October

“There are three sides to every story: yours … mine … and the truth. No one is lying."

 Robert Evans

I've spent the last few weeks immersed in the world of the late Robert Evans, who was the last of a dying breed: a major studio mogul.  Hollywood is a minor subsidiary run by vast faceless corporations now, which explains the relentless tsunami of comic book franchise movies that dominate the big screen these days. It wasn't always like this, kiddos,  

Having been plucked from the relative obscurity of the fashion industry by Norma Shearer, who -- on the basis of seeing him poolside at the Beverly Hills Hotel -- insisted that he play the role of Irving Thallberg in her upcoming movie Man of a Thousand Faces, Evans did as he was told, filming scenes with Jimmy Cagney. Not bad for a young man who'd already given up his dream of becoming an actor, and since one thing often leads to another in Hollywood, Darryl Zanuck soon wanted him for the part of Ava Gardner's Latin lover in a film adaptation of Ernest Hemmingway's novel The Sun Also Rises. There were objections from much of the film's cast -- Gardner, Tyrone Power, and Mel Ferrer -- but Errol Flynn liked the young Evans and told him not to worry about it. Ignoring all this sturm und drang from the cast, Zanuck declared: "The kid stays in the picture," so Evans went on to play the role of the young bullfighter Pedro Romero and get the title for his eventual memoir. 

Through a series of unlikely circumstances that you'd do better to read about than have me tell, Evans became the head of Paramount Pictures, which was then owned by Gulf Western and losing money to the point where the corporate board of directors wanted to sell the studio -- possibly to the Hollywood Forever cemetery right next door.  As this passage from the book's foreword says: 

"Robert Even's appointment as production chief of Paramount Pictures in 1967 was regarded by most of Hollywood's power players as utterly hallucinatory. Here was an actor who had never produced a picture, much less run a studio, being awarded sweeping responsibility over one of Hollywood's most fabled movie factories. It was bizarre!"

He managed to save the studio and his job by producing the monster hit Love Story, then went on to produce The Godfather and Chinatown, a trilogy that would put the grinning head of Robert Evans high up on Hollywood's Mount Rushmore if such a thing existed.  None of these movies came easy, though, and perhaps the best reason to read his memoir is to gain an understanding of what a real producer in Hollywood actually does.  Hint: It's not a job for the meek or faint of heart.

As this passage from an article in The Guardian puts it: 

"Of course, there is only one Robert Evans.  When I call him at his home in Los Angeles, he is in good spirits. His words sometimes come haltingly -- he suffered a series of strokes in the late 19990s -- but the charm is intact and impressive. As is that deep, rich voice, both gravelly and sweet.  I ask what makes a good producer and he gives a wheezing laugh. 'That's a good question. Every success I've had has been for a different reason and every failure for the same one -- I said 'yes' when I meant 'no.' With very few exceptions, that's been the story of my life. Darryl Zanuck told me, 'If you can introduce your movie in a paragraph you'll make a hit. If you can do it in a sentence, you've got a blockbuster."

"I wonder what he sees when he looks around Hollywood today.  'Young people' he shoots back without missing a beat. 'However, I'm not into machines. I'm not into Mars.  I like feelings. How does it feel?  That, to me, is the turn-on. And story. If it ain't on the page, it ain't on the screen, or anywhere else.'"

There's much, much more in this book, which tips the scales at a hefty four hundred and ninety-nine pages.  I could have done without Evan's relentless bragging about all the gorgeous women he went to bed with over the years, and the overweening pride he took in his tennis game -- but those are my only points of agreement with this nasty little slash-and-burn review from the NY Times.  Although it's not it  misses the point of the narrative.  Some reviewers just can't get over themselves enough to see the forest for the trees.  

For me, the story of Evan's roller coaster ride in Hollywood was worth the effort of wading through the book, but if you don't have that much time on your hands, there's an excellent documentary version by the same title: The Kid Stays in the Picture.  I saw the film when it was first released in 1994 and loved it, so in preparation for this post, watched it again ... and it holds up very well.  Narrated by Evans himself -- and he really does have a great voice -- the documentary avoids the long-winded pitfalls of the book in delivering a great story.  Definitely worth your time.

If you're interested in semi-real-life drama based on Evans, there's The Offer, a "limited series" that purports to tell the story of how Evans, producer Tom Luddy, and Francis Ford Coppola got The Godfather made at a time when the world was stacked against it. The show is a blend of fact and dramatic fiction, of course, and although this article claims to reveal which is which, only Luddy and Coppola know for sure, and they're not talking. I liked the show well enough, but I'm not wild about it ... something about it just felt a little off, although I can't explain to you or myself exactly why.  Still, it's well done and paints a vivid portrait of the movie biz in the Hollywood and New York of that era.  Who knows -- you might love it. I watched it on Amazon Prime Video, but it's probably viewable elsewhere.

Robert Evans remains a fascinating figure in Hollywood, as demonstrated by the money quote from his obituary in The Guardian:  

"The most famous anecdote -- or at any rate the most revealing -- concerns his reaction to seeing the first cut of Coppola's The Godfather. He considered it too short. "You shot a saga, but you turned in a trailer. Go back and make a picture," he barked at Coppola, who duly went away and came back with the epic that made his name." 

Imagine a producer telling his director to make a movie longer -- has that ever happened before or since? -- but Evans was right: he followed his gut instincts and produced a classic film, one of the best of all time.  The last of the big studio moguls may be gone, but he's not been forgotten.

PS:  A late addition a week after this post went up:  a potential crackdown on the absurd practice of everybody and his/her brother getting producer credits. As anybody knows who's walked on a set to see a dozen or more tall director's chairs labeled "Producer," this fiction has gotten way out of hand.

