A restaurant was the location for our sixth and final day of filming before having a day off.  Since the page count for that location was a mere 1 7/8 pages, the original schedule issued two months earlier allocated just half a day for its filming. That was as unrealistic as the entire schedule, which had determined THE RIGHT REGRETS would be filmed in 6 days. Before going into the details of filming on that sixth day in a restaurant, let me walk you through our search to find that restaurant. Once she had decided THE RIGHT REGRETS would be filmed on the Monterey Peninsula, Marlyn Mason had contacted Karen Nordstrand of the Monterey Film Commission. I had never met Miss Nordstrand, although I was very aware of the Film Commision because of my fried Richard Tyler’s many years of involvement with it. One morning Marlyn and I drove over to their offices on Lighthouse Boulevard in New Monterey and met with Karen. Although she would not be able to be involved directly with our production, having read the script she proved invaluable in the advice she was able to offer. For our restaurant she suggested we check out Toastie’s in Pacific Grove, so Marlyn and I hopped in her Volvo and continued down Lighthouse Avenue into Pacific Grove where we found the restaurant. It was a charmer, so out came my iPhone for some photo documentation.

I was intrigued. I saw the interesting possibilities for staging the two sequences set in the restaurant. Marlyn and I had lunch, but left without any overtures about securing the site. We immediately notified our staff to secure the restaurant for our location. Their first report was that the restaurant was open till 4:00 pm every day except Sunday, when they closed at 2:00 pm. However they were able to do nothing beyond obtaining that information because Teresa, the owner of Toastie’s was away until the following week. I decided the earlier closing time on Sunday made that day our obvious choice. The following week, when Teresa returned, she was contacted, and we were informed we could film there on a Sunday, but we would not be able to enter the restaurant until 4:00 pm, giving the staff time to clean up, and we would have to be finished by 9:00 pm. That gave me pause. Although the page count was a limited 1 7/8 pages, I knew it was going to take 18 setups to complete the day’s work, and that 7 of those setups involved a view of the exterior, which meant they would have to be completed before we lost the light. Sunset in California in early April was 7:30 pm. Steve Rosales, in charge of the location search, then sent me a photo of a restaurant in San Juan Batista that he said was film-friendly and could be ours for the asking. The fact that San Juan Batista was 35 miles from Carmel didn’t bother me. The photos he sent did.

The restaurant didn’t have the quaint charm of Toastie’s. It didn’t seem like the place where two professorial rare book dealers would meet weekly. Some how the problems at Toastie’s were going to have to be met and solved, beginning with the fact that the Sunday we would be filming was Easter Sunday. Normally we would take that holiday off and film our final four days starting on Monday, but we had a conflicting situation. We had a request from Maxwell Caulfield’s manager. Maxwelll had been offered a role on the television show, NCIS that would film on Monday, April 8. Would it be possible to adjust our shooting schedule so he could accept? It certainly was. We would shoot on Sunday and rest on Monday.

Easter Sunday, April 8, our company began assembling at the Pacific Grove location at 2:00 pm, in anticipation of entering the restaurant at 4:00 pm. I don’t know who arranged it, but I was pleasantly surprised when I saw the crew starting to take equipment into the restaurant shortly thereafter. So Brandon and I quickly set up the camera and with our three actors got our first shot of them entering the restaurant.

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We then moved into the restaurant where production designer Lisa Lupo was at work adding subtle touches to enhance the charm of the place, and Brandon began lighting our first setup. I chose to seat our two professorial gentlemen at a table by a window, and so began our race against time. There were 6 setups involving the windows that needed to be completed before daylight departed …

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… at which time Maxwell would also depart. He would drive that evening to his home in Ojai and report the following morning to the set of NCIS. The actor at the table with Maxwell is my dear friend, Jack Stauffer, whom I have known for over forty years. In that short clip you have seen most of the words Jack had to speak in his role of Abbott Harrington. I had qualms about asking him to play Abbott. Jack had acted many times for me in Hollywood in major roles; he had starred in all three of the stage productions I had directed in Carmel, and a couple of years ago I went up to Antioch to see Jack give a breathtaking performance as Willy Loman in a production of DEATH OF A SALESMAN. Jack’s response to my request that he play this minuscule role was an immediate affirmative, and to complete the picture he donated the stipend he was paid to Marlyn as a further contribution to our project.

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The waitress is Jeanette O’Connor, who was a major factor in the creation of our production of THE RIGHT REGRETS. Marlyn and Jeanette have known each other since grade school days. It was through Jeanette that we secured Maxwell for the role of Charles (you can read that whole story in my post THE RIGHT REGRETS: CASTING). Because of her aid, Marlyn wanted to repay her in some way. When she asked Jeanette what she would like, Jeanette suggested an overnight visit to Carmel. I then suggested that the visit be accompanied by the role of Jolie, the waitress in our story. Jeanette leapt at the offer, and I ended up with another small role being performed by solid pro.

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I was determined to have my nephew Julien in the movie, and the only sequence where I could use him was in the restaurant. There were complications. Julien was scheduled to leave after we completed filming on Sunday, as his school started after the Easter break the following day. When Maxwell heard that Lisa would have to drive Julien back to Los Angeles on Monday, her day off, he offered to drive Julien to Ojai, where Julien’s father could meet and pick him up that night. That meant Maxwell leaving later, but he had no problem with that, so Uncle Ralph got to direct his nephew …

… mama Lisa and the hairdresser prepared him …

… David Potigian’s ever-present camera recorded the event …

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… and Julien had his first movie close-up, which is in the final film …

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… after which he sadly bid all of his newfound friends on the crew goodbye. He really didn’t want to leave. I was told he cried.

We ended up working past the original curfew of 9:00 and with no complaint from management. Teresa was not only there with us to the end, she sat at one of the tables as background. One of the staff waitresses stayed on and appeared as a waitress. We finally wrapped at 10:30 pm. It was a wearisome day, actually much more fatiguing than our first day in Big Sur when we filmed the Lighthouse, Garripata Beach and two sequences in a moving vehicle on Highway 1. We had filmed our scheduled 1 7/8 pages; we had filmed two minutes and forty seconds of our thirty-five minute film. And if what we filmed seems inconsequential, I assure you it was not. Those eighteen setups spliced, together were what launched our story into orbit and retrieved it at the other end to proceed to its finale.

I looked forward to the day off on Monday, after which we would reassemble to complete filming our final three days.

The journey continues

The post The Right Regrets: The Restaurant appeared first on Ralph's Cinema Trek.

If I were to describe Marlyn Mason’s personality as being scintillatingly gregarious, I could be accused of making a gross understatement. During her frequent visits to Carmel she takes a daily walk through the village. With a colorful scarf draped dramatically around her neck and one of her charming parchment parasols perched on her shoulder she does attract attention. But even without these inducements I don’t think Marlyn has ever seen a person with whom she didn’t initiate a conversation, which does have its advantages when you’re searching for locations for a movie. One of the locations on our long list for THE RIGHT REGRETS was the interior of Lily’s house. Lily was the character Marlyn was to portray. Marlyn made it a point to ask almost everyone with whom she came in contact if they knew of a house that would be available. One day she asked that of a woman in one of the small shops she regularly visits. Soon after she returned from her walk, she received a phone call from that woman. She was given a name and telephone number. Marlyn made that phone call, and when she hung up she notified me that we had an appointment the following Saturday morning at 11:00 am to check out a house right here in Carmel. Saturday morning we walked a half-mile to the post office and an additional three blocks and met Lindamarie Rosier in one of the charming reminders of what Carmel used to be. Lindamarie greeted us warmly and then began a guided tour as she told us her home was one of an original five or six cabins built as I recall a year or so before I entered the world. The other cabins have been torn down and replaced with modern abodes, but Lindamarie’s father bought the house early in this century and had Lindamarie redesign it, keeping the original structure. At his passing, she inherited the house. Marlyn and I were enchanted. Lindamarie, keeping the original garage doors sealed off as the fourth wall, converted that space into an amazing music room with an organ. She teaches music in Oakland, where she resides with her husband, but she spends almost every weekend in Carmel. Unfortunately our story didn’t call for a music room. We were looking for a living room, a bedroom and a kitchen. And what a living room awaited us. With its beamed ceiling and paneled walls it did what a set is supposed to do – reflect and add dimension to the character living in it.

