The musings of Sean Paul Murphy: Editor, Producer, Screenwriter, Author. Or, Hollywood -- and beyond -- as seen from an odd little corner of northeast Baltimore, Maryland.
You've just finished your new script. It is a work of utter genius. You can't wait for the bidding war between the studios to begin. So you send it out.
Big mistake.
Don't do it.
Please.
Don't send it out until you've truly read and revised it.
I know what you're saying. I read through it twice. I've found all the spelling and grammatical mistakes. I gave it to my mother and my best friend and they both said it was great. Much better than my last five scripts. It's time to pitch it and make a million.
Think twice.
Personally, I don't like to send out a spec script until after I've written an entirely new screenplay. I break that rule all of the time, but that remains my ideal goal. I need to work on something new before I can look back at a script with any degree of true objectivity.
When I was but a boy screenwriter, I enjoyed some initial success. No produced films, but genuine excitement and interest in some of my spec scripts. I did really well with the first few. Why? Because they were really honed. I am, by nature, pretty prolific. I have dozens of ideas bouncing around in my head vying for my attention all the time. When I finish one script, I start on the next one. Between projects, I would reread and revise my older scripts. As a result, the first couple of scripts I sent to Hollywood when I finally got a good agent were really sharp.
Then, in retrospect, I could see that the quality of my work was slowly dropping off.
Since I finally had someone who was anxious to read my scripts, I would ship them out with little more than a cursory polish only to find them generating less and less interest. After a bright start, my career was stalling. I am currently reworking some of those scripts. Looking back at them now, it is easy to see why they didn't sell. The problems were fairly obvious. Had I put them aside for a couple of months and gained the proper objectivity back in the day, my career would have been considerably different.
Let me give you an example. A friend lent me a best-selling, Holocaust-related, non-fiction book that she thought would interest me. It did indeed. Reading it, I came up with a unique and fascinating way to handle the material. So what did I do? I wrote a rough draft to see if it would work, and I was satisfied that it did.
Now the book had been on the market for about a year and it didn't seem to be in production anywhere. So I called the publisher. The rights were available. The publisher was very pleased that a screenwriter represented by a decent-sized agency had written a rough draft on spec. When I tried to explain how I handled the material, the publisher gave me the (reasonably well-known) author's phone number and said I should talk directly to him. I called him and we had a great chat. He liked how I handled things and asked to read the rough draft. I sent it, and I never heard from him again. Why? Because it was sloppy. It was riddled with spelling mistakes, grammatical errors and unrealized moments. I had talked the talk, but the work wasn't sufficiently professional. I had thought that, one author to another, he would be able to look beyond the form to the substance, but he couldn't, and why should he? He had put his best effort into his book. He deserved the same courtesy from me. (In my defense, I wrote that script on a typewriter. Back then, before the days of the word processor, a rewrite required a lot more labor!)
Had I taken the time to hone the script, I could have partnered with the author and his publisher and my agent to get the film made. It could have been my breakthrough moment. It wasn't. Because I rushed things. I was simply in too much of a hurry.
Don't make the same mistake!
When you think you're ready to send out your script wait another month or so. Read it again. Have some trusted colleagues read it.
Remember: In Hollywood, people will only read your script once.
The death of Hollywood has long been predicted and long avoided, but I believe it might finally be at hand.
I feared piracy would destroy the movie business the same way it destroyed the music business. And piracy destroyed the music business -- make no mistake about that. Illegal downloading and file sharing deprives recording artists of a large percentage of their income. The self-justification of the people who enable this activity is pathetic. They claim to be striking a blow for the common man by the sticking it to evil corporations who deserve to be robbed. In the end, however, they are only stealing from the artists they claim to admire. Sickening. They should be ashamed of themselves.* I wrote songs long before I wrote movies. I'm glad my talents took me in the direction they did. I would hate to be in the music business today.
Movies, I feared, would follow the same fate once high-quality compression technology made feature films files small enough. A number of webpages allow you to stream films currently playing in the theaters online. Personally, I never found those pages too much of a threat because of the poor image quality. You cannot duplicate the theater experience by watching a cruddy, postage stamp sized picture on your computer. One day, however, someone will tie streaming video to your high-quality home theater, and streaming will become a real threat.
That day has come. Thanks, Netflix.
