11/13/22
Newletter157
The Crack of Dawn
But wait, I’m still not done bitching about that dick, Eric Roberts; I missed my best line. For context, the renowned Actor’s Studio in NY was started and run by: Harold Clurman, Elia Kazan, Stella Adler, and Lee Strasberg (who played Hyman Roth in The Godfather Part II). So, I was shooting with that creep, Eric Roberts, and for the first several days he seemed to be concentrating on nothing but busting my balls. Every time I would call for another take, Eric would say, “What’s the problem, boss? Give me some direction. Help me.” Eric, BTW, is from Mississippi, so that whole “boss” routine with his southern drawl obviously insinuated a prisoner/warden relationship. He thought he was Cool Hand Luke. He did manage to intimidate me for a day, but that was it. The next day when I called for another take and he pulled that shit, I said, “You might me surprised to learn that I call for another take for other reasons other than you. A bump in the dolly move, the boom dropped in, whatever. I don’t have to explain myself every time I call for another take.” The next take he pulled the same shit, “Come on, boss, give me some direction. Boil it down into one word.” I said, “You want one word? Here’s the word – Again. Do it again.” After we finished the scene – which honestly wasn’t a bad scene – and I was outside smoking a cigarette, Eric walked up and said, “I’ve worked with directors like you before. Men of few words. But I like a lot of direction. You have to talk me through the scene.” I said, “No I don’t. I’m not Stella Adler. I’m not an acting teacher. If you haven’t got that shit worked out by now, it’s too late.”
I just looked at his IMDb page and he’s the workingest son of a bitch in Hollywood. He’s got to have twenty pictures in production or pre-production. You can’t keep a good man down. Maybe he got over his nasty marijuana addiction. Me personally, I’m smoking a joint right now.
Which puts me in mind of Reefer Madness (1936), which I saw at the Cabaret Theater. This was Detroit’s “weird” movie theater in the 1970s. This was where I saw John Waters’ Pink Flamingoes (1972) on its original release, which was probably in 1973-74 – it took a while things to come out back then. So, maybe I was sixteen years old. Whatever you think of the movie, and it made me laugh like laugh a bunch of times, it’s the cheapest of all the indie features to come out and become popular – it was cheaper than everything, including Night of the Living Dead (1968). It was like $9,000. and shot with a 16mm news camera with optical sound on the positive picture – it wasn’t a negative – so you could just process it and show it. It’s called reversal. Anyway, I took great inspiration from it. I bought one of those cameras – a CP-16 – really cheap and never used it.
So, John Waters and I ended up as the special guests of the Chicago Underground Film Festival at some point in the early 2000s. I never did get a chance to tell him that he inspired me, even though he and I attended a lunch and a dinner and a screening. In fact, he flatly ignored me, and that was perfectly OK with me. He’s exactly the snotty son of a bitch you think he is, and I love him for it.
Tally ho!