In addition the room was furnished with a wonderful array of antique and unique pieces.

Lindamarie told us she would remove the Christmas decorations, and that we would be free to relocate the furniture and remove anything from the room that we didn’t want to use. I knew immediately what I intended to do. The leather sofa would move from under the window to in front of the fireplace, and the small table that Linda Marie was using as a desk …

… would be placed behind the sofa and with the two purple-seated chairs would be Lily’s dining area. Lindamarie told us that small table was a “booze” table. She swiveled the top of the table to reveal the space beneath, where liquor was hidden during Prohibition.

Left of the fireplace was a built-in telephone table. I decided I would move the telephone scene scripted to occur in the kitchen to that area, which would be more interesting to photograph and would save time by eliminating lighting another room. It even came propped with a telephone. However, the telephone was a dial phone. That was certainly passé.

But when I lifted the receiver and found the telephone actually functioned, I realized it too added to Lily’s character. The dial phone stayed. A final look at the bedroom, where I had two sequences to film, …

… and I knew three quarters of a mile from my home we had found a gem. LIndamarie told us we would have to film on a weekend, since she was employed in Oakland during the week. With only one weekend of filming in our schedule we settled on Saturday, April 6, since Sunday, April 7 was already allocated to another location.

CUT TO:

8:00 am, Saturday, April 6. The cast (only Marlyn Mason; Maxwell had a later call) and crew arrived. I discovered that Lindamarie had heard my plans for rearranging the furniture and had gone ahead and done it. It looked fabulous. Production designer Lisa Lupo and art director Ryan Gibson immediately went to work, removing the extraneous and adding where necessary to turn Lindamarie’s living room into Lily’s living room. Three of Marlyn’s phone calls were set in this room, and that was our order of business that morning—two of them at the built in desk in the corner and the third in the middle of the room.

We wrapped the phone calls late morning, which brought to an end the filming of the day sequences in the living room. The crew then went to work blacking out the windows for the night sequence. Lisa did her best with the drapes that were hanging to cover the windows, but there were blank spots where the blackened windows showed.

First: David Poitigian’s filming of the crew’s filming Take 3 of the master shot. The blond lady standing in the doorway is Lindamarie, the owner of the house, filming the scene with her iPad

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Those windows did determine how I filmed the scene. Under normal circumstances I would have panned Marlyn’s cross around the couch, but these were not normal circumstances. The windows had been blacked out, and there were not enough drapes to completely conceal those windows. Here is Take 8, as it appears in the final movie.

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There were three more angles to shoot for the scene, and then we moved to the bedroom, where there were two scenes to be filmed. The major one of the two was a long phone call. As originally scripted Lily received the call while she was perched on her bed needlepointing, and Charles was phoning from his den. I had a double motive. I didn’t want another phone call (remember, there were five) emanating from that same den, but more importantly this was a beautifully complex scene; — the couple had strong feelings for each other, but there was a definite abyss between them. I didn’t want to do the scene with alternating close-ups. I wanted to see them side-by-side on the bed, and so I decided I would present the scene using a split screen. We had filmed Maxwell’s angle in a bedroom at Dino Cocalis’ house on our third day. At that time Brandon had taken precise measurements: the height of the bed and the distance to Maxwell from the foot of the bed. As we set up to film Marlyn on her bed, he was making the same measurements, and he realized that Maxwell’s queen-sized bed had been longer, and that in the present location  there was not enough space between the foot of the bed and the wall for him to obtain that same distance. Fortunately there was a window in that obstructive wall. Brandon came to me and said he wanted to move the camera outside and shoot through the window. And that’s what he did. They built a platform to raise the camera to its required height and then draped a black cloth to block out the daylight. We were filming a night sequence in the early afternoon.

Brandon had one more request: he wanted to remove the iron footboard from the bed. LIndamarie declined. As usual set photographer David Potigian was lurking in a dark corner with his incredible eye locked into his trusty camera.

The scene was almost two minutes long, with lots of pauses. When we had filmed Maxwell’s angle two days earlier, Marlyn stood beside the camera and played the scene with him. But if Maxwell were to do the same now, it would have created a problem. There was no way the timing of the two players would match exactly as needed for the split screen. If we had been filming on a sound stage, Marlyn would have been filmed acting to an audio playback of the take selected of Maxwell’s scene, that playback being heard through a large speaker. But this was independent film making in a very small room. Marlyn ended up playing to a playback, but it was coming through a laptop computer. Assistant director Hope Garza was beside the bed holding the laptop. The quarters were so tight she also doubled and did the slate at the scene’s opening. During the rehearsal Marlyn had difficulty hearing the scene, so Hope moved even closer. She was just out of range of the camera.

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And so we completed our fifth day of filming. Another interesting day awaited us the next day, and then Monday would be a day off. We were all ready for that!

The journey continues

The post The Right Regrets: Lily’s House appeared first on Ralph's Cinema Trek.

If the opening of a show is of the utmost importance, it goes without saying that the closing has to be that “utmost” carried to the nth degree. Miss Mason in her script had provided me the blueprint for a whopper of a closing. It coincidentally occurred at the same location as the opening, presenting me as I compose this post with a problem. I want to tell how we spent the balance of our fourth day of filming in front of the Potigian house, but under no circumstances can I give away how our story ends. So sit back, relax and read on, view David Potigian’s great on-set photographs and watch the film clips, even as I warn you, you’re going to be more titillated than informed.

I’ve described in my post, THE RIGHT REGRETS: THE OPENING, the reason I was originally averse to filming at the Potigian house. Now in addition to the attractiveness of the structure, I have to admit, a major reason for wanting to film there was because of the balcony. I had an activity in the closing sequence that I wanted to film with a shot from above. Even as I envisioned the scene, I was remembering an incident many years ago, May of 1963 to be exact, when I was directing MY NAME IS MARTIN BURNHAM on ARREST AND TRIAL. I scouted a six-story building under construction in the Wilshire district. On the roof of the building where we would be doing our major filming, there was a large crane situated in the center with its long arm reaching out to extend over the edge of the building. Attached to the end of the long arm was a scoop that I figured could hold a cameraman with an Arriflex camera. What a dynamic shot that would be – shooting DOWN on James Whitmore scuffling with another actor and revealing the street six stories below. I told the assistant director who was accompanying me on the scouting what I wanted to do and asked him to make the necessary arrangements. Imagine my disappointment when I arrived at the location the morning we were to film to find absolutely nothing had been done, no arrangements had been made. There was to be no overhead crane shot. Fortunately the Potigian balcony did not present a similar problem. I would be able to get the shot I wanted by having the cameraman hand hold the camera and lean over the railing. But then I went onto the balcony, leaned over the railing and discovered there was a roof extension below the balcony that prevented my getting my planned shot. I described what I wanted to director of photography Brandon Fraley and gaffer-head grip Ryan Wood. Whereas the seasoned veteran assistant director backed by a studio with bucks galore had merely ignored me, these two kids, both a few years shy of thirty, went to work …

… brought the Jib we had used earlier down on the street up to the balcony, attached the camera to it and extended what looked like an enlarged tinker toy over the railing.

And that’s how I got my shot.

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Now you didn’t think I was going to show you what I was filming. I warned you. You were going to be titillated, not informed.

David and Lilliana were absolutely wonderful hosts. They allowed us to use their second floor bedroom with its magnificent view of Monterey Bay (I am always amazed when David tells me he watches the sun RISE from this room) …

… for our actors to have their makeup applied.

