Shelby’s Odyssey: A Wild Ride of Romance in all of its Artistic Forms

I own two t-shirts that I wore as inspiration to get through the journey of making my film SHELBY’S VACATION.  They will sound patently obvious… and yet, they are so true, as cliché’s are.  One has a quote from Winston Churchill: “Never, never, never give up.”  The other has Diana Nyad’s motto (and the title of her book about her swim from Cuba to the Florida Keys) “Find a Way.”  I actually heard Diana talk at the LA Times Festival of Books.  She was riveting.  It took her five tries to do that swim and she accomplished the 110.86-mile journey at the age of 64.  She found a way.  If she could do that, I could find a way to make my film.  And I didn’t have to worry about being stung by box jellyfish… although irritated State Park Rangers was a close second.

SHELBY’S VACATION, once upon a time, was a full-length feature script.  I wrote the initial drafts in the mid 1990’s, inspired by a trip I’d taken to and from the Grand Canyon.  On that trip (and all of my Grand Canyon trips), I stopped in Kingman, Arizona, for gas and food.  It’s always windy in Kingman and when I opened my car door, a gust of wind blew through the car (the passenger window was down) and scattered all of my notes and maps (this was pre-internet).  I thought, wow, what a great beginning to a movie.  Our heroine gets completely lost because the universe yanks away her directions!  I ended up sending my main character, Shelby, up highway 395 instead of into the desert, simply because I love the Sierra Nevada mountains. 

The basic elements I crafted in the early drafts have always remained the same.  Shelby, mid-to-late 30s, is heart-broken because once again she fantasized about a potential relationship that didn’t work out – and this most recent time was particularly humiliating because the crush was on her boss, Marion.  She heads out of L.A. to find comfort in nature but loses her maps and directions thanks to the wind and ends up at a rustic resort high in the mountains.  Of course she falls for resort manager Carol, who has her own fantasies (from the past instead of the future) that get in the way of creating a long-term relationship.  Both women go on a journey to learn why they’ve held on to their idealized versions of love.

Having no clue as to how to move the movie ball down the field into production, I put the script away and focused on my stage plays and TV scripts. 

In 2008 I took a vacation to Rock Creek Lake in the Sierra Nevada and thought, man, this is the perfect setting for SHELBY’S VACATION.  So I got the script out, brought it in to my then-writers group, and polished it up.  I’d tried previously selling my film script SIGNS OF LIFE by having a reading with actors and inviting small production companies.  I got some interest but not strong enough to really launch it.  If a straight romantic comedy wouldn’t quite sell, how the heck was I going to sell a lesbian dramedy?

I put the script away again.

Then I got an email in 2010 about a script contest called Chicago’s Pride Films and Plays.  I noticed that the categories were geared toward gay men’s stories.  I wrote the executive director of the contest, David Zak, asking him, “What about lesbian stories?”  He wrote right back and said they would have a contest for our stories the next year. Hooray!

So when I got the contest announcement the following winter, I sent in SHELBY’S VACATION.  Lo and behold, I made the semi-finals and then a few weeks later David’s group contacted me.  They wanted to do a staged reading of the script for a gay pride event in Vermont. Hallelujah!

In July of 2011 I paid for my own plane ticket and made the trip to Randolph, Vermont as my summer vacation.  I had a glorious time.  I got to hear a fun reading of the script, ate samples at the Ben & Jerry’s factory, and I drove all over Vermont to hike in rolling green mountains – with no billboards on the interstate as I traveled!

Filled with passion from the Vermont experience, I returned to L.A. vowing to turn SHELBY into a film.  I dug out three years of MovieMaker magazine and absorbed all the lessons producers who came before me had learned.  I bought THE book on how to do a business plan and then learned the woman who wrote it (Louise Levison) lives mere blocks from me in the Sherman Oaks, so I paid her to critique MY business plan.  I attached my first director… who stayed for just a few months and then dropped out.  I attached director #2, who stayed on board for a few months… and then she, too, left, to focus on a TV stage-managing job.  Director #3 was with me a few months, and then she moved to Washington State.

Finally, I reached out to a friend who sent an email blast to the Alliance of Women Directors (AWD).  I should’ve done so years ago; I got two-dozen responses. I weeded and weeded and narrowed things down to a half dozen, did interviews, did second interviews in-person, and finally picked Vickie Sampson.  Vickie and I had met many years ago in a networking group called Cinewomen, so there was a comfortable energy between us.  She came armed to our meeting with a lot of enthusiasm about the story as well as printouts of actresses who could play the roles.  Vickie had directed some heartfelt shorts, snappy award-winning PSAs and commercials and was hungry for a feature-length film.   Perfect!

That was in May of 2013.  Then the real fun began: Looking for Investors.

I devised a passionate one-page letter, a one-page story summary plus our creative team bios with years of experience in The Biz (Vickie brought along a great cinematographer and I had a couple of line-producer gals with us as well).  I had my business plan; I had my budget (we had a variety of them over the years, but the smallest one I had for the feature version was $270,000).  I made a look-book of photos I culled from my trips to the majestic Sierra Nevada mountains, where SHELBY’S VACATION is set. I set up an LLC, I hired a good designer to craft a website... I WAS ALL SET!

I approached a handful of reasonably well-off friends and got only one “yes,” but I thought it was a solid yes.  I scoured back issues I had of the LN (Lesbian News, a legendary L.A. publication) for gals featured in articles and in ads for their real estate or law businesses.

Then I hit upon what I thought would be the ticket: I found a group up in San Francisco called StartOut.  They provide mentoring for LGBT entrepreneurs starting their own businesses.   I sent several of them my powerful letter – arguing how rarely we see quality lesbian films – THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT to name one of the rare ones back then.  I pointed out that Hollywood so rarely said yes to these kinds of movies that we needed to fund from within our community.  I explained that SHELBY was different than many typical gay films – no one was coming out; no one felt tortured about being gay.  It was a story of two adults figuring out their relationship patterns and why they couldn’t live in the present.  We’ve never seen this story before, I proclaimed from the mountaintop.

And what I heard in return:  crickets.  Over three+ years I approached 40 individuals, either as investors or someone who would know someone. 

Meanwhile, we were networking.  I’ve been going to Outfest every summer (L.A.’s huge LGBT film festival) since the early 1990’s and to ramp up for SHELBY, we worked it, baby, we worked it.  I researched films ahead of time, their producers, their actresses, and then we went up to these folks after their screenings.  We sent my script to some of them, had follow up phone calls, and even met a few at their offices.  Vickie also got great at approaching well-known actresses after screenings at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.  Sum result: nada.

So after four years of hard work, I had no attached stars, no production company backing and just two potential investors, neither of them 100% telling me what they would put in.  That wasn’t enough to guarantee $270,000.

In July of 2015, I happened to read a lesbian detective novel called LEFT FIELD by Elizabeth Sims.  It was charming, fun, engaging… and at the end of it I thought, HANG ON, I could turn the story of Shelby into a novel; that way I could tell the whole story and not worry about cutting the budget (because I was forever trying to get the budget down).  Then, we could tell the end of the tale in a short film, say, 25 – 30 minutes.  Forget investors, we could raise the money via a crowd-funding campaign.

Vickie agreed it was worth a shot.

I had been leery of doing a crowd-funding thing for a few reasons.  First, I’ve done several of them with my writers/actors group Fierce Backbone and also for a web-series I co-wrote and co-produced (THE CALAMITIES OF JANE) and I’d learned it takes a village.  We had dozens of people involved with Fierce and JANE and it was still a struggle to raise $25,000 for both causes.  You need more than two people to raise that kind of money.  Or so I thought.

I started on the novel (after reading a couple of books on how to write a novel to pick up pointers on how they’re different from movie scripts).  I set myself a goal of writing three pages a day, five days a week, and by the spring of 2016, I was 80% done with the first draft.

For the movie, I cut the 90-page script down to 25. I cut all of the other characters and focused exclusively on the essence of the story between Shelby and Carol – the moment when they meet, the moment when they connect, the moment when they agree to do a ritual to get rid of their bad habit of holding on to fantasies… and of course the ritual itself.

