X Films: True Confessions of a Radical Filmmaker 9780755699933, 9781845115661

Citation preview

For Tod Davies

Published in 2008 by I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd 6 Salem Road, London W2 4BU 175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010 www.ibtauris.com Copyright © 2008 Alex Cox The right of Alex Cox to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. ISBN 978 1 84511 566 1 A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library Typeset by JCS Publishing Services Ltd, www.jcs-publishing.co.uk Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham

X-Films.indb 4

14/05/2008 16:14:09

INTRO This book is about 10 films I made. It’s called X Films because I like the Roman numeral, because I have two Xs in my name, and because it reminds me of the banned, adults-only films of my childhood – mainly horror films and Spaghetti Westerns. Not all of these were revolutionary films. But some were. I grew up with a passion for the pictures, and for weird, marginal, independent films. The 90-minute form is the length of our dream cycle, we’re told. As Buñuel and Dalí knew, there’s something particularly empowering and exciting about telling stories that resemble dreams. The cinemas I was raised in were real buildings: often huge, with vast, nicotine-yellow screens, and I would head upstairs to the circle, or down to the stalls, and watch two films – a double feature – through rising trails of cigarette smoke. Going to the cinema today is a more ordered affair. The cinemagoer is forced to undergo a shopping experience, sees only one film instead of two, pays a lot more for it, and endures a barrage of loud, assaultive ads before the film begins. It’s this advertising, along with sales of highly salted, shit-smelling popcorn, and sugared water, that makes the cinema chains their money. Only the studiodistributors make money from the films themselves. Talking to students and younger people now, I get the impression that they think a film is ‘given’ to a filmmaker – by a studio, or a production company. This is not so. If you’re a real filmmaker, a film is something that you personally conceive, and then, in partnership with similarly minded colleagues, make yourself. It might be shot on film, or digital video. It might be 19 minutes or 370 minutes in duration (I’d recommend 80–95). It is entirely within your power to make an

X-Films.indb 1

14/05/2008 16:14:09

X films  Ÿ  2

independent feature film, as long as you belong to one of two groups. To pull it off, you must be either: 1) a vocational filmmaker, affronted by Hollywood and its power, caring little about money or rewards, determined to tell your own tale; or 2) a computer (or other) hacker, because hackers are brave and curious, and not afraid of acquiring, applying, and sharing information. I include hackers because I suspect that feature film is dead, or dying, and that new blood and brains are needed to bring the twitching corpse-thing back to life. In the last few years I’ve learned a great deal from hackers: from 2600, from Richard Stallman, from Lawrence Lessig, from The Cathedral & The Bazaar – and I believe we’re hoeing the same row. Most of what I know about the loss of my civil liberties I’ve learned from computer magazines: only here, on a monthly basis, can the general reader learn about the destruction of the fair use doctrine, about abuse of patent and copyright law, about the monopoly power-grabs of Microsoft and other corporations, whose stupidity and cupidity rival the Pentagon’s. Patents and copyrights are complex things, far too difficult for Guardian or New York Times reporters to understand, so it’s a good thing we still have Computer Shopper to remind us that we’re being screwed. Today, an independent filmmaker is a revolutionary fighter, in a prolonged popular war. This is the same war that Free Software and GNU/Linux activists fight against Microsoft; that the Slow Food movement fights against McDonalds; that independent musicians fight against the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) and the Apple Music Store; that Fairtrade activists fight against WalMart and the WTO; that the Zapatistas fight against patriarchal systems of control in Mexico. There are no spoils to be had on this battlefield, and no prospect of a quick and easy victory. Yet, buoyed by belief, and by the lack of a sustainable or sane alternative, the guerrilla soldiers on. In the case of feature films, the battle for an independent, personal art form is already won (thanks to the Mini DV tape and the DVD), lost (thanks to the studios and their admirers), but irrelevant anyway. Irrelevant because the feature film was the original art form of the twentieth century. It can’t be the original art form of the twenty-first as well. Something that goes beyond it will displace it – some medium

X-Films.indb 2

14/05/2008 16:14:09

3  Ÿ   intro

equally visual and visceral, but interactive, with multiple narrative possibilities. It’s already being born: out in the same uncharted territory as the computer game, the ‘readjusted’ corporate website, and the home-made CD of ‘illegal’ MP3s. But the birth won’t be easy, and the new form is destined for a long and hard-fought war. Lined up against the development of new art forms are the financial beneficiaries of the old: the studios and record companies, and the politicians, academics and media who work for them. Their world is already dying. Soon it will be gone. In the meantime, there are still a few jobs to be had there. This is the filmmaker’s choice – dependency, and the money which comes with it, or independence, which may involve lean times. At the same time, as the studios retrench, consolidate, and fight for dominance in a diminishing market, it becomes even more important for them to suppress the individual, or regional, voice. In some countries, the idea of film as a distinctive, national art form has been abandoned. The British and the Mexicans face the most acute cultural challenge. Mexico suffers from its military and economic weakness and geographical proximity to the US; Britain suffers from a common language and from a ruling class that is scared to defy the biggest bully in town. As a result, our governments and cultural classes invariably bow to American influence. Instead of encouraging regional voices and developing new creative forms, they gather in secure redoubts in the capital city and assist in the creation of amnesia, in the effort to wash away our feelings and our brains. Rather than encouraging new forms to develop – in film, in art, in science, in copyright law – our leaders, cultural and political, seek to enshrine the old. In film and television, the entire panoply of human emotion is carved up into bite-size segments – serving a massive, antiquated, violence-fixated Hollywood fast-food chain that Peter Watkins has called the Monoform. On Paul Robeson’s tombstone are the words, ‘The artist must elect to fight for freedom or slavery. I made my choice. I had no alternative.’ What this great actor said applies to directors, to writers, to journalists, and indeed to almost everybody. But not everyone is in the fortunate position of the artist, able to weigh the political implications of each possible job, and to accept or reject the work accordingly. The choices that we make, as artists, hackers, or filmmakers, are visible in our work. No one is forced to make a film.

X-Films.indb 3

14/05/2008 16:14:09

X films  Ÿ  4

Slavery is profitable. Freedom is difficult. Money is plentiful for those who promote obedience; it’s in short supply for those who disobey. And yet, all over the world, people refuse to be slaves, and give up careers, and even lives, because their sense of self-worth, or their community’s survival, obliges them to. Another world is possible. The key film in this book is Walker, shot in Nicaragua in 1987 with the cooperation of the Sandinista government. Back then the Sandinista movement was radical and broadly based: inspiring progressive people all around the globe. Walker is the film in which I became a director. Before that I was a writer who also directed: I hadn’t established a style for myself, or thought hard about what a film should be. With Walker, the script was in the hands of someone else – a great screenwriter – and for the first time I had to concentrate entirely on directing. This task included navigating deep political waters and thwarting the efforts of those who tried to shut the picture down. With Walker I grew up, and managed to complete a political film of which I felt proud. But I also became acquainted with the unnecessary tragedy that making films on a massive scale sometimes involves. Up to this point, I’d been unduly optimistic about the importance of making films, and egocentric in my approach to the process. Later, I became more pessimistic. My most unified film, El Patrullero, was the result of these experiences. Who is this book intended for? I hope it will be of interest to independent filmmakers; to people who care about non-dependent films, and how they’re made; and to independent spirits in general. So I’d be pleased if it turned out to be of interest to computer hackers, who have replaced film directors and investigative journalists as our best cultural revolutionaries. Film is an art form, and art demands creative genius, which usually comes in individual packages. But film is also an intensely cooperative medium. One of the reasons very few women become film directors is the macho, hierarchical, and competitive nature of the gig. Men are more apt to compete, women to create cooperative structures. If another world is possible, then another way of making films is possible as well. In the Postscript I touch on the possibility of different film-making structures. Maybe in these, the involvement of women or people of colour will cease to be an ‘issue’. As Charles Burnett’s career shows, not all Black filmmakers want to make gangster films or

X-Films.indb 4

14/05/2008 16:14:09

5  Ÿ   intro

generic, Hollywood-pleasing comedies. Another world was possible for him, because he chose it. It’s possible for the rest of us, too. Charles has been an example to me, and to many others, as one of the best film artists that the Univeristy of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) produced. Honoured by the Library of Congress and the MacArthur Foundation, ignored by Hollywood, he’s only pursued projects that he cared enough to make. He’s had what many people would consider a very difficult time. Money – in terms of personal income – doesn’t seem to have mattered to him. The work has been the thing. Writing this book, I’ve had to consider many things, and come to understand some of them a bit better. I don’t know if it will be useful, much less inspirational. But here it is. In preparing this manuscript, I’ve been greatly helped by two fine editors, Philippa Brewster and Jessica Cuthbert-Smith, and I’m forever grateful to them both. I’ll borrow the end of this beginning from a much better writer, Ernesto Cardenal. Ernesto will explain what I’ve been trying to say, and haven’t managed: En una cabaña solitaria en la frontera, Yo, Clinton Rollins, sin pretension literaria, Me entretengo en escribir mis memorias Y mis pensamientos de viejo retroceden. Las cosas que hace cincuenta años sucedieron. . . Hispanoamericanos que ha conocido – a los que he aprendido a querer. . . Y aquel olor tibio, dulzón, verde, de Centro America.1 (In a lonely cabin on the frontier, I, Clinton Rollins, attempting no literary style, Pass the time by penning my memories And as an old man my thoughts wander back. The things that happened fifty years ago. . . Spanish-Americans I have known – whom I have grown to love. . . And that warm, sweet, green odour of Central America.) Ernesto Cardenal writing as one of Walker’s Immortals

Alex Cox Tabernas

X-Films.indb 5

14/05/2008 16:14:09

X-Films.indb 6

14/05/2008 16:14:09

EDGE CITY

Bill Wood as the assassin/repo man, Ozzie Mamber. I arrived at UCLA almost entirely by chance. In the 1970s the British film industry was, as usual, in crisis. Not enough films were being made; the workforce, mostly based in London, wasn’t expanding, and the film union, the Association of Cinema and Television Technicians (ACTT), ran a closed shop. In practice, this meant that you couldn’t work in features unless your dad was in the industry. Graduates of the National Film School also got an ACTT card: Roger Deakins and Dave Bridges started their careers that way. But I couldn’t conceive

X-Films.indb 7

14/05/2008 16:14:10

X films  Ÿ  8

of spending three years in a London suburb called Beaconsfield. I’d directed and designed plays at Oxford, while pretending to study law. I’d done nine months in Bristol, on the University’s Radio, Films and TV Studies course. Via this roundabout academic route I applied for – and got – a Fulbright grant to attend the film school at UCLA. I went knowing nothing about the place, or the city it was in. UCLA in the late 1970s was a creative vortex with low fees, radical esprit de corps, and, most important of all, inexpensive access to expensive film and video equipment, plus insurance. There were Arri cameras, lighting packages, upright Moviola editing machines and – even more marvellous – two flatbeds, where you could sit and watch your picture on a screen the size of a small TV. There was a 32-track mixing studio. Some students stayed for many years. The school had produced one recognisably-great film: an ironic, laconic, brilliant feature, shot in Watts, called Killer of Sheep. Charles Burnett, the film’s writer/director/producer/cinematographer, had moved on, but his print was still there, visible as an example of what was possible and attainable at UCLA. There were no restraints in terms of length, or content, of films. Charles recalls an earlier environment that was just as radical, if not more so: In the ’60s it was really a good place to be. A sort of anarchy reigned at the time; you were self-taught; you learned from other students; the teachers were there for I don’t know what reason exactly . . . But it was fun. . . it was like there was a dialogue, and there was always disagreement. Unlike USC [University of Southern California], where it was very structured and the teacher was almost like God. At UCLA the end-of-the-quarter screenings were like a crucible, like a rite of passage – and there was always another one, and another one. It was good: it taught you to be independent, to do everything yourself, and also at the time there was an anti-Hollywood feeling. It also forced you to come up with your own, original ideas, which I thought was very interesting. Now everything is so derivative. At UCLA the attitude was, ‘Have we seen it before? You’re in trouble.’

In the UCLA production programme, students were expected to shoot two, three, or even four films, starting with an 8mm ‘Project One’. Like Charles, a number of students converted their 16mm ‘Project Two’ into a ‘Project Three’ and – if necessary – into a thesis, in order to produce a 90-minute feature.

X-Films.indb 8

14/05/2008 16:14:10

9  Ÿ  Edge City

At least three of my contemporaries were making features. So, naturally, I wanted to as well. UCLA was the epitome of cooperation and competition. We all worked on each other’s films – shot them, edited them, acted in them – but there was always a certain tension, because we were all auteurs, and, yes, we all wanted to direct. Edge City was shot between 1978 and 1980. The cinematographer was Michael Miner, and the title was his idea. Later, in a trim bin, we found the 16mm titles of another student film called The Suburbs of Edge City, which must have been made several years before either of us were students there. Back in the late 1970s, ‘Edge City’ was a state of mind: a mental territory inhabited by people with an interest in hallucinogenics and catastrophe: apply here, graduate students. Michael had been recommended by just about everyone as our most interesting cinematographer. He had just directed and shot a longish short, entitled Labyrinths, with one standout special effects shot, which looked like it was left over from 2001: A Space Odyssey – a giant spacecraft with a nuclear reactor at the business end. Michael’s special effects designer was a fiery lad named Rocco Gioffre, whose triple passions were radical politics, classic American cars, and special effects. Michael introduced me to Rocco, and to another cinematographer who had just graduated from UCLA: Tom Richmond. Michael later became a feature director, and the screenwriter (with Ed Neumeier) of RoboCop: I was lucky to catch him in his camera phase. Widely read and observant, he introduced me to the works of Borges, and to Julian Jaynes’ book, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, which he would expound on in the most intriguing manner. We both knew a high-school kid, and aspirant actor, called Dick Rude, who had already appeared in a couple of UCLA films. One day, Dick told us about some problems he was having with one his teachers. The guy sounded a bit nuts, but I couldn’t offer any real advice other than just get through it. Michael said, ‘It sounds to me, Dick, as if your teacher is trying to indoctrinate your class with Scientology!’ No doubt this seems entirely bizarre, but Dick took in what Michael was saying, went back to school, and busted the teacher: it turned out the guy really was trying to impose what Mike Davis calls ‘L. Ron Hubbard’s amalgam of black magic, psychotherapy, and science fiction’ on his teenage class. The school authorities spirited him away to wherever off-kilter teachers were re-programmed in those days.

X-Films.indb 9

14/05/2008 16:14:10

X films  Ÿ  10

In screenwriting classes at UCLA, I tried my hand at writing feature scripts. I also began a short script, called ‘Illustrator’ (which was to become Edge City), about a graphic artist who goes mad. When I was an undergraduate, one of my enthusiasms had been graphics and poster design. I’d amassed a large stack of Letraset (letters and numbers and lines you rubbed off plastic sheets onto paper, back in the days before computers made the letters, numbers and lines) and the usual graphics tools: knives, cutting boards, pens, and metal rulers. So the props were already there, and it wasn’t hard for me to dream up a paranoiac tale about the Young Artist in Society. The script – written in a fragmented fashion in the style of the director Nick Roeg – told of one Roy Rawlings, an English commercial illustrator based in LA. Roy seeks to stay one step ahead of his creditors while (a) getting the girl and (b) pursuing his Big Break. His agent is the sinister Smack Hasty, who pays him in drugs. Roy wants to meet the author of the book he’s illustrating, but Smack keeps putting him off. Roy meets Krishna, a rich hippy girl, at a party, and invites her to the ruined house he lives in. He promises her ratatouille, but when she comes to the party there is none. However, he does have Quaaludes, which restore her equilibrium. While Roy is at the supermarket, Krishna swallows too many Quaaludes, and drowns in the bath. On his return, Roy is surprised to find two soldiers, or vigilantes, eating the contents of his fridge. He flees just as Krishna’s body is discovered, and heads out to the desert in his sports car, where he meets the mysterious author, and various secrets are revealed.

PRODUCTION Edge City begins with an aerial shot of LA, the camera circling the city’s most impressive freeway intersection – where the 405 meets the 10. A year previously Michael had had a commercial gig that involved a helicopter. He’d persuaded the pilot to take a little detour inland and up and down the coast, and had shot a couple of 16mm reels of wide-angle, Mineresque aerial footage. So Mike had a valuable collection of stock footage, from which he sold me three shots – the freeway, warplanes on an airstrip, and the oceanfront. All for a modest sum: $50, I think. We began filming ‘Illustrator’ in the summer of 1978, with a small crew all from UCLA – Michael; Tom as his assistant; Dan Halperin,

X-Films.indb 10

14/05/2008 16:14:10

11  Ÿ  Edge City

sound recordist; Nancy King, assistant director; and David Burton as production manager. Our first location was the apartment where David, Nancy, and I all lived: a dingbat building on Beverly Glen Boulevard, near Olympic. This all sounds solidaritous and communal, I know, but it violates the First Film Commandment: don’t shoot where you live. This is because, inevitably, somebody will cause some damage to the premises. For the same reason, the Second and Third Film Commandments are: don’t shoot in a friend’s house, and don’t borrow their car. I violated all these rules. Michael and I did some tracking shots on almost-empty freeways in the San Fernando Valley, while awaiting the arrival of two actors from England. For these travelling shots, we fixed a rubber suction mount to the hood of Nancy’s MG. The theory of the suction mount was that it wouldn’t leave a mark on the car, but this was not the case. Nancy was none too pleased about the ring-shaped scratch that now adorned the bonnet of her classic British sports car. But worse was to come.

Richard Benjamin, David Burton, Michael Miner, Nancy King, and me – taping UCLA’s Arri to Nancy’s MG. While I waited for the cast, I kept fooling around with the script. Like James Fox’s brain in Performance, it morphed and expanded. One role still lacked an actor. The film was obviously going to take three weeks,

X-Films.indb 11

14/05/2008 16:14:10

X films  Ÿ  12 X-Films.indb 12

not two. The cast and crew were working for free, but I still had to buy film and audio stock, and – as Michael emphasised – I had to feed people. I didn’t have enough money to bankroll a three-week shoot. And the actor who was flying in to play the lead, Bill Wood, was only coming to LA for a week. In the circumstances I did what any megalomaniac director would have done: decided to play the lead role myself. Bill was a gentleman about playing a repo man/skip-tracer called Ozzie Mamber instead of Roy. The other British actor, Richard Benjamin (no relation), had a couple of days’ work as a weird harassing bureaucrat. Having the director play a role in a low-budget film does make a kind of sense, because the director is always on set, and it means one less person to feed. Directors often learn to act simply by watching actors. But isn’t there an actor out there who can do the job better? Unless your name is Orson Welles, the answer may be yes. Michael and I had decided to go with a mixture of film stocks and to shoot certain scenes in colour and others in black and white. All of the opening scenes in Roy’s apartment were shot on 100 ASA blackand-white reversal stock. These, along with the ending, also monochrome, are my favourite sequences. I’ve always wanted to make an entire film in black and white: all of my films but the Westerns would have been better in monochrome, I think. But since the early 1980s there’s been a de facto prohibition on monochrome that only a handful of filmmakers have managed to get around. It’s a pity, since blackand-white images are so strong, so lacking in visual distractions. The rest of that first week of production was spent in Royce Hall at UCLA, a huge, boxy auditorium that we used as the location for Smack Hasty’s office. Michael and I had recently been awed by The Conformist: a film both visually spectacular, and of real substance. Its hero, like Roy Rawlings, is one of those ‘go along, get along’ characters. We both felt Roy was living in a proto-fascist environment, and, thus inspired, set out to emulate Storaro’s tracking shots. This approach to making the film was akin to a magpie’s in nest construction. Here were bits of Bertolucci/Storaro. There was the editing strategy of Performance, followed by a scene shot in a single master. There was a flash-cut in the style of Bird With Crystal Plumage. A snippet of Godzilla. A sniper, as in Buñuel’s Phantom of Liberty. Sooner or later, Edge City would make it to Monument Valley, and discover Punk. I’d written the part of Smack for a woman, and had in mind Florence March, Frederic’s widow, whom I’d met through a friend.

14/05/2008 16:14:10

13  Ÿ  Edge City

It didn’t work out with Florence, so I asked Ruth Schwartz, a very dapper UCLA teacher, to play the wicked agent instead. Ruth first agreed, then reconsidered. So I asked Bob Rosen to step in and play the role of Hasty. Bob was a critical studies professor at UCLA; later he became the film school’s dean. He was a most interesting and successful teacher of a difficult subject.

Author’s sketch of Smack Hasty, played by Bob Rosen. Replacing Ruth with Bob made the film a bit more guy-heavy than I had planned, but he was very good in it – always menacing, always bemused. Casting a film is usually this sort of balancing act, and you must work hard, probably harder than you anticipate, to get it right. Unless your film is set in a prison or a Foreign Legion fort, you will want a suitable mix of women and men: characters like ‘Doctor’ and ‘Cop’ are often cast as men, but there is no reason this should be so. Likewise, unless your film is about the Air Force or the Ku Klux Klan, you will want to have a racial balance to it. After the initial week of shooting, Michael and I spent several weekends in downtown Los Angeles, where we’d film whatever caught our attention: a motorcycle cop who’d punched a Mexican to the ground, a fleet of bike cops cruising past a cinema playing

X-Films.indb 13

14/05/2008 16:14:10

X films  Ÿ  14

Saturday Night Fever, a parking lot filled with abandoned police cars. Michael would set up the shots and I’d wander through them, in my best bemused/paranoid/Limey style. Downtown LA was far less manicured at this time, and there was a lot more to see, and film, without restrictions. One weekend we filmed a march by Central Americans to a park in downtown LA. The marchers were carrying banners and a flag stained with red paint. I didn’t know it, but it was the Nicaraguan flag. The Nicaraguan revolution was being won on the streets of León and Managua that very weekend in 1979, but in the mainstream press we heard nothing of it. Yet beyond the precincts of Westwood and Beverly Hills it was obvious that Los Angeles was a Latino city, and that the Latinos were kept in check by the heavy presence of white, armed police. Mad though Edge City was, it was increasingly a documentary. During the shooting period I moved to Venice, California, and fell in with a group of guys who called themselves the Ambrose Bierce Black Norton Motorcycle Club. In a Mifune-esque effort to be accepted by the group, I painted my red Honda 360 black. This did no good at all. Japanese bikes were despised by these American Anglophiles, though I had a slight advantage in that my motorcycle actually ran, while theirs were permanently broken down. The gang leader went by the immortal name of Varnum Honey. He had a Norton, which sat immobile in his lock-up garage on a side street behind Venice Beach. And Varnum possessed another vehicle after which I lusted: a rustencrusted Chevrolet Malibu. Something about this wretched car appealed to me. The quantity of rust was visually interesting (the metal was so deteriorated we couldn’t get the rubber suction mount to stick to the hood), and the car had a box-like, mid-1960s hugeness. The script recounted upward social mobility, and the two cars – Varnum’s near-wreck of a Malibu and Nancy’s shiny yellow MG – were a visual metaphor. My idea was that both Ozzie and Roy, two Limeys in LA, were going nuts: Ozzie in a traditional, outgoing, sniper-assassin mode; Roy internally with Argento-style flashes of a weird other world. There weren’t many skyscrapers in LA in those days – four or five downtown, and two triangular ones in Century City (a newish development on the 20th Century Fox backlot), known, not surprisingly, as the Twin Towers. In those low-security days it was very easy to walk into them unchallenged, and Michael and I rode the elevators to the upper floors – huge empty spaces that had not yet been rented and divided up. We

X-Films.indb 14

14/05/2008 16:14:10

We organised a party scene around a swimming pool in someone’s garden in the Valley. Christine Burton, sister of our production manager, David, played the Quaalude-addicted temptress, Krishna. Christine gave two deadpan monologues about the commune she was going to visit, and the horrible things that happened there. She’s the best actor in the film. When Walter Hill’s The Driver opened (1978), I was impressed by its minimalism and its night-time car chases and resolved to include a car chase of my own in the ever-expanding film. The campus police kindly agreed to lend us a patrol car and a driver, and we filmed a pursuit through Lot Three, the parking structure adjacent to the film school. We shot with two cameras, operated by Michael and Tom (action sequences, baby!). At dawn we filmed the scene where Roy wakes from his dream. The camera circles me and the MG several times, on the roof of the parking lot, getting closer and closer, before coming to a perfect full stop. Michael was operating from the back of a station wagon, but the camera move was down to Tom, driving the station wagon, in diminishing circles, backwards. Michael and Tom were a great team. They both loved complicated tracking shots: this was their best, accomplished in a single take just as the sun appeared. Tom had a pal called Shaun Madigan, a gaffer who also made money as a night watchman. When I told him I was looking for a location he invited me to come and see the house he was currently guarding. It was a California bungalow undergoing major renovations – windows and walls were missing, and it had no roof. We made a deal. He’d let us shoot there if I’d fill in for him as guard. I was temporarily between premises, so the deal worked well. We shot for several days in this location, which looked as if a bomb had hit it. Shaun and UCLA screenwriter Greg Alarcon played the paramilitaries who invade Rawlings’ digs. Some of the scenes we filmed are pretty conservatively constructed: a zoom out to place the character in the location, then intercut medium shots and close-ups. But others, particularly Krishna’s monologues, play in single takes. It would be a while before I realised the significance and value of the long take. Looking back

X-Films.indb 15

15  Ÿ  Edge City

shot scenes for our films there. No one ever bothered us. I liked the huge empty spaces, and took to wandering around the vast, deserted floors. Only once, when I made it up onto the roof of one of the towers to enjoy the sunset, did a kindly security guard follow me and ask me to leave.

14/05/2008 16:14:10

X films  Ÿ  16 X-Films.indb 16

at these films now, I’d say that every director of photography (DP) I worked with excelled when given the chance to shoot long, continuous scenes involving serious acting. And in each case the actors’ work was noticeably better when they were able to play the whole scene, uninterrupted, in real time. (In Spanish two words describe the long, moving master, though I didn’t know it yet: plano secuencia.) All this time we were shooting without an actor to play the most important character of all: the mysterious writer whom Roy Rawlings wishes to meet, Beauregard Masterson. How embarrassing it is for me to see that name now. It is a monicker straight out of a badly dubbed Spaghetti Western. Unsurprisingly, I had trouble trying to find a decent American actor to play the role. In those days I was a passionate enthusiast of the character actor Harry Dean Stanton. He had a particularly world-weary, exhausted, saddened face, and made a strong impression in a number of interesting films, including Two-Lane Blacktop, and The Missouri Breaks. Tom Musca, from UCLA, had a cousin who owned a pizza restaurant at the top of Beverly Glen. Tom worked there as a waiter. This wasn’t the bottom end of Beverly Glen where I’d resided, in the smog. This was top end of Beverly Glen, up near where it crossed Mullholland, the best road in LA. Up there was where the movie stars – Brando and Jack Nicholson – had their pads. Musca told me Harry Dean was a frequent visitor to the pizza restaurant. He and I worked out a system whereby he would call whenever Harry came into the restaurant. I’d immediately get my helmet and leather jacket on and race up the hill. In those days, on a motorcycle, it took a mere 20 minutes to get anywhere in LA. Inland via the 10 and up the 405, I’d scoot to Musca’s pizza joint. The first time I walked in, I acted like it was a complete surprise that Harry Dean Stanton was sitting finishing his dinner. I introduced myself, praised his great work, and asked if he’d consider reading a short script that I just happened to have in my pocket, titled ‘Illustrator’. Poor Harry Dean had no choice but to accept the script, and mutter something about getting around to reading it. Some days went by, then Musca tipped me off again, and I blazed up there. I gave a double take when I saw Harry, said hi, and chattingly brought the conversation round as to whether he’d read my script or not. Of course, he hadn’t. I didn’t give up. I wanted a very good actor for that role. Not only a very good actor, but someone with a bit of iconography behind them. Harry had worked for Monte Hellman, and Peckinpah,

14/05/2008 16:14:10

17  Ÿ  Edge City

and Arthur Penn. Those directors were my generation’s heroes, and Harry had acted with Warren Oates, whom we also loved. (Oates had moved out of LA and lived on a ranch in Montana, one suspects to avoid meetings with impecunious and impertinent students such as this.) Eventually Harry read my script. He said he might do it, but prevaricated. ‘Coincidence’ kept drawing me back to that pizza place. I don’t think he ever said no. I just ran out of time waiting for him to say yes. (Still, it was a valuable experiencee to go through, as preparation for Repo Man. And Musca always treated me to a slice of pizza and a glass of wine, once my negotiations were done.) About 18 months into the production of Edge City, I received a screenwriting prize, worth $2,000 in cash. This went straight into the film. It was suggested that I, as the recipient of this generous gift, should write a letter to its donor, one John G. Nicholson, thanking him and inviting him to come down to UCLA to address the students. I did so. Visions formed immediately in my head of Jack Nicholson, lost in Melnitz Hall, being shanghaied onto a waiting sound stage, and forced to play Beauregard. This led to another plan: I rewrote the ending of ‘Illustrator’ so that Roy went to Hell, which took the form of a Bruegelian discotheque, presided over by a disco-mixing Devil. This role could more easily be played by Jack once he’d finished his speech to the students. And the title of the film would be changed, to ‘Disco Inferno’. Sadly, Jack didn’t reply to the invitation. ‘If you’re looking for a really out-there actor,’ Michael Miner said one day, ‘there’s always Timothy Carey.’ Timothy Carey was a powerful actor with an outstanding history: he’d worked for Kubrick in The Killing and Paths of Glory, Brando in One-Eyed Jacks, and Cassavetes in The Killing of a Chinese Bookie. Michael had a number for him, and I called it. It was an agricultural feed store, out in the desert somewhere. They had another number, where a woman answered, and I had a long conversation with a madman, to whom I promptly mailed a copy of the script. Timothy Carey read it, liked the character of Beauregard, and so we met. Unlike some actors, Carey was more imposing in person than on film. He looked about six foot six, and had a powerful voice, black-and-white hair, and staring eyes. He talked constantly, a little bit about the script, but mostly about farting, about the importance of not suppressing the

X-Films.indb 17

14/05/2008 16:14:10

X films  Ÿ  18 X-Films.indb 18

breaking of wind, about how Western society was doomed, due to its suppression of the fart. On and on like this he went, in the same way as Harry Dean was apt to get into a longish diatribe about the Jews, not that Harry was anti-Semitic – he thought the Christian culture every bit as bad and stupid as the Jewish one – but he did tend, given a trapped interlocutor, to go on about the Jews. Timothy’s obsession, expressed in public, in a much louder voice, was the beauty and importance of the fart. For all that Timothy Carey seemed nuts, he was a very fine actor, putting on a performance for me and everyone else in Dairy Queen. He was the most egomaniacal thespian I’d yet met, and thus, I suspect, one of the most insecure and damaged. He was also a director, having authored and starred in a feature of his own, The World’s Greatest Sinner. Clearly, Timothy was right for the part of the mysterious, mythological madman, the wisdom-dispensing grail-o-matic at the end of Roy’s desert quest. I offered him the part, making it clear that there wasn’t any money, this being a student film. He told me this was fine. What was important, he said, was somewhere he could be quiet and prepare, on set, before we filmed. This was a reasonable (if inconvenient) request; in my head I saw myself pitching a tent, in the foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains. Timothy also thought that some of his observations, particularly regarding farts, might fit the character of Beauregard. I couldn’t have agreed more. How much film would it use up? Not that much. I could always cut the fart stuff out – though, if Timothy said it with the passion he evidently felt, it would probably be better than the lines I’d scripted. I spoke to him a couple of times at his home in El Monte. The LA County Fair was held in nearby Pomona, and Timothy urged me to attend it, in particular so I could marvel at its enormous pigs. I said I’d try, and returned to issues of the shoot: costume, location, date, etc. My plan was to shoot our showdown on one of the trails above Will Rogers Park. This was then an unspoiled and wild part of LA, whose canyons and roadless areas had so far defeated the developers. If you got deep enough into it, and looked the right way, all you could see was desert hills and the ocean. I was giving Timothy the directions to Will Rogers when he hit me up for cash. And he didn’t mean gas money, he meant a fee. I’d already explained I had no money, that the film was being made via a ‘UCLA waiver’ by which Screen Actors Guild members

14/05/2008 16:14:10

19  Ÿ  Edge City

could work for no money without breaking the guild’s rules. I reminded Timothy of the waiver, but he was now unwavering. ‘You must be able to come up with something,’ he told me, ‘even if it’s as little as 10,000 bucks.’ $10,000 was more than the entire budget of the film. I told him I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t pay for anything, beyond gas, food, film, and his fucking tent. I saw him only once thereafter, a couple of years down the line. I was going to a screening at the Hitchcock Theater on the Universal lot. And there was Timothy, sitting in the guard’s booth with the guard, singing and playing a guitar. He fixed me with an intense gaze, and serenaded me as I passed. Leaving behind the ‘Disco Inferno’, I gave up on the actor/icon hunt. I was drawn increasingly to Punk: the solution to the film’s puzzle wouldn’t be individual, it would be a movement. Punk had shown up in LA in the form of a Devo gig and the emergence of bands like X, the Go-Gos and the Plugz. I came up with a finale that was part game show, part nerve gas attack, to be shot on a UCLA sound stage. People usually want to work and have fun. The UCLA trick was to do both simultaneously. My apocalyptic game show gave contestants the opportunity to dress up as Romans, ronin, or lab technicians, and to pretend to choke to death. Among the dead and dying was the blond and brilliant Ed Pansullo, who’d played the lead in Musca’s film The White Apache and owned a cod-Native American costume as a result. I persuaded Nancy that the wrap-around to the nerve gas attack scene should be shot in Monument Valley, and that we should take her MG there. (Varnum’s Malibu wouldn’t have made it to Arizona.) The MG had two seats, so she was promoted from assistant director to second unit producer and camerawoman, and we headed east in her little car, as winter descended. The route being via Las Vegas, the director dropped acid and shot a large number of ‘driveby’ shots, most of which didn’t make it into the film. Nancy, steadfast in her love of independent cinema, got increasingly worried as the roads and the weather got worse. When we reached the outskirts of Monument Valley, I came up with the idea that Roy’s MG should get stuck in the sand. We compromised by carefully heading out on a narrow, rutted track towards a skeletal wooden arch which – mirabile dictu – turned

X-Films.indb 19

14/05/2008 16:14:10

X films  Ÿ  20

out to be the one built for the famous flashback scenes of Once Upon a Time in the West. The stones had fallen off in the intervening years, but the wood skeleton of the arch and its position were unmistakable. The art department had laid two cement dolly tracks in the desert scrub. At the corner of one of the tracks, one of the actors had signed his name in the wet cement: ‘H. Fonda, 1968’. Beneath the arch, Nancy’s car got properly stuck. We shot the scene, and dug it out. We headed back for the road. The exhaust hit a rock, and was torn off. Nancy was not pleased. A Navajo mechanic welded the exhaust pipe back. Second unit returned to LA. The last scene of Edge City is a bank robbery. (I have a theory, never proved right, that you can improve any film by including a bank robbery scene.) This was inspired by a weird news item that had appeared in the LA Times about a writer, shot in the course of attempting a bank robbery. This deluded fellow apparently wanted to write a book, or, worse still, a screenplay, about bank robbers, and attempted to gain experience by actually doing it. He didn’t make it as far as the bank. Somehow he ran into the cops en route. ‘Police Kill Writer on Way to Rob Bank’ as the LA Times put it. It was a tidy ending for Edge City, I thought, following Monument Valley and the game show. Naturally I called the bank on Ocean Avenue in Venice, just a block from the beach. I explained I was a UCLA student and that I’d chosen their lucky bank as the location for a robbery scene. The manager said there was no problem in principle – just show up on the day and introduce ourselves, and don’t, of course, bring any real guns. On the day in question, I met my actors, Ramon Menendez and Dan Einstein, outside the bank. It was uniquely isolated. It stood where there had been an arched colonnade – seen in the opening shot of Touch of Evil. Now all that remained was a threatening, square box surrounded by cement pavement, sand, and dust. I asked Michael and the cast to wait outside while I checked with the manager. I went in, and spoke to him. Yes, he remembered our chat. What did we want to do? ‘Just film two fellers come running out of the bank.’ ‘Do they have guns?’ ‘Yes, they have fake guns, but they won’t wave ’em around inside the bank.’

X-Films.indb 20

14/05/2008 16:14:10

21  Ÿ  Edge City

The bank manager said everything was fine. I went back out and explained the situation to Michael and his camera department, to our sound recordist Dan, to the actors, and to Jay Neely, who was driving Ramon’s post office truck (the getaway vehicle). It was a couple of hours before sunset. We shot the beginning of the sequence first. Came the moment to film the robbers’ exodus. ‘Go into the bank and get ready,’ I told Ramon and Dan. ‘And don’t wave your guns around.’ ‘They know we’re coming in, right?’ Ramon asked. ‘Oh yes,’ I assured him. ‘I spoke to the manager. Just don’t wave your guns around when you go in. And don’t put your masks on until you’re about to come out.’ Outside, we prepared to do the shot. A small crew goes really fast, and Michael was quickly ready, the slate prepared. ‘Roll sound . . .’ Ramon emerged from the bank, taking his mask off, and beckoned to me. I called ‘Cut’. When Ramon and Dan had marched into the bank, the manager, with whom I had spoken less than an hour ago, was no longer there. He had been replaced by another manager. He hadn’t told the other manager that we were filming. Seeing our masked robbers, everyone in the bank froze. The bank guard, an elderly retiree with a real gun, froze. A longish moment passed. Dan or Ramon explained that they were actors. I imagined they used the immortal words ‘We’re making a movie’ or its derivative, ‘We’re with THE movie.’ The guard released his grip on his revolver. Ramon went back outside to invite me in. The happy ending of this story is that we got all the shots we wanted, including an improvised one in which I chased the post office van into the sunset. The police were not summoned. No one was killed. A year after the shoot began, Bill Wood returned for an additional scene: one that was meant to explain the other activities and involvements of the sniper and his employer. Michael was in Ecuador, so Tom Richmond shot it. Nicaraguan events were now reported in the LA Times, and so Bob Rosen’s character, Hasty, claimed to have business interests in Nicaragua. The location was an oil refinery in San Pedro. Again, we had no permissions to shoot in this splendid refinery, with its bobbing, insectoid wells. When the guards showed up I

X-Films.indb 21

14/05/2008 16:14:10

X films  Ÿ  22

told them I’d spoken to Mr So-and-so of Chevron Oil the previous week – which indeed I had, and he’d refused permission. But it was Saturday and there was no way for them to contact Mr So-and-so, so, since I’d given them an actual name, they let us shoot. You couldn’t get away with that now: the guards have mobile phones, and middle management are accountable 24/7. In spite of all its negative aspects, LA was – in the late 1970s and early 1980s – a great place to shoot dystopian, independent films. There was so much readily accessible dystopia: oil wells and refineries and burn-off towers, abandoned warehouses and railroad tracks, districts of impoverished tract homes, alleys that had been completely reclaimed by native vegetation, wide streets buckled, cracked, and pitted with potholes, and so many vast concrete structures of surpassing ugliness, soaring above ground or cutting aggressively into it.

Through the oil refinery sails the Mayflower. As the light faded, a full-size replica of the Mayflower, the famous pilgrim ship, sailed past the refinery. Tom got two shots of it: one solo, one with our characters walking in front of the big sailing ship. Both shots made it into the finished film. But what do they mean? What is the Mayflower doing in Edge City?

X-Films.indb 22

14/05/2008 16:14:11

My UCLA advisor, Jorge Preloran, was a documentary filmmaker who edited his own films. His advice was to cut on the Moviola, which was, he said, the best possible device for editing 16mm or 35mm film. Until non-linear (video) editing became ubiquitous, most professional editors felt the same way: they preferred to edit standing up, operating the pedals of an ‘upright’ editing machine. But I was more the director/client type, more apt to be sitting down in front of the flatbed, with its larger screen. So, though Ramon and I shared a cutting room, and had 24-hour access to our upright Moviola, neither of us wanted to take advantage of that machine. We were directors, and we wanted to edit like directors – on the flatbed. All the UCLA directors felt the same. There must have been 30 upright machines and only two flatbeds, but everyone wanted those flatbeds. Students were limited to a certain number of hours of ‘flatbed time’ via a ‘signup sheet’. You were allowed four hours per machine per week, something like that. Everyone showed up for ‘flatbed signup sheet posting’, which occurred at 10 a.m. each Friday. My principal adversary at 10 on Friday was Rafiq Pooya, an Iranian director who was making a documentary about pre-1979 rebellions against the Shah. Rafiq would be there to sign up for his flatbed time, which was fair enough. But his girlfriend would also be there, signing up for time of her own, and she wasn’t making a film! She was just working for Rafiq. So Rafiq was getting double flatbed time. Historic British–Iranian hostilities flared, but Rafiq never surrendered a minute. He didn’t really need to. Some people booked time but didn’t show up, and if you were prepared to camp out in your editing room, you could enjoy unanticipated flatbed hours, or minutes. So we lurked like vultures, in our doorways, eyeing the flatbed rooms for latecomers or no-shows.

23  Ÿ  Edge City

POSTPRODUCTION

Edge City was edited over the couple of years it took to shoot. Due to the length of time involved, I changed things constantly. Scenes were re-ordered, rearranged, and intercut. I had no idea when we shot the scenes of Krishna’s drowning and Ozzie’s suicide dash into the Pacific that I would cut the two together. These things suggested themselves, over time.

X-Films.indb 23

14/05/2008 16:14:11

X films  Ÿ  24

Inevitably, the film reached a crisis point. The screenplay had been 35 pages or so – the length of a 35-minute film. By the time I’d cut in all the scripted stuff and the improv’d scenes and images from downtown, Edge City was a sturdy 55-minute creature. I only needed to shoot another 30 minutes, and I would attain that much-coveted grail, the independent feature. This was what all of us UCLA auteurs wanted: a 90-minute feature film. Right? Perhaps not. It may be a constant element in this book – it certainly is in the films themselves – that something much desired, when acquired, ceases to be wanted. Colliding with the ambition for a feature was an artistic instinct – imagine that! – which distrusted Edge City. Artistically, aesthetically, the film already seemed too long, in danger of acquiring a familiar narrative. Letting it get still longer would make it more normal. Ambition, routed, retreated without firing a shot. I pruned the picture back to a 36-minute, weirdo film. I think this was the better option (especially for the viewer). It was also shorter and cheaper, which was a consideration when you were shooting film and paying for it yourself. In anticipation of mixing in our state-of-the-art studio, I began ‘building our tracks’ – that is, creating new sound rolls with music and audio effects, to run in synch with the dialogue tracks. One of the flatbeds was a ‘six plate’, which meant you could run one picture and two sound tracks simultaneously. You could listen to dialogue and music, or music and effects, but not all three, unless you were in the mixing suite. This was a bit frustrating. One of the classes I missed, while throwing myself into the editing process, was the one called ‘taking care of your tracks’. Of course, the original negative of the picture was protected, in a vault at the lab in West LA. But the original sound, recorded on ¼-inch tape, was transferred to 16mm mag film, and then the abuse began. This was back in analogue days, when sound deteriorated as the magnetic coating of the film rubbed away, flake by flake, over the sound heads. I paid no attention to this: I just went on rolling the original dialogue tracks back and forth, and building new music and effects tracks, fighting to keep them all in synch. This is why, if you watch Edge City today, it sounds as if everyone is speaking down a cardboard tube. The music, by Greg Weissman, is crisp and clear, and the sound effects – including stuff recorded off the radio – are very present. But the dialogue tracks are the old, original

X-Films.indb 24

14/05/2008 16:14:11

25  Ÿ  Edge City

transfers, worn away by several years of use and never replaced. There was little UCLA’s acest mixers, Tony Cummings and Amy Halpern, could do to remedy the long-term grinding my tracks had undergone. Today our world is digital and so there is no danger of your tracks deteriorating. But they can still disappear. All manner of disasters are always possible, which is why the wise editor backs up his/her work on separate media at the end of every day, if not more frequently, and has copies of the original masters stored elsewhere. As usual in the world of independent film, while cutting Edge City I had used temporary music from other films, or from my LP collection. For the car chase I used Tangerine Dream’s great soundtrack for Sorcerer, and like all directors who use borrowed scores, I tended to fall in love with the ‘temp’ music. Bill Wood brought out the double-sided Sex Pistols single My Way/Cosh the Driver, and, despite the complete absence of rights, I grabbed Sid Vicious’ ‘My Way’ as soundtrack for the end credits. I fell heavily for another song, ‘The Funky Western Civilization’ by an enigmatic US punker called Tonio K, and cut the game show to it; and I included part of Brian Eno’s ‘The Big Ship’ (from the album Another Green World) in the scene where Krishna takes a bath and drowns. There is nothing wrong with any of the above. Should you wish to make a film and put Sid Vicious singing ‘My Way’ or indeed ‘C’mon Everybody’ and ‘Something Else’ all the way through, you may. You can do anything you want with Sid’s voice, and with the images of your favourite film, as long as you do it for your own, private purposes. What you can’t do is any of the above for a commercial purpose. Charge one penny for your CD sampling of Sid, or put them in your student film and charge for the DVD and you’re breaking the law and liable to pay substantial penalties, etc., etc. Copyright law, thanks to the Hollywood studios and music corporations, is now insanely draconian. Copy a DVD, even without a commercial purpose, and you can be banged up for five years in an American jail: that’s what the ‘FBI Warning’ on a studio DVD now says. Music licencing is why Burnett’s magnificent Killer of Sheep didn’t get a commercial release for many, many years. A severe reduction of copyright law is the best way to clear this mess up. Reduce copyright period to something useful to the public, and to other content creators: to 14 years, say, rather than the current, ridiculous 95. After 14 years, let everything – art, science,

X-Films.indb 25

14/05/2008 16:14:11

X films  Ÿ  26

culture – enter the public domain. It’s a good idea: that’s why the American Founding Fathers originally set 14 years as the maximum length of a copyright, and why US law decrees that copyright be ‘for a limited time’.1 The current version of Edge City retains the bad dialogue of all previous incarnations, but five pieces of copyright music have been replaced with new tunes by Yorkie: ‘Druggs!’, ‘Glue’, ‘Lies Are Fire’, and ‘Jettison The Past’. Near the end of the editing process, one of my fellow students, Randolph Pitts, suggested an alternative title for the film: ‘Sleep is for Sissies’. The more I came in late to struggle with my dialogue problems, the more this new title seemed to convey what my film was about. The problem was, the old title did, as well. Since I couldn’t decide, the film has two titles: Edge City at the beginning, and Sleep is for Sissies at the end. The total cost of Sleep is for Sissies was $8,000. This includes film stock, processing, food, gas money, two prints (one with an electroprint soundtrack, the other with a magnetic stripe), and repairs to an exhaust pipe.

RELEASE Edge City/Sleep is for Sissies’ public premiere was on 6 June 1980 at the Fox Cinema in Venice. It was shown with six film and 15 video works by UCLA students. The Fox was a great old cinema – the only one left in Venice – which specialised in art and foreign films. (Later it was owned and managed by Rafiq Pooya, who struggled valiantly, but in vain, to keep it in business.) A modest brochure was printed up for the occasion, with an essay entitled ‘The Role of UCLA in the Creation of the Artist’ – supposedly distilled from interviews with project advisors, including Jorge Preloran, Shirley Clarke, John Boehm, and Teshome Gabriel. The academics described their own function thus: Faculty advisors and faculty members strive to produce people who appreciate film and video as definitive arts rather than as commercial products irrespective of social meaning. It is the hope of most advisors that students produce socially responsible works, but a student’s efforts are criticized on how successfully the idea is executed, rather than because of the choice of subject or theme.

X-Films.indb 26

14/05/2008 16:14:11

Edge City (experimental, 36 min.) Director Alex Cox has created a Boschian comedy of errors set in post-apocalyptic LA. This Englishman intends a career with the British railways. Director of photography: Michael Miner.

27  Ÿ  Edge City

A film school with a stated goal of producing socially responsible works! Do such things still exist in the twenty-first century? Also in the brochure/policy statement was a description of each film. Mine was as follows:

At the Fox Venice, on that fateful day, as the lights went down, and Edge City/Sleep is for Sissies unrolled for the first time before a paying audience – on that big genuine movie screen – someone was talking loudly outside. Being young and full of myself, I stuck my head into the lobby and said, ‘Shut the fuck up!’ This was a mistake, for the long-haired fellow who was talking turned out to be the manager of the cinema. Many minutes of placating this dude had to ensue, and I missed most of the film. The obvious lesson is that the opening of a film is a stressful occasion for the filmmaker; and that when it takes place, the power shifts. The film’s fate now lies in the hands of the distributor/exhibitor; a perverse individual both inordinately sensitive and cruel, who controls the prints, the screening rooms, the loudness of the sound, the brightness of the bulb. The filmmaker should ask nicely (usually, to have the sound turned up), get their names right, and not abuse them, if possible. To my surprise, the LA Times commended Edge City for a ‘voluptuous sense of dread’ and ‘labyrinthine imagery’. The Herald Examiner called it ‘a nightmare vision of LA’. My newly-acquired agent showed it to the head of development at Orion Pictures, who had left before the end of the screening, telling her, ‘I don’t know anybody like this! I don’t know why this film was made!’ I took a print back to England. Still knowing no one in the business, I called the National Film Theatre in London and asked for a free screening. They said, ‘Who’s coming?’ I said, just some people, ex-students. They replied, ‘If you want a free screening you have to invite celebrities, famous directors, people like that.’ Who? ‘Well, Lindsay Anderson or Nicholas Roeg.’ I called up Anderson and Roeg – they were in the phone book – and invited them to see Edge City. Both said they’d try to come, and when I reported this to the NFT, they gave us the screening. Anderson didn’t show up, but Roeg did, with

X-Films.indb 27

14/05/2008 16:14:11

X films  Ÿ  28

a mysterious woman, both of them dressed all in black. It was very decent of him, and he was very enthusiastic about the film, though I’m sure he’s forgotten it now.

Poster for screening at UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute.

X-Films.indb 28

14/05/2008 16:14:11

REPO MAN In 1982 Jonathan Wacks and Peter McCarthy set up a production company. We’d been friends at UCLA, and I dropped by to see them at their office, in Venice, California, where they were making commercials (‘Gene Kelly assures the public the MGM Grand is safe again!’). Venice was then still fairly run-down, and had the same reputation for dodginess, ethnicity, and riotousness that Toxteth, Liverpool, would soon acquire. I congratulated the boys on their choice location and spacious digs, and suggested that they should also be feature film producers, and hire me as a director. Wacks and McCarthy weren’t really aspirant producers, of course. Nor were they stupid. They were from UCLA, and wanted to direct. So we worked out a plan to make three features, one directed by each of us, produced by the other two. Jonathan was a painstaking writer, and he wished to make his task more difficult by adapting a book by J.M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians, which meant getting an option on the rights. Peter was a fast writer, and together we penned a script called ‘Mopeds to Mulege’, a teenage road movie set in Baja California, for him to direct. The first script I wrote for the partnership was called ‘The Hot Club’. It was a comedy about nuclear blast veterans and nerve gas thieves, set in the early years of the twenty-first century, based loosely on a short story by William Burroughs. I remember insisting that this story of military train hijacks, helicopter shoot-downs, and the destruction of LA wasn’t going to be expensive at all, but fooled no one. So I began work on an alternative screenplay: Repo Man. Repo Man was based on the activities of Mark Lewis, friend and roommate of the Edge City actor Ed Pansullo. Ed occasionally went out with Mark to earn a few bucks in the exercise of Mark’s profession. ‘It

X-Films 04 ch2.indd 29

19/05/2008 09:09:39

X films  Ÿ  30 X-Films.indb 30

can get real weird,’ Ed told me, ‘Either real weird, or real boring. But if he snags the vehicle, he’ll pay you 20 bucks to drive his car home.’ I rode around with Mark for the next three months or so. He’d call me and pick me up, and we’d drive out to wherever the defaulter’s car was rumoured to be parked, or to his home, or to his girlfriend’s residence, or to a place where the defaulter had been seen. Often we cruised downtown in the Watts and Vernon areas, where Repo Man was ultimately made. Other times we’d head north into the far reaches of the Valley. We’d stop at liquor stores and refresh ourselves with canned, pre-mixed cocktails called Clubs. If we snagged a car, Mark would pay me $20 to drive his vehicle back to Venice, or to the tow yard. The money was appreciated, as were his stories of the repo trade. Mark insisted that every car he repossessed had one of those little Xmas tree chemical ‘air fresheners’ in it: some repo men decorated their offices with them, though personally he hated the smell and threw them away. I filed this away as an urban myth of the repo trade, but when I ripped my first car, sure enough, it had one of those little Xmas trees hanging from the rearview mirror, smelling up a storm. Mark observed that repo men should drive anonymous cars, and dress like detectives. His was the only profession, he said, apart from the police, where you got paid for creating ‘tense situations’. Over time he and his colleagues convinced themselves that tension was what they liked. There wasn’t a repo man he knew who didn’t take speed. As for the defaulters, the people who hadn’t kept up their car payments, they were all ‘assholes’. Mark fantasised being able to shake anybody down at random, ‘finding out how much money they owe, and making ’em pay!’ But he also knew when to walk away: as soon as anybody pulled a gun, whether it was real or not. ‘Some people get very intense about losing their vehicles,’ he told me. ‘You have to remember, only an asshole gets killed over a car.’ Mark worked for a big company, General Motors Acceptance Corporation. GMAC, at this time, offered health care and a pension. I set my script in the ranks of the ‘cowboy’ repo men. The cowboys went after the older, more conflictive cars. They went into the badder neighbourhoods. I named the four cowboys Bud, Lite, Oly, and Miller – after the brand-names of the undrinkable beer-type swill most commonly available in LA. Their characters were loosely based on the four members of Fear, the city’s most obnoxious, obstreperous, and tongue-in-cheek Punk band. Most of Bud and Lite’s dialogue came from Mark or one of his colleagues. Tom Richmond called them ‘the outlaws of democracy’.

14/05/2008 16:14:11

Repo Man went through 14 drafts over a period of just more than a year. The first five or so were a road movie involving the journey of a Chevy Malibu from LA to Truth Or Consequences, New Mexico. Later drafts were set entirely in LA. Though done for budgetary reasons, this helped the film: one location made the plot tighter and the action more unified. In later drafts I firmed up the ‘chase’ aspect by thinking of the Malibu as the black box in Kiss Me Deadly: to keep its menace present, it needed to reappear. Peter reckons we printed and sent out roughly 200 scripts. Each one was accompanied by a frontispiece of four comic book pages, depicting the adventures of Otto and Bud. I’d planned to draw the whole script as a comic book of some 36 pages. But I realised after only four pages that drawing a comic book is a lot of work. I gave it up. Film-making is a lot of work too, but there’s a greater variety, and you have company. You must be very disciplined and tough to be a comic book artist.

X-Films.indb 31

31  Ÿ   repo man

Wacks and McCarthy liked the first draft. There were no special effects as yet, so it was budgetarily more viable than ‘The Hot Club’. They agreed to make Repo Man the first Edge City production.

14/05/2008 16:14:11

X films  Ÿ  32 Our plan at this stage was to make Repo Man low, low budget. Edge City – the company, not the film – was founded on $4,000, provided by Bob Rosen, Wacks, McCarthy, and me. The money bought letterhead, paid some lawyers’ fees, plus phone bills, photocopying, and postage. Those 200 scripts went out to studios, to production companies, and to private individuals who were rumoured to have dough. The individuals received, along with their script, the following proposal, on Edge City Productions red-letter stationery. Repo Man is an action adventure comedy about an eighteen year old ‘punk’ hoodwinked into working for a seedy repossession company, and thrust headlong into an intrigue involving flying saucer cultists, fast cars, exotic women, ruthless intelligence agents and a wayward nuclear scientist . . .

Page two contains a synopsis that begins ‘OTTO, a young karateexpert punker, becomes involved in an intrigue . . .’ There was never a draft where Otto was a karate expert, so very possibly this synopsis was being tailored to a particular action-film-oriented recipient: Roger Corman, or the producers of The Karate Kid. Page three is headed ‘Production’, and is so excruciating that I must quote it in full: Repo Man will be a high-gloss, low budget feature film shot in and around Los Angeles with the mobile technology of Super 16mm. It will be released in wide-format 35mm. (Tests by Du Art

X-Films.indb 32

14/05/2008 16:14:11

(The above is an example of the bullshit that always goes into these things. Why on earth go on about technology that your reader doesn’t understand? Today’s analogous blather would be something like ‘Shot in full-screen 16x9 1080p HDV Pro, which tests in New York have shown is just the same as DigiBeta or a blow on the head with a heavy object. . .’) The dreadful sales pitch continues:

33  Ÿ   repo man

Labs in New York show no appreciable difference between films blown up from Super 16mm and films shot in 35mm).

The professional crew will work on a deferred payment basis. A Personal Injury and Property Damage Liability Insurance Policy, L.A. City Filming Permits, sound and recording stages, Chapman cranes, lights, animation camera, and Dolby Sound Mix Facility will be donated by UCLA.

(Translation: the crew are amateurs, will work for free, and will break things when we shoot in your home.) Richard Portman, two-time Academy Award Winner, will mix the film. Repo Man will be shot in four weeks with twelve weeks of postproduction.

(Richard taught postproduction sound at UCLA, and we Edge City boys were pals with his assistant, Amy Halpern. Peter or Jonathan may have squared it with her. Of all those mentioned in the prospectus, Portman was the only one who could really be called a professional filmmaker.) Examples of this independent approach to feature film production include Return of the Seacaucus Seven ($1,800,000 in domestic rentals), Penitentiary ($4,000,000), Pink Flamingos ($1,700,000) and Decline of Western Civilization ($1,200,000): all shot in 16mm for less than $100,000. Currently, Chan is Missing (made in 16mm for $20,000) is grossing $18,000 a week in ONE Los Angeles theater.

Of the films cited, the only one remotely similar to ours was Penitentiary, which Jamaa Fanaka also made as a student project at UCLA. (I don’t imagine Penitentiary really grossed four million dollars, despite its virtues, and I’ve no idea where we came up with any of those figures: presumably from some Variety article on ‘indie’ film.) It must be emphasized that these rental figures are for theatrical distribution in the U.S. and Canada ONLY. As such, they represent

X-Films.indb 33

14/05/2008 16:14:11

X films  Ÿ  34 X-Films.indb 34

LESS THAN HALF the income generated by independent features – the other half coming from foreign distribution and domestic Cable TV licensing.

Note the absence of ancillary markets! Today, of course, a prospectus would include DVDs, downloads, video streams ‘and all media and distribution mechanisms yet to be invented’. When we wrote our proposal, VHS was itself such a new market that we didn’t think to include it as a source of income. The prospectus said that $50,000 in deferred salaries had been shaved from a $120,000 budget. This meant me and the producers working for nothing for the next six months (although the office would be paid for, gracias a dios!), and the actors and the crew working for nothing for the month-long shoot. According to UCLA tradition, they would however be fed on the days they worked. So we were proposing to make Repo Man for $70,000 – as follows: pre-production costs were listed as $2,000; stock and processing were $11,000 – an actual cost which had to be paid; $7,400 in art department costs; $3,800 in equipment rentals; $2,500 for insurance; $3,000 for catering; $2,000 for travel expenses; and $2,000 for lawyer and accountant fees. Editor and assistant editor fees were also deferred. Editing room supplies – stuff like tape and splicers and a physical place to work in, things that don’t even count now that we edit on a laptop – came to $5,600. Animation and titles were $5,000; there was $4,000 for music and sound effects. Lab and blow-up fees were $17,700. There was a publicist’s fee of $1,500 (presumably included in the budget to demonstrate our business savvy), $2,000 for production office rent, and $500 for a 1-inch video tape, made from the 35mm blow-up, for cable TV. Would Repo Man have looked different had it been made for $120,000 instead of a million and a half, which was the final budget of the film? Undoubtedly. The DP would have been Michael Miner, or Tom Richmond. Most of the downtown locations would have been the same, and equally deserted; but with no money to build a repo office, we would have used an actual location, probably Peter’s mechanic’s lot, with its second-storey wooden office, on a back street in Venice. Would the cast have been different? I doubt that Harry Dean would have done the film for nothing, or a couple of grand, deferred. Emilio Estevez might have done it, because it was his first lead role. I’m sure that Fear, or Los Plugz (who ultimately composed and

14/05/2008 16:14:11

Page eight of the prospectus reminded potential investors that filmmaking was a risky venture, best suited to venture capital, since there was always a possibility of ‘project failure and loss of investment funds’. Project failure? We’d been told to include this bit, but whatever did it mean? How could such a project fail? If I’d died, Peter or Jonathan would have directed the picture. If we’d all died, and the principal cast died too, the film might have been abandoned, but otherwise the arrival of $70,000 cash would guarantee the film got made. According to a profit breakdown on page nine, Edge City Productions was looking for up to 10 investors, each prepared to invest a minimum of $7,000. Does this sound familiar? I guarantee somebody is writing or emailing a similar prospectus even as you read these words. If you’d invested $7,000 in Repo Man in 1982, you would have owned 5 per cent of a low-road film’s net profits. With the same script and creative team, roughly the same cast, a specialised theatrical distribution, and TV and video sales, the film would have been in profit within two years. Imagine owning 5 per cent of Repo Man, a film you and almost everyone you know has seen. It wouldn’t be a bad deal at all. Now imagine owning 5 per cent of, say, the original Get Carter, written and directed by Mike Hodges. Consider that film’s (justified) popularity, its ubiquity – on TV, on video, on DVD. Add to that the money earned from the sale of the re-make rights to Hollywood. Consider the steady income even 1 per cent of Get Carter would have returned over the decades. The film industry is uncertain, but this is often due to the insane antics, bad investments, predatory activities, and massive over-spends of the studios and the multinationals that own them. Investing in independent features – especially good ones – is not such an insane idea. It’s a difficult partnership, because people with spare money to invest in film are liable to have issues about their wealth, their parents, and their own creativity; whereas independent filmmakers are apt to be political, angry, and scornful of the rich people/trust-fund babies who might support their films.

X-Films.indb 35

35  Ÿ   repo man

performed the soundtrack anyway), would have written us a score for the actual/deferred money, and that the Circle Jerks and Juicy Bananas and other LA bands would have pitched in songs. Bob Dawson, ex-UCLA, would probably have given us those striking video titles. How different would it have been? Not very.

14/05/2008 16:14:11

X films  Ÿ  36

John Waters, director of Pink Flamingos and many other independent features, has pointed out the irony in this: One thing is to learn how to get along with rich people. I really hate it when you meet young filmmakers and they say, ’I hate rich people.’ I say, ’Well, who do you think is going to give you money for movies? You should learn that right away. If you have any relative that has any money, be nice to them.’ Learn to like them, if you’re raising the money yourself. Rich people want three things of their filmmakers: they want to hang around, they want the hip level of their lives to go up, and they want to be invited to better parties.1

I wish it was as easy as he suggests. But rich people care only for money and status, things the artistic soul eschews. Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí followed this strategy when they shamelessly befriended the Vicomte and Vicomtesse de Noailles to get the money for L’Age D’Or. Buñuel didn’t direct for years after the picture flopped. And Dalí became a bad artist and a fascist. Artists can easily turn into notorious sycophants in the company of the rich. It’s best to avoid them, if possible. The Repo Man prospectus refers to ‘casting in July and August’ – almost a year before Repo Man was made. By this point Edge City had met the design team of J. Rae Fox and Linda Burbank, who made it clear they couldn’t go the lowest road: they needed money for their crew, and – not unreasonably – to be paid. In search of cast, Peter and I drove my pickup truck to New Mexico, where we hoped to track down Dennis Hopper and show him the script. On our arrival in Taos, which we believed to be Dennis’ home town, we enquired at the liquor store, and were told Dennis lived in LA. We returned with a pair of Taos baby boots for Jonathan and Margaret Wacks’ first-born. Responses to the script kept coming in, all of them negative. The general reaction was that the characters were ‘unsympathetic’. (This has been the response of money people to almost all my scripts.) Fortunately, we were introduced to someone with money who actually liked the script. Abbe Wool, another UCLA-ite working on her thesis film, had given the script to a producer called Harry Gittes. Harry gave it to Michael Nesmith, the ex-Monkee. Nesmith considered financing it himself, then took it to Universal. The super-low-budget Repo Man was about to become a different kettle of worms.

X-Films.indb 36

14/05/2008 16:14:11

X-Films.indb 37

37  Ÿ   repo man

Peter, Jonathan and I puzzled over Nesmith, trying to understand him and anticipate his moves. We puzzled him, too. When he said we’d need more money for the budget, McCarthy and Wacks agreed, I didn’t. I didn’t want more money: I wanted to make the film as cheaply as possible. Nesmith remained intrigued by the subject and the four-page cartoon, yet fiscally distant. I knew he could fund it, and I wanted to get going. Nesmith wanted Repo Man to cost a lot more, and for someone else to pay for it. While we were trying to negotiate the deal, I found an old Monkees TV screenplay in a second-hand bookshop in Hollywood. I bought it, and brought it to the office to show the boys. It was an episode in which the Monkees met the devil, who tried to tempt them all. Mephistopheles was particularly disappointed and incensed by Michael’s character. ‘Nesmith,’ he said, in a script written by Bob Rafelson and Jack Nicholson, ‘You have no faith.’ One Friday evening, our lawyer Kenny Mayer phoned after Peter and Jonathan had gone home. I was living in the office by this stage, and answered the phone. Kenny said he’d come to a roadblock with Nesmith’s lawyer, Rick Finkelstein. He said that, given the instructions we three had given him, he couldn’t get us the deal we wanted. ‘The only way I can negotiate this deal from a position of strength,’ Kenny told me, ‘and the only way you will get what you want is if you are prepared to walk away.’ ‘To walk away from what?’ I asked. ‘The deal. You have to be prepared to walk away from the deal,’ Kenny said. ‘Otherwise I can’t negotiate.’ ‘Kenny,’ I lied, without consulting my partners, ‘You have our full permission to walk away from the deal.’ ‘Good,’ said Kenny. ‘I’ll get back to you on Monday.’ On Monday, Finkelstein told Kenny that Nesmith agreed to all our terms, and that he was going to make our picture. The deal was done, minus the handshake and the paperwork. By Wednesday, it had all fallen apart. We heard back via the lawyers that Nez thought we were acting ‘like the rock stars who discovered room service’, and that it was all over between us. But, weirdly, it came back again. Peter and I had just completed a new draft of ‘Mopeds to Mulege’, in which the heroes were imprisoned and tormented by a bizarre American former singing star. Then we got a call from Finkelstein. Nesmith was proposing to partner up with us on Repo Man, but this time we’d be spending Universal’s money.

14/05/2008 16:14:11

X films  Ÿ  38 X-Films.indb 38

Universal was at that time run by Robert Rehme, a former partner of Roger Corman.2 Nesmith proposed to us that he should take Repo Man to them. It seemed impossibly strange. Offer the film to a studio? Why? We all knew that the studios had no taste; they wouldn’t like it. And if they did decide to make it, they would destroy it, and us, in the process. Michael was a bit more sanguine about the way things were likely to go. By very low budget, he meant a million to a million and a half dollars. These were Apocalypse Now days, when the studios began to inflate their projects’ budgets, and to make fewer films. Rehme had just green-lit a 20-million-dollar movie, Streets of Fire. His other projects were all in the several-million range. Nesmith felt that Repo Man would be off Rehme’s radar, and we could make and deliver the film unscathed. Nesmith sent the script to Rehme and his young lion Thom Mount with high hopes. Mount and Rehme promptly rejected it, saying they didn’t know what it was about. Michael persisted, telling them he knew what it was about, that it was a funny teen comedy with a lot more to it besides. Mount said no a second time. What to do now? If the Universal deal didn’t happen, Edge City could split with Nesmith and go it alone. But where? To the companies who’d already turned it down? To 10 imaginary Marina dentists? To the producer who was interested in it for someone else to direct? At least we might recoup our expenses. It was a sorry prospect. Then Universal returned to the table. The deal was on again. Years later, Nesmith told me why the studio changed its mind. At our darkest hour, Michael had agreed to go for a drink with Kenny Rogers’ manager, at the producers’ watering hole Mortons. The manager was called Ken Kragen, and because of his proximity to Rogers he was thought of as an industry ‘player’. Rehme and other studio execs were there – dressed, Nesmith recalls, in cowboy-cut leisure suits. Kragen was angling to manage Nesmith, and pumping him for information, so Nez told him about Repo Man, which Universal had just rejected. As Bob Rehme passed their table, Kragen beckoned him over. ‘Bob,’ he insisted, ‘Michael’s Repo Man is a great script! We should make this picture!’ Kragen hadn’t read the script. Nor, clearly, had Rehme. But Rehme wanted to be thick with Kragen, and so he smiled, and said, ‘Well, I think we’re going to.’ And the next day, Thom Mount called Nez and said that Universal wanted to make the film. Is Repo Man’s existence really due to the arbitrary intervention of a dubious country-and-western manager in a bar? I believe so.

14/05/2008 16:14:12

X-Films.indb 39

39  Ÿ   repo man

So Repo Man became a ‘negative pickup’ for Universal. This was a way for the studio to get a film at a lower cost, by paying for it when it was finished, never incurring the salaries and pensions of the craft unions. Universal had contractual agreements with the guilds and unions; negative pickups were a way of getting around those agreements, and acquiring cheaper product. So my first professional directing gig was a union-busting enterprise. Not that we leftist independent filmmakers thought about that. We just wanted to make our film, and we were glad that – since Universal was also a major distributor – it would also get a proper commercial distribution. We had much to learn. How to finesse the music was another challenge. Like Edge City, Repo Man was grounded in the LA Punk scene. Otto, Duke, Debbie, and Kevin were all part of it. By now I’d been to various punk gigs, including the memorable Elks’ Lodge Hall show, shut down with notable violence by the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). The LA scene had developed later than the English one, and was visually quite different: kids in larger numbers, who for the most part ‘dressed down’ – just a shaved head and a checked shirt knotted fetchingly around the waist. A couple of good articles about the scene appeared in the free papers: one, by Chris Morris, gave an account of it and profiled X and Los Plugz; another, by Craig Lee, dealt with the Huntington Beach scene.3 It was to this particularly aimless ‘HB’ crew, or perhaps the punks of Downey, California, that I imagined Otto belonged. Nesmith was cool with Otto’s punk leanings. But the music of the film? That was something different. ‘If you think this movie’s going to have a punk rock soundtrack, Cox,’ he told me, ‘think again.’ Vicky Thomas, our casting director, drove a gigantic, green 1973 Chevy Impala, and I thought we should hold the auditions in it (later it was Bud’s car in the film). So we parked it on a sound stage at UCLA, and the first actor who turned up was Biff Yeager. Biff gave a great reading as Bud. At this time he wasn’t well known: his most notable film/TV work was a 30-second public service ad in which he played an alcoholic seeking help. But he was impressive, and I wondered if we shouldn’t run with him. Peter and Jonathan, probably correctly, encouraged Vicky to pursue more famous names. Now that we knew where he lived, we arranged an agreeable lunch with Dennis Hopper, and pitched Repo Man to him. It was very exciting to meet Dennis. Not only was our lunch guest a fine actor, but he was one of the best American directors of his generation, a creator of remarkable independent films. Contrary to his fearsome reputation, he seemed relaxed and agreeable.

14/05/2008 16:14:12

X films  Ÿ  40

Dennis told us he was interested in playing Bud. Then things went quiet. I called his agent to pursue the thing, and was told that money had come between us: they wanted ‘six figures’ but – even with the bigger-budget Repo Man – only five figures were allocated. So Dennis went off to do a Mullholland Drive road-racing movie called King of the Mountain, and, as we’d threatened in our prospectus, we invited Harry Dean Stanton to read for the lead role. My friend Tod Davies had run into Harry at a party. She told me he was born to play the role: ‘He has that Old-West-skeletonVarnum aura,’ she wrote, ‘which is just like Bud.’ I thought I should do something to firm up our relationship. Rather than try the ol’ Pizza Joint Scam again, I arranged via his agent to visit him. We discussed the part. Spending time with Harry could be hard going: he liked to talk a lot about Eastern mysticism and Buddhism, but his knowledge seemed dogmatic and superficial. And then he would go on about the Jews. He seemed to have Buddhism, Calvinism, and Predestination confused, but it was impossible to say anything, because if you contradicted him, he became annoyed. I put his anger down to his career: he had the perpetually sad face of someone who had been yelled at by successions of tough-guy directors and actors who were bigger and more brawling than him. Yet, when he smiled, his face could light up, and his eyes glitter with delight. Harry Dean was, in his own words, ‘a complicated character’. And he liked the character of Bud. All seemed to be going properly and professionally, so I paid a courtesy call on his agent, at the most famous Hollywood agency. This was an eye-opener. I spent 20 minutes chatting to Harry’s agent about what a great actor Harry was, the wonderful work he’d done. The agent listened, and then said, ‘Harry Dean’s okay, but he’s past it. You need someone younger, more up-and-coming. I also represent Mick Jagger. Why don’t you offer Mick the part?’ This gobsmacked me. First, Jagger was completely wrong for the role of a grizzled, burned-out LA repo man. And second, the guy was out of line. We’d offered Harry the part, and here his agent was trying to do him out of the job. It was immoral, surely a breach of contract, and stupid. I replied that Harry’s age, experience, and nationality made him the best choice, made my excuses and left. Besides Harry Dean, Vicky cast Sy Richardson (Lite), Tracey Walter (Miller), and Tom Finnegan (Oly). Otto Maddox, heir to the ‘Repo Throne’, was played by Emilio Estevez: he did a perfect impersonation

X-Films.indb 40

14/05/2008 16:14:12

41  Ÿ   repo man

of a blank but ambitious page. Emilio’s agent had refused to show him the script, so Wacks and McCarthy had slipped it to him via his babysitter: another ex-student from UCLA. These were the days when actors still auditioned, and Emilio and Harry Dean – like all the other actors – read for their parts in the film. Nez advised Miguel Sandoval and Tracey Walter to audition: he’d worked with them both on his film Timerider. I took to Miguel immediately, probably because I acted in the audition with him, and when we swapped roles, he mimicked the dim-bulb voice for ‘Archie’ which I’d used. No actor is more politically astute than Mickey Sands. Tracey was different. He seemed at the audition to be innocent. He had some childish scribbling (a daughter’s birthday card, perhaps) pinned to his coat. I’d written audition speeches for the characters of Miller and Lite, and Tracey read the Miller speech perfectly. When I offered him the part, he was disappointed to learn that the speech wasn’t in the script. Always keen to assist a good actor in the performance of his/her duty, I added the Miller monologue to the screenplay. Miller was a combination of several people, particularly Tod and me. Tod, like Miller, hated cars and had never learned to drive. She rode the bus to UCLA, and said, ‘the more you drive, the less intelligent you are.’ Like Miller, I puzzled over stories and attitudes in the newspapers, and tried to make sense of coincidences, which seemed to occur with mysterious frequency. I never could. I should have spent longer floating in the isolation tank back in the hippy days. Another inspiration was a Venice guy called Swatty. Swatty was mad and died quite young of a brain tumour. He worked for a glass company, in whose service he claimed to have installed two-way mirrors in John Wayne’s pad in Brentwood. What did John Wayne want the two-way mirrors for, I asked, astonished. ‘So he could watch his buddies fuck, of course!’ said Swatty, who insisted that Wayne was gay and that ‘He came to the door in a dress!’ This too became one of Miller’s revelations. In addition to Tracey and Miguel, Nesmith also sent along an actor called Richard Masur. I thought he was there for an audition, but as our interview progressed, Richard revealed that Michael had suggested he be ‘dialogue’ director; a term used to describe an additional director, hired to work with the actors when the producers don’t consider the nominal director to be any good.

X-Films.indb 41

14/05/2008 16:14:12

X films  Ÿ  42

During the course of our chat, Masur decided that I probably could direct actors; this shows his good taste and political dexterity. I wanted to give him a part in Repo Man, but couldn’t figure out what part to offer – other than the lead role, Bud. On the last day of the shoot, I saw a repo-type come stumbling out of a payphone in downtown LA, and he reminded me intensely of Richard Masur. I wondered then what would have happened if we’d gone for a younger, more befuddled Bud – Masur was a very good actor, so it might have been interesting. Some of the cast I already knew. I’d met Sy Richardson on a stage at UCLA, working on Monona Wali’s film The Grey Area; I thought he was a very powerful actor. Vonetta McGee had impeccable credentials, having played the heroine of Sergio Corbucci’s greatest Western, The Big Silence. Jennifer Balgobin and Dick Rude had both appeared in Abbe Wool’s film Rita Steele – Private Heart; Zander Schloss was a young guitar strummer, brother of La Wool; Pansullo and Varnum were my neighbours from Venice.

