9/15/2025
Newsletter #792
The Crack of Dawn
Having made The Blind Waiter, and feeling good about the results, Scott and I decided to make another comedy short together. This time we would shoot in 16mm so that we could have a professional enough movie to sell . . . to someone. Luckily, there was plenty of 16mm equipment around since Book of the Dead had just been shot in 16mm.
Okay, good. Scott and I were both onboard with 16mm, and it would be a comedy. And it would be a lot easier if there wasn’t much synchronized sound, like dialogue, so it would be primarily sight gags. We understood all of that, we just didn’t have an idea. So we went to diners, drank coffee, smoked cigarettes, smoked weed, but couldn’t come up with shit. What the fuck was funny? Nothing seemed funny. This went on for weeks. We couldn’t think of anything.
Finally, Scott and I were driving through my old neighborhood, Franklin Village, that is located on a hill, prosaically named Franklin Hill. At the top of the hill is the Franklin Cemetery, which is situated slightly above Franklin Road. The front lawn of the cemetery is at a steep angle down to the road. As we drove past we saw a guy vainly trying to mow the steep lawn, but he kept losing out to gravity and getting pulled down the hill. Though we’d only seen this incident for possibly twenty seconds, we both knew that we had the idea for our next movie. A guy loses control of a lawnmower that miraculously just keeps going, causing havoc. Once again, the universe had supplied us with the idea. This did not go unnoticed at the time.
Combining our great wits, Scott and I came up with the title, Torro, Torro, Torro! The film is six-and-a-half minutes of silly comedy gags with a lawnmower. Since we were shooting 16mm, we now had full access to changing speeds, stop-motion, reverse-motion, and other things that we couldn’t do in Super-8. Plus, we had access to Bart Pierce, who had just done all of the cool stop-motion special effects for Book of the Dead. Scott and I wrote several stop-motion gags into the script just to see how they’d come out. Under Bart’s supervision, they all worked out.
If you’ve got nothing better to do, here’s Torro, Torro, Torro!
Even though the film was rough in many ways, it was still funny and people liked it. We felt like we were on a roll. I was fulfilling my need to make funny movies. For the next comedy short we came up with our own idea—a parody of Raiders of the Lost Ark, which was a new movie at the time. We called our film, Cleveland Smith Bounty Hunter. This time we knew that Bruce would play Cleveland Smith. Scott and I quickly whipped up a script that everybody liked. However, since we intended to shoot in 16mm again, and this film would need a variety of costumes and props, as well as having some complicated special effects, we needed more money than we presently had. We also needed a bit more time to shoot. We had the free use of several 16mm cameras, Bart worked at the film lab so we got processing and printing for free, but the film stock was the expensive part. Also, we both thought it should be in back and white, which was even more expensive (color film uses dye; black and white uses silver). It would cost hundreds of dollars. Possibly even a thousand dollars. We didn’t have it.
Once again, the universe stepped in. You can’t make this shit up. Bruce was teaching a college filmmaking class. He had become friends with the head of the film department. His name was Ron Teachworth and he was a tremendously nice guy. Bruce and I went over to his house. Ron took us to his guest house that he had converted into a little movie studio. It was wonderful. He had everything necessary to make a 16mm movie. There was a refrigerator packed with big cans of 16mm film. Local production companies donated film stock to the college, but it was out of date and they couldn’t use it anymore. But we all knew that Kodak film stock was good for a lot longer than it’s discard date. How long was the gamble. Ron pointed into the refrigerator and said, “All of those big cans are 1000-foot rolls of unexposed 4X black and white film stock. We could never figure out what to do with them. They’re two years out of date, and too big to handle [all of the cameras we used took either 100-foot loads or 400-foot loads—nobody had ever seen a 1000-foot roll of 16mm film].” Then Ron said the magic words, “If you know anybody who might want this, please tell them.” I immediately raised my hand and said, “I’ll take them.” Ron said, “They’re yours.”
Since Bart worked at the film lab, I had him spool off 100-foot rolls from the 1000-foot rolls. Suddenly, we had shitloads of film. But here’s the thing—the silver in the black and white film stock creates static electricity as it’s wound onto reels. When Bart gave me the boxes of 100-foot loads, he said, “While I was spooling the film, there was a lot of static flashing.” I said, “Is it ruined?” Bart said, “No, but you’ll see it.”
So now the film stock was not only out of date, it was static flashed. Since we had already set up the four-day shoot, we decided, fuck it. Let’s just do it. Once again, we left it up to the universe.
I recall that four-day shoot fondly. The weather was warm and clear. For once we didn’t feel rushed. Scott, Sam, Bruce, and the lovely Cheryl Gutridge, had nothing but fun during that production, which was shot primarily right next to my parents’ house. My mother made lunch. It was a lovely little shoot.
When the film was processed at the lab, Bart informed us, “You can definitely see the static flashing.” Scott and I went to the lab and watched the film. Yeah, you could see the flashing, but it was kind of cool; it made the film look older. Scott and I both liked it. Everybody liked it. When the film was shown at the New York Underground Film Festival, my friend Steve said, “I loved the old-looking black and white. That was brilliant.”
For those who care, here's Cleveland Smith Bounty Hunter—
https://www.google.com/search?q=bruce+campbell+cleveland+smith+bounty+hunter&rlz=1C1JZAP_enUS1014US1014&oq=bruce+campbell+cleveland+smith+bounty&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqBwgBECEYoAEyBggAEEUYOTIHCAEQIRigATIHCAIQIRigATIHCAMQIRigAdIBCTUwOTkxajBqNKgCALACAQ&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&imgdii=4LNddn1oAdvAdM&imgrc=529ZGMgS8YSG4M&vld=cid:97c170b1,vid:e9XOksMDe2Q,st:0
After Scott and I made these three comedy shorts, we went on to make the feature, Thou Shalt Not Kill…Except. Then we moved to Hollywood.
But that’s another story.
Scott Spiegel was my good friend for a long time. We wrote together, we made movies together, we hung out together. We had a lot of good times together—way more good times than bad times—and that’s all that I care to remember.
Goodbye Scott.
I love hearing these Scott stories. He always made me laugh.
Lovely memories about Scott and the good times you two had.