Episode 119: Television writer and director Ken Levine

This week on the blog, a podcast interview with writer (and director and playwright and author and podcaster) Ken Levine about the business of writing and directing situation comedies.

LINKS

A Free Film Book for You:  https://dl.bookfunnel.com/cq23xyyt12

Another Free Film Book:  https://dl.bookfunnel.com/x3jn3emga6

Fast, Cheap Film Website: https://www.fastcheapfilm.com/

Ken Levine’s Website: http://kenlevine.blogspot.com/

Eli Marks Website:  https://www.elimarksmysteries.com/

Albert’s Bridge Books Website:  https://www.albertsbridgebooks.com/

YouTube Channel:  https://www.youtube.com/c/BehindthePageTheEliMarksPodcast

Dying to make a feature? Learn from the pros!

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

★★★★★

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

• Jonathan Demme: The value of cameos

• John Sayles: Writing to your resources

• Peter Bogdanovich: Long, continuous takes

• John Cassavetes: Re-Shoots

• Steven Soderbergh: Rehearsals

• George Romero: Casting

• Kevin Smith: Skipping film school

• Jon Favreau: Creating an emotional connection

• Richard Linklater: Poverty breeds creativity

• David Lynch: Kill your darlings

• Ron Howard: Pre-production planning

• John Carpenter: Going low-tech

• Robert Rodriguez: Sound thinking

And more!

Write Your Screenplay with the Help of Top Screenwriters!

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

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

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

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

The book covers (among other topics):

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Roger Nygard (“Suckers”) on mixing genres

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

TRANSCRIPT

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.

Episode 118: Magician and Filmmaker Lance Burton on his low-budget feature debut, “Billy Topit: Master Magician.”

This week on the blog, a podcast interview with magician Lance Burton about how he wrote (and directed and starred in) the delightfully comic “Billy Topit: Master Magician.”

LINKS

A Free Film Book for You:  https://dl.bookfunnel.com/cq23xyyt12

Another Free Film Book:  https://dl.bookfunnel.com/x3jn3emga6

Fast, Cheap Film Website: https://www.fastcheapfilm.com/

Lance Burton Website:  https://www.lanceburton.com/

Billy Topit Website:  http://www.billytopit.com/

Eli Marks Website:  https://www.elimarksmysteries.com/

Albert’s Bridge Books Website:  https://www.albertsbridgebooks.com/

YouTube Channel:  https://www.youtube.com/c/BehindthePageTheEliMarksPodcast

Dying to make a feature? Learn from the pros!

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

★★★★★

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

• Jonathan Demme: The value of cameos

• John Sayles: Writing to your resources

• Peter Bogdanovich: Long, continuous takes

• John Cassavetes: Re-Shoots

• Steven Soderbergh: Rehearsals

• George Romero: Casting

• Kevin Smith: Skipping film school

• Jon Favreau: Creating an emotional connection

• Richard Linklater: Poverty breeds creativity

• David Lynch: Kill your darlings

• Ron Howard: Pre-production planning

• John Carpenter: Going low-tech

• Robert Rodriguez: Sound thinking

And more!

Write Your Screenplay with the Help of Top Screenwriters!

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

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

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

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

The book covers (among other topics):

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Roger Nygard (“Suckers”) on mixing genres

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

Lance Burton Transcript

John: I loved Billy Topit, both Jim and I did. I've made a number of low budget movies in my life, about a half dozen of them and the driving force behind them has almost always been, let's get together with some friends and make a movie. I got the sense that that was kind of part of the DNA of Billy Topit. Is that right?

Lance: Well, yes, I just have to correct you on one thing: Billy Topit was not a low budget movie. It was a nobudget movie. We literally just decided, you know what, I'm not going to spend any money. Everyone volunteered. So, if it ever makes any money, I'll go back and pay the actors.

John: Well, okay. But as someone who has done the same thing, I’ve done that a half dozen times with the no money. The results you got, given the no money status, were great. Your sound is exceptional. One of the things that's normally a big sign that it's a low budget movie is the sound is not good. It's a hard thing to get right and when you do get it right, it makes it sound like a big budget movie. The cinematography is terrific, the editing is fantastic. I don't know if you bought the music, or if someone did the music, but whatever it was it fit perfectly, and it just sailed along. So, for a movie that had no budget, you did an exceptional job of making a real movie.

Lance: Oh, thank you. You’re right, the sound is the one thing you really don't want to skimp on, because that's something you really can't fix in post a lot of the times. So, we did try to pay attention to the sound recording. As far as the music goes, some of the music was from my show that I already own. Some of the performance pieces, some of the music we use just for the movie, was rights free music that that I got from a company called Digital juice. They have all different sorts of music and it's searchable. So, you can find you know, rock and roll hard driving music, you can find, you know, instrumentals, you really have everything.

Then there was a couple of pieces that a friend of mine, who's a musician wrote and recorded for me. And one of the pieces in the film, my lead actress, Joelle Rigetti, she had actually recorded an album a couple of years ago and she gave me the album during the production. She said, “Hey, anything on here you want you're welcome to use.” And I listened to it and there was one track, I went, this is perfect for this one scene I have. It's that it's the scene where the whole cast is waking up on the second day, brushing their teeth and getting ready to go out. That's actually the lead actress singing.

John: The stuff you picked all really meshed well together.

Lance: Oh, thank you. It was during the post-production process when it really struck me—as we were editing and doing that—how much the music adds to a production, not just a live show. I already knew that for a live show. But as I was making the film, it really just struck me again, you know, wow, music really does add a whole new dimension to the movie or live show.

John: Yeah. So, where did the idea for the movie come from?

Lance: Well, I'll tell you exactly where it came from. When I was a kid, there was a television series on TV called The Magician starring Bill Bixby. It only lasted one season, because the network got a new president that came in and he just, you know, cancelled all his predecessors’ shows. But it actually did good in the ratings. But it only lasted 22 episodes.

The magic consultant on The Magician was Mark Wilson and so when I moved out west, I met Mark Wilson, and became friends with him. Then when I was shooting Knightrider, guess who they hired to provide all of the large illusions and props for the episode? Mark Wilson. He was sort of the magic advisor on that television show. So, Mark, and I got to hang out for seven days on the set as we were shooting. He's actually in the episode. You can see shots of him. He's sitting in the audience during one of the opening performances. In fact, I get him up on stage at one point as a volunteer. So, anyway, one day after filming, Mark and I are going out to dinner and we're in his car and we're driving along. And he says to me, “Lance, how do you like doing this work?” And I said, “What do you mean, Mark? You mean like this episode?” He says, “Yeah, how do you like, you know, acting on this, this TV show?”

And I said, “I'm having the time of my life. I get to do magic. I get to act. I get to work with a stuntman, and this is great.” And he says, “Well, you're doing a good job and you ought to think about doing more of this.” And I said, “More of this, so what do you mean?” He says, “You ought to start a notebook, start keeping some ideas of how you could incorporate your magic into a TV series or movie, you know, like with the Bill Bixby series.” And I thought, Oh, that's a good idea. So, I did, I started writing, every time I had an idea about how to use magic within the context of the drama series, or, you know, a story, I would write it down.

So, after a few years, I had all these sort of clever things that I came up with, to use magic and propelling the story forward, or to get out of this sticky situation or whatever. And every few years, I've pulled that out, and I'd go, “You know, I'm going to try and go pitch this,” and I would go to Los Angeles and set up some meetings. And I was trying to pitch to do a series every few years and we got close a couple of times, but we never were able to sell it. But the area I was working in was so similar to things that would pop up on my TV screen later. I kept thinking, “Man, I've got something here, I just need to, like any kind of magic trick, you know, I get it in my head and it's frustrating, I just I gotta get it out, I got to put it on the stage because it's like in my brain is like scratching the inside of my skull and it's really annoying.”

By that time, the technology had progressed to the point where we had these high-definition cameras that weren't, you know, astronomically expensive. And we had editing software so that somebody on their laptop could put out a professional looking product. So, I finally just said, hey, you know what, I'm gonna do this. And I called my buddy, Michael Goudeau and he came over and we fleshed out the story. And then we wrote the screenplay within, like two or three months. And then we eventually just started casting it and shot it. So, it all goes back to Bill Bixby and The Magician from 1973.

John: Well, most things do. Most things do go back that. Were you always planning on directing?

Lance: You know, directing and acting at the same time is really difficult. But I had been doing it all my life, you know, with my live show. And we started in on this thing and then at some point, I heard an interview with Barbra Streisand, and someone asked her that question, and they said, “Is it difficult to act and direct in the same production?” And she had a great response. She said, “No, it's easier that way. That's one less person I have to argue with.”

Jim: She's right. Absolutely right. So, talk a little bit about how the movie changed, you know, from your initial script and then through shooting and editing. Were there a lot of kind of, oh, let's do this. Oh, that didn't work.

Lance: I'll tell you what: when I first had the idea, I didn't have a real clear idea of the tone I wanted to take, you know? As far as it could have been a drama, it could have been a comedy or whatever. But I started chatting with my buddy, Michael Goudeau. Now, Michael worked in my show, as my special guest star. We've been friends for, you know, since the mid-80s and Michael said, this was his idea. So, I gave him credit.

He said, we should write this is a family film and I said, why is that? He says, because I have two small children and about two or three times a year, I have to take them to the movies and we have to pick a family film, and they're always horrible. That's why I'd like to see a good family film. Something good, we can take the kids to see. And I said okay, that's fine. You know, that fits. Magic's always been considered a good family entertainment.

So, we chose to write it as a family friendly movie, and as a comedy, but I give credit to Michael for that, and it didn't alter that much. Once we had the script completed, the idea was, you know, to keep to the script as close as we can within reason. Now, there were some scenes that were improvised and there were some things that I added during the course of the movie.

I'll tell you one thing that we added: the film starts with a dream sequence, with Billy floating a lady in the air. And then he wakes up in bed and you realize, oh, that was just a dream. He doesn't really have a big Las Vegas show. He's a birthday party magician and that was the first thing we shot.

So, as we were shooting, I read a book by Robert Rodriguez about his experience shooting El Mariachi. That was recommended to me by Rory Johnston, who played the bad guy in my movie. When I explained to Rory what we were going to do, he said, oh, you're doing like a no budget movie, like Robert Rodriguez. And I said, Who's Robert Rodriguez? He said, he is just a director, he started out by making this movie called El Mariachi. He had $7,000. That was it and he made a whole film.

And so, I bought the DVD to watch. I wanted to see what a $7,000 movie look like. And then I read his book and he had some really interesting advice and thoughts. He was talking about the power of three—which magicians will do also—where you have a callback, or something keeps popping back up, and it happens three times. In El Mariachi, there's like this sort of dream sequence. But it happens three times. And I started thinking, he's got a really good point there. So, I started thinking, where else could I insert, I need two more dream sequences? And I’ve got to find a place to insert them. So, we wrote two more dream sequences and found the right place to put them. And we shot that, but that kind of happened once we started once we started shooting.

Jim: You know, John, as he's mentioned, has shot some low budget movies here and there, populated largely by friends of John. And I get the sense that, in watching your movie, that these people are all your buddies, that they're all your pals, these are all your friends.

Lance: Oh, yeah, they're all my friends. The only time there were people in their movie, really, that I didn't know, like extras in the restaurant. We would just ask people, do you have any friends that you can come over and be background actors? And a lot of them are my friends. Like the birthday party scene: those kids are all kids of friends. Like, hey, if you got kids, bring them over to my stage manager's house.

John: It really looks like you guys are having fun throughout the whole movie. I don't mean to denigrate it in any way, but it's a really goofy movie. It is surprisingly silly in a really fun way.

Lance: It's a silly movie and a lot of that stuff is Michael Goudeau. Everybody loves Michael and loves his comedy and kids especially love him. So, that's we wanted to go for. For instance, when we were writing the date scene, you know, that was a silly scene and they were doing the game with the milk, the little milk containers. And Michael said, listen, when I take my kids to a movie, when it gets to the romantic the date scene, they are bored. They are like, oh, they're falling asleep going, oh, when is this over? So, let's beef this up with something silly. Hey, great. That sounds great. So, again, a lot of that stuff was just the purpose of the movie was to keep everybody's interest.

John: And that's probably something you've learned from being on stage forever, is feeling when the audience might be getting bored and being ahead of them.

Lance: Yeah, you don't want to get to that point. You want to keep it moving.

Jim: Your friend Michael is in the movie?

Lance: Yes, he is in the movie. He's one of the jugglers.

Jim: Okay. But the taller one or the shorter one?

Lance: The shorter one. He was my co-writer on the screenplay and also co-executive producer.

Jim: At the very end, in the credits, there's some very clever, funny, little teases about the possibility and it was sort of like, gosh, I hope there is a sequel. Is there talk of that--?

John: And I will say, I'm going to speak from my podcast partner here. We're standing by ready to help you if you want to do.

Jim: Absolutely. I’ll drop everything.

Lance: Billy Topit Part Two, The Empire Strikes Back. Billy Topit Part Two, the Search for Spock. I tell you, that was just me getting at the end of the editing process and doing the credits and it's just going out. This will be funny. Just me just making up silly stuff.

John: And the image of you doing that of sitting on a computer and editing, do you have the filmmaking bug now or you going to it doesn't have to be a sequel, Billy Topit, but...

Lance: I've enjoyed. Here's the thing that I enjoyed the most on the whole process was learning to edit. My good buddy Bob Massey was our photographer and our editor. But in the process of editing, I would go over to his house, and we would work on it and then he'd have to go do something. I was like, do we have to stop? And one day he said, you know, I can give you the software. I bought this and I can put it on two computers legally. So, if you want to, I'll show you how. I went, yeah.

So, I went out, I bought this and I put this stuff on, and I started to learn how to edit. Bob was there to help me, show me. I really loved it. I really, really loved the process.

And a lot of it is very similar to magic. I'll give you a good example of that: There's a scene at the end of the movie where they've opened the big show and I do the sawing a couple into eight pieces. So, we got the two, the boy and the girl and they get sawed apart and they come out of the boxes at the end. And the boys were in the girl’s clothes and they chase each other offstage. And then they run past the camera and then the second shot, you see them run into view in the wings. And then they have a scene in the wings.

Well, we shot the first part, with the doing the trick, and then running past the camera. We shot that at the Monte Carlo hotel in 2010. And the scene in the wings, we shot in 2013, on the other side of town at Rory Johnson's church that he went to. They allowed us to shoot there. So, the two scenes that are supposed to be at the same time were shot three years apart in different locations.

As we were shooting the first one, I knew in my mind what I wanted to do: I wanted him to run past the camera, and then I would pick it up. And the rest of the cast hadn't even been cast yet by the way. I didn't even know who the other actors were going to be. But I knew there was a scene over there. So, as they run past, I'll pick it up. Whenever we get to that three years later, we shoot the thing.

Now I'm editing it together. So, now I take the music from the first part of the shot, playing during the trick and the audience reaction. You get the audience applauding and cheering, and they run past the camera and we go to the second shot. But you still hear the audio, you still hear the music playing, and you hear me out on stage going thank you and the audience applauding. And so now when you put it all together, it's like it's seamless. No one knows that that scene was shot three years apart. It's like a magic trick. It's an illusion. There's a good example of how the sound helps enhance the illusion. And there are a few magic tricks that we do on stage where sound is a very big part of the illusion.

John: I don't know at what point in the process you read Robert Rodriguez’s book, but he based El Mariachi on what he had available. He wrote the script based on the town, the bar, the tortoise, the dog, all of that. You seem to have done a very similar thing, in that I'm guessing you already had some footage you on stage or was it a relatively easy thing to get. For an average person, that's a really hard thing to get.

Lance: Exactly. And I had to shoot all that before the show closed, because we were getting ready to close the show. So, we captured all of that all the stuff that had to be shot in the theatre, we captured that.

John: But for the average person writing a script, to write that in a scene, you can't shoot that. The lights alone in the ceiling are more than your budget.

Lance: And I was well aware that. I had this opportunity that we'd written it into the script and it's like, okay, I gotta shoot this now, because if I wait another two months, it's all going to be gone.

John: Exactly. And I felt the same with the scenes in the casino, which would be I think, normally a difficult thing to do. But you obviously had a relationship to make those happen.

Lance: The casino scenes, those were all shot afterwards. That was my buddy, John Woodrum, who owned this little casino called the Klondike. We wanted it to be a locals type Casino. I talked to a few of the casinos and some of them were like, yeah, we'd let you come in here and shoot, we have a coffee shop. How many days do you need it?

And I'm going to myself, I don't know how long this is going to take to shoot. I never shot a movie before. And then finally I went over to see my buddy, John and I said, John, I've got this movie I'm shooting, and some of the action takes place in the casino. And there's a coffee shop and you've got a coffee shop. What would you think about a shooting here? And he looks at me says yeah, whatever you want. Come on in. I'm like, what? Come on, anytime. That's like, Okay, I found this. I found our location.

John: You are a low-budget filmmaker at heart. You got all the tricks that are necessary to be good at this and you did it on your first movie. That's exceptional.

Lance: It was a fun process and it's not dissimilar to shooting a television special or a TV show, but it is a little different. There is obviously magic in it. But you know, there's also the whole second element of the story and doing the scene and the acting and getting all the actors on the same page.

John: And speaking of the actors, I was thrilled to see our friend Louie Anderson in there. He was a Twin Cities guy who I knew back when he was here and I had the good fortune of working with him a couple times in the corporate arena. And to see Johnny Thompson obviously having so much fun, it was just great. And then to see Mac kind of turn up. I don’t want to spoil it. But he does turn up

Lance: Mac turns up there near the end of the film. It was great fun, being able to work with Johnny. To be able to direct your mentor is a really special thing and that was just so much fun working with Johnny, and he was just so good in this role.

John: He was such a good actor, he really had that ability to turn it on.

Lance: And Pam too.

John: Oh, yeah, Pam was in there as well. It was just so much fun to see them just pop up like that.

Jim: A delight, the whole thing was from start to finish was a delight. I watched it by myself after my wife went to bed and I just was giggling through the whole thing.

Lance: Thank you. Here's my favorite story from the whole process. I had this idea to do the trick on the telephone, The Wizard, that that anybody that is amateur magician knows the trick. Well, when Michael and I were coming up with a storyline, I had this idea of using The Wizard as part of the kidnapping thing, to find out where the assistant was being held. In order to do that, of course, I had to show what The Wizard was.

The reason I wanted to include that was I wanted kids especially to be able to watch the movie and then after the movie, I wanted them to be able to perform The Wizard for their friends. After we had our premiere, my wardrobe lady from the Monte Carlo—and she also did wardrobe on the movie—she called me like a week later. Her stepdaughter, who was in junior high school at that time, the little girl had gone to school the next day and had performed The Wizard for her friends. And when I heard that, I was like, yes, touchdown.

John: Mission accomplished.

Lance: Mission accomplished. It's exactly what I wanted. I wanted kids to go and actually perform a magic trick for their friends.

Jim: But I really liked how you then turn it around and use it as a plot device.

Lance: It's integral to the story. Yes, and those are those are especially the kind of things I like with magic in movies or TV shows: where you can take something and bring it back in later as a practical device.

Episode 117: Screenwriter and author Neal Marshall Stevens on “A Sense of Dread.”

This week on the blog, a podcast interview with screenwriter and author Neal Marshall Stevens about his new book on horror, “A Sense of Dread (Getting Under The Skin of Horror Screenwriting).”

LINKS

A Free Film Book for You:  https://dl.bookfunnel.com/cq23xyyt12

Another Free Film Book:  https://dl.bookfunnel.com/x3jn3emga6

Fast, Cheap Film Website: https://www.fastcheapfilm.com/

Neal’s book at Michael Wiese Productions: https://mwp.com/product-author/neal-marshall-stevens/

Neal on IMDB:  https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0139605/

Brian Forrest’s Blog:  https://toothpickings.medium.com/

Eli Marks Website:  https://www.elimarksmysteries.com/

Albert’s Bridge Books Website:  https://www.albertsbridgebooks.com/

YouTube Channel:  https://www.youtube.com/c/BehindthePageTheEliMarksPodcast

Dying to make a feature? Learn from the pros!

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

★★★★★

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

• Jonathan Demme: The value of cameos

• John Sayles: Writing to your resources

• Peter Bogdanovich: Long, continuous takes

• John Cassavetes: Re-Shoots

• Steven Soderbergh: Rehearsals

• George Romero: Casting

• Kevin Smith: Skipping film school

• Jon Favreau: Creating an emotional connection

• Richard Linklater: Poverty breeds creativity

• David Lynch: Kill your darlings

• Ron Howard: Pre-production planning

• John Carpenter: Going low-tech

• Robert Rodriguez: Sound thinking

And more!

Write Your Screenplay with the Help of Top Screenwriters!

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

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

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

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

The book covers (among other topics):

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Roger Nygard (“Suckers”) on mixing genres

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

Neal Stevens Transcript

JOHN:  Neal, you have a really long and storied history in the horror cinema. Can you remember the very first horror movie that had an impact on you?

NEAL: Well, actually, looking back, the first movie that scared the hell out of me wasn't a horror movie. It was actually a Disney movie called Johnny Tremaine. It was a kid's movie. And there was a scene in that movie, Johnny Tremaine was a kid during the Revolutionary War who knew Paul Revere, who, as you may remember, was a silversmith. And there's a scene in that movie, the British are coming and Paul Revere has got this urn of molten silver.

It gets knocked onto a table. Johnny Tremaine trips and puts his hand face up into the molten silver and fries his hand. And I'm sure I know I, every kid in the audience goes like (sound effect.)

But that's actually not the scariest part of the movie. Later on, surgeons are unwrapping his burnt hand, and they look down and they react in horror.

His fingers have healed together, stuck together. We don't see it and they say, “Oh, we're going to have to cut his fingers apart,” which also happens off screen. And again, in our imagination, imagining no anesthesia back then, it's a revolutionary war. So, poor Johnny Tremaine has to have his healed together fingers cut apart.

The memory of what that must be like has lasted. I must have been like five or six when I saw it. My parents dragged me to see Johnny Tremaine, it's a happy Disney movie. I'm 67 years old, so it's been over a half a century since I saw this movie and was appropriately traumatized by those images. So, Disney knew how to scare little kids. That's for sure.

JOHN: He sure did. Wow. That's a horrible story.

NEAL: Yeah. As for official horror movies that scared the hell out of me, again, we used to watch Phantasmic Features on the TV in Boston. I remember a movie called Teenagers from Outer Space. They weren't actually teenagers. They were all in their thirties. But anyway, these invaders had a skeleton ray that as they would aim it at someone, it would flash and you're instantly reduced literally to a skeleton. And they were, they didn't care who, so as soon as they come out of their spaceship, there's a barking dog—bzzzt!—and the dog falls down, reduced to bones.

They didn't care. They would use it as a woman's climbing out of a swimming pool—bzzzt!—skeleton floating in the pool. The casualness with which completely innocent people are reduced to skeletons. Again, absolutely horrifying. Couldn’t have been much older than nine or ten when I watched this movie. But the fact that human flesh has reduced the skeletons, but also the casual innocence of which people are reduced to flesh is stripped off their bones. It's terrifying to me.

BRIAN: I wonder how you parlayed that early sense of, “Oh, I like horror movies” into, “I want to create horror as a genre. “

NEAL: Well, I was one of a whole generation of kids who got super eight cameras and made, you know, we made stop motion movies and made monster movies in their basements. Pursuant to that, I was writing scripts when I was 13 years old. I guess people now do it with phones. We didn't have cell phones back when I was a kid, but we had super eight cameras and then, you know, a little cartridge things that we'd slug in.

And so, I made tons of those little stop motion movies down in my basement.

BRIAN: Do you still have some of them?

NEAL: I guess I may have them somewhere. I think I have an old creaky super eight projector somewhere. I don't think you can get a bulb for it anymore.

BRIAN:  I've got one up there. I wonder if it would work?

NEAL: Yeah. That's the big question. I wonder if it would work? Heaven only knows.

JOHN: But that's a great way to learn visual storytelling.

NEAL: Yeah. When I ultimately went to NYU grad film and, and all the films that we shot the first year were all silent. First silent film then silent with sound effects, but you weren't allowed to use sync sound until you got to second year, if you made it that far.

JOHN: Did you make it that far?

NEAL: Yes, I did. I actually graduated. Back at NYU, it was a very rough program at the time. They cut the student enrollment in half going from first to second year. So it was, it was a rough program back then.

JOHN:  That's brutal.

NEAL: Yeah.

JOHN: So, you leave film school with something under your arm that you've shot. Where does that lead you?

NEAL: It certainly didn't get me much in the way of employment at the time. I ended up going right back to NYU. I ran their equipment room of all things for something like six years. But during all those six years I was writing. They had like a computer that they used to turn out the schedules. And then when I weren't writing schedules, I was using that computer to write my screenplays using WordStar. If anyone remembers that old program. God, it was horrible, but it was free, because they had the equipment room.

And eventually I sent some stuff to Laurel Entertainment, which is the company that did Tales From the Dark Side. And they had an open submission program. If you signed a release form, you could send them stuff. And I'd gone in and I'd met Tom Allen, who was their senior story editor. I had a screenplay and I went in and talked about it. He liked it. It wasn't for them, but then he invited me to submit ideas for their new series, their follow-up series to Tales from the Dark Side, which is a thing called Monsters.

And I went in, and I pitched some ideas, and they bought one. And it turned out to be their premier episode of Monsters. And shortly after that, tragically, Tom Allen passed away. And the VP, Mitch Galen, invited me in and said, “Would you like to take over and be our senior story editor on Monsters and our other projects?”

And meanwhile, you know, for the second part of that whole series, I was still working in the equipment room at NYU and also working as a senior story editor on Monsters and being their creative consultant and reading hundreds of scripts for Laurel Entertainment. And then eventually I quit the equipment room, and I went and I worked for them full time and wrote a bunch of episodes for Monsters.

And I was a story editor on The Stand and The Langoliers— which wasn't so good—but on a bunch of other projects, it was just an enormous learning experience. And The Stand I think turned out really well. Other stuff, The Langoliers, did not work out really well. And a bunch of other projects that were not horror.

BRIAN: Why do you think some things, especially, let's talk about Stephen King, why do you think some of those things adapted well and some didn't?

NEAL: Well, The Langoliers was not, it wasn't that great. Wasn't that strong a project. And I think the idea, trying to make that and stretch that out into a mini-series. wasn't that strong. It wasn't that strong, the material wasn't really there. I think there are times when staying faithful to the material is the right approach. It certainly was the right approach with The Stand.

Working with The Langoliers, you know, there were certainly elements of The Langoliers that were strong. And other stuff that was really just so-so. And I think if you'd had the willingness to step aside and do something different with it, it would probably have ended up—especially because they were expanding it into a mini-series—being just devoted to the original material, I think, ended up with a product that was really thin. Plus, we had hired a special effects company that the Langoliers themselves were just horrible. It was really substandard, honestly. So, it did not work out very well.

BRIAN: I'm guessing with all these different projects you had to work on, you probably had to start dealing with types of horror and genres of horror that weren't in your comfort zone. Maybe not even what you wanted to do. What kind of learning curve was that for you?

NEAL: You end up having to deal with a lot of different kinds of horror, especially with, you know, working in Monsters, where you just were turning stuff out tremendously fast. But also, I grew up with a certain kind of horror.

I was never a huge fan of slasher stuff. I missed that whole era of horror.  Certain kinds of movies appealed to me. That particular kind of transgressive material never really clicked.

JOHN: Why do you think that is with you?

NEAL: Because this simple act of repetitive bloodletting, for me, it always felt thin. I mean, it's not that I objected to explicit violence or explicit gore. I mean, I think that Dawn of the Deadunquestionably is one of the most brilliant horror movies ever made. And there certainly, George Romero didn't pull back from explicit violence. Or a movie like Hellraiser, the same deal.

It's a question of how the filmmaker employs the use of graphic violence to elevate the material. What I've told people when you watch a movie like Dawn of the Dead, the first 10 or 15 minutes of that movie—which by the way, I saw when it virtually when it first came out and saw it in the theater—you had never seen anything like that opening scene in terms of graphic violence from being bitten and heads being blown off and all the rest. You were just put through the ringer, watching that opening. And after that opening, the movie was never that violent again. He never showed anything like that again.

And you didn't have to, because you—having seen that opening scene, you were—you were so blown out of your seats. You said, “I'm watching a movie where anything could happen to anyone.” And that was a kind of really intelligent and that kind of thoughtful use of violence is what George Romero was always able to do. It was understanding how graphic images can affect the psychology of the viewer.

JOHN:  Do you think it's also that with Romero's films, they're actually about something, whereas a slasher film is really just about a body count, but with Romero, he always had another thing going.

NEAL: Well, of course, I mean, no movie that isn't about anything is ever going to really, from my perspective, be worth watching. But I mean, even a movie like Hostel, which is exceptionally violent and harrowing, is certainly about something. And I think Eli Roth's movies, which get a really bad rap, are very much about something. He's got something to say with his depictions of violence and his images. Not necessarily to my taste. I certainly wouldn't say that he's not, he's making movies that are certainly about something. He's not a dumb filmmaker by any stretch of the imagination.

JOHN: So, you work on Monsters, and then what happens?

NEAL:  I worked on Monsters. I worked there for around six years, and then they were acquired by a big studio, and they were shut down. And so, I was out of work. I'd known a woman named Debbie Dion from Full Moon. I figured, well, I'll give that a shot. I'll call her up and see, maybe I could write for a Full Moon. And so, I gave her a shot. I, you know, reintroduced myself and said, you know, “I'm looking to see if I could get some job, maybe writing features for Full Moon Entertainment, Charlie Band's company.”

And they said, “Well, we pay around $3,000 for a feature.” And I said, “Well, I got paid more than that for writing an episode of Monsters. That doesn't seem like such a good deal.” And then my unemployment insurance ran out.

BRIAN: Suddenly it's a very good deal.

NEAL: Sounds like suddenly a very good deal. But, you know, I made it very clear that money buys one draft, and if you want to rewrite, you got to pay me again, because I knew what development was like, where they just expect draft after draft after draft, and I'd say, “I can't do that, that doesn't make any sense.”

And also, having worked for Monsters, I had learned to write really fast. I could write a pass on a Monsters episode in two days, so I knew that I could write fast, because these were 80-page scripts.

And so, I started writing for Full Moon, and over the course of like the next few years, I wrote something like... 50 or 60 features for Charlie Band. And a lot of them got made, because they're not wasting money on movies that don't get made. Tons of them got made.

And in the midst of doing that, I was, you know, whenever I got a break writing a full movie, I would write spec scripts, you know, in the hopes I could sell something of my own that wasn't for $3,000. I didn't have an agent at that point. I didn't have a manager at that point. And so, I'm not really good making cold calls to people. It's not my thing. I just like to sit, write my scripts.

I'd come home one day, and I saw my wife was on the phone having this long conversation with someone. When she was done, I said, “Well, who was that?” “Oh yeah. I called up to order something.” I said, “So she's really good at getting on the phone and talking to people and calling them.” And so, I convinced her to be my manager. So, she agreed. She changed, you know, she went out under her maiden name.

She managed to get an option on a science fiction script that I'd written that, I mean, it was ultimately bought. It was never made. And then I decided, you know what? Horror is really my bread and butter writing for Charlie Band. But I don't really have a horror spec. And most of what was out those days in horror didn't really scare me that much. I should really write a script that would scare me. So, I wrote a script called Deader, which I thought had all the stuff in it that I thought was really scary.

And Judy went out with that script, sent it to a bunch of people, sent it to some folks at Stan Winston's company, as they had a development deal. The producer that she talked to really liked it, asked if he could sort of slip it to some people. He did, he sent it to someone, a producer at Dimension, it's based in New York, and he really liked it. And they showed it to Bob Weinstein.

Bob Weinstein called us on Sunday. Am I half awake? Talk to Judy. Because they didn't know that Judy was my wife. He said, “This is the best goddamn script I've read. I'm like three quarters away. Come in on Monday and we'll talk about it.” So, we came in on Monday and they bought the script.

And of course, at that point, it sort of went all over town. And for a very short period of time, it was like the flavor of the month and everyone loved me. And I got myself an agent and got myself like three pictures. And as I was a really big, big to-do. From that, I also got 13 Ghosts.  I had like a really big opinion of myself after, after that sale.

JOHN: Has that been tempered since then?

NEAL: I kind of got the opinion that like, wow, selling scripts is easy. People wanted to hire me because that script was super hot and was all over town. I learned subsequently there are flavors in writers, and I was like that flavor of the month. That fades and then you have to really do a lot more work to get things sold. That was a hard lesson to learn. But I've managed to keep working over the years. I've written many scripts, sold some, and it's been a decent career.

BRIAN:  I was just wondering, you were having all the success writing screenplays, when did you decide to make a jump to writing a book?

NEAL: Over the last five or six years, I've been teaching. A woman that I knew from NYU, actually, Dorothy Rumpolsky had been instrumental in starting a screenwriting program at David Lynch Institute for Cinematic Studies. And she realized at one point that she had a number of students who wanted to work in a horror. She remembered me back from NYU many years ago. So, she got in touch with me and wanted to know if I was interested in mentoring those students. And I said, absolutely. I done some other online teaching at other places. And so, the way it works is, you fly out for an opening few days where you meet the students. And then you fly back to where you come from. They go back to where they come from. And it's all done remotely, the mentoring. And so, I've been doing that now for five or six years.

And during that kind of get together, you meet a bunch of guest lecturers and other teachers, other mentors. And a number of those people had written books for Michael Wiese productions. And, in the course of chatting, they suggested, well, you, you know, “You have a kind of encyclopedic knowledge of horror and horror cinema. That might be a good book for Michael Wiese. Give them a call and see if you can come up with a pitch and an interesting take on it.” And so I did, and I called them and they responded. And so we were off to the races.

JOHN: The book is really, maybe delightful is the wrong word, but it's a captivating book because as you read through it—you have outlined breaking down our different types of fears—you can immediately in your mind go, “Oh, that's what that movie was doing. Oh, that was that. That's what was happening there.” What was your research process like?

NEAL: I think that the research kind of developed over the decades as I studied what made movies scary and what was working, not only in the movies that I was watching, but in the movies that I was writing. I mean, in the same way that when you work as a screenwriter, it becomes almost second nature to try to figure out what was working and what wasn't.

Talking to fellow filmmakers and screenwriters, you have to say, “How many times do you watch a movie?” And a lot of times I will watch a movie 8, 10, 20 times. And there's a process that works when you watch a movie that many times, where you say “Certain things will work every time you watch a movie.”

In the same way that you can watch a comedy and you can laugh every single time as certain things comes up. And other times, you start seeing the nuts and bolts and say, “Well, this is always working and here they're just connecting stuff.” And you start saying, “Ah, I get it. I see what they're doing. I see how they're taking this piece that works and this other piece that works and they couldn't quite, they kind of, they found some connective tissue to stick it together. I see exactly what they're doing.”

And you start understanding—whether you're watching a comedy or you're watching a drama or you're watching a scary movie—they knew exactly how to make this thing scary. And this is how they're doing it. And they understood exactly how to make this thing scary. And it's like, ah, this is what they're using. Whether it is a spider crawling on someone, that's always going to work. Or, “Oh, I see, this is just a jump scare.” And the jump scare is, I understand, that's just, because a big bang, a loud noise, a hand reaching in from, that's just, that's always going to work. It's going to work no matter what. It's just a kind of placeholder scare, because they couldn't think of anything better.

And there are movies where it's just jump scares. And you can always use a jump scare. You can sneak up on a cat and jab it and it'll jump. It's an instinctive response. And if a movie is just relying on jump scares, you know it's because they don't have anything better. They haven't got any deeper than just having the phone ring and they turn up the soundtrack. You can always get an audience to jump by putting a loud sound on the soundtrack.

JOHN: Is there an example you can think of though, where there is a jump scare that you think is a genuinely good, effective jump scare?

NEAL: I can think of a movie that has two really excellent jump scares. John Carpenter's The Thing. When the doctor's giving the electric shock to the guy's  chest, and the chest opens and slams shut on his hand. Didn't expect it.

That's a super great jump scare. It is perfectly integrated into that scene. Everyone jumps, but it's also a brilliant continuation of that scene. Second jump scare, when MacReady is testing everyone's blood. And saying, “We're going to do you next,” puts the needle in, and that thing jumps out of the Petri dish.

Fantastic jump scare. We didn't see it coming. Everyone jumps. And it's again, it's perfectly integrated into that scene. So, two brilliant jump scares in what's already an incredibly brilliant movie.

BRIAN: I remember watching the commentary on Jaws and Spielberg said he got greedy with his jump scares. He had the moment towards the end of the film, you remember that Jaws comes out of the water while it's being chummed. And he said he got this great reaction from the audience, and he wanted one more. And he went back, and he added in the scene earlier where the corpse face comes through the hole. And he said he never got the audience to react as well to the shark after he added in that corpse face coming through the hole of the ship. And I wondered, do you think there's a point of diminishing returns with jump scares in one movie?

NEAL: I think there absolutely is. I mean—and I have no end of admiration for Jaws. I think it may be one of the most brilliant movies ever, and it certainly has stood the test of time.

JOHN: So, we've each come armed with some movies here that I thought it would be fun to talk about them with you, so that you could sort of delve into the different types of fear that are outlined in the book and we'll just sort of

checkerboard back and forth here. I'm going to start with one of my favorite sense of dread movies, and that's Don't Look Now, with Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie, directed by Nick Roeg which I saw way too young. First R rated movie I saw. I remember I knew that it was supposed to be really scary, and I went with my older brother, and we were standing in line and the seven o'clock show was letting out. And I said to my brother, “Well, it can't be that scary. They're not saying anything.” Not realizing that they had all been stunned into silence about the last five minutes of that movie. So, what are your thoughts on Don't Look Now and where does that fit?

NEAL: When I talk about the sense of dread, which is what my book is about, it's the notion of those aspects of our lives that we think of as safe and secure and dependable and sacred being suddenly or unexpectedly penetrated by the unknown or the unnatural, the unexpected.

And you have to say, well, what are the things that we depend on? We depend on our homes. We depend on our families. And so that relationship of parent and child, what violates that? And the loss of a child, loss is already wrenching. And so, this sense of parents having lost a child, but then this notion that, well, maybe not, maybe the child is still out there somewhere, is so deeply disturbing. And so this weird, this quest, this pursuit in them. And meanwhile, in the background, you have the sense of a killer, of killings going on. This really disturbing notion of the woman's half decayed body being pulled out of the water is just as an image is—and again, the notion of human body being reduced to mere flesh—it’s deeply disturbing. And nakedness, coupled with decay, it's deeply disturbing. And all of this sort of happening in the background.

We don't quite know how these pieces connect. The notion that the search for the child and the notion that there's a killer on the loose. We know, because the nature of cinematic storytelling is telling us that somehow these things are going to connect, because, I mean, in the real world, there are countless thousands of things drifting around that don't necessarily hook up. But we know that one thing is going to collide with another. And so, there's this growing sense of profound unease, because we know, somehow, this child in this Red Riding Hood cape is wandering around, it's like, is this the child? Is the child going to become embroiled in this?

But what we don't, certainly don't expect is the ending that confronts us in the finale, which is so incredibly, the reversal is so terrifying and so hits us in the face of that sense of innocence—revealed in such a terrifying way—is the essence of dread. Where we expect to find innocence, we find a nightmare.

JOHN: What's great about what Nick Roeg did there was—if you read Daphne du Maurier's short story—he basically shot the last paragraph of that short story. Cinematically, he figured out the way that she's laying out what's going on with Donald Sutherland’s character at that moment. He figured out a way to make it cinematic. So, like you say, all the pieces suddenly fall into place in those last few seconds. And, like you said, we've been brought to this place, we had no idea that that's where it was going to turn. Neal, tell me about Enemy from Space, and what you like about that.

NEAL: Enemy from Space is the second of the three Quatermass movie, adaptations of the serial. It's in the same vein as Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and all these other movies about human beings who are being invaded and infested by alien forces.

In this case, over the past few years—but in the context of the story—there have been rains of these tiny little meteorites. Anyone who finds them, they crack open and what's inside infests human beings. And you can find these tiny little burn marks, these V shaped marks on them. And the parasites take them over and make them into these kind of human slaves. And the premise is they serve this larger being, this kind of group entity, and they proceed to start building these atmosphere plants, with the goal ultimately to turn the earth into a colony for these beings that come from outer space.

But the notion of these human beings, they have infiltrated our government, infiltrated our community, and they gradually take people over, scary enough. And they have built this enormous plant that looks, he says, this looks just like this proposed lunar base with these giant atmospheric domes. A group of people managed to infiltrate one of these bases and he looks inside, manages to get close enough to look inside one of these domes and inside are the parasites. When they're released, they grow together into this thing that looks like a giant blob. That's what it looks like outside of the human hosts.

And a bunch of these guys are trapped inside of the atmosphere of plant. And they realize this thing, they can't survive outside the human body. They need methane to breathe, because that's what their home planet is like.

“What we need to do is we need to pump oxygen into this dome to kill this thing. That'll destroy it.” And voices come over to say, “Look, this guy's crazy. There's nothing inside this dome. You send some representatives over, we'll show you anything you want.”

And Quatermass says, “You're crazy if you go over there, you're going to be infected. You're going to be taken over.” But they managed to divide, they send the guys over and Quatermass is pleading with them, “Listen, they're going to get on this speaker. They're going to tell you that everything is fine, but you can't listen. Don't listen to them, whatever you say.”

And then they hear this sound. This hideous sound of screaming coming down the pipes, the pipes that they've been sending oxygen down to the dome. They say, “What the hell is that? What's going on?” And then they look, they see the pressure has gone way up. There's something wrong. And the pipe is burst, the pipe that's sending oxygen to this dome. And they say, “What is it? What's happened?”

And they look and something is dripping down through the pipe. And they say, “What is it?” It's blood. They took the guys that they sent, and they pushed them into the pipe. They say those pipes have been blocked with human pulp in order to keep the oxygen from coming into the dome. That is one of the most, again, all you see is just these drops of blood coming out of the cracked pipe, but that has resonated as one of the most terrifying moments from any movie that I saw, again, as a little kid.

I've seen the movie recently and it's still incredibly terrifying. And again, the architecture of this web of pipes, the cold black and white architecture, is horrifyingly chilling. And the notion of human beings being reduced to mere flesh, being used as material for blocking a pipe. And the pipe's only like, it's like this big. So, you can imagine this person shoved into a pipe is hideous.

JOHN: It is available on YouTube if anybody wants to watch it after that. Brian, do you want to ask about folk horror?

BRIAN: Actually, I was going to jump ahead just because of what Neal was just talking about. I thought this would dovetail nicely into a question I had about a fear of contagion. And you can wrap body horror into this. Movies like The Thing or 28 Days Later, or probably The Quatermas Experiment as well. How does that fear of our own bodies being infected or watching another body change or be infected in unnatural ways? How does that—I don't want to use the word appeal—but how does that appeal to our sense of dread?

NEAL: Well, I think you also have to run back to one of the most common— whether it's psychological or physiological—which is obsessive compulsive disorder.

You say, well, what exactly is obsessive compulsive disorder? We have built in grooming behaviors, whether it's cleaning our hands, we clean our skin. That's wired into us. And when you turn the dial up too far, that turns into obsessive compulsive, obsessive hand cleaning or scratching, itching, hair pulling, all that stuff. It's wired in behavior, in the same way that dogs will scratch, we will scratch.

And so, all of that, we react to it in the same way that if you see a spot of dirt on someone's forehead, it's almost impossible to “Clean that thing off. Get rid of that thing.” I mean, we're built in a certain way to respond to distortions, infections, invasions, in the same way that if someone's eye is cocked to one side, we react to it. Someone's face is distorted. We react to it negatively. We have to work not to respond to it.

It may be a bug, but it may be a feature, because we are built to respond to a diseased or distorted members of our community. It's a survival trait. And so, in some ways, horror movies respond to that. Distorted human beings, Hunchback of Notre Dame or Igor or anyone else who are distorted, deformed, limbless creatures—Freaks—are employed in horror movies in a variety of different ways.

BRIAN: And it's a very different thing from seeing an arm chopped off versus seeing an arm with three hands that are all operating. Both of them is something happening to your body that you might revolt towards, but it's a very different reaction though, right?

NEAL: It is, but it's—in a sense—it's all variations of the same thing. There's a central human norm, and that which varies from the human norm beyond a certain point triggers a reaction that says, “That's not the way it's supposed to be.” And it's just, eyes are too close together, eyes are too far apart, eyes are too big, or there's an extra one. There's one missing. We recoil from it. We recoil from something that is too different, too far off the norm.

And of course, in strictly social terms, you can say, but why, why should we? We shouldn't really respond in that way to others who are too different. But we do respond that way, and it comes with the programming in a very real degree.

JOHN: How does that connect, then, to another movie on your list, The Island of Lost Souls, from 1932?

NEAL: I think it's central to that list. The notion of the difference between that which is human and that which is animal. And Moreau, who experiments with making animals into human beings, but not really. And the sort of terrifying revelation when our hero and the woman—who we know to be an animal woman, but she looks fundamentally human—escape out into the woods and come across the animal person village. And the realization to what extent Moreau has been experimenting. It's not just tens or dozens. The animal people just come flooding out of the woods. And it's just hundreds.

And the extent and the depth and the kind of nightmarish quality, they're all different. They're all horrible. And it's just like, what has Moreau been doing? He experiments with these animals, gets them to a certain state, and then he just discards them and moves on to something else. This utterly careless, sadistic god of this army of nightmares. And you sort of see when they do their, you know, “Are we not men?” And you just see row upon row upon row of these hideous nightmare faces. And you just say, “My God, what has this guy been doing for years? Just making these monsters.”

JOHN: It's a classically creepy movie. I do want to ask you about the classic ghost story movie, The Haunting, and what that says about our fears. If you can, maybe tie that into Ghostwatch, because there's a similar sort of thing going on there.

NEAL: They're both intriguing. They both are opening us up to this notion of unseen nightmare forces, especially the original Haunting, which shows us nothing. All you ever see: Doorknob turning. A face that may or may not be in the wall. This horribly loud banging on the door. A moment where someone thinks that her hand is being held, but there's no one there. It is simply this notion of a house that is born bad, but never really fully explained.

Again, you have this idea of the world itself that should be well behaved, that should be governed by comprehensible natural laws. But there's something deeper and darker and incapable of truly being understood, nevermind being controlled. And if you just prod it a little bit too much, you're going to open it up to forces that are utterly destructive and utterly malevolent.

And in both of these cases, you have this man of science and his team that are going to find out. “We're going to find out for sure whether there really are ghosts, whether there really is a supernatural, whether it really is life after death.  We're going to nail this down for science.” Yeah, don't do that. Don't do that. These are things that are, that are not meant to be explored, not meant to be examined. Go back.

BRIAN: I'm reminded of Van Helsing's sign off on the original Dracula, where he said, “Just remember, there really are such things in this world.”

NEAL: Yeah. Yeah. And, and the same thing is true in some ways on a much more terrifying scale with Ghostwatch, where it's just, it's this kind of, “It's all just fun and Halloween, we're going to explore this. It's the most haunted house in Britain.” And it's broadcasters whose faces everyone knew at the time, and they were playing themselves. Going to this haunted house where you had these poltergeist phenomena. And we're all going to, “We're going to do it live and call in with your own experiences about being haunted.” And it all just goes so horribly wrong.

JOHN: Now, Neal, I just watched that for the first time this week. Heard about it for years. I had no idea that those were real broadcasters. I thought they were really good actors. But to someone in Britain watching that, those are faces they saw all the time?

NEAL: Yeah. Those are real broadcasters. They had their own shows. They were real, the real deal.

JOHN: Wow. I highly recommend renting it because—it'll test your patience a little tiny bit, because it is quite banal for quite a while, as they lead you into it. But now this new bit of information that these are all faces that that audience who saw it, quote unquote, live that night, it's as terrifying as I imagined the Orson Welles’ War the Worlds would have been. Because it seems very real.