Fox Harris as J. Frank Parnell, inventor of the neutron bomb. Fox Harris played the dying neutron bomb inventor, J. Frank Parnell. I knew him, though I hadn’t seen him act. A couple of years earlier, Nancy Richardson and I had been caretakers at the Actors Studio in Hollywood. We were just out of UCLA; the Actors Studio didn’t pay us but they let us live on the premises in return for opening

X-Films.indb 42

14/05/2008 16:14:12

43  Ÿ   repo man

Sam Cohen, the real inventor of the neutron bomb. and locking up after the acting classes. Most of the actors were horrible: they wouldn’t speak to us and they ate our food, and when we put a padlock on the refrigerator they broke the lock. The only actor who was friendly was Fox Harris: he put on no airs, treated us as if we were human, and didn’t steal our food. Fox was a generous, exciting actor. When in his cups, he would declare, loudly, ‘We must all dare to be STARS! Let us be STARS!’ I tried to convince him it was better to be a great actor. But Fox knew he was already a great actor. He wanted to be a star. Harry Dean had a hankering to play Bud and J. Frank Parnell. At his audition he gave a wonderful cold reading as J. Frank, peering over the tops of his spectacles and playing it with a very creditable English accent. (For some reason it’s very hard for most American actors to play English roles believably: most don’t get the nuances, or the regional differences.) Harry mentioned someone else who might do justice to the role. ‘If I don’t play it,’ he mused, ‘there’s another actor: name of Fox . . .’ Fox was a self-made character: as a young man he’d escorted a party of elderly lady tourists to Italy and absconded with their money, living the high life till he was caught and deported back to the US. He couldn’t drive, but wouldn’t tell us even after he was cast: we only found out when I suggested he take me and Robby Muller for a spin in J. Frank’s Chevy Malibu, to ‘get the feel’ of the car. Fox cruised through several stop signs in Ocean Park. He didn’t know where the

X-Films.indb 43

14/05/2008 16:14:12

X films  Ÿ  44

brake was. We stopped him before he hit Lincoln Boulevard. It was the first time he had ever been behind the wheel of a car. Though he was one of our most experienced and accomplished actors, Fox was also so nervous that, even when not pretending to drive, he tended to break out in hives. Edge City and Nesmith formed a new company, Gorilla Filmworks. We moved into new premises off Main Street in Ocean Park. There was a garage on the ground floor of the new premises, where in-car auditions continued. Now Vicky had an actual office, and an assistant. Other assistants, a production coordinator, a production manager, and a location scout appeared. I hired an impressively calm assistant director named Betsy Magruder. This wasn’t someone who really wanted to direct features, like us UCLA lot: Betsy actually liked being an AD. Our stunt coordinator was called Eddie Hice. Eddie had worked for William Friedkin on Sorcerer, so I had high hopes for him. He kept promising to bring in little toy cars so we could plan out our stunts. I had discussions with Dave Schaffer, the Teamster captain, about the production vehicles. Inevitably, J. Frank’s car was a Chevy Malibu and Dave was concerned that we’d only located one of these (Varnum’s having long since disintegrated). He pointed out that this was an important prop, and if anything happened to it, we’d be screwed without a replacement. However, to save money we decided to do without. I paid frequent visits to the LA River with Alan Alsobrook, our location manager. Casting continued. One actor in particular, Chris Penn, wanted to play the repo man, Lite. I thanked him for his keenness, but said I wanted to cast a Black actor in the role: I already had Sy in mind. Chris began calling me, pretending to be a Black actor, so as to show me he was right for the part. I’m fairly easily gulled, especially by good actors pretending to be people they are not. This went on for a while. The script was submitted for what is called ‘E&O’ (Errors and Omissions) insurance. This is an insurance policy that covers you in case the script accidentally defames some individual, or breaches somebody’s copyright. If Otto sang Black Flag’s ‘TV Party’ for instance, the E&O report would say ‘Must secure rights to song, “TV Party”’. This was mostly straightforward stuff, though at times there were intractable problems. For instance, in the original script, when the repo men went to beat up Mr Humphries (the supermarket manager

X-Films.indb 44

14/05/2008 16:14:12

45  Ÿ   repo man

whom Otto had wrongly accused), they all wore ‘Dodgers’ baseball caps. This was meant as a joke, since they went armed with baseball bats. The E&O report said, ‘Dodgers – copyright brand of LA baseball team. Must secure permission for use of name & logo.’ Now we had to contact the Dodgers’ marketing department. Predictably, given the nature of the scene, the Dodgers said, no, absolutely no wearing of our hats. Seeing as I’m a rebel filmmaker and all that, you might ask: why didn’t I just say, ‘Fuck it’ and have ’em wear the hats anyway? I did indeed think of this, but I couldn’t get away with it. We were on notice, and to use the Dodgers hats would have invalidated our E&O insurance. Without valid E&O insurance, Universal could refuse to accept the film. E&O insurance isn’t bad or onerous, it’s just one of the completely inconsistent nuisances you have to deal with on a film. And it’s entirely arbitrary. Cars, for example, appear to be exempt from E&O. You can specify that your villain drives a Mercedes, even have him kill a child with it, and E&O won’t ask you to obtain permission. Car logos apparently exist within the fair comment and free speech area; baseball cap logos don’t. (At the same time as we shot Repo Man, Penelope Spheeris made a film about the LA Punk scene, Suburbia, in which a man wearing a Dodgers baseball cap runs his pickup truck over a small child. How did they get away with this? Easy – the Dodgers cap wasn’t mentioned in the script, so they didn’t have to ask permission.) Gorilla Filmworks had opened premises in Ocean Park because Edge City Productions were located in what Bud of Repo Man would term ‘a bad area’. We used to tell everyone who came to visit us in Venice that their car radio would be stolen while they were inside. They would laugh, but we weren’t joking. Being perenially unbothered about living space, I was sleeping in the old Edge City office, just south of our new HQ. Nesmith had loaned me his BMW motorcycle – green, the colour of money – and it was parked outside. Though it was late, I stupidly decided I should do a little repair job on it. Nothing much, just a few minutes’ work. So, there I was, lying underneath Michael’s motorbike, on Sunset Avenue at midnight, when this angel dust freak appeared, stuck a knife in my face, and asked me for my gun. He was amped up and anxious, so it didn’t make it any easier when I told him I hadn’t got one.

X-Films.indb 45

14/05/2008 16:14:12

X films  Ÿ  46

‘Sure you got a gun, man, give it to me. Everybody’s got one.’ I agreed that, in this bad area, many people did indeed have guns, but that I, being English, didn’t carry one. ‘You ain’t English, man. You’re from the neighbourhood.’ And I agreed again, that, yes, it was confusing, but, though I resided locally, I was from Old Blighty originally, many thousands of miles away . . . Our conversation was grinding towards its inevitable end. My robber demanded my gun again. I said I didn’t have one. He asked for my billfold. A breakthrough! What a robber was supposed to do, at last! I didn’t have a billfold, but I did have a wad of banknotes and credit cards and picture ID. I offered these to my knife-wielding, bad-drug-stewing interlocutor. He took them vaguely, seeming not to know what to do next. The knife was still at my throat. I closed my eyes, and, fortunately for us both, my robber took off running. I locked the bike up, went back inside the Edge City building, and started thinking about renting a flat. Michael was keen on hiring an ‘experienced’ DP. I met one, who had just finished a feature for Paul Morrissey: Steve Fierberg. I showed Nesmith a tape of the film, 40 Deuce. Nesmith didn’t like it – perhaps because there was a lot of hand-held photography, something I thought was great. But Peter saw this rejection as an opportunity. We’d been treating Repo Man as a low-budget, independent film – but a million and a half dollars could buy us more, he said. ‘Think about any cinematographer in the world, Al. Anyone. We’ll offer ’em the job.’ Robby Muller immediately came to mind – I thought of the car scenes in The American Friend, which he’d shot for Wim Wenders. Robby was one of the top DPs in Europe: his ability was unquestionable. Could we afford him? Peter discovered he had an agent in LA: he’d already made one American film, a Dolly Parton vehicle, which he hadn’t much enjoyed. His agent said they could negotiate if Robby liked the script. So the 200th script was dispatched to Robby Muller, in Germany. Robby read it, liked it, and agreed to shoot the film. He flew to LA and we all met for a sushi dinner in Venice. Fox and Burbank were hired as production designers – though, in their modesty, they chose to be called art directors. They introduced us to Theda DeRamus, who became our costume designer. I asked them to ‘seed’ the film with would-be visual coincidences: generic goods and Xmas tree air fresheners; ‘happy face’ badges, unseen since

X-Films.indb 46

14/05/2008 16:14:12

47  Ÿ   repo man

the 1960s, on the lapels of UFO enthusiasts; and flyposters urging Edge City dwellers to vote for one ‘Harry Pace’ for City Controller. Happy face. Harry Pace. Get it? J. Rae and Linda did, and made ready to display these things on walls, shelves, and windows, up and down the mean streets of the film. All three seeded items would cross over into the larger media culture. Happy face badges, which had almost ceased to exist in 1983, soon got an even bigger boost from the comic book Watchmen, then turned into the symbol of the ecstasy scene; vile-smelling ‘Car Fresheners’ became ubiquitous in cars driven by losers; and bluestriped generic packaging attracted the interest of John Lydon and Public Image Limited (PiL). Each day was hotter, and smoggier. Then the day of the shoot arrived.

PRODUCTION Abbe drove us to the set the first day. The call was at 4 a.m. As we headed downtown, there was a new moon, and Talking Heads’ ‘Burning Down The House’ came on the radio. It played throughout the weeks to come, and became the FM radio anthem of Repo Man. Though the song isn’t heard in the finished film, it played on Otto’s headphones in a deleted scene. ‘Burning Down The House’ inspired discussion of a sequence where Otto returned home to douse his family nest in gasoline and put a match to it. However, this was never included in the shooting script. When we arrived on location – downtown LA, by the railroad tracks and the LA River, naturally – I was astonished. I hadn’t anticipated how many vehicles were considered necessary to shoot a feature film. We drove past truck after truck after truck – big, white, articulated lorries carrying costumes, props, camera and lighting equipment, dollies, portable toilets, accommodation for the actors, ADs, and production and executive producers. There seemed to be hundreds of these trucks, though I suppose there were really only 25 or so. Plus all the vehicles that the crew and cast had driven to the set. All this to make a film about two men, in modern dress, driving a car?

X-Films.indb 47

14/05/2008 16:14:12

X films  Ÿ  48

This wasn’t the way we’d made films at UCLA. It felt as if the small, secretive ritual in which we’d partaken no longer existed: it had been crudely morphed into some big, truck-heavy, industrial process. The secrets of the temple had been revealed to a gang of bruisers with beer bellies and baseball caps, who hung out with cops. That first morning, a large portion of me cried out, flee! Back to the desert! Back to the 16mm Bolex, to the cave! But I remained. Repo Man’s motorcycle cops were Officer Al and Officer Bill. Though full-time employees of the production, they were simultaneously members of the LAPD, with uniforms and guns. The presence of paid cops is a disturbing aspect of American filmmaking. They are usually unnecessary. The Teamsters, stunt guys and some of the actors are packing high-calibre weapons in their trucks and trailers: if guns give you a feeling of security, you are already very safe. All the cops do is hang around the set giving passers-by the evil eye, drinking coffee and eating (and, yes, they do eat mostly donuts). This tough-guy stance encourages the crew members to adopt an adversarial attitude towards the public. Most people in LA don’t like the police, who are militaristic and treat the city as a war zone: their battalion’s main assignment being to defend Bel Air and Beverly Hills. When folks see cops acting as hired guns for films, it makes them hate movie crews too. Hence the small acts of sabotage which occur on any shoot: loud radios or stereos turned on just after the ADs shout ‘Rolling’, tyres getting slashed, bits of kit going missing, people demanding money to move their cars or turn the radio off. Michael Miner and I had shot Edge City on our own in these same parts of town: it was entirely possible to make films downtown, or in East LA, with a much lower profile – and without cops. Officers Al and Bill weren’t bad men: they were close to retirement, were kind to their bikes, and they accompanied us through traffic with reliable professionalism. A few years later, I heard that Officer Al had been run over and killed, while eating donuts on another film. The driver did a runner and hid, so the surviving cops called in the K9 squad and, when they found him, set their dogs on him. It was all so pointless, so avoidable, and so typical of the mindless brutishness that underlies both LA and the movie scene. Officer Al’s death shows that having cops on set is not a guarantee of anyone’s safety. It also indicates how vulnerable motorcyclists and cyclists are in a city full of bad drivers. Welcome to LA.

X-Films.indb 48

14/05/2008 16:14:12

X-Films.indb 49

49  Ÿ   repo man

We shot Repo Man in July and August 1983 – the hottest, most polluted, and unpleasant months of the LA year. Almost all our shooting was based around Central and Santa Fe Avenues, south of downtown. The first scene was the one where Otto, betrayed by Debbie, walks along railroad tracks before dawn. He sits down, sings ‘TV Party’, gets up, walks on, and the lights on the Fourth Street Bridge over the LA River all go out. So, immediately after the depressing vista of lorries and cops and far too many people, I got a refreshing taste of the weirdness and magic that film-making also involves. Alan, the location manager, introduced me to the guys whose job it was to turn the lights off, on the bridge. One was very tall and gangly, and looked like Ichabod Crane. The other was short and fat, clad in dungarees like a cartoon character’s. His name was Mr Knickerbocker. Here were two perfectly preserved, downtown LA characters circa 1932, the kind of guys who’d have been waiting for Philip Marlowe when he stepped off the train at the Union Station. I gave the nod when Emilio got up from the tracks, and the assistant directors relayed a radio cue to Mr Knickerbocker, who turned the lights off. I gave the cue a second time, and Mr Knickerbocker shut all those bridge lights off again, and the scene was done. The sky behind the bridge was glowing. I was entranced. I hope I remembered to say thank you to Mr Knickerbocker. The next scene was the one where Otto meets Bud, and is recruited into the repo business. It seemed to go well, a good day in fact. A stuntman chased the car and fell, and Emilio, as Otto, committed sacrilege by throwing away a dashboard Madonna. My biggest difficulty was that, at least for the first couple of days, Harry Dean didn’t want to learn his lines. He insisted that, since the great actor Warren Oates had read his lines off little cards stuck to the dashboard in Two-Lane Blacktop, he was going to do the same. At first, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to confront him mano a mano, which seemed to be what he wanted. I was 29, he was 58, and my complicated leading man clearly had issues that weren’t going to get resolved in the next five and a half weeks. Harry Dean didn’t know his own agent had tried to get him fired, or that Emilio’s agent had demanded first position credit for her client. He didn’t know that I’d stuck up for him. I couldn’t tell him, because it would have made him angrier, and things worse. So instead, I told Harry that refusal to learn one’s lines was a breach of the Screen Actors Guild contract. I had no idea if this was true or not, but Harry Dean was word-perfect thereafter.

14/05/2008 16:14:12

X films  Ÿ  50

I made a mistake the next day, when we filmed Bud and Otto returning to the yard. Harry wanted to do a ‘baseball-type’ signal to Emilio, indicating where to park. Since I hated all sports, I rejected his suggestion. This was wrong. Having fought with Harry to make him learn his lines, I should have now accepted his input. He’d thought about Bud, and was concerned to bring out the humanity of the character: I hadn’t delved so deeply into any of the characters I’d invented. I tended to consider them interesting monsters. Harry got angry again when I told him not to do the baseball thing. In a loud voice he told all present that he had worked with better directors than me, the best directors in the world, including Francis Ford Coppola. I asked in what way the world’s greatest directors’ technique differed from mine. ‘They let me do whatever the fuck I want!’ At the time I thought this was ridiculous, but now I see the truth in what he said. Arthur Penn didn’t get a great performance out of Harry in The Missouri Breaks by putting him in a straitjacket. Harry needed the tension of these emotional outbursts; like a repo man, he was addicted to ‘tense situations’ in order to do his work. But this made for a difficult process, if you weren’t one of the world’s greatest directors. Apart from these struggles, things seemed to be going pretty well. We filmed a day in the desert near Palmdale; the scene (supposedly on the New Mexican border) where J. Frank Parnell is pulled over by a motorcycle cop. When he peers into the trunk, the cop encounters the leaking neutron bomb and is vapourised. The cop was played by Varnum, owner of the original Chevy Malibu, and it was Nesmith’s idea to reduce him to a pair of smoking boots. He’d used a similar gag in Timerider, and it had got a laugh. Robby made this a crane shot out from the boots at sunset. Nez was right: the revelation of the burning boots after Varnum’s grisly death never fails to get a laugh. The art department was on top of things, and working with Robby was a continual pleasure. But, as we got into night shooting, Peter and Jonathan told me they thought things were going slowly, and that the camera department was the cause. The majority of scenes in Repo Man were two-handers, and we covered them in two-shots. This was Robby’s natural inclination, and I think he was entirely right: the alternative was the visual strategy of soap operas, chopping the scenes into endless exchanges of closeups.4 Many of our two-shots were in motion, which complicated the

X-Films.indb 50

14/05/2008 16:14:12

X-Films.indb 51

51  Ÿ   repo man

lighting, but I felt, aesthetically and time-wise, that we were doing okay. If we went slowly, it was due to the bloat of the production, not Greg Gardiner, Robby’s gaffer, tweaking the lights. However, being the director, working so closely with the cinematographer, I would think that. And it was true that, compared to what we’d shot on UCLA films, we were getting less footage now. Robby was slower than Michael or Tom. But his aesthetic was less agitated than ours had been. He didn’t need close-ups, didn’t bother with cutaways. It was a different way of working from the more active, coverage-oriented styles we’d employed. I can explain this easily now, but at the time I couldn’t. I was too close to the action, and too inexperienced. So I became an anxious intermediary, sticking up for Robby’s shooting strategy, fighting aesthetic battles with the producers. Jonathan and I ended up wrestling in the dust one afternoon, after we’d shot the scene where Otto drags J. Frank’s body out of the crashed Malibu, and leaves it on a bench. Robby had got the shot in a wide angle, and Jonathan wanted some additional coverage of what he thought was a boring sequence. Wacks suggested another angle to Robby, and Robby filmed it, but also complained to me, ‘There is one right shot and we already got it!’ This was Robby’s philosophy at that time, and my tussle with Wacks was a chivalric defence of it. Roger Deakins said the same thing to me on Sid & Nancy: ‘There is one correct angle for everything.’ This was their point of view; it made for very good-looking films. Yet both Robby and Roger later gave up on it entirely: Robby with the scores of cameras used on 24 Hour Party People, Roger with the multiple-camera shoots of Air America and his studio pictures. Do those films look as good as their earlier, more precise work? You decide. Robby had very specific likes, and dislikes. He liked tracking shots, or to shoot on a tripod. He was happy to use a crane, if one was affordable. But he didn’t particularly like hand-held photography, because of the weight of the camera, so there’s only one hand-held sequence – the beating up of Otto – in the film. Robby’s most fervent dislike was of the Steadicam. He’d tried to use one on an earlier film, and thought it a ridiculous, heavy device that achieved a queasy, seasick visual effect. After one attempt, his crew put the Steadicam rig back in its boxes, and used them as seats. Dave Schaffer, the transportation chief, had some advice for me when the producers expressed concern about our pace. ‘Don’t waste any time at the beginning of the day,’ he told me, as we sat in one of his plush-lined, vehicular cocoons. ‘Know what your first shot’s

14/05/2008 16:14:12

X films  Ÿ  52

going to be, before you arrive. That way, everyone can get to work right away, and I won’t have to move any vehicles.’ Moving so many vehicles was, indeed, an enormous hassle, so Dave’s advice speeded things up. On a smaller, more economic shoot, it isn’t necessary to know what your first shot will be. It was good advice for me, an inexperienced director on an overgrown LA movie set. But the most important and useful thing a director can do is to rehearse the scene with the actors. Everything else – camera angles, lighting, sound recording – comes out of that rehearsal. Only if your crew is large enough to include a transportation department should they be told in advance which way you plan to shoot, so that they can hide the trucks. We picked up speed. The mood on set stayed good. Betsy kept things relaxed and business-like. Everyone – from Nesmith to the coffee department – loved Robby. He was soft-spoken, calm, determined, experienced. When Harry Dean realised the crew revered Robby, he began to revere him too. One evening we were shooting the scene where Lite and Bud sit in their cars overlooking the city, and smoke a joint. Sy was closer to the lens, Harry Dean further away: the only way for us to get the shot, with both actors in sharp focus, at night, was to use a split-diopter – placed in front of the lens – that would give us two different focal planes, several feet apart. This meant neither actor could move into the other actor’s sector of the frame, or he’d be out of focus. Sy was naturally cool about this. Usually, if I asked Harry Dean not to do something, he would immediately do it. But when I told him it was a technical request by the camera department, even Harry softened, asked ‘for Robby?’ and behaved. Thus I learned another way of tricking Harry into acting. In addition to liking Robby, Harry Dean seemed to appreciate Emilio and Sy. I also grew more and more impressed by Sy, who brought such authority to his work and took such pleasure in it. A writer, actor, and former repo man himself, Sy was a fount of inspiration, solidarity, and relaxed good humour. In the script, Otto has a fated acolyte called Kevin: a would-be punker with a convertible haircut, whom the real punks despise. Zander Schloss, who had been hired as a production assistant, wanted to play the Kevin part. I told him he could, but the producers were less keen: Zander had never acted before. How could I give away a good part to our cigarette-butt-picker-upper when real actors were circling

X-Films.indb 52

14/05/2008 16:14:12

X-Films.indb 53

53  Ÿ   repo man

the picture, looking for a part? A number of Emilio’s friends had visited the set, including the late Chris Penn, and Tom Cruise. This too troubled Harry Dean because he and Cruise, he said, had had a run-in over the affections of an actress. Though this had happened some months ago, the wounds were still fresh, according to Harry. He would surely quit, or be unhappier still, if we offered Cruise a role. Peter and Jonathan both favoured Chris – brother of the famous Sean. I gave in, told Zander I had changed my mind, and we offered Penn the role. I felt guilty about this betrayal. I knew I could have pushed for Zander and got him. I’d given him up just to be deferential, and let my partners pick an actor. I tried to convince myself it didn’t matter: Chris was a professional, and would do much better in the role. But by the time Chris showed up for his first Kevin scene, everyone had heard the story of how he got the role. An aggrieved cigarette-buttpicker-upper had seen to that. The wardrobe department fell out with Chris over his costume, disagreeing about a silly hat. It was a straw one, partially destroyed. He thought it looked funny, which perhaps it did. And he’d been hired to act in what was supposed to be a teenage comedy. So, to get into his ‘comic’ character, he had brought along this ‘comic’ hat. This was an immediate problem, because we weren’t playing the film like a comedy. Our strategy was to make Repo Man as downbeat, dingy and ‘normal looking’ as possible: so that if you saw a still from it, you’d think it was a contemporary thriller, not a comedy. Harry Dean had wanted to wear a fedora, and I’d had to dissuade him. The other actors understood this strategy via the casting, and in the read-through. Chris had come late to the production, ready to do American comedy the way it was usually played: try to be funny, mug a bit, pause-for-the laugh, Saturday Night Live style. His first scene should have been a contrast of personalities, between the determined cool of Otto and the needy nerdiness of Kevin. Instead it was a contrast of acting styles, between Emilio’s determined minimalism, and the Animal House ‘wacko’ style that Chris chose. Chris Penn was a good actor, but he was lost here. Determined to be visibly, audibly funny, he collided head-on with the film’s matterof-fact style. At the end of that day, Steve Nelson, the sound recordist, told me we had a serious problem: one scene, and only one, had a mysterious reverb on its soundtrack – the Otto and Kevin scene. The sound was unusable. We’d have to re-record the dialogue, or, as Steve pointed out, re-shoot the scene. I took the problem to Nesmith, who

14/05/2008 16:14:12

X films  Ÿ  54

had just arrived on set and heard the buzz about the Kevin scene. If we had to re-shoot the scene anyway, couldn’t we try it with Zander? If Zander turned out to be no good, we could just re-voice and carry on with Chris. Michael watched Chris’ rushes. He agreed that we should re-shoot, with Zander in the Kevin role. Zander did a good job as Kevin, and has been a good actor ever since. But the moral of this tale isn’t that a director should always hire amateurs rather than professionals. Professional actors are usually much better than people who haven’t done this kind of thing before. Zander was exceptional in many ways: he was also an exception to the old rule, that the hardest workers complain the least. Zander worked hard, earned little, and complained constantly. Harry Dean was more predictable: as the highest-paid person on set, he inevitably grumbled about money. One day, after I had listened patiently for half an hour while Harry bitched about his wages, my leading man insisted that I accompany him to confront Nesmith and demand he get a pay rise. I declined to go. The fourth independent film commandment is that actors and crew not discuss their salaries with the director. They should be paid properly, on time, of course, but this should all be decided before they begin work. It’s an issue for them, their agents and managers, and the producers. If the money isn’t right they shouldn’t take the job. Complaining about it, while others are working harder for less, offends kibun.5 Dave Schaffer suggested I drive the Chevy Malibu to and from the locations. As he observed, I was without a car and this way he wouldn’t have to allot a Teamster to be responsible for the vehicle. One evening I drove the Malibu to the old Edge City offices in Venice, and engaged Peter and Jonathan in a spirited debate about Robby’s pace and the apparent sloth of the shooting process – to the horror of Martin Turner, who had flown in to shoot production stills. While we were yelling at each other, the Malibu, which I had parked outside, was stolen. Our transpo captain had warned that it was risky to have only one ‘hero car’. Now we were paying the price. An insurance claim began, and the car’s scenes were rescheduled for later in the shoot. The Teamsters began an heroic search for another 1964 Chevy Malibu that could be made to resemble the missing picture car. Miraculously, such a Malibu was found, and swiftly purchased. An expensive process of painting it and giving it similar trim, seat-covers, etc., began.

X-Films.indb 54

14/05/2008 16:14:12

X-Films.indb 55

55  Ÿ   repo man

Thereafter, I would always joke with Dave when I ran into him. I’d accuse him of making off with the original car, so he’d be covered in glory when he found a new one. Dave, of course, modestly demurred. The new Malibu, carefully restored by the Teamsters’ technical experts, arrived on set. Almost immediately, the old Malibu was found, abandoned. So now we had two ‘hero cars’, in place of none, which is much better if you are shooting a film that depends on a particular car. Especially if the actor behind the wheel can’t drive. In celebration of the car’s return, we tried to shoot a scene in which J. Frank Parnell drove the Malibu, at night, into a gas station. Unable to negotiate the pedals or really understand the purpose of the steering wheel, Fox Harris drove straight into a petrol pump, putting a dent in the car. Thereafter, all shots of J. Frank driving were either of Fox being towed (he acted up a storm behind the wheel) or doubles: in wide shots, it’s usually me or the deputy transpo captain, Bobby Ellis, driving the Malibu. I had a fine time with Fox, and indeed all the actors. They seemed uniformly up for it, whatever ‘it’ was. I persuaded Vonetta to reminisce about Corbucci, whom she’d really liked. Emilio always maintained an excellent, cool minimalism. His finest hour was the scene with his parents when he asks for his college money in advance, while eating ‘food’ from a can. (‘Food’ and ‘Drink’ were our inventions; all the other blue-striped generic products came from an LA supermarket, Ralphs. My inevitable Harry Dean showdown came when we shot the scene when the repo men threaten their sworn enemies, the Rodriguez brothers, with baseball bats. It was past midnight, beneath a freeway overpass downtown. The prop man had thoughtfully provided fake and real baseball bats; Harry took a real one. The first camera rehearsal went very well, ending with Harry’s swing at Del Zamora with his wooden bat. After we cut, Robby called me over. ‘Just now I felt the wind of a wooden baseball bat pass by my face,’ he said. ‘I will not shoot this scene unless all the actors use plastic bats.’ The other actors were already using plastic bats. Only Harry wielded a wooden one. But when I asked Harry not to use the real bat, he was furious. Slamming his wooden bat down on the hood of the Falcon, he roared (and he has a stentorian voice for such a little guy) ‘Harry Dean Stanton only uses REAL baseball bats!’ I didn’t think to use the ‘Robby would like it if . . .’ gambit because Harry then made the mistake of throwing his bat upon the ground. I picked it up

14/05/2008 16:14:12

X films  Ÿ  56 X-Films.indb 56

immediately. Realising he’d almost lost his prop, Harry grabbed the other end. A foolish tug of war ensued, to the great amusement of the crew. Harry and I were distracted by the deft Betsy, and her valiant assistant Rip Murray, into surrendering the disputed bat. All the wooden bats immediately vanished. The scene went wonderfully. At this point the director wanted to fire the lead actor; the writer quickly figured out a way. During our meal break in Nesmith’s trailer, I proposed to the producers that we should retire Harry and give his remaining scenes to Sy. I could easily re-work the script so that the final scenes revolved around Lite, rather than Bud. I felt Sy was doing better work than Harry. His character had started out with almost no lines: Sy had created Lite from the ground up. Peter and Jonathan opposed firing Harry on aesthetic grounds. Nesmith just said it wouldn’t fly with Universal. Though the studio hadn’t wanted Harry, he was still in the picture. In the event of a terminal disagreement between the director and the main actor, it was the director who had to go. Michael was pulling my coat to certain industrial realities that hadn’t existed at UCLA. We returned to the set. Afterwards, Del (who was playing a car thief/revolutionary, Lagarto Rodriguez) told me he’d loved the whole ruckus. He was convinced a pro like Harry would never lose control of his bat, wooden or plastic. Leaving, Harry shook my hand and thanked me for a good night’s work. Harry Dean was difficult, but he was a great actor, as was Sy. Another remarkable actor, I thought, was Richard Foronjy, who played the knitting cop, Plettschner. Foronjy claimed he was an ex-gangster who had worked in the meat business, done time, and then become an actor and a writer. He wrote semi-autobiographical screenplays about gangsters, the New York underworld, and the docks: in this way, I realise now, he was a completely Liverpudlian character. Richie claimed to have invented the first heavy leather gay nightclub in New York, The Spike: not that this was his scene, but there was a lot of money in it, and the clientele weren’t troublesome. Ritchie came up with the lines about the ‘chicken man’ and Plettschner’s claim to have been a prison guard in Attica: a joke, since Richie had been incarcerated there. He said he’d written the scene in Dog Day Afternoon where Al Pacino’s character incites the crowd by chanting ‘Attica! Attica! Attica!’6 Foronjy told an incredible tale of how Sidney Lumet dealt with producers, studio execs, and other potential troublemakers: ‘On the

14/05/2008 16:14:12

The shoot continued, slowly. The convoy of trucks seemed to get longer: so many vehicles, so many miles of cable, so many Teamsters and people whose job description was unclear. Robby and I reminisced about shooting out of VW campervans: at UCLA we’d used Michael Miner’s. Robby said that, while making Kings of the Road, they’d taken an afternoon off to pick fruit and packed the van with it. An afternoon off! Unthinkable. Repo Man’s size didn’t lead to efficiency. Old cars still refused to start. A driving shot (which Edge City had achieved with just a suction cup) required a tow-truck, a camera-car crowded with people, follow cars, and the inevitable LAPD outriders, Al and Bill. If only we’d been preceded by Centurions in gold helmets and scarlet cloaks, riding on white stallions, bearing aloft Universal’s colours! We could not have proceeded any more pompously, or slowly. (The experience of all these films has convinced me that it’s better to keep the crew size down to a minimum. Hire the best people you can: but not too many of them. And don’t work such long hours! Don Luis Buñuel was right: you should shoot less, rather than more; work few hours, rather than many; and always get home by martini time. Otherwise, you’re just making yourselves slaves, serving an exigent God of Extra-Hard-Work, who doesn’t really exist.) When the time came for the car chase in the LA River, confusion reigned. I wanted one of those shots – you’ve seen them – where the cars race past the camera, and the camera pans. Not too difficult. You just have to make a clear plan: if anything goes wrong, the drivers of the cars steer in one direction, and the camera crew runs in the opposite direction. Then, if someone miscalculates, or a spinning tyre hits a tripod leg, everyone knows where they should dive. We discussed it carefully with Eddie, the stunt coordinator, before we did a half-speed rehearsal. ‘If anything goes wrong, your camera guys all dive to the right,’ said Eddie. ‘Down towards the river bed?’ asked Robby. ‘Yes,’ said the stunt captain, ‘you all dive right. I’ll tell my drivers to head left.’ I felt reasonably secure. We’d discussed it, and we had a clear plan (even though Eddie’s toy cars had never appeared). Cars veer left, camera crew dive right. No problem. We got the shot in two takes. The second time something almost went wrong: you can

X-Films.indb 57

57  Ÿ   repo man

first day of every shoot, Sidney will gather everyone there on set. And he’ll say, “Fellers, this is my movie and I want nobody to fuck with that. You do what I say. I’m the boss. If you don’t like it, there’s the fuckin’ door.” And then he’ll smile!’

14/05/2008 16:14:12

X films  Ÿ  58

see one of the stuntmen, doubling a Rodriguez brother, has ducked beneath the dashboard of his car. But the camera crew didn’t run, they froze; the cars shot past; everything was okay. Afterwards I spoke to one of the stunt drivers: ‘If anything had gone wrong, you’d got a plan, to get clear. Right?’ ‘Sure thing,’ the driver told me. ‘If anything went wrong, I was gonna veer right, down toward the river bed. All your camera guys were gonna jump to the left.’ I felt uneasy about car stunts after that. My faith was restored by a stunt man named Rick Barker. Rick had been hired as a double for Fox Harris, whom he did resemble; he was also reasonable, thoughtful, and knew left from right. He choreographed – and starred in – the stunt in which a car smashes through a phone box. There was only one special effects phone box, and only one Rick, who leapt out less than a second before the car hit the booth. Yet he made the whole process go tidily, and according to plan. One morning, in mid-shoot, after a full night’s shoot, I offered Robby Muller a ride home. Robby didn’t drive a car, and he accepted. We’d been shooting in the Valley, a long way from our Venice digs. I set off with Robby riding pillion on a battered old BMW 60/6 (my bike, not Nesmith’s) into the morning rush hour. It was one of those horrible LA summer mornings where the light is a sickly milky white, and the smog and traffic are thick. As I steered the world’s greatest DP through street and freeway traffic, I began to wonder why I was doing this. We were both dog-tired, we had spent all night on a set surrounded by immobile Teamsters, sleeping in their motorhomes. Now, after 14 hours’ work, we were riding a motorcycle home. There was no fun in this, no common sense either. I dropped him at the Kensington Hotel in Venice and headed for my flat nearby. I was presented with a moral quandary by Abbe, who was in charge of the many video elements. It concerned the character of Debbie, in the screenplay an amoral punker who serially betrayed Otto. Abbe thought this was an unpleasant and sexist portrayal on the part of the screenplay’s author, me. Vicky, the casting director, agreed with Abbe that it should be changed. I thought Abbe was being over-protective of Jennifer Balgobin, who had played the lead in her UCLA film, Rita Steele. Personally, I approved of the scene we’d shot, in which Archie, played by Miguel Sandoval, went down on Debbie. Jennifer is fantastically beautiful and it was a very sexy scene, as well as a bizarre

X-Films.indb 58

14/05/2008 16:14:12

59  Ÿ   repo man

one, thanks to Miguel’s bobbing mohawk. I saw little wrong with her betraying Otto, since he was such a passive–aggressive little prig. Robby agreed with me. But I am a white male leftist, already guilty of the sins of sexism, racism, and general wishy-washy-ism. As the days went by, I reflected regretfully on the adolescent sexism of my script. Abbe and Vicky were right. With a heavy heart, I asked the editor to remove the Debbie-and-Archie sex scene. Still I felt guilty: Debbie was still a poor excuse for a character, a dim-bulb punk, cannon fodder in a comic shoot-out scene. I rewrote the liquor-store scene: Duke would still die, a plethora of platitudes on his lips. But Debbie would survive, and, rejecting Otto’s invitation to rekindle their love affair, would walk, unscathed and fearless, into the night. This was a good idea. Jennifer and Emilio played their goodbyes perfectly, and Debbie made her exit on a high note, unlike Duke. By alerting the director, the TV coordinator and casting director improved the picture. Could a film made by a group – where all take the role of director, say – reach a decision like this? Presumably it could. Who knows? Maybe this interaction points to a more collaborative system, in which a group might make decisions more quickly. The least inspiring day of the shoot involved the first death of Archie. Miguel Sandoval, a very inspirational actor, was playing Archie. Sando, who’d been hired partially for his swimming prowess, told us that morning that he couldn’t swim.7 The scene was a Beverly Hillsstyle mansion, into which the punks had broken. There was supposed to be a pool surrounded by statues. But ours was a low-budget Hollywood film: the mansion was in miniature, and the ‘breakable’ props were few. In the shooting script Archie was killed by an arrow, fired from the bow of Duke. Dick Rude asked me: ‘What should my expression be, after I see I’ve accidentally killed Archie?’ I had an answer ready: it entailed what I knew about Pudovkin’s editing experiments (very little), and a story about John Wayne being directed by John Ford on the set of The Searchers. Wayne’s character had just discovered a white family massacred by savage Redskins. Wayne wanted to know what look he should have on his face. ‘Duke, don’t think of anything,’ Ford told him. ‘Relax, and think of nothing at all.’ The juxtaposition of Wayne’s expression with the unseen horror in The Searchers is a magnificent moment in a great film. I thought that I could now put this time-honoured theory into practice. ‘Duke, don’t think of anything,’ I

X-Films.indb 59

14/05/2008 16:14:13

X films  Ÿ  60

told him (I called all the actors by their character names, imagining myself a Method Director). ‘Relax, and think of nothing at all.’ Dick let his face go completely blank. Back in the editing room, we cut the scene together. It was not a good scene: there was no swimming, a strangled off-screen cry, and Dick Rude with a blank expression on his face, thinking of nothing at all. This was a lesson that, no matter how much one reads about John Ford, or Buñuel, or any other filmmaker, these easy shortcuts don’t exist. One time, for certain people, maybe they did. A director must work hard, and the actors act hard, to make a good film.

Susan Barnes and Olivia Barash question Emilio Estevez. In a TV studio at UCLA we built the interior of Agent Rogersz’ surveillance van. We also filmed on this stage the scenes where Otto was tortured by Leila, under Agent Rogersz’ supervision. These scenes were based on the famous ‘obedience’ experiments of the social psychologist Stanley Milgram in 1963. Milgram encouraged quite ordinary Americans to ‘electrocute’ their peers as punishment for a mistake. The ‘electrocution’ was fake, and the screaming victims were actors, but the experimenter discovered that almost everyone is up for a spot of torture, as long as an ‘authority figure’ tells them it’s okay. (I think this short scene is one reason Repo Man has remained relatively ‘modern’ and interesting, over the years.) Another modern element of Repo Man is the presence of nuclear weapons, and the likelihood of nuclear war. I’d written a script for Adrian Lyne, the British director, about a nuclear attack on Seattle.

X-Films.indb 60

14/05/2008 16:14:13

61  Ÿ   repo man

I was particularly astonished by the neutron bomb: the radiation weapon which killed people, but left the infrastructure standing. I gave Adrian the first draft, called ‘The Happy Hour’. He told me it would be his next picture, and went off to direct Flashdance instead. The 14 different drafts of Repo Man had various endings, all involving the neutron bomb, usually located in J. Frank’s trunk. In one, Otto and Leila drove the Malibu to the jungles of the Yucatan to sign up for the Revolution. In another, Kevin, clad in a white contamination suit, hijacked the Malibu/bomb from under the repo men’s noses. The most extreme ending – in which the neutron bomb in the trunk was accidentally set off, destroying LA – was the one that Mount and Rehme had allegedly read. It was the one the studio had signed off on. So it was the one we had to shoot.8 We’d scheduled a two-night shoot at an old Nike missile site in the Santa Monica Mountains for the showdown scene. A police helicopter was due to arrive, and in the resulting melee, the neutron bomb to explode. We drove one of the Malibus and several other picture vehicles up to the old base, as a thick fog descended on the coast. Emilio and Harry Dean arrived and sat in their trailers while we waited for the fog to lift. It didn’t. It was so thick we couldn’t shoot: the lights weren’t powerful enough to reach the actors’ faces. The helicopter, with a powerful searchlight and a stunt man dressed as a police sniper, couldn’t find us. Around three in the morning, we called it off. This fog, unusually persistent, was forecast to last. We rescheduled the final sequence for the end of the shoot. That night/day I overslept, and woke just after crew call. I got to the set an hour late. Nobody mentioned it. I apologised to everybody. Everyone was pleased that I’d fucked up so visibly. Nobody likes Johnny-on-the-Spot. But better not be late twice. The location was a shut-down hospital in West LA, where we were to film the night scenes in which Otto seeks absolution from Bud, and escapes from the Blond Men. It was a busy, agreeable night. We moved fast, got a lot done. At the end, Jonathan and Martin told me they’d been discussing Tracey’s character, Miller: how he’d turned out to be the most interesting and enigmatic of the repo men. They’d come up with a new ending for the film. Still guilty over my lateness, I didn’t freak out, but sat down to listen. Their idea was this: there wasn’t a neutron bomb in the trunk. J. Frank had it wrong. Instead there was some sort of device – maybe an alien flying machine, maybe a time machine – which was sentient,

X-Films.indb 61

14/05/2008 16:14:13

X films  Ÿ  62 X-Films.indb 62

and which repelled all efforts to control it. When Otto discovered Bud with the car, the car would be glowing like the radioactive isotope in Kiss Me Deadly. The CIA Blond Men, the repo men, the men in fallout suits, all would try to reach the car, only to be repelled by its mysterious power. Then Miller, unafraid and unaffected, would walk up, get in the driver’s seat, and invite Otto to take a ride. I thought their idea was brilliant. It resolved the problem of Miller, who had become the most interesting and important figure in the repo yard, and who otherwise would simply vanish at the end. And it meant we didn’t need to destroy LA. This was better, since I’d become attached to the place, sort of. Animals might flee it, but humans clung to every part of LA. It would always be a dreadful hell-world, but so many nice people lived there. It was a shame to kill them all off, even in fiction, just to make the obvious point that nuclear bombs were bad. Everyone knew that, already. Under the terms of the ‘negative pickup’ agreement, we couldn’t substantially change the screenplay without Universal’s consent: otherwise, they could say Repo Man wasn’t a ‘fair facsimile’ of the original screenplay, and refuse to accept/pay for it. We had less than a week of shooting left, and there was no way Universal would respond within a couple of days. Our only hope was to convince Nesmith, and let him deal with it. Next day, the producers delegated me to sell Nez on the plan. Robby was convinced it could be done cheaply: ‘Just paint the car with luminous paint and light down the axis of the camera.’ I headed for the payphones. These were the days before mobiles (no video assists on the cameras, either, plus no digital editing, no screenwriting software, no global positioning devices, no CGI . . . how on earth did we manage to make films?), and if you were on set and needed to make a call, you went to the call box on the corner. The call box here was outside Davy Jones’ Liquor Locker, in Venice, just over the road from the bank we’d robbed in Edge City. I poured several dollars’ worth of quarters into the only phone that worked, and called our executive producer in faroff Monterrey. I told Michael about the new ending: he liked it. But he didn’t want to bring it to Universal’s notice at this time. Things were going on over there, he said, that might, or might not, be good for us. Now was not the time for us to propose changes. The best thing, Nez reasoned, was to shoot the scripted ending, and then ask the studio for more money later. This was a reasonable plan: it would have primed the budgetary pump, had Universal gone for it. But, if anything was going wrong,

14/05/2008 16:14:13

63  Ÿ   repo man

I thought we should run with the new ending and do it now. If the studio turned against the picture, they weren’t likely to cough up more dosh. We argued back and forth. An elderly lady approached the payphones. She tried the other telephones to see if they were functioning. They weren’t – I had the only working phone. ‘Young man,’ she said, pathetically sweetly, ‘can you help me?’ I kept talking, trying to convince Nesmith. She tapped my arm. ‘I’m being thrown out of my home and I must call my son . . .’ Michael was pointing out that if he called Universal, pitched the new ending, and they said no, it could be strategically bad for the picture. I agreed, but said my instinct was to do it anyway: tell them, give them a deadline, see what they say. The old lady patted my arm again. ‘If I could just use that phone. They’re throwing me out of my home, you see . . .’ I refused to surrender the phone. I kept on bugging Nesmith, trying to persuade him he should make that call. Eventually the old lady, probably weeping, wandered away. She wasn’t a crazy person. Several old hotels on the boardwalk in Venice had housed old, retired, poor people for a long time. Recently the building owners had begun raising the rent, throwing the tenants out, and selling the flats as condos. Maybe her son would have been able to assist. Probably not. I’ll never know, because I didn’t help her. Nesmith made the call to Universal, who, surprisingly, agreed to the new ending. It was quickly written up, probably by Jonathan and Martin, and distributed as ‘green’ (or ‘yellow’ or whatever colour’s turn it was) pages to the crew. In the new finale, the helicopter landed and disgorged our televangelist, Reverend Larry, plus two additional characters: a rabbi, to be played by Jonathan, and a priest, to be played by Pete. It’s always nice to shoot the first scenes first and the last scenes last, and I was looking forward to the rescheduled scenes where Emilio found Harry Dean in the glowing Malibu, the minions of authority descended en masse, and Tracey flew the car away. But a huge kerfuffle had grown up around the glowing car. One of the Malibus had been stripped of its motor and other heavy elements, and painted, inside and out, with the reflective paint used for highway signs. There was a crane to lift it up. All well and practical, until a Hollywood special effects crew arrived to position a mirror. This didn’t seem hard to me or Robby, but the ‘specialist team’ managed to occupy four hours of our penultimate evening stroking beards and sporting leather crew jackets, while the rest of us waited.

X-Films.indb 63

14/05/2008 16:14:13

X films  Ÿ  64

The prevarication, condescension, and slowness of these Hollywood types is my most vivid memory of that evening: it’s the only time I can remember sitting around for hours, doing nothing, on an independent feature film. When, in postproduction, we needed additional footage of the glowing Malibu, we didn’t invite the experts back. As Robby had suggested, we parked the car behind the production office, got a mirror, and lit it ourselves. On our last afternoon, Vicky came into the production office and asked me, ‘Is there a part for Mohammed Ali in this picture?’ I said, yes, of course there was. ‘Well,’ said Vicky, ‘he’s down the street in Gold’s Gym. You ought to talk to him.’ Gold’s Gym was then a small, storefront operation on Main Street, and Mohammed was probably the best-loved human being in the world. We hastened there. In the gym, I approached Mohammed, and asked him if he would consider acting. He was very soft-spoken, and I had to lean in close to hear his reply. ‘Yeah, I might. What’s the part like?’ I told him a little bit about the final scene, and invented a role for him: after Rev Larry, a priest, and a rabbi attempted to approach the Malibu, and were blasted back, he, Mohammed, would emerge from the helicopter, approach the glowing car, and almost reach it, before being forced back, surrendering the prize to Miller. ‘Sounds fine,’ said Mohammed. ‘But the thing is, I have a manager now. And he doesn’t let me do anything for free any more. I have to be paid a million dollars, whatever it is I do. Half a million before, and the other half a million after. When is this movie that you want to do?’ ‘This evening.’ ‘Uh huh. Well, here’s what you have to do to make this work. Get on the phone to your people. See if they’ll come up with the million. I’ll be right here for another hour or so. If they will, come back and let me know, and I’ll see you tonight.’ Vicky and I went back to the office and called Nesmith. Nez agreed it was a good idea, but didn’t think the studio would fork out a million bucks for a cameo – even this one. And it was Friday afternoon: everyone had already left the office. Vicky went back to tell Mohammed we wouldn’t need him. He was relaxed about not being hired for Repo Man. On the last day of the shoot, we drove around downtown on a camera car, then went for a beer. I called Alan, the location manager, to invite him to join us. Somehow I misdialled, and a voice answered ‘Directors Guild of America’. A plate of shrimp, no? I wasn’t a member of the

X-Films.indb 64

14/05/2008 16:14:13

65  Ÿ   repo man

Directors Guild, and the misdialled call made me wonder if I should be. I talked it over with my American agent, who advised me not to join. My agent was a lovely woman, who had taken on a number of former UCLA clients. Politically, she was quite liberal. Maybe she had that peculiar American prejudice against unions; anyway, she was dismissive of the Guild. ‘We can negotiate better terms for you than the Guild can,’ she told me. This might have been true, but only for a while. It was divisive logic – 1980s thinking – the idea that the clever individual doesn’t need a union to support him or her when negotiating with a powerful corporation. You’re foolish to be fooled by it, as some of us were. Robby and I said our goodbyes. He was off to prepare for Paris, Texas – and another six weeks on the road with Harry Dean. I took off in my pickup with my old pal, Tom Musca. We spent three nights camping and hiking around Cottonwood Lakes in the Sierra Nevada. After so many days and nights spent downtown LA, the California mountains were major boosts to our personal happiness and immune systems. Tom and I walked through New Army Pass, a pile of rocks 12,000 feet above sea level, overlooking Sequoia National Park. We camped beside South Fork Lake and watched an endless, multicoloured sunset. We swam in Dinosaur Lake – man, that water was cold. We’d lugged in heavy packs and began to think that a week of bracing dips in ice-cold water might be a couple of dips too many. Down in the California Central Valley, we both knew of certain inviting hot springs . . . So we left early, hiking back down the trail in a hurry, to beat the crowds who would no doubt swarm in on Labor Day. We loaded our rucksacks into my truck and headed up the hill from the trailhead. It was a long, winding, uphill dirt road. ‘Wonder how ordinary cars can make it out of here?’ mused Musca, thinking about his old Volvo back in LA. I laughed, and put ’er into third. The truck backfired, and the back axle snapped in two with a loud bang. The gears and brakes went out. We slowed, then started rolling backwards, down the hill, brakeless. I steered the truck away from the cliff edge, into the rock wall. In spite of Labor Day, no one was on the road. After a long while, a park ranger passed us, and, taking Tom’s American Automobile Association particulars, drove on over the hill – en route to fight a forest fire and summon us a tow truck. We waited for hours on that empty dirt road surrounded by rocks, beside my doomed pickup in the hot sun, more than a little mad.

X-Films.indb 65

14/05/2008 16:14:13

X films  Ÿ  66

Late in the day, we heard a vehicle approaching. Musca commented that Tracey Walter should be driving the tow truck that was our salvation. By now I’d had enough of ‘plate of shrimp’ coincidences. Over the hill, the truck appeared. The cab bore a sign: MILLER’S TOWING.

POSTPRODUCTION Our editor, Dennis Dolan, cut standing up at the Moviola. He didn’t make splices, insisting they slowed him down. Instead he’d make the cuts and paper-tape the two bits of film together. There was always at least one assistant, usually two, standing by to splice the film. Dennis had longish hair, a beard, and looked like a biker. His assistants looked like biker chicks. He was a real old-school editor, who’d worked for Peckinpah. Dennis wasn’t shy about requesting additional shots – not just transitions or inserts, but new scenes or new parts of scenes. He thought we ought to see more of the mystery Malibu, and pointed out that we were short on material for the finale. He hated the scene in which Duke slew Archie with his bow. I was in favour of cutting it out entirely, but Dennis wanted to know what happened to Archie – why did he disappear? Since we were planning to shoot pickups, Dennis proposed a second demise for Archie, in which – after Duke burned his hand on the radioactive trunk handle – Sando’s character would take over the gang, throw the trunk open, and be fried, as Varnum had been in scene one. Michael Nesmith wanted pickups, too: he was concerned that there was little physical ‘car violence’ in the run-up to the baseball bat scene. Bud’s Impala chased the Rodriguez brothers’ Falcon through largely empty streets, and there was little or no physical contact between the cars. With Bullitt, or The French Connection in mind, perhaps, Nez advised: ‘When you go back downtown with those cars, Alex, don’t be afraid to beat ’em up. Run ’em into each other.’ Yet the stunt guys, usually gung-ho, were strangely reticent. On the first two takes, they barely touched bumpers. ‘Don’t be afraid to beat ’em up,’ I insisted, ‘Run ’em into each other!’ The drivers shook their heads. ‘We’ve been told not to damage the cars too much,’ one of them explained. I asked who’d given him these instructions. ‘Michael Nesmith. He’s worried about getting a bill from the owners of the Falcon.’ I convinced them to bump the cars a tad more, but Repo Man

X-Films.indb 66

14/05/2008 16:14:13

67  Ÿ   repo man

remains one of the least noteworthy of car-themed films, in terms of vehicular destruction. Robby and Harry Dean were gone, but half a dozen other actors were still around. Sy added a new line to the first repo office scene: when Lite entered and saw the spilled beer, he now asked, ‘Somebody piss on the floor again?’ Some critics have remarked how a moving shot in Repo Man, filmed shortly after sunset, very purple in hue, is ‘the quintessential Robby Muller shot’. This shot, crossing the Fourth Street Bridge, was done by Bob Richardson, who also filmed the second death of Archie, various transitions, and the aerial sequence that concludes the film; he and Tom Richmond shot additional chase footage in the LA River. The pickups and reshoots went faster now that the crew was smaller. Gone were the huge white trucks, gone were the rentacops, and we were down to one Teamster, Bobby Ellis, who was doubling Fox. Bobby was a good actor; one night, he also played a cop. We were downtown LA again, with the Ford Falcon, the Chevy Impala, and the surviving Malibu. We were grabbing driving shots – without permits – shooting on and off the freeways and the deserted streets. (You could never get permission to shoot on the freeways, so all the freeway shots in Repo Man and Edge City were ‘winged’.) Around three or four in the morning, the LAPD pulled us all over. And an odd-looking bunch we were: four or five guys, one hand-held movie camera, and three beaten-up 1960s cars. The cops were keen on taking us to the cells. ‘You’re not allowed on the streets without at least two officers at all times,’ their leader told me. ‘Oh, we do have officers,’ I lied. ‘Where are they?’ this sergeant wanted to know. ‘Back at the base, with all the trucks and the other equipment,’ I explained. ‘Let me speak to ’em,’ he said. I picked up the walkie-talkie off the seat of the Malibu, and mumbled into it. ‘Any of the officers near a walkie?’ I asked, of nobody, for there were no officers, no base camp, and no trucks. The walkie-talkie crackled. ‘Yeah,’ said a voice. ‘Who’s this?’ ‘This is Alex, the director,’ said Alex, the director, no idea who he was speaking to. ‘I’m with the little unit and we’ve been pulled over by some of your colleagues, and they want to know where you are.’

X-Films.indb 67

14/05/2008 16:14:13

X films  Ÿ  68

‘I’m with the main unit,’ said the voice, impatiently. ‘Let me talk to ’em.’ I handed the arresting officer the walkie. The voice asked them their names. They told him who they were. ‘Listen, guys,’ the mysterious police voice said, ‘I’m back at base here, waiting for these guys to get done so we can all go home.’ ‘Well, you oughta be with ’em,’ said the cop. ‘Right now they’re shooting on the street without an officer present.’ ‘I reckon they’re done. Isn’t that right?’ I said, yes, indeed, we were done. The cops nodded. ‘Okay, I’m gonna send ’em back to you,’ said the sergeant. He almost handed back the walkie-talkie. Then he pressed the talk button again. ‘Who is this?’ ‘Officer Bob, LAPD.’ ‘Ten Four, Officer Bob.’ They got back in their LAPD cruisers and took off. I walked over to the Falcon. Everyone was in fits of laughter. Lying on the floor of the car was Bobby, in his J. Frank widow’s-peak makeup, holding the only other walkie we had. ‘Ten Four, Officer Bob!’ Looking at the finished film (or rather two finished films, since the TV version is quite different), I think the writing of Repo Man is better than the direction. This was only my second picture, and I hadn’t evolved much. Fox and Burbank understood the script, and Alsobrook went for the most broken, concrete, and alien locations. An aesthetic of ‘brokenness’ developed to fit the film: old cars whose motors failed, punk fashions, J. Frank’s sunglasses, Agent Rogersz’ artificial hand, the gag of the severed boots . . . The Repo Map of LA is quite precise. No one other than Miller or Otto even has a home. They spend their time in cars and telephone boxes, on which their lives depend (Bud spends far more time waiting in phone booths than he does smashing them). When J. Frank’s around, these familiar objects become deathtraps. Yet the characters still cling to them. There were no cellphones back in the summer of 1983, or SUVs, as our fragile humans scuttled across hot concrete parking lots, from car, to payphone, to car. The punk score came about gradually. It appeared as source music (‘Pablo Picasso’); existing songs were sung by characters (‘TV Party’). The Circle Jerks appeared in sequinned jackets doing a lounge act, and we showed the film to Iggy Pop, hoping he’d write our title music.

X-Films.indb 68

14/05/2008 16:14:13

69  Ÿ   repo man

But the two composers, Tito Larriva and Steve Hufsteter (half of Los Plugz), were as interested in Latino music and surf rock as they were in punk. There was a little tension between Los Plugz and Iggy. Iggy had just moved out to LA and got a mohawk (this was de rigeur for rock stars in the mid 1980s: when Joe Strummer came to LA he did the same). Stevie and I went to Ig’s flat off Sunset Strip to discuss the main theme. Iggy felt it should resemble the Batman theme. I thought this was an excellent idea. Stevie, like any composer, wanted Iggy to integrate his piece into the music Stevie and Tito were writing. He wasn’t sure about the Batman thing, though the song Iggy wrote turned out to be spot-on. The lyrics reflected both the script, and Iggy’s own apocalyptic take on the consumer culture: ‘a page out of a comic book, a chicken hanging on a hook, a reverie, a babbling brook, a sermonette, a TV cook . . .’ His guitar player was Steve Jones, late of the Sex Pistols, another recent LA arrival. These were all edgy, thoroughbred musicians. It could, in other circumstances, have been a horrible disaster. But our music disaster was yet to come. Sometimes, independent films are saddled with an industry ‘oldtimer’ so as to give order to a process that has become disorderly. Repo Man is unique in that Peter, Jonathan, and I imposed one of these ‘oldtimers’ on ourselves. Everything else in postproduction was going swimmingly. Dennis was a great editor. Warren Hamilton’s sound effects team was precise and dedicated (they told me the provenance of all the effects, and were particularly proud of Bud’s car engine, previously used for Nick Nolte’s muscle car in 48 Hours). Dialogue and music were proceeding on schedule. Yet, just to be on the safe side, we hired a music editor. Not just any music editor, but a man who had been, before he retired, the ‘music guy’ at one of the studios – I think it was Paramount. Missing the action, our man had presented himself to Peter and Jonathan as an experienced music editor, who’d do the job for cheap. What does a music editor have to do? Not much. S/he must attend screenings of the film with the composer and the director, make notes as to where everything synchs up, then go back to the cutting room and place the music tracks in synch with the picture. It’s a pretty mechanical task, and an easy one – especially now that we cut digitally. So I and the ‘music guy’ got together with Hufsteter and Larriva and ran through all the cues, reel by reel. I took notes about everything. The ‘music guy’ didn’t. I asked him if he wanted to borrow

X-Films.indb 69

14/05/2008 16:14:13

X films  Ÿ  70

my notes. No, he said. This wasn’t his kind of music, but it was all straightforward. Off he went to work. A few days later he told us he’d finished, and I went into the editing room to see how the music had synched up. I checked the first reel. Not a cue was correct. I thought maybe there was something wrong with this reel, and put up the second reel. The same. Every cue was in the wrong place. Some music was in the wrong place entirely, other cues were seconds early, or late. I checked all 10 reels: there is a lot of score in Repo Man. Every cue our ‘music guy’ had laid was wrong. I tracked him down and told him that all his cues were out. ‘What, you mean, they’re in the wrong reel?’ he replied. No, just wrong. That was how they did it in the studios, maybe. Completely out of synch but in the same reel, okay, not a problem. Wacks and McCarthy didn’t take much persuading to fire our ‘music guy’, and I did the synching on the flatbed which Dennis, being a real editor, rarely used. It took a day and a half. Surrounded by others, creative people still work in isolation, and so we imagine that these daft, ridiculous things, these setbacks caused by salaried incompetents, happen in isolation. We don’t imagine they are systematic. So it was interesting for me, browsing a biography of John Belushi, to come across a story told by the very same ‘music guy’. The scene was the postproduction of Belushi’s last film, Neighbors. I’d liked that film better than anything else Belushi did – it seemed like he was playing a role at last, instead of just acting ‘wacky’. In the book, Belushi was depicted as roaring into the office of the head of music at the studio, waving a cassette player, raging about a punk band that he insisted should be writing music for the film. His victim was our ‘music guy’ – who, in an interview given after Belushi’s death, depicted the actor as out of control, presumably on drugs, a dangerous person to be hustled out of the office at all costs. Fair enough, nobody likes a drunken, drugged-out actor gnashing his teeth and spitting across their desk. But the band in question, the one which supposedly proved Belushi’s madness and drug-addlement, was Fear. Fear, as previously mentioned, were the hippest band in LA. Their crudity and seeming homophobia made them controversial, even in the Punk world (which was generally politically correct), but there was more to Fear’s vileness than met the bloodshot eye. I’d pursued Fear as composers, and actors, for Repo Man. Belushi was completely right to promote them as a creative element in Neighbors: their music

X-Films.indb 70

14/05/2008 16:14:13

71  Ÿ   repo man

would have enhanced what was supposed to be a crazy, no-holdsbarred film. It was our ‘music guy’, presenting Belushi as a druggedout crazy, who knew nothing about music or its place in a film. Maybe if Belushi hadn’t had to deal with mediocre obstructionists of this ilk, he wouldn’t have felt so wasted, unappreciated, and frustrated. Maybe he wouldn’t have ended up a dead junky. Who knows? It suits ‘the Business’ to work with pliable drug addicts. Like Sid Vicious, Belushi had good instincts, but he ended up another wellpaid puppet, checking out early amid a low crowd. Throughout production, Nesmith had held the firm belief that we shouldn’t let Universal see Repo Man till it was finished. ‘If they see it before it’s done, they’ll think that’s what it is. These people have no idea how to read an unfinished film.’ Shortly after we’d wrapped the shoot, the rumours he’d heard were confirmed: Bob Rehme, head of Universal Pictures, had been fired. Nesmith decided we should change our strategy, and have a screening of Repo Man for Universal as soon as possible. If we acted fast, he thought, maybe we could win over the new boss. This was a man called Frank Price, someone we Edge City innocents knew nothing about. (These alleged heads and bosses were fictitious anyway: Universal was really run by a rich and powerful jefe político, Lew Wasserman, of whose cufflinks I’ll reveal more, later.) I tried to persuade Nez that we should stick to the old plan and not show the studio anything till we were done. But Michael was convinced our only hope was to show Universal the unfinished film. This was a problem. The ‘X-Rayed Desert Cop’ effect, and the ‘Second Death of Archie’ had been cut into their respective reels, but reel ten, the most special-effect-heavy, had no effects at all. There was no flying car, no climactic joy-ride among the city’s skyscrapers. How could the new boss or his minions possibly judge Repo Man in such a state? Naïvely, I imagined Universal would still support the film. I didn’t understand that it was institutionally impossible for the new regime not to condemn Repo Man, or other films green-lit by Rehme. These films had to fail, because if they succeeded Rehme’s business decisions would be proved right, and the new bosses’ judgement called into question. Screening or no screening, Repo Man was doomed. This process astonished me. I’d always assumed that multinational corporations, though evil and bent on destroying the world, also existed to make money. But now I saw it at first hand: no deliberate malfeasance, just the endless propitiation of egos and, at all costs, the retention of jobs. These pyramidal power structures weren’t even

X-Films.indb 71

14/05/2008 16:14:13

X films  Ÿ  72

making money for their shareholders; they just existed, grew, and spread like a big tasteless mushroom in the dark. Price didn’t attend the screening. Two mid-level studio execs watched our incomplete version of Repo Man and talked on the telephone all the way through. (The studio thoughtfully provided phones between the twin armchairs in each screening room so that busy executives could make calls rather than watch films.) Afterwards, a panicked lower-level exec insisted that the film might still be saved, if only we’d remove all scenes involving Tracey Walter. None of us – me, Dennis, Peter, Jonathan – wanted to do this, nor could we see how cutting Miller out would remotely help or improve the film. So we all refused to cut him out. Even when Nez, who had brought Tracey to us, now agreed we should get rid of Miller, we wouldn’t budge. As the suits walked funereally away, Michael told Jonathan, ‘Just finish the motherfucker.’ Repo Man wasn’t even finished, and it was doomed. Yet it wasn’t: our sticking together over the character of Miller made a crucial difference to the finished film. If we’d been divided on the issue – if one of us had sided with Universal, or if Dennis had offered to cut out all of Tracey’s scenes behind our backs – disaster would have ensued. An inferior, fucked-up film would have resulted, followed by recriminations all round. By staying united behind our vision, the producers, director, and editor won the battle for control of the picture. Because we stayed united, creatively the film was saved. Originally we’d been invited to mix Repo Man in the massive Hitchcock Theater at Universal. The invitation was now withdrawn. Instead we mixed at Lion’s Gate, in West LA. The mixer was Mike Minkler. Mike had invited a colleague, Richard Beggs, down from San Francisco to help him. Beggs wasn’t only a mixer, but a sound designer – a job he’d just performed for Coppola’s Rumblefish. Minkler didn’t get Repo Man, and every day he would take Beggs out to lunch and apologise for dragging him down to work on Repo Man. And Richard would tell Mike not to apologise, because he was enjoying himself. In keeping with its rock’n’roll intent, Repo Man was mixed in mono. I felt stereo was okay, especially for the ‘car-by’ where a car passes from right to left, or vice versa, and the sound effect follows the car. But how many ‘car-bys’ can you enjoy before this thrilling experience gets old? No mixer should pan dialogue to the right or left: this just gives the audience headaches since, on a reverse cut, the voices jump to the opposite side of the screen.

X-Films.indb 72

14/05/2008 16:14:13

73  Ÿ   repo man

Mono – done well – kicks stereo’s ass, or so I thought then. Not that our mix was perfect: there were multiple effects for every sequence, yet, at times, the new audio could seem mysteriously barren. Dennis was quiet for most of the mix, but during the final of reel one, he spoke up. It was the shot where Varnum set off from behind the billboard, in the desert, in pursuit of the Malibu. ‘I know you guys have done a lot of work,’ Dennis told the effects cutters, ‘but the original sound for this scene was perfect. The engine noise, the gear changes, it was all there. Now there’s just some engine rumble and some gravel. Where’s all the detail gone?’ He was right. Standard industry practice had led us to dump the original sound, painstakingly recorded on location, for a less exciting studio substitute: stock motorbike engine noise, but no authentic clunk! clunk! of Moto Guzzi gears. As the original production track wasn’t to hand, we went with the bad audio. Today, where there’s no limit on the number of digital tracks you can bring to the mix, there’s no need to throw away any original sound. Even if you plan to replace it, keep it around. You can always mix it with the new sound elements, if necessary. There were no studio overages to bring Robby Muller back to LA. Bob Richardson went to the lab and spoke to the timers. Peter, Jonathan and I saw the answer print, and liked it. We thought our work was done.

RELEASE Universal’s deal with Nesmith involved opening Repo Man in 12 markets. The first market they chose was Dallas, Texas. Jonathan proposed that Universal open the film in Los Angeles instead. The studio said no. Instead they decided to open the picture in Chicago. The film also played at the Berlin Film Festival, where it was well received. Soon after, Universal’s foreign arm, UIP, began a fire sale, selling Repo Man off as quickly and cheaply as they could. I went straight from Berlin back to the US for the Chicago opening, in February 1984. This was in 53, mainly suburban, cinemas. Edge City did the best we could: gave interviews arranged by Universal’s publicist (my first was to a student newspaper); paraded Emilio about; and infiltrated ringers into the audience, who were

X-Films.indb 73

14/05/2008 16:14:13

X films  Ÿ  74

then vox-popped by unsuspecting local TV crews. Ed Pansullo gave an outstanding performance as a member of the public who had just, by chance, seen Repo Man and thought it absolutely the best film ever made: ‘It has everything . . . girls . . . adventure . . . great music . . . girls!’ This was acting on a par with Bobby’s portrayal of Officer Bob. Repo Man made money in Chicago – $3,600 per screen according to Jonathan, who has total recall of everything. But it wasn’t enough money, according to Universal. Since our film wasn’t proceeding according to their ‘expectations’, it was pulled after a week. In the wake of Berlin, the film received two completely different reviews in Variety: the daily edition, which hated the movie, called the humour ‘scatological’, but the weekly edition found Repo Man funny. Peter and I called Variety and asked why they’d run two reviews: they told us it was the first time this had happened, but having received two contradictory reviews, they’d decided to run them both. Edge City Productions took out an ad reprinting the weekly review, and challenging Universal to release the picture. In response, the studio publicly attacked the film. One of their marketing guys, Bill Sody, managed to get Dick Barkle, head of public relations at Pan American World Airways, to denounce the film. Barkle told reporters that Pan Am would never show the film on any of its planes, adding ‘I hope they never show this film in Russia!’ If Universal had anything to do with it, I’m sure ‘they’ never did. What Sody and Universal were doing is called ‘Red-baiting’: an old LA tradition going back to the 1950s or before, where corporate bosses tar their adversary – a writer, actor, or director – as a ‘Commie’. But what was communistic about Repo Man? The Punk thing? Edge City’s disobedience? The John Wayne story? The parodies of religion and Scientology? It would be fun to know what got them so agitated. Universal were still under contract to release Repo Man in an additional 11 US markets. After much foot-dragging, they agreed to Jonathan’s proposal to screen the film in LA, but their approach was no more focused than Chicago had been. How to explain the marketing decision to print up posters with the words ‘Repo Man’ in black against a dark background? It seemed like a deliberate attempt to drive the audience away. Peter and I bought 20 cans of red spray paint. We cut a large stencil saying ‘Repo Man’ and the date of the film’s LA opening, and we drove around LA, stopping wherever Universal’s goons had flyposted a Repo Man

X-Films.indb 74

14/05/2008 16:14:13

The weird tale wasn’t over yet. Some months later, Peter, Jonathan, and I were invited to a screening of the film at the home of Jean Stein. She was the daughter of Jules Stein, founder of MCA, the talent agency that, in violation of US anti-trust laws, took over Universal and became a studio. We had no idea why she wanted to see Repo Man, but Jean was a very agreeable host, and her brother (a colonel or general) was a lively sort. Peter and Jonathan, meanwhile, had made a deal with MCA Records to release a soundtrack album. MCA invented a new sub-label ‘San Andreas Records’, so as to make the album appear less corporate. The LP and the tape sold in markets where the film hadn’t appeared, probably because the soundtrack was a good sampler of the LA punk scene, circa 1983. When sales of the album topped 50,000 copies, Irving Azoff, head of MCA Records, apparently asked, ‘Is there a movie to go with this?’ And the film’s distribution juddered back to life, thanks to Kelly Neal. Kelly ran Universal’s ‘Special Handling Division’, a tiny branch of the company that specialised in re-releasing Hitchcock films. Kelly only had a team of three and a few prints of Repo Man and Rumblefish, but he knew the marketplace and he had a strategy to get both films into what he thought were the right cinemas. Kelly opened Repo Man in one theatre in New York, the Eighth Street Playhouse on Bleeker Street. Iggy lived nearby and went to the opening night. He reported lines around the block. Repo Man played at the Eighth Street Playhouse for 18 months. It was a triumph for Kelly’s team, coming after the TV and video releases. Peter ran into Kelly in LA; Kelly told him that Repo Man had grossed four million dollars during its second US release, in the summer of 1984. ‘I can’t wait for my Christmas bonus!’ he joked. Kelly’s Christmas bonus was the sack. He was one of the last people fired by the collapsing Frank Price regime. A few weeks later, Price himself was ditched.

75  Ÿ   repo man

poster. Out came the spray cans, and the posters were bedecked with a big red ‘Repo Man’ title plus opening date. Now that was marketing! In LA, the film made a little more money, but still not enough for the new regime. Repo Man went straight to cable, and thence to video.

Universal did offer Peter, Jonathan, and me another job: a project about some high-school kids whose friend was kidnapped by ‘Central

X-Films.indb 75

14/05/2008 16:14:13

X films  Ÿ  76

American terrorists’. During their summer vacation, these school chums headed south and liberated their buddy from the Communists. None of us liked the project. It promoted the notion that Americans had the right to intervene in Latin America. When we demurred, the studio exec (the same one who had tried to persuade us to cut Miller out of Repo Man) assured us that the writer was a good chap since ‘he snorts heroin at parties’. The script was written by a former Nixon speechwriter. For some reason, the studio seemed anxious to embed this right-wing fellow within the movie business. Was there a deliberate desire on the part of corporations and the Republican Party to do this, so that more reactionary stories would be told by Hollywood? I can’t say, from my limited experience. (The big ‘official’ youth picture was now John Milius’ Red Dawn.) Was the heroin story true? Were we supposed to think this doofus cool? Everyone knew the fate of Vicious and Belushi and other famous junkies, and they seemed like idiots. In subsequent years I saw a number of esteemed collaborators fall into the same trash compactor, and wondered whether Hollywood wasn’t designed to pick up on addictive types, and drug dealers: they were guilty, predictable, and easy to control. Almost a year after it opened at Berlin, Repo Man was scheduled to play at the Rotterdam Film Festival. The festival was then a small one, mainly based at a tiny complex of cinemas – the Lantaren/Venster. Repo Man was playing at the Luxor, which was then the biggest screen in town. I went over for the opening, and in the bar of the hotel across the street from the Luxor ran into Harry Dean Stanton, who had also been invited to attend. Harry was chatting to a bearded guy. He introduced us. ‘This is Rudy.’ ‘Rudy Wurlitzer?’ I asked manically, as if suddenly gazing upon a pillar of the pantheon, which indeed I was. For it was he. Legendary novelist, screenwriter of Two-Lane Blacktop and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid! It was very kind of Harry to introduce us: out of that chat came a good friendship, several unmade scripts, and Walker.

X-Films.indb 76

14/05/2008 16:14:13

LOVE KILLS/ SID & NANCY In 1980, while finishing Edge City, I wrote a script called ‘Too Kool to Die’. It was the tale of a blind, implacable, impervious detective, hired by a rich American family to rescue their daughter Adele from the clutches of an English bass player, Ringo Shiv. It was mainly inspired by the story of Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen, and by the weird, light-headed, apocalyptic feeling of the late 1970s and early 1980s, when one would encounter those ‘London Flooding – Will You Be Affected?’ posters all over the City. This was official apocalypticism – a deliberate incentive for the populace to fear the worst. The script depicted the flooding of London, the Shah of Iran’s heroin dealing, and the Jeremy Thorpe scandal, as well as many other things that guaranteed it would never be made into a film. So I put it aside. Around the end of 1984, I was approached by a European producer who was working in Hollywood. We met in a bar in Culver City; it must have been late in the year, because it was already dark outside and raining. We sat at the bar and this man asked me to direct a film based on ‘the rags-to-riches struggle for success’ of Madonna. I hadn’t worked since Repo Man and should have acted keener. But then, as later, I was only interested in things that I found interesting. The producer said there was another possibility. In addition to Madonna’s story, the same studio was considering making the story of Sid and Nancy, starring Madonna plus ‘that actor from Brideshead

X-Films.indb 77

14/05/2008 16:14:13

X films  Ÿ  78

Revisited: very handsome boy – you know him – Rupert Everett’. For anyone who had been vaguely into the Punk movement, this was a troubling idea indeed. The danger was two-fold: 1) the film might get made; and 2) the film would present Vicious and Spungen as exemplars of Punk, rather than sold-out traitors to it. I left the bar, my mind in turmoil. As yet, Madonna’s people didn’t have a script, he’d said. I had ‘Too Kool to Die’ – half a script about Sid Vicious – which was highly political and apocalyptic. If I was going to get this picture going, it would be necessary to drop the Liberal Party scandals and the London flooding stuff. Better to start afresh; in my head I was already planning the production, aware we had to move fast. Artificial Eye, a British distributor, had licensed Repo Man – they flew me to London to support it. I started tracking down and interviewing people who had known Sid and Nancy. Some of them had worked in the shop Sex (later Seditionaries). Some had been part of the Bromley Contingent, associated with the Sex Pistols. One was a dominatrix, in whose house the gang had lived. She had regularly whipped a famous TV personality. Another was Malcolm McLaren, the Pistols’ manager/entrepreneur. There was some doubt back then as to whether Sid had really killed Nancy or whether a drug dealer had done it. Over dinner in a fish restaurant called Wheelers, I remarked ‘Nobody really knows if he killed her, after all.’ McLaren lolled, smiled, and replied, ‘I do’, at which point his friends jumped up hastily and hustled him away. After they had got used to me, I talked to the surviving Sex Pistols. I liked Glen Matlock, the original bass player, who had been thrown out of the band because he didn’t look as cool as Sid. When Repo Man played at Edinburgh I met an agent, Nicky Hart, who offered to represent me in London. I told her about the project, which needed a good London-based producer. She said she’d look out for one. By January 1985 I’d moved into the Chelsea Hotel in New York, where I met Lech Kowalski, director of D.O.A. (1980), in which Vicious and Spungen memorably appear. Lech had a new film in the cinemas about the local junky underworld, called Gringo. I met its star James Spacey, and other ex-associates of Vicious: Rockets Redglare and Dee Dee Ramone. I asked Abbe Wool to write the script with me. She came out to New York and we took up adjoining premises at the Chelsea. Shirley Clarke, who had been on the teaching staff at UCLA, was our neighbour

X-Films.indb 78

14/05/2008 16:14:13

79  Ÿ   love kills/sid & nancy

several floors up. Based on the notes I’d taken and newspaper articles we’d acquired, the script proceeded swiftly. The first draft was finished in New York on 23 January, and titled ‘Love Kills’. I checked out of the Chelsea and headed for London. The following evening I had drinks with Ann Beverly, Sid Vicious’ sinister mother, in a railway-arch pub called The Hole in the Wall, in Waterloo. Next day, while handing out those newly completed scripts, I followed the producer Jeremy Thomas to a discreet and expensive London hotel. There I was introduced to William Burroughs, the venerable patron saint of junkies, bad boy actors, and musicians, who was visiting the colonies with James Grauerholtz, his ward. Running into Burroughs seemed like a ‘plate of shrimp’, given the subject matter of Love Kills. Like many would-be bohemians, I was fascinated by Old Bill back then – by the grisly factualness of Junky and by the brilliance and imagination of The Naked Lunch and Exterminator. Certainly he was a great writer, but he was also a snob, a bad painter, a wife-killer, and a trust-fund junky. His books depict terrible things, but for Bill, I don’t think life was quite so terrible. There was always another cheque from the family funds to keep him going. I pursued the money. In February, Nicky introduced me to Eric Fellner, a promo producer who she thought was the right man for Love Kills. At that time Eric had no film experience: for his sins, he’d just produced a series of high-gloss pop videos in the style of the Emmanuelle films, featuring sexy models crawling through jungles and Venetian blinds. His strategy had been to use these glossy images to sell faux bands like Duran Duran, and it succeeded – nailing shut, in the process, the coffin lid of Punk. Eric was an upper-class lad, like all the other media people I’d met in London, keen on getting into features; confident, and enthusiastic. And he knew London, and London crews. Eric favoured a wine bar in Notting Hill, where he would order a bottle of champagne upon entering; sometimes he’d barely touch his glass and leave the remainder in the ice bucket – he must have been very popular with the waiters. I didn’t have a car, and in the time we worked together Eric sometimes tried to persuade me to acquire one. Eventually I said that if he knew anyone with a second-hand Cortina I’d take a look at it. He took this seriously – neither of us had the faintest idea when the other was joking – and managed to secure just such a beaten-up old Ford

X-Films.indb 79

14/05/2008 16:14:13

X films  Ÿ  80

from a friend of his. I drove it half a mile through the dark and rain, then I abandoned it. Eric, meanwhile, went through a succession of increasingly expensive and startling motors. He began with a BMW, graduated to a Ferrari, and thence to a Maserati, which he would race from stoplight to stoplight in the centre of town. On April Fool’s Day 1985 I met Margaret Matheson, the head of Zenith Productions. Zenith was an independent film production company with money, c/o Central TV, and Margaret thought she could come up with half the budget. Another company was also interested: Virgin Films. Virgin Films was the short-lived production entity of Richard Branson, later known for his Coca-Cola imitation, his airline, and a massive taxpayer rip-off called Virgin Trains.1 Branson had farmed out his film business to a person with no experience, but a noble name stretching back to Elizabethan times. Branson’s ilk are impressed by things like this, but his Elizabethan was no match for Margaret, who came in at the last minute with a better offer for the film. Instead of improving his offer, Branson’s Elizabethan wrote a complaining letter to Eric, detailing why he should have triumphed in the negotiation. This is something – in business as in love – that you should never do. Virgin Films shut down a year later. Zenith’s deal was satisfyingly straightforward: I would direct; Eric would budget and produce the picture; Margaret would provide 50 per cent of the finance and pursue the rest. Convinced the film was going to happen, I rented an ‘artist’s loft’ off Abbey Street in Bermondsey. This was a big space, all white and almost all one room, with a translucent shower and two walls of windows; unfortunately looking out in one direction onto a car park, in the other onto Abbey Street, with tower blocks and the dread Lupin Point beyond. Unfamiliar with London, I soon discovered I was in the wrong part of town. The Sex Pistols’ story all took place in the west and north-west of London. There are numerous Tube lines and stations north of the river, but very few south of it. I think this is because the poorer people live south of the river. Hence the lack of amenities (and why the Elizabethan theatres were built there – outside the city limits). Apparently, Bermondsey has undergone a transformation over the last two decades; a Tube station has finally appeared, and the abandoned warehouses along Abbey Street and the river have

X-Films.indb 80

14/05/2008 16:14:13

I pursued my search for interview subjects. Even though the script was finished, the more sources of information, the better: we were making a potentially contentious biopic about people who, in some cases, were still alive. I had a phone conversation with Johnny Thunders, late of the New York Dolls, who requested a fee for his reminiscences. Full of punk rock self-righteousness, I declined to pay. In June Lucy Boulting began work as our British casting director, and I bought a 1983 BMW R100RT motorbike in Cowley, outside Oxford. The bike, unlike Nesmith’s, wasn’t the green colour of folding money: it was the colour of silver money instead. Wheels acquired, I left immediately for LA. Eric had worked out a way of getting business-class tickets cheaply from an airline that was going out of business, British Caledonian. Vicky Thomas had come on board to look for Nancy and the American cast, so now I was talking to casting directors in both countries. From London to LA, back to New York, or London, or perhaps LA again . . . it wasn’t so painful if you were youngish, and they kept filling your glass with cheap champagne. Thus I fell into a demented routine of frequent flying back and forth across the Atlantic. Over and over again, week after week, month after month, eventually year after year. I must have overflown Greenland at least 200 times. This makes me personally responsible for at least two kilos of carbon dioxide every trip: 400 kilos in all. The worst of it all was that on many of these redundant, global-warming, immune-system-depleting trips, I didn’t get the upgrade. All these logistics, all this travel, to make a film about two pigignorant junkies! Now it seems mad. Couldn’t we have prepared and filmed Love Kills all in one place? We could. We could have shot almost all our interiors in London, with a week of establishing shots in the US. But the film might not have had the same tension – the same trajectory of hope in its first half, doom in its second – as its extended schedule achieved. That we were able to shoot in both countries (with an additional day trip to Paris!) is due to Eric and his extraordinary budgeting ability. He managed to extract an 11-week schedule from the budget Zenith okayed – enough for two independent feature films! There would be

X-Films.indb 81

81  Ÿ   love kills/sid & nancy

blossomed into apartment buildings, restaurants, and cafés. This may be so, but I will not find out because I grew to hate Bermondsey: a sad, thuggish white ghetto with roving skinhead gangs and tattered posters for the National Front.