Vickie and I reached out to a handful of actresses we knew and had them come over to my living room and read in pairs.  The script worked!  We picked our two favorite actresses and we were off to the races, or rather, the slog of raising money.

Nagging Mom / P.T. Barnum

We went to a seminar lead by Emily Best of Seed & Spark and she really is the best.  Seed&Spark (S&S) is a crowd-funding platform solely for independent films.  Kickstarter requires that you raise 100% of your goal (we did that with JANE, and it’s migraine inducing); IndieGoGo will give you whatever you raise.  S&S asks that you raise 80% of your goal, and I thought that seemed like a good compromise.  If we’d gone with IndieGoGo and had raised only $10,000, we would not have been able to hire a professional crew and were adamant about that – and about paying them.

Our budget goal was $36,000 and 80% was $28,000.  While Emily and company were full of tips and enthusiasm, they conveyed to us something along the lines of… a short film at S&S had never raised that much before.  I was nervous, but I wanted to prove S&S wrong. 

On April 1, we shot a teaser with our two actresses up at Switzer picnic area in the San Gabriel Mountains aka The Angeles Nationals Forest, which sits on the northern edge of Los Angeles.  It was a small crew – director Vickie, Kimby Caplan our D.P., a sound guy, and a make-up artist.  I got to wear a lot of hats – craft services / lunch / props… and I learned how to do the slate clapperboard.

Vickie did a fantastic job of editing the footage into a compelling teaser.  We shot a bit of me doing a pitch to donors (citing the deplorable statistics of women and LGBT folks in Hollywood) and edited that in as well.  I had to strategically plan what footage to send out at the beginning and then more snippets as our campaign progressed.  Each email blast needed a fresh angle that highlighted why people should support our film.

From the campaign of the web-series THE CALAMITIES OF JANE, I learned to not offer tangibles as premiums for the different levels of giving – it takes extra money to produce things like hats and t-shirts.  So we made the premiums for SHELBY easy to fulfill – nature photos of mine, visits to the set, hikes led by me, downloads of the film.

During the campaign Vickie and I spent a lot of time sending emails out – personal ones, group ones every few days, using the selling points I’d honed approaching the 40 investors previously.  Hey, that experience was good for something!  I read someone else’s blog about their fund-raising campaign, and she said she felt like a cross between a nagging mom and P.T. Barnum. Yep.

The money came in – sometimes in big chunks of $250 and $500, but mostly as $25, $50 and $100 contributions.  Our actresses didn’t have a lot of luck finding supporters… and then the one playing Carol dropped out saying she had another wonderful opportunity come up.  Crapity-crap-crap-crap.  But we had to soldier on.  We did not tell our audience yet because we didn’t have time to recast and reshoot the teaser smack in the middle of the campaign. 

I had a couple of favorite elements during the campaign – one was writing personal “thank yous” to each and every person who donated.  Whether it was a big sum or a little sum, my heart overflowed with joy and I loved sending gratitude out. The other thing I enjoyed was putting special thank yous up on Facebook:  I would take one of my nature photos – like a shot from the Grand Canyon – and put a phrase at the top like, “’Tis grand… generous friends” and then I’d list the donors of that particular day in the post.

The June fund-raising was 40 days and 40 nights as I would joke later, and it was a nail-biter near the end to get to 80% of our goal.  But I had a few miracles happen in the last week of the campaign.  I contacted an old pal at a well-known production company – he and I had worked together on my first TV show job back in 1988 and we went to the same college.  He and his wife made a very generous donation.  Then, the day before our campaign was ending and we were still $1140 short of our 80% goal, I ran into a friend in the lunchroom where I work at UCLA.  I told her how exciting the campaign was, how grateful I was, and I didn’t even ask her for money, I was just genuinely sharing my passion.  She asked how much we were short, and then she said, “Hmm, that’s four figures.”  I thought she was going to do a math thing, like, “If you get 11 people to each donate $100, you’ll get your goal.”

She got out her checkbook.  I thought, oh, she’s gonna make a donation and I started to do my, “Hey, any amount is fine,” speech.  Then she handed me a check.  I started crying.  It was for $1140.  Here was a co-worker, who probably doesn’t make much more than I do, and yes, we’ve talked about stories and art before, but I hadn’t told her much about the movie and I hadn’t done any kind of pitch to her for money.  This is what happens when you are genuine and full of passion with no expectations:  a miracle.

So we had our goal, and then there was another miracle:  The following day, I got a text message from a woman I used to see at an annual Oscar party for years and years.  Her partner had passed away the previous winter… and she wanted to make a donation in her honor.  It was another generous amount.  So we actually hit 90% of our goal!

Switzer in the San Gabriel Mountains (where we did the teaser) wouldn’t need a reservation (but we’d get a permit and be legit this time) but Harwood Lodge near Mt. Baldy (the second half of our shoot) needed a reservation so I called the Sierra Club (of which I’m a member and they own the lodge) and the only available time they had was the last weekend in August.  WE’LL TAKE IT, I said.  We decided to film the first week in August at Switzer and I contacted the River Ranger District Filming lady and was all set to send in our film permit application the last week in July. 

Then came a big curveball:  the Sand Fire (every fire in California gets a name).  The Sand Fire broke out north of the San Gabriel Mountains July 22nd.  The fire was several miles away, but as fires do, it romped through vegetation and BAM, in a few days, big trouble.  People lost their homes… and the River Ranger office stopped issuing filming permits, including ours to shoot at Switzer.

With almost no time before our scheduled shoot, we had to find a location.  I’ve been hiking in the local mountains around L.A. for nearly 30 years, so I had some ideas.  One idea that did not work:  Griffith Park – the lawns at street level are manicured, so it doesn’t seem like a real forest, and equally important, the permits to film there are very expensive.  I suggested to Vickie we try some nearby state parks.  We drove up to Topanga Canyon State Park early one weekday morning and Vickie saw the potential – lots of oak trees. To get a permit for a state park, you’re supposed to apply four business days in advance.  We were now less than four days away – we called Mr. V at the Parks Dept. film office and told him we wanted to drive over to where he was stationed to fill out our application RIGHT NOW.  He laughed and said we could come by for tea but the application was on-line.  Oh.  Got it.

Instead of driving home to do it, we drove to a high spot on Topanga Blvd. in the Santa Monica Mountains to get good cell reception and filled out the application using Vickie’s cell phone.  Remember this moment:  Vickie told me what the format was for the dates we wanted:  year, month, day.  And we knew our shoot dates by heart, Aug. 3, 4, 5.  We filled it out and hit “Apply.”

Shortly thereafter, I received a confirmation of our application and another application to fill out, with our credit/debit card info.  I did that, and at the bottom I wrote the shoot dates and multiplied that times the permit fee for each day.  I sent it in and Miss B in the permit office sent me an email asking for another application, for just the first day.  Remember this moment: I wrote back and asked why, and were they going to bill me three separate times for the three shoot dates?  It made no sense to me.  Miss B wrote back and said she’d get back to me, and she copied Miss C on that email.

August 3rd came and we all arrived early at Topanga Canyon State Park, we’re there when the ranger officially opened the gate, yes, off to a good start.

Next curveball.  I knew the parking pass machine dispensed passes for $10 a pop.  I came armed with lots of $10 bills.  Great idea, huh?  I had not read the fine print on the machine.  It would take only $5 bills – what the !@#$%?  So I used my debit card… and after three passes, the machine stopped working – perhaps it thought, “FRAUD.”  I used my credit card… for three passes and then that stopped working.  I cobbled together other cash and cards for the rest of our cast and crew.

Mid-way through the parking machine tap dance, a very stern-looking Ranger Supervisor came over to me. “LET ME SEE YOUR PERMIT.”  I felt smug and whipped that sucker out.  He looked it over and snottily said, “You have too many people here!”  He practically threw it in my face and said he was reporting me to Mr. V, the man I’d been in contact with over the phone.  He stormed away and my stomach went into Knotsville.

Okay, I knew on the permit application it asked how many you had in your crew – under or over 14.  If you had over 14, you had to have a ranger monitor and a bunch of other stuff.  We had a teeny bit over 14, like 17.  I thought I’d go with the “spirit” of the rule – the under 14 was for “small” productions and we were a small production.  To me it was true.