NEAL: And apparently the way they did it, is that there was a number you could call in. And if you called in that number, they would tell you, it's like, “Don't worry, this is all just a show.” But so many people were calling in, they couldn't get through.

BRIAN: This really is War of the Worlds.

NEAL: So, they never were able to get to that message that would tell them, don't worry, it's all just a show. So apparently it panicked the nation, because part of the premise was at a certain point, the ghost that was haunting the house got into the show. And so, the studio itself became haunted. It was really spectacularly well done.

JOHN: It is. It's great. Let's just sort of wrap up here real quick with Neal, if you have any advice for beginning screenwriter about how to best create a really powerful and effective horror screenplay, any little tips.

NEAL: Well, first of all, and I touched on this before, jump scares don't work on the page. You need the loud bang. You need the hand reaching in from the side. You describe that and it doesn't work. So, you have to rely on creating that sense of dread. And while writing screenplays, you have to keep things tight. The concept, the idea—in the same way comedy screenplays have to be funny—scary screenplays have to be scary. It has to be scary on the page. If it's not scary on the page, you're not going to sell the screenplay. And that’s the fundamental trick. You got to make it scary on the page.

JOHN: Excellent advice. All right, let's just quickly, each one of us, tell our listeners a recent favorite horror film that you've seen in the last couple years.

I'll start with you, Brian.

BRIAN: Just last night, I saw Haunting in Venice. And it worked because I had seen the other Kenneth Branagh/Agatha Christie adaptations, and I was very familiar with, and you know, you already know generally that kind of detective whodunit story: it's going to be very, you know, using logic and rationality.

And when they had this episode that was sort of a one off—sort of a departure from that usual way that mysteries are solved—it was very effective. I think if I'd seen it without having already watched a bunch of Agatha Christie adaptations, I would have said, “Oh, that's an okay Halloween movie.” But having seen those other ones, it was an excellent Halloween movie.

JOHN: Excellent. That's on my list. The movie I would recommend, which really surprised me, my wife literally dragged me to it because it was a French film called Final Cut, which is a French remake of a Japanese film called One Cut of the Dead. At about the 30-minute mark, I was ready to walk out, and I thought, why are we watching this? And then they took us on a ride for the next hour that, it's a really good ride. It's called Final Cut.

BRIAN: And this is not to be confused with the Robin Williams Final Cut from... ?

JOHN: Not to be confused with that, no. Or if you can go back to the original and watch the Japanese version. But what's great about the French version is they are literally remaking the Japanese version, to the point where they've made all the characters have Japanese names. Which the French people struggle with enormously. It's a highly effective film. Neal, how about you? Take us home.

NEAL: Okay. It's not a new movie, but I just saw it very recently. It is a Chilean stop motion animated film called The Wolf House. It describes the adventures of a young Chilean woman who escapes from a repressive German colony and ends up in this bizarre house in which she blends into the walls.

She's escaped with two pigs who grow up with her in this house, but again, nothing, no way in which I describe it is going to convey to you how deeply disturbing and chilling this movie is. It really is quite indescribably bizarre and disturbing and just well worth your time to watch. It's not quite like any other movie I've ever seen.

Episode 116: Director John Badham on “Wargames” and more.

This week on the blog, a podcast interview with director John Badham, discussing an early made-for-TV movie, “Isn’t It Shocking,” along with “Wargames” and “Dracula.”

LINKS

A Free Film Book for You:  https://dl.bookfunnel.com/cq23xyyt12

Another Free Film Book:  https://dl.bookfunnel.com/x3jn3emga6

Fast, Cheap Film Website: https://www.fastcheapfilm.com/

John Badham Website:  https://www.johnbadham.com/

John Badham Books:  https://www.johnbadham.com/books

“Isn’t It Shocking” (Made-for-TV movie): https://youtu.be/2fDLHx3feRM

Eli Marks Website:  https://www.elimarksmysteries.com/

Albert’s Bridge Books Website:  https://www.albertsbridgebooks.com/

YouTube Channel:  https://www.youtube.com/c/BehindthePageTheEliMarksPodcast

Dying to make a feature? Learn from the pros!

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

★★★★★

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

• Jonathan Demme: The value of cameos

• John Sayles: Writing to your resources

• Peter Bogdanovich: Long, continuous takes

• John Cassavetes: Re-Shoots

• Steven Soderbergh: Rehearsals

• George Romero: Casting

• Kevin Smith: Skipping film school

• Jon Favreau: Creating an emotional connection

• Richard Linklater: Poverty breeds creativity

• David Lynch: Kill your darlings

• Ron Howard: Pre-production planning

• John Carpenter: Going low-tech

• Robert Rodriguez: Sound thinking

And more!

Write Your Screenplay with the Help of Top Screenwriters!

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

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

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

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

The book covers (among other topics):

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Roger Nygard (“Suckers”) on mixing genres

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

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Gaspard: So, thank you for talking to me. I could talk about every single movie you've done. But I'm not going to do that. I have focused myself to take principles from the two books, both of which I love, and take some of those principles and see how you applied them in different situations on three different movies. So, just to get some background to make sure I've got the history right, your first TV directing gig was on The Bold Ones, right? The Senator.

Badham: Yes. Yes, that's right.

Gaspard: And then your first TV movie was The Impatient Heart.

Badham: Right, right, yes.

Gaspard: Okay. So, I'm just doing some rough figuring and before you shot Bingo Long, which was your first theatrical feature, you did somewhere between 35 and 50 hours of TV. You had a lot of stuff under your belt before you tackled that theatrical feature, because of all the series you did, and the Made-for-TV movies. So, you were pretty well learned by that point for that first feature. How did that help you on that first one?

Badham: Well, it certainly helped you learn how to prepare things, what you needed to do, and working with actors, getting attuned to working with actors. The mechanical parts of it are fairly easy to learn—

Gaspard: Right.

Badham: —the cameras and lenses and the microphones and the lighting and and stuff like that.

I feel very comfortable just from my years at the Yale Drama School, working in theater where you're doing somewhat analogous things along the way. And then as I was working my way toward directing—once I came to California and was working at Universal—I was able to sneak down to people's sets and meet directors and kind of hang out with them and found an interesting approach. Because, initially, going and hanging out on a set sounds like a lot of fun. And it's good for about 10 minutes and then it is just boring as hell.

And I realized I don't want to, this is boring. What could I do better? And then it came to me: The truck just ran over the director, and I have to do it. What am I gonna do? So I would get hold of the script and try and prepare the day's work roughly, and then come down and be able to watch what the director was doing.

And it didn't matter who was right or wrong. What it did matter was because I had thought it out. I had a basis on which to judge, you know, was it a good idea they were doing, what stuff would I have forgotten? I just learned by watching that that way.

And so, after, four or five years of doing television, I was pretty well versed in a lot of high speed, quick filmmaking for, episodic television in particular. But then the movies of the week, you know, were a nice step in between. There you had a chance, you're still working quickly, but not nearly at the silly lightning pace of the episodic.

Gaspard: So, was the speed at which the features were shot, was that easy to ease into? Or were you always just thinking, why is it going so slowly? Why aren't we going faster? Why, why, why, why?

Badham: Yeah, it seemed to me on, on Bingo Long where they said, well, we're going to shoot this in 38 days. And I thought, 38 days, what am I going to do in the afternoon? Oh my God, I can go home after lunch. We'll get this. Well, little did I know how long camera would take and baseball games to shoot and stuff like that. And the production manager kept telling me, “it's going to be 52 days.” And I said, “No, no, we promised 38, that we would do 38. I'm going to do it.” “No, it's gonna be 52.” Because he was right. It was 52, right on the money.

Gaspard: Yeah.

Badham: He knew it. So, I just had to regear my brain. Same thing on Saturday Night Fever. Same 38 to 52 days, you know, just me getting to understand what that next level up of filmmaking requires. And in terms of the detail of the filmmaking and the careful performances and things like that.

Gaspard: When you look back on, on the hours and hours and hours of, you know, on the job training you had before that first feature … and then you think about directors starting out today, who simply don't have that, getting all that experience is hugely helpful. And I know you've taught for years. What, advice do you have for someone who's diving into a feature for the first time who doesn't have 40 hours, 50 hours of finished TV work under their belt?

Badham: They're in a lot of trouble. That's what the truth is. You know, it's so much harder than it looks. And I see that with my students, with the filmmaking that they come up with. It's really difficult to learn it. And the thing that turned out to be really good in my case and some other friends of mine is that we got a lot of practice and learned how—if we stubbed our toe—it was not the end of the world. That you could get through it, because it is harder than it looks.

And they've got a great, harsh awakening coming for them. You know, I've worked with several cameramen who've become directors. And of that, several, almost all of them, never did it again. It drove 'em crazy, and they were brilliant cameramen. You know, these were top of the line, the best guys in the world. And they said, “oh my God, we're going to get a so-and-so to direct this.” And they hated it, because you had to deal with actors. And they were used to a crew that would just jump: If you, said jump, and you know, how high? Ten feet. They'd jump 10 feet. But the actors are going, “What?” They didn't like that.

Gaspard: That's your special gift I think. You can direct action like nobody's business, but when it comes to getting an actor where you need them to be, I mean, you, straddle both sides really, really nicely. I do want to talk about Isn't It Shocking? I don't know why I know it as well as I did. It must have aired at least twice when it came out. And that's around 1973.

Badham: Right. Yes.

Gaspard: I know that I was a big Harold and Maude fan, so I wanted to see Ruth Gordon in something. But I was really taken by it, and it stayed with me for years and years. And I found it recently on YouTube. You can see the whole thing on YouTube, not a terrible print of it. And some questions came up. First: one of the first credits on it says David Shire did the music. How did that happen?

Badham: I was at Yale when David was there and worked on two musicals that he and his partner Richard Maltby wrote. And, so we were friends from there and I was, you know, excited to be able to bring on a composer. I think it was the first one that he had ever done, the first film he had ever done. I mean, he might've done some low budget things, but my recollection is, that he had been playing the piano for The Fantasticks off Broadway forever and ever. That was his day job.

Gaspard: How did Isn't It Shocking? come to you?

Badham: I think my agent at the time was able to talk two very young producers into taking a look at work that I did, which was at that point, I think. The Impatient Heart was probably what they might have looked at, at that point.

And, it was just a wonderful script, you know, it was just laugh-out-loud reading and so much fun to do. And we shot it really quickly, like in 12 days up in Mount Angel, Oregon.

Gaspard: The casting of it is so terrific. You know, besides Ruth Gordon, you've got Will Geer, you've got Alan Alda, you've got Louise Lasser, you have Lloyd Nolan. I know you kind of started out in casting and you've consistently had really smart casting on all the movies. Do you remember how that cast came together?

Badham: Well, my producers were New York based and they had a great sensibility for actors, like Louise Lasser, who I didn't know at all. Will Geer I certainly knew, and Lloyd Nolan I had worked with. Alan Alda was, you know, we all admired his work and thought we were really lucky to get him right at the end of the MASH season.

Gaspard: Yeah, it looks like was right at the end of the first year of MASH.

Badham: Right. And we were shooting on the lot at Fox where MASH shot any anyway, so I was able to go over visit with him and talk with him and get to know him. But, as I say, my producers were very helpful because they were just into every detail. They were over my shoulder, breathing down my neck in the middle of closeups, you know, “We need more goop on them. We need, this is not goopy enough. “

Gaspard: Goop is very important in that movie that you needed enough goop, because it gets bad when he runs out of the goop,

Badham: It drove me a little bit crazy. And, at one point, as they're whispering in my hair during a take, I call “cut.” I reached for my wallet, pulled out my Director's Guild card and said, “Here, you fucking do it.”

Gaspard: Oh boy. You know, this is at least two or three years before Mary Hartman. So, at that point Louise Lasser is from Bananas and—

Badham: A couple of Woody Allen movies.

Gaspard: Yeah, a couple Woody Allen movies, but not that famous. It felt to me like this could have been a backdoor pilot, that if MASH didn't go, here we have these two wonderful characters of Louise Lasser and Alan Alda solving crimes every week. With, you know—not that Ruth Gordon wanted to do a TV series—but it would've been a fun way to continue those characters. Because they were really charming together.

Badham: They were wonderful. And we forgot about Eddie O'Brien.

Gaspard: Oh, exactly. He looks so upset in that movie. It's hard to watch him sometimes.

Badham: I had seen him in a pilot that Jack Lord was starring in, and he played a bad guy. He had these thick coke bottle glasses on, and he was quite a treat. He was quite a handful. Because he wasn't always very focused and sometimes getting him off, “Okay, that's that shot, now we're going to focus on this shot.” And he's still back in the earlier shot.

Gaspard: Well, you were juggling so many different kinds of acting styles, and that's one of the things that I want to talk about from the book: When you have, you know, in one scene, an Alan Alda, Louise Lasser and a Lloyd Nolan. I'm guessing they're acting styles were a little different, or their approaches were a little different. How do you juggle different techniques when you need to get everybody on the same page pretty quickly?

Badham: It's a real challenge to do that because you have some people that like to rehearse a lot. Some people that don't like to rehearse very much at all. Some people that are good on take one and other people who don't start to get good till four or five. And you're going to find, every single time, you're always going to run up against these disparate characters.

If they haven't worked together a lot, you're now trying to massage. You know, “Am I going to shoot Will Geer first in this scene? Or am I going to wait because he gets better later on?” And if I shoot over his shoulder, he is kind warming up, so when I'm ready to turn around onto him, he's at that good cooking point. He's simmered, you know, he is done. You can stick a fork in him, and it will be all right.

Gaspard: That's invaluable knowledge to have when it comes to planning out your day and your setups.

Badham: Oh yeah. I mean, once you start to get a fix on how the people like to work. I learned once from Jodie Foster—I worked with her when she was very young and we were kind of become friends—and I was asking her how she likes to work with actors. She said, “The first thing I do, is I go up and I ask them how they like to work?”

You know, do you like notes from the director? Do you like to go first? Do want me to let you move, find your own blocking? And just kind of having these conversations lets you know a ton of stuff. Elia Kazan talks about it all the time in his book, saying actors will tell you anything, you've just met them, and they'll tell you their entire life story in a few minutes. And you can learn so much about their acting style, just from the stories that they tell and their perspective on the world. And you're so smart to be able to go and have dinner with 'em a couple of times, to sit with them and just not talk about the business, but just their life and understand, you know, what you may be able to get from 'em.

Gaspard: That’s so smart. Just that idea of, well just ask him. You don't have to pretend to know everything. And that's one of the things you keep coming back to in both books is: don't pretend to know everything. Ask, ask. And that's so smart to just ask them the way they want to do it.

A friend of mine was one of the editors on Veep. And he said it took them a little while in that show to realize that, you know, most things are shot, you do a master and then a closeup, and a closeup and a closeup. And he said it doesn't work on an improv show. You have to do all your closeups first until everyone's sort of settled into what they're going to do. And then you do the master at the end, because that'll match. He said, you do a master up front, it's not going to match anything you're doing. And it's like, well, duh, obviously. But we're so attuned to this idea of, well, you know, you start out and then you move in and move in. They just turned it on its head and went, no, it's got to go the other way. Or the master is just useless.

Badham: Right. Well, those are outrageously funny.

Gaspard: So. speaking of improv, you mentioned I think in one of the books, one of my favorite Ruth Gordon stories. I was lucky enough to meet her when she came through town here in Minneapolis, Harold and Maude played for two and a half years, when I was a teenager. And I got to meet her and Bud Cort and hang out with them a little bit during that time. And in one of the books you talk about, where she came up to you and said, “This line isn't working for me.” And you said something along the lines of, “Well just, you know, say what you want.” And do you remember what her response was?

Badham: Oh yes, absolutely. I said, “Well, Ruth, what would you say?” And she looked me right in the eye, kind of waggled her finger and said, “Oh no. I get paid for that.”

Gaspard: Yeah.

Badham: And she went ahead and said the line as written, the one that she started out complaining about.

Gaspard: A couple more things on Isn't It Shocking? There's one point in it where Alan Alda is walking through, I believe it's Ruth Gordon's home. And you did—for that movie—a pretty long continuous shot. Now you said you shot in, was it 12 days?

Badham: Right.

Gaspard: How risky did you think it was? Maybe you did do coverage on it, we just didn't see it. But when it comes down to setting up shots like that, what are you weighing in your mind when it comes to how much time I have and what I need to get done today, and continuous shots versus a lot of coverage?

Badham: Well, you know, usually the continuous shots, you can get several bits of coverage in the shot itself. And so if you write down the amount of time it takes to do a continuous moving master versus a lot of separate shots, it works out about the same.

Gaspard: Okay.

Badham: It's just a different way. And in that particular shot, if I remember it right, we pick up Alan Alda coming in the front door and then as he's walking through, there are cats hanging everywhere and cats dropping down out of the ceiling onto him. And you could see them hanging on light fixtures. They're all over the place. And I,remember our production manager had an arm full of kittens and he's walking behind the camera, putting them up in all these places and you could see them kind of hanging on by the front paws or whatever it was. It was very funny.

Gaspard: It's a delightful movie. It was crafted in such a way that at least it seemed to me like you had very cleverly gone, “Well, I can get name people because they're only going to be here for a couple days. It's not a big deal.” You know, “I only need Will Geer for a few days,” if you're shooting it that way. “I only need Ruth Gordon for a couple days. I only need Lloyd Nolan for a couple days.” So, it's kind of fun for them, but it's not a huge commitment.

I think a lot of filmmakers don't think that through when it comes to, you know, you might be able—if you're making a low budget, no budget movie—you might be able to get somebody to come in for very little if they like the script. And if it's only going to take a couple days. If they're going to be sitting around for three weeks, well that's a whole different consideration. But if they can have fun for a couple days, that's just a really smart way to write it, I think.

Badham: Yeah, it was nice. It was easy to get to, because we fly 'em up to Salem, Oregon. I think everybody was from LA. I forget where Ruth Gordon was coming from, but that was not bad. And it's a very pleasant area there in Oregon. The air is just fabulous compared to LA air, especially at that time. And, you know, just really, really pleasant. 

Gaspard: Well, if you haven't seen it for a while, it is on YouTube. Give it look. And I think should talk to the producers about getting it out on Blu-ray and you should do a commentary on it. It's just a little lost gem. Okay. Enough on that. We'll move on now to probably my favorite John Badham movie, and that's WarGames. What I was surprised to learn, was that you came into the movie when it was already up and running. Some stuff had already been shot, right?

Badham: Yes. They had shot for maybe a week and a half, I'm guessing.

Gaspard: Okay. And that was Marty Brest who started it and then went away?

Badham: Right. Yes.

Gaspard: Another terrific director, with Midnight Run being one of the best comedies, maybe of all time. So, what do you do in a case like that, when they say, you know, the phone rings and they say, “This movie's up and running. Get up to speed as quick as you can.” What does that mean? How quickly can you get up to speed?

Badham: Well, my agent calls me and says, “There's a picture that they would like you to take over, and I don't think you should do it.” “Why is that?” “Well, it's always when they're in trouble and they have to replace the director, there's, going to be real trouble there in River City, so stay away.”

I said, “But what if it's any good?” And he said, “Well, I don't know.” I said, “Well, I think we should read it.” So, I read it and I said, “This is really wonderful.” And I go in to meet with Paula Weinstein, who was running UA at that time. And after we talked for a while, she said, “When could you start shooting on this?”

And it was about two in the afternoon. I said, “I can walk over there and start shooting right now.” She went, “What?”

I said, “The trouble is, it won't be any good.” She said, “Why not?” I said, “Because I barely read the script. I needed time to, you know, kind of absorb it and get my head wrapped around the thing. I think it's a wonderful script and, and I could do it, but the shots I would be doing would be pretty generic. And that's not what you want. You need something, you know, that is not as dark as Marty was bringing.”

Because I did have a chance to look at the dailies that he had shot and was watching the scene where Matthew Broderick first takes Ally Sheedy up to his bedroom and shows her how he can change her grade on the computer.

And I'm looking at this scene and I'm kind of thinking, “The actors are good. I don't know who these kids are. Photography's wonderful. What's the problem here? Why is it not working?” And then it came to me, they're not having any fun. If I could change a girl's grade on the computer and I was that age of 15, 16, I would be peeing in my pants with excitement, you know? I would not be treating it like we were sixties rebels on the dark web—if there had been such a thing at the time. It's not that at all. It's a kid who's into games and playing. So that was the first thing that I re-shot—I took them right back to that bedroom on the stage.

And it took us, oh my gosh, several takes before we could even get them warmed up. Because Matthew and Ally figured that they were going to get fired any minute too. So, they were terrified of me. And as we kept doing takes, I would just run in there and tell jokes and tickle 'em and do anything to make it, ‘this is light and breezy and we can have fun.’

And so around take 12 or 13—I never do that many takes, but I figured I can't turn in dailies, that look only a little bit better. They've got to be a hundred percent better for the studio to have gone to all this trouble. So, I said to them, I said, “Okay, we're going to have a little break here. We're going to take 10 minutes for coffee. Matthew and Ally, you and I are going to have a race around the outside of the stage, and we'll race around here, and the last person back has to sing a song for the crew.

Gaspard: That was going to be you,

Badham: I knew who that per person was. You know, I'm like 20 years older than them already at that point. I know who's going to lose. And as we get back to the stage, of course I'm last. And I remember this old song that we used to sing in Glee Club in high school called The Happy Wanderer, where a guy yodels. And that just kind of helped break the ice and, loosen them up so that they started to get more playful with it.

Gaspard: How did the bit of business where she traps him between her legs come about? Was that a rehearsal thing? Was that you? Was that them?

Badham: Oh, I think it was something Ally just did.  It was very, very erotic in its own little way.

Gaspard: And his reaction is great too. because he doesn't know what to do.

Badham: Yeah. Yeah. That's right. I forgot, totally forgot about that, but I do remember it happening.

Gaspard: You know, if in a parallel universe I'd be interested in seeing what a finished WarGames by Martin Brest would look like, but I'm glad we got your version, because I think that's the one that's more of a crowd pleaser.

By the time you were pulled in, was the NORAD set already designed and built?

Badham: It was. Yeah, pretty much built, they were already shooting tests in there to see how to sell the thing the best. And Billy Fraker, the cinematographer and myself, went over there and spent a lot of time walking around saying, you know, “how would we shoot this?” You know, how was I thinking about shooting it versus whatever Marty had in mind.

Gaspard: Right. Was all the casting done at that point? Was Dabney Coleman already cast and John Wood?

Badham: Dabney Coleman was cast. John Wood. I recast, Matthew's father.

Gaspard: Okay.

Badham: I didn't care for the father they had. And I recast the general, who they had. He was okay, but it needed a bigger personality.

Gaspard: The visuals on the Crystal Palace set on those screens, were those already in production when you came on? Because there's a lot going on on those screens and that's all happening live while you're doing it, right? This is not today. This is back then, and everything that happens happens right in front of the camera. Were those all ready to go when you came on, or were you part of getting that ready? Because there's so much stuff going on in those screens.

Badham: This movie, as far as that concerned, was brilliantly prepared. I mean, they were creating film that would take you several minutes per frame in the optical printer to create. And that had been going on for quite a long time because they had six front projectors, four rear projectors, and 82 video monitors. All of these hundred and whatever had to work in sync with each other, which had never been done before.

Nobody had ever tried to gang that much equipment together to run. And the Hollywood family that did this for years, the Hansards, were able to solve the problem, so you had all these projectors running in sync and you could photograph from any angle which, you know, you maybe might have trouble doing if you were doing blue screen. It used to be with front projection, rear projection, you didn't want to move the camera because you didn't want to get off the hotspot of the arc light. If you got off to the side, it would fade out. But the film had gotten a lot faster. And Fraker was just the best at making all this stuff go together.

Gaspard: The sequence at the end when everything's blowing up, you get so much bang for your editing buck and you're shooting it all live. That's what just kills me. I mean, nowadays they would just, “okay, we'll deal with all that in post.” But you had to go into the edit suite with all those shots of all those screens, doing all those different things for that last big, WOPR explosion thing. For the time, it's really incredible.

Badham: Well, I much prefer it that way. You know, Jim Cameron in the latest film of Avatar, he is managed to get it so what he sees through the camera is what you're going to see on the screen. He is not waiting for stuff to come back from some horrendously tedious project. And so, we are doing a much cruder version of that than what Jim was able to accomplish. But it's, you know exactly what you've got at that time, and you're not suddenly stuck with bad exposures and nasty looking bad blue screen work.

Gaspard: That's the balance that I think is so amazing in your career. Great performances, highly entertaining stories, but my goodness, the action and getting all the pieces you need. Just an education in itself.

John Wood. I'm a huge fan of John Wood. He wasn't in enough movies. What was it like working with him?

Badham: This was an absolute lovely English pro of the first order. You know, English actors are so disciplined and so together, compared to our American actors who tend to be a little loosey goosey. So, I had somebody who was just totally focused on doing the best job that he possibly could.

And he was so humble, maybe falsely humble. I used to think that. But he would come up and say, “Oh, dear boy, I'm ruining your movie.” And I'd say, “Oh, John, that's bullshit. Just shut up. You're doing great, it's just lovely.”

And he was at that point just starting rehearsal for Amadeus, to play the Salieri part on the road. And he was asking me, he said, “They've got us on a raked stage, for this, which is fine,” he said. “But my back is killing me. I can't be on this raked stage with the high heel shoes of the period.” And I sent him to my chiropractor, in Culver City. And he came down to where they were rehearsing and managed to completely solve his back problem with different kinds of shoes and stuff like that. So, John was just, you know, so, grateful for that, because he was miserable.

Gaspard: In WarGames he is the center of one of my favorite shots of yours in the war room, when he first enters, and he comes down the stairs and crosses the entire room.

Badham: Mm-hmm.

Gaspard: Do you remember how you did that shot?

Badham: Oh yeah. Well, we did it with a crane that was designed to work inside and was one of the first cranes that would extend out and pull back through the space that he was going through.

Gaspard: Was that the Luma Crane?

Badham: Yes, it was, thank you.

Gaspard: I remember that from Polanski's Tenant film. He had it where it snaked up through a stairway, but it's such a lovely shot.

Badham: It did work out really nicely. The war room was stepped up as you went toward the back of it, it went up, you know, four or five steps. So, it wasn't a matter of being able to dolly straight back, because you couldn't do that. But the Luma Crane was better than your average Chapman Crane because it had this extender on it. The mechanics of it were very difficult, however, and it slowed you down to a crawl because it took so long to get it set up, rigged and = right. And now, there's better equipment, so I'm sure nobody except Mr. Luma uses it anymore.

Gaspard: Right, but at, but at the time it was—

Badham: —oh. It's great.

Gaspard: An audience member watching the movie is unconsciously aware of the fact that this room has steps and goes up because you've seen people coming down the steps, going up the steps, even to the stairs on the side. But I mean, the room is just tiered. And so, when you see John Wood come down the stairs, cross the room and go up and up and up and the cameras with him the whole time, you mentally go, “how were they following him? They're going up steps.” And it's not steadycam, because I don't think steadycam came about till maybe—

Badham: Steadycam was around since 74.

Gaspard: Anyway, it's just a fabulous shot. Two more things on WarGames. The opening scene, with the two guys who are in the bunker, is such a great tension scene. It's beautifully staged, but it also sets up the theme of the movie so perfectly. Was that always the opening of the script?

Badham: As long as I worked on it, it was always the opening.

Gaspard: Did you make any changes or go back to previous drafts when you came on board?

Badham: I did. I asked them to send me every draft that they had, and they had taken the original writers Lasker and Parks and had replaced them with a couple of other writers, and they had changed the script quite a bit. And I went back and read Lasker and Parks and said, “this is the one that we need. I'm throwing these other ones out.” And I called the guys up and I said, “Come back. Help me out here. You know, we can tidy up the script the way you like it, the way it should be.” So, we were able to do that and to finetune it to where I think it was doing the right thing or doing the best job.

Gaspard: Okay. One more WarGames question. In the I'll Be In My Trailer book—and in both books—you talk about being totally honest with actors. But you are occasionally willing to keep them in the dark, or I wouldn't say trick them, but not necessarily tell them everything is going to happen, just to see what they do. The example in WarGames is when Matthew Broderick tussles, Dabney Coleman's hair, after his hair has been tussled by Dabney Coleman. And I believe that that was something you told Matthew to do, but you didn't tell Dabney. How often does that come up, and how often should you use that sort of technique of surprising people on camera?

Badham: Well, I think it can be fun. You get a spontaneous reaction from them and if it works, that's great. If not, you've always got what was scripted.

Gaspard: Right. 

Badham: And sometimes you just get an idea watching it. For example, the Dabney Coleman/Matthew Broderick example that you give: they had to kind of shake hands or hug or whatever, and in the excitement of it, Dabney rubs Matthew's hair in the rehearsal. And so, I went over and told Matthew on the quiet, “Hey, you do it to him, you know, to surprise him.” Because Dabney has a temper and he kind of reacts and I knew he was not going to just take it lying down. And yet he's like, you know, six or eight inches taller than Matthew. So Whatcha gonna do You gonna hit the kid?

Gaspard: It's a lovely moment. And what I love about that ending of WarGames is that when the movie's over, it ends. You don't drag stuff out, the movie’s over and we're done. I wish more films did that. Is that just a built-in barometer with you that you just know when it's time to just put up The End?

Badham: To get out. I mean, I hate watching movies where you just have one ending after another and you've gotta wrap up every single character. And I understand why people do that, but it just bores me silly. And that's probably coming from working in television where they always have to have—at the end of an episode—an epilogue. You know, we've convicted the murderer, we've gotten the bad guy, you know, and then they go to commercial and they can come back and they have a two minute scene. And usually it's just deadly stuff. There's nothing, much fun about it.

I did a lot of episodes of Supernatural and they had hit on a formula that actually worked great. Which was, you went to commercial, when you came back, you'd always have a scene with the two brothers that was sort of off topic from what the rest of the thing had been. And it was just great fun. And you hung in there to watch it. because it was a delightful addition. It was not some, you know, millstone hung around the series neck.

Gaspard: It's not literally filler where you're trying to fill those two minutes. You've actually come up with something fun. Do you have a couple more minutes? Just talk about Dracula very quickly.

Badham: Yeah. Let's do that.

Gaspard: What a great version of Dracula. I believe in one of the two books, one of the things you said was, “Don't be afraid to say, ‘I don't know, let's figure it out.’” And I got the sense you did that a lot on Dracula. There was a lot of, how do we do this? I don't know, let's figure it out.

And you had some of the best people. One of them I want to ask about is working with Albert Whitlock and matte paintings, which are beautiful in that movie. And, of course, seamless, because his stuff was seamless. I should know how this is done. I don't. Is he painting the painting and you're bringing it live to the location and setting it in front of the camera with the part open that you need for the live thing? Or is that all placed on in post?

Badham: The old-fashioned way to do it is you would set a frame up in front of the camera and, now let's say you were extending a building up, so you would literally stand there and paint it on the spot.

Gaspard: Okay.

Badham: That was the first way that they did it. So that when you shot the film, you had a combined matte painting: it was all together as one piece. Albert, what he did was, he would block off in black all the parts where he's going to paint and just leave open the parts that we're going to photograph and make it so that none of that black part was exposed to anything. He would make you put down a platform that was rigid, it would take an earthquake to move, because nothing could move, everything had to be absolutely stone rigid and you would shoot two or three takes of whatever it was, the castle, Dracula’s castle was one that we did, you know, several of.

And now take that film back to his studio and put it in the refrigerator. Do not develop it. Now he would go in and clip off a few frames from the unexposed negative and develop that. And now create a matte where he painted in everything. And he could now take the original film out of the refrigerator and he would run that through the camera again, not exposing the part that had already been exposed, but now just exposing the top. And so, it was all original negative. That was his whole feeling, that he was not working with dupe negative at all.

Gaspard: That's why it so great.

Badham: And it is absolutely perfect. By that point in England, the guys had kind of tried to go beyond that and figuring—with new film stocks—they could make dupe negatives. Albert only gave us 10 shots, and other ones that we had were done in a newer style, where they didn't have original negative and they don't look as good as what he did.

Gaspard: One last question about actors, because you had a great example in Dracula of dealing with an actor who was sort of playing with you to get more time on camera. And that was Donald Pleasance and his bag of candy. At what point did you realize that he was doing that, and what advice do you give to someone who has an actor who's playing games to be on camera?

Badham: When you realize what's going on, you have to decide how are you going to deal with this? I had a similar situation with James Woods in a movie called The Hard Way, and he's the same kind of same kind of guy. Exactly. Always looking to kind of sneak more time on camera, how to upstage other people.

Donald is the genius at up staging other people. And I would just call him on it and say, “Donald, let's give Lord Olivier his close up here. Let's give Larry his closeup.” I never called him Lord Olivier. If you called Olivier ‘Lord Olivier,’ he’d say “Larry, dear boy. Larry.”

Episode 115: Filmmaker Amy Scott on her documentary, “Hal.”

This week on the blog, a podcast interview with filmmaker Amy Scott, discussing her terrific documentary, “Hal,” which takes a deep dive into the life and films of director Hal Ashby (“Harold and Maude,” “Being There,” Coming Home,” “Shampoo”).

LINKS

A Free Film Book for You:  https://dl.bookfunnel.com/cq23xyyt12

Another Free Film Book:  https://dl.bookfunnel.com/x3jn3emga6

Fast, Cheap Film Website: https://www.fastcheapfilm.com/

Amy Scott Website:  https://www.amyelizabethscott.com/

“Hal” Documentary website:  https://hal.oscilloscope.net/

“Hal” Trailer: https://youtu.be/GBGfKan2qAg

“Harold and Maude Two-Year Anniversary” Documentary: https://youtu.be/unRuCOECvZM 

Eli Marks Website:  https://www.elimarksmysteries.com/

Albert’s Bridge Books Website:  https://www.albertsbridgebooks.com/

YouTube Channel:  https://www.youtube.com/c/BehindthePageTheEliMarksPodcast

Dying to make a feature? Learn from the pros!

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

★★★★★

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

• Jonathan Demme: The value of cameos

• John Sayles: Writing to your resources

• Peter Bogdanovich: Long, continuous takes

• John Cassavetes: Re-Shoots

• Steven Soderbergh: Rehearsals

• George Romero: Casting

• Kevin Smith: Skipping film school

• Jon Favreau: Creating an emotional connection

• Richard Linklater: Poverty breeds creativity

• David Lynch: Kill your darlings

• Ron Howard: Pre-production planning

• John Carpenter: Going low-tech

• Robert Rodriguez: Sound thinking

And more!

Write Your Screenplay with the Help of Top Screenwriters!

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

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

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

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

The book covers (among other topics):

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Roger Nygard (“Suckers”) on mixing genres

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

Amy Scott Transcript

First, I want to say thank you for making the movie and thank you for making such a great movie because he totally deserved it. I would always wonder why of all the directors of the 70s and 80s, he was never really heralded the way he should have been. I think part of it has to do with that he had no discernible style. So, you couldn't really pick him for something. But before we dive into that, tell me a little bit about your background before you made Hal?

Amy Scott: Well, I'm from Oklahoma. I moved to Chicago, out of college and in college, we studied a lot of, I had a great professor at ODU at the University of Oklahoma. I don't think he's there anymore. But he really hipped us to the coolest documentaries. I had no idea that you could be a documentary filmmaker, like from Chris Marker to the 7-Up series to Hands on a Hard Body. It was just a really great, great, well-rounded Film and Media Program.

Anyway, I moved to Chicago. I wanted to be a director and a DP, but I fell down, I had gotten a job at the University of Chicago. I think I faked my way into it. I was supposed to start on a Monday, and I fell on the ice and broke my arm on a Friday. So I was like, “I can't shoot. I can't film. I can't use my arm to film and hold the camera. I need to learn how to edit. So I learned how to edit with my right hand, and I loved it. And then I just did that for like 10 years. Well, I mean, I still do it. But it was like this accidental career path.

You're an accidental editor.

Amy Scott: An accidental editor. That became something that later, I just valued as such an important skill set. I use it now. I have wonderful editors that I work with. But we speak the same language. And I think with the story structure, that you have an eye for things in the edit bay and now it really, really helps my ability to break down a three-act structure or figure out where the narrative arc is, and things like that. I think would have taken me a lot longer, had I not fallen and broken my arm.

It was sort of a similar path for Hal Ashby, starting in editing.

Amy Scott: Totally. I loved his films and then when I read Nick Dawson's book, and I started to learn more about him, I really, really connected with him. Because of things that he would say about filmmaking and editing and being in the edit bay and being obsessed with every frame. I felt like, being seen and heard. Like, “Oh, this is how I feel about it, too. I don't feel like such a freak of nature, and lots of people feel this way.” I really connected with Hal and he didn't make The Landlord I believe until he was 40 years old.

He was up there.

Amy Scott: Yeah, up there.

For a first-time filmmaker, that's a late start.

Amy Scott: And that was about the same age that I made the Hal movie.

What was your first experience with a Hal Ashby movie?

Amy Scott: The first film that I saw that I can remember was with my friend Jason in college. I was watching Truffaut and Cassavetes and so I thought that I had a very well-rounded understanding of the new Hollywood. And my friend Jason said, “Have you ever seen Harold and Maude?” I had no idea what he was talking about. He was a couple years older, and he was like, “Oh, honey, you're gonna skip school today. We're gonna watch it.” And I swear to God, we watched it. I couldn't believe what it was. I couldn't believe I'd never seen it. It somehow gone past me.

As soon as it was over, I was like, “Stop. Start it again.” We have to rewatch it. We where there for like eight hours, watching it on a loop. David Russell compares it to The Catcher in the Rye as a sort of like rite of passage for people at that age. It hit me right straight through the heart. And then from there, I think I saw The Landlord, someone had screen of The Landlord in Oklahoma City. And I was like, oh my god, this is incredible.

I live in Minneapolis, where Harold and Maude ran at The Westgate theater for two and a half years. I saw the movie quite a bit there. And then, because I was in a film program, and knew someone who knew the film critic for the local paper, when Ruth and Bud came to town for the two-year anniversary, he sorts of dragged me along with him. So, I had dinner with Bud Cort and hung out a little bit with Ruth Gordon. I made a little documentary on Super 8mm of my perspective on their experiences.  I was 15 years old or something and although I knew their itinerary, I couldn't drive. And so I would go to the TV station and shoot some stuff there with them and then they were on to something else. I had to hop on a bus to keep up with them.

Amy Scott: That's incredible.

Yes, my only regret was on that when I had dinner with Bud that I didn't ask better questions. I was sort of starstruck and there's a lot of question. I would ask him now—that I've tried to ask him—but you know, he's not too communicative.

Amy Scott: Yeah. That's incredible that you that you have that footage and I would love to see it.

It was really, really fun and interesting. Ruth Gordon was very much Ruth Gordon, very much Maude. She didn't suffer fools. So, you've seen Harold and Maude, seen The Landlord. At what point did you decide that a documentary had to be made?

Amy Scott: Well, okay, I was pregnant with my first child, and was finishing up Nick Dawson's book on Hal, you know, on Hal’s life. And I thought, I just couldn't believe there was a documentary. But this is before the market became oversaturated with a story about everyone's life. At the time, I just thought, oh my gosh, there's so much here. This guy, his films should be really celebrated. And he should be more known and revered in the canon of American 70s New Hollywood, because he's so influential.

And that's why it was important that we include David O Russell and Adam McKay, and Allison Anders, Judd Apatow. They could draw a direct connections, like the film family tree. When you see the wide shots in Harold and Maude, you think of Wes Anderson. Or, you know, the music, you think of David O Russell. I mean, his influence was everywhere. I started to connect the dots and I thought, oh, my gosh, we've got to, we've got to make a film here.

But I'd never done anything like that. I had directed smaller documentaries. I tried to make a film about this band called The Red Crayola and that was a hilarious attempt on my part. To try to chase them around the globe and on no money. That was my only experience outside of editing. So, fortunately, I had hooked up with my producing partners that I still work with now. I just met them at the time and they hired me to edit some cat food commercials. So it was editing Friskies or Purina, I don't know what it was. It was just looking at cats all day.

And I was about to give birth but I was working trying to lock down the rights And the rights came through one afternoon and I just pulled them (the producers) in and I was like, let's do this together. We didn't know what the hell we were doing, but it was so great and so fun. We approached it, like, all hands-on deck, and we were a little family making this thing. So, that spirit has continued, thank goodness, because of what we put into the Ashby movie.

What do you think were his unique qualities as a director?

Amy Scott: Gosh, so much. I just think he really had an eye. He could see stories. You said something earlier, that all of his films are not the same and therefore it's hard to go, oh, he's this style of filmmaker. But the thing that they all have in common is that he has a very real and raw approach at looking at humanity. Sort of holding the mirror up and showing us who we are, with all of our faults and complexities and layers of contradictions and failures. So he's able to see that and find the stories of humanity. And that's the connective tissue for me. He also had a sick musical taste; I mean, he sort of found Cat Stevens. The soundtrack to Shampoo—I think that's why it's not in wide release right now, as I can’t imagine having to license Hendrix and Janis and the Beach Boys, you know?

That's true. But I'll also say he had the wisdom to let Paul Simon do the small musical things he did in Shampoo, which are just as powerful or if not more powerful.

Amy Scott: So, powerful. So much restraint. Incredibly powerful. I feel like Hal, because he was not—from all of our research and talking to everyone and girlfriends and collaborators—he wasn't a dictatorial director. He didn't lay down mandates. He was really open to hearing from everybody and making it feel like it was a democratic scene and everyone has an equal voice. If you had an idea, speak up.

But at the end of the day, he was like, okay, here's the vision. And once he had that vision, I think that's where he really got into problems with the studio system. Because that was such a different time. The studio guys thought that they were also the director, that they were also the auteur. I cannot imagine a world where you throw your entire life into making a film and then a studio head comes along and tries to seize it from you. I mean, that would give me cancer, you know, from the stress. I can't imagine.

It certainly didn't match with his personality at all.

Amy Scott: No, not at all. What I thought was so fascinating was how open he was to ideas. I love that about him and it resonates in my microscopic ways of connecting to that now. Man, every time it pops up, I'm like, I feel this little Hal Ashby devil angel on my shoulders.

Yes, but it's odd. Because it's not like they didn't know what they were getting. It's not like he hid that part of his personality. You would know, immediately from meeting him that...

Amy Scott: Yeah.

With Harold and Maude, it was just a weird perfect storm of a crazy executive like Robert Evans saying yes to all these weird things. And then the marketing team at Gulf and Western/Paramount going, “we have no idea what to do.” You know, I had the Harold and Maude poster hanging for years. And it's the most obvious example of a studio that cannot figure out how to market a movie. The Harold and Maude different color name thing. It's just so obviously they didn't know what do.

Amy Scott: I know I love when Judd Apatow was talking about that. That's really funny.

So, what was the biggest thing that surprised you as you learned more about Hal?

Amy Scott: What surprised me was that side of his temperament. He did look like this peace love guy.  He was an attractive man but, you know, this long hair and long beard and so cool and I had a really myopic like view of what I thought his personality was. I thought he was a super mellow guy. And then I got in and started reading the letters. My producer, Brian would read the letters in his voice as a temp track that we would use that to edit to cut the film. And we were rolling, dying, laughing, like falling down, like, oh, my God, I cannot believe that Hal would write some of this shit to the head of Paramount or whoever. It was like, wow, this guy is not at all who I thought. These were fiery missives that he was shooting off into space.

It wasn't like just getting mad and writing an email. I mean, he had to sit on a typewriter.

Amy Scott: Typewriter and they were very, very long. I mean, the sections that we used in the film, were obviously heavily cut. We couldn't show like six pages of vitriol. The best part about the vitriol though, he wasn’t just vomiting, anger. It was a very poetic. He had a very poetic way of weaving together his frustration and expletives in a way that I just loved.

And then we turned the papers over to Ben Foster. That's why we wanted him to narrate—be the voice of Hal—because he's always struck me as an artist that totally gets it. Not a studio guy and he was all over it. He was right. You can really identify with this sort of, you're either with us or against us artists versus, the David and Goliath. So, that was most fascinating to me.

I knew—because of the book, because Nick did such a great job—I knew Hal’s story. Leaving his child, leaving Leigh. It's one thing to read about it in a book and it's a completely different thing to go meet that person, to sit with her. She's since become a dear friend to me. I feel like she'd never really spoken about that, about her dad and that time of her of her life. I think revisiting trauma on that level, and working through a lot of those emotions with her, was really heavy and not what I intended. When I set out to make the film, I was thinking about the films of Hal Ashby. I didn't think it would get as heavy as it did. I'm glad that we went there and that she took us with her. I feel really, really thankful. I think she got a lot out of it. We certainly did.

It really did show you just how complicated he was, the reality of his life, when you see the child. And she was so eloquent on screen.

Amy Scott: So great. He had some generational trauma too and then you put it all together, and you're like, okay, well, this is somebody that's really adept at looking deep into the human condition. He’d been through a lot. He'd made a lot of mistakes and he's been through a lot. So, of course, this checks out. And he's just so talented and creative, that he can make these films that are this really accurate, fun and funny and sad and tragic and beautiful portrayals of humanity.

Well, let's just if we can't dive into a couple of my favorites just to see if anything you walked away with.

Obviously, Harold and Maude hold a special place in my heart. I've just loved reading Nick’s book and reading and hearing in your film and in listening to commentaries about what Hal did to wrestle Harold and Maude into the movie that it is. I forget who it was on one of the commentaries who said there were so many long speeches by Maude that you just ended up hating her. And Hal’s editor's ability to go and just trim it and trim it and trim it. I compare what he did there to what Colin Higgins went on to do when he directed and he simply didn't have it. He had the writing skill, obviously, and the directing skills. He didn't have that editor’s eye. I don't think there's a Colin Higgins movie made that couldn't be 20 minutes shorter. If Hal had gone into Foul Play and edited it down, it would have been a much stronger comedy. 9 to 5 would have been 20 minutes shorter. Probably a little stronger. Anyway, you don't recognize that. It's all hidden. It's the edit. You don't know what he threw away and that's the beauty of Harold and Maude: within this larger piece he found that movie and found the right way to express it. So, what did you learn about that movie that might have surprised you?

Amy Scott: Everything surprise me about it. You know, we were never able to get Bud Cort. You know Bud Curt, he's so special and so elusive and we thought we thought we were gonna get him a couple times and then it was just a real difficult thing.

But you have him from the memorial service, and that's a great thing.

Amy Scott: Oh, yeah. Anytime he's on camera, he's bewitching. He's incredible. So we went again with the letters. I just didn't realize that Bud and Hal we're so close. I mean, obviously, they were close. But they were very tight. They had a real father son, sort of bond.

Charles Mulvehill, the producer, also talked about how difficult it was to make the film. I didn't know that Charles ended up marrying one of the women that is on the dating service that Harold's mom tries to set up. That was interesting, too. It's hard for me, to tell you the truth. We did so much research on all the films, so there's little bits and pieces of all.

Jumping away from Harold and Maude—just because my brain is disorganized—Diane Schroeder was with Hal for a number of years and she's in the film. She was sort of a researcher archivists, she wore many hats. I did not realize that on Being There, she really needed to nail down what was on the television Chauncey Gardiner learned everything from TV, so it was really important what was on it. When he's flipping, it's not random. She and Hal would take VHS tapes in or I guess it would have been Beta at the time, whatever the fidelity was, but they would record hundreds of hours of TV and watch it. She got all these TV Guides from that year, 1981. But what was a three year’s span, she had all the TV Guides.

She had everything figured out. It was like creating the character of Chauncey Gardiner, with Hal and then Peter Sellars got involved, and he had certain thoughts about it, too. I was just so blown away by the fact that that much care and effort and painstaking detail would go into it. When you see it on screen, it's definitely a masterpiece because of those things. Just the defness of editing, of leaving things out, is what makes it good. That is such a such a really hyper detailed behind the scenes thing to know that. When we were going through his storage space. I remember asking Diane, why are there boxes and boxes and boxes of TV. She said, “oh, yeah, that's Chancy Gardener's.” I said, I cannot believe you guys saved this. Really funny.