14/05/2008 16:14:13

X films  Ÿ  82

two American bases: one in New York for the Chelsea interiors, New Jersey pizza scene, and significant exteriors such as Max’s Kansas City; the other in Los Angeles for all the club interiors, grandma and grandpa’s house, and sound stage interiors. From the LA base we’d trek to San Francisco and the California desert to re-create the Pistols’ Texas bus tour. In late June I checked in at the Kensington Hotel in Venice. My room was on the south-west corner, with a dynamite view of the beach and the Pacific; it was the room we’d found for Robby when we shot Repo Man. At Rent-a-Wreck I hired a 1973 Plymouth Valiant convertible (going for that ‘rockin’ Limey’ film director thing, was I?). Vicky and I discussed the LA casting; I visited Peter McCarthy, who would be our US producer, and Debbie Diaz, who would coordinate the American shoot. Casting began in Culver City the next day. Zenith’s search for an American partner proved difficult. Eric reported that ‘Everybody in the States thinks this film has no theatrical potential.’ The Madonna/Everett project seemed to have vanished – perhaps for this very reason. Margaret went back and forth with Mace Neufeld, a Hollywood producer who shopped the script around without bothering to make a deal with us. He was unable to come up with funds. Then she asked us to get in contact with Andre Blay, of Embassy Home Entertainment, and Eric and I went to see him in LA. Andre was a somewhat anxious man who, like every other Hollywood exec, insisted on journeying around the front of his desk to make us feel at home. As usual, we sat on sofas round a coffee table in an office with framed posters on the walls. At the end of the meeting, Andre told me, ‘Kid, I want to make your next three pictures!’ ‘Good Lord!’ Eric exclaimed as we emerged from Embassy Home Entertainment, ‘That man just offered you a three-picture deal.’ English people who go to LA initially make the mistake of believing what people tell them there. But I’d lived in LA since 1977 and knew there was nothing behind these wonderful words. Blay wasn’t in a position to take such a risk: he’d only just met me, and his company wasn’t long for this world. Fortunately, Embassy did fund half of the Love Kills budget, before going belly-up. Love Kills’ final cost would be just under four million dollars – more than double Repo Man’s budget, but still tight because it was a much more ambitious film.

X-Films.indb 82

14/05/2008 16:14:14

X-Films.indb 83

83  Ÿ   love kills/sid & nancy

In London Lucy introduced me to many fine actors: Kathy Burke, David Hayman, Graham Fletcher Cook, Ann Lambton, Perry Benson, Sara Sugarman, Drew Schofield. Ian Dury auditioned for the McLaren role – a great idea of Lucy’s that I perhaps should have pursued. For the role of Sid she presented me with some fantastic possibilities, including Sandra Bernhard, who we both agreed would look splendid, stripped to the waist, avec guitar. Preparation for the film was occasionally fraught: another casting director told Eric and me that she thought Vicious and Spungen were repulsive, and she didn’t understand why anyone would want to waste time telling their story. It was a reasonable point of view. Some actors were also sensitive: Lucy invited Tim Roth to read for the Rotten role, but he declined. He said he thought the Sex Pistols were too close to recent history. Official pre-production, funded by Zenith, began in mid-July 1985. I saw The War Plays – a four-and-a-half-hour drama – at the Barbican, and The Duchess of Malfi, staring Eleanor Bron, at the National Theatre. Malfi was a fine production with a particularly menacing set, parts of which lurched towards the audience as the cruel story was told. I invited our evolving cast, Kathy, Michele Winstanley, Perry, Sara, et al., round to my director’s pad for a reading of The Duchess. I thought it good actor practice, but also I loved the play and secretly wished I was making a film version of it, rather than the story of two punk junkies. Such is directorial ingratitude. Lucy brought in a series of young actors to read for the Sid role – Daniel Day-Lewis, Gary Oldman, Pete Lee Wilson, and Lee Drysdale. Lee Drysdale was a gifted writer (he’d written an amazing, doomed, London love story called ‘Defenceless Under the Night’) but not so strong an actor. Pete Lee Wilson was good. Gary Oldman was very interesting. I remembered him as one of the spear carriers in The War Plays; Gary had very pale eyes: he’d need contacts to play Sid. He was a tad shorter, but facially somewhat similar to the late Vicious. As others have observed, there’s a genuine chameleon-like quality to Gary, whether he’s playing Sid Vicious, Beethoven, or Lee Harvey Oswald. Both Gary and Dan Lewis gave very good readings. Both physically resembled Vicious. Both brought something different to the part. This was a great problem for the director. Watching My Beautiful Launderette, I realised Dan could easily play the dashing leading man. Oldman was less credible as a lover, less debonair, but he knew where Sid was coming from. Gary, like Sid, had had the misfortune to grow

14/05/2008 16:14:14

X films  Ÿ  84

Gary Oldman as young Sid. up south of the river. So I was classist in my decision-making: instead of the Poet Laureate’s son, I picked the Bermondsey boy. It was a decision Lucy loved and Abbe hated. ‘Since you’ve miscast Sid,’ she wrote to me, ‘you will now have to miscast Nancy as well.’ In LA I had my first meeting with a ‘bond company’. Before this, I didn’t know what a bond was – it turned out to be an extra type of insurance, often taken out for non-studio feature films. This was in addition to the regular insurance that underwrites the production in case of personal injury, sickness, or a disaster. The completion bond guaranteed that if the director and/or producers failed to do their job, someone else would step in and finish the film. A bond cost the production between 2 and 5 per cent of the budget. In reality the financiers didn’t need it, unless there was something actually wrong with the director or producers on the honesty or sanity front, in which case, why trust them with your money in the first place? On Repo Man, Nesmith hadn’t bothered with one. There had been a risk, perhaps, of the film going over budget. But it was well planned and it proceeded on budget and on schedule, as most independent features do. By not buying a completion bond, Nez saved himself between $40,000 and $80,000.

X-Films.indb 84

14/05/2008 16:14:14

85  Ÿ   love kills/sid & nancy

Bonding feature films was very good business for a number of years and a handful of companies made a lot of money out of it. Since very few films ever failed in mid-production, calling yourself a bondsman was a licence to print money. Love Kills didn’t need its completion bond. I never worked on a film that did. Bonds penalised good producers and directors, by making them foot the bill for salvaging bad filmmakers’ films. Still, if your financiers wanted a bond, there wasn’t much you could do about it. If you were lucky, your experience would be as painless and enlightening as mine was with a gentleman bondsman, Lee Katz. Lee had been in the business since the days when films were made in caves; among his credits were Lawrence of Arabia, and Moby Dick. We discussed the Love Kills shooting plan, which began in London, went to LA and came back cross-country to New York. ‘Do you want your New York scenes to look like Christmas?’ Lee asked. No, I didn’t. ‘Then you need to shoot New York sooner, because by November everything in the city is gonna be six feet deep in Christmas, and you won’t have the resources to get rid of it.’ This was sound advice, from a good guy. Was it worth 4 per cent of four million dollars – $160,000? You be the judge. Next day, in LA, I started reading potential Nancys. Vicky had already met a number and had been through an immense quantity of pictures and resumés. Nancy, thanks to her wretched tale, was a dynamite role for any woman actor. I was impressed by Patti Tippo, and by a kid calling herself Courtney Love, whom Abbe had met in New York. Patti was a gifted actor and comedian and would have been a killer Nancy. Courtney seemed too young – particularly opposite Gary, who was about 10 years older than the ‘historic’ Sid – but she had immense drive and real potential. Late in our third day of Nancy meetings, Miguel Sandoval introduced us to an actor named Chloe Webb. We met at Peter McCarthy’s office in Venice – the old Edge City building. Before becoming a full-time LA actor specialising in moustached characters, Miguel and his wife Linda Callahan had run a theatre company in Santa Fe, New Mexico. This did only cutting-edge bohemian stuff: they wore pierrot costumes and did theatre workshops with inmates in maximum-security prisons. They were no-nonsense thespians. Chloe, a very serious and intense actor, had naturally fallen

X-Films.indb 85

14/05/2008 16:14:14

X films  Ÿ  86

Gary as Sid; inimitable Drew Schofield as Johnny.

X-Films.indb 86

14/05/2008 16:14:14

87  Ÿ   love kills/sid & nancy

in with Miguel and Linda, and had moved out to LA around the same time. Having read the script, Miguel was convinced Chloe should play Nancy. So he arranged our meeting; Chloe read, and that was that. Patti and Courtney and the other good actors who read were all eclipsed by the amazing glimpse of Nancy that Chloe gave that afternoon in Venice. She was a disciplined and innovative actor; very sexy, and very, very funny. She was a little younger than Gary, and their styles were totally different: his more reserved, hers fearless and in your face. Was there a danger of the two not gelling? Possibly. But I was convinced that Chloe had already ‘got’ the character of Nancy. Miguel thought so too. And Gary would surely reach the same level, as time went by. Vicky Thomas wasn’t as opposed to Chloe Webb as Abbe was to Gary; ‘Daring, off-the-wall casting,’ she called it, ‘only I don’t know if it’s going to work.’ Location scouting continued. At the end of August I met Roger Deakins, the DP of 1984, to discuss his shooting Love Kills. Roger asked me straight off, ‘Why don’t you ask Robby Muller?’ It was a fair question. I said that that I thought Robby was permanently on call to Wim Wenders and wasn’t available, for this was what Robby had told me. I sent Robby every script I wrote in those days; he would invariably tell me he was waiting for Wim’s next film. I concluded that I’d offended him, either by having Bob and Tom shoot Repo Man inserts, or by failing to fly him back to time the film. It was a shame. Once I’d convinced Roger I wasn’t gratuitously abandoning an excellent DP, an agreeable chat ensued. We talked mainly about American independent directors like Monte Hellman, and the greatest English-speaking actor, who we both agreed was Warren Oates. Here we were, two English chaps, discussing a feature about our English icon, Sid, in an English alehouse, and our terms of reference were utterly international. Over a couple of pints, we moved from The American Friend, via Herzog’s Aguirre, Wrath of God, to Gian Maria Volontè, Klaus Kinski, Roger Corman, and Harry Dean. There was nothing unique about our conversation: two Dutch filmmakers could have been having it at that moment in the Lantaren in Rotterdam. In fact, they probably were. We were speaking the language of independent film – still, at that time, an international one. Back and forth across the continents dementedly went I. Lucy and I read Lindas, Phoebes, Rottens, Joneses and Cooks in London on one

X-Films.indb 87

14/05/2008 16:14:14

X films  Ÿ  88 X-Films.indb 88

day; Vicky and I read detectives and junkies in LA the next. Two days of actor meetings followed in New York, then back to West London for a location scout. I met David Martin, the editor; like Dennis Dolan, he was one of those bearded chaps who seemed totally in control of the technical mysteries of 35mm editing. He worked alone, or with one assistant, unlike Dennis with his cadre of biker chicks. Then back to LA for my first daylight visit to the Starwood, where I’d seen many of Punk’s finest combos only a few years before: Fear, X, 999, the Screamers, the Wierdos, the Circle Jerks, the Gang of Four . . . It was a great venue in West Hollywood, unpopular with its neighbours and hated by the sheriffs, which had been forced to close after its owner, one Eddie Nash, was arrested for diverse crimes. Now it was available as a film location, and, thanks to Fox and Burbank, it would pass for CBGB’s, Max’s Kansas City, and several Texas watering holes. On 14 August 1985 I attended an all-day meeting with our lawyers in New York. This wasn’t my first lawyers’ meeting in connection with the script, but it was certainly the longest. It started at 10:30 and ran until 6:45 in the evening. Embassy’s attorneys (and quite possibly the bond company’s lawyers and a lawyer from the insurers) sat around a big conference table and we went through the script, scene by scene, page by page, line by line. I had my notebooks and supporting materials, and my script. They’d study their copies of the script and ask questions like, ‘Dominatrix whips newsreader. Any evidence for this?’ And I would say, referring to my notes, ‘On 19 May, in The Man in The Moon pub off the King’s Road in London, I interviewed W— X—, a former callgirl, now retired. She said that one of her clients was the former TV newsreader Y— Z—, and that on one occasion she flogged him while the Sex Pistols were in an adjacent room, conducting a sleepover.’ ‘You have contemporaneous notes of this?’ ‘Yes, from my interview with W—. Also, we don’t name the newsreader.’ ‘Okay. Next, Sid and Nancy shoot heroin together. Evidence?’ ‘Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen were notorious drug abusers. I refer you to all the interviews, and to published material in the press.’ ‘Okay. Next, McLaren hides under the counter of a store called Sex. Evidence?’ ‘Malcolm McLaren ran a clothing store with Vivienne Westwood. It was called Sex, and later Seditionaries. I refer you to my interviews of 25 January with Alan Jones and Debbie Wilson. Both tell a story

14/05/2008 16:14:14

Actors occasionally claim to have written their own dialogue, and to have invented the characters they play. Sometimes it’s true. But it wasn’t so with Love Kills, where every line of dialogue and every stage direction had to be cross-examined and defended in a conference room full of New York attorneys before the actors could be licensed to speak. It was fun, in a way, like a long, easy viva-voce for a law student. Not every film is like this. Love Kills involved living, potentially litigious people, so the lawyers were being extra careful. Sid and Nancy were dead, of course, and quite notorious. They probably couldn’t have sued us successfully. But McLaren and the other Sex Pistols, their friends and enemies, Sid’s mother, and Nancy’s family were very much alive. If any of them was depicted in a way that damaged their reputation, they could sue those responsible – not just me, but Embassy, and Zenith. More actor meetings followed. Two days later, I met one of our foremost potential litigants, given his prominence in the script: John Lydon, formerly Johnny Rotten. Seeking to be on good terms, we’d sent him the screenplay and requested an interview. Now an interview was arranged for the bar of the Mayflower Hotel, at 6 p.m. on 16 September 1985.

89  Ÿ   love kills/sid & nancy

of McLaren being locked in a cupboard for several hours by Vivenne Westwood. While fictitious, hiding under a desk is a similar sort of activity. Nor is it unreasonable, given that McLaren, in the circumstances, is hiding to evade the Wrath of Sid.’ ‘We’ll come back to that. Next . . .’

John was on time, and most agreeable. In the course of 90 minutes we each consumed eight sea breezes, or maybe they were Singapore slings; my notes, made right after the meeting, are a little confused. Whatever it was, it was a delicious, highly refreshing drink involving vodka and cranberry juice – a health drink, really. But did I really down eight of them? And who paid the bill? I think there was some talk of the script; Lydon was very kind about it, and we discussed Drew Schofield, who I thought should play him. Very graciously, John invited Drew to come to New York and meet him. He was pleased Drew was a scouser and thought the actor should play ‘Johnny Rotten’ as one. In London, the day after my meeting with John, I offered Drew the part. We got together with Glen Matlock and asked him to be the musical director of the recreated Pistols songs. This would involve Drew singing as Johnny, Gary singing as Sid, and Glen ironically

X-Films.indb 89

14/05/2008 16:14:14

X films  Ÿ  90

re-creating the non-too-excellent bass lines of his successor. I passed on Lydon’s invitation, which Drew accepted. A visit was quickly arranged, Drew flew to New York and John took him out on the town. They toured various clubs; Lydon was happy to show Drew the way of Rotten, while simultaneously trying to persuade him to play the role as a Liverpudlian rather than as a Londoner. Lydon’s instincts were correct, I think. He was pushing Drew and me to fictionalise the Pistols – to invent new versions of himself, Sid and the others, rather than have the actors emulate the originals. I think he would have liked the idea of Sandra Bernhard playing Sid, and Ian Dury as Malcolm. Lydon wanted us to think about Love Kills in an entirely different way, while retaining the same tensions and the tragic love story – something closer to ‘Too Kool to Die’ than to Love Kills. At one point in the evening out with John, Drew thought ‘this information will come in extremely useful in my portrayal of the King of Punk.’ But he woke up the next morning with a memoryerasing hangover and the taxi waiting to take him to the plane. He remembered nothing. Later, Lydon denied these conversations had taken place, and insisted that our motive was a vile capitalistic one. If only it had been so! As far as I know, none of the cast or crew have seen a penny’s profit from the film. In retrospect I think John was being kind to us, since his alleged rage got the film publicity, just as media fury against the Sex Pistols had helped the band get record deals in the late 1970s. When Public Image Limited, Lydon’s band, came out with a record called Album, alias Cassette, the cover art consisted of one word on a white background with blue stripes: the same generic supermarket graphic that we’d used for all the products in Repo Man. I imagined this generic joke was a deliberate Repo rip-off, and was well chuffed.

PRODUCTION Love Kills had the longest shoot of any of my films: 11 weeks. The first half, shot in London, was the fun part, though often technically more difficult. The second half, in America, was easier from a production standpoint but far more challenging for the actors. The British half was full of characters, actors, crowds – a succession of lively, funny scenes. The American section had fewer characters: the Sex Pistols on

X-Films.indb 90

14/05/2008 16:14:14

91  Ÿ   love kills/sid & nancy

tour, then Sid, Nancy, and their little circle; by the end, we were down to three characters, then only two. It was like making two films, back to back, in different countries with different crews. Only certain department heads – picture, sound, and makeup – remained the same. Roger was quite rigorous, even more austere than Robby in his choice of lenses. Robby had no objection to the zoom, but Roger was determined to use primes: usually the 35mm or the 85mm lens. He insisted on this whenever possible, and the result is an enclosed, cramped aura that a wide-angle lens would have lost, and which perfectly suits the film. Deakins worked closely with the designers: Andrew McAlpine in England, Fox and Burbank in the US. He was particularly involved in the ‘My Way’ set, which Andrew’s team constructed, and the colour scheme for the Chelsea Hotel rooms, which Fox and Burbank built on an LA stage. There were two different costume designers, though Pam Tait remained in charge of Sid’s wardrobe throughout. Roger and I wanted to shoot in black and white. As usual, the producers told us this was impossible: Love Kills was being bankrolled by Central TV and a home video company, both of whom superstitiously wanted colour product.2 Instead, Roger decided to make the images increasingly monochromatic as the story unrolled. The most memorable parts of the British shoot were the Thames boat trip and ‘My Way’. The boat trip was the biggest logistical enterprise I’d been involved in – there were three camera crews: Roger’s, shooting on the boat itself; another, headed by David Bridges, shooting from a police boat giving chase; and a third in the air, aboard a helicopter. (Weather prevented the helicopter crew getting any useful shots.) The boat party was demanding – more than a dozen actors and 40-odd extras – but it paled beside its aftermath, where the young lovers, in a cloud of drug-assisted bliss, walk through a police riot unscathed. Something along these lines had happened to me, in 1977. The gig was in a room at the top of a very grand staircase in the Elks Lodge, off Pershing Square in LA. The Punk scene wasn’t popular with everyone, and for some reason the police were summoned. Two hundred cops in riot gear appeared, declared the show over, and proceeded to beat the bejesus out of the departing punkers. I’d dropped two tabs of acid just before the show began, so the whole thing was doubly mysterious to me. Hoping the gig would yet go ahead, I hung back until the hall was almost cleared. Finally, the

X-Films.indb 91

14/05/2008 16:14:14

X films  Ÿ  92

big space was empty; there was just me and Tito Larriva, who was also hiding out to avoid a beating. I thought to myself, completely tripping, I’ll try and sneak off now that everything’s died down. And I walked out onto the big staircase. It was completely covered in cops. Cops in riot gear. Cops with shotguns. Cops with dogs. Cops with walkie-talkies. All looking at me, with my punk-rock haircut, my leather jacket, and my rippedup pants. I took a deep breath and descended the staircase. I thought, well, they’re probably going to lay into me, but what can I do? If I run, they’ll only chase me. I walked on down the long, long stairs, nodding at no one, smiling, tripping away . . . Then suddenly I was out on the street, surrounded by raging cops, whacking punks with nightsticks. I was in no state to ride my motorcycle home; I couldn’t remember where it was. I sat down on a bus bench and watched the riot. Why didn’t LA’s finest beat the shit out of me? I can only conclude it was the drugs: I read somewhere in my hippy studies of LSD’s effect on humans in the proximity of bees: apparently people tripping on acid are less likely to be noticed or attacked by bees than non-stoned humans. I think the same thing happened with the cops. The acid trip gave me a non-threatening, non-invasive demeanour as far as the cops were concerned – like the undercover narco’s ‘scanner suit’ in Philip K. Dick’s novel, A Scanner Darkly. They were all primed for a frenzy, yet, like those bees, they let me wander through the hive unstung. Sid and Nancy weren’t acid-heads, but I still had this vision of them wandering through a raging storm that they’d provoked, in a cocoon of drugs (or love, maybe) which protects them from violence. I talked to Roger about it; I’d imagined a series of different shots: individual set-pieces, involving Chloe, Gary, extras, and stunt guys. Instead, Roger proposed keeping the camera on them the whole time, and letting the mayhem play out in the background. Roger was a genius! And the burden of lighting and filming a bunch of boring night-time action scenes was lifted. This was my first plano secuencia, a long, moving master shot that incorporates an entire scene. It’s the way Arturo Ripstein shot many of his films, and the way most of the scenes in I Am Cuba are constructed. Later I made features that way, for a while.

X-Films.indb 92

14/05/2008 16:14:14

93  Ÿ   love kills/sid & nancy

Ann Lampton and Chloe Webb lead the film’s Bromley contingent. The acting highlight of those London sequences, I thought, was Nancy’s phone call to her mother. The call to the US, essentially a monologue, was a brilliant piece of work – one in which Chloe couldn’t be overshadowed by Gary. At other times, when the two characters were physically close, Gary had a tendency to overpower her. Chloe mentioned this to me, but I didn’t have much influence, beyond reminding him that this was ‘only’ acting. At the outset, worried about the chemistry between the two leads, I’d called Nicholas Roeg and asked him how he’d managed to film the amazingly sexy scenes between his principals in Don’t Look Now. Roeg was charming but non-specific: ‘Well, you know . . . You just put the two of them together in circumstances in which they’re relaxed and comfortable . . . and take it from there.’ But there seemed to be no circumstances in which Gary and Chloe could be comfortable. They were equally intense, equally strong actors, with completely different styles. Some competition was inevitable. The London filming was very difficult for Gary, whose father died early in the shoot. In circumstances like these, a job is probably a good thing, since it gives one something else to focus on, but it was Gary’s first feature film, his first lead role, and so probably an anxious experience. Talented and ambitious, he’d already acquired a phalanx of agents and managers – and now this awful, personal

X-Films.indb 93

14/05/2008 16:14:14

X films  Ÿ  94

trauma. In a fight scene with Chloe, Gary hit a picture frame and cut his hand on the glass. He and I embarked on a useless quest, up and down hotel stairs, through the kitchen, blood dripping from his hand, trying to find a bandage. Finding nothing, we walked back up to the second floor, where the crew were. A medic showed up eventually.

Chloe and Gary in one of numerous unused scenes. At the same London hotel location, on the roof, Sid and Nancy shot cap guns at Edward Tudor-Pole, who played the concierge. They were dressed as cowboys and it was meant to be light-hearted stuff. Half an hour into it a helicopter appeared, and we saw men in black with sniper rifles on the adjoining roofs. Our hotel was opposite New Scotland Yard – the presence of Chloe and Gary, with toy guns, had triggered a red alert. No one was shot, the cap guns were examined by the appropriate authorities, and filming progressed. A couple of concert scenes – one in a basement club, the other in a large venue that doubled both for Uxbridge College and the Winterland in San Francisco – caused the actors difficulty. Being a veteran of the west coast Punk scene, I was used to being soaked in sweat and showered with spit at gigs: it was the punky thing. Most of the spit was aimed at the bands, out of respect, but if you stood anywhere near the stage, you’d also end up being spat upon. If it sounds disgusting, that was the idea.

X-Films.indb 94

14/05/2008 16:14:15

95  Ÿ   love kills/sid & nancy

Extras are usually cast on the basis of their looks, which meant a large number of our Love Kills extras were seriously into the punky thing. The movement was in retreat by 1985, but that only made them want to be more authentic. And authenticity included spitting at the actors when they portrayed the band. The cast hated this, and complained to the production, citing the example of Captain Sensible of The Damned, who had supposedly contracted hepatitis after swallowing the infected spit of a fan. From a health and safety point of view, they were right to complain – spitting was unsanitary, but it was also part of the scene that we were trying to re-create. Should I have exhorted the extras not to spit? What if they’d spat, anyway? Despite the actors’ complaints, which tended to multiply as the shoot progressed, their performances were excellent. The climax of the English shoot was the re-creation of the famous ‘My Way’ promo, directed by Julien Temple. If you look at the original version today, the stage, set, audience, and Sid’s gun are all comparatively small. However, in our memories, if we are enthusiasts for this kind of thing, the stage is huge, ablaze with light, the theatre giant and grand, the audience vast and agog, filled with august dignitaries, and Sid’s gun enormous . . . Memory plays tricks, makes good things great. It was these memory tricks that I was emulating in a re-creation of London Punk, a scene I’d never seen. Real London Punk in 1976 or 1977 was a couple of skinny, spotty boys bouncing up and down. Ours was a mob of tattooed skinheads and mohicans, slamdancing in a mosh pit. It looked like California Punk, circa 1984, because that was what I knew, and it was visually more exciting. I wanted to show the movement’s heroic, epic side, so the viewer would understand the tragedy of its destruction. Andrew McAlpine’s mission with the ‘My Way’ set was to re-create the imaginary apogee of Sid’s pretty pathetic repertoire. Andrew made the stairs enormous: under each step he placed a bank of fluorescent lights. We filmed a dozen takes of the song, before Gary reached for his revolver. He was lip-synching, but, like Drew, he’d sung the tracks himself. He acted with great energy and finesse. So much good work was done over two short days that something was bound to fail. When it did, it was quite sudden and dramatic. In the theatre stalls, the grips had built a crane for Roger’s camera. A movie crane is a big fulcrum: one or two camerapeople and

X-Films.indb 95

14/05/2008 16:14:15

X films  Ÿ  96

the camera are balanced by layers of weights on the other end; the grips add or remove weights depending on who’s riding on it. On this occasion, Roger was up there and Dave Bridges was sitting beneath him writing a camera report, when the crane collapsed. One moment Roger was gliding smoothly through a camera move. The next, the crane, with Roger aboard, slipped off its balancing point and landed in the stalls. Simultaneously, Dave leapt from his seat and landed a couple of rows away. The row of stalls where he’d been sitting was completely crushed. Dave and Roger were both okay. Dave had catapulted himself from disaster. Such keen perception: he was aware of the crane coming off its pivot. Such decisive action: jump now! Such physical agility: his ability to do it. These are among the skills of a great DP. For the wrap-around to the ‘My Way’ scenes, we needed some footage of the actors in Paris. Eric arranged for a small crew and three actors to fly to a small airport outside Paris in a private plane. We got our various locations, including some stolen shots on the Metro, where Sid and Nancy abused a hippy busker. At a restaurant across the street from the Moulin Rouge, we were joined by Peter McCarthy, who was playing one of Sid’s insidious suitors, a manager named Hugh Kares. That day in Paris was the easiest of the Love Kills shoot. With two vehicles and a total company of 10, we moved fast, yet were still able to light and shoot a night-time restaurant exterior. The small crew made it easier, of course, but there was another factor: the city itself. Paris seemed to be the most film-friendly city on Earth. If you went into a shop, or sat down on the terrasse of a café, and asked to shoot there, the reaction always seemed to be a broad smile and a ‘certainment’. After LA and London, it was amazing. The night before we left to start the American phase of the shoot, there was a wrap party for the London crew. In the gents’ toilets, I met an interesting gatecrasher. His name was Joe Strummer. (I assume the gentle reader is familiar with Strummer, the White Man at Hammersmith Palais, and his seminal punk band The Clash, whom I’d seen, soaked with spit, sweat and white light, at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. If not, there are albums and ‘rockumentaries’ to enlighten you.) We chatted briefly about Sid and the film, and agreed to get together when the shoot was done, so I could show him some footage and perhaps acquire a song.

X-Films.indb 96

14/05/2008 16:14:15

97  Ÿ   love kills/sid & nancy

Thence to New Jersey, where I spent a blissfully warm and sunny Sunday with a tow truck, arranging piles of dredged-up cars along the docks. I was on my own, almost, in one of those industrial desertscapes that filmmakers love. The state of the cars was strange: they were all new sedans, which had just been pushed off the dock into the river. The tow truck driver told me scores of new cars got dumped here, in the pursuit of insurance frauds. Every so often the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey would dredge them up, and he’d drag them away. And the fraudsters would come back, and dump more new cars in the water. Here we shot the sequence where Sid eats a pizza, dances with the kids, and is reunited with the ghostly Nancy. The dancing-with-kids scene was based on one of my interviews with a British photographer who had seen Sid disco-dancing with some children before a gig. Sid was being his usual sweet-baby self, till he saw the guy taking pictures, at which point he threatened to flay the photographer with his bike chain. In Sid’s eyes, to be photographed in a non-tough punk rock pose was suicide. From Abbe’s and my viewpoint, that aspect of Sid, that little-kid thing, redeemed him. There was one shot where Sid walked across the waterfront, with the World Trade Center in the background. Teasing him on his theme of ‘one right shot’ I said Roger should prepare to be boring, since tradition and the rule of threes obliged him to put the Twin Towers on either the right or left of frame. Roger set up his shot, in defiance, with the towers right in the middle of the frame. It was completely wrong, aesthetically, and so we went with it. The next night we shot the exterior of Max’s Kansas City. This was where The Velvet Underground once played; it was abandoned, but Fox and Burbank had recreated the famous sign from the Velvets’ album cover, and for extras we had a crowd of keepers of the Punk flame, some of whom modelled themselves on the late Vicious – this meant they hated Gary Oldman, because he wasn’t really Sid. After the rehersal, Gary told me that some of these Sid-clones had tried to punch him when he got out of his limo. We agreed not to hang about, but to shoot immediately, and that I’d go in with him. So that was me, clinging to Sid’s belt as he raced from the limo into Max’s Kansas City, if you noticed. Sure enough, several would-be-Sids threw punches at us, as, heads down, we barrelled through the crowd. But we made it in a couple of takes, and I must have done a better job than Luis Colosio’s bodyguard did in Tijuana, as Gary survived.

X-Films.indb 97

14/05/2008 16:14:15

X films  Ÿ  98

We cast Courtney Love as one of Nancy’s New York pals. She was a good actor, and one of those American girls with a continuous vocal stream of consciousness. One evening during the New York shoot Rudy and I made plans to go out for dinner. We were going to discuss a screenplay I’d asked him to write about William Walker. Courtney got wind of this and wanted to come along – so that, she said, she could learn how films got made. I told her she couldn’t come; Rudy and I were going to be working, and we didn’t want to be entertained, or to have to entertain her. Courtney told me that if she could come along, she wouldn’t speak. ‘I promise to be a complete moll and just sit there, saying nothing,’ she vowed. This didn’t seem possible, but I took her at her word, and we three went out for dinner at the grisly, overpriced Spanish restaurant adjacent to the Chelsea Hotel. Rudy and I had a productive discussion about the script and, as you’ve guessed, Courtney remained totally mute. I thanked her very much for being so disciplined. We filmed a couple of days at the Chelsea, on its elaborate staircase, in its corridors, and in the lobby filled with art. We shot half of the sequence where, having set fire to their room, the love bunnies are moved to new quarters. We picked up the scene with Gary, Chloe, Sandy Barron (who played Stanley Bard, the hotelier), and Fox Harris (as the bellboy) four weeks later, on a sound stage in LA. Such is the detail of the art department, and the care taken in lighting, that the transition is hidden. Then came another wrap party, and another flight to LA. The first evening there I stayed at the hotel the production team had found for us – a large, impersonal new building in Santa Monica. I rode up in the lift with Gary, listening to him complain about something, and while trying to find my room, ran into two more ‘Sex Pistols’, who also began to moan. I forget what they were complaining about; it may have been the colour of their rooms, or the contents of their mini-bars. Next day I moved to the Kensington, where no one from the production was staying. I was getting tired of my Pistols, and they of me. This was quite ironic because, researching Love Kills, I’d formed a disapproving opinion of McLaren – blaming him for letting the Sex Pistols fall apart. If he’d only been a better manager, put more energy into it, supported his artistes more, the band might have lasted longer, and produced even greater work – my thoughts were along those lines.

X-Films.indb 98

14/05/2008 16:14:15

99  Ÿ   love kills/sid & nancy

By the time we reached LA, I’d reconsidered. Dumping the band, letting it fall to pieces: it didn’t seem so strange now, or such a mistake. The next day I told the Pistols actors that they were doing great work, that I was very impressed by them, but that I wasn’t responsible for their rooms, their per diems, or many other things that might occur. I was the director of a film, they were actors in it, and our only interactions should be about their characters and their actions in the scenes. Gary, Perry, and Tony listened in silence. Drew spoke to me later and apologised for whining (he had been the least prolific whiner in any case). ‘From now on, you won’t hear nothing from me, except my lines!’ declared my scouse friend. It wasn’t true, but I loved hearing it. Nor can I complain about the actors: I was very lucky to have such convincing Sex Pistols. They had a hard job, and were succeeding at it. A great actor, David Hayman, was portraying McLaren brilliantly as the master manipulator. And in LA I was reunited with some of the cast of Repo Man. In an abandoned jail, Sid’s police interrogators were Biff Yeager and Ed Pansullo; handing Gary his belongings as he left prison was Dick Rude. Working with these guys again was natural and agreeable. I knew that the great directors – Peckinpah, Ford, Leone, Aldrich, Kurosawa, Buñuel, Anderson – had built up ‘stock companies’ of actors whose work they admired. This seemed possible, and a good idea. In early December, we filmed the methadone clinic sequence, with Chloe, Gary, and Sy. This was a scene Abbe and I invented, in which Nancy and Sid are held hostage by a medical orderly who wants them to know some facts about drugs. Sy’s character, holding onto their little paper cups of orange liquid, gives them (and the audience) a potted history of CIA involvement in the heroin trade. Sid and Nancy didn’t get it, of course. But here, amid all the histrionics and the spit and the drool, is the film’s message: heroin comes here courtesy of the CIA and other intelligence agencies.3 It is a means of social control. Western states have long used dope to pacify colonial subjects; as they de-industrialise and jobs vanish, they need it to pacify their citizens at home as well. A reliable, controlled supply of smack and other drugs is essential to ‘free market’ democracies – which is why, after the Taliban eradicated the opium crop, NATO invaded Afghanistan. Sy is a powerful actor, and he gave a great

X-Films.indb 99

14/05/2008 16:14:15

X films  Ÿ  100

performance in a film of great performances. But in a long film, it’s only one short scene, the one point at which the political context of heroin is mentioned. More memorable, for most of the audience, is the scene that Abbe improvised and directed: where Sid and Nancy kiss in an alley, with dustbins falling all around. This was invented at the eleventh hour, after we’d lost a location. The scene had depicted Sid throwing a chair at someone and kissing Nancy, so Abbe said ‘Let’s have something which starts with a kiss and ends with a crash.’ The alley into which the trash fell wasn’t in New York, due to an inexplicable shortage of creepy alleys in Manhattan. In contrast, LA’s downtown brick buildings offered plenty – replete with fire escapes, overflowing dumpsters, and very large rats. In charge of our LA extras was an old UCLA pal, Lorenzo O’Brien, who did his job by walking up and down the Venice Boardwalk, stopping people he liked the look of, and asking them if they wanted to be in a movie. A small crew went up to San Francisco to shoot a conversation between Phoebe (Debby Bishop) and Sid in the back of a cab. We missed our characteristic Golden Gate Bridge shot when the fog rolled in, but Roger didn’t want to risk another crack at it. The only time on the whole shoot that I saw him get remotely rattled – including the collapse of the crane – was in ’Frisco, when the fog came, and a light drizzle began to fall. We were filming with Roger’s own Arriflex, and it was clear he wanted to be done as quickly as possible, so as to get his camera out of the rain. This struck me as a bit weeny, and not in the tradition of macho British cameramen that he otherwise upheld so admirably. Who cares if the camera gets wet or not? If you’re worried about that, rent one! Gary and I took the Amtrak train down to LA Union Station. Everyone else flew back to LAX. Our appointments were quite luxurious, and we enjoyed spectacular views of the Pacific, and of the missile launchers at Vandenberg Air Force Base. We filmed in El Centro, then headed south to the border town of Calexico, where Lorenzo had hired as extras a Mexican motorcycle gang. Our version of the Sex Pistols’ Texas tour was, like our version of the Pistols, somewhat exaggerated. In addition to the tour bus and the motorcycle outriders, there was a helicopter full of paparazzi. Aboard

X-Films.indb 100

14/05/2008 16:14:15

101  Ÿ   love kills/sid & nancy

the bus sat Miguel Sandoval, in a curly black Marc Bolan wig, singing an anthem of his own invention, ‘I Want a Job’. On our return to LA, we filmed the Miyako Ballroom sequence where Sid walked through a plate-glass door. This, in fact, didn’t occur. The historic Sid ended up prostrate as a result of drugs, alcohol, hepatitis, and ‘stupidissimus’: the walking-through-glass stunt was a shortcut to indicate his state. Rick Barker did it most impressively: he doubled Gary, mimicking his Sid-walk, up and down to the huge plate of sugar glass once or twice, then, when the cameras rolled, marching straight through it. Rick never stopped acting – having gone through the glass, he writhed a bit, loose-limbed, like Gary playing Sid, then tried to get up. He fell again, thrashed about, then passed out. The eleventh week of the shoot, scheduled as our last, was on stage at Cine Pro studios in Hollywood, where Fox and Burbank had recreated the Chelsea rooms. It was a great environment after constantly changing locations. We could rehearse in one place, in peace. The largest set was the Chelsea suite that Sid and Nancy set on fire. We shot the transition from England to the US here: Sid lying in bed, imagining himself in Maida Vale, fantasising about how much better things would be when they got to America. After the room was burned, we moved to the Room 100 set, completing the scene where Fox Harris, as the world’s oldest bellboy, carries Sid’s guitar to the new room. Once we were in Room 100, Sid and Nancy were almost entirely alone, at the vortex of their horror/love story. And we were into the most dramatic and difficult scenes of the film. Not difficult for the director, who just stood behind the camera watching marvellous actors, but very demanding for the cast. Chloe and Gary weren’t entirely alone in Room 100: Xander Berkeley played Sid and Nancy’s dealer, a composite character we’d named ‘Bowery Snacks’. Xander is one of those actors who love to discuss the details and the possibilities of their characters. He brought many interesting angles to the scene, down to the details of the drugs his character had ingested prior to the scene, and whether Bowery was an authentic ‘drug bucket’ or, more likely, drawn to the opiates, like Nancy and Sid. He alternated Bowery’s fawning side with his anger at being the errand boy of celebrity fuck-ups. Some have assumed that because Love Kills was about two junkies, we were all awash with drugs. A noted film director even asked me ‘How much smack did Gary and Chloe do, during the shoot?’ I could only

X-Films.indb 101

14/05/2008 16:14:15

X films  Ÿ  102

repeat the old yarn about Dustin Hoffman and Laurence Olivier, when they were making Marathon Man: Dustin, in the process of ‘getting into character’, tells Larry that he plans to go to the dentist to have a tooth filled without anaesthetic, so that he will know what it feels like to be tortured with a dentist’s drill. ‘Dustin,’ Larry gently asks, ‘have you ever tried . . . acting?’ I wanted a mess of cockroaches to inhabit those final scenes. The Chelsea was full of cockroaches, and roaches weren’t in short supply in LA, but there were some difficulties. The sound stage owners didn’t particularly want roaches introduced to their building, and both Betsy, the excellent assistant director, and Gary were phobic about the beasts. One evening, in the parking lot outside the sound stage, I tried to convince Oldman and Magruder that cockroaches were an essential element of the next day’s scenes. ‘We must have them,’ I insisted, ‘but not to worry – we’ll put ’em in Sid and Nancy’s bedside garbage pile, film ’em, and then burn ’em!’ FLASH – instantly a huge lightning flash enveloped the car park, surrounding us all with ghastly light. I fell to my knees, gibbering. ‘Only kidding about the cockroaches, honest, didn’t mean it,’ I babbled, as thunder rolled. At the end of our eleventh week I turned 31. We shot for a couple more days; finishing Nancy’s death scene, and an interior we’d missed, with Graham Fletcher Cook. Chloe and Gary had reached a position of equality in their acting – it was a privilege to see them work. Next day I left LA for Mexico City, en route to a location scout in Nicaragua.

POSTPRODUCTION Postproduction took place almost entirely in London, apart from some additional dialogue recorded in LA, and John Cale’s and Pray for Rain’s music, done in New York and San Francisco. The first cut of the film was three hours long, so there was no need to shoot additional sequences. The task was to cut the picture down. I’d left it completely in David Martin’s hands during filming and while I was in Nicaragua. His cut, watched on a flatbed in Soho, was very promising. David never over-edited scenes, and tried to let them run in masters if it was possible. I’d made him promise not to cut the

X-Films.indb 102

14/05/2008 16:14:15

X-Films.indb 103

103  Ÿ   love kills/sid & nancy

‘My Way’ sequence, but he couldn’t resist having a discreet crack at it. I was tempted to play all of ‘My Way’, plano secuencia, in one shot: a particularly complex composition of Roger’s with Gary in the middle distance and several TV monitors in the foreground. But, as David observed, there was too much good material not to use it. Love Kills contains its share of punk music. There are on-screen versions of songs by the Pistols and Siouxsie and the Banshees, not to mention the Monkees (‘Stepping Stone’). The Pogues composed perhaps a quarter of the overall soundtrack. Another quarter came from Pray for Rain4 – including the popular falling-dustbins music. John Cale wrote an original song for us, and Steve Jones gave us a guitar piece from his new album. Dee Dee Ramone penned a song for the film (remarkably titled Love Kills), but his manager insisted the Ramones keep it for their album. The remainder of the music – at least a quarter of the total, if not more – came from Joe Strummer. In terms of music, Strummer provided the greatest variety. Some of it was soundtrack, but most was ‘source’ – playing from a radio, or via a speaker system somewhere in or near the frame. This music came in a gradual and roundabout way. Strummer took to dropping by the cutting room. He’d watch whatever scene we were working on, fire up a spliff, and depart. Next day, or the day after, he’d return, bringing along a cassette tape of soundtrack music inspired by one of the scenes he’d seen. It might be something he already had, but more often it was a piece he’d written and recorded the previous night at home. Joe, living in London with time on his hands, had decided to try the film thing, and his Love Kills contribution is far more than could be officially noted in the credits. His record company, Epic, insisted that Joe could write and record only two original pieces for our film, including a main theme. But Joe kept watching the picture and saying things like, ‘You could do with some reggae here. Playing over the speakers .  .  .’ And next day he would bring in a cassette version of the reggae he had in mind. David would match Joe’s rough tracks up against the picture and we would fall immediately in love with them. Contractually, there was no way we could use them. In less than a week Joe exceeded his musical quota, and we’d already spent our soundtrack budget. But his attitude was that he’d been paid for two songs, which was fine, but he would keep on writing music. If the record company forbade it, he wouldn’t tell them. The songs could be included in the soundtrack under assumed names.

14/05/2008 16:14:15

X films  Ÿ  104 X-Films.indb 104

Joe wrote half a dozen original tunes this way, including an original Country and Western song, sung by Pearl Harbor. All play as source or background music in the film. In the end roller, they’re credited to non-existent composers and bands. Joe didn’t seem to mind; he was getting experience as a part-time film composer, he was having a good time. Strummer was a haunted man, concerned to be upfront. He slicked his hair back with soap, wore his sideburns long, and always showed up wearing the same black-and-red checked lumberjack shirt. I remember him lecturing a young American actor about the danger of heroin, the importance of not falling stupidly into doing it. The message didn’t sink in, but I was impressed by Strummer, who seemed entirely sincere. Joe thought drugs were something you should be upfront about. If you had a spliff to smoke, you should walk down the street smoking it – ‘The Rebel Way’! If you had to hide what you were doing, you had a problem. Strummer was an encyclopedic musicologist. He would produce home-made cassettes and lay them on people – tapes of music he had put together to augment areas where he thought their musical knowledge was lacking. He gave me tapes of reggae and of old English music. This was a huge asset to Love Kills. The only point over which we disagreed was the title song, which in the end he wrote and sang. Two guys had sent me a tape of their song about Sid. They were quite young and the song was very critical – about how Sid had sold out, done nothing of value, died an idiot. ‘King of the punks, king of the geeks,’ went the chorus. It was minimal, had a good riff, and I was taken by it. I met its authors, and we agreed they’d do a version for the film. Strummer didn’t like their song, and volunteered to write an alternative. Then, in his typical hyper-prolific fashion, he came back with two demos: ‘Love Kills’ and ‘The Dum-Dum Club’. Either one could have been our main theme song par excellence, but ‘Love Kills’ stood out: a plaintive ballad with a mournful, wailing vocal; minimalist, troubling, moving. Unfortunately, in going from demo to finished product, the song and the singer/songwriter went through the studio of a producer in New York. This guy had a state-of-the-art 1985 computer setup, with thwonky fake drumbeats, auto-bass, and those early digital thingys that made ‘blip-blip’ sounds. Joe’s lovely song, once just his voice and a couple of instruments – so sparse, so lonesome – grew thicker and boingier with multiple mechanical drumbeats, and hyper-bass. I heard various versions and the effects and thuds got louder every time.

14/05/2008 16:14:15

One night, near the end of the editing process, I took the Tube back to Tower Hill. When I came out of the station I encountered a mass of banners and marchers heading east. Immediately I spotted the banner of the ACTT – the Association of Cinema and Television Technicians union, of which I’d only recently become a member! I joined my comrades beneath our proud banner. Where were we going, I asked? ‘Wapping!’ the marchers replied. It was a march against Rupert Murdoch, and his creation of a fortified non-union printing Stalag for The Times, the Sun, and his other rubbish papers, in Wapping. (For those who are fortunate enough not to know London, Wapping was another poor district, partially industrialised, on the opposite bank of the river from Bermondsey.) The ‘Dirty Digger’s’ plan was enthusiastically supported by Thatcher, who sent forth armies of cops to break the picket lines. This was a march in support of the pickets and the printing unions – in support of the right to protest, and to block the factory gates! I loved marches, and this one was particularly atmospheric, through blackened old brick streets, to Murdoch’s grey-walled bunker, with razor wire and CCTV. Flanks of public and private police eyed us, though not as many as I’d anticipated. After a bit of chanting, I retraced my steps and walked home across Tower Bridge.

105  Ÿ   love kills/sid & nancy

The finished main theme/title song wasn’t a patch on Strummer’s minimal, sad original. I preferred the demo, or the anti-Sid song the two lads had written, but by then their lament had also been put through the ‘deflavouriser’ by a ‘professional’ producer in London. Too much money, time, and effort had gone into Joe’s ‘Love Kills’ for us not to use it. So, dehumanised and boingy, it bounced over the end credits of the film, soon to be rechristened Sid & Nancy.

Love Kills was to be mixed in a basement on Dean Street. When I checked the place out, it seemed very small, dominated by a pingpong table. Eric thought some decent films, including Brazil, had been mixed there, but I remained suspicious. So, as an alternative, he booked us in at a larger mixing room just up the street: at De Lane Lea, where our mixer would be Hugh Strain. Hugh was an old-school sound mixer. He had a reputation as a fire-eater, and some people inevitably referred to him as ‘Strain by name, strain by nature’, but we hit it off well. Hugh’s style was get the feel of a reel – one 10-minute chunk of the picture, consisting of several different dialogue tracks, up to 20 effects tracks, and maybe six music

X-Films.indb 105

14/05/2008 16:14:15

X films  Ÿ  106

tracks. He’d rehearse a few times, listening to the different tracks, and then he’d roll and mix it on the fly, adjusting levels and fading tracks, until he made a mistake, or the scene ended. I watched him mix long scenes this way – several minutes’ worth of dialogue, music and effects – without pausing. It was exciting – a real performance, an artist at work. There was no automation or computer assistance: every knob had to be tweaked, each button pushed, and every slider slid, by Hugh’s or his assistants’ hands, in real time. Today, we programme all our fades, levels, effects, tweaks, and adjustments in advance, and every take is predictable. The digital world has made things precise and accurate, but perhaps less exciting. Close to the end of postproduction, Eric and I were summoned by one of Zenith’s lawyers, who insisted we remove the ‘My Way’ sequence. We spent several hours with this guy and he was quite adamant that the scene had to go, because we hadn’t secured the rights to it. Eric persisted for a while, then left. I continued the resistance. This lawyer was missing something – if only I could figure out what. We watched our ‘My Way’ scene on video. We watched ‘My Way’ in The Great Rock’n’Roll Swindle for comparison. ‘You don’t have the rights,’ the lawyer kept telling me. He was a youngish fellow, somewhere between my and Eric’s age. I kept insisting that we did. We had secured the rights to the song: Gary, who played Sid, was under contract to us. We owned the rights to the performance, orchestrated by Matlock of the Pistols. In any case, this was a biopic, and the ‘fair use’ doctrine covered it.5 Back and forth this lawyer and I went – me insisting that fair use and our contracts covered the sequence, he insisting that they didn’t. I felt like I was losing my mind. What didn’t this guy get? Finally the penny dropped. ‘The person in the video,’ my persecutor said slowly, ‘Who is it?’ ‘It’s an actor called Gary Oldman,’ I sighed. ‘Do you want to see his contract?’ ‘No, not the actor. The person in the original video. Who is that?’ I couldn’t believe the question. Who did he think the person was? Who did he think our biopic was about? Father fucking Christmas? ‘Sid Vicious,’ I replied. ‘Oh,’ said our lawyer, ‘well, there’s no problem then. You can keep the sequence in the film.’

X-Films.indb 106

14/05/2008 16:14:15

107  Ÿ   love kills/sid & nancy

I love lawyers, and have faith in them because, as democracy is increasingly stolen from us by oligarchs, puppet politicians, and corrupt voting systems, the law is all that stands between their whims and us having no rights at all. This idiot had caused us hours of aggravation, and had charged the production for his time, but I didn’t even mind – I was just happy to get out of there. Then the lawyers told us we must change the title. It seemed a writer in New York had written a novel, about a serial murderer of prostitutes, several years previously, called Love Kills. This person had written Zenith a letter, claiming he owned the title and threatening to sue us if we called our film Love Kills. In 1985 the law in Britain and the US said you couldn’t copyright a title. We did a search and quickly discovered several previous uses of the two words, including a 1936 stage musical, also titled Love Kills. This meant his case would never have stood up in court – assuming that he brought a lawsuit, which he probably wouldn’t have. No matter. Our lawyers insisted that we change the title. I wanted yet another meeting with them, but Margaret, who had supported us through thick and thin, told us to find another title. Everyone in Zenith’s office tried to come up with alternatives, most of them gags along the lines of ‘Nancy Gets The Needle’. Which is why Love Kills came to be called something as bland as Sid & Nancy, unless you saw it on video in Mexico, where the title was Dos Vidas Destruidas por la Droga (Two Lives Destroyed by Drugs).

RELEASE The film first played as part of the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs at Cannes in 1986. It opened in a huge cinema, in the presence of Jack Lang, the former minister of culture, who sat in the balcony; he received more applause than the film did. The Sid & Nancy/Love Kills team were all seated together as the lights went down: me, Eric, Margaret, Chloe, Dick Rude, Sara Sugarman, Joe, Gary, and his manager. Apparently, members of Duran Duran were in the audience. As the first image of Gary as Sid appeared on screen, one of them shouted out: ‘Johnny Thunders!’ Strummer, may the saints preserve his memory, stood up and yelled at the wanker, ‘Shut the fuck up!’

X-Films.indb 107

14/05/2008 16:14:15

X films  Ÿ  108

After the screening, we emerged into a milling crowd of punks, some of whom had seen the film. One of them looked me in the eye and declared, ‘Ce film – c’est nul!’ Half a dozen people crashed on the floor of my hotel room after the event. Next morning I went off for a meeting of some kind, and, on my return, found Strummer, Rude, and Tom Richmond, still dressed in their black evening wear and white dress shirts, clustered around a white plastic table in the hot sun, trying to get coffee. The image stuck with me, and inspired the opening scenes of a new film, Straight to Hell. Love Kills had a preview in LA – one of those events where the invited audience fills out forms and answers a studio’s questions. These were some of the responses from the preview audience: I feel this film was totally evil. Makes me uncomfortable but doesn’t answer any questions. Where is the character growth? A degrading, revolting film. There was nothing anyone could relate to. The characters were so inhuman. The script is deplorable. The look of the film surprised me for its apparent amateurism. The choice of shots were [sic] totally boring – there were no dolly shots or anything even subtly soothing. The Americans are depicted as ridiculous.

Despite the previews, the film got an American release from the Sam Goldwyn Company, an independent distributor of art pictures, based in west LA. The Americans went with the ‘raining dustbins’ image for their poster; the British distributor went with a brightly coloured, Jamie Reid-type graphic of Gary and Chloe. The posters reflect the way the film was viewed: quite differently in each country. In England, Sid & Nancy was a Sex Pistols artefact, while in the States – where punk had never had much of a foothold – the film was seen as a free-standing drama. Following Sid & Nancy, I received invitations to direct other heroin-related projects, among them Needle, and The Basketball Diaries. These were good projects, but why would I want to do another one? Now, if I could just shoot Malfi, starring Chloe Webb or Kathy Burke, with Drew or Gary as her werewolf brother Ferdinand, and Sy or Xander as the Cardinal . . . But how to swing it?

X-Films.indb 108

14/05/2008 16:14:15

STRAIGHT TO HELL In 1986 I received the disturbing news that Courtney Love had been kidnapped by white slavers based in the South Seas. I didn’t know Courtney well, but it seemed a shame that one so young should face such a career-damaging setback. I gathered a small band of lads, most of them actors, and we drifted south, towards Guam. We found Courtney the prisoner of a scurvy crew of military ‘contractors’ providing security for a US Air Force base. It took cunning, guile, and guts to wrest her from the clutches of these bravos, but that’s a story for another day. To get her back unharmed, however, I had to assure the leader of the bandits, El Chupis, that ‘La Love’ was a legendary chanteuse and actor, and that her fans – many of them young girls the age of Chupis’ twin daughters – would be brokenhearted if Courtney was not returned. Above the pokkata-pokkata noise of our cargo plane over the Pacific, I advised ’Ney to prepare for a career in music and films. She looked at me astonished: up until this point, the girl had sought only the simple life. ‘You’ve no choice,’ I told her, as the sun set below us, ‘I gave my word to El Chupis that you were a great singer, artist, and actor. If you don’t achieve fame, my dear, I shall have lied.’ Straight to Hell is the result of a Sandinista benefit concert at the Fridge, in Brixton, organised by Simi Bedford. It took place on 7 August 1985. Around 2,000 attendees bought tickets, and The Pogues, Strummer, The Men They Couldn’t Hang, and Elvis Costello played. It was a great show: in addition to 2,000 in the cinema there were another 2,000 who couldn’t get in, which suggests both the popularity of the acts, and how many Londoners were in solidarity with Nicaragua and against the US war there.

X-Films.indb 109

14/05/2008 16:14:15

X films  Ÿ  110 X-Films.indb 110

Strummer, buzzing with energy from the event, declared himself up for a trip to Revolutionary Nicaragua. The Pogues, who wished they’d been The Clash, said they were up for it as well. Costello was a contemplative man and would have opted to stay at home, had he not fallen in love with The Pogues’ Sid-like bassist Cait O’Riordan: if The Pogues went to Nicaragua, Elvis was going as well. Lorenzo had made contacts in Nicaragua, preparing the ground for our Walker film; I asked him if he could make discreet plans for a rock and roll tour of Nicaraguan towns the following year. We’d film it in August 1986 with a small crew and edit the documentary in London; it would be paid for by Eric’s pre-sale of a videocassette. This seemed like a guaranteed money-maker: Strummer and The Pogues and Elvis on the Revolution Trail! Everyone who turned up at the Fridge would buy a copy – 4,000 units moved on the first day! But, when Eric shopped the project to various record and video companies, they all turned it down. This was weird, I thought, and it put me in a somewhat embarrassing position, vis-à-vis a dozen musicians who’d promised not to tour or record for an entire month, anticipating a solidarity tour of Nicaragua, and a video on the back end. It wasn’t something to be winged UCLA-style in a VW campervan: there were six Pogues plus road crew and a manager, Strummer and his band, Elvis and co, plus me, the producer, film crew, and all the equipment. It was a serious logistical enterprise: like moving a not-sosmall orchestra about, on dirt roads. As August approached, Eric mused, ‘You know, I think it would be easier to make a feature with this lot.’ I enquired what sort of feature and who would finance it. ‘It could be any sort of film, but it would have to have a script pretty quickly, and involve the same people: Joe, Elvis, The Pogues. We’d sell it on the basis of the musicians.’ The Duchess of Malfi with a rock’n’roll cast? It was too good a proposal not to pursue. We discussed the idea with Strummer. He was keen on our going back to Almería, where Eric, Tom, and I had shot his ‘Love Kills’ video. I’d been there on teenage pilgrimages, and made a short film on the old Leone sets. I was always on the lookout for obscure Italian Western stills, videos, or soundtrack albums on market stalls or in the specialist music shops in Soho. Any excuse to make a Spaghetti Western, I was game. Strummer loved Spain for the same reasons all decent Englishmen love it: the sun, the relaxed pace and attitude, the decent food, the red wine and brandy, the cheap cigarettes, and the hashish. Throw in

14/05/2008 16:14:15

111  Ÿ   straight to hell

the Madrid Metro system, the Talgo from Atocha to Almería, and the Prado, lose the ciggies, and I was 100 per cent in agreement. Drawn to Almería by the films, we’d both fallen in love with the province. I’d spent most of my time in the high desert around Tabernas. Joe found a small town on the coast, San Jose, and started taking his wife and daughters there. At that time it had one hotel, two streets, and one telephone – in the local bar. Strummer wanted to shoot a real, heavyduty, hardcore Spaghetti Western – something like Damiano Damiani’s Quién Sabe? or Sergio Sollima’s The Big Gundown. These are serious Westerns, and good films. But I didn’t think we could go the serious route – any more than rockers could play the leads in Malfi. Eric had found interest from Island Films, who wanted a wacky, musician-based comedy, not a 1960s Italian Western brooding with homoerotic sadism, parapolitics and insanity. A crew was quickly rounded up. Before the script was even written, Eric had asked Andrew McAlpine to design the film. We hunted down Karl Braun, who had been production manager on the Love Kills promo. Karl knew the extras casting guys, the owners of the Western towns, and construction people. We all knew the locations. When Eric said a screenplay was now essential, I went to LA to write it with Dick Rude. At the Kensington Hotel, we began work on a script provisionally titled ‘The Legend of Paddy Garcia’. We knew we were writing it for a group, and that it wasn’t to be too ‘serious’. But, on a practical level, within our Spaghetti Western world, who would the hero be? Joe was the obvious candidate, but he was an untried actor whose enormous stage charisma might not translate onto film. The Pogues were innate rivals: the group would kill any of its cohorts rather than let him play the lead. Elvis had a great look, but it wasn’t the square-chinned, pale-eyed killer face of Eastwood, Franco Nero, or Henry Fonda. Should an actor play the lead? Sy Richardson was the most obvious protagonist: commanding, credible, experienced. But he wasn’t one of the rock’n’rollers. Unknown to me, he was currently working as a bank manager. The hero of a good Spaghetti Western moves through it like a steamroller: like Toshirô Mifune in Kurosawa’s Yojimbo. By contrast, Straight to Hell introduces four characters, then 24 more; all inhabit the film constantly. Three days pass, and very few are killed (Ed TudorPole and Jem Finer, one of The Pogues, bite the dust prematurely). On the final day, in the last 20 minutes of the film, a speedy killing-off ensues.

X-Films.indb 111

14/05/2008 16:14:15

X films  Ÿ  112

This structure gave Costello, The Pogues, Strummer, Love, et al. the maximum amount of time to chew the scenery. Xander Berkeley’s character, Preacher, might ultimately be slain, but not before he’d carved crosses on his acolytes’ chests, chugged a last desperate espresso, and done a runner with the chapel plate. Straight to Hell might indeed be better if its structure were different, but it was written to suit its circumstances, as screenplays sometimes are. During the writing process Dick and I consumed coffee – bad coffee, brewed on the electric ring – and suffered from sexual tension, provoked by one of our neighbours in the hotel. We never knew who, or even where, she was, but if we angled the slat-opening windows of our writers’ roost just so, they’d catch the reflection of this woman who spent every day tanning on her balcony. She was dark-skinned and voluptuous, with a very small bikini, and every day she would lather herself with sun-tan oil and lie there on the plastic sun-lounger provided by the hotel. Sexual tension quickly became the screenplay’s main concern. Despite all their talk of money, most of the characters are ruled not by avarice, but by love or lust. Unlike my previous scripts, this one contained no swearing at all. We wrote the screenplay in three days. If you associate long periods of effort with quality work, you may think quickly done things like this to be cheap rubbish. Never mind. The ideas in Straight to Hell had been brewing for some time, and we were creating characters for actors we knew: screenplay as casting director. Only one role proved difficult to cast: Mr Dade. In the script, Dade is a villainous regional power-broker, who has hired the three killers – Norwood, Willy, and Simms – to murder a rival. When his hirelings fail, rob a bank, and run away, Dade sends an emissary, Whitey, to look for them. Whitey is hanged and Dade heads for the killers’ hideout, to settle their account. Given this, the part of Mr Dade called for a very strong actor. In the best of all possible worlds, Dade wouldn’t have been human at all, but a brain in a bell-jar on hydraulic robot legs, or a lizard-creature in a lounge suit: something out of Mars Attacks! or a Cronenberg movie. But either possibility would have involved some serious special effects, something, in 35mm days, beyond our million-dollar budget. I tried Iggy Pop: he, if anyone, could play a special effect! Iggy was receptive at first, but as the date approached he was less keen. Eric asked Gary Oldman and Chloe Webb if they would play a cameo –

X-Films.indb 112

14/05/2008 16:14:15

113  Ÿ   straight to hell

either arriving in town together and being killed, or turning up solo and ditto. Imagine Chloe, part android, in the role of Mr Dade! But, fresh from Sid & Nancy, neither was in the mood for a small role. Dick suggested we offer Jim Jarmusch the part, and, in a hurry to sign off on the casting process, I took his advice. Jim had a good look, and Pam Tait gave him a fine white suit to wear, but his performance wasn’t very strong, or animated. Not that any actor could have competed with Fox Harris, who became the focus of any scene he was in, and who would be at Dade’s side in the final showdown. The film expanded beyond our document. We were asked to include scenes for Dennis Hopper, Grace Jones, and for a band featuring three sexy dreadlocked girls (we made them Tudor-Pole’s henchpersons). Rude’s acting aspirations had to be considered: honest Dick, who had been denied the lead in Repo Man! And there was Zander Schloss, also insisting on a part, and a good one this time, after his miseries. There were women I’d gone out with, or tried to. And there was Courtney. This is why Straight to Hell has not one, but four protagonists: Velma, the harridan wife, played by ’Ney; Norwood, the American assassin (Sy); Simms, the vegetarian killer (Strummer); and Willy, the kid, played by Rude. Tom and I watched a tape of Giulio Questi’s brilliant Django Kill . . . If You Live, Shoot! several times. Unlike most Italian Westerns, it didn’t imitate the visuals of Leone, or of Yojimbo. It has a visual strategy quite unlike any other Spaghetti Western: moving camera, focus pulls, and blue-and-yellow light for night exteriors. We decided to use it as our model.

PRODUCTION The shoot began on 4 August 1986, with the opening: interiors and exteriors at the Gran Hotel, Almería, and the apparent kidnapping of Velma. The Gran is a none-too-pretty tower block opposite the docks. It’s one of the new buildings that went up in the 1950s and 1960s to replace the neighbourhoods destroyed when the German navy shelled Almería and Malaga: the last cities to surrender to the fascists in the Spanish Civil War. In the 1960s, the Gran was the only ‘modern’ hotel in Almería: it had telephones, so it was where all the movie crews, actors, and directors stayed. David Lean and Lee Katz stayed there,

X-Films.indb 113

14/05/2008 16:14:15

X films  Ÿ  114

shooting Lawrence of Arabia. Leone, Van Cleef, Volontè, and Corbucci had been guests in its less-than-magnificent quarters – they had sat in its jumble-sale array of ancient sofas and armchairs. Our first two days were over-scheduled, and we abandoned a mini-action sequence in which the killers, in their little red rental car, were chased by the police. The location was a miniature driving course in the dry river bed opposite the hotel. Instead, we grabbed some shots on the outskirts of the city, where the desert begins, and filmed a bank robbery in a town called Benahadux, north of the city. In all this we were carefully shepherded by Karl Braun. Karl was angling to be an actor, having revealed that he’d doubled Terence Hill on the set of My Name is Nobody. He claimed he’d been Sergio Leone’s ski instructor in Switzerland, and that Leone told him to come to Almería since he always needed big white guys for his films. Karl’s main interests, besides acting, were smoking cigarettes and driving.

Tom Richmond, Shaun Madigan, Del Zamora, James Fernley, Dick Rude, Biff Yeager, Courtney Love, Martin Turner, Joe Strummer, and others on the set of For a Few Dollars More.

X-Films.indb 114

14/05/2008 16:14:15

115  Ÿ   straight to hell

On our third day, we moved uphill to a Western town beside the Almería–Granada highway. The rest of the three-week shoot was to take place here. It was on a flat plateau called the Llano del Duque, and had been built for a Charles Bronson film around 1970. I suspect Bronson wasn’t very tall, since they’d made all the buildings, especially the doorways, undersized. Most of the interiors on the Llano del Duque set were unusable for this reason. The exteriors were already small, and the interiors were tiny. All the buildings were made of seemingly authentic adobe – a mix of mud and straw. The McMahons’ hacienda, so substantial from the outside, was a jumble of pit-props, crumbling walls, and discarded Mariachi costumes within. We extended the back of the bar and knocked down a wall to make the hardware store bigger; otherwise, this was to be a film of exteriors. When the Llano del Duque set was new, there was an Americanstyle wooden saloon building with two functional floors, but when we shot, it was reduced to a staircase and a skeleton. It collapsed not long after. Once we moved up to the desert, I usually slept on the set, either upstairs in the skeletal saloon, or on the balcony of the McMahons’ hacienda. Strummer, Rude, Love, and various others camped on set as well. But, as the weeks went by, and romance began to blossom, the number of lonesome cowboys and cowgals camping on the Llano del Duque diminished, till I was alone. We filmed the breakdown of the killers’ car in a ravine adjacent to the Llano. Though we didn’t know it, the ravine is the Barranco del Infierno – the Canyon of Hell. Next evening all vehicles had to be driven out of sight, as actors and crew clambered up the hill that overlooked the Llano for the scene where Velma and the killers first catch sight of the town. One of our most enjoyable shots, it illustrates a pleasure of film-making: when a group of people exert themselves doing something they wouldn’t normally do (climb a sheer rock slope in high heels, say) at an odd hour, to get a scene unreplicable on any other occasion, an image of which is transferred, upside-down, to a row of hurtling 35mm frames . . . Tom came up with a scheme for covering the first face-off between the killers and the McMahons. This was to film it over several days, at sunset, relying on consistent weather. The scene was a wide exterior involving 20 or 25 characters, most of them appearing for the first time. The ideal time to shoot it was late afternoon – ‘magic hour’ – but this light only lasted 45 minutes, assuming there was no cloud. We wanted

X-Films.indb 115

14/05/2008 16:14:16

X films  Ÿ  116

a variety of coverage, so, for four days, we shot afternoon scenes with a handful of actors while the wardrobe and makeup departments got everyone else ready for the ‘magic hour’ showdown.

Courtney, Joe, me, Sy, and the collapsible hardware set.

I took this when the Hell set was new – around 1971.

X-Films.indb 116

14/05/2008 16:14:16

117  Ÿ   straight to hell

The weather in Almería in August was indeed predictable, and Tom’s plan worked. Sleeping on abandoned film sets is another foible of the Method Director. I still called the actors by their character names (I’d say ‘Norwood’ instead of ‘Sy’, ‘Velma’ instead of ‘’Ney’); worse, I asked the actors to come to the location a week early, so they could ‘relate to each other’s characters’ and ‘get to know the set’. If you were a cinéaste, this might be a nice experience. But some of those involved had real jobs, and one of them was Sy. When I asked him to come to Spain to act, I didn’t realise he was working as a bank manager. (This is one of the reasons I didn’t make another film with Harry Dean Stanton after Repo Man – his full-time job as a greeter at WalMart cuts into the time he has available to act.) Strummer, half kidding, but half serious, strove to be Method, too. The loathing his character, Simms, felt for the boss’ wife Velma was completely heartfelt. Joe slept out in the desert, wearing his shoulder-holster and his battered black suit, digging deeper into the contradictions of the steak-eating vegetarian Simms. When Joe went to Almería city, he wore his shoulder-holster under his black jacket. Eddie Tudor-Pole, also Methoding out, was packing several toy guns. Karl told tales of how he’d had to bail Spaghetti Western actors out of jail on Monday morning, and bring them, hung-over and bloodstained, to the set. He assured me and Eric it wouldn’t be long before our cast were in the carcel, and gave a sidelong glance, across the Gran Hotel bar, at Strummer and his shickso sidekick Rude. Karl was wrong about the carcel. Straight to Hell’s cast were all good timekeepers, and impeccably well behaved. Zander played Karl, the Weiner Kid. Inevitably, he was the town scapegoat.1 If anyone was to be lassoed, kicked, and otherwise illtreated, it would be Karl. Zander took great interest in Andrew McAlpine’s creation of his cart, and had even brought a prop with him: a wooden nickel that he thought Karl’s natural father might have given him before abandoning him at the fair. Zander had exactly the correct take on Karl and played it to the max. Our actors and musicians were a soft-hearted and loving bunch, but their hearts turned to stone when they saw Karl’s cart approaching, pushed by Zander, in his red-and-white chequered coat and service hat. By the second week of shooting, we probably had more footage of Karl being mistreated than of any other character’s travails.

X-Films.indb 117

14/05/2008 16:14:16

X films  Ÿ  118

Karl’s suffering is all over the finished version of Straight to Hell. Even when we cut 10 minutes out of the film, it didn’t diminish him. Only Kim Blousson (Fox Harris) does more to entertain the Llano del Duque, and he is a professional: apart from his portrayal of J. Frank, I think this was Fox’s finest filmic hour. Not many Westerns featured a Tom Jones imitator, and Fox had no singing voice at all. Once again I’d given him a role he wasn’t right for, but how glorious the result. Fox’s version of ‘Delilah’, sung to a crowd of bizarrely dressed armed drunks, is quite fine. Of course, he is superbly supported by Elvis Costello: always in character, struggling to keep pace as Fox randomly changed pitch, tempo, and key. Another actor who enjoyed himself was Ed Pansullo. Cast as one of the spooks in Repo Man, Ed had blurred into the blond herd. Determined not to let this happen again, Ed made friends with the wardrobe designer, the ineffable Pam Tait, and went through her entire costume collection on arrival. Ed prepared a dandy mariachi outfit for himself, tricked out with epaulettes, sashes, kerchiefs, silver buckles, silver spurs, silver conchos, and a whip. Xander Berkeley had a harder landing: he flew from LA to Madrid to Malaga, whence he was immediately driven to the wardrobe department, a tent in the desert. Sleepless, and in the midst of a costume fitting, he was summoned to the set. Xander had been looking forward to discussing his character – ‘Who is Preacher McMahon? Where is he coming from?’ – those kind of questions. On the set of Sid & Nancy there had been one director and three actors. Now there was one director, baked to insensitivity, and 20-odd actors. This director’s attitude was, ‘Get yer costume on and start actin’!’, which worked for most, if not all. In such circumstances actors must rely on wardrobe and props. Xander hadn’t even thought about his character, but the Preacher had been issued with a bible, so he hit Karl with it. Simms had a switchblade, so Karl was menaced with it. Mac had a whip, so he whipped Karl. The night after Karl was dunked in the town well, Zander confronted me. Dick Rude was on his side. There’d been too much picking on Karl, they felt, and Karl needed some kind of restitution. I agreed, and offered Zander three choices. He could 1) continue with the script as it was, but instead of being killed his character would, after further suffering, be allowed to leave town with all the women; 2) show up and offer his services to Norwood and co., who would reject him – then, off-screen, a bus would run him over; or 3) offer his services to

X-Films.indb 118

14/05/2008 16:14:16

It was more difficult to satisfy the acting aspirations of The Pogues. In addition to the band, there was a charismatic manager, Frank Murray, and various road crew members, all of whom required costumes and character names. Fortunately they already owned Western-style long coats based on the costumes of The Long Riders: a considerable saving. Like all Western fans, I loved to see those long coats, ever since Once Upon a Time in the West – the film that created the long-coat paradigm. The Madrid costume houses dressed The Pogues as mariachis. Jem Finer, much to his chagrin, was hustled into a chequered blanket, a nightshirt stained with drool, and a wheelchair. He was a fine actor, and so I’d cast him 20 years older than he was, as the family patriarch. But Jem, like all The Pogues, wanted to be a gunfighter. He didn’t want to be granpa. Shane McGowan had a charismatic and intense presence on stage that did not transfer to film acting. He was a singer, songwriter, and poet of excellence. Acting was of lesser interest to him. On film, he gave the impression of someone who didn’t know what the fuck he was doing there. Sightlines meant nothing to Shane; continuity meant nothing to him. Just because he did something in rehearsal, or in take one – exited left, for instance, or spoke to a character on his right – didn’t mean he would do it again in take two, or take three. A discussion of his character, ‘Mmbleghgghr’ McMahon, was not to be had. On the plus side, he had a beautiful face, fine energy, and like his colleagues, he looked stalwart in mariachi gear. There was a steady turnover of supporting actors whose characters showed up in town only to be quickly killed: Eddie TudorPole was an Englishman channelling Warren Oates. I played one of his henchpersons, and, when we were killed, we all threw ourselves down with vigour. Afterwards Juan Torres, a Western veteran who played our gravedigger, congratulated us on the ways we’d died. Juan’s assistant was played by Sara Sugarman, another actor from Sid & Nancy without enough to do. The only direction I gave her was ‘Play it like the Artful Dodger’ – not the most helpful note an actor could receive. Sara did a good job with very little, and was fearless

X-Films.indb 119

119  Ÿ   straight to hell

the killers, who would gun him down, after which Simms would say ‘What a waste of three good bullets.’ Zander chose option 3, with the proviso that he could be well dressed for the occasion. And he negotiated an additional scene, in which Sue Kiel’s character, Ma McMahon, expressed an interest in his sausage enterprise. Both scenes remain in the film.

14/05/2008 16:14:16

X films  Ÿ  120

Xander Berkeley, Juan Torres, and Sara Sugarman. when hats were shot off her head. But what she really wanted to do was direct. There was no better, faster, whiter cameraman than Tom, whose skin was so prone to burning that he was nicknamed ‘Whitey’ by his crew. He was entirely on top of things, as was Andrew’s art department, as were costumes and makeup. And yet, we weren’t quite making our days. By the middle of the second week I realised my own department was to blame: shooting in fragments, we were failing to finish scenes – leaving things out that we’d need to get later. I was working with an ‘old school’ assistant director, who had done Romancing the Stone. Hollywood films shot for many, many weeks and moved at a different pace, it seemed. He was a charming guy, but if I needed something – a gun that fired blanks, for example – I’d say, ‘I need a gun with blanks,’ and my man would shout, ‘We need a gun with blanks!’ and stand there, looking around. If his second assistant was in the vicinity, that guy might shout ‘Gun with blanks!’ as well. And that would be that.

