost joker like grin.

You can imagine with the monocles around his eyes, he was thankful there probably wasn't that much wind on a closed set, because he probably couldn't have closed his eyes that many times. But a lot of these things become spoken about and detailed over time with mythic status. That he had to have his eyes operated on to achieve the constant widening of his eyelids. Or the teeth -- he could only wear the teeth for certain periods of time before accidentally biting his tongue or his lips, et cetera.

But Chaney certainly wasn't a sadist, with himself, with his makeups. He was very professional. Although he did go through undoubtedly a lot of discomfort, especially probably the most, explicit case would be for the Hunchback of Notre Dame, in which his whole body is crooked down into a stooped position.

But, with London After Midnight, I do highly suspect that the inspiration for that makeup in general came from the Dracula novel. And because MGM had not acquired the rights to the Dracula novel, unlike how Universal acquired the rights of the Hunchback or, more importantly, Phantom of the Opera, by which point Gaston Leroux was still alive.

It was just a loose adaptation of Dracula. But nevertheless, when you read the description of Dracula in Bram Stoker's novel, he does bear a similarity to Chaney's vampire, in which it's the long hair, a mouth full of sharp teeth, a ghastly pale palor and just dressed all in black and carries around a lantern.

Whereas Bela Lugosi takes extraordinary leaps and turns away from the Stoker novel. But it must have definitely had an impact at the time, enough for MGM to over-market the image of Chaney's vampire, which only appears in the film for probably just under four minutes, compared to his detective disguise, which is the real main character of the film.

Although the thing we all wanna see is Cheney moving about as the vampire and what facial expressions he pulled. It's just something that we just want to see because it's Lon Chaney.

Right. And it makes you wonder if he had lived and had gotten to play Dracula, he kind of boxed himself into a corner, then if he'd already used the look from the book, you wonder what he would've come up with, if Lugosi hadn't done it, and if Chaney had had been our first Dracula.

The other thing that I think of is here's a guy who -- take Hunchback or Phantom or even this thing -- whatever process he went through to put that makeup on, you know, was hours of work, I'm sure. Hunchback several hours of work to get to that, that he did himself, and then they'd film all day.

So, on top of, I mean, I just think that that's like, wow, when you think about today where somebody might go into a makeup chair and have two or three people working on them to get the look they want. Even if it took a few hours, that person is just sitting there getting the makeup done. He's doing all of this, and then turns in a full day, uh, in front of the cameras, which to me is like, wow, that's incredible.

Daniel: Definitely, it's like two jobs in one. I imagine for an actor it must be really grueling in adapting to a makeup, especially if it's a heavy makeup where it covers the whole of your head or crushes down your nose, changes your lips, the fumes of chemicals going into your eyes.

But then by the end of it, I imagine you are quite exhausted from just your head adapting to that. But then you have to go out and act as well. With Chaney, I suppose he could be more of a perfectionist than take as much time as he wanted within reason. And then once he came to the grueling end of it all, he's actually gotta go out and act countless takes. Probably repair a lot of the makeup as well after, after a couple of takes, certainly with things like the Hunchback or the Phantom of the Opera.

And, you know, it's not only is he doing the makeup and acting, but in, you know, not so much in London After Midnight, but in Phantom of the Opera, he is quite athletic. When the phantom moves, he really moves. He's not stooped. He's got a lot of energy to him and he's got a makeup on that, unlike the Quasimoto makeup, what he's attempting to do with the phantom is, reductive. He's trying to take things away from his face.

And he's using all the tricks he knows and lighting to make that happen, but that means he's gotta hit particular marks for the light to hit it just right. And for you to see that his face is as, you know, skull-like as he made it. When you see him, you know, in London After Midnight as the professor inspector character, he has got a normal full man's face. It's a real face. Much like his son, he had a kind of a full face and what he was able to do with a phantom and take all that away, and be as physical as he was, is just phenomenal. I mean, he was a really, besides the makeup, he was a really good actor.

Daniel: Oh, definitely.

I wonder if he was the makeup artist, but not the actor and he did exactly the same makeup on somebody else. And so we had the same image. If those things would've resonated with us the way they do today. I think it had everything to do with who he was and his abilities in addition to the incredible makeup. He was just a tremendous performer.