It's interesting because they would have done all that in post now. And they had to get that all figured out, before they were shooting it. That’s a lot of pre-production.

Amy Scott: Oh, an immense amount of pre-production. Hal set up an edit bay in his bedroom. It’s the definition of insanity. I had that going on at one point in my life and it's not good. It's not good thing to roll over and it's like right there like right next to pillows staring at you. You need some distance.

When I saw Being There for the first time for some reason I was in Los Angeles/ I saw it and of course loved it. And then came back to Minneapolis and someone had seen it and said, “don't you love the outtakes?” And I said, “What outtakes?” They said, “over the end credits, all those outtakes with Peter Sellars.” And I said, “there were no outtakes.” In the version in LA, they didn't do that.

Amy Scott: I wanted to add this, but we just ran out of time. We found all these Western Union telegrams that Peter Sellars wrote to Hal, just pissed, just livid, furious about that. He said, “You broke the spell. You broke the spell. God dammit, you broke the spell.” He was so pissed that they included those outtakes and I agree with them.

It’s not a real normal Hal move, is it?

Amy Scott: No, it's honestly the first time that I'd ever seen blooper outtakes in a film like that. That’s such an interesting 80s style, shenanigans and whatnot. But, yeah, no, you want them to walk out on the water after watching him dip umbrella in the water and think about that for the rest of your life.

Exactly. I think they left it out of the LA version for Academy purposes, thinking that would help with the awards. But then years later to look at the DVD and see the alternate ending and go, well, that’s terrible. I'm glad you guys figured that out. And then apparently, was it on the third take that somebody said, he should put his umbrella down into the water?

Amy Scott: That's so smart.

It's so smart. Alright. Shampoo is another favorite.  I'm curious what you learned about that one, because you had three very strong personalities making that movie with Robert Towne on one side and Warren Beatty on the other and Hal in the middle. It's amazing that it came out as well as it did. Somehow Hal wrangled it and did what he did. What did you learn there that sort of surprised you?

Amy Scott:  Well, that aspect is what we wanted to really investigate. Because Hal had a pretty singular vision. Hal as a director—at that stage—was becoming a very important filmmaker. So, then how do you balance the styles of Robert Towne and Warren Beatty? These guys are colossal figures in Hollywood, Alpha dogs. I wish that we could have sat with Warren. It was not for lack of trying. I think a lot of these guys that we couldn't get, it's like, yeah, that's what makes him so cool.

Bruce Dern. I was trying to chase down Bruce Dern at the Chase Bank, and he got up one day and I was just like, I knew, let it go.

But Shampoo, everything we learned, we put in the film. Robert Towne talked to us. And then there was the audio commentary that Hal had from his AFI seminars. Caleb Deschanel spoke pretty eloquently about it being like watching a ping pong match going back and forth between Robert and Warren about what the direction should be. And then the director sitting in a chair probably smoking a joint, waiting for them to finish. It seems like they might have needed a sort of mediator type presence to guide the ship, like have a soft hand with it, you know?

You can't have three alphas in the room at the same time. Nothing would get done. You need a neutralizing force and it seems like that's what Hal was it. He just had a really great taste, you know? My favorite element of that movie—besides Julie Christie's backless dress—would be Jack Warden. Anytime Jack Warden comes on screen, I'm like, just want to hang with him for another half hour. I can just watch that man piddle around and be funny.

I remember reading an interview with Richard Dreyfus after Duddy Kravitz came out, in which he was blasting the director, saying that they ruined Jack Warden’s performance in post-production. And Jack Warden is amazing in Duddy Kravitz. I don't know what they he thinks they did to it, because he's just fantastic.

Amy Scott: He must have just been astronomically amazing and funny, which is what I imagined he's was like.

I took away two things from Shampoo. One was—having seen Harold and Maude as often as I did—recognizing that the sound effects of the policeman's motorcycle as being the same one as George's motorcycle as he's going up the Hollywood Hills. Exact same ones.

But the last shot as he's looking down on Julie Christie's house and the use of high-angle shot, it is one of the saddest things I've ever seen. It's just a guy standing on an empty lot looking down onto the houses below, but it's … I don't know. Given the guys he was dealing with, I don't know how he made that into a Hal Ashby movie, but he did.

Amy Scott: He did. Well, it seems like it's moments like that yeah, there's so much melancholy loaded into that moment. Because George is such an interesting character. Now, I'm realizing that you and I have just blown, we've just spoiled the ending shots of both Being There and Shampoo.

Anybody listening to this who hasn't seen those movies deserves to be spoiled.

Amy Scott: Get on the boat. But yeah, that always got me. I think it's all of those really like, foggy misty Mulholland Drive shot of George on his motorcycle, anytime he's alone. Because he crams his life so full of women to try to fill the hole or the void or whatever he's got going on that's missing in his life. And he's just trying to shove it full of women. So, when he's alone, and he has nothing and no one you're like, oh, my God, this is the saddest thing I've ever seen.

It really is. I don't know. Maybe you can fill me in on this. I remember reading somewhere that the scene—his last scene with Goldie Hawn—they went back and they reshot it because somebody said he's standing. He should be sitting. And I'm always interested in directors who hear that and are willing to go back and do it.

The other example is Donald Sutherland in Ordinary People in his last scene. Telling Redford, “I did it wrong. I should be done crying. I was crying when I should have been done crying.” and they went back and reshot. His portion of it is no longer crying because the director went, you're right. And that simple notion of Warren Beatty should be sitting down, and she should be standing over him.

Amy Scott: She's got the power.

Yes. But I'm not sure a lot of directors would have said yes to that. Like, “We don't need to go back and do that. We're overscheduled we got other stuff to do …”

Amy Scott: Oh, I don't think Hal cared about the schedule at all. Everything that I read or, you know, even Jeff Bridges talked about, like them being over budget and he's like, “you know, all right, let's figure out a creative solution to this. It's going to take as long as it's going to take.” He never seemed to really get riled onset or let those sorts of parameters hold all the power and guide the filmmaking. He was in complete control of that.

Having that sort of attitude about things, that just spreads to the whole set. That spreads everywhere and makes it easier for everybody to work.

Amy Scott: It does.

Let's do one last one. Coming Home is interesting for me because I had friends who ran a movie theater here in town. It was just a couple of running it and I would come by from time to time if they were busy. I’d go up and run the projector for them. They had one of those flat plate systems, so you only had to turn the projector on. It wasn't that big a deal. But you know, I was young and it's like okay, now I'm going to turn the house lights down … I got to see the first five minutes of Coming Home a lot. Probably more than I saw the rest of the movie. Was there anything you learned about the making of that film that surprised you?

Amy Scott: Yeah, I didn't realize how hard it was to get that film made. Jane Fonda is the one that's really responsible for Coming Home even existing. Nancy Dowd had a book and Jane really fought hard to get it made. By the time it got to Hal, it was different, there was a number of rewrites. And it obviously had to be cut down significantly.

I never think—it's never my go-to—to think that one of the actors is the one responsible. Usually it comes to you in a different way, and especially if he's working with Robert Towne and the like. But I thought that was really cool and really interesting that Jane spoke about showing what our veterans were going through. This wasn't new, because you had like The Deer Hunter would have been the comparable. And that's a wildly different take on what coming home from the Vietnam War was like. But also, the woman's journey in that film, and the sexuality of all of that was just like, wow. Only Jane Fonda can speak about it eloquently as Jane Fonda does.

I also didn't realize— when we were sitting with John Voigt—that he was really method in the way that he didn't get out of his chair, I mean, for days on end. Going into crafty in the chair, learning how to do go up ramps and play basketball and all the things that you see was because he wouldn't get out of the chair, which was wonderful.

I really enjoyed talking with Jeff Wexler, and Haskell. That interview that we did with Haskell, I'm so thankful for because, you know, Haskell passed away, not that long after we film. That was one of his last interviews. So, it was really special. He came to the set and Haskell is like, a film God to me and my team. For me, I lived in Chicago so Medium Cool, was one of the coolest things ever. Meeting him and talking with him was so interesting.

I loved hearing about the opening. You can just tell it’s Haskell Wexler. You know it's a Hal Ashby film, but the way it starts and having seen Medium Cool, and going into that opening scene, where the all the vets are non-professional actors. They were actual vets that had come home and those were their true real stories. Now we would say it's sort of hybrid documentary and scripted, but it was like a really early use of that kind of style. And that's what made it feel so real and then you start in with the Rolling Stones, it's just such a masterly, powerful film.

I'm always curious about that sort of thing where he has a lot of footage and he's creating the movie out of it and what would Hal Ashby be like today? How different would his life be if he had everything at his fingertips and it’s not hanging out a pin over in a bin and he had to remember where everything was? I don't know if that would have been any made any difference at all?

Amy Scott: He was an early pioneer of digital editing. He was building his giant rigs and was convincing everyone that digital is the way to go. Which is so cool and so mind blowing. But I think it was born out of a place of independent film, of democratizing the access and taking the power away from the studios. And knowing that you could do this cheaply in your home. It was so actually tragic to learn that. What could he have done? Because his output was just, he put out so much so many great movies. So, what could he have done if the infrastructure was even more accessible and sped up technologically?

Imagine an 8-part streaming series directed by Hal Ashby, what would that be?

Amy Scott: Just be incredible. Well, I know that he was wanting to work. He had so many films that we found. And we found script after script. One of them, I was so, “damn, that would have been cool,” was The Hawkline Monster. A Richard Brautigan science fiction Western novel. It's so trippy and so cool. I feel like every couple of years, I hear about some directors says, “we got the rights, we're gonna make it.” And I'm like, when are they gonna make it? It's so long.

And imagine what his version of Tootsie would have been.

Amy Scott: Oh, I know. Yeah. No joke.

Just seeing those test shots. Wow.

Amy Scott: I know, it would have been a different film.

I read a quote somewhere that one of the producers or maybe it was Sydney Pollack, who said, they took the script to Elaine May. And she said, “yeah, it just needs…” And then she listed like five things: He needs a roommate that he can talk to …  the girl on the TV show, she needs a father, so he can become involved with him … there also has to be a co-worker who is interested in him as a woman … the director needs to be an ass, he should probably be dating the woman. It was like five different things. She said the script is fine, but you need these five things. So, what did they have? She just listed the whole movie.

Amy Scott: Right. Well, we're talking about Elaine May. She’s someone that needs a film.

She does. And why aren’t you doing that?

Amy Scott: Listen, I'm telling you. I've tried. This is another one that I've tried for years. You know, here’s a real shocker: It's hard to get a film about a female filmmaker funded. It's a hard sell.

She probably wouldn't want to do it anyway

Amy Scott: She's so cool. My approach has always been that she has so much to teach us still. So, I would love to get her hot takes on all those films. A New Leaf. I mean, the stories behind that thing getting made.

Like the uncut version of A New Leaf.

Amy Scott: Exactly. I want to hear it from her. So, yeah, that's high up on my list. I really, really want to make one with Elaine.

Was there anyone else you really wanted to get to? You mentioned Warren didn't want to talk to you. Anybody else?

Amy Scott: I would have loved Julie Christie or, you know, more women would have been great. Bruce Dern was so great and so funny and I’d seen him a number of times. I saw he was at a screening of one of his movies. He talked for like, an hour and a half before they even screened the film. He was whip smart in his memories. I was so upset that we couldn't work it out because I knew that he would be incredible.

Just his knowledge of movie industry, having been in it so long.

Amy Scott: My gosh, yeah.

He even worked with Bette Davis.

Amy Scott: Yeah, he's national treasure. Exactly. I was just staring at a poster. I have framed poster of Family Plot in my kitchen.

That's the movie that was going to make him a star, according to Hitchcock. It still has one of the greatest closing shots of all time. I think I read that Barbara Harris improvised the wink, and that's another person who you should make a documentary about.

Amy Scott: Oh my gosh. Barbara Harris is something. Do you remember what was the film that she was in with? Dustin Hoffman and Dr. Hook scored it. It's a really long title.

Who Is Harry Kellerman And Why Is He Saying These Terrible Things About Me?

Amy Scott: That is such a phenomenal Barbara Harris performance. I mean, Dustin Hoffman is incredible. He's always great. But Barbara Harris really shines and I guess I'm like, that's who she was. Yeah, I think she was difficult. Well, I don't know, difficult.

She had stuff she was dealing with.

Amy Scott: She had issues and Hal had to deal with those on Second Hand Hearts too.

From a production standpoint, people are interested in hearing what your Indiegogo process was Any tips you'd have for someone who wants to fund their film via Indiegogo?

Amy Scott: Oh, boy. Well, that was a different time, because I really don't know how films are funded at the moment. This came out five years ago, but it took us like six years to make. So, during in that time, you could at least raise enough capital to get through production.

The Indiegogo campaign enabled it so that we could even make the movie, because everything past that point, nobody ever got paid at all. But at least that way, we could buy film stock and pay the camera operators and our DPs and stuff. So, that was hugely important.

At the time, I remember thinking like, oh, no, how are we ever going to get anybody to because you had to make these—I don't know if this is still the case—but you had to make these commercials for your project or like a trailer to get people's attention. And you had to be all over Facebook and crap like that. So, I was like, oh, no, how am I going to make a thing that shows that Hal Ashby's important to people that want to give money?

A friend somehow knew John C. Reilly and mentioned it to him. It was like, we just need a celebrity to come in for like, you know, half a day or one hour. And he said, I'll come on down and do that. And he came. I couldn't believe it. The generosity of this man. He didn't know us at all. But he knew and loved the films of Hal Ashby and wanted to give back and pay it forward.

So, he came down and because of him, we have a really funny, awesome little commercial trailer.  I have no idea where that thing even is. I'd love to see it because I had to do it with him, which was terrifying, because I am not a front of camera person. I didn’t know what to say. And he said, All you have to do is ask for money. I'll all do the rest of the talking.

I remember seeing it.

Amy Scott: It’s been stripped from Indiegogo which probably means that we used a song that we weren't able to. That was back in the early days of crowdfunding, where you could just take images or songs and  I'm sure I used the music of Cat Stevens, and then, loaded up with a bunch of photos that we never paid for.

Well, that brings up a question of how did you get all the rights to the stuff you got for the finished movie? Was that a huge part of your budget?

Amy Scott: No. The most expensive thing always to this day is music. Music is going to get you. Outside of that, thank goodness, there's this little thing called fair use now, which wasn't the case in documentary filmmaking for a very long time. But now you can fair use certain elements, photographs, or news clips, video clips, anything that sort of supports your thesis that you're making about your subject and supports your storyline falls under the category of fair use.

So, I think what our money did pay for is the fair use attorneys that that really go over your product. They went over out fine cut, because we couldn't afford to pay for multiple lawyers to look at it. So you give them a fine cut, you hold your breath and hope that they say, oh, you know, you only have to take out a couple things. And you're like, oh, thank God. Okay, and then you change it.

I believe, because we never had any money, that we submitted to Sundance and got in on a wing and a prayer. And then had, you know, two weeks to turn the film around and get it, finished. I remember we were like, you know, pulling all these all nighters, trying to change the notes that the legal said XY and Z was not fair use and trying to swap out music with our composer. It was a wild, wild run.

Isn’t that always the way? You work on it for six years and then suddenly you have two weeks to finish it.

Amy Scott: That's how it shook out for us. It was like really, really pretty funny, because you're going on a leisurely pace until you're not. And then it's like, alright, it's real now. I thought for years, I think my friends and casual acquaintances thought that I've lost my mind. Because every year, I'd see people that I would see occasionally and they're like, hey, how's it going? What are you working on? I'm like, I'm just working on this Ashby's movie. And they were like, year after year, like damn. She's like, we need to reel her in and we need to throw her a lifeline. No, really, I really, really am. So, it was pretty funny. We were. We did it.

People have no idea how long these things take.

Amy Scott: It's unfunded. But you know, then we got lucky after that, because we nearly killed ourselves on Hal. Then we kind of fell into the era of streaming deals and streamers. And then people were like, oh, we want to make biopics and we want to give you money to make a biopic. And that was truly our first rodeo. We're like, oh, my gosh, what? This is incredible. We can get paid for this.

Now that's falling away. This streaming industry is, you know, collapsing in on itself as it should, because there's no curation anymore. And it's like, let's return to form a little bit here, guys. So, we're just riding the wave. I say it's like we're riding trying to learn how to ride a mechanical bull this industry. I’m a tomboy. So, every local Oklahomans is up for the ride.

Let me ask you one last question. I'll let you go then. So, as a filmmaker, what did you learn doing a deep dive into the work of this director and editor and you are a director and editor? So, that's sort of a scary thing to do anyway, to be the person who's going to edit Hal Ashby. What did you learn in the process that you can still take away today?

Amy Scott: Well, listen, we joke about it all the time. My producer, Brian Morrow and I are constantly going, oh, what would Hal do? Everything that he stood for, as a filmmaker. The film will tell you what to do. Get in there, be obsessed be the film, all of those things.

I get this man because I feel the same way. So, when we like took a real bath in Hal Ashby's words for years, that sort of that shapes the rest of your life as a filmmaker. You're not like a casual filmmaker after going through like the Ashby's carwash. That stuff's sticks.

But I'm proud. I'm proud that that we pulled it off. I'm proud that we were able to make the movie. Somebody would have done it, because Hal is too great and too good, and he just has deserved it for so long.

The only thing that we've ever wanted was that we wanted people to go back and watch his films, or to watch him for the first time if they had never seen him. And then to take his creative spirit forward. Be in love with the thing that you make. It’s your lifeforce.

So, otherwise, what is it all for, you know? So, yeah, that's what I got from him.

Episode 114: Filmmaker Peet Gelderblom on “When Forever Dies”

This week on the blog, a podcast interview with director and editor Peet Gelderblom on his collage feature, “When Forever Dies.” 

LINKS

A Free Film Book for You:  https://dl.bookfunnel.com/cq23xyyt12

Another Free Film Book:  https://dl.bookfunnel.com/x3jn3emga6

Fast, Cheap Film Website: https://www.fastcheapfilm.com/

When Forever Dies website: http://www.whenforeverdies.com/

Watch it on Vimeo:  https://vimeo.com/ondemand/whenforeverdies/806226783

Watch it on the Eye Film Player: https://player.eyefilm.nl/en/films/when-forever-dies

Eli Marks Website:  https://www.elimarksmysteries.com/

Albert’s Bridge Books Website:  https://www.albertsbridgebooks.com/

YouTube Channel:  https://www.youtube.com/c/BehindthePageTheEliMarksPodcast

Dying to make a feature? Learn from the pros!

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

★★★★★

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

• Jonathan Demme: The value of cameos

• John Sayles: Writing to your resources

• Peter Bogdanovich: Long, continuous takes

• John Cassavetes: Re-Shoots

• Steven Soderbergh: Rehearsals

• George Romero: Casting

• Kevin Smith: Skipping film school

• Jon Favreau: Creating an emotional connection

• Richard Linklater: Poverty breeds creativity

• David Lynch: Kill your darlings

• Ron Howard: Pre-production planning

• John Carpenter: Going low-tech

• Robert Rodriguez: Sound thinking

And more!

Write Your Screenplay with the Help of Top Screenwriters!

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

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

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

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

The book covers (among other topics):

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Roger Nygard (“Suckers”) on mixing genres

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

Interview Transcript

I do want to just spend just a minute or so talking about When Forever Dies. But oh, my goodness Peet. Where did that come from? And how do—I realize you could probably talk for an hour about it? How did you come up with that? And the very process of putting it together is mind blowing. How would you describe it to someone who hasn't seen it?

Peet: Yeah, When Forever Dies is an archival fiction and it cobbles together scraps of existing films to tell an entirely different story of its own. And that is the story of the relationship between a man and a woman, and how this relationship sort of degrades over time. And it's really experimental in the way that it takes shots and bits and scenes from completely different movies and also completely different genres. It can be advertising, documentaries, animation, love silent films, everything really, and it still manages to tell a whole story.

 You know, you say it's experimental, as someone who has seen it, it's experimental for a few minutes. And then you understand the experiment. And it's then a normal narrative, you get it. I mean, you use some interstitial cards that help bring us along.

 Peet: I say that, because I've always believed that experiment in accessibility shouldn't be a mutually exclusive. It's actually, it's a roller coaster ride of a film and it's in a very, in a lot of ways, it's actually very traditional because I'm using the rules of continuity editing, but I’m using the rules against themselves a little bit, because I take from different films, and then I create, you know, sometimes the opposite meaning out of different shots. Yeah, but what gave me the idea was just I saw a way to do this. And it has evolved, of course, with maybe the start of it was the Raising Cain recut, and making movie mashups after that—video essays—but it all comes from my editing background. I've edited lots of trailers and promos for Universal Pictures and Comedy Central and all sorts of TV channels. And then I was also able to take from different series and different films, you know, put different shots together and create this new through line that didn't exist before and I always enjoyed doing that and I just thought, wouldn't it be really cool to try and do this for a whole feature film?

As it turns out, it was really cool. You know, we recently had on the podcast an editor named Roger Nygard, and Roger edits, Larry David's show Curb Your Enthusiasm, he edited Veep and he's a filmmaker like you. He directs and he edits and he put he also makes his living as an editor. And he said that the thing that taught him the most about filmmaking and about editing was editing promos, where you had a you know, you had to do it all in 15 seconds. And he said you'd learn the most about filmmaking when you have that sort of requirement to work within those boundaries and still tell a story.

 Peet: Yeah, it's the shortest way to tell a story and you really need or you really learn about what things what elements you really need to make something happening on the screen.

With When Forever Dies what's the music on that post-scored or where did you edit to the music? I couldn't really tell, it was all seems so seamless.

Peet: Wow, thank you. Well, it's a little bit of both. I decided I wanted to have a sort of backbone because there was no backbone besides the story that I had made up. So, I actually edited everything on music. Some of the music I made myself but there's also a lot of Creative Commons music and music that was replaced later on by something that our composer did.

Well, it all feels of a piece. It's all just together in perfect. So, I will definitely recommend to listeners that when it becomes available, When Forever Dies is...

Peet: Yeah, it had a very good festival run and then one audience award in Colombia. We're looking into, you know, other, yeah, we're looking into how it could be distributed right now. But obviously it's a weird film. It's difficult to place it.

Yeah, it is. It's different. But then once you get the rhythm of it, you're totally in and you get it.

Peet: Yeah, that's also been my experience with that audience really, audiences really love it when they see it. But I think the trick is to how do you get them in the film theater.

Episode 113: Comedian Wayne Federman of the history of stand-up comedy albums

This week on the blog, a podcast interview with comedian and USC Professor Wayne Federman on the history and impact of stand-up comedy albums.

LINKS

A Free Film Book for You:  https://dl.bookfunnel.com/cq23xyyt12

Another Free Film Book:  https://dl.bookfunnel.com/x3jn3emga6

Fast, Cheap Film Website: https://www.fastcheapfilm.com/

Wayne Federman Website:  http://www.waynefederman.com/Wayne_Federmans_Official_Web_Site/Welcome.html

The History of Standup Podcast: https://www.thehistoryofstandup.com/

Eli Marks Website:  https://www.elimarksmysteries.com/

Albert’s Bridge Books Website:  https://www.albertsbridgebooks.com/

YouTube Channel:  https://www.youtube.com/c/BehindthePageTheEliMarksPodcast

Dying to make a feature? Learn from the pros!

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

★★★★★

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

• Jonathan Demme: The value of cameos

• John Sayles: Writing to your resources

• Peter Bogdanovich: Long, continuous takes

• John Cassavetes: Re-Shoots

• Steven Soderbergh: Rehearsals

• George Romero: Casting

• Kevin Smith: Skipping film school

• Jon Favreau: Creating an emotional connection

• Richard Linklater: Poverty breeds creativity

• David Lynch: Kill your darlings

• Ron Howard: Pre-production planning

• John Carpenter: Going low-tech

• Robert Rodriguez: Sound thinking

And more!

Write Your Screenplay with the Help of Top Screenwriters!

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

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

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

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

The book covers (among other topics):

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Roger Nygard (“Suckers”) on mixing genres

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

John: I want to just kind of start at the beginning, if you have any idea who performed or produced or released the very first quote, unquote stand-up comedy album?

Wayne: The first album recorded, there's some controversy about it, but it's going to be either Redd Foxx’s Laugh of the Party, Volume 1, 1956. But in 1955, there was an album of Mort Sahl recorded, but it wasn't released until 1960, which was after he had already released another album. And it's a very tough question and a terrible answer but it would be probably those two guys, I would say, are in the running for the first comedy album would be Redd Foxx, and Mort Sahl.

John: Okay and the genre that Redd would slip into would be a genre that I didn't really follow that much, which was the party album.

Wayne: Correct. The party album concept was that these were albums that exactly as described, would be listened to, at a party, usually an adult party. So, it tended to have more what we would call baudy humor, it wouldn't be explicit, the way people speak now on comedy albums and in life. But at that time, it was something and these are usually all on minor labels. That because people could still get in trouble for swearing because of something called Community Standards back then. So, a lot of times in the record store—when there were record stores—you would have to ask for it specifically, it wouldn't be like up in the counter. It wouldn't be in this displayed, it would be like, do you have the new, let's say Rusty Warren album. Yes, she was like a singer who also did sort of baudy songs and told sort of jokes about, you know, breasts and guys getting laid and things like that. There was a number of them.

John: Knockers Up being the one I've ran across the most.

Wayne: Sold millions of copies, millions of copies.

[Music]

John: Just hard to imagine, these days, a party where the entertainment was you all sat around and listened to a record album. It’s quaint.

Wayne: Exactly. But if you think about it, the power of the comedy album was in the fact that for the first time you were transported to these adult nightclubs, or coffee houses, or theaters, where stand-up comedy was being performed. Before then you would never hear anything like that. You heard, there was obviously comedy records, but they were usually produced in a studio. So, this was all something very new.

John: And this was an outgrowth of the sort of explosion of nightclubs?

Wayne: It was a convergence of a number of things. Because if you think of those first big breakout albums, which was of course, the Redd Foxx, and then Mort Saul, and then Shelley Berman, and then a guy named Bob Newhart, those were kind of like the first ones. So, those were all comedians still trying to break through. This wasn't like big Jimmy Durrante, or Milton Berle or Bob Hope, or any of the big nightclub headliners weren't putting out their records. As a matter of fact, there was a big divide between the older generation, or let me put it this way, maybe the less established generation, and the established guys because they were making you know, this is when Vegas started hitting, so these guys, it's like, yeah, Alan King was making, whatever, 15 grand a week or 20 grand a week and he was like, “why should I put my act out for $1.98?” It just didn't make any sense, not realizing the transformative power of like, oh, my God, we get to go to a nightclub here in our living room in Des Moines, but also the promotional value of those albums. So, there was a real divide about whether to put this stuff out or not.

John: So, would the analog be comedians today doing podcasts in order to build up their audience so when they do go on the...

Wayne: Very similar. Yes, that's a great analogy. Great analogy about stand ups and technology.

John: It's just a way to get your brand out there so that there is an audience when you show up in town.

Wayne: 100%. Yes. You got that.

John: At that point with Mort Sahl, he is a contemporary at that point with Lenny Bruce. They're running kind of on the same track, right?

Wayne: They're at the same time. Lenny Bruce is not as successful as Mort Sahl was at this time. Like you said, Mort Sahl started touring with a jazz band, the Dave Brubeck Trio or whatever that was and then he also got fame for kind of doing comedy in this new style, where as Lenny Bruce was still, he was playing strip clubs in Los Angeles. So, Lenny Bruce was primarily a Los Angeles act. It's a little later, while Mort Sahl was a little more famous. And Mort Sahl was really championed by local San Francisco writers at the papers and he just became a thing. It just became like, oh, you don't have to be in a tuxedo. You don't have to be doing mother-in-law jokes. You don't have to be doing any of these things that people would see in Vegas, like, oh, this is powerful, very powerful.

[Skit Audio]

John: That's a real shift from the Catskill comic where they were all named Jackie and they kind of trade routines  .

Wayne: Yes, there was. There was a number. There were some Mortys. There was some Buddys. It wasn't all Jackie's. But they all had that vibe, too. Yes.

John: I know at the beginning of Broadway Danny Rose when the comics are sitting in The Carnegie Deli and one of my favorite comics, Corbett Monica, talking and he's telling about a joke that he tells that died the other night.

[Skit Audio]

John: And there was this understanding, I thought, that the jokes were kind of interchangeable and you would—like a magician nowadays, if the two magicians are on the same show, they'll talk beforehand about we don't want to overlap tricks—and comics, I thought they used to have that same sort of discussion. They're both on the bill, so I'm going to do this some of you that you're not going to do this. Was it true that they just sort of traded stuff back and forth and it wasn't that personal comedy that Mort Sahl sort of...

Wayne: First, I get that as a general rule that is absolutely correct. That is absolutely correct. There were a number of Catskill comedians that did share material and it was all kind of the same persona. Like, I don't know if it was Morty Gunty or was that different than Corbett Monica, or Freddie Roman or all of those guys.

Yeah, but looking back, I feel like that's a little bit of a generalization, because certainly, there were comedians that were very creative. Like, there was a radio comedian called Fred Allen, who had a very popular show, and his act was not at all interchangeable with what Jack Benny was doing on stage, or even with Bob Hope was doing, or even what there was a comedian named Jean Carroll, who worked in New York City, even what she was doing or what Moms Mabley was doing. So, I think it's a little bit of a misnomer that every comedian before Mort Sahl an interchangeable act, wore a jacket and did mother-in-law jokes. But that did exist.

John: Getting back to Bob Newhart, I remember you talking on the podcast, that when he recorded his first album, that was the first time he had worked in a nightclub, is that right?

Wayne: That is correct.

John: But up until that point, he had just been, I mean, he must have been doing it.

Wayne: He was doing it but it was more he was doing it with his radio buddies. So, these were like little radio skits they would do or he would do when it's friend’s local radio show in Chicago. So, there were recordings of it that that guy sent to, I think it was Warner Brothers Records and they were like, yeah, oh, look, Mort Sahl has this hit album recorded at this little room. And then Shelley Berman based on Mort Sahl's recommendation, he has this crazy hit album also. You know, those are both on Verve Records, which was kind of a jazz label and Warner Brothers like, “we're a big company, let's get on this. Let's jump on this bandwagon.”

And so it was just a perfect timing and they sent him down to Houston, Texas to a place called The Tidelands and it's incredible, because he wasn't even, he wasn't the headliner. He was like opening for a singer or something. It's almost, it's mind blowing, because the whole thing about stand-up comedy, at least when I was starting was, “oh, it's gonna take you five years just to find your voice or find your own point of view or your own rhythm,” and now here was this guy right out of the gate recording an album that dominates the charts in such a powerful way that album wins the Record of the Year, beating out like Frank Sinatra, beating out the music acts, that's how big that album was.

[Skit Audio]

Wayne: Can I also tell you a little bit of trivia? I mean, I know you know it from the podcast but not only does that album win the Record of the year and Bob Newhart wins Best New Artist. But the album was so popular that he rushed out another album, The Buttoned-Down Mind Strikes Back, and that album won Best Comedy Album the same year. There's been nothing close to it. The only thing close was like when Chappelle put out four Netflix specials in one year, like there would have been nothing like that.

John: And that's the second album is pretty darn good.

Wayne: It is good. It is pretty good.

John: Maybe another one that I'm gonna pull up that I know Harry would have opened for would be a guy named Woody Woodbury.

Wayne: Yes, out of Florida.

John: I found a number of his albums.

Wayne : They were huge sellers. I feel like he straddled the world between the party record and the traditional comedy record. Would you agree with that?

John: I would totally agree that yes, absolutely agree. That was his market.

Wayne: He has his own television show as well. He had a talk show that was sort of based on The Tonight Show a little bit like that version. And, he was definitely a huge player in early 60s stand-up comedy album boom.

[Skit Audio]

John: In the early 60s, you got Ed Sullivan’s Toast of the Town, The Ed Sullivan Show, right? How did the Ed Sullivan show help stand-up comics, and did their albums get them on The Ed Sullivan Show? Was there any connection between the two?

Wayne: Ed Sullivan is really important in the history of the stand-up comedian because he had this very popular show on Sunday night at eight o'clock on CBS. There was this family show that was—despite his limitations as a host and as a personality—it was beloved by the United States. He loved stand-up comics and almost every show had at least one sometimes two, sometimes two comics and a ventriloquist. There there was a lot of work for stand-up comedians, and this was the first time like you really saw a stand-up kind of doing their act, even though it was in obviously this theater, so it's not quite in the nightclub. But you would see that and it definitely helped comedians gets bookings in like Miami Beach or the Catskill Mountains or in New York at these big theaters that were called presentation houses. That's like the Roxy or Lowe's or The Paramount. These are big multi thousand seat theaters.

 Yeah, so Sullivan was the nightclub comic’s dream booking. And then when the album's came along, and he this is an interesting, like, again, there was a generational divide we talked about earlier. This is really where it hit because these new wave comedians, they call it, they despite them being a little more intellectual than the Catskill guys that they were still trying to get on Ed Sullivan Show. So, they would use an album to get there as opposed to a booking at let's say, the Latin Quarter or the Copa or so wherever, you know, Sullivan and his talent bookers would hang out in New York. So, yeah, he had all those guys all on. Now, I know a lot of comedians didn't like doing that show because right before they would go on, they would be like, oh, you can only do four tonight as opposed to the seven. It usually was a cutting situation. It's interesting.

John: What was the first comedy stand-up album that you ever got?

Wayne: It certainly wasn't The Bob Newhart. It wasn't any of those because I'm a little younger. I believe it was an album called Bill Cosby Is A Very Funny Fella, Right? Yes, Noah was his big breakout thing and I guess he had just done the Tonight Show and yes, I had that album as a kid. But it was more of the family had the album and I listened to it. But I do remember my uncle had an early Jackie Mason album that like, I'm the greatest comedian in the world or something like that, like, so I heard that as well. But Bill Cosby was very big in my house. So, it's hard to talk about him now because he's in jail.

John: So, a couple more personal questions...

Wayne: Anything! You got me. I'm here.

John: A favorite album or performer from that era of 60s and 70s.

Wayne: I really liked those George Carlin albums, but I have to say I felt there was a rerelease of Woody Allen's three Copix albums. I didn't have any of those that was just called The Nightclub Years. Yeah, that was I would say that was the main one that I was like, oh, this is insanely good. I really liked those Carlin albums. I even listened to those Richard Pryor ones that had the N word in the title. So thank you for asking. Yes, I would say those are the albums that I really fascinated me, but I listened to the you know, oh, let me give me another one. I thought the there was a Flip Wilson album that I also enjoyed very much that had the ugly baby routine on it.

John: Geraldine was on it, too?

Wayne: I think he'd be. I mean, he would always do a Geraldine type voice. There was a routine I remember used to do about Christopher Columbus and so Queen, the Queen of Spanish, Queen Isabel, that was in the Geraldine voice. It was that voice, but it was so great.

[Skit Audio]

Wayne: Can we go back really quickly?

John: Sure.

Wayne: Remember, I said that I love that Woody Allen album and that Shelley Berman album obviously albums were incredible. Those were all because those guys had seen more Mort Sahl perform and were like, “oh, I could do this is possible and stand up like this level of an intimate, not hyper performative style.” So, both of those guys were inspired to get into the stand-up game because of Mort Sahl.

Episode 112: Writer/Director Nicholas Meyer on Houdini, Star Trek, Sherlock Holmes, Time After Time and more…

This week on the blog, a podcast interview with writer/director Nicholas Meyer about his work on the Adrian Brody “Houdini” mini-series, as well as thoughts on Sherlock Holmes, Star Trek, Time After Time and more.

LINKS

A Free Film Book for You:  https://dl.bookfunnel.com/cq23xyyt12

Another Free Film Book:  https://dl.bookfunnel.com/x3jn3emga6

Fast, Cheap Film Website: https://www.fastcheapfilm.com/

Behind the Page Nicholas Meyer Interview Part One:  https://tinyurl.com/3f7mbzer

Behind the Page Nicholas Meyer Interview Part Two:  https://tinyurl.com/ms3tm45f

Nicholas Meyer website:  https://www.nicholas-meyer.com/

Eli Marks Website:  https://www.elimarksmysteries.com/

Albert’s Bridge Books Website:  https://www.albertsbridgebooks.com/

YouTube Channel:  https://www.youtube.com/c/BehindthePageTheEliMarksPodcast

Dying to make a feature? Learn from the pros!

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

★★★★★

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

• Jonathan Demme: The value of cameos

• John Sayles: Writing to your resources

• Peter Bogdanovich: Long, continuous takes

• John Cassavetes: Re-Shoots

• Steven Soderbergh: Rehearsals

• George Romero: Casting

• Kevin Smith: Skipping film school

• Jon Favreau: Creating an emotional connection

• Richard Linklater: Poverty breeds creativity

• David Lynch: Kill your darlings

• Ron Howard: Pre-production planning

• John Carpenter: Going low-tech

• Robert Rodriguez: Sound thinking

And more!

Write Your Screenplay with the Help of Top Screenwriters!

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

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

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

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

The book covers (among other topics):

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Roger Nygard (“Suckers”) on mixing genres

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

 Nicholas Meyer – Transcript

John Gaspard: Do you remember what it was that caused your dad to write that book?

Nicholas Meyer: I know something about it. He was interested, the subjects that kind of absorbed his attention were the sons of passive or absent fathers. This was a topic which probably originated from his experiences with his own father, my grandfather, who was a very interesting man and a kind of a world beater, but who spent so much of his time doing what they said in The Wizard of Oz—being a philip, philip, philip, a good deed doer—that he didn't have enough time for fathering. He was not a bad man at all, quite a conscientious one. But the parenting was left to his wife and I think my father missed and was affected by not having an involved father. And I think that a colleague of my dad's said to him Houdini, that's the guy for you. And that's how he did it. I'm only sorry that he didn't live to see the two-night television series based on his book.

Jim Cunningham: I enjoyed it immensely as a Houdini fan. It was fascinating and fun and Adrian Brody is terrific, as is the woman who plays Bess. I thought I knew a lot about Houdini and there was a lot in there that I did not know. And I really enjoyed the opening to it, which suggests that it's all fact and all fiction, and it's our job to figure out which is which. How did you come to being involved with the TV mini-series about your dad's book?

Nicholas Meyer: I have been friends and worked for many years with a television producer named Jerry Abrams. I started working with Jerry in 1973 with the first teleplay that I wrote was for a television movie called Judge Dee in the Haunted Monastery. There was a—China apparently invented everything first, including detective stories—and a circuit court judge in the seventh century, Judge Dee Jen Jay, solved mysteries and people wrote detective stories about him and now there are movies about him.

But back in 1972, or something like that, and I had just come to Hollywood and was looking for work and didn't know anybody. And I met Jerry Abrams and I met a director named Jeremy Kagan and I'm happy to say both of these gentlemen are alive and still my friends. They gave me a shot to write this Judge Dee in the Haunted Monastery because I think ABC thought they were going to get a Kung Fu movie out of it, which it wasn't. But it was a television movie with an all Asian cast. The monastery in question was the old Camelot castle on the Warner Brothers lot and that's where I met Jerry. And Jerry and I've been friends ever since. Jerry’s son is JJ Abrams, who directs movies.

Anyway, Jerry said to me a couple of years ago, let's do Houdini and I said, Oh, funny, you should say that because my dad wrote a very interesting book about Houdini. I would be interested if it were based on his book. I would only be interested and that's how it got made.

John Gaspard: What was your process? Did you know it would be two nights going in? Did you know it's going to be that long? How did you get started and what other resources did you use, because I know there's stuff mentioned in the movie that I don't remember being in your dad's books. You must have had to dig a little bit.

Nicholas Meyer: There's a lot of books about Houdini, that I read many, many books, because my dad's book is distinguished—if one could call it that—by being the only book of all the books about Houdini that attempts some inner explanation of his psychological process. The why? Why would you do this? Why do you feel the need to do this? Other books will tell you what Houdini did, and some will tell you how he did it. But my dad's book, as I say, it kind of explores the why of it.

And so I read these other books to supplement the rest of the how and the why and I've amassed quite a large Houdini library. When I say large, probably compared to yours not so much, but I must have like 10 books about Houdini and flying aeroplanes and Houdini and Arthur Conan Doyle and spiritualism and so forth. So, yes, I read all those to supplement what I was trying to condense.

I don't remember whether at this point whether it was proposed as two nights or three nights or whatever. I also know that if it hadn't been for Adrian Brody agreeing to play Houdini, it never would have happened. They weren't going to do it without a star.

Jim Cunningham: He's great.

John Gaspard: I was telling Jim earlier, before you got on, that my wife was kind enough to sit down and watch it with me. She's always worried in things like this, that she’s going see how something's done. She doesn't want to know how magic is done at all. And when we got to the end, she said, “Houdini seems so nice. He's such a likeable guy.” And I think that's really more Adrian Brody.

Nicholas Meyer: Oh, yeah. The Adrian Brody. As I say, the movie would not have got made without Adrian. I'm not sure that he wasn't to a large degree cast against type. I think Houdini was a guy with ants in his pants, a kind of frenetic character. And I don't think when you read about him in any detail, that he was what you'd call nice. I think he was a person who had a lot of charm that he could switch on and off like a tap.

And I think this is one of the things that my dad's book brings out, and we tried to bring it out in the movie: that Houdini's whose own father was a failure of flop and absent parent. So, I think Houdini spent a lot of his life looking for substitutes or alternative father figures. And I think the first one he probably stumbled on was the French magician Robert-Houdin, from whom he took his name. And I think Houdini's pattern, at least according to my dad's reading of it, was to find father figures and fall hard for them, only to ultimately become disenchanted and alienated and furious with them. Probably, because ultimately, they weren't his real father. But I think there was something like that going on.

John Gaspard: Yes, it's pretty clear that's what happened with Doyle as well.

Nicholas Meyer: Yes, but he had better reason than in some other cases to be disenchanted with Doyle because Doyle's Atlantic City séance with Lady Doyle, Houdini ultimately regarded as a real betrayal. Because he decided, probably correctly, that the contact with his mother via Lady Doyle doing spirit writing was fake.

And by the way, it's not that Mrs. Doyle or Lady Doyle might not have believed what she was doing. It just didn't track for two reasons: Houdini experienced this contact with his mother, and he was as obsessed with her as he was with the fact of an absent father. And he was so overcome when she spoke to him via the spirit writing that it was a couple of days before he realized that his mother didn't speak a word of English. And she had communicated via lady Doyle in English, she only spoke Yiddish. Doyle got around this difficulty by explaining that the medium in this case, Lady Doyle, worked as a kind of simultaneous translator.

And Houdini said, yeah, but—and this was the second item—it was his birthday. And she never mentioned it and she always sent him something on his birthday. And he then denounced Doyle and Lady Doyle, as quote, menaces to mankind.

John Gaspard: So, were you involved in a day-to-day way with production? And I'm wondering why you didn't direct it?

Nicholas Meyer: I was involved. The whole movie was shot in Budapest, everything and I was involved. I was not invited to direct. I have not directed really since the death of my wife in 1993. I had two small children to raise and by the time it was, like, possible for me to go back since they are now grown up and busy. I was sort of out of a game.

John Gaspard: Oh, that's too bad. You're a terrific director.

Nicholas Meyer: I'm not arguing with you.

John Gaspard: So, once you were scripting it, and you were using other sources, how concerned were you about this is fact, this is fiction?

Nicholas Meyer: That's a very good question and it doesn't just apply to Houdini. It applies largely to the whole issue of dramatizing the stories based on real events.

And by the way, you could make the case in a way that there's no such thing as fiction; that all fiction ultimately can be traced back to something real. I'll give you two examples off the top of my head: one, Moby Dick was based on a real Whale called Mocha Dick because of his color; and, as Heinrich Schliemann proved, when he discovered Troy, most legends, most myths have their origins somewhere in the mists of time, in some kind of reality. It turns out there was a place called Troy. So, he was not far off the mark.

It's a knotty question with a “k” how much we owe to fact and how much we get to mush around and dramatize? And the answer has to be inevitably elastic. The problem is that people are neither taught, nor do they read history anymore. We are not taught civics. We are not taught history.

Nobody knows anything and so by default, movies and television are where we get our history, and that history is not always truthful. It is dramatized for example, in that Academy Award winning movie, The Deer Hunter, we learn that the North Vietnamese made American prisoners of war in Vietnam, play Russian roulette. There is no evidence, no historical evidence that they ever did any such thing. And yet, if you're getting your history from the movies, that's what you see and someone said that seeing is believing. In any case, you have to sort of always be looking over your own shoulder when you are dramatizing history and realizing that, yes, you can tell a story with scope, dates and characters. But what's the point where you cross a line and start inventing things out of whole cloth?

I’ll give you another example: was Richard the Third really the monster that Shakespeare portrays? Now, remember, Shakespeare is writing for the granddaughter of the man who killed Richard the Third and usurped his throne and called himself king. You could make a very different case that that guy was a scumbag and that Richard was not, but you know, Shakespeare was in business. The Globe Theatre was a money-making operation and Henry the Seventh’s granddaughter was the Queen of England. So, there are a lot of variables here.

When you sit down to dramatize, I've worked for the History Channel and I can tell you the history channel will not make a movie where Americans look bad. The History Channel will not make a movie that questions any point in our own history. Our right to the moral high ground. It's a point of view and they have a demographic and Americans don't want to be shown any of their own flaws or asked to think about them.

Jim Cunningham; Well, who does? Can I ask questions about the espionage? Part of what I witnessed last night, although I had sort of a vague memory, that there is some espionage connection or perhaps connection? In the first episode that he was working for at least the American government and perhaps the English government as well. Is there evidence for that?

Nicholas Meyer: Circumstantial evidence.

Jim Cunningham: Yes, and I suppose that it could still be even at this late date protected in some way in terms of, I don't know them, not admitting, or maybe no real hard evidence exists anymore, right?

Nicholas Meyer: I'm more inclined to think that no real hard evidence exists. Although we all know that somebody said, truth is the daughter of time. But a lot of evidence has for a lot of things, not merely in this country, but also England has been redacted and eliminated and buried. You know, how many of your listeners know the story of Alan Turing?

Alan Turing may have shortened World War Two by as much as two years by inventing the computer that helped break the German Enigma code. Alan Turing signed the Official Secrets Act which meant that his wartime work could never be revealed. Alan Turing was gay. After the war was over, Alan Turing was arrested on a morals and decency charge and he could not tell the world who he was and so he was sentenced to some kind of chemical castration, I believe and he killed himself.

And all of this remained a secret for the next 55 years before the world's, you know, learned and suddenly there was a play called Breaking the Code and then there was the Enigma novel by Robert Harris and then there was the movie, which is very inaccurate, and very troublesome to me, The Imitation Game. Because in The Imitation Game, the first thing he does when he's arrested, is tell the cop who he is. With a crushing irony, as well as inaccuracy, is it there's no way he was allowed to tell. That was the price you pay when you sign the Official Secrets Act. So that movie kind of bugged me.

Whereas for example, Enigma, which I think is one of my favorite movies, doesn't bug me at all because it doesn't call him Alan Turing and therefore, he's not gay, and it's a different story entirely spun out of inspired by, but not pretending to be Alan Turing.

Jim Cunningham: Well, now I'm gonna have to watch that movie because I don't think I've seen it.

Nicholas Meyer: You never saw Enigma?

Jim Cunningham: I don't believe I saw Enigma.

Nicholas Meyer: It's the only movie produced by Mick Jagger and Lorne Michaels, written by Tom Stoppard. Kate Winslet, Dougray, Scott, Jeremy Northam. Anyway, it's a fantastic movie, but you have to watch it like five times in order to understand everything that's going on because Tom Stoppard is not going to make it easy.

John Gaspard: Just a quick side note here. I remember reading somewhere that Mick Jagger was a possible first choice for Time After Time.

Nicholas Meyer: Yeah, for Jack the Ripper.

