Stone Cold Crazy

A Very Candid Conversation with Lynn Lowry

2010-06-04T17:00:00.000-07:00

Lynn Lowry and myself at Cinema Wasteland, October 2009

Lynn Lowry was the captivating star of several 70s cult films. In addition to showcasing her striking beauty and her sensuality, her roles were very unorthodox. She made her debut as a mute hippie who gets rabies in I Drink Your Blood. Her most memorable scene in the film comes when she kills a housewife with an electric carving knife. She followed that up with a dual role in Sugar Cookies where she played an actress who is killed at the beginning of the film and a naïve innocent who’s a dead ringer for the murdered actress. Subsequently, she appeared in George Romero’s The Crazies as a young woman, affected by chemical warfare, who is raped by her father after he too succumbs to the effects. Then, there was Score, which is a take on Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Like Virginia Woolf, the story is about two couples who entertain the idea of switching partners. However, in Score, instead of pairing a man and a woman, the two new parings are same sex couples.

Lynn’s work was also distinguished by the directors she worked with. In addition to Romero, Lynn would go on to work with David Cronenberg (The Fly, Eastern Promises) in one of his first films, Shivers. She also worked with Jonathan Demme (Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia) on Fighting Mad, and her co-star and love interest in the film is Peter Fonda. Finally, she got to briefly work with Paul Schrader (American Gigolo) on Cat People.

Lynn spent little time in front of the camera during the '80s and '90s. However, in the 21^st century, she returned to her awaiting public, at conventions and in several low-budget films. This year, she made an effective cameo in the remake of The Crazies. The remake is distinctive in two respects. First, it is a big budgeted remake of a film that was made on a shoestring budget in the '70s. Second, it is actually a good film and not redundant. More importantly, for Lynn, it shows that her body of work from the '70s has not been forgotten.

In the following candid conversation, we talk about Lynn’s work during the '70s, her time away from the silver screen, and currently, her time back in the movies. I want to thank Lynn for taking the time to do this interview.

Jeff Cramer: Alright, so where and when were you born?

Lynn Lowry: October 15, 1955. I was born in East St. Louis, Illinois.

JC: And what made you decide to get into acting?

LL: Well, when I was a little girl, I was very, very shy and I needed some kind of outlet. So, first off, I started getting up and giving reports in class, and I found that when I was up in front of people, I wasn’t shy, because I had a script or other words that I could use. I think I was maybe seven years old when I discovered that. From that point on, I just started trying to get up in front of people as much as I could. I did a play in grade school. And then from there, I went on to do plays in high school, and then college, and then summer stock.

JC: I understand that you were a Bunny before you started acting.

LL: Oh, yeah. When I was 20, I was hired at the Playboy Club in Atlanta, Georgia. I actually turned 21 on the floor as a Bunny. I think I worked for them for about a year; didn’t like it. It was very hard. I had to wear really high heels all the time, and it was just really uncomfortable. The Bunny costume’s very uncomfortable. They called me Bunny Mia because I was very skinny at that point in my life.

JC: I just find it funny that you would be called too skinny for it, because that’s a rare criticism for a Bunny.

LL: They want you to be skinny, but they want you have to a big bosom. So, I didn’t have a big bosom, but they would try to make me look like I had a big bust. I even had people come in sometimes who, when they got me as their Bunny, would request another Bunny because they wanted a more voluptuous one. They put me in the back room a lot of times to play bumper pool with the customers, and when you bend over the table, you look like you’ve got a bigger bust. I made a lot of money playing bumper pool.

Lynn during her Playboy days

JC: Did you meet Hefner?

LL: No, I never met him. I was in Playboy a couple of times, and never was I just a Playmate or anything, but in, like, a special kind of article that they had. I actually did a very, very famous Playboy shot in a poem called “Monday’s Child,” and I took that picture and turned it into a lithograph. It became extremely popular. It was sold all over the world and was in calendars and everything.

JC: Okay. Tell me about your first role: The Battle of Love’s Return.

