That's Not A Bad Sandwich, DaveNotDave - The Long Germination of a Short Film

“Moment of Anger” is meant to be a tale about a man forgetting what is good in life, and life itself helping him remember. The process of creating the movie was in turn a “remembering.” We each of us found what was best in our talents and put them on the screen. This is the story.

All of my film ideas percolate for a long time, before pouring out of me in a rush, like a cook leaping to take care of a stove that is boiling over. The first germ of “Moment of Anger” starts in 2005, with my divorce. Not that I would have recognized that at the time. I had absolutely no self-awareness that there was anything about myself that would make me hard to live with. All I knew was that I had been hurt and I couldn’t understand why someone would be so cruel. You know, to me.

Flash forward ten years, and I am married again to another fantastic woman. (How do I attract these Mighty Aphrodite? All I know is it must be what Opus the Penguin once described as the “Billy Joel/Christie Brinkley Syndrome.”) I am only slightly less self-aware of my personal faults than I was then, which means a lot of frustration for the people who love me. But ten years also means that the screenwriting degree from BYU I held in 2005 has been PHD’d (Piled Higher & Deeper) with a Film & Television Producing degree from Chapman. So while I may not be (I may never) fully equipped to engage in an emotional relationship, I am completely qualified to entertain the masses about my shortcomings!

It was around Valentine’s Day 2015 (ah, romance) that I determined my hands had been idle long enough and it was time for me to make another feature film. In my film career, which I chart starting in 1995 with my first semester at BYU, I have been involved with 2 features that have made it all the way to theaters. At Chapman, I had been engaged in the production of several short films as well, but the features, the big projects, have always been the ones that excited me, so I said, “I want to do that again.” I spent the next year reminding myself why my 21 years in the business working for myself have resulted in a grand total of 2 features: Wow, it’s HARD. My first was a coattail kind of thing, anyway. And my second almost never saw the light of day. 2016, and that third one is still a script, a dream, and a Facebook page, but it will come.

I told you about that project because it, too, led to “Moment of Anger.” It was in the face of another schedule stall, yet another pushing back of the goal post, that I was contacted by an actor friend who wanted to know if I could help him “put something together for his reel.” He was thinking of some mock commercials. Stuff that could be done quick, without renting a lot of equipment, just whatever was on hand. He had an idea or two, and he asked me to improv some for him. That sounded super . . . super. But he was a longtime friend and I honestly had the time, so we set a date. Then as I started to gather the crew for THAT shoot, I stood in the shower and asked myself: Given the opportunity of working with one of the best actors I knew (seriously, Gary, you’re awesome) and doing whatever I wanted . . . was this what I wanted to do? If not, what did I want to do? What was my story, and where did I want to tell it?

Porterville, CA, is, and used to be widely known as, the “Gateway to the Sequoias.” There is an old motel here in town of the kind they sing about in the movie “Cars.” Long ago but not so very long ago the Palm Tree Inn was known as the Paul Bunyan--complete with statute of the Legend Himself and Babe the Blue Ox--it was a bustling tourist stop, restaurant, bar, and dance hall. Today, it is thriving on business of a different sort. (Seriously, a week after we shot our movie the place was raided.) The subtext for great potential squandered . . . well, it couldn’t be LESS of a subtext, it is so RIGHT THERE. That was where to set the story. The story of a man who takes a wrong turn in his life. A man who has gotten in his own way, and could lose everything if he doesn’t face up to it. Will he? Or will he run away?

There is a lot of me and my experience in “Moment of Anger,” because I have more than once stormed out of the presence of people who love me, unable to say how I feel and unwilling to strike out physically; I could never be that guy. Of course, being adverse to the bad side of things sometimes means you’re not very good at the positive side, and so I am either too clingy or inarticulate with the people who matter--much like Dave, in “Moment of Anger,” who screams, leaves, and then instead of returning and apologizing goes off and gambles with a stranger, losing his sandwich. And as that plot swirled in my head, bizarrely, I began to hear the haunting lyrics of Dolli Grace mixed with the upbeat sound of Cordwood.

And so I stepped out of the shower and contacted Gary. By the time I proposed the idea to him it was almost fully formed: A man who storms out on his woman, but then has a very bad day, culminating with being trapped by drug dealers. He has this day because she had been the best thing in his life, and after 5-10 (my timeline is unspecific) years with her he is unable to really handle his life without her. People are only happy in pairs. (“Enchanted April,” 1991).