I long resisted Netflix. I was a loyal Blockbuster man. I liked walking down the aisles and looking at the DVD boxes and artwork. I often found intriguing films this way that I would have never sought out on my own. Sadly, Blockbuster, which once wielded unbelievable power in Hollywood, is now dying. Killed by Netflix and Red Box. I will miss it. The same way I miss record stores.
After my Blockbuster closed, I had no choice but to give Netflix a chance. Friends and relatives have been singing its praises for years -- especially since the advent of their streaming instant view. Having made the conversion to HD and Blu-Ray, I was somewhat revolted by the idea of watching streaming movies on my television. I didn't want to take a step backwards in quality. But, after I hooked up my Roku box, I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of some of their movies. And the quantity.
Some friends have told me that they canceled cable after getting NetFlix. I can't see myself going that far, but I am considering canceling some of my beloved, and tax deductible, movie channels. In the past, I spent most of my time in front of the tube watching films on HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, Starz or The Movie Channel. Now, I would have probably canceled all of them already if I didn't want to miss some of their original series.
Netflix has definitely affected my DVD and Blu-Ray purchasing decisions. I simply will not buy a movie that I can watch streaming on Netflix. It just seems absurd. Why buy something when you have complete access to it 24/7? This is a much larger threat to DVD sales than the traditional movie channels. On cable, you have to wait to see a movie until the network chooses to show it again. If I knew I would want to watch a movie repeatedly, I went out and bought a copy. I have hundreds of DVDs. That said, I find it easier to pick up the remote and turn it on via Netflix than it is to go over to my shelves, find the DVD, and put it in the player. (When given the opportunity, I will always choose Blu-Ray over instant view.)
On the bright side, I suppose this is suppressing piracy too. Why would you waste the space on your computer to download an illegal copy of a movie when you can stream it anytime you want legally? Why buy an illegal DVD? It doesn't make sense anymore when you can get Netflix Instant view for eight dollars a month.
Hollywood doesn't seem so worried right now. They have been giving Netflix and some of the other services pretty good deals on streaming rights. Now that the practice is proving very profitable, they will start charging Netflix what they charge the cable networks for rights to their movies.
But what about the independent filmmaker? We're the ones who will be getting hurt.
DVD sales have been the main source of income for independent filmmakers. Local broadcast stations buy very few movie packages anymore. It's all network and syndicated programming. And, there is so much product available today that it is very hard to get a small indie films on cable television unless you have some big name stars. DVD was all we had. And DVD sales are dropping through the floor. Part of it is the general state of the economy. Part of it is streaming.
Two of my films have been available on Netflix instant view: "21 Eyes" and "Hidden Secrets." How much did they pay for the rights? Discretion prevents me from reporting the details here, but, let's just say I would rather people buy the DVDs!
Okay, okay. I might be a little premature. Hollywood might survive online streaming. They've survived everything else, but streaming is no friend to the independent filmmaker.
Heaven help us!
The grave of Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., in Hollywood Forever Cemetery.
There might be enough room there for some indie filmmakers.
*Before anyone busts me for being a hypocrite, I do occasionally "borrow" photos and artwork from other internet sites for this blog. And, yes, I am ashamed.
I like a good train movie, and Emperor of the North provides a pretty wild ride.
Robert Aldrich was a great action director. His films included classics like The Dirty Dozen, Flight of the Phoenix and The Longest Yard.
Emperor of the North follows the tradition of those films, but failed to achieve their box office success and remains little seen today. Some people say it failed because it didn't have a female character to hook the female audience, but, if that were true, how do you explain the success of the other films I mentioned? I don't think there was a single woman in Flight of the Phoenix, and the only women in The Dirty Dozen were prostitutes and ready-to-be slaughtered Germans. No, this film failed because it was too dark, too grimy and ultimately too unsatisfying -- even by 1970s standards.
That said. It is a pretty good action film on its own terms.
The plot is simple. It's the height of the depression. Poverty and unemployment are rampant. Many men roam the country looking for work or better opportunities and many of them do so by riding the rails. The always reliable Lee Marvin plays a "A No. 1" -- a legend among hobos. He goes and does what he pleases living by his wits and guts. He soon finds himself being tailed by Keith Carradine's "Cigaret" -- an annoying, boastful young hobo. The third character in this piece is Ernest Borgnine's Shack. Shack is the sadistic conductor of the No. 19 train. Shack would rather kill a man than give him a free ride. Obviously these characters were bound to collide, and, after a series of events, Marvin announces to the world, through a message written on a water tower, that he intends to ride Borgnine's train to Portland. Carradine tags along for the life-or-death struggle.