That was another example of the remarkable candid shots David took with the participants (Jessica doing Marlyn’s hair, Shiloh holding the mirror and Hope Garza in the background admiring the view) totally unaware they were being photographed. He was shooting from a distance using a 200mm lens.

And the Potigian hospitality didn’t stop there. As plans were being made to film, Lilliana announced that she was going to serve lunch. I was concerned. In addition to our cast and crew, which numbered between 15 and 20 people, we were going to have possibly that many more that day as extras for our filming. I suggested she prepare lunch just for the cast and crew, and we would have sandwiches for the extras. Lilliana would not hear of that. She would feed everybody. And indeed she did.

And what a spread.

In addition to seating people at their dining room table and other areas of the living room, David and Lilliana had provided tables and umbrellas on their rear deck and back lawn.

Ryan Wood, our gaffer who donated the use of all of our electrical equipment, also provided the use of his dolly. He was meticulous. Although the dolly had heavy rubber wheels, Ryan insisted on laying track and replacing the rubber wheels with track adaptators.

That was a chore, but he insisted it resulted in a smoother shot. It also provided a unique scooter for my nephew, Julien.

Occasionally on long dolly shots, track could not be used, because it would show in the shot. And good fortune did eventually shine on us that day. By late afternoon the visitor had returned and removed her car from the space we needed.

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We returned to the Potigian house a month after completing photography for five additional shots that I decided I needed. Since there was no dialogue involved, our crew was extremely skeletal – director of photography Brandon Fraley and me. The female contingent was slightly larger. In front of the camera was Marlyn Mason, backed up by hairdresser Jessica and makeup Shiloh. After we completed filming the five shots, we repaired to the Potigian living room where (due to the magic of digital photography) we could view our day’s work on a laptop computer. We could also view the sequence into which these news shots would be inserted. It was then that we were faced with the awful truth. There was a dreadful mismatch. Marlyn was wearing the wrong scarf. Why didn’t we just get the right scarf and reshoot the three shots in which the mismatch occurred? Because the needed scarf was 500 miles away in Medford, Oregon. And so as I write this three weeks later, we are scheduled to return to the Potigian house tomorrow for the third time, when we will hopefully finally conclude filming THE RIGHT REGRETS.

The journey continues

The post The Right Regrets: The Closing appeared first on Ralph's Cinema Trek.

For me the first major hurdle on any show I direct is the opening. This was true when, fresh out of the Pasadena Playhouse, I directed theatre, and it was something I recognized very early in my career behind the camera as being even more critical when directing television. People sitting in their living rooms in front of their tv sets weren’t like theatre patrons. In those pre-cable days they hadn’t dished out money to view what was on their small screens; they didn’t have a financial investment in the evening. If their interest wasn’t grabbed early, there was nothing stopping them from getting up and changing channels. This was in the early days of television before remotes were invented; they made it even easier to turn the dial in search of something more entertaining.

The opening of THE RIGHT REGRETS presented an intriguing opportunity to create a grab-the-attention beginning for our drama …

ST. STRATHCONA STREET, VANCOUVER, CANADA – DAY

A quiet neighborhood. Across the street from one of the charming homes in a parked Honda a silhouetted WOMAN shields herself with a road map as she looks over the top at the row of tidy houses with their well trimmed yards. CHARLES WICKHAM (50’s) emerges from his home carrying a small package. As he reaches the sidewalk, if he were Curly in Oklahoma! he would burst into song, singing “Oh, what a beautiful morning,” but he’s not Curly so he turns and in his quiet professorial manner heads toward the village. Woman exits the car and follows Charles, keeping a respectable distance. (Her face is not visible)

… and I knew exactly how I was going to do it. But first we had to secure the street and the house, and on our independent film budget we weren’t going to be going to Vancouver, Canada, to find them. There is a charming section of Monterey called Spaghetti Hill. My friends, David and Lilliana Potigian, have a lovely white house there that I have long admired, and I knew without asking that it would be available.

But I was conflicted. The steps from the sidewalk to the first landing seemed to me to be a little steep, and there is no hand railing. I was fearful that could cause a problem in the staging I had planned for the final sequence in the film, so producer Marlyn Mason and I hopped in my Green Rover and set out to find another house. We zigzagged our way through Spaghetti Hill, up one street and down the next. For openers the streets we traversed were narrower than the street of the Potigian house, which would make filming more difficult. And nowhere did I see a house as attractive as the Potigians’ or any that provided an interesting setting for my planned staging. I finally asked myself a question: since the activity of that final sequence was something that could actually occur, what would real life participants do? Would they say, “Sorry, the stairs are too steep and there is no hand railing. Goodbye.” No, they would not. They would adapt and manage. I wasn’t sure just how I would adapt and manage, but I knew that when the time came, I would. As I anticipated, David and Lilliana graciously, even eagerly, offered their home to be filmed in THE RIGHT REGRETS.

With that choice made, our staff was assigned the task of securing the necessary permit from the city of Monterey. My request in addition to permission to film was for eight cleared parking spaces in front of the Potigian house, four on their side of the street and four across the street. That took considerably longer. I was told that calls had been placed to the city offices, but those calls had not been returned; but because our staff was not based here on the Monterey peninsula (a factor that negatively affected all of our pre-production activity), I was not privy to the day-to-day negotiations. Eventually, as we drew near to our start date to begin filming, I was told we had the permit and the cleared four parking spaces directly in front of the Potigian house, but permit for the four spaces across the street was denied. The reason given was that side of the street was almost entirely apartment houses, and those spaces could not be cleared. That presented a major problem. The staging for the sequence required that the woman waiting for Charles Wickham to exit be seated in a car parked across the street from his home. I lowered my request to clear a single space. That too was denied, and there were also some restrictions issued with the permit. We were not to film in the street or on the sidewalks.

I don’t think I would be overstating when I say 98% of the film I shot in my 26 years directing was with the camera mounted on a crab dolly. The crab dolly could roll forward, backward and sideways, the camera could pan right and left, tilt up and tilt down, be raised and be lowered, and with a zoom lens attached its capabilities were endless.

It was exactly what I needed for my planned opening shot in the film. But rental for a crab dolly was not cheap. I explained the shot I wanted to director of photography Brandon Fraley, and he assured me we could make the shot with the camera mounted on a Jib.

Since I was new to the world of independent film making, I smilingly agreed.

We arrived at the Potigian house early on our fourth day of filming to find the four parking spaces in front of the house cleared as agreed to in our permit, but as feared all of the parking spaces across the street were filled, including the space we needed to park our picture car for the opening shot. A couple members of the crew were delegated the task of knocking on doors to try to find the owner of the car. What they discovered was the car belonged to a visitor, but no one knew where the visitor was visiting. As it turned out, there was a temporary escape from that impossible predicament. Directly opposite the Potigian house was a wide driveway for an apartment house, and it was just in front of the space currently occupied by that unknown visitor. We could park our picture car there for our early morning sequence, but we had to have the space behind it for an afternoon sequence. We had to pray that by the time we got to that sequence in the afternoon, the owner of the car would show up. We parked our picture car, lined up the shot with the Jib, got lucky as no car needed to enter or exit the driveway, and although it took five takes, we got the shot.

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We filmed that on April 5. I had rejected having a monitor on the set to view each take as it was being filmed; I preferred watching the real action, not a screen. That was a mistake. We had no facilities to view dailies each day, so imagine my shock as we began editing on April 24 when I saw that only Maxwell’s feet were seen coming through the door. There I was, two weeks after principal photography had been completed, the company had disbanded, and I was without my opening shot for the film. The following setup that I filmed was the same action of Maxwell coming through the door and down the steps into a close-up.

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That was David Potigian, our wonderful set photographer, on the wrong side of the camera. We finally got our shot with Maxwell, and later with an establishing shot of the house to replace the wide shot of the street and some judicious editing, I felt I had an effective opening for our story.

