***QUICK NOTE BEFORE OUR SCHEDULED PROGRAMMING: If you’re a new screenwriter, it will interest you to know that my good friend Linda Frothingham is having a special First Five Pages Table Read event at Chicago Screenwriters Network this Sunday night, 7pm. You can find out more about it by visiting her website ChicagoHollywood.com. You can read about it here. Or here.
And now back to…THE BOZO SHOW!
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One last trip back in time (Thank Christ!) to that bastard child of mine, Jane Doe. These are last licks, some final items you want to make sure you never do when directing your own movies. Then we can leave Jane Doe to the two seeders on Pirate Bay with that Swedish sub-titled torrent. Or to the folks pirating the movie here. Or to Amazon, still somehow selling it here. I make not a penny on these, haven’t in years. And that’s ok. In truth, I’ve made my peace with it. For your purposes, do as I say, not as I did. Let this mediocrity be your guide…
- DIRECTORS DON’T NEED A COOL HAT
I was a dice dealer in Aurora, Illinois, what did I know? My old man and brother threw me into the mix as director. Tell me please how you tab a guy who has never, in his life, even stepped foot on a movie set, let alone directed a $250,000 dollar movie? Doomed from the start…
It was the day before our first full production meeting. This would be the first time I would meet the full crew. It would be my first impression on them. My old man told me casually that all great directors have cool hats. With zero experience, I took that at face value. Rather than work on the shot list, or prepare scenes I wanted to work in rehearsal, I went shopping for a cool hat. Doomed from the start…
I found a clowney thing, pork-pie hat with red rubber sideburns attached and a short rainbow Afro. Maybe it didn’t have the Afro, I can’t remember. Point is, I wore it to the first production meeting.
Can you imagine their faces—from the PA’s on up to the DP and AD and producers—when into this critical first meeting walks Bozo, walks Shakes The Clown. I had wanted to lighten the mood, get everyone loose. What I got was a room full of people looking at a fool, who didn’t even realize he was a fool. I set the land speed record for loss of director respect. First ten seconds of the first meeting. Oh fuck, said their faces. Or maybe it was wow, just wow.
Life Lesson 101: Dumbass, you don’t need a cool hat to direct.
- DIRECTORS DON’T NEED TO GO TO FILM SCHOOL, BUT IT CAN’T HURT
I remember being handed Sidney Lumet’s book, Making Movies, by one of our producers. “Maybe this’ll help,” he said delicately. He had been to the production meeting where I walked in with the clown hat and, well…
Had I been to film school, I might have had a clue in terms of film set responsibilities. This is the stuff of freshmen learning at Columbia College’s Cinema Art and Science department. I had no formal education, I had to learn it on the fly.Thing is, you don’t want to be on the set of a quarter million dollar film doing that. So let’s say that yes, there’s a place for film school, despite all the negativity you’ll hear in certain quarters. “Fuck film school!” they’ll say. “Spend that $20,000 a year on making a movie. Hell, you can make four movies in four years. Nobody cares what Scorsese’s grade-point average was at NYU!”
All true, but I’ll say this. If I’d had formal training the chances of my movie failing would have gone down… significantly. It’s at least worth looking into adult education courses in writing-editing or, yes, directing.
Life Lesson 006: It’s better to be a Jack of four trades than an Ace of one.
Whilst you’re waiting to become Christopher Nolan or Tarantino, you might find that the 3rd or 4th skill you learned in film school is the one you’ll actually make a living with. Be in script supervisor, or Digital Image technician, or casting, or grip/gaffer work. Do be like your humble narrator, learn as much as possible about craft of making movies. Helps to pay the bills while you struggle with the art of being The Director.
- DIRECTORS DON’T PLAY HANDBALL, AND SHOULDN’T CHASE PA’S
Words come back to me in pieces only.