Although Marvin was the star, Borgnine steals the film right out from under him. Too many people are dismissive of Borgnine because of his role in McHale's Navy, but he could play a very compelling bad guy. Remember, he's the guy who beat Frank Sinatra to death in From Here To Eternity, but that character was a sweetheart compared to Borgnine's character in this film. Shack is a vile, evil creation. In lesser hands, he would have been a one-dimensional bully, but Borgnine gives him the occasional flash of humanity. After a series of encounters with the hobos leave the train on course for a possible head on collision, Shack shouts out an offer of a temporary truce to his antagonists. Not out of fear of his own safety. No, it seems more out of a sense of duty to the railroad. He might have a passion for violence, but he also has a more understandable sense of duty. Granted, it is that very devotion to duty that fires his sadistic rage. Hobos steal rides from the railroad. Therefore, it is his duty (and pleasure) to make sure no such thefts occur on his train. His entire ego is built around the fact that no one has ridden his train for free.
So why did the film fail? Easy. A lack of character arcs. No one changes. No one learns anything. Therefore, the violence is pointless and unfulfilling. In "The Dirty Dozen," which also featured Marvin and Borgnine, the selfish, unreliable death-row prisoners ultimately learn to work together as a team and show a willingness to sacrifice for each other. The violence transformed and cleansed them. In "Flight of the Pheonix," the men put aside their prejudices and egos to work together as a team and as a result are ennobled by their ordeal. The same is true of "The Longest Yard." The egotistical quarterback, Burt Reynolds, grows by putting his future on the line for his prisoner teammates. The audience gets to go home happy.
There is no such moment in Emperor of the North. Shack never doubts his course of action: People who try to steal a ride on his train deserve death. Marvin learns nothing either. He steps into the film a legend among the hobos and his legend only grows. At the very least one would expect Cigaret, the young would-be protege, to grow as a result of Marvin's hard won wisdom, but the film deprives the audience of even that victory. The conflict, therefore, was pointless.
In the 1970's, Hollywood briefly produced some films that deliberately gave the audiences unhappy or unsatisfying endings. This is one of them, and it suffers as a result.
Still, if all you want is tough guy action on a train, you need go no further.
My novel Chapel Street is now available! You can currently buy the Kindle and paperback at Amazon and the Nook, paperback and hardcover at Barnes & Noble.
David A.R. White, Sean Paul Murphy, Timothy Ratajczak
in my dining room with a book on Scientology. Hey,
what's that doing there?
Good times, bad times, you know I had my share....
Co-writer Tim Ratajczak and I returned from LA with the sense that we had a fun, little movie on our hands. The initial edit went smoothly. I would cut sequences together, upload them for my masters, and hone them. Before long, we locked picture for the first time. Everyone was happy. Or were they?
The first hiccup came from writer/director/producer/actor David A.R. White's camp. His agent saw the movie and didn't like what he saw. If you remember, he had pushed David to play both the naive Roy and his wacky, worldly uncle Brian. He wanted David to be the next Tyler Perry and Uncle Brian to be his Medea. He felt the central relationship should be between Roy and Brian instead of Roy and his love interest Annie. Now that's a fine idea. Tim and I could have certainly written a film like that. But we didn't. And you can't decide on a change like that in post-production. Especially since Brian ends up in jail halfway through the film and stays there until the last scene. That change would entail extensive re-shoots which we were not going to be able to do. The film was now in disarray. David was now certain the relationship between Roy and Annie didn't work.
Chad Kapper is a commercial director from Ohio. I don't know how or when he became involved with Pure Flix, but he offered to do some animation and special effects for Holyman Undercover. He wanted to add a few animated bridging sequences into the film. Ultimately, we only used his opening credits and his Amish sex education film, but he did the movie a great service by convincing David that the Roy/Annie relationship worked after changing the order of a few scenes. Thanks, Chad. We would meet again. And it would be complicated. But that's another couple of blogs!
Now the picture was locked (again).