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The time-code at the bottom of the screen was provided later so I could prepare the cues for the music composer. By 11:00 am we had completed our morning sequence and had the opening forty-five seconds of our movie in the can; I can’t really say that! It’s no longer in the can; it’s in the computer. The balance of the day was at the same location where we would film the closing sequence – next as …

The journey continues

The post The Right Regrets: The Opening appeared first on Ralph's Cinema Trek.

For a change the weather forecaster delivered what he had predicted, and on our third day of filming, Thursday, April 4, the rains came. The brutal fact that the contretemps of permission to film at the lake was not resolved had little to do with our change in plans. The rains were an even more forceful reason for us to assemble that morning at our only cover set, my friend Dino’s house. That location had been an easy one to select. I knew the house well, having been in and out of it many times in the past two decades. I had watched the addition of a family room that Dino and his partner, Richard (now deceased) had added. It was a room with a floor-to-ceiling bookcase that could have been designed for the home of our Charles Wickham.

Five telephone calls! When I read Marlyn’s script, it brought back memories. Fifty years before in April, 1963, I had directed COLOR SCHEMES LIKE NEVER BEFORE, an episode of NAKED CITY, that had a telephone call that really concerned me. It was long and much more involved than the telephone calls I had staged for DR. KILDARE. I knew I had to do more than just photograph two close-ups of people holding a phone to their ear. I also planned ample coverage, because I was sure the scene would be shortened later in the editing room.

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When COLOR SCHEMES aired, nothing had been eliminated.

But here I was faced with FIVE telephone calls! Almost five and a half pages of the first seventeen and a half pages of the script, just under a third of those pages, had the two principals in a developing love story miles apart and communicating holding that gadget to their ear.

Speaking of telephones that was the way Maxwell Caulfield and I first met. Once he had been cast, his manager, Budd Moss, gave me his phone number, and I called him. In our discussion of the script and his role, Maxwell said he felt there should be a sense of danger, an aura of evil about Charles Wickham. I agreed and likened this role to the one played by Joseph Cotton in Alfred Hitchcock’s SHADOW OF A DOUBT, a role coincidentally named Uncle Charlie. But I added that that aspect of the role should not be his responsibility. He must provide the charm; it would be up to me to create the evil, and I knew exactly how I wanted to achieve that. It would start with how I staged Maxwell’s first phone call in the story. For that I was going to need a large wingtip leather chair. In the script all of Charles’ telephone calls were in his den, but the room we had chosen at Dino’s for the den didn’t have a wingtip leather chair. I set off and explored the rest of the house. In one of the bedrooms I found a blue leather wingtip chair, but to move it to the room we had selected for our den entailed carrying it (and it was large and heavy) down a narrow winding stairway. To film it showing the bedroom where it sat was also not a possibility. The room, charming as it was, just didn’t look like it belonged in Charles Wickham’s house.

We solved the problem by pulling the chair into the middle of the room and confined the shot to close on the chair and Maxwell, never showing any part of the room.

Since we were only filming Maxwell’s part of the phone conversations that day, Marlyn was not on call to work. But being the trouper that she is, and also the film’s producer, she was there the entire day playing her end of the phone scenes off-camera with Maxwell.

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That still left four more phone calls to film in the den. Director of photography Brandon Fraley (who had earlier filmed two promos with Marllyn in that room for her website) had requested, and I agreed that we film only the part of the room with the tall bookcase. I didn’t want to film so many scenes with the same background. One of the scenes in the film had Marlyn’s character receiving a phone call in her home while she sat up in bed needlepointing. The other bedroom in Dino’s house was perfect for Charles Wickham …

… and so I moved his end of that conversation to his bedroom.

Knowing how to keep a’goin’ when strange things happen, like losing your location at the last second is a challenge … (but) there’s always a way, and sometimes it works out even better!

John Dayton left that COMMENT on The Second Day Contretemps. And he was so right. Our third day ended early. It had been an easy and uneventful day, which actually was a blessing after the first two hectic days we had put in at the Big Sur Lighthouse, Garripata Beach and the cabin. And tomorrow was going to be another tough one, filming the dramatic opening and closing sequences of our story, next as …

The journey continues

As usual THE RIGHT REGRETS’  photographs
and  film clips are by
David Potigian
owner of GALLERY SUR in Carmel, CA.
David was with us as set photographer for
eight of our nine days of filming.
He shot close to 1,500 stills (all candid),
plus many video clips.

The post The Right Regrets: Charles Wickham’s House appeared first on Ralph's Cinema Trek.

Our second day of filming on THE RIGHT REGRETS began the same way as the first day -– the cast and crew met at a parking lot (this time the Safeway’s in mid-Carmel Valley), to be led by Jim Challis in caravan to our White Rock location. Well for me not quite the same. The butterflies in the stomach on my first day behind a movie camera in twenty-six years were gone. I was back in the saddle and raring to roar. The trip as before (I had traveled it twice during location scouting) took about forty-five minutes, although because of the very early morning hour, it was not nearly as beautifully scenic as I remembered, and in the grayness of that early hour, the steep winding road as we neared our destination made me thankful I was in the passenger seat and art director Ryan Gibson was behind the wheel, driving my green Range Rover, which was going to be needed at the location for the filming.

The caravan arrived at the cabin, and the company split into two groups. The camera crew and I were led by Jim Challis the additional twenty-minute ride to the lake to prepare for our first set-up. The rest of the company remained at the cabin, where Shiloh and Jessica, our make-up and hair gals, set up an area on the cabin’s spacious and scenic deck, to do their magical work turning Marlyn Mason and Maxwell Caulfield into Lily McHenry and Charles Wickham.

An added joy for me on this project was my niece, Lisa Lupo, who came up from Los Angeles to be the production designer on THE RIGHT REGRETS. Since I retired just about the time she entered show business, we had never worked together, but more about her later. Accompanying her for the first six days of our shooting schedule was her son, my great-nephew, Julien Silvas. Ten-year old Julien is the lead singer in a rock group, The Hooligans, and has appeared twice at the Roxy Theatre on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood. He even managed to make himself useful on our crew.

I have mentioned that my friend, David Potigian, took time away from his art gallery, GALLERY SUR, in Carmel to be our set photographer. He is a professional photography artist specializing in landscapes, and this was a new adventure for him. Because his gallery specializes in photographs of Big Sur and the incredible California coastline, he came with us the first day to the Big Sur Lighthouse and Garripata Beach. His intent was to do it only for that one day, but after that exciting day he was hooked. He remained with us for eight of our nine days of filming, during which time he shot almost 1500 photographs and movie clips. David has an incredible eye for composition, and I was amazed at the stunning results he produced, since everything he shot was candid, none of it was posed.

Meanwhile further up the mountain (I know, it’s not really a mountain, but I choose to think of it that way) we had arrived at the lake, and after Jim left, director of photography Brandon Fraley and I revisited the areas we had selected for our two scheduled sequences. It was a fine day, and as the sun rose higher in the sky, the rays shining through the trees around the lake added to the beauty of what we were about to film. Then Jim suddenly reappeared, and it was not the smiling, exuberant Jim who had so recently departed. He told us the lake and the land around it on which we were standing was privately owned. He had known that but had not anticipated any problem with our filming there, but the owner (or the son of the owner) had seen our group arrive and had contacted Jim and told him we had to leave. Jim was chagrined and embarrassed. We packed up our gear and prepared to return to the cabin, and Jim left to see what could be negotiated that would allow us to return to the lake on a future day. Our arrival at the cabin caused a great deal of surprise. They were expecting the cars to come back to transport the rest of the crew and the two principal actors up to the lake. I was told that Marlyn said, “What the (expletive) is going on?” I announced the change in plans. We could not film at the lake as planned, so we would stay in the area and film the cabin scenes that had been scheduled for the following day. That could create a problem. Even though most actors of the caliber of Marlyn Mason and Maxwell Caulfied will usually learn the lines for the entire script before filming begins, there is an emotional preparation actors make for the scenes they are scheduled to film each day. After giving Brandon the set-up for our first scene, Marlyn, Maxwell and I retired to the cabin deck to rehearse.

