12/28/23
Newsletter #538
The Crack of Dawn
The Dalai Lama walks into a pizzeria and says, “Make me one with everything.”
Not long ago I saw an hour-long interview with Francis Coppola about The Godfather Part II (1974), which I was surprised to run across, and it may be his one and only interview he ever gave about that film. Coppola’s given many, many interviews about the first Godfather (1972), and all of the difficulties and insecurities of making that film: Paramount didn’t want Pacino or Brando or James Caan or him, etc. But the second Godfather film, which is in my opinion the peak of brilliance in cinematic history, has no drama attached. Coppola explained that since the first film was such a big hit and won all the awards, Paramount gave him absolutely everything he wanted on the second one. There were no arguments about anything, and they gave him as much money and time as he asked for. He kept trying to make it clear that it was an enormous production, and it wasn’t easy to make; it’s just that he had everything he needed, he had all the best people available, and absolutely everything worked the way it was supposed to work. I haven’t heard many stories about filmmaking like that, particularly not on as big of a production as The Godfather Part II, but there you have it.
As I sit musing, with this newsletter lurking in the back of my mind, I am perpetually drawn to the dramatic events either in my life, or dramatic stories that I’ve read or heard. Drama being the key word. Drama is conflict. And that’s why Coppola has told the story of the first The Godfather a thousand times – it’s loaded with conflict – and has only told the story of The Godfather Part II once. The production of Part II had no conflict, and therefore, no drama. One might go so far as to say, everything went perfectly. And the film turned out perfectly.
As close as I can come to that, and very possibly why I’ve gotten 538 episodes into this newsletter without mentioning it, is the TV series I worked on, Jack of All Trades (2000), starring Bruce Campbell. I was put in mind of Jack because I was just writing about another of Bruce’s TV series, The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr., on which I didn’t work. However, on Jack of All Trades I was hired to direct the pilot episode, meaning the first episode, as well as a second episode (that was aired as episode #4). Directing the pilot of a TV show is a highly trusted position and I took it very seriously.
When you direct the pilot episode of a TV series, you’re not only establishing the tone of the show, but the approach to making it. The executive producer, my old pal, Rob Tapert, entrusted me with the pilot of Jack of All Trades, and I’m still appreciative. And the cast and crew that Rob and Bruce (who was a co-executive producer) put together was excellent. I had three solid, professional and funny lead actors – Bruce, Angela Dotchin and Stuart Devenie, who played the ostensible bad guy, the French Ambassador, Croque, but Stuart played him as the mad King George, which I thought was hysterical. I shot a couple of scenes of fancy dinner parties at the French embassy hosted by Croque. Stuart decided that the ambassador was a slob, so as he prepared for the scene, he would take bits of different kinds of food and smear them on his shirt and his face, and put crumbs in his hair.
The director of photography was a wonderful fellow named Kevin Reilly, with whom I’d previously worked on an episode of Xena. Kevin is one of a very small group of people that I’ve met in my life who are incredibly good at what they do, know how to listen, work very fast, and make no fuss at all. I never waited for Kevin, he never bitched about anything, and all of his footage looked excellent. Well, that’s as good as it gets.
Very luckily, we also got Ngila Dickson, the costume designer from Xena, who would go on to do little productions like, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) and The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001). Ngila won an Oscar for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (with Richard Taylor, who was the FX supervisor on my movie, Hercules in the Maze of the Minotaur [1994]).
I loved working with Ngila on Xena and on Jack of All Trades. Going to her meetings was absolutely wonderful. Her preparedness was awesome. Her costume design “sketches” were rendered in her terrifically flowing style of drawing, with swaths of color, each worthy of being framed and hung. The red in Jack’s swashbuckling cape was brilliant. All of her designs were beautifully conceived and rendered.
We also scored by getting the Xena and Hercules production designer, Phil Gillies, who is an incredibly imaginative, funny, pleasant, smart guy. I must digress. One day Phil and I came out of the studio and saw a Jaguar XKE, 12-cylinder sports car that had been perfectly rebuilt as a station wagon. I asked incredulously, “Who would do such a thing?” Phil said, “Me,” and got in and drove away. Anyway, I loved all of Phil’s sets. His harbor set for Jack, with a moored, front end of an enormous sailing ship built into the set was very clever and impressive.
And of course, just like Hercules and Xena, and all of my movies, Joe LoDuca did the music score. Somewhere in the production process I pitched Rob the idea of doing a full-blown musical number for the front titles. I was thinking about the ‘60s TV shows like, F Troop, Gilligan’s Island, Green Acres, and many others – a montage telling the entire backstory in the front title with a song. Unlike any other director on these shows, I actually know Joe and talk to him about the scores. Anyway, I sketched out a series of storyboards, but the title shoot didn’t occur until after I left New Zealand. It was directed by Charlie Haskell, with whom I’d worked on Hercules, and I think it came out very well (and should care to watch it, here it is, Jack of All Trades ).
So, even though I don’t even remember Jack of All Trades all that often — these short TV shoots were so fast they’re difficult to remember — it was brilliant, and quite possibly the high point of my career as a TV director.
Good on ya.
Know that it was made joyously.
I forgot that one. I wrote about doing foley on real cheapies that Bruce and I did in same place that Scott and I did that piece of crap you're talking about. That was in the old Fox studios on Western Ave, which I'm sure are long gone. "Alien Private Eye"? Really? Another picture had Lyle Alzado and Debbie Foreman. We would gaffer's tape high heels to our sneakers.