The sound mix was a blast. David A.R. White and producer Michael Scott flew into Baltimore to do the sound mix at Clean Cuts, an audio facility owned by an old friend of mine named Jack Heyrman. Tim and I, as well as executive producer Matt Richards, sat in for the sessions and added quite a few jokes. The commentary track we recorded at the end of the sessions captured the good spirits in the room. Everything was fine. Until....
The industry screening. As I related in the previous blog, a studio muckity-muck saw the film, muttered some mild praise and offered a warning about our angelic retarded boy Jake. Sadly, Jake was consigned to the cutting room floor. I wasn't happy about it -- particularly since I discovered after my last blog that the guy who played him, Josh Sussman, became a regular on the hit show "Glee." Would it be nice to have a regular from "Glee" in your film? You betcha!
Josh Sussman of "Glee," formerly of "Holyman Undercover"
Soon thereafter we decided to have a few impromptu test screenings. Our target audience was Christian 'tweens and teens. A friend of mine went to a church where the pastor's son had movie screening every week in his home. I asked if they would be interested in showing the film and filling out some questionnaires. They said yes. The next Saturday they had the screening. Twenty-five Christian youths aged thirteen-to-twenty-one. Exactly our target audience. The film starts. They start laughing. They literally laughed all the way through the film. People even requested to back some bits up to watch them again. We were in heaven. Lights up. Time to hand out the questionnaires. As we did, the pastor's son asked whether they should evaluate the film as normal people or evangelicals. I said to answer the way they felt most comfortable. They took the evangelical route.
Yikes.
You'd never believe that the people who filled out those questionnaires were the same people who laughed uproariously throughout the entire film. Not a single good review. They hated it. We were getting comments like: "Failed to display the entire gospel" and "Didn't show enough of God's wrath." What? I didn't even know we were supposed to show God's wrath! We wanted to give that a rest this time.
I didn't want to share the questionnaires with the folks in LA. I told them to trust the laughter, not the words, but they didn't hear the laughter. They could only see the words. The panic was starting. Some friendly gatekeepers were shown the film. They hated it. Everybody hated it. I arranged a screening at my church on a night when we had some youth events. The gatekeepers there made the youth leave the sanctuary before the screening! In other words, they prevented the people at whom it was aimed from seeing it. It was sad. Every faith-based film has a mission. "Holyman Undercover" was no exception, but it was beginning to look like it would never get to fulfill it.
David A.R. White, Fred Willard and Matt Richards
Basically, our mission was to reach the Christian teen market. Like all teenagers, Christian teens feel the pull of peer pressure and not all of their peers are Christians. In fact, most of them aren't. Therefore, the teens find themselves under enormous pressure to put aside their beliefs to become cooler and more acceptable in the eyes of the world. That's what "Holyman Undercover" is all about: A young man, who, after leaving his sheltered home, feels the need to conform to the world to gain popularity and win the girl he loves -- not realizing that it was his individuality -- including his faith -- that originally caught her interest in the first place. I believe that the original version of the film clearly made that point in a humorous and entertaining manner. Not only did we feel that this film would speak to Christian teens, we felt it was funny enough that they would be able to share it with their more jaded, secular friends without embarrassment.
Additionally, on another level, the film dealt with evangelism in our post-Christian culture. Our hero Roy's Uncle Brian considered himself to be a missionary but strictly an undercover one. He was one of God's self-appointed secret agents. Feeling the world would reject the straightforward Christian message, he wanted to spread the gospel subliminally through gimmicks. In reality, of course, in his heart Uncle Brian really only wanted fame and popularity and, although he claimed he wanted to be true to his faith, he wouldn't let it get in the way of his goals. Roy, after achieving instant success and fame, went another route and openly proclaimed the gospel, but achieved no more success more Uncle Brian because he was relying on celebrity and personal popularity to persuade people. But the press conferences and magazines covers ultimately meant nothing. The megaphone is never as important as the heart. In the end, Roy's most effective tool for evangelism turned out to be the witness of his life, which he found himself sacrificing for more worldly popularity.
So, for a goofy comedy, we felt we had covered an awful lot of theological bases. The gatekeepers disagreed.
The most important gatekeeper is The Dove Foundation. Most Christian bookstores will not carry a film unless it carries The Dove Seal of Approval. Now, if you're like "Fireproof," and you have a major studio and six million dollars in P&A money behind you, you don't need the Dove Foundation. But if you're an independent faith-based film, you need them, and they hated this film. Hated, hated, hated it. Everything about it.