Daniel: Absolutely. He was a true multitasker. In his early days of theater, he was not only an actor, but he was a choreographer. He had a lot of jobs behind the scenes as well. Even when he had become a star in his own time, he would still help actors find the character within them. like Norma Sheera, et cetera. People who were kind of new to the movie making scene and the directors didn't really have that much patience with young actors or actresses.

Whereas Chaney, because of his clout in the industry, no one really interfered with Chaney's authority on set. But he would really help actors find the character, find the emotion, 'cause it was just all about how well you translate it over for the audience, as opposed to the actor feeling a certain way that convinces themselves that they're the character. Chaney always tried to get the emotions across to the audience. Patsy Ruth Miller, who played Esemerelda in in the Hunchback, said that Chaney directed the film more than the director actually did.

The director was actually even suggested by Chaney. So, Chaney really had his hands everywhere in the making of a film. And Patsy Ruth Miller said the thing that she learned from him was that it's the actress's job to make the audience feel how the character's meant to be feeling, and not necessarily the actor to feel what they should be feeling based on the script and the settings and everything.

So I think, that's why Chaney in particular stands out, among all of the actors of his time.

I think he would've transitioned really well into sound. I think, he had everything necessary to make that transition. There's one sound picture with him in it, isn't there, doesn't he? Doesn't he play a ventriloquist?

Daniel: Yes, it was a remake of The Unholy Three that he had made in 1925 as Echo the ventriloquist, and the gangster. And yes, by the time MGM had decided to pursue talkies -- also, funny enough, they were one of the last studios to transition to, just because they were the most, one, probably the most dominant studio in all of Hollywood, that they didn't feel the pressure to compete with the burgeoning talkie revolution.

So they could afford to take their time, they could release a talkie, but then they could release several silent films and the revenue would still be amazing for the studio. Whereas other studios probably had to conform really quick just because they didn't have the star system, that MGM shamelessly flaunted.

And several Chaney films had been transitioned to sound at this point with or without Chaney. But for Chaney himself, because he himself was the special effect, it was guaranteed to be a winner even if it had been an original story that isn't as remembered today strictly because people get to hear the thing that's been denied them for all this time, which is Chaney's voice.

And he would've transitioned very easily to talkies is because he had a very rich, deep voice, which, coming from theater, he had to have had, in terms of doing dialogue. He wasn't someone like a lot of younger actors who had started out predominantly in feature films who could only pantomime lines. Chaney actually knew how to deliver dialogue, so it did feel natural and it didn't feel read off the page.

And he does about five voices in The Unholy Three. So MGM was truly trying to market, his voice for everything that they could. As Mrs. O'Grady, his natural voice, he imitates a parrot and a girl. And yeah, he really would've flourished in the sound era.

Any surprises, as it sounds like you were researching this for virtually your whole life, but were there any surprises that you came across, as you really dug in about the film?

Daniel: With regards to London after Midnight, the main surprise was undoubtedly the -- probably the star chapter of the whole thing -- which is the nitrate frames from an actual destroyed print of the film itself, which sounds crazy to even being able to say it. But, yeah the nitrate frames themselves presented a quandary of questions that just sent me into a whole nother research mode trying to find out where these impossible images came from, who they belonged to, why they even existed, why they specifically existed.

Because, looking for something that, you know, you are told doesn't exist. And then to find it, you kind of think someone is watching over you, planting this stuff as though it's the ultimate tease. To find a foreign movie poster for London After Midnight would be one thing, but to find actual pieces of the lost film itself. It was certainly the most out of body experience I've ever had. Just to find something that I set out to find, but then you find it and you still can't believe that you've actually found it.

How did you find it?

Daniel: I had connections with a few foreign archives who would befriend me and took to my enthusiasm with the silent era, and specifically Chaney and all the stars connected to Chaney films.

And, quite early on I was told that there were a few photo albums that had various snippets of silent films from Chaney. They didn't really go into what titles these were, 'cause they were just all a jumble. All I knew is that they came from (garbled) widow. And he had acquired prints of the whole films from various, I suppose, junk stores in Spain.

