Little Red was the first feature film I edited that was officially released. Earlier that same year I had edited another Super 16mm feature called Charm City. It never found a distributor, but that's another story.
Little Red was written and directed by my old friend Clay Valenti. I originally met Clay at the much-storied advertising agency Smith Burke & Azzam. I worked in Broadcast. Clay hung his shingle in Account Services. One of his first accounts was the Midwest fast food chain Rax Restaurants, which earned him the nickname among old-timers as "The Rax Man." Not a bad nickname, if you ask me.
Clay's heart wasn't in Account Services. He spent most of his free time with us in the Broadcast Department, despite a dire warning from one of his supervisors that he would never get anywhere if he "hung out with those people in broadcast." I don't think he hung around with us entirely because of our legendary three hour lunches. (Now don't think badly of us because of that. When we worked, we REALLY worked. And when we didn't work, we REALLY didn't work.) Clay wanted more. He wanted to make movies.
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| Clay Valent, seated left, during our Ad Men period. |
Clay read a poem by a Baltimore City student named Darrell Collins which used the tale of Little Red Riding Hood as a metaphor for the drug dealing he saw on the mean streets of Baltimore all around him. Clay was inspired and decided to dramatize it in a short, black & white film. Here it is:
The success of the short inspired Clay to make a feature film version. I was very busy with commercial work so I had little involvement with the shooting of the feature, except when it came to me. I lent the production my house as the location for Little Red's mother's home. It led to a moment of deja vu when I watched the film later. I was sitting on my sofa watching Red and her mother sitting on my sofa watching television. Weird. The experience also taught me that I really don't have enough electrical outlets for a film shoot.
One of my favorite moments of the project happened right after the shoot at my house. The cinematographer Chuck Regner, another old friend of mine who now shoots news for WBOC, and Clay and I sat around watching Psycho on DVD with the daughter of a neighbor. We didn't realize the girl hadn't seen the film before and we got to vicariously relive the initial shock the original audiences felt at Janet Leigh's death in the shower. (I never experienced that shock myself. I had heard all about "the shower scene" long before I actually saw it!)
When the shooting ended, my work began. I had edited the short and I was only too happy to take time out of my commercial schedule to edit the feature. After all, I didn't get in this business to make commercials, did I? I was assisted by young Michael J. Walls, who had also acted as second assistant camera on the shoot. Mike warned me about a scene that everyone knew would be difficult to edit. He called it The Kobayashi Maru, after the unbeatable test at the Star Trek Fleet Academy. I decided to cut that scene first and get it out of the way. The Kobayashi Maru soon became a tradition on all of the subsequent feature films I edited. I always edited the worst or most complicated scene first, before proceeding to cut the rest of the film in a sequential manner.
The film was shot beautifully on Super 16mm. Man, I regret the death of film. Not only do I miss the aesthetics, I also miss the focus it forced on filmmakers. Film was expensive. An independent filmmaker could not afford to shoot endless takes or use multiple cameras. Directors really had to think about what they needed. Little Red had about a four-to-one shooting ratio, if I remember correctly. That meant we could easily assemble a rough cut in about a week. You can't do that nowadays. Not with the video rolling endlessly. I am not exaggerating when I say there was more raw footage in the scene in Marriage Retreat where the couples first talk with the counselors than there was for the entire film of Little Red! Film made you focus on exactly what you needed!
Perhaps my favorite memory of this film was the screening at the New York Film Festival. I had just started dating my future wife Debbie, and I thought this would make an impressive date. I picked her up after work and drove up to the Big Apple for an unforgettable night. After the screening, we went dancing on a ship converted into a nightclub. The night finally ended around seven in the morning with eclairs at a bakery near the apartment a friend had lent me. Debbie was impressed enough to marry me!
Guess what: The film even got released! It was picked up by DEJ Productions, the in-house production arm of Blockbuster. The deal had its pros and cons. On the positive side, Clay made a profit and the film got stocked at every location. On the negative side, it was only released in the 4:3 standard format, and, when Blockbuster disappeared, so did the film.
But not anymore. Clay managed to get the rights back and now you can rent it on Amazon Prime. Click here to check it out: Little Red
I have nothing but fond memories of this little film that gave the world a taste of the streets of Baltimore before The Wire. The local casts of unknowns* mostly acquitted themselves well, and I would work with a number of the crew members many times in the future.
Here's the trailer:
*One of those unknowns was my own mother Clara. Clay needed someone to play the bitter mother of one of the drug dealers. He picked my mother, who delivered a classic off-camera rant. I should rip it from the DVD and post it.
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