I wish I had a copy of their original review. It was unbelievable. From their reaction, you would've thought we were sacrificing blonde, blue-eyed virgins to Baal on a pile of burning Bibles. Now, granted, we were the first faith-based film with prison rape in it, but come on....
The editing began. A strenuous effort was made to cut everything unacceptable in their eyes out of the film. As I mentioned in my earlier blog on "Hidden Secrets", the gatekeepers like films where people get saved, but they loathe to hear about, let alone see, what they were "saved" from. Well, I discovered one thing they liked less than seeing sin and that was "making light of it." I remember hearing a radio preacher saying that he felt he had a great sense of humor, but he could never laugh at something that Jesus died for. That doesn't leave a lot of area for comedy.
We cut version after version of the film to no avail. (I shouldn't say "we." I had already handed the film back to California by then.) Nothing we did mattered. They just hated the film. They refused to give it the benefit of the doubt or consider its audience or purpose. Ultimately, however, we discovered, it wasn't the drug references they hated most. It wasn't the implied homosexual prison rape. It wasn't the so-called violence. (They actually gave this film a higher violence rating than PureFlix's "In The Blink of an Eye" which featured numerous murders including a woman being shotgunned and leaving a graphic trail of blood as she slid down a wall.) No. It was our little Jennifer Lyons. She was just too sexy for Christian cinema.
According to the gatekeepers of various stripes, the single most objectionable scene in the film is the one where the network executives tell Roy that they want him to date Jennifer's character, Tiffany, for publicity reasons. Roy says no. Insulted, Jennifer goes over and gives him a steamy kiss thinking that it will sway him, but Roy ultimately remains unimpressed. That kiss was simply too much for them. Even a minister I met in Baltimore, who was known for watching secular movies and incorporated them into his sermons, said he had to leave the room during that kiss. Really? Folks, trust me, it wasn't that bad. The Hays Office wouldn't have blinked an eye. So, okay, we cut the kiss out of the film but it was still a no go. Jennifer was too inherently sexy for the gatekeepers.
Tim Ratajczak with the impossibly seductive Jennifer Lyons
David A.R. White was worried about the sexiness of the Tiffany character in the script stage. However, we needed her. We wanted to show all of the temptations that normal people, even Christians, face. With that in mind, David went out of the way to make sure that her clothing didn't reveal anything. Additionally, we tried to make her a comic seductress rather than a sexy one, by giving her a lot of goofy gestures and having her make goofy animal noises. More than once, before a take, I saw David walk over to Jennifer and ask her to zip something all the way up. Jennifer said David was the first director who asked her to put more clothes on!
This is why, generally, faith-based films are dismissed as being so phony. The gatekeepers want films about people overcoming things like sexual temptation, but, under no circumstances are we to show any sexual temptation. Why? Because they say they don't want their children exposed to it. Really? I wonder what planet they are living on. They don't seem to know that their children are exposed to things a thousand times worse than "Holyman Undercover" dozens of times a day. What do they think they are watching on TV?
Remember our first test audience I talked about earlier? As I was leaving, I asked them what they had watched the previous week. They said they were watching the DVD boxed set of the animated series "The Family Guy." Huh? Now that is a truly raunchy television show. Funny too. Could anyone who watched and laughed at that show be offended in the least bit by "Holyman Undercover?" Of course not. While they were watching "The Family Guy," I'm sure they weren't complaining that it didn't reveal the whole gospel or that it didn't show enough of God's wrath.
The key was the question the pastor's son asked before they answered the questionnaire: "Should judge the film as normal people or evangelicals?"
As normal people, they had laughed all the way through it.
As evangelicals they felt the need to judge it.
I never thought that's what it meant to be an evangelical.
Oh well.
They like the film in Brazil. It's doing really well there.
(BTW, there are two versions of the film available on DVD. The highly-edited Christian version and the mainstream version. I highly recommend the mainstream version. Unfortunately, nothing on the box indicates which version of the film is inside. However, generally, I believe you can get the mainstream version at secular websites like Amazon.com. The other version is available at websites like Christiancinema.com.)
Here's the trailer. (Seems innocent enough to me, but what do I know.)
Be sure to check out my novel Chapel Street. It tells the story of a young man straddling the line between sanity and madness while battling a demonic entity that has driven his family members to suicide for generations. It was inspired by an actual haunting my family experienced.