But not being a projectionist, he just purely took them at the face value that he just taken the images and snipping them up and putting them in photo albums, like how you would just do with photographs. And then the rest of the material was sadly discarded by fire. So, all we were left with were these snipped relics, survivors almost to several Chaney lost films. Some of them not lost, but there were films like The Phantom of the Opera in there, the Hunchback of Notre Dame, Mockery, The Unknown.

But then there were several lost films such as London After Midnight, the Big City, Thunder. And All the Brothers were Valiant, which are mainly other than Thunder are all totally complete lost films.

So, to find this little treasure trove, it was just finding out what the images meant and connecting them up, trying to put them in some sort of chronological scholarly order. Grueling, but it was very fun at the same time. And because I had identified myself with all of these surviving production stills from the film -- a lot of them, which formed the basis of the 2002 reconstruction by Turner Classic Movies -- it didn't take me too long to identify what scenes these surviving nitrate frames were from.

But there were several frames which had sets that I recognized and costumes that I recognized, but in the photographic stills, they don't occupy the same space at the same time. So, it's like the two separate elements had crossed over. So that left me with a scholarly, question of what I was looking at.

I was able to go back and, sort of rectify certain wrongs that have been accepted throughout the sixties as being the original, say, opening to London after Midnight. So I've, been able to disprove a few things that have made the film, I suppose, a bit more puzzling to audiences. Some audiences didn't really get what the plot was to begin with. So, it was nice to actually put a bit more order to the madness finally.

At what point did you come across the original treatment and the script?

Daniel: The treatment and the script, they came from a private collector who had bought them at auction a number of years ago who I was able to thankfully contact, and they still had the two documents in question. I had learned through Philip J Riley's previous books on London after Midnight that he had the two latter drafts of the script, the second edition and the third draft edition.

And, again, the question of why and where. I just always wondered where that first draft of the script was, hoping it would contain new scenes, and open new questions for me and to study. And once I've managed to find those two documents, they did present a lot of new, perspectives and material that added to the fuller plot of the original hypnotist scenario, as opposed to the shortened, time efficient London After Midnight film that was ultimately delivered to audiences. So again, it helped to put a little bit more order to the madness.

You found an actual piece of the film that you were able to, somebody got images from it? And then you found the scripts? But the images are terrific and they're all in your book. They came from what exactly?

Daniel: The just below 20 images of the film came from originally a distribution print, a Spanish distribution print, from about 1928. Originally, they were on 35 millimeter indicating that they were from the studio and as is with a lot of silent films that have been found in foreign archives.

Normally when a film is done with its distribution, it would have to be returned to the original studio to be destroyed, except for the original negative and a studio print, because there is no reason why a studio would need to keep the thousands of prints when they have the pristine copy in their vault.

 But, in a lot of smaller theater cases, in order to save money on the postage of the shipping, they would just basically declare that they had destroyed the film on the studio's behalf. There was no record system with this stuff and that's how a lot of these films ended up in the basements of old theaters, which are eventually when they closed, the assets were sold off to collectors or traveling showmen. And eventually these films found their ways into archives or again, private collections. Some of which people know what they have.

A lot of times they don't know what they have because they're more obsessed with, naturally, more dedicated to preserving the films of their own culture that was shown at the time, as opposed to a foreign American title, which they probably assume they already have a copy of. But it's how a lot of these films get found.

And, with the London After Midnight, example, there were the images that I found spanned the entire seven reels, because they came from different points in the film. It wasn't a single strip of film, of a particular scene. Having thankfully the main source that we have for London After Midnight is the cutting continuity, which is the actual film edited down shot for shot, length for length.

And it describes, briefly, although descriptive enough, what is actually in each and every single shot of the film. And comparing the single frame images from the film with this document, I was able to identify at what point these frames came from during the film, which again spanned the entire seven reels, indicating that a complete seven reel version of the film had gotten out under the studio system at one point.

As is the case, I'm assuming, 'cause these came from the same collection, I'm assuming it was the same with the other lost Chaney films that again, sadly only survive in snippet form.

It's like somebody was a collector and his wife said, "well, we don't have room for all this. Just take the frames you like and we'll get rid of the rest of it."