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In the late summer of 1978, I was among a small crew gathered in the parking lot of an outdoor mall in Valencia, north of LA, to shoot a day of pickups for a low-budget movie called Van Nuys Boulevard.  It was my first feature as a member of the technical crew, which meant I'd never again have to work as a PA.  

"Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, free at last..."*

Principal photography had been completed six weeks before, and the editor now had a list of shots he needed to complete the film. There we were, half a dozen of us in the early morning chill, sipping bad coffee from styrofoam cups as we prepared to go to our first location when, from out of nowhere, came a deep, mellifluous baritone we'd all heard before on the big screen.  

"Are you making a movie?"

We turned as one to see Darth Vader himself, but there was no menacing black mask, no flowing black robe, and no cohort of Imperial Storm Troopers.  The unmistakable voice came from James Earl Jones, a large bespectacled man with an imposing frame and a big warm smile, who was apparently doing some early shopping to beat the crowds. He chatted for a few minutes, then wished us luck with a big smile and went on his way.

Some things you don't forget.

                                               RIP

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Bob Newhart passed away in July at the ripe old age of 95.  After trying his hand at working as an accountant, he moved to an ad agency where he and a co-worker came up with comic bits just for fun. Fate and circumstance led him to comedy, and he eventually produced a record album called "The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart" -- a monster hit that launched a career and eventually took him to the top of the television sitcom world. 

Yes, kiddos: there was a time in America when comedy LPs were a very big deal, and Bob Newhart was a star.

I was just getting a toehold in Hollywood when "The Bob Newhart Show" ended a six-year run, then was heavily immersed in the world of commercials during the eight-year run of his next big hit, so I pretty much missed all of his most famous work. Fate took a hand in the late '90s when all my commercial accounts followed the gold rush north chasing fat Canadian government subsidies coupled with a favorable exchange rate, and my only opportunities to keep paying the rent turned out to be ... sitcoms.  My fourth sitcom landed at the CBS Radford Studio, where both of Newhart's big hits were made, and one of our recurring guest stars was the wonderful Suzanne Pleschette, who'd been among the core cast of "The Bob Newhart Show."  Bob would walk on our stage every now and then -- which stopped everything -- to chat with Suzanne and regale the cast and crew with his dry wit. I never shook his hand or sat down to have a drink with him, but from what I saw, Bob Newhart was a good and decent man.  I never heard a bad word about him, which can't be said of every star in the sitcom world.  He brought light into the living rooms of America with smiles and laughter, which is always a good thing.

Back in 2019, Bob sat down for a conversation with Conan O'Brien in his podcast Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend, which is very funny.  At 90 years old, Newhart could still bring it: you've really got to hear that podcast to fully appreciate his lethally dry wit. This one is definitely worth your time.

Thanks for the laughs, Bob.

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Finally -- just so this post doesn't turn into a full-on obit page where all I see is dead people -- here's a great interview with Gary Oldman, star of Apple TV's "Slow Horses."   Truth be told, I never much cared for the younger Oldman on screen.  Sure, he's always been a terrific actor, but he invariably seemed to play smart, evil villains who never won in the end ... but now he's playing a guy I can relate to. Not in skill set, mind you, but in age and general dyspeptic disposition.  

Getting old will do that to you.

And on that cheerful note, have a lovely October, kiddos. Remember: don't eat all the Halloween candy in one sitting.

* With apologies to Martin Luther King...

September

For reasons I don't understand, the nice crisp photo of this manuscript transferred to Blogger in a decidedly fuzzy mode ... so what you may -- or may not -- be able to read is "Blood, Sweat, and Tedium: The Education of a Hollywood Juicer"

That's right kiddos, the long-promised book version of this blog is done ... sort of.  Put it this way: the first draft is done, which is some distance from a paperback you can leaf through at the airport while waiting for a plane, then forget and leave somewhere, after which a janitor will eventually pick it up, look at the title, and with a weary shrug of his shoulders, toss in the trash.

I have no illusions about publishing this thing.  Truth be told, I have precious few illusions left about anything in life -- getting old does that to you -- but the plan is to find a printer/publisher who can do a decent job, pay for a run of 1500 copies or so, then see what happens.  Maybe fifty will sell, maybe a hundred ... or maybe I'll just end up driving around the country leaving a copy in every gas station bathroom and roadside rest.  I dunno, and right now I really don't care. I'm just playing it by ear and trying to finally get this thing done. 

Still, after all these years of promising that "the book is coming," this feels like a big step.  The next step is the second draft, of course, which is now underway: going through the manuscript line by line, page by page, cutting what I can, then sanding, polishing, and painting as I go.  It's a tedious, painstaking process that's a little more than half done at this point.  Once complete, I'll send the manuscript to a friend (who shall hereafter be referred to as The Reader) to plow through and offer her educated opinion as to how it flows, what needs to stay, and what -- if anything -- needs to go.  The oldest and perhaps most valuable advice given to everybody who writes is "Kill your babies," which means being ruthless in the quest to slim and simplify every manuscript.  Sometimes the parts you fell in love with in the early going turn out to be anchors that slow the forward progress of a reader ... and when that happens, boredom sets in and the book is likely to be set aside in favor of a snappier, more engaging tome. Regardless of what I hear back from The Reader, most of what's in it now will remain.  I'm not trying to craft a sexy best-seller here, but just want a book that offers something to industry veterans and civilians alike -- two wildly disparate audiences -- which is a tricky tightrope to walk. As someone much smarter than I once said, "You can't please all of the people all of the time," so it's fine if future readers skip past parts they find slow to get to the juicier bits, and I'm reasonably confident they'll find something more to their liking if they keep going.