X-Films.indb 120

14/05/2008 16:14:16

121  Ÿ   straight to hell

We’d all stand there, squinting into the desert, listening to the crickets, watching the wind blow through the set, and the trucks creep up the Almería–Granada road. Eventually, I or one of the actors would go looking for the prop guys, find a gun with blanks, and bring it to the set. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Being an AD on an independent film is harder than being one on a studio movie: you have less time, the environment is less controllable, you have fewer people to help you. The director’s department must be on top of everything and keep things moving. All must be good. I suggested to Eric that we ask Lorenzo O’Brien to step in as first assistant. Lorenzo was dynamic, fast moving, bilingual, and currently cooling his heels in LA. He would have sped things up. But Ed Pressman, who had become Walker’s executive producer, wanted Lorenzo to stay put. Meanwhile, Straight to Hell still needed another week of shooting. Eric took off on an emergency mission to LA. Strummer and Sy both got annoyed at Courtney for talking when they were rehearsing, or when I was giving the actors notes. In truth it didn’t really matter, because I’d discovered an infallible method to make a group of actors listen to me. I’d start out just loud enough to get their attention, then I’d lower my voice. And I’d keep lowering it, telling them which door this, which way that, all stuff they needed to know. Inevitably, everyone got quieter as I spoke. Eventually, even ’Ney shut up. This is one of the Rules for Pack Leaders in the wolf cubs’ manual. Or if not theirs, the brownies’. On the crowded sets of Hell, and later Walker, the lowered-voice strategy almost always worked. Directors should always speak to their actors in a soft voice, keeping them close. Paul Raphael, our line producer, found us a new assistant director, and we forged ahead. But my department was never great, and my Spanish was poor. Shooting days were long: 12, sometimes 14 hours. We would need that extra week, especially as Strummer kept inventing musical numbers: such as ‘The Weiner Song’, which he wrote with Zander and Miguel, and the group rendition of ‘Danny Boy’. Martin Turner was hired as Sex and Cruelty Consultant: he was to focus on scenes of torture and strange abuse, in the spirit of Django Kill. He would lure people by asking innocently, ‘Would you like to be in the film?’ Most of the set visitors were journalists, often from the music papers, quite innocent and naïve. Joe and The Pogues would

X-Films.indb 121

14/05/2008 16:14:16

X films  Ÿ  122

point out candidates – reporters they disliked – and prolonged scenes ensued, involving the journalists being staked out in the sun and tormented, often with no camera present. Many beautiful and striking women appear in Straight to Hell. This may be why the film has endured: the extraordinary women, and their costumes, designed by Pam Tait. Pam’s work was greatly appreciated in Japan when the film opened there. There’s little sex in the picture – it’s a Spaghetti Western, after all – but there’s a sexiness in Pam’s costumes and in the script’s burden of sexual tension. In a reference to Cool Hand Luke, Martin had Fabienne wash George’s motorcycle while Simms sat across the street, sweating and staring, accompanied by The Pogues’ harmonica. It all says something about the fusion of sex, machines, and conspicuous consumption – though what, I’m not entirely sure. Straight To Hell was scheduled to wrap on 22 August 1986, the day Grace Jones and Dennis Hopper worked. Informally, Paul and I sounded out the actors to see if they could stay another week. All could; most were happy to. The full horror of Fiesta Fortnight in downtown Almería was not yet understood. Only Karl knew what was in store. Karl was now an actor, thanks to Pam, playing the important role of Blacksmith McMahon. ‘The actors shouldn’t stay another week at the Gran,’ he warned us, ‘the Fiesta’s coming. Very loud. They can stand it for two nights, maybe.’ He shook his head, doubtfully. ‘But a whole week . . .? I don’t think so. Some will go insane.’ We ignored Braun’s wisdom. We couldn’t afford to stay anywhere for another week. It was easier to keep everybody where they were – or so we thought. We reckoned without the architecture of the Gran Hotel. As mentioned, it’s a tall, 1960s building; a plan would show it shaped like a V, facing the docks. During Fiesta Fortnight, the main street and the docks are filled with fairground attractions, flamenco bars, and gigantic speakers playing supposedly popular songs. In August 1986 the favourite song was Lionel Ritchie’s ‘All Night Long’. The V-shape of the Gran acted like a vast soundingboard, bouncing the crackling, metallic, bass sound of many huge, cheap speakers back and forth, from balcony to balcony, from room to room. As Karl warned, this was just the beginning – the torture would last, depriving every cast member of sleep and sanity, for the next 10 nights. Lionel Ritchie singing ‘All Night Long’ out of big,

X-Films.indb 122

14/05/2008 16:14:16

The last of the big night sequences involved the McMahons lined up as a Last Supper painting, or the cast of Viridiana, drinking a last coffee in granpa’s honour, and singing ‘Danny Boy’. Shaun Madigan, the grip, suggested a plano secuencia, thinking this would speed things up – he wanted to get to bed before dawn. The scene features almost all the actors in the film, including Blacksmith, and Martin Turner in drag. Only Jem Finer was absent, his character being dead. Miguel continued to improvise and to expand his role as the hardware store owner. He created a scene where Jennifer, who played his faithless wife, was supposed to slap him. Miguel did one of those actor numbers: ‘Go for it, Jennifer. Really hit me. Otherwise it’ll look fake.’ When the take came, Jennifer hauled off and whacked him. It looked great. Sando, like Brando, is an actor whose mind you can read, and one can clearly see him thinking, as his glasses fly painfully from his face, ‘Why did I tell her to do that?’ That evening, Biff Yeager told me Straight to Hell was the first of my scripts that he’d been able to understand. The previous screenplays, as far as he was concerned, were gibberish. But Straight to Hell made sense. The next day, Eric returned from LA with a suitcase full of money. I told Sy the good news, and – as the rest of us celebrated – he called the bank in California. He asked his boss if he could have another week of leave. His boss said no, four weeks’ leave was enough; they needed him back on Monday. So Sy, who was earning next to nothing on Straight to Hell, quit his job there and then. He didn’t mention it to me, or anyone. It was almost 20 years before he told me. I didn’t know Sy even had a job, apart from acting. I’d simply relied on him entirely. To pull Straight to Hell off, I’d needed a corps of fearless, ready-for-action actors on whom I could rely. Sy was the most vital member of the group; I was luckier than I knew. Dennis Hopper and Grace Jones came, generating a great buzz among the actors, but it was Sy that I am most indebted to.

X-Films.indb 123

123  Ÿ   straight to hell

booming, broken speakers that echoed back and forth, over and over again, all night long. As Mephistopheles said, this was Hell, nor were we out of it. If Lionel didn’t break your spirit, the ‘Chochona’ song would drive you to despair, for sure. The non-stop ‘Chochona’ song – Yo quiero una Chochona! Me gusta la Chochona! Chochona! Chochona! – invited us to fire rifles or throw baseballs in order to win an ugly-looking doll. This was the Breughelian hell-world that inspired The Pogues’ song ‘Fiesta’.

14/05/2008 16:14:16

X films  Ÿ  124

Straight to Hell is almost devoid of politics. It has the traditional Spaghetti Western distrust of rich guys and landowners; oil wells bestride its corpse-strewn landscape at the end. At one point, Simms reads a newspaper declaring, ‘ALLIES VOW WAR TO THE END’ and ‘NUCLEAR TERROR BLAST MISHAP’, but that’s about it. Nevertheless, Joe convinced himself that Straight to Hell had a political intent when Dennis’ character claimed to be ‘I.G. Farben – helping people help themselves to have a home!’ ‘I.G. Farben’ was the same fake I.D. that Harry Dean had used in one of the deleted scenes from Repo Man. Joe felt we were pointing out how this bastard Farben, who’d manufactured poison gas for concentration camps, had got away with it at the conclusion of the war. The truth was worse than that: I.G. Farben was the leading Nazi industrial cartel. It manufactured thousands of products for the Nazis, including Zyklon B, and did indeed emerge unpunished – in part due to its close business dealings with the Rockefellers and Standard Oil. In 1947, a US judge ruled that ‘Standard Oil can be considered an enemy national in view of its relationships with I.G. Farben.’2 Straight to Hell and Repo Man have singularly failed to bring any military-corporate war criminals to justice, to date. But the struggle continues! One night in our fourth week, instead of driving back to Almería, Dick, Michele, Courtney, and I headed for Tabernas, the town with the Moorish castle on the hill, from which the desert takes its name. There was a feria here too, and we ate candyfloss, drank brandy, and rode in a rickety ferris wheel in the main square. Then, somewhat giddy, we decided to raid Mini Hollywood, the tourist attraction that had been a principal location for Leone and Corbucci in the glory days. The main gate was shut, but we knew the back way in. We raced our little red rental car around and around the town gallows making war whoops and shouting ‘Indio nunca morir!’ The night watchman emerged from the saloon, where he’d been sleeping, and began firing a pistol. We beat a retreat towards the Gran Hotel. This sounds silly and childish, even dangerous and stupid. And indeed it was. What were we then, what are we now, but big kids? I’ve directed better films than Straight to Hell, but I’ve not been happier, nor enjoyed the company more. Sunday, 31 August. The shoot was over. This was our day of rest, before everyone shipped out. To celebrate the conclusion of the shoot,

X-Films.indb 124

14/05/2008 16:14:16

125  Ÿ   straight to hell

Del, Spider, Spider’s girlfriend Shayne, and I climbed the Alfaro – that striking, triangular mountain that appears in Lawrence, Straight to Hell, and in almost all the Almería Western films. It was another 110-degree day. Del and I had water. Spider hadn’t slept and had a bottle of whisky, which, as shown in Westerns, isn’t the best thing to take with you on a desert hike. But we kept going and eventually reached the top of the Faro, where jagged purple rocks surrounded us, all pointing at the sky. The view of the desert, the port, the sea, and the fantastic, surreal Andalucían landscape was superb. And it was an easy walk back down.

POSTPRODUCTION David Martin edited the film in Soho. The sound designer was his assistant, Justin Krish. The original four-day version was complete in December 1986. I missed most of the editing, since Walker was in preproduction in Nicaragua and Mexico. But the process seemed to go smoothly. Eric, however, was beginning to have his doubts – not about the editing, but about the picture itself. He’d shown the cut to friends of his, and they didn’t find it funny. He turned to the Sex and Cruelty Consultant for advice on how to make it funnier. Martin asked Eric if he wanted to shoot new scenes or to re-edit it; Eric didn’t know. Strummer, worried about the response, sent me the following letter at the beginning of January. I quote it in full: there are no secrets in it, but it reveals his concern for the film, and what else was going on with him. Dear Al Please find enclosed an idea for the film. Spoke to one or two people here who could not follow story when they saw the film. As a result comments included ‘Disappointing rip off’ ‘The story is feeble’ also ‘Just a load of rockstars posing about.’ I did not defend or voice any opinions but I pumped them and discovered that none of the story is getting over. So without speaking to anyone I sat down to write you a letter. However a small idea came to me which I began to like very much. Benefits include: 1.) puts story over; 2.) adds depth; 3.) is cheap to do; 4.) requires no cutting of film as is; 5.) contains new presentation idea.

X-Films.indb 125

14/05/2008 16:14:16

X films  Ÿ  126

When I hear Dick say ‘I hate narration’ and when I hear you say ‘I’m not going to add narration just to save a film’ I realise we are probably doomed to a disastrous reception from the critics and public in February. Yet are these attitudes wise in the circumstances? Anyway please sit down comfortably and alone and really try and visualise this as you read it as a punter might see it. I have discussed this with no one. If you think it is a goer or is a good springboard for additional ideas please discuss it with Miguel. My mother died the night before Christmas Eve. I have just returned to London after the funeral. Will send that song. Mick [Jones] also sending something probably in demo form. Remember I’m batting for you. Love from the deserted city Joseph

I hadn’t known Joe’s mother was ill. And I’ve forgotten what debate we’d had about narration. I opposed a voiceover, on the grounds that this was a Spaghetti Western, and, while they often had incomprehensible plots, they never had voiceover narrations. Strummer’s proposed fix was fascinating, but it wasn’t cheap: it involved re-editing the film, and shooting new scenes with Miguel Sandoval. Joe’s idea was that the film’s events should be presented as flashbacks, from the point of view of Sando’s character George, living in his bunker beneath the burned-out hardware store, long after the apocalypse. It was quite a brilliant proposal, typed on a sheet of paper six feet long. I took it seriously, and called Karl in Tabernas to ask about the state of our locations. He sent the following poetic reply: The village is still standing, The hotel is down, The bull is up but the head is down The head is on the floor and is easy to fit. Charley Braun

However, there was no money for the shooting of new scenes, so Strummer’s proposal wasn’t pursued. Dave Bridges, who was about to shoot Walker, thought the opposite. He was impressed with Joe on film, and suggested cutting the other leads, and using all available footage of Strummer. In the end, the old devil, compromise, emerged, and David and I re-edited the film, removing seven minutes and reducing the story from four to three days. Straight to Hell didn’t suffer much as a result of this. Nor

X-Films.indb 126

14/05/2008 16:14:16

127  Ÿ   straight to hell

was it much improved, though I suspect shorter is always better. We lost a scene where Elvis, as the butler Hives, was tied up and beaten by the McMahon women, and one where a camel train passed through town, while Karl was abused by Mac and the Preacher. Music was by The Pogues and Strummer in London, and Pray for Rain in San Francisco. We mixed at Twickenham, a studio out in the suburbs. So as to be on hand for the mix, I stayed in a hotel nearby; this was a mistake, for the hotel, like Twickenham, was a grim place indeed. Joe came out to see me one evening, bringing a tape of a song he’d just written for the film. It was called ‘Evil Darling’. The film was already packed with music, but Joe didn’t want to hear that. He wanted ‘Evil Darling’ in the film. Suddenly, he broke off, staring in horror at our surroundings. ‘What are you doing in this Eastern European hotel in Twickenham?’ he asked me. I didn’t know.

RELEASE Straight to Hell opened in London and Dublin on 12 June 1987, the day after Thatcher’s general election victory. It’s hard to imagine a worse downer of a time. Just as Joe had predicted, the critical response was negative and the initial audiences small. Strummer had bravely promoted and defended the film, but its British theatrical release didn’t last long. The UK distributor was a company called Miracle Films, who had distributed the excellent Spaghetti Western Today It’s Me . . . Tomorrow It’s You! Their motto was, ‘If it’s a good film, it’s a Miracle!’ The US opening was at the Pickwick Drive-In, Studio City, LA on 1 July. I attended this gala event. Island had come up with a fine distribution plan: good cinemas in 17 cities. They spent money on advertising, but the US critics were hostile, too – there was only one good review in the entire country, from a Seattle paper. I was surprised: Straight to Hell might not be great, but it was all right. Its strongest point was Sy’s performance. There was very good music and photography, some demented and sadistic humour, and a sustained Spaghetti Western homage. But this was 1987: there was no vogue for jokey films about black-suited professional hitmen, or films without one central character. Among those who absolutely failed to ‘get it’ were the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the

X-Films.indb 127

14/05/2008 16:14:16

X films  Ÿ  128 X-Films.indb 128

Hollywood censorship board. Having made a film entirely without swearing, we received an R rating from the MPAA due to ‘strong language’. Straight To Hell was released in Spain as Directos al Infierno. I was told that Sergio Leone saw the film at a festival in Madrid, where it won the critics’ prize. I don’t know if this is true, or what he thought of it. It would be nice to think that the Old Master saw the film. ‘Back to Hell’, the promised sequel, was never made (except as a documentary to accompany the DVD), but among my papers from the period is a page of notes for a Duchess of Malfi version of ‘Back to Hell’, to star Sy Richardson as Bosola, Kathy Burke as the Duchess, and Dennis Hopper as Ferdinand. The page ends with the words ‘the Duchess wins by marshalling a serious army, and by being a Machiavel.’ Straight to Hell was best received in a place with an insatiable appetite for weirdness: Japan. I was invited to Tokyo for the film’s opening, by its distributor, Kuniaki Negishi. A few years later, Mr Negishi funded El Patrullero (Highway Patrolman). Negi-san is a very unusual, creative individual – he lasted longer in the difficult world of foreign-language film than any other Japanese distributor. In 2002, I was invited to direct a Japanese TV episode starring the actor Masatoshi Nagase. It was an exciting and surprising invitation (all the other directors were Japanese), so I wanted to be sure the producers got what they wanted. Which of my films did they most want the episode to resemble, if any? I asked them. They answered, without hesitation, ‘Straight to Hell’. So I tracked Tom Richmond down and we shot a 50-minute Spaghetti Western, set in Yokohama, with music by Pray for Rain. Later it turned out that, by Straight to Hell, they’d meant a film with many guest appearances by rock stars.

14/05/2008 16:14:16

WALKER The beginning is an assault in every way. Violent, loud, the music jarring against the picture as we lurch across the battlefield to Walker’s riotous trial, to the crowd gathered outside Ellen Martin’s house. Within, Ellen’s home is no less an assault: a ghastly scraping duo of violin and tuneless piano, presided over by a grim paterfamilias, plays loudly as a fat, mutton-chopped racist shouts over the music to compensate for a beautiful woman’s deafness: ‘I am sure the little lady will agree . . .’ The location is an assault, as well. Victorian bric-a-brac and clutter everywhere, walls jammed with paintings in heavy frames. The costumes are assaultive: everyone wears a high, uncomfortable collar, the men’s coats have tails. There’s something stylistically old-fashioned about this opening – the conservative framing, the static, tripod-based cinematography. The soundtrack racket never ends. Then, suddenly, all changes. We’re in another room of Ellen’s house, the one Walker has filled with the stuff he’s brought back from his expeditions: his maps, his books, his framed spider and frog collections. Ellen slaps Walker’s face and tells him she’s dumping him. And the man of iron, the grey-eyed man of destiny, as his supporters have arranged to have him called, begs his girlfriend not to kick him out. This is my favourite moment in the film. Suddenly, after the trumpets and blood and shouting, a most beautiful piece of score kicks in: music by Strummer. Ed Harris’ intense, desperate performance is matched by Marlee Matlin’s calm, determined confidence. Rudy’s dialogue is acted almost entirely via hand-signs, with subtitles. Here lighting, acting, script, and music all work in harmony. Strummer’s strings take the scene to a rare level of romance, warmth, and sexiness. It’s the most successful love scene I’ve directed – completely

X-Films.indb 129

14/05/2008 16:14:16

X films  Ÿ  130

sincere, and not devoid of politics. As the lovers embrace, Walker is tempted by the shouts of the crowd outside. This was my contribution: the presence of the unseen crowd, chanting Walker’s name outside. ‘You’re about to embrace Ellen, pull her to you, prove you’re going to stay with her forever,’ I told him, ‘and then the crowd starts up again, chanting “Walker, Walker, Walker” right under the window. And you just listen to them for a moment. And then you kiss her.’ As they played the scene, I whispered ’Walker, Walker, Walker’ – the worm in the apple, the skull beneath the skin. The sidelong glances of Ed and Marlee, like the signed scene, which preceded it, are acting of a high order. Of a classic kind. Script – acting – lighting – music, all in harmony. This makes effective films.

BACKGROUND Walker is my best, my most expensive, and my least-seen film. It’s the biopic of William Walker, an American mercenary who had himself made president of Nicaragua in the mid-nineteenth century. In the US, Walker was an anti-slavery liberal; in Nicaragua he instituted slavery. He’s almost unknown in the US today, but in the 1850s Walker was fantastically popular. The newspapers wrote more about him than they did about Presidents Pierce or Buchanan. All the characters in the film existed, though they aren’t all accurate portraits, and there’s no evidence, say, that Walker and his financier, Vanderbilt, ever met. Most of what happens in the film is part of some historical record, but it’s a drama, and the bricks of truth are mortared with fiction. I first went to Nicaragua in 1984, with Peter McCarthy – on one of those leftist tours where you meet nuns and trade unionists and representatives of cooperatives. It was the week of the presidential election, which the FSLN – the Sandinistas – won. We were impressed by the revolution, by the beauty of the countryside, by the changes and the optimism in the air. In León, on election day, two young Sandinistas egged us on to bring to Nicaragua a big Hollywood movie that would communicate something about Nicaragua to the Americans, and spend dollars there. Fair enough – Nicaragua was a poor country, under continuous terrorist attack.1 The Sandinistas were their elected representatives,

X-Films.indb 130

14/05/2008 16:14:16

What I read about Walker convinced me that this was a person who wanted to get himself killed. He managed in the end, being shot by a firing squad in Honduras. But many, many others had to die first. In that way the story of Walker reminded me of a film I’d seen about a pair of death-fixated hero-types, who provoked untold destruction: Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid. I wrote a long letter to Rudy Wurlitzer, asking him if he would consider writing the script for a feature about Walker. Fortunately, that letter is lost now: it was filled with grandiosity and impossibly revolutionary cinematic hopes. In spite of it, Rudy agreed. He flew to London, where he stayed at my place in Bermondsey and began writing. However, he hated it there, just as I did, and soon went back to New York. Before he left, we discussed our approach to the story we called ‘Ride to Glory’. Hollywood, we thought, would have made a ‘Walker’ movie from the viewpoint of a sympathetic, humane journalist; we felt there were no ‘good’ journalists, especially in Walker’s entourage. Rudy saw Walker’s men as pirates, gangsters, would-be slave-owners; his Nicaraguan supporters were equally villainous. Nothing had changed in the 130 years between Walker’s genocidal campaign and that of Oliver North and the current crop of war criminals in the White House. The anachronisms that Rudy placed in the script became an essential part of the project – to show things as they were now. Over Christmas and New Year 1985/6 I went to Nicaragua on a location scout with Lorenzo O’Brien and Cecilia Montiel. At this point, Lorenzo was already the producer. We’d made a policy decision that everyone involved in the production would fly economy, including the principal actors. This saved us a substantial amount of cash. It’s thanks to Lorenzo that so many dollars got spent in Nicaragua, and that a film was made. As producer, he had to manage the logistics of four different crews – Nicaraguan, Mexican, British, and American – in various languages; deal with industrial unrest, weather damage, three-camera shoots involving the Nicaraguan Army, the attempted cancellation of the completion bond, whining journalists, drowning actors, and car crashes, while feeding and paying all those involved. On that first location scout, we visited Corinto, León, Rivas, and San Juan del Sur. We met representatives of Instituto Nicaraguense de

X-Films.indb 131

131  Ÿ  walker

who’d led the overthrow of the dictator, Somoza, in 1979. Not that this meant much in Hollywood. To get serious money for a Sandinista feature, it would need an American protagonist: step forward, William Walker.

14/05/2008 16:14:17

X films  Ÿ  132

Cine (INCINE), the tiny Nicaraguan film bureaucracy in Managua. We spent a few days in Granada, the most colonial of cities: many streets looked as they must have when Walker was there. Walker boasted of burning the city to the ground, but it’s hard to see how a fire could destroy Granada. Almost all the buildings were of thick-walled stone, with tiled roofs and interior courtyards – like the old houses in Granada, Spain. We took a boat to the islands of Lake Nicaragua, the largest lake in the Americas, and the only one with freshwater sharks. In Granada we went to the cinema. Television was everywhere, but VCRs were still a luxury, so the country had the second-highest cinema attendances in Latin America: only Mexicans went to the pictures more. It was a huge, barn-like auditorium with broken speakers and a dim bulb. The film was Peckinpah’s Ride the High Country. Even the battered, pink-and-blue print couldn’t disguise a great tale. How many other Peckinpah films were circulating round Nicaragua’s 125 cinemas? Recent American films were unavailable, as a result of the US government’s embargo, so instead Nicaraguans paid a few cordobas to watch classic American cinema on a huge screen. This, and other experiences in these local cinemas, convinced me that Walker should have a mono soundtrack. If you played a recent, stereo print (Sid & Nancy, say) on one of these old mono systems, it sounded terrible. The projector missed the edges of both optical tracks, and the result was muddy and indistinct, whereas a mono print, one optical track, always sounded great. Lorenzo and I waited for Rudy’s script. We knew it wasn’t going to be the screenplay of a cheap film, since we’d encouraged Rudy to leave nothing out of it. When the script came, it was called ‘King of the World’. This screenplay is very like the finished film, plus a couple of significant scenes. After he finds his beloved Ellen Martin dead of cholera, Walker goes on the rampage, overturning a couple riding in a cart and challenging the driver to a duel. In the pistols-at-dawn scene that follows, Walker fires into the air and is wounded in the shoulder. Suicidal, he insists upon another round – only to be over-ruled by his second, Dr Jones. The climax is a $500-a-plate ‘Benefit the Freedom Fighters’ dinner in the Miami Sheraton, where Walker is the keynote speaker. Outside the Sheraton, the ragged, surviving Immortals stage an antiwar protest. We dropped both scenes, the duel one because it required additional locations, and the Miami one because I thought its point

X-Films.indb 132

14/05/2008 16:14:17

133  Ÿ  walker

was already made. While avoiding the ‘good narrator’ trap, Rudy’s script, from this very first draft, pulled in two directions: 1) Walker’s own story; and 2) that of his troops, and Nicaraguan camp followers. Rudy titled his second draft ‘Immortals’. While the central action remained the same, there were more troops, and there was more for them to do. We kept meeting interesting actors who wanted to go to Nicaragua, many of them for solidarity reasons. It made sense to have them populate Walker’s army. Lorenzo and I went looking for an executive producer. This would be a more expensive film than either of us had made before. We needed someone to visit the studios and the banks for us. An American producer, Ed Pressman, expressed an interest. Pressman’s credits included Badlands and Masters of the Universe. Among his many projects were some politically risky ones. He did an amazing thing on Walker: managing to raise American money for a very radical, anti-imperialist feature film – a film shot in Nicaragua, a country with which the United States was de facto at war. And he raised the budget from a US studio! At the same time, Ed’s first idea for finding finance was a bit alarming: he wanted to take the project to Universal. This sounded like the Return to Hell, but Ed insisted – there had been another regime change at the studio, and the new boss didn’t want to be thought of in the same light as his thuggish forbears. Bad former execs had suppressed films like Repo Man. The good current execs wanted to extend the hand of friendship and support to talent whom the previous bad execs had wronged. Maybe. Our game plan was to raise half of the budget via an advance on foreign sales, selling the other half in the US. This is the way independent films were made at that time – the international sales market hadn’t yet collapsed. So we were only looking for half the budget from the US. Ed knew we planned to shoot in Nicaragua, but he didn’t think that would necessarily be a problem. The three of us also discussed the fallback position of shooting in Mexico. Lorenzo and I planned to shoot in Nicaragua, of course, but we couldn’t insist on this to potential insurers, to whom we had to present an image of flexibility rather than fanaticism. We began working out of an office in Culver City: me; Lorenzo; Debbie Diaz, production coordinator; Vicky Thomas, casting director; and, intermittently, J. Rae Fox, Linda Burbank, and Cecilia Montiel, art department. Pam Tait, back in England, was to do the costumes; Bob Richardson was to shoot it. Bob and I took several location trips

X-Films.indb 133

14/05/2008 16:14:17

X films  Ÿ  134 X-Films.indb 134

south, while Lorenzo looked for a Mexican partner who could help us crew the film. You might ask why, as we were filming in Nicaragua, we didn’t use a Nicaraguan crew. We worked with a Nicaraguan cameraman, Frank Pineda, and there were many ‘Nica’s in the construction, art, and costume departments. But Nicaragua is a very small country: three and a half million inhabitants when we lived there, maybe three million now. Film-making hadn’t been encouraged by the Somozas or by the US Marine occupations. There was a small film community, and most of it was already working on INCINE’s first feature, El Espectro de la Guerra. There was no Nicaraguan crew to spare. (Two foreign features had been made in Nicaragua since the 1979 revolution: Miguel Littin’s Alsino and the Condor, and Haskell Wexler’s Latino. Both used foreign crews, though Littin’s was a co-production that provided Nicaraguans with production experience and a spirited debate about the finished picture. There was little local film production beyond short documentaries and newsreels called Noticieros.2) During one of the casting sessions in LA, Lorenzo introduced me to a Mexican director/producer, Luis Mandoki. Lorenzo had worked with him and thought he would be the right partner for us. Luis ran his operation out of a small office at Churubusco Studios. He was an independent filmmaker with feature credits, who kept his expenses to a minimum. It was exactly our style, and I was convinced Lorenzo was right. Lorenzo invited Ed to meet Luis and another producer, Angel Flores. Ed seemed more impressed by Angel, who’d done no features, but a number of commercials. He had a office in a big, twostorey house with a vast, sweeping staircase. I found our executive producer standing at the bottom of that staircase on our first Walker visit to Mexico. ‘Impressive offices’, he remarked. Indeed they were. Ed wanted to go with Angel. Our difficulties getting a completion bond surprised me. I’d already spoken to Lee Katz, whose company had bonded Sid & Nancy and Straight to Hell. Lee had told me he had no problems with the Walker project. Finally, he took me out to lunch and said that while the Completion Bond Company (CBC) had no objection to bonding Rudy’s script, or a film in Nicaragua, they’d previously had a problem with one of the producers on the film, and had a policy of not working with him again. Lee didn’t mean Lorenzo, he meant Ed. What the cause was, Lee didn’t say. Pressman didn’t tell me either; as he observed, there were

14/05/2008 16:14:17

Pre-production didn’t exactly accelerate when I left for Spain to direct Straight to Hell. In my absence, Lorenzo met more actors, made more budgets, and waited for news of Pressman’s negotiations with Universal. Our provisional crew – unpaid and uncontracted – began to drift away: when I got back from Hell, I found Bob Richardson had left the picture, to work for Oliver Stone. Bob told me Wall Street’s producer had assured him Walker wouldn’t be happening any time soon, and had offered him a $10,000 advance to jump ship. I thought this outrageous – I wanted to know who this producer was, who had such insight into my film. Bob told me it was Ed Pressman. How could such a thing occur – especially in an honourable place like Hollywood? As you can imagine, I was shocked. To replace Bob, I contacted David Bridges, who’d worked on Sid & Nancy. He was big, strong, and an excellent operator. I didn’t anticipate the quality of lighting Dave would bring. He had a system of aiming his lamps up into white boxes that diffused the light on the actors. I think this was his invention: I’d seen no one else do it. The result, involving the hanging of these white boxes over the actors, wasn’t quickly achieved, but it looked great, particularly in close-ups of beauties such as Marlee Matlin, Blanca Guerra (the Mexican actor who played Walker’s Nicaraguan lover Doña Yrena), and Pedro Armendáriz Jr.

135  Ÿ  walker

other bond companies. He set us up instead with a smaller outfit, with which he said he’d had no problem: Film Finances.

In contrast to a somewhat uptight Mexico City office, things at our Nicaraguan headquarters went better than we could have hoped. Nicaragua was another world: a far more viable, agreeable, and practical world, from our viewpoint. A world forced into a war, a world of uniforms and contradictions, but also one where to be a poet was considered normal. The assistant production coordinator came into work sad one day. When I asked what was wrong, she said someone she knew had been killed by Contras. I offered my condolences, and she thanked me, and asked me if I would like to hear the poem she had written about it. Producing dramatic films might be a new thing, but poetry was like blood: everyone had it in them. One day, we were stopped in traffic in Managua, and a newspaper seller approached our car. He was selling La Prensa, the right-wing paper, which we all knew received CIA funding. He

X-Films.indb 135

14/05/2008 16:14:17

X films  Ÿ  136

waved a copy at Cecilia, who told the guy, in Spanish, that we didn’t take the reactionary rag. The guy immediately got on her case. This was an old newspaper boy in the middle of a busy intersection, and he shouted at us: ‘What the hell do you know about reactionaries? You are foreigners! You have no right to criticise, or have an opinion about anything yet! Buy La Prensa, and learn what Nicaraguans think!’ The traffic moved, the car rolled on. We didn’t buy a paper. There were three national newspapers: La Prensa (which was indeed a reactionary rag); Barricada, the Sandinista paper; and El Nuevo Diario, written by journalists who had left La Prensa. Each of these newspapers was published and edited by a Chamorro: the Chamorro family, right wing and left wing, had a monopoly on journalism in Nicaragua. In Mexico, Lorenzo and I met a prop master, Ron Downing: he was one of those obsessive English prop guys who are determined that everything be authentic and quirky at the same time, and he contributed enormously to the detail of the film. Angel introduced me to a first assistant director, Miguel Lima, who modestly pretended he was a second assistant; and to an eagle-eyed special effects master, Marcelino Pacheco. We received notes from the Mexican censor, who at that stage reviewed every script that might be shot there. The censor told us to lose references to drunks in the city of Granada, and to the Mayor of Granada being forced to kneel before Walker’s men. He pointed out that the idol Walker encountered in the jungle wasn’t a Mayan one, but a Nahua artefact. Due to ‘official’ Mexico’s fear of offending the US, he also instructed us not to refer to a CIA man at the end of the script, but to call him a ‘company’ man instead. The censor didn’t limit himself to what was actually in the script: he also said we should improve the characters of Corral and Doña Yrena in the next draft. These notes were good ones, and although we didn’t plan to shoot in Mexico, Rudy incorporated them into his next draft. Of all the cast, Walker was key: it was his story, and it had potential to attract a ‘movie star’. In London, Strummer told me he’d seen a picture of the actor Sean Penn, ‘And he looked just like Walker. Same age, same shape of face, same expression in his eyes. When you’re out in LA, you have to see him. The Grey-Eyed Man of Destiny.’ Pressman agreed with Joe. His preferences were for Sean or for Warren Beatty. I didn’t think Beatty was right for Walker – he was older, physically very different, but he could make a powerful Vanderbilt. Thus began

X-Films.indb 136

14/05/2008 16:14:17

X-Films.indb 137

137  Ÿ  walker

a series of phone calls from me to the New York hotel in whose penthouse Beatty resided. Beatty liked to talk. He knew a bit of history, and he knew Walker was the better role. I kept trying to impress him on the sheer power and charisma that Vanderbilt would project: qualities that very few actors were able to project as effectively as Mr Beatty. He remarked that I seemed very enthusiastic. I said I was. ‘Why? What are you – a coker?’ I asked him what he meant. ‘You know, coke, are you all wound up on coke right now?’ Nope, I said, I was wound up with the thrilling energy of the Walker project, of which I hoped he’d soon be a major part, etc. Our conversations petered out when Beatty’s father died. Discussions with Penn persisted. Sean and I met, and in terms of physical appearance, Strummer was spot on. Penn looked like Walker aged around 30, before the Nicaraguan mission took its toll on him. He seemed very young. Could this handsome, even delicate, young man convince an audience and an army of actors that he was its leader? I hoped he’d audition for the part. At our meeting, he said he would, but his agents told Pressman he wouldn’t. This hadn’t been an issue in the past: whenever I’d asked an actor to read they’d done it, LA or London. Walker was bumping up against the ‘star’ system, with its strange rules and demands. ‘Stars’ are different from actors. ‘Stars’ marry other stars. ‘Stars’ do not read. Sean’s agents felt that for him to audition would be to lower his status within a larger structure. Perhaps they were right. However, it meant I had no way of knowing what Sean might be like in the Walker role. I had no instinctive feeling, based on our one meeting, as to whether this little, somewhat shrimpy, guy could play the role. When he refused to read, we moved on. Into the equation stepped another actor, whom I had known vaguely back in UCLA days: the star of Ed Harker’s The Dream Players, Ed Harris. Harris is a striking character: his grey eyes and the pronounced bone structure of his face draw your attention. His qualities were the antithesis of Penn’s: he looked older and a little less like Walker, but he projected a force of personality that could clearly dominate a throng of filibusters circa 1853, or a throng of actors circa 1987. And he was willing to read. Ed had been a football player at college and presented himself as devoid of bullshit. In due course, Vicky and I flew up to Portland, Oregon, where Ed was shooting a film, and he auditioned. In his production condo, Ed buttoned up his shirt collar, pulled his sleeves down and fastened them, sat bolt

14/05/2008 16:14:17

X films  Ÿ  138

upright, and suddenly he seemed uncannily like William Walker as he read Rudy’s lines. After the reading we had a beer, and Vicky and Ed played a game involving throwing a ball and catching it. Then she and I flew back to LAX; we didn’t talk much about the reading – we knew the part was Ed’s.

Directing the Colonel. Photo: René Auberjonois.

At the beginning of 1987, we received the new version from Rudy, now titled ‘Walker’. It was the best draft yet, ending with Walker refusing to board the helicopter, as in the finished film. Still nothing had yet fallen into place financially: Universal wouldn’t provide any written commitments, and there was still no foreign sales partner. The production design issue remained unresolved. Fox and Burbank were brilliant, but neither was a Spanish speaker. Cecilia was talented enough to do the job, but she would be a hard sell to the bond company. Then, out of the blue, a new candidate walked through our door: Bruno Rubeo. Bruno was a former model maker for the special effects designer Carlo Rambaldi. He spoke Spanish fluently and seemed a creative chap. To his credit, Bruno recognised Cecilia’s talent and knowledge of the project: he hired her as his art director.

X-Films.indb 138

14/05/2008 16:14:17

X-Films.indb 139

139  Ÿ  walker

In our ongoing effort to placate the insurers and bond company, Lorenzo and I continued scouting the same falling-down Mexican movie locations we’d already seen. We showed Bruno John Wayne’s movie ranch, La Joya. Nearby was the ranch that Peckinpah used as Old Fort Sumner in Pat Garrett, which we also visited repeatedly. We talked about using it for the San Jacinto battle, but we had no real plan to shoot there – how could we recycle the main location of another of Rudy’s films? Lorenzo stayed in Mexico for meetings with potential crew. While still trying to be a lean and mean film-making machine, we were hiring a union crew from Churubusco Studios, which entailed a lot of people and much paperwork. Bruno and I headed south, from the snowy Sierra Madre to the tropic heat of Nicaragua. We stayed briefly in Managua at the Intercontinental – a hotel built to resemble a pyramid or ziggurat – which had survived the 1972 earthquake. The Intercontinental was the sort of place where you put journalists and actors; the rooms had phones, so they could call their agents, and the food was suitably bland. The hotel had something of a history: supposedly it had been built for Howard Hughes, who blacked out all the penthouse windows. The fugitive Hughes had been invited to Nicaragua by the American ambassador, Turner Shelton, formerly a croupier in one of Hughes’ casinos. After the revolution, it had briefly been headquarters for Daniel Ortega and Tomás Borge. Our Managuan meetings done, Bruno and I drove south, via Rivas, to San Juan del Sur. We stayed at the Hotel Estrella, close to the beach. San Juan looked very like the illustrations from Walker’s day: two-storey wooden structures with one big room per floor. It was the kind of place you’d see on a tourist guide to undiscovered paradises. The bedrooms at the Estrella were demarcated by flimsy partitions, with doors protected by a tiny padlock, or no lock at all. Yet no one was ever robbed there. Many of the foreign crew and cast liked the Estrella, but its lack of amenities and proper locks made our new designer ill at ease. We left our bags at the hotel and went out to reconnoitre. When we returned, Bruno insisted someone had been in our room going through our luggage; he was certain his bags had been searched. I asked him who he thought had searched them; he told me Sandinista intelligence or the local police. At the time, I thought this was paranoia on Bruno’s part: I’d stayed here before and had never had this problem. But perhaps Bruno was onto something, as far as his bags were concerned.

14/05/2008 16:14:17

X films  Ÿ  140

PRODUCTION By 1987 Nicaragua wasn’t quite the happy, optimistic place I’d encountered four years earlier. The US government was spending at least 80 million dollars a year to fund Contra atrocities. Too many young doctors and teachers had been murdered; inflation was out of control, and life was noticeably harder. Most people said they still supported the Sandinistas, but they were hostile to conscription, and in the two years that I worked there, increasingly worn down by the stream of injured and dead soldiers, and the news of people’s relatives being murdered on their farms. Our Mexican crew was held up for a week at the Guatemalan border, with all of their gear. By this time the American actors had all arrived. Their wardrobe had been flown in, or manufactured in Nicaragua, and so we had the cast, in costume, raring to begin. Meanwhile, to my dismay, the last foreign sales company dropped out of negotiations with Pressman. Instead, Ed received an offer from Universal for foreign rights, as well as US domestic. That meant handing the entire package over to the studio, while we still had nothing in writing as to their distribution plans. Lorenzo and I wanted to make a radical film. We wanted to make it in collaboration with the Sandinistas, and to spend dollars in Nicaragua. To do this, we needed those dollars. At the outset, an English investor, Martin Bedford, and I had funded the film. But now Pressman was paying its running costs, and with offices and crews in Nicaragua, Mexico, and LA, this was a substantial amount of cash. We had to make the film. If Ed said that Universal was the only possible financier, so be it – we had to make it with Universal. Was Walker doomed from that moment on? Probably. But what was our alternative? Angel told Lorenzo some long and complicated story about how the convoy had been held up by bandits in Guatemala. The reality was less exotic. The crew had been delayed by the Guatemalan authorities who were, as ever, under orders from, and eager to please, the Americans. Our trucks were searched repeatedly; bits of gear were impounded; days went by. When the vehicles finally got rolling, there was a road accident and somebody was killed. It was stupid stuff, possibly preventable, and it didn’t become less stupid by glossing it over with tales of highway banditry.

X-Films.indb 140

14/05/2008 16:14:17

X-Films.indb 141

141  Ÿ  walker

Suddenly we were a week behind schedule. Because we were filming in what the insurers considered a war zone, we hadn’t been able to get coverage for ‘Acts of God’. Predictably, the insurance company considered this border hold-up to be one of God’s actions. There was no spare money to pay for the week’s delay, so Ed Pressman and I kicked our salaries back into the budget. This almost funded the extra week of idleness; to make up the balance, Ed Harris gave half his wages back as well. Now this was extraordinary: it doesn’t normally happen on a film, even a good one. Of course, it had to do with the Nicaraguan revolution: each of us felt some moral obligation to make the film. Harris, in character, led all of the actors on a forced march, to get them in the spirit of the film. Ed’s forced march was a bonding exercise: it got the entire cast on a walk that was pretty excessive for most of them – eight miles or so, which if you’re from LA or London can seem like the Bataan Death March. It took us on winding dirt roads through lush countryside. We stopped in the poorest of villages, where houses didn’t have glass in their windows (though the little store usually had a television!), drank cola out of plastic bags (bottles were always too valuable to be taken away), and generally behaved like starryeyed gringos and Mexicans on a political nature tour. My assistant, Abbie Fields, had worried we’d run into problems because there were military installations (Nicaragua’s only radar battery) nearby. But we went without minders – only our INCINE producer, Carlos Alvarez – and encountered no obstacles. That day spent marching in disorderly ranks behind Ed, through the real Nicaragua, more than compensated for the absence of work. At last, the trucks arrived. The shoot started the next day, 14 March 1987, at a tiny village not far from the radar base. It was a halfday shoot, after a long convoy out of Managua into the mountains, to catch the gorgeous afternoon light for the scenes in which Walker’s troops reached town. I don’t know if the handful of houses had a name: in the script, we called it Realejo. The art department had whitewashed all the buildings, fixed up the roofs, added a couple of walls and built a chapel. It was only a temporary movie chapel, with three sides, but this suited the locals, who had plans for the wood. Our first shot was a low angle on the steep road to Realejo, looking up towards the town. Dave Bridges and I puzzled over the composition for several minutes. We wanted it to be visually impressive, so we’d be excited by our first look at the rushes. But we couldn’t stop thinking in terms of horizontals and verticals. Finally Steve Fierberg, whom

14/05/2008 16:14:17

X films  Ÿ  142 X-Films.indb 142

I’d hired to shoot second camera and second unit, suggested that we move the camera a few metres to the left. Now the narrow road created a diagonal. The right image popped out immediately. We didn’t need to rehearse 50 men going up a hill, I thought. We rolled camera, I called action, and off they went – Walker in the lead, of course, flanked by Byron Cole, the romantic journalist, and Dr Jones, the black-clad opium eater. After them came the soldiers, Hornsby, Henningson, and co., and 30-odd extras. After the extras came the mule-skinner Wiley Marshall and then the chuck wagon, which, having no mule, was pushed by the two cooks, Washburn (Joe Strummer) and Faucet (Dick Rude). However, the chuck wagon barely moved an inch. Dick, dressed in a ‘fat suit’, strained in the traces; Joe, clad in rags, face hidden by long, curly locks, ran at the wagon and tried to budge it. The gap between chuck wagon and army widened. The wagon slid sideways, into a ditch. After we cut, Joe and Dick descended on me. Their cart, it seemed, was realistically laden with provisions, ironware, and heavy goods. It was near impossible to push uphill. Joe thought I was playing some kind of joke on him, and threatened to quit. Aghast, I asked Ron, the prop master, if he could possibly remove some of the fantastically authentic but very heavy items from the cook wagon. He nodded; his assistants were already in the process of stripping it. This was the only time in three films that I saw Joe get pissed off or offer to resign. Walker was supposed to be a political film, and pretty much everyone involved offered to resign from it at some point, or threatened to go on strike. The previous weekend I’d been to the Realejo set with Lorenzo because the Nicaraguan construction crew had downed tools.3 This was another of those occasions where a director learns to appreciate a great producer. We needed that location ready, with the paint dry, by a certain hour on 14 March. The only person who could guarantee that this would happen was Lorenzo, thanks to his attention to detail, his negotiating skills, and his staying on the case. Without Larry’s precision, persistence, and extreme charm, there would never have been a film. It started to get dark. The village was on a particularly scenic hilltop, with a magnificent view of the Pacific to the west. As the buses appeared to ferry the actors back to their hotels and homes, Joe proposed that rather than ride the bus back, we all camp out on set as we had done on Straight to Hell. Several actors, veterans of that film, agreed. One of the Nicaraguan crew tried to dissuade us: he indicated

14/05/2008 16:14:17

143  Ÿ  walker

it wasn’t a good idea for us to sleep up there. ‘Por que?’ Joe asked, ‘Peligro?’ ‘No, no,’ the guy said, ‘Frio.’ Joe smiled, and indicated the bedroll that he and all the actors carried. Walker’s Immortals had their sleeping gear with them, courtesy of the wardrobe department: they wouldn’t be cold. I grabbed a bedroll from the costume truck before the trucks drove away.

Ecstatic Strummer en la selva. Photo: Lynn Davis.

It got darker. The stars appeared. It was fantastically beautiful. Our small group settled down to share provisions and some Flor de Caña rum. That night we learned two things: 1) although Nicaragua is a tropical country, it gets really cold in the mountains at night; 2) you know those blankets and bedrolls cowboys and solders carry in the movies? To save money and material, the prop department make them three feet long. Instead of the balmy desert air of Andalucía in

X-Films.indb 143

14/05/2008 16:14:17

X films  Ÿ  144

August, we encountered a cold so cold as to be unsleepable in. We polished off the food and drink, and stood or crouched in huddles on the mountaintop, shivering, singing, and staring at the eastern sky, hoping for dawn. His experience with the overloaded chuck wagon, followed by our Night on a Bare Mountain, put paid to Joe’s interest in the Method, I think. Never again did he or any of us sleep out on the Walker locations. Strummer came to the set, waited, acted, went back to the room he’d rented, and thought about music. Like the march, even this event had a unifying purpose, as did the absence of creature comfort. We’d brought camera trucks from Mexico, but none of the usual array of private trailers or ‘honey wagons’ for the actors. All the cast were expected to get dressed in the back of the wardrobe truck, and hang out on the street. When an American actor objected, Pam Tait pointed out that all the Mexicans, including Blanca, got changed in the truck without complaining. Thereafter, there were no objections. The following morning we filmed Walker’s speech to his men and the ensuing riot. This is the only scene in Walker in which Ed Harris wore a wig. We’d had it specially made, and it did make him look slightly more like the historical Walker, but it was a bear to deal with: it kept flying up, or coming off, and in the rushes one hardly noticed it. Ed was cool about giving it up: he had a lot of scenes, and less time spent in hair and makeup meant more time on set. Working with Dave and Steve, I was able to set up two scenes simultaneously: Sy clearing the cantina of ‘Immortals’, Jack Slater encountering the sheep pens. I was much enthused by being able to work like this; Dave was less excited. He said it wouldn’t work once we got into interiors, which was no doubt right. The day ended with the execution of three Immortals who had been singled out for exemplary punishment. One of these men was an actor, Will Utay, who played Admiral Fry. (Since Walker has burned his ship he doesn’t need an admiral.) The other executees were extras who had been complaining about something: either their wages or the food. In the political climate that surrounded Nicaragua and the making of our film, Lorenzo and I tended to be a little paranoid, and anyone who made problems for the production (such as asking for better food) was regarded as a potential fifth columnist, or spy. Given Walker’s habit of executing his own men, it was easy to earmark complainers/potential spooks for the next firing squad. This doesn’t

X-Films.indb 144

14/05/2008 16:14:17

145  Ÿ  walker

mean that all the extras who were ‘killed’ in Walker were suspected spies. The majority were dedicated, young American FSLN supporters – Sandilistas, like Lorenzo and me. We killed them, too.4 Dave and I set up the execution shots with a particular editorial effect in mind: we started close on the executees and the firing squad, moved to a wider shot, then cut to a wide landscape, just before the shots were fired: the execution became a small thing, an element on the horizon, with Walker’s troops in the foreground. Yet the troops all jumped when the shots were fired. Lorenzo and I now encountered a new phenomenon: journalists. Today, films are part of the ‘news’ menu served up by all media, so reporters on the set, even of an independent film, are not uncommon. At the same time, the sane filmmaker makes every effort to avoid such visits. So why did we say yes to all these journalists’ requests? Why did we turn no reporter down, but welcome them all to lunch, to a guided tour of the set, to a chat about the project? Because we had a political agenda. We wanted to generate news items from Nicaragua: news items that we guessed would be positive, an antidote to the antiSandinista propaganda so pervasive in the US press. Reagan had told Americans that Nicaraguan troops were massing on their borders, ‘only two days’ drive from Harlesden, Texas’. Lorenzo and I wanted to put faces on these troops, to show that most of them were teenagers, defending their homes. After the forced march, Ed Harris became the natural representative of the actors, and, if some issue came up with them, he’d let me and Larry know. Ed was always on time, always knew his lines. Only one issue presented itself: like a lot of us young fellows, Ed liked a few beers in the evening. It might be one of the native brews, Victoria or Toña, or an import if he was back at the Intercontinental. There was nothing wrong with this: Ed could be pretty funny when drunk. But the camera doesn’t forgive. If Ed drank several beers, the skin around his eyes became puffy, and his eyes red, as if . . . as if he’d had some beers the night before. The historical William Walker was a puritan teetotaller, who betrayed every belief he ever had, save that one. Even in the midst of a battle, or in retreat from one, Walker remained alert, bright-eyed, sober, smoke-free. He was one of those Thatcheresque politicians who can exist on two or three hours of sleep, rise, and send armies to their doom. Ed couldn’t afford to seem the least tired – he had to look like

X-Films.indb 145

14/05/2008 16:14:17

X films  Ÿ  146

Walker. Morag Ross, the makeup chief, discussed it with me, and I spoke to Ed. The camera could see he was a bit hung-over, I explained, and makeup couldn’t hide it up so close, so the only solution . . . ‘So I can’t drink the night before we shoot?’ asked Ed. ‘That’s fine. We’re not shooting on Saturdays, right?’ Most Saturdays were ‘turnaround’ days, where we got back on a day schedule after shooting on Friday night. ‘And we’re not shooting on Sundays?’ That was definitely right. ‘Well, then, it’s not a problem. I can get loaded on Saturday. And on my days off.’ We laughed at that, because Ed didn’t have any days off: Walker was in almost every scene. Ed was true to his word, and a pristine Walker resulted. (Only when editing did I realise that the film Walker had to be about Walker, and only Walker. Many actors who’d come to Nicaragua, and acted fiercely for many weeks, almost vanished from the film – just as they have from this recounting of it. Apologies to all those actors for the double omission, but it was all about Walker.) Lorenzo and I wanted Walker to be revolutionary in style, as well as purpose. So we’d jumped on Rudy’s anachronisms, which would drag the story into the present day. One of these was the wreckage of a downed plane – this was meant to be the Hasenfus plane, shot down a year earlier by Sandinista soldiers, disgorging a live American mercenary. This was an important piece of recent history – unfortunately the footage didn’t turn out very impressive. Shot from the ground, with the Immortals filing past, the genuine aircraft wreckage looked like bits of tin. We were able to borrow one of the Sandinista Army’s helicopters, so as to get an aerial shot of the wreckage and the troops’ descent, but the helicopter vibrated so much that our hand-held footage was useless. (Though we ditched the wreckage shots, we referred to the Hasenfus story later in the shoot, in a scene where FSLN fighters marched the bedraggled Colonel Sanders into their camp. Jack Slater, who played Sanders, had the misfortune to resemble Hasenfus.) From my point of view, things were going well, and the footage (apart from our attempts at aerial photography) was excellent. But Dave Bridges wasn’t entirely happy: there were some aspects of Steve Fierberg’s work that he didn’t like, and he had doubts whether his and Steve’s shots would intercut properly. I felt they would; I wanted to continue with Steve. However, there was another cameraman, whom Dave preferred, and he was available.

X-Films.indb 146

14/05/2008 16:14:17

147  Ÿ  walker

Lorenzo and I felt we had to go with what Dave wanted; we both liked Fierberg’s work, but Bridges was the DP. If someone isn’t working out, the department head should always have the right to replace them, right? Otherwise they’re not really in charge of their department and can’t be responsible for it. I broke it to Steve that he was getting lashed. He grinned and shook his head – he’d seen it coming: ‘I realise I shouldn’t have suggested your very first shot to you guys.’ I protested that we’d been undecided, that his suggestion had been good. ‘It was. But I shouldn’t have done it. It screwed up my relationship with Dave.’ It was decent of Fierberg to let me off the hook. On the Sunday of the first week of production, an article appeared in the New York Times about the filming of Walker in Nicaragua. It made it clear that the production was supported by the Sandinistas, and was a co-production with INCINE. The following Monday, someone from Film Finances telephoned Pressman in LA and told him they were cancelling the bond. Ed called Nicaragua and advised Lorenzo. Lorenzo came to the set and told me the story: Bruno Rubeo had apparently denounced us to the bond company, and the bond was being cancelled, which meant the film would be shut down. It was all too ridiculous. Bruno had his complaints, but so did lots of people. I knew from his art directors that everything in his department was fine. At first Bruno denied everything: perhaps, he said, his wife had denounced the production. What to do? Neither Lorenzo nor I believed Bruno, yet we couldn’t really sack him. If he was the bond company’s source, this would confirm their worst fears. Everything being fundamentally okay, it was best to continue. By the afternoon, things had calmed down a little. Pressman sent word to Lorenzo that the bond company would be sending a representative to Nicaragua to check up on the production and evaluate the negative report they had received from persons unknown. The bond guy showed up a few days later, as we were filming the Battle of San Jacinto. This was one of the film’s three big battle scenes. It involved most of the cast, plus Alfonso Arau as a French adventurer, Raousset, the mariachis from the Intercontinental Hotel, 30 extra-Immortals, and the Sandinista Army, which provided dozens of soldiers on horseback. It was the largest scene I’d ever shot. There were 20-odd actors, three stuntmen, 80 or 90 extras, horses, cannon, explosions. I was dealing with stunts, special effects, highly cooperative and hard-working

X-Films.indb 147

14/05/2008 16:14:17

X films  Ÿ  148 X-Films.indb 148

actors, and also actors who were apt to fret and ask questions like, ‘But why would my character flee?’ Right in the middle of this, the representative of the bond company stepped forward. A single word he spoke: ‘Enhancement’. None of us had any idea what he meant. In later years, I discovered that bureaucrats, who very often don’t understand what they’re doing, make up new terms not used in the business in question, which only they can understand. This gives them a sense of power in an environment otherwise mysterious to them. It qualifies and enables them to destroy industries, such as British Railways, or British film. ‘Enhancement’ was one of those words. It meant something to him, and to his bosses back in LA, perhaps. By uttering it, he was finding serious fault with the production. The set, he told Lorenzo, was too big. There were too many extras. We were shooting with too many cameras – three cameras. Too many cameras to shoot a battle scene? This wasn’t a remotely real issue. Even for students at UCLA, film stock costs were never significant; you shot as much film as you needed to. In the overall budget, especially of a film costing $5.67 million, film stock was a tiny part. The guy had been told to find some contractual breach, and this was what he came up with. Now they could threaten to cancel the bond again. Whatever the reason, it made production more difficult and our circumstances less certain. To put the situation in perspective, compare this small US ‘intervention’ with the ones the Nicaraguans suffered on a daily basis. This guy was trying to stop the production of a film; in Matagalpa, and on the Costa Rican border, Nicaraguans were being killed daily by US-funded terrorists. The entire country lived in expectation of an American invasion. The draft ate families; a tough life got more difficult still. That same day INCINE wrangled us a small plane, and lashed it to the ground adjacent to the farmhouse, so that its propellers could create a dust storm. As soon as they heard there was a problem, Maritza Castillo and another FSLN compañera asked us what the situation was. Lorenzo told them that if the bond was cancelled, Universal might stop funding the film. The women jumped on various possibilities. If Universal pulled out, to whom would the rights belong? Where could we find more cash to complete the picture? If Walker was too political for the US, maybe Eastern Europe . . . ?

14/05/2008 16:14:17

X-Films.indb 149

149  Ÿ  walker

During breaks in the shoot, actors began wandering up to me and asking, ‘Hey, Al, any news about when we’re going to be getting paid?’ or saying, ‘I was talking to the missus last night, and she said the cheque still hasn’t arrived . . .’ Strictly speaking, actors shouldn’t bother the director with things financial. We’re supposed to be above all that. But these guys weren’t out of order; they were asking, three weeks into the shoot, where their paycheques were. As far as I knew, everything was fine. The contract with Universal was signed, and cashflow had begun: otherwise the Mexican crew and their trucks wouldn’t be here, and there wouldn’t be any money to buy gas, food, or pay the local costume crew and art department. Neither Lorenzo nor I, busy with the set, could say what the hold-up was. At this point, a second wave of thespians landed, including the actors playing Walker’s brothers: Gerrit Graham and Billy O’Leary. When Gerrit heard from the other actors that no one had got paid, he gravely reported his own experience of a film called Phantom of the Paradise. In this film, also produced by Ed Pressman, Gerrit said Pressman had failed to pay the actors. It was one of those familiar stories involving the words ‘picture made millions’ and ‘never saw a penny’. Gerrit’s tale had the effect of making many actors anxious. What if they weren’t ever paid? What if the film shut down, and they were abandoned in Nicaragua? Ed Harris wasn’t worried, but he was the official spokesman of the actors, and some of his colleagues were talking about going on strike. Ed told me and Lorenzo that if the actors went on strike he’d have to join them. I offered to go on strike too. Lorenzo was doubtful whether our contracts permitted this; he also said it didn’t matter. Now that Ed had conveyed the situation so clearly and unequivocally, Larry felt sure he could communicate it to Pressman, and that the delay in payments would end. And indeed it did. Lorenzo was very valiant, driving 50 miles back to the Intercontinental Hotel in Managua, calling LA via the long-distance phone, and making sure the actors all got paid before they went on strike. At the end of each day’s shoot, I had the luxury of going back to the old house I’d rented in Granada, and sitting in the courtyard – watching it rain, or the moon creep across the sky. Or I might watch a video with my neighbour, Strummer – Ran, for its battle scenes, or Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid, for its script and music – and strategise creative things. Lorenzo, meanwhile, would still be stuck under the fluorescent lights at the Inter, on the telephone to LA.

14/05/2008 16:14:17

X films  Ÿ  150

Predictably, the bond company told Pressman they were cancelling the bond again. It seemed a crude effort to shut down the film. My response was to go on the offensive: it seemed to me that, by threatening to cancel the bond without good cause, Film Finances were in breach of contract. This was the line Pressman’s lawyers took with them, and, since it was true, it eventually brought them around. With the example of the Nicaraguans, what could we do but try to be resolute and defiant? The Sandinistas’ motto that year was ‘Aqui No Se Rinde Nadie’ – Here, nobody gives up. It was on billboards everywhere: frayed, weather-beaten billboards with panels missing, one of which showed Hasenfus arrested by a young Sandinista soldier. Despite a constant, murderous war of attrition, Nicaragua hadn’t given up – so how could we? Despite a lot more threatening and posturing, Film Finances never actually cancelled the bond. Lorenzo and I went on working, the crew and cast continued to show up. Only a handful of people even knew that this was happening. If any experience demonstrates how absolutely useless and unnecessary a completion bond was, this was surely it. Whereas CBC had been a benign and distant presence on Sid & Nancy, and physically absent on Straight to Hell, Film Finances were an impediment to Walker – yet despite the difficulties they caused us, we continued shooting, on schedule and on budget, while they collected their percentage. Little by little, anxiety receded. Cashflow continued, and gradually we realised we had won. Rivas was the first major battle of Walker’s Nicaraguan invasion. Up until that point it had all been skirmishes, meeting and shaking hands with local allies, and advancing on Granada, where he planned to have his capital. However, en route Walker picked a fight with the city of Rivas, which was barricaded and filled with Nicaraguan troops. As depicted in the film, Walker disdained tactics of any kind and simply marched his men into town. It was a completely stupid and unnecessary manoeuvre, which resulted in the decimation of Walker’s army, from 200 to 37 men, in an afternoon. Our reconstruction took four days to shoot. To maximise possible camera angles, Dave and I had found a wide side-street in Granada, with overhanging, red-slate roofs, where the Immortals could be trapped. Once you were in it, from ground level, you were surrounded by thick-walled stone buildings that looked entirely original. One modern building had to be concealed with a hoarding, and the street

X-Films.indb 150

14/05/2008 16:14:18

151  Ÿ  walker

covered with dirt, but when this was done it was pretty convincing, with many angles, high and low, in all directions. My plan was to have Walker’s men turn into this wide side-street, get half-way down it, then be boxed in, both front and rear, by wheeled vehicles, as riflemen appeared behind the wagons, and on the roofs. When we began shooting the Battle of Rivas, many, many people turned up to watch. We’d anticipated this, and had managed to get the teenage Sandinista police to do crowd control on our first day there. But what if people kept coming in these numbers? What if we ended up with hundreds of unexpected extras, or spectators? Fortunately, film-making is quite slow-moving (especially if, like the bond guy, you know nothing about it). Adults quickly got bored and walked away. The kids, however, stayed. The crew continued to have a certain fascination for children, who love to stare at adults working with machines. Jaime O’Brien, Lorenzo’s brother, had shown up and joined the ADs’ department. He was a natural assistant director, rapid and empathetic, but his work was frustrated by a fad that was sweeping Latin America: the traca-traca toy. This was a sort of rattle, which, if you kept swinging it, made a sound like a rattlesnake trapped in a rusty can. One traca-traca gave off a nerve-jangling sound, and there were hundreds of them in Granada. Every child had at least one. Waiting for them to stop was like waiting for crickets to fall silent. The traca-tracas would subside, mysteriously; we would begin shooting; then one traca-traca would start up, in the middle of the watching kids,

Children in ‘Realejo’ – one of Dave Bridges’ gorgeous images for Walker.

X-Films.indb 151

14/05/2008 16:14:18

X films  Ÿ  152

and then 40 of them would be traca-traca-traca-traca-ing, in unison, as the scene died. It was a wind-up worthy of Gerrit. Then, suddenly, the traca-traca phenomenon passed. By the end of the Battle of Rivas, sounds of tracatraca-traca-traca were scarcely heard. No one knew why, but it was good news for the sound department. A more serious issue for the Granadans was the dust. Though colonial and often beautifully preserved, Granada was a modern city with asphalt roads, pavements and overhead electric cables. Like all oppressive film productions, our mission was to get rid of them. The electric wires were re-routed, the phone lines the same. But hiding tarmac and concrete meant bringing tons of dirt into the centre of the city, and dumping it in the streets. I paid little attention to this process, which seemed so natural and sensible. I was more concerned with Cecilia’s project: hiding various modernities, including the Sandinista soldier on a giant plinth in the main plaza. To do this, she had decided to build a theatre in the dusty main plaza, where Walker might mount the works of Shakespeare, in English, for the improvement of the populace. Granada was already a beautiful city, and, as far as I could see, we were improving things. I wasn’t thinking about the actual results of dumping a load of earth and sand in the middle of a community, of the dust that would rise and swirl through town, of the discomfort, inconvenience, and respiratory consequences. It all looked great to me. But I was wrong. Overestimating the importance of our project, I underestimated people’s willingness to put up with it. In 2004, almost 20 years later, I saw Ernesto Cardenal in Caracas. Cardenal had been Nicaraguan minister of culture, and a supporter of the film. The first thing he said to me was, ‘That film of yours – do you remember the dust, the problems you created in Granada?’ I had been playing the artist, but at what a cost to the locals? Wasn’t I acting arrogantly, like one of those Hollywood movie crews with their paid cops on Venice Beach? If Walker contained anachronisms, why couldn’t one of the anachronisms have been paved streets with parking signs? I was stupid, lacking in solidarity, not to think of this. Late in the course of his disastrous battle, the actual William Walker took shelter in a house on the outskirts of Rivas. There was a lot of action and dialogue to cover in this interior scene, and Dave Bridges suggested that we should do it all in one take. It was an exciting idea –

X-Films.indb 152

14/05/2008 16:14:18

153  Ÿ  walker

a proper plano secuencia, like Sid and Nancy exiting the boat. We’d just come out of a very staccato sequence – the street battle – so it would be in complete contrast to what had gone before. The shot took less than a day to get: we rehearsed it a couple of times with the camera at the end of one day, had it in the can by lunch time on the next. It’s more complicated than any of the hand-held moves of Sid & Nancy, and includes a dozen or more elements – the stabbing of Major Angus in the eye; a bullet hitting the wall adjacent to the landscape painter; Doubleday, Henningson and Hornsby arguing over military tactics; Walker playing ‘Silver Threads Among the Gold’ on the piano. I could only follow this action, given that the camera did a 360-degree move through the building, by being behind it or in front of it. If I stayed behind Dave and his focus-puller I would see nothing. Being as moustachioed and hairy as any of the Immortals, I got an extra’s costume and watched the action from the piano room. That’s me, crouching on the floor next to Eddie Tudor-Pole, clutching a musket. Among the Nicaraguan actors in Walker are Paulino Rodriguez, Dexter Taylor, Nestor Mendez Garcia, and Alan Bolt. Our most inspired Nicaraguan actor was Roberto López Espinoza, who played Mayorga, one of Walker’s collaborators. He was a Sandinista, and he viewed Mayorga as one of those modern Nicaraguans who opposed the FSLN and admired the Americans – someone like Adolfo Calero, or Eden Pastora. He felt it was very important to explain why some of his countrymen adored the United States, and why some became Contras. Mayorga, he thought, had bought into the notion (common in many places besides Nicaragua) that culture and progress are gifts donated to us by our betters. So Roberto wrote a speech in praise of the American intervention, celebrating Walker’s promise of ‘God, Science, and Hygiene’. In the aftermath of the battle, stained with stage blood, he staggered among the corpses and berated the surviving townspeople for misunderstanding the Americans. It’s a very good scene, which remains in the finished film, even though Rudy knew nothing of it. Roberto was a great actor, but he was also a subtle and clever thinker. Walker is an ethnocentric film about the conquerors, their fallings-out, and their fates. This is its most authentic ‘Nica’ moment. Most of Walker was filmed in or around the city of Granada. The shoot veered from intimate moments between Walker and his lovers, Ellen

X-Films.indb 153

14/05/2008 16:14:18

X films  Ÿ  154 X-Films.indb 154

Martin and Yrena, to crowd scenes involving marketplaces, floggings, executions, and, finally, the burning of the town. Dave’s second cameraman, Dennis Crossan, arrived and we worked out a schedule where Dave and I would shoot the main scenes while Miguel and Dennis took a second unit to capture any scenes in which Walker didn’t appear. Dave, Dennis, and either Frank Pineda or Rafael Ruiz would cover the big scenes together. (Since Steve’s departure I’d given up directing two scenes simultaneously.) After so much male energy, the scenes with Walker and the women were a joy to shoot. The actors were relaxed, and it was also a relief to film indoors, at night, with windows open onto balconies, after long days filming battles in the hot sun. Rudy’s dialogue anticipated Bush II, or Blair. ‘The American phalange will provide for national security,’ Walker stammered, as Yrena seduced him, ‘and I think we should have free elections within six months .  .  . if you think that’s possible.’ But everything took time. By the fifth week we were running a day behind. On a regular film, that wouldn’t matter: running late on a regular film is normal. On Walker it was evidence of communistic chaos and moral turpitude. We’d been shooting one of the big scenes in the marketplace, a crowd scene with perhaps 200 extras and 20 principals, including René Auberjonois, whose character, Henningson, was out shopping. In addition to the marketeers, there were construction workers raising a scaffolding, horses, a stagecoach, and a couple of floggings: an average afternoon in President Walker’s capital. Dave was concerned that we hadn’t quite ‘got it’ – that we needed a bit more coverage at the end of the scene. It would be days before we saw the rushes, which would be hand-carried back from the lab in London. So Lorenzo arranged for all 200 extras to be ready again one hour before sunset the next day. We finished an interior with Ed Harris 45 minutes before sundown, and raced outside. Half an hour before sunset, the camera was on the crane again, with all the extras, foreground and background action, horses, scaffolding, carts, and Major Siegfried Henningson, ‘late of the Corsican campaign and the Balkan fiasco’, going through their moves. Two takes later, the clouds rolled over the sun, Dave gave me the thumbs up, and we wrapped, 15 minutes ahead of schedule. As we walked away from the set, René remarked how quickly the whole complicated sequence had come together – re-created itself – at the very end of a busy day. ‘In LA that shot would have taken all

14/05/2008 16:14:18

155  Ÿ  walker

day to get,’ he said, ‘and they still wouldn’t have got it.’ In Nicaragua, film-making was easier: no one knew things were impossible. By the sixth week of production, we were two days behind, and the bond company was perturbed again. It occurred to me that while first unit was waiting for the principals to be ready with costume and makeup, Dave and I should shoot some short scenes involving the subsidiary characters, a third wave of American and British actors having recently arrived. But it was a mistake. Invariably, by the time Dave and I had lined up the first shot, Ed and Blanca would arrive on set, ready to shoot the important sequence. And the new, improvised scene would be scrapped. It hadn’t dawned on me yet that Walker was key to everything, and that any scenes that didn’t involve him could be dropped. Instead I persisted with a vain attempt to shoot the whole script. This was understandable: it’s what I was supposed to do. But it meant shooting some unnecessary scenes, featuring subsidiary characters, on the ‘San Francisco’ waterfront. Here, on the shore of Lake Nicaragua, the art department had built a series of false-fronted hotels and waterfront stores. Bryce Perrin and crew had managed to fit masts and sails to a couple of leaky scows, and the whole location – built on a shoestring – was tremendously cool. It appears in a long shot, a special effect by Rocco Gioffre, which, in addition to the actual waterfront, includes painted buildings, ships, and campfires burning on the hills. Rudy’s script contained much more dock material: the farewells of the Immortals, Ephraim Squier’s drunken arrival, and the attempt by one Sheriff Purdy to arrest Walker. I shot it all; it all hit the cutting room floor. It was fun to watch Richard Masur act – he’s what some people call a technical actor. At one point, as I was looking through the camera, Masur asked Dave, ‘What lens are you using?’ Dave told him it was an 85mm lens. The actor pointed to a spot on his chest, exactly where the TV-safe frame line was. ‘Frame line’s here, right?’ he said. Richard knew things he didn’t need to know, and there was tension in the Ellen Martin scenes. Ed was studiously learning sign language, so as to communicate better with Marlee Matlin. But Masur was already fluent in it. Marlee was happy to be working with another skilful signer, but Richard’s confidence infuriated Ed. In the Julius Caesar scene, Rudy and Cecilia captured the pretentiousness of the enterprise, and Walker’s coming fall. As Walker watches the

X-Films.indb 155

14/05/2008 16:14:18

X films  Ÿ  156 Walker’s men perform Julius Caesar. Fredric Neumann, Bruce White, Linda Callahan, David Martin, Sharon Barr, Ben Guillory, Richard Zobel. atrocious production, played before a background of European landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower, his closest allies try to warn him – all shouting at once, of course – of lost cities, of advancing armies, and of cholera. All to no avail: Walker decides this is the moment to announce the introduction of slavery, so that ‘the South will rally to our cause’. Walker’s brothers were supposed to be in the scene, but only one was present: Norvell, played by Gerrit. Billy, who played Junior Walker, was laid up at the Intercontinental with food poisoning. Without level-headed Billy/Junior, there was no restraining influence to prevent Norvell and William (or Gerrit and Ed) from winding each other up. As Walker prepared to make his historic declaration, Norvell laid into him with a tirade of criticisms and insults, and led his cronies in a chant of ‘Food, Booze, Money, Justice!’ At this point in the script, Walker tells Norvell that he is stripped of his rank; he can either remain in Nicaragua as a private, or leave. In the screenplay, Norvell turns and walks away (the historic Norvell returned to the United States to make trouble for his brother, and money for himself). But in rehearsal, instead of leaving, Gerrit stood his ground, grabbed his balls and said, ‘Private this, Billy!’ This so infuriated Ed, or rather Ed’s character, Walker, that he pointed at the obstreperous Norvell and said, ‘Anderson, kill him.’ Anderson, Walker’s stalwart killer-cowboy, was played by Bruce Wright. Bruce

X-Films.indb 156

14/05/2008 16:14:18

157  Ÿ  walker

stepped forward, aimed his pistol, and said ‘Bang’. And Norvell/ Gerrit, surprised but stoic, bit the dust. Immediately after the rehearsal, Ed asked me, ‘Can we? Or have we shot something with him later on?’ We checked with Mario Cisneros, the ‘Script Boy’. Mario told us we hadn’t yet shot any of Norvell’s later sequences; he didn’t have many, in any case. Ed, the actor, freely voiced his opinion that Walker, the character, would have

Walker’s jungle idol. Photo: Cecilia Montiel.

X-Films.indb 157

14/05/2008 16:14:18

X films  Ÿ  158

spontaneously ordered his brother’s execution at this moment in the film. It was a good note, I thought. A bit of a shock to Gerrit, perhaps, but he took the news of Norvell’s death manfully, and gained a spectacular demise. To mix Shakespeare with slavery, cholera and one’s brother’s murder is surely to tempt fate. By the end of this scene, Walker must either become a god-devil, or be doomed. The idea that Walker thought he was becoming a Central American god or devil did sometimes occur to me. It isn’t in the script, and it never really crystallises in the film, though Ed played his character as the most extreme imaginable animal. There are two moments in the film that suggest this possibility: one is in the cathedral, where he begins to feed on human flesh (really a piece of watermelon); and the other is in the jungle, where he sees the preColumbian statue of a demon devouring a man. Jorge Sainz, the art director, made three sketches for this: two realistic, one cartoon-like and over the top. Naturally, I went for the crazy one with a mad face and lolling tongue, grinning and chewing on a human head. In the film, Walker stares at the thing: clearly, he senses kinship. But to make the point more strongly, I should have had him order Washburn and Faucet to carry the statue to Granada on the chuck wagon, and install it in the presidential suite. Before the burning of Granada, much additional set building was needed, and so the cast and crew headed south for a two-day shoot in San Juan del Sur. To get from Rivas to San Juan, there were two routes: the main highway, which was paved, and El Chocolate, a wide dirt road that ran through farms and forests. There was less traffic on the Chocolate, and so the convoy took that. En route, our trucks passed a boy riding a horse, and the horse took fright. The boy was thrown, and one of our trucks killed him. Lorenzo and I, riding in my pickup, reached the end of the stalled convoy. I went back to the main road, and took the longer route to the hotel; Lorenzo stayed on the Chocolate. I prepared for the next day’s shoot; Lorenzo dealt with the driver, the police, and ambulance. I had a beer with the actors; Lorenzo visited the boy’s family. The next day, as we were getting ready to shoot, Lorenzo came to me and said, ‘We have a choice here – we can take the day off and go to this boy’s funeral, or we can keep shooting. What do you want to do?’ I thought about the bond company, and their reaction if we deliberately fell behind. What if they threatened to shut us down

X-Films.indb 158

14/05/2008 16:14:18

159  Ÿ  walker

again? So I opted to keep working. I was completely wrong – a halfday off, to pay our respects, was totally affordable. Instead Dave and I filmed some undistinguished stuff: the Immortals, wounded and battered after Rivas, shooting at a sloop anchored off shore. Most of it wasn’t used. It isn’t easy, doing good work with a guilty conscience, on a balmy shore. Lorenzo and Carlos, from INCINE, attended the funeral. During our location scouts, Lorenzo and I had found a secluded beach north of San Juan, where some striking rocks emerged from the surf. There was no road to it, so we’d agreed to ferry the actors by boat, as we’d scouted the location. The day before the shoot, Carlos showed me and Lorenzo a surprise, courtesy of the local military: a five-kilometre road, dug through the rain forest, from the Chocolate to the beach. The army had done a thorough job, cutting a wide swath through ancient trees, devastating the pristine forest. Lorenzo and I felt like fucking ghosts: we hadn’t asked for this, it wasn’t necessary for an afternoon’s shoot involving 30 actors, who had agreed to travel by boat anyway. Why such insane desecration of the forest? There had to be a reason. It couldn’t really be ‘for the movie’, could it? A Sandinista friend wondered if there was a military need for it: we were close to the Costa Rican border, and sometimes the Contras attacked by sea. Perhaps it was an access road for the army, passed off as a favour to filmmakers, paid for by us as well. Almost 20 years later, some Nicaraguans in London told me the road had been built on the orders of the local comandante, so that his relatives could develop the beach. Now there are cabañas and a restaurant there, owned by the former comandante and his partners. Is this what the revolution was fought for? Is this what Walker was about? It seemed as if, on the Chocolate, all my attempts at proper actions were being revealed as destructive, bogus. A forest had been destroyed; a boy killed. Was there anything worse than a pompous English filmmaker, trying to be useful to the Revolution? In the 1850s, Managua barely existed, and its religious buildings, such as they were, were modest affairs. By the late 1980s, there was a huge cathedral in Managua – but it was a roofless, windowless, concrete shell. In Nicaragua, where the parishioners were seriously poor, the largest religious building had been written off by the church, following the earthquake. Stark and symbolic, it was a magnet for filmmakers looking for a location.5

X-Films.indb 159

14/05/2008 16:14:18

X films  Ÿ  160

After laying waste Granada, Walker had retreated to the city’s cathedral. Lorenzo naturally approached the diocese of Managua for permission to shoot in the ruined building. Thanks to his diplomatic skills, permission was granted for us to shoot not only in the cathedral, but in a church-owned building in Granada overlooking the main square: Walker’s office. In the cathedral our most extreme scenes of Walker occurred: Walker operating on a wounded man on the altar; eating his liver; and his last address to his men. When we turned the cameras to face the watching Immortals and prisoners, Ed had an idea. He wanted, he told me, to explain to them what this film was about. I thought they knew, but Ed wanted to make it clear to them. So, Ed, off-camera, read a speech he’d written for them. Few of them could understand his English words. This is what he said: You all might think that there will come a day when America will leave Nicaragua alone. Well, I am here to tell you that day will never happen. Because it is our duty to be here. It is our duty to control you people. So no matter what you do – no matter how hard you fight – we’ll be back – time after time – forever.