By the way, when the Ranger Supervisor looked around at all the cars, some of them belonged to other hikers, not our group, and so he didn’t even count how many people we had.  He just yelled.  To be safe, I sent a few of our volunteers away, to get our total personnel number down.

It was a 12-hour day but we got beautiful footage. Our actresses and crew were superb. 

And then I began to worry.  I’d never heard back from Miss B or Miss C about charging my card for our next day’s filming.  I’d sent a follow-up email and made a phone call to remind them.  Still nothing… but Mr. V called in the middle of Day One and said I did not have a permit for the Day Two.  I was livid and told him the whole story about the application on-line where we filled out the dates, how I’d TRIED to submit the credit card application with all three filming dates.  He had no sympathy and said Miss B was in Billing and knew nothing about the actual permits.  OH GREAT, NOW YOU TELL ME.  But he said we could fill out an “addendum” to film tomorrow.  Great!  I had our line producer, Kristina, fill that out, and whewwwww, we were good for Thursday.

We came back Thursday, right there when the gate opened again.  I had gone to a grocery store and a drug store the night before to get a boat-load of five dollar bills to feed into the parking machine today – you will not defeat me, “Take that, Parking Machine Monster!”

Half way through the day, Mr. V let us know there have been “complaints” about us – that we had too many people again.  I actually had met one of the rangers who came to visit our shooting site, and he was very friendly and seemed okay with us.  I told him we picked up other people’s trash, we had a small footprint, and we were leaving the place better than how we found it.  Apparently having a couple of extra people was too much for the color-in-the-lines bureaucrats.  Mr. V said we were denied a permit for Friday - no addendum, no nothin’.  So, I spent the rest of Thursday with my stomach in Knotsville again, trying to find another location.  I was at least lucky enough to have cell phone service at Topanga Park to make calls; many people did not; it was spotty even for me; my favorite place was under a tree in the parking lot, which I began to refer to it as my “office”.  Well guess what:  you can’t get a film permit at the last minute.  Then I discovered private ranches – no permit required!  But they were exorbitant (hello, $7000, for one day, really??).  Finally near the end of Day Two, I made an executive decision.

The Sand Fire was mostly contained by this time BUT the Forest Service wasn’t issuing film permits until the FOLLOWING week.  We would lose our D.P. by then.  We had to shoot Friday.  And we would go back to Switzer where we filmed the teaser.  Without a permit.  I didn’t like going renegade, but I literally had no other option.  I told director Vickie… and I said we need a story in case a ranger came by our Switzer spot.  Vickie said she would pretend to be a college instructor with a class.  Perfect.

One more curveball:  our sound guy wouldn’t do a shoot without a permit, so we had to scramble to find a sound person during the evening of Day Two for Day Three.

Switzer Redux

Early on the morning of Day Three, I handed out Adventure Passes for parking to the cast and crew as I stood on Angeles Crest Highway… and then drove on up to Switzer picnic area.  The crew unloaded camera equipment… and DUM DA DUM DUM DUM:  the Ranger Lady showed up around 9 a.m.  That morning I’d almost put on my MovieMaker T-shirt.  Instead, as a safety precaution for confrontation, I’d picked out my Grand Canyon “Just Hike It” t-shirt so I’d look like a hiker and not a film producer.  That moment had come.  Brayton, our Key Grip, and I hiked right past the Ranger Lady as she picked up trash.  We talked loudly of hiking in Alaska (his home state) to sound really authentic.  Meanwhile, when Director Vickie saw Ranger Lady, she calmly introduced herself as a college professor teaching students how to photograph nature.  Luckily not every piece of equipment was out of the van yet (yeah, nothing says “college students” like a SteadiCam harness and a jib…) and only a few of the crewmembers were with Vickie at that point. The Ranger bought it.  After she finished with the trash, she left, and didn’t come back the rest of the day.  Whew.

We spent a glorious 12 hours filming our actresses (we still had Laura as Shelby and by mid-summer Brynn Horrocks had joined us as our new Carol) running around in the woods “play fighting” with sticks.

We wrapped about 8 p.m., as it was getting dark.

Ignorance is bliss

If I’d known the Sand Fire was gonna break out…

If I’d known 17 people was a deal-breaker with the State Parks film dept…

If I’d known my boss at work was gonna pitch a fit when I asked for time off in August when we had to move the shoot from June (August is a big month for my department)…

What? I wouldn’t have done the film?  Ignorance is bliss.  You go with the info you have at the moment and keep your fingers crossed.

In spite of all the curveballs, we were ready for our second location, Harwood Lodge.

Harwood Lodge – a slice of heaven, a dream come true

Finally at Harwood, I could have a good time and do less worrying.  There were no pesky persnickety State Park Rangers, I wasn’t hounding donors for money, we had a solid cast and crew in place – and as an amazing bonus, we had eight, count ‘em eight, volunteers (many of whom I knew through the Gay & Lesbian Sierrans).  We literally couldn’t have done it without them.  They helped prepare food, then clean it up, set furniture and props and then move things for the next scene, and they acted as background extras.  They did it without complaining.  In fact, no one in the entire crew complained – and we worked hard – 12, 13 hours a day.

I was in my element:  high (6000’) in the mountains, surrounded by pine trees and craggy peaks, making art.  There were many dreams that came true during the weekend.  I’d purchased a Celtic Tree of Life t-shirt in England a few summers back and had hoped it could be used for the film:  our art department ended up framing it and putting it on the wall of Carol’s cabin.  I got to watch (and help) our Art Dept. gal, Melissa, hang up the “Welcome to Sierra Glen” sign, and hear the actresses say lines that I had written years ago.  The hand-made journal I’d worked hard on (with the help of friends, co-workers and some cast & crew members all writing in it) looked big and full – as if it had been around for years, filled with made-up adventure stories.

We made a movie!

One of the few challenges we had was staying on time.  We were supposed to be done at 8:30pm on Friday and we went to 9:30p.m.  On Saturday, the line producer, the First A.D. and I all worked to keep things moving, with more success.  The D.P. did ask me if we could shoot a dinner scene outside under the pine trees – as was originally planned – but we’d already started to set it up indoors and the director had already done a blocking rehearsal.  I just said no.  No explanation, no apology, just no.  We shot in the dining room and it looked beautiful.  And we got done that night by 8:30. The next day, Sunday, we wanted to be done by 6:30 because we needed to pack up and everyone had an hour-plus drive home.  The final shot was a fantasy kiss, with sunlight from behind the actresses, and when the sun disappeared behind the mountains at 6:15… that’s a wrap!

I stood in the parking lot w/ Vickie and with tears in my eyes we both said WE DID IT, WE MADE A MOVIE!

Shelby’s Vacation has gotten in to over a dozen film festivals and won a bunch of awards.

And now the novel

 The movie version of this story ended up being just under 40 minutes and was very satisfying to watch.  And yet… I still had this yearning to tell the WHOLE story of Shelby.  So, during the beginning of COVID, with extra time on my hands, I got out the novel version of SHELBY’S VACATION and polished it up.  I hired an editor who proofed it twice, and then I submitted it to a variety of publishers, which is another journey.

I’m thrilled to announce it was just published on June 1st of this year, 2023.

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Nancy Beverly has been developing plays for several years with the writers’ / actors’ group Fierce Backbone, including Dyke-Doggie Patrol which was chosen by the Alliance of L.A. Playwrights for the city of West Hollywood’s 2022 gay pride readings. Thanks to the Harrison Grant from Fierce Backbone, she will be producing and starting in her one-person show Sister from Another Planet at the Hollywood Fringe Festival in June 2023.  Some fun honors:  her play Community made the finals of Sacramento’s B Street Theatre contest and the top 12 of the American Association of Community Theatres play contest.  Nancy’s professional career began at Actors Theatre of Louisville where she was the Assistant Lit Manager and had a slew of ten-minute plays produced, including Attack of the Moral Fuzzies, which was published by Samuel French and has been produced dozens of times around the U.S.  In L.A., she worked on such hit shows as Rosanne, Blossom, Desperate Housewives, and Ghost Whisperer.  She wrote and produced the film Shelby’s Vacation which got into over a dozen film festivals and won a boatload of awards.  More good news:  the novel version of Shelby’s Vacation has just been published and is available now from BarnesAndNoble.com (eBook and paperback) and Amazon.com (paperback), as well as from other online booksellers. Get your copy today!