Fortunately Marlyn’s hairstyle for our first sequence in the cabin was the same as the one for the first sequence we were scheduled to film at the lake, so she was made up and ready to roll. But in the cabin there were problems. Ryan Wood, our gaffer, was supplying not only the electrical equipment, but also what was needed for the grip department, including a camera dolly and track. Each day, in a small trailer, he would bring to the location only those items that would be needed for the day’s scheduled sequences. Well, he was prepared to film exterior scenes at the lake and was woefully lacking the lamps to film three highly dramatic interior sequences. But there were no complaints. He and director of photography Brandon Frayley went to work and according to my Frayne Williams mantra, they proceeded to sublimate their limitations.

The problems with the change in schedule didn’t end there. We had a scene to film with Marlyn and Maxwell dining, but there was no food. My niece Lisa, who in addition to her duties as production designer had taken on the responsibilities of prop master and wardrobe, took over. While we rehearsed and the crew lit the scene, she sent someone back to the Safeway where earlier that morning we had assembled. But in the meantime, in case they didn’t get back in time for us to use what they bought, she took some of the sandwiches that had been purchased for the crew’s lunch, discarded the buns, used the lettuce for salads and arranged the other ingredients on plates for the entrees. And that was what we filmed

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In the meantime Jim Challis had been negotiating with the landowners. He arrived back at the cabin and announced that the father who owned the property and had the final say was waiting outside in his golf cart. He wanted to speak to Marlyn. We were between setups, so Marlyn readily agreed, and as she prepared to leave, she said, “I’ll be back in ten minutes.” She then asked Jim, “How old is this guy?” Jim responded, “In his eighties,” to which Marlyn replied, “Well if I have to sleep with him, it’ll take twenty minutes.” She returned in ten.

I remember the sound booms that we used both at the studio and on location.

But independent productions can’t usually afford such luxuries. And even if we could have, there was no space in that small cabin room for it. In fact there wasn’t even space on the floor for our soundman, Nick Abasolo, so he found a perch from whence he could function in the cabin’s loft…

…which created a strange problem. The microphone at the end of the boom is always suspended above the head of the actor speaking. But somehow in the following scene when we were filming Marlyn’s close-up …

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… Nick had the microphone over Maxwell’s head. Now in postproduction we are going to have to rerecord Marlyn’s speeches and lay that sound track into the film.

I keep pointing out the differences and difficulties between film and digital photography. But digital does provide many advantages. Even with the most efficient script person on book, there are times when questions will arise as to matching wardrobe, action or sometimes, even make-up. With a laptop computer on the set, the dailies containing the scene in question can be inserted, viewed, and the question is immediately solved.

Marlyn Mason, Me, Lisa Lupo, Assistant Director Hope Garza

At the end of the day, and it was an early ending, because we were not prepared to film the two scenes outside of the cabin, Jim returned with some heartening news. The property owners required him to submit papers proving we were properly insured and other conditions that I’m vague about. There was also going to be a rental fee, which Jim insisted he would take care of – it was his contribution to the production. Since accomplishing this was going to take some time, returning to the lake the following day was not possible. But rain was scheduled for the next day, so we would not have been able to shoot there anyway. We again rearranged our schedule and planned for the third day to go to my friend, Dino’s house (scheduled for the ninth day), planning to return to the lake on the ninth day. Jim was confident the contretemps would be resolved by then.

And so ended our second day, a day with equal portions of drama being enacted before and behind he camera. We were a little behind schedule because of dropping the exterior scenes at the cabin, but I was confident we would easily do them when we returned to film the lake.

My award for the best performance of the day?

    Jim Challis

The journey continues

The post The Right Regrets: The Second Day Contretemps appeared first on Ralph's Cinema Trek.

Of the several locations we were faced with finding, the one that concerned me most was the mountain cabin with a nearby lake. I didn’t have a clue as to where in the area we would find them, and I was not reassured knowing that the people on our staff looking for them were not locals. One day in early February I was talking with my friends, Marijane and Jason Johnson in their jewelry store in Carmel, Le Bijou, a regular stop on my daily morning walk. When Jason asked me about the locations we were going to be seeking, I recounted the list, and when I got to the cabin and the lake, Jason told me his friend, Jim Challis, owned a cabin high in the hills south of Carmel Valley. It was an area totally unknown to me. When Jason offered to contact Challis, I eagerly accepted. Jason’s phone call was placed, and plans were immediately made for Marlyn and me to meet Jim and have him take us to the area. On the appointed morning Marijane and Jason picked up Marlyn and me, and we drove to the Safeway parking lot in the mid-valley, where we met and were introduced to Jim Challis. We then followed Jim’s car, as he led us to a road just east of the parking lot, where he turned off and headed south. The drive was mildly winding, and the countryside contained California rolling hills that were still green, not yet turning the shimmering gold that we knew would arrive sooner this year because of the lack of rainfall. After about twenty-five minutes Jim stopped at a low double gate, where I assumed he either said “Open, Sesame,” or he had the required “key”, as the gate swung open, and we entered what turned out to be much different terrain. As the road ascended, I did not know if we were traveling into a low mountain range or just higher hills.

We soon arrived at a different entrance, the entrance to the preserve where Jim owned a cabin. An elderly lady in a small structure by the side of the road greeted Jim, as he gave her the four names of his guests for the day, which she recorded as she checked us in. I was told that when we left, we would be checked out. We then followed Jim as he drove through a magical winding forest road. Even before seeing the cabin or the lake, I was impressed with the filming possibilities offered by the location.

We passed several rustic cabins, and I later learned they served only as recreational abodes; no owner of a cabin was permitted to live in it full time. Jim told me he had started coming to the area as a child, when he visited the cabins owned by parents of friends. At that time a love for the area developed, and he hoped some day he would own a cabin on the preserve. And then as we followed Jim, he pulled up and stopped in front of his cabin.

The cabin had a large deck that with the scenically perfect surrounding area provided an ideal location for the arrival and departure scenes I would be staging with Marlyn and Maxwell. The interior of the cabin was small, very rustic and sparsely furnished, but again visually interesting. There was a living room and dining area with a small kitchen in the corner, two bedrooms (one of which we would use as a dressing room, the second as a storage room for equipment), a bathroom and a loft, which was reached by climbing a ladder. Jim told us he had had as many as twenty-two sleepover guests on a weekend. Hearing that Marlyn, knowing there were two days’ work at the location, suggested we might even plan to stay overnight. The impracticality of that idea soon sank it.

So far we were batting a thousand. Now on to the lake! Jim told us there were two man-made lakes on the preserve. The larger one was conveniently close and accessible; the smaller lake was a twenty-minute drive over a rugged, steep, winding and difficult road. We of course opted to see the larger lake, and after showing us their impressive recreation center, Jim took us to it. It was a large body of water with several cabins around it. I had envisioned staging the picnic scene between Marlyn and Maxwell with them sitting on a pier with their feet dangling in the water. The lake had a pier, but it was not anchored; it was a floating pier that moved up and down with the movement of the water. I knew the scene I had planned would not work, but there was a small bench at the end of the pier. Although not ideal, the scene could be played there. As we returned to our cars, I tacitly gave the location my approval. As the car engine started, I suddenly said, “While we’re here, I think we should look at the other lake.” Since leaving the cabin the five of us were traveling in Jim’s car, so he graciously agreed, and we started what turned out to be a very interesting ride. As we had been told, the poorly paved road was winding and at times steep and precipitous, and no longer were there towering trees with verdant leaves lining our path.

Part way up Jim pointed out a concrete landing strip alongside the road that he told us was for small planes to arrive and depart the preserve. Near the top we passed a tennis court that would have felt at home on the estate of Norma Desmond on SUNSET BOULEVARD.