Although I've already cut close to thirty pages in following Strunk and White's timeless advice to "Omit needless words," I've no doubt it'll still be too long once I'm done cutting -- but that's okay.  As the saying goes, "It what it is" ... or maybe "Que será, será  is a more appropriate cinematic cliché.

We shall see.

The title is a modest change from the blog pointing to the underlying theme of the book: learning.  As I rewrote and assembled the posts into chapters, I was continually reminded that every day in Hollywood marked another step in my film industry education, a process that will never be complete.  Nobody hands you a degree when you "graduate" from Hollywood, and even in retirement, I keep trying to understand what's going on in the film/television business, a particularly confusing task these days.  

On that subject, a guy I used to work with at CBS Radford recently posted this on our union's FB page, an eye-opening dissection of what Hollywood is up against in the struggle to keep film and television production from following fat financial incentives elsewhere. It's not a pretty picture. Although I keep reading and hearing that shows of one sort or another are coming, there hasn't been much production going on in Hollywood thus far -- certainly nothing like it should be at this time of year or was in the not-so-distant past.  Are those days gone forever, or will the buffalo return?  I think they will, in time, but in what numbers, who knows?  All I know for sure is that a lot of people who work below the line are suffering terribly these days, which is not a humane or sustainable situation.

My fingers are crossed for all of you there suffering this dearth of work -- I hope it picks up soon for you all.

 Meanwhile, enjoy what's left of Summer as it slides inexorably into Fall ... and remember, Winter is coming.

August

 

                     Like it or not, the way things were is not how things will be.

First, a note for any film industry people in LA who are suffering from the lack of production these days: The LA Times recently published an article (free to everyone) detailing how and where to get financial help. If that's you, please read it and avail yourself of whatever aid that you can. Assuming the Teamsters okay the recent Basic Crafts Agreement, the threat of a labor stoppage will be over, and hopefully Hollywood will get back to work again, but even in the best of circumstances, that won't happen overnight ... and we don't know if or when the town will truly get busy.  Meanwhile, keep the faith -- I wish the best of luck to you all.

Now, on with the show...

Those of you who've been here for a while will remember Peter McLennan, a retired DP/Director who's written three excellent (and very popular) guest posts for this space in the last few years -- but if you missed them, you can rectify that oversight here and here.  He's a terrific writer who's probably forgotten more about the art of putting images on film than I ever knew, which is why I'm always grateful for his contributions to this blog.  A gifted photographer with a great eye developed during his long career looking through the viewfinder, Peter recently began experimenting with images manipulated by an AI program called Stable Diffusion.  He's been sending me the results for a while, so I finally asked "Why don't you write another guest post on the subject?"

It was a win-win proposition: not only would it be a good read for all of us, but it would take the heat off me for another month ... and so it has.

Peter, the floor is yours:  

         A Camera for my Imagination

A retired DP finds new avenues of creativity with Generative AI

Story and images by Peter McLennan

On a dark winter day in 2023 I typed the word “tree” into a text box and watched gobsmacked as an image of a tree appeared on my screen. It was a moment as memorable as when I first watched an image appear like magic in a darkroom developer tray.

My very first AI Image wasn’t much to look at.  In fact, looking back at it eighteen months later, it looks positively primitive.  But for me on that winter day, it was transformative. The image was generated not by a camera or a paintbrush or even by an artist. It was generated by a single word.

I soon discovered that a forest was as easy to generate as a tree, and an artistic rendering of a forest was as easy as adding the words “etching” and “art deco” to the prompt. As a constant stream of images appeared on my screen, a trap door opened on the floor of my office and I fell through it, not emerging until many weeks later. Day after day I spent hours exploring, working, making “just one more generation” until one day I realized what had happened. I had become addicted to Generative AI.

In a mad burst of creativity and discovery I began to explore a new world of images both familiar and novel. I made images that were horrifying and beautiful, intentional and accidental, disappointing and delightful and always, images that were surprising.  

I think it was the discovery aspect that kept me glued to the keyboard late into those winter nights, for I frequently had no idea what would appear on my screen. Many of the software’s controls achieved their results with completely new concepts using new and arcane names like “Variational Autoencoder”, “Denoising Strength” and “Classifier Free Guidance”. I had little idea what any of them meant, so the only way forward was to experiment. Consequently, many images were far from what I expected, and as it turns out, surprise and delight were what kept me engaged with Stable Diffusion.

My initial discovery process used what is called “text to image” where the images are generated solely by your skill at writing prompts.  For me, as a life-long photographer, this was challenging.  I was used to seeing images and recording what I saw in a viewfinder.  Now, I had no viewfinder. I had only my thoughts.

I tried without success to illustrate an ocean voyage I’d taken on a freighter as a teenager, but the images on my screen bore no resemblance to those in my memory. I failed completely to illustrate what I’d intended.  I felt I’d plumbed the depths of generative AI and found severe limitations.  Had I reached the end of my creative buzz?

In fact, I’d barely begun.

Soon, another technique presented itself: Image to Image.  Now, I could take existing images, my images, and operate on them using the same AI techniques as before.  Another new world opened up. For instance, this rather boring photograph of a door in Nevada …

… became this one.  Bearing only vaguely visible resemblance to the original, the camera image has become something completely new.

A photo I took in Sri Lanka…

... became this, from dog knows where. Who are those guys?

This image -- part photograph, part creative prompting, and part styles AI learned from artists who worked long ago -- started life as a simple photo of snowy trees in my backyard.

The “image to image” function effectively divides the image creation process into two components: The AI, and me. My photography provides the basic structure and palette, Stable Diffusion interprets my text prompts and adds its own creative seasonings as it sees fit.  

It is a productive and inspiring, if somewhat hit and miss, partnership. This image of confidence, youth, fearlessness and curiosity was generated from a photograph of some construction machinery in a grassy field.

