If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor (30 page)

John: I see
Crimewave
as a real turning point in a certain way, because if you survived that experience, nothing in the business could ever be as hard again.

Bruce: And how, brother.

John: It was the most difficult film ever in my life, and if I were a little older or hadn't been young and naïve I never would have survived. It was terrible -- terrible. The unions and the work rules I knew nothing about and the production reports I knew nothing about. We had always been so independent it was like, "Who are you asking for this crap to send to Susan somebody in LA? I mean tell her to drop dead. We're dying out here. I don't have time to do this bullshit."

Josh Becker signed on as an extra, but he could smell trouble right from the start.

"I worked the first four days, but I thought, 'Like hell I'm going to continue on this mother as an extra,'" Josh explained. "It was so fucking cold out here, so awful. Sam is shooting so slowly. I'm gone man, gone."

I think Scott Spiegel was the only person who had any fun on the shoot.

Scott: You hired me and said, "Hey, you want to be extras wrangler?" and I go, "Crap, yeah, I can use some dough."

Bruce: But you also wound up getting in front of the camera a lot.

Scott: Yeah, it was great. I was a guy shivering in the cold in one shot, an old man at an elevator, a bum in an alley with you, a dinner guest -- all kinds of things.

Bruce: You know what's funny about that -- you were on camera so much, I got a call from Susan about you -- she was the Embassy exec.

Scott: Really? How horrible. What did she say?

Bruce: She goes, "I saw that damn Spiegel kid in dailies again. Why does he have to be in every scene?"

I also got in trouble for "Shemping" too much. I put myself in a news segment as a goofy anchorman and Susan spotted it right away.

"Why were you in that scene, Bruce?"

"Well, you see, it's like this..." I stammered, groping for an answer. "That newscaster was the day job of my character, the Heel."

It was total bullshit, but she bought it.

Every motion picture budget has a buffer of ten percent. As overtime mounted, we exceeded that percentage by almost fifty percent. When this happens, things start to change. Embassy Pictures' first order of business was to dismiss our production manager, Joe. Granted, he wasn't up to the task -- his mind was on other projects. I should have gotten the hint when he insisted that a special "Bat Phone" be installed in his hotel suite -- three stories above the production office.

Regardless of who was managing the crew, the shoot was moving too slowly and someone had to take the blame. Sam seemed prepared and was actively engaged at every level, so Rob and I figured that he wasn't the problem -- it must be the cameraman, Bob. His work was good, but he wasn't exactly a speed-demon.

As producers, Rob and I felt obliged to "lean" on him. We drove him home after wrap one night, and led the conversation with an innocent question.

Rob: Hey, Bob, the pace of the shooting seems to be really slow. Anything we can do about that?

Bob: Well, in case you haven't noticed, Sam is attempting some very tricky stuff. He's an ambitious director.

Rob and I were well aware of Sam's embellishments and couldn't disagree.

Bruce: Well, sure Bob, we all know that, but why is it taking so long to light the shots?

Bob: If you're referring to the speed of my work, I can only go as fast as I go. If you want to let me go, that's fine, but I can't and
won't
be shooting any faster than I already am.

Bob's fearlessness put an end to our discussion and he stayed for the entire shoot.

Sam liked the look of wind on film. As a result, much of
Crimewave
was staged in the path of an impending storm. In order to achieve the type of gale force needed, several "Swamp Boats" had to be acquired from Florida. Just so we're clear here, I'm talking about the type of boat with a big fan behind it, powered by a 350-horse Chevrolet engine.

One such scene was filmed downtown at night, directly in front of a retirement home. As the wind machines raged incessantly, a bottle crashed to the street from high above. Inside the shattered glass, a pathetic note read: "The noise is keeping me awake all night long and I am getting sick. I am dying because of you..."

My many jobs on
Crimewave,
aside from demoted actor, temporary assistant director, and actress cajoler (there should be a union local for this one) also included second unit director. In the case of
Crimewave,
it meant that I was responsible for getting shots of cars driving, wheels spinning, the odd foot on a brake pedal -- the exciting stuff.

One of Sam's shots required a high angle looking past a car to the Detroit River below -- the only problem was that at thirty below zero, the water had iced over completely. Because this wasn't part of the story, it became our responsibility to get rid of it.

We started by throwing things off the Belle Isle Bridge -- rocks, tires, anything that would penetrate the frigid layer. I managed to find a cinder block and with great gusto I wiped out several yards of ice. Surveying the aftermath, I spotted a lone mitten floating on the water.

"Look at that," I shouted above the gale, "some poor bastard lost a glove!"

Seconds later, I realized that it belonged to me -- I had to find warmth and fast. Fortunately, the mechanical effects guys always had a truckload of gear and I begged my way into a new pair of Gore-Tex gloves.