John Gaspard: Okay, interesting. I prefer the choice you came up with.

Nicholas Meyer:  Well, when they—Warner Brothers—were trying to sort of figure out how to make this movie, quote, commercial (they were so surprised when it was a hit), they suggested Mick Jagger as Jack the Ripper. And he was in LA at the time touring and I really didn't understand the politics of not just filmmaking, but you know, sort of office politics generally. And my first reply was no, you know, you might believe him as the Ripper, but you'd never believe him—or I didn't think you would believe him—as a Harley Street surgeon. And they said, You mean you won't even meet him? And that's when I said, oh, okay, I get it. I have to agree to meet. So I met him and then I said, fellas, I still don't, you know, think this can work. And so we went on to David Warner.

Jim Cunningham: I think that was the first film I became aware of David Warner and of course, it colored my opinion of David Warner for everything I've seen him in since, including him as Bob Cratchit in a version of A Christmas Carol. I kept thinking to myself, don't turn your back on him. He's a killer. He's a stone-cold killer, because of Time After Time, which is still one of my favorite movies.

Nicholas Meyer: Oh, thank you so much.

John Gaspard: We promised not to geek out too much. But I have to tell you that the hotel room scene between him and McDowell, I still pull up once or twice a year to look at the writing and the acting in that scene. “You're literally the last person on Earth expected to see.” They're both so good in that scene.

Nicholas Meyer: They are that, they are.

John Gaspard: I think you mentioned in your memoir in passing that when you did The 7% Solutionthere was some back and forth with the Doyle estate. We—Jim and I—have a friend, Jeff Hatcher, who wrote the screenplay for Mr. Holmes, which is based on a book. Once the movie came out, it did run into some issues with the Doyle estate, because the writer had taken some characteristics of Holmes from the later books …

Nicholas Meyer: It's all bullshit. All that is bullshit. The Doyle estate, which was once the richest literary estate in the world, was run into the ground by his descendants and their in laws and they don't care anything about Sherlock Holmes. All they care about is money. And what they try to do is to stick up movie companies and book companies and say you've got to pay. And back when Holmes legitimately fell into copyright, which is when I wrote The 7% Solution, yes, I had to pay and I understood that. I mean, I didn't understand it when I wrote the book because I was a kid. But I understood it when it was explained to me.

What since happened is they continue, even though he's out of copyright, to try to pretend that he is or that one or two stories are etc. My friend, Les Clinger, who is a business manager but also happens to be a lawyer and a Holmes’ enthusiast, took the estate to court and won. He broke that bullshit stranglehold that they were trying to exercise on anybody who wanted to write or create or make a movie about Holmes.

Now, it's also true that big companies like Warner Brothers, or Paramount or something, if they make a Sherlock Holmes movie, and the Doyle estate comes sniffling to their door, find it cheaper to say, here's $10,000, Go away, than it is to bother to do what Les did, which was take them to court. It's just, it's blackmail, you've all seen the Godfather, you know, give me a little something to wet my beak is what this is all about. I have nothing good to say about them and what they did with Mr. Holmes, your friend's movie, was they waited until the movie was about to come out before they hit him.

John Gaspard: Jim, I should mention, you probably don't know this, that and this is the truth, the man we're talking to is the man for whom the thing at the beginning of a DVD that says the opinions expressed here are not those of this company. He's the reason that's on DVDs.

Jim Cunningham: Is that right?

Nicholas Meyer: Yes, I will explain because I'm very proud of it.

I've made a couple of contributions to civilization. One of them is the movie The Day After, it's my nuclear war movie. And the other is this little sign. And it happened when they were preparing the DVD release of Star Trek Two: the Wrath of Khan. I was interviewed and asked to explain my contributions to the making the movie, the script, the directing, etc. So, I told the story about how I came to write the script. And the DVD lady who subsequently became a very good friend of mine said, “Gee, the lawyers say we can't use any of what you told us.” And I said, “And why is that?” And she said, Paramount was worried about getting in trouble with the Writers Guild, because you are not credited as the author and you wrote this sort of under the table, the script. And I said, Well, why don't you just take me out of the whole DVD? Because if I can't tell the truth about it, I don't want to be in it.

And she said, “That's what I hoped you would say. Now, I've got some ammo.” So, she went back and she came back and she said, okay, here's the deal. And the deal now applies to every studio. “The opinions expressed in this interview, are not those of Paramount Pictures, its employees or affiliates.”

What this does is it stops those interviews from being bullshit puff pieces and allows them to become oral histories. Now, different people may have different oral histories of the same thing. You put them all on the DVD, but suddenly, you've opened up a whole world to telling things that really happened or that the tellers think really happened, or are their opinions without the studio, worried that they're going to be sued, because of that little disclaimer. And they all have that now and that's my contribution.

Jim Cunningham: It's great. Now, I promised John before this interview that I would not talk Star Trekwith you, but since you've opened the door a little bit here. Now, that you say that you wrote Wrath of Khan under the table, can you just flesh that out for me? It might not ever be in the podcast, but I'm an incredible Star Trek fan. So, I'm interested in this story.

Nicholas Meyer: Well, very quickly, I knew nothing about Star Trek when I met Harve Bennett, the producer of what was going to be the second Star Trek movie. He showed me the first movie. He showed me some of the episodes and I got kind of a jones to make an outer space, a space opera. And I realized once I started to familiarize myself with Captain Kirk that he reminded me of Captain Hornblower, which were the books by CS Forester that I read when I was a kid, about a captain in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars, who had adventures and a girl in every port, which sounded good to me. I was 12. I think it was 13 or something and so I thought, “Oh, this is Hornblower and outer space. This is destroyers. This is submarines.”

So, I made a deal with Paramount and Harve Bennett to direct a Star Trek movie for them, which was going to be their second movie. And Harve said, draft five of the script is coming in. So, I went home and waited for draft five. And, you know, I looked up and it was three or four weeks later and wondered whatever happened, because I was starting to think about spaceships and stuff like that. And he said, “Oh, I can't send you the script. It's not good. I can't.” I said, “Well, what about draft four, draft three, whatever?” And he said, “You don't understand. All these different drafts are simply separate attempts to get another Star Trek movie. They're unrelated.”

And I said, “Well send them all to me. I want to read them.” And he said, “Really?” I said, “Yeah.”

And in those days, you didn't hit Send. A truck, drove up, a van, and it had a lot of scripts. And I'm a very slow reader and I started. I read all these scripts and then I said, “Why don't you and your producing partner, Robert Salem, come up to my house and let's have a chat about this because I have an idea.” And so they showed up, and I had my ubiquitous legal pad and I said, “Why don't we make a list of everything we like in these five scripts? It could be a major plot. It could be a subplot. It could be a sequence. It could be a scene. It could be a character, it could be a line of dialogue, I don't care. Let's just make the list and then I'll try to write a new screenplay that incorporates as many of these elements as we pick.” And they didn't look happy and I thought, I don't get a lot of ideas. This was my idea and I said, “What’s wrong? What's wrong with that?”

And they said, “Well, the problem is that if we don't have a screenplay within 12 days, Industrial Light and Magic, the special effects house for the movie, say they can't deliver the shots in time for the June opening.” And I said, “What June opening? “And I only directed one movie in my life, and these guys had booked the theatres for a movie that didn't exist. And I said, “Well, okay, I'll try to do this in 12 days, but we got to pick the stuff now.”

And they still weren't happy. And I said, “So, what is it? What's the problem?” And they said, “Well, you know, let's be honest, we couldn't even make your deal in 12 days.” And at this point, I was like, foaming at the mouth. I said, “Look, guys, forget the deal. Forget the money. Forget the credit. I'm not talking about directing. We've already got that signed, sealed and delivered. But if we don't do this, now, there's gonna be no movie, yes or no?”

And I was an idiot, because I at that point gave away you know, what turned out to be significant. So, I didn't invent Kirk meets his son. I didn't invent Khan. I didn't invent Savak. I didn't invent the Genesis Planet. I didn't invent any of those things. I just took them and played with them like a Rubik's Cube and poured my, essentially it's all my dialogue, Harve wrote a few lines, but I wrote most of it.

John Gaspard: Well, it certainly worked.

Jim Cunningham: Oh, boy. Yeah, absolutely. And I will not bring up The Undiscovered Countrybecause I promised John I wouldn't. The 7% Solution is very interesting. You took one thing, and you extrapolated out from that an entire kind of reality about Holmes that had not been explored. And it's similar to kind of what your father did with Houdini. And did that ever occur to you that there was there's a similarity there somehow?

Nicholas Meyer: Well, I did 7% before he did Houdini.

Jim Cunningham: He owes you then.

Nicholas Meyer:  Oh, yeah. He does. It's interesting. I was not the first person to put together Holmes and Freud. In fact, Freud knew that he'd been compared to Holmes. Freud loved to read Sherlock Holmes stories. That was his bedtime reading and at some point, he even wrote in one of his case histories, “I follow the labyrinth of her mind, Sherlock Holmes-like until it led me to…” So he knew about this comparison.

And there was a doctor at Yale, a famous psychiatrist/drug expert, who wrote a paper that my father gave me to read about Holmes, Freud and the cocaine connection. Because Holmes is a cocaine user and for a time, so was Freud. And when my book came out and was the number one best-selling novel in the United States for 40 weeks, I got sued by this doctor at Yale for plagiarism. This is like the first successful thing I'd ever done in my life and this guy was saying I ripped him off. Because he was probably walking across campus and people were saying, “Hey, doc, hey, professor, that guy in the New York Times you ripped you off.”

So, I got sued. This is how you know you're hot is when you get sued. But it was devastating to me. It was devastating and it was expensive, because I had to defend myself. I had a lawyer and the lawyer said, “They have no case. We will ask for something called summary judgment.” And I said, “Does that mean we have to wait till July?” And he goes, no, no, no, it's not about that x couldn't resist summary judgment. Yeah, that happened in the summertime.

Summary judgment turns out to mean that the facts of the case are not in dispute. No one can dispute that I read his essay. I put it in my acknowledgments. I thanked him. I read it. The question is, what is the definition of plagiarism? It turns out, you cannot copyright an idea. You can only copyright the expression of an idea. The words. I hadn't used his words. I haven't used any of his. I didn't write an academic paper. I wrote a novel. I wrote a story. So, I won and then he appealed and I won again, end of story.

So, it didn't originate with me, nothing originates with me. Moby Dick was based on another whale. Emma Bovary was a real person, on and on and on.

If you read the history or a biography, you understand that in good faith, efforts have been made to lay out the facts. But when you read a historical novel, you understand that the facts have been mushed around and dramatized, that the author has assumed the dramatist’s privilege, his prerogative, to help things along.

There's an Italian phrase, se non è vero, è ben trovato. If it didn't happen that way, it should have.

I’ll give you another example: Queen Elizabeth the first and her cousin and rival Mary Queen of Scots, whom Elizabeth subsequently had beheaded, never met in real life. They'd never met. But of all the 4,622 movies, plays, operas, novellas, ballets, whatever that are, they always meet.

Because it ain't cool if they don't meet.

John Gaspard: It's a better story.

Nicholas Meyer: It's a better story.

Episode 111: A Couple of Grouchos Sitting Around Chatting

This week on the blog, a podcast interview with Noah Diamond and Jim Cunningham, talking about the pleasures and perils of playing Groucho Marx.

LINKS

A Free Film Book for You:  https://dl.bookfunnel.com/cq23xyyt12

Another Free Film Book:  https://dl.bookfunnel.com/x3jn3emga6

Fast, Cheap Film Website: https://www.fastcheapfilm.com/

Noah Diamond website:  https://www.noahdiamond.com/

“Gimme a Thrill: The Story Of "I'll Say She Is," The Lost Marx Brothers Musical” -- https://tinyurl.com/28ftau5e

Eli Marks Website:  https://www.elimarksmysteries.com/

Albert’s Bridge Books Website:  https://www.albertsbridgebooks.com/

YouTube Channel:  https://www.youtube.com/c/BehindthePageTheEliMarksPodcast

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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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Noah Diamond Transcript

JOHN

Let's go back to the beginning. We'll start with Noah and then go to Jim. What's your earliest memory of Groucho Marx or the Marx Brothers?

NOAH

Well, for me, it started in a kind of roundabout way, when I was a very little kid. Before I could even read, I was really interested in books. And I had my collection of Dr. Seuss, and all the books that would be read to me. But what I really liked to do was go downstairs where my parents had, in the living room, bookshelves lining the walls. And their books were really interesting to me. I just knew there were secrets there, you know?

They had like big art books and books of poetry and maybe my first experiences with words were looking at the spines of the books in the living room. And one of the books they happen to have was then fairly recent book, Joe Adamson's Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Sometimes Zeppo, which is, I think most Marx Brothers fans would say it's the best loved book about them, certainly and I think the best written.

That book came out in 1973. So, it's 50 years old this year and for some reason, as a tiny kid, that was a book that I took off the shelf. It was interesting that it had silver lettering on the spine and little icons, a harp, and what I would come later to recognize as a Chico hat. “Oh, look, this is interesting.” And I started looking through it, and I saw all these pictures. And the photographs of the Marx Brothers were just something to grapple with and it seemed a little familiar to me. My world was the Muppets and Dr. Seuss and Maurice Sendak. The Marx Brothers appeared in these photographs, like there was some continuity there and I also found them a little scary. Groucho in particular, that's quite a face for a child to reckon with.

So, that was a book that I looked at a lot when I was just little more than a baby. I wouldn't really see the Marx Brothers in their movies until I was 12. Partly that's because, I'm just old enough to have had a childhood where it wasn't so easy to find old movies. And I sort of had to wait for home video to come along. And when it first came along, it's not like all 13 Marx brothers’ movies were at the local Blockbuster.

It was that that journey, that constant searching for things that characterized life in the analog world. So, it was very gradual in between those two times.

Rather than blow your whole episode on this answer: in between the very little boy looking at pictures in Joe Adamson's book, and the 12-year-old finally, like seeing Duck Soup, and a Night at the Opera on video, there were many years where the Marx Brothers always seemed to be right around the corner. I would encounter them in Mad Magazine, or adults I knew might refer to them. And I sort of came to understand that the nose and moustache and glasses had something to do with Groucho. I was aware of them as a kind of vapor increasingly during those, I guess, nine or ten years between discovering the book and seeing the films.

JOHN

Jim, how about you? Where did you first encounter them?

JIM

I was an enormous and still am a Laurel and Hardy fan. There was a local television show here in the Twin Cities where I live on Sunday mornings, hosted by a former television child's television host named John Gallos who played Clancy the Cop. And so I came to the Marx Brothers, kind of grudgingly because I was such an enormous and still am Laurel and Hardy fan, that I poo pooed the Marx Brothers for many, many years. I started watching Laurel and Hardy as a little kid. I mean, 7, 8, 9 years old. Every Sunday morning, I would rush home from church and plop down in front of the TV to watch Laurel and Hardy. They were sort of my comedic touchstones, if you will. And then the Marx Brothers were kind of off to the side for me. And I went to the Uptown Theater, John, here in the Minneapolis area …

JOHN

You crossed the river from St. Paul and came to Minneapolis, you must have really been interested.

JIM

Oh, I only go across the river for work. This was a point where I was not working yet. And I saw a Night at the Opera and you know, was convulsed and then devoured everything I could get my hands on after that. The Marx Brothers were eye opening for me, just in terms of oh my gosh, this whole thing is so different. I was reading in your book that Frank Ferrante said “I was raised by Catholic nuns and I wanted to sort of do to the Catholic nuns would Groucho would do to Margaret Dumont.” And I was like, well, that's exactly right. Because I too was raised by Catholic nuns, and that sort of energy was really attractive to me as a sophomore in high school. And so I fell in love with them. And then, you know, anything I could get my hands on, I watched and read and loved them to this day. I still love Laurel and Hardy quite a bit too.

JOHN

Okay. Noah, this is just my own experience and I'm wondering if you guys have had the same thing: that entering the world of the Marx Brothers was actually a gateway to a whole bunch of other interesting stuff. I mean, you get into the Algonquin table, you get Benchley, and Perlman and into other plays of Kaufman. And you know, you're reading Moss Hart, and all sudden you look at the New Yorker, because, you know, he was there. I mean, did you find that it sort of was a spider web?

NOAH

No doubt about it. Yeah, that's very true. It’s learning about them biographically and the times they lived in, the circles they traveled in; and partly it's in order to understand the references in their films. That's one of the great things about sophisticated verbal comedy: it's an education, and particularly if you're a kid. So, yes, through comedy and show business in general and the Marx Brothers in particular, I learned, I hesitate to say this, but probably just about everything else I know from following tributaries from the Marx Brothers.

JOHN

Do you remember the first time you performed as Groucho?

NOAH

The first time I played Groucho in front of an audience was in a talent show, a school talent show in, I think seventh grade. I performed with my brother and sister as Harpo and Chico. They're both a little younger than me and by the time we became the Marx Brothers, they were so accustomed to involuntary service in my stock company. They were veterans by that time, they had done living room productions of Fiddler on the Roof where they had to play everyone but Tevya. And we did the contract routine from A Night at the Opera, with a little bit of Harpo stuff thrown in.

JOHN

Okay. Fantastic. Jim, how about you: first time as Groucho in front of an audience?

JIM

The first time in front of an audience as Groucho was really the first time I played Groucho. Just as I have a deep and abiding love and respect for the art of magic (and want to see it, want to read about it), I don't want to perform it. Because it is a thing in to its unto itself and if you do it poorly, it's horrible. So, I love to see it. I just don't love to perform it. And I felt the same way about Groucho.

So, I went kind of kicking and screaming, to a staged reading of The Coconuts that Illusion Theater did. We really just carried our scripts because there was just a couple three rehearsals, but we read the whole thing and sang some of the stuff that was in it. And then that morphed from there into an actual production of The Coconuts and we did it both at the illusion theater in Minneapolis, and then it moved to the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul. When the Marx Brothers performed there, I think it was called The World theatre. So, I love that kind of thing. I love standing where Wyatt Earp stood or standing where William Shakespeare stood. And so, to be doing a play that Groucho did on a stage that Groucho did it. I should have gotten out of the business right then. I should have said it, I've done it. What’s left?

JOHN

Excellent stories. Noah, have you ever done The Coconuts or Animal Crackers?

NOAH

I haven't done The Coconuts. I would love to. Animal Crackers …  One of the subsequent childhood Groucho appearances was when I was 14 years old. I had a relationship with this community theater. At this point, I was living in South Florida. I spent the first part of my life in Connecticut, and then lived in South Florida when I was a teenager and New York since I grew up. And this was in the Florida years. There was a local theater in a town called Coral Springs, it's not there anymore, but it was called Opus Playhouse. And it was a great place that helped me a lot and gave me a chance to put on shows and learn how to do things. And I just wanted to do Animal Crackers. So, I did a bootleg production completely unauthorized. I didn't even have the script. I just wrote the movie down line by line to have a script of Animal Crackers. And so I've sort of done it. But you know, I really shouldn't put that on my resume as I was 14 and...

JIM

It counts for me. Anybody who's willing, as a 14-year-old, to go line by line through a movie and write it down, you did the show in my book.

NOAH

That just shows the desperate measures we had to take in those days. There was no internet. Little kids writing down movies, you know?

JIM

Exactly.

JOHN

It's charming. It's absolutely charming. So, what is it Noah that draws you to play Groucho? What is it about that guy?

NOAH

Yeah, what is it? I know, it's funny. ‘What is it about Groucho’ is a question we can grapple with forever, even aside from the question of why try to be him? I think one thing that definitely true is that as soon as I saw the Marx Brothers and heard his voice and watched him moving around and interacting, the urge to be him, or at least to behave like him, was immediate. I mean, it was right there. Now, I was already a kid who was a little ham and a performer and would be inclined to find my role in anything, anyway.

But nothing, no character other than myself, ever grabbed me the way Groucho did or ever has, really. And I think part of it is what you mentioned, Jim, that Frank Ferrante has said, part of it is the instinct to rebel against authority. And that's unquestionably part of the Marx Brothers act, and a big part of the Marx Brothers appeal I think to kids.

But I think it's a little more like watching a great violin player and deciding you want to play the violin. It just seemed to me that, as far as embodying a character and getting laughs and singing songs, nobody ever did it like him. Nobody ever seemed to be speaking directly to my sense of humor and my sensibility. I just wanted to talk in that voice. I wanted to play that instrument.

JOHN

JIM, what about you?

JIM

Nothing. Really, truthfully, I did not want to do it. I still don't want to do it. But I would do it again tomorrow, if somebody asked.

I think trying to find your way to entertain an audience through somebody else is tricky for me. I'm better at playing me than I am at playing anybody else. And so the desire to play Groucho, I have sort of put it inside me, and I have an eye on it all the time. I use Groucho’s sensibility without the grease paint, and I'd like to believe that I do. I'm certainly not in Groucho’s league.

Laurence Olivier said it: steal from everybody, and no one will know. And so I have, but the desire to put on the grease paint and wear the frock coat is akin to me saying, I want to do a magic show. I just I love to go to a magic show. I love to watch a Marx Brothers movie. But I'm really kicking and screaming to play him again, because the mantle is so huge and heavy and I don't think that I'm particularly serviceable as Groucho

It wasn't until we were halfway through the run of The Coconuts when a light bulb went off in the dressing room, while I was putting on the makeup: there's a difference between being faithful to the script of The Coconuts and what we learned, and being faithful to the Marx Brothers sensibilities, if that makes sense. There's the letter of the law versus the spirit of the law.

About halfway through that run, I started doing things that I felt were more attune to the spirit of the Marx Brothers, then the letter of the script. So, I was calling other actors onto the stage. I was going out into the audience, I took a guy out and put him in a cab one night. That sort of anarchy that people talk about when you read about the Marx Brothers in their heyday, about Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin in their heyday: I don't know what's going to happen and I want to be there because of that.

And for all I know, it was the exact same show night after night after night, and they just gave the impression that it was crazy. But that idea for me still percolates. This the idea of, am I creating a museum piece or am I trying to, in some way, channel that anarchy for an audience? The other show that I do that has some relevance here is we do a production of It's a Wonderful Life, at Christmas time, as a live radio play. And that too: what am I doing? Are we trying to capture the movie or are we creating something different? So, finding that sort of craziness is what I was most intrigued by and still am.

NOAH

There's not a lot of roles like that. If you're playing one of the Marx Brothers in Coconuts or Animal Crackers, or I'll Say She Is, it's not the same as playing Groucho Marx in a biographical piece about his life. Nor is it like playing Sherlock Holmes, a very familiar character, where there is room to make it your own. I suppose people have done that with Groucho, too. But generally, if you're in a production of one of the Marx Brothers shows, the assignment is to try to make the audience feel like, if they squint, maybe they're watching the Marx Brothers.

JOHN

Noah, when you tackled the formidable and important task of recreating, resurrecting, bringing back to life, I'll Say She Is, were you having that same sort of thing Jim was talking about? Balancing the reality of what may have happened against you don't really know for sure and the spirit of it? How did you approach it? But first, why did you pick that show? And then how did you bring it back to life?

JIM

Can I back up? Because the three of us at this table are enormous Marx Brothers fans. So, if you say I'll Say She Is, we have a frame of reference. But people listening to this may go, ‘what the hell is I'll Say She Is?’ So, can you start with that? Can you start with what is I'll Say She Is and how did you come to it, because I think for the layman who's not a huge Marx Brothers fan, they don't even know what we're talking about.

NOAH

Yes, absolutely. In a nutshell, the Marx Brothers, although primarily remembered for their movies, were already halfway through their career by the time they ever made a film. Most of their lives were spent on stage. They had a long period in vaudeville, and then in the 20s, they became Broadway stars. And that was really the beginning of the Marx Brothers as phenomenon we would recognize. They did three Broadway musicals. The first was I'll Say She Is, a thinly plotted revue, and the second was The Coconuts, and the third was Animal Crackers. By the time they were making talkies, they had these two very prestigious vehicles, Coconuts, and Animal Crackers, written by George S. Kaufman and Morrie Riskin, with scores by accomplished composers, Irving Berlin and Kalmer and Ruby. And there was no question but that those would be the first two films.

And as a result, I'll Say She Is just kind of faded into history. It was the show they'd never made it into a movie and no script survived or at least no complete, intact script survived. So, if you were a kid like all the Marx maniacs out there, reading every book you can get your hands on and learning everything you could about the Marx Brothers, I'll Say She Is just had a sort of intrigue about it. What was that show?

Everyone knew from those books that the highlight of the show was the Napoleon scene in which Groucho played Napoleon and the other brothers played the various consorts of Josephine, who are always materializing every time he turns his back. And that scene was touted as like, that's really the arrival of the Marx Brothers. That was the essence of them, before they ever met George S. Kaufman. It’s just such a tantalizing thing if you love them.

I think—because I love the theater and I love musical theater—a lot of my other interests are also right in the bullseye of I'll Say She Is: Broadway, New York City history. I'm a big fan of the culture of the Jazz Age in the 1920s. And this was just so appealing to me. So, every time a new book about the Marx Brothers would fall into my hands, the first thing I would do is look up I'll Say She Is in the index and read all the associated stuff first. I just had a little obsession about it.

In The Marx Brothers Scrapbook, which is a book I'm sure familiar to both of you and many of the fans, that book reprints the entire opening night program from I'll Say She Is on Broadway. When I was 12 years old, I took that book to the library and photocopied it, and cut out the pages, and made myself a little program so that I could pretend that I had seen I'll Say She Is.

Fast forward many years, and I'm an adult doing theater in New York. My wife and collaborator, Amanda Sisk and I were doing political satires, writing these musicals that would be ripped from the headlines. And we did that for a long time before realizing that the time it takes to develop a musical is too long for topical material, so we could never really perfect our work. And we decided to stop doing those shows, which were a bit of a dead end for us creatively. And I found myself after many years of doing one thing trying to figure out, well, what's my thing going to be now?

And I think it was probably inevitable that I would just sort of go home to the Marx Brothers. ‘Well, let's do a Marx Brothers show. I haven't done that in a while, you know?’ I don't know, it seems a little bit silly to call something so unlikely, inevitable, but I just think I was hurtling toward it from the day I picked up Adamson's book when I was three or four years old.

JIM

It had to have been both a joyful and frustrating experiences as you tried to recreate something that doesn't exist. The Napoleon sketch: we did a version of that Napoleon sketch. The only line I can remember from that Napoleon sketch was, “I'll be in Paris tomorrow, don't wash.” That's the only line I can remember from the entire show. I think of that. Was it super fun or was it super frustrating? Or was there a combo? What was that like?

NOAH

It was fun. I mean, writing is always a combination of both of those things. Stephen Sondheim once called it agonizing fun. That's kind of what almost any writing process is. This one, I wouldn't have taken on the idea of doing I'll Say She Is if enough of it didn't survive and how much of it seemed to have survived. Before my research, I think what I was really thinking is that I would maybe try to write a book about I'll Say She Is, and maybe figure out some way to do the Napoleon scene on stage.

But realizing that it could be a show again, that happened kind of slowly as material started to accumulate. Yes, the Napoleon scene has survived and that's been known for a long time. Also, the first scene of I'll Say She Is is one that's familiar to Marx Brothers fans, because it was an old vaudeville piece that they filmed in 1931. The theatrical agency scene.

[Audio from the Clip]

NOAH

So, those are two big pieces of material were a given. And then as for the rest of it, I became aware, by relying on the work of other researchers, that there was a type script I'll Say She Is at the Library of Congress. Also, another slightly different one at the American Musical Theatre Institute run by Miles Kruger. And I was able to get my hands on the type script.

Now it is on one hand, it's the script of I'll Say She Is. That isn't quite that what it is, though. It’s a 30-page document that they went into rehearsal with. And, you know, going into rehearsal with the Marx Brothers, it's an outline with dialogue. It's what we would now refer to as a treatment. and there is some dialogue in it, some of which is recognizable from later Marx Brothers projects. Some of it is very sketchy.

Of course, almost everything Harpo does is merely indicated: stage directions like, Harpo business, or sometimes, business with hat. But this provided something like 20% of the dialogue and the continuity for I'll Say She Is. There were no lyrics in it, but it did specify where the songs would fall.

So, my first attempt to write a script for this was a combination of material from that type script and things learned from the playbill, from reading every account of I'll Say She Is I could find in books and interviews. And then I started to search old newspaper archives, which was just getting easier to do at this time. I was embarking on this sort of major I'll Say She Is research period around 2010 and it was just starting to be possible to read decades worth of old newspapers on the internet. It's gotten much easier since then.

So, by reading every review I could find FROM every city I'll Say She Is had played in 1923, and 1924, and 1925, I started to realize there's material here. There's reviews that quote dialogue or describe scenes that aren't in the type script and that I didn't know about before and maybe nobody did (unless they've read this copy of the New York Clipper from 1924).

And some of the songs from the original I'll Say She Is were published in 1924 and it was fairly easy to get my hands on those. But that represented only about half the score, maybe a third of the score. A number of the original songs remain missing. And of those, I did manage to find a couple. And to fill in the gaps, I found other songs written by the same people. Will Johnstone was the lyricist (Marx Brothers fans will know him as a screenwriter on some of their later films) and his brother Tom Johnstone wrote the music. Well, the Johnstones also wrote six or seven other Broadway shows during the same period. So, I was able to find some of those songs and interpolate them and do a sort of general polish on the lyrics on the surviving lyrics.

When I was bringing in other songs, sometimes I would write the lyrics. I know there was a song here, and I know what it was about. So, I'll write a lyric about that and whenever I had to do that kind of thing, where I would invent something to fill a gap, I would always try to do it very conscientiously, by relying on what I knew about the Marx Brothers act up to 1924. And also by immersing myself in Will Johnstone's writing. He's an interesting, very unsung artist too; he was a very prolific newspaper writer and cartoonist and did a little bit of everything. So, by reading everything I could get my hands on by Johnstone, it made it a little easier to write what he would have written for them.

JOHN

That's just fascinating.

JIM

It really is. The whole thing to me is it's so titillating and so exciting that even though I say I never really want to do Groucho ever again, if you said, I'm gonna send you a copy of I'll Say She Is, I produced that. I'd be in that. I put that up right now.

NOAH

It could happen, Jim.

I think what you said earlier, Jim, about playing Groucho, you feel like there's this mantle of greatness that is, is impossible to live up to. I feel that way too. It is impossible. I mean, playing Groucho on stage, you're kind of making a deal with the audience, like, ‘Hey, we both know, I'm not him. I'm not. Nobody will ever be that good at doing that. But if you'll meet me in the middle, I think I can fool you for a minute.’

It becomes a sense of responsibility. And it's the same thing with reviving, I'll Say She Is. If we're gonna put that title on a marquee, and charge people money to see it, boy, this better be the very best we can do.

JOHN

So, once you started reconstructing I'll Say She Is, were you always planning on putting it on its feet?

NOAH

Well, probably, the answer is definitely yes. I think the question is, would I have admitted it to myself early on? I do remember nibbling around the edges of it for a while before looking at squarely in the face and saying, ‘We have to do this.’ We have to do this on stage for that very reason: because it is so daunting. It’s daunting to produce a big musical, even without all the baggage and the history and responsibility of the Marx Brothers and I'll Say She Is.

JIM

I looked at the pictures of your production and was flabbergasted at the cast and how big the cast is, and the costumes for the cast. It was like, this is a big deal.

NOAH

One thing that was very lucky—because of the nature of the project, and because it's so interesting and historical—it attracted a lot of really talented people, all of whom worked for much less than they deserved. We have done it twice at this point: the Fringe Festival production in 2014 was the first, full staging and the book Give Me a Thrill is current through that production.

Then in 2016, we did an Off-Broadway production, which was larger and fuller and ran longer and was even more fully realized. There will be a new edition of a book covering that production. But even that is now some years ago.

There is in the future, I think for an even bigger, even more 1924-faithful I'll Say She Is. And I also think there may be a lightweight version of I'll Say She Is. I think we may experiment with that, saying, ‘Oh, okay, it's a 1920s revue. It has a line of chorus girls. It's spectacular. But what if we did to it what Marx Brothers fans often want to do to the film's and just boiled it down to just the Marx Brothers gold and do an I'll Say She Is Redux?’ There two licensable versions of Animal Crackers. There’s a small cast multiple role kind of version, and then there's the big full musical.

JOHN

It’s like the Teeny Sweeney. The idea of you offering and creating a version that would be a little easier for most theaters to do. I think is really a smart idea.

JIM

Knowing the Marx Brothers, and knowing Coconuts and Animal Crackers, because of course, they're enshrined in celluloid and we can look at them whenever we want. There's a story to both of those things, loose as it may be. I wouldn't say either The Coconuts or Animal Crackers were a revue. Is the same true of I'll Say She Is? Is it a revue where we're just going from sketch to sketch to sketch or song to song to sketch, and they're not connected by a through line the way Coconuts or Animal Crackers are?

NOAH

It's an interesting question and the answer is kind of both. One thing that has happened is I think the word revue is now understood more narrowly than it was in the Marx Brothers day. When we use the word revue now, we generally mean exactly what you're describing: a variety kind of evening, with a series of unrelated sketches or songs.

But the truth is in the 1920s, particularly, revues tended to have either thin plots or themes that tied them together. And that's exactly what distinguished a Broadway review or what would have been called rather snootily, a legitimate revue. That's what distinguishes it from vaudeville, which really was one act after another and what the third on the bill does on stage has nothing to do with the content of what was second on the bill.

A lot of these Broadway revues, including the Ziegfeld Follies, they would be built on themes or plots. An example would be As Thousands Cheer, Irving Berlin's famous revue. It doesn't have a plot that runs all the way through it, but each piece is based on a news story of the day. It's not just a collection of songs.

In the case of I'll Say She Is, it was a thinly plotted revue. And the thin plot is: a bored heiress is looking for thrills. That's the plot. It makes Animal Crackers look very sophisticated. It begins with a breaking news that a society woman craves excitement, she has promised her hand, her heart, and her fortune to whoever can give her the biggest thrill. Very saucy stuff.

So, each scene or musical number in the show is vaguely an attempt to give her a thrill. It's kind of like a clothesline. You can hang anything on it. So, the Napoleon's sketch—in the context that was provided for it in 1924—is a fantasy sequence where the ingenue fantasizes that she's in the court of Napoleon. That’s the attempt of the hypnotist to give her a thrill.

In order to make the show a little more compact and a little more accessible, in my adaptation I did nudge it a little closer to being a book show. I did I strengthen the plot a little bit. I just added some reinforcements, some undergirding to the plot. And some things in the show that weren't connected to the plot, but could have been, I made some little connections there.

And also, some of the sequencing was a little perverse in terms of how the evening built. So I thought, with the help of many people who worked on the show with me, but I'll mention Travest-D and Amanda Sisk, who had a lot to do with the development of the script, we figured out that the Napoleon scene really should go at the end of Act One. And the courtroom scene should go at the end of Act Two. And other  little concessions like that to make a contemporary audience feel some sense of satisfaction.

JOHN

You both do such a nice job of Groucho—even though one of you has to be dragged into it kicking and screaming. What is, from your experience, what is the hardest part of being Groucho on stage?

NOAH

Well, for me, the most challenging part is the physical performance. That's the part I work on the most. When I see video of myself as Groucho, that's the part—if I notice things to improve on next time—they're usually physical things. I think that may have something to do with my particular skill set. I'm very comfortable vocally. I like my vocal version of Groucho and it sounds the way he sounds to me. I generally feel confident with that, although off nights do happen.

But physically, being him physically, partly because he was so verbally overwhelming, we often overlook what an interesting and unusual and brilliant physical performer, Groucho Marx was. I can't think of anyone who moved the way he moved. Both his physical body was unusual, his shape, and the way he—especially in the early films—he like has no gravity. He's sort of weightless.

There is a tendency to make him too manic and to try to match his impact by being loud and fast and very abrupt in your movements. Or overly precise. He wasn't that precise, actually. He was pretty sloppy in the way he moved. But there was a grace in all that sloppiness…

The difficulty of putting it into words—that you're experiencing with me right now—is part of where the challenge is. There are times when I feel good about the physical performance, and I nail something, a move of his that I've been working on. But I think that's the part that's the most challenging.

JOHN

Okay, Jim, how about you? What did you find most challenging?

JIM

You know, what I found most challenging is dealing with the mantle of Groucho. Not just the audience's expectations of what that means, but more problematic, my own belief system, about what I'm capable of, and how far short of what the man was and did on stage my version of him is.

So for me, I always had to really kind of get myself ramped up in order to believe that, okay, I'm going to go on, I'm going to do this. And it was a constant battle for me every night before I would go on. Am I capable of this? Is there anything about this that's even moderately entertaining for an audience? And I just couldn't get by that and I still can't, you know, I still can't get that out of my head.

Now, I separate that for a second and set it aside with It's a Wonderful Life. I'm very happy with what I've achieved in It's a Wonderful Life. Very happy with, what I've done, me personally, and the show in general. But my performances, I'm very happy and satisfied with them and I'd love to do them and can't wait till December comes around so I can do it again.

But the Marx Brothers thing is that there's a fear factor, I guess that I'm going to let him down in some way and I can't help but let him down. There's a certain love and respect I have for him, in the same way that I have love and respect for magic, that I just don't want to be a bad Elvis impersonator. You know what I mean? That's what I don't want to do. There's a big difference between Elvis and the best Elvis impersonator and you can have joy in both. But, you know, Groucho is so far—and nothing against Elvis, please. If you're listening to this podcast, and you think I'm about to diss Elvis, you're right. But I don't mean it that way.

There's a vast difference between what Groucho was on screen and what Elvis was on screen. Elvis could sing. Groucho could do anything. And that's the difference, and I can't do anything. I can barely sing. I'm lucky enough to have done it and I'm happy to have done it and when people talk to me about it. ‘Oh, I saw you was Groucho. You were excellent.’ And I want to say, ‘Apparently, you don't know the Marx brothers. I wasn't.’

NOAH

That's a very Groucho response, that hey, you are great in that show, and you have no taste, you know?

JIM

That's exactly right.

JOHN

Well, I could do this all night, but we're not going to do that. I want to just wrap up with a couple Speed Round questions, kind of general Marx Brothers questions. Noah, do you have a favorite of the movies?

NOAH

Animal Crackers, because I think it's the closest we can get to seeing them as a stage act at the peak of their powers.

JOHN 43:43

Okay, do you have a favorite scene?

NOAH

Yes, I feel guilty because my favorite Marx Brothers scene only has one Marx Brothers in it and I I love Harpo and Chico and I even love Zeppo. I have to say that, but my favorite scene is the strange interlude scene in Animal Crackers.

[Audio from the Clip]

JOHN

To have been there live, to watch him do that, to see him step forward. I would rank that very high for my favorite scene. Jim, do you have a favorite movie and a favorite scene?

JIM

Yeah, I think so. Largely because it was my first experience of the Marx Brothers, nothing for me compares to a Night at the Opera. If I am clicking around and Night at the Opera is on, we stopped clicking and that's what it is. And anybody who is in the house, my wife or the kids, I'm sorry, but you'll either have to find another TV or go out to play, because this is what we're going to be watching for a while And you know the line of Groucho’s, what happened?

[Audio from the Clip: “Oh, we had an argument, and he pulled a knife on me so I shot him.”].

JIM

That right there. When I heard that the first time, I was afraid I'd have to leave the theater. I started laughing so hard, and I couldn't come back from it. It just kept coming to me. I kept thinking of that well past it and was giggling about it and so that whole ‘belly up, put your foot up here.’ That whole thing to me is as good as it gets.

JOHN

One other little alley, I want to go down. There's another great book and Noah, if I get the title wrong, please correct me. Is it Four of the Three Musketeers?

NOAH 

Yes.

JOHN

Which tracks in exhausting detail, every stage appearance of their stage career. As you look through it—we're all getting older, all three guys—you begin to realize the weird gap or you think something was a long time ago and it turns out it wasn't. I was born in 1958 and realized just recently that Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein was made a mere 10 years before I was born. The Marx Brothers on stage in the 20s, or late teens and 20s, they're traveling everywhere in the country. They came to Minneapolis a lot. They went to Duluth a lot. And, you know, a mere 40 years before I was born, I could have gone and seen them. So, my question to you guys is: you have a chance to see the Marx Brothers live on stage in that era. What is your pick? What do you go see? You have a time machine. You can go you can go see one thing or two. I'll give you two, because I have two.

NOAH

Well, I'm glad. I'm glad you're given me two, because the obvious answer is I'll Say She Is and....

JIM

That would be my answer too.

JOHN

Bring your iPhone and hit record. Yeah.

NOAH 

Yeah, right, bootleg it. Nobody knows what an iPhone is anyway. Exactly.

JIM

And then you just go right back to what you did as a 14-year-old line by line.

JOHN

Okay. So, your second choice after the obvious, I'll Say She Is?

NOAH

I guess it would be to see some of the even earlier stuff, satisfying the urge to see them at their best on Broadway. You know, there's a lot of curiosity about the act up really up to 1920. In 1920 or 21, there's a big change. That’s when Groucho painted the moustache on and drops the German or sometimes Yiddish accent he had been using before. Harpo and Chico evolved more subtly, but in a sense, they were all playing somewhat different characters in the early vaudeville tabs. So I guess I would want to see Home Again, which was their vaudeville tabloid, that carried them through the World War One years and beyond.

JOHN

Jim?

JIM

Anything vaudeville. The school sketches that they did. I'd see anything. It wouldn't matter to me. If I could get back there, I'd go every day. John, you and I were talking about Robin Williams and being the greatest improviser of all time, and the quote that you said was, somebody had said, “see the eight o'clock show, then see the 10 o'clock show, and we'll talk.”

And to me, that's interesting. I would kill to, you know, follow them on the road, like Bruce Springsteen, and just see how much of it really is the same. In the same way that I'm tickled, when somebody says to me, ‘How much of that did you just make up on the spot?’

None of it. Essentially, none of it did I make up on the spot. I'd like to see how much of what they did day to day was exactly the same and how much of it was, ‘today, I'm going to do this for no reason at all’ and I'd like to see how much of that is different.

JOHN

You know, my two choices kind of fall within that. One is the day that Chico's daughter didn't go to the show, and she came home, and Chico thought she'd gone to it and he said, ‘What did you think?’ And she said, ‘What do you mean?’ And he said, ‘Harpo and I switched roles.’

And I know it's weird: if you had like one chance to go see the Marx Brothers, you're gonna go see them do the role they're supposed to do. But it's just fascinating when you think about it.

The other one is when Groucho was sick and Zeppo stepped in and if I'm quoting Susan Marx’s book correctly, the reaction was so strong towards what Zeppo did that Groucho got healthy really fast and came back. But Zeppo was really, really good. We do have the agent sketch, so you get a sense of what they were like on stage. You do get that. But the idea of seeing, I can easily see Zeppo doing Groucho. But Chico doing Harpo and vice versa? I realize that if I have a time machine, I should go back and do something more helpful for the world. But at that same time, I want to stop by and see that one show where they switched.

JIM

That you’ll do that on your lunch break. While you're stopping World War Two, on the way home, swing by and see that show. You've earned it.

NOAH

That's a good answer.

JOHN

Yeah. Noah, thank you so much for chatting with us.

JIM

Just a delight. Thank you so much. I had a great time talking to you.

NOAH

It's been a pleasure, fellas. Thank you for having me on.

Episode 110: Re-Cutting “Raising Cain”

This week on the blog, a podcast interview with Peet Gelderblom, the Dutch filmmaker who re-cut what Brian DePalma now considers to be the Director’s Cut of “Raising Cain.”

LINKS

A Free Film Book for You:  https://dl.bookfunnel.com/cq23xyyt12

Another Free Film Book:  https://dl.bookfunnel.com/x3jn3emga6

Fast, Cheap Film Website: https://www.fastcheapfilm.com/

Peet Gelderblom website: https://www.directorama.net/bio-english/

“Raising Cain” Re-Cut: https://www.directorama.net/raising-cain-directors-cut/

“Raising Cain” Trailer: https://youtu.be/jx2MeCjfP44

“Raising Cain” Steadicam shot: https://youtu.be/kuTfcP3hTyk

Eli Marks Website:  https://www.elimarksmysteries.com/

Albert’s Bridge Books Website:  https://www.albertsbridgebooks.com/

YouTube Channel:  https://www.youtube.com/c/BehindthePageTheEliMarksPodcast

Peet Gelderblom – Re-Cutting “Raising Cain”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And he's so good at that.

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

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

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

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

That's a bad sign.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There's now going to be a second disc.

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

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

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

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

Dying to make a feature? Learn from the pros!

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

★★★★★

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

• Jonathan Demme: The value of cameos

• John Sayles: Writing to your resources

• Peter Bogdanovich: Long, continuous takes

• John Cassavetes: Re-Shoots

• Steven Soderbergh: Rehearsals

• George Romero: Casting

• Kevin Smith: Skipping film school

• Jon Favreau: Creating an emotional connection

• Richard Linklater: Poverty breeds creativity

• David Lynch: Kill your darlings

• Ron Howard: Pre-production planning

• John Carpenter: Going low-tech

• Robert Rodriguez: Sound thinking

And more!

Write Your Screenplay with the Help of Top Screenwriters!

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

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

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

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

The book covers (among other topics):

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Roger Nygard (“Suckers”) on mixing genres

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

Episode 109: The Making of Harold & Maude

This week on the blog, a podcast interview with James Davidson, where he talks about his book, “Hal Ashby and the Making of ‘Harold & Maude.’”

LINKS

A Free Film Book for You:  https://dl.bookfunnel.com/cq23xyyt12

Another Free Film Book:  https://dl.bookfunnel.com/x3jn3emga6

Fast, Cheap Film Website: https://www.fastcheapfilm.com/

The Book: Hal Ashby and the Making of ‘Harold & Maude’: https://mcfarlandbooks.com/product/hal-ashby-and-the-making-of-harold-and-maude/

The Twin Cities Welcomes Ruth Gordon and Bud Cort—A Mini-Documentary: https://youtu.be/unRuCOECvZM

Eli Marks Website:  https://www.elimarksmysteries.com/

Albert’s Bridge Books Website:  https://www.albertsbridgebooks.com/

YouTube Channel:  https://www.youtube.com/c/BehindthePageTheEliMarksPodcast

Dying to make a feature? Learn from the pros!

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

★★★★★

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

• Jonathan Demme: The value of cameos

• John Sayles: Writing to your resources

• Peter Bogdanovich: Long, continuous takes

• John Cassavetes: Re-Shoots

• Steven Soderbergh: Rehearsals

• George Romero: Casting

• Kevin Smith: Skipping film school

• Jon Favreau: Creating an emotional connection

• Richard Linklater: Poverty breeds creativity

• David Lynch: Kill your darlings

• Ron Howard: Pre-production planning

• John Carpenter: Going low-tech

• Robert Rodriguez: Sound thinking

And more!

Write Your Screenplay with the Help of Top Screenwriters!

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

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

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

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

The book covers (among other topics):

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Roger Nygard (“Suckers”) on mixing genres

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So, you said that you had some time on your hands, I think in 2014, and you picked Harold and Maudeas 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.

Episode 108: Character and voice actor Jim Meskimen

This week on the blog, a podcast interview with character actor Jim Meskimen on building an acting career one step at a time.

LINKS

Jim Meskimen website:  https://jimmeskimen.com/ 

Jim Meskimen acting reel: https://jimmeskimen.com/acting/

The Acting Center:  https://theactingcenterla.com/

Behind the Page: The Eli Marks Podcast (Episode 222): https://www.elimarksmysteries.com/eli-marks-podcast

A Free Film Book for You:  https://dl.bookfunnel.com/cq23xyyt12

Another Free Film Book:  https://dl.bookfunnel.com/x3jn3emga6

Fast, Cheap Film Website: https://www.fastcheapfilm.com/

Eli Marks Website:  https://www.elimarksmysteries.com/

Albert’s Bridge Books Website:  https://www.albertsbridgebooks.com/

YouTube Channel:  https://www.youtube.com/c/BehindthePageTheEliMarksPodcast

Dying to make a feature? Learn from the pros!