G&E In Motion does not necessarily agree with the opinions of our guest bloggers. That would be boring and counterproductive. We have simply found the author’s thoughts to be interesting, intelligent, unique, insightful, and/or important. We may not agree on the words but we surely agree on their right to express them and proudly present this platform as a means to do so.

The Small Moments: My Experience (Thus Far) With Zen Art

            In 2018 I was granted the Hemera Contemplative Fellowship for Artists and went off to the Zen Mountain Monastery for a retreat.

            I had never explored anything of the sort but was always fascinated with meditation and the Buddhist experience.

            The closest I came was probably my acting training. The foundation of the program was Suzuki, a post-modern Japanese movement technique. Basically, the method approaches text from a physical standpoint whereas Western trainings tended to start from the psychological. In Tadashi Suzuki’s seminal work The Way of Acting, he states that the exercises he created for his actors were “a means to discover a self-consciousness of the interior of the body, and the actor’s success in doing them confirms his ability to make that discovery. The actor learns to become conscious of the many layers of sensitivity within his own body.”

            Of course physicality and the traditions of Japanese performance are no strangers to one another; one simply needs to turn to Noh or Kabuki for evidence. It is said that such movements are akin to worship as physical performers call forth energy with their bodies to then ingest that vigor inwards, representing the maturation or fullness of that life energy.

            My own teacher, Maria Porter, trained with Suzuki himself in Japan and made it her artistic mission to fuse and repurpose this Eastern acting methodology with the trainings of the West.

            These vague (but related) connections were my only points of access, outside of various cultural depictions, to some aspects of Zen Buddhism, which commenced in China but later branched out to Vietnam, Korea, and Japan (of course Buddhism itself originated in India).

            Needless to say, I was intrigued to learn and delve into the Zen Buddhist lineage established by the late John Daido Loori Roshi. The monastery maintained that they were dedicated to sharing the dharma as it has been passed down, generation to generation, since the time of Shakyamuni Buddha.

            I didn’t quite know what that meant but I knew they offered something unique as part of the retreat: the opportunity to study Zen Art. I also really didn’t know what Zen Art was but figured it would somehow expand my knowledge and perspective in regard to my craft. 

            And so I went out into the peaceful woods, put away my phone for the duration of my stay, and approached the main building that at one time was a Benedictine monastery.

            I strolled through the meditation and dining halls until I found myself in the dormitory for visiting practitioners. I put my bag down not knowing what to expect. I took a deep breath. And I began my journey.

            Throughout the retreat I, along with numerous others, participated in all the customary happenings one might predict; we were woken up every morning by a gong, had vows of silence, ate healthily (and deliciously), learned meditative disciplines such as zazen, helped clean the residence, acknowledged our thoughts as we attempted to clear our minds, learned about the history and legacy of Zen Buddhism, engaged in liturgy, and inevitably did not reach enlightenment.  

            But it was the Zen Art, as I predicted, that struck me most. Zen priest Jody Hojin Kimmel, Sensei, taught the class.

            The session, at first glance, seemed quite elementary. We were painting pictures and they weren’t necessarily meant to be “good” by the standards of any certified art historian. We painted on instinct. We painted without looking. We painted without caring about the colors. We moved our brush not with a sense of purpose but with the pull of creative inertia.

            The cornerstone of the practice depended upon an artist’s willingness to feel a piece instead of planning it. I recalled instantly the acting note I would always receive in the early years of my studies: You’re in your head; get out of your head!

            And so I did my best. Little by little, I left my preconceived notions behind. I did not think what I wanted the piece to look like. I did not think about what I wanted it to say. I just painted.

            A sense memory emerged as my mind made a further connection to my old training. Theatrical performances that are in the Suzuki style often challenge audiences to recognize that the feeling a piece evokes supersedes the intellectual understanding of it. In this way, I felt a bit at home as this helped ease me into the concept of Zen Art.

            Hojin Sensei spoke of the relationships between artist and subject, artist and object, and object and audience. I found it fascinating.

            I painted one picture in particular that I deemed worthy of my attention. If you saw it, you would probably wonder which kindergartener drew it, but to me I looked at the piece and saw the universe, wonderment and possibility. I thought, in a way, it was a study of myself. Perhaps all Zen Art is. Perhaps all art is.

            I wish I still had it. Ironically I think someone mistook it for modern muck and tossed it accordingly.

            During the last night of our retreat, as we meditated in the zendō, we were told there would be a treat that not every group experienced due to scheduling. The Rōshi of the Mountains and Rivers Order, the abbot of the monastery, Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, would be seeing interested practitioners one at a time for a very brief encounter. We were given the opportunity to ask him one question, any question, and he would answer it. We quickly learned the ritual, the proper way to bow and kneel in front of him, and the conventional way to address and speak to him. We formed a seated line outside of his office and waited our turn, nervous that we were going to screw up the customs and formalities.

            His office was more like a miniature monastery. He sat in the center of the room; his body typified the characteristics one thinks of when imagining such a figure. I performed the procedure (aware that it indeed very much felt like a performance) and sat across from him. I knew what my question was going to be from the moment the opportunity presented itself. I was going to ask about Zen Art and its realistic implementation in film. After all, Zen Art seemed antithetical from a logistics point of view as a director and a crew tend to need to know what’s coming next. And so I asked.

            Shugen Roshi nodded his head and thought. He talked about balance, acknowledging the need for planning and practicality. But he stressed that I should find moments. Those small moments. Moments when I could let go and allow a course of action to unfold in the way it seemingly wanted to.

            At the time, I think I was disappointed in the answer. I nodded gracefully and thanked him.

            At the end of the retreat I felt refreshed and calmed. I walked out and headed towards my vehicle to find a dent. That’s right: my car had been hit in the Zen Mountain Monastery parking lot. Apparently, the universe balances out very quickly. I actually snickered in disbelief. The small moments. Luckily it was minor and the individual responsible gave me her name and information.

            On the drive home I wondered where the happy medium existed in film, the goldilocks zone of embracing the unplanned and accepting the spontaneous (that stretched far beyond improvisation) without jeopardizing a project.

            Two years later, during the height of a pandemic, I received an opportunity to experiment with this concept when I was hired by Teri Hansen to direct her short film Into the Water. Of all the projects I had been a part of, this one seemed to lend itself most towards the liberating practice of Zen Art.

            Into the Water was a spiritual journey about a woman who ethereally encounters her anxieties, fears, ambitions, and dreams - for when there is seemingly insurmountable hardship, there is always hope. The film’s themes include rebirth, self-examination, and the ever-blurred relationship between endings and beginnings. It was very much inspired by the Buddhist concept of Bardo.

And so, when filmmaking seemed to be at a momentary standstill, 19 ambitious artists, including a handful of Broadway actors, went to a lake house, followed all the newly created health guidelines, and made a union-approved movie.

            This was the first film I directed where I did not pen script. It was not my story. It was Teri’s and it was personal to her. She was the producer and lead. I would have normally been far more specific and stringent with what I envisioned but I found for the first time that was not truly my job; my job was to try and understand her vision and attempt, to the best of my ability, to bring it to life.

            I found my naturally less personal relationship to the material, in some sense, freeing. I just let things roll, pun very much intended.

            I started to judge the performances and sequences not through my usual lenses of discernment and continuity but instead through a connectivity of sensation. I sought out the small moments - moments of impressions and evocations. They became my cinematic chaperone, guiding me towards the truth of a scene, the truth of a character, and the truth of a moment.

            Interesting to note, Zen Art wasn’t the only inspiration I drew from for this project. I also channeled my inner Werner Herzog (I didn’t even know I had an inner Wener Herzog). I knew our schedule required us to often shoot in a single shot to save time and thusly we were going to avoid shooting for coverage.  Who better than Herzog for such an approach? The unchained freeness of flow of the camera and its relationship to the image has been a trademark of Herzog throughout his career and that technique seemed to mesh well with both what we were attempting to create and Zen Art itself. As the director himself has said, the goal is to capture “only the truly intense and the remarkable.” Perhaps the New German Cinema pioneer had been a Zen Artist all this time.

