2/17/23
Newsletter #250
The Crack of Dawn
My Detroit filmmaking buddies and I started off shooting silent Super-8 comedies. Sound was introduced to Super-8 around 1975. Then, just like Hollywood in 1929, we all had to figure out how to shoot movies with sound. Plus, we had to figure out how to write dialogue, and since we were all still making comedies, we had to learn to write jokes. My film, The Case of the Topanga Pearl (1976), a detective comedy, I have what I consider to be my first good line. Sam Raimi, playing the Peter Lorre character (on his knees), sticks a gun in the face of Ellen Sandwiess (later to star in Evil Dead). Ellen says, “You wouldn’t kill me, Fritz, you loved me once.” Sam replies, “Be thankful, now I will only kill you once.” In Sam and Scott Spiegel’s movie, Six Months to Live (1976), they have a great Michigan line I’ve used fifty times since then. One character attempts to light another character’s cigarette and the lighter doesn’t work. The one guy says, “Out of flint?” The other guy says, “No, Saginaw.”
Even though we changed directions completely and shot Evil Dead in 1979-80, that movie didn’t actually come out for three more years. In the interim we went back to making comedies. And as we started to get good at it, we switched to 16mm. Looking back, making those films – The Blind Waiter (1980), Torro, Torro, Torro! (1981) and Cleveland Smith Bounty Hunter (1981) – was probably as much fun as I ever had making movies.
Continuing my recent theme of old-fashioned special effects, this is when I met Bart Pierce, who was creating the animation effects for Evil Dead. Bart not only loved all of the cool old effects like I did, he actually knew how to do them. So, for Cleveland Smith Bounty Hunter, I shot black and white 16mm film – special effects blend better in black and white – and put in every kind of effect I could think of: rear screen, miniatures, superimpositions, and even just plain old animation. Cleveland Smith (Bruce Campbell) is being chased by natives with spears. He jumps into a canoe and paddles away. The natives throw their spears at him from the shore. It cuts to a line- drawing of Charlie the Tuna from the Starkist commercials, who says, “Now this is what I call good taste,” in sync (I dubbed it). A spear goes through Charlie, a sign lowers down on a hook that says, “Sorry, Charlie,” and a voice (Sam’s) speaks the line –
”Sorry, Charlie,” in sync.
I was Bart’s assistant on all of these wonderful funky effects. We shot in the basement of his house in Detroit with his 16mm Bolex camera. As I played with Bart’s two little kids, Bret and Drew – who are now known filmmakers in their 40s – Bart sat with a little pad and a pencil and mathematically figured out how many times Charlie had to open and close his mouth to say, “Now this is what I call good taste,” and he actually did. Then he and I went into the basement and did it. Bart would say, “Two frames,” and I would push button on the cable release twice. He’s say, “Three times,” and I pushed three times. And goddamn if it didn’t work.
I purchased two sizes of Indiana Jones action figures – a four-inch model and a twelve-inch model. Bart set up a rear screen and with a slide projector and filled the background with a still photograph of the jungle. Live action, Cleveland Smith jumps out of the canoe onto a boulder, calls the natives chickens, then mysteriously begins to rise out of frame. I love this effect, because it’s not an effect, it’s performance. I started the shot with Bruce squatted down and framed from the chest up. To rise through frame he just stood up. I’ve used this schtick several times over the years.
It cuts back to reveal that Cleveland is actually on top of a dinosaur’s head that is going up. Bart sculpted a dinosaur’s long neck and head out of clay and we put the four-inch Indiana Jones on it’s head. Then – this is the clever part – Bart put the dinosaur and the doll on an old, geared-down tripod he had that took a hundred turns to rise two feet. Using this fantastical process called “mathematics,” Bart was able to make the dinosaur and Cleveland Smith rise while the dinosaur growled and Cleveland waved his arms. I got a shot of Bruce rising into frame by way of him standing up, and it all cuts together perfectly. Thank goodness for black and white, and Bart watching King Kong (1933) ten thousand times.
If nothing else, I hope I’m conveying my love of the filmmaking process. For whatever reason, it tickles me to fool the audience with magical, mechanical, sleight-of-hand tricks.
Just one more for fun. On Thou Shalt not Kill…Except, to simulate bullets hitting the dirt around the character, effects man Gary Jones cut two-inch circles of cardboard, attached at the center by thin fishing line to sticks, and buried them in the dirt around the actor. The four people pulling the sticks timed their pulling out, one, two, three, four. On action the actor ducks, the lines are pulled one, two, three, four across the screen. You can’t see fishing line, or the circles of cardboard, or anything. With sound effects of bullet hits put in, it works perfectly.
Shalom, Ya’ll (2003). A good documentary.