The AI software doesn't need to work from a photo, drawing, or painting. These next four images were created entirely from my imagination using prompts to describe what I wanted to see, including the media type, image size in pixels, and aspect ratio. Most of these prompts resemble descriptions found in film scripts, but some trial and error was required to jump the gulf from imagination to screen image. The resultis were further controlled by several on-screen math functions related uniqely to the Stable Diffusion imaging software. 

“Oil painting, messy Victorian library, winter afternoon, dramatic window lighting, a body is on the floor, a man sits at a distant desk, volumetric lighting”

“High resolution colour photograph, night, interior truck cab, rain”

“Cartoon colour image of an orange cat flying a kite in a field of flowers”

“High resolution monocrhrome photo of a film set from the forties, smoke, movie lights, several crew members”

The astounding pace of AI development in the last two years points to an uncertain future. Although we can't predict exactly when and how it will impact the film and television industry, it’s already apparent that the creative skills in immediate peril are those of photographers and illustrators. But how will musicians, film crews, and writers fare in the new world of AI?  Repetitive clerical and administrative tasks are far more efficiently done by AI, and the writing is on the wall for copywriters and computer coders. If I was an office worker tasked with researching and writing reports, I’d be brushing up my resume -- presumably with the help of a bot of some kind -- and I’d be learning everything I could about the coming tsunami of AI assistance.

That’s the most important thing I’ve learned with my admittedly shallow-end dip into the pool of AI imaging: AI doesn’t do the work, it helps you do the work. AI doesn’t think for you, it assists you by doing much of the grunt work, freeing you to be more creative, more explorative, more adventurous. A far better term than “Artificial Intelligence” would be “Assistive Intelligence." I didn’t need to learn how to paint with egg tempera or do etching or lithography, my AI pal knew all that. I just had to tell it what I wanted to see and what artist’s technique to use. 

More impressive, AI seems to think for itself, drawing on resources I’m ignorant of and regularly coming up with ideas I’d never have considered.  The elusive muse we call creativity works in mysterious ways. As this technology becomes more adept and accessible, I foresee a bright future -- not for computer coders, storyboard artists. and report writers, but for audiences.  We’re in for a treat.  

Just you wait.

PS: This experimental clip -- not affiliated with Volvo in any way -- is a sample of what AI can do now ... so imagine what it will be able to do in five years.

July

                                  Burgess Meredith in Time Enough at Last

For many workers in Hollywood -- and certainly the vast majority of those I know personally -- the past year and a half has felt a lot like this image as they look around at the destruction of a work life they once knew, all the while wondering WTF went wrong?*  As I walked around my old home lot during a recent two-day visit to LA, it felt like a ghost town. With sixteen of eighteen sound stages empty and just two shows working (one of those being "Big Brother," which seems to have been running forever), I could almost see tumbleweeds rolling through the lot.  I spoke with one of my former co-workers who told of being unable to afford rent on his apartment, then having to move his wife and baby into his mom's house, and another with whom I'd done many shows, now nearly fifty years old, confessed to being just a hop, skip, and jump away from homelessness.

This is real. People who've invested decades into their film industry careers are hurting badly.

A confluence of factors brought all this: the WGA/SAG strike, the looming threat of an IA strike, the implosion of an economic model the streaming networks thought would work but didn't, and the ongoing scourge of runaway production. There wasn't much of a pilot season this spring, but returning shows traditionally begin rigging and lighting stages in mid to late July for the new fall season, and indeed, a recent missive from the 728 call steward indicated that the tide might be starting to turn.  Although the IA hammered out a new contract with the producers (which will have to be ratified by the rank and file), the basic crafts contract is still up in the air, and until that's settled, the potential of a strike hangs over Hollywood like the Sword of Damocles.

So, fingers crossed.

June carved another chunk out of our collective hide, taking Donald Sutherland and Martin Mull, both of whom left their mark on Hollywood and our shared culture.**  I only worked with Sutherland once, when ABC trotted out the stars from their 2009 television lineup for a week of filming promos featuring everyone from the wonderful Ray Wise (Reaper) to the entire cast of Lost minus Evangeline Lilly, who -- from what I hear -- had a problematic relationship with the acting profession.  It was a week I remember mostly for reuniting with Paget Brewster and Anna Ortiz -- two lovely, talented, and very gracious actresses I'd befriended in the sitcom world*** -- and for inadvertently planting my index finger deep into Josh Holloway's late-morning cup of coffee. Holloway, who played the role of "Sawyer" in Lost, put his white styrofoam coffee cup on an apple box near the camera just before we began to film his segment. Ducking back under the lens after adjusting a light, I stumbled slightly and my finger somehow sank all the way to the bottom of his nice warm coffee without knocking the cup over.  Holloway's attention was focused on the camera while everyone else on set was looking at him, so nobody noticed.  

Well ... almost nobody.  The key grip on that project was one of those guys who misses nothing, and as I surreptitiously shook my finger dry, I noticed him grinning at me while shaking his head.  

Sorry Josh, but hey, shit happens on set.

My other memory from that week is of Donald Sutherland, who was then starring in Dirty Sexy Money.   He walked on set looking very distinguished, as usual, but clearly was not happy.  Ours was the last in a gantlet of four promo units all these actors had to run that day, and apparently three was his limit.  I couldn't blame him for being sick and tired of the promotional circus.  He was my age now at the time, and if I'd had such a storied career as Donald Sutherland, I sure as hell wouldn't want to waste a day of my life playing Fluff-Boy for the network publicity machine.  He was doubtless there due to contractual obligations, but signing that contract didn't mean he had to like it ... and he didn't.

