Jane Doe- Rashoman Style!

I am breaking a promise today. I swore I was done with Jane Doe posts. What is left to say that hasn’t already been said? Hit the search bar for Jane Doe if you want to read about my ill-fated movie with Calista Flockhart. You can still rent it on Netflix and good luck with that. Alas, great play, not-so-great movie.

Today I bring it out of mothballs because of Michael Chabler. A post that Mike made for his blog was about Jane Doe. See, Mike worked as a PA on that film and his post, Saving An Actress, recounted the day he drove Calista Flockhart to the hospital after an accident on set when a transistor radio hit her in the head and…

Wait…what’s Rashoman got to do with any of this? And why should you care?

Perspective is critical to writing, seeing things from multiple POV’s. Rashoman tells a single story with three distinct POV’s of the same event. Here, with Jane Doe, it was fascinating to read Mike’s take on that day on the set. I remembered it well, but I remembered it much differently. So, for your edification, two different takes on the day Calista Flockhart was bloodied on the set of Jane Doe.

• MIKE’S TALE

I won’t cut and paste the whole article, please go to his blog to check it in full, but here’s a taste:

“I was outside the warehouse with my walkie. Inside they were shooting a scene where the boyfriend becomes angry and starts throwing things. Then I saw Calista walking out, with blood on her face, that I assumed was fake, and she was crying.

“Did the scene bring out some traumatic memory from her past?” I wondered. “She’s so good,” I thought. I asked her if she was ok and she didn’t say anything at first. It turned out the blood was not fake. When they were shooting and the boyfriend was throwing things, one of the items was plugged in and it whipped back, hitting her on her temple. She said she was crying because she was hurt.

We had to take her to the hospital. One of the crew members who I had known, who was nice but seemed a little off — he told me how he had been a drug dealer and lived on the streets — jumped into the car with Calista, one of the producers and the director. Callum looked a little horrified as the car was peeling out. He asked the guy to get out of the driver’s seat and asked me to drive them to the hospital.

On our way, people shared stories. The director said, “this always happens to me–something always happens to me.” He said when he was a kid, riding in his parents’ convertible on the highway with the top down, something hit him. A guy sleeping on the bridge they drove under dropped a glass bottle he had just finished drinking from. And his parents had to rush him to the hospital.

Calista told us about an incident where she was walking down the street when a woman jumped from the top of a building to her death, landing just in front of her. She told her boyfriend when she got home and he didn’t believe her.

We walked her into the emergency room, checked her in and were told to wait. One person with us expressed surprise that that it was so quiet, unlike the shows that were popular at the time. I sat next to Calista and looked at her. She still had a long streak of blood running down her face and neck. I told her and she went into a bathroom, washed up and came back….

The waiting started to bother me more and more. I went to the window where a nurse sat. I explained we have someone with a head injury. The nurse asked me to go back to my seat and someone will see her shortly. After waiting a while longer, I started to grow more concerned. I wondered if we were running out of time. We didn’t know until someone examined her. I explained the urgency again, this time more angry and alarmed. Then a doctor finally came to see her and took her to the back. She had to have stitches…”

• PEDITTO’S TALE

Train wreck. Casino craps dealer turned first-time director who had never set foot on a film set. 4 AD’s fired or split in the 18-day shoot. Pie in the sky budget #’s. Dozens of scenes trashed as a result of not making a single day’s production schedule. Predatory producers like Nikki Nikita (not her name but you can Google her) swooping down on Peditto, that hapless craps dealer previously mentioned. In a word, clusterfuck.

This was the day we were shooting the big fight scene. Toshi, my DP, was barely talking to me at this point. He took what seemed like hours to light this key scene. The story was: Calista’s character Jane was coming back to the tiny apartment where Horace (my alter ego, played by my brother Chris) was waiting. A giant fight ensued. We hadn’t rehearsed, of course, no time or money. So fuck it, just wing it. We managed one take with my brother swiping the entire contents of a dresser drawer in anger. Not great, we needed to go again so the set designers attempted to place everything back where it was. Camera set, and action! In limps Calista, some sparring before voices are raised, now they’re screaming at each other and Chris swipes the dresser as before, only this time a small portable radio slams into Calista Flockhart’s head. She goes down, coming up with a handful of blood. “I really don’t think I can go on.”

Cut!!!

About 20 people are looking to me now and I’ve never even remotely been in this situation before. Well, she’s in EVERY SCENE of the movie. Literally nothing for my brother to shoot solo and Calista was dripping blood. Fuck it, close the set down until we get back from the hospital. Nobody was arguing, she was in bad shape.

In the car on the way to the hospital, I don’t remember a thing. I guess I told her the story about getting hit in the head and bloodied myself. Get this: I was in the back of a ’68 Mustang convertible, top down, on a highway, driving 60 miles-per-hour out from under an overpass when I felt a dull thud and wetness on my head. I reached up and touched blood. LOTS of blood. What happened– shit you not– was that a drunk threw a bottle from the street along the overpass and at 60 miles per hour, in that exact instant in time, in a convertible car with the top down, the bottle slammed into my head. Imagine the odds and then imagine I’d be sitting in this car with the actress who in one year’s time would be on the cover of TIME magazine as the new IT girl for Ally McBeal. Bad luck doesn’t quite cover it.

I do remember waiting a long time at the hospital. I also remember taking a call from lead producer Niki Nikita. I was in shock as the “conservation” was strictly one-sided, and went something like this:

“You shut my set down! You don’t ever shut my set down! YOU DON’T EVER SHUT MY SET DOWN!”

Bad luck doesn’t quite cover it.

Today it’s lost to the cosmococcic universe. None of this matters. Jane Doe is long forgotten.

But a couple of us are still around, and if we must take the bullshit with the good, then I’m glad somebody remembers.

And now, maybe you too, Good Reader. For whatever it’s worth.