We’ll be back. That improvised speech stretched from Nicaragua to Vietnam, to Iraq and beyond. Ed knew exactly what Walker was about, and what US policy was about: power and control, and an empire that must keep expanding, endlessly, or die. After Ed made his speech, he led his troops outside for the evacuation scene. I didn’t imagine we’d use the improvised dialogue, but Peter Glossop recorded it, just in case. A misunderstanding occurred. We’d arranged to borrow two trooptransport helicopters from the Sandinista Army to film the evacuation scene. No problem had been foreseen. But since then, the Contra war had gone into overdrive.6 The government was ferrying a lot of troops to the border with Honduras, and bringing many wounded back. On the first evening we’d planned to film them, the helicopters were cancelled. We had a fallback – the cathedral interior. Next evening, the Sandinistas told us they could only afford to send us one helicopter. We said this was fine, and waited for it. When it arrived, and the doors opened, we found wooden benches installed for the passengers, and fresh blood on the floor. We gave the floor a scrub before the actors got on board. The rehearsal went well. The ‘company’ man vetted the departing Immortals,

X-Films.indb 160

14/05/2008 16:14:18

X-Films.indb 161

161  Ÿ  walker

and the non-American ones were shot, or shooed away. Walker, as president of Nicaragua, refused to leave. The marines shut the doors. We went over the plan one last time: pilot, ADs, cameramen. With the chopper on the ground, we’d film the sequence up until the actors got aboard and the doors were closed. At that point I’d call cut. We’d shoot the same scene again, a couple of times maybe. The actors would get out, the set would be cleared of extras, and then the helicopter would take off. The steps of the cathedral were covered with Nicas, playing corpses. The plan was to get them off the steps, and the actors out of the helicopter, before it was airborne. We’d film the takeoff with the National Palace as a backdrop, and the empty steps out of shot. The FSLN guys said fine: the helicopter pilot didn’t want to take off with all the actors on board anyway. So we completely understood each other, just as we had completely understood the stunt coordinator, in the LA River, on Repo Man. The craft was parked on the ground, doors open. It started its rotors. Three cameras rolled, and I called action. The actors performed a thrilling version of the scene. Walker was left behind, staring at the helicopter, as the doors closed. I called cut. Nobody heard me. It didn’t matter: this was the planned cutting point, as we’d all agreed. The noise was deafening. The doors remained closed; the rotors turned, faster. The helicopter rose. Why did the helicopter take off? There had been a breakdown in communication. Somehow, in spite of all our plans and agreements, the pilot didn’t know he was supposed to stay on the ground. Or he forgot. Actors aboard, doors closed, up he went. Now, as the helicopter rose, a wind came off the Lake and hit it, blowing it off its vertical course, and towards the cathedral. I was standing on the cathedral steps, clad in an extra’s costume, a few feet behind Ed. The chopper drifted towards us. Ed didn’t break character for a moment. He knew the cameras were still rolling, and he remained stock still: Walker on the steps, observing the huge machine. The chopper struggled to rise: the racket of its engines grew louder. It drifted closer to the stone columns of the cathedral. Soon the rotors would hit one of the columns, shatter, the helicopter would spin out of control, and everyone aboard it, and on the ground beneath it, would be killed. The actors and the extras on the ground figured this out at the same time. They gave up acting, and ran for it. Ed Harris remained.

14/05/2008 16:14:18

X films  Ÿ  162

The helicopter was almost above us. Ed, stalwart, still in character, gazed fearlessly up. We were the only people left on the steps. He looked back, saw me, and winked. Then he stepped behind one of the pillars. I didn’t move. What was the point? The helicopter was about to hit the cathedral. This way, I would be killed quickly. Let poor Lorenzo, my best friend, deal with it. Rather him than me. I closed my eyes. Gradually the vast, roaring sound lessened. I opened my eyes and saw the chopper, higher now, having cleared the cathedral façade, circling the square and coming back in to land. After this near-disaster, a visit from the bond company was no big deal. I visited the bondsman in his room at the Inter. He didn’t mention ‘enhancement’. Instead he said he was concerned that we would be late delivering the picture. I said I didn’t think he needed to worry: delivery of the film was several months away, and we were due to wrap the shoot in just a few days’ time. We hadn’t over-spent: there was still money for effects, music, and titles. I swore to him, on the hotel Bible and the black flag of Anarchy, that Lorenzo and I would deliver the film on time. The bondsman still looked preoccupied: maybe he knew that true Anarchists really swear on the black book of Anarchy, and that the black flag thing was just a feint. The burning of Granada followed. We shot simultaneous scenes, Sando directing the second unit. For a week, Dave and I would be filming in one place, Miguel and Dennis in another. Once, we shot a 24-hour day. The first unit began work at 5 or 6 p.m. with a battle scene in the main square in Granada. This involved long tracking shots with Walker and his men. There was a major lighting setup; diesel bombs were going off in the background. Ed Harris led a posse of filibusters, including his brother, through the flames. Tonight Junior was killed: seemingly by a stray bullet (later, during the editing, I discovered it was Hornsby, Walker’s faithful aide-decamp, who pulled the trigger). Billy O’Leary had come to Nicaragua a rosy-cheeked, fresh-faced American actor. He looks that way in the early scenes, when he gets off the coach with brother Norvell. Ironically, all the cast who stayed at private houses in Granada remained in excellent health, while those who resided at the Intercontinental in Managua came down with

X-Films.indb 162

14/05/2008 16:14:18

X-Films.indb 163

163  Ÿ  walker

food poisoning. Billy was the worst hit: bed-ridden for almost two weeks, he lost 20 pounds and returned to the set quite skeletal and menacing. He had a proposition for me. Brooding in his fever bed, he’d decided that Junior Walker wasn’t an innocent, but a key player in the mayhem: Billy wanted to play Junior as a bad guy – a clean-cut sadist, worse than his brother. It was a great choice. Having filmed Junior’s death and various other violent scenes, we wrapped at 5 or 6 a.m. This should be Toña or Victoria time, but just as first unit ended, second unit was stirring. And second unit looked suspiciously like first. Dave and I checked on Sando, setting up a scene on a Granada side-street where several extra Immortals poured through a hole in the wall, into a hail of bullets. All seemed to be going well, so I walked back across town to my house and went to bed. I slept till 1 p.m., then woke and rode in my pickup to Managua, where I boarded the Actors’ Bus (lately renamed the Actors’, Extras’ & Crew Members’ Bus) northbound to León. On the bank of Lake Managua, in the shadow of volcano Momotombo, we were to shoot pickups for the scene where Walker decides to betray Vanderbilt, seize his boss’ ships, and go it alone. It was a gorgeous location on the lakeside, in sight of the geothermal power station that the Americans had built in Somoza’s time, and which the Sandinistas now ran, with the aid of some Italians.7 We’d filmed the bulk of this scene two weeks previously, but still needed a couple of extra shots to make it work. The actors on the bus were all working their second shift. The bus took us out to the location: a dilapidated, two-storey wooden hacienda inhabited by several families. When we got there, we couldn’t shoot. On the previous occasion, Cecilia’s art department had covered the corrugated metal roof with red ceramic roof tiles. The tiles were still there, on location, but they were no longer on the roof: instead, they were piled up neatly, in hundreds of rows, under the eaves of the building. Our goal was a wide shot featuring this splendid, if crumbling, edifice. It wasn’t something we could do as a special effect, special effects shots being expensive in those days. We couldn’t shoot this building as it was. The solution was a group effort, converting our Screen Actors Guild cast into a roofing crew. For an hour, Miguel, Ed, I, and the rest of the actors and staff climbed ladders and spread red tiles across the roof. Here these great actors were, crawling across a hot metal roof in Nicaragua, passing me armloads of red tiles, in clear violation of their contract and job description, just so that we could get the shot.

14/05/2008 16:14:18

X films  Ÿ  164

We got the shot. And, as we headed for the buses, an old man who lived in the house came up to me and said, ‘Vos eres un gran amigo de Nicaragua.’ I don’t know if he said this because we’d just put new tiles on his roof, or because he approved of our attempts to tell this particular story, but he made me happy. I shook his hand, that strong, fluid, soul-handshake that the Nicas made, and hurried off so that he wouldn’t see tears in my eyes. Concerned that something was still missing, I invited Ed and Sy over to my house in Granada to shoot a new scene based on Walker’s diary. Dave set up a simple two-shot, on the patio, with Ed and Sy seated at a table. In the scene, Walker read twice from his diary, on his theories of racial purity. And Hornsby read once, from the same diary, of the bravery of all the men at the Battle of Rivas, irrespective of their race. I wasn’t quite sure where the scene would fit, but I felt we needed it. The last scheduled scene was Walker’s trial in San Francisco. This was shot in the set built on the Granada waterfront. Fox Harris played the prosecuting attorney. I had a haircut, and a shave, and played his assistant prosecutor. Fox was very quiet. Normally it was tremendous fun to work with him: though nervous, he was dementedly funny and apt to say anything that came into his head. But in Nicaragua, he was reserved, unusually serious. I didn’t know that he’d been diagnosed with AIDS. He died not long after. He’d told no one – not me, not friends like Dick or Zander – that he was ill. At the conclusion of the scene, the ADs announced the film was wrapped. A cheer went up, and one of the extras punched me. I didn’t blame him, though it hurt a bit. He was a Dutch guy, one of the Sandinistas who’d dragged around in Walker’s army for nine weeks, putting up with bad food, inaccurate information, and un-solidaritous treatment. He’d clearly hated the power structure that ran Walker, but he’d put up with it. He’d waited nine weeks, respectful of my directorial authority, as long as it lasted. And then he punched me in the head. I’ve always admired the Dutch – so able to combine justice with timing and common sense. We didn’t know it, but as Walker wrapped, INCINE itself was shutting down. El Espectro de la Guerra – a musical about the war – had taken a huge effort. But some footage had been accidentally destroyed at the Havana lab. There was no insurance, or money for reshoots. As the

X-Films.indb 164

14/05/2008 16:14:18

POSTPRODUCTION

165  Ÿ  walker

war weighed more and more heavily on everything, the FSLN gave up on film production. Shortly thereafter, the ministry of culture was also closed.

Among the actors, there was one who had no obvious plans to leave. Strummer, having faded into the murky texture of Walker’s cast, had hatched some very specific plans. He was there partially because he was enjoying the film thing, partially because of the political situation, but also because in the weeks we’d spent there, Joe had got into Nicaragua itself – it was so magnificent, so musical, so colourful, so olfactory. He was in no hurry to go home. In pre-production, Joe, Lorenzo, and I had discussed his writing some music. At the time, we’d planned to include Nicaraguan composers and musicians, including Carlos Mejía Godoy, in the soundtrack. Now the shoot was over, the plan was for the entire company to return home. But where was home? I had no base anywhere; Lorenzo and Cecilia lived in LA; Joe had a wife and two daughters in England, yet . . . Joe felt strongly, he said, that I should edit there. He remarked how beautiful Nicaragua was, how great the people were, what a rich creative world surrounded us. He said that, if we went back to London, we’d be sitting around, with cups of milky tea, kicking ourselves for having left this place. It wasn’t hard to convince me: I loved Nicaragua, and had no connection to London. By encouraging me to edit in Granada, Joe was also kicking the editors off the film. He was quite explicit about this. He knew David and Justin had families in London and wanted to go home. Joe had felt disappointment at the way Straight to Hell turned out, and he blamed David Martin for the initial failure of the film. I think he was wrong about this. Straight to Hell’s flaws are inherent in the project. David did the best he could with four weeks’ worth of Hell, but he was never going to turn the material into a film as polished, or as well structured, or as profoundly acted, as Sid & Nancy. Justin gave the film an excellent sound design. Both did good work. But Strummer wanted regime change in the cutting room. It was easy to orchestrate the rift. Lorenzo and I were more than happy to stay. After we wrapped, David and Justin returned to London; Lorenzo, Joe, and I remained in Granada.

X-Films.indb 165

14/05/2008 16:14:18

X films  Ÿ  166

Granada is a small city, politically conservative, beautiful to behold. My Spanish skills improved. Lorenzo and I had lunch with the Chamorros, who ran the soap factory. They told us we should make a commercial film in Nicaragua. We said that Walker was a commercial film; they laughed. I cut Walker for a couple of weeks, while Lorenzo looked for a replacement for David. And I learned just what a good editor David was. Every time I doubted one of his cuts, and took it apart to try to improve it, I saw the reason for David’s edit – an actor blinked or looked away, there was a focus problem, someone forgot a line. He hadn’t put a foot wrong anywhere. His talents were indisputable. But, here we were. Certain sequences, especially the big battles, involved a lot of material, and a lot of possibilities to be explored. I worked on these. In Mexico City, Lorenzo met Carlos Puente, who had edited several Mexican-based Hollywood pictures, and cut one of Arturo Ripstein’s films. Back then, Carlos was spouseless and childless, as was his assistant, Edgar: perfect additions to our rootless team. After they came to Nicaragua, we worked in parallel: I cut the battle sequences and the Shakespeare play, Carlos edited the narrative scenes. Our office was off the main road between Granada and Managua. Most evenings Strummer turned up with a cassette tape of temporary score, which he’d play in shaky synch beside the flatbed, as we’d done in Soho. Joe came up with hours of music: dissatisfied, he’d go home, throw most of it away, and compose more. One day, I suggested to Joe that he and I take a taxi to Managua, to meet Carlos Mejía Godoy, and talk about the score. ‘Well, Al, I’ve been thinking,’ he replied, ‘you know the scores of your last couple of films?’ Of course I did – Strummer had worked on both of them. ‘Well, I’m not entirely happy with ’em. You know, the way they turned out. I think Walker should have one composer. For the entire score.’ Silence. I looked at him. He looked back at me. The eyes that normally evaded people held me in one complete and penetrating gaze. We walked into town, to have lunch at the café where they’d hung the picture of Walker and his Immortals at their Last Supper. Strummer’s score for Walker was composed entirely in a small farmhouse outside Granada. It was performed and mixed in San Francisco, and re-mixed (in Francis Coppola’s barn) by Richard Beggs. I can’t describe the score of Walker, since I’m not a musical

X-Films.indb 166

14/05/2008 16:14:18

It took eight weeks for us to finish the rough cut. Near the end of the process, Tomás Borge visited the cutting room. Lorenzo and I took bets as to how many pickups and four-wheel drives would be in Borge’s convoy, but the comandante surprised us. His very agreeable personal guard showed up to tell us Tomás was on his way. Borge arrived a few minutes later in a second car – no jeeps, no outriders – with a Cuban advisor. Having a Cuban advisor was something of a status symbol for the comandantes: I’d seen Russians in Nicaragua, but they didn’t fraternise much with the Nicas – they wore baseball caps and raced around in jeeps and acted, well, like Americans. The Cubans, on the other hand, were thick with the Nicas; very political, and could be a terrible wind-up. Carlos and I showed Tomás and his Cuban asesor the burning of Granada scenes. We were quite proud of these – though they didn’t yet feature Joe’s final version of ‘The Brooding Side of Madness’. Tomás watched the sequence, nodded, and said, ‘Very good’ or something like that. We looked at his Cuban friend. ‘Yes,’ said the Cuban, ‘you only show a small part of Granada burning, of course. Is there a reason for that?’ I didn’t like this guy. We were supposed to be filmmakers, artists, internationalists and intellectuals, united in defence of the Nicaraguan Revolution – and here he was, dissing our film! Let the Cubans come here and make a film as funny and as good as Walker, and pay for it with American dollars! I made up some bogus explanation, and got on the phone to Rocco Gioffre to ask if he could squeeze another effects shot into the budget: a high angle, at night, in which it was obvious (even to the most narrow-minded Cuban intellectual) that the city of Granada was entirely ablaze! Over lunch, Borge told us all a joke. ‘Cox, what is more important, do you think – sexual technique, or the size of the male member?’ ‘Well, technique, surely, Comandante.’ ‘O’Brien, what do you think is more important? Size, or technique?’

X-Films.indb 167

167  Ÿ  walker

person. Nor could I account for its brilliance, originality, and orchestral breadth, nor judge the songs he wrote and sang. It was a work of great self-confidence. You could tell this by the way he mixed his vocals loud – not like the buried vocals of the albums that preceded and followed it.

14/05/2008 16:14:19

X films  Ÿ  168 X-Films.indb 168

Lorenzo also felt that erotic ability was more important than the size of the organ. Borge turned to his Cuban advisor, nodded, and said, ‘See? Two more guys with small dicks!’ We got the plate for Rocco’s shot from my balcony, using Frank Pineda’s camera. I enjoyed my daily walks, through two- or threehundred-year-old streets, to the cutting room on the edge of town. It was hot and humid, the streets smelled of mangos and bananas and diesel fuel, people shouted, your landlady whistled at you, there were kids, carts, and animals everywhere. I went swimming every day in Lake Nicaragua, with its famous freshwater sharks; I didn’t really believe the sharks were there. I’d head in a straight line out from shore, leaving the palm trees and the little taxi rank behind, making way towards the distant volcano. I’d swim for 20 minutes or so in that direction, then turn back. One day, I saw a long, straight fin, sticking out of the water, between me and that volcano. Or maybe it was a tall stick. Headed straight for me. Maybe. I didn’t wait for a closer look at Carcharhinus nicaraguensis, but crawled for shore. That was my last dip in the lake. Carlos and I had a rough cut now and Strummer’s score was expanding daily, which provoked more picture changes, and more temp music. We needed to get back to San Francisco so Joe could start recording, and we could lock the music and the picture down. Richard Beggs was waiting to begin work on the sound design. A few days before we closed the Granada office, I was sitting in the cutting room. It was about 10 p.m. and I was working on the helicopter scene, specifically, the moment where the Company Man points at Henningson, and the marines open fire on him, blowing off his arm. We’d had a running joke regarding Henningson’s injured arm, and René had asked if his arm could be shot off at the end of the film. Don Marcelino was happy to oblige him with much spurting blood, and a detachable arm. Just as I spliced two shots – the soldiers firing, and Henningson’s reaction – there was a god-awful crash outside. Several crashes very close together, in fact – one of those road-accident-just-round-thecorner sounds. I ran outside and saw a terrible scene. A car, driving fast, had ploughed into the back of a truck trailer, parked across the road from our office. The car was packed with people, and – as its roof was torn off by the impact – the passengers had spilled out and were lying, dead or injured, in the road.

14/05/2008 16:14:19

169  Ÿ  walker

I stared at the accident. Lorenzo emerged from the office. He took in what had happened, and immediately yelled to the taxi drivers who hung out in front of Walker headquarters: ‘You, you! Pick those people up and take them to the hospital. You others,’ (this to me and the other taxi drivers) ‘get the rest of them out of the road.’ We raced to follow Lorenzo’s orders. Sometimes a hierarchical command structure works. We carried an injured woman out of the road. The taxis roared off to the hospital with the wounded. I went back to get another man, but he was dead. His arm had been cut off and it was lying next to him. I stared, mystified, at the severed arm; a taxista picked it up, and, not knowing what to do with it, laid it on the dead man’s body. Lorenzo seemed to have everything under control. We waited for the ambulance and the Sandinista cops to arrive. The least injured comforted the more severely hurt. The taxi guys found blankets for the dead. I went back inside. I found myself in the editing room, where the shot of Henningson’s severed arm still glowed in the flatbed window. I thought about the man who’d just been killed outside: the white meat of his arm, the lack of gushing blood. I thought of the lattice of coincidence – How could such things be? How could they be so horrible? What could they mean? I turned off the machines. In July, Carlos and I set up a new cutting room in San Francisco. This was to supply Richard with whatever material he needed, and make small edits to accommodate the music as it arrived. In fact, we continued editing the film. Strummer established mini-offices: one in the cutting room, another in a cupboard in the corridor outside Richard’s studio. He kept his rolling papers, lighter, notebook, guitar, and other essentials there. We shot two new sequences at Old Tucson, Arizona, on 14 and 15 August 1987. These scenes gave Walker a new aspect: the Western town set with its railroad tracks, and the magnificent, saguaro-filled desert where we staged a fictitious meeting between Walker and his financier, Vanderbilt. After Beatty, our next choice for Cornelius Vanderbilt had been Peter Boyle. He was a great actor and he looked like the original Cornelius Vanderbilt. But Peter had been doubtful about travelling to Central America, and we’d gone with another actor. His performance

X-Films.indb 169

14/05/2008 16:14:19

X films  Ÿ  170

wasn’t very strong, and, as Lorenzo observed, without a megapowerful Vanderbilt Walker would make no sense. When we asked Peter to play the part a second time, in Tucson, he accepted the role, and did it for no fee. We cut the new Vanderbilt material in and showed the film to Rudy and Ed Harris in San Francisco. For the first time, we discussed a voiceover narration. I talked to Bob Dawson about explanatory maps. Bob, who also designed the title sequence, created the animated maps depicting Walker’s route from San Francisco to Nicaragua, and some of his journeys in the country. Rudy and I had vowed two things when he embarked on the script: no voiceover narration, and no maps. Now, in an attempt to make the narrative as clear as possible, we would have both. Richard Beggs produced a cornucopia of unexpected and delightful aural elements: he filled the air surrounding Vanderbilt with farts and flies (some of which I regret that I declined). He also offered helicopter fly-bys during an early campfire scene: I declined them, too, because I thought we should wait for the physical arrival of the helicopters at the end. But I was endlessly impressed by the work he put in on small things – animal and insect sounds, for instance – and the way he worked with Joe to design the Rivas battle. The MPAA screened a tape and told us Walker would receive either an R or an X rating. No cuts were required, and it received an R. Joe delivered the last track, ‘Remix Brooding # 6’, at the end of October. He said he’d hijacked the lovely melody from the screeching vocals in the main theme of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. I wouldn’t have known: it was a delicate, pretty piece that worked in the contradictory manner of Tôru Takemitsu’s score for Ran. Carlos and I continued to make Richard’s job more difficult. At the eleventh hour, after a complete screening of the cutting copy, we put back the impromptu scene where Ed and Sy read from Walker’s diary.

RELEASE The regime had changed, but my Universal experience was pretty much the same as it had been with Repo Man. There was endless dickering about the poster. The new boss, Tom Pollock, had okayed Paul Mavrides as poster artist, but it was a struggle to get anyone

X-Films.indb 170

14/05/2008 16:14:19

We requested another meeting with Tom Pollock. In the middle of it, the door to his office suddenly opened. A hand, expensively cufflinked, appeared. It beckoned to Pollock, with one finger; Pollock leapt up and ran from the room. Lorenzo, a studio exec, and I stared at the door. ‘Is that Lew Wasserman?’ I asked the exec. He grew pale, and put his finger to his lips. I’d guessed it was the capo de capi, the Boss of all Bosses, because who else would walk into a studio head’s office without knocking, and beckon him outside, other than the real boss? We waited, staring through the plateglass window, down into the Valley smog. Finally, Tom Pollock returned. ‘It was Lew,’ he explained, carefully shutting the door. There was a Walker benefit for the Nicaraguan women’s charity MADRE on 30 November, where I met Nicaragua’s ambassador to the UN, the magnificent Nora Astorga. The film opened the following week. The first reviews, in Time magazine and the New York Times, were positive, and for a moment we thought we’d got away with it, but every major review that followed was entirely negative. There was a consistent quality to many of the reviews: a repetition of phrases (particularly “blood spurting,” and the use of “clever” in a pejorative sense), and a recurrent admonition that no such films should be made again. Like Repo Man, Walker was gone from the cinemas in a couple of weeks. In London, Martin Turner took me to an exhibition of drawings by Otto Dix, at the Goethe Institute. Dix’s anger, graphic brilliance, and specific-ness made me feel better about political art. The film played at the Havana Film Festival, twice, in one of those huge cinemas named after the twin heroes of the revolution, ‘Carlos’ Marx and ‘Carlos’ Chaplin. It was a 2,000-seater auditorium, and every seat was occupied. After the second screening, I met three young people in the lobby of the Nacional. They were students of the Cuban film school at San Antonio de los Baños – two guys and a woman, kids really, one from Ecuador, one from Argentina, and one from Peru. They all shook me by the hand, and swore with great sincerity, ‘Cuando hacemos peliculas, queremos hacer peliculas como Walker!’

X-Films.indb 171

171  Ÿ  walker

else there to accept this. Mavrides painted a cartoon image of Walker without a face. This freaked everyone out. The poster had to have a face! Lorenzo and I attended a meeting with 16 people from marketing, all of whom clearly had better things to do. Walker, like Repo Man, was doomed.

14/05/2008 16:14:19

X films  Ÿ  172 X-Films.indb 172

Back in England, on 30 December, I saw, with Cecilia and Dick, the RSC’s production of The Revengers Tragedy, at the Swan Theatre. Like the Dix exhibition, this stoked my enthusiasm for radical art. On New Year’s Eve, I wrote two quotations in the back of my appointment book: ‘No one has ever prospered or died happily outside the law’ – the words of G.D. Hadfield, US Marine Corps Commanding Officer, to A.C. Sandino, Nicaragua, 12 July 1927; and Vindici’s line from Revengers, ‘Great men were gods if beggars couldn’t kill ’em!’ I requested a meeting with UIP, the multinational distribution corporation owned by Universal and Paramount.8 They owned all foreign rights to Walker, and I wanted to learn their distribution plans. I met their head honcho in London, who was even more nervous than Tom Pollock, and even more determined not to release the film. ‘We all loved Repo Man,’ said Universal’s man in his big office off Soho Square, ‘but you have to admit you didn’t get it right this time. With Walker, you didn’t get it right this time.’ The UIP boss was quite big, and was talking very loudly. I said I didn’t think it mattered if I’d got it or not, that his company had chosen to buy the international rights to Walker, and that it was in our mutual interest to coordinate the release of Joe Strummer’s excellent soundtrack album with the opening of the film. The man wasn’t prepared to begin discussing it. ‘It’s the violence, you see. The violence – before, we could have got away with it. But not now. Not after Hungerford.’ Hungerford – an English town where a madman, armed with guns he’d acquired via a licensed gun club, opened fire in the main shopping area, killing a number of people. Hungerford – he said the word two or three times. This was the reason that UIP wasn’t going to release Walker in Britain. It was on account of the violence. Hungerford. He was actually shouting, and I asked him to lower his voice a bit. I said I didn’t know enough about Hungerford to comment on his analysis. But we were still business partners, with a duty to get this film out there, to help it find its audience. In order to address his concerns about the violence, I said I was prepared to sit down with him if he liked, and cut all of the violence out. Maybe Walker was too violent. I wondered how it would play without the violence, with only minimal suggestions of killing and battle scenes. It might be like Repo Man, re-cut for TV, with the drugs and swearing taken out – different, but by no means worse. My man was shouting again. Re-editing the picture wasn’t going to help because . . . nobody wanted to exhibit it! UIP wasn’t going to

14/05/2008 16:14:19

173  Ÿ  walker

distribute Walker in Britain, because there weren’t any cinemas that wanted to show it anywhere. Because they’d already asked. One of the reasons I had gone to see UIP was because my British agent, Nicky Hart, was the daughter of an exhibitor and distributor, Romaine. Romaine owned a couple of screens and wanted to screen the controversial Walker as soon as possible. So did Andi Engel of Artificial Eye, who had made so much money from Repo Man. I told the UIP man this – it didn’t make much difference. In England Walker did eventually get a release in London, via Jeremy Thomas’ Recorded Picture Company. Hungerford had nothing to do with it: the British censor passed the film with three seconds of cuts; shots of two horses falling. But in the rest of the world – including natural markets like Italy and Latin America – Walker was never shown. At the end of 1989 the US invaded Panama, killing thousands and overthrowing a client dictator whom they had previously installed. US troops also attacked the Nicaraguan embassy. The message wasn’t lost on the Nicaraguan people. In general elections a few days later, they voted the FSLN out of office, and a US-approved coalition, led by a Chamorro, in. The same month the General Assembly of the United Nations condemned the United States for supporting the Contra war against Nicaragua (only the US and Israel voted against the resolution), and for imposing an illegal embargo against Nicaragua (again, only the US and Israel were opposed).

X-Films.indb 173

14/05/2008 16:14:19

X-Films.indb 174

14/05/2008 16:14:19

EL PATRULLERO In the run-up to Walker, Lorenzo and I had scouted locations in Northern Mexico on both sides of the Sierra Madre range. This had involved long hours in a minibus with a driver, Poncho Granados. Poncho, in his youth, had been a member of the Federal Highway Patrol. I found his stories about that part of his life completely fascinating. For a Limey, the notion of the Federal de Caminos, patrolling a vast and lonely stretch of road in the high desert, was entirely beguiling. I persuaded Lorenzo to write a screenplay based on Poncho Granados’ stories. This meant going back to Mexico to track Poncho down. He wasn’t hard to find: Poncho was a producer now, working for a company that made low-budget action and police films. His boss was an actor, Juan Garrido, who normally played an obsessive, macho detective. Their latest production, AR-15: Comando Implacable, was the story of an obsessive, macho cop who, his family having been murdered, keeps their bodies in his house, and props them up around the dining table so as to have meals with them. AR-15 was violent and predictable, but it also owed a debt to Jodorowsky and Buñuel, which made it quite a different cultural artifact from its US equivalent. Poncho and his business partners had reason to be suspicious of us: we were potentially muscling in on their territory. But Poncho saw Lorenzo and I were talking about a different sort of film, and he was happy to chat about what it was really like to be a highway patrolman on the Recta de Matehuala. In the end, not much interview material made it into the film, but what did percolate was Poncho himself: his likeability, his fallibility, and his resoluteness in dealing with impossible destiny and an implacable landscape.

X-Films.indb 175

14/05/2008 16:14:19

X films  Ÿ  176

In his cutting room at Churubusco Studios, Carlos Puente showed me an unreleased film by Arturo Ripstein, La Mujer del Puerto. It was complicated, tough, surprising, all shot in plano secuencia – each scene a single moving take. Ripstein’s style impressed me a lot. If feature films were to survive, they had to be different from the dominant medium, TV. What Ripstein was doing was creating an alternative space for storytelling; he was breaking with the Monoform. Working with a good hand-held operator, plano secuencia made it possible to tell a story via a series of quite distinct and contrasting compositions, linked not by montage but by the natural reframing of the camera, following an actor through a scene. The focus didn’t have to be on the leading actor: it could be his or her antagonist, or a waiter; the protagonist of the shot might change, but the camera would use an actor as its axis, as it traversed the scene. I studied Ripstein’s plano secuencias – especially the nine-and-ahalf-minute take that ended Principio y Fin. It was clear that everyone had to work together, in near-perfect unison, to pull them off. I applied the concept to projects I was offered. While waiting to make another film, I began to develop my own strategy for how I’d make it – irrespective of what it was, I was going to shoot in plano secuencia. Lorenzo is a prolific writer, but it was hard to get him to finish the script. Only when we threatened to lock him in a motel room with a typewriter did he give in and write the last 20 pages. The script was called ‘Federal de Caminos’. I loved his screenplay, and its protagonist, then called Lucho Rojas. The first draft was structurally very similar to the final film, though quite different in dialogue and in the ending. We gave Cecilia the script: it was high time she designed a feature. She felt that the design of Walker had been disorderly: with so many art directors taking responsibility for different locations, there was a certain inconsistency. She wanted to apply a certain colour palette to everything: a scheme from the Mexican painter, Rufino Tamayo. Lorenzo took the script to Poncho and Garrido, proposing a partnership; they declined. We made plans, as with Repo Man, to sell shares – this time worth $50,000 each, so as to come up with a budget of $750,000. Lee Katz told us he’d bond the picture up to the end of production for this amount: he didn’t think it was enough for postproduction as well. Interestingly, the average budget of one of these Mexican cop movies was around $250,000; but those were films shot in the Distrito Federal in three or four weeks. We were

X-Films.indb 176

14/05/2008 16:14:19

177  Ÿ  EL patrullero

Manuela Loaeza (costumes), Cecilia Montiel (designer), Lorenzo O’Brien (writer/producer). planning a long shoot, in Northern Mexico and Mexico City, with many characters. We were talking about a script, about design, about locations; we were also talking to Claudia Becker and Miguel about the cast; and we had no money. After the Japanese opening of Straight to Hell, Lorenzo sent Mr Negishi an English version of the script, titled ‘Highway Patrolman’. Negi-san read it, and said it reminded him of a samurai film; maybe he could raise money for it. At this time, Japanese companies were investing in foreign films, and even buying American studios, in the cases of Matsushita and Sony. But it still seemed very remote. After Walker, it looked as if my directing days might be over, and I suggested to Lorenzo that he should direct the film. But he persisted with the original plan. Remarkably, he got the attention of Roger Corman. Roger was interested in making the film, either in Mexico or on the US side of the border, for around $125,000. He was thinking of it as an American ‘indie’ like Cockfighter, but with two possible markets, and so wanted us to make two films: a Spanish-speaking and an English-language one. This was slightly impractical (most of the Mexican actors didn’t speak great English, and we certainly couldn’t afford two casts), but Lorenzo and I reckoned we could dub and

X-Films.indb 177

14/05/2008 16:14:19

X films  Ÿ  178

deliver Roger an acceptable English version for the drive-in and video market. Then Mr Negishi told us he’d found the money. A huge Japanese trading company, Marubeni, had agreed to fund features produced by him and his partner, Sammy Masada. ‘Highway Patrolman’ was approved as the trial project, with a budget of $1.5 million. A twopage contract followed, between Lorenzo and Mr Negishi. And $750,000 appeared, by wire transfer, in Lorenzo’s account. We discussed running off with the money, but decided 1) that it wasn’t really enough to finance our permanent disappearance; and 2) that we really wanted to make the film. I thought for a while that El Patrullero’s message was the impossibility of doing good. But the ending changed quite drastically while we were still shooting, and this affected what the film says. Now I think the film is about the impossibility of imposing good on people, and about coming to terms with fate. Our base was a huge stone house in the ‘Country Club’ colonia of Mexico City, adjacent to Churubusco Studios. We called this the ‘Indio Fernández’ place, though I’m not sure the great director ever lived there. The big house had been rented to visiting producers and directors over the years: it appears as a location in Bud Boetticher’s The Bullfighter and the Lady. In the upscale colonia of Jardines de Pedregal, Lorenzo found us a ‘Mexican’ partner: a French producer, Jean-Michel Lacor. Jean-Michel recommended a line producer, Alejandra Liceaga, and a writer, Paz Alicia Garciadiego, who could review the script and recommend changes of a ‘Mexican’ nature. The Mexicans liked the script, but they all said it read as if it had been written by a Peruvian. It had indeed been written by a Peruvian, and the writer-producer was as politic as ever in asking a Mexican writer to go over his script, turning ‘Lucho’ into ‘Pedro’ and recommending other changes. Paz Alicia turned out to be a great partner in the project: its ironic humour and fatalism were the same as hers. Meanwhile, Lorenzo and Alejandra submitted the script to the Mexican Highway Patrol, and in due course attended a meeting at their headquarters. The idea was to ask them for free cars, helicopters, and uniforms – which they often provided to action features, such as AR-15. We knew in advance they were going to turn us down. The Highway Patrol had a reputation as the most legitimate of Mexican police corporations. A cynical person might say this didn’t mean

X-Films.indb 178

14/05/2008 16:14:19

X-Films.indb 179

179  Ÿ  EL patrullero

much – but every organisation has its mistica, and the Highway Patrol prided themselves on their relative rectitude. They would reject our script because a highway cop took bribes in it; not just one highway cop, but several. What Lorenzo and Alejandra wanted to do was to accustom them to the idea of the film, and for them tacitly to accept it. The Highway Patrol had jurisdiction over the Mexican highway system. If they’d taken a dislike to us, it would have been very easy to shut us down. They could have pulled our trucks over every time we set wheel on the highway. So Alejandra put on a short skirt, and Lorenzo his best shirt, and off they went. At Highway Patrol headquarters they were introduced to two high officials with police nicknames – ‘Tauro’ and ‘Dragon’. They hadn’t read the script, but a younger officer had. And the young guy was really angry. He wasn’t just annoyed about the bribe-taking: he was angry about the way people addressed Pedro, angry that Pedro went to a brothel, angry that Pedro got drunk after a funeral, angry that Pedro left the police force, angry that Pedro had problems with his dad. ‘It’s completely unacceptable’, the young cop told Lorenzo, ‘for you to suggest that the character of Pedro’s father doesn’t want him to become a Federal Highway Patrolman. It’s completely unbelievable. It’s impossible.’ Lorenzo started to reply that he had meant it purely in archetypical terms: a classic father–son conflict. But Dragon interrupted: ‘He doesn’t need to take that out. My father didn’t want me to become a Federal Highway Patrolman.’ Tauro agreed. ‘That’s funny,’ he said, ‘my dad really didn’t want me to become one either. He was so annoyed he didn’t come to my graduation.’ Dragon and Tauro reminisced about their fathers, neither of whom had raised his son to be a cop. The young officer persisted in citing the errors of the script. A policeman setting up a second family with a prostitute! Unacceptable! Unbelievable! Tauro lit a cigarette and stared at Lorenzo. ‘Are you aware’, he asked, ‘that it is every policeman’s fantasy to rehabilitate a prostitute?’ Alejandra observed this could be a manifestation of the macho desire to deprive an independent woman of her income. A spirited debate between the high cops and filmmakers ensued, during which the young cop turned beetroot red. Was Lorenzo a homosexual? Did he hate his dad? The script discussion reached the scene when Pedro fights with his wife, Griselda, after returning from the brothel.

14/05/2008 16:14:19

X films  Ÿ  180

According to all three officers, spousal abuse was unknown in the Federal Highway Patrol. ‘These things don’t happen,’ Dragon told Lorenzo, ‘and when they do, we have a special section – police psychiatrists, part of the corporation – to rehabilitate these policemen, and counsel their families.’ The scene continued in this surreal fashion. They sat in the office all afternoon, smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee and arguing about the script and the mistica of the Federal Highway Patrol. At the end of the meeting, the two high cops told our producers that there was no way we would receive any assistance from the Federales; that they hoped the film would not be made, since it was potentially injurious to the patrol’s reputation; and that it had been very nice to meet them. (In a Hollywood film made by Tony Scott, our filmmakers would be followed back to their hotel by kidnappers in the pay of these same cops. And a blood-spattered tale of horror, revenge, and torture would ensue. Such is the whiteboy fantasy of Mexico, mysterious and savage land. In fact, the cops had been completely straight with Lorenzo and Alejandra: it was a highly successful meeting.) We’d made friends with our potential adversaries, and Dragon and Tauro had given Lorenzo an idea for a new scene: Pedro, spinning out of control, is sent to visit the special police psychiatrist. Creating new uniforms and our own police vehicles wasn’t a problem: it was in the budget. And the real Highway Patrol were driving Ford Mustangs now; Cecilia preferred bigger, boxier, 1970s-style cars. The script was given a new title: El Patrullero, and its police corporation was renamed the PNDC: the Patrulla Nacional de Carreteras. Throughout the shoot we never had a problem with the Highway Patrol, who, while clearly aware what we were up to, looked the other way when our trucks and PNDC cars drove by. The only police problem I can recall occurred one evening when some of our electricians went out drinking in a town called Sombrerete, and a group of local cops challenged them to a fight. These cops had seen their PNDC t-shirts and thought a rival police agency had turned up, seeking to extract bribes or extend its influence. Once our sparks explained that they were but imaginary policemen, kibun was restored. With a $1.5 million budget, El Patrullero was the most expensive ‘domestic’ feature Mexico had then made, so there was no limit as to the Mexican actors we could invite to audition, or to lunch. I already

X-Films.indb 180

14/05/2008 16:14:19

181  Ÿ  EL patrullero

Unit 6627 of the Patrulla Nacional de Carreteras, Mapimi. knew Pedro Armendáriz and Blanca Guerra, and remembered Jorge Russek from the Walker auditions (Blanca had thrown an ashtray at him). It was a good thing I liked actors, because in Claudia Becker’s casting office I met quite a few. We hired two costume designers: Tolita Figueroa, who designed our new police uniforms, and Manuela Loaeza, who took charge of all the other costumes. Jean-Michel wanted me to see a variety of cinematographers, but having just watched Rojo Amanecer, I was keen to meet the person who had shot it. Rojo Amanecer, directed by Jorge Fons, is the story of the Tlatelolco Massacre – the mass-murder of students by the police and military, which took place in Mexico City in 1968. The film doesn’t show the massacre. Instead the story takes place in one of the apartments overlooking the square where the killing occurred. Miguel Garzón was the cameraman. We discussed the difficulty of shooting on a set constructed in secret in a workshop owned by Antonio Hernandez, the Moviecam rental man. Garzón was short, strongly built, around Robby Muller’s age. I thought, based what he and Fons had done, that Garzón was a great cameraman – Jean-Michel didn’t agree. Pedro Armendáriz had a different take: ‘He’s very, very talented. Some people don’t see it, but I’ve always noticed it. The problem is, he

X-Films.indb 181

14/05/2008 16:14:19

X films  Ÿ  182

fights with everyone. He’s fought with Fons, with Ripstein, with me. Eventually he’ll fight with you.’ Whenever I’ve worked in Mexico, I’ve asked Pedro’s advice, and then done the opposite of what he’s told me. I didn’t see how one could possibly fight with such a professional, practical, and urbane cameraman as Miguel Garzón. I hired him the same day.

PRODUCTION We filmed in June and July 1991 in Parras, Mapimí, Gómez Palacio, Durango, Sombrerete, and Mexico City. Including travel between the various locations, the shoot took six and a half weeks. Mapimí is a real town, with (at the time) a particularly bright and varied colour scheme, of which Cecilia approved. But its environs were shot over a wide area of Northern Mexico – so as to include natural wonders like the sand dunes of Parras and the Desierto de los Organos. In Mexico City we shot the scenes of the police academy (a Formula One motor racing course) and most of our interiors, including the psychiatrist’s study, the post-funeral bar, and the Marcos’ home. The day before filming began, Lorenzo pointed at the rooftops of Parras, and asked me if they looked familiar. For some reason, they did. ‘I think this is where they filmed The Wild Bunch,’ Lorenzo said. And so it was. We were walking up the main street, coming back from a lucha libre match in the local sports stadium. All of a sudden the place clicked, and I could see a dozen shots from the opening shootout, superimposed over this quiet town. When Jorge Russek came to the set (he drove up from Mexico City with his wife Julie, towing his own trailer), he confirmed that most of The Wild Bunch had been shot in and around Parras. The dunes where Pedro buries his stash were the dunes through which the Bunch had ridden. The abandoned sugar factory outside town was where the final massacre was filmed. El Patrullero, for some reason, went the smooth way that one plans and hopes for things to go. No one was killed, we never ran late, the bond company sent us blessings, and everyone worked towards the goal of making the same film. Thanks to its decent budget, El Patrullero had attracted an amazing cast. It was Vanessa Bauche’s first film, but the other actors had

X-Films.indb 182

14/05/2008 16:14:19

183  Ÿ  EL patrullero

considerable experience. I’d seen Roberto ‘Beto’ Sosa and Bruno Bichir on stage in a Mexican production of Slab Boys. Both came from acting families: Beto was 21 and had already appeared in some 30 films; Bruno and his brother Demián had played the older boys in Rojo Amanecer. Zaide Silvia Guttiérez had acted in the American film El Norte, and starred with Blanca and Ernesto Gómez Cruz in Ripstein’s El Imperio de la Fortuna.

Bruno Bichir as Anibal. Gómez Cruz, generally thought of as the most heavyweight of Mexican film actors, played our police captain. Ernesto had great authority and presence: he wasn’t stand-offish, yet all other actors were in awe of him, and called him Don Ernesto. In smaller roles were several terrific actors, including Damián Alcázar (later the wicked mayor in La Ley de Herodes). From the outset, Beto and Bruno had been dubious of Armendáriz Jr, an actor of a different generation, who they perhaps thought of as an old ham. Pedro surprised them, and me, with his intense portrayal of Barreras, the instructor at the academy. It was very exciting to see him hurl himself into a performance worthy of a Melville film. There were plenty of gringos in Mexico who could have played our drug dealer, but it seemed right to ask Karl Braun to interpret the

X-Films.indb 183

14/05/2008 16:14:19

X films  Ÿ  184 X-Films.indb 184

role. Charley still had the production office in Tabernas, but there was no production there. Almería was played out, as far as features went; Mexico clearly wasn’t. In El Patrullero I wanted to take a different approach to violence, based on my own experience of it – especially the almost naturally assumed, unremarked, daily violence of car accidents. My grandfather had been killed by a car outside our house when I was a kid; I’d seen the aftermath of that terrible car crash outside the cutting room in Nicaragua. Yet neither of these incidents involved witnessing the violent act – they were about coming upon it afterwards. This, I imagined, was what a policeman or an ambulance driver usually does: s/he heads for the scene of violence after the violence has occurred. In one scene in El Patrullero, the cops and the ambulances raced to a bloody road accident: whoever got there first could rob the cars and corpses. So, in El Patrullero, very little ‘action’ happens on screen: we only broke the rule once, when we blew up Pedro’s car. This we filmed with three cameras (‘Enhancement!’), cutting all three shots in quick succession. Plano secuencia enabled the prop guys to play tricks on me. Just before we filmed the scene where Pedro kills a mad dog, in a mining town called Dinamita, the prop men brought a mangy-looking dog and real bullets to the set. I asked what the idea was. ‘Well,’ one of them said, ‘you’re doing plano secuencia and you won’t be able to cut away, so we decided the only way to do it is for Beto to really shoot the dog.’ I said that I would prefer to shoot the dog off camera. ‘Don’t limit yourself,’ he insisted, ‘we’ve got four more dogs, so you can shoot five plano secuencias.’ On set, plano secuencia is a popular style. The actors enjoy it because they can play every scene out in its full length, rather than breaking it up into little bits, or starting, without rehearsal, in the middle. And the crew like it because, once you’ve got the shot, and then a second good take as a protection, the scene is done, and so our work days usually finish early. We followed the script exactly. Of course, the actors improvised, and small things changed. But plano secuencia had made the script more important: everything needed to be settled, ready for use, before filming began. The script ceased to be an optional element: it became a blueprint. Each day we followed a ritual of rehearsal, planning and preparation, shoot, repeat, and on to the next scene. Garzón and Montiel were always prepared and orderly, and René Villareal, my formidable AD, kept up the pace. Unless a lot of travel was involved, we finished ahead of schedule.

14/05/2008 16:14:19

185  Ÿ  EL patrullero

One day we got done so early that Lorenzo and I decided to improvise a new scene. We moved the crew down to a small town by some railroad tracks, where a train was due, and cobbled together a sequence where Pedro watched two contrabandistas – Damián Alcázar and Alejandro Bracho – from his car. We filmed Pedro and the bad guys eyeing each other, waiting for the train to pass. They eyed each other. The train went past. The bad guys drove off in one direction. Pedro drove away in the other. I called ‘Corte!’ And so what? Lorenzo and I knew, as we shot it, that we wouldn’t use it, and we didn’t. Cecilia proved to be the best designer I worked with. There was a brief rebellion – one of the art directors tried to challenge her for ‘supremacy’ of her department – but this was put down quickly by René. Cecilia’s principal art director, Omero Espinoza, was loyal, precise, and thoughtful. They designed El Patrullero with colour palettes based on the work of the Mexican painter Ruffino Tamayo. In other films, I saw Ceci base her colour schemes on Orozco, Rivera, and Hopper. We filmed with Jorge Russek at a small railway station in the desert outside Durango. Russek said this was one of the locations from The Wild Bunch, too. At first, I thought he was having me on: there wasn’t anything there but the hollowed-out old railroad car in which we were filming. But Russek pointed to the tracks, and reminded me of the scene where the gang ride in at the beginning of the picture, across the railway line, past the kids pitting ants against scorpions. Once again, fragments of the film superimposed themselves over the location, and I could see the thicket out of which the Bunch had ridden, and the railway points they’d crossed. Jorge invited me to his trailer, where he had ice-cold beers stored . . . Pedro’s ghostly dad was played by Eduardo López Rojas, a fine Mexican actor who also ran a theatre company in LA. As he finished his phantasmal admonition, a wind sprang up and whipped through the roadside trees; lightning flashed, Eduardo rose and limped away. (The lightning didn’t show up in the rushes. Sometimes even reality requires a special effect.) Thereafter, Pedro Rojas limped, just like his dad. Lorenzo’s point was that all boys become their dads, no matter how much we try not to. (I can’t argue with this. While I was in Nicaragua, my father, who was a mechanical engineer, ran a workshop in his garage for a charity

X-Films.indb 185

14/05/2008 16:14:20

X films  Ÿ  186

called Tools for Self-Reliance. They reconditioned tools and sent them to Nicaragua. So father and son were putting their skills to the same purpose.) Since El Patrullero was shot out of sequence, Roberto always had to keep in mind: was this scene before, or after, his character got shot in the leg? And which leg would he get shot in? He told me he got it wrong only once: crossing the sand dunes at Parras, he hadn’t worked out his limping schedule and forgot to do it. Yet when I watched the sequence in the rushes, Beto seemed to be limping across the dunes. We shot one scene, at the police station location, twice. It’s where Teniente Perez (Guillermo Ríos) assigns Pedro his police car, and Pedro pulls out one of those backrests, made of strung-together wooden balls, which taxi drivers used to use. We shot the exterior scene one afternoon, then next morning went into the office to film the scene between Roberto and Ernesto that preceded it.

Ernesto Gómez Cruz as Comandante Navarro. The scene went well, though Ernesto had difficulty with one line: ‘esperamos un desempeño ejemplar de su parte’ (we expect your development to be exemplary). Specifically, it was two words,

X-Films.indb 186

14/05/2008 16:14:20

187  Ÿ  EL patrullero

‘desempeño ejemplar’ – exemplary development – that were giving him trouble. Indeed, they’re hard to say. But they were the right words: reflecting the mistica and excessively formal, ritualised language that these senior officers used. Ernesto persevered and got it. I hate cuts around doorways (which usually attempt to ‘disguise’ a location change), so at the end of the scene when Pedro exited, I didn’t call cut, and Garzón followed Beto out. This led them to the car, where Lt Perez was waiting. Miguel kept the camera pointed at the actors, who began playing yesterday’s scene again. This was a more natural way of storytelling than cutting one moment in time in two, because of a door. So we dumped the previous afternoon’s work, and covered both scenes as one continuous shot. Thereafter, we tried to schedule contiguous scenes in sequence, so we would always have the option of going through doors. What we were doing was in some ways more difficult than Walker: the budget was less; the crew smaller; I was working in a foreign language; and you couldn’t fake plano secuencia if anything went wrong. But the Completion Bond Company didn’t object, never threatened to intervene. We shot on ‘short ends’ – reels of 35mm film that had been used by another production (in this case, Total Recall). Usually the previous user has shot on only a small portion of the roll, the remainder of which – unexposed to light – can safely be re-sold; most independent filmmakers have shot with short ends at some point in their thrifty careers. But when you’re shooting plano secuencia, and some of your scenes are several minutes long, it’s a mistake. You know you can film two five-minute takes on a 1,000-foot reel. But can you squeeze two takes onto a ‘re-can’ that’s somewhat less than 1,000 ft? No one can say, because no one knows exactly how long short ends are. On a couple of occasions, when we were filming Roberto’s long, limping run though the desert, the short ends ran out. Similarly, back in Mexico City a short end rolled out near the end of Griselda’s breakfast seduction scene. The take was so good that we used it anyway, cutting out just before the flash frames: you can still see some dust and scratches. Some savings are worth making; others aren’t. We shouldn’t have shot with short ends. Outside Sombrerete, we filmed the death of Anibal. In the script, Pedro encountered his friend dead in the road, but I thought that, had

X-Films.indb 187

14/05/2008 16:14:20

X films  Ÿ  188

I been dying, I would have preferred not to die on the hot asphalt, but beside a little stream nearby. The stream was separated from the road by an enormous quantity of trash, which the art department had to remove. This wasn’t to please the censor (who had never shown up), but to provide a more dignified visual environment for Anibal’s death. The scene involved some elaborate choreography, and the drawing of many maps. Afterwards, Beto and I, marveling at how the complicated scene had been achieved, drew maps in our scripts, showing where everyone had been. As my drawing illustrates, 34 crew members were hiding behind the camera, or somewhere else in the ravine, so that we could get a shot of two men completely alone in the desert.

This may sound like the excess of Repo Man, where it took 60 crew, 10 Teamsters, and two motorcycle cops to film two men sitting in a car. But everyone involved in the death of Anibal scene was needed. Starting with the driver of the pickup truck, the five guys pushing it (Miguel was sitting on the bonnet), and the two guys in the back of the truck, holding the ropes securing Garzón to the hood. They then let go of the ropes as the truck slowed, so that Miguel could step down (followed by his first assistant, Miguel Urbina, and the sound recordist and boom operator) and track Beto around the burning car

X-Films.indb 188

14/05/2008 16:14:20

189  Ÿ  EL patrullero

and out into the desert, where the ADs, armed with walkie-talkies, and the grips, with their reflector boards, were hidden. Then there was the director and the continuity person, tiptoeing along behind the camera and sound guys; Jorge Farfan and his special effects team regulating the smoke and flame from behind a tree; the crew guys blocking traffic a kilometre up and down the road; and Lorenzo and Alejandra, at base camp, where lunch was being prepared, going over the budget and the production report and wondering when our short ends would run out today. Getting that one shot really was a 34 person job: 36 persons including actors. The miracle of plano secuencia, with its apparent transparency and its 360-degree movements, is that it appears no one, not even God, is there. The least credible moment in El Patrullero, I think, is the scene where Pedro encountered the truck driver gutting a pig. As the truck driver said, ‘There is hunger in this country.’ This was definitely true, but rural Mexicans didn’t normally crouch around a dead pig with their hands extended and demented expressions on their faces. This scene has épater les bourgeois scrawled all over it. It looks as if it was directed by a vegetarian – like the shot of Karl turning a rotting pig on a spit, which appeared not once but twice in Straight to Hell. Now that was a good shot: Straight to Hell could stand such excesses, El Patrullero was different. Another doubtful moment occurred when Maribel’s mother told Pedro, ‘I’d like to give you something to eat, but there isn’t enough.’ As Malena Doria, who played the mother, observed: ‘There isn’t any woman in Mexico who would say that. It wouldn’t happen.’ Fortunately the writer was present on set, and so Lorenzo, rather than I, invented an answer to her question. ‘That’s intentional,’ he assured her, ‘you’re playing the meanest mother in all of Mexico.’ ‘Okay,’ said Malena, doubtfully, ‘as long as it’s intentional.’ In Durango there was a script-related ethics dispute. Since I wasn’t the writer, I could sit back and enjoy it. Lorenzo had written a new draft, and both Alejandra and Cecilia had problems with the ending. I arranged what I hoped would be a relaxing dinner for the four of us, in a second-storey restaurant overlooking the plaza in Durango. The restaurant had a great, colonial view, untypical of the city: Durango grew very quickly in the 1960s, and is a loud, contaminated, lively place.

X-Films.indb 189

14/05/2008 16:14:20

X films  Ÿ  190

A beautiful light filtered through the windows. Downstairs, mariachis played. We ordered a bottle of wine and began to discuss the ending. In Lorenzo’s new draft, Maribel – Pedro’s prostitute lover – died. I forget what she died of: consumption, or a cocaine overdose, or a broken heart – one of those things that doomed romantic heroines die of in films. In dying, Maribel left behind two children, a situation from which the honest Pedro couldn’t walk away. So, after the children were rejected by their grandmother (clearly a wicked character, as Malena Doria had feared), Pedro took the two tykes back to his house. ‘Quienes son?’ Griselda asked when Pedro seated the two tykes at their dinner table – Who are they? ‘Son nuestros,’ Pedro replied – they’re ours. At which point the good, kind Griselda got some extra plates out, and began serving the new children their dinner. I liked the scene, but Alejandra and Cecilia loathed it. They hated that Lorenzo had killed off a viable woman character, who hadn’t shown any signs of TB, a life-threatening habit, or excessive sadness; and they hated that Griselda, who was played in such a fiery manner by a great actress, Zaide Silvia, would let Pedro get away with such a smug paternalistic act. I could see their points, and was conciliatory: I said I thought Lorenzo should consider them, and maybe come up with an adjustment. However, Lorenzo responded as I had on Repo Man, when challenged by Abbe and Vicky: he told them their notes were just archetypical feminist received wisdom, that they knew nothing of screenwriting. He departed the restaurant forthwith. I had a fine meal with the women; Lorenzo, after an appropriate pause, wrote another ending, in which no one died, and Pedro found himself with two families, a casa chica and a casa grande, and no money to pay for either one. (As in the case of Repo Man, the changes made the film better.) Pedro was doomed, yet the scene wasn’t without hope, thanks to Beto’s performance. As Pedro, he displayed a mysterious sense of optimistic conviction, almost contentment – taking his wedding ring off, putting it on again, as Maribel hit him up for money for their new home. Back in Mexico City, we filmed during a total eclipse. The streetlights came on. A weird half-night hung around for a few minutes. Then the sun returned, and a sudden dawn chorus began, as all the birds in Mexico City started singing. We shot the eclipse, and used a fragment of it at the end of the scene where Pedro met his father’s ghost. At the big stone house near the studio we filmed the scene where Pedro goes

X-Films.indb 190

14/05/2008 16:14:20

191  Ÿ  EL patrullero

to visit the police shrink – inspired by Lorenzo’s interview with Tauro and Dragon. The police psychiatrist was to have been played by Arturo Ripstein. Unfortunately, as the day approached, Ripstein reneged: he had long hair and didn’t want to cut it. As his replacement, Claudia cast Alonso Echánove, star of Principio y Fin, and Carlos Carrera’s brilliant comedy, La Vida Conyugal. This scene contains the only intentionally surreal or weird moment in the film. At the beginning, Echánove and Sosa sit talking around a sculpture, which contains a skull. Half-way through the scene, the skull turns into a table, the colour shifts, and the unnatural background noises are replaced by city traffic sounds. While wandering the backlot at Estudios America, where we shot the brothel scenes, I found, seemingly abandoned, a model of a mountain with a skull face and small model buildings at its base. It must have been a miniature in a horror film. I took it to Cecilia, who hates to throw anything away. When we were about to shoot the psychiatrist scene, Cecilia remembered the skull mountain still sitting downstairs in her workshop. It was brought to the set, and placed on the floor between the actors. We began to shoot the scene. After a couple of takes, the writer/producer appeared. This was the only time that Lorenzo lost his patience with his director. He told me it was unacceptable to have that stupid thing sitting there, and that it should be gone. I tried to blame it on Cecilia; the skull-thing was removed, and replaced by a coffee table. We continued with the scene. Early one Sunday, we filmed in the downtown area around the Zócalo; the scenes where the police chief’s car races through the streets. I remember watching one of our production assistants backing his car into a side-street without looking behind him, and thinking that he has become infatuated with the thrill of film-making; he has lost contact with the reality that he is in the biggest city in the world. I could hear sirens approaching; I turned back to the set, to speak to René or to Miguel. The sirens got louder; it sounded like an ambulance. Then there was a god-awful crash. I looked up and saw our PA’s little car had just collided with an ambulance; the back window of the ambulance shattered, and a man came flying out. No one was seriously injured, not even the paramedic who shot through the window and landed in the road. It was still early and there wasn’t much traffic. The cops came and arrested our PA; Lorenzo and Alejandra had to spend the rest of Sunday negotiating with the police

X-Films.indb 191

14/05/2008 16:14:21

X films  Ÿ  192

and the ambulance company, to settle the cost of the accident and get the boy released on bail. Years later, I was working on another picture with that individual, and I remarked that it had been very silly of him to drive without looking where he was going. ‘I almost gave my life for your film!’ the asshole replied, indignantly. His values were clearly still askew. Directors prefer it when the crew and cast aren’t killed on set. It creates a nicer atmosphere, and fewer problems for the producer. But his response indicates the unreality in which some people, infatuated with the magic of the movies, dwell. On 16 July we shot our last sequence: the scene where Pedro returns home drunk, and is threatened by the knife-wielding Griselda. Though set in Mapimi, like most of our interiors, it was shot in Mexico City. It was a bit complex, going from an exterior, at night (when focus is more critical), into a series of rooms in the Marcos residence: the sitting room, where Don Marcos is asleep in front of the TV; the bedroom; the kitchen, where Griselda keeps her knife collection; back to the bedroom; and into the bathroom. The scene started on a close-up of a lock, and ended on a close-up of Griselda, after running a gamut of tracking shots, wide shots, two-shots, and medium shots. Playing on the TV in the sitting room, behind Farnesio de Bernal, was a scene from RoboCop 2. This was kindly provided by Jon Davison, the film’s producer. I asked him for the clip so as to give a momentary glimpse of the imaginary police world in which Pedro – like Tauro and Dragon – had so much invested, and in which they’d once, perhaps, believed. At the end of that last night shoot, Cecilia and I were doused with blue paint. This was our bautismo – our baptism – by the rest of the crew. We were being welcomed as members of the STIC – the Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Industria Cinematográfica, or similar (Lorenzo had already worked with the STIC, and been covered with paint some months before).

POSTPRODUCTION Carlos Puente came up with a surprising take on the police psychiatrist scene. I’d felt we’d better use the coffee table shot, rather than the

X-Films.indb 192

14/05/2008 16:14:21

Postproduction was mainly in LA, where the music was supposed to be composed, and where the sound mix would be. But there was additional dialogue to be recorded, and foley to be done: excuses to return to Mexico City. When not recording authentic Mexican cup-downs, I’d visit the National Museum and stare for ages at the landscape paintings of José María Velasco, most of them featuring the Valley of Mexico: massive, illuminated countrysides long since swallowed by houses, factories, and cars. Though ‘pretty’ to our postmodern taste, Velasco’s art was revolutionary in the late nineteenth century. Here was a Mexican landscape painter painting Mexican subjects, in a bold, epic style! There are Velasco landscapes, now and then, in El Patrullero: in some of Garzón’s early morning shots, and in his slow zoom out from Pedro and Griselda’s family crossing the bridge to Dinamita. In LA, we had music problems. Zander Schloss, having collaborated heavily with Joe Strummer on the Walker soundtrack, and then on Strummer’s album Earthquake Weather, had volunteered to write El Patrullero’s score. Unfortunately, Zander was interested in another type of score at the same time. He, like various friends in London and LA, had decided to become a junky. Why, I do not know. I blame the CIA. Plus William Burroughs. And Sid & Nancy. In any case, something had to be done about Zander. Lorenzo and I loved what we’d heard of his Patrullero music, but there was very little of it. We could fire Zander, of course, just as Pedro could have walked away from Maribel, but he was our friend. A showdown meeting was convened, with Lorenzo, Zander, his sister, and me present. It was agreed that henceforth we would pay Zander’s salary to his sensible sibling, who would keep the said funds for him, until she determined him competent to spend them. We found a louche producer to get our composer his maintenance dose – creativity returned to Toytown. This wasn’t the right way to get a soundtrack for a film. Zander overcame his difficulties and remains an active, working musician. But it was such a scramble to get the music finished that we put all thoughts of a soundtrack album aside. Which is a shame, since there’s

X-Films.indb 193

193  Ÿ  EL patrullero

one featuring skull mountain. Instead Carlos cut both together. Since the camera didn’t move (it’s the only sequence in the film that is completely static) – presto! skull mountain became a coffee table. Lorenzo approved of the gag, with its suggestion of Pedro’s disturbed mental processes.

14/05/2008 16:14:21

X films  Ÿ  194

lovely music in the score of El Patrullero, and a rockin’ song, composed by Zander, sung by Tito Larriva. We mixed at Skywalker (formerly Lion’s Gate, where we’d done Repo Man) in West LA, in September and October. The mixer, Stanley Kastner, spoke no Spanish, so he mixed all the dialogue loud. It was a good choice. On 18 October, Miguel timed the picture at FotoKem, and we screened our first answer print for Negi-san on 4 November 1991. Lorenzo arranged a distributors’ screening a month later. By then I was back in Mexico, working on the script of Death and the Compass.

RELEASE El Patrullero was unusual in that it was made without any thought as to distribution – other than in Japan, where it was to be released by Mr Negishi’s company, Cable Hogue. It played in the festival at San Sebastian. That it won a prize was entirely down to Lorenzo, who wasn’t at all shy about hassling the festival organisers, and the jury, to show respect for a Mexican film. His politicking worked: the jury declared Roberto Sosa the best actor. Beto was back in Mexico, so Seymour Cassel was asked to accept his award. Mysteriously, Seymour did this on behalf of John Cassavetes, while mispronouncing Beto’s name. In spite of the award, our sales agent couldn’t sell the film in Spain. I had assumed Spain was a natural market for Mexican films, but it was not so. In general, all film buyers seemed risk averse. They tended to buy generic product that they knew how to move in a certain market: this explained so many third-rate action flicks, starring Chuck Norris, playing on Mexican long-distance buses, and in hotel rooms. Lorenzo and I tried to convince our sales people to have screenings for potential distributors. But screenings are expensive, and sometimes the key distributors don’t show. Here the studios’ advantage is again apparent: they are vertically integrated, producing, distributing, and selling their own product, and operating as a cartel with the other studios. They have lots of leverage, and lots of money: buying screening room time is the least of their problems – they own screening rooms. The playing field is so un-level that you can see why national film agencies tend to give up, and facilitate American production rather than encourage their native industries.

X-Films.indb 194

14/05/2008 16:14:21

195  Ÿ  EL patrullero

In the US the film was to be distributed by a new, small company. This was exciting news, but, as we discovered, it wasn’t easy for a new, small company to get its product into the cinemas. Months went by; the film rolled slowly out across the US, to good reviews. The experience taught me something about the ‘special relationship’ as far as the film world is concerned. I’d put a fair bit of effort into finding a British distributor, to no effect. But once the film opened in the US, we got calls from British distributors, who were now interested. I realised that British distributors looked to the US, not to British critics or audiences, in deciding whether or not to release a film. They did this partially to save money, by recycling the American 35mm prints. Film politics also meant that El Patrullero did well in provincial Mexico, but not in Mexico City itself. The problem was an absence of cinemas in the capital city: there was considerable turmoil around film policy in Mexico at this time, and many of the big, old cinemas in the Distrito Federal were closed for renovacion. While their facilities were indeed ancient, renovacion was really a protest by cinema owners against the government’s Ley de Cine, which guaranteed the screening of Mexican features in the cinema, and insisted that foreign (i.e. American) films be subtitled, rather than dubbed. This was a very sensible policy, since it encouraged literacy (to enjoy a Hollywood movie, you had to be able to understand English or read Spanish) and guaranteed an audience for Spanish-speaking, local films. But it was not to last. I learned two lessons from El Patrullero. One was that shooting in plano secuencia was the right thing to do: a solution to the stultifying predictability of commercial feature films. The other was really the lesson of Walker – the one I hadn’t learned at the time – that it’s impossible for individuals to confront powerful organisations headon. Watching Lorenzo’s negotiations with the Federal Highway Patrol, and seeing how he handled the shoot itself, I finally learned the value, and meaning, of an English expression I hadn’t previously understood: ‘Please make an exception in this case’. It works in Spanish, as well as English, and also in Japanese. It’s far more useful than, ‘Gringo aggressor, I will bury you in the dust of my beloved mountains,’ though not as much fun to say.

X-Films.indb 195

14/05/2008 16:14:21

X-Films.indb 196

14/05/2008 16:14:21

DEATH AND THE COMPASS Buñuel hated blind men. He said it was because he was deaf, but that doesn’t really explain anything. He’d hated blind people since he was a kid, and he wasn’t deaf then. Borges was famously blind. I didn’t know much more than that when I was asked by the BBC to direct a film based on one of his short stories. It was probably just as well, because if I’d known more about the dude, I might have turned the job down. Jorge Luis Borges was the worst kind of Latin American – the type that pretends to be a European. No doubt he had European roots, and one could forgive him for being a faux Limey in the same way that one forgives James Ivory, raised in the high desert of Oregon, for spending his life carving an artistic fantasy of English butlers and chandeliers. Harder to forgive are Borges’ fascist tendencies, and his admiration for the CIA’s Chilean butcher, Pinochet. In other ways, he’s strangely egalitarian: he shows no empathy for the poor, who are silent, drunk, angry, and knife-wielding, but he displays little enthusiasm for the rich either. Borges was blind, and to be blind on the streets of a chaotic city like Buenos Aires must be frightening. Buñuel was deaf, which by comparison is no big deal. Buñuel was a boxer, a little guy with the temperament of a big bull, and no fear of confronting people; Borges was reserved, academic, and fragile. Borges was afraid. The Borges project was a ‘strand’ of teleplays being produced by European TV companies in connection with the 500th anniversary of

X-Films.indb 197

14/05/2008 16:14:21

X films  Ÿ  198

the Spanish invasion of the Americas: this was a loathsome celebration. It was also the 500th anniversary of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, and of the burning of the Library at Granada. Not that the BBC knew or cared: they were prepared to make one Borges film, it seemed, French TV another, and Spanish TV the rest. According to the BBC producer, Charlie Pattinson, it was possible to pick any one of Borges’ stories, unless another director was already working on it. His fax said, ‘This project is a co-production with the Spanish company Iberoamericana who have optioned the rights to all of Borge’s [sic] short stories.’ Carlos Saura had aready begun production on a version of the story Sur. Other than Bertolucci’s Spider’s Stratagem, I didn’t know of any films based on Borges’ works,1 so the whole thing seemed, so to speak, an open book. However, it wasn’t – in fact only a handful of stories had been optioned by the Spanish producer, Andrés Vicente Gómez. And instead of a relaxing, relatively well-paid, six-month gig, I was embarking on an unanticipated, labyrinthine venture that would stretch beyond reason into a four-year project – involving me in debts of honour, disastrous business choices, duelling producers, and a mysteriously out-of-synch answer print, at the Villa Triste-le-Roy . . . ‘I would be delighted if you would be interested in directing the BBC’s film which will be made in English,’ the fax continued. ‘At present we have no fixed story in mind to dramatise, although it would make sense for us to tackle one of the “European” stories that can be shot in the UK. Aside from that there is free range. Our production schedule is relatively flexible with a delivery date set for June 1992 . . .’ I discounted the ‘European stories’ and the ‘shot in the UK’ bits immediately. I was in postproduction on El Patrullero and the location for the Borges film was already obvious. Clearly, the BBC wanted it shot in Mexico City, even if they didn’t know this yet. I read Ficciones, but chose El Aleph. There were other filmable stories, of course, such as The Garden of the Forking Paths and The Circular Ruins, but El Aleph held, and still holds, the most intriguing possibilities. I passed this on to Charlie, who went away, then got back to me by fax, reporting that, having read El Aleph he was ‘concerned by its lack of narrative. Are there any other stories that interest you? .  .  . I’ve had another look through my collections . . . the following are some alternate (but by no means exclusive) suggestions.’ There followed a list of seven cuentos, including Emma Zunz and Death and the Compass.

X-Films.indb 198

14/05/2008 16:14:21

X-Films.indb 199

199  Ÿ   death and the compass

Andrés Vicente later told me that this list of seven titles contained the only cuentos that had been licensed from the Borges estate: he’d never had the rights to El Aleph. Why hadn’t someone at the BBC told me this? The answer to that question lies in the Borgesian world of producer insecurity, and the labyrinth of the BBC. Be sympathetic – imagine how fearful you would become if you depended on a regular salary from a large, corporate employer that was dependent on the goodwill of capricious bureaucrats for its existence; how you would dread the possibility that you might lose your job. You would start to keep secrets, to bury bad news, to unnecessarily hoard information. Instead, be glad you are freelance, with no regular income at all! I read all the stories on the list. Emma Zunz seemed the most promising (indeed, it had already been filmed twice!) and I suggested Kathy Burke to play the role of Emma. At the same time there were problems with it: not dramatic ones, but problems of an ethical nature. In the story, Emma fakes her own rape so as to take revenge upon the villain. I’d never made a film that had a rape in it; it seemed a very loaded issue, something better not reduced to the stuff of story points. Here a rape, faked by a vengeful woman, was the story point. It was very effective Borgesian storytelling, but . . . what could I do with it? The story opened up a slew of difficulties that I didn’t want to deal with. Instead, I went for Death and the Compass. After Repo Man, I’d been offered a number of police films in the US, and had turned them all down. Now I was on my second police-themed film. Death and the Compass was a different police story, though: an exploration of the strange politics and cabalistic organisation that the police, or the military, or perhaps any boys’ bureaucracy, tends to create, in order to preserve itself. Borges’ story tells of a brilliant detective whose genius and eclectic methodology bring about his destruction.2 As a detective story, it was a natural candidate for filming. It was less obscure than certain of Borges’ other cuentos, but every bit as cynical and sharpwitted. It seemed a catalogue of irony, hopelessness and pessimism. Change or escape was impossible; violence everyone’s inevitable fate. For all his weird politics, Borges was a great writer, and his Anglophile inclinations mean that his stories read as well in English as they do in Spanish – something I think is pretty rare. In the US and Britain today Borges is often called a ‘cult’ writer, which is a bit sad – as though really good literature, in any language, were a ‘cult’ instead of a zenith to which all writers should aspire.

14/05/2008 16:14:21

X films  Ÿ  200 X-Films.indb 200

My brief at this stage was to produce a 55-page script of Borges’ story. Already assuming they’d go for it, I suggested that the BBC might also want to make a 90-minute version and release it as a feature. I was told Alan Yentob would look at the 55-minute version, then decide. In August 1991 I took a week off from editing El Patrullero and began work on the screenplay. It wasn’t a hard assignment: the set-up and the structure were already there. Borges’ work is great material for the cinema, partly because his writing is so visual: his places, melancholy times of day, deadly doppelgängers, dark coincidences formed out of chaos, are all described in vivid, visual terms. The original story was only 13 pages in length, which meant a lot of stuff had to be invented. Due to rights issues, I couldn’t grab scenes and characters wholesale from Borges’ other stories, though I certainly made frequent references to certain other tales – in particular El Aleph. Some things, great on the page, didn’t make it into the script: for instance, the scene in Death and the Compass where Lönnrot finds himself in a mirrored room. That scene seemed a homage to Lady from Shanghai. Before his sight failed, Borges had been a film reviewer: he wrote one of the best reviews of Citizen Kane. The mirrored room scene was beautifully written, but I found it too daunting to attempt to emulate Welles. If I tried, I’d just end up making a pale, colour imitation, like the boring hall of mirrors scene in My Name is Nobody. So I left it out. Borges’ cuento is constructed like the fragments from an imaginary dictionary, or the gazetteer of a fictitious country – as the last adventure of a great, and very famous, detective. Like most of his work, it is so dense that it could be expanded in almost any direction: told as conventional thriller (the structure of Se7en is similar), or as an intellectual comedy, or as an Expressionist nightmare in the manner of Dr Mabuse and Fritz Lang. The names of the characters – Erik Lönnrot, Franz Treviranus, and ‘Red’ Scharlach – suggested to me a series of pulp novels of police and criminal interaction, of a nightmare city dedicated to the commission of crimes, and the detection and cruel punishment thereof. Names like Zunz and Novalis drifted in from other Borges stories, or came, like Inspector Blot, from a Melville film. My Lönnrot wasn’t entirely Borges’. I had in mind a New Age detective, a chat-show celebrity, a devotee of Eastern religions, a combo Gnostic-Taoist-Buddhist. So there’s an additional element of punishment in my version, in that vanity, as well as intellectual rigour, drives Lönnrot to his fate.

14/05/2008 16:14:21

X-Films.indb 201

201  Ÿ   death and the compass

In the first draft, Police Commissioner Treviranus accompanied Detective Lönnrot to the Villa Triste-le-Roy. In the second, I left Treviranus behind. Cecilia and I wanted to emphasise the labyrinths and dualities on which Borges’ stories thrived. Some of these were clearly very personal. Years later, I saw a photograph of Borges and his biographer and translator, Adolfo Bioy Casares. It was remarkable: here was Borges, tall, old, skinny, and blind, rising from his desk to shake the hand of another fellow – Casares, also tall, old, skinny, and wearing the same suit and the same pair of blind man’s spectacles. The similarity was striking, even if you didn’t know who they were. Given that they were author and translator, it was as if Borges had turned his literary device, the doppelgänger, into a real person . . . Borges’ story and my 55-minute film have the same structure. The narrative of the feature is less linear, broken up by the interviews with Treviranus, his eventual downfall and disgrace, the Used Money Repository robbery (a complete invention, added to give more weight to Scharlach), and various other small scenes. The BBC producers liked the first draft, but blew colder on the second. Charlie Pattinson told me it had received a ‘mixed response’. The programme, though it had not yet been given the go-ahead, now possessed two executive producers: Michael Waring, and George Faber. George was worried that in this draft, ‘the essential emptiness of the story becomes apparent.’ I didn’t know what to do about that. Death and the Compass is what it is – a Borges story about the hollowness of a great life: its meaninglessness, its ignoble end at the hands of an enemy. All of Borges’ cuentos, as far as I know, feature this ghastly emptiness, which is why their characters are driven to murder and to obsessive listmaking. If the BBC weren’t keen on this kind of stuff, why get involved with Spanish television in a Borges series? But the producers had a good note: that the back story – the reason for Lönnrot and Scharlach’s enmity – be expanded. In Borges’ cuento, there isn’t a back story: there’s no space for one. But in a detective film, which refers to an ongoing war between two men, it was clearly needed. So in the third draft I included a black-and-white flashback, in which Scharlach’s brother was killed during an interrogation by Lönnrot’s operatives, in City Police headquarters. Later, for the feature version, I expanded the back story further. Tod Davies gave me notes on the script, most of which I followed. She said that Treviranus should also be an arch-criminal, and that Lönnrot should see reality so clearly that he foresaw his own death,

14/05/2008 16:14:21

X films  Ÿ  202

yet pursued it by obfuscating. In Borges’ story, she said, reality was jealous of the artist, who must therefore, like Christ, meet his fate; Treviranus and Scharlach represented reality. She also said the script needed a sense of outrage – something I never gave it. In January 1992 I went back to England, and met most of my producers for the first time. At their suggestion, I went to Madrid to meet Cecilie Brown and Enrique de las Casas, who were producing the four Spanish films for Andrés Vicente. I finished the third draft in late January, and at the end of the month went back to London for a meeting with yet another producer, Simon Curtis, who assured me that Death and the Compass was ‘95 per cent on’. I went back to Mexico and gave the script to Claudia Becker, saying it was an English-language film, with an entirely Mexican crew, and mostly Mexican actors, to be funded by the famous and respectable BBC of London. Such quality productions had been done before. Germans, Dutch, and other Europeans had made Englishlanguage films in Mexico. Mexican actors and technicians had worked on John Wayne movies in Durango. Of course we Mexicans could make an English-speaking film! The only danger was that the BBC would decide not to join the Borges project, or to hire a different director – I was going out on a limb again, encouraging people to work for no money, without a contract. Karl Braun took the project seriously enough to fly to Mexico City and start budgeting the script. Diego Sandoval became our location manager. And then, at last, the film was finally declared ‘100 per cent on’, and within a month we were spending cash.