Eventually, having run out of debris to hurl, we laid primer cord (a powerful explosive) across the ice and blew the living crap out of it -- as they say, "Anything to get the shot."

HACK AND SLASH

Shooting came to a halt some twelve weeks after it had begun and editing commenced within the confines of our dentist offices in Ferndale.

Unsatisfied with both the pace and the results of our Midwest approach, Embassy pictures eventually yanked the editing from us and unceremoniously relocated all postproduction to Los Angeles.

Sam: That was horrible. It was the worst time of my life. I realize now that they were a bunch of idiots, because if you're making a three-million-dollar movie, you should let the director have a preview, you know. Let him cut his movie. Let him put sound with it and watch it once -- don't look at half a rough cut and before you've --

Bruce: They yanked that sucker before it was even cut.

Sam: It was really wrong. It was such a horrible, horrible, horrible, depressing scene.

This meant that Rob, Sam and I had to get our butts to the West Coast if we had any hopes of remaining involved in this film. It all led to a tense meeting in Century City -- nerve center of Embassy Films. There, we were informed that the company would pay for
two
of us to stay in LA, but not all
three.

Feeling like the third wheel, yet emboldened by months of hard work, I spoke for the group in an unforgiving tone.

"Hey, guys, there have always been three of us. We're all partners. This seems like nickel-and-dime bullshit..."

No sooner had the words left my mouth than Jeff, the production accountant responsible for tracking costs of
Crimewave,
leapt from his chair and pointed an accusing finger at me.

"Look,
ASSHOLE,"
he began, "do you have any idea how much you guys went over budget?"

I'll spare you the rest of Jeff's tirade. At the receiving end of red-faced invectives, I replied with a resolute, "Look, do whatever you want, pay for whoever you want -- the
three
of us made this film and we'll all be here in LA until it's done."

With that, I got up to leave the office, but Jeff stopped me with, "Hey, Bruce, it's just
business..."

I didn't even know how to react to that statement. If this kind of treatment was representative of the film business, then the hell with it. I left the office and went down to the parking garage. Waiting in our Rent-a-Jalopy for Rob and Sam to return, it seemed like a good cry was long overdue. It felt good to rage against the absurdity of this studio system.
Hollywood sucks Grade A, Free Range, All-Natural eggs,
I told myself, wiping back a tear.
What a bunch of insensitive, money-grubbing pricks!

Embassy, to their credit, eventually paid for all three of us to oversee the "new version." From an office in Los Angeles, we endured what has since become an almost mandatory function in Hollywood -- reediting and reshooting. In the case of
Crimewave,
it meant reediting the film from almost the ground up with a "Hollywood" editor, and filming a set of "bookends" -- a new beginning and ending that would help explain more clearly what audiences were about to see in the middle.

In the end, it didn't make any difference -- "cross-genre" films like
Crimewave
send marketing people scurrying under a desk. A straightforward genre film is no problem. If it's action, you make sure someone is holding a gun in the poster. If it's a drama, you show a big close-up of the lead actor looking pensive. Comedy is a little trickier, but you might employ a conceptual artist to "Lampoon" the film. Combine the genres, however, and you're asking for congestion on Madison Avenue.

Crimewave,
in its desire to please all viewers, test-marketed as
Broken Hearts and Noses
in San Diego. Foreign countries seemed to roll with the off-kilter tone of the film more easily. In France and Italy, it was called
Death on the Grill
and
The Two Craziest Killers in the World,
respectively.

Upon completion, we watched helplessly as the film went down in box-office flames. To meet a minimum HBO release requirement, the film opened only in Kansas and Alaska. To coin a phrase, "This film wasn't released, it escaped!"

There was only one good screening of
Crimewave
in its miserable existence and that was at the Seattle Film Festival. The host of the festival took the stage immediately before the show and proclaimed, wisely, that the film they were about to present was "silly."

"Put on your silly hat," he told the crowd of Pacific Northwest intellectuals. My mother happened to attend that night, and thanks to the properly warned audience, she maintains to this day that the film was "cute."

John Cameron has since come up with a term he calls "The
Crimewave
Meter" -- a little alarm that goes off in his head when he knows he's about to work on a screwed-up film project.

Overall,
Crimewave
was a lesson about abject failure -- no matter how you slice it, the film was a
dog,
and everyone involved can pretty much line up to take forty whacks. As filmmakers, we failed to execute a misguided concept and our studio refused us the benefit of any doubt.

One good thing came from this mess -- my daughter Rebecca was conceived during production. While
Crimewave
was in post-production, she was born at the Henry Ford Hospital in downtown Detroit.