6/24/23
Newsletter #376
The Crack of Dawn
Bruce, with my assistance, worked out a four-day schedule over a long weekend in May 1982, which for a 10-minute film seemed downright luxurious. That’s only two-and-a-half pages a day (on Xena we would shoot 5-7 pages a day), but it was all somewhat complicated gags. Our main location was the woods next door to my parents’ house, and nearby environs. Scott, and a newcomer to our group, Kurt Rauf (who would later be the DP on my films, Running Time and If I Had a Hammer, as well as several of Bruce’s films), deftly handled the art direction, which was as good as it got in the short films.
Since I was the whole camera department – loader, operator, focus-puller, constant blunderer – I had to deal with this ridiculously funky, Tri-X 400 film stock. The film was so fast that I couldn’t shoot in sunlight with the iris completely closed. I was overexposed at f22. However, knowing that this would be an issue, I borrowed a set of contrast filters (probably from Bart Pierce). Contrast filters are dark, darker, darker still, and darkest. I needed the darkest. It was nearly opaque. Once it was on the camera, it was so dark that I could no longer see through the lens. I would adjust all of the settings on the camera without the contrast filter on so I could see what I was doing, then put the filter on and shoot the scene blind, unable to see through the lens. Generally, I would choose a frame and simply lock the camera off on the tripod. Otherwise, I aimed the camera like a gun and hoped for the best.
Scott and I, meanwhile, had obviously been smoking way too much pot while watching way too many Three Stooges shorts. We both fell in love with the Stooges’ favorite supporting black actor, Dudley Dickerson. Since Dudley was so talented of a comedian, he was able to take the clichéd, stereotypical, insulting-but-still-in-constant-use in 1947, frightened black man to such a supremely absurd place that the Stooges just kept casting him, then letting him steal the films. Anyway, this obsession of ours only makes Cleveland Smith rather shockingly un-woke. We couldn’t even get our one black friend to show up and play a native.
The featured African natives in the film, wearing black body stockings, afro wigs, with plastic bones in their noses, were Sam Raimi, Rob Tapert and Bridget Hoffman (who is in Running Time, and I just saw her in an episode of ER from the early 2000s). Ted Raimi is also a native.
Our femme fatale was Cheryl Guttridge, who was the prettiest, perkiest, actress wannabe in Sam’s grade. She stars in several of Sam’s early movies, and several of my movies, including, Stryker’s War (1981) and my first feature, Thou Shalt Kill…Except (1985). Cheryl was my first leading lady with whom I fell into unrequited love. This would persist my whole career.
Cheryl used the pseudonym, Cheryl Hansen, for some reason that I no longer remember — yes, I do, she just didn’t like Guttridge, which might even be Gutteridge. When last I checked, a decade ago, she is the author of about a dozen young adult novels. There was a photo of her in a bikini and she looked incredibly awesome, reigniting my foolish adoration.
Anyway, as I’ve mentioned hither and thither in these newsletters, I used as many old-time special effects as I could think of in this film, with Bart Pierce as the FX man: rear screen, miniatures, reverse-motion, animation in front of a rear screen, clay creatures. Bruce has a mustache, by the way, because he had just appeared in a local commercial, and could be called back in at any moment, so he had to be ready. Personally, I like it.
It was a terrifically well-planned, 4-day production, with gorgeous, sunny, late spring, May weather. Everybody had fun. Here’s the funniest thing that happened on a funny set, and it’s now in bad taste. We took aboard the crew a young man whose name I can’t recall — Brian, I thin — as a P.A. and he was an unusually large fellow — 300 lbs. He really did give it everything he had. For his own reasons he always carried around a big plastic bottle of sugar-free pop. We had a lovely, unhurried schedule. But Brian was a P.A. going to get something, whatever it was, and Bruce was following him, completely in a daze (this is really Bruce’s story). Bruce began absently singing the big hit song of that moment [May 1982], Ronnie Milsap’s version of, Any Day Now. Bruce sang, “Any day now . . .” and Brian turned to him, dead serious, and said, “Hey, man, I’m going as fast as I can.” Bruce felt awful.
OK. There’s actually a payoff to this story. I entered the film in the New York Underground Film Festival in 1982 and got in. Not only was nobody scandalized by the film’s blatant racism – because we were obviously parodying it; while paying tribute to Dudley Dickson; and back then people who were both black and white could understand that – it was in fact a brilliantly successful screening with non-stop laughs and applause. Everybody got every joke, and laughed at the FX themselves, which they were supposed to.
But best of all, I was asked numerous times: “How did you get that great, old-time, intermittently flashing look? It was so cinematic. How did you do it?” That of course had occurred by mistake when Bart spooled the 1,000 ft. rolls onto 100 ft. rolls creating “static flashing,” which I had ignored and shot anyway. Now it was an attribute. I always answered by saying, “This was a complicated lab procedure, involving, what we call, ‘Static Flashing.’”
The blue gels are here. I’m smiling.