3/19/23
Newsletter #280
The Crack of Dawn
Rock drummer Jim Gordon died two days ago at the age of seventy-seven. Gordon was one of the most ubiquitous studio drummers of the 1960s and 1970s, appearing on hundreds of recordings, from the Everly Brothers to Steely Dan. Although he’s rarely brought up in this context, he was an unofficial member of the renowned band of L.A. studio musicians called the Wrecking Crew. Gordon’s most famous credit was co-writing the song Layla with Eric Clapton. In the late ‘70s Jim Gordon began hearing voices in his head, primarily that of his mother. One day there was a knock at his mother’s door. She opened the door to find her son standing there holding a hammer. Jim Gordon then proceeded to beat his mother to death with that hammer. In 1984 Jim Gordon was convicted of murder, even though he was certifiably insane. He spent the remainder of his life in prison in Vacaville, CA, which is where he just died.
There is a very minor controversy in the world of movie geeks and horror fans as to who really directed Poltergeist (1982). Tobe Hooper is credited as the director, and Steven Spielberg is the executive producer. Tobe Hooper had directed the classic, seminal, and brilliantly-made, Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), then the utterly terrible, Eaten Alive (1976). He somehow managed to get and generically direct two episodes of the mini-series, Salem’s Lot (1979) – which we the cast and crew of Evil Dead watched while we were in Tennessee making the movie – then he made the severely unmemorable, The Funhouse (1981). And then Tobe Hooper got Poltergeist, an expensive, Steven Spielberg production, which was a big hit. But for those of us who knew his career – I saw Poltergeist with Bruce Campbell – we knew Tobe Hooper did not direct that movie; Steven Spielberg did. Spielberg has a very obvious style, and Tobe Hooper couldn’t direct that well with a loaded gun pointed it his head.
Within the next two or three years Bruce and I worked on many commercials shot here in Detroit that were photographed by the big-shot Hollywood cinematographer, Matthew Leonetti, who just happened to have shot Poltergiest. On one of these productions, I was the production assistant who drove Matt to the airport. When I was sure he was my captive and couldn’t escape (thank goodness there were no cell phones) I hit him with the big question. “So,” I said casually, “who did direct Poltergeist?” like it was two or three years ago, so why not tell the truth.
Matt didn’t answer right away. He’s a very nice, talented, politic guy with a lot of big Hollywood credits, like a couple of Star Trek movies, for example. This was a touchy question. Tobe Hooper got the credit, but had followed up with the reasonably expensive, and insanely bad, Lifeforce (1985), that had bombed, was withdrawn, was retitled, Space Vampires, was rereleased, then bombed again. I was one of the very few human beings who paid money at a movie theater and saw Lifeforce (as it was known back then). And I recall all too clearly coming out of the theater thinking, “Texas Chainsaw Massacre was a fluke. The shmuck who directed this movie knows nothing about filmmaking.”
Matthew Leonetti finally answered the question. He said that with this big, Steven Spielberg production looming in front of him, Tobe Hooper froze and couldn’t make a decision. Well, that’s all a director does all day long is make decisions: where does the camera go? From which direction do the actors enter? Where do they stop? Without this basic information nobody else can work. Matt made it very clear that Spielberg did not want to direct Poltergeist, that’s why he had hired Tobe. But as the executive producer, every minute that Tobe sat there on the set not deciding what to do cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. So Spielberg directed the movie, just like it looks. And as per the contract, Tobe Hooper got the credit.
Well, Tobe Hooper never went on to do anything else of note, but this Spielberg fella did all right for himself. Anyway, that’s the real story why Poltergeist looks so much like a Steven Spielberg-directed movie; it is.
I had a spectacularly witty line on the set of one of these commercials. We were about to shoot a shot where a guy breaks a car window. I said, “Matt, you ought to be quite good at shooting a shot like this.” He said, “Really? Why’s that?” I said, “Because you shot Breaking Away,” which got a laugh from the crew, but particularly from Matt. As far as movie sets go, that was a spectacularly witty line. For you young folks, Breaking Away (1979) was a funny, well-shot, surprise hit film that introduced a young actor named Dennis Quaid.
And with that, a good day to one and all.