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

★★★★★

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

• Jonathan Demme: The value of cameos

• John Sayles: Writing to your resources

• Peter Bogdanovich: Long, continuous takes

• John Cassavetes: Re-Shoots

• Steven Soderbergh: Rehearsals

• George Romero: Casting

• Kevin Smith: Skipping film school

• Jon Favreau: Creating an emotional connection

• Richard Linklater: Poverty breeds creativity

• David Lynch: Kill your darlings

• Ron Howard: Pre-production planning

• John Carpenter: Going low-tech

• Robert Rodriguez: Sound thinking

And more!

Write Your Screenplay with the Help of Top Screenwriters!

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

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

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

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

The book covers (among other topics):

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Roger Nygard (“Suckers”) on mixing genres

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

Jim Meskimen — Character and Voice Actor

John Gaspard: Today, we're going to talk about your life as an actor and having a diversified pool of things to draw from to be a working actor. I listened to a couple other interviews with you, and there was one point they kept coming to that I wanted to avoid, which was immediately talking about your mother. My connection is, and was, that we went to the same high school, Southwest high school in Minneapolis. So, I thought, well, that's my great connection. And then my friend Jim here, who is … one of the reasons he's here is because he is a working actor as well, but in a much smaller market here in the Twin Cities. So, I thought having him as part of this chat would be interesting. Jim, what is your story?

Jim Meskimen: And he happens to have the name of Cunningham.

John: 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.

Episode 107: Dawn Brodey and Brian Forrest on “Frankenstein” and “Dracula.”

This week on the blog, a podcast interview with Dawn Brodey and Brian Forrest, talking about the various film versions of “Frankenstein” and “Dracula.”

Dawn gave me 4.5 films to revisit: The 1931 version of Frankenstein, Frankenweenie (the feature and the short), Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and Young Frankenstein.

Meanwhile, Brian assigned me the original Nosferatu, the 1931 Dracula, Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein, Horror of Dracula, Dracula in Istanbul and Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

LINKS

Dawn’s podcast (HILF):  http://dawnbrodey.com/ - shows

Brian’s Blog and Vlog, Toothpickings: https://toothpickings.medium.com/

A Free Film Book for You:  https://dl.bookfunnel.com/cq23xyyt12

Another Free Film Book:  https://dl.bookfunnel.com/x3jn3emga6

Frankenstein (1931) Trailer:  https://youtu.be/BN8K-4osNb0

Frankenweenie Trailer:  https://youtu.be/29vIJQohUWE

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (Trailer):  https://youtu.be/GFaY7r73BIs

Young Frankenstein (Trailer):  https://youtu.be/mOPTriLG5cU

Nosferatu (Complete Film):  https://youtu.be/dCT1YUtNOA8

Dracula (1931) Trailer:  https://youtu.be/VoaMw91MC9k

Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein (Trailer): https://youtu.be/j6l8auIACyc

Horror of Dracula (Trailer):  https://youtu.be/ZTbY0BgIRMk

Bram Stoker’s Dracula (Trailer):  https://youtu.be/fgFPIh5mvNc

Dracula In Istanbul: https://youtu.be/G7tAWcm3EX0

Fast, Cheap Film Website: https://www.fastcheapfilm.com/

Eli Marks Website:  https://www.elimarksmysteries.com/

Albert’s Bridge Books Website:  https://www.albertsbridgebooks.com/ 

YouTube Channel:  https://www.youtube.com/c/BehindthePageTheEliMarksPodcast

Dying to make a feature? Learn from the pros!

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

★★★★★

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

• Jonathan Demme: The value of cameos

• John Sayles: Writing to your resources

• Peter Bogdanovich: Long, continuous takes

• John Cassavetes: Re-Shoots

• Steven Soderbergh: Rehearsals

• George Romero: Casting

• Kevin Smith: Skipping film school

• Jon Favreau: Creating an emotional connection

• Richard Linklater: Poverty breeds creativity

• David Lynch: Kill your darlings

• Ron Howard: Pre-production planning

• John Carpenter: Going low-tech

• Robert Rodriguez: Sound thinking

And more!

Write Your Screenplay with the Help of Top Screenwriters!

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

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

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

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

The book covers (among other topics):

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Roger Nygard (“Suckers”) on mixing genres

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

---

Dawn and Brian TRANSCRIPT

John: [00:00:00] Before we dive into the assignment you gave me—which was to watch stuff I hadn't seen and also rewatch stuff I had seen to get a better idea of who's done a good job of adapting these books—let's just jump in and talk a little bit about your area of expertise and why you have it. So, I'm going to start with you, Brian. I was very surprised after working with you a while to find out that you had a whole vampire subset in your life.

Brian: A problem, you can call it a problem. It's fine.

John: Okay. What is the problem and where did it come from?

Brian: I was just vaguely interested in vampires for a while. When I was in my screenwriting days, someone had encouraged me to do a feature length comedy about vampires, and that led me to do a lot of reading. And then I just kind of put it aside for a while. And then I was, I had just finished a documentary for Committee Films and they said, do you have any other pitches? And I thought, and I said, you know, there's still people who believe in vampires even today, that could be really interesting. And I put together a pitch package. Then, the guy in charge of development said, [00:01:00]this is what we need to be doing. And then it stalled out. Nothing ever happened with it. And I said, what the hell. I could do this on my own. I could fly around and interview these people. And I did, I spent a couple years interviewing academics and some writers. And along the way, I started finding all these very intriguing moments in the history of either vampire lore or fiction or even just people who consider themselves vampires today. And all these things would connect to each other. It was a lattice work of vampires going back hundreds of years. It didn't fit the documentary, unfortunately, but I found it way too interesting. And I said, I need some kind of outlet for this. And so I started writing about it on Tooth Pickings. And that eventually put me in touch with people who were more scholarly, and it opened up a lot more conversations. And now I can't get out. I'm trapped.

John: Well, the first sign is recognizing there's a problem. [00:02:00]  Okay. Now, Dawn, you had a different entryway into Frankenstein.

Dawn: Yeah, well, I was a theater major and a history minor at the University of Minnesota. Go Gophers. And, this was in the late nineties, early two thousands, when there were still a lot of jobs for people who had degrees and things like this. Or at least there was a theory that  this was a reasonable thing to get educated in. And then I graduated in 2001, which was months after 9/11, when all those jobs went away. And so, I had this education so specific and what was I gonna do? And gratefully the Twin Cities is a great place for finding that kind of stuff. And one of my very first jobs out of college was at the Bakkan museum.

So, the Bakkan museum was founded by Earl Bakkan, who is the inventor of the battery-operated pacemaker. And he has always, since childhood, been obsessed with the Frankenstein movie that came out in 1931. And he attributes [00:03:00]his great scientific invention and many others to a science fiction in general. And to the spark of the idea that comes from sources like this.

So, when he opened the museum, he insisted that there'd be a grand Frankenstein exhibit. And that means going back to the book, and that meant going back to the author, Mary Shelley, who wrote the novel Frankenstein, she started writing it when she was 16.

And so, I was hired because—boom, look at me—my degree is suddenly colliding, right?

So, I was hired by the Bakkan museum to create a one-woman show about the life of Mary Shelley, where I would play Mary Shelley and would perform it within the museum and elsewhere. And through the course of that research, I read the novel for the second time, but then I read it for my third, fourth, fifth onwards and upwards. Because the show was about 45 minutes long, I referenced, you know, the novel, the books, the popular culture, the science behind it. And the deep dive just never stopped. And so long after I was required to do the research and the show was done and up, I just kept reading. [00:04:00] And it gave me the opportunity to meet experts in this field and the peripheral field, as I would sort of travel with this show and be an ambassador for the museum and stuff like that. And, yeah, it still curls my toes.

John: All right, so with that background. I'm going to just be honest right here and say, I've read Dracula once, I've read Frankenstein once. So that's where I'm coming from, and both a while ago. I remember Frankenstein was a little tougher to get through. Dracula had a bit more of an adventure feel to it, but something I don't think has really been captured particularly well in all the movies. But they both have lasted and lasted and lasted.

Why do you think those books are still, those ideas are still as popular today?

Dawn: I will say that I think Frankenstein, it depends on what you mean by the idea. Because on the surface, just the idea of bringing the dead to life, is, I mean, the Walking Dead franchise is right now one of the most popular franchises. I mean, I think we are really pivot on this idea. And I remember saying to a friend once that the part in [00:05:00]Revelation where the dead rise is like the only part of the Bible that I don't question. It's like, oh, the dead will get up. You know, we always just seem to be real sure that at some damned point, they're getting up. And so I think that that is part of why that it sticks in our brains. But then the story around Frankenstein—especially as it was written in 1818—has so many universal and timeless themes, like ambition and what is right and wrong. And the question that Jurassic Park posed in 1995 and continues to—1993 around there—and continues to pose, which is: just because science is capable of doing something, should it do something? And how do we define progress? Surely the very idea of being able to beat death and not die seems to be kind of the ultimate goal. And here is someone saying, okay, so let's just say, yeah. We beat death and everyone goes, oh shit, that'd be terrible. [00:06:00] You know?  And then also, I always love the idea of the creature, the monster, Frankenstein's creature himself, who has a lot of characteristics with which people have identified throughout history. Some people say, for example, that Mary Shelley's whole purpose for writing Frankenstein was a question of: didn't God do this to us, make us these ugly creatures that are imperfect and bumbling around and horrifying? And then once he realized that we weren't perfect, he fled from us in fear or fled. He just keeps going and every generation has a new media that tells the story a little bit better, a little bit different, and yeah, there we are.

John: I will say that for me, the most memorable part of the book was the section where the monster is the narrator and is learning. And I think with the exception of Kenneth Branagh’s film, it it's something that isn't really touched on that much. There’s a little bit in Bride of Frankenstein, of him going around and learning stuff. But the sort of moral questions that he [00:07:00] raises as he's learning—what it is to be human—are very interesting in the book. And I wish they were in more of the movies, but they're not. So, Brian on Dracula, again, we have dead coming to life. Why do we love that so much?

Brian: Well, it's one of the questions that made me want to make a film about it myself: why has the vampire been so fascinating for hundreds of years? Why does it keep coming back? You know, it ebbs and flows in popularity, but it never leaves. And it keeps seeming to have Renaissance after Renaissance. Dracula specifically, I think one of the interesting things about that novel is how many different lenses you can look at it through and not be wrong.

People have looked at it through the lens of, is this thing an imperialist story? Is it an anti-imperialist story? Is it a feminist story? Is it an anti-feminist story? And you can find support for any of those views reading Dracula. And I think that some of it might be accidental; there's times where Dracula is catching up to whatever the cultural zeitgeist [00:08:00] is right now. And we look at Dracula and we say, oh, he was thinking about this back then. Or maybe Bram Stoker was just very confused and he had a lot of different ideas.

John: All right, let's explore that a little deeper. You each gave me an assignment of some movies to watch or to re-watch that you felt were worth talking about, in relation to your subject of Frankenstein or Dracula. I'm going to start with Frankenweenie, just because I had not seen it. And in going through it, I was reminded—of course, as one would be—of watching Frankenweenie, I was reminded of Love, Actually. Because I came to the realization after years of Love, Actually being around that it—Love, Actually—is not a romantic comedy. It is all romantic comedies, all put into one movie. And Frankenweenie is all horror films. Condensed, beautifully and cleverly into one very tasty souffle.

[Frankenweenie Soundbite]

John: I stopped at a certain point making note of the references to other horror films. Just because there are so many of them. But the idea that it references everything from Bride of Frankenstein to Gremlins. They do a rat transformation that's right out of American Werewolf in London. The fact that they have a science teacher played by Martin Landau doing the voice he did as Bela [00:10:00] Lugosi in Ed Wood. I mean, it's a really good story that they just layered and layered and layered and layered. What was it about that movie that so captivated you?

Dawn: Well, so much of what you just said. And also it seems to me the epitome of the accessibility of the story of Frankenstein. The idea that if anyone can think of any moment in which if I could bring someone back to life. But what I love about it too, is that the novel Frankenstein that is not Victor Frankenstein's motivation. It generally tends to be the motivation of almost every character, including the Kenneth Branagh character--at some point, he, when Elizabeth dies, his wife dies for the second time, he says, yes, I'm going to try to bring her back. But it is so not the motivation of the scientist in the book. It is just ambition. He just wants to do something no one else has done. And lots of people die around him and he really never, ever says to himself at any point in the novel, I wish I could bring them back, I'm going to bring them back. That's never, that's never part of it. He just wants to be impressive. And so, I love [00:11:00] that it starts with that pure motivation of wanting to bring the dead to life; just wanting to bring your dog back, so that it's so accessible for everyone watching it. Who wouldn't wanna try this? But then, even in that scene with the teacher, when he shows the frog. And he's demonstrating that if you touch a dead frog with electricity, its legs shoot up, which give the kid the first idea of bringing his dog back. Which is like a deep cut in, in the sense that that's nothing -- Mary Shelley herself and her friends were watching experiments exactly like that before she wrote the book: galvanism and animal magnetism were these really popular public demonstrations happening in London and elsewhere where they would do just that. But because electricity itself was so new, I mean, it blew people's hair back you know, that these dead frogs were flopping around. It was the craziest thing. And a lot of them were thinking to themselves, surely it is only a matter of time before we can, we're gonna have our dead walking around all the time. So, it was so circulating and so forward.  [00:12:00] So it's not just movie references and it's not just Frankenstein references. That movie really includes source deep source references for how Frankenstein came to be. And I just love it.

John: Which brings me to Frankenstein, the 1931 version, in which Colin Clive has a similar point of view to what you were talking about from the book. He just wants, you know, he wants to be God.

[Frankenstein soundbite]

John: What I was most impressed with about that movie or a couple things was: it starts, it's like, boom. We're in it. First scene. There there's no preamble. There's no going to college. There's no talking about it, right? It's like, they're starting in the middle of act two. And I think a lot of what we think of when it comes to Frankenstein comes from that movie, [00:13:00] that the stuff that James Whale and his cinematographer came up with and the way they made things look, and that's sort of what people think of when they think of Frankenstein. Now, as you look back on that movie, what are your thoughts on the, what we'll call the original Frankenstein?

Dawn: Yeah. Well, I love it. You’ll find with me and Frankenstein that I'm not a purist. Like I love everything. Like I have no boundaries. I think this is great. One of the things that 1931 movie did was answer—because it had to, anytime you take a novel and make it a movie, you take a literary medium and make it a visual medium, there's obviously going to be things that you just have to interpret that the author left for you to make for yourself individual. And in this instance, that individual is the cinematographer. So, we're gonna get their take on this. And one of the real ambiguous things that Mary Shelley leaves for you in the novel is the spark of life. What is the spark of life? She does not in any [00:14:00]detail describe lightning or static or any of the recognizable or, or future developments of how electricity would've been.

Brian: I was shocked when I first read that book and saw how little space was devoted to that, that lab scene. It's blink of an eye and it's over.

Dawn: “I gathered the instruments of life around me that I may infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my.” Period. I just, what I love is what I love about film in general is that they went, oh, spark being all right, girl, it's a dark and stormy night and you know, and there's chains and there's bubblers and there's a thing. And the sky opens. I mean, God bless you, like way to just take that thought. Make it vivid, make it, build a set, make us believe it. And it's so, so pervasive that in Frankenweinie, you know, which of course is about Frankensein. [00:15:00] Like that is one that they do: he's got the white robe that ties in the back and the gloves. And in Young Frankenstein, it's the, you know, that lab scene. And so I love that. And the other thing that they had to do was describe the look of the creature, make the creature—Frankenstein's monster himself—look so like something. Because she, similarly in the novel, says that he is taller than a regular man, has dark hair and yellow watery eyes. That's all we know about what the Frankenstein looks like. And so, in 1931, Boris Karloff with the bolts. And it's black and white, remember, we don't think his skin is green. That he turned green at some point is kind of exciting, but of course he was just gray, but just dead flesh, you know, rotten, dead walking flesh is what's frightening. And, I just thought that the movie did that so well,

John: I think the makeup was kind of a green/gray, and that when color photos came out of it, that's why someone went, oh, [00:16:00] it's green, but it wasn’t green.

Brian: I thought I saw a museum piece of, you know, an actual makeup bit that Jack Pierce did and I thought it was greenish.

Dawn: Yeah. Greenish/gray. I think, yeah, the rots, just kind of trying to capture the sort of rotten flesh.

Brian: It’s just like the bride's hair was red.

Dawn: That's right. That's right. My day job here in Los Angeles is as a street improviser at Universal Studios, Hollywood. And two of their most treasured characters of course are Frankenstein and Dracula. So, while most people might separate them, John, they are usually arm and arm where I work every day. And the bride has recently come back to the theme park as a walking character, and they gave her red hair. We don't mess around.

John: That's excellent. But you mentioned Dracula, let's jump into the 1931 Dracula. There’s a connection point between the two that I want to mention, which is the amazing Dwight Frye, who is Fritz, I believe in Frankenstein. And I'm not the first one to mention his naturalistic [00:17:00] acting kind of putting him above everybody else in that movie. Famously, when he's running up the stairs, stopping to pull his socks up at one point. He's just really, really good in that. And then you see him in Dracula as the, essentially the Harker character. I think he was called Harker --

Brian: Yeah. Well, he's Renfield in Dracula. They merged those two characters. I thought it was a smart move for a first attempt at the film. Yeah. And Dwight Frye, he's in a lot of other Universal horrors, too. Dwight Frye often doesn't get the credit. He somehow was not the leading man he should have been.

John: I don't know why that is. He turns up again as an assistant in Bride of Frankenstein. He's a towns person in Frankenstein meets the Wolfman. And then he tragically died on a bus ride to an auto parts job that he took because he wasn't getting any acting work, which was too bad. A really, really good actor.

Brian: There is another intersection besides the fact that they were both produced by Junior. Lugosi was put into the [00:18:00] short, the trial film they shot for Frankenstein. I can't call it a short film, because it was never intended for release. But they shot a cinematic test reel and they had Lugosi play the monster, but he was under a sheet the whole time. I think he may have been able to pull the sheet off. It's a lost film. We don't know for sure. We just have kind of the recollections of a few crew people.

John: I've never heard of that. I would love to see that.

Brian: I would too. I think a lot of people would really love to see it, but it was as much a kind of a testing ground for Lugosi— whether they wanted him to be the monster—as it was for some of the techniques, the things they wanted to try in the film. And what I understand is the producer saw the test reel and they said, yes, we love this look, this is the look we want you to give us. And then it's whatever version of Lugosi not getting that part you want to believe: whether Lugosi turned it down or the producers didn't like him or something. But he ended up not taking that part.

John: But he is of course always known as Dracula. So, what are your thoughts on their adaptation? Which [00:19:00]again is not the first adaptation but is the kind of first official?

Brian: Yeah. The first to bear the name Dracula, although, well, I'll back up a second. Because some releases of Nosferatu called it Dracula. He would be named as Dracula in the subtitles, you know, because that's an easy thing to do in silent film, you can just swap that out however you want to. But yes, it’s the first authorized official film adaptation.

John: Well, let’s back up to Nosferatu, just for a second. Am I wrong in remembering that the Bram Stoker estate—Mrs. Stoker—sued Nosferatu and asked that all prints be destroyed? And they were except one print remained somewhere?

Brian: Close. That is the popular story that she sued Prana Films. She won the lawsuit. All films were set to be destroyed. Now there's a guy named Locke Heiss and a few others who've been doing some research on this. And they will tell you that there's no proof that a single print was ever destroyed. It's a more fun story to say that, you know, this one was snuck away and now we have the film. But there was no real enforcement mechanism for having all the theaters [00:20:00]destroy the film. Who was going to go around and check and see if they actually destroyed this film or not? Nobody, right? So maybe some people destroyed it. Maybe Prana Films destroyed their remaining copies. But the exhibitors kept all of theirs and there's different versions and different cuts that have been found. So, we know that some of these reels went out in different formats or with different subtitles or even different edits. And some of them have made their way back to us.

John: There's some really iconic striking imagery in that movie. That haunts me still.

Brian: What I always tell people is see the film with a good live accompaniment, because that still makes it hold up as a scary film. If you see a good orchestra playing something really intense when Orlok comes through that door. It feels scary. You can feel yourself being teleported back to 1922 and being one of those audience people seeing that and being struck by it.

John: What do you think it would be like to have [00:21:00] seen that or Dawn to have seen the original Frankenstein? I can't really imagine, given all that we've seen in our lives. If you put yourself back into 1931, and Boris Karloff walks backwards into the lab. I would just love to know what that felt like the first time.

Dawn: You know, what is so great is I was fortunate enough to know Earl Bakkan who saw the movie in the theater in Columbia Heights, Minnesota when he was 10 years old.

And he went, he had to sneak in. People would run outta this, out of the theater, screaming. I mean, when they would do the close up of Frankenstein's Monster's face, you know, women would faint. And of course that was publicized and much circulated, but it was also true. People were freaking out. And for Earl Bakkan—this young kid—the fear was overwhelming, as you said. And also in this theater, I was lucky enough, I did my show in that theater for Earl and his friends on his 81st birthday. So, I got to hear a [00:22:00] lot of these stories. And they played the organ in the front of the curtain.

Brian: Is this the Heights theater?

Dawn: Yes, the Heights.

Brian: Oh, that's an amazing space.

Dawn: So, they played the organ in there and it was like, oh my God. And it was so overwhelming. So, I'm glad you asked that question because I was really fortunate to have a moment to be able to sort of immerse myself in that question: What would it have been like to be in this theater? And it was moving and it was scary, man. And yeah, to your point, Brian, the music and the score. I mean, it was overwhelming. Also, I think there's something that we still benefit from today, which is when people tell you going in this might be way too much for you, this might scare you to death. So just be super, super careful. And your heart's already, you know…

John: And it does have that warning right at the beginning.

Dawn: Yeah. Versus now when people sit you down, they're like, I'm not gonna be scared by this black and white movie from 1931. And then you find yourself shuffling out of the bathroom at top speed in the middle of the night. And you're like, well, look at that. It got me.

Brian: That reminds me, there [00:23:00] was a deleted scene from the 1931 Dracula that was a holdover from the stage play. Van Helsing comes out and he breaks the fourth wall and he speaks directly to the audience. And he says something to the effect of—I'm very much paraphrasing—about how we hope you haven't been too frightened by what you've seen tonight, but just remember these things are real. And then black out. And they cut that because they were afraid that they were really going to freak out their audience.

Dawn: It's like a war of the world's thing, man. It's oh, that's so great. I love that.

[Dracula Soundbite]

John: So, Brian, what is your assessment of the 1931 version? As a movie itself and as an adaptation of Stoker's work?

Brian: The things they had to do to try to adapt it to film, which they borrowed a lot of that from the stage play. They used the stage play as their guide point, and I think they made the best choices they could have been expected to make. You know, there's a lot of things that get lost and that's unfortunate, but I think they did a decent job. I don't find the 1931 version scary. I like Bela Lugosi. I think he's a great Dracula. I think he set the standard. With the possible [00:25:00]exception of the scene where the brides are stalking Harker slash Renfield, I don't think the imagery is particularly frightening. The Spanish version, I think does a little bit better job. And you know the story with the Spanish version and the English version?

Dawn: We actually talk about it on the back lot tour of Universal Studios. Because they shot on the same sets in some cases.

Brian: Yeah. My understanding is that Dracula shot during the day, Spanish Dracula would shoot at night. So, they got to benefit maybe a little bit by seeing, okay, how is this gonna be shot? How did Todd Browning do it? Okay. We're gonna do it a little bit differently. It's a little bit of a cheat to say they move the camera. They do move the camera a lot more in the Spanish version, but the performances are a little bit different. I'm going to, I can't get her name out. The actress who plays the ingenue in the Spanish Dracula, I'm not going to try it, but you can see her kind of getting more and more crazed as time goes on and her head is more infected by Dracula. You see these push-ins that you don't see in the English version. There's blocking [00:26:00] that's different. I put together a short course where I was just talking about how they blocked the staircases scene. The welcome to my house, the walking through spider web. And how it's blocked very differently in the two versions. And what does that say? What are these two directors communicating differently to us? In one, Harker slash Renfield is next to Dracula. In one, he's trailing behind him. In one, we cut away from the spider web before he goes through. And in the other one, we see him wrestle with it. That's not really what you asked, John. Sorry, I got off on a tear there.

John: I agree with you on all points on the differences between the two films. Although I do think that all the Transylvania stuff in the English version is terrific: With the coach and the brides. The Spanish version, the biggest problem I have is that their Dracula looks ridiculous.

Brian: He's not Bela Lugosi. You’re right.

John: He looks like Steve Carell doing Dracula and there is no moment, literally no moment [00:27:00] where he is scary, whereas Lugosi is able to pull that off.

Brian: There’s a lot of people who have observed that the Spanish Dracula would be a superior film were it not for Bela Lugosi being such an amazing Dracula in the English version.

John: He really, really nailed it.

Brian: And since he learned his lines phonetically, he could have done the Spanish Dracula. Just write it out for him phonetically, because he didn't speak English very well.

John: If we could just go back, you know, cause a lot of things in history we could change, but if we could just be at that meeting and go, Hey, why not have Bela do it? Okay. So then let's jump ahead, still in Dracula form, to Horror of Dracula. From 1958. With Christopher Lee as Dracula and Peter Cushing as Van Helsing.

[Soundbite from Horror of Dracula]

Brian: For some people, Lee is the ultimate Dracula, and I think that's a generational thing. I think he's great. He's got the stage presence and I love Peter Cushing as Van Helsing. I don't like the film as a whole. It feels like I'm watching a play with a camera set back. It doesn't work for me the way it works for other people. That is personal taste. Don't come after me.

John: It does, however, have one of the greatest, ‘Hey, we're gonna kill Dracula’ scenes ever, with Peter Cushing running down the table and jumping up and pulling down the drapes and the sun.

Brian: Oh, right. Interesting. Because in Dracula, the book, the sun is not deadly, remotely really. But that's [00:29:00]the influence of Nosferatu being pasted onto the Dracula cannon, that the sunlight is deadly to Dracula.

Dawn: I remember having this fight very enthusiastically in the nineties when Bram Stoker’s/Winona Ryder’s Dracula came out and I was already sort of a literary nerd. And they were like, hey, they have a scene with him walking around during the day. And I was like, yeah, nerds. That's right. That's cuz vampires can walk around during the day.

I was very already, like, you don't know anything, go back to history.

Brian: And there's a seventies version where he's out on a cloudy day, but he is not hurt either. There suggestions in the book that he's more powerful at night.

Dawn: He's a creature of the night. I always understood he had to wear sunglasses. He was sort of like a wolf. Like they show him as a wolf during the day; it can happen, but it's not great.

Brian: I like the way they did it in the Gary Oldman version. He's suited up. He's got the sunglasses on. There's not a whole lot of skin exposed. But he's not [00:30:00] going to turn into smoke.

John: Well, okay. Let's talk about that version and Kenneth Branagh’s version of Frankenstein.

Dawn: Ug.

John: I'm not going to spoil anything here, when I say it doesn't sound like Dawn cared it.

Dawn: You open this, you opened this can of worms. John, sit down for a second. Listen. He calls it: Mary Shelly's fucking Frankenstein. I inserted the fucking. I'm sorry, I wasn't supposed to say that. He calls it. He calls it. How dare you, Kenneth, Brannagh, call this Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. So that was A-number one. But I went into it all excited: It’s Kenneth Brannagh. Love him. He calls it Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and he starts with the ship captain out at sea, just like the book. And so I pull up my little, you know, security blanket and I'm like, oh, Kenneth Brannagh, do this to me, buddy. Do it to me buddy. Show me Mary Shelley Frankenstein as a movie. [00:31:00] And then he just fucks it up, John. And he doesn't actually do that at all. It's a total lie. He screws up every monologue. He makes up motivations and then heightens them. And it’s dad. The acting is capital B, capital A, capital D across the board. Everybody sucks in this movie. It looks bad. The direction is bad, and it has nothing to do. He tries to bring Elizabeth back to life. This is a huge departure from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Thank you very much, Mr. Brannagh, that's all I have to say for now.

John: All right, I was fooled by the fact that he started at, at the north pole.

Dawn: That’s because he's tricking us, John. That’s because it's the whole movie is a lie.

John: Okay with that same mindset, what do we think of Bram Stoker's Dracula by Francis Ford Coppola?

Dawn: I love that one.

Brian: I'm afraid that I don't have, I can't match Dawn's intensity in either respect. Um, except I thought Robert DeNiro [00:32:00] was really good in Frankenstein.

Dawn: But that's no, he's not. you're wrong. Your opinion is valid and wrong. Yeah, I'm kidding for listeners who don't know me. I am, I am kidding. Of course. Everybody's opinion is valid except for that one. Yeah. The movie, everything about that movie is bad.

John: He is, I think, miscast.

Dawn: And Helen Bonan Carter is one of the finest actresses of not just our generation, but of all time. And she sucks in this movie.

John: Right. So. Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

Brian: Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

[Soundbite: Bram Stoker’s Dracula]

Brian: Also produced by Branagh. And I assume that is the connection, why they both start with the author's name. I always call it Coppola's Dracula because it gets too confusing to make that distinction. I thought it was a decent movie, but it didn't feel like Dracula. It felt like someone who had heard of Dracula and wrote a good script based on what they had heard. So many divergences that bothered me, although I think it's aged better than it felt the first time. I remember seeing it when it first came out in the nineties and not thinking much of it. And I think audiences agreed with me and it seems like it's been kinder, that audiences have been kinder to it as it's gotten older.

John: Okay. Dawn, you love it.

Dawn: I loved it. I loved it. It, you know what though? That was one of [00:34:00] those movies that unlike, unlike Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, I can't look at with like an adult critical eye because I, what year did it come out? Was it like 90, 92? I'm like middle school getting into high school and like Winona Ryder was everything. Vampires are everything. I mean, Gary Oldman is the, is a great actor and it's so sexy, very sexy. The sex is Primo. And so I remember loving it, very moving. I don't remember comparing it as certainly not as viciously to the novel because I read Dracula after I had seen the movie. And so there's always that inherent casting where Nina is always going to be Winona Ryder. But I do remember really loving the Gothic convention of the letter and that the movie did seem to utilize and to great effect how letter writing can build suspense and give us different perspectives in a, in a unique cinematic way.

Brian: [00:35:00] The two or three biggest stakes that film puts in the ground are not to be found in the book. So there's no love story in the book. There's no Vlad in the book.

John: Can I interject there? Isn't that basically, didn't they just rip that off of Dark Shadows, The idea of my long lost love is reincarnated in this woman. I must connect with her.

Brian: That is a good question, John. I'm glad you asked that because I call it the doppelganger love interest. Right? We first see that, the first time I know of it happening, I'm sure there's an earlier precedent, is in The Mummy, but then Dark Shadows does it. But that's not where Stoker, I mean, that's not where Coppola and a screenwriter claimed to have gotten the idea. They claimed to have gotten it from Dan Curtis's Dracula in 74.

John: Dan Curtis, who produced Dark Shadows, with Barnabas Collins, falling in love with his reincarnated love.

Brian: But Dan Curtis's Dracula comes out two years after Blacula. That has a reincarnated love interest.

John: Not only does the Blaclua [00:36:00] have a reincarnated love interest, but if I'm remembering movie correctly at the end, when she says I don't want to go with you. He goes, okay. And he's ready to go home. It's like, sorry to bother you.

Brian: No, uh, in Blacula, he commits suicide

John: Oh, that's it? Yeah. He walks out into the sun.

Brian: He goes home in a different way.

John: Yes. He's one of my favorite Draculas, the very stately William Marshall.

Brian: Yeah, absolutely. That is a favorite of mine.

John: Anyway, you were saying stakes in the ground from Coppola’s Dracula.

Brian: Well, the, the love story, the equating Dracula with Vlad the Impaler. And I felt like they did Lucy really bad in that movie. They had her turn into a wanton harlot, which is not in keeping with the book. Some things are okay, but they really said these are the building blocks of our story and that bugged me. But Anthony Hopkins I liked, so, all right.

Dawn: Alright, but see, this [00:37:00] the itch that still that still makes me wanna scratch though: why say Bram Stoker’s Dracula? Why say Mary Shelley's Frankenstein? I mean, because I think you heard the venom, obviously. If they took Mary Shelley's name off that thing, you can make Frankenweenie. And I will love, like, I love Frankenweenie. Do your Frankenstein homage all day, all the time. But when you call, when you say it's Bram Stoker’s, I think that this is what has been frustrating historians like me and getting high school students Ds in English class ever since. Because it just creates the false perception that you've basically read the book. Right. Or that you, if you know the thing you know the book and it's just a cheap ploy. And I don't like it.

Brian: I think, somebody correct me on this, that there, there had been a plan to do a reboot of the Universal monster franchise, and these two movies were supposed to be the reboot of it. [00:38:00] And then they would've then done HG Wells’ Invisible Man.

John: The Mummy killed it. They've tried to reboot it several times. And that was the first attempt.

Brian: Yeah, I’ve heard that called the dark universe. They were trying to do their own MCU.

Dawn: Yeah. Well, at Universal Studios, there is of course in, in LA, in general, there's the property wars, you know? What what's, who has what? And sometimes those get really blurred. Like why does Universal Studios have Harry Potter? When we can see Warner Brothers from the top of our wall/ And that's obviously, you know, those things happen. But when it comes to like the IP or intellectual property, those original monsters are so valuable and they always are at Halloween. And then it's like, sort of, how can we capitalize on this? And yeah. And it's cross generational.

Brian: All they really own right now is the look right? They own Jack Pierce's makeup job from Frankenstein.

Dawn: But I think that that's exactly the point; [00:39:00] the delusion of what is it that you own if you own, you know, Frankenstein, whatever. But yes, there was definitely an interest to sort of revamp all of the original Universal Monsters they call them and it's the Mummy, Frankenstein, Dracula, and the Invisible Man.

John: It's everybody who shows up in Mad Monster Party.

Dawn: Exactly.

[Soundbite: Mad Monster Party]

Dawn: But yeah, The Mummy, starring Tom Cruise, was a tremendous flop. And I think that sort of took the wind out of everybody's sails.

John: Let me ask you this, Dawn. If Mel Brooks had titled his movie, Mary Shelley's Young Frankenstein, instead of Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein, would you have a problem with that?

Dawn: Yeah, no, but no, I would not have had a problem, because that would've been irony and juxtaposition. Not just a straight lie.

John: So that brings us to some comedies. Young Frankenstein and Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein, which I was very surprised and a little unnerved to [00:40:00] realize a few years back, Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein was made a mere 10 years before I was born. And I had always assumed it was way back then. And it's like, no, it wasn't all that way back then. It was pretty, pretty recently.

Brian: That happened to me when I realized that Woodstock was only six years before my birth. And it always seemed like ancient history.

John: Is that the common thing, Madame Historian? That people kind of forget how recent things were?

Dawn: Oh yeah. Remember Roe V. Wade. Sorry, too soon.

Brian: We're recording this on that day.

Dawn: Yeah, absolutely. I think that it happens to everybody so much faster than you think it's going to. I remember looking around in the nineties feeling, well, surely the seventies was ancient history, you know, because they had That Seventies Show, which debuted as like a period piece. I am still very young and hip and happening and [00:41:00] they are in production for That Nineties Show right now. And I said to my husband, That Nineties Show. I was like, Jesus, I guess that's 20 years because I was in the nineties they did That Seventies Show. And he goes, no baby that's 30 years. And I was like, I'm sorry. I said, I'm sorry, what? He goes, the nineties was 30 years ago. And I just had to sit down and put my bunion corrector back on because these feet are killing me.

John: All right. Well, let's just talk about these two comedies and then there's a couple other things I wanna quickly hit on. What are our thoughts on, let's start with Young Frankenstein?

[Soundbite: Young Frankenstein]

Dawn: I told you I'm not an idealist and we're not a purist about Frankenstein, but I am an enthusiast. So that is why I told you to watch Kenneth Branagh’s movie, even though I hate it so much. And that is also why I love Young Frankenstein, because I think that it is often what brings people into the story. For many, many people, it introduces them to the creature. They may know literally nothing about Frankenstein except for Young Frankenstein. And that's actually fine with me because I'm a comedian myself. And I believe that parody is high honor. And often when you parody and satirize something, especially when you do it well, it's because you went to the heart of it. Because you got right in there into the nuggets and the creases of it. And there is something about Young [00:43:00] Frankenstein as ridiculous as it is that has some of that wildness and the hilarity and The Putting on the Ritz. I did find out from my Universal Studios movie history stuff, that that scene was very nearly cut out. Mel Brooks did not like it. And he just didn't like that they were doing it. And of course it's the one, I feel like I'm not the only one who still has to make sure that my beverage is not only out of my esophagus, but like aside, when they start doing it.

[Soundbite: Young Frankenstein]

Brian: And I understand they were about to throw away the sets from the 1931 Frankenstein when Mel Brooks or his production designer came up and said, Stop stop. We want to use these and they were able to get the original sets or at least the set pieces.

John: I believe what it [00:44:00] was, was they got Kenneth Strickfaden’s original machines. Ken Strickfaden created all that stuff for the 1931 version and had been used on and off, you know, through all the Frankenstein films. And it was all sitting in his garage and the production designer, Dale Hennessy went out to look at it because they were thinking they had to recreate it. And he said, I think it still works. And they plugged them in and they all still worked.

Brian: Oh, wow.

Dawn: Oh man. It’s alive.

John: Those are the original machines.

Dawn: I didn't know that. That's fantastic.

John: At the time when I was a young kid, I was one of the few kids in my neighborhood who knew the name Kenneth Strickfaden, which opened doors for me. Let me tell you when people find out, oh, you know of the guy who designed and built all those? Oh, yes. Oh, yes. I know all that. One of my favorite stories from Young Frankenstein is when they sold the script. I forget which studio had said yes. And as they were walking out of the meeting, Mel Brooks turned back and said, oh, by the way, it's gonna be in black and white, and kept going. And they followed him down the hall and said, no, it can't be in black and white. And he said, no, it's not gonna work unless it's in [00:45:00] black and white. And they said, well, we're not gonna do it. And they had a deal, they were ready to go. And he said, no, it's gonna stay black and white. And he called up Alan Ladd Jr. that night, who was a friend of his, and said, they won't do it. And he said, I'll do it. And so it ended up going, I think, to Fox, who was more than happy to, to spend the money on that. And even though Mel didn't like Putting on the Ritz, it's weird, because he has almost always had musical numbers in his films. Virtually every movie he's done, he's either written a song for it, or there's a song in it. So, it's weird to me. I've heard Gene Wilder on YouTube talk about no, no, he didn't want that scene at all, which is so odd because it seems so--

Brian: I never thought about that, but you're right. I'm going in my head through all the Mel Brooks films I can remember. And there is at least a short musical interlude in all of them that I can think of.

John: But let's talk then about what's considered one of the best mixes of horror and comedy, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein [00:46:00]

[Soundbite: Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein]

Brian: As with comedies of that age, it, it starts off slow, but then it starts to get very funny as time goes on. And all the comedy is because of Abbot and Costello. They are the, [00:47:00] the chemistry they have on screen. I don't know how much of that was actually scripted and how much of it was just how they rolled with each other. But it works really well. Not much of the comedy is provided by the monsters or the supporting cast or even  there's maybe a cute, a few sight gags. But wouldn’t you say most of the comedy is just the dynamics between them?

John: It is. The scary stuff is scary and it's balanced beautifully at the end where they're being chased through the castle. The monsters stayed pretty focused on being monsters and Abbot and Costello's reactions are what’s funny.

Dawn: If I may, as someone who has already admitted I haven't seen much of the movie, it's feels to me like it may be something like Shaun of the Dead, in the sense that you get genuinely scared if zombie movies scare, then you'll have that same adrenaline rush and the monsters stay scary. They don't have to get silly. Or be a part of the comedy for your two very opposing one's skinny, one's fat, you know, and the way that their friendship is both aligning and [00:48:00]coinciding is the humor.

Brian: I believe there is one brief shot in there where you get to see Dracula, Frankenstein's monster and the Wolfman all in the same shot. And I think that might be the only time that ever happens in the Universal Franchise. During the lab scene, does that sound right John?

John: I think you really only have Dracula and the Wolfman. I'll have to look it up because the monster is over on another table--

Brian: Isn't he underneath the blanket?

John: Nope, that's Lou Costello, because it's his brain that they want. And so they're fighting over that table. And then just a little, I have nothing but stupid fun facts. There's a point in it, in that scene where the monster gets off the table and picks up someone and throws them through a window. And Glenn Strange, who was playing the monster at that point -- and who is one of my favorite portrayers of the monster, oddly enough -- had broken his ankle, I believe. And so Lon, Chaney, Jr. put the makeup on and did that one stunt for him, cuz he was there.

Brian: He did that as Frankenstein's monster?

John: Yes. Frankenstein.

Brian: I didn't know that. Yes, I [00:49:00] did not know that. So he plays both of those roles in that movie?

John: Yes. Let me just take a moment to defend Glenn Strange, who played the monster three times: House of Dracula, House of Frankenstein, and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. In House of Frankenstein, he is following up the film before that, which was Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman, in which, in this very convoluted universe, Lugosi is playing the monster, even though he didn't wanna do it in 31. Because his brain in Ghost of Frankenstein had been put into the Monster's body. So, in Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman, it is Lugosi as the Frankenstein monster. It is Lon Chaney Jr., who had played the monster in Ghost of Frankenstein, now back to playing Larry Talbot. So, it is Wolfman versus Frankenstein. And the premise of the script was he's got Ygor’s brain and it's not connecting properly. He's gone blind. They shot that. They had tons of dialogue between the two characters of Larry Talbot pre-wolfman, and the monster, Bela Lugosi. And the executives thought it sounded silly. So they went in and they cut [00:50:00] out all of Lugosi’s dialogue out of the movie. So now you have a blind monster stumbling around with his arms in front of him, but he doesn't talk. And if you look at the movie, you can see where he's supposed to be talking and they cut away quickly. And it's really convoluted. Glenn Strange who then has to play the monster next, looks at that and goes well, all right, I guess I'm still blind. I guess I'm still stumbling around with my arms in front of him. Which is the image most people have of the Frankenstein monster, which was never done by Boris in his three turns as the monster. So with, in that regard, I just think Glenn Strange did a great job of picking up what had come before him and making it work moving forward.

Anyway, a couple other ones I wanna just hit on very quickly. Brian asked me to watch Dracula in Istanbul. Under the circumstances, a fairly straightforward retelling of the Dracula story. I would recommend it--it is on YouTube--for a couple of reasons. One, I believe it's the first time that Dracula has actual canine teeth.

Brian: Yes.

John: Which is important. But the other is there's the scene where he's talking to Harker about, I want [00:51:00] you to write three letters. And I want you to post date the letters. It’s so convoluted, because he goes into explaining how the Turkish post office system works in such a way that the letters aren't gonna get there. It's just this long scene of explaining why he needs to write these three letters, and poor Harker’s doing his best to keep up with that. That was the only reason I recommend it.

Brian: That movie is based on a book called Kazıklı Voyvoda, which means The Warrior Prince and it was written in, I wanna say the 1920s or thirties, I wanna say thirties. It's the first book to equate Dracula and Vlad the Impaler, which I've come back to a couple times now, but that's significant because it was a Turkish book and the Turks got that right away. They immediately saw the name Dracula like, oh, we know who we're talking about. We're talking about that a-hole. It was not until the seventies, both the [00:52:00] fifties and the seventies, that Western critics and scholars started to equate the two. And then later when other scholars said, no, there, there's not really a connection there, but it's a fun story. And it's part of cannon now, so we can all play around with it.

John: But that wasn't what Bram Stoker was thinking of? Is that what you're saying?

Brian: No. No, he, he wasn't, he wasn't making Dracula into Vlad the Impaler. He got the name from Vlad the Impaler surely, but not the deeds. He wasn't supposed to be Vlad the Impaler brought back to life.

John: All right. I'm going to ask you both to do one final thing and then we'll wrap it up for today. Although I could talk to you about monsters all day long, and the fact that I'd forgotten Dawn, that you were back on the Universal lot makes this even more perfect. If listeners are going to watch one Dracula movie and one Frankenstein movie, what do you recommend? Dawn, you go first.

Dawn: They're only watching one, then it's gotta be the 1931 Frankenstein, with Boris. Karloff, of course. I think it has captured [00:53:00] the story of Frankenstein that keeps one toe sort of beautifully over the novel and the kind of original source material that I am so in love with, but also keeps the other foot firmly in a great film tradition. It is genuinely spooky and it holds so much of the imagery of any of the subsequent movies that you're only watching one, so that's the one you get. But if you do watch any more, you've got this fantastic foundation for what is this story and who is this creature?

John: Got it. And Brian, for Dracula?

Brian: I was tossing around in my head here, whether to recommend Nosferatu or the 1931 Dracula. And I think I'm going to have to agree with Dawn and say the 1931 for both of them, because it would help a viewer who was new to the monsters, understand where we got the archetypes we have. Now, why, when you type an emoji into your phone for Vampire, you get someone with a tuxedo in the slick back hair or, I think, is there a Frankenstein emoji?

Dawn: There is, and he's green with bolts in his neck. [00:54:00]

Brian: Yeah, it would. It will help you understand why we have that image permanently implanted in our heads, even though maybe that's not the source material. We now understand the origins of it.

Dawn: And if I may too, there's, there's something about having the lore as founded in these movies is necessary, frankly, to almost understand what happens later. I mean, I get very frustrated in 2022, if there is a movie about vampires that takes any time at all to explain to me what a vampire is, unless you're breaking the rules of the vampire. For example, you know, like in Twilight the vampire sparkles, like a diamond when it's out in the sunshine and is the hottest thing ever. That's really great to know. I didn't know that about vampires. That wasn't necessarily true before, you know, but you don't need to take a lot of time. In fact, when you do read Dracula, one of the things for me that I found very frustrating was the suspense of what is it with this guy? They were like: He said we couldn't bring [00:55:00] garlic and they take all this time. And you're kind of as a modern reader being like, cuz he is a fucking vampire. Move on. Like we know this, we got this one. It's shorthand

Brian: That’s one snide thing I could say about the book is that there are times where Dracula’s powers seem to be whatever his powers need to be to make this next scene creepy and move on to the next chapter.

John: He was making it up as he went along. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Episode 106: Writer/Director Eric Mendelsohn revisits “Judy Berlin”

This week on the blog, a podcast interview with filmmaker Eric Mendelsohn, who revisits the lessons he learned while making his debut feature film, “Judy Berlin.”

LINKS

Judy Berlin Trailer:  https://youtu.be/23PlEaTy9WA

Edie Falco Interview about Judy Berlin: https://youtu.be/AoC5q5N-6kY

A Free Film Book for You:  https://dl.bookfunnel.com/cq23xyyt12

Another Free Film Book:  https://dl.bookfunnel.com/x3jn3emga6

Fast, Cheap Film Website: https://www.fastcheapfilm.com/

Eli Marks Website:  https://www.elimarksmysteries.com/

Albert’s Bridge Books Website:  https://www.albertsbridgebooks.com/

YouTube Channel:  https://www.youtube.com/c/BehindthePageTheEliMarksPodcast

Dying to make a feature? Learn from the pros!

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

★★★★★

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

• Jonathan Demme: The value of cameos

• John Sayles: Writing to your resources

• Peter Bogdanovich: Long, continuous takes

• John Cassavetes: Re-Shoots

• Steven Soderbergh: Rehearsals

• George Romero: Casting

• Kevin Smith: Skipping film school

• Jon Favreau: Creating an emotional connection

• Richard Linklater: Poverty breeds creativity

• David Lynch: Kill your darlings

• Ron Howard: Pre-production planning

• John Carpenter: Going low-tech

• Robert Rodriguez: Sound thinking

And more!

---

Write Your Screenplay with the Help of Top Screenwriters!