            I often think to myself – what’s next in my Zen Art journey? How can I build off that singular experience? Surely every project could benefit from a touch of that artistic independence. I constantly attempt to balance such unrestraint with self-imposed constraint. The mere thought tends to spiral me into vexation.

            At such times, I think of Shugen Roshi and the way he nodded his head and thought. I think how he spoke of balance; the need for planning and practicality. I think about what he stressed: those small moments. I think about letting go and allowing my art to unfold in whatever way it wants to.

            At such times, I am not so disappointed in his answer. Though often solitary in such recollections, I nod gracefully and thank him.

Onwards and Upwards, Always,

G

Heavy Kettle!

Here is a short-list of things I have not seen until recently:

1. An attack on the CapitOl Building

2. A pandemic

3. A Ma and Pa Kettle movie

That's right, you read that correctly. In my 57-year love affair with vintage films, I have totally missed the 9 movies that followed Universal-International's THE EGG AND I.

Now, even as a youth I was not crazy about the Claudette Colbert/Fred MacMurray filmed adaptation of Betty MacDonald's 1945 memoir. In the film I was shocked to find Betty's character (portrayed by Miss Colbert) so subservient to her chicken farming obsessed husband (MacMurray) as to be a totally unbelievable caricature of the obedient housewife. This intelligent woman, who was so used to the comforts that life had to offer, follows her husband into the hardscrabble world of farm life with a smile on her lips and a heart full of devotion. It still makes me slightly ill to think about. When I did the research about the real Betty MacDonald, I was not surprised to find that her real chicken loving husband (Robert Eugene Heskett) actually was a bit of a loony and an abusive drunkard. The marriage lasted just over 3 years when Betty hightailed out of that nightmare situation pronto. Now that seems much more believable.

So, I was/am not a fan of THE EGG AND I, and this led me to be totally disinterested in the Ma and Pa Kettle series which followed in its very successful wake. To be frank, I wasn't crazy about the supporting characters of Ma and Pa Kettle in this first film. Ma was abrasive and way too loud (Marjorie Main was nominated as Best Supporting Actress for it, too!), and Pa was in no uncertain terms A BUM! His borrowing ways and extreme laziness were presented as supposedly lovable traits, but the whole thing only annoyed the heck out of me.

Well, my good pals Lon and Debra Davis had recently gotten in touch with me and asked if I would like a copy of their latest book, MA AND PA KETTLE ON FILM (so I could review it). Suddenly something inside of me clicked. I realized that I'd never given these films a chance, and with the book on the way I thought it would be a good time to order the entire series on DVD. I'm so glad I did. The subsequent films are funnier, possess more warmth, and are much more endearing than the film from whence they sprang. Of the nine films a few are really terrific, some are very good, and only a couple are just so-so. Not a bad record, to be sure.

I grew up in the New York area in the 1960's and 70's and I enjoyed watching Abbott and Costello films every Sunday at 11:30 AM. A few years before Bud and Lou took over that spot I watched the Bowery Boys every Sunday at noon. I even made time for the Blondie and Dagwood movies on Saturday mornings, and occasionally I would sit through one of the Francis the Talking Mule films (not a big favorite). But, only once do I remember a Ma and Pa Kettle movie being shown during my childhood. It was on CBS one Saturday afternoon back in the late 60's, but I didn't watch. I just wasn't interested. You have to remember that I was also inundated with TV's THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES, PETTICOAT JUNCTION, and GREEN ACRES (my favorite of the bunch), so the thought of another hillbilly comedy just wasn't at the top of my list of desired viewing.

Boy, was I wrong. After a shaky first film, simply called MA AND PA KETTLE (which was basically a rehash of what we'd encountered in THE EGG AND I) I began to get sucked into this family's warm and wacky world. I even found a new favorite Christmas movie, MA AND PA KETTLE AT HOME. Not only does it feature a very touching Christmas themed final half, but it also features one of my all-time favorite actors, Alan Mowbray, in a hilarious performance as a snooty agricultural writer. In this film the “stuffy” Brit is butted in the rear end by a goat, doused in pig's mud, pelted with eggs (among other things), and tortured by a frog named Oscar. This is the best film in the series and I can honestly say that I laughed and cried before the film's end.

As expected there are complaints from some modern audiences regarding non-PC content (it just wouldn't seem right if SOMEBODY wasn't offended!). There are two Native American characters, Geoduck and Crowbar who do ALL of Pa's work. While Pa lies in his hammock, or sits in his rocking chair, his friends do his heavy lifting. The bottom line is that these characters, despite their stereotypical way of speaking, are the Kettle's best and most loyal friends. They help Pa because they love the guy, and that's OK with me. They are usually the smartest people in the room, and their devotion to their friends is nothing short of admirable. There is also grunting about the stereotypical depiction of “mountain folk.” Yes, they dress in old-fashioned clothing, and they seem a bit out of touch with the modern world in general, but how nice it is to see these simple folk constantly outwit, or tame the dishonest or uptight city-folk.

Watching the films also made me realize that the running gags were as familiar to the fans of the series as the harassed mailman was in the Blondie movies, or Slip Mahoney's mangling of the English language was in the Bowery Boys films. Pa banging his rocking chair on the floor to turn on the radio is found in all of the films (the radio ALWAYS plays “Tiger Rag” until Pa bangs the chair again to switch the station to a more sedate melody). There is also Ma's bellowing, “COME AND GET IT!” as she calls their stampeding 15 children to the table for mealtime and the perfunctory saying of Grace by Pa always follows that, which is more of a tip of his battered derby than an actual prayer (apparently this was Kilbride's own derby given to him by New York governor, Al Smith decades before!).

As for character traits, Pa is still the laziest man in town and he still borrows everything he needs from anyone who will comply, but somehow those traits seem more forgivable in these films. Perhaps seeing the struggle of the young couple in THE EGG AND I being undercut by Pa's deadbeat ways made it somewhat tough for me to forgive. But in these films he doesn't prey on anyone who can't afford to lend a hand to the laconic layabout. He owes money to everyone in town, but it's accepted by most because it's who he is. He just wouldn't be Pa Kettle if he didn't have these foibles. Ma is also accepted as she is a loving mother and wife, in spite of her coarse and sometimes rough and tumble behavior.

Another plus is Ma and Pa's relationship. They occasionally feel romantic, but even more than that there is a benign acceptance between them of who they are and what they mean to each other. It's almost sophisticated in its depth. Ma knows full well what Pa is and accepts his behavior as his nature. Pa sees Ma as his savior, She does his work for him, raises the kids, pulls the plow, and on and on. Some might think that is unconscionable behavior from Pa, but there is almost something sweet in the unconditional love they feel for each other. Ma's workhorse ways are just the way it is, has been, and always will be. She doesn't mind so neither do we.

The children remind me of the Bowery Boys who weren't Leo Gorcey or Huntz Hall. That means they could have been played by anyone who fit the costumes. There was usually one adult child who took on the role of love interest with an outside character, but the children were mainly there for crowding purposes, If Ma occasionally forgot their names, it was okay because so did we.

So many welcome familiar faces show up in these films, and I was sure glad to see such favorites as the aforementioned Alan Mowbray, Ray Collins, Sig Ruman, Barbara Brown, Teddy Hart, Stan Ross (he of the Jackie Gleason Show, with his catchphrase, “I'm with YOU!”), Una Merkel, Emory Parnell, Ted DeCorsia, Charles McGraw, Ben Weldon, Sid Tomack, Esther Dale (as the stuffy “Birdie Hicks”), Marjorie Bennett, Elvia Alman, and so many more.

The directors and writers are like a who's who of classic comedy. Here we find Charles Barton, Charles Lamont, Eddie Sedgwick (MA AND PA KETTLE BACK ON THE FARM was the comedy veteran's final film), and Lee “Roll 'em” Sholem. Writers included Leonard Stern and Martin Ragaway (from the Abbott and Costello radio show, and The Honeymooners), Jack Henley, and Kay Lenard. But the most tantalizing name in the bunch is that of John Grant. Grant was one of the main architects of the comedy of Abbott and Costello. He was on salary so that he could effortlessly weave the reworked burlesque routines that he knew so well into the boys' films. Here he does the exact same thing for the Kettles. He was not a story man, nor was he great at structure, but he was expert at including bits like 7x13=28, or The Lemon Table bit seamlessly into a film's trajectory.