You can buy the Kindle and paperback at Amazon and the Nook, paperback and hardcover at Barnes & Noble.
Sorry to take a break from the continuing saga of "Holyman Undercover," but my film "Run On" was released straight to DVD last week and this seems like a good time to talk about it.
(Always promoting.)
It's kind of weird calling it my film since I had little to do with it. Tim and I got involved with what would become this project soon after finishing the script for "Holyman Undercover."
David A.R. White had been performing "Holyman Undercover" as a one-man-show for a number of years. With the completion of the film, he wanted to develop a new property to perform live. Timothy Ratajczak and I were recruited to come with something new for him. It was interesting challenge. Tim had more of a stage background than me. I hadn't written anything for the stage since grade school. (Shout out to St. D! Yo! Time for another reunion!) One stage. One performer. It's an unforgiving format. We were game.
"Holyman Undercover" was based extremely loosely on David's life. He wanted his next show to cover the same material, but in a more realistic and honest -- yet funny -- manner. Tim and I began the process by extensively interviewing David about every aspect of his life and career. And I mean every aspect. If his wife, the lovely and talented Andrea Logan White, ever needs to know anything about him, she should call us. Tim and I and David labored on this project over the course of a couple months between other assignments and eventually came up with a show called: "David White: Christian Film Star." Pretty imaginative title, huh?
While we were working, David was building a relationship with a manager who booked performers on the faith-based circuit. Two of the manager's other clients were comedians Brad Stine and Tommy Blaze. Tim and I had already worked with Brad Stine years earlier on a potential film project that did not come to fruition. Brad would later appear in our films "Sarah's Choice" and "Marriage Retreat," as well as a still pending project. We didn't know Tommy at the time, but his presence would loom larger soon thereafter.
The manager liked the show, but he thought David would have an easier time getting booked at the various mega-churches, etc., if it had a Biblical theme. I can't remember which one of us came up with the idea of tying David's life to the parable of the prodigal son, but it proved a perfect fit. David's life already conformed to the general themes, so it was a quick rewrite and we were done.
David thought the best way to kick off his new show was with a movie. And, since he was now represented by the same manager as Brad Stine and Tommy Blaze, he thought they should make a stand-up film together to promote all three of their careers. Initially, they were going to each simply perform their normal routines, ala "The Kings of Comedy," etc. However, after Tommy read David's show, he decided to combine all three of their performances into a single narrative along the lines of the Prodigal son parable. David would start the tale about how he, a preacher's kid from a small town in Kansas, went to Hollywood and drifted away from his values. Tommy would pick up then pick up the narrative with the low point in his life as he faced a painful divorce. Then Brad would finish the show by illustrating the Christian life triumphant. Tommy and Brad wrote their own segments.
Tim and I had nothing to do with the movie script. Tommy simply cut down and adjusted the existing material to fit the overall film. Our schedules did not permit us to go to the filming which took place in front of a live audience in Tennessee. We had little to do with the post-production other than to look at early cuts of David's routine and advise what to tighten, etc.
Fortunately, the film doesn't invalidate David's one-man-show. Only a small portion of it is used in the film, and, since David opened the show, his segment had to carry the bulk of the exposition. As a result, many of the jokes from those segments were cut to make time for the story. If you really want to see what we wrote, you'll have to see David when he comes to your town. He puts on a good show.
The Holyman Undercover shoot was a good time. An excellent time, in fact.
By the time financing had been secured, over a third of the film had been shot and edited guerrilla style. As a result we only needed about nine days of principal photography starting Thursday, July 29, 2007. Tim and I decided to go out and bask in the glory that is Hollywood Filmmaking. The vast bulk of the remaining film was to be shot at The Escarpment Studios in Huntington Park. Tim and I got rooms at a somewhat sleazy hotel nearby. It was a nice enough place for what little time we would actually be in our rooms. That said, no one told us before we got there that the neighboring school had a marching band that liked to practice early in the morning. Very early.
Oh well.
One of the good things about being a writer is that you never have an early call time. Generally, you don't have a call time at all because directors usually don't like having the writers around. Director/star/co-writer David A.R. White, however, welcomed our presence on the set and even solicited our input on occasion. That was cool. Although the script had already been written, Tim and I wanted to keep our eyes open for new opportunities for laughs that might be presented by the locations or available props.
