12/29/22
Newsletter #203
The Crack of Dawn
So, Sam, Bruce and Rob shot a Super-8 “pilot” called Within the Woods which they used to raise the money for Evil Dead (1983). Using the same method, I shot a Super-8 pilot called Stryker’s War, that my partner Scott and I used to raise the money for Thou Shalt Not Kill…Except. Seeing the logic in the scheme, my buddy Sheldon shot a pilot for his Vietnam War script Firebase, called Firefight.
One of my favorite quotes is by Teddy Atlas, former trainer for Mike Tyson. He said, “If you have an advantage, you have to take advantage of it.” He meant, if you’re tall and have long arms, keep your opponent out at the end of jab, that way they can’t hit you. Or, if you’re fast, then keeping moving and wear your opponent out. Take advantage of your advantage.
In Sheldon’s case, having served in the Marine Corps, he called up his pals at Camp Pendleton and asked if he could shoot his movie there. Not only would the Marines let him shoot there, but they also leant him uniforms, weapons, extras, and the use of helicopters. Firefight may be the most expensive-looking cheap movie ever. And Sheldon didn’t shoot in Super-8, he shot in 16mm.
Sheldon returned to L.A. with all of his footage and installed himself in what may very well have been the lowest-budget studio in Hollywood, Movie-Tek, run by a cowboy named Lucky Brown. It was smack in the heart of Hollywood, across the street from CFI Laboratory (where Marilyn Monroe’s mother worked). I would guess that Movie Tek was built in the 1930s, and was a full-service, though tiny, movie studio, with editing rooms, a small soundstage, and a mixing room. Then bless his soul, Sheldon hired me to cut and mix the sound.
Lucky Brown was a funny, thin, tall fellow who had been a stuntman and had photos of him on the walls getting punched by the likes of Alan Ladd and Guy Madison. Lucky claimed to have been one of the earliest, silent Little Rascals, but my research proves otherwise.
While Sheldon cut the picture in one room, I cut the sound in another room. Stalking between the rooms was a Firefight cast member, and an old military pal of Sheldon’s, named Frank Dux. Frank is six-and-a-half feet tall, and exactly as the short John Ford referred to the tall John Wayne, Frank is a “Galoot.” For his help Sheldon was giving him an associate producer credit, but Frank misconstrued that to mean he got some input. He didn’t.
So, I’m sitting in my little sound room cranking 16mm magnetic soundtrack back and forth on rewinds and Frank comes in and says, “Sheldon won’t listen to me. I am associate producer, you know.” I said, “Is that so?” Frank said, “I’m going to stand up to him. Will you come along?” I said, “Happily.”
Like John Ford, Sheldon’s not a very big guy – 5’7” maybe, 150 pounds. Frank is a brick shipyard. We go into Sheldon’s editing room and Frank says, “Sheldon, you have to listen to me,” turning to me for support, so I nodded. Sheldon turned around from the Moviola and stated loudly and clearly, “Frank, get the fuck outta here and don’t come back!” Frank and I left.
Frank told Sheldon (and me) that he was the last practitioner of Ninjitsu, was a Ninja master, and that he was the only white person to ever win the coveted Kumite martial arts competition. He told Sheldon, but not me, that he won the Medal of Honor. He seemed like nothing but a big oaf to me, but Sheldon ended up writing the screenplay, Bloodsport (1987; one of Donald Trump’s favorite movies), based on Frank’s assertions, which all proved to be false. He never won the Kumite, he wasn’t the last Ninja, and forget the Medal of Honor. He actually wrote a book that I recall reading while sitting on the floor of Book Soup in L.A., maybe 25 years ago, and everything he described about Bloodsport, Jean-Claude Van Damme, and anything else I was witness to, was somehow completely distorted to make him out to be the brains of the organization. I truly howled with laughter there on the floor of Book Soup.
Anyway, Sheldon had Firefight blown up to 35mm – which is another story entirely – showed it to the executives, and goddamn if he didn’t write and direct the next Jean-Claude picture, Lionheart (1991), which is certainly one of his better films.
In conclusion, my finest moment as the sound editor on Firefight, was putting in all of the foley by myself. Foley is the footsteps, as well as all the clinking, clanking, clothes rustling noises, to which nobody pays any attention at all, except if it isn’t there it sounds wrong. The footsteps were done in a wooden sandbox broken into four sections: dirt, sand, pebbles, and cement. I had to put in the foley sounds for a platoon of men, like 14 guys. I put on army boots, strapped myself with ammo belts with canteens, put a helmet on my head, two helmets on my fists, and marched my way through the movie a couple of times. Me and the mixer used three versions, slightly off from one another, that tripled the sound. I had already cut all of the machine guns, helicopters and explosions, so we mixed it all together. It was pretty good, but somehow it wasn’t right. I asked, “What do we do?” The mixer knowingly pulled out a box marked, “Yellow Sky,” which is a 1948 western with Gregory Peck. He said, “The Yellow Sky wind track fixes everything.” And indeed, he was right. The distant howling wind not only filled every hole, but was kind of eerie, too.
And a good day one and all.