So, you mentioned in passing the 2002 reconstruction that Turner Classic Movies did using the existing stills. I don't know if they were working from any of the scripts or not. That was the version I originally saw when I was working on writing, those portions of The Misers Dream that mentioned London After Midnight.

Based on what you know now, how close is that reconstruction and where do you think they got it right and where'd they get it wrong?

Daniel: The 2002, reconstruction, while a very commendable production, it does stray from the original edited film script. Again, the problem that they clearly faced on that production is that there were not enough photographed scenes to convey all the photographed scenes from the film. So what they eventually fell into the trap of doing was having to reuse the same photograph to sometimes convey two separate scenes, sometimes flipping the image to appear on the opposite side of the camera. And, because of the certain lack of stills in certain scenes cases, they had to rewrite them.

And sometimes a visual scene had to have been replaced with an inter-title card, merely describing what had happened or describing a certain period in time, as opposed to showing a photograph of what we're meant to be seeing as opposed to just reading. So, they did the best with what they had.

But since then, there have been several more images crop up in private collections or in the archives. So, unless a version of the film gets found, it's certainly an endeavor that could be revisited, I think, and either do a new visual reconstruction of sort, or attempt some sort remake of the film even.

They certainly have the materials to do that. I've got an odd question. There's one famous image, a still image from the film, showing Chaney as Professor Burke, and he is reaching out to the man in the beaver hat whose back is to us. Is that a promo photo? Spoiler alert, Burke is playing the vampire in the movie. He admits that that's him. So, he never would've met the character. What is the story behind that photo?

Daniel: There are actually three photographs depicting that, those characters that you described. There are the two photographs which show Chaney in the Balfor mansion seemingly directing a cloaked, top hatted figure with long hair, with its back towards us. And then there is another photograph of Chaney in the man in the beaver hat disguise with a seemingly twin right beside him outside of a door.

Basically the scenes in the film in which Chaney appear to the Hamlin residents, the people who are being preyed upon by the alleged vampires, the scenes where Chaney and the vampire need to coexist in the same space or either appear to be in the same vicinity to affect other characters while at the same time interrogating others, Chaney's character of Burke employs a series of assistants to either dress up as vampires or at certain times dress up as his version of the vampire to parade around and pretend that they are the man in the beaver hat. Those particular shots, though, the vampire was always, photographed from behind rather than the front.

The very famous scene, which was the scene that got first got me interested in London After Midnight, in which the maidm played by Polly Moran is in the chair shrieking at Chaney's winged self, hovering over her. It was unfortunate to me to realize that that was actually a flashback scene told from the maid's perspective.

And by the end of the film, the maid is revealed to be an informant of Burke, a secret detective also. So, it's really a strong suspension of disbelief has to be employed because the whole scene of Chaney chasing the maid through the house and appearing under the door, that was clearly just the MGMs marketing at work just to show Chaney off in a bizarre makeup with a fantastic costume.

Whereas he is predominantly the detective and the scenes where he's not needed to hypnotize a character in the full vampire makeup, he just employs an assistant who parades around in the house as him, all the times with his back turned so that the audience can't latch on as to who the character actually is, 'cause it must have posed quite a fun confusion that how can Chaney be a detective in this room where the maid has just ran from the Vampire, which is also Chaney?

Yeah, and it doesn't help that the plot is fairly convoluted anyway, and then you add that layer. So, do you think we'll ever see a copy of it? Do you think it's in a basement somewhere?

Daniel: I've always personally believed that the film does exist. Not personally out of just an unfounded fanboy wish, but just based on the evidence and examples of other films that have been found throughout time. Metropolis being probably the most prominent case.

But, at one point there was nothing on London After Midnight and now there is just short of 20 frames for the film. So, if that can exist currently now in the year 2023, what makes us think that more footage can't be found by, say, 2030? I think with fans, there's such a high expectation that if it's not found in their own lifetime or in their own convenience space of time, it must not exist.