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

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

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

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

The book covers (among other topics):

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Roger Nygard (“Suckers”) on mixing genres

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

---

TRANSCRIPT -EPISODE 106

Eric Mendelson Interview

[JUDY BERLIN SOUNDBITE]

John

That was a soundbite from “Judy Berlin,” which was written and directed by today’s guest, Eric Mendelsohn. Hello and welcome to episode 106 of The Occasional Film podcast -- the occasional companion podcast to the Fast, Cheap Movie Thoughts Blog. I'm the blog's editor, John Gaspard.

Judy Berlin, starring Edie Falco, as well as Madeline Kahn, Bob Dishy, Barbara Barrie and Julie Kavner, was Eric Mendelsohn's feature film debut. The film was an Official Selection of the Cannes Film Festival … won Best Director at Sundance … Best Independent Film at the Hamptons Film Festival … and was nominated for three Independent Spirit Awards. Eric is currently the Professor of Professional Practice, Film, at Columbia University.

I first spoke to Eric about Judy Berlin years and years ago, for my book, Fast Cheap and Under Control: Lessons Learned from the Greatest Low-Budget Movies of All Time. In the course of that interview, Eric laid out a handful of really smart filmmaking lessons – lessons that, if followed, might be the difference between making a successful film … or making no film at all.

I was curious: What did Eric think about those lessons, all these years later?  Before we got into that, though, we talked about the origins of Judy Berlin …

[MUSIC TRANSTION]

John

What was the impetus that made Judy Berlin happen?

Eric

It's answerable in a more general way. When I get interested in making a script or making a film, it's because a group of feelings and images almost in a synesthesia kind of way, come together and I get a feeling and I say, oh, yeah, that would be fun. And for Judy Berlin, the set of feelings were definitely having to do with melancholy, hopefulness, the suburbs and my intimate feelings about them being a fresh place that I hadn't seen, represented in the way I experienced them. Things as abstract as how everyone feels in autumn time, I guess, maybe everyone does. I don't know. Maybe there are some people who are just blissfully unaware of all those sad feelings of you know, autumn, but I felt like they were worth reproducing if maybe they hadn't been in that particular locale. I think this is a funny thing to say but against all of that sadness, and kind of hope against hope, being hopeful against hopelessness, I had this sound of a score to a Marvin Hamlisch score to Take the Money and Run. And I actually asked him to do the music and he said he didn't understand such sadness that was in the movies that this isn't something I do. Which is really true and I didn't get it and I wanted to persist and say no, but that score for Take the Money and Run, that has such like almost like a little kids hopefulness about it.

That's what I wanted. It was like a river running underneath the ground of the place that I had grown up with. And I think the other inspiration for the movie was pretty, I don't know, maybe it's called plagiarism. Maybe it's called inspiration, the collected feeling that you can distill from the entire works of Jacques Demy, and I loved Jacques Demy 's films. They gave me a license. I saw them and said, Well, if you can mythologize your own little town in the northwest of France that maybe seems like romantic to Eric Mendelsohn from old Bethpage, Long Island, New York but truly is a kind of a unremarkable place at the time it was made, that I can do it with my town. I can mythologize everybody, and love them and hate them and talk about them and so those are some of the feelings that went into it.

John

But they all came through. So, what I want to do is just go through the handful of lessons that you told me X number of years ago, and let's see what you think about them now. So, one of the big ones that turns up again and again, when I talked to filmmakers was the idea of write to your resources. And in the case of Judy Berlin, you told me that that's a great idea and you thought you were: It takes place over one day with a bunch of characters in one town. When in fact you were really making things quite difficult for yourself by having middle aged people with homes and cars and businesses and professional actors who all had other things going on.

Eric  03:35

And multiple storylines is a terrible idea for low budget movie making. Each actor thought oh, I’m in a little short film. I, however, was making a $300,000 movie about 19 characters. What a stupid guy I was.

John  03:53

Do you really think it was stupid?

Eric  03:54

It was. You know, everyone says this after you have graduated from that kind of mistake or once you've done it, you look back and say I would only have done that because I didn't know any better. I know you haven't finished your question. But I also want to say that writing or creating from ones’ resources also includes what you are able to do, what you are able to manufacture. In other words, I didn't have enough writing skill to concentrate on two characters or one character in house, like Polanski, in his first endeavors. I didn't I had small ideas for many characters. It's much more difficult to write a sustained feature film with two people. So, I was writing to my resources in a number of ways, not just production, but in my ability as a writer at that point.

John  04:53

Yeah, you're right. It is really hard. I don't know why they always say if you're gonna make a low budget movie, have it be two people in a room. That's really hard to do. The idea of let's just tell a bunch of stories does seem easier and I've done that myself a couple times and it is for low budget easier in many respects. My stuff is super low budget, no one's getting paid. We're doing it on weekends, and you can get some really good actors to come over for a couple days and be really great in their part of the movie and then you put it all together. Another advantage is if you have multiple stories, I learned this from John Sayles in Returns of the Secaucus Seven, he said I couldn't move the camera. So, I just kept moving the story. It allowed him to just, I can't move the camera, but I can move to the next scene, I can move to these people, or I can move to those people there. And it also allows you an editing a lot of freedom, because you can shift and move and do things. So, the downside you had of course was on just a strictly production shooting day level, very hard to do what you were doing. But it did allow you to grow a bit as a writer because you're able to write a lot of different kinds of characters and different kinds of scenes.

Eric  05:57

Remember, I always say this, you know, you sit in your room, and I believe you need to do this as a writer, you sit in your room and you say to yourself, she slams a car door harder than usual. And then you realize later she drives a car, where am I going to get a car from? She enters her house. How am I going to get a house and if I have seven characters, and they all have cars, that's a job in itself. One person could spend their summer looking for seven cars. But that's the least of your problems. When it's houses, cars, clothing, handbags, all of it.

John  06:30

Yeah, when you're starting out, you don't necessarily realize that every time you say cut to something in your script, that's a thing. You've got to get it. I did a feature once that had four different stories and there are four different writers and a writer came to me with his finished script, which was brilliant, but it was like 14, 15 locations that I had to shoot over two days. So, how do you do that? Well, you end up spending four days on it. But the other hand, another writer who understood screenwriting, handed me a script that was four locations, but brilliantly combined and figured out. So, in two days, you could shoot them all because he knew what he was doing. And that's something you don't necessarily learn until you're standing there at six in the morning with a crew going, I don't know what I'm doing right now, because I screwed myself up and I wrote it and that's sometimes the only way you can learn it.

Eric  07:16

I think it's the only way. The only way. Look, you can be precautious, you can, it's no different than life, your parents can warn you about terrible, ruinous, stupid, love affairs that are going to wreck you for a year. Are you really going to just not get into them because of what smart older people said? You throw yourself at a film in the way that hopefully you throw yourself at love affairs. You're cautious and then you've just got to experience it. And I think the difference obviously is in film, you're using lots of people's time, effort money, and you do want to go into it with smarts and planning. I still say that you should plan 160%. Over plan in other words. And then the erosion that naturally happens during production, this crew member stinks and had to be fired a day before. This location was lost. This actress can't perform the scene in one take because of memory problems. All of that is going to impact your film. Let's say it impacts it 90%. Well, if you plan to 160%, you're still in good shape in the footage that you get at the end of the production.

John  08:29

Yeah, I'm smiling, because you're saying a lot of the things you said last time, which means it’s still very true. Alright, the next lesson was, and this is one that I've embraced forever: No money equals more control. You spoke quite eloquently about the fact that people wanted to give you more money to make Judy Berlin if you would make the following changes. Looking back on it did you make the right decisions on that one?

Eric  08:51

Yes. I'll tell you something interesting. Maybe I didn't say this last time. But I remember my agent at the time saying to me, we could get you a lot of money. Why don't you halt production? We'll get you so much money that will get you--and this is the line that always stuck in my head-- all the bells and whistles you want. Now, I'm going to be honest with you what he said scared me for two reasons. One, I had worked in production for a long time in my life and I knew that if you stall anything, it just doesn't happen. It just doesn't. That the energy of rolling downhill is better than sitting on the hill, potential energy and trying to amass funds. But another thing and I was scared privately because I said to myself, I don't even know what the bells and whistles are. I'm afraid to tell him that I don't know what they are. And I'd rather I think that's those bells and whistles are for some other savvy filmmaker that I'll maybe become later. But right now I have the benefit of not knowing enough and I'm going to throw myself and my planning and my rigorous militaristic marshalling of people and props and costume names and locations and script. I'm gonna throw that all at the void and do it my cuckoo way because once I learned how to make a movie better, I'll have lost a really precious thing, which is my really, really raw, naive, hopeful, abstract sense of what this could be. And that thing that I just said with all those words was not just a concept. I didn't know what I was making, in the best sense possible.

I was shooting for something, shooting it for an emotional goal, or a visual goal for a dramatic goal but I didn't put a name on it. I didn't put a genre to it. So much so that by the time I got to the Sundance Film Festival, and I read the first line of a capsule review, and it said, A serio-comic suburban. I almost cried, I felt so bad that I didn't know what I was making in an objective sense. In a subjective sense, obviously, I knew exactly what I was trying to do. But objectively, I didn't know it could be summed up by a review. And it hurt me so badly to think I was so mockable and now I'm going to embarrass myself by telling you what I thought I was making. I didn't think I was making something that could have a boldface thing that said, serio comic, multi character, suburban fairy tale. I didn't know that. I really thought I was like writing in glitter on black velvet or I don't know, I didn't even know that it could just be summed up so easily.

And I think I've written a lot of scripts since that one, and many haven't gotten made, but each time I reject and issue an objective determination of what the thing is that I'm working on, prior to sitting down. Is that the best way to work? It is a painful way to work. My friends will tell you that. I have my great friend and filmmaker Rebecca Dreyfus always says that I have creative vertigo, that I don't know what I'm doing for months and years on end and then I looked down and I say, Oh, God, I think it's a horror film. Or I think I've rewritten a Dickens story. And I get a nauseated kind of, you know, dolly in rack, focus thing. It's not, I'm telling you, I'm not describing a creative process that is painful for me to realize, always later on what I'm doing. And I still hold, that's the only way I can do it. I will not go into a screenplay and then a film saying this is a serio comic black and white, multi character, suburban, who wants that? I go in thinking, I'm making something that I don't know, that no one's seen before and then we'll see what they think.

John  12:54

You know, we were very similar, you and I in that regard. In addition to low budget, filmmaking, as I've gotten older, I've gotten into novel writing and mystery writing, which I enjoy. And the parallels between independent publishing and independent filmmaking are really close. One of the things that people say all the time in independent publishing that I back away from is you have to write to market. You have to know who your audience is, what they like, and write a book for them. And I can't do that. I can write a book for me that, you know, if I slip into dementia in 20 years and read it, I won't remember writing it, but I would enjoy it because all the jokes are for me and all the references are for me...

Eric  13:32

I think you and me, doing the exact right thing, according to me. And you'll be happy to know, because I teach at Columbia Columbia's film grad school, we have an unbelievable group of alumni people, you know, like, you know, Jennifer Lee, who created Frozen and the people behind Making of a Murderer and Zootopia. And all they ever say when they come back to speak to our students is nobody wants a writer who is writing to the industry. They want something they haven't seen before that is new, fresh, odd, and still steaming be you know, out of the birth canal.

John  14:14

Yep. The corollary to that, that I tell people who are writing and also people who are filmmakers who want to work that way is the more you can take economics out of the process, the more you're able to not need to make money from what you're doing, the happier you're going to be. Because every movie I've ever made has never made money and it didn't matter. It wasn't the purpose. The purpose was, oh, this is interesting idea. Let's explore this with these 12 actors and see what happens. But if you can take economics out of it, you completely free.

Eric  14:41

You free and I'll tell you what, I know. Again, it's just a perspective, one person's perspective. But everyone, you know, you want to leave on the earth some things that you felt good about, whether they're children or ethics or some civic thing you did for your town, or a movie. And all the people I know who made tons of money always are talking about coming back to their roots because they're so unhappy. Like, I get it. I get it. And all these actors who want to do work for no money, it's because they feel like well, I sure I made a ton of money, but I didn't get to do any of the stuff I really care about.

I remember in my first real attempt at filmmaking after film school, a short half hour film that starred the late Anne Meara and Cynthia Nixon in an early film role and F Murray Abraham did the voiceover. And I was 20 something years old, and the film did very well and it was just a half hour movie and we showed it at the Museum of Modern Art. And after the screening, a woman came up to me and I don't remember what language she was speaking. She was Asian, and she tried to explain to her to me, what the movie meant to her, but she spoke no English and she kept tapping her heart and looking at me. Anne Meara was standing next to me and she kept pointing like and then making a fist and pounding her chest and pointing to like a screen in the air, as if she was referencing the movie. And then she went away. Anne Meara said, listen to me now, it will never get better than that. I understand completely. For the movie I made after Judy Berlin, which is called Three Backyards and a movie I produced and cowrote after that, called Love After Love. I didn't read the reviews. Who cares?

John  16:27

Yeah, that's a pretty special experience and good for her to point that out to you.

Eric  16:31

Her husband in a bar after a production of The Three Sisters told me that--this is pretty common. This is Jerry Stiller, the late great comedian said to me, I was about to tell him what the New York Times had said about his performance. He said, no, no, no, don't. Because if you believe the good ones, then you have to believe the bad ones. And I've since known that that is something that's said a lot. But if a review isn't going to help you make your next movie, then don't read it.

Marlena Dietrich, in my favorite last line, paraphrased from any movie, gets at why criticism is unimportant for the artist. In the end of Touch of Evil, she says, “what does it matter what you say about other people.” It's just, you either do or they did to you or you experience all that garbage of what people say it goes in the trash, no one except for maybe James Agee’s book, there's very few film criticism books that people are desperate to get to, you know, in 50 years. But you take a bad movie, I watched some summer camp killer movie the other night, and I thought I'd rather watch this than read what somebody said about this movie. I’d rather watch somebody's earnest attempt to fling themselves at the universe than a critics commentary upon it. Yeah. Anyone who gets up at five in the morning to go make a movie has my respect and I don't even you know, on the New York Times comments online commentary site, I refused when it's about artwork to come in even anonymously. Nope!

John  18:05

Okay. You did touch on this. But it's so important and people forget it. I phrased it as time is on your side. You talked about being prepared 160% and having Judy Berlin, every day, there were two backups in case for some reason, something didn't happen and the advantage you had was you had no money. But you had time and you could spend the time necessary doing months of pre-production, which is the certainly the least sexy part of filmmaking, but is maybe the most important and is never really talked about that much.

How much you can benefit from just sitting down and putting the schedule down? I mean, we used to, I'm sure with Judy Berlin, you're using strips and you're moving them around and when we did our 16-millimeter features, we didn't even spend the money on the board. We made our own little strips, and we cut them out and did all that. You can do it now on computers, it's much easier, but it's having that backup and that backup to the backup. You don't really need it until you need it and then you can't get it unless you've put it in place already.

Eric  19:06

Well, I'll say this, I have to disabuse some of my students at Columbia by telling them that there is no like effete artist who walks onto a set-in filmmaking with no idea about scheduling. That character fails in filmmaking. That every single director is a producer, and you cannot be stupid about money, and you cannot be stupid about planning and in fact, Cass Donovan who is an amazing AD and one of my good friends. She and I sometimes used to do a seminar for young filmmakers about scheduling your movie and I always used to say, you know, a good schedule is a beautiful expression of your movie, where you put your emphasis. And it comes out in the same way that people say like oh, I just like dialogue and characters. I'm not good at structure. There's no such things. You need at least to understand that a good structure for your story can be a beautiful, not restrictive, rigorous device that's applied to your artistry, a structure and a story is a beautiful can be a beautiful thing and the expression of the story and the same thing is true with the schedule.

The schedule is an expression of your story’s emphases. If your story and your resources are about actors, and you've got an amazing group of people who are only doing the project and lending their experience and talent, because they thought this was a chance to act and not be hurried. Well, that expresses itself in how many days and how many shots you're going to schedule them in. And I love how a schedule expresses itself into an amount of days and amount of money and allocation of funding. I love it. There is no better way to find out what your priorities were and I love it. And in terms of planning, one of the reasons I don't understand or have an inkling to investigate theater is I don't want something that goes on every evening without my control, where the actors sort of do new things or try stuff out and the carefully plotted direction that you created can get wobbly and deformed over time. Instead, I like the planning of a script and now I'm not talking about pre-production. I'm talking about I like that, with screenwriting, you go down in your basement for as long as you need. So, maybe I'm afraid of shame and I don't like to present stuff that is so obviously wrong to whole groups of people. I like to go down in the basement for both the writing and the pre-production and get the thing right.

You know, there are so many ways to make a movie that I'll also I want to place myself in a specific school of filmmaking. To this point in my directing life, I've created scripts that are meant to be executed in the sense that not as disciplined in execution as what Hitchcock or David Lean, we're shooting for, but not as loose an experiment as Cassavetes, or let's say, Maurice Pilar. We're going for, everyone has to find their own expression. In other words, if you are Maurice Pilar or Cassavetes, or Lucrecia Martel, you have to find your own equation, you have to find your own pre-production/production equation where the room for experimentation.

I haven't really wanted to experiment on set, I know what shots I want, and I get them. The next film I make may be different. But everyone has a different equation and every script and every director are going to find their own priorities that are expressed in the project and then the execution. The fun thing was, the last movie I worked on, was something I've produced and co-wrote ,called Love After Love. And that was directed and co-written by Russ, and Russ and I spent years writing a script that we knew that was intended to be elastic, and to be a jumping off ground for the kind of impromptu directing he does. Now, a lot of what we wrote ended up in the movie, but sometimes he would call me from the set and say, this isn't working and that was exciting, because we knew that would happen. And he told the cast and the crew before they went into the project, before they went into the short film he made before that called Rolling on the Floor Laughing. This is intended to be a porous experiment ,with a firm spine of drama that is not porous.

So, we've created a drama and interrelations in that script that then he went off, and those couldn't budge. Those were fixed the dramatic principles and dynamics. But he worked as a director in a completely different way than me and I was very happy to loosen my own way of working and then as a producer, make sure that he had what he needed on the set, and that the pre-production, production and even editing--we took a year to edit that film--was based in an idiosyncratic methodology of his particular artistry, not mine.

John  24:34

And why I think is so interesting about that is that you know, you made sure that everybody involved knew going in we're doing this kind of movie and this kind of movie has … I remember talking to Henry Jaglom, about I don’t know which movie it was, you know, Henry has a very loose style of what he does. But it's still a movie, and he was talking about, he was shooting a scene and an actress either jumped into a swimming pool or push somebody into a swimming pool. And he said, Why did you do that? She said, I was in the moment. Yeah, and he said, yes, this is a movie and now I have to dry these people off and I have to do the coverage on the other side. So, you need to know where the lines are, how improvised is this really.

Eric  25:15

And everyone has different lines, and you make movies to find out how you make movies. You write screenplays to find out what that feeling is and whether or not you can interest an audience in it. You don't write a screenplay to execute Syd Fields, ideas about story or the hero's journey. I'm not a hero. I don't have a hero's journey. I have my journey. The task, the obligation is to see if I can take that and still make it dramatic and interesting to a group of hostile strangers, normally called an audience,

John  25:52

As Harry Anderson used to say, if you have a bunch of people all seated facing the same direction, do you owe them something.

Eric  25:58

Yeah, it's unbelievable. A friend of mine who works in theater saw a terrible show and he works on Broadway, and he works on all the big shows that you have heard of. So, I can't give the title of this one particular production. And he said, you know, I feel like telling these people because he works in lighting. He said, I feel like telling these people who create these shows that every single audience member who comes to see the show at eight o'clock that night, woke up at seven in the morning, and they're tired, and they worked and you better provide something at eight that night.

John  26:33

Exactly. I remember talking to Stuart Gordon, the guy who made Reanimator, and he was big in theater before he got into horror films. And he said we had one patron who always brought her husband, and I'll say his name was Sheldon, I forget what the name was. And he would consistently fall asleep during the shows. And my mandate to the cast was our only job is to keep Sheldon awake. Yeah, that's what we're there to do is to keep Sheldon alert and awake. And I think at all the time as you're watching something on film, you're going is that going to keep Sheldon awake, or is that just me having fun?

Eric  27:01

No, he didn't ask this question, so it's probably not. But a lot of students are not a lot, actually but some students will say to me like, well, what I have to know the history of movies? Why do I have to know that when I'm going to create something new? And I just think because you're not. Because there is a respect for a craft. Forget the art of people who have been doing this for ages. And to not know it puts you in the position of the only person on set who doesn't realize that. Every single crew member is a dramatist: the script supervisor is a dramatist, the set decorator is a dramatist, the costume designer, the cinematographer, the producer. So sometimes my students in directing will say to me, well, I thought this shot was interesting and I said, Okay, you may think that's interesting. But I'm going to tell you something scary right now: your producer, and your editor will know immediately that you don't know what you're doing and that that won't cut. It is not a secret this thing you are doing, this skill. Learn what other people, what the expectations of the art form are, please, and then build from them and break rules and expand but don't do it naively.

John  28:06

Yeah. When I wrote the first book, it was because I had done an interview with a couple guys who made a movie called The Last Broadcast, which came out right before Blair Witch, which had a similar project process to it. And one of them said to me, he said in talking to film students, one thing I keep seeing is everyone wants to reinvent the wheel. And so I put the book together, because here's all the different lessons, you can you're going to end up learning in one way or another, you might as well read them now and like you say, not find out that that won't cut because it won't cut. It just won't cut.

Alright, you did touch on this lesson earlier just in passing, but it's a good one and it's sometimes a tough one. I just called it Fixed Problems Quickly and it was about if there's a crew member who's not part of the team, it's easier to get rid of them two weeks out, then two hours into the shoot.

Eric  28:54

Yep, it still holds, and it happened on the film I made after Judy Berlin as well. Someone who had worked on Judy Berlin came on to the new production of Three Backyards, and I tried my best to keep this untenable relationship working. But like a rotten root on a plant, it started to rot everything around it, and everyone would like to be the well-liked captain of the ship. But that also means firing crew members sometimes. We had a very, very big key position on that film, and we had to lose them a week before we shot. I'll tell you something else about Three Backyards. It was a week before we shot it. Is it okay that I talked about that?

John  29:39

Absolutely. We're talking about what you've learned.

Eric  29:42

Yeah. So, after Judy Berlin I made a film called Three Backyards with Edie Falco and Elias Kotes and host of other people. A very strange movie it was, I am not joking. I haven't said this. So, not that this is some big reveal that anyone gives a shit about but before, a week before we shot it was called Four Backyards. I've never told that because I didn't want anyone to watch it with that mindset and start to say, and we even kept the crew quiet and said, please, we don't want this to get out that it's you know. And I cut out an entire storyline a week before shooting. Now, when I tell you that it was an actor, a very amazing actor in that storyline, the fourth backyard, who I had to call, who was already doing driving around on his motorcycle in the location, going to visit places that had to do with his storyline, costume fittings, everything had been done locations we had gotten, I had to call them and say we're cutting, that your character and that storyline. It was still to this day unbearable. I don't expect you know, the guy is very well known and successful, and you know, has done far more important things than my little movie. But I still feel guilty to this day. I feel nauseous to this day that I did that, that I had to do it.

We got to a point where it was clear, the expression of the film called Four Backyards would be running through one take per shot, per setup and running through with no time to work on the characters, no time to give these amazing actors, you know what they wanted. We'd be run and gun and I just said, I'm not this old, you know, to making this movie so that I can re-learn terrible lessons and put these actors through that kind of experience. So, I cut an entire storyline that was dragging down this buoy, let's say in the water and then once we cut it off, and I of course I don't mean the actor or the performance, the potential performance. I mean, the production. Once that fell to the bottom of the sea, the buoy lifted and bounced and righted itself. And I lived with that decision knowing I did the right thing, but that it was hard.

We also lost one of the key, we lost our production designer I would say about 15 days before shooting, and that was another one of those kinds of decisions where I said get it done now. I will say this offline on Three Backyards. There was a crew member who had, the minute I shook hands with them, I knew this is that kind of poisonous sniping inconsolable person. But I leave those decisions to department heads and that's not my job to get in and say this person seems awful to me. But that's my feeling. They worked for about, let me say this carefully, they worked and it and became exactly the problem that I had predicted. They initiated a work stoppage that was uncalled for, unprofessional, and everyone was aware.

They pretended not to know what location we were going to next and didn't show up. We were delayed I think 40 minutes. On a low budget movie, 40 minutes is unsustainable. And I will just say this, I had to make the decision because we were so deep into the film, whether or not firing that person would cause such bad feelings in the remaining crew or free us up in a way that was similar to what I described earlier. I decided to keep the person and it was I believe the right decision because we were close enough to finishing the film that I believed I would no longer reap benefits from firing them and that leads me to a sentence that I probably told you when I was 20 or whatever how old I was when I spoke to you.  I'm now 57.

On a movie, you want to be effective not right. In other words, a decision that is morally right on a film which is a temporary, collapsible circus tent where people strangers get together and work for a month, being morally right can hit the main pole of that circus tent really hard and collapse. You want to be effective not right. The right decision in a movie. It is the one that gets forward motion. In that particular case, I took my revenge out later, I kept the person, I bit my tongue and swallowed my pride and said I'm so sorry, let's negotiate. How can we make you happier? However, after we finished production, my more powerful friends in the industry never hired that person again. That person was fired from large TV productions that they were on and given no reason and I felt absolutely thrilled with that.

John  34:48

Well, it does catch up with you. The next one is one that I use all the time and you just put it very succinctly you said, Fewer Takes, More Shots.

Eric  34:57

So, I can talk about that. I want to be specific though, that it's for my kind of filmmaking. If you're shooting every scene in one shot, this cannot apply. But in the edit room generally, is a very broad stroke comment, generally, if you're a more conventional visual director who tells stories with shots, you get stuck on one shot in one setup, especially if it's a master and you're trying to get it right. You have no other storytelling ability. You don't have the move in. You don't have the overhead shot. You don't have the insert shot of the finger of the character touching a teaspoon nervously. You don't have any other storytelling ability if you get stuck in one setup.

So, a lot of people always say, you know, remember, your first take is probably your best take. That's a good truism. There's an energy that you get from nervous actors, nervous camera operators in a first take. So, sometimes your first take has a great spontaneity about it. Sometimes it lingers for a second or third take. The idea that you are going to beat that dead horse into the ground with subsequent takes going up through 13, 15, 19 to get something perfect flies in the face of the actuality, which is that editing, performance, the rhythm of the eventual scene through shots and takes creates what the audience experiences. That the idea of perfection is a great way to flatten your actors, kill your dialogue, ruin your scene.

It's like when I first made a pie ever in my life, nobody taught me and I didn't really look at a book. I was preparing a meal for a woman who was coming up to her country house and I was upstate using the house. And I thought to myself as I carefully cut the butter into the flour and created a little pebbly, beautiful texture, and then gently gathered those pebbles of flour and butter and sugar together into a ball. I mistakenly thought that if I took the rolling pin and roll the life out of it, I would be making the best crust possible. And it tasted it was inedible. It tasted like shoe leather. And I said what did I do wrong? And they said, the object she said to me when she arrived, the object is to gather those delicate, beautiful pebbles together and lightly make it into a crust that retains the little particles, the delicate interstitial hollows. Not to flatten the life out of it. And the same is true about shots. The more angles you have, if that's the way you shoot, create a sense of life. That's about as good as I can say it.

John  37:49

Well, you know, I want to add just a couple of things. When I did the book, originally, I talked, had a wonderful long conversation with Edie, Falco about Judy Berlin. She was trying to get her brand-new baby to go to sleep while we talk and so it's very quiet recording of her talking.

Eric  38:04

That's my godson Anderson.

John  38:05

Oh, that's so sweet. She said about multiple takes. She said there's a perception sometimes with filmmakers that actors are this endless well. And she said, I'm not, I'm just not. Unless you're giving me direction to change something, it's going to be the same or worse. Again, and again. And so you know, of all the lessons from the book that I tell people when I'm making presentations, fewer takes more shots. The thing, a corollary of attitude, is if you're going to do another take, tell them to do it faster, because you're gonna want a faster version of it. You don't realize that right now, but you're gonna want one.

Eric  38:38

Here's a great way of saying it. I feel people mistake, directors mistakenly think that they are making the film on set. The filming of a movie is a shopping expedition for, drumroll please, ingredients. If you are shooting one take per scene, sure, get it right, you have your own methodology. But if you're going to be telling a story in the traditional narrative way, where a bunch of angles and performances in those shots, setups angles, will eventually tell the story of a scene that let's say for example, goes from pedestrian quotidian to life threatening, remember that you need the ingredients to then cook in the edit room of quotidian, seemingly boring escalating into life threatening.

Making a movie on set in production is shopping for the ingredients and you come home and then you forget the recipe and say, what did I get? What was available? What was fresh? What does that mean if you're not talking about food? Well, this actor was amazing, and I lingered on them and I worked on their performance because it's going to be great. That's one of the ingredients you have to work on. In the edit room, this actor was less experienced, and I had to do more setups because they couldn't carry a scene in one shot. That's what I have to work with now in the edit room.

When you're in the edit room, you're cooking with the ingredients you got in the fishing expedition called shooting. That's why my students say to me, well, why am I going to get extra footage? Why am I going to get anything but the bare minimum? Why am I going to overlap in terms of, well, you think you're only going to use that angle for two lines, we'll get a line on either side of the dialog, so that you have it in case. And they say, that's not being professional. That's not being precise and accurate. And I'd say it's a fishing expedition, especially if you're starting to learn film. You don't go shopping for a party and say, I think everyone will have about 13 M&Ms. You're buy in bulk, because you're getting like, oh, it's a Halloween party, I’ll need a lot of this, a lot of that and a lot of this, and then you cook it later.

John  41:04

You know, one of the best examples of that is connected to Judy Berlin, because as I remember, you edited that movie on the same flatbed that Annie Hall was edited on...

Eric  41:18

I still have it, because the contract I made with Woody Allen was that if no one ever contacted me for it, and I bore the expense of having to store it, I would keep it. And so I got it and nobody ever asked for it. Nobody uses it anymore.

John  41:34

But the making of that movie is exactly that. They had a lot of ingredients and they kept pulling things away to what was going to taste the best and all of a sudden, this massive thing … You know, I was just talking to another editor last weekend, o, I pulled out this, the Ralph Rosenblum’s book, but...

Eric  41:49

Oh, yeah, I was just gonna mention that. The best book on editing ever.

John  41:51

Although Walter Murch’s book was quite good. But this is much more nuts and bolts.

Eric  41:56

And much more about slapping stuff together to make art.

John  42:00

That one lesson of: don't spend all day on that one take over and over and over. Let's get some other angles is …

Eric  42:06

I'll tell you what happens. I may have said this in our first interview, but I will tell you from the inside, what happens. It's terrifying and if you start with a master, a director can get terrified, because to move on means more questions about what's next. Was it good? And you can get paralyzed in your master shot if you're shooting in that manner. And then the actors aren't doing their best work in the master, especially if it's a huge master, where there's tons of stuff going on. They're going to give you some better performance, if you intend to go in for coverage and you by the time you do that you may have lost, you know, their natural resource. They might have expended it already. I've been in that situation where I got lost in my master and you almost have to take a pin on set and hit your own thigh with it and say, wake up, wake up, move on, move on.

John  42:58

Yeah. All right, I got one more lesson for you, because I'm keeping you way too long. It's a really interesting one, because it's when I talked to Edie about it, she didn't know you had done it and she thought, well, maybe it helped. But Barbara Barrie played her mother in Judy Berlin, they had never met as actors, as people. And you kept them apart until they shot, because you wanted a certain stiffness between them. I just call that Using Reality to Your Advantage. What do you think about that idea now?

Eric  43:25

Edie isn't someone who requires it, you know, she's one of the best actresses in the world.

John  43:30

And Barbara Barrie wouldn't have needed it either. I'm sure.

Eric  43:32

She wouldn't have but I do think there's a … look. This is a funny thing about me and my evolution from Through an Open Window, which is the half hour film, to what I'm writing today. I always thought that film was interesting in the same way that I thought military psyops were interesting: that you could control or guide or influence an audience's experience of the story in ways they were unaware of. So, I always liked those hidden influencers. Even in advertising, I thought they were interesting. You see how this company only uses red and blue and suddenly you feel like, oh, this is a very, this is an American staple this product. I love that shit and after I'm done with a script, I know what I'm intending the audience's experience to be I want to find anything to help me to augment that and if you're a fan of that kind of filmmaking, would the shots have a power outside of the audience's ability to see them? They know that the story is working on them and they think the audience thinks, oh, I was just affected by the story in that great performance. They have no idea that the director has employed a multitude of tricks, depth of field to pop certain actor’s faces out as opposed to wider shots that exclude are identifying with other characters, moving shots that for some reason, quote unquote some reason meaning every director is aware of how these techniques influence an audience, suddenly make you feel as if that moment in the story of the character are moving or have power have influence while other moments have nothing.

In Three Backyards, funnily enough with Edie, I had a scene where Edie was, the whole, Edie's whole storyline was about her desperate, unconscious attempt to connect with this other woman who was a stranger to her. And I refused to show them in a good two shot throughout the entire film. I separated them. I made unequal singles.

When their singles cut, they were unequal singles tighter and wider, until the moment that I had convinced the audience now they're going to become best friends. And I put them into their first good, easy going two shot. And that kind of manipulation is done every moment by every filmmaker directing. In one aspect it is a mute, meaning silent in an unobtrusive, persuasive visual strategy for enhancing the story. So, whether you're keeping two actors away from each other during the course of the day before their first scene, because the scene requires tension, or whether you're separating them visually until a moment late in the movie, where they come together, and they're coming together will suddenly have tension because they're in the same shot. Those kinds of persuasive manipulations are what visual storytelling, otherwise known as directing is about.

John  43:33

Yep, and there's a lot of tools. You just got to know about them because a lot of them you're not going to see, you won't recognize, though until somebody points out, do you realize that those two women were never really in the same shot together?

Eric  47:06

Every well directed movie has a strategy. Sometimes they're unconscious, but you don't want to be unconscious. As the director, you want to be smart. You want to be informed about your own process, and I think smart directors … Here's what I always say to my students: learn a lot, know a lot, then feel a lot.

So, what does that mean? It's just my way of distilling a whole bunch of education down into a simple sentence. Understand what has been done and what you can do, and what are the various modes of directing and storytelling. And then when you get into your own script, feel a lot. What do I want? Why isn't it working? Add a lot of questions marks to the end of sentences. Why can't this character be more likeable? Why isn't this appealing? Why haven't I? How could I? And it's a combination of knowing a lot and being rigorously intellectual about the art form that you want to bow down before you want to bow down before what works and what doesn't work. I would say that you want to bow down before the gods of what works and what doesn't work. You know, you don't want to look them in the eye and say, screw you, I'm doing what I want. You bow down and say, I don't even understand why that didn't work. But I'll take that lesson.

You want to feel a lot. You want to be open on the set. One of the hardest things to learn is how to be open on the set. You want to be open when you're writing. You want to be open when you're editing. It's a real juggling act of roles that you have to play, of being naive, being smart, being a businessperson, being a general, being a very, very wounded flower.

You know, I remember reading, as a high school student, Gloria Swanson's autobiography. And then it's so many years since I read it that I might be wrong. But I remember they said what are you proudest of in your career. And she said without hesitation that I'm still vulnerable. And I didn't even know if I understood it at the time, but I get it now.

You want to be smart. You want to be experienced. You want to have a lot of tools and know the tools of other directors and still be naive and vulnerable and hearable and have your emotional interior in tech. Those are hard things to ask of anyone, but if you want to be in this industry, an art form that so many greats have invested their life's work toiling in, then you owe it to yourself to be all of those things.

[MUSIC TRANSTION]

John

Thanks to Eric Mendelsohn for chatting with me about the lessons he learned from his debut feature, Judy Berlin.

If you enjoyed this interview, you can find lots more just like it on the Fast, Cheap Movie Thoughts Blog. Plus, more interviews can be found in my books -- Fast, Cheap and Under Control -- Lessons Learned from the greatest low-budget movies of all time ... and its companion book of interviews with screenwriters, called Fast, Cheap and Written that Way. Both books can be found on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Google and Apple Books.

And while you're there, check out my mystery series of novels about magician Eli Marks and the scrapes he gets into. The entire series, staring with The Ambitious Card, can be found on those same online retailers in paperback, hardcover, ebook and audiobook formats. And if you haven’t already, check out the companion to the books: Behind the Page: The Eli Marks podcast … available wherever you get your podcasts.

That's it for episode 106 of The Occasional Film Podcast, which was p roduced at Grass Lake Studios. Original music by Andy Morantz. Thanks for tuning in and we’ll see you … occasionally!

Episode 105: Matthew G. Anderson on the “Theater People” web series

This week on the blog, a podcast interview with filmmaker Matthew G. Anderson about his hit web series, “Theater People.”

LINKS

Theater People Website: https://www.theaterpeoplewebseries.com/

Theater People on SeekaTV: https://watch.seeka.tv/en/theater-people

No Context Theater People on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nocontexttheaterpeople/

A Free Film Book for You:  https://dl.bookfunnel.com/cq23xyyt12

Another Free Film Book:  https://dl.bookfunnel.com/x3jn3emga6

Fast, Cheap Film Website: https://www.fastcheapfilm.com/

Eli Marks Website:  https://www.elimarksmysteries.com/

Albert’s Bridge Books Website:  https://www.albertsbridgebooks.com/

YouTube Channel:  https://www.youtube.com/c/BehindthePageTheEliMarksPodcast

Dying to make a feature? Learn from the pros!

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

★★★★★

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

• Jonathan Demme: The value of cameos

• John Sayles: Writing to your resources

• Peter Bogdanovich: Long, continuous takes

• John Cassavetes: Re-Shoots

• Steven Soderbergh: Rehearsals

• George Romero: Casting

• Kevin Smith: Skipping film school

• Jon Favreau: Creating an emotional connection

• Richard Linklater: Poverty breeds creativity

• David Lynch: Kill your darlings

• Ron Howard: Pre-production planning

• John Carpenter: Going low-tech

• Robert Rodriguez: Sound thinking

And more!

Write Your Screenplay with the Help of Top Screenwriters!

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

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

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

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

The book covers (among other topics):

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Roger Nygard (“Suckers”) on mixing genres

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

Transcript — Episode 105

[Film Clip 0:00 to 0:32]

John Gaspard  00:33

That was a soundbite from the Theater People Web series, which was created, written, directed, edited and occasional photographed by today’s guest, Matt Anderson. Hello and welcome to episode 105 of The Occasional Film podcast -- the occasional companion podcast to the Fast, Cheap Movie Thoughts Blog. I'm the blog's editor, John Gaspard. I've known Matt Anderson for too many years to calculate -- certainly as a screenwriter and filmmaker, but occasionally as an actor. He even shows up as a waiter in my digital feature, Grown Men.

[Film Clip 1:09 to 1:28]

In our conversation today, Matt talks about the origins of the Theatre People web series and takes us through the unique challenges he and his team faced bringing each of the four seasons to life. Where did theater people come from?

Matt Anderson  01:44

Desperation. Don't they all come from desperation?

John Gaspard  01:48

I guess so. What was your desperate situation?

Matt Anderson  01:52

I had just not been working, or, more specifically, I'd been working for a really long time writing. I was out in LA, and was doing that thing where you write for free, and nothing ever actually gets made. And I got to a point where I just kind of got tired of that, you know? After a while you kind of would like to see something actually reach fruition. I just kind of hit this point where I felt like, even if it was something just completely do-it-yourself, I just needed to see something I was writing actually get made without needing to, you know, pass through 1000, gatekeepers and sell to a studio in order to see it happen. So, that was pretty much it. I just felt like I wanted to make something truly independently and I hooked up with a producer named Lydia Bolder, who was just getting out of stage management and was looking for a new kind of project and the two of us just kind of started it up. And we brought Crist Ballas on to produce with us and the three of us just kind of made Season One happen without any real sense of whether it would work or not.

John Gaspard  03:08

All that being said, why did you land on the idea of theater people as your subject matter?

Matt Anderson  03:14

Just because it seemed like subject matter that would never exhaust itself. I'd been acting for 10 years prior to moving out to LA and I felt like the material was inexhaustible. You know, if you've spent any time in theater, as you know, you have the story, it is just coming fast and furious, like you couldn't, forget enough to not have just a goldmine of good stories and good characters and experiences to draw from. And so that was kind of the idea behind why that world. And then the practical reason was I really just wanted to work with a lot of the people that I'd used to act with. I knew that I knew a ton of really good actors and I felt like this this kind of story would lend itself to a really large cast which would allow me to work with a lot of actors, which was another thing that I wanted to do. Get as many people involved as possible and I knew I had a lot of resources. I knew that, you know, if I was going to be trying to do this completely out of pocket and as inexpensively as possible, playing to the fact that I knew a lot of people with theater spaces and knew a lot of people that would be willing to help me out and let us shoot in them for free. And all of that logistical stuff just made it seem like it was a really economical choice of story, as opposed to doing something like an office set, you know, or a restaurant or any of the other kinds of locations that are just absolute nightmares to line up. I felt like theaters were the ones that were going to be my best shot and this was something that could be primarily shot in theaters.

John Gaspard  05:11

I had that exact same thought when we did Ghost Light, when I was hanging out at Theater in the Round and realized that the building was only actually in use, really, Friday, Saturday night, Sunday afternoon. The rehearsal room was used in the evening, but there were more than 30 other rooms in that building that were genuinely never used and were kind of interesting.

Matt Anderson  05:33

Being able to have that kind of access is just, you know, when you can't pay to close a place down, finding a restaurant or a store or an office. And me being me, I still wrote in plenty of restaurants and stores and offices and then we just had to problem solve that. But at least we were able to, for the majority of what we needed, rely on friendly locations that were available to us for cheap.

John Gaspard  05:57

So, as you were doing that, I remember that in addition to the episodes for Season One you also did I don't know what you would play call them. They were Theater People Minute, a Minute.

Matt Anderson  06:10

Yeah, the Promo Minutes.

John Gaspard  06:12

Why did you think to do that? And they were all very funny but if I'm remembering right, aren't they really completely divorced from your main stories?

Matt Anderson  06:22

Yeah, character-wise, there's no continuity. We just did that because we knew that we needed to, this was my first, I had never done a web series before. I came from a background where I had done a bunch of shorts, and I had done a feature and I had kind of done that sort of those modes. I'd never done something that I was going to need to be able to market and promote and find an audience for and raise awareness of and build a brand and all that kind of stuff. And it was really sort of a learning as we were going sort of thing. So, I knew that we somehow needed to get the idea that we were making a show out there, to start building an audience and bringing people to our Facebook page, even though we didn't have a show yet and you know, getting people interested in when the show was going to launch. And so the Minutes were just a way for us to do something that was in the same spirit of the show, you know. They were silent. So, they were things that we could shoot without needing sync sound, they were short, they were a minute long, set to like old times silent movie music, and they kind of had that feel to them.

So, we could shoot them in three hours, and edit them pretty quickly and just put them out there as something that people could watch in a minute and get a sense of what the sense of humor of the show was going to be. The first season was 10 episodes, of eight to 10 minutes a piece. And once we launched, we released one a week, every Friday for two and a half months. And people liked them and we got, you know, a few 100 views every time we'd launch one. And then more people would find them as we released further episodes, and we'd go back and catch up and, and it was good. It was really warm. What was most important to me was when we started it, you know, we didn't have any money and literally nobody got paid and everything was out of pocket and everybody was basically signing on to this big question mark. When I approached them, I think I told everybody, you know, I have no idea how this is going to turn out. I just want to work. Lydia, I and Crist just want to work and so we're going to do this thing and I have no idea if it's going to be any good. I think it's going to be good because it's resting on good writing and great performances and I feel like we can do that but, I said two things.

·      I said, one, it'll get done. Because that's a big thing, you know, a lot of projects, a lot of independent projects, that actors sign on to, they work on them really hard for you know, sometimes months int the end, and they never see the light of day, you know. You're checking in with the producers like a year later and they're like, our editors trying to fit it in between the other projects, and we're not sure when it's gonna get done and you know, a lot of them just don't get finished. So, I said, this will get finished.

·      The other thing I said was, you're gonna like your work. I said it'll get finished and you'll like you in the final product and that's really all I can offer. And we had a ton of actors that were willing to come on for this big question mark and just see what happened and, and it worked out well.

I think I probably also said, I think it's going to be fun, and I think it has been. I think people have had a good time working on it, which is, as you know, with an independent project always, again, a question mark because, these productions are not cushy, you know. They're a lot of work and it's a lot of scrambling around and I mean, making any kind of film is a ton of work and then for a web series, especially one like this, where I mean, we ended up shooting 35 days, I think over the course of a year. We started in September, and I think we finished in May or June. And it was a really long process and we had all these great actors that were willing to come on for free and just kind of roll with it. And, you know, take the gamble.

John Gaspard  10:34

Okay, so Series One is a success. What pushed you into, hey, let's do Series Two, and along with that, let's try to raise money via Kickstarter?

Matt Anderson  10:46

When we finished Season One, there were a lot of questions about what we were going to do next. Because it had turned out well, and people liked it, and people liked working on it, and it definitely did have that sense of, you know, we could go anywhere with it next. And I always had the same answer, which was we'll do another season, if we're able to pay people. Because for me, I think it's perfectly legitimate to ask actors to work for free for a project that you think is going to end up being a good project. And I think actors are used to that and you know, they can always say no, if they're not in a position to do it, which is totally fine. It's no different from theater that way. But my personal philosophy is you get to ask them to work for free once and if you're gonna ask them again, you have to be able to add something to the equation. Like that's just how I wanted to operate. I always said, you know, if we can find a way to put some money together and actually pay people even if it's just a stipend, then we would do a Season Two, or look at doing a Season Two. About a year after we finished Season One we've been doing well, like, we'd still see, I would say probably, like 15 to 20 Episode views a day, I think if I'm remembering correctly. Like just organically, like it was just kind of out there, people would hear about it and, you know, check it out and that was day to day for a year. So, I mean, that was nice, you know. It's just small, grassroots organic growth. And then, about a year after we launched, American Theater Magazine put our link on their Facebook page. I still don't know, I think it was somebody local, specifically who got it to them, I've never really heard what the provenance of it was. And they didn't editorialize it. They weren't like, hey, here's a great show. It was literally just the link, if I recall correctly. And within a week, we had, like, hundreds, if not 1000s of views on top of the, you know, probably couple or 1000 that we've had to that point. My numbers might be wrong. It was a long time ago, but it was huge. It was a huge bump. A lot of people were checking us out because of that American Theater push. And so we were getting all this feedback from all over the place and we were seeing our numbers go up and it was really exciting and totally unexpected. And that was the point where I said, you know, maybe if we're going to look at doing crowdsourcing, which we knew would have to be the next step, if we were going to try and raise money, this would be the time to do it.

And so, Lydia and Crist and I kind of put together a Kickstarter campaign to try and raise a budget for a second season. The first season was about independent theater, the second season was going to be about corporate theater. And so we put together a budget for that and put together a Kickstarter and ran the Kickstarter for a month and it was absolutely, unexpectedly exhausting. I had no idea. I had talked to some people about Kickstarter, to get ideas about, like how to run it. I talked to people who had run successful campaigns. I was so completely unprepared for how difficult it was. It was, so much more than a full-time job, but it was successful and, in the end, we had actually a decent amount of money over the amount that we were planning to raise, which was great. It was all worth it, but it was a real learning experience.

John Gaspard  14:12

What would you say to someone thinking of starting a Kickstarter campaign now, even though it is a couple of years later, and things might be a little different? But what were the big takeaways you got from that exhausting experience? Because I remember watching just how exhausting it was from the sidelines.