PRODUCTION, PART ONE It wasn’t hard to convince the BBC to shoot in Mexico City. At the time, I doubted that there was any other city in the world with such grand and readily available public buildings (I had forgotten Liverpool!). The key crew people of El Patrullero were all available, with the exception of René Villarreal. Miguel Lima was AD again. We had the same cameraman, Garzón; the same production designer, Cecilia; the same costume designer, Manuela; and the same editor, Carlos. In El Patrullero, art and costume had gone for muted colour schemes; for Death and the Compass both wanted something brighter,

X-Films.indb 202

14/05/2008 16:14:21

X-Films.indb 203

203  Ÿ   death and the compass

more extreme. Cecilia came up with a colour strategy for each of the principal characters. For Lönnrot, we discussed Harry Dean Stanton and Ed Asner, but my first choice was always Peter Boyle. In New York, Peter declared himself unfazed by the altitude or the location; he too was interested in matters Gnostic and mysterious, and so I offered him the part. For the role of Zunz, Steven Berkoff, Malcolm McDowell, and Ralph Brown were all proposed. The BBC’s preference was for Chris Eccleston, whom I’d cast in Let Him Have It. I was happy with this, though sorry not to find a part for Ralph, who had worked so hard with Lucy during the Sid & Nancy readings. He was a fine actor, the best in Withnail & I. For Treviranus, I always thought of Sando. He had an uncompromising awareness of the ridiculousness inherent in his profession, and the stupidity of his colleagues. In the distant past he had also directed, and like all directors he was blessed with wisdom, sensitivity, and patience. Thanks to Claudia, the rest of the picture was quickly cast. Sosa and Bichir, the former highway cops, played snivelling urban street criminals; Zaide Silvia played the Gypsy woman Ms Spinoza (a part expanded from a letter-writer in the Borges tale); and Pedro and Alonso were Lönnrot’s pet policemen, Blot and Novalis. Cecilia pressed me into typing memos and lists of rules, to be pasted on the walls and partition mazes of City Police Headquarters. I was living in the big stone house near Churubusco, and one night, while everyone else was out, I sat down to write a few of them. Something told me that all these memos must be from Treviranus. The character appears only briefly in the original story, but, sitting there, I sensed that Borges’ police chief was an inveterate memo-sender, letterwriter, and lister of rules. I began pounding out a series of memos from the commissioner. There were memoranda on the sharpness of pencils, on eligibility for free coffins and funerals, warning members of the City Force not to brawl with the Intelligence Police, on security measures for the upcoming Policemen’s Ball. Treviranus would have been at home in a ‘New’ Labour cabinet, with his feigned love of order, societal discipline, and new laws. He was also an obsessive writer of letters to the editor, in which he promoted his own virtues, while disparaging his rival and subordinate, Eric Lönnrot. I kept this up for hours, raising a stack of letterheaded papers on my desk. Next day they were copied and posted around the police labyrinth. Another stack was left lying on Treviranus’ desk. Miguel,

14/05/2008 16:14:21

X films  Ÿ  204

who was the only person to read them, made a collection of them, which he took home. In addition to the Treviranus memoranda, Cecilia had prepared a number of red-bordered ‘wanted’ posters to decorate the streets and the police station. One of these featured Daryl Gates, the hated LA police chief, but the others were more obscure: they showed three suspects in the assassination of President Kennedy – Lee Harvey Oswald, David Ferrie, and Guy Banister. There are other references to the JFK assassination in the film. The streets are full of mobs supporting either the Old King or the Young Pretender. The Old King was George de Mohrenschildt, the mysterious Russian petroleum geologist who was Lee Oswald’s friend and mentor in Dallas. The Young Pretender’s face is a news photo of Gordon Novel, a CIA plant in Garrison’s office, whom the assassinologist R.B. Cutler believed to be the ‘Umbrella Man’ in Dealey Plaza, on that fateful St Cecilia’s day. You see how Borgesian the world of assassination conspiracies is? Cross-references lead from coincidence to theory, via discarded sets of facts and circumstances; from Dealey Plaza, via New Orleans, to Mexico City, down the Borgesian leaf-strewn driveway flanked by pairs of statues, up the steps into the mansion with the spiral staircase into the mirrored, circular room . . . Somehow Chris Eccleston managed to miss his flight not once, but twice: two days running he showed up late at the airport, after the Mexico flight had closed. Our friends at the BBC seemed incapable of doing anything logistical – which meant that Charley and I had to keep calling the travel agent in England, at great expense, to rearrange Chris’ travel plans. When a third flight became necessary, we leaned unsubtly on our half-dozen BBC producers to give us a hand in getting our man to the airport. These combined efforts, on two continents, finally got Eccleston airborne. On arrival, Chris proved an inspired, intrepid actor, throwing himself into his triple role. Our initial shoot lasted four weeks – the month of April 1992. Our principal locations were the Palacio de Correos, the fantastic baroque central post office, which was undergoing renovations; the Palacio de Bellas Artes next door; and the former Convent of San Ildefonso, now part of the National University. Within the Palacio de Correos, Cecilia constructed an intricate maze of partitions and offices, complete with autopsy tables and a

X-Films.indb 204

14/05/2008 16:14:21

205  Ÿ   death and the compass

torture school. On the roof of San Ildefonso – the Villa Triste-le-Roy – she set up a full moon, three metres in diameter. The story concludes in a circular room, but we weren’t able to find a suitable one; so she built a circular platform, surrounded by trompe-l’oeil mountain ranges and stained glass windows, on a stage at Estudios America. The platform was matted into a two-metre diameter model of the circular labyrinth by Rocco Gioffre in LA.

Rocco Gioffre’s terminal special effects shot. On the night of 9 April, returning to the big stone house, I turned on the shortwave radio and listened to the general election results from England. They were as depressing as they’d been when I’d listened from Nicaragua five years previously. The announcer would name each constituency, followed by the words, ‘Conservative . . . no change.’ It sounded as if he was reading the names off gravestones. For two days we shot at a hacienda in the state of Hidalgo, and at an abandoned railway station. It was a pleasure, as always, to leave the mad megalopolis for the beauty and courtesy of the countryside. I drank fresh pulque on a tiny farm (after leaving the ranch, I learned what items are put into pulque to make it ferment. I haven’t drunk any since). Boyle and Eccleston were valiant on location. At one point, disguised as Zunz, Chris had to follow a narrow path beside a stream: on the narrow path he lost his footing, and slipped into the murky water. In the rushes, we could see Chris corpse, start to step out of

X-Films.indb 205

14/05/2008 16:14:21

X films  Ÿ  206

character, but Peter turned his back to the camera and we heard him say, ‘Chris, keep going. Keep going! They’re gonna use this take!’ Chris stayed in character, climbed out of the stream, and carried on. And Peter’s prediction was entirely accurate: we replaced his words of encouragement with some scripted dialogue. The stumble made the shot more real. We only lost one location: a Metro station where we were absolutely, categorically refused permission to shoot. I would have chanced it, but Charley and Alejandra were convinced the Metro authorities would shut us down immediately. Instead we filmed on railway tracks in the north end of the city: the scene where the former highway patrolmen attempted to rob a family, and were reformed on the spot by the mystical power of Lönnrot. There was another railway scene to shoot, aboard one of the passenger trains that, in those days, left Mexico City bound for Tula and points north. Charley and I determined not to make the same mistake again: this time we didn’t ask permission, we just bought tickets, and, with 35mm cameras and battery-powered lights, piled aboard the train. Though it bustled with students by day, at night the Convent became melancholy and surreal, decorated with bold Orozco murals. Several crew members took me to see the bullet holes around the doorway where an unknown number of students were rounded up and killed on the night of the Tlatelolco massacre. Those San Ildefonso/Triste-le-Roy scenes were my favourites: most like passages from Borges’ story, where Lönnrot grows increasingly depressed as he passes through a series of identical courtyards and rooms. The architecture, Garzón’s illumination, and the frozen roses, moons, and artificial spiders’ webs, combined with Pray for Rain’s music and Boyle and Eccleston’s performances, realised exactly what I had visualised when I read the story. How often can a director say this? The shoot ended on 30 April 1992, at dawn, with the scene in which Lönnrot and Treviranus walked down Calle Torbitt after the riot, and it began to rain. This was one of those race-against-time shots that are supposed to take place at night, but which you end up shooting as the sun is coming up. A few days later, I watched our black-andwhite rushes at Alpha Cine in Seattle (there being no black-and-white lab in Mexico). I brought the material back and we cut the picture in Carlos’ editing room at Estudios Churubusco. A month later, in London, I screened a 65-minute version for Yentob in an attempt

X-Films.indb 206

14/05/2008 16:14:21

207  Ÿ   death and the compass

Theatrical scrim transition: Chris Eccleston in his office, Peter Boyle and Ariane Pellicer in bed. to convince him that the BBC should make Death and the Compass a feature. Alan had asked me round to his charming house in Notting Hill so he could watch the tape after he came home from work. A generous host, he poured me a glass of wine, sat down to watch the film, and fell instantly asleep. I sat on his comfortable sofa, gazing out into the garden. It was an idyllic English summer afternoon, the sun was shining, birds sang in the trees. I poured myself another glass, or three. The film ended. Yentob woke up. Although he’d been asleep throughout, I wasn’t offended. It doesn’t matter whether executives actually watch your film or not: all that matters is that they like it. I made my pitch, stressing the great production values that he’d just witnessed, the possibilities of expanding the various back stories that had entertained him so, and stressing why Death and the Compass would be even better value for the BBC if they gave me some more money and then released it as a BBC Films feature. ‘I think it works well as it is,’ Alan said, ‘or perhaps a bit shorter. Fifty-five minutes would be ideal.’ The Universal Clock had ticked: we were to fit a one-hour, not a two-hour, slot. I went back to Mexico and cut the film down as instructed. Most of the Mexican actors had done pretty well with their English – in particular Zaide Silvia – but I was concerned that Echánove’s accent was impenetrable, and replaced his voice in the dubbing suite with another actor’s – mine. Pray for Rain delivered a

X-Films.indb 207

14/05/2008 16:14:21

X films  Ÿ  208

synthetic music track, meant to sound as if it was recorded with the technology available to Tangerine Dream, circa 1979. Alejandro Li-ho created our sound effects, and the mixer was Víctor Barragán. On 10 July we screened our first answer print, at Filmolaboratorios. Charley and I returned to London with the answer print, and handed it over. John Crane at the BBC did our video grading and prepared the tape for broadcast. The TV version, 55 minutes long, played first on the BBC in its drama series Screenplay, and subsequently as part of the Borges strand. That was the end of that, I thought: the film was cut, mixed, finished, delivered.

PRODUCTION, PART TWO In early 1993, Tod and I had looked for a project to do together, and had been offered a very inappropriate film: a low-rent actioner about a female avenger who . . . suffice to say, it was terrible. Then Charley Braun phoned; he said he’d found funds to shoot more of Death and the Compass, and that I was needed immediately in Mexico. I made my excuses and flew south. The new budget was a modest sum: $100,000. It came from PSC, a production company in Tokyo, where our contact was Katsumi Ishikuma, a.k.a. ‘Stonebear’ – a Spaghetti Western enthusiast and friend of Mr Negishi. In return for their investment, PSC were to receive the Japanese rights and Ishikuma and Negishi would receive executive producer credits. As in the case of El Patrullero, the creative conditions were extremely favourable, though – unknown to me at this stage – a misunderstanding had occurred between Karl and the Japanese investors, that was to dog me for several years. In Mexico City, the first order of business was to come up with the additional scenes. The 55-minute version is weakest in the Scharlach– Lönnrot back story. Why does Red Scharlach detest Lönnrot so? What is there in Lönnrot’s past that makes him so wearily guilty? I set to work on a flashback that would provide the answers. Also, the trap laid by Red Scharlach for Lönnrot was fairly complicated, and some additional explanation of that wouldn’t hurt.

X-Films.indb 208

14/05/2008 16:14:21

209  Ÿ   death and the compass

But the additional back story only added 10 minutes or so – one reel of plano secuencia. Then, back in the old stone house near Churubusco, I found a pile of the ‘memos from Treviranus’ that I’d written for the art department. I recalled of the advice of Joe Strummer: shoot more footage of Miguel Sandoval, and make him the on-camera narrator of Straight to Hell. Strummer felt Sando was the most charismatic actor in Straight to Hell, and that only he could pull together its over-extended narrative. As I leafed through these Death and the Compass memos, it occurred to me that this was the sort of material that Joe had meant! This was Treviranus’ guide to the labyrinth. Now the film acquired a new tense. It already had present and past tenses: present being filmed in plano secuencia with garish colours, while the briefer past tense scenes were shot in black and white. For the new future (or flash forward) tense, Garzón and I decided to attempt a new style: plano secuencia broken by jump cuts. In retrospect, this third style works the least well. Miguel’s framing seems imprecise, and the jump cuts Carlos and I made are often tentative as well. Sometimes they seem almost indistinguishable from dropped frames, where the cut negative was re-joined. In later films we got better at jump cuts. We’re always learning: at least, that’s the idea. Garzón and Montiel were both available for the additional shoot. The locations were the abandoned Tolteca cement factory (which plays the role of the Used Money Repository), and a baroque house in the Chapultepec district (Treviranus’ mansion). Sando flew down from LA, and Gabriel Solano, the makeup designer who had provided a false nose, wigs, and other disguises for Eccleston, aged him by about 45 years. Unfortunately, just as Pedro Armendáriz had predicted, Garzón and I fell out. Garzón had quarrelled with his excellent assistant, his nephew, Miguel Urbina; he announced that his son, Miguel Jr, was now his focus puller. But Miguel Jr had no experience doing this, the most crucial job on the entire set. Charley and I asked Garzón to find someone more experienced. He did so, but thereafter he refused to speak to me, to go to the lab, or to time the film. Why do things like this occur? I suppose they happen in every business, especially when family matters intrude, but it’s sad when a great creative relationship goes sour. I was also worried about one of our actors, the brilliant Echánove, who had started doing a lot of coke. A lovely guy, he now got quickly edgy and anxious. A few weeks later

X-Films.indb 209

14/05/2008 16:14:21

X films  Ÿ  210 X-Films.indb 210

he suffered a stroke, which put him almost permanently out of action as an actor. He was 40 years old. In the flashback sequence at the factory, I’d created an old friend for Lönnrot: Comandante Borges, whose death at Scharlach’s hands provided our detective with a revenge motive. This was also an opportunity to re-visit Gilbert Shelton’s blind cartoon cop, Tricky Prickears, with whom I’d already flirted in the script ‘Too Kool to Die’. Alfonso Arau, the actor and director who had appeared in Walker, accepted the part of Borges; and Jorge Russek, veteran of Peckinpah’s films, was to play the cowardly sergeant, whom the Comandante urges to be brave. This was a pretty obscure and interesting casting coup on the part of Claudia Becker. It was 25 years since Alfonso and Jorge had acted together: their previous double-act being in The Wild Bunch, where they played the debauched henchmen of Mapache (Emilio Fernández). Unfortunately, as the shoot approached, I lost both actors. Jorge’s health wasn’t good, and Alfonso wanted to return to the US, so as to give further press interviews about his film Like Water for Chocolate. At short notice, their costumes were adjusted to fit two other Englishspeaking actors, Karl Braun and Alex Cox. There are interior and exterior floor plans for the UMR robbery sketched in my script. The interior one went into such detail as to record 35 centimetres as the width of a shelving unit and 41 centimetres as the width of a filing cabinet -- presumably so as to figure out if Miguel and his 35mm Moviecam could fit through the gap. This black-and-white sequence was awash with explosions, stunt men, extras, bullet hits, burning cars, and blazing money. We’d taken Borges through the looking glass, into a madder world than even he’d conceived. But by the time we entered Treviranus’ mansion, that $100,000 was being stretched extremely thin. We’d had a decent budget from the BBC for the main shoot, with a full Estudios America crew and art department. Karl was calling in a lot of favours for this second shoot. Any talk of salaries for him, or me, evaporated. Sando didn’t get paid either, which is something that should never happen in Miguel’s case, since he never forgets. Carlos viewed the rushes and started cutting the new footage. But after a couple of days, even he enquired if there was any chance of being paid. Not that Carlos wanted the money for himself, of course, but his assistant, Martin Torres, ought to receive something. Karl told us there was no money left. So Carlos and Charley and I shut down

14/05/2008 16:14:21

With the traditional resaca, or hangover, came the realisation that things were worse than I’d thought. $100,000 had barely covered the additional week of shooting; in fact, it hadn’t been enough and we were all broke. However, the Japanese producers had the impression that this money would pay 1) for the additional shooting; 2) for the editing and audio mix; and 3) for a nice new answer print. How this misunderstanding occurred, I don’t know. Charley was an excellent line producer, production manager, and actor, but he was less experienced in postproduction. Perhaps he forgot about it while negotiating with the investors; perhaps they all did. In any case, there was no money to complete the picture. There wasn’t even money to gather up the negative, which was scattered all over the world: in a BBC vault outside London, in Rocco Gioffre’s special effects shop in LA, at Alpha Cine in Seattle, and in two labs in Mexico – Filmo and Churubusco. To finish cutting, gather up the bits, re-cut the neg, record new sound effects, foley, and music, mix and make an optical soundtrack, and get a new answer print, was going to cost between $70,000 and $100,000. The Japanese don’t yell at foreigners, but clearly Mr Negishi and Stonebear weren’t pleased. They’d laid out a substantial piece of money; we were repaying their generosity by failing to deliver them a film. As I delved into the labyrinth, it got twistier. In his negotiations with the BBC, Charley had only acquired rights to the 55-minute version of Death and the Compass. The feature rights didn’t belong to us, but to Andrés Vicente Gómez, in Madrid.

211  Ÿ   death and the compass

postproduction, boxed up all the material, and repaired to a cantina, where our sorrows were drowned.

POSTPRODUCTION To buy us out of this mess, I had to get a job. I ended up directing a ‘work for hire’ – The Winner. It was an unhappy assignment, but the money made it possible to finish Death and the Compass. Lorenzo negotiated a deal with Andrés Vicente: in return for the feature rights we gave him domestic distribution rights for Spain. They drafted the agreement, and I raced to Madrid to have Andrés sign it before he changed his mind. I offered Lorenzo a producer credit on

X-Films.indb 211

14/05/2008 16:14:21

X films  Ÿ  212

the feature: a single card, separate from Charley’s, in return for the negotiation. I asked the BBC for the 35mm negative: one morning I turned up at the old Edge City office in Venice, CA, and there it was, six reels sitting in a cardboard box on the doorstep, where the courier had dumped it. This was the same ‘bad neighbourhood’ where I’d been held up at knifepoint, and where the repo car had been stolen. But not even the local crackheads stole film negative. From Seattle I reclaimed the black-and-white footage, and took the whole lot back to Mexico, where Carlos finished his feature cut. In LA, Rocco, who had already done half a dozen special effects shots for the 55-minute version (Lönnrot’s apartment in a lightning storm, an imaginary skyscraper, an explosion of bats, the closing shot of the maze), came up with a dozen more: fires, hanging skeletons, spinning newspapers. Tom Richmond and I borrowed his model labyrinth and shot a title sequence in it. Dan Wool delivered more music. Pray for Rain’s brilliant score for The Winner had been stripped out of that film, so I encouraged Dan to write whatever he liked, secure in the knowledge that it wouldn’t get cut out this time. Alejandro built a new layer of effects tracks, and Victor mixed the finished feature at Churubusco in July 1996.

The spinning newspaper! Almost all films should have these. When we saw our first answer print, it was mysteriously out of synch. Carlos was a painstaking editor, and he couldn’t understand what had gone wrong. Neither could I. Leaving Carlos to try and figure out what the mistake was, I walked back to the old stone house near

X-Films.indb 212

14/05/2008 16:14:22

213  Ÿ   death and the compass

Treviranus (Miguel Sandoval) is unjustly persecuted by a tribunal. the studio. The house was adjacent to a little park and a high-walled golf course. There was a corner of the flat roof where, if you crouched down, only the tops of the trees that filled the park and lined the golf course were visible. Hunched there, unable to see any of the surrounding buildings, you could pretend you were in the middle of a forest. Lately, I’d been doing this a lot. After a while, feeling somewhat better thanks to my fantasy that I was in a wood, I ate a taco at the little stand outside the studio, and returned to the cutting room. Carlos thought he had figured out what the mistake was: without our knowledge, one of the opening title cards had been changed. It appeared that one of the producers, whom I shall call Charley, had persuaded his crony at the title house to re-make his producer title: so that it would stand out more than Lorenzo’s title: the new card called this fellow ‘EL Productor’. Normally, a director would dismiss this as typical high-spirited producer rivalry: the more producers there are, the more they fight each other over the wording of their credits. Mr Negishi and Stonebear had also disagreed over their titles, and demanded separate cards. But things were complicated here by the fact that Charley’s coke-addled little helper had made EL Productor’s new title several frames too long. We returned to the lab, where, surrounded by anxious technicians in white coats, and sweating over the original 35mm material, Carlos counted the frames of negative against the frames of our cutting copy. ‘I think it’s three frames out,’ he said. We held our breath. We shouldn’t

X-Films.indb 213

14/05/2008 16:14:22

X films  Ÿ  214

be doing this: fooling around with the negative, having lost synch due to clownish producer games! If Carlos was wrong, and it had been only two frames out, we’d still be out of synch, but the picture would now be too short, and we’d have to shoot the titles all over again. ‘Three frames, I’m pretty sure,’ said Carlos, and he cut them out. Fortunately, he was right.

RELEASE The TV broadcast in the UK received some good reviews; I don’t know what the reaction was in Spain, France, or Germany, where it was also sold. Unlike film directors, TV directors seem to move calmly from job to job, undisturbed by weekend box-office figures or reviews. Because there was the pre-existing TV version, there wasn’t much interest in a theatrical release in Europe, so EL Productor and I concentrated our attention on Japan and the American market. Death and the Compass premiered at the Tokyo Film Festival on 2 October 1996, and played at the Vancouver Festival 10 days after that. The Tokyo Festival screening meant that my debt was paid in full. Karl, Lorenzo, and Miguel Camacho, head of Churubusco Studios, all went to Japan for the opening. Karl and I forgave each other, and sang his ‘Benignity’ song. The film first played in the US at the Santa Barbara Festival, and at the Guadalajara Festival in Mexico, in March 1997. It also screened at the PiFan Science Fiction Festival in Puchon, Korea, where 200 students showed up, each one of whom had read the original story, in English, Spanish, or both. Theirs was the best question and answer session I have ever attended. The intellectual level and linguistic ease of these young Koreans were fantastic. Death and the Compass opened theatrically on 11 July at Laemmle’s Music Hall in Los Angeles, with a newspaper ad designed by Paul Mavrides. The LA reviews were good – better than the British ones. This was odd, since the film is nowhere near as good as Walker, which the LA critics had loathed. Perhaps the missing element in Borges’ work is any kind of identifiable politics: apart from the JFK set dressing (which no one but Cecilia and I noticed), and the general ambiance of corrupt policework, there’s not much politics in the film. Death and the Compass is a colourful entertainment, which makes it less dangerous to like.

X-Films.indb 214

14/05/2008 16:14:22

THREE BUSINESSMEN In 1996 and 1997 I received a series of faxes from a man who seemed to be mad. They were very long, waxing lyrical about all manner of philosophical things, and they were signed by one Wim Kayzer, who said he was a producer for Dutch TV. Tod’s very sensible attitude is to ignore communications from people who appear crazy, but mine is always to treat them seriously. You never know – one of these crazy people might have money for a film. Wim said he’d produced various TV series in the Netherlands, and was embarking on a new one, with the theme of ‘beauty and consolation’. It could be anything, he told me: Perhaps you have a 67-minute feature film in mind. Perhaps you want to shoot the film in your present place of residence (a single shot from a window), perhaps you want to return to the UK. Or film in the Bronx . . .

Did I want to be a part of it? But of course, said I. The faxes flowed back and forth – mine somewhat short, his increasingly loquacious. Wim encouraged me to come up with a script based on his theme. I tried to think of something that might fit the bill. This was pretty hard, since most of the projects I’d worked on dealt with doom, failure, and obliteration – beauty and consolation were in short supply. As far as I could tell, I only had one such arrow in my quiver: a book called Into A Desert Place, written by an Englishman called Graham Mackintosh. It detailed his love for the desert and coast of

X-Films.indb 215

14/05/2008 16:14:22

X films  Ÿ  216

Baja California, Mexico. Martin Turner had written a very good script based on the book. By 1997 I’d lost the rights, but Cecilie Brown in Madrid was still pursuing it. I sent the script to Wim, stressing it could be reduced in scale and made for a low budget. He didn’t like it. So I went back to the files of notes I’d kept – almost all of them about nuclear weapons systems and environmental destruction – and after much searching found something I’d written in Mexico City, in the middle of a lightning storm. I sent it to Wim, as a possible outline for his film: 20/7/96 I was feeling lonely and at a loss. It was Saturday night and I was in Mexico City waiting for an answer print of Death and the Compass. I had had lunch with Pedro Armendáriz, a nice lunch at his house after which I saw him in a play at the Teatro de Asfalto, Krisis. I was on my own and I missed my girlfriend and felt alienated. I had got depressed at lunch talking about money, and though I enjoyed the play, a very well-staged political comedy, part thriller, part farce, I remained down in the dumps as I walked through the ancient city centre after my Metro ride. Then I saw lightning flicker in the crack of sky between the buildings to the south. And I felt better as I climbed the stairs to my third-floor corner room (306) at the Hotel Washington. I sat in the dark with my feet out on the balcony and watched the faint flickering become a series of lightning bolts flashing across the top of a huge cloud. A few big raindrops fell and an acrid smell hung in the air as lightning crashed on all sides of the sky. I felt much better. Lightning is like a great disaster or a magnificent view: it gives perspective. I saw a circular lightning bolt hit Monument Valley, Arizona. In Spain I watched two lightning storms trade off flashes – one above the Sierra de las Alpujaras, the other above Los Filabres, back and forth in perfect one, two, one, two sequence. Standing in the Tucson desert in the rain trying to photograph lightning, I heard and saw it simultaneously as it hit a power line above my head . . . Lightning is in charge. Recently scientists have photographed streamers, little miniature electric bolts that dart up from power poles and buildings and people’s heads attempting to make the connection with the big bolt from above. And far above lightning storms, in the upper atmosphere, conical flashes of coloured light have been observed, and christened sprites.

This interested Wim more than the desert, and for a couple of months we exchanged intermittent faxes about lightning. The process

X-Films.indb 216

14/05/2008 16:14:22

An unconventional drama within a sort of documentary (remember Los Olvidados?), ending with special effects. It should be shot in 35mm: there is no 16mm lab in Mexico, and though its destination is VPRO [the Dutch broadcasting organisation] in 1999, it should also play as a film: this is also the inducement to obtain the partnership of Churubusco/Azteca Studios (they were the Mexican producers of Death and the Compass, and will provide Panavision equipment, lab and editing facilities, and mix).

217  Ÿ   three businessmen

went slowly because neither of us was ever in one place. We were incessantly racking up the frequent flier miles: I between Europe, LA, and Oregon; Wim between the Netherlands, France, and the US. Eventually I sent him a proposal for a film about lightning, to be shot in Mexico City:

I was proposing, as well as an episode of a Dutch TV series, a free-standing, 90-minute cinema film. Later, there was some confusion over this. But as far as I was concerned, it was always a theatrical feature. There were practical reasons for this: it may be ridiculous, but the mysterious and magical aura of the feature still persisted. You could call in more substantial favours and get better actors for a feature film. The ‘Lightning’ project didn’t go much further. I wasn’t happy with the ideas I’d come up with; the only good part of the treatment was the lightning storm itself. But Wim wanted me to make a lowbudget drama for around $120,000 in Dutch guilders, based on lightning and other beauty and consolation themes. I ditched the synopsis and asked Tod if she could write a script based on Wim’s themes. Now that we were talking money, she took the project more seriously. Over Christmas 1997, Tod wrote a script she later called ‘Three Businessmen’. The basis was an old idea of hers, in which two couples drove a car around the world in one night, in search of a decent meal – inspired by Buñuel’s The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, where the characters never get fed, and by My Dinner with Andre, where they do. Tod thought of it as an ‘intellectual date film’ – something that people who weren’t entirely oppressed or medicated might go to the pictures and smooch over. We both imagined at this stage that intellectuals still went to the cinema. I don’t know why we thought this. The religious aspects of the film are entirely Tod’s. If there is a God I suspect he/she/it is a mad demon, at war with similar demons, with

X-Films.indb 217

14/05/2008 16:14:22

X films  Ÿ  218

dire consequences for us. Tod tends towards a belief in the Goddess, dispossessed millennia ago. Tod’s take on ‘Beauty and Consolation’ was that the hungry travellers were the Three Kings, en route to witnessing the birth of the New Messiah, who is, fortunately and blasphemously, a girl. For a moment, the three characters break through the wall into that alternate reality, where religious feeling and the fairies reside. The coincidences have led somewhere, and made sense. Realising who they are, and what the story means, they have, for a moment, an agreed upon set of values; but they forget immediately. Tod’s initial title for the script was ‘Dad Has Left the Building’ – referring to the departure of the old deity, seen in the shape of the ‘old man’ leaving St George’s Hall in Liverpool at the beginning of the film. We sent Wim Kayzer the screenplay at the end of December; thereafter things moved quite quickly. On 2 January 1998 Wim approved both the script and the budget we’d faxed him. We flew to Amsterdam and met him for the first time. Wim was a striking individual – black-clad, whitehaired, wearing a black eyepatch. Amazingly, in an era of increasingly stupid television, he had made a series of expensive documentaries – some of them in English – on complex philosophical themes. His assistant, Chris Williger, told us this period of epic documentarymaking was coming to an end: this series would be Wim’s swan song. We had some enjoyable drinks and a rather drab teriyaki meal (all Dutch food is of the same bland nature, with the exception of herring) with Wim and the hapless Chris, whose job included driving Wim home after the drinking was done. We discussed the script and budget. It was obvious the film was going to cost more than VPRO’s $120,000: while decent in TV terms, this was very tight for a drama to be shot all round the world. Wim encouraged us to find additional sources of funding. The following week we met Dick Willemsen of Filmfonds Rotterdam, and applied for a production loan. Filmfonds is a clever programme that has made Rotterdam the media capital of the Netherlands, and one of the most important audiovisual cities in the world. It loans money to producers on condition that they spend 150 per cent of that loan in the city’s film and TV sector. Naturally, this encourages producers to shoot in Rotterdam, to rent equipment there, and to use Rotterdam-based crews. The money comes from the city government, and for them there is no downside, since all the money – plus half as much again – is spent in Rotterdam. Inevitably the

X-Films.indb 218

14/05/2008 16:14:22

219  Ÿ   three businessmen

producers spend far more than the stipulated 150 per cent, just as we did on Three Businessmen. If we made a profit, we’d have to repay Filmfonds their investment, plus a percentage. If the film lost money, the audiovisual sector was strengthened anyway. In 1998 Filmfonds was relatively new and the audiovisual sector was still growing. Five years later, when Tod and I went back to meet Dick’s successor, Jacques Van Heijningen, the fund had paid for the renovation of an old factory as a brand-new media complex, with special effects and postproduction companies, and offices for 50-odd media businesses. It was a stunning success, which we could never persuade the city fathers of Liverpool to emulate. Though Liverpool was then the most-filmed city in Britain, very few local crew people were being employed, and no money went into developing the region’s media skills. A Filmfonds-type activity could have turned the city’s media underdevelopment entirely around. But the local politicians would never take the trip to Rotterdam to see how Filmfonds worked. Instead they’d pretend to believe there was a film renaissance in the city, and wash their hands. VPRO, our own investment, Filmfonds, and the involvement of PRC in Japan brought the budget up to almost $250,000. With the exception of Edge City, this was the cheapest film I’d made. Having studied the sales tactics involved in my earlier films, I’d realised foreign sales agents never told anyone the true cost of a film. If a film like The Winner cost $3.5 million, the sales company would claim it cost between $7 and $9 million. This way, they’d get a higher price per territory, and recoup the picture’s costs more quickly. So Tod and I vowed not to reveal what the film cost. We knew that the plethora of locations would give it a good look, and there was no reason to reveal how low our expenses were. We thought a quarter of a million was very little money to make a feature: we didn’t realise that, by the late 1990s, the average cost of an American independent feature had descended to a mere $40,000. First-time directors made these $40,000 pictures, with crew people who were willing to work for little, or for free. In Japan, an entire festival, PIA, was dedicated to amateur features: first made on Super 8mm, later on DV and HDV. Such was the ongoing, magical attraction of the feature film. By mid-February 1998, VPRO had approved their contribution to the budget, and Tod had finished the shooting script. She’d written

X-Films.indb 219

14/05/2008 16:14:22

X films  Ÿ  220 X-Films.indb 220

it for cities where we knew film people, so we could hire locally, and keep crew travel costs down. I’d shot a promo in Liverpool, and been impressed by the local crew, particularly Kim Ryan, the first assistant director. Even though there were no incentives, financial or otherwise, to shoot there, we thought it worth it. The crew people were keen, and the locations suitably monumental. Rotterdam, naturally, would be another location, as would Tokyo. We figured we could shoot in Hong Kong with a skeleton crew, and wrap in Mexico City. At the beginning of March I embarked on a two-week location scout from Xochimilco, Mexico, to Tokyo, where Stonebear and Chigumi Obayashi showed me around. On 22 March, Tod and I returned to Liverpool, where Andrew Patrick – in charge of a new regional screen agency, FTC NorthWest – generously offered us free office space. We set up shop in Andrew’s premises, off Dale Street. No sooner were we installed in Dale Street than two characters came in. They were a bit younger than me, local guys, infinitely intimidating. I thought, this pair are either cops or gangsters. They’d come to see Tod. Little did I know it, but our visitors were Keith Jenkins and his partner Tony, security experts. Liverpool had a reputation as the place to go if you wanted to get your equipment ripped off, and Tod asked them if we really needed security: Liverpool seemed a pretty safe place to her, she said. ‘Let me put it this way,’ Keith told her, speaking in his fast scouse accent that she hadn’t quite caught up with yet, ‘if yez got security, yer stuff is safe. If yez don’t have it, things are likely to disappear.’ Tod decided we’d have security. It was a wise decision, and Keith and Tony turned out to be two of the more reliable friends we made in Liverpool during our five years in production there. The following evening we saw my old sparring partner Drew Schofield in a play, Dreams of Children, at the Masque Theatre. Drew was, as always, quite brilliant. We asked him and another actor from the play, John McMartin, to be in the film. Martin Turner was production designer in Liverpool and for the final scenes. We decided to film the latter in Spain rather than in Mexico for two reasons: we were already shooting in Europe, and it was easier to scout locations and to film in two continents than in three; and the desert landscape of Almería has more of a traditional ‘biblical’ quality than Xochimilco’s canals. Tod had written the part of Benny Reyes, the American businessman, for Miguel Sandoval. She’d written Benny’s foil, Frank King, for me: some of Frank’s idiosyncrasies (tearing articles out of the pages of newspapers, for example) were mine. In a way, Frank was a

14/05/2008 16:14:22

221  Ÿ   three businessmen

1998 incarnation of Miller in Repo Man: more fearful and pretending to be straight, but still, like Tracey’s character, trying to make sense of the impossible, to discover a pattern in things by typing torn-out pages from the newspaper into his laptop, in his hotel room. It made economic sense for me to act: we saved a salary and a round-the-world aeroplane ticket. Unlike me, Sando is a sharp businessman who drives a hard bargain. While negotiating with him we considered other actors for his part, including James Gandolfini: I’d acted with him, and thought him a strong actor and a good guy. We shot our film just before Gandolfini began a TV series called The Sopranos. What would have been Three Businessmen’s fate had it starred Bugsy Soprano (or whatever his TV character was called), rather than the drug lord from Get Shorty? Since we hired Sando, we’ll never know. Bob Rosen had introduced me to a director/cinematographer called Robert Tregenza at a UCLA screening of his feature Talking to Strangers. The film’s photography is extraordinary. There are nine scenes, each one a single, 10-minute take. There’s an impressive amount of camera movement and choreography of actors, vehicles, and props. Working independently, Tregenza had decided that internal cutting was getting in the way of storytelling and limiting film’s possibilities: the same conclusion Ripstein and I had come to. Talking to Strangers was an impressive demonstration of the virtues and flexibility of plano secuencia. It was probably a mistake for me to ask another director to shoot the picture – very few of us can abandon their directorial ego the way that Charles Burnett can – but Tregenza was up for the attempt, and flew to Europe at the end of March. We recced Liverpool, Rotterdam, and Spain. Rotterdam offered us yet more assistance. When Repo Man played there, the International Film Festival was still a small affair. By 1998 it had become one of the biggest festivals in the world, with more films and larger audiences than Berlin or Cannes. The festival had a fulltime office, and the organisers, Simon Field and Sandra den Hamer, invited us to share it during pre-production and the shoot. They also invited us to screen the film at the next year’s festival. This was great news: it meant we had a guaranteed slot at a major film festival at the beginning of 1999. We accepted, and told VPRO and Wim. For the third businessman, Sando also had a recommendation: an American called Robert Wisdom, who, it appeared, was going to be

X-Films.indb 221

14/05/2008 16:14:22

X films  Ÿ  222

on holiday in Spain right when we were due to shoot. Wisdom turned out to be one of the planet’s nicer actors. He passed through Almería on his way to Morocco, where he was building a house. On 11 April, Miguel arrived in London. I went down to meet him at Heathrow, and we travelled up to Liverpool by train, running our lines en route.

PRODUCTION Tod wrote the opening scenes for the Adelphi Hotel in Liverpool. The Adelphi is to hotels what Heathrow is to airports – one of the worst in the world. It was built in the days of the ocean-going liners that sailed from Liverpool to New York and elsewhere. It could, and still can, accommodate 2,000 people; but it cannot feed them, or make them happy. More bizarre than the hotel in The Shining, the Adelphi offers a contrast between huge public spaces – with mirrored walls and chandeliers, deliberately recalling the ballroom of a Cunard liner – and mean, grotty little rooms. Its corridors snake and twist in all directions, ending abruptly on mysterious mezzanines. It is a terrifying edifice, inside and out, where no one in his or her right mind would ever stay. I was very fond of it. Normally, it would be easy to film in such a place: lousy hotels are usually happy to have a film crew come and inconvenience their guests. But the Adelphi had recently been the subject of a BBC ‘fly on the wall’ documentary series, and it was now famous. Famous for bad service, broken glass and vomit on the staircases, and a harpy-like manager called Mrs Downey. But fame is a funny thing: despite showing the hotel in its true colours, the series had done wonders for the Adelphi’s business. People were booking to stay in the hideous pile merely because it had been on TV. Britannia Hotels, the place’s parent company, had even had postcards printed up, depicting Mrs Downey and her scurvy team in full regalia. Their message: ‘Stay With Us – and Get the Full Treatment!’ As a result, the Adelphi was constantly full, and whether or not we would be allowed to shoot there hung in the balance. Mrs Downey was now a national celebrity, and it was hard even to get a meeting with her. Finally we met for tea in the vast, decaying Derby Room. ‘Everybody wants to film here now,’ purred Mrs Downey, like a Cheshire cat. She had just corrected my pronunciation of the word ‘Derby’. ‘You see those people sitting over there?’ She indicated two

X-Films.indb 222

14/05/2008 16:14:22

223  Ÿ   three businessmen

attentive, anxious groups. ‘They both want to shoot their films here, too. That lot there,’ she nodded at the first group, ‘I’m going to turn them down. That other lot, I haven’t decided.’ Tod piled on the charm and flattery – what a great hotel the Adelphi was, what a fantastic series it had been, how fine Mrs Downey and her staff looked on TV. Mrs Downey’s Cheshire grin remained in place. Deciding not to prolong our agony, she told us that we could shoot at the Adelphi, and that our crew could stay there too. All for the very reasonable all-in fee of £1,000. As we emerged from the Adelphi at the conclusion of our meeting, a drunken woman fell against Tod, then hit her head on the pavement. An ambulance was called. That weekend two Rotterdam crew members, sound recordist Christine van Rhoon and assistant cameraman Abraham Haile Biru, arrived and discovered their delightful Adelphi rooms. On Monday, 13 April 1998, the shoot began. The first scene was the longest I’d ever done, a tracking shot into the restaurant where Benny and Frank sit down to eat. We were shooting on Super 16mm. In theory, 1,000 ft of 35mm film, or its equivalent, 400 ft of 16mm, lasts for 10 minutes. In fact, if you don’t waste time getting going, you can squeeze almost 11 minutes out of either roll, which we did here. The idea for the sequence came from something Tod and I had actually encountered in a hotel in Bradford. The management had provided, in the dining room, a large table for ‘lone diners’ – the idea being that solo travelling salesmen and the like could sit together while they ate their dinner, and converse rather than dine alone. It’s a nice idea, and maybe some people like it. But Tod and I enjoy a bit of solitude, and the thought of being forced unnecessarily into conversations with people we didn’t know – outside business hours – filled us with horror. We’d also noticed a sadistic tendency on the part of maîtres d’hôtel to cram all diners into the same corner of a dining room. This is for the convenience of the waiters – it’s certainly not for the pleasure of the customers, forced into uncomfortable proximity with other people who overhear everything they say. In Tod’s script, Benny and Frank get the worst of both these worlds, thanks to the sadistic maitre d’ portrayed by Adrian Kai. Actually, Frank is the one who suffers. Being English, he doesn’t want to talk to, or look at, anyone. Benny is an American: he’d love to

X-Films.indb 223

14/05/2008 16:14:22

X films  Ÿ  224

be seated at the lone diners’ table. Benny will talk nervously at length to anyone; Frank hates people like this, but is too repressed/polite to let them know. (I think this comes very close to being a perfectly written scene. It’s long, drawn out, and excruciating, as life is sometimes.) Including false starts, we probably did 10 or 12 takes; it took most of the day. We had a massive dolly, called the ‘Western’, which only cleared the restaurant door by millimetres as it began its slow track in on the scene. Ray Fowlis and Chris McDonough, our grips, manoeuvred the great beast with determination and care. We had our first theft during lunch. Someone stole one of the Western dolly’s wheels. Like many criminal acts in Liverpool, this was presumably intended as a joke – Abraham found the wheel stashed in the men’s toilets, down the hall. At end of the day, as we emerged from the Adelphi, another drunk woman collided with Tod and collapsed on the pavement, threatening suicide. Another ambulance was called. Next day, Kim’s dad joined us to play the old man leaving St George’s Hall. A light drizzle was falling – you can see the raindrops on the lens – as we proceeded to the Central Library to get our dismal opening shot. Tiny buds were appearing on the trees and I set to work pulling them off so that the scene would appear still more stark. Thence to Lime Street Station, where I discovered our cinematographer and I didn’t have the same approach to shooting an independent film. Our philosophies, as we’d discussed them, seemed quite similar: get in there, shoot in a low-key way, and move on to the next location. In practice, we defined ‘low key’ differently. Tregenza thought it best not to introduce the small dolly into the station, since it might attract attention. Instead, he proposed to have Ray and Chris push him on a shopping cart. I said I thought this would attract more attention than the small dolly. Not to worry, Tregenza assured me, he would be wrapped in a blanket and no one would notice him. Picture the scene: two scousers with tool belts are pushing a shopping cart through the concourse of a busy railway station; on the shopping cart sits a man with long, flowing, grey hair, wrapped in a blanket, holding a movie camera. They’re followed by a sound recordist, me, Keith, and Tony. I can’t imagine anything more likely to invite stares into the camera and shouts of ‘Fuck off!’ from my brother Liverpudlians. Unless, perhaps, we’d all worn fluorescent t-shirts with ‘Film Crew’ on them.

X-Films.indb 224

14/05/2008 16:14:22

Almost everything that happened in Room 147 had happened to me and Tod in the same room. So mad were the staff that they would actually call you in your room to ask what room you were in. This was typical Adelphi mischief: there is no sane reason to do such a thing. When Benny unpacked his suitcase, it made me think of Lorenzo, who regularly travelled with a laptop, a printer, and a mess of cables, floppy disks, and voltage converters. We filmed Benny and Frank’s visit to the empty hotel kitchen (my favourite shot), then moved back to the hotel lobby for their discovery that the staff have disappeared. If you look closely at this shot – beautifully composed by Rob – you’ll see someone crouching in the right-hand corner of the frame. It’s Kim, the first AD, who had been assured that she’d be out of shot if she stayed there. Most films, whether made independently or by the big studios, contain mistakes of this kind – crew members hiding, bits of camera tape left on the floor, microphone booms drifting into frame. In this case I always pretended the error was intentional. When someone at a screening asked what Kim was doing there, I would say that she was one of the hotel staff, hiding from Frank and Benny, and that, if the viewer looked carefully, they could pick out many members of the Adelphi staff hiding in the corners of the picture. It wasn’t true, but it added to the legend of the Adelphi. After that, we moved out onto the street to shoot Benny and Frank discovering the naked statue. Some time that evening, our second theft occurred. The two aluminium posts that stick out of the front of the camera, holding the matte box in place, mysteriously vanished. Abraham searched everywhere, but those little posts were gone. On Thursday night, the shoot involved a walk across the city: four scenes involving Miguel and me, each of them a single take. This work was much more difficult for Rob and Abraham, since we were filming in uncontrollable conditions, with a hand-held camera, at night. Keith had predicted this would be the most difficult part of the Liverpool shoot: you can’t control a city centre, ever. One scene took place outside a restaurant where Benny wanted to eat. Martin had drawn up a ghoulish sign advertising ‘Pure British Beef Burgers’ – deaths from Mad Cow Disease were then still in the

X-Films.indb 225

225  Ÿ   three businessmen

But we got our shots of Benny’s arrival, laden down with luggage, and proceeded to the street. At which point it started snowing. It doesn’t snow much in Liverpool, especially at Easter. Very appropriate it was.

14/05/2008 16:14:22

X films  Ÿ  226

news – Tod disliked the sign, but it seemed spot-on to me. As we were filming, out of the corner of my eye I watched a drunk approach us. He got closer. Then I saw Security Tony intercept him, and beckon him, very politely, into a doorway. When Tony beckoned, people tended to follow him. While acting, I was aware of Tony speaking softly to the potential scene-disrupter. I have no idea what he said, but the man caused no disruption at all. This was the brilliance of Keith and Tony’s approach. Anyone can get in a shouting or a shoving match. Their genius was that they never threw their weight around. These weren’t fat, gun-packing LA cops – just very intense, highly conversational civilians. I never saw them behave in a bullying or out-of-order way. If a place was too dangerous to film in, Keith would just tell us not to go there, and we wouldn’t go. Even with such guardian angels, these were hard scenes to get right: traffic and passers-by were unpredictable, and Abraham struggled to keep perfect focus. We had rented our camera package from the US: their lenses came with the focal length marked only in inches. Abraham had grown up in Ethiopia and now lived in Holland; for his entire life, he had known only centimetres – he had never before encountered feet and inches. Now, not only did he have to pull focus on hand-held travelling shots at night, but he had to simultaneously multiply the inches by a factor of 2.54 – in his head – in order to figure out the distance from the actor to the film. A number of times during these night shoots, Abraham wasn’t certain if he’d got the focus right. So we’d go for another take, and another, until he was convinced. When the footage was developed and we saw it projected, Abraham’s focus was always perfect. But I don’t begrudge him the extra takes: it gave us actors more chances, and the director more options at the editing stage. When we reached Mathew Street, Liverpool’s principal ‘tourist attraction’, there was no hope of keeping drunks out of the shot. Nutters outnumbered us by a factor of five to one. After we wrapped, Christine and Abraham asked me, ‘Why did so many people shout ‘Fuck off’ at us and stick their faces in the lens?’ I said they were honouring the name of the great Soviet director, Vuckoff. But really it was just a taste of Thatcher’s and New Labour’s England: Bruegel’s Triumph of Death, featuring the mini-skirted and the shaven-headed. Christine began experiencing problems with her tape recorder: the needles on the level indicators were jamming, which meant she

X-Films.indb 226

14/05/2008 16:14:22

227  Ÿ   three businessmen

couldn’t tell by eye whether her sound was distorted or not. Ray Fowlis, in theory a humble dolly grip, volunteered to take her machine home and fix it, which he did – by loosening the screws that held the glass over the dials. This was an indication that Ray had unappreciated talents, and was constantly acquiring skills. The next night we filmed on the waterfront, where there are fewer bars. We shot aboard a double-decker bus and in the tunnels of James Street Station. James Street is the most film-worthy underground station in England: the staff know this, and are quietly proud of their Victorian labyrinth. We shot aboard the Merseyrail train, which, leaving Liverpool, was almost empty; while we waited at Birkenhead Park Station for the return train, Keith waxed lyrical about his collection of teddy bears. The main scene of the evening was outside a Porsche and Mercedes dealership, where Benny and Frank puzzled over the question, ‘Who’s buying those cars?’ The answer, of course, was drug dealers, as a barmaid (Christine Colvin) told them. But our heroes can’t access this, because though they claim to be art dealers, and real estate agents, and restaurateurs, they’re really drug dealers. Drug dealing is the only job that still exists, and the only one that can’t be mentioned, in Benny and Frank’s world. Nesmith remarked, in the context of Repo Man, that hidden things in works of art, or films, tend to remain hidden and hence don’t contribute to the revenue stream. Three Businessmen is the most secretive of all these films, and it certainly wasn’t the most profitable. But how could it be other than what it is? Just as the transitions between cities were hidden, so Benny and Frank’s jobs had to be hidden. Making their money in the drug trade, they must keep moving, have no friends, and always be afraid. For Tod, this was a latter-day Fear and Loathing pair: the gonzo white man and the mad king of Aztlan reduced to a pair of paranoids, trying to pass for normal. On our night off, the third heist occurred. Rob or Abraham always slept with the camera, but the rest of our gear was stowed in a supposedly secure room on the first floor of the Adelphi. Of course, the room wasn’t secure at all, and that evening somebody kicked the door down and stole two of our walkie-talkies. Mrs Downey refused to accept responsibility, and when we reported it to the cops, they told us, ‘This was done by tourists.’ Tod asked how they knew. ‘Because they stole your walkies, but left the chargers. The batteries’ll be dead by now. No scouser would be so

X-Films.indb 227

14/05/2008 16:14:22

X films  Ÿ  228

thick as to nick two walkies and forget the battery chargers.’ Indeed, the master thief had left his jacket in the room: it was full of letters from his dole office, in Cardiff. On Sunday evening, we filmed a pub scene in the basement of Ma Boyle’s. Ma Boyle’s was unusual for an English alehouse in that it served very decent food – mostly fish, plus scouse on Fridays. My friend Adrian Henri came along and sat in a booth, surrounded by a coterie of admiring poetry groupies; always working, he wrote several poems while he was there that were published in his last collection. John McMartin played the Liverpool-boosting businessman (‘Call centres! Liverpool call centres handle 60,000 calls a day!’) and Christine, our location manager, played the barmaid who knew who bought the cars. On our return to the Adelphi, Abraham made one last tour of the hotel, looking for the missing camera-mounts. He found them, lying side-by-side, on the stove in the hotel kitchen. Somebody else’s little joke. Next day we flew to Schiphol. The valiant Abraham managed to persuade the Speke Airport staff to let him hand-carry our Super 16mm projector aboard the plane. We settled into the Hotel Central. One of the few surviving pre-Second World War buildings in Rotterdam, it had a mini-Adelphi quality; Marco, the night porter, told us about the two guests he’d found hanging in their rooms. The cheaper rooms at the Central didn’t have windows, just an opening onto a shaft – it wasn’t hard to imagine hanging yourself there. Especially if you were playing Frank King. Our Film Festival production offices were, by contrast, bustling and cheerful. The crew people were busy and optimistic, as you would expect in a city that took culture seriously and put money into its creation. Our coordinator, Carolien Provaas, had already secured our locations, and our art director, Jalle van der Hijden, had made several different versions of Benny’s ‘Plutonium’ credit card. Jalle was responsible for the film’s more complicated hand-props, which also included the Mir space station model carried by Leroy, and the posters advertising Daddy Z, the singing star. The Mir joke usually gets a laugh of recognition – at least if the audience is familiar with Christian mythology. But no one gets the ‘Daddy Z’ gag. Daddy Z was played, on posters scattered through the film, by Zander. The idea was that Daddy was the star that the three

X-Films.indb 228

14/05/2008 16:14:22

229  Ÿ   three businessmen

Sketch for Daddy Z poster.

Miguel with finished product, Lime Street Station, Liverpool.

X-Films.indb 229

14/05/2008 16:14:23

X films  Ÿ  230 X-Films.indb 230

kings follow. Tod was convinced that the idea would work, I less so. It has, I think, to do with how we dream: a lot of Tod’s dreams involve puns, and if you dream in wordplay, you’ll get the joke; if not, maybe you won’t. In Rotterdam we filmed at the Tramhuys, a charming bar that many visitors to the Film Festival will know, to their cost. This was the scene where Benny showed Frank his Plutonium card – a magic totem guaranteeing his safety and security in a troubled world. Prior to this was a short interchange between Tod and a Dutch actor, Ruud van der Pluim. Ruud’s part was originally to have been played by Steven Berkoff, an actor whom I very much admired. I’d been to Berkoff’s splendid waterfront pad in Limehouse, and sat beneath the giant, eight-foot-high portrait of Steven as a pierrot, trying to persuade him to be in various films. I’d dined with him, and over dinner he could be quite good fun. For a while I’d tried to collaborate with him on a script, set in the London underworld, titled ‘Revenge’. Collaboration had proved impossible: Berky is a writer/director/actor/ theatrical entrepreneur par excellence – emoting constantly, rarely hearing anything anyone else says. When Steven called to discuss his part in Three Businessmen, Tod answered the phone. As Tod tells it, she introduced herself and said how excited she was that he would be appearing in our picture. I have no doubt she said this, in her polite and charming way; I also have no doubt as to Steven’s response. ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘I’ll need to improvise around the role.’ Writers don’t like to hear this from actors. Normally, having no power, they must suffer such remarks in silence. But Tod was also the producer. A beacon of calm, maybe, she asked, ‘Steven, have you read the script?’ ‘No, not yet,’ Berkoff replied, ‘but I already know my part isn’t big enough. It must be expanded. I must have MY FRISSON!’ At that point Tod more-or-less fired him. When I spoke to him later, Steven made it clear to me he was no longer available. It was a shame, especially after all those hours I’d put in admiring that stupid painting of him as a pierrot. The moral of this little tale is that, if you want input into a project, speak privately to the director. On the set, I would, of course, gladly have given Steven his frisson, even if it turned into a two-page monologue. I’m surprised Steve, a sophisticated person, didn’t know this (Tod thinks he did, and was looking to get fired). As a rule, it’s probably best not to diss the script to the writer – just in case.

14/05/2008 16:14:23

231  Ÿ   three businessmen

The first half of Three Businessmen was shot almost exactly in sequence. This was a great gift to the actors, since we learned our lines in their natural order, and developed our characters as the story progressed. Ideally, all films should be shot in sequence, but this is usually impossible: location issues and actor availability don’t permit it. Now the schedule meant we had to shoot the desert sequence, in southern Spain, then return to Rotterdam. On Friday, 24 April 1998 we flew, via Madrid, to Almería. We met Bob Wisdom and Cecilie Brown. Cecilie drove us north into the high desert of Tabernas. A motorway, built on a berm the size of a small mountain, now bisected the Llano del Duque – the flat plain where Straight to Hell was made. Our old location was crumbling into romantic dust. In these badlands, we shot Benny and Frank’s trek through the desert, and the arrival of Leroy. Late in the day we filmed Benny’s attempt to call Plutonium Central from a Swisschalet-style payphone/shrine, which Martin Turner had affixed to a telegraph pole. A flat in Tabernas became the abandoned Plutonium Card headquarters. After a couple of days in the desert, we moved to the coast to shoot the Bethlehem scenes. The Cabo de Gata had filled up with plastic tunnels – endless greenhouses meandering across the landscape – but

Businessmen Cox, Sandoval, and Wisdom, back in Albaricoces.

X-Films.indb 231

14/05/2008 16:14:23

X films  Ÿ  232 X-Films.indb 232

the final building frenzy of the twentieth century hadn’t yet begun. We filmed in the white town of Albaricoces, where El Indio and his bandits holed up in For a Few Dollars More. You remember the scene – Gian Maria Volontè and Klaus Kinski rein up at the end of a long avenue of cacti, and point Clint Eastwood towards the white town at the end of the road. ‘It looks like a morgue .  .  .,’ Volontè says, ‘and it could so easily become one.’ Eastwood, whom none of them trust, rides into town. And who was coming down that dusty, cactus-lined trail 33 years later? Benny and Frank, looking for breakfast. These were classic film locations, lovingly enhanced by Martin, who had built us a ramada, dressed a restaurant, and rented a donkey for the day. And I learned that, if you want your shots to look like the desert exteriors of John Ford or Sergio Leone, you need an enormous generator, and a great big lamp, or several great big lamps, to bang light into the shadows. The lighting of Leone’s outdoor scenes isn’t subtle, but on a sunny day in Almería the cameraperson faces extremes of light and dark. S/he must use the sun to backlight the actors. To counteract the brightness of the sun, s/he needs a great big lamp, or two, to throw some light onto their faces.1 We had the location, the sunlight, and the faces; but we didn’t have the lamps. This shows in the wide shots outside the café. We were able to get around the problem in certain close-ups by improvising reflectors. For example, Isabel Ampudia’s introduction starts with a big close-up, pulls out to a wide shot of Josefina and the three businessmen, and leads them to the verandah where breakfast is served. When Rob’s camera was close to Isabel’s face, Abraham held an aluminium foil reflector beneath her chin. As Rob pulled back, Abraham removed the reflector. You didn’t notice the light change on her face (I hope!) because of the shift in focus as the businessmen appear. While we could get around the absence of big lamps in closeups, there was no way we could properly illuminate faces in three- or four-shots. This was one of the rare moments when I regretted being an independent filmmaker, and wished for a couple of those monster trucks. Turner had provided enough art materials that our interior could have been a literal Christmas-card-type scene, but Tregenza favoured a neutral look – a Nativity of the Nonconformist Protestant variety, with no stained glass, smoke, or statuary. I sent a copy of the final image to Rocco Gioffre, who was to paint a religious icon in which the three businessmen were represented, in the same positions, as the

14/05/2008 16:14:23

233  Ÿ   three businessmen

three kings. Rob’s shot would be followed by a zoom out from Rocco’s painting, and thus, we thought, the message of the scene would be conveyed. We returned to Rotterdam to film the blue-screen sequence in which Benny and Frank ride in a taxi. In our absence, Carolien and Jalle had thoughtfully had a taxi sawn in half. They’d also found us a scissor lift, which we used as a moving camera platform. Walking through the Plaza one evening, Tod, Miguel, and I found ourselves in the middle of a riot. This was Queen’s Day, when – apparently traditionally – youths in Rotterdam and other Dutch cities fight with the police. It was a strange thing to wander through. Big gangs of kids, mostly minorities, would charge at the cops, then withdraw. The police would march into the middle of the square, then retreat. Cans, rocks and some gas were thrown. The weird thing

Robert Tregenza, Henk Dirker, Christine van Rhoon, Abraham Haile Biru, me, and Mike. Photo: Jalle van der Hijden.

was that it seemed so orderly. The advances and retreats were slow, lacking in any real momentum or excitement. It was a riot without spontaneity, a rebellion devoid of noise. The Dutch shoot wrapped on 2 May, and after a day’s break, in which we saw our Spanish rushes newly arrived from Soho Images

X-Films.indb 233

14/05/2008 16:14:23

X films  Ÿ  234

in London, we flew to Hong Kong. Here our local crew consisted of one person, a local filmmaker called Terry Boyce. This was Edge City revisited, as we had no permissions to shoot at all. We wanted to film aboard the Star Ferry, and also on the gangway to the ferry, on the Kowloon side. No one on the Star Ferry asked us for permission, or said anything at all, as we sailed back and forth across the neon-lit bay. Hong Kong was familiar with films, and obviously film friendly if you were discreet. Only a gambling joint, in the background of one of our Island shots, seemed interested in us. Terry suggested we find an alternative location when the mafiosi emerged. A couple of clubgoers stopped to read one of Jalle’s ‘Daddy Z’ posters. These posters, otherwise identical, contained a different club name for each city. The clubgoers were clearly Zander fans, since they wrote down the information about the gig. We shot a sequence aboard one of the magnificent double-decker trams, through whose open windows the most fabulous illumination – coloured neons and fluorescents – flowed. Thence to Tokyo, where we scouted locations, and prepared for a night shoot among the cafés below Shinjuku railway station. Stonebear warned me that the next night’s shoot would have to be postponed, because of rain. ‘Let’s wait and see,’ I said, ‘we might be able to get something.’ ‘No, no,’ he replied, ‘the weather forecast says it’ll rain tomorrow at five. And it’ll keep raining all night. We have all exteriors scheduled, and when the rain starts, shooting is difficult.’ Regardless, I insisted that the crew be ready just before 5 p.m. The weather was good until around 4:30, then the sky abruptly darkened. At 5 p.m. a torrential downpour began. It lasted all night; after Stonebear postponed the shoot, he took me to a bar where we sat, watching the rain fall. We discussed our cultural differences in the context of weather forecasts. In Europe and the US, no one believes weather forecasts, and we are constantly surprised by the weather. In Japan, the weather forecast is like the train timetable: if the forecast is for rain at five, at five it rains. In Shinjuku, the inhabited cardboard boxes, beneath giant TV screens, could have been a sight from New York or London. But the orderly rows of cardboard boxes in Ueno Park, each with its own identical blue plastic waterproof sheet, and the communal washing line, suggested that in Japan even the awful experience of homelessness wasn’t necessarily dirty, or disorderly.

X-Films.indb 234

14/05/2008 16:14:23

X-Films.indb 235

235  Ÿ   three businessmen

The next night we filmed in Stonebear’s favourite restaurant, a little one-counter pub in the Ogikubo district, near the railway station. Its proprietor, Mr Banshyu, spoke no English, and knew nothing about acting: he’s the man with the wooden shoes who serves Benny and Frank sake and gives them an umbrella and a fan. Banshyu-san was a very intelligent person and a great chef: unfortunately our lack of a common language prevented me and Miguel from explaining that he should not serve us real sake as we acted the scene. We were actors, serious actors. And as such, we wanted sake cups filled with tepid water, just like the tapwater we’d drunk at the Tramhuys, pretending it was gin. But Banshyu-san couldn’t understand our requests for water, and insisted on serving us fresh bowls of delicious sake with each new take. What could we, as actors, do? We couldn’t interrupt the scene, or each other’s concentration, by calling cut and demanding water instead of alcohol. Thish wash an important scene, and we had to do repeated takesh to get it righ . . . We spent an evening filming on reclaimed land in Tokyo Bay, in a long pedestrian overpass that went nowhere. One end adjoined an office building, the other marshes and a strip of highway. No one used it; the overpass had been built in anticipation of other skyscrapers, or a transit station, months or years in the future. It was perfectly clean, free of graffiti, lit with fluorescent tubes. None of the tubes was burned out. This pristine, science-fictional tunnel was nothing like the broken-down, fried-electrical, piss-smelling pedestrian overpass we’d filmed in Liverpool. The one in England had a purpose, was used by hundreds of people every day, and was disgusting. This one, in Japan, had no purpose, was unused, and perfect. The long walking scene we shot in it was fun for Miguel and me, and very difficult for Abraham and Tregenza. The next night began in a Chinese café that we were pretending, much to the crew’s hilarity, was a Japanese noodle shop. Our leading actor was Tomorowo Taguchi, the dashing and mysterious actor who starred in the Iron Man films. This was the scene where Benny and Frank are served plastic food because of Benny’s rudeness. If you want to understand the American–English dilemma, and why Britain follows the US into illegal wars of aggression, Tod explains all here. Benny, told the restaurant is closing, becomes belligerent. He acts in a colonial and aggressive way towards the ‘foreign’ café owner, played by Taguchi. Frustrated by his national inability to learn languages or deal with ‘foreigners’, Benny becomes a bully, shouts, and thinks he’ll get what he wants. And Frank, the Englishman who has despised

14/05/2008 16:14:23

X films  Ÿ  236

Miguel, Tod Davies, me, and Ryoko Takizawa are shown delightful plastic food (or radioactive alien corpses) by Tomorowo Taguchi. Benny, is suddenly and cravenly impressed by this display of American firepower. Frank imagines he’s going to get his dinner, and goes along for the ride. And so Taguchi humiliates the pair of them, and sees them off into the night. A concise portrait of the transatlantic ‘special relationship’ – painted before the wedding of Bush and Blair. After the scene was over, we took the necessary crew photograph (somehow, when you take these pictures, the crew always doubles in size). Then we embarked on a last, top secret, mission: an unauthorised attempt to grab a shot of one of the most remarkable new buildings in Tokyo – the Fuji TV headquarters. Also built on reclaimed land, this consists of two undistinguished skyscrapers joined by a network of interconnecting catwalks and a huge copper ball, eight storeys in diameter. The building, lit at night in a succession of changing colours, is spectacular: a new, giant, secular space, a postmodern St George’s Hall. Stonebear had asked, on our behalf, for permission to include the building in one of our shots. Permission was refused: Fuji only permitted Fuji TV productions to show the building. Naturally, we

X-Films.indb 236

14/05/2008 16:14:24

237  Ÿ   three businessmen

didn’t accept this, and so, co-producer, cinematographer and actors set off in Stonebear’s car for the Fuji building. As we approached, the building was ablaze with light: green, orange, purple, red. Then, a strange thing occurred: we left the bay bridge, and all the lights went out. The massive illuminations, which lit up the catwalks and changed the colours of the big brass ball, were suddenly extinguished. The exterior had gone completely dark. Coincidence? This was the night we’d asked for permission to shoot, and been refused. But had they actually remembered? Did a Fuji minion turn out the lights deliberately, throwing the Big Switch, when Stonebear’s tiny car appeared? Since it was now too dark to shoot, we filmed on an adjoining catwalk – an un-scripted scene where Benny, having recovered Frank’s PanAm bag, returns it. And that was the end of the film. Back at the hotel, we encountered Tod, who had just discovered our 30 crew members and their friends waiting in the lobby for the wrap party. A visit to a local restaurant was hastily arranged, and kibun maintained.

POSTPRODUCTION On Sunday 10 May 1998, all returned home. Sando and Tod and I were on the same flight from Tokyo to Los Angeles. The original King Kong played on the tiny seatback screens. Three Businessmen was edited on a flatbed in Rotterdam from 21 May to 16 June. Since every scene played in a single take, and there were no action sequences, editing was quite straightforward. In fact, it would have been easy to edit digitally – if we’d had video rushes. But, faithful to the Old Ways (for the last time), I’d opted for film dailies. I liked being surrounded by the old equipment in a big loft beside the docks: not just editing flatbeds, of which there were two, but also big industrial sewing machines. A big, bright space, some big machines, a flickering screen, a roll-up of ‘white widow’: this was nothing to grumble about. It was the last time I’d ever cut on a flatbed or an analogue editing machine. Analogue editing of celluloid wasn’t better or easier than digital editing. A certain percentage of analogue editing time was always spent worrying about synch: had a shot or a scene slipped out of synch? Had the synch drifted, or had the coding machine marked

X-Films.indb 237

14/05/2008 16:14:24

X films  Ÿ  238

it wrongly? Was it a sprocket or a frame off? This time, when our dialogue tracks were transferred to 16mm magnetic film, about 10 per cent were out of synch. This was an issue with the transfer house, not Christine’s original material, but it meant either 1) complaining, reordering the stuff, and waiting days to get it: or 2) snipping out or adding odd frames so as to speed up or slow down the pauses, until the drift was barely noticeable. I did both 1) and 2) in the cutting room on Three Businessmen, and both were a pain. While it’s possible to get out of synch in a digital video edit, it’s very easy to get back in synch again. I don’t know any editor who misses the old days, when we struggled to find the missing synch. Nor do I know many people who prefer to commute into a busy city centre to work on an editing machine, rather than do the same work at home. Postproduction sound was once again in San Francisco, at Richard Beggs’ studio and at Pray for Rain’s headquarters. Miguel and I recorded our own foley – putting cups down, walking on concrete and in sandboxes – for Tony Cummings, on the sound stage at UCLA. Tony was about to retire from the UC system, after 20 years’ loyal service. We laughed about that, because he’d begun work at UCLA while I was filming Edge City. The final mix was at the Skywalker Ranch. While an average independent feature mix might take two weeks, Richard finished Three Businessmen in two days. This was only possible thanks to his strategic skills, the large number of pre-mixes he brought with him, and the fact that he, Dan, Tod, and I were all on the same page creatively. Tod and I went to New York to meet Frank Rizzo, of Metropolis Labs, who was to make our first 35mm print from the Super 16mm negative. The film was complete save for the religious icon shot, which Rocco had just shipped out from LA. We received it at the eleventh hour, after screening a 16mm answer print with the missing shot slugged. The shot didn’t work. Technically, there was nothing wrong with it: it was an image of a religious icon, zooming out from the Three Kings – positioned just like Frank, Benny, and Leroy – to reveal a mediaeval Nativity scene. It was beautifully painted, but it was flat, dimensionless, like something shot from the pages of a book. It didn’t work as a straight cut. What about a dissolve? My UCLA vows forbade them.

X-Films.indb 238

14/05/2008 16:14:24

239  Ÿ   three businessmen

Tod solved the problem by coming up with a new shot – a Nativity crib scene, complete with baby Jesus and toy animals. We found a New York cameraman, Adam Vardy, and tracked down a guy who collected Nativity displays: we had our pick of Jesuses, Marys, Josephs, Shepherds, Sheep, Rudolphs and Santas. I bought some short ends of Super 16mm, all of which turned out to be bad. So next day I purchased 100 ft of new stock and, on 22 September, the patient Adam shot our Nativity scene. We screened the first married answer print on 25 September.

RELEASE Our executive producer was not happy when we told him the film had been invited to Rotterdam: Wim Kayzer had decided he didn’t want the film shown anywhere prior to its VPRO screening. It was he who’d originally suggested that we make a feature, and we’d discussed the Filmfonds deal with him on several occasions. When he changed his mind, he put us in a difficult position. We had an obligation to Filmfonds, and to the Festival: they’d loaned us their offices, and their invitation to screen Three Businessmen in the city where it was made was not to be ignored. At the same time as Wim objected to the Rotterdam invitation, I was invited to be a member of the festival jury: this meant helping pick the winner of the prestigious VPRO ‘Tiger’ Awards. Things were getting a bit surreal, and nothing to do with film-making, or with creativity – as is usual, at this stage. I didn’t want to be on the jury. I hate contests, and prize-givings. However, Rotterdam had been generous to us, as had VPRO. So I accepted the invitation. When Wim insisted we pull Three Businessmen from the festival, what was I supposed to do? Withdraw the film, and disappoint Filmfonds and the festival? Quit the jury, and upset VPRO? Everyone had conflicting loyalties, and probably everyone realised this except Wim Kayzer. Looked at differently, it was a beautiful situation, but there was no consoling him. Perhaps because his strand of documentaries was coming to an end, Wim wanted to test the limits of his power with VPRO. When we refused to withdraw Three Businessmen from Rotterdam, Wim told VPRO he was no longer interested in screening it.

X-Films.indb 239

14/05/2008 16:14:24

X films  Ÿ  240

Our Rotterdam Festival premiere was a disaster. Remembering Repo Man, the programmers had allocated Three Businessmen two late-night screenings. Around midnight, good-sized crowds, well-lubricated and expecting rock’n’roll fun, rolled in. Most rolled out again before the film was half-way done. It wasn’t just that Three Businessmen was different from Repo Man. It is different, of course, but that was to be expected, and perhaps preferred. Three Businessmen is almost totally dialogue dependent. The images, though sometimes striking, are static. They contain little story information until the end. Often the location is deliberately unclear. We learn what’s going on from Benny, Leroy, and Frank – and they are usually wrong. Now the Dutch are excellent linguists. Many speak English almost perfectly. But after midnight, after a few beers, a good dinner, and a spliffen, were any of them in a mood for a dialogue-driven, slowmoving, foreign-language film without subtitles? You can enjoy Repo Man without subtitles because it’s cartoon-like and music-driven. Three Businessmen isn’t. There’s also a moral/ethical divide between the films. Repo Man has heroes, of a sort: people who, when the chips are down, risk their lives to do unusual things. Benny and Frank aren’t heroic in any way: buffeted by every event, they have no clue where to go, or what to do. The vehicular iconography of the two films says this. Repo Man is a vigorous chase for a valuable car, and what better diversion is there than an American, car-based, escape fantasy? Benny and Frank don’t have a car: they’re consigned to public transport at closing time. For all its apparent rebelliousness, Repo Man is conservative. It sneers at mysticism, yet embraces it for a tidy finale. It can’t conceive of a car-free culture – only a ‘better’ car culture, where cars fly. It isn’t fundamentally challenging. Three Businessmen presents a conservative aspect, but stripped-down, it’s devoid of toys and trinkets, genuinely radical. You have to pay attention in order to get it. In Rotterdam, there was a third, afternoon screening, with a smaller audience that stayed to the end. The festival paper ran an article with a picture of Tod and me standing on a Metro platform, and the headline, ‘Who Are These Two Boring People and Why Should We Care?’ That was the response to Three Businessmen at its world premiere. We screened the film at Channel 4 in London. Steven Berkoff came to see it, and next day he phoned pretending to be an American distributor, eager to buy the film. I kept my end up until Steven got

X-Films.indb 240

14/05/2008 16:14:24

241  Ÿ   three businessmen

bored and revealed that it was he. He laughed at how easy it had been to fool me, at how grovellingly attentive I had been, but my policy was still to indulge lunatics, in the hope that they had money for independent films. Three Businessmen played in London at the ICA, and at the Cornerhouse in Manchester. Its greatest moment of near-triumph came at the Hamptons Film Festival in the US, where, after the first screening, Tod and I were approached by a man who claimed to be the head of New Line Cinema. He said that he wanted to distribute our film. I didn’t believe he was the head of New Line, since previously I’d met another gentleman who claimed to have that distinction. But he showed us his card, and yes, indeed, he did appear to be the chief of that distribution company, rather than another impersonator sent by Berky to torment us. ‘This is just the kind of film that New Line should be releasing,’ this fellow told us, ‘It’s different, it’s funny, it’s not like anything else!’ He waxed enthusiastic, and we began to wonder if there was a market for intellectual date films, after all . . . The festival organisers, delighted to have brokered such a deal, looked on aglow. We sent the print to his office in New York next day. He screened it, then re-screened it for his ‘team’. We asked when we could pick it up, and he said he needed to hang onto it for another day or two, so as to show it to the guys in marketing. When marketing saw it, the deal was dead. There were no more returned calls from the head of New Line Cinema. We picked up the print, and somebody told us marketing had nixed it. Looked at from their conventional point of view, Three Businessmen was a non-starter: it wasn’t just the presence of Sando and me as the main actors, though that was bad enough – the film itself was the problem. It failed to conform to any genre they could recognise (unlike the ‘youth movie’ Repo Man or the ‘rock’n’roll film’ Sid & Nancy), or to offer them any marketing hooks, other than a Debbie Harry cover song. Three Businessmen eventually found a release in the US: not in the cinema, but on HBO and the Sundance Channel. Looking at Three Businessmen now, my attention is drawn by the way some scenes end, or begin, with objects: mobile phones, a display of (plastic) food, night-time buildings in which people are too small to be seen. One scene consists entirely of inanimate objects: the abandoned office with the Plutonium Card answering machine. These are important things, separate from the agitated humans who, trapped

X-Films.indb 241

14/05/2008 16:14:24

X films  Ÿ  242 X-Films.indb 242

in another part of the film, desperately want them. The objects are unattainable, and Frank and Benny derive their only comfort from discussing and imagining things: from the sprites flickering above lightning storms, to the diagonal dimensions of their laptop screens. This brings me to the bigger problem of Three Businessmen – the way we watch a film. Consider the scenes with Benny and Frank aboard the Metro. While we’re aboard the train, it’s pretty similar to the Liverpool Merseyrail: a Metro interior is a Metro interior, after all. The train that Miguel and I boarded in Liverpool was painted yellow; the train from which we emerged in Rotterdam was green. You might think this is a pretty clear visual clue: trains don’t change colour, after all. Yet almost no one in the audience noticed it. This taught me that people watch films on a shot-by-shot basis. What they see now, they accept as ‘reality’ within the frame; what was on screen five minutes ago is already forgotten. Some people didn’t believe the film was scripted. If you’re not a writer, perhaps you might think Miguel and I were merely improvising stuff, philosophising as we ambled along. It’s a compliment to Tod, maybe, that her dialogue is so natural sounding. But it also suggests laziness on the viewer’s part: the same inattentiveness that misses when a train changes colour, or that prompts someone to ask, ‘And the donkey cart that you guys jumped on: did that just happen by?’ The idea that dialogue has to be written, edited, and learned – or that donkey carts have to be rented and transported, with their driver and their donkey, to the desert on a truck – is too much information for the tired critic or viewer, who prefers a ‘magical’ view of things (‘Two kids show up on Sunset Boulevard and the next thing you know they’re MILLIONAIRES . . .’). Perhaps the underlying message is just too confusing – that a good film, or any film, depends not on genius, but on slightly tedious, medium-term teamwork. The point of Three Businessmen is that we are, most of the time, entirely and voluntarily alienated. We don’t see clearly; we don’t pay attention to things; we don’t know what our jobs mean, or who’s buying those cars. Benny and Frank walk and take public transport all the way around the world, in total ignorance. They think Rotterdam is Liverpool. They think Shinjuku in Tokyo is Liverpool’s famed ‘Japanese Garden’. They think the desert is a city. They wake up in generic hotel rooms, with no idea where they are, or why they’re there. One of Three Businessmen’s earliest enthusiasts was a United Airlines flight attendant: he understood exactly what was going on.

14/05/2008 16:14:24

243  Ÿ   three businessmen

But how to convey this to a wider audience, who don’t feel this dislocation so intensely, even when they live amid this anonymous post-war architecture, shop in its identical shops and ride its transport systems? Our poster designer, Takao Sasai, got the joke: against a background of skyscrapers and a giant moon, he superimposed a picture of the three businessmen holding their iconic items, but he changed the word ‘Mir’ on the model spaceship box to ‘Meal’. This was wordplay on several levels: he was telling the story of the film, and taking advantage of the old joke about the Japanese confusing ‘r’ and ‘l’. Mir – the Russian word for peace – sounds to their ears the same as ‘Meal’: which is all that matters, in the end, to Benny, Frank, and Leroy. Not long after we finished Three Businessmen, I chanced upon another work by Otto Dix that neatly summed up where this desperate alienation ultimately led. The painting is called Selbstmörder, and it depicts some miserable clerk who’s just hanged himself in his flat, or hotel room. Dix could have left it at that, but, being Dix, he didn’t. Instead he painted the ghost of the hanged man, sitting reading the paper, unaware he’s dead, in a chair beside the corpse. That is Frank King! Or at least, Frank King before he made friends with Benny and Leroy.

X-Films.indb 243

14/05/2008 16:14:24

X-Films.indb 244

14/05/2008 16:14:24

REVENGERS TRAGEDY At university, I read no literature at all. In the last week of my final term at Oxford, I went up to the Worcester College library, to study for my law exams. The same week, I was directing a play at the Playhouse: the musical Cabaret. I was a poor student, with little interest in the law, and since it wasn’t yet time for me to go and check on my actors, my eyes wandered across the leather-bound Victorian books on the library shelves. They lighted on an old volume called The Plays and Poems of Cyril Tourneur. I took the book down, and browsed through it. One of the plays was called The Revengers Tragedy. That sounded promising. I started reading it; its language was somewhat like Shakespeare’s, but clearer – noticeably more modern. The author was using terms we used: he wrote ‘it’s’ instead of the Shakespearean ‘’tis’. But even more strikingly, his ideas were modern: particularly the revenger-hero’s line, Great men were gods – if beggars couldn’t kill ’em.