To me, the golden age of screen comedy were the 1920s and the 1930s. (The least funny decade: The 1950's. They didn't have much once you got past Martin & Lewis.) From my youthful days as a Super 8mm film collector, I have always been a huge fan of Charlie Chaplin, Laurel & Hardy, Buster Keaton, W.C. Fields, The Three Stooges and The Marx Brothers. I had read extensively about their process. Their gagmen and writers were always on the set with the performers looking to build on the script. (Yes, Virginia, even The Mighty Chaplin used gagmen and writers.) One thing that I always found missing in modern comedies was a lack of "business." The silent clowns could often wring laughs out of simple everyday items. You don't see much of that today. Nor do you see much of it in "Holyman Undercover." Frankly, we were moving too fast to really search out such opportunities, and we were also happy with what we were getting from the script.
Cinematographer Darren Rystrom
and director David A.R.White
After our forty-piece wake-up call, Tim and I hit the road for the first location of the day: the fast food restaurant where Roy would work after his fall. We didn't have a GPS on us, so it was a flurry maps as we drove. Then suddenly, we see these a police car screeching to a stop up ahead. We wondered what kind of crime scene we had wandered upon as we watched the cops jump out the car. Then we noticed the cameras. We were at the location. Those were our cops! What a great introduction to the shoot. We had only missed two or three shots.
Before I go any further I want to give a shout out to Josh Sussman who played the "retarded" boy Jake whose simple words and wisdom gently point Roy to repentance. "What retarded boy?" both of you who have seen the movie are asking yourselves. Well, sadly, neither Josh or his cinematic alter-ego Jake made it to the silver screen. Why? Because, after an industry screening, the head of Sony's faith-based films division said he liked the movie but felt that the Jake character might offend some people's sensibilities. I got a phone call the next day and Jake was out of the film -- despite the fact that Josh gave a terrific performance. (He was very funny in real life too. He was working up a stand-up routine that had Tim and I rolling.)
Sorry Josh, you were the first sacrifice in our vain attempt to gain wider distribution, but you wouldn't be the last! (Producer Matt Richards was the only one who objected to removing Jake on the basis of an offhand comment from a Sony executive. Now if he had said he would pick up the movie if we got rid of Jake....)
Ooops. Excuse me. That was a diversion into my next blog about this movie which will be labeled ""Holyman Undercover," Part 3, Bad Times." But back to the good times.
After the restaurant and street corner scene, we went to shoot the car wash sequence. In this scene, Roy and his uncle Brian, both of whom were played by director David A.R. White, go through a car wash with the owner, Pinky, with the car windows wide open. Now, I have to admit that I assumed, while we were writing the scene, that it would be difficult and annoying to shoot for everyone involved. It would prove even more difficult when you only had about an hour to do it.
Why only an hour? In the film, unbeknownst to the naive Roy, the car wash is a front for the drug dealing Pinky and Uncle Brian is one of his best customers. When they leave the car wash, the cops come screaming in and arrest everyone. Well, the same thing kind of happened to us. After the first take of the cops arriving with sirens blazing and guns waving, a neighbor, worried about what was happening at the local business, called the police himself. The police promptly showed up and asked to see our shooting permit. It was proudly shown, but it was found to be lacking some dotted "i" or crossed "t" and we were promptly shut down. Normally, this would be an ideal time to hit the craft services table, but it hadn't been set up yet, and wasn't going to be until the right permit was secured.
Fortunately, while one of Pure Flix's minions wrestled with City Hall, Tim and I got to hang with the cast and crew. We particularly enjoyed talking to the talented Jeremy Luc, who played the good-natured drug dealer Pinky. Tim, Matt and I loved Jeremy's audition and had been big boosters for him throughout the casting process. I explained how, in the original script, he probably would have been fifth billed. As originally conceived, based on the one man show, the Pinky character became Roy's chief advisor and confidant after his Uncle Brian is arrested halfway through the story. (One of the underlying themes of the film is that the naive and trusting Roy is constantly taking the worst possible advise from the worst possible people.) We also apologized to him for making one of the few Hispanic characters in the film a criminal. Jeremy said he didn't mind that stereotyping. He was, however, getting sick of being cast as a Mexican. "You're not Mexican?" "No, I'm from the East Coast," he said. "I'm Puerto Rican."