Gary was on board almost immediately, as was the rest of the pre-production crew I had originally begun to form for the “commercials project.” My co-producers Kanarose (my producing partner on literally everything over the last ten years) and Matthew (new to my usual team, but fantastic) helped immensely by being interested in the story and offering their own takes on the material. Kanarose has always been great for bringing up things that need to be done in pre-production that I usually forget, and always pointing out where I’m being stupid or boring. Matthew would contact me at random times with story ideas, good ones, some that made it to the screen.

Our main snags were 2 things: I wanted a professional cinematographer, I knew I didn’t want to shoot it myself. And we had to shoot the entire script in one day. I am a screenwriter, a producer, and a sometime director. I am also and mostly a dad, and one day in March 2016 was all I had for this one. As it happened the schedule constraints affected the search for a cine. Initially, a friend of mine whom I’d worked with on several projects was on board, then he called and said he was having Oral Surgery the day of the shoot. After an intense search (I believe I talked with a dozen different DPs) I had the good fortune of stumbling across the work of Adrian Sierkowski. And not just the work, but the man.

Adrian was a joy to work with because HE found the work to be a joy. He has filmed on all sorts of cameras from Big Budget to Garage Band (for lack of a better term) and what mattered to him was getting the most out of what he had--as opposed to some DPs where all they seem to want is to “get the most” (as in toys). Even so, our original DP still provided a great light package on top of what Adrian brought to the table, so I really believe that our production was able to look 100x more expensive than it really was. Good DPs matter.

So, that second problem: a one day shoot. How do you make that work? Well, after securing the locations, the #1 way to keep on point with that is a good Assistant Director. Personally, I always think women make the best ADs, particularly 1ADs. You may not believe this, but a strong woman commands attention, and everyone listens to her. I spoke to a couple of women in the run up to March, some that I had worked with before, but nothing was gelling. So we were very, very fortunate to have the schedule open up for one of the best in the business in this regard, Sharmane Franklin Johnson. Sharmane kept us on point, on time, and while we originally worried that our shoot would run overtime, working with me in the Director’s chair and her as my co-pilot on set, she had us wrapped 2 hours early.

I can’t end this without saying something about my lead actors. First of all, Gary Klavans, my star and the spark for the project, was a trooper and true professional. Everything he did was practically without me telling him. “Let’s do that again” meant more to Gary than a straight repeat, and he always found ways to give me exactly what I asked for in every take, making every one seamless, but at the same time there were subtle differences that would allow me to change entire tones if I re-arranged what he had done in the editing room. He is like the Algebra Actor.

Stefanie Halstead did so much with so little, I am humbled. When I cast her, I told her, “You speak hardly at all, but you are the center of this film. You have all the power here. His reaction to you. Whether he will go back to you. Whether you will TAKE him back. It is all you.” She really played with that. It is all up there on her face.

Bruce Allen Green was having so much fun. In life, he is a retired substance abuse counselor, and he channeled some of that experience back to his character--with, you can see, a bit of a wink at the screen. The production really rested on his shoulders, and not just as a character. At one point, we lost a location HALF AN HOUR before we were supposed to film there. Instead of taking his lunch break, Bruce was on the phone, and by the time we were ready to shoot we had a place to shoot in, and better than the old location.

I could go on, even about my support actors, but you need to go. (Have a sandwich.)

“Moment of Anger.” A Film by Eric C. Player. A love letter to life, marriage, frustration, commitment, and sandwiches. Enjoy.

Conduct on Set

I just found this excerpt from the writings of Edward G. Robinson--THAT'S RIGHT, EDWARD GUN-IN-YOUR-FACE ROBINSON--about dealing with difficult actors on set. It comes from a time when he was working with Miriam Hopkins (never heard of her? There's a reason!) On a Howard Hawks picture called Barbary Coast. It is a lesson in throwing away your opportunities.

Enjoy:

Barbary Coast (1935)
Production Company: Paramount
Director: Howard Hawks
Cast: Edward G. Robinson (Luis Chamalis) - [Left Pic]
Miriam Hopkis (Mary 'Swan' Rutledge) - [Center Pic]
Joel McCrea (Jim Carmichael) - [Right Pic]
Walter Brennan (Old Atrocity)
Frank Craven (Co. Marcus Aurelius Cobb)
Brian Donlevy (Knuckles Jacoby)
Clyde Cook (Oakie)
Harry Carrey (Jed Slocum)
Donald Meek (Sawbuck McTavish)

"Miriam Hopkins was a horror to work with. I worked with her in Samuel Goldwyn's Barbary Coast. Well, you couldn't exactly say that. I tried to work with her. She made no effort whatever to work with me.