In all of Shakespeare’s work, you’ll never find a line like this, nor encounter any credible rebel sentiment. Shakespeare, for all his greatness as an artist, was a reactionary. His plays esteemed kings, and portrayed grovelling before them as appropriate. This was only sensible since his predecessors, Kyd and Marlowe, had been tortured and possibly assassinated by the state. But it makes Shakespeare less admirable than the author of The Revengers Tragedy. Add to this his acquisition of a coat of arms (mocked by the jealous rebel, Ben Jonson)

X-Films.indb 245

14/05/2008 16:14:24

X films  Ÿ  246

and his utter failure to educate his daughters, and the ‘historical’ Shakespeare seems a bit of a sexist social climber. It isn’t bold to dedicate yourself to pleasing the powerful. Shakespeare had brains and brilliance; but the author of Revengers had balls – mocking dukes, lords and a corrupt, syphilitic court. Hamlet hesitates because his adversary, the King, is praying. Vindici in Revengers sees the Duke praying, and moves immediately for the kill. Perhaps it was no accident that the play was first published anonymously; a generation later, it was ascribed to a dead writer, Tourneur. Thomas Middleton, the true author of Revengers, was a versatile playwright and showman, working for an up-and-coming power base, the London merchant class. When he wrote a hugely popular political satire, A Game at Chess, Middleton was ordered to appear before some terrible tribunal of the time, replete with hot coals and instruments of torture. He didn’t go – which was fair enough, after what they’d done to Kyd. Instead, he sent his son, Thomas – perhaps thinking he could confuse the king’s inquisitors since they had the same name! (Thomas Middleton Jr got out without being tortured, no thanks to dad.) The Revengers Tragedy was first performed around 1606, against a background of rebellion and social unrest. Between 1586 and 1631 there were at least 40 food riots and two attempted insurrections in the West of England. In 1607 the Midlands Insurrection took place, in which thousands of rebels occupied the land of the rich. Unlike the Northern Rebellion of 1569, which had religious overtones, the Insurrection was entirely political, and was violently suppressed. I wanted to make The Revengers Tragedy into a feature film. In pursuit of this I read Middleton’s other tragedies, and got to know his remarkable contemporary, Webster, and the other Jacobean playwrights. Their writing, also, seemed completely modern; there was a reason for this. The regime of James I saw a loosening of the reins of power. Though he had inherited the first English super-state – church and monarchy consolidated, with a powerful network of spies – the new king was less of a control freak than his mother, or her dad. The theatre, already original and innovative, relying on female impersonators and hyperviolence to excite the audience, became increasingly rebellious and iconoclastic. People enjoyed these plays because their wild action reflected the unstable world that they inhabited: a world riven by aristocratic corruption, wars, and competing religions, along with the shocking rise of new venereal diseases. It was a time very like our own.

X-Films.indb 246

14/05/2008 16:14:24

X-Films.indb 247

247  Ÿ   revengers tragedy

A new and brilliant form had appeared – the first, authentic English drama, of which The Revengers Tragedy is a parody. The model was laid out by Kyd, in his magnificent Spanish Tragedy, when he was 29 years old. The Elizabethans – Kyd, Marlowe, and Shakespeare – wrote plays with single, heroic protagonists. The Jacobeans, witnessing the shifting flows of power, the absence of clear or absolute authority, wrote plays with multiple protagonists: The Duchess of Malfi, The White Devil, Women Beware Women, The Revengers Tragedy, and so on. Adapting these plays for film is harder: more editing and invention is required, as the author must first choose, and then build up, a heroic protagonist. For a long time I couldn’t decide how to deal with one of the play’s main conceits: how Vindici, the principal revenger, disguises himself so that that neither his enemies nor his own mother recognise him. In a good stage production, this doesn’t matter, of course: the audience suspends its disbelief. Watching a film is different. First, the use of close-ups makes a convincing disguise almost impossible to pull off. As we watch a film, things must appear to be real – as they do in Buñuel’s Exterminating Angel, say. When I read A Scanner Darkly, I began to conceive of the Revengers Tragedy as a science fiction film, set in the future. Vindici would wear some variant on Dick’s policeman’s ‘scanner suit’, making him a vague, indistinct image people didn’t notice. But that would have made the film very expensive – a hard science fiction picture requiring many special effects shots, in the days before digital effects. In 1990, Alan Yentob put me in touch with the poet and playwright Tony Harrison, who liked the idea of an updated adaptation, and thought it might work in Newcastle. Harrison is a great writer, but my impression of Newcastle was of a rather attractive, scenic city. If we were to shoot in one of the once-great cities of the north, I already knew another one, more redolent of doom. During this time, I continued to absorb other Renaissance tragedies, and my film-going dried up. My experience of film festivals had made me enjoy films less – just as being inundated with crap VHS tapes by the studios had led me to quit the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. I’d had it with mainstream films. Yet I still wanted to create drama with intense emotion and a sense of politics. Vindici’s rage and successful overthrow of the status quo seemed ever more appropriate. I thought of his enemy, the Duke, more as a brand than a person: a business, using his corrupt, coiffured image as an advertising icon to promote sales – in the manner of Trump and

14/05/2008 16:14:24

X films  Ÿ  248 X-Films.indb 248

Branson, and other needy tycoons. Such a Duke would naturally have out-of-control, good-looking sons with traits of lechery, ambition, and vacuousness. Such types were familiar: one ran into them on a daily basis in the film business – useless, arrogant sons-of-the-rich. Do I sound like Vindici? I was Vindici. When I moved back to Liverpool in 1998, Roger Shannon – head of production at the BFI – gave me a list of local writers. It was a stellar list: Willy Russell, Alan Bleasdale, Jimmy McGovern, Joe Ainsworth, each of whom was busy with projects of their own. Through Roger’s list I’d met Adrian Henri, who wanted to have a crack at it. However, as Adrian’s health deteriorated, I followed Roger’s list to another charming and intelligent writer, Frank Cottrell Boyce. Frank was, though I didn’t know it, the busiest screenwriter in England, with at least two features in production at any one time (right then, the two were Hilary and Jackie and Pandaemonium). Somehow he found time to re-read the play, and we met in the idyllic garden of his house in Blundellsands. It was a most beautiful May afternoon, and my notes of our meeting read, ‘Frank says bones & bodies galore will make it work .  .  . Naples gangsters have their cars crushed for tombstones; Naples funerals have the dead tied to a chair, presiding over the wake . . .’ I went to Simon Perry, at British Screen in London, for development funds; a modest sum was forthcoming. Revengers Tragedy was one of the last films British Screen developed – soon it was to be shut down. ‘New’ Labour’s replacement agency, the Film Council, would prove to be a triumph of cultural policy on a par with ‘Cool Britannia’ and the Millennium Dome. Frank began work on the first draft. Collaborating with him was a painless process: he wrote at home, surrounded by half a dozen children and a beautiful, hyper-vigilant wife, Denny. Frank and I might be in one of the upper rooms of their rambling, Victorian house, discussing the various tortures Vindici and Carlo might inflict upon the Duke. Should they stamp upon his hands (people are always stamping on each other, with sadistic shouts, in Middleton and Webster)? Should Carlo shock him with an electric cattle prod? Then suddenly, it would be tea-time, and we’d be summoned by one of the younger Cottrell Boyces, most likely Benedict, to the dining room. There we’d eat and discuss, with the kids, the virtues of Oasis, or the relative merits of Philip Pullman and Tolkien. I think that in his insouciant and effortless bridging of diverse worlds – physical horror and intellectual/domestic pleasure, in this

14/05/2008 16:14:24

Frank knew Liverpool, and England, much better than I did. It was he who saw the importance of the cult of football: in the first draft, the Duke and Lord Antonio attended a private football match, played in their honour by professional teams. Having always hated football, I would never have thought of that. He transposed the seventeenth century into the mid-twenty-first with ease: the characters, with their family bonds, viciousness, and loyalties (or lack thereof) proved timeless. And he rearranged and edited the text drastically, losing the second disguise sub-plot, justifying Graziana’s failure to recognise her son by making her blind. It was an expert piece of creative adaptation. The script convinced two excellent producers, Margaret Matheson and Tod Davies, that here was something worth pursuing. A script reading followed at the Script Factory in London, cast by Gary Davy. David Morrissey read the part of Vindici, and Rita Tushingham played the Duchess. I asked Berkoff to play the Duke, but he couldn’t make it. Phil Daniels played Lussurioso brilliantly. Drew Schofield and Christine Tremarco came down from Liverpool to play Carlo and Castiza; Tony Booth read Lord Antonio. Overall, the cast was very well chosen: after that reading, I could think of no one but Gary to cast the film (he had stage-managed that RSC production back in 1988, and loved the play as much as I did). Though some financiers had been invited, no money came; the Script Factory asked us to stage the reading again, before an audience. This was a chance for me and Gary to try out new actors: Chris Eccleston as Vindici, and Margi Clarke as Hannah (formerly Graziana, Vindici’s mum). Diana Quick played the Duchess at the second reading. She was fantastic, and afterwards I asked if she’d consider the part if we were able to raise the money. ‘I’d love to, dear,’ she told me, ‘but you know you’ll end up casting Barbara Windsor or Joan Collins!’ Gary and I resisted these temptations. Again, Drew Schofield played Carlo. In an ideal world, I would have asked Drew to play Vindici: he’s an acting virtuoso, and such a skilful mimic that he could have done amazing things with Vindici’s disguises. However, I couldn’t convince anyone to back me in offering him the role. Margaret and Tod both agreed Drew was a great actor,

X-Films.indb 249

249  Ÿ   revengers tragedy

instance – Frank really does resemble Thomas Middleton, who like Frank could write just about anything (comedy, poetry, tragedy, satire). A Buddhist or a Hindu might suggest he is the reincarnation of Middleton, such is his diversity of style, and skill.

14/05/2008 16:14:24

X films  Ÿ  250

but they couldn’t raise money on his name. Had Drew moved to LA after Sid & Nancy, it might have been a different story. What a pity (from my point of view) that Drew had never done a Gary Oldman: he was as versatile an actor as Gary, and funnier, but he never considered moving to LA. I had to promise Tod and Margaret two things: that we would cast commercially acceptable actors, and shoot in a more conventional manner – i.e. no plano secuencia. They both felt long takes were alienating, and that we should make an effort to seduce the audience with a familiar editing style. There was also a practical issue: the centrepiece of The Revengers Tragedy is a courtroom scene, and I couldn’t figure out how to film it as a plano secuencia. The characters – judge, witnesses, jury, accused – were physically too far apart and there was no one moving around the courtroom whom the camera could follow from group to group. Two fellows came to visit me at the office in Liverpool; they said they had money to make a film – good money, £3.5 million. It was to be, they said, part of a package of 10 films paid for by high-earning venture capitalists in need of a tax break. The roster of films they’d made veered between the laughable and the appalling: there was a bikini beach movie, an erotic thriller, no writers or directors you had ever heard of. Not that this mattered: the government had put certain tax breaks in place to encourage film production. Any ‘tax advisor’ with rich clients (footballers, shall we say) could invent a roster of films, good or bad, and by putting their clients’ money into it, gain tax relief worth double their investment. Tod and I read their script; it was nowhere near ready. Then one of them asked: ‘Well, do you have any other project with a finished script?’ These are the moments that filmmakers dream of. How sad, when they turn out to be dreams. I told him that we did have such a project: Revengers Tragedy, a story of revenge, murder, and filial love, set in 2010, in Liverpool. Our guys continued to insist that they were sitting on £3.5 million: they had to spend it before the end of the year or it would vanish, like something in a fairy tale. Could we shoot Revengers before Christmas 2000? Of course we could. Margaret checked out their investors’ credentials. They really did appear to have money in the bank. Encouraged by a document showing the existence of this production money, Margaret felt we should begin

X-Films.indb 250

14/05/2008 16:14:24

251  Ÿ   revengers tragedy

hiring people. Not too many – just enough to get a low-budget feature going quickly: a production manager, a coordinator, a casting director, an AD to break down the script and make a schedule. In this way, Tod, Margaret, and I found ourselves in a trap into which a wise producer should never fall: fronting their own money for pre-production. We thought we’d found the Grail – decent film money, far from the strangulating London film circuit. We hadn’t. Day after day, the money was delayed. Tod travelled down to London with one of the alleged ‘tax advisors’ in order to get it, but it wasn’t there. After two weeks of pre-production, we had 25 people working for us. We’d booked locations and expanded our office space; we’d paid a lawyer to get work permits for Cecilia and Diego Sandoval, her art director. Cecilia and Diego were in the air, en route to Manchester Airport, when we learned the money wasn’t really there. The paperwork these boys had shown Margaret referred to money they’d already spent. Our putative patrons had been relying on a second £30 million tranche of cash from wealthy ‘footballers’, which had not arrived. At 4 p.m., Tod called the staff together, and told them what had happened. Everyone was laid off, and the production shut down. All the crew descended to the bar of the Everyman, where beer and wine were found. We waited for Cecilia and Diego: everyone was very curious to meet the designer of The Mask of Zorro and Desperado, even if they had been given the lash. I tipped the Big Issue seller to tell us when a Mexican and a Peruvian turned up. It was the most horrible and, inevitably, the happiest, time. We didn’t have to work; we could legitimately get drunk. Scousers, whatever their failings, are noble in bad circumstances and heroic in defeat. Around 7 p.m., the whole crew was still sitting around the table shouting and drinking and laughing, and Kim’s second AD, who was from Manchester, beckoned me aside. ‘If you were in London and this had happened,’ he told me, very deliberately, ‘you would be sitting here alone.’ He pointed at all the crew, whom we’d just fired, and who were buying us drinks, ‘They wouldn’t be here.’ He paused and thought, then added, ‘Not in Manchester, either.’ When we did the sums, we were about £35,000 in the red. This was a bad thing for Margaret’s company, Bard, and for our own, Exterminating Angel. But help was at hand: Cecilia and Diego had shown up with numerous design ideas; they wanted to see the locations, even if

X-Films.indb 251

14/05/2008 16:14:24

X films  Ÿ  252

pre-production was suspended. We were still going to make the picture, right? Right. I toured the locations with Cecilia and Diego; we took pictures of the idyllic Wirral countryside around Thurstason village, overlooking the Welsh hills, with the idea that Vindici might arrive from the country, rather than aboard a Chinese junk. The junk, in which Vindici was supposed to land in Liverpool, had proved impossible to find. Frank insisted he’d seen one sail by recently, when he was walking on Formby Beach, but the production had been unable to track it down. I’d started thinking of contrasting a country idyll with an urban Gomorrah, the way that Middleton’s speeches so often did. Inevitably, Cecilia and Diego spent hours in the great public buildings of the city: the Picton Library, St George’s Hall, the town hall, the cathedral – monuments to the villainous history of a city built on the slave trade. They stayed in Liverpool for two weeks and distilled an art department book, featuring their chosen locations, bedecked with threatening posters of the Duke. We put together a presentation of design elements, and the three of us took the train down to London to present the project to the Film Council. In a radical change of policy, ‘New’ Labour had decreed that a new body, the Film Council, would distribute all public production funding. Previously, British Screen, the BFI, the Lottery, the Arts Council, and other bodies had all had money to invest in feature films. A very good producer, Simon Perry, had run British Screen, and Roger Shannon ran the BFI’s production fund. Strangely, in the staffing of the new film agency, there was no job for experienced producers such as Perry or Shannon. Instead, the new org would be run by John Woodward, an affable bureaucrat with no practical experience of making feature films. The people hired to run the production and development arms of the new Film Council were similarly skilled: naïve at the business of film, in awe of the Americans. Yet they were drawing unheard-of, six-figure salaries in an organisation that soon required 100 full-time paid employees, and hundreds of consultants more. One can’t blame people for being inexperienced or incompetent – someone hired them; someone created a structure in which they were quickly out of their depth. Systems analysis has a principle called POSIWID: the Purpose of a System is What it Does. It appeared that ‘New’ Labour was trying to

X-Films.indb 252

14/05/2008 16:14:24

253  Ÿ   revengers tragedy

create a studio, hence the large, bureaucratic staff, and the unusually high salaries. In management-studies-land, perhaps the mandarins imagined Film Council execs could go toe-to-toe with their American counterparts, based on what they earned. But this was never remotely possible. Woodward and co. might earn as much as junior studio execs in the US, but they didn’t have anything like the budget, or the archive, of even the smallest studio. They had no physical plant and no real money, hence no power; no track record as filmmakers, hence no leverage. The smart way for the government to support the British film industry would have been to learn from Europe: build small, lean organisations; exact levies on blank tapes, DVDs, and foreign (i.e. American) features; and create regional film funds, like the one in Rotterdam. Those would have been sensible things to do, if the government wanted to support and grow the British feature industry. Based on what the Film Council has actually done, growing and supporting a flourishing regional film sector was never the goal. Instead, ‘New’ Labour’s plan was what Alan Parker proposed, in his notorious ‘Bonfire Night’ speech: dismantle the British film industry, deliver certain profitable parts of it to the Americans, and funnel Lottery money to the Hollywood studios. All this has been achieved. POSIWID. The Purpose of a System is What it Does. The new head of the New Cinema Fund was 25 minutes late, and couldn’t stop talking on the phone. He had two phones, a mobile and a landline, and every time either rang, he jumped up and raced to answer it. His conversations seemed mainly domestic, or about scheduling matters that his assistant could have dealt with. His concentration skills were minimal – he browsed through Cecilia’s art book, the phone rang, he went away, came back, made some joke about Frank Cottrell Boyce, the phone rang again, he went away, and when he came back he told us the story of how he would have worked on Sid & Nancy, but had to quit due to glandular fever. Then he was running late again, for his next meeting. Diego, being Mexican, was astonished by the guy’s inattention, vanity, and rudeness. But Cecilia and I felt good about the meeting. We weren’t asking for much: just half of a greatly reduced budget of £1 million. Revengers was a prestige project that would attract fine actors. And this was a vain, distracted guy, in his first week on the job. On the train back to Liverpool, we drank wine, convinced we had a chance.

X-Films.indb 253

14/05/2008 16:14:24

X films  Ÿ  254 X-Films.indb 254

There were more hoops to leap through. The head of New Cinema wanted us to shoot on video, and offered us £10,000 to test a new camera recently released by Sony, called the 24p. We spent the money on a trailer instead, for Margaret to take to Cannes. It was a new, alternative beginning for the film. Instead of the junk, Vindici arrived on a bus that had been ambushed, and all its occupants killed. Fate, or a comet, or a vengeful god, had spared Vindici, because he still had business to attend to. The trailer ended with Vindici stepping off the bus, and setting out to take revenge. We had invited Kenneth Branagh to play Vindici; he passed on the role, and Chris Eccleston – to whom I’d offered the part of Lussurioso – was keen on it. I told him Lussurioso was a better part (which it definitely is), but Chris was insistent. He seemed a little dour, compared to our happy days in Mexico: I’d seen him in LA a couple of times, when he was working on studio features, and he hadn’t been happy. But he understood the idea of a war between the north and south that underpinned Frank’s script, and so we went with him. When we shot the opening sequence, Chris looked highly dashing, with longish hair. I remember thinking that he might indeed be able to pull off the seductive, flirtatious aspect of Vindici, and looking forward to it. Drew and Christine Tremarco both appeared in the trailer, as did a very talented young actor called Shaun Mason, whom Tod and I had seen on stage as Stan Laurel, and as Renfield in Dracula. The cameraman was Len Gowing (with whom I’d made a promo, Heart as Big as Liverpool), and the AD was Kim. Len didn’t like the 24p camera: the image still had the cheap, bright look of video. The camera was also expensive to rent, and cumbersome. Since this was a 35mm theatrical feature, Len quite naturally wanted to shoot on 35mm film. The New Cinema Fund, though, was very keen for us to use DV technology, so we promised to shoot a mixture of video and film. The high rental cost of the 24p camera meant that we couldn’t afford to use it as our regular video camera. Instead, we’d use a standard digital camera: a PD170, or a DigiBeta. We wanted to shoot on film from an aesthetic viewpoint – Len, Tod, Margaret, and I all preferred the look of film – but also from a strategic one. Shakespeare films, whether directed by Branagh, Mel Gibson, or Kurosawa, were shot on film. Thomas Middleton deserved an equally professional and respectful treatment. To shoot Revengers on video was to imply that Middleton was in some way cheaper and less deserving than Shakespeare – in the same way that pushing ‘New Cinema’ films

14/05/2008 16:14:24

255  Ÿ   revengers tragedy

onto tape would make them appear cheaper and less impressive than the Film Council’s ‘Premiere’ projects, like Gosford Park. They agreed to let us shoot on Super 16mm, and in the final week of pre-production, Len made an end run at the producers – pointing out that it would be almost as cheap to shoot in 35mm, that lighting would be easier (the film frame, being larger, was more sensitive to lower levels of light), and that we’d go faster as a result. Margaret didn’t think it was possible; Len’s arguments, which I supported, meant we’d have to go back to ask permission, when the Film Council didn’t really want us shooting film at all. At Cannes, Margaret ran into my old pal Mr Negishi, of Cable Hogue. She reported that Negi-san was willing to put money into Revengers, in return for the Japanese rights. And a colleague, Kevin Brazier, turned her on to a software company that was also looking for a tax break. This, combined with our Asian pre-sale to Negi-san, would provide the remaining budget for our million-pound film. I tried to persuade Berkoff to play the Duke; this came to naught. In London, in the space of an hour, Gary Davy introduced me to Eddie Izzard, and dispatched me to the theatre to see Derek Jacobi in a play. I got on very well with Eddie, who has a Jacobean face: we went to a seventeenth-century pub in Covent Garden, and talked for some reason about competing sensational theories of the origins of Christianity. Derek’s play turned out to be about a Vatican researcher who discovers sensational secret news about the origins of Christianity, and is marked for murder by the Pope. Another ‘plate of shrimp’, though what it meant or means, I cannot say. Derek gave a great performance in a not-so-great play. I met him briefly afterwards, and that was that: as far as I was concerned, Gary had found Lussurioso and his dad, the Duke. But would they accept the roles? And would their stellar presence be enough to make the Film Council step up to the plate? Not quite: the New Cinema Fund still wanted us to acquire one more celebrity – it could be another famous actor, or a supermodel, they didn’t mind. This was list-based casting: our execs were simply pushing for a random accumulation of celebrities. But did a welter of footballers, soap stars, and models really guarantee the success, commercial or artistic, of any film? Fortunately, Tod and Gary found us a very nice, hard-working supermodel, Sophie Dahl, who wowed the New Cinema Fund so much that contracts at last exchanged hands.

X-Films.indb 255

14/05/2008 16:14:24

X films  Ÿ  256

Music, as usual, involved finding a suitable band. This happened organically with Strummer, Los Plugz, The Pogues, and Pray for Rain. It was difficult to do it artificially – an approach to Radiohead went nowhere. We liked Space, the Liverpool combo, but didn’t know anyone connected to them. So instead, I sent an email to Chumbawamba’s website, asking ‘Would you like to write the music for a Jacobean revenge tragedy set in Liverpool? PS we think you are great.’ A reply, from Alice Nutter, came almost at once: ‘It depends on if we like the script or not. We just said no to Mr McGoo.’ Marvellous – Anarcho-Syndicalists who turned down money! Now I could be excited about the music, because I liked the band.

PRODUCTION Film-making, like anything else, gets easier as time goes by. If you do something enough – dig a trench, rehearse a scene, carve bons mots onto grains of rice – you develop an efficient working method, and it takes less effort to achieve the goal. As with Repo Man or Edge City, I’d managed to find a crew who were both nice and enthusiastic. Although I no longer abused them with 12- or 14-hour days, the schedule was still an endurance test: five weeks, with a large number of location moves, to fit the different schedules of those massive public buildings. Some scenes that took place in the day – Junior’s trial, for instance – had to be shot at night. This was a big lighting, acting, and logistics job, and exhausted everyone involved, save for Paul Reynolds, who never got tired. There were difficulties, of course, but they didn’t bother me as they had before. When Eccleston showed up, after two days’ filming, with a shaved head, what could I do? Ask him why he had done such a stupid thing without consulting me or the hair and makeup people? A bad haircut wasn’t a sacking offence, but it boded ill. I sensed, again, that Chris had been hurt by his LA experiences, and had come back with an enlarged chip on his shoulder. The rest of the cast were delightful. Derek Jacobi proved to be the nicest actor known to man. The visiting actors were put up at the Adelphi (apart from Diana Quick, who knew better), where the Duke’s sons played a variety of manic jokes on each other, at all hours of the night. Frazer Ayres, whom we’d cast as Spurio, returned home at 3 a.m. from his big scene with Diana, to find a note nailed to his

X-Films.indb 256

14/05/2008 16:14:24

257  Ÿ   revengers tragedy

door: ‘Congratulations! Join me for a glass of champagne to celebrate – Room 479.’ It was signed by Paul Reynolds, and Frazer proceeded immediately to Room 479 for libations. However, Room 479 wasn’t Paul’s: it was Derek’s, as Frazer discovered when Britain’s greatest actor, roused from sleep, staggered to the door. Americans aren’t afraid of asking personal questions, so Tod asked Derek why he was so nice. He asked her what she meant, and she observed that there were times during our shoot when he had been inconvenienced, misled, or delayed – moments when other actors might have freaked out, or gone shickso on us. Somehow he had always remained good-humoured and relaxed. ‘Good child rearing practices!’ Derek replied. His parents, he said, had always been loving and supportive, and had encouraged him to be an actor. ‘They were more than parents, really. They were like . . . my best friends.’ The scene where Eccleston fights with a gang of toughs was filmed among Victorian warehouses, off the Dock Road. Choreographed by a scouse stuntman, Ray Nichols, it was based on an old Liverpool custom: small and irritating scousers would lie in wait for ‘foreign’ football fans, tormenting them with variations on the question, ‘Are you a cockney?’ The funny reply would have been yes, but visitors were ill-advised to say it, because invariably there were several big lads hiding round the corner, waiting to duff up the cockneys. I’d witnessed this on match days in the 1970s, when fans with red-and-white scarves wrapped around their extremities would roam the city centre, looking for Chelsea or Arsenal fans to beat up. (This was before the mellowing influences of the heroin plague, and the opening of pubs in the afternoon.) My goal was a hand-to-hand fight like the great judo battle at the mid-point of Kurosawa’s Red Beard. Of course, it’s nowhere near as good: our fight was filmed on the street in a single morning, while The Master took two weeks to film his battle, on a studio set. Chris was very good with the physical action; Frank described Vindici as ploughing through the thugs ‘like a steamroller’ and this is what Chris did. We all liked the conceit of a war between the north of England and the south that, for a brief moment, anyway, the northerners won. Eccleston, being from Manchester, charged them head on. Coming from Liverpool, I thought Vindici might also be a master of disguise, subterfuge, and guile: all scousers want to be this, but are useless at it. The giant TV screen that appears after this first battle contains a picture of the Duke with the old comedian Arthur Askey. Thus did the

X-Films.indb 257

14/05/2008 16:14:24

X films  Ÿ  258

Duke establish his ‘brand’ identity – by identifying himself with iconic entertainers, popular local lads, long dead. It was a sinister thing, like Apple Computers’ ‘Think Different’ campaign, where dead people of real worth, like Ghandi, were co-opted to sell electric gear. We had to get permission from Arthur Askey’s grandchildren to use his image, and they asked to read the script. Interestingly, they understood Frank’s point about the co-optation of valuable images: not only did they get the joke, they found it funny.

Sketch for Vindici’s arrival, Sc 2: the Duke’s banner on the Liver Building. Final version, Sc 2: Arthur Askey and the Duke (Derek Jacobi) on the big screen.

X-Films.indb 258

14/05/2008 16:14:25

259  Ÿ   revengers tragedy My sketch for Sc 92, with the wreckage of Lutyens’ cathedral in the background. Final version, Sc 92: Lutyens’ cathedral under construction! Thank you, Duke.

The giant video screen, and all subsequent effects shots, such as the view of the ruined cathedral, were provided by River Media – a Liverpool-based graphics company run by Tom Lang and John Corner. River were experienced at commercial graphics; this was their first feature. The results surpassed excellent – the head designer was Paul Rogers: he’d already provided animated flies for the trailer, buzzing around the corpses on the bus.

X-Films.indb 259

14/05/2008 16:14:25

X films  Ÿ  260 X-Films.indb 260

Jacobean tragedies are a lot like Italian Westerns. There are many male characters, who commit all manner of entertaining crimes, but very few good female roles. Webster wrote two or three great roles for women (or, rather, for the boys who portrayed women); Middleton’s other tragedies contain stupendous women’s roles; Shakespeare, of course, gave us Lady Macbeth. Often, however, the women in these plays are spiritless, passive, victim types – like Anabella in ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore, or Hamlet’s mum and girlfriend. The women in the original Revengers Tragedy fall into this not-very-interesting category. Castiza is a determined girl, but her determination isn’t directed towards much, besides virginity. Graziana, Vindici’s mother, is weak, greedy, and vacillating; it’s unclear whether her repentance is real or bogus. Frank beefed both roles up as best he could; when the actors took them over, a miracle occurred. Thanks to Carla Henry, a young actor from Moss Side, Castiza became credible at last – flirtatious, furious, funny, possibly suicidal, and insane. And Margi Clarke did the impossible: she took a one-dimensional stooge from Middleton’s line-up of conventional vices, and made her a credible, tragic heroine. The first scene we shot was at Castiza’s house, where Vindici attempts to seduce his sister and his mother. Len and I hadn’t found our feet, but as soon as Margi came down the stairs, and launched into her celebration of corruption, I knew that – from an acting point of view, at least – we would be fine. Margi and Chris were joined by Drew for the scene where the sons attempt to strangle and stab their mother. It was obvious, from Margi’s performance, that the repentance was genuine, not fake. Her sons were cold revengers; only a sincere Christian repentance on their mother’s part would have stopped them cutting her throat. Academics and critics can argue about these things indefinitely, but when it’s done by good actors (professionals or amateurs – they just have to be good), you know exactly what those words mean. All elements are in unison here: acting, writing, camera, music. This is my favourite scene. The big, hand-held close-ups that Len caught as it ended – the two sons clutching their mother’s hands and kissing them – have the intensity of one of the biblical paintings in the Lady Lever or the Walker Art Gallery. There’s also something very Saturday-nightscouse about it: two big babies, bevvied and wired on coke, stagger to their mother’s boyfriend’s house in Garston to give him a kicking and tell her off for being a slag. Boyfriend’s scarpered, and after some more drinking and some screaming, the lads end up on their knees before mam, weeping, pledging their undying love for her, for all time.

14/05/2008 16:14:25

261  Ÿ   revengers tragedy

Eddie Izzard as Lussurioso, Marc Warren as Supervacuo. Justin Salinger and Marc Warren were the idiot brothers, Ambitioso and Supervacuo. Supervacuo is not a bad role – Derek had played it in a student production at Cambridge – but Marc made it his own by deciding that Supervacuo was also the epitome of camp, and would outdo his brothers, and even his dad, in menacing feyness. Casting Paul Reynolds as Junior was a bit of mischief. I’d met him in 1990, when I cast him and Eccleston in Let Him Have It. In that film, Paul’s character killed a policeman: since he was too young to be punished for the crime, his accomplice, played by Eccleston, was hanged instead. Now, at last, I had an opportunity to do dramatic justice, and hang his character, until dead. Eddie Izzard was an agreeable actor. One of the skills he possessed was bar football. By coincidence, a bar football table had been placed in Lussurioso’s bachelor pad, overlooking downtown Liverpool. This led naturally to a contest between Lussurioso and Vindici, across the bar football table. Eddie, being a hotshot, beat Eccleston consistently. I didn’t mind, since I have no interest in footy (full size or in miniature), but Chris wasn’t pleased. Both did admirably the next evening, in the scene where Lussurioso enlists Vindici as a pimp. This was shot on Back Maryland Street, a cobbled street behind a student bar, chock full of garbage bags and rats. It was scheduled to end a long night, and, since the sun

X-Films.indb 261

14/05/2008 16:14:25

X films  Ÿ  262

would be coming up, there was no alternative but to shoot it plano secuencia. I knew Chris could handle it because we’d worked this way on Death and the Compass. And Len and I had shot Pete Wylie’s promo Heart as Big as Liverpool in one long take, with Len operating, walking backwards down a staircase. Technically the shot was very like the one with Boyle and Sando in Death and the Compass, minus the lightning and rain. As then, it was all down to the actors, the expertise of the operator, and the diligence of his focus puller. Walking backwards on cobblestones, Len had to weave between police cars, keep Chris and Ed in shot, and feature Junior, the cops, Lord Antonio, bodyguards, Castiza, and the weeping People’s Princess, at the appropriate moment. I love such scenes, because they’re challenges, and all the work is in the hands of the actors and the camera guys – Garzón and Miguel Urbina, Gowing and Mike Costelloe. Though I’d promised not to shoot Revengers in plano secuencia, this didn’t mean moving masters were entirely banned. In that last hour before daybreak, we managed five complete takes, then the sun appeared. We used take number five. A plano secuencia also gave our more experienced actors a chance to demonstrate their gifts: this inspired and improved the other actors. Consider the other long take in Revengers Tragedy, where Lussurioso tries to murder his parents in their bedroom. The Duke overpowers his son pretty early on; the shot quickly becomes a two-shot of Derek and Eddie, then a three-shot of the Duke and twins, Ambitioso and Supervacuo. Throughout, Diana, who plays the Duchess, is visible in the background, on the bed. She has no dialogue in the scene. What does she do? A Coarse actor1 would either fall asleep or gaze respectfully at the actor who’s speaking, wondering where she left her car keys. Diana, on the other hand, is a Real actor, who really acts. She doesn’t hesitate: excitedly she speaks to her son, Spurio; she looks around for the guards, clutches her hair, again engages in intimate chat with Spurio, and does all of it, mute. Her choice is perfect. And Frazer Ayres, playing Spurio, accepts the invitation to perform a dumb show in the background of the scene. Diana’s doing what she’d do if she were on stage: she’s entirely present whether she’s the focus of the scene or not. The director of a stage play can’t ‘edit’ or focus the audience’s attention the way a film director can (though lighting and performance can do this, up to a point); good actors, therefore, are constantly present.

X-Films.indb 262

14/05/2008 16:14:25

Len and I wanted the flashbacks to Vindici’s wedding day to be stylistically different: we decided to channel Four Weddings and a Funeral, which meant that Len would engage in TV comedy lighting, something all real cinematographers hate, and I, as the director, would come to work with no ideas at all. Vacuity was to be our theme, and on set my only direction was that the camera should follow a bottle of champagne, on a tray held by a waiter, through the wedding throng. ‘Something’s wrong here,’ Eccleston declared as we rehearsed the camera move with the champagne, and ignored the actors. ‘This doesn’t seem like the film we were making yesterday.’ And indeed it wasn’t. Vindici’s wife was played by Jean Butler. Best known as a dancer, she was also a talented and congenial actor. (Gary Davy had pursued her because Frank’s script referred to Gloriana’s head of bright red hair.) Faced with her death scene, Jean told me that it was the first time she had to die, on stage or screen, without dancing. But she went to her reward in a properly grisly, non-dancing, manner.

263  Ÿ   revengers tragedy

We shot in the Birkenhead docklands, with their magnificent vista of the Liverpool skyline – two cathedrals, Three Graces. Here, a strange coincidence occurred. It was just prior to the scene in which Vindici flees his mother’s house at dawn, after bribing her with the jewel. The screenplay read, ‘he runs away like a vampire,’ something that we couldn’t depict, short of bringing a coffin along. We filmed on a cloudy Friday, at dusk. As Vindici approached his mother’s metal shack beside the dock, a ship sailed through the background, headed for the river. Its name was Jonathan Harker.

One of the less enjoyable aspects of film-making is dealing with the visiting financiers. Revengers Tragedy was marked by quite primadonna-ish behaviour by the investors. Numerous Film Council wallahs came up to Liverpool for the obligatory on-set visits. As usual, such visits tended to occur when the main stars were in attendance: in this case, Sophie Dahl. A journalist, also on set, wrote a short location piece in which he referred to our visiting financiers as ‘useless poodles’. It was quite accurate, and best ignored, but the Film Council employees – none of whom had been named – were deeply upset. So upset that they asked Margaret and Tod to write a letter of complaint to the magazine in question, Time Out. This was quite ridiculous, and it suggests to me that our financial benefactors were either unusually sensitive, or completely new to

X-Films.indb 263

14/05/2008 16:14:25

X films  Ÿ  264

the game of making films. Certain actors are very rude, department heads throw wobblers, and the entertainment press hands out insults gratuitously – these are truths that anyone involved in film, TV, or theatre knows. For the Film Council to be hurt, and for them to ask the producers to respond, was silly. It was like a playwright, or a film director, replying to a bad review. One just didn’t do it. To soothe the Film Council’s feelings, I wrote a letter to Time Out. I said it had been bold of the New Cinema Fund to fund Revengers Tragedy (true) and that our set visitors were not poodles, but tigers (false). This was the most shameful thing I did during Revengers, and I apologise to the journalist whose work I criticised. At least the Film Council weren’t like the eugenics-oriented private investor who quizzed Margaret, Tod, and me over dinner. This fellow wanted to know the specific racial makeup of one of the actors: was she a quadroon or an octoroon? His questions were the kind you would expect to hear in Mandingo, in one of the slave market scenes, but feature films need money, and you have to hang out with some weird types in order to get it. One of the most difficult aspects of Revengers was finding a location for the football scene. You’d think Liverpool – with two football stadia, plus another across the water – would be an easy place to film a football match. However, the huge corporations of Liverpool and Everton FCs are not just about the boring business of football – they are in the same game as Real Madrid or Man United: mega-property owners and developers, traders in human capital, licensers of replica sportswear, aggressive intellectual property litigators, promoters of brand identities, and parking lot millionaires. The last thing they want is some film crew traipsing out onto the pitch; they don’t need the publicity, and you don’t have enough money to make it worth their while. Not even Tranmere Rovers, the third-division Birkenhead club, would let us in. This was a pity, because Tranmere’s ground was still seedy and Eastern European: grey, run-down, overlooked by a concrete box in which the security guards sat. It was a perfect location for Frank’s battle royal: a five-a-side, private football match between the Duke’s Men and the Lord Antonio’s Lads. But it was not to be – the only stadium that would have us was Aintree, where the Grand National and other horse races occur. Unlike the footy pitches, Aintree only functions in daylight. So, while it has a large and impressive stand, it has no lights at all. Len discovered this on the day of the shoot,

X-Films.indb 264

14/05/2008 16:14:25

X-Films.indb 265

265  Ÿ   revengers tragedy

having arrived to pre-light. He had to rent all the available lamps in Manchester to illuminate the stadium. In the absence of a pitch, our football match had become a bar football game. Tony Booth sat in the box normally reserved for the Queen Mother, and we used this regal location for the murder of the Duke. The bar football contest, and associated events, was shot in five or six different locations, on different days and nights, over three weeks. It fits together thanks to the most diligent concentration of the camera, costume, and makeup departments, Kim’s excellent scheduling, and Ray Fowlis, who edited it. The giant screen TVs featuring Castiza and the knife-thrower were also the work of River Media. The knife-thrower was played by Shaun Mason. Aintree was our last long night shoot, and everyone was trailing by the end of it. Hours earlier, Kim had asked if she could let the extras go. I’d said she could, and went to rehearse the last scenes involving the Duchess and her sons. We came, in due course, to the scene in which Lussurioso, terrified for his life, called out for help. ‘Men! Guards!’ Eddie dutifully cried, ‘Stand by my person!’ He looked around for his guards. I did, too. Kim shook her head. I remembered that I had told her that the extras – henchmen, guards, and retainers – were no longer needed. They had all gone home. What to do? Lussurioso, surrounded by his hated brothers, was calling for his guards, and there were no guards to be seen. Eddie called again for his guards, and when they didn’t come, remarked: ‘So this is where I call for my guards, right? And we don’t have any. So maybe it would be FUNNIER if when I call for guards, nobody comes? Right?’ Right! Of course! It was indeed funnier, at 4 a.m. on an icecold, windswept summer’s night at Aintree; the entire cast and crew thanked him, under their breath, for not obliging us to do it properly. Eddie was generally considered Most Improved Player. So it was weird when, on the last day of filming, Eccleston came down on Izzard like a ton of bricks. Chris waited till Ed had finished work, then beckoned him aside and laid down the law: he told Izzard he was unprofessional, a bad actor, that he was disrespectful to the crew, nobody liked him, and that he was always late. Eddie’s comic act is one of anxiety, misunderstanding, and constant self-assessment. In real life, whatever that is, his manner is pretty similar. You can imagine how he would react to a telling-off, especially from such a principled and experienced thespian. Deeply troubled, Eddie told me what had transpired: he repeated Chris’ list of his transgressions, and asked me, very seriously, if any of them were

14/05/2008 16:14:25

X films  Ÿ  266

true. I said I thought he was very professional, and a very good actor. I remarked that the crew had given him Most Improved Player status, due to his lack of fuss over the henchmen. I assured him, truthfully, that he was always respectful and polite. ‘What about the lateness?’ Eddie wanted to know. ‘Ah, the lateness. There, Chris has a point.’ Eddie tended to run late. This might sound like a problem, but if it’s consistent, it isn’t a big deal. The ADs would just give him a call time half an hour before he was needed, then he’d show up half an hour late – i.e. on time. What was ironic was that certain other actors had a tendency to be late, too – naming no names. That afternoon we had a distinguished visitor – John Pitcher, the Renaissance scholar from St John’s, Oxford. Pitcher endured a seven-hour, broken-down Virgin train journey to Liverpool, and was immediately put to work explaining to Chris and Drew the meaning of the expression ‘clipping nobles’. He couldn’t have come at a more opportune time, since his was a fresh face, and an enthusiastic presence. In the play, mother and sister simply vanish during the final action. Reading Frank’s script, I’d always assumed that Hannah and Castiza would stay behind when Vindici and Carlo made their break for freedom. Such a decorous fade-out never occurred to Margi or Carla. When the brothers took Antonio hostage, mother and sister went with them, watching the lads’ backs as they marched the new Duke down the stairs. I asked Margi why they made that choice. She and Carla replied it hadn’t been a choice: ‘Where else were we going to go?’ Thus do actors know their own part better than any director. Thus does Revengers end properly, with the entire clan gunned down, together with their hostage, beneath the portrait of the Queen.

POSTPRODUCTION Revengers Tragedy was the first film I cut on a computer. Ray and I had cut three documentaries on his digital system, thus helping me overcome my fear of computers. What if it crashed? What if the hard drive died? What if the tapes got wiped or lost? None of these horrors proved as inevitable as I’d expected (though the Avid certainly froze every few hours, and the Windows OS crashed at least once a day).

X-Films.indb 266

14/05/2008 16:14:25

267  Ÿ   revengers tragedy

It was exciting and liberating to re-shoot film or video sequences off the cutting room monitor – degrading the image massively – and immediately reincorporate a new graphic element into the film. In any case, film editing wasn’t an option. With a tight budget, film rushes were a disposable luxury, like the Moviolas and the flatbeds piled up in the corridors at Skywalker Ranch. Our negative had been transferred to video at Soho Images, and the tapes sent up to us. Once we settled on a cutting style, Ray proved as gifted as any analogue editor. That scene where the brothers threatened to kill their mother was entirely cut by Ray – after I saw what he’d done with the material, I could think of no improvements. We edited at Mersey Film and Video, on Hope Street. One Wednesday afternoon, early in September 2001, the office received a glossy wall chart, showing Liverpool city centre divided into 37 coloured zones. It was titled the ‘LIVERPOOL CITY CENTRE EVACUATION PLAN’ and it said, in red letters, ‘This Wall Chart Should Be Displayed in a Prominent Place!’ The accompanying text read, ‘A major disaster can be in many guises and may affect the City Centre at any time. It is essential that we plan ahead and minimise the risks to the people and businesses that make up the heart of the City Centre.’ Plans for the evacuation of the city centre followed, using a numbered zoning system devised by the City Council and the Emergency Services. ‘The map clearly shows the numbered zones and it is important that you establish not only which zone you are in, but also the zone numbers adjacent to you.’ In order to be ready for the emergency evacuation, city centre businesses were urged to obtain a special pager: ‘It is recommended that there should be at the very least one pager in each building in the city centre,’ the wall chart warned. Information about these pagers was available from BT Paging and Merseyside Emergency Planning Unit; the wall chart itself was produced by ‘Merseyside Emergency Planning Unit in conjunction with the following organisations: Merseyside Fire & Civic Defence Authority, Merseyside Police, Mersey Regional Ambulance Service, British Transport Police, Liverpool City Council, Liverpool Health Authority, Merseyrail, and the Clayton Square Shopping Centre.’ Around the edge of the map were adverts for companies likely to be involved in the evacuation or the aftermath of a disaster (‘24-hour replacement glazing service’). In the first week of September 2001, a consortium of Liverpool authorities anticipated some urban disaster, and a wall chart

X-Films.indb 267

14/05/2008 16:14:25

X films  Ÿ  268

promoting city-wide evacuation was distributed. The Evacuation Plan was limited to the central business and shopping districts. It excluded the universities, the two cathedrals, and major hospitals. What was going on here? What disaster could force the evacuation of the business district, but not of the students, or of the hospitals? It seemed like a deliberate wind-up. But why? And where did they get their information? Six days later was 11 September 2001. Strangely, the Liverpool Evacuation Plan was forgotten: there was no follow-up, no further mention of emptying out the city centre, zone-by-zone, no more ads for pagers. Revengers postproduction rolled on, and we occasionally shook our heads at the strange coincidence that the population of our imaginary Liverpool wore turbans and headscarves, like the people we were now bombing in Afghanistan. When the invasion of Iraq loomed, a local bomb/evacuation scenario seemed much more likely, so I decided to apply for one of those pagers. I called the Merseyside Emergency Planning Unit: their number had been disconnected. I called BT Paging’s number: they were now called O2 Paging, and didn’t know anything about the scheme. They promised to fax me an Evacuation Pager Application Form – it didn’t arrive. It was hard to reach a decision about a couple of scenes. Both of them involved the revengers’ mother, played by Margi Clarke. Margi gave a great performance, but her two great scenes – one where the brothers proposed to kill her, and one where Castiza tormented her, pretending to be a prostitute – were problematic in that they delayed the swift forward movement of the action, and postponed the cataclysm of revenge. Frank and the producers felt we should cut both scenes out; Ray and I wanted to keep them. In the end we compromised, and cut out the second scene. The film’s pace was still slowed by that Vindici–Carlo–Hannah scene, but I couldn’t bring myself to lose it. It was important, on Middleton’s terms, and it contained very good acting. The most sensible solution would have been to produce two versions of the picture: a fast-moving cinema one, and a morecomplete DVD version for schools and academic audiences. But our contracts required all versions of the film be the same, even down to the certificate. We showed Revengers Tragedy to Northcroft, our co-financiers, and the Film Council on 9 October 2001, in the BFI theatre in London. The New Cinema Fund subsequently gave us lengthy notes. The other

X-Films.indb 268

14/05/2008 16:14:25

269  Ÿ   revengers tragedy

investor had just two comments: ‘I don’t like the last shot of the film; I think the first shot should explain what’s happened.’ The first shot was the arrival of the bus. And the last, following a zoom in on the royal portrait in Liverpool Town Hall, was a shot of the World Trade Center collapsing, as Vindici’s wife’s skull screamed for revenge. I thought it was timely and appropriate, given that ‘we’ (the Pentagon and NATO) had just embarked on an open-ended war of revenge. At that time I imagined that the press would treat these new wars of aggression – no different from the US wars against Vietnam, or Latin America – as acts of revenge, and that the words ‘Revengers Tragedy’ would soon be commonplace in our political discourse, in order to describe this folly and self-destructive wickedness. It didn’t happen. With the exception of the Independent, the media didn’t oppose the war: they became cheer-leaders for it. But I still thought revenge bad, and that it doomed the revenge-taker: hence our use, in the film, of that spurious ‘Chinese’ proverb about the revenge-seeker needing to dig two graves. For the same reason, I wasn’t inclined to remove the Twin Towers ending. It was there for a moral purpose, in keeping with the play and with the film. The private investor didn’t like it because he was offended by its politics. The head of the New Cinema Fund told me the WTC must be removed because ‘otherwise you won’t get an American release’. (It’s fortunate the Film Council weren’t executive producers of Michael Moore’s documentaries, or Fahrenheit 9/11 would never have been made. His fear illustrates the London quango’s knee-jerk terror of upsetting the Americans, and their lack of actual experience in the American market.) Regarding the opening sequence, it was certainly possible to make changes: to add something that more clearly elucidated the ‘back story’ of the film. I went through various synopses that had accompanied Frank’s script in the money-raising stage. One of them read thus: It is 2011. Ten years ago, a great comet hit the earth, destroying the south of England and most of France. DUKE TOURNEUR, a London gangster, was on a golfing holiday with his family in Malaga. He returned to England and relocated his operations to Liverpool. Among his many crimes has been the murder of a young woman betrothed to VINDICI.

X-Films.indb 269

14/05/2008 16:14:25

X films  Ÿ  270

Today most of the population lives in dire poverty – VINDICI’s family among them. Others live lives of ostentatious wealth and power – especially the DUKE. VINDICI has not been seen since 2001. Today he returns.

So our assignment was to convey, briefly, some of the scale of this disaster – to show the catastrophe that had created the world our characters inhabited: the devastated North of England, ten years from now. We spoke to Tom and Jon about an extra sequence. Paul sketched out an opening scene showing the earth from space, then zooming through clouds to reveal the huge crater of a comet that has devastated Western Europe.2 This was achievable, and would improve the film. I ignored the notes about the ending. Besides, there were many other notes still to be considered. The first tranche we’d received from the New Cinema Fund was seven pages long, and involved around 40 different points. (A second tranche of additional notes followed later.) I’d never received such a bulk of notes from anyone. Somebody clearly had lots of time on their hands. Some of the notes were helpful. Some were less useful, such as ‘Make the Duke’s death look like a tacky rock video.’ What did this mean? Why should we? Some suggested the writer had not seen a film before, as in ‘Night scene follows daylight shot. Suggest including shot of sunset.’ But the worst note was the Film Council’s suggestion that we shoot a ‘more explicit, graphic rape’ of Sophie’s character. It was certainly true that recently a couple of French films with violent rape scenes (Irréversible and Baise-moi) had been highlighted at Cannes, and released in Britain, to much controversy. In my films, I’d managed to avoid a graphic rape scene, or indeed any rape scenes at all. One of the pretexts for The Revengers Tragedy was a rape, but in the play it happened prior to the action. Len had filmed a perfectly adequate Argento/De Palma sequence in which Paul and his henchmen stalked Sophie. At the end of it, they followed her into a stairwell – this was enough. I didn’t want to film any more, nor did Tod or Margaret want to call Sophie’s agents and tell them the Film Council wanted her character raped more graphically. So we refused. Instead, Ray and I held on a CCTV image of the empty corridor, and added a scream. Beneath the scream, we repeated a shot of Lord Antonio, cheering grotesquely, and various one-frame clips of the voodoo items that surrounded Castiza’s boudoir. I think the result

X-Films.indb 270

14/05/2008 16:14:25

Does anything connect Revengers Tragedy to Three Businessmen, or to the films I made in Nicaragua and Mexico? There is a link, I think – it’s localism. All are different – extremely different – but each represents something specific, particular to the places and cultures where they were filmed. Mexico may be fucked-up, but at least it isn’t a selfpitying bully, like its neighbour to the north. It has its own specific problems and its own solutions; it’s also a cultural powerhouse. Liverpool may be awful, but it also has its strengths, its noble side. Mexico City, Managua, and Liverpool provide alternative narratives: they contradict the ‘official’ storyline. For this reason the dominant power must worry constantly about them; must starve them of resources and autonomy; must threaten them with ‘regeneration’. Tom Harnick, our location manager, talked about the damage ‘regeneration’ had done to Liverpool. Growing up, he’d seen whole neighbourhoods – not slums, but vibrant working-class areas – destroyed to create car parks for football pitches and motorway access roads. One night, Tom asked me something. He’d seen the budget, and so he knew how much the producers and I were getting paid. Seemingly puzzled, Tom said, ‘You’re not doing this for the money, are you?’ ‘No,’ I said. ‘So I reckon,’ Tom went on, ‘that this must be a labour of love, like.’ I said yes, and in that way Revengers was the same as my other films – the good ones, anyway. But I think Tom’s puzzlement deepened. Because, if you always labour for love, when do you get paid?

271  Ÿ   revengers tragedy

was better. Perhaps the absence of a violent, controversial rape scene made it more difficult to sell to Cannes. Fuck Cannes. Sometimes you do what’s right, regardless of French film programmers.

Chumbawamba didn’t worry about stuff like that. They knew what they wanted to do, and they did it. I made several pilgrimages to their studio in Bradford, followed by convivial visits to the local real-ale hostelry. I was travelling by train, and the railways were in complete disarray following privatisation and several fatal accidents. So I’d usually end up, hungry and drunk, on windswept platforms such as Bradford Interchange, hoping for a train, any train, heading west, where I might catch a Liverpool connection. If I’d been a real film director I would have caught a taxi back to Liverpool. Instead, I’d become Frank King. All that supported me through those dark vigils were the remains of a plastic-wrapped newsagent sandwich, and some immensely memorable new sounds, courtesy of the Chumbas.

X-Films.indb 271

14/05/2008 16:14:25

X films  Ÿ  272

Somewhere across the water They’re storming the palace gates. Scared of the moth-flame metaphor We sit at home and wait . . .

Revengers Tragedy went through a digital process in the creation of the final negative. This meant we could include small effects, such as wipes, or dust clean-up, without losing a ‘film’ generation: indeed, the overall quality of the 35mm blow-up seemed sharper than a conventional negative-to-positive blow-up. All the information on celluloid and tape went into a huge computer in Copenhagen, was shaken, stirred, reflavourised, and emerged on an unbroken roll of 35mm negative. Dissolves were decadent, and still not to be used. But I’d been impressed by Kurosawa’s use of wipes, and by the possibility of having two faces in frame during the transition. For the first time, I had a chance to play with wipes: I probably under-used them. Ray tested these possibilities to speed up and slow down certain shots – such as the accelerated track around and in on Vindici, in the funeral hall. The film was mixed by Kevin Brazier at his facility in Soho. When there was some doubt as to whether the anticipated mixer would be available, I suggested we contact Richard Beggs, the brilliant sound designer of Walker and Three Businessmen. This was dismissed as too difficult, and inappropriate for a British independent film. Kevin’s effects cutters turned out to be excellent, and the mix went well. However, there was a sad postscript: within 18 months of the completion of Revengers Tragedy, Kevin shut his operation down – there wasn’t enough work for him to keep employing staff, and pay the rent. Quite sensibly, he didn’t want to go into debt, so he shut down one of Soho’s oldest and most stable postproduction houses. There was work in London, of course, but it was work for the American studios – big-budget productions like Harry Potter and the latest James Bond film. And the studios kept that work in-house: they qualified for all the British tax breaks, brought over American specialists, and repatriated the profits. A year after Kevin’s business shut down, Richard Beggs and his assistant were flown over from San Francisco to design the sound for the latest Harry Potter sequel. This was an American film, shot at one of London’s suburban studios to draw ‘New’ Labour’s subsidies, directed by a Mexican. We retained the WTC ending for as long as possible, but the New Cinema Fund had to sign off on the picture, and refused to do so until

X-Films.indb 272

14/05/2008 16:14:25

273  Ÿ   revengers tragedy

we removed the footage they feared might offend Americans. (It never occurred to them to ask Tod, who is an American, and was the film’s producer, her opinion.) We replaced the 11 September footage with film of the Nagasaki bomb. This came after a chance conversation with an old man in a pub. The bar was the Carnarvon Castle, one of the nicest, quietest bars in Liverpool. A friend and I had got into a conversation with this auld feller about terrorism, and discussed the 9/11 attacks. ‘Ay,’ he said, ‘but you’ve got to put it in perspective. That wasn’t the greatest terrorist atrocity against civilians. The greatest terrorist act was dropping the Nagasaki bomb in 1945; 175,000 people died. The Americans didn’t need to do it. They just wanted to see if it worked.’ Sam Cohen had told me the same thing. I went in search of Nagasaki footage. I’m not sure if the material we found was really the Nagasaki bomb, though it was licensed to us as such. It didn’t really matter: no one was going to identify any particular atom bomb. It was just a nuclear blast: a powerful, and horrific image, but lacking the immediacy of the WTC footage, and the specific context of revenge.

RELEASE Revengers Tragedy was rejected by all the major festivals of Europe. This seemed strange at first, given that it had some well-known names in it, including a supermodel. But there was one element, which, placed right at the beginning, may have been a tad off-putting to those festivals’ programmers. It was the special effects shot that our investor had requested: a satellite POV of Earth from space. In this image – beautifully executed by River Media – a gaping crater left by the meteor impact can be seen. Most of the cities of Western Europe, including London, but also Cannes, Berlin, and Venice, have been obliterated. How would you feel if you were a festival programmer, watching dozens of tapes and DVDs a day, and in one of them, the town where you live and work had been destroyed, merely as the back story? You might think, great, I hate this place, we’re showing this picture. Or you might think, we receive X million Euros annual subsidy from the good burghers of this city to promote a positive image of (fill in name of obliterated capital) .  .  . Next! Despite the

X-Films.indb 273

14/05/2008 16:14:25

X films  Ÿ  274

earring and the filmophile manner, most festival programmers aren’t nihilists. All they really want to do is not get fired, go to the big official dinner with Nicole Kidman, and get some sleep. The rest is a nuisance. Revengers was invited to festivals in Edinburgh, Cambridge, Hereford, and Birmingham – where it won a prize. It was also invited to the Locarno Festival. I missed this as I was directing a TV show in Japan, but Margaret and Eddie attended the screenings. Ed proved to be a valiant supporter of the film, and joined us in Edinburgh for the film’s British premiere. Our best review appeared in the Italian paper Il Manifesto: they called the film ‘un affresco prepotente e inquietante’. It was one of three films chosen to open the cinemas at the Foundation for Art & Creative Technology (FACT) in Liverpool. This was the end of a ‘bullish’ period for my old home town, in which several local independent films were made. In fact, it seemed as if Liverpool might become an independent film centre, in the manner of San Francisco, New York, or Rotterdam. There was no shortage of talent in the city, but there was no support for the talent, either. Remarkably, the soundtrack CD came out on the very day the film opened: something Strummer and I hadn’t managed to achieve on Walker. Rightly disdainful of their record company, Chumbawamba simply self-published the CD – selling it off their website, and sending copies to all the cinemas in time for opening night. It was such an obvious, successful strategy that I wondered why Joe had never tried it on any of the films he scored. But he was caught in the big league, where everything was done for you – which made everything seem much more expensive, and more difficult. Strummer could have selfproduced a dozen albums: he never knew the power he really had. Whereas there were 11 Chumbas, who knew what they wanted, and did it. The last time I saw Strummer was at the Cannes Film Festival. I hadn’t run into him in several years. We’d been invited to attend a bean-feast, and we were housed down the street from the event. Our hosts asked us not to walk to it, so we waited for a long time outside the hotel. Eventually black cars came, picked us up, crawled down the Croisette, and let us out at the end of a red carpet at the bottom of some stairs. At the top of the staircase was a mob of press photographers and film crews, all of them fixated on the black cars. I indicated the photographers: ‘Just like old times!’ Joe shook his head. ‘When we get

X-Films.indb 274

14/05/2008 16:14:26

X-Films.indb 275

275  Ÿ   revengers tragedy

to the top of the staircase’, he told me, ‘they’ll all turn their backs.’ We walked up the staircase, on the wide red carpet, with the rest of our party. As we got closer to the phalanx of press photographers, they clocked us, realised we were of no account, and just as Strummer had predicted, all turned away.

14/05/2008 16:14:26

X-Films.indb 276

14/05/2008 16:14:26

SEARCHERS 2.0 In 2006 I tried to get a project going in Liverpool: a slate of eight micro-budget features, in time for ‘Capital of Culture’ year, 2008. The scheme would have involved most of the city’s audiovisual community (directors, actors, writers, producers, composers, special effects, camera, and crew). Home-grown features had been few since the glory days of Colin McKeown’s Liam and Revengers Tragedy, and I thought ‘8408’ might infuse some local blood into the drifting 2008 project: as usual, local cultural producers were being ignored. It was not to be: the City Council went with a rival proposal – by the regional screen agency – to produce only three films. The first film they greenlit brought a director and crew from London. Yet the exciting notion of the microfeature – costing £100,000 or less – stuck with me. This was the low road, the way we’d originally wanted to make Repo Man. Though super-cheap, it would be made by ‘real’ film people. However, the destination was DVD, not the cinema. Wasn’t this a betrayal of the vision that began this book: the siren song of the theatrical, 35mm feature? Maybe – but I’d already been down that road. It seemed only a studio could make money out of theatrical distribution. The cinema-owner made a loss by showing the film itself; the profits were in commercials, and in moving aspartame and popcorn. An independent producer was worse off: if the studio distributed your picture, they did it badly, lost heart, and sent it straight to video. An independent distributor might give it their best shot, but they wouldn’t have much of an advertising budget, and wouldn’t be able to get good screens. If you four-walled the picture yourself, you were limited to a handful of cinemas and were lucky to break even.

X-Films.indb 277

14/05/2008 16:14:26

X films  Ÿ  278 X-Films.indb 278

Four-walling was still best, since you didn’t end up in debt to the studio or distributor, and you still owned the video and ancilliary rights, but it was a lot of work and hassle. A microfeature, being shot on video, didn’t need to play in the cinema, at all – at least, that was the theory. The previous year, I’d gone to Monument Valley to see Once Upon a Time in the West projected on a giant inflatable screen. The organisers generously put me up at Goulding’s Trading Post – the equivalent of the Gran Hotel in Almería – where Ford and Wayne had stayed while filming Stagecoach and many other films. I’d taken an extraordinary hike across Hunts Mesa with a Navajo guide. Tim League, who ran this rolling roadshow, told me he was planning to screen The Searchers in Monument Valley in 2006 – the film’s fiftieth anniversary year. So when the Liverpool project folded, I called up Rudy Wurlitzer, and suggested we drive out together and see The Searchers, in the mystical place where it was filmed. In the past, I’d managed to lure Wurlitzer out to the Old Tucson movie ranch, and the Forrest Tucker ruin, near Tubac, Arizona. Unfortunately, Rudy’s back was playing up, and he demurred. I went anyway, and before I went, I wrote a script about two outof-work actors with a grudge against a screenwriter, who decide to attend a showing of his film in Monument Valley, so they can beat him up. Was I mad at Rudy for not accompanying me on another fruitless, memory-lane excursion? Not at all. The fact that the screenwriter in the script is named Fritz Frobisher is coincidental. The Searchers, on Goulding’s airstrip, overlooking Monument Valley, was magnificent. Ford got a bigger turnout than Leone: 200 people, including all the German, British, French, and Japanese tourists from the Lodge. It was too dark to see those formidable buttes, but just to watch a new print on this big screen under the stars, instead of on a TV, was enough. Wayne, in his character’s worst moments, looked like a monster: Ford filmed him in shadow, with a worn-out face and staring eyes. Yet Ethan Edwards was a multi-faceted racist: his was the only white character to speak Comanche. Before the show I’d chatted with a Hopi tourist from Gallup, New Mexico. He and his wife drove up to Monument Valley now and then, he told me, to play golf. I thought he was joking, but out came half a dozen golf balls and two irons, and they started knocking the balls around the old campground on the hill there, with the red Mittens and Merrick Butte in the background. They were excellent golfers. So Indian desert golfers showed up in the next draft of Searchers 2.0.

14/05/2008 16:14:26

279  Ÿ   searchers 2.0

Most of the story takes place on the backroads between Venice, California, and that inflatable screen; I reckoned the last third would be shot in Monument Valley, or in Valley of the Gods, across the Utah border. The actors would drive east as we filmed them; the shoot would take 12 days. The total budget was already fixed, of course – but how to raise it? I first tried to find the £100,000 via the Internet, having read several articles in which enterprising filmmakers raised money this way, or said they were about to. Via my site I put out the call for serious feature investors. Two or three kind, genuine people contacted me, offering thousand-pound commitments in return for a point in the picture. Several nutters, some with multiple personalities, also contacted me. However, this attempt was an almost total bust – perhaps I did it wrong, but I do wonder how many of those Internet features actually got made. Perhaps a band can raise the money for an album via the Internet – the budget is much less – but it wasn’t happening for this microfeature. Searchers 2.0 is the fortieth script I’ve written. Pretty much all of these, from a First World War story to a biopic of Che Guevara, got the same initial response: ‘the characters are unsympathetic’. Certain screenplays got made into films anyway: most didn’t. The characters of Searchers 2.0 are fairly typical of my films: Fred is a reactionary nut who always sides with the forces of authority, thereby disadvantaging himself; Mel thinks of himself as a politically aware, righteous guy, but he’s also a deadbeat dad; and Delilah is a Prozac addict whose world view comes from reading two contradictory books (hence her desire for a hybrid Suburban). But this time, strangely, there were no objections to the script on grounds of sympathy. Instead, several people wanted to produce the film. Michael Nesmith was interested. This should have been a onestop shop, since Nez could easily have funded the picture. Just as previously, he didn’t want to. He gave me some excellent notes: that Delilah should be Mel’s daughter, not his ex-wife, and that her car should be a Cadillac Excalibur SUV, or similar – ‘the biggest, most expensive, stupidest car on the road’. Instead of banking the film, Nez said he wanted to read for the role of Fred. And he felt the film should be shot in five-minute segments, and made available as a periodic download to mobile phones. Various LA producers offered to take the picture on; a dear actor friend, made wealthy by a weekly telly series, thought he might

X-Films.indb 279

14/05/2008 16:14:26

X films  Ÿ  280

fund it, but all these offers came with a familiar price: casting. The producers wanted to ‘cast the picture up’ – that is, raise the budget to $3.5 million so as to hire, say, Cheech Marin and Bill Murray to play Mel and Fred. My actor friend thought he and another thespian whom he regarded highly should play the roles. For me, this was problematic. At one point in the script, Mel and Fred are mistaken for homeless people by a Mexican guy who gives them a dollar. This follows the revelation that neither of them has health insurance. Now this is not surprising: 40 million Americans don’t have health insurance; 18,000 Americans die every year because of this. Fred and Mel are ‘between gigs’ – in other words, out of work. But imagine Murray or Cheech, or any other upper-middle-class Hollywood actor, trying to say those lines. It would be unfair to the thesps: it would seem like hypocritical, insincere film-flam – just the kind of acting Fred Fletcher hates. I’d based these characters, to some extent, on Del Zamora and Ed Pansullo – actors I’d known for more than 20 years. Ed had pretty much retired: like Fred, he was working as a travel agent in the Bay Area. And Del, like Mel, hung out at Home Depot looking for work as a day labourer, to support his primary career, actor. Jonathan Wacks proposed a partnership with New Mexican investors. But we’d need to shoot a goodly chunk in their home state, and to get E&O insurance. (Errors and Omissions, the reader may recall, entails an insurance company vetting the screenplay for potential libels, defamations, or breaches of copyright.) Wacks is a

Del Zamora as Melvino Torres.

X-Films.indb 280

14/05/2008 16:14:26

281  Ÿ   searchers 2.0

Ed Pansullo as Fred Fletcher. good producer but E&O and microfeatures don’t necessarily gel. Then a new fly landed in the ointment. I don’t mean to compare Jon Davison to a fly, although he did produce the greatest giant bug movie of the 1990s, Starship Troopers. Among his other works are White Dog, Airplane, and RoboCop. Like Ed, Jon had retired: in his case to his ranch, where he bred massive, pedigree attack dogs. Years before, he and I had tried, and failed, to make a giant bug movie of our own: Mars Attacks! When he read Searchers 2.0, Jon offered to be my LA-based assistant. In this capacity, he took the script to Frances Doel, head of development for Roger Corman. Corman offered to finance the film to the tune of $180,000; he wanted it shot in 15 days. Roger was the perfect executive producer for Searchers 2.0. His famous cheapness meant that he didn’t want E&O insurance: this was a good thing, because it would have killed, or at least warped, the project. On E&O orders, I’d had to remove powerful, litigious brand names from the script of Repo Man. Searchers 2.0 is far more anticorporate, and specific. The script denigrates cars generally, and SUVs in particular. Fred insists that Volvos break down and that Denalis and other big pickup-truck-based luxury vehicles are dangerous. Delilah’s Suburban is always out of gas or in the shop. Other trademarks, including AAA, MPAA, Megantic Pictures, Megalithic Studios, and Naomi Klein’s No Logo are referenced, often by maniacs. Worse, from a litigation viewpoint, are the gratuitous insults to beloved folk heroes. Delilah mocks Bud Boetticher; Frobisher insults

X-Films.indb 281

14/05/2008 16:14:26

X films  Ÿ  282

John Wayne. Terrible stories are told about Ronald Reagan, Bob Hope, and Al Pacino. Al Gore and Michael Moore are repeatedly denounced. In terms of copyright infringements, we were on firmer ground, I thought: the film is a vague pastiche of the real Searchers, and copyright law is more lenient towards comedy – on the grounds of ‘parody’ or ‘satire’ – than it is towards ‘serious’ drama. This is ridiculous, but the law is thus, and lucky for us. Thus did Roger’s cheapness greatly increase the spontaneity and joke quotient of the film. He also supported, in the interests of inexpensiveness, my casting choices: I was able to invite Del and Ed to play the lead roles: how rarely does a writer get to do that! And what a treat for a director! It was natural to cast Sy Richardson as the semimythical Fritz Frobisher; of all the actors I’ve worked with, he’s still the best. Sy, Del, and Ed were excellent actors who’d been reduced to playing quasi-extras in the film I directed as a work-for-hire, The

Sy Richardson as the semi-mythical Fritz. Winner. Back then, I’d thought the old stock company dead: now we were together again. In terms of crew it was also familiar territory: Steve Fierberg kindly agreed to shoot the film; Cecilia Montiel and Diego Sandoval to be our art department; Dan Wool to score it. One of the script’s sub-themes is the sadism and authoritarianism of mainstream film-making. Writing it, I thought of Foronjy’s story of Sidney Lumet asserting control over his picture; of Peter Bogdanovich’s

X-Films.indb 282

14/05/2008 16:14:26

283  Ÿ   searchers 2.0

tale of John Ford publicly kicking his producer off the set. I thought of a quote from Terry Gilliam, which I’d seen on the wall of an insurance company in LA: something like ‘One day we will be dust. Only the film matters. Only the film will endure.’ I thought of my own direction of Straight to Hell: hadn’t poor Zander suffered unnecessarily as I encouraged the other actors to torment his character/him? In Searchers 2.0, Fred seeks revenge against Fritz for torturing him – but it emerges that Fred was equally cruel towards his fellow actors, given the chance. So I asked Zander to play the gas station attendant, Rusty, formerly a young actor, and victim of Fred. However, winter was coming, and winter – especially the couple of weeks before Christmas – is the season when the Circle Jerks tour rest homes and hospices in the Mid West, playing to their surviving fans. Zander was fully booked, and couldn’t replace himself in time, so we went the old-fashioned route and held auditions. On 11 November I took the train from Klamath Falls down to Van Nuys, near Boss Davison’s place. (As money-saving measures, Jon and his wife, Sally Cruikshank, put me up on their ranch when I went to LA, and Jon forgot to pay himself. This was insanely generous of them both, and is not recommended.) After a day of auditions – run by two outstanding casting directors, Jan Glaser and Christine Joyce, with Del reading opposite the actors – we cast Zahn McClarnon as Rusty. We rented a Chevy Suburban and headed out on our one location scout: me, Jon, Steve, Cecilia and Diego. Steve had borrowed the latest Canon ‘prosumer’ camera, which we were going to test by shooting drive-bys of the location vehicle. This was Jon’s excellent idea as, in the struggle to get the acting part of any film made, the first things that get dropped from the schedule are establishing shots and drive-bys. In Indio we searched for the Siete Mares, a seafood restaurant that had burned down; we couldn’t find it. We stayed in 29 Palms, then headed east, through Earp and Hope, to Bagdad, which we reached just after sunset. I’d written the gas station scene without ever visiting this town: its name was the attraction. Its gas station, when we rolled in at dusk, was new and disappointing. We drove back into the dark, towards Prescott; Jon put his Return of Ringo soundtrack CD in the big truck’s player. We found Skull Valley – Skull Valley, Arizona, is everything Bagdad should have been: it has an ancient petrol station with antique pumps, and a wood-framed

X-Films.indb 283

14/05/2008 16:14:26

X films  Ÿ  284 X-Films.indb 284

general store where locals sit around the stove. It also has a better name. After a night in Prescott, we drove on to Monument Valley, pausing only to get stuck in sand, and be rescued by Navajos. We spent two nights at Goulding’s; we drove through Monument Valley and into the Valley of the Gods, and watched a DVD projection of The Searchers in the John Ford Theater. Jon drove us back to LA – astonishingly (for me, who travels at a snail’s pace via secondary roads) we made it in 10 hours. The roads we’d picked were mostly less-travelled: good for acting-while-driving. Counting Skull Valley, we had all our locations. The two outstanding issues now were: 1) which camera to use; and 2) who should play Delilah. The Canon had a good lens and nice, sharp images, but I had difficulty importing the material into my editing system. We’d shot using the camera’s faux-24p format, which turned out to be a fudge of NTSC – i.e. 29.97 frames per second. The inevitable debate of the merits of PAL vs. NTSC ensued – PAL won. Which camera to use, then? Corman wanted us to shoot on highdefinition video, but didn’t mind about formats. Steve liked the latest Panasonic camera, with its interchangeable lenses, but it recorded HD onto 8 Gb flash cards, which meant hiring an extra crew member whose sole responsibility was to race back and forth between camera and player, copying the cards onto a drive so we could re-use them. Any mistakes and .  .  . Jon and I didn’t like that concept very much. Corman’s son, Roger Martin, offered us his Sony HD camera, which recorded onto Blu-ray discs. But this meant renting an HD player for the cutting room, and upgrading my editing system, which was set up to import tape. Besides, there was something reassuring about tape. You shot it, pushed the little lever so it couldn’t be recorded over, and kept it safe. In that way it felt like film negative – even more so when our production assistants, Orlando and CJ, copied the tapes each evening, and messengered the copies back to LA. In the long term, our sense of security was false: digital video’s lifespan is dangerously unknown. DVDs decay much faster than anyone expected; hard drives and flash drives last only a few years; of all the DV storage formats, tape still seems the most durable. But how long do tapes last? And the machines to play them? The tape issue led us back to my camera, a Sony Z-1. I’d used a VX-1000 for several years, and the Z-1 was just a big, improved version

14/05/2008 16:14:26

We were faced with two strong possibilities for Delilah: one was Jaclyn Jonet, an enthusiastic, spirited actor; the other was a striking actor from New York who’d just played the lead in an independent feature. Jon felt we should take these potential cast members for a driving test, in the rented Suburban. Jac drove fine: she said she’d learned to drive in just such a car. With the New Yorker, it was an experience along the lines of my test drive with Fox Harris, only in much heavier traffic. This was a quite brilliant actor: she almost convinced us she had driven a car before. Boss Davison was a native New Jersey-ite: he knew it’d be possible to grow up in New York, unlike LA, and never drive a car. We returned to Corman’s offices, in Brentwood. I must still have been shaking, because Roger asked if everything was all right. I told him the story of our death-defying driving test. ‘This reminds me of filming Bloody Mama,’ Roger mused, ‘Shelley Winters was in the passenger seat, firing a gun at her pursuers. In the driver’s seat I had put a young actor from New York, named Robert De Niro. I was tied to one side of the car with a rope, the cinematographer to the other. The scene called for Robert to drive at top speed down a mountain road. He did it very well, but at one point almost lost control of the car. After we cut, I said I’d like to do it again, and I asked him to take it easy on the corners, so as not to take us over the cliff. Robert replied: “I don’t know how to drive.” “That’s a print!” I said.’

285  Ÿ   searchers 2.0

of the VX and its successors. The Canon had a better lens, but the Z-1 shot PAL, was solid, and I knew how it worked. Steve preferred other, better cameras, but very decently agreed to use the one the director liked. (We hired two other Z-1s for the shoot: one packed up, the other did fine.)

Ed Pansullo came down for a script reading on 28 November. He’d cut his hair and his moustache, and he looked a lot like William Holden in The Wild Bunch. It was the first time Jon met Ed, or saw him act; he approved of him as Fred. Del Zamora had helped us at the auditions: he knew the script already. Sy was spot on, as always, and Jacyln was very funny, and very amused by Ed. Before coming down to LA, I’d watched a couple of tapes of Hope and Crosby ‘road’ movies, and dreamed of finding an actor with the sprightly imperviousness of Dorothy Lamour. Had we? With Jac, maybe we had.

X-Films.indb 285

14/05/2008 16:14:26

X films  Ÿ  286 X-Films.indb 286

PRODUCTION The shoot began on 5 December 2006; the crew was 10 people. There were no electricians, no lighting department – we were dependent on natural daylight, yet we were shooting on the shortest days of the year. Just before we hit the road, Corman offered to lend us his 35mm cameras: instead of DV, we could make a 35mm feature – if we could fit it into our $180,000 budget. It was impossible: shooting on 35mm would have required a couple of camera assistants (Steve had no assistant – only a grip, Dale Alexander, and a gaffer, Steve Mathis), plus stock and lab costs, video rushes, higher shipping costs, and an answer print at the end. It was a fine idea to shoot on 35mm, but this was a microfeature. On day one, we violated the Second Film Commandment by shooting in the home of our makeup artist, Kate Donahue. Kate was a good friend, as was her husband, Shaun Madigan; it was entirely wrong of me to borrow their apartment as a location, just as it was wrong of certain crew members to walk on their ceiling wearing muddy boots, and leave black tape stuck to the white wall. But the scenes – Pansullo as Fletcher, watching himself on TV, and inviting Del/Mel in – went well. It was a pleasure working with Steve again, likewise with Cecilia, who brought mounds of old newspapers and framed pictures of Pansullo to adorn Fred Fletcher’s home. That afternoon we filmed our flashbacks on a sound stage at Sony in Culver City. Our location manager, Simon Tams, had found some big pieces of extruded polystyrene, which Cecilia turned into the buttes of Monument Valley: a backdrop for the scene where Frobisher whips the child actors. This was a film-within-a-film: Roger Corman the evil producer, Sy Carter the ineffectual director. Next day Del and I went to Home Depot and hired some job-seekers to play themselves in the film’s opening scene. They were all good, natural actors. A Nicaraguan, Juan Leyva, played the worker who shouts at Mel for fighting with the boss. Thence to Cecilia’s house in Venice, which we’d chosen as the location for Delilah’s home, violating the Second Film Commandment again. And thence to the road: our second day ended with cast and crew leaving LA, headed for Desert Hot Springs, shooting as we went. This was the third big scene of the day; the actors were all prepared, and performed wonderfully. It couldn’t last.

14/05/2008 16:14:26

287  Ÿ   searchers 2.0

Roger Corman playing an evil producer. Searchers 2.0 is 96 minutes long. Its script is 94 pages. With most films, a page equals a minute of screen time. A ‘normal’ independent feature might take five or six weeks to shoot – averaging three or three and a half script pages a day. With our 15-day schedule, we had to shoot more than six pages daily. This was a tall order, particularly for the three principals, who were together in more than half the scenes. We shot more or less in sequence: that is to say, we began filming in LA, where the story started, and shot the ensuing scenes in order as we headed towards Monument Valley. This was of some help to the actors, but learning six to eight pages daily and emoting convincingly while driving to Utah was a tall order. Del and Jacyln excelled: they were always word-perfect when they got into the car. Ed found it tougher going. Now, there are two types of film actor: 1) those who show up, like stage actors on the opening night of a play, word-perfect; and 2) those who show up with the script in hand – usually they’re familiar with it, but they plan to learn their lines during rehearsals, and in their trailer. Michael Madsen, for instance, is always word-perfect; Harry Dean Stanton is of the latter school. Both are excellent actors; both methods work. But obviously 1) is easier on the other actors, and more pleasing to the director. On Searchers 2.0, Pansullo was of school 2). There would be pauses as he struggled to recall his lines; the more takes we did, the better he got. Del tended to be more consistent, and to be annoyed when Ed wasn’t ready.