There's still a lot of silent lost treasures that just have not been found at all that do exist though. So, with London After Midnight, from a purely realistic standpoint, I've always theorized myself that the film probably does exist in an archive somewhere, but it would probably be a very abridged, foreign condensed version, as opposed to a pristine 35-millimeter print that someone had ripped to safety stock because they knew in the future the film would become the most coveted of all lost films.

So, I do believe it does exist. The whole theory of it existing in a private collection and someone's waiting to claim the newfound copyright on it, I think after December of last year, I think it's finally put that theory to rest. I don't think a collector consciously knows they have a copy of it. So, I think it's lost until found personally, but probably within an archive.

Lost until found. That's a great title for a book. I like that a lot. What do you think of the remake, Mark of the Vampire and in your opinion, what does it tell us about, London After Midnight?

Daniel: Well, Mark of the Vampire came about again, part of the Sound Revolution. It was one of those because it was Chaney and Todd Browning's most successful film for the studio. And Browning was currently, being held on a tight leash by MGM because of his shocking disaster film Freaks, I suppose they were a little bit nervous about giving him the reign to do what he wanted again.

So, looking through their backlog of smash silent hits, London After Midnight seemed the most logical choice to remake, just simply because it was their most, successful collaboration. Had it have been The Unholy Three, I'm sure? Oh no, we already had The Unholy Three, but had it have been another Browning Chaney collaboration, it might have been The Unknown, otherwise. So, I suppose that's why London After Midnight was selected and eventually turned into Mark of the Vampire.

The story does not stray too much from London After Midnight, although they seem to complicate it a little bit more by taking the Burke vampire character and turning it this time into three characters played by three different actors, all of which happened to be in cahoots with one another in trying to solve an old murder mystery.

It's very atmospherical. You can definitely tell it's got Todd Browning signature on it. It's more pondering with this one why they just did not opt to make a legit, supernatural film, rather than go in the pseudo vampire arena that they pursued in 1927. Where audiences had by now become accustomed to the supernatural with Dracula and Frankenstein in 1931, which no longer relied on a detective trying to find out a certain mystery and has to disguise themselves as a monster.

The monster was actually now a real thing in the movies. So I think if Bela Lugosi had been given the chance to have played a real Count Mora as a real vampire, I think it would've been slightly better received as opposed to a dated approach that was clearly now not the fashionable thing to do.

I suppose again, because Browning was treading a very thin line with MGM, I suppose he couldn't really stray too far from the original source material. But I find it a very atmospherical film, although I think the story works better as a silent film than it does as a sound film, because there's a lot of silent scenes in that film, away from owls, hooting and armadillos scurrying about and winds.

But I do think, based on things like The Cat and The Canary from 1927 and The Last Warning, I just think that detective sleuth with horror overtones serves better to the silent world than it does the sound world away from the legit, supernatural.

So, if Chaney hadn't died, do you think he would have played Dracula? Do you think he would've been in Freaks? Would Freaks have been more normalized because it had a big name in it like that?

Daniel: It would've been interesting if Chaney had played in Freaks. I think because Todd Browning used the kinds of individuals that he used for Freaks, maybe Chaney would've, for a change, had been the most outta place.

I do think he might have played Dracula. I think Universal would've had a hell of a time trying to get him over because he had just signed a new contract with MGM, whereas Todd Browning had transferred over to Universal by 1930 and really wanted to make Dracula for many years and probably discussed it with Chaney as far back as 1920.

But certainly MGM would not have permitted Chaney to have gone over to Universal, even for a temporary period, without probably demanding a large piece of the action, in a financial sense, because Universal had acquired the rights to Dracula at this point. And, based on the stage play that had, come out on Broadway, it was probably assured that it was going to be a giant moneymaker, based on the success of the Dracula play.

But because of Chaney's, status as a, I suppose retrospectively now, as a horror actor, he was probably the first person to be considered for that role by Carl Laemmle, senior and Junior for that matter. And Chaney gone by 1930, it did pose a puzzle as to who could take over these kinds of roles.

Chaney was probably the only one to really successfully do it and make the monster an actual box office ingredient more than any other actor at that time, as he did with. Phantom, Blind Bargain and London After Midnight. So, I think to have pursued Chaney for a legit, supernatural film would've had enormous possibilities for Browning and Chaney himself.