"However, Sam Goldwyn, who denied absolutely that he fired me out of the silent film he'd made with the Selwyns (Fields of Glory), worked very hard to persuade the Warners to loan me out for Barbary Coast. While they were gleeful about the success of the Columbia film (The Whole Town's Talking), they now thought me hot again and wanted me for their very own. What they wanted to put me in was quite another matter more of that miserable gangster, a character of whom I was growing wearier and wearier all the time. The Goldwyn film, written by Ben Hecht and Charlie MacArthur, offered good writing, a fascinating character, and a director named Howard Hawks.

"I shall spare you the titles and the directors Warner's offered me and certainly the miserable scene that went on in the front office as I turned down every script and simply looked haughty when they mentioned suspension, that dread word that meant you'd not be paid and could not work for anyone else. While their other troubles with Bette Davis and Olivia de Havilland and, I suspect, Errol Flynn and Jimmy Cagney, were matters of public notice, I tried to keep my differences private. I had long since learned that you could do anything to Jack Warner except humiliate him. (It is easy to do; under that tough clown's façade he is easily hurt. Despite his wealth and power, I have always felt him to be insecure. I mean it as a compliment.)

"Finally, after Goldwyn must have offered more than twice my salary, Jack let me go, assuring the newspapers the loan had been mutually agreeable, and even letting one columnist say that he was so concerned over my career that he had ranged over every studio to find something suitable for my talents. The inference was that, if not minimal, they were certainly limited. Jack Warner was always certain of the last word, and we talk of it often and laugh about it. Jack would rather laugh than anything in this world except have the last word.

"Without consciously affecting the posture, I decided it was necessary to act younger than ever, more aggressively, more affirmatively, more conscious that each day must have meaning. Howard Hawks was the first recipient of that attitude. Or was it Miriam Hopkins?

"It seems remaining with me still were some of the remnants of my childhood chiefly an almost instinctive reaction to people: from the very beginning, when I was introduced to somebody, or even saw him from a distance, I either liked or disliked him instantly. I have a psychoanalyst friend who tells me in a very scholarly way that this is not in the least unusual among the foreign born and minorities. They (we) tend to be suspicious of an attitude, a look, narrow eyes, thin lips, blond hair. I cannot agree that this is altogether a fact. If you will remember, when I discussed long ago the Principal of Public School 137, she automatically had all the things I was taught to dislike. She was tall, Anglo-Saxon, thin-lipped, but at the same time she was warm and outreaching and friendly. Above all, she did not patronize me.

"So I think my psychoanalyst friend is wrong. But people do give off auras and I respond to them automatically. It is not only with human beings that I have this weakness of character; it is also with paintings.

"At the time of Barbary Coast, my character flaw of first impressions was at its height. All of which, of course, brings me back to Howard Hawks and Miriam Hopkins.

"Howard seemed to be patrician, aristocratic, and I sensed he was looking down his nose at me. I've learned to know him well since, and my initial assessment of him was wrong. His manner was concealing his own doubts, his own fears, his own insecurities at starting a new picture with a bunch of temperamental actors.

"I do not propose to say the same thing about Miriam Hopkins. She was puerile and silly. There was one thing I recognized in her that could have made us friends: She, too, had come from the stage; she, too, felt that movies were beneath her. I had gone through the same thing; I had been graduated from that stage.

"How odd, then, for me to be the recipient of the kind of snobbery that I, myself, had indulged in for so long! Even though I didn't know it then, it was clear (in the words I spoke over and over again on the screen) that I could dish it out but I couldn't take it.

"In addition, the set of Barbary Coast was highly politicized. As I look back on it now, I really don't know the individual political stances of the company, but I'm sure of this: Hecht and MacArthur were liberals; Howard Hawks, Miriam Hopkins, Joel McCrea, Walter Brennan, and Harry Carey were not liberals. We were two warring camps, and that kind of deep dispute was going on in every studio and every living room.

"The arguments on the set were appalling; as a result, there was little socializing among us. There was a good deal of polite freezing and occasional bursts of rage.

"This political sentiment took its toll in many ways. Miss Hopkins complained bitterly about every line, used every trick in the book to upstage me. I had long ago learned that these upstaging manoeuvres would not work at all in films. The cutter could attend to them.