“Paul…the director should be with the actors, or with camera.” This might have been whoever the current AD was (we had four AD’s in 18 days, for a first-time, dice-dealing director). Honestly, I can’t remember. Jane Doe is a blur, a hallucination. I do remember these words though, spoken to me between takes, while I was playing handball one of the PA’s. The whole setting up shots thing was completely foreign to me. Frankly, I didn’t much care how our DP, Toshiaki Ozawa, set up his lighting. Only that he did it fast. My old man had put $90,000 in and I had a responsibility to get this film in the can.We were shooting Super 16 and the time it took to set up, in the depths of my ignorance, seemed to take altogether too long! In one ear I had the AD saying “gotta move, gotta move!” and in the other I had Toshi saying “Paul, I need time to set up.” It was very, very stressful!
To take the edge off, yeah, I played a little handball with the PA’s. And yes, I was a bad boy and chased a 20 year-old PA or two. Nothing happened. Of course I know it’s inappropriate… now!
You need a certain temperament to direct a feature-film. I knew even back then, I didn’t have it. Because of my theater background I could cast, I could block. I had an eye for the finished work and could give specific, valuable notes. But getting to the finished work, and the epic responsibility that it required—it just wasn’t me.
This was recently highlighted yet again when we shot my micro-budget Chat. 6 a.m., into the 11th hour of shooting at a plastic surgeon’s office. Crew is beat down, sleepless, 3rd all nighter of the weekend. Boris Wexler, our director, was working closely with Fred Miller, our DP, on a rig for the 5D, an overhead shot of an actor strapped to a liposuction table, pushing down right into his screaming mouth, very Coen-Brothers. And where was I during this critical moment? Drawing howls of laughter from the PA’s as I took out a pair of silicon implants, placed them to my chest, and…
Life Lesson 007: Directors do not play handball with PA’s, nor do they seek out silicon implants.
- DIRECTORS OFFER DRUNK ACTORS BEDS, NOT WHISKEY BOTTLES
How do you handle a drunk actor? Do they teach that in film school?
This happened to me on Jane Doe. The actor was someone who had been in some big movies like The Godfather and Marathon Man. He was the classic 3rd-guy-on-the-right—a face you might recognize but not a name. When we hired him we knew he’d seen better days but I just had to have him in the flick. This was the guy who grabbed the suitcase in the original The Getaway and got punched out by Steve McQueen. Hell yeah we were casting him!
So in he stumbled drunk. Everyone saw it immediately and looked to me for leadership (good luck). We tried to shoot the scene. Picture this: He’s playing the 110-decible-bandstand music-playing next door neighbor, marching band cap on, having tea and donuts with Jane and Horace, lifting his doughnut to find a cockroach on it. He’s supposed to say:
RUDY THE BANDSTAND MAN: Recall the Norwegian proverb: ‘The life of man is like the flight of a swallow through the lighted feasting hall. Out of the dark, a brief moment of noise, and back into the dark.’
Keep in mind we’re shooting on film, with a strict 3 takes per shot ratio. There was no time for blown takes. But our guy just couldn’t get through it. “The life of man is like the flight of….sorry…what?” The life of man is like the flight of…huh?” Meanwhile we were pinning PETA approved cockroaches to donuts and watching our guy just stare at them and…cut!
With a background in theater I knew about improvisation. We threw out the lines he couldn’t master, and wrote something on the spot. I think it was: “Norwegians live the longest. Because of pores. They keep the pores open in Norway.” Then he lifted the donut, stared at the bug on the donut and improvised again, eating the damn thing, just inches from the bug! Yeeeees!(the take made my rough cut but not the finished film, alas).
Afterwards he came to me. “Sorry for the commotion.” “Hey man, no sweat, you pulled it out.” “Hey, you got 20 bucks, I need… you know.” ‘Yeah, sure” I said, leading him to a bed. “Let me go get some money.” I left and came back in 10 minutes, he was passed out, dead to the world. I tucked the $20 in his pants. He earned it.
Life Lesson 009: Directors offer drunk actors beds, not whiskey bottles.
