8/24/23
Newsletter #437
The Crack of Dawn
I just heard Michael Caine tell this story on TV. He was in the Philippines making a film and was invited to a swanky party thrown by a rich Filipino couple whom he didn’t know. At the party, people continually came up to him and introduced themselves. But he kept catching glimpses of the party’s hostess across the room giving him the stink eye. He thought, “What have I done?” Finally, when he was alone, the woman made a beeline straight for him and asked very seriously, with a thick accent, “Are you a drug dealer?” He was horrified and said, “No.” The hostess said, “Then why do people keep coming up to you and saying, ‘My cocaine?’”
I somehow can’t yet escape this stupid Hercules movie. The big finale took place in the minotaur’s underground lair. The production designer, Mick Strawn, came up with a big, clever set built on two levels with ramps that allowed the actors to move in 360-degrees and circle each other, which is what I wanted. Good old Jim Bartle (which could be Bartel, but I won’t check), the contentious, curmudgeonly, obnoxious, elderly (meaning younger than me now), bearded cinematographer, came on the set in the morning and looked around with a pained expression. He asked me what I had in mind, and I told him – Herc and the minotaur are circling each other as they speak big hunks of dialogue. Jim promptly blew a fuse at me and bellowed, “You can’t do that, you’ll be shooting off the set. We’ll need to bring in flying walls. This is going to be a nightmare.” We were nearing the end of the shoot, and I was heartily weary of his bullshit, although I did reply calmly, “We will not be shooting off the set and we don’t need any flying walls.” Flying walls are movable wall flats that can be stuck in behind actors if there is no set there.
Let’s digress. I love sets. If I had my druthers, I’d shoot everything on sets, just like in the old days. Several of my biggest fights in the course of making these movies and TV shows has been in regard to me saying in preproduction, “This scene should be shot on a set,” and production coming back at me with, “We hate building sets, let’s find a location.” In every goddam case, we then scout and scout, which takes a long time, then end up building a set.
Back in the minotaur’s lair, Jim Bartle was blowing a fuse at me for being so ignorant that I only had 180-degrees of the set built. Of course, that’s how most sets are built. This tale seems to be turning into a shaggy dog story. I said, “Jim, just watch it through the monitor, we’ll never shoot off the set.” He said, “But they’re circling each other. That’s 360-degrees.” I said, “Yes, but we’re not circling with them. Just watch.” The camera was on the Steadicam (operated by the future DP of Hercules, John Mahaffie). As Hercules and the minotaur (Anthony Ray Parker) circle each other, the camera is in a medium shot, meaning from the waist up, of Hercules, who eventually passes the lens and exits the shot just as the minotaur steps up and it becomes his shot. The characters are circling each other, whereas the camera isn’t panning more than 100-degrees.
Swell. I was right for once on that movie. Meanwhile, and I’m not making this up, the set was located in a warehouse behind a car wash, and next to a bump shop, which Kiwis call panel-beaters. Not only was it a particularly bad location for a movie sound stage, it had a metal roof. On the second level of the set was a row of four human-sized clay pods, in which the minotaur stored all of the humans he’d kidnapped throughout the story. I had asked the writers, Andy Dettman and Dan Truly (who went on to bigger things), why don’t the humans die in these airless pods? And I kept getting, “We’ll get back to you on that,” but they never did. The day before we shot, I asked the art department for a wooden bucket full of green, non-toxic, slime. They said it would be there and they never asked me what it was for. When the minotaur put the various characters into their pods, each time they attempted to ask what’s happening, the minotaur shut them up by covering their face in green slime. I thought of the green slime as not only some sort of strange anesthetic, but really more as a plot-corrector. In any case, it was a good enough shtick to be included with the toy minotaur.
As it says on the box, it comes complete with the “Immobilizing Sludge Mask.” I felt then, and still feel now, very good about adding this extra bit of choking hazard plastic to the toy.
The day we shot the final part of the minotaur’s lair, it was pouring rain. Pelting is more the word; rain was coming down like boulders. On a metal roof. This is where I shot Anthony Quinn’s last scenes, that all had to be looped later because of the rain. These were not only Quinn’s last scenes in that movie, but for all five movies, which had taken six months. Therefore, the crew and the ADs had to make a thing out of it, which was certainly appropriate in the case of Anthony Quinn. Being the utter ham that he was, he stood up in front of the cast and crew and said, “I’m so moved I can only express myself in Italian.” He then spoke for several minutes in fluent Italian (although he’s dubbed in Italian by another actor in Fellini’s La Strada [1954]).
When he sat down, that was finally my moment to swoop in and get my poster signed. The poster was for Barabbas (1961), and I’d purchased it in Auckland, so it had the funky Australian/New Zealand design. The top half is Quinn depicted in Lawrence of Arabia, Zorba the Greek, and The Guns of Navarone. The poster was set before him on apple boxes, and he was given a black Sharpie. Mr. Quinn looked at the poster, nodded his head, he liked it, and a female PA asked, “Is that you kissing Sophia Loren?” Quinn immediately agreed, saying, “Yes, that was a very young Sophia Loren—” And of course I could not help but interject, “That’s not Sophia Loren, it’s Silvano Mangano.” Silvano was Dino De Laurentiis’ first wife. Quinn blinked a few times, then said, “Yes, it was Silvano.” I pointed down at the poster and said, “This is for me, will you sign it?” And he said, “Of course.” Then he and I looked at each other.
Oddly, he and I probably had more of a relationship than anyone on those films, except possibly the producer, Eric. I was the 2nd unit director on Quinn’s first day of shooting, six months earlier. He and I were both staying in the same hotel, and we actually had dinner together a couple of times. And now here I was directing him in the last of the five films.
Well, he had no clue what my name was, and I didn’t have the gumption or fortitude to tell him. He wrote, “Fond Regards, Out of so many – But these I loved – Anthony Quinn
.
I was last. But he was fine.
Jesus, that old man was (Quinn) was a dick, and he really has it out for you!!!!