For Ma and Pa, the prolific writer included a version of 7x13, only this version was 5x14=25 (gone viral on YouTube!). He also managed to include the old Bud and Lou standby, “Loan me $50.00”. This is where Bud needs to borrow 50 dollars from Lou. When Lou tells him that he only has 40 dollars Bud accepts but adds, “Okay, give me the 40 and you'll owe me 10.” I found it fascinating after watching Bud and Lou do these routines for decades, to see these actors (who weren't comedians) performing this very familiar material. Unfortunately it doesn't work as well with Ma and Pa, but it still adds to my fascination with the films. (I've often said that if you want to know about the artistic merits of Abbott and Costello just watch somebody else try to do one of their routines. Nobody even comes close.)

As in other series films, the main characters are thrown into some unlikely situations. The Kettles win a contest and move into an ultra-modern house in MA AND PA KETTLE, they are invited on a trip to Paris, France in MA AND PA KETTLE ON VACATION, they go to Hawaii in MA AND PA KETTLE AT WAIKIKI, and even visit New York City in MA AND PA KETTLE GO TO TOWN. In most of the films they deal with swindlers, gangsters, spies, ornery neighbors, and a whole lot of various opportunists. None of them stand a chance against the homespun Kettles though.

Of course it's Marjorie Main and Percy Kilbride who are the main reason for watching these low budget (but hugely profitable) programmers. It's their relationship, comic reactions, and all around innate decency that made me fall for these films. In MA AND PA KETTLE AT THE FAIR, Pa is asked to stand in for the ailing church minister. Of course I suspected some kind of comical disaster to occur, but I was totally surprised and delighted as Pa makes a heartfelt and serious sermon about tolerance, and gratitude toward things like family and friendship. And as for Ma, she is one big raucous bundle of good common sense, loving motherhood, and total support for her enormous family.

I really like these people a lot, and I eagerly looked forward to each film as I devoured them in chronological order.

The final two films of the series are the weakest. This is due to the retirement of the irreplaceable Percy Kilbride. The man was in his mid 60's and he was quite tired of playing the same role over and over again. He lived quietly on his savings and his social security before succumbing in 1964 due to the effects of being hit by a car. He was 76 years old. Marjorie Main stayed on for the two Percy-less films, but it seems that those entries suffered from Stanley Clements disease. When Leo Gorcey left the Bowery Boys series they decided to keep things going with a different partner for Huntz Hall, played by Mr. Clements. These are the least entertaining films in the series, and so it was for the Kettle films, as well. Character man Arthur Hunnicut played Pa's act-alike cousin in THE KETTLES IN THE OZARKS, and then they hired a new Pa played by Parker Fennelly (most known as New England's own Titus Moody on the Allen's Alley portion of the Fred Allen radio show). But it didn't work. Fennelly and Hunnicut were both terrific actors, but only Percy Kilbride was Pa Kettle.

And so the series came to end after 10 films (including THE EGG AND I). Miss Main, who was by all accounts a very neurotic germaphobe who often “spoke” with her dead husband, did a little television after her final Kettle film (THE KETTLES ON OLD MACDONALD'S FARM, her 85th and last film) but decided to retire to a comfortable life in her Palm Springs home. She died of cancer in 1975 at the age of 85.

As for the brand new book, MA AND PA KETTLE ON FILM (Bear Manor Media/368 pages), it is the perfect reminder for those of you who'd grown up with these films, and the perfect guide for the uninitiated. Not only does it cover each film in complete detail, but we also are treated to firsthand stories from surviving cast members, biographical information on the main and supporting players, and relevant reviews (some by the New York Times, no less). We are also treated to full cast and crew listings, running times, an index, and so much more. It is the perfect book on the subject and I am proud to include it in my library.

In closing I just want to say that a part of the joy for vintage film fans/historians is the fact that we haven't seen every film ever made. In fact, we haven't seen most films...period! But it's the joy of the chase and the satisfaction of discovering roads not yet taken that keeps the fascination and curiosity burning within us. Even something as seemingly unimportant as catching up to these delightful low budget treats is enough to make the trip a more bountiful one. Long live Ma and Pa Kettle, and with streaming, DVDs, and hopefully Blu-rays, they will live a good deal longer than anyone probably ever expected them to.

---

Nick Santa Maria: A native New Yorker, he has been a walking encyclopedia of show biz history since he was in single digits. He has appeared on Broadway in GREASE!, and THE PRODUCERS. He's done TV, film, radio, and stand up. He is the co-author, lyricist/composer of the Off-Broadway show, REAL MEN, the Musical. He has done more than 250 audiobooks, and is the dumber half of Biffle and Shooster, the fake 1930's comedy team (DVD on Kino-Lorber Video). His book THE ANNOTATED ABBOTT AND COSTELLO (w/co-author, Matthew Coniam) will be published by McFarland Press in November of 2022. Check out his website: nicksantamaria.com

 G&E In Motion does not necessarily agree with the opinions of our guest bloggers. That would be boring and counterproductive. We have simply found the author’s thoughts to be interesting, intelligent, unique, insightful, and/or important. We may not agree on the words but we surely agree on their right to express them and proudly present this platform as a means to do so.

Making The Monster

For years, I had been kicking around the world of independent filmmaking trying to get a project made. What I had was a feature length monster movie inspired by the middle section of Mary Shelley’s FRANKENSTEIN, which involved the creature living outside a farmhouse imagining the lives of the humans who lived inside.  I often asked myself, “Who were those people and why did the monster want to be a part of their family?”

Drawing on stories from my grandfather’s life in a lower income rural family, I built out the characters that inhabited the story of SLAPFACE.  Instead of a re-animated corpse as the monster, I drew from Grimms’ Fairy Tales and legends of witches befriending children and drawing them into their worlds of intimacy and chaos. Frankenstein’s Monster was never far from my mind, though, as the monster in SLAPFACE is seven feet tall, wearing a raggedy cloak and skulking through the forest.  

This feature length script was written with a low budget in mind.  One of the reasons independent filmmakers make scary movies is the time-honored tradition of not needing big budgets or movie stars to make a project that can sell.  

On streaming services you can find all manner of spooky entertainment that was banged out in a couple of weeks or less by enterprising creators.  

Seriously, how hard is it to get some young people in the woods, buckets of blood and someone in a mask to dutifully chop them up, or gather a collection of friends to be zombies attacking your rural house?

Once we accept that this can be done, we have to ask ourselves why we want to tell our story.  SLAPFACE was personalized by stories from within my family. The cycle of abuse that exists within the two brothers at the center of the story cut very close to the bone for me.  In some ways the domestic drama is as scary as the monster, and I was excited by the counterpoint of the human drama versus the supernatural violence that ensued.

The main character is a 12-year-old boy, since I loved how Don Coscarelli’s PHANTASM took a child protagonist and placed him in a bizarre adult story.  Once you are dealing with children, you might as well include animals (a dog and a rat figure into the narrative.)  So we very quickly had a demanding low budget independent shoot working around the limitations of child labor laws, demanding special effects, animals, and of course limited funds!

I spent years figuring out how to get this movie made, with various producers going about trying to secure funds.  There was always confusion over how the Monster is supposed to look.  Literally an entire page of the script is devoted to the height, clothes, hair, skin, hands of the creature, and yet producers and investors would ask questions like, “Does it look like Shrek?”

Also, movies like HEREDITARY, THE BABADOOK and THE WITCH hadn’t come out yet, so there wasn’t a framework for character driven stories of dysfunctional families grappling with the supernatural that you could point to in a pitch deck.  Which is not to say that they weren’t getting made...Larry Fessenden’s WENDIGO is an essential, inspirational film about a family, a monster, and a sense of ambiguity over what’s real and what is manifested by a child’s imagination.  If you haven’t seen the movie, go track it down - it’s an indie masterpiece.

