9/25/23
Newsletter #469
The Crack of Dawn
Here’s a story to exemplify just how petty I am. We shot the original Evil Dead in 1979-80. We were actually shooting on New Years night as the decades changed. We were shooting in the cabin and few minutes before midnight we stopped production, went outside and had a firecracker war. Back then we frequently had firecracker wars. Very oddly, my parents had a swath of astroturf pasted down in front of the front door of our house. Within a week of the astroturf’s installation we had a firecracker war in front of my house. If someone threw a lit firecracker at you and it fell to the ground, you always stepped on it and let it blow up under your foot. Someone threw a firecracker at someone, it fell to the brand new astroturf and they stepped on it. It blew a black scorch mark on the fake grass that remained there until the house was sold twenty years later. Anyway, as 1979 became 1980, we threw firecrackers at each other in front of the old cabin in Tennessee. After about fifteen or twenty minutes we went back inside and kept shooting.
Since the cast and crew were contracted for a six-week shoot, at the end of six weeks they all went home. Sadly, we didn’t have half of the movie shot. Five of us remained and kept shooting for five more weeks. Plans were made to bring actors in and out for a few more days each. Apparently, some sort of a distress signal was sent back to Michigan, and soon friends and family members began to arrive. Each would stay for a few days, helping out on the crew, then leave. Sam’s brother, and my good pal, Ivan showed up, and so did Bill Vincent, Sam’s film professor from Michigan State University. Bruce’s film professor from Wayne State University, John Mason, had been our sound man for the first six weeks. I reluctantly took over the sound recording (while I was lighting), unless I could dump it on one of our visiting friends. Bill Vincent took over the slate while he was there.
In any case, Bill really knows his movies and he knew a movie trivia game that he taught me. I’m not a game player, but I played this game. Bill and I played it for the days (actually we were shooting nights) while he was there. It’s wonderfully, and almost insanely, eclectic, and I’ve never been able to play it with anyone else.
To begin the game someone must think of two movie titles that have a word in common. They don’t say it, they think it. For instance, Gone With the Wind and Inherit the Wind. What they say out loud is, “Clark Gable and Vivian Leigh and Spencer Tracy and Fredric March,” who are the lead actors of both films. In my head I think of those two titles, and now working with just the words of the two titles – which haven’t been said – I come up with another title, which I don’t say, either, but I say the lead actors, like, “Sean Connery and Candice Bergen,” which should make him think, The Wind and the Lion, and now he’s got wind and lion to work with. He might possibly say, “Katherine Hepburn and Peter O’Toole,” which would make me think, A Lion in Winter, and on and on . . .
What’s great about this game, from my perspective of not liking games, is that you don’t want to win, you want to keep going. The point is how long can you keep it going? And there’s always the possibility that somebody fucked up along the way and thought of the wrong title and now you’re going in the wrong direction. Anyway, most of it goes unspoken.
Bill was there for about a week, and the longer he remained, the better we got at the game. Finally, we had one match that kept going for a few days. Everybody on the movie was aware of it. This was a movie geek showdown. Bill was a film professor at a big university, and older than me, but I was a 21-year-old idiot savant, so I had that going for me. So Bill said to me, “Walter Huston and Jane Russell,” which is an easy one, The Outlaw (1943), but it’s not a great title to work with because it only gave me the one word (the doesn’t count). There was no time limit, but after a few hours you really had to put up or shut up. As Bill passed me, he said, “Well?” I said, “Moe Howard and Larry Fine.” Bill shot back, “Shorts aren’t allowed.” I said, “This is a feature.”
Well, hours went by, and incidentally, this movie called Evil Dead was being made in the background. After perhaps three hours, Bill said, “I give up. But I think you’re cheating with a short.” I said, “Oh, yeah? The Outlaws is Coming (1965), with the Three Stooges and Adam West. One of their better late features with Curly Joe De Rita.” Bill said, “Oh, I haven’t seen it.”
Therefore, I won. Me. That’s who. Super Geek.
And nobody can say that I’ve wasted my life.
Evil Dead, 1980. Rob Tapert, Steve Frankel, Sam Raimi, Tim Philo, Josh Becker.