And then Jim stopped the car at our final destination. We got out, and he led us on a path through a wildly untamed area. I was excited. These surroundings were what I needed for the first scene at the lake when Marlyn’s character arrives.

And then we saw the lake.

Primitive. Even a bit eerie. My approval was no longer reluctant, nor tacit. The most difficult location on our list had been the first to be found, and it would be several weeks before we would return to film. The week before filming began I returned with the director of photography and his crew for them to scout both the cabin and the lake. Our planned schedule had us filming the lake on the second day and the cabin on the third day, but filming schedules don’t always follow schedules as planned. That’s another interesting story — next as …

The journey continues

The spectacular photographs are by
David Potigian
owner of GALLERY SUR in Carmel, CA.
David was with us as set photographer for
eight of our nine days of filming.
He shot close to 1,500 stills (all candid),
plus many video clips.

The post The Right Regrets: The Cabin and The Lake appeared first on Ralph's Cinema Trek.

WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF INDEPENDENT FILMMAKING!

How many times I heard that during the two months we prepped THE RIGHT REGRETS. But I wasn’t sure the world of independent filmmaking I was becoming involved in was the real world of independent filmmaking. Two and a half years ago when Marlyn completed her first draft of THE RIGHT REGRETS, she contacted Brandon Fraley and asked for assistance in assembling a group of production people to help her. Brandon, living in San Francisco, did that, and a small group of compliant San Franciscans laid out the plans and budget to film her project on the east coast. Two and a half years later, not having raised the amount of money it would cost to film in the east, Marlyn changed course and decided the story worked just as well filmed in the west. But as plans proceeded to film in the spring of 2013, there were other changes that occurred. Her production manager, who would remain in charge, had moved to Washington D.C. The first assistant director, who was to assume many of the local duties of the production manager, left the project to accept more financially relevant employment elsewhere. And when I entered the project in February, everything moved south to the Monterey Peninsula. All of these changes affected what occurred during the ensuing two months. A major problem facing the production staff was to find the several locations required to shoot our film. The locations were:

Exterior Charles home (in Vancouver in the script)

Interior Charles home (in Vancouver in the script)

Interior Lily’s House: Living room and bedroom (in Monterey in the script)

Porch of Lily’s duplex home (in Monterey in the script)

Restaurant (in Vancouver in the script)

Book Fair (in Monterey in the script)

Lighthouse (in Oregon in the script)

Beach (in Monterey in the script)

Exterior mountain cabin (in Oregon in the script)

Interior mountain cabin (in Oregon in the script)

Lake (in Oregon in the script)

Highways (in Monterey and Oregon in the script)

Finding these locations on the Monterey Peninsula was a task that really should have been assigned to a location manager familiar with the area. The one local qualified person approached, used to dealing with Hollywood budgets, asked for $650.00 a day for his services. The budget for THE RIGHT REGRETS, which I affectionately called a “frayed shoestring budget”, did not allow for that, and so our staff in San Francisco set about their searches. I must say in advance, I am not denigrating the work of our production staff. In fact my intent is to point out in advance the difficulties they faced, and as I hope our final film will prove, the remarkable results they achieved. I again refer back to my mantra from Frayne Williams at the Pasadena Playhouse, “Great art is a sublimation of limitations.”

In addition to the five major speaking roles, there was another item to be cast: Charles’ automobile. In her original script, Marlyn had called for a BMW. During the time we were in negotiations with Michael York, he had suggested that we recast the car with an aged Jaguar. Since we figured Michael owned an aged Jaguar and would be comfortable driving his own car, we enthusiastically changed the script; the BMW was now an aged Jaguar. But when Michael eventually declined the role, we were faced with the problem of recasting Charles’ car in addition to casting Charles. Marlyn, in her usual gregarious manner, was discussing our automotive need one day with the proprietor of a Carmel card shop. He took her out of the shop and there parked at the curb was a stunning black Mini Cooper, which he was more than willing to loan her for the film. The car was scheduled to be involved in four of the nine days of filming, and he graciously included his services to deliver the car to our locations. But a couple of days later tragedy struck; a major illness to an immediate member of his family made his personal participation doubtful. The arrival of Maxwell Caulfield into the cast also affected the automobile situation. The Mini Cooper was just too glitzy. Leave us face it – Maxwell Caulfield at 53 is still a hell of a hunk and his goal and ours was to subdue that quality, so that his character of Charles would not overwhelmingly appear to be a sexual predator. All of this time I knew that I had the solution parked in my garage, but I was resistant to the chore of having to deliver it to the four locations, all of them distant, where it would be appearing. But I eventually succumbed, and Marlyn’s original BMW, which had become an aged Jaguar and then a black Mini Cooper, now finally was going to be a 1991 Green Range Rover.

I have in the previous post, THE RIGHT REGRETS: CASTING, written of the difficulties faced in securing the permit to film at the Big Sur Lighthouse. That location was only half of the first day’s work. There was a charming scene between Marlyn and Maxwell strolling on a beach. Although I knew of Garripata Beach, which was a few miles north of the lighthouse, I had never been there. Securing the permit to film at that public beach was included in the negotiations for the lighthouse permit. I did not scout the beach until the day we finally were scheduled to scout the lighthouse.

Having completed the Big Sur Lighthouse sequence by lunchtime, the cast and crew were fed at the lighthouse and then moved north to Garripata Beach.

A major problem when filming on a beach is the constant roar of the surf and the possible factor of wind, both of which are detrimental to the recording of dialogue. I had my first experience with that situation in 1963 when I filmed IN THE CLOSING OF A TRUNK, an episode of ROUTE 66, on a beach in Corpus Christi, Texas. You can read about that on my post for that film. But that production had the equipment and personnel provided by a major Hollywood studio. I am amused now when I look at the Crew List issued at the beginning of production on THE RIGHT REGRETS. Assigned to Sound were Nick Abasolo as Sound Mixer and Sedric Pieretti as Boom Operator with a (Maybe) after the second man’s name. (Maybe) never materialized. The remarkable Mr. Abasolo became our one-man sound department, as he attached his digital recorder to his belt, held his arms held high over his head and functioned as boom man. I must add he also donated the use of his sound equipment to the company without charge.

I needed just five setups to complete the sequence. For the wider shots I knew the surf and wind would overpower Nick’s sound track, and we would deal with that after filming was wrapped.

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For the closer shots of Marlyn and Maxwell, a large screen was used both to muffle the sound of the surf and to act photographically as a reflector.

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After we had secured our five filmed setups, a sheltered spot on the beach was found, and Marlyn and Maxwell did what amounted to a radio recording of the scene we had just filmed.

It was our improvised version of the looping stage in the Hollywood studios, and those sound tracks would be available in postproduction if the filmed sound tracks proved to be unusable.

That brought to a close our fist day’s filming.

The journey continues

The post The Right Regrets: The Beach appeared first on Ralph's Cinema Trek.

Serendipity: the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way; a “happy accident” or “pleasant surprise”; specifically, the accident of finding something good or useful while not specifically searching for it.