Sutherland took his place in front of the big white backdrop, then glanced at the camera and stiffened.  

"That's a twenty-nine-millimeter lens," he said. "You can't film me with a twenty-nine-millimeter lens."

All the action on set stopped.  The DP tried to reassure him that due to the chip size of his video camera, the image produced would be the rough equivalent of a fifty-five-millimeter lens on a 35 mm film camera -- the format Sutherland was accustomed to -- but the old thespian remained unmoved.**** 

At that point it became clear that this had little to do with lenses and everything to do with a veteran actor being understandably weary of this promotional dog-and-pony show.  Once he blew off some steam -- and after the DP put a stand-in in front of the camera to show Sutherland the image on the monitor -- we all got back to work.  No harm, no foul.  

Like the rest of us, actors come and go -- there are no exceptions to the rule of life ending in death -- but unlike most of us, their work lives on.  Donald Sutherland's performances on screen will be enjoyed and appreciated for a long time. He was one of the really good ones.

Long before my unwilling transition from the lucrative world of commercials to the low-rent but user-friendly cloister of sitcoms, I did a three-day job filming Martin Mull at The Magic Castle in LA. I'd first become aware of Mull when he appeared in Mary Hartman, Marty Hartman, Fernwood 2 Night, and America 2 Night, three droll-but-innovative comedies that hit the airwaves shortly after I arrived in Hollywood.  What I didn't know until recently is that he'd come to LA as a guitar-playing comedian -- and a pretty good one at that -- or that later in life he became a painter.

As you can imagine, that job at the Magic Castle was fun (as were most of the gigs I did with comedians), despite a director who was entirely too full of himself. After lunch on the final day, some asshole broke into Mull's car in the parking lot to steal what he could, which put Mull in a bad mood ... and by then our director had really gotten on his nerves. Sensing this, the director had a PA run out to buy a jeroboam of chilled Moet and Chandon Champagne which he presented to Mull at the end of the day. Rather than grab the bottle and head for home to call his insurance agent, Mull popped the cork right then and there and shared it with the entire crew.  The director put on a happy face, but he was clearly miffed -- which I'm pretty sure is exactly what Martin Mull intended. 

He was a good man and a very funny guy, and I liked him.  

RIP.

(For your viewing pleasure, here's a brief taste of America 2 Night)

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June was no sooner in the rear-view mirror when July brought another blow: the death of screenwriting legend Robert Towne.  Although most well-known for Chinatown, he wrote a ton of movies, including 70's classics The Last Detail and Shampoo.  While recovering from surgery one unemployed summer in LA, I saw him give a fascinating talk at the WGA theater.  After discussing Chinatown, he talked about other films, including Greystoke: the Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, recounting that the script he turned in didn't have a single line of dialog until page 80 ...  and I've always wondered about the reaction of the first studio honcho to read it. Needless to say, changes were made in an attempt to turn the script into something more commercial, the details of which -- and they are many -- are in that Wiki link. It's worth a read.  

As for Chinatown, it's interesting that the ending Towne wrote was completely different from what became the finale of the movie. Apparently he and Polanski fought over the script for two months as they worked on the final draft, and in the end Polanski won out -- hey, he was the director. Towne was pissed, but in later years admitted that Polanski had been right.  The ending of the movie is undeniably wrenching, but that's what made it the last truly great film noir ever made in Hollywood.

And so another icon of my relative youth is gone to the Great Beyond.  

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The New Yorker Radio Hour recently featured a half-hour interview with Kevin Costner covering a range of subjects, including his new film Horizon: An American Saga, the first in a series of four westerns he's long wanted to make.  It's not a puff-piece to publicize the movie, but a serious wide-ranging conversation. Costner had to violate the first rule of Hollywood to get his movie made -- always use other people's money -- reportedly investing millions in the production. As usual, the subsequent media focus has been on box office returns, which thus far have not been good. Although I won't see it unless and until the film comes to a streaming service, I have to give Costner credit for doing something few people in Hollywood have ever done: he put his money where his mouth is. 

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Not to get political here -- Dog knows we get too much political crap shoved in our faces these days -- but I recently stumbled across a theory that was brand new to me: The Wizard of Oz was not a mere story about a little girl being swept away by a tornado into a long and complicated dream, but an allegory about the political/cultural struggle that took place over the gold standard back in the 1890s.  If that sounds nuts -- as it did to me at first -- check out this Wiki page on the subject.  

Hey, who knew?

Finally, another look at my favorite TV commercial of all time. (Note: the original link I posted has since become inactive, so it's now been updated)  

Now that the calendar has turned to July, with much of the country in the sweaty grip of a fierce heat wave, summer is well and truly here --and to me, this commercial embodies the essence of what being young in the summer is all about.

Stay cool, kiddos.

* Yeah, I know -- the character Burgess Meredith portrays in this episode is actually quite happy in this photo because he now has all the time in the world for the one thing he truly loves: read books ... but in life and The Twilight Zone, things are not always as they seem.

** The world of baseball also lost Willie Mays and Orlando Cepeda in June. June was a brutal month.

*** Translation: I had a massive crush on both of them.

**** A 29 mm is a very wide angle lens that can distort facial features -- not a flattering look.

June

 

With the passing of Roger Corman, yet another Hollywood icon has entered the transfer portal and moved into the Great Beyond. I'm not sure it's possible to overstate the impact Corman had on Hollywood in particular and the film industry in general: in cultural and cinematic terms, the man punched far above his weight.  Variety summed up his career rather nicely, as did The Hollywood Reporter, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Guardian, each in their own way.  NPR's "Fresh Air" reran an old but fascinating interview with Corman that included comments from Peter Fonda, Bruce Dern, and Jonathan Demme.

