Too Old to Dream?

When I was a child of, perhaps, seven- or eight-years-old, we played Cowboys and Indians or Army Man in our back yards.  We didn’t really have back yards as in the traditional suburban sense.  We lived in a rural area and our backyards were grass/dirt areas between our houses and the horse corrals and barns.  And on either side of our three-house “neighborhood” were expansive fields of wild grasses and weeds.  They were perfect for our adventures.

On more than one occasion—perhaps more than 100 occasions—something in our running battles would strike a chord with me and I’d stop play and announce that we should reenact what had just occurred as if it were a movie.  My friends and I would run through the “scene” again and make really cool suggestions on making it even cooler.  We’d invariably end up moving on to another scene, then another as we made them up on the fly and then modified each to the perfect level of coolness.  For the most part, I’d be the director, but I still played parts in our movies.

Turning our playtime into movie time was the most fun for me.  I knew then that I wanted to grow up and be in the movie business.

When I was 12 or 13, we begged my father to let us use the family 8mm film camera and a roll of film.  We wrote a short script and filmed a (silent, of course) movie we called Back to Bataan.  Doug thought up that title and I didn’t know until many years later that he’d stolen it from the John Wayne movie of the same name.

Basically, ours was the story of a downed American pilot who is rescued by an Australian soldier; all of it behind enemy lines.  The length of our story was dictated, first, by the facts that we spent almost the first minute of the film running the credits—in which each of the four of us actors held up a piece of paper containing our name and our character name—and that we had one roll of film… about three or four minutes in length.

The Usual Production Problems

We were plagued by the usual production problems faced by Martin Scorsese, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg.  Our primary issue being that Bobby, on the night before the shoot, was begging us to take the script on his family trip to his grandmother’s house.  He wanted to show her what we were going to do.  We told him that he couldn’t because he would leave it there and it was our only copy.  Bobby responded to our refusal as would any professional actor even to this day; he went and got his mother.  The 1960’s were the days when any neighborhood adult had authority over you.  His mother came outside and said, “Let him take the script.”

We pleaded, “But he will forget it!”

“He will not!” she scolded, then turned to Bobby and told him to take the script inside.

Inside my little skull I was saying, “Hey, Lady!  That’s not your script!  It’s our script and you have no authority!  And your stupid kid is going to forget it!”  On the outside, I just stood there as she closed the door on us.

The following morning, we went to get Bobby and the script but, of course, he’d left it at his grandmother’s house.  The rest of us began screaming at him, telling him that not only had he promised he wouldn’t forget it, but this is exactly why we told him he couldn’t take it in the first place.  His mother instantly appeared in the doorway and said, “Hey!  It’s not his fault that he forgot it!  Now go play!”

I turned to her and said, “Then whose fault is it?  We told him he couldn’t take it because he’d forget it and you made us let him take it!  In fact, you didn’t even give us the choice!  You let him take it into the house and you shut the door on us!  And what did he do?!  He forgot it just like we said he would and you told us he wouldn’t!  It’s your bleeping fault!  Now we have no bleeping script!  Damn you!  Damn you to the bowels of hell!”

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Of course, she’d long since closed the door on us and everything I said was once again only inside my head.  But I’ve heard this happens in almost every motion picture still being shot today.   One of the bit players leaves the script at his grandmother’s house the night before principle photography and the director and producers have to make up the movie as they go.  Well, I’m not sure this happens on every film, but I’m pretty sure The Godfather was shot this way and for this very reason.  Maybe Return of the Jedi and, definitely, 1941.

I am quite certain today’s filmmakers must also deal with our next challenge.  My little brother, who was in kindergarten or first grade, went crying to my mother because we wouldn’t let him play with us.  My mother came outside to the adjacent vacant lot, I mean to our set, and told us to let Frankie play with us.

“Mom!” I whined.  “We’re not playing here!  We’re making a movie!”

“Let him play!” she commanded and walked back inside.  That’s how moms got the final word.  They’d give you an order, then go back inside and turn on the vacuum cleaner.  Even if you dared continue your argument(s), you had no choice over the vacuum.  Ask Scorsese, Lucas and Spielberg and they’ll tell you it hasn’t changed.

Action!

My little brother bounded over to the field where we all stood and triumphantly smirked a victorious look my way that besought a punch in the head, but I did not want to delay our production for another moment.  Luckily, Charles, our director/cameraman told my brother he could be his assistant.   It was a good idea; a perfect way to keep Frank occupied without having to include a little kid in our serious army movie.  It did create one problem that we did not see until we saw our finished film.

You see, we had no equipment to splice (edit) our film, so it had to be edited in the can; meaning we shot each scene, each close up, each angle in sequential order and what we shot was what we got in our final film.