Matt Anderson  14:29

Well, you know, part of it was the way that we approached it, for sure. Like, I don't think every campaign has to be this way, but the way that we approached it, you know, you know me. My strong suit is not going around and asking people to give me money. That's just not anywhere near my comfort zone. And the only way I could really get comfortable with it was I said if we're going to ask for money, I kind of want to sing for our supper. I only going to be comfortable doing this if we are giving something as well, during the campaign. And so what we planned out was we released three videos a week, for the month of the Kickstarter campaign. So, every week, I think it was probably Monday, Wednesday, Friday, we would release a new video. We'd release one video that was like sourced from Season One. So, it'd be like an outtakes reel, or it would be a supercut of every one of the dozens, I think we had 50 some speaking parts in Season One: every one of those actors saying one line or one word from one line, just fun stuff like that. And then on another day, in the week, we'd released what we call our help us pay videos where we introduced a member of our crew and kind of showed what they did. So, help us pay Katie Driscoll, she's our production assistant, these are all the things she does. Help us pay our composer, this is Mike, you know, get to know him a little bit. And they were all just these little one minute videos and again, you know, all of them had the same spirit of the show. I mean, that was kind of the idea, you know, everything was sort of a piece of the project. So, every time we released something, it was like another piece of Theater People. And then, the last video each week would be something sort of more ambitious. So, for one of them, it was another Theater People minute. For one of them, it was a scene between two of our Seasons One characters. One of them had gone to prison at the end of Season One, because really, if you're going to try and do a really easy, quick shoot, what you should do is write it to take place in a prison. That is just smart producing.

John Gaspard  16:37

Can I suggest something? Why don't you do it out of state, certainly a long way away from your base?

Matt Anderson  16:43

You know, luckily, we came up with that idea on our own and ended up in Iowa.

John Gaspard  16:48

Yeah, that makes sense.

Matt Anderson  16:51

No, this is the thing. I mean, I'll tell you like, I was gonna say the unsung hero, but I think I'm still singing about her. So, hopefully she's the sung hero, but Lydia Bolder and her production magic, like literally, I would just write this stuff, and then say, hey, Lydia, I need a prison. And then she would give me that look and then she'd go get a prison. So, the last video was always something like that, sort of a bigger piece of the puzzle. And so we were releasing videos, like every other day during the week, and obviously, you know, producing anything is exhausting. So, producing at that pace was really difficult and that's on top of the fact that you have to be constantly shepherding your campaign, you know. We were Facebook based, because the Twin Cities, social media wise, is primarily Facebook based. So, we were always on Facebook, you know, we were always, tracking where we were getting the word out, spreading the news about new videos. That was actually a real upside to how we operated. You know, it allowed us to have something new to talk about all the time. So, it wasn't a month of, hey, we're doing this thing, give us some money, and then two days later, having to go back and be like, hey, we're still doing this thing, give us some money. Like, we were able to have a conversation about each video, you know. Instead, it was like, hey, come meet Katie Driscoll, a one minute video just hit our page, you know, and then we can focus on that and then the ask for the campaign was in that video. So, we didn't have to kind of be walking around hat in hand all the time.

John Gaspard  18:43

You gave them a reason to keep coming back.

Matt Anderson  18:46

Exactly.

John Gaspard  18:47

Just the hardest thing to do.

Matt Anderson  18:49

It was absolutely exhausting and then honestly. And this was advice that was given to me by somebody, who had done a successful campaign, you're emailing literally everyone that you've ever had an email address for. And you’re Facebook messaging every single Facebook friend you have, that you can bring yourself, to ask for money from. And, you know, that's just kind of how it works and it's hugely uncomfortable if you're not sort of constitutionally built for that, which I'm really, really not. But really effective, because if people know, especially with a personal ask, and you know me surprise, surprise, I couldn't just send a form letter, like I needed to make a personal reach, check in and, it was really rare, frankly, once you reached out to somebody for somebody not to contribute. I mean, it might not have been much, it might have been five bucks. But that's kind of what we wanted, we weren't angling for big ticket donors. We didn't feel like that's how our show operated. You know, the show for us was really about community and showing that if you make something out of a community, that the community will be there to support it. And so in the end, I think our average donation was something around 20 bucks, which meant we had a lot of people who gave five bucks and we had a lot of people who gave more. And it averaged out to a really nice, manageable reasonable average, which I was really pleased with.

John Gaspard  20:25

So, you exceeded your goal and with the leftover money thought, what the heck, rather than do Season Two, let's do Season Twoand Three.

Matt Anderson  20:33

Yeah, well, that was a surprise that came out of the campaign. So, midway through the campaign, I got contacted by Graydon Royce, who was the Minneapolis Star Tribune, theater critic, who I'd met, I think, in passing. He just sent me an email, I think, via Facebook and said, hey, I really love the show, I saw that you're doing the Kickstarter, I hope it's going well. I had an idea for Season Two, if you'd be interested to talk about it. And I said, well, I think I know what Season Twois going to be. But you know, I'm never going to turn down an idea. Let's get together and talk. And we met for coffee, and I just loved his idea. It was just this really fantastic idea. He said, I have this house that my brother and I are renovating. It's our old family home and it's in Mound, Minnesota, about 40 minutes west of the cities. And we were out there working last weekend and it just occurred to me that it might be really funny to have Jamie, the ridiculous Avant Garde director from Season One, if he decided to do a site-specific show. You know, sort of crazy, rundown farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. And then we started spit balling ideas and I was like, yeah, maybe, what if he plans it in the fall, but by the time they do the show, it's winter and so now it's winter in the middle of nowhere in Minnesota, and nobody is aware of what they're getting into, and it just kind of spirals out of control. And I just fell in love with the idea. And so we took a look at the numbers and the money that we'd raised and you know, we'd plan for a month-long shoot for our big season for our corporate season. I said I feel like we could shoot Season Two, if we really scale it back, and I shoot it myself. So, we don't have to worry about bringing in a bunch of crew to do it. Similar to Season One, we did bring in a godsend, Mickey Richardson, who did sound and lights for us, which was beyond I mean, it wouldn't have happened without Mickey. But otherwise, we shot it pretty much like we shot Season One, except it was all in one location.

So, we could go out there on a Friday night and basically shoot Friday night, all day Saturday, all day Sunday for three weekends. And we ended up shooting in, you know, what is that seven and a half days. What was originally going to be a shorter season and ended up just being a fewer number of episodes, but the episodes were longer. So, it still ended up being I think about a 90-minute season. So, basically, it's  one story as opposed to the A story and the B story. It's basically like a feature film cut up into, you know, six episodes.

The first thought was a well maybe that'll be Season Three. But I knew that this one was going to have to play differently. I knew it wasn't going to have the A story and the B story. I'd had this idea about doing it in black and white, because Jaime our director character is very much the sort of person who would think of himself as being Ingmar Bergman, and this season would sort of be from his perspective. And so it allowed us to shoot in black and white, which gave us a lot of leeway because you can shoot faster in black and white than you can when you're shooting in colors. It can speed up and you know, winter in Minnesota and black and white.

Like, if you're trying to make something look stark, desolate and foreboding, black and white is the way to go. And so I said if we're going to do it that way, it's got to be Season Two. Because if we have a Season One that's in color, and there's A story and a B story and it's 10 episodes long, and then we have Season Twoand it's in color and there's an a story and a B story and it's 10 episodes long. That's the show, we've established our format for the show. But I said if we sneak this one in between as a six episode thing in black and white, that's kind of the weird offshoot, I said then it kind of opens up the possibilities for the show. Then we've built ourselves some flexibility then, we can kind of do anything. If we really liked that prison location and want to do an entire season in a prison, that could be Season Four. We did not do that because that would have been a terrible idea. But it gave us the flexibility. It just opened up the format to have it be the second season. So we actually did shoot Season Three first. And then while we were wrapping up Season Three, we started the weekend shoots on Season Two. So, I think we shot Season Three in December of that year and started and shot Season Twoon the weekends in January. We were done with everything pretty much by the end of January.

John Gaspard  25:01

Okay, so you finished Season Two, finished Season Three, what was it that happened that made Season Four happen?

Matt Anderson  25:07

So, we did Season Two. Season Two was a really interesting experience. Honestly, I have so much love for all of the seasons of the show. Season Two is the is season that if I were to stumble on it, just by accident online, it's the season that I would like the most. I'm a film guy so, like the Bergman thing and the like, ridiculous fake British director. And there's a Fawlty Towers aspect to it like, it really speaks very directly to the stuff that I enjoy. But it was a huge break from our format, and it really threw a lot of people. And we saw our views go down, like from where we were in Season One, it wasn't the same level of enthusiasm. The people who liked it, the people who really responded to it, liked it better, absolutely, like the passion index was much higher for it. But they were also longer episodes and as with anything on the internet, as you increase your episode length, you're going to reduce the number of people who are just going to click in and then watch on a whim, you know, instead of 7 to 10 minutes. Now, our episodes were 12 to 17 minutes, which sounds like not a ton more, but it's like 50% longer. And so like that was a dissuading factor for a portion of our audience. And we definitely had people come up to us and say, hey, I saw Season Two, that's really weird. Season Three is going to be like Season One, though, right?

Like, you're gonna go back to that. There were definitely some people who really missed the sitcom format of it and that was, I don't know, it wasn't surprising, I guess, but it was a little disappointing to me. Just because I loved it so much and I felt like it was such an interesting step forward for the show. But I say, I understand why it happened and it made a lot of sense to me. But what was really great was because of the nature of it, because I felt like it was something unique. I felt like it might have some legs on the film festival circuit, which I'd never really considered doing, with the show. I'd been burnt out on the film festival circuit pretty badly, just doing short films. Like my experience was pretty much always you spend a lot of time submitting it to a film festival, your work, whatever it is. And you pay your 50 bucks and then two months later, you get a letter saying how happy they are that you paid your 50 bucks, but they just didn't have a place for you. And then you do it all over again. And so I'd kind of moved past that, you know, it was not something I had anticipated.

But I started looking around and I started seeing that more film festivals were having sidebars for web series. And I thought, you know, there's not going to be a lot of black and white Bergman-esque comedy web series out there, I might as well you know, throw our hat into the ring. And so I submitted to a few festivals, and was really surprised that we really started doing well. Like we got into a really high percentage of the festivals that we applied to. I mean, I feel like on average, if you apply to if you're applying to film festivals, I feel like you've got a really good hit to miss ratio if you're getting into 10 to 20%, right? And we got into probably two thirds or more of the festivals that we applied to, which was really great, because it meant that first of all, the show was getting out there, you know, it was finding audiences in a different way than I'd ever expected it to. And also it was just really validating, you know, because when you do see your numbers drop like that, you know that it's not really playing for everybody, you start to kind of second guess yourself a little bit. And it was really validating to have, a curated festival come along and say, we really want to show your show. And then we won some awards and our cast was nominated for Best Ensemble Cast at the New York City Web Fest, which is one of the biggest web fests in the country, if not the biggest. And so like, we started having that reaction, it made a lot more people aware of the show. And it's always difficult to get people to hit the play button and having that kind of legitimacy bestowed on you by people who aren't friends of yours, who aren't people who are in the show, really helped us build an audience.

So, that was kind of step one toward raising the profile of the show. And then we did Season Three, we released Season Three later that year, once I was done editing it, obviously. And right before Season Three launched, Minnesota Public Radio, Marianne Combs, did a piece on the show, a really great piece, which by the way, I was completely unprepared for. I thought that was going to be a train wreck. I met with her thinking that we were going to meet to talk about doing a piece and then we sat down and she pulled out a microphone and like, I hadn't been doing any PR for the show for like six months, because I'd been editing. I had no talking points like, I was totally unprepared and that woman is a genius and the piece that she put together was fantastic. Like it was this really great piece, like she integrated some fantastic clips from it and it played on NPR one morning, right around the time, we were launching Season Three. And that same day, I got a Facebook message from a local guy in town named George, who said, I heard the piece on the radio this morning and I'm working with a couple of guys to put together a new social media content platform. And it's going to be geared specifically toward independent web content and it sounds like we should sit down and talk.

So, we did we sat down and had a cup of coffee and kind of talked about what their plans were. And over the course of a few months, we talked about--because I'd had the same response to, after we were done with Seasons Two and Three, again--people would start asking, are you gonna do a season four and I had the same response. I said, yeah, we'll do it. If we can pay people more, because we were finally able to pay people for Seasons Two and Three. But I mean, it was a pittance. I think everybody, all the actors in Seasons Two and Three made $100 for the project, you know, whether it was people who were shooting for a month on Season Three, or people who were living in a freezing farmhouse for three weekends for Season Two. 100 bucks for the project, not a lot. And I said if we're going to move forward, same situation, we'll do it if we can pay people more. If we can actually pay a day rate instead of a stipend. And so in talking with, with these guys, who were putting together this platform that's called SeekATV, they said, you know, we're going to be acquiring a lot of shows, like dozens of shows, but we also are interested in producing a handful of original seasons of shows. And Theater People was the first one that they asked, I believe. And they said, would you be interested in, if we could license the first three seasons for our site, we could produce, we can help finance a fourth season. And, you know, it's one of those things that comes up, and you never think it's actually going to pay off because you hear you know, these ideas floating around all the time. And most of the time they don't come through. nd these guys absolutely came through and you know, by June or July, we had a deal in place for them to produce the fourth season of Theater People with a budget of about five times what we had made, Season Two and Season Three for. So, a significant step up in terms of what we were able to work with for a budget.

John Gaspard  32:55

So, with Season Four, though you're going with longer episodes.

Matt Anderson  32:59

Yeah, they were looking for something more around the 15-minute mark, like the 15-to-20-minute mark, and most of our episodes for Season Four are about 15.

John Gaspard  33:07

Which is closer to the traditional 22 minutes of standard sitcom?

Matt Anderson  33:11

Yeah, and that was actually the appeal for me, like when we got our deal put down, and they said, we'd like your episodes to be somewhere between 15 and 20 minutes, there was sort of a moment of creative, well, it turned out to be hubris on my part. Because I went, hey, we get to make a sitcom, that's great, that's really exciting. Like, this is a terrific creative challenge. That was really short sighted of me. It meant that now we were going to be dealing with, instead of 150 pages of content, 200 pages of content, which is a lot more content.

John Gaspard  33:53

Now, let's just back up and do the math on that. You're saying 200 pages of content is more content than 150 pages of content?

Matt Anderson  34:01

I don't have the numbers in front of me. But we worked it out and 200 It turns out is a significant percentage more than 150. And we had budgeted for, you know, more or less the Season Three model, like a 10-to-15-minute episode. And so, we had budgeted in terms of both money and in terms of schedule for that kind of a production. And now, as excited as I was about it, I very quickly realized, we signed on for suddenly 25% more show. And that then became the challenge for Season Four, was how do we develop it in such a way from a production point of view that we can with this budget that we've got. Which was primarily Seeka put up the lion's share of the budget and then we raised the rest of it from individual investors. And then it was figuring out okay, well, how do we do this show right? How do we do this show in a way that we are compensating people the way that we'd like to be compensating them and we're getting done the work that we need to get done and the show is a legitimate step up from what we've done before. Like, if we do a show, at this new budget level, ends up looking like what we did for 20% of this budget previously, that's going to kind of be a failure. It should look better, it should look like a marked step up from what we've been doing before. Like this is our chance to show what we can do with more resources. And so that was the goal with this one was to make a show that really represents an advance on what we've been able to do previously.

John Gaspard  35:49

How did you do that? What were the key things you focused on to make that happen?

Matt Anderson  35:53

From a development point of view, the real key was embracing it as a sitcom and by that, I mean, the show had always been sort of arranged in a way that I really liked. But if you watch an episode of Theater People, aside from Season Two, which was its own beast. From Seasons One or Three, we're all over the place. Like an episode will hop from an apartment to a theater to a street to another theater to an office. We needed to find a way to embrace the idea of sort of a single set sitcom, you know. It was never going to be a single set, but, if you watch a sitcom and especially like, the shows that I really love, like I'm a huge fan of Community. Community is a little rangy, but the majority of an episode of Community takes place in the study room. Cheers is in the bar, most of Seinfeld is in Seinfeld's apartment. It's not that you never go outside, it's just that the majority of what you're doing takes place in one location. And we've never done that before. And so for Season Four, what we decided was we are going to embrace this idea of being a real sitcom and as with the other seasons, we wanted to look at a different kind of theater.

So, Season One had been independent theater, Season Two was site specific theater, Season Three was corporate theater. And for Season Four, I felt like, because we were looking at being on a new platform that I felt was probably going to want to be appealing to like college kids like 20 somethings like a younger audience than we had necessarily been skewing toward in our previous seasons, I felt like Youth Outreach Theater was the way to go. I had been a member of a Youth Outreach Theater in high school for a year and a half and it was a huge part of my sort of getting into theater. And I knew that the material was there as well. And it put us in a position where we could be dealing with a younger cast than we'd had before. You know, a lot of 20 somethings. Our youngest principal cast member literally started college the day of our readthrough. And it also meant that we could base out of basically their headquarters, their homeroom, which is this, you know, supposed to be a room in this college and it turns out to be the costume locker in the basement. But it allowed us to shoot probably 80% of what we were doing in this one controlled room, which really was the only way that we were going to be able to crank out the amount of material we needed to on the schedule that we had there.

John Gaspard  38:22

So, you had a different aesthetic designed for Season Four, tell me a little bit about that.

Matt Anderson  38:26

Yeah, well, the aesthetic was kind of… I would have brought Amber back on if I could have to shoot Season Four as well. But logistically, knowing that we were going to have to be moving as fast as we were with a nine person principal cast, which meant scheduling was already going to be really difficult, and she is a busy shooter and it just seemed like it was going to be logistically impossible. And on top of that, most of our shooting was going to be taking place in this little tiny room where every extra body really makes a difference. And so we kind of were in a position where we had to run lean again, which is what we're used to. We've never had a crew of more than four or five people. But we had to keep to that again and it just made sense for me to operate. I was feeling comfortable enough, I was pleased with how Season Two looked, having somebody who was lighting it for me in particular being important and Mickey was back. He actually produced Season Four and he was also our gaffer, and our lighter are all around go to tech equipment guy. And again, like this season wouldn't have happened without him being there. You have to have somebody on set, John, who knows what they're doing.

This is what I found, you might only need one, no, you need two because you also need a sound guy and we had Nathaniel who did the sound for Season Three for us. But you have to have those two people who know what they're doing as Kevin Costner, I think, would tell you. As long as you've got people around you who know what they're doing, you can do a pretty good job. And that was the situation. I felt comfortable enough shooting it myself, because we were going to adopt this aesthetic of having it be handheld, everything that's down in the room is handheld. And that was, you know, largely born out of just necessity. Like we traditionally, I get absolutely nothing usable from the first day of shooting, this has just always been my experience, I should plan on it and I still never do.

John Gaspard  40:27

You should start on day two then.

Matt Anderson  40:30

Right, give everybody a day off. Now, Season Two, we had to be up and running on day one. But usually there's a bit of a learning curve going into it. And the learning curve with Season Four was we were going to shoot, I was planning on having everything locked down just because it takes a little bit of the responsibility off of me to be able to actually operate the camera. But we tried shooting in that room on a tripod, and it was just not going to be tenable. We just weren't gonna be able to move fast enough. Like, every time we moved, it required a different lighting setup. And there frankly, wasn't enough room in the room to have a full tripod setup. I mean, for a lot of different reasons, it just really quickly made sense that, okay, we're gonna do sort of a, you know. I've been watching a lot of Veep, so like, when I sat down to write Season Four, I was looking for good inspiration. I had already stolen everything I could from Community for Seasons Two and Three. So, I needed something new. So, I sat down, and I watched Veep and Silicon Valley, both of which are fantastic. And the Veep aesthetic, the sort of run and gun, let that be part of it, you know, that sort of fly on the wall feeling. And you know, we were able to emulate that. We didn't go so far into it that it ever feels documentary. But it does definitely have a looseness, it definitely had, it gave us the flexibility to have less of a restrictive lighting setup.

So, we could sort of light the room and just let the camera go where the camera needed to go as much as possible. And that just meant that we were able to shoot a lot faster than we would be able to do. And because it was looser like that, I felt more comfortable operating because it didn't need to look composed and perfect. It needed to just have the right energy, and basically be pointing at the right people at the right time. And as long as I knew who I needed on camera, when I needed them on camera, it allowed me to operate pretty quickly, it worked out really well.

And you know, the upside to having a good director of photography is that you have a good director of photography. The downside of having another a separate director of photography is that that's another layer of communication and well, I would say on most productions, it's absolutely worth that. On this one, because we were going to need to be moving as quickly as we were, it was really helpful for me to just be able to know what I needed to get and get it, as opposed to having to try and effectively convey that information to somebody else who was going to have to execute it. And then probably have to go and watch it myself on a monitor to make sure that it was what I wanted. You know what I mean? It's in order to move fast and when we needed to move fast. It just made more sense for me to do it and I'm pleased with the results. If we had a better director of photography, I have no doubt that they would have brought another level of production quality to it. Like, it would have been another step up on that front, but we'd still be shooting.

John Gaspard  43:30

Well, then you wouldn't be able to talk to me right now.

Matt Anderson  43:31

That's true, I'd be in the middle of a shoot and dealing with mass mutiny on the part of all of my cast and crew, I have no doubt.

John Gaspard  43:38

Most likely. So, you've pretty much covered most of the pro side of when it comes to you being the writer, director, shooter, editor.

Matt Anderson  43:47

Yeah, the pro is if you're doing it all, you know that you're going to be there, and you can prioritize the work in a way that you're not going to be able to afford to have other people prioritize the work. You know, I do always bring on the most important crew position in a lot of ways is your sound recordist. I remember, did you ever see, In The Company of Men?

John Gaspard  44:12

Yeah.

Matt Anderson  44:13

Got that movie, I remember watching the DVD of it, so that was Neil LaBute’s first movie. And I will always remember this: he was talking about how his sets don't look very good, which they don't. Like if you look at a shot in that movie, it looks like what it is, it looks pretty amateur. But he said his belief--and I don't know where he picked it up or whatever it stuck with me forever--he said people will accept a movie that looks like crap, as being an aesthetic. As long as it's consistent, they will absolutely watch a movie no matter what it looks like and just assume that that's an intentional choice. No one will watch a movie with bad sound because that's never a choice, it's always a deal breaker. And so, I use the guy that I uses name is Nathaniel and Nathaniel is fantastic. Nathaniel recorded a lot of Season Three for us and that was really important to have a sound recordist and then he also mixes for us, which is great because, he can record in such a way that he knows what he needs when he gets to the mixing part of the process. But yeah, then you're in a position where you know, Nathaniel's got a job, you know, he's got other projects, other things that potentially are going to be prioritized over this. He does a really great job of prioritizing us and of hitting the deadlines that we need and I'm not really sure how he does it? But it's really difficult to ask that of people when you're not able to pay them something commensurate to what they're making on a corporate project, or on their day job doing this. So, the nice thing about doing it yourself is you're personally driven to get it done and to do it as well as it can be done, and you are able to prioritize it ahead of kind of everything else because that's just your role. You know, your job is to kind of make it the most important thing in your world while you're doing it.

John Gaspard  46:03

That's all well and good. But what's the downside of wearing all those hats?

Matt Anderson  46:08

It'll kill you. I'm not done yet, John, which is why we're able to have this conversation. It's way too much. I mean, honestly, like, I have overreached, which is good. That's how much you can reach, you overreach, and then you go, I won't do that that way again. But that is the position that I've put myself in, it was just, it was a lot, it was shooting, you know, like I say, 200-page script over the course of we started in the middle of September, I was still doing pickup shoots in February. So, again, I'm not a math guy, but that's, you know, at least two or three months.

John Gaspard  46:52

How do they tell, them how they can seek out Seeka?

Matt Anderson  46:55

Seeka is amazing. And this is what I loved about Seeka: from the first time I heard about what they were trying to do, when I started making a web series, I had never seen a web series, I might have stumbled across something. But it was probably something pretty high profile, like Funny or Die. The problem is with web series, they're just out there. But unless you know that they're out there, it's like a cool club, you know, you only know it's there, if you already know it's there. Which is neat for a cool club, but not neat for a web series that you would actually like people to find. And what Seeka's whole mission was, let's make a hub for quality, independent web content, so that people can just go to one place and find 50, 60, 70, 100 shows and find what they like, you know. There's no more searching around. And when I started, Season One of Theater People, it was hard to figure out even what to watch, to know what to emulate, you know, because unless you knew what to Google like, and you could Google like best web series out there, but you're gonna get like five or six different shows. And there's 100 shows, at the time, there was probably already hundreds of shows out there.

So, Seeka's whole model was, let's make a place where you can find a lot of great shows, of a lot of different types from all over the world in one place. Watch them easily, it's free, it's subscription free, there's the opportunity to contribute to a show, you can tip the show, after you watch an episode, there's a little button if you want to kick in a buck, or three bucks, or however much you want to kick in. And that money goes largely like generously, largely to the content creators. I forget what the actual split is. But it is a generous split in favor of content creators, because they want content creators to want to be on Seeka. The only way this works for them as if they've got people who want to have their stuff on the platform and so they have to make it attractive.

Also, they're just really great guys and I don't think they want to screw anybody over. But like, they need to have a good platform in place in order to have the kind of content that's going to make their platform successful. And I have found some fantastic stuff on there. Like I feel very privileged to be airing alongside some of the stuff that they have on there. And I know that as they move forward, you know, the goal is going to be to continue to find that really high quality stuff. And they're going out to festivals, and they're getting the stuff that's winning the awards at festivals, and they're really doing a great job of finding the kind of content that is sort of ready for primetime, in the web series landscape and it's great.

John Gaspard  49:37

So, I'm going to wrap this up with a closest thing to a Barbara Walters question that I would ever ask anybody, which is, I don't remember how many years ago, young Matt Anderson drove home from Los Angeles with his new Rebel camera with the idea of creating theater people or something like that?

Matt Anderson  49:56

Pretty close to that.

John Gaspard  49:57

What would you want to say to him? If you could just give him a call, because you've been through quite a bit here, what have you walked away with, that would be helpful for him or anybody else starting something that turns out to be quite this massive.

Matt Anderson  50:10

You know, honestly, I would say this: I've been really fortunate. A lot of it would be validation of the ideas that I had coming into it, there have absolutely been discoveries, there have been so many discoveries. I'm actually teaching a course called web series one on one right now. There is so much knowledge that I have just had to find via trial and error over the last five years that it's absolutely, I'm still learning all the time, you know. You learn how to make the show, you learn how to put the show out there, you learn how to find an audience, you learn how to promote it, you learn how Facebook works, if you want to get the word out to more people, you know, like all of that stuff. But honestly, I think the most important thing that I would say would be the general idea that I had, which was that, if you've got good material, and great actors, that is all you need, like I really and direct them, that's what you have to do, you have to direct them.

That actually is also super important, because actors are supposed to be working with the director, you know, the director is the one who knows how everything fits together. And I think part of the reason that I'm as proud of our casts and all of our casts, like, every season, including Season Four, which has a ton of young actors and a ton of actors. For the first time, I'm dealing with a cast where I haven't worked with most of the principal actors before, because I've been working with actors that I used to act with 10, 15 years ago, and a bunch of them are still around, and a bunch of them are still in the show. But for this, you know, Youth Outreach Theater, we needed people who could pass as college students. And so we had to go out and find them. And this cast is as fantastic as any we've had and that's why the show works. Like it really is, and you know, different shows are different, some shows are effects driven, some shows are, you know, location driven. So, I'm sure you know, there's lots of things that draw people into a show. But for this show, the key has always been having a really great ensemble, you know, having an ensemble that doesn't seem like they're doing an amateur project, you know, having an ensemble that is delivering work that is on par with something that you would see on broadcast television. I really believe that is why the show has traveled as well as it has. I believe that's why it's played, the festivals, that attract, that it has, I think that's why Seeka wanted to come on and produce a fourth season. And that was always the idea was the Twin Cities have this amazing pool of actors. And now you know, specifically I'm talking about, where I'm making stuff in Minneapolis, like what we have is this fantastic, deep pool of acting talent. And so I built a show around it. And the show works because that's the engine and these guys are fantastic and that's what I would say would be just continue to have faith in the idea that if you've got good writing and great actors, you don't need to be a great camera person.

You don't need to have all the technical stuff down, you don't need to have a jib arm, you don't need the equipment that you don't know how to use, you don't need a 10 person crew. Like this show is about really good actors delivering hopefully really good dialogue in a way that is compelling and that tells a story from start to finish. And I think that has borne itself out as being a really viable method. And the nice thing is you don't need to do that in a studio, you know what I mean? You don't need to do that with a million dollars behind you. You can do it effectively on the scale that we've been doing it. That's the best thing that I could say like if I was whether I was talking to myself or anybody else, especially in Minneapolis,making stuff that would be what I would say was find really great actors and then work with them and trust them because that's the goal. That's why I like watching the show.

[Film Clip 54:24 to 54:38].

John Gaspard  54:38

Thanks to Matt Anderson for chatting with me about creating the Theater People webs series, which you can find online at SeekTV.com – check the show notes for a direct link to all four seasons. If you liked this interview, you can find lots more just like it on the Fast, Cheap Movie Thoughts Blog. Plus, more interviews can be found in my books -- Fast, Cheap and Under Control -- Lessons Learned from the greatest low-budget movies of all time ... and its companion book of interviews with screenwriters, called Fast, Cheap and Written that Way. Both books can be found on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Google and Apple Books. And while you're there, check out my mystery series of novels about magician Eli Marks and the scrapes he gets into. The entire series, staring with The Ambitious Card, can be found on Amazon in paperback, hardcover, ebook and audiobook formats. That's it for episode 105 of The Occasional Film Podcast. Produced at Grass Lake Studios. Original music by Andy Morantz. Thanks for tuning in and we’ll see you … occasionally!

Episode 104: Editor Roger Nygard (“Veep,” “Curb Your Enthusiasm”)

Filmmaker Roger Nygard (“Trekkies,” “Suckers,” “The Nature of Existence”) on cutting comedy, the need for editors to also be filmmakers, creativity and why sometimes you have to cut great jokes.

LINKS

A Free Film Book for You:  https://dl.bookfunnel.com/cq23xyyt12

Another Free Film Book:  https://dl.bookfunnel.com/x3jn3emga6

Fast, Cheap Film Website: https://www.fastcheapfilm.com/

Eli Marks Website:  https://www.elimarksmysteries.com/

Albert’s Bridge Books Website:  https://www.albertsbridgebooks.com/

YouTube Channel:  https://www.youtube.com/c/BehindthePageTheEliMarksPodcast

Roger Nygard Website: http://rogernygard.com/

Cut to the Monkey (The Book):  https://www.amazon.com/Cut-Monkey-Hollywood-Behind-Scenes/dp/1493061232

The Truth About Marriage (Trailer):  https://youtu.be/VeFI_4WC2OI

Dying to make a feature? Learn from the pros!

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

★★★★★

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

• Jonathan Demme: The value of cameos

• John Sayles: Writing to your resources

• Peter Bogdanovich: Long, continuous takes

• John Cassavetes: Re-Shoots

• Steven Soderbergh: Rehearsals

• George Romero: Casting

• Kevin Smith: Skipping film school

• Jon Favreau: Creating an emotional connection

• Richard Linklater: Poverty breeds creativity

• David Lynch: Kill your darlings

• Ron Howard: Pre-production planning

• John Carpenter: Going low-tech

• Robert Rodriguez: Sound thinking

And more!

Write Your Screenplay with the Help of Top Screenwriters!

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

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

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

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

The book covers (among other topics):

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Roger Nygard (“Suckers”) on mixing genres

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

TOFP Episode 104 - TRANSCRIPT

Damon Wayans Jr  00:00

License and registration please. I’m going to write you a ticket.

Larry David

A ticket?!

Damon Wayans Jr 

It was a bad decision on your part to honk at a police officer.

Larry David  00:06

Oh, are you above the beep?

Damon Wayans Jr  00:07

Absolutely. I'm a police officer. I protect your rights.

Larry David  00:10

My rights to beep. That's one of my rights.

Damon Wayans Jr 

But you don't beep me.

Larry David

That's a right. That's America, we're allowed to beep.

Damon Wayans Jr  00:16

Yeah, well, I'm allowed to write this ticket.

Larry David  00:19

Good. Write it.

Damon Wayans Jr  00:20

Getting smart with me, boy.

Larry David  00:21

I'm not getting smart. I am smart. By the way. I'm smart and of course, I'll be protesting this ticket. I hope you enjoy your day in court.

Damon Wayans Jr  00:29

Here you go. Have a nice day.

Larry David  00:33

Thank you.

Damon Wayans Jr  00:33

Thank you.

Larry David  00:34

You made my day.

John Gaspard  00:37

That was Larry David and Damon Wayans Jr. In a scene from ‘’Curb Your Enthusiasm,’’ which was edited by today's guest, Roger Nygard. Hello, and welcome to episode 104 of The Occasional Film podcast, the occasional companion podcast to the Fast, Cheap Movie Thoughts blog. I'm the blog's editor John Gaspard. Today we're talking with filmmaker Roger Nygard. In addition to being a director, and editor and a screenwriter. Roger is also the author of a terrific book, Cut To The Monkey, A Hollywood Editor’s Behind The Scenes Secrets To Making Hit Comedies. In it, he explores the nature of editing comedy, with advice from some of the comedy experts he's worked with over the years. Larry David on Curb Your Enthusiasm, Julia Louis Dreyfus, and David Mandel on Veep. Plus, Sacha Baron Cohen, Alex Berg, and many, many more. The book gives us a great jumping off point, I could talk to you about film —and I have in the past – under any sort of structure.

Roger Nygard  01:44

There’s no reason to stop that now.

John Gaspard  01:46

But the book does raise some interesting points that I want to talk about because not only did I learn stuff about you reading, Cut to the Monkey, but I also learned some stuff about myself that I had not considered seeing what I've done in moviemaking, through your eyes. So, we'll start right at the beginning. You have very supportive parents, when it came to what you were doing creatively as a youngster. Is that safe to say,

Roger Nygard  02:11

Yeah, well, particularly my mother, it's really a mother's job, and I guess my mom did her job in that category, which was when I came home in from kindergarten, they give you crayons, and you'd have to draw a picture, everyone does that. I would hand it to my mother, all proud, and she would say, “That is amazing. You are so creative, you're so talented.” She would fill my head with this delusion that I carry to this day that I'm talented. So, it gives me a framework to keep trying, despite the constant failures over and over again, and eventually, you one of them sticks. I guess, I succeeded here because I didn't give up.

John Gaspard  02:53

It doesn't mean also give yo a trampoline effect in your head that you can just bounce back pretty quickly from rejection, just because you have this basis of, no, you're cool. You're fine.

Roger Nygard  03:03

Yeah. Well, the thought that I have when something goes wrong, I get a bad review, or someone doesn't like my script, or someone critiques a documentary. My first thought is not, oh, I'm not good enough. My first thought is, oh, what idiots, they don't get it. So, it's their fault, not mine, that they don't like my work.

John Gaspard  03:24

I haven't gotten to that degree yet.

Roger Nygard  03:27

But it's quite a useful delusion. I know it's a delusion. But I'm stuck with it. Because my mother instilled in my framework of my mind as it was soft and solidifying, she got me when I was young.

John Gaspard  03:39

Yeah. I was in the same situation, parents who didn't really understand what I was doing, but recognized the passion I had for it and were just very encouraging. I'm always reminded of Steve Martin stories, and the one where he has brought his parents to see his first movie, The Jerk. As they come out, his father turns to him and says, well, it's not Charlie Chaplin and you go, well, that's a whole different parenting style that I was brought up with. That's the opposite of what you had; and that’s what he's fighting against. In reading the book and reading what you went on to do, I kept coming back to he was so lucky to have that basis of ego, I guess, that allows you to bounce back into business that very often is pushing you down.

Roger Nygard  04:25

Oh, we're all dealt a hand, a certain amount of talent and it's genetic and its sort of here's what you're given. Now, play your hand, the best you can see. Steve Martin had an amazing hand he had a straight flush, and so, he was able to overcome whatever difficulties his parents and others put in front of him because of his immense talent. I, on the other hand, am a completely mediocre talent, but pressed forward by this pressure of support that I felt and so …  one thing I learned and maybe I'm jumping ahead a little bit when I made a documentary called The Nature of Existence when I was really questioning existentialism and my own reason for being and what is the point of everything. I learned from that journey, that the point of everything is to be creative, daily, and that's what brings me happiness. So, it's not like I have to force myself to be creative. It's built into my need to be, and we all have a need to be happy. And I'm the same as everyone else. I enjoy the result of my labor, my creative labor daily. A little bit of that Minnesota work ethic, Scandinavian work ethic, is that if I don't put forth some effort during the day, I feel like a complete loser at the end of the day. So I have to have some kind of something to show for myself for the day, some work I put in, some results. Whether it's cleaning the garage, or writing a book, either one, or both are immensely satisfying to have completed, or feel like I completed something today, and look back on myself and go, wow, I did that. I feel really good about myself and then my mother's programming is all part of that, see, you did it, you can do it, you're good. and it's a self-perpetuating process.

Roger Nygard  06:02

So, every day I'm creating, working on the next book, working on the next script, editing TV show, whatever it is, it's all creative. I remember reading a study once I think way back in college, how there was this nursing home where they had 100 residents, and they gave everybody a plant. And 50% of the residents, they said, here's a plant, we'll take care of it, you have no responsibility. The other 50%, they said, here's the plant, you need to water this and take care of it, it's your responsibility. And the ones with the responsibility for the plant lived longer, because they suddenly had a reason for being in their life and it's about creation, they're creating life out of this plant and keeping it alive and it's what's innate in us is to create. And most of us, I guess, we get married, we have children and that child, that's your project for 20 years, or 18 years, or however long it takes to kick them out of the basement. You brought forth a small version of yourself, you created life and you're trying to make a better version of yourself, by putting what you can into that that new entity. And that creativity takes over your life for this two decades. Then a lot of people find themselves back where they started, what do I do now and then they're taking pottery classes, or painting or dancing classes and back to finding ways to express their creativity again. And when a human beings are not expressing creativity, they become depressed. And if you give someone a paper who's depressed and say, take 10 minutes and draw a picture of a plant or a giraffe, just draw a picture, while they're drawing the depression is not a part of their mental framework, because they're expressing creativity, they have a purpose, even if it's for that five minutes. So, you and I, as filmmakers, we put that forth that energy into a film or a product, ultimately, that has a larger result of some kind, we finish it, we show it to our community or social network, we get feedback and then that self-perpetuating loop continues. Some of that feedback is negative, some of its positive, but it's good to get any feedback. Because we're social creatures, we need that feedback, we need to engage and be creative and that's a lesson that I learned from the beginning of from age seven until now.

John Gaspard  08:07

It shows up in the book. I should say, I love the book, Cut to the Monkey. I knew I would because I knew your voice and, in the times, we talked in the past, I've always come away with stuff that I remember that I keep using. It's a terrific book about how to be a good editor. It's also a really good book about how to get a job as an editor, how to keep a job as an editor. I noticed you slipped in there in the middle of the book about screenwriting, which was a nice little diversion, where they also know this a screenwriting book, and then it's back to being an editing book. But that's sort of selfish on your part. Because as an editor, the better the screenplay that you're dealing with, the easier it's going to be for you to edit and you also have some great ideas about story and structure and how a scene works.

Roger Nygard  08:46

Editors or writers. They're the same. It's another type of writing. To be a good editor, you also have to understand writing.

John Gaspard  08:54

That's true. We first crossed paths, you must have still been in Minneapolis at that point. You had just shot Warped, which I get the sense you finished in LA but you started here.

Roger Nygard  09:10

I moved to Los Angeles after college. I graduated from the University of Minnesota in the fall of 1984. In 85, packed up my Celica, drove it over the mountains, barely made it and got a job. I was originally going to go to graduate school, and I applied and got turned down everywhere except USC, I got into USC, the number one school everyone else said no. And by the time my semesters came around to start, I had already found a job and once I did the math, I thought okay, I could start spending $50,000 a year on grad school or I can keep working here and take my grad school money and go make a short film, which I will now own because you don't own it. It's USC owns your film, and there's no guarantee you get to direct at USC, you have to earn the right and very few do. So, it seemed to me a better equation and that's what Warped was, that was my grad school money being poured into making a short film and I went back to Minnesota where I had more than contacts and was able to pull it off on a lower budget. But you and I had actually had crossed paths even earlier way back at the University of Minnesota at a place called UCV, University Community Video, you were making a film at the time, what was your first feature length film called?

John Gaspard  10:16

We did two on video. Deception was the second one.

Roger Nygard  10:20

Oh, I remember Deception. That was what I remember seeing and being influenced, and oh, wow, these guys just made a movie using video, using the same equipment I had access to. I aspired to achieve what you were doing at that time and that would be like 1982.

John Gaspard  10:38

82, yeah and we were not embraced by the University Community Video people because to them, we're using video as cheap film, which they thought was a bad thing and we thought was a good thing.

Roger Nygard  10:51

Their idea of art was very specific. Art had to make you feel bad. I have an opinion that I like to make people laugh and feel good. I get turned down a lot by film festivals for my films, because they're too entertaining.

John Gaspard  11:08

I remember seeing Warped and thinking, this guy is a really good director and a really good editor. When we look back on our earlier films, I don't know what you think about Warped. But I remember thinking, this guy is going to get a job in LA directing, and editing, because I've never seen such sharp editing. And then in reading the book, I learned that our paths were very similar. We were each given regular 8 cameras at a very young age. But what I realized in looking at your path was, we both start with regular eight, and then I moved on to Super Eight and in terms of editing, at that point, I'm a pretty good editor, I'm shooting a lot of coverage. I'm cutting it together really nicely. It flows and it has the rhythms you want and then I hit a speed bump. When I went to Film in the Cities school, in my junior and senior years of high school, I spent every afternoon at this film school. And Kodak had just come out with their single system sound camera, and we could now shoot dialogue and that as an editor, absolutely put the brakes on me, because I could no longer edit, because I had to deal with the sound. So, the first couple of things I did were Woody Allen-esque long takes, and you just join them together. And then I did a feature in Super Eight sound and was able to get in there and make the edits and you can imagine your pictures here and your sound is 24 frames away and you have to cut the sound, because that's what's going to throw people off. The visual, they won't mind so much. But if the sound isn't right. And I did a couple of features in Super Eight sound, and it steered me toward a dialogue-driven kind of writing, then like you, we moved into video, and suddenly we had a little bit more freedom. But if you remember, in those days, it was a cumbersome system, you're using three quarter inch tapes.

Roger Nygard  12:50

Right. The 30 pound PortaPack.

John Gaspard  12:52

But we did get better at it, but you still had that problem of it was very linear, you add this shot, and then you put on that shot, and then that shot and if you want to go back, you literally had to go back and redo everything and it wasn't at a point where there was a computer that was going to remember it.

Roger Nygard  13:07

These are the same problems Charlie Chaplin faced going from silent to sound and so, you followed the same path as Chaplin.

John Gaspard  13:14

What did you learn in that phase of your career when it came to — I think we're kind of fighting the editing system at that time to do what we want. Do you have memories of that?

Roger Nygard  13:23

Well, when I discovered video, yes, it was a whole new world because at the same time that was around, it was just before and as MTV was being born and this idea that you could cut so much was new, and it changed how I thought about filmmaking. I was breaking things down into shots and building more of a visual essay, I was much less pursuing the dialogue long takes, the road you took and more pursuing how to cut a bunch of images together set to music, which was in the direction of MTV. And that led me to shooting these early music videos and filming bands like I filmed Dare Force in concert and I ended up working with Eddie Estrin of Rocking Horse, who did some music for one of my early shorts and was combining music and images. Eventually, I realized I needed to start telling stories though.

John Gaspard  14:20

When you're editing video, at that point, you're not really fighting the system. The system was working fine for you.

Roger Nygard  14:27

I was learning what the system could do. I hadn't gone to film school yet. I hadn't started writing scripts. All my early films were essentially the same story, which is the story that they—if you watch silent films— it's the same story they tell. It's a chase. Somebody has something and the other people are chasing him for it. Keystone Cops is just a nonstop chase, Buster Keaton lots of foot chases and car chases. And it's the easiest story to tell without much of a plot. And Warped even has a car chase in it, once I finally stepped up to doing narrative. It was so ingrained in me there's got to be a car chase. So, even working in car chasing with an old lady chasing another girl on foot tried to run her down. I guess part of that was, I was always in my mind imagining, I'm going to go to Hollywood and make James Bond movies or something because I loved what James Bond, particularly the Roger Moore era, because it was so funny. I loved the comedy. That's what I was really enamored with. A lot of people want to pick on the Roger Moore era, but I love that era.

John Gaspard  15:29

It is the silliest era for James Bond.  Okay, so, then what's your first 16-millimeter piece, was that Warped?

Roger Nygard  15:35

Warped was shot on 16 millimeter, yes. It was really the only time until I shot a documentary called Six Days in Roswell, which we shot on Super 16. But otherwise, after Warped, then I moved to 35 millimeter. I followed what is now more much more common even when people still use film, I made a Digital Intermediate, I filmed on 16 millimeter, but I went to a post house and transferred it all to one inch masters and then from that made three quarter inch dailies tapes, and I edited and then onlined on video, so I never went back to film.

John Gaspard  

You're ahead of your time there.

Roger Nygard

It saved money and gave me more flexibility. There was much more I could do when I wasn't limited to just cutting together the film, there's so much more you there are many more ways to manipulate in the world of video. The reason I think I became a good editor or a great editor, whatever level I am, is because of a turn of bad luck. After I made my first feature film, High Strung, it was very difficult to get my second film made. I had a three year stretch where I didn't have much income coming in and I was $30,000 in debt and I took a job writing, producing and editing promos for TNT Latin America, during those two years by being forced to edit promos—when you've got to cut something down to a 15 second spot—it forces you to understand and realize every frame is crucial and anything extraneous has to go. So, I spent those two years cutting those promos. It's like shooting layups practicing my craft and all those tricks I learned during that period, I took forward into making my Trekkies, the way I cut Trekkies, and the way I work on Curb Your Enthusiasm. It's because I had that time where I was forced to go into the trenches and cut these promos.

John Gaspard   16:49

What a great bootcamp to go through, we probably didn't realize at the time that what was going to be sort of your superpower.

Roger Nygard  17:27

Yeah, big problem for a lot of filmmakers is that when they get too much success too early, they haven't gone through a boot camp. So, they end up making all of the typical Film School mistakes on their big feature and then it shows. You’ve got to get that out of your system. So, you can create a product that doesn't have all those typical flaws that every filmmaker makes when they start out.

John Gaspard  17:55

But what do you think is the biggest misconception the general public and starting filmmakers have about what it means to really be a good editor?

Roger Nygard  18:03

Well, the thesis of my book—in Cut to the Monkey, I have a chapter about it specifically. You don't want to be an editor who cuts films, you should be a filmmaker who edits. To be a great editor, you need to be great as a filmmaker. So, what I recommend to film students is to learn about the world, learn about every aspect of filmmaking, then choose your specialty, whatever it is, whether it's wardrobe, makeup, editing, cinematography. And particularly, you should understand story structure. That's the most important thing anyone going into filmmaking should understand is how stories are put together in such a way that audiences like to receive them, you know. Three Act structure. There's a reason for Three Act structure. It's not something that's forced on people by Hollywood, it's something that the Greeks realized way back when they were putting on their shows, their plays, that humans like things told to them in a certain way. This is the way we'd like it and if you don't present a story that follows this structure, you're going to lose the audience. No matter what your job is, whether it's an editor or cinematographer, the better you understand how story works, the better you can do your job. That's the least I think, understood and most important aspect for editors that I try to impress upon people. Here's a rule of editing: you want to enter a scene—or in screenwriting same rule‑you want to enter every scene as late as possible, and get out as soon as you can. As soon as the climax of the scene occurs. You don't want to dribble on past the punch line. So, oftentimes, like especially on Curb Your Enthusiasm, we're dealing with improv scenes where I'm trying to find the best in and out points. They may have shot a seven-minute scene or a six-minute scene or even a three-minute scene that's twice as long as it should be. I'm realizing that the ending came in the middle, they reached the best point and the rest—as funny as it is—is completely unnecessary and then it has to go away.

