The Crack of Dawn

Volume #429

8/16/23

Newsletter #429

The Crack of Dawn

It seems to me that everybody now wants to have their own podcast, with millions of subscribers on YouTube and Tik-Tok, be an “influencer,” and be famous.  I think that most people already always wanted to be famous movie stars, but now they want to influence as well.  As though their opinion matters. Because I like movie-oriented content, my YouTube algorithm sends me horseshit like, “The 100 Greatest Movies of All-Time,” by SuprFan11 (or whatever), as though I had the slightest interest what some jerk called SuprFan11 thinks.  What makes them think that with absolutely no cred, having never worked on a movie, his/hers/their taste is so fucking “super” that I give a shit enough to watch, which I don’t, let alone be influenced? And that’s all it takes — just follow the format, list 100 movies, and you’re an expert.

During the production of Thou Shalt Not Kill…Except in 1984, a local TV entertainment show called PM Magazine did a segment on the movie.  They interviewed the producer, Scott, and I at our office.  When asked something like, “What are your goals?”  I confidently replied, “Francis Coppola has five Oscars, I want six.”  Bold talk for a one-eyed fat man.  Right after the interview, Sam walked up to me and said, “Six Oscars?  That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”  I shrugged, thinking, “What?  It’s true.”  But six Oscars wasn’t my real goal, anyway.  My goal was bigger than that, I wanted to be Alfred Hitchcock (and he never won an Oscar).  I didn’t pursue fame, per see, I was after greatness.  Ergo, if I achieved greatness, then of course fame and fortune would naturally follow.

In 1990 I made my second feature film, Lunatics: A Love Story (1992), for my buddies Sam and Rob at Renaissance Pictures, and it cost about $600,000.  Those wheeler-dealers sold the film to Columbia-Tri Star for a million dollars before we were out of the editing room.  It was packaged with 20 other movies and shown on cable television, like Cinemax and Showtime.  For all intents and purposes, for an independent, low-budget movie, 99% of which don’t make their money back, Lunatics was a great success.  It made its money back, and a tiny bit of a profit.  What else could I possibly want? 

But nobody had seen it, and I thought it was pretty good.  I went to Sam and Rob in a state of outraged desperation, because this was the moment for this movie, and I said, “Would you have done this with Evil Dead?  Sell out the rights, but not open it?”  They got enormously mad at me.  They told me I was an ungrateful piece of shit and a lousy director.  Rob went so far as to say, “Lunatics is a good idea that wasn’t well-realized and someday we’ll remake it.”  Ooooh.  It was a heated and acrimonious discussion, and poor Bruce, who happened to produce the film, didn’t know which side he was on.  Honestly, he was pretty damn pleased getting the million dollars, and I don’t blame him. He didn’t write and direct the film.

The final settlement was that Renaissance Pictures financed the opening of Lunatics at the Laemmle Royal Theater in Westwood for a weekend.  This was the minimum opening required to get the newspaper critics to review it, along with a critic’s screening.  All the critics got homemade press kits with five black & white, 8x10 photos.  And all of the critics showed up and saw it.

At that time the big critic at the LA Times was Kevin Thomas.  Kevin Thomas loved my movie, and gave it a half-page, glowing review in the Friday paper.  Most of the other critics also liked the film to an extent, but not nearly as enthusiastically as Mr. Thomas.  He really did get whatever it was I was trying to say, and he thought it was funny, bless his soul.

OK, great.  People showed up to the screenings, and thou not in droves, decent crowds that laughed in the right places.  I was pleased and a good time was had by all.  We’d gotten good reviews.  It was fine, but nobody was getting even a little bit famous from any of this.

However, come the next Monday morning, my phone did a thing it didn’t often do there in Hollywood, it rang.  And then it rang again, and again, and again. It was the assistants of many of the top studio executives and the talent agents – names I’d heard – all requesting a copy of the movie.  And of course, I wasn’t prepared.

Let’s go into Mr. Peabody’s “Way-Back” machine, all the way to 1992 . . .

Although there were VHS tapes, all of these executives expected three-quarter inch, U-Matic tapes.  It was a big expensive deal, and I didn’t have any money.  But I did it, somehow.  And I got tapes to all of these big shots, and I waited, and I waited . . .

It’s not dog eat dog; its dog doesn’t call dog back.

And that, folks, is Hollywood. 

And that, I guess, was my moment of, if not popularity or fame, exactly, then a momentary awareness of those with power in Hollywood, who could have changed my life forever, but didn’t.  They had all read Kevin Thomas’s review, had all said, “Get me that movie,” and then it was over. By the time the movie arrived — on U-Matic tape — their interest had long since moved on.

I lamented over the loss of those $300 worth of three-quarter inch tapes.  For a while I hopped that they would kindly be returned, as they were clearly marked, but they weren’t.

Alas, I could’ve had class, I could’ve been a contender.  But now I’m nothin’ but a bum.

No, I’m not.  I’m a newsletter-writin’, rootin’, tootin’, son of a gun.

Since I don’t know what I’m writing about tomorrow, how could AI replace me? Or could it?