2/25/23
Newsletter #258
The Crack of Dawn
Simply as an observation, both the right and the left give Joe Biden shit for being eighty years old, like that makes him Old Man Time. The guy seems perfectly fine to me, and certainly has way more energy than I do, and I’m only sixty-four. But just for the sake of historical perspective, here are few other folks who are within a year Biden’s age: Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Paul McCartney, Harrison Ford, Robert DeNiro, Christopher Walken, Joe Pesci, Ben Kingsley, Malcom McDowell, Chevy Chase, Tuesday Weld, Catherine Deneuve, Martin Scorsese, Werner Herzog, Britt Ekland, Bob Hoskins, and Barbra Streisand. Do these folks seem too old to do their jobs? Eighty is the new seventy.
My only film that’s never been released is If I Had a Hammer (2001). I’m presently in discussion with a distributor about finally releasing it. I think it’s more pertinent now than when I made it. The story takes place over a weekend in 1964, and all of act two is in a folk club. We see seven musical performances of classic folk tunes, all of which are in the public domain so there are no rights to be paid. Even still, film distributors are so frightened of litigation that the issue of the song rights killed every possible deal. Now, twenty-two years later, the songs are still in the public domain.
If I Had a Hammer is a musical in the same way as Cabaret (1972), meaning, nobody ever just breaks into song. All the songs are performed on a stage, or rationalized in some other way — in Cabaret there is a song sung in a beer garden, and in Hammer I have one song in a music store. They’re both “musicals” that never leave a believable reality.
And unlike damn near every other musical ever made, I didn’t use playback. The standard process for shooting musical numbers is to bring the actor into a sound studio, record the song properly, then have the actors lip-sync the song on the set. It’s always worked, more or less, but I’ve always found it a tad off-putting and unrealistic. Therefore, I decided that everybody had to actually play their instrument and sing while we were filming. My casting director, Donise Hardy, who had just done a fabulous job for me on my film, Running Time, said, “Don’t you think you’re setting the bar kind of high?” I said, “No, I’m not asking them to dance.” It turned out that finding actors who could sing and play the guitar was easy. Apparently, many folks who dream of being actors also dream of being musicians.
However, the one part I had tremendous difficulty casting was the “Angry Young Folk Singer,” which I had based on young Bob Dylan, and used the song In My Time of Dyin’, a public domain folk standard on Bob Dylan’s first record. I auditioned at least a hundred young men for the part. Since we couldn’t cast the part in the two days we rented a casting facility, I had young men with guitar cases showing up at my apartment for a couple of weeks. Pretty much all of them could play the guitar and sing to one extent or another, but none of them, and I mean none of them, could get angry. Twenty-five-year-old males who could play the guitar and sing in Los Angeles in 1999 didn’t have a hint of anger in them.
Shooting was rapidly approaching and I had the entire large cast, except this one part. Finally, Donise sent over a fellow named David Zink. Right away, David was too old for the part. I was looking for twenty-five and David was my age, which was forty at that time. Also, David had long hair past his shoulders which was unheard of in 1964. My first question was, “Will you cut your hair?” and David said, “No.” OK, this was going great. He did, however, have a beret in which he was able to stuff all his hair. OK, what the hell. David asked if he could have a cigarette and I gave him one. With his guitar on his lap, David smoked the entire cigarette and didn’t say a word. When he got down to the butt, he suddenly just let the smoldering butt drop on my carpet where he ground it out with his foot, then he ripped into In My Time of Dyin’ like he really fucking meant it. David then delivered my angry, pissed off dialogue like he was angry and pissed off — like it was supposed to be delivered. It was a revelation, and of course he got the part.
I never did get that burn mark out of my carpet.
In a final, completely disconnected movie memory, there is a film called The Secret of the Incas (1954), that stars a peppy young Charlton Heston that I’ll bet you a million trillion dollars both George Lucas and Steven Spielberg saw as kids. The Secret of Incas is Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), with a much smaller budget, but a much better lead. Both characters are dressed exactly the same, and they’re both archeological treasure hunters in old temples and pyramids. Secret of the Incas is a pretty good movie, but it’s not Raiders. However, given a choice, I’ll take Charlton Heston over Harrison Ford.
I saw the dawn begin at 6:57 yesterday. It is now 5:54. Therefore, it appears that me and the actual crack of dawn are progressively nearing each other.
Top of the morning to ya.
Thank you. That's a coincidence with "The Secret of the Incas" just coming out. And if it's Kino it will probably look good.
If "If I Had a Hammer" gets a Blu-ray release I will be a happy, happy fellow. It has been my favorite of your films since I first got the VHS, and then later a signed DV-R.
Coincidentally, The Secret of the Incas" will be released by Kino on Feb. 28. Maybe I should see it!