Or we don't need all this preamble at the beginning. Let's get right to the conflict, right to the problem, right to the argument, right to the dead body, the infection, the insurrection, whatever. The inciting incident of the whether it's the movie or each scene. Each scene must have a moment where something is conflictual. If you think about it, every one of your or my favorite movies—everywhere anyone listening to this—all your favorite movies are a fight between one thing and another. One person and another. One person and society. A person and the environment. We love watching people fight,. Some movies even have the word vs. right in the title, Godzilla vs Megalon. We know who's going to fight who, Superman versus whoever. We know, every Marvel movie is a fight between our hero and the bad guy and the bad guy is stronger. So, our hero is doomed and it's quite a struggle to get to the end where the hero emerges victorious. Once the bad guy is vanquished, the movie is over. Obviously, you can't go on past that or the audience is, you've lost them. They know when a movie is over. And then editor has to know when a movie is over and when a scene is over. And you know that because you have studied the language of cinema and the art of story and literature.

One thing I wished I had done more taking more classes in college was in literature and studied more classic literature. That was my weakest link in my curriculum. When I went to the University of Minnesota, I majored in communications because it was the closest thing they had to filmmaking. But I had no minor because I wanted to take a class in every single discipline, from biology, to physics, to meteorology, to psychology, I wanted to learn about the world. I took one literature class, and I wish I had taken six or many more, maybe I should have minored in literature, because that would have been the most useful tool moving forward.

John Gaspard  21:57

One of the things that I find interesting in editing is the misconception that people have when it comes to continuity being the editors fault or they'll go oh, she was holding a cup with one hand, and now she's holding it with the other or whatever it is. And I believe that 99% of the time, that's the editor saving something and making it work when it didn't work.

Roger Nygard  22:17

Well, you have to watch for continuity, you have to try to match things so it doesn't stick out and pull the audience out of the story. That's one of your missions. But our rule on Curb Your Enthusiasm, and my rule is: comedy over continuity. If it's funny, we don't care which hand the pen was in. And, that said, these days we'll do on a typical Curb Your Enthusiasm episode, 100 digital effects shots. Now you don't think of those TV shows as digital effects heavy, but they are and many of those are to take that pen out of the hand that wasn't supposed to be in. Or to change a t shirt. Or to put a jacket on somebody that he was supposed to be wearing and they forgot. We're changing everything now so that we can get the maximum comedy. It doesn't matter the cost in continuity, if it's funny. There are times also where on when I was editing Veep, the showrunner, Dave Mandel, would want to cut six lines. The problem was they were walking from room to room as they're delivering those lines. Selina Meyer, she says a line in one room, and then Dan responds to it in a completely different room. But you can't tell, you know, maybe it's a slightly different color, but you don't, people don't really pay attention to those things if you keep it moving, and keep the energy moving forward and keep the jokes coming. They just feel like that it's all part of one construction.

John Gaspard  23:45

You've gotten caught up in the story and they're not looking for that thing. In reading the book and seeing your phrase, word baggage, I'll let you define that first and I'll tell you my experience with it.

Roger Nygard  23:55

You might notice if you watch people talking—and we're probably included—that they say things like, umm, like, you know, and they pause. They throw all of this, what I call word baggage, into their performances. Actors do it a lot, especially when they're trying to remember their lines. And my job as an editor is to scrape away those barnacles, to get rid of it all. One of them that the big one is, they'll say Look or Listen, before they start speaking. It's an announcement that says I'm about to speak.  Look at me everyone, I'm about to speak. I get rid of the announcements, I get rid of the word baggage, I get rid of the pauses so that it flows as elegantly as possible with as little in the way between a setup and a punch line for a beginning and an ending. Whatever the two poles are that I have to get between I want to get through there as quickly and efficiently and elegantly as possible by getting rid of all that word baggage without speeding things up just to speed them up.

What I've noticed is that the best pacing for a scene is always faster than what the actor thought it should be or the director thought it should be, or the writer thought it should be. The audience, especially now, I think people even compared to 10 years ago, and especially 50 years ago, humans are primed to receive their information rapidly. So, you have to keep the pace at a certain level or you lose them, they'll switch to watch something else. Now, that doesn't mean you cut out all the pauses. That just means that as an editor, when there's a pause, everyone pauses, because you choose for them to pause, because it's funny to pause and the awkward pause or the reason and its part of the information.

John Gaspard  25:31

In the book, you've got the Periodic Table of Nonsense. We could do several episodes just on going through that. But number nine is Do it Faster. And it is a huge bugaboo of mine, as a director, something I'm trying to get better at, because invariably, when you shoot it, and you're watching them do it, it seems just perfect. That's perfect and then you get into the editing room, and it needs to be 20% faster. I remember reading an interview with Tom Stoppard who has directing his first movie, the movie version of his play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. He's in the editing and the interviewer says to him, what would you change? He said, If I could change anything in this movie, it'd be to make them talk faster. And this is a guy who wrote their words, who had seen that done a million times, it seemed perfect when he shot it. And yet you get in to the editing suite, it's like, oh, my, come on. Why is this not? I don't know how to trick my brain as a director to know that is there? Is there a secret to that?

Roger Nygard  26:27

You become an editor, and so, that you think about editing, while you're directing. All the great directors should have an understanding of all of the other jobs on the set, including editor. One reason you should when you go to film school, you should try everything and learn everything. I learned all the roles, because I had to when I was making my first short films, because I couldn't afford to hire people to do these things. So, I ended up having to do everything for the most part. I learned from that, I started putting myself, I started acting as it were in my documentaries by making myself the host of a couple of them and that was because I couldn't afford Morgan Freeman. But I learned so much coming out of making the Nature of Existence. The first time I did that I had so much more respect for actors than I did before. It was like, just say your line, is it hard to hit your marks and say your lines and remember them correctly? Wow, that's hard. So, you have to learn everything, or you should try to learn what each of the roles in the production are if you want to be great at whatever specialty you choose.

John Gaspard  27:34

I think you've been part of a wave of getting dialog faster. I know you've directed on The Office, worked on Veep, worked on Curb. Those are all—particularly the last two‑their hallmark is the speed at which the jokes and the dialogue happened. And if you go back in the history of film, one of my favorite, they were very good at this in the 30s and in the 40s. And if you look at His Girl, Friday, there are a couple scenes in it where there is no editing, they are just going at 150 miles an hour, and you get all of it and it doesn't seem like they're racing, but they're going really fast. And it's something that actors of that age are able to do. I know there's a scene in What's Up Doc, which is trying to emulate that feeling. I saw an interview with Peter Bogdanovich, saying when they did this one scene with Ryan O'Neal and Barbra Streisand, it was like two and a half minutes long in rehearsal. And he said, it's got to be a minute. And they said, what do you want to cut? He said, I'm not going to cut anything. Just do it again and do it in a minute.

[FILM CLIP 28:31]

Judy

What's wrong?

Howard

The future.

Judy

What's the matter with it?

Howard

Well, judging from the recent past…

Judy

You know what Edmund Burke said, you can never plan the future by the past.

Howard

I beg your pardon.

Judy

I guess you're wondering what a nice girl like me is doing quoting an 18th century guy like Edmund Burke, I was a political science major at Colorado State.

Howard

So, you gathered your information on….

Judy

Hey, you’ve got a case just like mine. No.

Howard

No?

Judy

No. Advanced geology Wellesley.

Howard

What about the music?

Judy

Bennington musical appreciation, Comp Lit Northwestern University.

Howard

Is that it?

Judy

Archaeology, Tuskegee Institute, General Semantics, University of Chicago, Veterinary Medicine, Texas A&M. Say when.

Howard

What were you trying to become?

Judy

A graduate.

Howard

Why is that so important?

Judy

It's important to my father. He was very upset when I was asked to leave the first college I ever went to.

Howard

Asked to leave?

Judy

Bounced. You want to know why?

Howard

No.

Judy

No. Anyway, he sent me someplace else after that, but that didn't work out either. None of them did. Some of it was very nice, I read a lot of good books. I went to a lot of movies, mostly, but something always seemed to go wrong.

Howard

Yes, I can believe that.

Judy

Well, this last time was not my fault.

Howard

What happened?

Judy

Nothing, nothing really. It was just a little classroom. It sorta burned down.

Howard

Burned down?

Judy

Well, blew up, actually.

Howard

Political activism?

Judy

Chemistry major.

Howard

I see.

Roger Nygard  29:38

You're looking for the sweet spot where it becomes the funniest. And it gets less funny when you go faster. At some point you go okay, we've gone too far, and then you go back and loosen up the lug nuts a little bit. On some shows—like when I worked on Grey's Anatomy—I realized I was going way too fast and I had to go back and slow down my pacing. Rhea Seehorn—who was on Better Call Saul—I just worked with her on a new web series called Cooper's Bar, and we were discussing this very idea of speeding things up. And she said that actors, the way she put it was, actors feel like every line that they have is the most important line. So, they luxuriate in it, they draw it out, they put in these pauses, that dramatic pause, and you’ve got to speed them up. Okay, when I'm directing, I remember my number one and two most common pieces of advice to actors were—after praising them, that was fantastic, you're great—now try it faster, and try to enunciate more. Just say clearly and faster.

John Gaspard  30:37

How tough could that be? One of the things you talked about in the book is something I would have a lot of trouble doing. Although I pat myself on the back for having done it a few times, in the last few features I've done on digital. Which is I think you call it cutting some B plus jokes to make an A plus joke bigger. I'm from the Joe Bologna, My Favorite Year school: you never cut funny. I imagine it's really hard, particularly if you're dealing with Curb where you say you have all this great material, and you're just throwing stuff away. Does that hurt your heart at some point to go, that's a great joke, but it just doesn't get to live here?

Roger Nygard  31:09

Yeah, it's hard to do to cut funny stuff. But you have to keep the overall in mind. That that's the director's job, really, you're in charge of overall. Each actor is in charge of their own lines. That's why they think theirs is the most important. But the director has to know what's most important for the gestalt of the project. It's tricky. I mean, we cut a lot of funny stuff in Curb Your Enthusiasm, obviously, the shows are much longer, shot to be much longer. The idea of curating jokes, that was Alec Berg. His theory, I met Alec when he was on Curb Your Enthusiasm, and he went on to co-create Barry, and he worked on Silicon Valley. His thought is that the most memorable movies and TV shows have four or five or six gigantic laughs belly laughs. And that's what you when you tell your friends about it. To get those gigantic belly laugh, sometimes you have to sacrifice a bunch of other B-plus jokes so that the A-plus jokes can shine. And you've got to build a framework so the A-plus jokes can land. Bridesmaids is a film that's going to be remembered for a long time because it has some gigantic belly laughs in it. Lots of comedies have come and gone that had 100 B-plus laughs that you watch it and then you move on, you kind of forget about it, because it never rose to that level of that gigantic moment. Each episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, the goal is to have several of those gigantic laugh moments. And it takes planning and some judicious sacrifices of other jokes to get there.

John Gaspard  32:43

I've taken up a bunch of your time, I want to ask you a couple real quick questions, and then we'll wrap up because we could literally do this all day long. Editing is such an invisible art in theory. Do you have a movie, the movie you think is really well edited that you'd love because it's so well edited?

Roger Nygard  32:59

Many. I can tell you the ones that influenced me. There's a movie called The Hunger that was Tony Scott's first movie. The opening scene, it's a tour de force of editing with flash forwards and flash backs and the song Bela Lugosi is Dead, underlies everything. And they cut to a monkey several times in that scene. So, clearly that stuck with me. That for sure is a pivotal movie in my mind. The Evil Dead, the Sam Raimi film, one of his early films.

John Gaspard 

The Citizen Kane of horror films.

Roger Nygard 

It really is astounding. He introduced so much to the film language in that movie that we all take for granted now through camera and dialogue and editing. It's astounding. The classic films of Hitchcock, there is nobody above Hitchcock, who would direct as an editor, he was pre editing in his mind as he shot and you can see how everything's laid out. This is someone who had a framework and a plan in mind and it's very clear there's a very strong filmmakers’ hand. Those are some examples.

John Gaspard  34:05

Is there a favorite edit you have in a movie when one shot is connected to another one?

Roger Nygard  34:12

I love experimenting with jump cuts. I'm always trying to work in jump cuts in my work. It's hard to get them through though because jump cuts call attention to themselves, but I love it when they work and many times they work as an ellipsis to get from somewhere in time to somewhere else in time more rapidly. They work best in a montage where someone has, like, a packing montage: you know, suitcase gets thrown on the bed, clothes get thrown into the suitcase suitcases slammed, out the door. It's just saving a lot of time, cutting shoe leather, cutting wasted non-informational visual material. You're cutting it out and leaving what remains. If you watch my film, Suckers, you'll see a lot of jump cuts where I didn't plan it that way when I was filming but when I got in the editing room, I started jump cutting things. Like a car pulls in, and then I cut to Louis Mandalore slamming the door of the car, I didn't need to see him turn off the car, get out of the car, we understand that. But the door slam gives me a button in the metronome of beats. So, drive in, slam, house door, he's inside: rule of three, three shots, all following a beat. I look for those whenever possible, to move things along quickly, in a stylish way that doesn't interrupt the flow of information and take the audience out of the story.

John Gaspard  35:37

You mentioned The Hunger. Is there one movie that you think has been most influential when it comes to what we think of as modern editing in film?

Roger Nygard  35:44

Well, editing is continually evolving. If you go back to The General and Buster Keaton, Buster Keaton was inventing a lot of editorial tricks that no one had done before, and are shockingly still amazing and funny. Now, people are cutting too fast, oftentimes cutting just to cut, it shows a loss of control of a scene or a movie, when you're cutting too much. I try never to cut, I try to cut as little as possible. If something's working, I'll let it play. Because I'm going to have to cut a lot to fix the dialogue. And the films that I find the most inspirational are usually ones I get lost in, I don't notice the editing. It doesn't jump out at me as though that's a bad edit that that doesn't feel right, or it's a smooth flow, a smooth, elegant flow from beginning to end because the editor steps behind the curtain and that's when I know it's well edited. There are movies where if I start getting antsy, okay, the editor failed, because you know, it's there. If there's a slowdown or a problem and it gets past the editor, scissors, it's the editor’s fault. Now maybe they were countermanded by the executive producer or the director. But then it's still a mistake, a problem in editing that whoever left that scene in or left that moment in, made that mistake.

John Gaspard  37:05

I'm pushing the edge of the clock here. So, I want to ask you one last thing. If you want to give just one piece of advice on how to become a better editor, what would it be?

Roger Nygard  37:12

To become the best at what you do whether, it's editing or anything else, especially in film, you need to absorb the language of film. So, watch movies with a notepad and take notes of everything that you notice: a line of dialogue, a great camera move, an interesting edit. And fill up those pages. I was doing this during college, I would watch movies on the weekend, I would watch three or four movies because I got a VHS recorder and I was able to tape movies off the air. I didn't really know what I was looking for yet. I just knew I was writing things down that I liked. I remember watching Sergeant York and I was blown away by that movie, the Gary Cooper movie. I would have never watched it if I hadn't been seeking out four-star movies and catching up on movies, which is what people need. Don't just rely on the movies on your favorite streamer, go back through the history of movies, watch all the great movies and take notes. By taking notes, it forces you to learn about it, to absorb it, it doesn't just wash over you, in one ear and out the other. You make a special mention in your in your notebook about it and that way it stays with you and you learn from it and you can go back then. I've gone back and watched movies to see if they stood the test of time, like Where Eagles Dare or Kelly's Heroes, that which really affected me when I was young. I have gone back and watched them and they are still they are so entertaining. Brian Hutton, who directed both those movies, was on a roll at the time making these amazingly entertaining films. They're amazingly shot, edited, the explosions. They didn't have digital effects. So, they were really blowing those things up and it's just astounding the logistics that they had to control to make those movies and to make it edit together seamlessly. I took notes then and I watched it and went back and they still stand up. So, study the language of film, you need to absorb it, and you need to take an active participation in studying it.

John Gaspard  39:10

Thanks to Roger Nygaard, for taking the time to talk to me about editing and screenwriting and story structure. And everything else we covered today. His enthusiasm for filmmaking is infectious. As I mentioned in the interview, every time I talk to Roger, I learned something that makes me a better filmmaker. Now that you've listened to the podcast, you should run out and buy Rogers’s book Cut to the Monkey: a Hollywood Editor’s Behind the Scenes Secrets to Making Hit Comedies. And catch up on his movies as well: Suckers, Trekkies, Six Days in Roswell, The Nature of Existence, and The Truth about Marriage. You can find links in the Show Notes.

If you liked this interview, you can find lots more just like it on the Fast, Cheap Movie Thoughts blog. Plus, more interviews can be found in my books, Fast, Cheap And Under Control. Lessons Learned From The Greatest Low Blood Movies Of All Time and its companion book of interviews with screenwriters, called Fast, Cheap, And Written That Way. Both books can be found on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Google, and Apple books. And while you're there, check out my mystery series of novels about magician Eli Marks and the scrapes he gets into. The entire series, starting with The Ambitious Card, can be found on Amazon in paperback, hardcover eBook, and audiobook formats.

Well, that's it for episode 104 of the Occasional Film Podcast. Produced at Grass Lake Studios. Original Music by Andy Morantz. Thanks for tuning in, and we'll see you occasionally.

Episode 103: Lee Wilkof on his film “No Pay, Nudity.”

Director Lee Wilkof talks about the production of his film, “No Pay, Nudity” (starring Gabriel Byrne and Nathan Lane), as well as his work as an actor on the musicals “Little Shop of Horrors” and “Assassins.”

LINKS

A Free Film Book for You:  https://dl.bookfunnel.com/cq23xyyt12

Another Free Film Book:  https://dl.bookfunnel.com/x3jn3emga6

Fast, Cheap Film Website: https://www.fastcheapfilm.com/

Eli Marks Website:  https://www.elimarksmysteries.com/

Albert’s Bridge Books Website:  https://www.albertsbridgebooks.com/

YouTube Channel:  https://www.youtube.com/c/BehindthePageTheEliMarksPodcast

“No Pay, Nudity” trailer:  https://youtu.be/toO8g8fgtP4

Lee Wilkof revisits “Suddenly Seymour”:  https://youtu.be/x7DNEts0yQQ

“Suddenly Seymour” from MDA Telethon:  https://youtu.be/b4tddRw6JVU

“Little Shop” TV spot:  https://youtu.be/itYxORbajSc

Dying to make a feature? Learn from the pros!

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

★★★★★

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

• Jonathan Demme: The value of cameos

• John Sayles: Writing to your resources

• Peter Bogdanovich: Long, continuous takes

• John Cassavetes: Re-Shoots

• Steven Soderbergh: Rehearsals

• George Romero: Casting

• Kevin Smith: Skipping film school

• Jon Favreau: Creating an emotional connection

• Richard Linklater: Poverty breeds creativity

• David Lynch: Kill your darlings

• Ron Howard: Pre-production planning

• John Carpenter: Going low-tech

• Robert Rodriguez: Sound thinking

And more!

Write Your Screenplay with the Help of Top Screenwriters!

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

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

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

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

The book covers (among other topics):

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Roger Nygard (“Suckers”) on mixing genres

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

TRANSCRIPT

The Occasional Film Podcast - Episode 103

NATHAN LANE 0:00

I had one of the best times I’ve ever had making a movie doing this, this little teeny-tiny film. One could say it’s a niche film. And yet I think everyone can relate to the notion dreams lost or shattered and you think it’s going to turn out one way and it doesn’t. And how do you come to terms with that?

JOHN GASPARD

That was the one and only Nathan Lane talking about his experiences making Lee Wilkof’s lovely film, “No Pay, Nudity.” 

Hello, and welcome to episode 103 of the Occasional Film Podcast, the occasional companion podcast to the Fast Cheap Movie Thoughts blog. I'm the blog's editor, John Gaspard. 

Today we're talking with long time actor and first-time director Lee Wilkof about his film “No Pay, Nudity.” It's the story of Lester Rose, a mid-career actor in crisis about show business in particular, and life in general. It stars Gabriel Byrne, Frances Conroy, Boyd Gaines, Donna Murphy, and Nathan Lane. 

[AUDIO EXCERPT FROM THE FILM’S TRAILER]

When I saw the name Lee Wilkof listed as director during the film's credits, I thought where do I know that name from? I racked my brain and then it came to me. Suddenly.

[LEE WILKOF SINGING “SUDDENLY, SEYMOUR”]

Lee originated the role of Seymour Krellborn in the Off Broadway production of a little musical called “Little Shop of Horrors,” and went on to originate the role of Samuel Bick in Stephen Sondheim's “Assassins.” 

He talked about those two memorable roles at the end of our conversation. But first we talked about “No Pay, Nudity”, which was his first time as a film director. 

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

LEE WILKOF 3:20  

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

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

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

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

JOHN GASPARD 5:35  

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

LEE WILKOF 5:42  

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

JOHN GASPARD 6:34  

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

LEE WILKOF 6:39  

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

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

JOHN GASPARD 7:52  

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

LEE WILKOF 8:00  

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

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

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

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

JOHN GASPARD

Yes indeed. 

LEE WILKOF  

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

JOHN GASPARD 10:44  

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

LEE WILKOF 10:59  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

JOHN GASPARD 14:20  

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

LEE WILKOF 14:28  

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

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

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

JOHN GASPARD 15:40  

Was that the only set you built?

LEE WILKOF 15:41  

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

JOHN GASPARD 16:35  

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

LEE WILKOF 16:41  

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

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

JOHN GASPARD 17:35  

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

LEE WILKOF 17:40  

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

JOHN GASPARD 18:04  

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

LEE WILKOF 18:11  

No. 

JOHN GASPARD 18:12  

At what point did you decide to include that?

LEE WILKOF 18:15  

When certain people thought it would be a good idea. 

JOHN GASPARD 18:19  

Okay. I'll move on.

LEE WILKOF 18:25  

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

JOHN GASPARD 18:41  

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

LEE WILKOF 18:58  

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

JOHN GASPARD 19:13  

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

LEE WILKOF 19:18  

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

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

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

JOHN GASPARD 21:04  

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

LEE WILKOF 21:14  

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

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

JOHN GASPARD 21:58  

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

LEE WILKOF 22:08  

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

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

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

JOHN GASPARD 23:41  

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

LEE WILKOF 23:58  

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

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

JOHN GASPARD 25:12  

There's open it as far as willing to open it. 

LEE WILKOF 25:18  

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

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

JOHN GASPARD 26:22  

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

LEE WILKOF 26:36  

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

JOHN GASPARD 27:00  

But you learned from it.

LEE WILKOF 27:01  

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

JOHN GASPARD 27:07  

So, are you going to do this again?

LEE WILKOF 27:10  

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

JOHN GASPARD 27:59  

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

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

LEE WILKOF 28:18  

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

JOHN GASPARD 28:38  

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

LEE WILKOF 29:25  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

JOHN GASPARD 34:38  

Yes. It’s finally time. 

LEE WILKOF 34:44  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[SOUND CLIP FROM LITTLE SHOP]

JOHN GASPARD 38:20  

Thanks to Lee Wilkof—heard here performing my favourite song from Little Shop of Horrors, Mushnik and Son—for taking the time to talk to me about his movie, “No Pay Nudity,” which is available now for home viewing. I recommend that you track it down. 

If you liked this interview, you can find lots more just like it on the Fast Cheap Movie Thoughts blog. 

Plus more interviews can be found in my books, Fast, Cheap And Under Control:Lessons Learned From The Greatest Low Budget Movies Of All Time, and its companion book of interviews with screenwriters, called Fast, Cheap And Written That Way. Both books can be found on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Google, and Apple books. 

And while you're there, check out my mystery series of novels about magician Eli Marks and the scrapes he gets into. The entire series starting with The Ambitious Card can be found in paperback hardcover eBook and audiobook formats. 

Well, that's it for episode 103 of the occasional film podcast. Produced at Grass Lake Studios. Original Music by Andy Morantz. 

Thanks for tuning in, and we'll see you occasionally.

Episode 102: Jonathan Lynn on “Clue” and “My Cousin Vinny”

Writer/Director Jonathan Lynn talks about his work on the classic films “Clue” and “My Cousin Vinny,” as well as his comically dark novel, “Samaritans.”

LINKS

A Free Film Book for You:  https://dl.bookfunnel.com/cq23xyyt12

Another Free Film Book:  https://dl.bookfunnel.com/x3jn3emga6

Fast, Cheap Film Website: https://www.fastcheapfilm.com/

Eli Marks Website:  https://www.elimarksmysteries.com/

Albert’s Bridge Books Website:  https://www.albertsbridgebooks.com/

YouTube Channel:  https://www.youtube.com/c/BehindthePageTheEliMarksPodcast

“Clue” Trailer:  https://youtu.be/KEXdWfsKZ1k

“My Cousin Vinny” Trailer:  https://youtu.be/HrfXTjYyenE

“Yes, Minister” Clip:  https://youtu.be/KgUemV4brDU

Dying to make a feature? Learn from the pros!

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

★★★★★

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

• Jonathan Demme: The value of cameos

• John Sayles: Writing to your resources

• Peter Bogdanovich: Long, continuous takes

• John Cassavetes: Re-Shoots

• Steven Soderbergh: Rehearsals

• George Romero: Casting

• Kevin Smith: Skipping film school

• Jon Favreau: Creating an emotional connection

• Richard Linklater: Poverty breeds creativity

• David Lynch: Kill your darlings

• Ron Howard: Pre-production planning

• John Carpenter: Going low-tech

• Robert Rodriguez: Sound thinking

And more!

Write Your Screenplay with the Help of Top Screenwriters!

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

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

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

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

The book covers (among other topics):

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Roger Nygard (“Suckers”) on mixing genres

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

The Occasional Film Podcast - Episode 102 Transcript

[SOUNDBITE FROM “MY COUSIN VINNY”]

John Gaspard  00:32

That was Joe Pesci and Fred Gwynne in a much-quoted scene from the much-loved film, My Cousin Vinny.  Hello, and welcome to episode 102 of The Occasional Film Podcast, the occasional companion podcast to the Fast Cheap Movie Thoughts Blog. I'm that blog’s editor, John Gaspard. In this episode, we're talking to Jonathan Lynn, the director of My Cousin Vinny. But Jonathan Lynn is much more than that. He studied Law at Cambridge, appeared in the Cambridge follies, went with that show to Broadway and the Ed Sullivan Show, and played Motel the Tailor in the original West End production of Fiddler on the Roof. 

[SOUNDBITE FROM FIDDLER ON THE ROOF]

He wrote for television and—with Anthony Jay—created Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister, two classic British situation comedies. 

[SOUNDBITE FROM YES, MINISTER]

Lynn came to America and wrote and then ended up directing the classic movie comedy Clue. And he did all this by the age of 42. As the satirist Tom Lehrer said,

Tom Lehrer  01:54

It's people like that will make you realize how little you've accomplished. It is a sobering thought, for example, that when Mozart was my age, he had been dead for two years.

John Gaspard  02:39

In my conversation with Mr. Lynn, we talked about what he learned from shooting Clue and went into detail about the making of My Cousin Vinny. But we started our conversation talking about his new novel Samaritans, a caustic look at the American Health System, viewed through the eyes of one hospital, and its staff in Washington DC. What was it about this story that made you think this should be expressed as a novel?

Jonathan Lynn  03:05

I played around with it as a in other forms, because mostly I haven't written—I mean, I've written four or five prose books. I wrote The Complete Yes, Minister and The Complete Yes, Prime Minister, which were enormous bestsellers. But mostly I've written, as you say, in script form, either plays, TV or film scripts. The more I played around with this, the bigger the subject seemed to get. There was no way I could explore the characters of all of these people in a two-hour script, which is actually not very long. A screenplay is 120 pages, that's a pretty well-spaced out. Stage plays, you know, are a similar length we're talking about, you know, usually no more than an hour and a half, especially for comedy. You can make dramas last longer, because you're not asking to be so on the ball and get every joke. But with a comedy you don't want it to go on too long. The famous comedian’s rule, you know, leave them wanting more. And as I kept writing. I found more and more to write about, and it seemed to expand, and it seemed to me that expanding it was good. So, in the end, it seemed to me that its best form would be a novel.

John Gaspard  04:27

As I was reading it, I began to think at first, oh, this is going to be a farce. It's going to be absurd. It's going to be like, Catch 22. It's just going to take an idea and take it to its illogical endpoint. But then as I got into it, I realized, no, this is completely grounded in reality and every bizarre thing that happens seems to have an analogue in the real world and it isn't absurd. I mean, it is absurd. It's kind of like reality. Was that your intention?

Jonathan Lynn  05:03

Well, yes, you're right. It is absurd and it is reality. It's the absurd reality of the healthcare system in the United States, not just in the United States. I mean, I come from Britain where the National Health Service is in a state of collapse, for similar reasons. Because everything is viewed as a business model. And patients are viewed not as patients, but as consumers. And hospitals and healthcare is viewed as something that has to in some way make money. It's worse here, because healthcare in America costs approximately 1/3, more than in any other developed country in the world. In every other developed country, health care is regarded as a right, not a privilege. So, the absurdity here is greater than anywhere else. So, when you mentioned compared to Catch 22, which, by the way, is a very generous compliment that is such a wonderful book. But that's only a little exaggerated too. I mean, that really is what the military was like and World War Two. When you write comedy, you heightened things to exaggerate on the comic effect. But essentially, if they're not true, the reader, or the audience, recognizes that they're not true, and doesn't think it's funny anymore. And so, the balance is always to keep it truthfully observed so that people recognize it and slightly exaggerate it so that people laugh at it.

John Gaspard  06:36

And it is a very funny book. I don't want to talk about it and make it sound like it's dour or serious. I mean, the subject matter is serious, and it is, in many cases, literally life and death. I mean, I just jotted down a couple of quotes that I loved. Referring to healthcare as the ultimate lottery. A student loan, like a diamond, is forever and then I know you put this in for those of us who are fans of your other work to find when Blanche says, I feel you know what I feel flames on the side of my face.

Jonathan Lynn  07:08

Yes, that's a little indulgence for people who are fans of  Clue. People really love Clue and that seems to be everybody's favorite moment in the movie.

Madeline Kahn

I hated her soooo much, it, it, flame, flames on the side of my face, breath, breathing, heaving breaths.

Jonathan Lynn  07:08

Because I always saw Blanche. I mean, in God's production, you know, sadly, Madeline Kahn is no longer with us. But if she was, and if we did of production of Samaritans, you know, Madeline Kahn would be the perfect Blanche.

John Gaspard  07:47

She'd be ideal.

Jonathan Lynn  07:49

So, you know, it just sort of came to mind that maybe that's what Blanche say and why not have a little in joke for the benefit of fans of  Clue.

John Gaspard  08:02

Absolutely. It's a weird thing to say about a novel, but it's really well researched. At least it appears to be really well researched, which isn't something you think about with a novel. I have written a couple of mystery novels that involve a magician, and it does for me—not being a magician—involve a lot of research to understand that process for me. What was the process for you? Was it research first and then writing or writing leading you down rabbit holes of research?

Jonathan Lynn  08:29

It goes hand in hand to me. The idea comes first. The idea, that the funny idea that hospital beset with raising costs and poor management should decide that they need the head of a Vegas casino as their new CEO, because he understands about check out and check in, beds occupied, and dinners, and has no interest in healthcare. That struck me as a really fun idea as that truthful about the way the health care system is operating here. Then, when I was writing it, I discovered, I read a story in a paper. That said I think it's Aetna, it was one with the big insurance companies, had hired a new CEO, the CEO of Caesars Palace. So, I discovered that life was imitating art in that case. But what happens is that as you can see, when if I got an idea, I started researching simultaneous. So, then I had to find out about hospitals. I knew a bit about hospitals because, well partly I've been a patient more than once, partly my wife taught in two major London teaching hospitals, partly because I have friends who are doctors, and they were very unhappy with the way the situation, the system works here. And you start researching and you start talking to friends and acquaintances or people that you get in touch with and gradually, you discover things that are actually both more appalling and funnier in real life than you would probably ever have thought of as you sat at home trying to make it all up. 

I've always found that research led me to greater comic possibilities than I ever thought were there, in anything I've ever written. I think humor is about dark subjects, because it's about serious subjects and I know we're also going to talk about My Cousin Vinny in a few minutes. But you know, that's a perfect example. I mean, that is funny, only because of its terrifying implications that those two kids would have been electrocuted, would have been killed by the state, if they hadn't had a peculiarly argumentative lawyer in Vinny. And you know, so what makes that film both funny and compulsive viewing for people is that it is about something terribly serious. It is finally about life and death. It's a film about capital punishment, although people never talk about it in those terms, but that's at the root of it. So, the answer to your question is yes, I think the more serious the subject, the better the comic possibilities.

John Gaspard  11:16

What special pleasure does novel writing give you that you're not getting as a playwright, or a screenwriter, or a director or an actor?

Jonathan Lynn  11:25

The pleasure is that I only have to please myself. I don't have to worry about, you know, is there some actors who would like this part, or will somebody demand that this character has made more likeable before they'll play it. How can we raise, you know, millions of millions of dollars, in order to get this out before the public. There are all kinds of ways of putting you in a straitjacket when you're creating a play or a film or TV series. That are all to do with the fact that they cost so much money and that, therefore, you need the approval of producers, directors, executives, star actors and everybody else about everything and if you're not very careful, they get compromised out of existence and that often happens. As you know. That doesn't happen if you're writing a book. All I have to do is please myself, and then hopefully find someone who will publish it.

[SOUNDBITE FROM MY COUSIN VINNY TRAILER]

John Gaspard  12:26

The other reason for the call now was, this is the 25th anniversary this year of My Cousin Vinny and I'm sure you've been involved in other interviews and events about that, and those will continue. But I thought it'd be kind of fun to revisit this, you were kind enough to talk to me, I actually don't know how many years ago, but there were some of the questions wanted to ask you about it now that it's 25 years later. But to back up a little bit: So, your first movie, as a director was Clue, which you'd written.

[SOUNDBITE FROM CLUE TRAILER]

And I know you have had before that a lot of experience on stage, both as a director and an actor, but it's a really self-assured directing debut. It's a big movie, although it's in one house, but it's still a big movie with a big cast and a lot going on. What was the biggest lesson you took away from that directing experience?

Jonathan Lynn  13:33

The biggest lesson I took away, although I don't always manage to stick to it, it to trust my own judgments and don't, don't be overly impressed by what I'm told by studio executives. There are things in Clue that I regret, that I should have changed, and I didn't because I was persuaded by the studio that's what I should do, and as a first-time director, I assumed they knew what they were talking about. There are various examples of that. But perhaps the most obvious example is the multiple endings, which was a great mistake to release them in separate movie theaters. Because the whole point about the multiple endings is the ingenuity of the fact that the story could lead to three different outcomes, all of which made sense, and all of which were funny. The film wasn't a success until I put them all together for the video version and they started being seen on TV. I mean, I also learned all kinds of other things that I haven't found about how to use camera, because directing on stage is completely different, especially directing a farce, which Clue is, a broad comedy. Because on stage, you see all the characters and your eye takes in all different sorts of actions. The camera has to focus on little pieces of action one moment at a time. You can't have too many wide shots with eight or nine people in them because they all become too small. You can have some. So, for me it was a big lesson in learning how to photograph comedy as opposed to stage comedy. Staging it was not a problem for me, making sure that I had photographed it exactly right. So, and it was complicated because there were so many people in every scene, that the geography of the scene always had to be clear. You know, the audience needs to know where people are and in the case of Clue, they need to know where people are not, because that of course meant somebody was missing, they could be the murderer. And whenever I've been left alone by the studio, or by the producers to do my thing, my films have been better than when I've been subjected to too much pressure from the parent company.

John Gaspard  13:41

And then we get into My Cousin Vinny. Now, my, some of my questions are going to be based on having re-looked at your book, Comedy Rules. Because there's some stuff in Comedy Rules, although it doesn't refer specifically to Vinny, it feels like it sort of tendentially does. And one of the things you write about there a couple times, and this is I think, first in reference to Yes, Minister, is the idea of the hideous dilemma. Can you just define that for me?

Jonathan Lynn  16:07

Well, yes, I think there has to be. I think all comedy needs a hideous dilemma. And, you know, in, in my book, Comedy Rules, I talked about it in connection with, Yes, Minister, and Yes, Prime Minister, because the politician Jim Hacker, in those series and books, is like all politicians torn between doing the right thing and doing the thing that will either advance his career, or make him look better to the public, or go down better with the press. And these things are nearly always fighting each other. Doing the right thing is often not the safest thing and politicians are always scared of being exposed. Being in government or being in politics is essentially about having two faces, about hypocrisy, and you never want it to be revealed that you said one thing one day and then did something else another day. Now that rule has slightly changed since the advent of Donald Trump, who doesn't seem to care that he's caught out in the lie every day of his life or maybe 10 lies. But it matters to most politicians, and it kills their careers. Sir Humphrey, the senior civil servant, was also always caught in a dilemma. That was some of the nature. Now in My Cousin Vinny, the hideous dilemma is obvious. The two boys are charged with murder that we the audience know they didn't commit, and they have to make a choice. They have to hire Vinny, who has never had conducted a trial. He's only been qualified at the bar for six weeks and he's never done a murder case.

[SOUNDBITE FROM MY COUSIN VINNY TRAILER]

Jonathan Lynn  18:09

They have to hire him. They have nobody else. This is a hideous dilemma for them. The hideous dilemma for Vinny is that he knows that if he fails, his cousin will be executed. I mean, what worse situation could he be in? The hideous dilemma Mona Lisa Vito, Marisa Tomei, is that she's living with this guy who means well, but just can't get it right. All of this is what makes it funny.

John Gaspard  18:38

You know, it could have been played as a completely straight drama right out of John Grisham, because all the elements would be the same. 

Jonathan Lynn  18:44

It's a trial movie. It’s just that comedic choices are made instead of dramatic choices. But you're right. That's why it works. Because  most trial movies—I mean, I didn't know there was another trial movie that's a comedy from start to finish. There are comedies with trial scenes, but most of them are rather treated rather frivolously. In Vinny, I treated the situation with the utmost seriousness. And I think that's why it's funny, because it's so frightening.

John Gaspard  19:16

Exactly. Another thing you mentioned in the book Comedy Rules that I think applies really nicely here is the concept that it helps to be an outsider, which Vinny clearly is. And that gives you a great way into the story. Did your experience sort of as an outsider, a British director working in America, was that also helpful?

Jonathan Lynn  19:39

When I look at the history of Hollywood movies, one has to assume that that is helpful. If you look at the extraordinary number of really good directors who came from Europe mainly but also from other cultures to Hollywood and one of the best things about Hollywood that has to be said, that’s good about Hollywood, that it is not at all xenophobia. It welcomes anyone from anywhere. But if you look, I mean, Billy Wilder is my favorite comedy director. He was Viennese, Fred Zimmerman was from Vienna, Milos Forman is from Czechoslovakia. Michael Curtiz is from Hungary, and you could go on all day. I mean, a colossal number of the greatest Hollywood directors of—Alfred Hitchcock from Britain—are from somewhere else. And I think it helps. I think as an outsider, you see it maybe more clearly. People always talk to me about the fact that the South is presented differently in My Cousin Vinny than in most American films. That's because I think most American films are directed by northerners and they see the South as some strange, foreign place. To me, the South and the North they're all just America. I mean, the differences, there are obvious differences, but they're still part of American culture, all of which is, or was that time, foreign to me.

John Gaspard  21:01

I don't know, I'm one of those people who I'm sure you're running this all the time, who say if you're flipping channels, and My Cousin Vinny is on, that's it. You're gonna watch the rest of the movie.

Jonathan Lynn  21:10

That's really nice. I feel like that about some movies. I feel like The Godfather Part One and Two and you know, some other movies. I mean, if I see the Godfather on TV, if I happen to stumble across it, I have to keep watching. And, you know, there are some other movies. It's very nice to that people feel like that about Vinny.

John Gaspard  21:32

Yeah, everything came together in that movie, the script is very strong the way you directed it. And I don't mean just where you put the camera, or how you cast it. All those are great and you have a really very clean, non-intrusive visual style, which allows comedy to play really, really well. But between the script and the directing, and the way it's edited, all the pieces are there as a mystery, which it is sort of. It is completely fair. All the clues are given, and they're given so subtly, the how long does it take to cook grits, which is an important thing, is almost a throwaway line. You don't even think about it, it's perfectly in character for that conversation to happen. Just even the shot of the boys pulling away from the store at the beginning, where the curb can be seen on the left side of the screen, and you don't make a point of the fact that they don't go over the curb, because we don't know that's a fact. But when we see the photos later, we—if we had any doubts at all—knowthat wasn't their car, because they didn't go over that curb. I mean, it's that sort of attention to detail, you wouldn't necessarily see in a quote unquote, light comedy. But I think it’s what makes it a perennial favorite.

Jonathan Lynn  22:44

Perhaps it's because I have a degree in law and I wanted it to be legally good. And perhaps because I've seen a number of trial movies that I really, really liked, like The Verdict and Absence of Malice and of course, To Kill a Mockingbird, there's a lot of great, Anatomy of a Murder. One of those are films that I think are full of tension and suspense and hold the audience's attention and I think I felt that was important. You can't make the whole movie about a trial unless the trial is dramatically effective from start to finish. So, yes, I approached it as a drama, except that we made comedic choices all the way through.

John Gaspard  23:24

What was your rehearsal process like? Did you have time for rehearsal?

Jonathan Lynn  23:27

No, there was no rehearsal. I discussed it with Joe Pesci and Joe said he hated rehearsal. He felt it took away his spontaneity and of course, he liked to rehearse a scene on the morning that we were shooting it, but he didn't want any advance rehearsal. Now, one of the jobs of the director, maybe the main job of the director is just to get the best work out of all the people in the movie. If you're leading actor doesn't want to rehearse, there's no point in trying to make them rehearse. It won’t improve the result. So, we didn't have any rehearsal and all the rehearsals were just on the day of each scene.

John Gaspard  24:06

Well, that sort of jumps us right to my next question, which is going back to Comedy Rules again. This is rule number 140, which was  remember the old English proverb you don't buy a dog and bark yourself. Talk to me about how that applies to your work as a director, because you are also an actor, and you're also a writer.

Jonathan Lynn  24:28

I never demonstrate how everything should be done. I never say play it like this. I never say, say it this way. I assume that the actors that I've got are high level, skilled professionals. And what I want them to do is bring what they can bring to something that I already have in mind and that the writer—which may or may not have been me—has already written. You know, with really good actors, with leading actors you know, you don't tell the movie star, this is how you play the scene and then demonstrate, because they would, you know, rightly send for their limo and go home. That's not what they're there for. They're there to bring what they can bring to the proceedings. And what you have to do as a director is have what know what you have in mind and meld it with what your actors bring. And that's why casting is so absolutely critical, because if you miscast a part, you know, it will never work, or will certainly never work the way you intended it to.

John Gaspard  25:37

You mentioned Billy Wilder, and I'm going to mention another rule from Comedy Rules, because there's a lot of good ones in there. Rule 149 is the last part of every film and play is a race to the finish between the show and the audience. Which I think is something Wilder would have agreed with. And you went on to add, the show must get there first. One of the things that makes, I think, Vinny so successful is that when the end is there, it's there. We zip right to the end. You don't hang around, there's not a lot of extraneous stuff. It's like the movie is over and we're out. How hard was that to achieve?

Jonathan Lynn  26:17

Well, it was interesting, because of course, that was done in the production rewrite. Dale wrote a wonderful script, but there were things that still needed sorting out and Fox hired me to do the production rewrite. And in the original draft that I was given, we never knew who committed the murders. You never knew what the real story was. So, that was a problem. For me, that was a problem. You can't have a trial movie without knowing what actually happened. Now, obviously, we didn't want to see what actually happened, because that would have been time consuming and boring. That's the problem with a Who Done It. That's why Hitchcock never made a Who Done It, because in a Who Done It, there's always a scene at the end, when the detective explains what really happens and that's always really dull. I made fun of that in Clue, with the butler’s ludicrous explanation of everything. But I made it into a joke, because that film was a parody of a murder mystery. But in this case, we didn't need to see it all on camera. But we did need to know that the real murderers had been found and had been caught and that it all made sense. The other thing is that we didn't want to have the jury. Once it was clear that the two boys have not committed the murder, we have to get out of that trial as fast as possible. So, that meant it didn't have to it couldn't go to the jury. We couldn't have a boring scene when they came back and the judge said, you know, have you reached a verdict? Yes, Your Honor and reading out the verdicts and all that stuff that you see on television every week. So, it meant that we had to have the prosecutor do the right thing, which was very good anyway, because for me, there's no bad guy. The one most interesting thing about film, I think, is there is no villain. The court system, the justice system is the antagonist. So, we have to get out of that fast. So, it meant that the prosecutor did the right thing and simply withdrew the case. He just said, you know, we're not proceeding with this. So, that was the end of the trial. And that meant we could get out of that trial, in terms of screen time, probably five minutes sooner then if we'd gone through the whole thing of it going to the jury.

John Gaspard  28:27

Now, is there anything looking back in the movie that you wish you would have done differently?

Jonathan Lynn  28:30

Well actually, no. When I see the movie now, which I don't very often, but I you know, I have seen it occasionally. I'm really pleased with it. I have to say, most of my films, I see plenty of things I would like to change and that one, I think, you know, was a lot of luck. We made all the right choices, I think. I don't see anything I would want to change.

John Gaspard  28:53

I would agree. Is there anything any consistent thing you hear from fans about that movie that if someone mentions it, you know, they're gonna say this or that?

Jonathan Lynn  29:04

No, I get a lot of terrific response from judges and attorneys, who will say that it's legally the most accurate film that's ever been produced by Hollywood. I've met a number of federal judges who use it in their teaching at law schools, especially in the teaching of evidence. That's very gratifying. I was asked to speak at a couple of legal conventions to federal judges and others, not about the law, of course, which they know more about than I do, about how Hollywood treats trials and legal firms. So, they're very gratifying group of people. And then of course, they're just favorite moments that people refer to, which always happens in films, just like we were talking about in Clue, like Mrs. White’s lines about the flames on the side of my face. It seems that a large number of people quote Vinny’s line ‘Two Youts,” and there are a number of other moments in the film which people refer to with the great affection. 

[SOUNDBITE: MORE FROM THE MY COUSIN VINNY TRAILER]

John Gaspard  30:23

Thanks to Jonathan Lynn for taking the time to talk to me about his new book Samaritans, as well as Clue and My Cousin Vinny. If you liked this interview, you can find lots more just like it, including the transcript of an earlier interview with Mr. Lynn, covering other facets of My Cousin Vinny on the Fast Cheap Movie Thoughts blog. Plus, more interviews can be found in my books: Fast, Cheap And Under Control: Lessons Learned From The Greatest Low Budget Movies Of All Time, and its companion book of interviews with screenwriters, called Fast, Cheap And Written That Way. Both books can be found on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Google Play and Apple books. And while you're there, check out my mystery series of novels about magician Eli Marks and the scrapes he gets into. The entire series, starting with The Ambitious Card, can be found on all those online retailers I just mentioned in paperback hardcover eBook and audiobook formats. You can find information on those books and all the other books at Albertsbridgebooks.com. That's Albertsbridgebooks.com. And that's it for episode 102 of The Occasional Film Podcast, produced at Grass Lake studios. Original Music by Andy Morantz. Thanks for tuning in, and we'll see you next time.

Episode 101: Welcome and Launch

A quick welcome and setting expectations for what’s to come in future episodes.

LINKS

Fast, Cheap Film Website: https://www.fastcheapfilm.com/

YouTube Channel:  https://www.youtube.com/c/BehindthePageTheEliMarksPodcast

Eli Marks Website:  https://www.elimarksmysteries.com/

Albert’s Bridge Books Website:  https://www.albertsbridgebooks.com/

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