After several years of producers trying and failing to get this story told, I gave up.  I put the script away in a drawer and devoted myself to work-for-hire directing, not unlike the Roger Corman school of filmmaking where you are handed a script and told, “We have a slasher in the woods movie and Tom Savini for three days, go direct this to the best of your ability staying on time and on budget.”

That’s good practice for sure, but those projects are largely outside of your control.  One of them had no less than five writers, including myself at one point writing 20 pages worth of material as glue to help the finished movie make some sort of cohesive sense.  One of them told me flat out, in these words, “We’re not interested in rewrites, we want to make THIS shitty script.  Are you interested or not?”  Like a dutiful mercenary, we go in and draw our wages and make the best movies we can under the given circumstances. I’m not complaining; I learned a lot.

SLAPFACE had been long forgotten by this point until my friend, and director of photography, Dominick Sivilli suggested that we go out and make a 5-minute proof-of-concept for the movie of my dreams. “Just put together a few of the best scenes and we’ll go shoot it!  I need some fantasy material for my reel and five thousand dollars. Let’s go make a movie!”  Once I had agreed, he further suggested, “Why don’t we crowd fund a little so I don’t have to spend ALL of the five grand myself?”

After a few weeks of successful crowd funding where I remain indebted to the people who believed in me and this project, all of them, more than I could possibly say, Dominick patted me on the back and said, “That’s a good thing we did that because I DID NOT HAVE FIVE GRAND AT ALL.  I just wanted you to make your film!”

While I was torn between throttling Dom and hugging him, he was right.  Honestly, I would have never have gotten this going without his push.  We shot for two days (and one half-day of pickups) using a cast and crew of friends we had worked with before over our years of grind in the independent film community, edited the piece ourselves, and put it out there for film festivals and critics to judge.

I told myself that no matter what, I had done something that was close to my heart.  Even if the feature never got made, I could sleep peacefully at night knowing I had told SLAPFACE even in this abbreviated form, as a short film.

The short connected with horror audiences who identified with the child protagonist and saw in him the outsiders in themselves.  All I’ve ever cared about as a storyteller is finding a way to share something with the audience; once the movie is done it completely belongs to them.

I’m grateful to all of the film festivals, mostly in the horror community, that programmed our short film.  We used social media to keep people abreast of what was happening with the film and had a lot of fun along the way.  We ran for three years, and along the way were discovered by two producers (Joe Benedetto and Mike Manning) who were interested in optioning the feature.  

I’ve very much become an advocate of doing a proof-of-concept short film as a way to get the word out about your feature.  Doing a short version of your story, with its own beginning, middle, and end, or a piece of the larger story (which is the direction I chose to go), allows you to have an offering that producers can look at and get a sense of tone, performance style; what the monster looks like...!  It is much easier to get someone to watch a short film under 10 minutes than to read a 90-page script. If they are enticed by the short version, it accomplishes in a visual way what most people try to do with a logline or an elevator pitch.  It’s a living, breathing pitch deck and an expression of your idea.  

When Mike and Joe optioned the feature length script, I figured we’d take a year and see what happened.  Other producers had tried to get investors in the past.  Having the short film proof of concept definitely helped in attracting the money and was also instrumental in hiring Dom (who shot the short) and Lukas Hassel (who played the monster) on the feature.  People don’t have to use their imagination; it’s all right there in front of them.

Eight months later I was out there scouting locations, casting, crewing up...and once again most of the crew was people I had long term working relationships with.  When you’re doing low budget horror (with kids and animals, as I said earlier) it helps to be working with industry professionals who are your friends and have your back.  They knew this was my dream project and they wanted to be there to support me because we had all been in the trenches together for years. Having a community is vital.  

When we shot scenes involving extras, I called up my family but also indie horror directors and producers I’ve known along the festival circuit who were happy to show up and be bar patrons.  Trust me, those friendships matter.  When your back is against the wall, a friend will roll up their sleeves to help.  This is a business of relationships.

There are harsh realities of going from a short to a feature as well. For instance, we had to recast some of the lead roles with name talent.  12-year-old August Maturo from GIRL MEETS WORLD and THE NUN was extraordinary as the lead actor in our feature, a brilliant performer and a true partner in every sense of the word. 

But I did have to have some not fun correspondence with the child actor from the short film (who had aged out of the role, but still...) and say there was no role for him in the feature length.  That was uncomfortable, but you always must do what is best for the movie in as respectful a way as you can.

Another note for aspiring horror filmmakers is to always contractually obligate the special effects department to do a test. If you don’t do this, your effects test will happen during principal photography on set with the entire crew standing around watching you figure it out. That’s basically setting fire to the investor’s money and a gigantic waste of everyone’s time and labor. If you’re forced into this situation by a given circumstance, start with scenes you know you can cut out of the movie if you have to in case the effects don’t work.  But better than that is to do tests ahead of time where you can give notes and improve what your whole movie is depending on.  This is a horror movie after all!

Always listen to your collaborators with no ego attached.  Our producer, Mike Manning, was incredibly creative and hands-on. He gave notes that were brave and thoughtful, saying things like, “What if you made the ending EVEN darker; it would be much more tragic...” or “What if the opening scene was in media res and we throw the viewer into a disturbing scene so that they’ll always feel uncertain for the rest of the running time?”

One such note that was initially difficult to hear but wound up being profoundly good for our story was a suggestion that seemed like a radical shift in story. The short film was the story of a father and son, but he suggested it be about a younger brother and an older brother.  

I immediately thought of how THE FOG remake cast all of the actors younger and stripped them of all character and personality.  
 

I didn’t want to make a WB movie. I wanted to make something lean and mean. I balked at the idea but Mike asked if we could talk on the phone for two hours so I could hear him out.  With a deadbeat dad, there’s no hope at all...with an older brother, it is a troubled young man trying to take on the responsibility of parenting using tools he learned from an abuser. It would enrich the role and make a character more complex.  

Fortunately for me, I had been reading Mark Twain’s HUCKLEBERRY FINN at the time and that book is all about a young man plunged into the violence of an older person’s world. I am so grateful to have listened to Mike, who ultimately made the movie better. That’s the great gift of having smart collaborators building a project with you. If you remain open and listen to them, that is a force multiplier...

We finished the film and edited during the pandemic, which thankfully gave us something creative and enriching to do during lockdown, a weird time in all of our lives.  Once we completed the film, we put it out there to film festivals knowing that our goal was to sell the movie and we limited our scope to places that could attract either a sales agent or a distributor. Dread Presents picked up our movie and sold it to Shudder, where we will premiere in early 2022.  

It has been a fascinating journey going from a feature length script to a short proof-of-concept to a finished full-length motion picture.  As a character says in MAD MAX FURY ROAD, “I live...I die...I live again!”  

If you have a script with a high concept idea, maybe you can get the producers on board that way.  SLAPFACE is a character driven thriller with a monster in it, and its unique quality was served by starting small and slowly building.  I hasten to add that the feature length script was written BEFORE we did the short, so we had a lot to draw on. I don’t recommend going the opposite way necessarily; plenty of short films expanded to features get the critical smack down of, “It feels padded and should have stayed a short!”

Really it all comes down to following your passion and believing that there is always a way.  Sometimes it is a sprint, sometimes it is a marathon.  At the end of the day, I made the film I wanted to make and am extremely grateful for the journey with the cast, crew, festivals, critics, and collaborators along the way. I can honestly say, even when it was challenging, I have loved every minute.

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Jeremiah Kipp's directing credits include SLAPFACE (coming to Shudder in early 2022), the Chinese-American co-production BROKEN BADGES, the HP Lovecraft-inspired BLACK WAKE, and THE SADIST starring Tom Savini.  He is currently in post-production on DRAW UP AND STARE starring Michael O'Keefe, Linda Powell and Melissa Leo.  He is a graduate of NYU Tisch School of the Arts.

G&E In Motion does not necessarily agree with the opinions of our guest bloggers. That would be boring and counterproductive. We have simply found the author’s thoughts to be interesting, intelligent, unique, insightful, and/or important. We may not agree on the words but we surely agree on their right to express them and proudly present this platform as a means to do so.

Q&A: A Conversation with Horror Filmmaker Geroni J. Saint-Hilaire

Let’s start this off as we should – what’s your favorite horror film?