Jeremy Luc and I.
Guess who spends more time in the gym?
The new permit arrived about an hour before sunset and miraculously we got everything we needed for the scenes. The next day we moved to The Escarpment Studios for the bulk of the interior shooting.
Our illustrious cavalcade of stars began the next day. First up was the always amiable John Schneider, who Tim and I originally met on the set of our film "Hidden Secrets." John remembered us which was evidenced by the fact that he didn't call security when we went up and talked to him. In this film, John essentially played himself and would serve as Roy's replacement in the role of the Devil in our fictional TV show Dark Night. John would give the character of the devil a good old boy spin. He took some inspiration from Andy Griffin's performance in Elia Kazan's classic film "A Face In The Crowd," which, oddly-enough, I had watched on Turner Classic Movies the previous night.
Here's John in a clip from the movie:
We had written a song for John to sing, and that was first scene we were scheduled to shoot. John, guitar in hand, walked up to David and asked how the song went. David didn't know. None of us did. We had only written the lyrics not the melody. Ooops. That happens. David asked John if he could come up with a tune. No problem. He took the guitar out to his trailer and came back a few minutes later with the melody. I was very impressed with John's skills as a singer and guitar player. Normally musical numbers are recorded prior to filming and the actors only have to lip-sync the material. In our case, John and his backup singers sang it live. And they sang it consistently enough, with no real rehearsal, that we could cut from take to take for the final film. Bravo. I was also impressed with his noodling on the guitar between takes. He would play snatches of songs from Yes and the late Beatles. He's a better guitar player than me. Better looking too.
Sean, Fred and Tim
Next came Fred Willard. We were all on our best behavior before he arrived. Even our normally acerbic Assistant Director Michael Maurer became the very model of respect. Fred had made Tim and I laugh so often through the years that it was a dream come true to have him in our movie. And it made it even better. When he arrived on the set, the first thing he did was ask to speak to the writers. We dutifully came forward and he proceeded to say how much he enjoyed the script and his character. What a great guy. Fred is known to be a great ad-libber, and Tim and I were very interested in seeing what he would do with our script but he played it straight. I took that as a compliment, but I would have been very interested in seeing where he would have taken the material.
Here's Fred talking about the film:
Soon we were working with another one of our favorites: Staci Keanan. She's a terrific actress with a natural talent for both drama and comedy. My only regret is that Staci is always the bridesmaid and never the bride in our films. She was on the losing side of the romantic triangle in "Hidden Secrets," the shallow best friend in this film, and would later be the thoughtful sister in "Sarah's Choice." One day I'd like her to be the lead in one of these movies. It was also great working with Gregg Binkley again. He has such natural comic timing. And it was fun meeting new friends like Jennifer Lyons, who really ran with the role Tiffany Towers, the narcissistic actress. She was hilarious, but, sadly, too sexy for our film! (Much more about that later.)
Even Tim and I got into the act. We got to play the role of the abused writers of the fictional show Dark Night. Technically speaking, it wasn't a cameo. We were acting. I played Tim, and Tim played me. The "On Strike" sign was a shout-out our union brothers and sisters in the Writers Guild of America who were about to go on strike. If they would let us in, we would have gladly gone on strike with them.
Sean and Tim as Tim and Sean
All-in-all, our time on the set of "Holyman Undercover" was absolutely delightful. Our schedules did not permit us to go to the Disney ranch for the Amish sequences, but Tim and I took time to do what we always did in California: Visit a Presidential library. This time we went to the Nixon library where I did my best Nixon impersonation to every employee I could find. My two favorite quotes were: "I was born in the house my father built," and "No one will ever write a book about my mother." No one hit me with anything, but I got the sense they wanted to do so.
Tim and I are also cemetery junkies, and we took some time off to visit celebrity graves. While in Forest Lawn in Glendale, we came upon this adult-sized statue of a happy baby. The picture below doesn't really give justice to how garishly creepy it was. But, as frightening as the baby was, it was no where near as frightening as the fate of "Holyman Undercover."
Be sure to check out my novel Chapel Street. It tells the story of a young man straddling the line between sanity and madness while battling a demonic entity that has driven his family members to suicide for generations. It was inspired by an actual haunting my family experienced.
You can buy the Kindle and paperback at Amazon and the Nook, paperback and hardcover at Barnes & Noble.