I wrote about him a few months ago after seeing the wonderful documentary Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel, so -- having said it then as well as I can --  here's a reprint from that November post:

Roger Corman is one of the few living legends still alive in Hollywood. As one of the original -- and certainly the most prolific -- independent filmmakers to thrive in the shadow of the studio system, Corman's ultra-low-budget productions served as an incubator for young talent unlike any before or since. The list of major directors, actors, and countless below-the-line workers who graduated from the Corman school into mainstream Hollywood is impressive. The notable names on the poster of the 2011 documentary Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel are just a few of those who got their start working for Corman as he made films for American International Pictures, then started his own production company and studio with New World Pictures. 

If I'd had any brains when I landed in LA back in the summer of 1977, I'd have knocked on Corman's door, but I was utterly clueless at the time. Instead, I got my start with the now-defunct Crown International Pictures, one of the lesser low-budget production and distribution companies that were around back then.  A few years later, fate finally brought me to Corman's New World Pictures studio -- the old Hammond Lumber Yard -- in Venice, California to toil on a space epic with the working title "Planet of Horrors."  By the time it was released, the title had morphed to Galaxy of Terror, for better or worse.

My tenure there was a brief but interesting two weeks, during which we ran power throughout the stage and spaceship sets to ready them for filming, but the low wages -- I was making $600/week on a flat rate -- did not make me happy, so when a ten-day job paying $250/day came in over the phone, I decided to exit the low-budget feature world and walked away without looking back.  The gaffer replaced me with another warm-body/juicer, but forgot to inform the office that I was gone, which is how another $600 check arrived in the mail two weeks later ... which brought my total income on that project to $1800 for two weeks -- still not great, but a bit closer to market rate at the time. All things considered, I suppose Corman and New World Pictures treated me reasonably well, however inadvertently.  

Only once did the man come on stage to settle some issue, and did so with the Voice of God. Roger Corman was as impressive in person as is his legend in the film industry. He was a unique presence in our business who certainly deserved the Honorary Oscar awarded him by the Academy in 2009. Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel is a highly entertaining documentary available on Amazon Prime for just a couple of bucks: a fittingly low-budget price for the low-budget King.

I urge you to watch that documentary, a touching, fun, and fittingly informative remembrance of the man.

RIP, Roger -- and thanks!

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If anyone has picked up the torch of Roger Corman, it's Don Coscarelli, who wrote and directed Phantasm,  The Beastmaster, and Bubba Ho-Tep, among many other films.  True Indie: Life and Death in Filmmaking (published in 2018) is Coscarelli's account of getting started as an independent filmmaker on shoestring budgets and how he learned the hard way that strings always come with the deal when spending other people's money.  Not many 19 year old indie filmmakers have ever able to drop in on Sid Sheinberg in the Black Tower of Universal whenever they felt like it, but Don Coscarelli is one. He rode the bucking bronco of Hollywood hope, creativity, and disappointment for his entire career -- and it's not clear that his career is quite over.  

I'm not a horror movie buff, and although I'd doubtless have loved Coscarelli's movies in my teens, that was a long time ago.  Still, I've had a world of respect for the man over the last 40 years for one reason: when the Phantasm finally turned a profit, he came through on his promise to pay his crew. The expense of making a feature film -- renting cameras, grip, lighting, and sound gear, buying and processing film, and all the post-production costs -- meant that Coscarelli couldn't afford to pay his crew, so he asked them to work on a  "deferred" basis, meaning they'd get paid if -- and only if -- Phantasm turned a profit. This was common back then, and one way that young people trying to break into the film business could get real-world experience working on set. It was understood that since most indie films never turned a profit -- and even if they did, there was no guarantee the director or producer would hold up their end of the deal -- working deferred meant working for free. As crazy as that might sound, it was one of the only ways to overcome the Catch-22 reality of Hollywood, where newbies couldn't get a job without experience, but couldn't get experience without a job. My first PA job wasn't even deferred: I worked for free, period ... but that job led directly to everything else that happened in my career.  

In other words, it paid off.

Once I started getting jobs that paid, if barely, the notion of doing a deferred gig with no realistic hope of ever seeing a payday -- especially a venture as exhausting as a feature film -- was out of the question, so you can understand my incredulity when word rippled through the non-union community in Hollywood that Don Coscarelli made good and paid his Phantasm crew.  One of those guys, who I'd worked with on my second feature, reportedly received a check for seven thousand dollars, which was a lot of money back then.  Phantasm was the proverbial exception that proves the rule, and Don Coscarelli proved to be a man of his word.

Coscarelli's book is a breezy, entertaining, and informative account of his filmmaking journey, the people he met along the way -- including a young Quentin Tarrantino, who'd just graduated from the PA ranks and had written a script called "Reservoir Dogs" -- and includes much of what he's learned over the years. One theme runs through the narrative: despite the many disappointments, difficulties, and obstacles that came his way, he never lost the sense of excitement and joy in figuring out how to get a spectacular shot without a big budget and truckloads of expensive film gear.  Don Coscarelli learned these lessons the hard way, which he distills in a three-page chapter titled "Don Coscarelli's Five-Minute Film School." His book is an inspirational resource for any newbie who really wants to make movies, but more to the point, it's a fun read that will resonate with anyone who's ever made a film of any length. 

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 My knowledge of life above-the-line is minimal at best, and the world beyond that -- of agents -- remains a blank.  I'm not sure that anybody who isn't an agent really knows what goes on in their world, but there's one Hollywood agent who publishes occasional missives from this realm of mystery on a substack forum called Agent on the Loose.  As you can see in a recent post titled Transactional Awareness -- which asks the question "What do tires and agents have in common?" -- he's a smart, perceptive writer who's been around long enough to know what he's talking about.  His posts are equal measures informative and entertaining: in other words, worth a look.