You can kind of see a trend, a trilogy forming, with Browning, from London After Midnight, in which he incorporates things he used in Dracula in London After Midnight. So, he kind of had this imagery quite early on. So, to go from – despite it's not in that order -- but to have London After Midnight, Mark of the Vampire, and he also did Dracula, he clearly was obsessed with the story.

And I think Chaney was probably the, best actor for someone like Browning who complimented his way of thinking and approach to things like silence. As opposed to needing dialogue all the time, loud commotions. So, I think they dovetailed each other quite well, and that's why their ten year director actor relationship was as groundbreaking as it was.

If the film does surface, if we find the film, what do you think people, how are they gonna react to the movie when they see it? What do you think? What's gonna be the reaction if it does surface?

Daniel: Well, the lure of London After Midnight, the power in the film is its lost status rather than its widespread availability. I think it could never live up to the expectation that we've built up in our heads over the past 40 to 60 years. It was truly people, fans like Forrest J Ackerman that introduced and reignited the interest in Chaney's career by the late fifties and 1960s. That's when London After Midnight started to make the rounds in rumor, the rumors of a potential print existing, despite the film had not long been destroyed at that point. So, it was always a big mystery. There were always people who wanted to see the film, but with no access to home video, or et cetera, the only way you could probably see the film would've been at the studio who held everything.

And, by the time the TV was coming out, a lot of silent films didn't make it to TV. So again, it has just germinated in people's heads probably in a better form than what they actually remembered. But, the true reality of London After Midnight is one more closer to the ground than it is in it's people are probably expecting to see something very supernatural on par with Dracula, whereas it's more so a Sherlock Holmes story with mild horrorish overtones to it that you can kind of see better examples of later on in Dracula in 1930 and in Mark of the Vampire.

It's a film purely, I think for Lon Chaney fans. For myself, having read everything I can on the film, everything I've seen on the film, I personally love silent, detective stories, all with a touch of horror. So, I personally would know what I am going in to see. I'm not going in to see Chaney battling a Van Helsing like figure and turn to dust at the very end or turning to a bat. I'm going to see a detective melodrama that happens to have what looks like a vampire.

So, it certainly couldn't live up to the expectations in people's minds and it's probably the only film to have had the greatest cheapest, marketing in history, I would think. It's one of those films, if it was discovered, you really would not have to do much marketing to promote it.

It's one of those that in every fanzine, magazine, documentary referenced in pop. It has really marketed itself into becoming what I always call the mascot of the genre. There are other more important lost films that have been lost to us. The main one again, which has been found in its more complete form, was Metropolis, which is a better movie.

But unlike Metropolis, London After Midnight has a lot more famous ingredients to it. It has a very famous director. It has a very famous actor whose process was legendary even during then. And it's actually the only film in which he actually has his make-up case make a cameo appearance by the very end.

And it goes on the thing that everyone in every culture loves, which is the vampirism, the dark tales and folklore. So, when you say it, it just gets your imagination going. Whereas I think if you are watching it, it's probably you'll be looking over the projector to see if something even better is going to happen.

The film had its mixed reactions when it originally came out. People liked it because it gave them that cheap thrill of being a very atmospherical, haunted house with the creepy figures of Chaney walking across those dusty hallways. But then the more important story is a murder mystery.

It's not Dracula, but it has its own things going for it. I always kind of harken it back to the search for the Lochness Monster or Bigfoot. It has more power in your mind than it does in an aquarium or in a zoo. Hearing someone say that they think they saw something moving around in Lochness, but there's no photographic evidence, you just have the oral story, that is much more tangible in a way than actually seeing it in an aquarium where you can take it for granted.

And it's the same with London After Midnight, and I think that's why a lot of hoaxster and pranksters tend to say that they have seen London After Midnight more than any other lost film.

For a film that I would say the majority of the world does not have any frame of reference, that image is iconic in a way that has been, I mean, it at first glance could be Jack the Ripper. Once I locked in on that image, then I started to think, oh, the ghosts in Disney's Haunted Mansion, there's a couple of ghosts that have elements of that. I mean, it was so perfectly done, even though we don't, I bet you nine out ten people don't know the title London After Midnight, but I bet you seven outta ten people know this image.