X-Films.indb 287

14/05/2008 16:14:26

X films  Ÿ  288

However, Steve was getting more than sufficient coverage. There were cutaways, shots of the other actors, so I knew I could cut around pauses, or combine takes, at the editing stage. When we shot plano secuencia, Ed always got it together. At one point – the long scene where Fred and Mel list their favourite war movies – Pansullo wrote his lines on cards and stuck them on the dashboard. Del expected me to give him some abuse for this act of laziness, but I couldn’t: I myself had done this very same thing. It was a film shot the day after we finished Revengers Tragedy: I was playing Drew Schofield’s psychiatrist, and – claiming I had no time to learn my lines – had got the assistant director to write my dialogue on big cards, to be positioned behind the camera. The director, Jim Marquand, had forgiven me, so how could I not forgive Pansullo? And the card incident occurred but once. Looking back on that short, intense shoot, I think that Ed was channelling Harry Dean, and perhaps his namesake Ed Harris. Unlike Del (who channelled Eli Wallach) or Jac (Dorothy Lamour), Ed no longer thought of himself as an LA actor. He had a business and a family up north. He was like Pike in Peckinpah’s Wild Bunch: this wasn’t just a movie, this was the movie, the first and last one, as far as he was concerned. So of course he’d hassle the production, be exigent with the art department. He’d seen Harry Dean at work, had followed the Colonel in the van. Hell, like Sean Penn and David Heyman, Pansullo had wanted to play Colonel Walker, only to be beaten out by Ed Harris. It was time. Searchers 2.0 is a film about actors: about the way they think, and talk, and argue, and try to dominate each other. Ed was always in character as an actor – on screen, and off. No one but Pansullo could have come up with Fred’s peculiar pronunciation of the word ‘movie’. ‘Mu-vi’, he says it, as a baby might, obsessively, staring at a brilliant light. For Fred Fletcher, a ‘muvi’ is a magical thing, worth pretty much any amount of discomfort and sacrifice. When Frobisher says his flogging was necessary, Fred actually agrees: ‘If he did it for the mu-vi, then it’s all right.’ Mel’s triumph is not that he gets the question and answer session right, but that he disagrees with Fritz and Fred. For him, as for Delilah, the presence of a ‘mu-vi’ doesn’t cause a moral eclipse. Sy agreed with Fritz. He still goes to the cinema once or twice a week, but the films he and his wife, Teresa, enjoy most are older ones: black-and-white pictures from the 1930s and 1940s. So for him, Fritz’s eulogy at Fred’s graveside contains some truth.

X-Films.indb 288

14/05/2008 16:14:26

Is anything redeemable, the film asks? These characters? These small towns, disappearing back into the desert, with home-made memorials to sons killed in Iraq? The society that uses up those sons, and other people’s sons, so profligately, in energy wars? Was there a place for Ethan Edwards in The Searchers? Was he redeemed?

289  Ÿ   searchers 2.0

Delilah, according to Mel, hates movies and the entertainment industry because they’re ‘racist, hierarchical, and unredeemable’. ’Lilah thinks ‘mu-viz’ suck. Fritz, Fred, and to some extent Mel, find them transcendent.

Home-made Iraq memorial, Monument Valley. Pansullo’s brother, Michael, was killed by an SUV three weeks before the shoot began. Ed came through despite this – having a job always helps, I think. He seems to me perfect as Fred, as do Del, Jac, Zahn, and Sy in their roles. Good actors make their characters more complex than what is on the page. The crew opted to work on our final Sunday (spent at Goulding’s Trading Post) so as to wrap a day early. That morning, Ed, Dan Wool, and I took a hearty hike on the Wildcat Trail through Monument Valley. Kibun was maintained. Steve let me shoot second camera on two scenes: the dream sequence, where Fred is caught in a bear trap, and the Q&A showdown. I’d operated camera before – for Tom Richmond and Roger Deakins – and thought it a bad idea: a distraction for the director, who should be focused on the actors, not the machines. But the Z-1, or any

X-Films.indb 289

14/05/2008 16:14:26

X films  Ÿ  290

comparable camera, is easy to operate. In the showdown scene, Steve first concentrated on Sy, while I got coverage of Ed. We both shot Del and Jaclyn from different angles. Dale and Steve Mathis – who doubled as Fierberg’s assistants – kept me posted as to the A camera’s f-stop.

The Valley of the Gods. This was a scene shot against time in a vast location – the Valley of the Gods. There was little danger of two cameras getting in each other’s way (which usually happens with two-camera coverage on a restricted set), and Steve is a very patient teacher of photography. Surprisingly, I began to rely on the TV monitor during takes: there was no other way of judging the scene when we were in the Suburban: Steve, our highly flexible sound recordist, Alexandra Gallo, and I had to be jammed out of sight under the seats. I quickly became addicted to the monitor’s eye-view of what Steve saw – I justified this by pretending I was checking focus, as the Z-1 lacked a proper focus ring. When we were half-way through the Q&A showdown sequence, a massive storm blew in: next morning, the valley was carpeted with fresh snow. Again we rescheduled, and shot the funeral scene. Sy already knew his speech; Jon had the other actors on standby. Thanks to this, the funeral looks like something from Corbucci’s The Big Silence, which is not a bad thing.

X-Films.indb 290

14/05/2008 16:14:27

291  Ÿ   searchers 2.0

The funeral in the snow. All the films described in this book were lucky with the weather; Searchers 2.0 was luckiest of all. The staff at Goulding’s told us that a cigarette company had sent a huge crew out the previous December – they’d occupied the whole hotel for seven days, waiting with cranes and dollies and lamps and horse trailers and cowboy stuntmen for it to snow. It didn’t. What had seemed like a potential nightmare – filming daylight scenes on very short days – turned out to be a blessing. By the end, we only had nine hours of usable daylight, so it was easy to get up before dawn, have breakfast, and start the day with a splendid dawn shot. And what daylight, when it came! In the summer, the sun is overhead for most of the day. This gives the photographer lots of light, but of a harsh, unforgiving kind. In December, the sun is dramatically low on the horizon. During our last week, there was always interesting cloud cover: sometimes the clouds were magnificent. The actors preferred shooting on tape rather than film. There were no slates (necessary to keep film and audio tape in synch), and – since the DP had no assistant – no tape measures or light meters thrust into the cast’s faces. I hadn’t realised until then just how intrusive, and performance-undercutting, conventional film paraphernalia can be. Shooting on tape is much less intrusive, and you switch tapes every 60 minutes, instead of every 11 minutes with a magazine of 35mm film. We wrapped on 20 December, in the Valley of the Gods. I drove Frobisher’s Jeep back to Oregon. I’d acquired a wooden sign saying

X-Films.indb 291

14/05/2008 16:14:27

X films  Ÿ  292

‘Arizona’ and a realistic-looking Forest Service notice that read, ‘Tonto National Forest’. It was a two-day drive, with a brief hot spring excursion, via Utah and Nevada. Christmas was looming, and the Highway Patrol were out in force. Crossing into northern California on a backroad, I encountered the aftermath of a single-car crash. An old pickup had spun off the icy road and hit some trees. The back door of the ambulance was open, with a body on the gurney; the medics were doing paperwork, in no hurry to load their patient up. As I passed the spun-out truck, I wondered what could have punched two such neat, round holes in the windscreen. Then I knew – no seatbelts, no airbags. Young people, their friends still standing at the roadside, out for a Christmas spin. Like the other drivers passing the roadside hecatomb, I drove more slowly for a while.

POSTPRODUCTION Searchers 2.0 was edited in a cabin, two days’ drive from Monument Valley, using Avid Xpress Pro on a Mac laptop. No technical problems were encountered. The picture files were kept on separate hard drives – less than 500 Gb, in all. Jon came up in the middle of a snowstorm, and we locked the picture. Dan scored the film, and Richard Beggs designed the sound in San Francisco. Special effects were created by Eric Leven at Tippet Studios in Berkeley, and by Pete Kuran, at VCE in LA. Eric created the helicopter fleet that whisks Fred out of Monument Valley in pursuit of Fritz. Pete designed the title sequence and incidental effects: the best one depicts the effect of marijuana on a male human with the mind of a 16-year-old (Fred). As far as effects, music, and audio went, we were really in another world, seemingly beyond the reach of a microfeature. Amazing deals were made – but amazing deals are often made, if someone wants to work and likes your picture. Inserts suggested themselves as the edit progressed. I shot them with the Z-1: a TV monitor in the cutting room, featuring Quasi the Duck; a gas gauge nearing empty; a sign, made by Diego, reading, ‘El Rey Apartments – Where Excelence [sic] Is King’. When the picture was locked, Kim Ryan flew me back to Liverpool, to act in a film of hers. One of her crew, Ian Bickerstaff, told me he’d been tasked to shoot some aerial footage the previous year –

X-Films.indb 292

14/05/2008 16:14:27

293  Ÿ   searchers 2.0

where better to shoot helicopter shots for video games than Monument Valley? He sorted out a DVD of his unused footage, and this amazing material – hurtling across mesas and between buttes – became the background of our end credit roll. At the outset, I’d wondered whether video could capture the glories of Navajoland as well as 35mm film had done. Steve was always confident it could, and he was right. Filmed at magic hour, Monument Valley looks glorious no matter what medium you use to record it – the hard part of shooting video isn’t glorious landscapes at sunset, but ordinary stuff, like people in cars. Richard mixed the picture in Suite 202 at the Presidio, and played it back to us at Skywalker Ranch at the end of May. I thought it was Dan’s best score since The Winner. Richard’s was a fine, sensitive mix – probably more sensitive than Jon and I, with our Spaghetti sensibilities, would have preferred – but it was tastefully done, in the ’Frisco fashion. Searchers 2.0 was onlined at Kappa Studios, in the San Fernando Valley, on the premises of a former Scientology headquarters, in June 2007. Our colourist told us his ‘Nitris’ machine was ‘96 per cent’ compatible with Avid Xpress Pro files: in other words, only 4 per cent of my project files were lost and had to be re-made.

DISTRIBUTION While we were still in postproduction, the BBC bought UK distribution rights, and JVC, perhaps encouraged by Mr Negishi, acquired the film for Japanese release. Thus Searchers 2.0 had recouped half its cost before it was complete. Thanks to its cultured director, Marco Müller, we were invited to the Venice Film Festival. Marco had run the Torino Festival, which showed both RoboCop and Repo Man. For 2007, he and the excellent critic, Marco Giusti, were planning a retrospective of Italian Westerns. The script was translated into Italian by Norma Leuzzi and Catherine Marcangeli in Paris, and married to the picture, on a new HD SR tape, in LA. This time it only took two Avid experts to stop the process falling apart. The world premiere was at the Sala Perla, in Venice, on 31 August. During the screening, the projectionist accidentally pushed the pause button during a crucial scene. It was an unnerving moment, as it always is. The picture remained frozen: he had presumably fallen

X-Films.indb 293

14/05/2008 16:14:27

X films  Ÿ  294 X-Films.indb 294

asleep with his head on the switch. Stamping and whistling from the audience got the film moving again. Our next screening, in a huge tent called the Pala Biennale, went swimmingly. The screen was huge, and Searchers 2.0 – shot with that funky Z-1 video camera – was in perfect focus, and looked better than I’d imagined possible. In that big space, I appreciated Richard’s sound strategies. This was the film’s first public showing: more than a thousand people, most of whom had paid for their tickets. And, at the Western All’Italia screenings that followed, I met Giuliano Gemma, Gianni Garko, Carlo Lizzani, Enzo Castellari, Luis Enríque Bacalov, and other maestri of that deranged genre, including, at midnight on the last night, Giulio Questi, director of Django Kill. Questi, the maker of surreal and savage films, seemed the sweetest of men. After a long period without work, he had just discovered digital video and was making films again.

14/05/2008 16:14:27

POSTSCRIPT At one time this postscript might have been filled with prohibitions and prescriptions – do this! don’t do that! These rules would have been based on the prejudices I’d accumulated over the past 25 years. But Searchers 2.0, with its microbudget, and its facility of production, has been so intensely positive that I hesitate to offer any advice at all. Previously, I would have said: don’t look at the monitor, look at the actors! – but while Steve Fierberg shot, I often watched the monitor, and saw the actors very well. Directors shouldn’t shoot, I’d also have insisted. But Steve let me operate second camera for him, and – because I knew the script and when to zoom or change the angle – that turned out okay, too. Twenty-five years ago, the goal of most independent filmmakers was to shoot 35mm film. You began on Super 8, or video, or 16mm, and you worked your way up to shooting on 35. This was our Grail, in days when features were shot, processed, and edited by big, heavy, expensive machines. What does it mean, or matter, now? All this has been swept away by digital video. As an independent filmmaker, you are: 1) greatly empowered; and 2) even more alone. 1) is good, since you possess the means of production; with your Z-1, or your JVC 200, or whatever, and a couple of decent microphones, you can make a professional-looking and -sounding feature film. You can burn that film onto DVDs and sell ’em on market day, and via the Internet. You can investigate other distribution chains. 2) is bad, because film-making is a communal, collaborative medium. Only the writer and the editor can work alone – every other part of the process is a group effort, involving specialists in many different areas. Just because you have a camera and editing software doesn’t make you a DP or an editor. Being a director or a producer is

X-Films.indb 295

14/05/2008 16:14:27

X films  Ÿ  296

a full-time job; you need clever and creative colleagues, collaborators, and compañeros, at every stage of the process. Production is cheap: this reinforces a perennial problem. On Searchers 2.0, the cast and crew earned roughly $100 a day. This might be okay, if everyone worked five days a week, 40-odd weeks a year. But most actors, and many crew people, work intermittently. Even gifted actors spend a lot of time ‘resting’. In these circumstances, $100 isn’t a living wage. And working for free isn’t a living wage, either. Sy Richardson was on the Screen Actors Guild committee that came up with the low-budget agreement: the contract under which Searchers 2.0 was made. SAG, faced with the reality of very cheap feature production, couldn’t afford to see its members excluded. So Sy and his colleagues came up with a microfeature deal, for films budgeted at less than $200,000. This is what made our picture possible – but it only works financially for the actors if the microfeature plays on television, or if they work regularly, on a series of microfilms. Roger Corman did me a great turn by funding just one microfeature. But the über-Roger, in the Bizarro Alternate Production Universe, would have funded not one but eight, in succession, over a three-year period. If you only make one microfeature, everything’s riding on it – creatively and financially. If it doesn’t do well, that’s it. Make eight and you’re spreading your risk over a variety of features – yet still spending less than on one ‘normal’ independent feature like Revengers Tragedy. Out of eight microfeatures (and films generally), four will probably be bad, one will be controversial, two will do well, and one might be very good. For the form to succeed, and to sustain and grow a vibrant audio-visual industry, microfeatures must be made in batches. All this is written from the standpoint of a traditional, independentfeature maker, but a feature film is a synthesis of many talents in one artistic whole. Another world is possible – so what about a world in which independent films were directed by groups? Television has ceased to rely on directors, or actors, for its most popular output: sport and ‘reality’ shows. On drama series, the producers, the actors, the DP – even the poor writer – will have more creative input than any director can. The Zapatista movement in Mexico and the development of free software such as The Gimp and GNU/Linux are two alternative models of creativity, both of a high order. Eric Raymond described two potential creative or active environments as a cathedral and a

X-Films.indb 296

14/05/2008 16:14:27

297  Ÿ   postscript

bazaar.1 The cathedral, designed by a designer, is executed according to his/her orders via a precise, hierarchical, chain of command. It starts with the architect, or the Pope, who is the architect’s boss, and ends with the man who locks the gate that keeps the beggars out. It isn’t a lovely or human model, this ascending pyramid of flesh and iron, echoing with orders shouted downwards, but it gets the job done: it built Notre Dame, dug the Channel Tunnel, and made 2001: A Space Odyssey. The bazaar is a creative model that develops laterally. No one necessarily decides it should exist, and no one is in charge of it. The Zapatistas have leaders, but they’re obliged to follow a code of mandar obedeciendo: leading by obeying. The group, whether a village, a cooperative, or a revolutionary movement, decides an issue, and certain people get tasked to carry it out. They don’t make policy: they ‘lead’ by doing what the group wants done. But independent films must move fast, and group decisionmaking is usually slow. When I worked in Mexico and Japan, the director was treated as the person with creative authority. In the US, the crew and cast sometimes anticipated a struggle between the director and the producers, and waited to see who won it; effective forward movement could thus be difficult. Could Raymond’s bazaar model be applied to making feature films? I don’t see why not. A cooperative group of creative people – such as exists around the Nova Cinema in Brussels, or the audiovisual community in Rotterdam, or at Vive Television in Caracas, or in a good film school – could choose the subject. A group could write the script, but what of production, which depends on individuals who take responsibility for shooting the film, for paying for it, for recording the sound, for choosing or building sets, for playing a role? Hierarchy thus is part of the process, as is abrupt information-sharing and a certain amount of direct confrontation, something that is easier for men than for women. In most societies, women are accustomed to pretend to admire fragile male egos, and to get their way indirectly. Yet to direct a chaotic film set with its share of difficult actors and complex characters, a woman must confront stupid men directly, as ‘equals’. And this – for many good, intelligent women – is hard to do. Art is about creation and communication, not about competition. Unfortunately, competition thrives at the beginning and the end of the film-making process. At the start, the independent director competes with all his/her peers for the services of a writer, for actors, for the

X-Films.indb 297

14/05/2008 16:14:27

X films  Ÿ  298 X-Films.indb 298

limited amount of money available to fund independent films. Actors compete with each other for the limited number of parts. Women actors compete more intensely, because there are fewer female roles than male. Once the film is financed, and the roles are cast, the process changes: barring disasters, the process becomes a collaborative one. All work, in relative unison and harmony, towards a common goal. This continues into postproduction. Rivalries and competition don’t reappear until the making of the title cards. Then, everything reverts to competition mode. The finished film must compete against other films: 1) for a distributor; 2) for festivals; 3) for a soundtrack album deal; 4) for the attention of the media; 5) for the services of a good, illegal flyposter; and 6) for the largest possible audiences on its opening weekend. A microfeature – destined straight for DVD and TV – can avoid 5), 6), and possibly 3). But it too must participate in 1), 2) and 4): there’s no escape from these, if your art is to find its audience. I was discussing this – the disagreeable nature of the competition, the pleasure of the process – with Linda Callahan, one of Walker’s actors. She said the difference was between a contest and a ritual. The contest, in which we all compete for limited resources, is one of deliberately stimulated antagonism, as in a ‘reality’ TV show. The ritual is something in which everyone participates. Not everyone is equal in the ritual – some have bigger roles than others; some wear more elaborate costumes – but everyone has her/his part to play in it. Everyone’s action is crucial to its success. When the ritual goes well, no one is judged or made to feel worthless; everyone is essential, and involved. One time, watching the Deer Dance outside Tucson, it occurred to me that it isn’t what you achieve that matters. What counts is how you comport yourself. Loathing the contest, I still love the ritual, so I remain.

14/05/2008 16:14:27

For a difficult year, redoubled efforts! Photo: Cecilia Montiel.

X-Films.indb 299

14/05/2008 16:14:27

X-Films.indb 300

14/05/2008 16:14:27

Notes Intro 1 Reproduced by kind permission of Ernesto Cardenal.

Edge City 1 For more information about copyright issues and Creative Commons licences, see Lawrence Lessig’s website, http://www.lessig.org/. You can download a PDF copy of his book Free Culture from http://www.freeculture.cc/ or purchase/borrow a physical copy in the usual way. Further info about free software and the battle against corporate abuse can be found at the sites of the Free Software Foundation (http://www.fsf.org/) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (http://www.eff.org/).

Repo Man 1 John Waters, interviewed by Ted Elrick, DGA magazine, January 1999. 2 Roger Corman was, of course, the director of some ground-breaking, hugely successful independent films, including The Pit and the Pendulum, The Masque of the Red Death, The Trip, and The Man With the X-Ray Eyes. He was also the producer of a prodigious number of films, and US distributor of many foreign art pictures. His philosophy was to make as many films as possible, in the belief that many would be bad, some would be good, and most would make money. Whatever its flaws, his was a model that maximised creativity, and provided the largest number of jobs and opportunities. It was still hierarchical, but it gave many actors, producers, and directors experience, and created a body of important, independent American films. 3 Chris Morris, ‘Sounds Like Murder’, The LA Reader, 6 July 1979, and Craig Lee, ‘This Violent Generation’, LA Weekly, 9 January 1981. 4 This type of boring, generic storytelling is what the director Peter Watkins calls the Monoform. Combined with what Watkins calls the Universal Clock, it has obliged all audiovisual art – dramatic films, TV news reports, documentaries – to use the same frenetic film language, emphatic music, and rigid time frames. A handful of white, male studio executives and TV

X-Films.indb 301

14/05/2008 16:14:27

X films  Ÿ  302

5

6 7

8

commissioning editors – ‘the gatekeepers’ – enforce this regime on tens of thousands of filmmakers. Kibun is the Korean word for the idea that members of a group should hang together in a cool way, and not unnecessarily bother each other. If a nice vibe prevails on a film set, things go more smoothly, much better work is done, and kibun is maintained. Attica Prison, in New York State, was the site of a rebellion by 1,300 prisoners on 10 September 1971. Dozens of prisoners were shot and killed when the prison was re-taken. This is standard actor practice. In meetings, all actors pretend that they can drive, fence, sing, swim, play guitar, and ride motorcycles and horses. Once they are hired, they warn the production that they are agoraphobic, tone deaf, and allergic to lights. Jonathan Wacks, the producer, remembers the opposite – he recalls that Universal were opposed to the Neutron Bomb ending, and that when I couldn’t think of a non-nuclear alternative, Martin Turner and he came up with one.

Love Kills/Sid & Nancy 1 Christian Wolmar, Broken Rails: How Privatisation Wrecked Britain’s Railways (London: Aurum Press, 2001) 2 It is a sine qua non of all TV companies, and their suppliers, that people won’t watch (or won’t watch in sufficient numbers) a black and white film. I’ve never seen the evidence for this. People are certainly prepared to watch black and white commercials, pop promos, and features like Good Night, and Good Luck. Yet the prohibition/superstition remains, even in the ‘independent’ sector. 3 Books dealing with aspects of the CIA’s involvement in the drug trade include: Alfred McCoy, The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade (Chicago: Lawrence Hill & Co., 2003), Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall, Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies and the CIA in Central America (Berkeley, CA: Univeristy of California Press, 1992), Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair, White-out: CIA, Drugs and the Press (London: Verso Books, 1998), and Gary Webb, Dark Alliance: CIA, the Contras and the Crack Cocaine Explosion (New York: Seven Stories Press, 1999). 4 Pray for Rain was the group formed by Dan Wool, brother of Abbe, when he moved from St Louis to San Francisco. It was originally called The Big Race; his St Louis band was the Strikers. It has been reported that Pray for Rain and Zander Schloss were pseudonyms employed by Joe Strummer for his film soundtracks – this is not the case. Pray for Rain’s website is http://www.prayforrain.com. 5 It might not today: ‘fair use’ for commercial purposes was made illegal in Britain via Statutory Instrument No. 2498, otherwise known as the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003.

Straight To Hell 1 The Scapegoat, the famous pre-Raphaelite painting by William Holman Hunt (1854) hangs in the Lady Lever Art Gallery, near my childhood

X-Films.indb 302

14/05/2008 16:14:27

Walker

303  Ÿ   notes

home. I saw it often, on school trips as a kid. The desert landscape in the painting is very like Almería’s, and the theme appeals to me for some reason. 2 Charles Higham, Trading With The Enemy: The Nazi–American Money Plot 1933–1949 (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1983), p.62. 1 In 1984 the US Navy mined Nicaragua’s harbours, causing much damage and many deaths. This was part of a decade-long terror campaign, financed by the US, in which tens of thousands died. Nicaragua reported the US to the International Court of Justice in the Hague. Two years later the Court ruled against the US, declaring (by a 12 to 3 majority) that the US had acted in breach of customary international law, and ordering it to pay reparations to Nicaragua. (This is the case which established that there is no right of ‘pre-emptive self-defence’ – a pretext later used for the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.) 2 Jonathan Buchsbaum, Cinema and the Sandinistas: Filmmaking in Revolutionary Nicaragua (Texas Film & Media Studies) (Austin: University of Texas, 2003) is a fascinating history of the Nicaraguan films of INCINE, which ranged from mini-documentaries to features. He quotes one INCINE veteran, Martha Clarissa Hernandez, as saying that all Noticieros were group efforts, which suggests that INCINE was experimenting with alternatives to solo authorship as early as 1979 or 1980. 3 This was during a State of Emergency, during which all strikes and popular militancy were supposedly illegal. Our Nicaraguan workers were clearly unimpressed by the State of Emergency, and my impression was that this was normal. The Sandinistas disapproved of strikes, but turned a blind eye to them. 4 It would have been foolish to imagine there weren’t spies within the production. One of the Americans who played an Immortal, Daniel J. Glen, wrote an article about his experiences for his college newspaper, The Tech, on his return to the US. His editor ran it on the same page as a large advert recruiting MIT students for the CIA, published on 20 October 1987. The CIA ran a branch office in Boston, so as to make interviewing students from the elite schools easier. You can find the page, ad and all, on the Internet. 5 The Church’s failure to repair and roof its cathedral in Managua has an interesting counterpart in Liverpool: in the early twentieth century, the Catholic Church planned the largest religious building in the world – designed by Lutyens, it was supposed to be bigger than St Peter’s in Rome. The foundations were excavated, but the Second World War crippled the city, whose Catholics could no longer afford to pay for the most ambitious cathedral in the world. 6 The Contras’ overseer was John Negroponte, US ambassador to Honduras. More recently, Negroponte was the US Ambassador to Iraq. 7 Bill Daniels, my father-in-law, was one of those Americans. 8 Universal, Paramount, and the other Hollywood studios were given an official anti-trust exemption when they were still making silent films, via

X-Films.indb 303

14/05/2008 16:14:27

X films  Ÿ  304

the Webb-Pomerene Act of 1918. This allowed them to operate as an export cartel. It was an amazing benefit: permitting the studios to fix prices and operate as a monopoly, something US airlines and car manufacturers, say, aren’t allowed to do.

Death and the Compass 1 According to Edgardo Cozarinsky, there are a number of other Borges films, including two with screenplays by Borges: Invasion, directed by Hugo Santiago in Argentina in 1968, and Les Autres, directed by Santiago in France in 1973. Films based on Borges’ stories include Dias De Odio (based on Emma Zunz and directed by Leopoldo Torre Nilsson in Argentina in 1955); El Hombre de la Esquina Rosada (directed by Rene Mugica in Argentina in 1961); Emma Zunz (directed by Alain Magrou in France in 1969); and Bertolucci’s Spider’s Strategem (based on The Theme of the Traitor and the Hero) made in Italy in 1969. 2 It turned out that there was a pre-existing film version of Death and the Compass – a black-and-white short, made at the London Film School in the 1970s. It was directed by Paul Miller, and shot by Dave Bridges – later the cinematographer of Walker. Nigel Hawthorne played Lönnrot.

Three businessmen 1 Steve Fierberg, writing about SEARCHERS 2.0, says it isn’t more lamps we need, but more reflector boards, and people holding them. ‘The easiest way to screw it up is to bring in a light .  .  . When you get fading light, never use a lamp because over a long take, a perfectly set movie light at the beginning will become too bright by the end of the take, because the ambient light will have fallen. Whereas, if you use a reflector, the ratio between ambient light and fill will be constant.’ Steve Fierberg, ‘A Western State of Mind’, DV, Vol 16, No 1, April 2008.

Revengers Tragedy 1 Michael Green, The Art of Coarse Acting (London: Arrow Books, 1980) is a wonderful guide to actors’ crimes. 2 This is the same comet which Frank King was so excited about in Three Businessmen; having killed off the dinosaurs 60 million years ago, it has just swung by and clipped the planet once again. The characters in the play The Revengers Tragedy live in terror of comets, with good reason.

Postscript 1 Not surprisingly, his book is called The Cathedral & The Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary. (Sebastapol, CA: O’Reilly, 1999). Its print version is published by O’Reilly, but it continues to evolve on the internet, and can be read or downloaded, in a variety of languages, at http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/

X-Films.indb 304

14/05/2008 16:14:27

index 1984, 87 2001: A Space Odyssey, 9, 297 20th Century Fox, 14 24 Hour Party People, 51 2600, 2 40 Deuce, 46 48 Hours, 69 ‘8408’, 277 999 (British Punk band), 88 AAA (American Automobile Association), 65, 281 Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, 247 Actors Studio, LA, 42 ACTT (Association of Cinema and Television Technicians), 7, 105 Adelphi Hotel, Liverpool, 222–5, 227–8, 256 Afghanistan, 99, 268, 303 Age D’Or, L’, 36 Aguirre, Wrath of God, 87 Aintree Racecourse, Liverpool, 264, 265 Air America, 51 Airplane, 281 Alarcon, Greg, 15 Alcázar, Damián, 183, 185 Aldrich, Robert, 99 Aleph, El, 198, 199, 200 Alexander, Dale, 220, 286, 290, 302 Ali, Mohammed, 64 Almería, Spain, 110–11, 113–15, 117–18, 121-122, 124–5, 184, 216, 220, 222, 231–2, 278, 303 Alsino and the Condor, 134

X-Films.indb 305

Alsobrook, Alan, 44, 49, 64, 68 Alvarez, Carlos, 141, 159 Ambrose Bierce Black Norton Motorcycle Club, 14 American Friend, The, 46, 87 Ampudia, Isabel, 232 Anarcho-Syndicalists, 256 Anarchy, black book of, 162 Andalucía, 143 Anderson, Lindsay, 27, 99 Apocalypse Now, 38 AR-15, 175, 178 Arau, Alfonso, 147, 210 Argento, Dario, 14, 270 Armendáriz Jr, Pedro, 135, 181, 182, 183, 203, 209, 216 Art of Coarse Acting, The, 304 Askey, Arthur, 257–8 Asner, Ed, 203 Astorga, Nora, 171 Attica Prison, 56, 302 Auberjonois, René, 154, 168 Avid editing system, 266, 292–3 Ayres, Frazer, 256–7, 262 Azoff, Irving, 75 Bacalov, Luis Enríque, 294 Badlands, 133 Bagdad, AZ, 283 Baise-moi, 270 Baja California, Mexico, 29, 216 Balgobin, Jennifer, 42, 58–9, 123 Banister, Guy, 204 Banshyu, 235

Barash, Olivia, 60 Bard, Stanley, 98 Barker, Rick, 58, 101 Barkle, Dick, 74 Barnes, Susan, 60 Barr, Sharon, 156 Barragán, Víctor, 208 Barricada (Managua), 136 Barron, Sandy, 98 Basketball Diaries The, 108 Bauche, Vanessa, 182 BBC, 197–204, 207–8, 210–12, 222, 293 Beatty, Warren, 136–7, 169 Becker, Claudia, 177, 181, 202–3, 210 Bedford, Martin, 140 Bedford, Simi, 109 Beggs, Richard, 72, 166, 168–70, 238, 272, 292–4 Belushi, John, 70–1, 76 Benjamin, Richard, 11–12 Benson, Perry, 83, 99 Berkeley, Xander, 101, 108, 112, 118, 120 Berkoff, Steven, 203, 230, 240, 249, 255 Berlin Film Festival, 73, 221, 273 Bernhard, Sandra, 83, 90 Bertolucci, Bernardo, 12, 198, 304 Beverly, Ann, 79, 89 BFI Production Board, 252 Bichir, Bruno, 183, 203 Bichir, Demián, 183 Bickerstaff, Ian, 292 Big Gundown, The, a.k.a. La Resa dei Conti, 111 Big Silence, The, 42, 290

14/05/2008 16:14:27

X films  Ÿ  306 X-Films.indb 306

Bioy Casares, Adolfo, 201 Bird With Crystal Plumage, 12 Bishop, Debby, 100 Black Flag (LA Punk band), 44 Blair, Tony, 154 Blay, Andre, 82 Bleasedale, Alan, 248 BMW motorcycles, 45, 58, 81 Boehm, John, 26 Boetticher, Bud, 178, 281 Bogdanovich, Peter, 282 Bolan, Marc, 101 Bolt, Alan, 153 Booth, Tony, 249, 265 Borge, Tomás, 139, 167 Borges, J.L., 9, 197–203, 206, 208, 210, 214, 304 Bosch, Hieronymus 27 Boulting, Lucy, 81, 83–4, 87, 203 Boyce, Terry, 234 Boyle, Peter, 169–70, 203, 205–6 Bracho, Alejandro, 185 Bradford, 223, 271 Brando, Marlon, 16–17, 123 Brannagh, Kenneth, 254 Branson, Richard, 80, 248 Braun, Karl, a.k.a. Charley, 111, 114, 117, 122, 126, 183–4, 202, 206, 208–14 Brazier, Kevin, 255, 272 Brazil, 105 Brideshead Revisited, 77 Bridges, David, 7, 91, 96, 126, 135, 141, 144–7, 151–5, 159, 162–3, 304 Bristol University, 8 British Railways, 27, 148 British Screen, London, 248, 252 Bromley Contingent, 78, 93 Bron, Eleanor, 83 Bronson, Charles, 115 Brown, Cecilie, 202, 216, 231 Brown, Ralph, 203 Bruegel, Pieter 17, 226 Buchanan, James, 130 Bullfighter and the Lady, The, 178 Bullitt, 66 Buñuel, Luis, 1, 12, 36, 57, 60, 99, 175, 197, 217 Burbank, Linda, 36, 46–7, 68, 88, 91, 97, 101, 133, 138 Burke, Kathy, 83, 108, 128, 199 Burnett, Charles, 4, 8, 25, 221

Burroughs, William, 29, 79, 193 Burton, Christine, 15 Burton, David, 11 Bush, George W., 154 Butler, Jean, 263 Cabaret, 245 Cable Hogue Co. Ltd., 194, 255 Cale, John, 102, 103 Calero, Adolfo, 153 Callahan, Linda, 85, 87, 156, 298 Camacho, Miguel, 214 Cannes Film Festival, 107, 221, 254–5, 270, 271, 273–4 Car freshener. See Xmas trees Caracas, Venezuela, 152, 297 Carcharhinus nicaraguensis (freshwater shark), 168 Cardenal, Ernesto, 5, 152, 301 Carey, Timothy, 17–19 Carnarvon Castle, Liverpool, 273 Carter, Sy, 286 Cassavetes, John, 17, 194 Cassel, Seymour, 194 Castellari, Enzo, 294 Castillo, Maritza, 148 Cathedral & The Bazaar, The, 2, 304 CBGB’s, 88 Central TV, London, 80, 91 Chamorro family, 136, 166, 173 Channel 4, London, 240 Chaplin, Carlos, 171 Chelsea Hotel, NY, 78–9, 82, 98, 101–2 Chocolate, El, 158–9 Chumbawamba, 256, 271, 274 Churubusco Studios, 134, 139, 176, 178, 203, 206, 209, 211–12, 214, 217 CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), 62, 99, 135–6, 193, 197, 204, 302–3 Circle Jerks (LA Punk band), 35, 68, 88, 283 Circular Ruins, The, 198 Cisneros, Mario, 157 Citizen Kane, 200 Clarke, Margi, 249, 260, 266, 268 Clarke, Shirley, 26, 78 Clash, The, 96, 110

Coarse actor, 262 cocaine, 190, 302 Cockfighter, 177 Coetzee, J.M., 29 Cohen, Sam, 43, 273 Collins, Joan, 249 Colosio, Luis, 97 Colvin, Christine, 227 completion bond, 84–5, 131, 134, 147, 150, 158, 162 Completion Bond Company (CBC), 134, 150, 182, 187 Conformist, The, 12 Contras, 135, 140, 153, 159–60, 173, 302, 303 Cool Hand Luke, 122 Coppola, Francis, 50, 166 copyright, 2, 3, 25–6, 44–5, 107, 280, 282, 301, 302 Corbucci, Sergio, 42, 55, 114, 124, 290 Corman, Roger, 38, 87, 177–8, 281–2, 284–7, 296, 301 Corner, Jon, 259, 270 Costello, Elvis, 109–12, 118, 127 Costelloe, Mike, 262 Cottrell Boyce, Frank, 248–9, 252–4, 257–8, 269 Cox, Jack, 185–6 Cozarinsky, Edgardo, 304 Crane, John, 208 Cronenberg, David, 112 Crosby, Bing, 285 Crossan, Dennis, 154, 162 Cruise, Tom, 53 Culver City, CA, 77, 82, 133, 286 Cummings, Tony, 25, 238 Cutler, R.B., 204 D.O.A., 78 Dahl, Sophie, 255, 263, 270 Dalí, Salvador, 1, 36 Damiani, Damiano, 111 Damned, The (British Punk band), 95 Daniels, Bill, 303 Daniels, Phil, 249 Davies, Tod, 40–1, 201, 208, 215, 217–20, 222–7, 230, 233, 235–42, 249–51, 254–5, 257, 263–4, 270, 273 Davis, Mike, 9 Davison, Jon, 192, 281, 283–5, 290, 292–3 Davy, Gary, 249, 255, 263 Dawson, Bob, 35, 170 Day-Lewis, Daniel, 83

14/05/2008 16:14:27

E&O (Errors & Omissions), 44–5, 280–1

X-Films.indb 307

Eastwood, Clint, 111, 232 Eccleston, Chris, 203–7, 209, 249, 254, 256–7, 261–3, 265–6 Echánove, Alonso, 191, 203, 207, 209–10 Eddie Nash, a.k.a. Adel Nazrallah, 88 Edge City Productions, 31–3, 35–6, 38, 44–6, 54, 71, 74, 85, 212 Edinburgh Film Festival, 78, 274 Eighth Street Playhouse, NY, 75 Einstein, Dan, 20, 21 Elks Lodge Hall, LA, 39, 91 Ellis, Bobby, 55, 67–8, 74 Embassy Home Entertainment, 82, 88–9 Emma Zunz, 198–9, 304 Emmanuelle, 79 Engel, Andi, 173 ‘Enhancement’, 148, 162, 184 Eno, Brian, 25 Espectro de la Guerra, El, 134, 164 Espinoza, Omero, 185 Estevez, Emilio, 34, 40–1, 49–50, 52–3, 55, 59–61, 63, 74 Estudios America, Mexico City, 191 205, 210 Everett, Rupert, 78, 82 Everyman Theatre, Liverpool, 251 Exterminating Angel Productions, 251 Exterminating Angel, The, 247 Exterminator, 79 Faber, George, 201 FACT, Liverpool, 274 Fahrenheit 9/11, 269 ‘Fair Use’, 302 Fanaka, Jamaa, 33 Farben, I.G., 124 Farfan, Jorge, 189 fascists, 12, 36, 113, 197 Fear (LA Punk band), 30, 34, 70, 88 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, 227 Federal Highway Patrol, Mexico, 175, 178–80, 195 Fellner, Eric, 79–83, 96, 105, 106–7, 110–12, 117, 121, 123, 125 Fernández, Emilio ‘El Indio’, 178, 210

Fernley, James, 114 Ferrie, David, 204 Ficciones, 198 Field, Simon, 221 Fields, Abbie, 141 Fierberg, Steve, 46, 141, 144, 146–7, 154, 282-284, 286, 290, 295, 304 Figueroa, Tolita, 181 Film Council, The (see UK Film Council) Film Finances, 135, 147, 150 Filmfonds Rotterdam, 218–9, 239, 253 Filmolaboratorio, Mexico City, 211 Finer, Jem, 111, 119, 123 Finkelstein, Rick, 37 Finnegan, Tom, 40 First Film Commandment, 11 Flashdance, 61 Fletcher Cook, Graham, 83, 102 Flores, Angel, 134, 136 Fonda, Henry, 20, 111 Fons, Jorge, 181, 182 For a Few Dollars More, 114, 232 Ford, John, 59–60, 99, 232, 278, 283–4 Foronjy, Richard, 56, 282 Four Weddings and a Funeral, 263 Fowlis, Ray, 224, 227, 265–6 Fox Venice Cinema, LA, 26–7 Fox, James, 11 Free Software, 2, 301 French Connection, The, 66 Fridge, Brixton, 109 Friedkin, William, 44 FTC NorthWest, 220 Fuji TV, Tokyo, 236, 237

307  Ÿ   index

de las Casas, Enrique, 202 de Mohrenschildt, George, 204 De Niro, Robert, 285 de Noailles, Vicomte and Vicomtesse, 36 De Palma, Brian, 270 Deakins, Roger, 7, 32, 51, 87, 91–2, 95–7, 100, 103, 285, 289, 301 Dealey Plaza, Dallas, TX, 204 Decline of Western Civilization, 33 den Hamer, Sandra, 221 DeRamus, Theda, 46 Desert Hot Springs, CA, 286 Desierto de los Organos, Sombrerete, Mexico, 182 Desperado, 251 Devo (Akron Punk band), 19 DGA (Directors Guild of America), 64, 65 Diaz, Debbie, 82, 133 Dick, Philip K., 92, 247 digital video, 1, 2, 219, 254, 284, 286, 294, 295 Dinamita, Mexico, 184, 193 Dirker, Henk, 233 Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, The, 217 Dix, Otto, 171, 243 Django Kill, a.k.a. If You Live, Shoot!, 113, 121, 294 Dodgers (LA baseball team), 45 Doel, Frances, 281 Dog Day Afternoon, 56 Dolan, Dennis, 66, 69, 70, 72, 73, 88 Don’t Look Now, 93 Donahue, Kate, 286 Doria, Malena, 189, 190 Dos Vidas Destruidas por la Droga, 107 Downey, Mrs, 222–3, 227 Downing, Ron, 136 Dr Mabuse, 200 Dream Players, The, 137 Dreams of Children,, 220 Driver, The, 15 Drysdale, Lee, 83 Duchess of Malfi, The, 83, 108, 110–11, 128, 247 Duran Duran, 79, 107 Durango, Mexico, 182, 185, 189, 202 Dury, Ian, 83, 90

Gabriel, Teshome, 26 Gallo, Alexandra, 290 Gandolfini, James, 221 Gang of Four (British Punk band), 88 Garciadiego, Paz Alicia, 178 Garden of the Forking Paths, The, 198 Gardiner, Greg, 51 Garko, Gianni, 294 Garrido, Juan, 175–6 Garrison, Jim, 204 Garzón Jr, Miguel, 209 Garzón, Miguel, 181–2, 184, 187–8, 191, 193–4, 202, 206, 209–10, 262

14/05/2008 16:14:28

X films  Ÿ  308

Gates, Daryl, 204 Gemma, Giuliano,, 294 Get Carter, 35 Get Shorty, 221 Gibson, Mel, 254 Gilliam, Terry, 283 Gioffre, Rocco, 9, 155, 167, 205, 211–12, 232, 238 Gittes, Harry, 36 Giusti, Marco, 293 Glaser, Jan, 283 Glossop, Peter, 160 GMAC (General Motors Acceptance Corporation), 30 GNU/Linux, 2, 296 Godzilla, 12 Goethe Institute, London, 171 Gómez Cruz, Ernesto, 183, 186–7 Gómez Palacio, Mexico, 182 Gonzales, Orlando, 284 Good, the Bad and the Ugly, The, 170 Gore, Al, 282 Gorilla Filmworks, 44, 45 Gosford Park, 255 Goulding’s Trading Post, Monument Valley, 278, 284, 289, 291 Gowing, Len, 254–5, 260, 262–4, 270 Graham, Gerrit, 149, 152, 156–8 Gran Hotel, Almería, 113, 117, 122, 124, 278 Granada, Nicaragua, 132, 136, 149–53, 158, 160, 162–7 Granada, Spain, 198 Granados, Poncho, 175–6 Grauerholtz, James, 79 Great Rock’n’Roll Swindle, The, 106 Grey Area, The, 42 Gringo, 78 Guadalajara Film Festival, 214 Guatemala, 140 Guerra, Blanca, 135, 144, 155, 181, 183 Guevara, Che, 279 Guillory, Ben, 156 Guttiérez, Zaide Silvia, 183, 190, 203, 207 Hadfield, G.D., 172 Haile Biru, Abraham, 223–8, 232–3, 235 Halperin, Dan, 10

X-Films.indb 308

Halpern, Amy, 25, 33 Hamilton, Warren, 69 Hamptons Film Festival, 241 happy face campaign, 46–7 Harbor, Pearl, 104 Harker, Ed, 137 Harlesden, TX, 145 Harnick, Tom, 271 Harris, Ed, 129–30, 137, 141, 144–5, 149, 154–8, 160–4, 170, 288 Harris, Fox, 42–4, 55, 58, 98, 101, 113, 118, 164, 285 Harrison, Tony, 247 Harry Potter, 272 Harry, Debbie, 241 Hart, Nicky, 78, 172 Hart, Romaine, 172 Hasenfus, Eugene, 146, 150 Havana Film Festival, 171 Hawthorne, Nigel, 304 Hayman, David, 83, 99 Hellman, Monte, 16, 87 Henri, Adrian, 228, 248 Henry, Carla, 260, 266 Herald Examiner, The, 27 Hernandez, Antonio, 181 heroin, 76–7, 88, 99, 100, 104, 108, 193, 257, 302 Herzog, Werner, 87 Heyman, David, 288 Hilary and Jackie, 248 Hill, Terence, 114 Hill, Walter, 15 Hodges, Mike, 35 Hoffman, Dustin, 102 Holden, William, 285 Hollywood, 2–3, 5, 8, 25, 35, 37, 40, 42, 59, 63–4, 76–7, 82, 101, 120, 124, 128, 130–1, 135, 152, 166, 180, 195, 253, 280, 303 Holman Hunt, William, 302 Honda motorcycles, 14 Honduras, 131, 160, 303 Honey, Varnum, 14, 19, 40, 42, 44, 50, 66, 73 Hong Kong, 220, 234 Hope, Bob, 282, 285 Hopper, Dennis, 36, 39–40, 113, 122–3, 128 Hopper, Edward, 185 ‘Hot Club, The,’ 29, 31 Hotel Central, Rotterdam, 228 Hotel Washington, Mexico City, 216 Hubbard, L. Ron, 9 Hufsteter, Steve, 69 Hughes, Howard, 139

Hungerford, England, 172, 173 I Am Cuba, 92 ICJ (International Court of Justice), 303 ‘Immortals’, 5, 132–3, 138, 143–4, 146–7, 150, 153, 155, 159–60, 163, 166 Impala, Chevrolet, 39, 66–7 Imperio de la Fortuna, El, 183 INCINE (Instituto Nicaraguense de Cine), 132, 134, 141, 147–8, 159, 164, 303 Independent, The, 269 Intercontinental Hotel, Managua, 139, 145, 147, 149, 156, 162 Into A Desert Place, 215 Iraq, 160, 268, 289, 303–4 Iron Man, 235 Irréversible, 270 Ishikuma, Katsumi, a.k.a. ‘Stonebear’, 208, 211, 213, 220, 234–7 Island Films, 111, 127 Ivory, James, 197 Izzard, Eddie, 255, 261–2, 265–6, 274 Izzo, C.J., 284 Jacobi, Derek, 255–8, 261–2 Jagger, Mick, 40 James Street Station, Liverpool, 227 Jarmusch, Jim, 113 Jaynes, Julian, 9 Jenkins, Keith, 220, 224–5, 227 Jodorowsky, Alejandro, 175 Jones, Alan, 88 Jones, Grace, 113, 122–3 Jones, Steve, 69, 103 Jones, Tom, 118 Jonet, Jaclyn, 285, 288–90 Jonson, Ben, 245 Joyce, Christine, 283 Juicy Bananas, a.k.a. Juice (LA funk band), 35 Julius Caesar, 155–6 Junky, 79 K, Tonio, 25 Kai, Adrian, 223 Kappa Studios, LA, 293 Karate Kid, The, 32 Kastner, Stanley, 194 Katz, Lee, 85, 113, 134, 176 Kayzer, Wim, 215–18, 239 Kelly, Gene, 29

14/05/2008 16:14:28

LA River, 47, 49, 57, 161 LA Times, The, 20–1, 27 Labyrinths, 9 Lacor, Jean-Michel, 178, 181 Lady from Shanghai, 200 Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight, 260, 302 Laemmle’s Music Hall, LA, 214 Lake Nicaragua, 155, 168 Lambton, Ann, 83. 93 Lamour, Dorothy, 285, 288 Lang, Fritz, 200 Lang, Jack, 107 Lang, Tom, 259, 270 LAPD (Los Angeles Police Dept), 39, 48, 57, 67–8, 92 Larriva, Tito, 69, 92, 194 Las Vegas, NV, 19 Last Supper, The, 123, 166 Lawrence of Arabia, 85, 114 League, Tim, 278 Lean, David, 113 Lee, Craig, 39 ‘Legend of Paddy Garcia, The’, 111 León, Nicaragua, 14, 130, 131, 163 Leone, Sergio, 99, 110, 113–14, 124, 128, 232, 278 Lessig, Lawrence, 2, 301–2 Let Him Have It, 203, 261 Leuzzi, Norma, 293 Leven, Eric, 292 Lewis, Mark, 29–30

X-Films.indb 309

Ley de Herodes, La, 183 Leyva, Juan, 286 Liam, 277 Library of Congress, 5 Liceaga, Alejandra, 178–9, 180, 189–91, 206 Li-Ho, Alejandro, 212 Like Water for Chocolate, 210 Lima, Miguel, 136, 202 Littin, Miguel, 134 Liverpool, 202, 218–22, 224–228, 235, 242, 248–50, 252–3, 256–7, 259, 261, 263–4, 266–9, 271, 273–4, 277, 292, 303 Liverpool City Centre Evacuation Plan, 267–8 Lizzani, Carlo, 294 Loaeza, Manuela, 177, 181, 202 Locarno Film Festival, 274 London, 7, 27, 77–81, 83, 85, 87–90, 93–6, 101–3, 105, 109–10, 126–7, 131, 136–7, 141, 154, 159, 165, 171–3, 193, 202, 206, 208, 211, 222, 230, 234, 240–1, 246, 248–9, 251–2, 255, 268–9, 272–3, 277, 302, 304 London, Tony, 99 Long Riders, The, 119 López Rojas, Eduardo, 185 López, Roberto, 153 Los Angeles, CA, 10, 12, 14, 16–20, 22, 24, 27, 29, 30–1, 35–6, 39, 40, 42, 44–9, 52, 55, 58, 61–2, 65, 67–70, 72–5, 81–2, 84–5, 87–8, 91, 96, 98, 99, 100–2, 108, 111, 118, 121, 123, 134, 136–7, 140–1, 147–8, 154, 165, 185, 193–4, 204–5, 209, 211–12, 214, 217, 226, 238, 250, 254, 256, 279, 281, 283–8, 292–3, 301 Love Kills novel, 107 Love, Courtney, 85, 87, 98, 109, 113–17, 121, 124 LSD, 19, 91–2 Lumet, Sidney, 56–7, 282 Lydon, John, a.k.a. Johnny Rotten, 47, 89–90 Lyne, Adrian, 60–1 MacArthur Foundation, 5 Mackintosh, Graham, 215 Mad Cow Disease, 225 Madigan, Shaun, 15, 114, 123, 286 Madonna, 77–8, 82 MADRE, 171

Madrid, Spain, 111, 118–19, 128, 202, 211, 216, 231 Madsen, Michael, 287 Magruder, Betsy, 44, 52, 56, 102 Malaga, Spain, 113, 118, 269 Malibu, Chevrolet, 14, 19, 31, 43–4, 50–1, 54–5, 61, 63–4, 66–7, 73 Managua, Nicaragua, 14, 132, 135, 139, 141, 149, 159–60, 162–3, 166, 271, 303 Mandingo, 264 Mandoki, Luis, 134 Manifesto, Il, 274 Mapimí, Mexico, 182 Marathon Man, 102 Marcangeli, Catherine, 293 March, Florence, 12 Marin, Cheech, 280 Marlowe, Christopher, 245 Marquand, James, 288 Mars Attacks!, 112, 281 Martin, David, 88, 102–3, 125–6, 156, 165–6 Martin, Ellen, 129, 132, 153, 155 Marubeni, 178 Marx, Carlos, 171 Masada, Sammy, 178 Mask of Zorro, The, 251 Mason, Shaun, 254, 265 Masque Theatre, Liverpool, 220 Masters of the Universe, 133 Masur, Richard, 41–2, 155 Matagalpa, Nicaragua, 148 Matheson, Margaret, 80, 107, 249, 250–1, 255, 263–4, 274 Mathis, Steve, 286, 290 Matlin, Marlee, 129–30, 135, 155 Matlock, Graham, 78, 89, 106 Matsushita, 177 Mavrides, Paul, 170–1, 214 Max’s Kansas City, NY, 82, 88, 97 Mayer, Kenny, 37 Mayflower Hotel, N.Y., 89 Mayflower, The, 22 MCA, 75 McAlpine, Andrew, 91, 95, 111, 117, 120 McCarthy, Peter, 29, 31–7, 39, 41, 46, 50, 53, 54, 56, 63, 69, 70, 72, 73, 74–6, 82, 85, 96, 130, 207, 302, 304

309  Ÿ   index

Kennedy, John F., 204 kibun, 54, 180, 237, 289, 302 Kidman, Nicole, 274 Kiel, Sue, 119 Killer of Sheep, 8, 25 Killing of a Chinese Bookie, The, 17 Killing, The, 17 King Kong, 237 King of the Mountain, 40 King, Nancy, 11, 19, 20 Kings of the Road, 57 Kinski, Klaus, 87, 232 Kiss Me Deadly, 31, 62 Klein, Naomi, 281 Knickerbocker, Mr, 49 Kowalski, Lech, 78 Kragen, Ken, 38 Krish, Justin, 125, 165 Ku Klux Klan, 13 Kubrick, Stanley, 17 Kuran, Pete, 292 Kurosawa, Akira, 99, 111, 254, 257, 272 Kyd, Thomas, 245–7

14/05/2008 16:14:28

X films  Ÿ  310 X-Films.indb 310

McClarnon, Zahn, 283, 289 McDonough, Chris, 224 McDowell, Malcolm, 203 McGee, Vonetta, 42, 55 McGovern, Jimmy, 248 McGowan, Shane, 119 McKeown, Colin, 277 McLaren, Malcolm, 78, 83, 88–9, 98–9 McMartin, John, 220, 228 Mejía Godoy, Carlos, 165, 166 Melville, Jean-Pierre, 183, 200 Men They Couldn’t Hang, 109 Mendez Garcia, Nestor, 153 Menendez, Ramon, 20–1, 23 Mephistopheles, 37, 123 Merseyrail, 227, 242, 267 Merseyside Emergency Planning Unit, 267–8 Metro, Madrid, 111 Metro, Mexico City, 206, 216 Metro, Paris, 96 Metro, Rotterdam, 240, 242 Metropolis Labs, NY, 238 Mexico City, 102, 135, 166, 176–8, 181–2, 187, 190, 192–3, 195, 198, 202, 204-206, 208, 216–17, 220, 271 MFV (Mersey Film and Video), 267 MG, 11, 14–15, 19 MGM Grand, Las Vegas, NV, 29 microfeatures, 277–9, 281, 286, 292, 296, 298 Middleton, Thomas, 246, 248–9, 252, 254, 260, 268 Mifune, Toshiro, 14, 111 Milgram, Stanley, 60 Milius, John, 76 Miller, Paul, 304 Miner, Michael, 9–15, 17, 20–1, 27, 34, 48, 51, 57 Minkler, Mike, 72 Mir, 228, 243 Miracle Films, 127 Missouri Breaks, The, 16, 50 Miyako Ballroom, SF, 101 Moby Dick, 85 Monkees, The, 36, 37, 103 mono vs. stereo, 132 Monoform, 3, 176, 301 Monterrey, CA, 62 Montiel, Cecilia, 131, 133, 136, 138, 152, 155, 158, 163, 165, 172, 176–7, 180, 182, 184–5, 189–92,

201–4, 209, 214, 251–3, 282–3, 286, 299 Monument Valley, AZ, 12, 19–20, 216, 278–9, 284, 286–7, 289, 292–3 Moore, Michael, 269, 282 ‘Mopeds to Mulege’, 29, 37 Morris, Chris, 39 Morrissey, David, 249 Morrissey, Paul, 46 Mortons, 38 Moss Side, Manchester, 260 Moto Guzzi motorcycles, 73 Moulin Rouge, Paris, 96 Mount, Thom, 38, 61 Moviola, 8, 23, 66, 267 MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America), 127–8, 170, 281 Mr McGoo, 256 Mujer del Puerto, La, 176 Müller, Marco, 293 Muller, Robby, 43, 46, 50–2, 54–5, 57–9, 62–5, 67, 73, 82, 87, 91, 181 Mullholland Drive, LA, 40 Murdoch, Rupert, a.k.a. ‘the Dirty Digger’, 105 Murray, Bill, 280 Murray, Frank, 119 Murray, Rip, 56 Musca, Tom, 16–17, 19, 65–6 My Beautiful Launderette, 83 My Dinner with Andre, 217 My Name is Nobody, 114, 200 ‘My Way’, 25, 91, 95, 96, 103, 106 Nagasaki bomb, 273 Nagase, Masatoshi, 128 Naked Lunch, The, 79 National Film Theatre, London, 27 National Museum, Mexico City, 193 National Theatre, London, 83 NATO, 99, 269 Navajo, 20, 278, 293 Nazis, 124 Neal, Kelly, 75 Needle, 108 Neely, Jay, 21 negative pickup, 39, 62 Negishi, Kuniaki, 128, 177–8, 194, 208, 211, 213, 255, 293 Negroponte, John Dimitri 303 Neighbors, 70–1 Nelson, Steve, 53

Nero, Franco, 111 Nesmith, Michael, a.k.a. the Nez, 36–9, 41, 44–6, 50, 52–4, 56, 62–4, 66, 71–3, 81, 84, 227, 279 Netherlands, 215, 217–18 Neufeld, Mace, 82 Neumann, Fredric, 156 Neumeier, Ed, 9 neutron bomb, 42–3, 50, 61 Nevada, 292 New Army Pass, CA, 65 New Cinema Fund, 253–5, 264, 268–70, 272 New Jersey, NJ, 97, 285 ‘New’ Labour, 203, 226, 248, 252, 253, 272 New Line Cinema, 241 New Orleans, LA, 204 New Scotland Yard, 94 New York Dolls, 81 New York Times, 2, 147, 171 New York, NY, 2, 33, 56, 75, 78–9, 81–2, 85, 88–90, 97–8, 100, 102, 104, 107, 131, 137, 203, 222, 234, 238–9, 241, 274, 285, 302 Newcastle, 247 Nicaragua, 4, 14, 21, 102, 109–10, 125, 130–7, 139–7, 149, 150, 153, 155–6, 159–67, 170–1, 173, 184–6, 205, 271, 286, 303 Nichols, Ray, 257 Nicholson, Jack, 16–17, 37 Nike missile system, 61 Nixon, Richard, 76 No Logo, 281 Nolte, Nick, 69 Norris, Chuck, 194 Norte, El, 183 North, Oliver, 131 Northcroft, 268 Norton motorcycles, 14 Noticieros, 134, 303 Notting Hill, London, 79, 207 Nova Cinema, Brussels, 297 Novel, Gordon, 204 Nuevo Diario, El (Managua), 136 Nutter, Alice, 256 Oasis, 248 Oates, Warren, 17, 49, 87, 119 Obayashi, Chigumi, 220 O’Brien, Jaime, 151 O’Brien, Lorenzo, 100, 110, 121, 131–6, 139, 140, 142, 144–51, 154, 158–60,

14/05/2008 16:14:28

Pacheco, Marcelino, 136, 168 Pacino, Al, 56, 282 PAL vs. NTSC, 284 Palacio de Correos, Mexico City, 204 Palmdale, CA, 50 Panama, 173 PanAmerican World Airways, 74, 237 Panavision, 217 Pandaemonium, 248 Pansullo, Ed, 19, 29–30, 42, 74, 99, 118, 280–2, 285–9 Pansullo, Michael, 289 Paramount Pictures, 69, 172, 303 Paris, Texas, 65 Parker, Alan, 253 Parras, Mexico, 182, 186 Parton, Dolly, 46 Pastora, Eden, 153 Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, 76, 131, 139, 149 Paths of Glory, 17 Patrick, Andrew, 220 Pattinson, Charlie, 198, 201 PCP (Angel Dust), 45 Peckinpah, Sam, 16, 66, 99, 132, 139, 210, 288 Pellicer, Ariane, 207 Penitentiary, 33 Penn, Arthur, 17, 50 Penn, Chris, 44, 53–4 Penn, Sean, 53, 136–7, 288

X-Films.indb 311

Pentagon, 2, 269 Performance, 11–12 Perrin, Bryce, 155 Perry, Simon, 248, 252 Phantom of Liberty, 12 Phantom of the Paradise, 149 Pickwick Drive-In, Studio City, LA, 127 Picton Library, Liverpool, 252 Pierce, Franklin, 130 PiFan Science Fiction Festival, Puchon, Korea, 214 PiL (Public Image Ltd), 47, 90 Pineda, Frank, 134, 154, 168 Pink Flamingos, 33, 36 Pinochet, Augusto, 197 Pitcher, John, 266 Pitts, Randolph, 26 plano secuencia, 16, 92, 103, 123, 153, 176, 184, 187, 189, 195, 209, 221, 250, 262, 288 ‘plate of shrimp’, 66, 79 Playhouse, Oxford, 245 Plays and Poems of Cyril Tourneur, The, 245 Plugz, Los (LA Punk band), 19, 34, 39, 69, 256 Plutonium Card, 231, 241 PNDC (Patrulla Nacional de Carreteras), 180 Pogues, The, 103, 109–12, 119, 121–3, 127, 256 Pollock, Tom, 170–2 Pooya, Rafiq, 23, 26 Pop, Iggy, 68–9, 75, 112 Pope, The, 255, 297 Portland, OR, 137 Portman, Richard, 33 POSIWID, 252–3 Pray for Rain, 102–3, 127–8, 206–7, 212, 238, 256, 302 Preloran, Jorge, 23, 26 Prensa, La (Managua), 135, 136 Prescott, AZ, 283–4 Pressman, Ed, 121, 133–7, 140–1, 147, 149–50 Price, Frank, 71–2, 75 Principio y Fin, 176, 191 Provaas, Carolien, 228, 233 Prozac, 279 PSC, Tokyo, 208 Pudovkin, Vsevolod, 59 Puente, Carlos, 166, 168–9, 176, 192–3, 202, 210, 212–14 Pullman, Philip, 248

Punk, 12, 19, 30, 39, 45, 70, 74, 78–9, 88, 90–1, 94–5, 97 Quaaludes, 10, 15 Quasi at the Quackadero, 292 Queen Mother, The, 265 Questi, Giulio, 113, 294 Quick, Diana, 249, 256, 262 Quién Sabe?, a.k.a. A Bullet for the General, 111

311  Ÿ   index

162, 165–71, 175–82, 185, 189–95, 211, 213–14, 225 Ocean Park, CA, 43–5 Ogikubo, Tokyo, 235 Old Tucson, AZ, 169, 278 Oldman, Gary, 83–9, 92–5, 97–103, 106–8, 112, 250, 302 O’Leary, Billy, 149, 162–3 Olivier, Laurence, 102 Olvidados, Los, 217 Once Upon a Time in the West, 20, 119, 278 One-Eyed Jacks, 17 opium, 99, 142 Oregon, 197, 217, 291 Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, The, 9 Orion Pictures, 27 O’Riordan, Cait, 110 Orozco, Jorge, 185, 206 Ortega, Daniel, 139 Oswald, Lee Harvey, 83, 204 Oxford, 8, 81, 245, 266

Radiohead, 256 Rae Fox, J., 36, 46–7, 68, 88, 91, 101, 133, 138 Rafelson, Bob, 37 Ralphs supermarket, 55 Rambaldi, Carlo, 138 Ramone, Dee Dee, 78, 103 Ramones, The, 103 Ran, 149, 170 Raphael, Paul, 121–2 Raymond, Eric, 296–7 Reagan, Ronald, 282 Real Madrid Football Club, 264 Realejo, Nicaragua, 131, 141, 151 Red Beard, 257 Red Dawn, 76 Redglare, Rockets, 78 Rehme, Robert, 38, 61, 71 Reid, Jamie, 108 Return of Ringo, The, 283 Return of the Seacaucus Seven, 33 Revengers Tragedy production, Swan Theatre, 172, 249 Revengers Tragedy, The, 245–7, 250, 260, 270 Reynolds, Paul, 256–7, 261, 270 RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), 2 Richardson, Bob, 67, 87, 134–5 Richardson, Nancy, 42 Richardson, Sy, 40, 42, 44, 52, 56, 67, 99, 108, 111, 113, 116–17, 121, 123, 127–8, 144, 164, 170, 282, 285, 288–90, 296 Richardson, Teresa, 288 Richmond, Tom, 9–10, 15, 21, 30, 34, 51, 67, 87, 110, 114–15, 117, 120, 128, 212, 289 Ride The High Country, a.k.a. Guns in the Afternoon, 132

14/05/2008 16:14:28

X films  Ÿ  312

Ríos, Guillermo, 186 Ripstein, Arturo, 92, 166, 176, 182–3, 191, 221 Rita Steele - Private Heart, 42, 58 Ritchie, Lionel, 122 Rivas, battle of, 131, 139, 150–2, 159, 164, 170 Rivas, Nicaragua, 158 River Media, Liverpool, 259, 265, 273 Rivera, Diego, 185 Rizzo, Frank, 238 Robeson, Paul, 3 RoboCop, 9, 281, 293 RoboCop 2, 192 Rockefellers, 124 Rodriguez, Paulino, 153 Roeg, Nic, 10, 27, 93 Rogers, Kenny, 38 Rogers, Paul, 259, 270 Rojo Amanecer, 181, 183 Romancing the Stone, 120 Rosen, Bob, 13, 21, 32, 221 Ross, Morag, 146 Roth, Tim, 83 Rotterdam, 87, 218–21, 223, 228, 230–1, 233, 237, 239–40, 242, 274, 297 Rotterdam Film Festival, 76, 221, 228, 239 RPC (Recorded Picture Company), 173 Rubeo, Bruno, 138–9, 147 Rude, Dick, 9, 42, 59–60, 99, 107–8, 111–15, 118, 124, 126, 142, 164, 172, 218–9 Ruiz, Rafael, 154 Rumblefish, 71, 72, 75 Russek, Jorge, 181–2, 185, 210 Russell, Willy, 248 Ryan, Kim, 220, 224–5, 251, 254, 265, 292 SAG (Screen Actors Guild), 18, 49, 163, 296 Sainz, Jorge, 158 Salinger, Justin, 261 Sam Goldwyn Company, 108 San Andreas Records, 75 San Antonio de los Baños film school, 171 San Francisco, CA, 72, 82, 94, 100, 102, 127, 164, 166, 168–70, 238, 274, 292, 302 San Jacinto, battle of, Nicaragua, 147 San Jacinto, Mexico, 139

X-Films.indb 312

San Jose, Almería, 111 San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua, 131, 139, 158–9 San Pedro, CA, 21 San Sebastian Film Festival, 194 Sandilistas, 145 Sandinistas, 4, 109, 130–1, 136, 139–40, 145–8, 150–3, 159–61, 163–4, 169, 173, 303 Sandino, A.C., 172 Sandoval, Diego, 202, 251–3, 282–3, 292 Sandoval, Miguel, 41, 58–9, 66, 85, 87, 101, 123, 126, 154, 162–3, 177, 203, 209–10, 213, 220–21, 225, 231, 233, 236–7, 241–2, 262 Santa Fe, NM, 85 Santa Monica Mountains, CA, 18, 61 Santa Monica, CA, 18, 61, 96, 98 Sasai, Takao, 243 Saturday Night Fever, 14 Saturday Night Live, 53 Saura, Carlos, 198 Scanner Darkly, A, 92, 247 Scapegoat, The, 302 Schaffer, Dave, 44, 51–2, 54–5 Schloss, Zander, 42, 52–4, 113, 117–19, 121, 164, 193–4, 228, 234, 283, 302 Schofield, Drew, 83, 86, 89–90, 95, 99, 108, 220, 249–50, 254, 260, 266, 288 Schwartz, Ruth, 13 Scientology, 9, 74, 293 Scott, Tony, 180 Screamers (LA Punk band), 88 Screenplay, 208 Se7en, 200 Searchers, The, 59, 278, 282, 284, 289 Second Film Commandment, 11, 286 Seditionaries, a.k.a. Sex, 78, 88 Selbstmörder, 243 Sensible, Captain, 95 Sequoia National Park, CA, 65 Sex Pistols, 25, 69, 78, 80, 83, 88–90, 98–100, 103, 106, 108 Shakespeare, William, 152, 158, 166, 245–7, 254, 260

Shannon, Roger, 248, 252 Shelton, Gilbert, 210 Shelton, Turner, 139 Shining, The, 222 Shinjuku, Tokyo, 234, 242 Sierra de las Alpujaras, Almería, 216 Sierra Madre Mountains, Mexico, 139, 175 Sierra Nevada, CA, 65 Siouxsie and the Banshees (London Punk band), 103 Skull Valley, AZ, 283–4 Skywalker Ranch, CA, 238, 293 Slater, Jack, 144, 146 Sleep is for Sissies, 26–7 Soho, London, 102, 110, 125, 166, 172, 267, 272 Sombrerete, Mexico, 180, 182, 187 Somoza, Anastasio, 131, 134, 163 Sony Z-1, 284–5, 289–90, 292, 294–5 Sorcerer, 25, 44 Sosa, Roberto, 183–4, 186–8, 190–1, 194, 203 Space, 256 Spacey, James, 78 Spaghetti Westerns, 1, 16, 110–11, 113, 117, 122, 124, 126–8, 208, 260 Spanish Civil War, 113 Spanish Tragedy, The, 247 Speke (later John Lennon) Airport, 228 Spheeris, Penelope, 45 Spider’s Stratagem, 198, 304 Spike, The, 56 spliffs, a.k.a. joints, 103–4 Spungen, Nancy, 77–8, 83, 88, 92 St George’s Hall, Liverpool, 218, 224, 236, 252 St John’s College, Oxford, 266 Stacey, Spider, 125, 304 Stagecoach, 278 Stallman, Richard, 2 Standard Oil, 124 Stanton, Harry Dean, 16–18, 34, 40–1, 43, 49, 50, 52–6, 61, 63, 65, 67, 76, 87, 117, 124, 203, 287, 288 Star Ferry, Hong Kong, 234 Starship Troopers, 281 Starwood Club, LA, 88 Steadicam, 51 Stein, Jean, 75 Stein, Jules, 75

14/05/2008 16:14:28

Tabernas, Almería, 111, 124, 126, 184, 231 Taguchi, Tomorowo, 235, 236 Tait, Pam, 91, 113, 118, 122, 133, 144 Takemitsu, Tôru, 170 Takizawa, Ryoko, 236 Talgo, Spain, 111 Taliban, 99 Talking Heads, 47 Talking to Strangers, 221 Tamayo, Rufino, 176, 185 Tams, Simon, 286 Tangerine Dream, 25, 208 Taos, NM, 36 Taylor, Dexter, 153 Teamsters, 44, 48, 54–5, 57–8, 67, 188 Temple, Julien, 95 Thatcher, Margaret, 105, 127, 145, 226 Third Film Commandment, 11 Thomas, Jeremy, 79, 173 Thomas, Vicky, 39–40, 44, 58–9, 64, 81–2, 85, 87–8, 133, 137–8, 190 Thorpe, Jeremy, 77 Thunders, Johnny, 81, 107 Thurstason, Wirral, 252 Tijuana, Mexico, 97 Time, 171 Time Out, 263, 264 Timerider, 41, 50 Tippet Studios, CA, 292 Tippo, Patti, 85, 87 ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore, 260 Tlatelolco massacre, Mexico City, 181, 206 Today It’s Me . . . Tomorrow It’s You!, 127

X-Films.indb 313

Tokyo Film Festival, 214 Tokyo, Japan, 128, 208, 214, 220, 234–7, 242 Tolkien, J.R.R., 248 Tolteca cement factory, Mexico City, 209 Toña beer 145, 163 ‘Too Kool to Die’, 77–8, 90, 210 Torres, Juan, 119, 120 Torres, Martin, 210 Total Recall, 187 Touch of Evil, 20 Toxteth, Liverpool, 29 traca-traca, 151–2 Tramhuys Bar, Rotterdam, 230, 235 Tranmere Rovers Football Club, 264 Tregenza, Robert, 221, 224–5, 227, 232–3, 235 Tremarco, Christine, 249, 254 Triumph of Death, The, 226 Truth Or Consequences, NM, 31 Tubac, AZ, 278 Tube, London, 80, 105 Tucker, Forrest, 278 Tucson, AZ, 170, 216, 298 Tudor-Pole, Ed, a.k.a. TenPole Tudor, 94, 111, 113, 117, 119, 153 Tula, Mexico, 206 Turner, Martin, 54, 61, 114, 121–3, 125, 171, 216, 220, 225, 231–2, 302 Tushingham, Rita, 249 Twickenham Studios, 127 Two-Lane Blacktop, 16, 49, 76 UCLA, 5, 7–13, 15–20, 23–6, 28-29, 33–6, 39, 41–2, 44, 48, 51, 56–8, 60, 65, 78, 100, 110, 137, 148, 221, 238 UIP, 73, 173 UK Film Council, The, 248, 252–3, 255, 263–4, 268–70 Union Station, LA, 100 United Airlines, 242 United Nations General Assembly, 173 Universal Clock, 301 Universal Studios, 19, 36–9, 45, 56–7, 62–3, 71–6, 133, 135, 138, 140, 148–9, 170, 172, 302, 303 Urbina, Miguel, 188, 209, 262 US Marine Corps, 134, 172

USC, 8 Utay, Will, 144 Uxbridge College, Uxbridge, 94 Valley of the Gods, Utah, 279, 284, 290–2 Van Cleef, Lee, 114 van der Hijden, Jalle, 228, 233–4 van der Pluim, Ruud, 230 Van Heijningen, Jacques, 219 van Rhoon, Christine, 223, 226, 233, 238 Vancouver Film Festival, 214 Vandenberg Air Force Base, CA, 100 Vanderbilt, Cornelius, 130, 136–7, 163, 169–70 Vardy, Adam, 239 Variety, 33, 74 Vatican, The, 255 Velasco, José María, 193 Velvet Underground, 97 Venice Film Festival, 273, 293-4 Venice, CA, 14, 26, 29–30, 34, 41–2, 45–6, 54, 58, 62–3, 82, 85, 100, 152, 212, 279, 286 Vernon, CA, 30 Vicente Gómez, Andrés, 198–9, 202, 211 Vicious, Sid, 25, 71, 76–9, 83, 88–90, 92, 97, 104, 106 Victoria beer, 145, 163 Vida Conyugal, La, 191 Villareal, René, 154, 184–5, 191, 202 Viridiana, 123 Volontè, Gian Maria, 87, 114, 232 VPRO, 217, 218, 219, 221, 239

313  Ÿ   index

STIC (Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Industria Cinematográfica), 192 Stone, Oliver, 135 Strain, Hugh, 105–6 Streets of Fire, 38 Strummer, Joe, 69, 96, 103–5, 107–17, 121, 125–7, 129, 136–7, 142–4, 149, 165–6, 168–9, 172, 193, 209, 256, 274–5, 302 Suburban, Chevrolet, 283, 290 Suburbia, 45 Suburbs of Edge City, The, 9 Sugarman, Sara, 83, 107, 119–20 Swatty, 41

Wacks, Jonathan, 29, 31–3, 35–7, 39, 41, 50–1, 53–4, 56, 61, 63, 69, 70, 72–6, 280, 302–3 Wacks, Margaret, 36 Waiting for the Barbarians, 29 Wali, Monona, 42 Walker, William, 98, 130, 131, 138, 144–6, 150, 152–3, 164 Wall Street, 135 Wallach, Eli, 288 WalMart, 2, 117 Walter, Tracey, 40–1, 56, 61, 63, 66, 72, 221

14/05/2008 16:14:28

X films  Ÿ  314 X-Films.indb 314

Wapping, London, 105 War Plays, The, 83 Waring, Michael, 201 Warren, Marc, 261 Wasserman, Lew, 71, 171 Watchmen, 47 Waters, John, 36, 301 Watkins, Peter, 3, 302 Watts, CA, 8, 30 Wayne, John, 41, 59, 74, 139, 202, 278, 282 Webb, Chloe, 85, 87, 92–4, 98–9, 101–2, 107–8, 112–13 Webb-Pomerene Act, 304 Webster, John, 246, 248, 260 Weissman, Greg, 24 Welles, Orson, 12 Wenders, Wim, 46, 87 Western All’Italia screenings, Venice, 2007, 294 Westwood, Vivienne, 88–9 Wexler, Haskell, 134 White Apache, The, 19 White Devil, The, 247 White Dog, 281 White, Bruce, 156 Wierdos (LA Punk band), 88 Wild Bunch, The, 182, 185, 210, 285, 288 Will Rogers Park, LA, 18 Willemsen, Dick, 218 Williger, Chris, 218 Wilson, Debbie, 88 Wilson, Pete Lee, 83 Windsor, Barbara, 249 Winner, The, 211–12, 219, 282, 293 Winstanley, Michele, 83, 124 Winterland, SF, 94 Winters, Shelley, 285 Wisdom, Robert, 221–2, 231 Withnail & I, 203 Women Beware Women, 247 Wood, Bill, 7, 12, 21, 25 Woodward, John, 252–3 Wool, Abbe, 36, 42, 47, 58–9, 78, 84–5, 87, 97, 99–100, 190, 193, 302 Wool, Dan, 212, 282, 289, 293, 302 Worcester College, Oxford, 245 World Trade Center, NY, 97, 269, 272–3 World’s Greatest Sinner, The, 18 Wright, Bruce, 156 WTO, 2

Wurlitzer, Rudy, 76, 98, 129, 131–4, 136, 138–9, 146, 153–5, 170, 278 Wylie, Pete, a.k.a. The Mighty Wah!, 254, 262 X (LA Punk band), 19, 88 Xmas trees, 30, 46 Xochimilco, Mexico City, 220 Yeager, Biff, 39, 99, 114, 123 Yentob, Alan, 200, 206–7, 247 Yojimbo, 111, 113 Yokohama, Japan, 128 Yorkie, 26 Yrena, Doña, 135, 136, 154 Yucatan, Mexico, 61 Zamora, Del, 55–6, 114, 125, 280, 282–3, 285–90 Zapatistas, 2, 296, 297 Zenith Productions, 80–3, 89, 106–7 Zobel, Richard, 156 Zócalo, Mexico City, 191 Zyklon B, 124

14/05/2008 16:14:28