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NPR's Fresh Air recently re-ran an interview with George Miller from a few years back in which he discusses the making of his then-new film Fury Road and how his career long ago morphed from that of emergency room doctor to film director.  The program includes a review of Miller's new film Furiosa by Justin Chang, who recently fled the flailing LA Times to ship out with The New Yorker Magazine. It's a good program that was certainly worth my time, and might be worth yours.

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My favorite writer who's still at the LA Times is Mary McNamara, who's been there forever covering a wide variety of subjects.  This recent piece focuses on the problems of Hollywood's feature film industry, which seems to boil down to one main thing: a myopic focus on pumping out an assembly line stream of mega-budget tentpole franchise "products" that exhibit all the creative élan of a brain-dead zombie eating its own entrails. There's nothing wrong with a little mindless cinematic entertainment every now and then, but a steady diet of the stuff is like living on cotton candy: it will not end well. Mary's columns are always worth reading, and this one nails it.

From all I hear and read, things are bad in Hollywood these days. The promised ramp-up of post-strike production has yet to materialize while negotiations between the IATSE and producers continue.  As another recent LA Times piece noted, some below-the-liners -- many with more than a decade of experience -- haven't worked in over a year, and are getting desperate. I don't know if this is all part of the AMPTP strategy to starve out and discourage on-set workers, as they tried (and failed) with SAG and the WGA, or if something else is at work here.  It certainly doesn't help Hollywood that California's tax incentive program enacted to keep production from migrating to other states has now fallen way behind. Here's a quote from the LA Times piece:

"California offers $330 million annually in film tax credits, but other states looking to build up their status as production hubs, like New York and Georgia, provide more attractive incentives and programs with higher or unlimited funding.  New York's cap is $700 million and Georgia currently does not have a limit." 

What's good for New York and Georgia is bad for Hollywood. With the once-Golden State now staring down the barrel of a serious budgetary crisis that has many popular social programs on the chopping block, I doubt any politicians will be willing to shove more money at Hollywood -- not in an election year -- which means things will probably get worse before they get better.

I hate to end on such a downer, so this -- The Five Stages of anActor's Life -- might cheer you up.  Hey, it made me AND John Wayne laugh, so there's that.

Enjoy the coming summer, kiddos -- it promises to be the relative calm before the shit-storm in November.

May

 

Well, it's book time again. I do a lot more reading here on the sunny beach of retirement than when I was breaking rocks in the hot sun of Hollywood, and aim to spread the word about any particularly good reads.  The Wild Bunch, by W.K. Stratton, is all that and more.

Reading If They Move, Kill 'Em was an education in the life, times, and work of Sam Peckinpah, but although the chapter devoted to his most legendary film, The Wild Bunch, is excellent, it tells only a portion of the story. W.K. Stratton's book goes deep into how the movie came about, from the first sketchy idea to theatrical release, and as usual in Hollywood, none of it came easy, least of all the grueling process of filming the script on location in Mexico. Having suffered from the meddling of studio suits in his previous films, Peckinpah was determined not to let that happen again, so chose rugged, remote locations that offered the raw authenticity his story needed with the bonus of being difficult and unpleasant for the suits to reach.  

I must confess that I didn't grasp what an astonishing film The Wild Bunch is the first time I saw it.  Being a callow, uninformed, and thoroughly ignorant young man, I -- like many others at the time -- focused on the graphic slow-motion shootout at the end, and couldn't see the cinematic forest for all those bloody trees.  Many years later on a slow, hot, and unemployed summer afternoon, I saw a fresh print screened at the old Cinerama Dome in Hollywood ... and was totally blown away. Peckinpah's film is so tightly constructed and the performances so letter-perfect that I couldn't believe my eyes. It's a truly magnificent movie.

The story this book tells is equally amazing, especially for anybody who's worked a feature on location.  In that case, you know how hard that can be: so imagine spending months in remote regions of Mexico working for a director who was something of a genius, but also a heavy drinker with a Jekyll and Hyde personality that could be generously described as "volatile." 

If you have any interest in this legendary film, check out the book. It's terrific.

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Ed Zwick has enjoyed a golden career as a director, writer, and producer. Starting in television, he made a name for creating Thirty Something before moving into feature films, where he directed Legends of the Fall and Glory, among other notable efforts. Although I'd heard his name many times over the years, I haven't seen many of his movies, but this interview on NPR convinced me to read the book, and it's a truly great read. If my word isn't enough to induce you to read it -- no judgment here, I understand -- at least listen to that interview. It's highly entertaining and well worth your forty-five minutes.

With an opening that includes this, I wasn't too sure about the book at first: 

"I was living in Paris after college on a fellowship to observe experimental theater companies ... when I scored a dream job as an assistant to Woody Allen..."  

So the kid's first industry job is PAing for Woody Allen on the set of Love and Death  -- in Paris, no less --  after which he's accepted to the AFI in Hollywood. Woody then sets him up with a beautiful babe in Beverly Hills, and before you know it, young Ed is writing and directing a network television drama at the tender age of twenty-seven. This origin story carries more than a whiff of privilege, but I suppose a guy doesn't get to choose his parents, upbringing, or early passions, and as the narrative unfolds, it's clear that he had the chutzpa to make the most of whatever opportunities he encountered.