The first glaring error came on scene one when Charles yelled Action! to his brother after the film was rolling.  In our opening scene, Doug was supposed to be landing from his parachute drop from his airplane.  We, of course, didn’t have access to a parachute.  So we were going to pick up the scene where Doug landed.  But, because his big brother called Action! after rolling the film, the first five to ten seconds of our movie shows Doug looking at the camera, arms extended, looking like Now?  Do I go now?  You mean now?  Go ahead and do the shoulder roll now?  Ready?  Me?  OK, here I go…

Talent Plus Hat

Now comes my acting debut.  Here comes the Australian-soldier-behind-enemy-lines to rescue him.  I was selected for this pivotal role not, as you may surmise, because of my intelligence, good looks and incredible acting ability.  I was chosen because I had some sort of straw cowboy hat that could be pinned up on one side with a diaper pin.  Also, it was my family’s camera.

In my inaugural scene, I rush to the aid of the downed American flier and quickly give him water from my canteen.  By this point, my little brother is bouncing around and walking in circles, bumping into Charles while he is trying to hold the camera steady, basically being bored and a nuisance.  So Charles stops film and, to give him something to do, tells Frankie to run in and grab the canteen.  We continue the scene and remember that I am still supposed to give him some more water, so Charles stops the film, Frankie runs back in and gives me the canteen, then off again it goes when I am done with it.

Following Doug’s antics of looking at the camera for ten seconds before rolling to a stop, the rest of our first scene has a very serious (and dashing) Australian soldier administering questionable first aid and providing the downed American pilot with water from a magical canteen that keeps disappearing and appearing out of thin air.

At this point in the shooting schedule, Charles realizes we have used nearly all of our film.  So the rest of the movie consisted of me realizing a Japanese patrol was coming and Doug and me shooting off-screen, then a cut to a shot of Duane and Bobby falling off some boulders.

The End.

I only saw the film a few times.  I think Charles and Doug had it at their house when we moved to a neighboring city so the masterpiece is undoubtedly lost to the ages.

A Western

Our second feature was Custer’s Last Stand.  I wore a 98-cent yellow wig from the toy section of the corner liquor store and I’m sure I looked like Grandma Moses in a cowboy hat.  (Same hat from the previous feature, but side of the brim left unpinned and pin returned to my baby sister’s diaper.)

We traveled to an exotic locale for this one.  We got on our bikes and rode nearly two miles away to a remote, vacant field and a landscape unfettered by houses in the background.  We had no horses so the dauntless Custer and my company of three soldiers walked in formation across the field.  Suddenly, an arrow pierced the chest of one of my men!

We all gathered around my little brother who played the role of Cavalryman #3.  Bobby didn’t act in this film; probably because we refused to let him even touch the script.  So, we promoted my little brother from P.A. to actor and killed him off in the opening scene.  We’d made an arrow from a piece of bamboo, taped two flimsy orange feathers from a duster on one end and somehow attached it to a square of cardboard.  Charles cut to a single shot of Cavalryman #3, then stopped tape and we ran in and scotch-taped the arrow to his skin and let it protrude from the spaces between the buttons of his shirt.   Then Charles yelled Action! and the arrow was suddenly in his chest and he clutched at it, fell over and died.  Then we shot my close-up where I shook my head, saddened by the senseless tragedy.  And that’s about all I remember from that project.

After our initial two-minutes or so of film, Charles had some difficulty in turning the film and reloading the camera, I remember that.  I don’t think he was successful and I believe we wrapped at that point.  As far as I know, we never got the film developed because I do not have any recollection of seeing the saga.

When I was in 9^th or 10^th grade, I used that same camera to do stop-motion films of model cars in front of our house.  I also did a bit where some friends and some of my siblings sat on the lawn in the back yard as if they were driving invisible cars and I took frame-by-frame shots of them.  I’d click a frame and they’d scoot up a few inches.  Both of those epics still exist on my family’s home movie reels.

Too Old

When I was about 35-years-old, I worked as Director of Promotions for a network affiliate in the Palm Springs market.  I wrote a spec script for the TV show Coach and took copies with me to affiliate meetings in L.A.  It wasn’t the way to approach breaking into writing in Hollywood but it was all I knew how to do.  At one of the evening parties, some Junior Exec for the network—and I won’t mention here which network (ABC)—told me that at 35-years-of-age, I was too old to be trying to get into writing for Hollywood.  I was too naive to know any better so I believed him.  And that was more than two-decades ago.

All I wanted to do when I grew up was be in the movie biz.  But, after those first tentative steps into film, a semester or two in college Theatre Arts, and one more try before meeting that dick-of-a-junior-exec, I never had the courage to pursue my childhood dream.  Life moves on with wives and children and jobs and other responsibilities… and life can weigh you down.  I’ve had varying degrees of success in TV and radio in the desert.  I produced hundreds of half-hour TV shows and a few award-winning TV programs for local charities.  But I never had the courage or the belief in myself to give that childhood dream a real shot.

Until now.

Thanks to so many friends and family members, I was able to raise enough money to buy a refurbished computer and I’ve shot and began editing my first two short films.  I’ve looked at the footage and I can see so much that is wrong with both projects, but I’ve already learned lessons and, though I still need to finish post production on them, I am already formulating the idea for my next film.

I hate being a rookie at my age.  But when I am working on my little films, I feel like a child of seven.  So, to heck with it and what others may say.  My little movies may be crap and I may never make a real film in Hollywood.  But it feels fantastic to be trying.  Thank you to all of you who have supported me and offered encouragement on my new (old) dream.