Daniel: Definitely, it has certainly made its mark on pop culture, again, I think because I think it's such a beautiful, simplistic design. Everything from the simplistically [garbled] to the bulging eyes and the very nice top hat as well, which is in itself today considered a very odd accessory for a grotesque, vampire character.

But it's one of those things that has really carried over. It's influenced what the movies and artists. It was one of the influences for the Babadook creation for that particular monster. It was an influence on the Black Phone. It's just a perfect frame of reference for movie makers and sculptors and artists to keep taking from.

Yep. It's, it'll live long beyond us. Daniel, one last question. I read somewhere or heard somewhere. You're next gonna tackle James Whale, is that correct?

Daniel: James Whale is a subject, again, coming from, I happen to come from the exact same town that he was born and raised in, in Dudley, England. So, it's always been a subject close to home for me, which is quite convenient because I love his movies. So, I'm hoping to eventually, hopefully plan a documentary feature on him, based on a lot of family material in the surrounding areas that I was able to hunt down, and forgotten histories about him and just put it together in some form, hopefully in the future.

Daniel: James Whale is the most known for his work for directing Frankenstein with Boris Karloff in 1931. But he also directed probably some of the most important horror films that have ever existed in the history of motion pictures. The Old Dark House, which can be cited with its very atmospherical, and black comedy tones, The Invisible Man with Claude Rains and Gloria Stewart in 1933. And, the most important one, which is probably the grand jewel in the whole of the Universal Monsters Empire, which is Bride of Frankenstein in 1935, which is the ultimate, example of everything that he had studied, everything that he'd learned with regards to cinema and comedy, life and death, and just making a very delicious cocktail of a movie in all of its black comedy, horrific, forms that we're still asking questions about today.

One of his first films that he did was for Howard Hughes Hell's Angels, in which -- because he'd coming over from theater -- when again, films in America were taken off with the sound revolution. They all of a sudden needed British directors to translate English dialogue better than the actors could convey.

So, James Whale was one of many to be taken over to America when he had a hit play called Journeys End, which became the most successful war play at that point. And he did his own film adaptation of Journeys End. He also did a really remarkable film called Showboat, which is another very iconic film.

And again, someone with James Whale's horror credentials, you just think, how could someone who directed Frankenstein directed Showboat? But, clearly a very, very talented director who clearly could not be pigeonholed at the time as  a strictly horror director, despite it is the horror films in which he is remembered for, understandably so, just because they contain his very individualistic wit and humor and his outlooks on life and politics. And being an openly gay director at the time, he really was a force unto himself. He was a very modern man even then.

Dying to make a feature? Learn from the pros!

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What's changed? Technology. Platforms. Distribution.
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Inside, you'll find:

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  • 40+ links to trailers, scenes, and supplementary material—turning this book into an interactive master class

  • Real-world case studies from 33 groundbreaking low-budget films—from Clerks and El Mariachi to The Blair Witch Project and sex, lies, and videotape

  • Field-tested lessons from the author's own four features—proof that these principles work in the real world, on set, in the edit room, and on screen

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The book covers (among other topics):

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Peet Gelderblom – Re-Cutting “Raising Cain”

Click HERE for the Podcast Version of this Interview

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!

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What's changed? Technology. Platforms. Distribution.
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Inside, you'll find:

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  • 40+ links to trailers, scenes, and supplementary material—turning this book into an interactive master class

  • Real-world case studies from 33 groundbreaking low-budget films—from Clerks and El Mariachi to The Blair Witch Project and sex, lies, and videotape

  • Field-tested lessons from the author's own four features—proof that these principles work in the real world, on set, in the edit room, and on screen

Whether you're shooting on your phone or scraping together a micro-budget, this is your master class in turning limitations into strengths.

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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):

  • 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

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  • 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

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

Click Here to listen to podcast version of this interview

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.

 

Read all about how “Harold and Maude” became a cult film, playing for over two years at The Westgate Theater.

TWO YEARS, ONE THEATER: THE CULT FILM THAT WOULDN'T DIE

(SECOND EDITION - WITH A DOZEN NEW PHOTOS)

The studio wanted it buried. Critics dismissed it. But when Harold and Maude arrived at Minneapolis’ Westgate Theater, something magical happened.