The story takes wing once it gets to directing Glory, which put him on the map as a feature director while running him through the wringer of dealing with a bafflingly intransigent Mathew Broderick and the actor's highly opinionated, domineering mother.  Whatever residual shreds of envy I felt about Zwick's apparently effortless rise to early success in Hollywood, the ordeal Broderick (and his nightmare mother) put him through demonstrates that he paid his dues and then some.  When I got to the story describing how the 23 year old Julia Roberts blew to smithereens Zwick's dreams of directing "Shakespeare in Love" after he'd worked extremely hard to get the studio green light -- and this after six million dollars had been spent on sets and pre-production -- I understood that he earned his subsequent success.  The man is a gifted writer who spins a smooth and deeply personal story laced with wry humor, plus -- for any of you young wannabes still dreaming of becoming directors -- he offers a ton of sage, real-world advice on the craft, every word of which was learned the hard way.  

Here's a taste of Zwick's prose in a section describing what he learned about the diamond trade from a South African journalist while doing research for his film Blood Diamond:

"There was little about the diamond industry she didn't know (and despise). She walked me, step-by-step, through the circumstances by which De Beers' stranglehold on the market in rough diamonds was complicit in financing the bloody Sierra Leone conflict. With her guidance and by virtue of her connections, I visited mines, read spreadsheets and secret memos, peered at rough stones through microscopes, traveled through four continents to talk to jewelers, dealers, smugglers, politicians, captains of industry, mercenaries, NGO do-gooders and corporate spin doctors. What I learned was as complex and rife with contradiction as Africa itself: as faceted and mysterious, one might even say, as a diamond -- a thing both rare and yet abundant, a beautiful object born of ugliness, something indestructible that has also caused so much destruction." 

Nice.  

So yeah, I like this book a lot. Maybe I have some variety of ADD, because I'm seldom able to plow right through any book, which is why I usually have half a dozen on the coffee table with bookmarks in the middle. I always finish them, but not without bouncing from one to another night after night, so it can take me a long time to get to the last page of any book. That didn't happen with this one: instead, I looked forward to sitting down next to the wood stove every night to read a few more chapters -- and there were no digressions.  I didn't even look at another book until I'd finished Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions.  Indeed, my only complaint is that I finished it too soon.

Now, to answer the question the photo of the book above might have raised in your mind ... no, it seems I really can't take a level, non-skewed photo of a book with my iPhone.  

So it goes.

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Harkening back once again ... remember this one?  Truth be told, getting through the first half of that book was a bit of a slog. Although the story was true -- a famous director and his equally famous lead actress/wife kidnapped by a ruthless dictator/film buff who wanted them to turn his third-world film industry into a world-class cinematic powerhouse -- there are just too many names and events to keep track of in a very dense narrative, so I put it down for a while.  Quite a while, actually, but I finally opened it again and am happy to report that the second half picks up enough speed to be a fascinating read.  

The whole story would be unbelievable as a work of fiction, but being true, it ultimately comes across as poignant as it is jaw-dropping.  The tale is almost biblical in scope: a love story and marriage go bad as fame, pride, and temptation bring down a high-flying career until the heavy hand of fate intervenes to deliver years of truly brutal suffering. Redemption finally comes, but at a cost.  How does it feel to have a moribund career brought back to life -- to finally get all you ever wanted in professional terms -- at the price of renouncing your home country and living a complete lie?  Then what happens after years of careful planning leads to a narrow life-or-death escape and you're back home trying to explain what happened to a skeptical public and country that doesn't know who or what to believe anymore?  This story brings a double-shot of "be careful what you wish for," and if you can wade through the first half to get to the real meat of the story, you'll be glad you did.  It really is something special.

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Daniel Bessner has a long, thoughtful article in Harper's Magazine dissecting the current plight of writers in Hollywood. For all but the most established television writers, life is increasingly uncertain for several reasons Bessner delineates, including the corporate consolidation of the industry. If the link is hidden behind a paywall and you want to read the piece, shoot me an e-mail at the link on the home page and I'll send it along. One caution: I work on a Mac, so it will be in Apple's Pages word processing form, which isn't readable by a PC.  

If you don't have the time to read, check out this 45-minute conversation Bessner had with "Fresh Air" host Terry Gross on NPR, which covers the same territory. The more I hear about the situation in Hollywood these days, the happier I am to be retired.

On that note -- the current state of Hollywood -- here's another snippet from Ed Zwick's book, describing the comments of the studio executive without whose backing the difficult, costly production of Blood Diamond would never have happened.

"I love this movie," he said.  "I'm proud of it and I'm going to hang the poster in my office.  But it's the last one of its kind we'll ever make."

"But why?" I asked.

"Because it cost one hundred million dollars to make and the studio only made a forty million dollar profit," he said, shrugging. "Our corporate bosses expect us to meet a P and L projection every quarter.  It's more profitable for us to lose seventy-five million on one release and then make three hundred fifty million on the next. Those are the multiples we're working in these days. A big movie just for adults can't do that anymore. And forty million doesn't move the needle on the stock price."

So there you go, kiddos: it's all about the stock price nowadays.

Read it and weep.

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A nasty accident happened on a shoot in Georgia recently when a stunt involving two picture vehicles went bad. The details remain unclear at the moment, but as this article and video from the NY Times shows, it was bad, albeit not nearly as bad as it could have been. As disturbing as the accident is the absence of an ambulance in case something went wrong.  Stunts are inherently dangerous, especially when moving vehicles are involved, so how can a production company justify not having an ambulance standing by to rapidly transport any accident victims to the nearest medical facility?

Let me take a wild guess: it was the money the production would have had to spend on that ambulance, right?

Same as it ever was.

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Closing out on a brighter note, a story about an incident that happened during the filming of Exit Wounds in 2001. It seems that martial artist-turned-actor Seagal wasn't fond of rehearsing, and true to form, refused to rehearse a scene that was set in a houseboat on location. As told by Tom Arnold, who also appeared in that scene, here's what happened.

Spring is finally here after the long winter, so turn off your computer and cell phone, and get out into it.

And hey, Happy Cinco de Mayo!