6/23/23
Newsletter #375
The Crack of Dawn
I’m back at home. Man was my cat, Ike, pissed off at me. He meowed at me angrily for about two hours. But after a meal, and some lovin’ and pettin’, he calmed down. He’s asleep on the bed behind me, like he’s supposed to be.
Not that I intend to suddenly start telling my story in chronological order, which I’ve avoided, but I’ll finish up with the short films. So, Scott and I made The Blind Waiter, and that turned out pretty well. We then made the move to 16mm and made Torro, Torro, Torro!, which was a much harder film to make, with its many reverse motion and animation effects, as well as a much bigger cast. Plus, I hadn’t cut very much 16mm (one film in college), so that was mostly new to me. But I’d never cut a soundtrack in 16mm, so that was entirely new. Ostensibly, you’d begin with your location sound – the sound recorded while you were shooting – except that we didn’t have any because we didn’t bother with a sound man. Therefore, I had to create the entire soundtrack from nothing. It’s a ragged soundtrack, and none of the dubbed dialogue is in sync, but is worked well enough. It’s six-and-a-half minutes, played really well at parties, and got quite a few laughs. Scott and I felt pretty good, but certainly felt like we could do better. The funny part of this is that we’d already shot a great deal of Evil Dead in 16mm – literally tens of thousands of feet of film – but that was moving so slowly through pickup shooting and wasn’t yet even being edited yet. Anyway, being so short, Torro, Torro, Torro! went through the whole process very quickly.
I’m going to get philosophical for a moment. When Scott and I got together with the intention of making a short comedy film, we sent a vibe out into the universe. The universe responded by giving us a severely nearsighted waitress with Coke bottle glasses who couldn’t get the coffee into the cups – The Blind Waiter. When we decided to make another comedy short, we drove past a guy trying to mow a vertical lawn, losing his battle with gravity and being pulled down a hill – Torro, Torro, Torro! The first two films went well, why not make another one? What should it be?
Then that darn universe stepped in again. Bruce was working with a with the eponymously named film teacher, Ron Teachworth, and they made one of Bruce’s first feature films called Going Back (1984). Bruce and I were at Ron’s house, and he opened a refrigerator completely loaded with big, three-foot-round, 1,000-foot, film cans and said, “Know anybody who can use five thousand feet of Kodak Tri-X 400 16mm negative film stock [a weirdo film stock] that’s gone out of date?” I asked, “How far out of date?” Ron said, “Three years. But I’ll bet you it’s perfectly good. I’ve kept it refrigerated.” I raised my hand and said, “I’ll take it.” Ron pointed out the obvious gigantic hurdle, “It’s in thousand-foot rolls. What are you going to shoot it with?” None of us had ever seen a 16mm camera that could take a thousand-foot roll. I said, “I’ll shoot it with Rick Merciez’s Scoopic camera [which only took 100-foot rolls].” Bruce and Ron both asked, “How are you going to do that?” And I replied, “I’ll get Bart Pierce, who works at the film lab [and was sleeping with my sister] to spool it off into 100-foot rolls.”
Bart worked the night shift in the lab where there was plenty of downtime and was happy to roll off the film for me. However, when he gave me back about fifty 100-foot loads sealed in taped cans. He said in his Bullwinkle Moose fashion, “Uh, I was getting a lot of static flashes from the silver in the stock.” I said, “Is it usable, or is it fucked?” Bart said, “No, it’s usable.” So I used it. And for the first time I had a lot of film; actually more than I needed.
When I told Scott I had 5,000 feet of black and white film, he said, logically, “We have to do a period thing.” Being a great visionary – and coincidentally, the biggest movie at that time was Raider of the Lost Ark (1981) – I said, “How about a parody of Raiders?” And Scott said, “Sure, let’s do it.” And thus, the universe gave us that idea, along with 5,000-feet of film. Spooled into 100-ft. loads with static flashing (that I didn’t mention to anyone). Bart knew, of course, but if I didn’t care, he didn’t care. And he thought it might look cool.
God bless him, Bruce Campbell stepped in and produced, along with Scott and I. I shot the film with a 16mm Canon Scoopic, which was made of steel, and you could pound in nails with it, along with 50 cans of suspicious film . . . oh! Not only was it suspicious, but it was weird shit, too.
Kodak Tri-X 400 film stock. They still make it as professional still photography stock because it’s gorgeous. Not that Cleveland Smith is gorgeous, because it isn’t. But the stock never caught on as motion picture stock because it’s high-speed – normal is 100, so 400 is four times faster (faster means more sensitive, and needs less light, but is much grainier). And it’s really unsuitable for exterior shooting. Regular daylight is too much light. And of course, Cleveland Smith was going to be mostly exterior in daylight.
Plus, and this is just for my own personal annoyance: Kodak’s 200 speed b&w is Double-X; 300 speed is Tri-X; 400 speed is Tri-X 400? Quad-X didn’t do it for them?
So, I couldn’t have gone more out of my way to choose a wronger film stock for the movie I was about to shoot – except that it was free – and then I put it through an inadvertent static flashing process, to get it onto smaller reels, which may possibly have already ruined it, then decided to shoot anyway.
Don’t miss the next exciting adventure of The Making of Cleveland Smith Bounty Hunter, the short.
The blue gels are here.