"But when Miss Hopkins refused to stand on her marks, those little triangles of masking tape that set the actor within the proper range of the camera, it was too much. What was really too much was that Miss Hopkins, in period costume and headdress, was taller than I. When we did a scene together, Miss Hopkins wanted me to stand on a box. I refused, not only because it was undignified and made me self-conscious but because I was unable to play with any sincerity high on an insecure perch. My suggestion was that Miss Hopkins take off her shoes. When I think of it now, I suspect she could not play with any sincerity standing in her stockings.

"There were other problems between us. In the making of a picture, frequently a scene between two people is broken up so that you get a closeup of one and then the other. When the closeup is of you, you play a love scene to a camera lens, and the other actor reads the off-scene lines from beside the camera. This is common courtesy in the making of a picture, and even the most illustrious of stars are willing to do this difficult chore. But Miss Hopkins was not.

"When they did my close-ups, I read my lines and Miss Hopkins lines were read by the script girl. This infuriated me, and my revenge was to elaborately read the off-scene lines when it was Miss Hopkins turn for a closeup. This taught her nothing.

"Miss Hopkins is recently gone, and I'm sorry about that, of course. However, since these matters might help other young actors, I'm forced to proceed with them. The indictments:

1. Miss Hopkins was always late.
2. Miss Hopkins would never read a line precisely as it was written, thus not cuing me.
3. Miss Hopkins would make us all stand around and wait while she complained bitterly about her costumes.
4. Miss Hopkins indulged in every trick to delay, to confuse, to obstruct and to prove that she and not I was the star.

"Mr. Hawks tried to cope with these four lunatic types of behaviour and, I'm sorry to say, I don't think Mr. Hawks coped very well.

"As a result, one day, I told Miss Hopkins off. I shouldn't have done it, but I was fed to the teeth. I reeled off a litany of her mischief. In the first place I told her that temperament had gone out of fashion that it had worked in the days of Fritzi Scheff, Mrs. Fiske, and Mrs. Carter but it simply did not have any place on a movie set. Then, thinking of her own good, I told her she was far too conscious of the camera; she hugged it and thus defeated herself. I showed her how, in her attempts to upstage me, she would back up on her own lights and I did all this, unforgivably, in the presence of the cast and the crew. They remained silent.

"The next scene we had to play was one in which I had to slap her. Slapping, to say nothing of hitting, punching, kicking, and general brutality in films is usually faked. I wanted to rehearse this fake scene with the lady. But she wouldn't have it. She looked me straight in the eye and spoke very loud so that the entire company could hear.

"'Eddie,' she said, 'let's do this right. You smack me now so we won't have to do it over and over again. Do you hear me, Eddie? Smack me hard.'

"I followed her instructions. I slapped her so you could hear it all over the set. And the cast and crew burst into applause.

"If you will examine the credits for that movie, you will see, almost at the end, the following: Sailor (thrown out of saloon) David Niven.

"Whether David applauded, I know not. I did not meet him for years. When it happened, we scrupulously did not discuss Miriam Hopkins or my atrocious behavior."

Excerpt from All My Yesterdays by Edward G. Robinson.

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I think it is so classy that in the end he points to his own "atrocious behavior" on set. Actors (and we all), should learn from this man and hold themselves to a higher standard when getting the work done.

Working For Free

Entertainment--specifically, film and TV (and politics)--may be the last industry in America where it is expected, even encouraged, that "newbies" work long hours for no wages whatsoever. In front of the camera, the insiders may joke about it ("I can't technically pay you." "You just described Slavery." -- Community, Season 5 Episode 1), but among themselves the culture of running an "Intern" into the hospital for a single college credit is seen as completely natural. I ended up there three times myself during Graduate school. The Black Swan case woke up many people outside the industry, but for how long, and what does it mean for the struggling entertainment dreamer right now?

Well first of all, it means that you should respect yourself. If someone is treating you poorly, say so. Yes, I went to the hospital, more than once, for exhaustion, but it was on projects I believed in and in some cases controlled. Never allow anyone to be a "slavedriver" to you externally or berate you in front of others. There are a lot of big egos in Hollywood, and most of them are just oversized balloons. They have no reason to be petty except that that they can. Nobody, as yet, has taken the time to pop them. Be the sharp object they need. Sure, Hollywood is all about who you know, but that means knowing, and being known by, the right people. People who want to work. To be professional. To treat other people like they ought to be treated. Trust me, there are more of them than any other kind.

Those are the ones worth carrying the water for.