Geroni: Such a hard question but The Omen (1976) does it for me! The way the story took on a biblical theme and brought an ancient fear into the modern world was very original. Evil children with agendas of destruction always creep me out.

What attracts you to horror more than any other genre?

Geroni: I find horror to be a genre of great potential; there is always something new to make you afraid. Choose your poison: zombies, ghosts, demons, serial killers, aliens, conspiracies or cults. And then you have the directors who are daring and innovative and have the creativity to take something unexpected and make it scary and refreshing. Horror gives you a chance to make something that is deeply personal because fear impacts us all differently.

You've made both experimental and narrative films. What are the biggest differences?

Geroni: When working with a narrative storyline, there is usually a character that must ultimately reach a goal of some kind. This approach to making a film is the most common and widely used. If you are going down this route you have a formula laid out for you and it gives you limited creative freedom to express your visual ideas. There is always the three-act structure to worry about and the forced ending. An experimental approach to the craft brings together a series of ideas not too dissimilar from a narrative project but the integrity of the film relies on the auteur’s ability to hit the emotional core of the audience without having to spell anything out for them. The images and choice of sound in this case should do the work for you. And there will always be different opinions of the meaning! It is always a favorite moment when people ask me about one of my works and what it “really means” to which I like to respond with a question of my own. What did you take or learn from it? I actually learn a lot about my own work as a result.

What’s scarier – fast zombies or slow zombies?

Geroni: Slower zombies seem to be more goal-oriented. The fast ones just take a bite and move on to the next human. Slow ones take their time!

I've heard you talk about how horror affects people's emotional state, which is why you personally crave scary stories and why you believe people love them. Can you expand upon this idea?

Geroni: Since we were all young, most of us feared the ghost in the closet or the monster under the bed. There is something fascinating about the unknown. Many people I know would never dare step foot into a graveyard or an occult supply store for that reason alone. We tend to fear what we do not understand so we attach wrong or false beliefs to certain things that are considered taboo or freaky. Out of all the wholesome genres in the world, ranging from romantic comedies to heart string pulling melodramas, horror stands alone as the one that can ruin a good night’s sleep. In many ways it is the opposite of entertainment. It makes its way from the written word or the screen right into your world and into your mind. After a good reading or film viewing, you find yourself extra careful and tense in your own space. You might feel tough until you hear a strange sound coming from your hallway and if you are brave you gather enough courage to stand there and look into the dark and against all your logic you wonder for one second if there is someone or something out there, waiting for you.

Geroni on the set of Wet Paint with G&E Productions

Is there anything you think modern filmmakers have lost in terms of what horror movies used to be?

Geroni: Yes. They have lost the ability to be a generation to explore new topics for the very first time. Also patience and slow building as a form has dropped along with everyone's attention span. As a modern filmmaker, I feel that we have a huge opportunity to make innovative, shocking material. The past is there to provide us with lessons on what works and also with what doesn't. Despite this, there are still so many bad films in the genre being produced that it becomes questionable how some of these projects get green lit in the first place. On the other hand we do have some brilliant storytellers that are passing into new territory with their ideas. 

 Shock VS Tension. It’s an age-old debate. What's more important in your opinion?

Geroni: A healthy balance of both is essential. Like anything else too much of anything is not good. All shock means gory, loud, and annoying jump scares with a lack of character development. I attempted to find a decent balance of both with my short film Wet Paint. Trying to slowly build up to the finale piece by piece without showing too much or relying on jump scares was a challenge but ultimately a rewarding exercise. Too much slow building and tension and the project will come across as “boring” to many people. You have to find a way of keeping people guessing while also finding ways to give enough shock to keep them interested.

What makes something scary?

Geroni: In my opinion, something truly scary is something that can possibly happen to you. Anything beyond normal understanding and control can scare you. Zombies? No. Demons? Yes (I totally believe in demons). Slashers? Not so much. Disturbed fan that crosses boundaries and stalks you? Absolutely yes. 

What do you think most people get wrong when thinking about the process of making horror films?

Geroni: Most people start a script and immediately succumb to tropes and stereotypes and they force themselves into a writing device that ultimately makes a terrible film. How many times have you started a film on Netflix or Amazon just to see the same pack of arrogant teenagers going off on that last weekend get together before college starts only to see those same characters drinking, having sex, and dealing with some crazed lunatic who happens to know that they are alone and isolated all weekend. I tend to turn these off before the 10-minute mark. Many writers are scared to think outside of the box and this is what ironically leads them to make these awful throwaway projects. Everyone does their part and sometimes the image is great and the actors pull it off to the best of their abilities but the ultimate failure happened before anyone ever stepped on set in the form of a weak script. If you cannot keep people guessing what is going to happen next while cheering for someone in the story you will lose interest quickly.

If you were to remake a horror film – which would it be?

Geroni: I would love to take on The Omen! Even though this story is so cursed and infamous, something about working on a project with so much controversy and myth is very seductive. I would dive deep into the spiritual origins of Damien.

Is there a filmmaker who has never made a horror movie that you think should?

Geroni: I would love to see Darren Aronofsky try something in the paranormal or occult (I do not consider Mother! horror). He has a way of sending his characters into this terrible place mentally and physically and so it would be very interesting to see what he can do with horror. He has a very unique way of making audience members invested in characters while also destroying them at the same time. This approach would work wonders within the horror formula.

What’s the part of the creative process that you enjoy the most?

Geroni: Working with actors is probably my favorite part. Seeing how a performer will change and envelop the traits of a fictional character and mold him/her into reality is always fascinating. Actors add things into the mix that I would have never thought of and that experience is always fun. Also location scouting! The location for a film is always the most important and silent character. Think about how some of your favorite films would be impacted if they were based elsewhere!

The least?

Geroni: Writing the script is tedious work. Everyone has strengths and I feel like writing a script that really pops is a gift on its own. If you have a good writer who can help you achieve your vision, half the work is already done. 

You also paint - mostly horror related pieces. Tell us about that. 

Geroni: Yes! After wrapping up production on Wet Paint, I started to get an interest in making art in the medium of painting. I started on canvas and was inspired by Zdzislaw Beksinski and Salvador Dali's surreal paintings. It is a very freeing process because with a painting, there is no limit to what your imagination can create. There are no producers telling you, “No!” Plus, money isn’t as much of an issue. It's all about your unique vision. I was even able to get my paintings into a few small pop-up shows and galleries!

What would you like to see from the future of horror movies?

Geroni: I feel like the future is contrastingly bright for the dark world of horror films. Horror will always be something that people want to see. It will continue to survive the test of time. Scary stories have evolved from campfire gatherings and ancient urban legends to where we are now with people paying money to participate in haunted houses and extreme events. We will always revert to that primal desire to be scared, to get that adrenaline rushing, no matter what the future holds.

What would you like your mark on the genre to be?

Geroni: I want to be able to lift the veil of mystery on the occult. To be able to make solid work that does not lie or exaggerate in story. The occult has many twisted and terrifying secrets that have not yet been explored through the lens of a film camera. I want to show off the dangers of spiritual forces that cannot be seen but surely felt.

Unlimited budget – what's the next film you would like to make?

Geroni: I have one script that I have been working on slowly for some time that I will compete regardless of budget or costs. It deals with witchcraft and an old legend. Sometimes you have to dream big; the money is always possible to secure. Finishing something that seems impossible carries a big reward.

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Geroni J. Saint-Hilaire

Film director and a native New Yorker.

Geroni J. Saint-Hilaire is a film director and a native New Yorker. His short horror film Wet Paint is currently on the festival circuit and so far has screened at The New York Short Film Festival, Scared for your LIIFE, The Russian International Film Awards, and The Videoscream International Film Festival where it is currently a finalist in competition. His other films include Black Valentine, Sex, Drugs & Art, and Side Effect, which won Most Outstanding Experimental Short at Alpha Channel at Tribeca 92Y. Geroni also enjoys making music and painting. youtube.com/blackillusionpictures

G&E In Motion does not necessarily agree with the opinions of our guest bloggers. That would be boring and counterproductive. We have simply found the author’s thoughts to be interesting, intelligent, unique, insightful, and/or important. We may not agree on the words but we surely agree on their right to express them and proudly present this platform as a means to do so.