The quirky dark comedy about a death-obsessed teen and an 80-year-old free spirit found its home. And stayed. And stayed. And stayed some more—until angry neighbors started protesting.

This true story captures the remarkable phenomenon that transformed a box-office disaster into one of the most beloved cult films of all time.

Inside this captivating chronicle, you'll discover:

• How a single theater kept Harold and Maude alive when everyone else had given up on it

• The joyful celebrations when stars Ruth Gordon and Bud Cort visited their devoted fans

• The superfan who saw the film so many times he became friends with Ruth Gordon herself

• The hilarious neighborhood protests demanding a change after endless months of the same film

• Rare, never-before-published photographs of the theater, the celebrations, and the protests

Before streaming, before home video, before "cult classic" was even a term—there was a small theater that wouldn't let a strange little film die. This is their story.

Buy Your Copy Here

Dying to make a feature? Learn from the pros!

When Fast, Cheap & Under Control first hit shelves in 2006, it became the underground handbook for a generation of indie filmmakers. Now, two decades on, this 20th Anniversary Special Edition proves the lessons inside aren't just timeless—they're more essential than ever.

What's changed? Technology. Platforms. Distribution.
What hasn't? The grit, ingenuity, and sheer determination it takes to make a great film with nothing but vision and hustle.

Inside, you'll find:

  • Exclusive interviews with legends like Steven Soderbergh, Roger Corman, Jon Favreau, Henry Jaglom, Kasi Lemons, Dan O'Bannon, Bob Odenkirk and more

  • Over 100 images bringing the stories to life

  • 40+ links to trailers, scenes, and supplementary material—turning this book into an interactive master class

  • Real-world case studies from 33 groundbreaking low-budget films—from Clerks and El Mariachi to The Blair Witch Project and sex, lies, and videotape

  • Field-tested lessons from the author's own four features—proof that these principles work in the real world, on set, in the edit room, and on screen

Whether you're shooting on your phone or scraping together a micro-budget, this is your master class in turning limitations into strengths.

No film school required. Just this book. 

Roger Corman called it the textbook for his legendary filmmaking school. Now it's your turn to learn from the best.

Buy the Book: “Fast, Cheap and Under Control (20th Anniversary Edition)”

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! 

Buy the Book: “Fast, Cheap and Written That Way”

Ken Levine - Television writer and director

Click here for the podcast version of this interview

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!

When Fast, Cheap & Under Control first hit shelves in 2006, it became the underground handbook for a generation of indie filmmakers. Now, two decades on, this 20th Anniversary Special Edition proves the lessons inside aren't just timeless—they're more essential than ever.

What's changed? Technology. Platforms. Distribution.
What hasn't? The grit, ingenuity, and sheer determination it takes to make a great film with nothing but vision and hustle.

Inside, you'll find:

  • Exclusive interviews with legends like Steven Soderbergh, Roger Corman, Jon Favreau, Henry Jaglom, Kasi Lemons, Dan O'Bannon, Bob Odenkirk and more

  • Over 100 images bringing the stories to life

  • 40+ links to trailers, scenes, and supplementary material—turning this book into an interactive master class

  • Real-world case studies from 33 groundbreaking low-budget films—from Clerks and El Mariachi to The Blair Witch Project and sex, lies, and videotape

  • Field-tested lessons from the author's own four features—proof that these principles work in the real world, on set, in the edit room, and on screen

Whether you're shooting on your phone or scraping together a micro-budget, this is your master class in turning limitations into strengths.

No film school required. Just this book. 

Roger Corman called it the textbook for his legendary filmmaking school. Now it's your turn to learn from the best.

Buy the Book: “Fast, Cheap and Under Control (20th Anniversary Edition)”

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! 

Buy the Book: “Fast, Cheap and Written That Way”

Jim Meskimen — Character and Voice Actor

Click HERE for the podcast version of this interview

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.

CLICK HERE FOR THE PODCAST VERSION OF THIS INTERVIEW

Dying to make a feature? Learn from the pros!

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