Why do I bring this up? Because my life has been haunted by serendipitous occurrences, and more specifically because this production of THE RIGHT REGRETS was definitely loaded with serendipitous events. Two and a half years ago Marlyn Mason sent me a screenplay she had just completed. It was the first draft of THE RIGHT REGRETS and was the first of the three versions she would write. I won’t go into the changes she made in each of those versions; the one constant was that she wrote the main character of Charles with Anthony Hopkins as her template. Starting last fall attempts were made to get the script to Hopkins, but without success. I was not involved at that time beyond being a friendly consultant. (My eventual involvement was another incident of serendipity, which I will not go into at this time.) After the first of this year, because of budgetary considerations, Marlyn changed her plans and decided to film on the west coast rather than the east coast. Since there had been no response from Hopkins’ agents, she decided it was time to move on in her search for a Charles. She consulted an old friend, Jeanette O’Connor, who had a Cast Breakdown service in Hollywood. Jeanette suggested David Ogden Stiers. Marlyn was determined that the role be played by an Englishman, but when she was told that Stiers was very adept at portraying a bloke from across the waters, she sent a script to his agents. For a couple of days there seemed to be genuine interest on his part, but he eventually graciously declined. Marlyn next sent the script to Richard Chamberlain’s agents. Marlyn had known Richard long before his Dr. Kildare days. Richard too read and declined. Marlyn has a writer friend, Mel, in New York, who in a phone conversation said he was wavering on whether he should attend an event commemorating the 40th anniversary of the film, CABARET. Marlyn urged him to go, telling him to relay her greetings to Bob Osborne, whom she knew was going to be there. She then jokingly suggested that, should he have the opportunity, he should tell Michael York about her film. Mel called her from the festivities to tell her that Bob Osborne had been thrilled to hear from her, and he added that when he had told Michael York about THE RIGHT REGRETS, York had given him his e-mail address and asked to have Marlyn send him the script. By this time I was aboard to direct, and needless to say, we were both intrigued and delighted at the prospect of working with Michael York. I have long believed that his performance in CABARET provides the heart of that film. For the next ten days we were in constant e-mail communication with Michael. He liked the script and offered some very subtle and meaningful recommendations for changes in dialogue. As I told him, those recommendations spurred me to make additional changes, changes that substantially altered the character of Charles. No longer was he a predator; he became a much more sympathetic person, but a person with a mysterious secret. At the end of ten days, Michael had still not committed to the project. Marlyn, with a start date to begin filming fast approaching, finally had to request a decision from him. His reply was charming. He said he was turning it down, but he hoped that in the future he would have the right regrets. At this point I suggested a fine American actor who was the right age (70′s) for the role, and who I was sure could do an acceptable English accent. To my surprise and at the time disappointment, he declined, saying he felt he was totally wrong for the role. Things were looking grim. Marlyn then contacted Cast Breakdown Jeanette again, and this time Jeanette added the role of Charles to the breakdown she distributed

I had known Budd Moss since 1962, when as an agent he represented Carolyn Jones when we signed her to guest star in the DR. KILDARE episode, THE MASK MAKERS. The following year he represented Ruth Roman when she guest starred on a ROUTE 66 I directed. Our paths crossed many times in the ensuing years, but that was then, this was now. I had been away from Hollywood for over twenty years. Budd, now with his own management firm, read Jeanette’s breakdown and saw Marlyn’s name and my name connected with THE RIGHT REGRETS. He said it was like two old friends rising from out of the past. He immediately contacted us to renew the friendships from so long ago, and being an actor’s representative he submitted one of his clients, Maxwell Caulfield, for the role of Charles. Maxwell is not 70 years old; he is 53 years old. Marlyn and I immediately reacted by thinking that would add a new dimension to the project. And it has. Having completed photography a week ago, I cannot imagine having filmed the show we have in the can with any of the other actors we sought. But the series of serendipitous events is not concluded. Marlyn and I had no intention of telling Maxwell of what had transpired regarding casting prior to his involvement. But one day late in preproduction, he asked a question regarding the casting that had Marlyn and me looking at each other. Should he be told or not? She decided to be forthright and told him everything that had happened, just as I have presented it. When she completed her story, relating in detail about our contacts with Michael York, Maxwell told us he had seen Michael just a week ago. His connection to Michael York goes even deeper. In 1967 Maxwell’s mother worked for playwright Harold Pinter when he was involved in the filming of ACCIDENT, a movie starring Dirk Bogarde. There were two roles in the film for children, and director Joseph Losey did not want to cast professional child actors. Eight-year old Maxwell was the right age, and when he was brought in to meet Losey, he was approved. ACCIDENT was Maxwell Caulfield’s first film appearance. Michael York also appeared in that film; It was his third film appearance, but his first feature film, and that all happened 46 years ago.

Most of the film that I had seen of Maxwell was of his earlier work. I did see an interview he did in London two years ago when he and his wife, Juliette Mills, were appearing in a stage production. His appearance on that interview intrigued me; that was the image I had for our Charles. A few days before Maxwell came to Carmel for two days of rehearsal with Marlyn, he told me he now had a beard, but if I disapproved, he would be willing to shave. I must admit, I was not thrilled by that announcement, but I decided I would give myself time to get accustomed to it before making a decision. At the end of the first day of rehearsal I was negative; I felt the beard was a little unkempt and unattractive, but Maxwell told me he had grown it for an upcoming role in a television film. He said he would do a little trimming on it, which he did. The next day I was less resistant, and by the completion of filming, I had decided Maxwell should never shave if off.

It took weeks before we got the required permit to film at the Point Sur Lighthouse in Big Sur, but from photographs I had seen on the internet of the lighthouses in the area, that was the one I insisted should be our lighthouse.

I also wanted the lighthouse to be the location we filmed on our first day. I knew it would be difficult to film, but working with a new and very young crew, I instinctively felt, as an old Phoenix rising from the ashes, I needed to put my best foot forward as quickly as possible, but taking that first step was impeded very early the morning of April 2nd. Because of the parking situation at the lighthouse it was decided to limit the number of cars driving to the location. Cast and crew were told to meet at the Crossroads shopping center in Carmel at 6:00 am, and some cars would be left there as bodies were piled into as few vehicles as necessary for the company to travel 25 minutes down the coast to our destination. However our southward trek was delayed, because our star, Maxwell Caulfield, was not present. A member of the production staff was to have picked him up at his lodgings, but we discovered that driver, living in Santa Cruz, had overslept and was still in his home 40 miles north of Carmel. I don’t remember whether we dispatched someone from the Crossroads to get Maxwell or whether he was given direction and drove to our meeting place, but he soon arrived and, sans the errant Santa Cruzan, the company in caravan finally took off.

Beside the lighthouse being a magnificent structure that greatly enhanced the sequence I was to film, the stairways leading to the lighthouse provided a wonderful visual setting for staging.

Once the two actors were out of their make-up chairs and into their wardrobe, filming began. By our lunch break I had the 13 set-ups I needed for the sequence, and I had a recurrence of a feeling similar to one I had had fifty-two and a half years earlier on my first day ever of filming, when on the set at MGM of DR. KILDARE — JOHNNY TEMPLE — I felt as if I had been doing it forever. As I ascended that long stairway the 26 years since I had last directed film vanished. It seemed like BLUE SKIES (that last film) had been just the day before.

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The journey continues

The post The Right Regrets: Casting appeared first on Ralph's Cinema Trek.

One of my most pleasant memories is the production of JEREMIAH OF JACOB’S NECK, a one-hour pilot I directed for Edgar J. Scherick Productions. It was another in my string of family shows, this one with fewer kids than the others but embellished with the addition of a ghost. Although it was a 20^th Century Fox production, I never went near their Pico lot. We were scheduled to film the entire show on location, and as I remember, Scherick’s production office was in the 9000 Sunset Boulevard building, which during pre-production was very convenient for me. It was practically at the foot of the hill from my home.

Casting and finding our locations were our two main concerns, with the locations being the more difficult, and for the locations our primary search was for a lighthouse with a lone family house nearby. Art Stolnitz, the line producer, and I started scouting the southern California coast from Santa Barbara to Long Beach. We spent a couple of days, didn’t find too many lighthouses and none with a lone house nearby; they all had large communities of homes in their vicinity. Then one day Art told me that we would be flying to northern California the next day. We flew to San Francisco the next morning, boarded a very small shuttle plane to Ukiah, then into a car for the final drive to Mendocino. I had never been to California north of San Francisco, so as we traveled the coast on the last lap of our trip, I was bowled over by the beauty of what I was seeing. As we rounded the last bend in the road, I got my first glimpse across the waters of the headland on which sat the charming community of Mendocino …

…and if Mendocino was to be our location, I knew what the opening shot of my film would be. A lovely lady whose name I have forgotten greeted us in Mendocino and acted as a one-woman film commission and tour guide. Our first stop was the lighthouse just north of what was their downtown, and we knew our search was over. The Point Cabrillo Lighthouse loomed on the coast and set back four hundred yards was a lone two-story white clapboard house. That would be where our family of four, newly arrived, would reside. For the interior scenes at the house our guide then took us to a large deserted house that sat at the end of their main street. It too proved to be perfect. Lots of rooms and they were large, better for filming than if we had tried to film in the house by the lighthouse. The rest of the day was a combination of scouting and securing the rest of our needed locations and learning the fascinating history of that unique community. Late afternoon Art and I were having a glass of wine in the local bar, killing time until we would be due back in Ukiah for our return flight to San Francisco, when we received word that we needed to leave immediately for the airport. Fog would be rolling in, and the flight would be leaving early. We immediately got into our car, headed for the airport and boarded the same small shuttle plane. There were only three of us on board: the pilot, Art and me. Soon after we took to the air the predicted fog engulfed us, and we were socked in. No longer was there a view through the plane’s windows. It was as if white paper had been pasted on to them. Art, who was a pilot, sat in the co-pilot seat, and I heard constant quiet conversation between the two men. I assumed that being a smaller plane, we could not rise above the fog because those lanes would be reserved for large commercial planes, so we were flying blind, hopefully with some instrument guidance. It was a long hour, but as we neared the San Francisco airport, we came out of the fog and made a safe landing. The flight from San Francisco to Los Angeles was far less hair-raising.

Casting went very smoothly. The network, who had final cast approval, had already approved Keenan Wynn, who was soon joined by Ron Masak, Arlene Golonka, Brandon Cruz and Quinn Cummings to make up the basic cast should the pilot be turned into a weekly series. The supporting players were set and on Sunday, February 29, the company traveled to Mendocino, where filming began the next day. The first shot I filmed and the first shot in the film was the shot I had planned as I saw Mendocino for the first time on that scouting day.

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That was the 21^st and last time I would work with art director, Richard Haman, whom I had requested. Richard’s first chore was redoing the exterior of the white clapboard house. The description in the screenplay was:

“a gray-shingled, early Victorian, somewhat ramshackle house that once sheltered the lighthouse keepers.”

Obviously there was some needed conversion work to be done to the immaculately painted structure. The current owners living in the house approved, so Richard had his painters redo the exterior. To meet the demands of the screenplay the house was dirtied and “ramshackled” down. After we finished filming, the house was repainted and restored to its original state, so the owners were delighted; they ended up with a freshly repainted home in addition to the fee they received for allowing us to film on the premises.

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The ghost also needed some revamping. The screenplay description of him:

I sometimes wondered if the people at the network ever bothered to read the scripts before they made their final casting decisions. Both Edgar Scherick and I agreed Keenan Wynn was a superlative actor, but except for the parrot on his shoulder he did not physically fulfill the description in the screenplay, not to mention the difficulty in production that a peg leg would create. Peter Benchley’s pirate Jeremiah Starbuck became our sea captain Jeremiah Starbuck.

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The elderly couple at the post office were locals who lived in Mendocino; the post office mistress was my pal, Amzie Strickland in one of her frequent appearances in a production I directed. This is another of those times when I regret not having kept a journal, but as I remember, the beautiful Victorian interior of the Mendocino Hotel had a caged counter in the lobby that I thought would make a fine post office, but the exterior of the hotel couldn’t be used for the scene when the couple exited. So we found another building for that scene, put up a sign and a flag, and presto – the exterior of the Jacob’s Neck Post Office was created.

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The antique bicycle for the post office mistress presented a problem. When Amzie mounted to ride it, the bicycle proved temperamental; it seemed to have a mind of its own. It wouldn’t go in the direction she was steering, and it kept trying to throw her off. But I was not about to give up. The prop crew was called in, additional wheels were added and Amzie’s Abby went bicycling down the dusty road on her newly created tricycle.

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Another difficult location we needed was postmistress Abby’s house, both exterior and interior. We had a lot of filming to do there, but we were taken on our scouting day to a charming small house with a spectacular view. The owner’s were agreeable, and a commitment was made.

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This was a reunion for Brandon Cruz and me. It had been six and a half years since I had directed him as seven-year old Eddie Corbett in THE COURTSHIP OF EDDIE’S FATHER. Now two months from his fourteenth birthday I was directing him as Clay Rankin, the shy teenager with a precocious younger sister. One day during production someone on the staff told me they felt sorry for Brandon. Every evening he was having dinner with his grandmother (I think she was the adult required by law to accompany him to the location), Quinn and her mother. It was suggested that I take him to dinner to give him a break from all those females. I gladly complied.

Quinn Cummings, like her character of Tracy, was a very bright, precocious little girl. She was eight years old when we filmed JEREMIAH. The following year she appeared as Marsha Mason’s daughter in Neil Simon’s THE GOODBYE GIRL, the film for which Richard Dreyfuss won an Academy Award. I read an interview of Quinn at that time in which she was asked to what she attributed her success. She replied, “I have a pushy mother.”

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Edgar Scherick was a fine producer, always on the set, very supportive and never interfering. 1976 was a time that was pre-cellphone. I was amused that whenever we arrived at a new location or at a restaurant to dine, Edgar would immediately excuse himself to go make a phone call. That went on for the full ten days of filming. The last day we ended working in a stable where Richard Haman had created sets for the tunnel cave the children were trapped in and for the carpet in Abby’s house with the unseen Jeremiah’s feet leaving indentations. As we arrived at the stable, one of the employees called out, “Telephone call for you, Mr. Scherick.”

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Keenan Wynn was true show biz royalty. The son of legendary Ed Wynn, his career spanned more than half a century. He rarely had a lead role, but he almost always received prominent billing. Keenan told me a wonderful story of his youth. Ed Wynn, although he was Jewish, was welcomed into one of the segregated clubs in Los Angeles. One day he took young Keenan with him to the club, and there were some objections when the young boy put on a bathing suit in preparation for a dip in the pool. The elder Wynn interceded, saying, “He’ll only go in the water up to his waist. It’s all right. He’s only half Jewish.”

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On our scouting day we decided on a walk-in safe for our room for Jacob’s Neck Archives. It was small, and the loaded shelves seemed very appropriate, but the floor of the safe was totally filled with – I can find no other word – junk. Instructions were given that the junk needed to be cleaned out so we could install the props we would need for filming. On the scheduled day for filming, we arrived to find the safe in the same state; it had NOT been cleared out and redressed. Edgar Scherick panicked, as I calmly started overseeing the clearing out of the extraneous objects and the dressing of the set. Edgar couldn’t understand why I was not shouting and reacting more emotionally to the situation.

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I was amused when I learned that after the previous scene of Keenan and Ron, one of the network people at the screening of the dailies complained, “I can’t see their faces.”

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I thought Ron Masak looked a lot like Lou Costello, but he was taller and looked more like a leading man. In the final battle between Ron and Alex Henteloff (the bank robber), when Ron was pushed into a chair, the action was overly energetic on the first take, and the chair tipped over. The lady of the house who was present became very agitated. She demanded that we cease filming and leave. I don’t remember what I said, but I somehow quieted her, assured her that there would be no damage to her possessions, and we were allowed to finish. I remember Ron quietly commending me for that as we returned to filming. Three years later we worked together again on an unfortunate project. When I was summarily fired, Ron called. He wanted to quit, leave the film in protest. I convinced him to stay on. I’ve never forgotten that phone call. He really was a mensch!

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In May when CBS announced their schedule for the following season, JEREMIAH OF JACOB’S NECK was not on it. Sometime later I was near CBS at Beverly and Fairfax when I bumped into David Shaw, a fine writer. We exchanged the usual amenities, checking on each other’s recent activities. I told David I had directed the pilot, JEREMIAH OF JACOB’S NECK. I’m not sure how David knew; I assumed he had been involved in some executive position at the network, but I was startled and dismayed when he replied, “Oh, that one was dead on arrival.”

The journey continues

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