LL: Well, at the time, Battle of Love’s Return. But at the time I did it, it was not a feature; it was just a short. Actually, my first feature film was I Drink Your Blood, but then, after I did that, Lloyd Kaufman decided to make The Battle of Love’s Return the feature, so then it turned into a feature film. So, my very first acting job in New York was The Battle of Love’s Return.

JC: And how did that part come about?

LL: Well, I was up for a part in a film called Joe, directed by John Avildsen but Susan Sarandon got the part. I was sitting in the lobby waiting for my turn, and Lloyd Kaufman, who was working with Avildsen, saw me and came over and introduced himself, and told me that he was doing this short film. They had just lost the actress who was playing the dream girl and he thought I would be perfect for the part and wanted to know if I would be interested in doing it. So, that’s how I met Lloyd and got involved with that project.

JC: And how did I Drink Your Blood happen? [To see a trailer for I Drink Your Blood, click here.]

LL: Well, I saw an ad in Backstage, which is a magazine for actors. The ad said that they were looking for people for this horror film, and so, I met David Durston. I was actually the very last person who showed up that day, and he was just getting ready to close up. He had cast the entire film and there were no parts left. He tells this story rather well. He saw me and he just thought I was so beautiful that he just had to have me in the movie. He told me that he would call me in a couple of days and let me know what he’d worked out, and of course, I didn’t think I would ever hear from him again. But sure enough, he did call me and he said that he had decided to put me in the movie as a mute so that way, he wouldn’t have to write anymore lines or another part. So, that’s how I got the part.

JC: Now, some actors have told me that it’s hard to act without lines. Would you agree?

LL: Sometimes, but I think it depends on what’s going on around you. If there’s a lot of activity surrounding what you’re doing that you can react to, I don’t really think it’s that difficult. And with that particular film -

JC: I know; a lot of activity.

LL: There was a lot going on with all the different characters, and it was very colorful. So, it was actually pretty easy to just kind of be real and just react to what was going on and not have any lines.

JC: Okay. The next film was Sugar Cookies. How did that one happen?

LL: Well I had already worked with Lloyd in The Battle, and they just asked me if I would be interested in doing a part. Actually, I turned the part down at first because I didn’t really want to do that kind of nudity. I didn’t wanna become known as an actress who does that sort of stuff, but they kept talking to me about it, and I read the script a few times and I thought, “Well, gee, I sure do have a lot of camera time, and I get to play two different people, and I know that I’m a good enough actress that I could pull it off, so, it wouldn’t just come across like some terrible actress taking her clothes off.”

And Mary Woronov was in it. She was an actress whom I admired a lot and respected and was interested in working with. So, I finally decided to do it with the rule that they would not really focus on anything below the waist. That was the one thing that I stipulated in my contract- they weren’t allowed to show that sort of stuff.

JC: Mary’s then husband Ted Gershuny directed it. It must have been strange to be doing love scenes with the director’s wife.

LL: Honestly, I was at some sort of show with Mary at one point when she laughingly said something about how her husband was dreaming of having her play a lesbian with another woman or something- something to that effect. But at the time of the movie, I didn’t really focus on that at all. It was just a part, and I was doing my part and she was the other actress. I didn’t even feel as if the film was about lesbians. I never even thought of my character as a lesbian. I thought of her as just this woman who happened to fall in love with this other person who happened to be female.

But as far as being uncomfortable or anything with Ted directing, I never felt that. Mary was always very professional, and we just did everything as believably as we could.

JC: One of the people involved was Oliver Stone. Do you have any recollection of him during the making of that film?

LL: He’s also in The Battle of Love’s Return. I think he has an actual acting part in there. Honestly, I had no idea who Oliver was. I had no memory of really working with him or anything. Funny story: In New York, I was on the bus one day, and I think this was after he was on a couple of things; I’m not sure what. But he came up to me on the bus and introduced himself and said he was Oliver Stone and that he’d worked with me in Sugar Cookies.

And I didn’t recognize him and didn’t know what he had done. So, I said, “Hi, how are you doing? Nice to see you.” Of course later, I realized who he was and I thought, “Oh man, I should have given him my resume or something.”

JC: Oliver would not be the last of the many directors you encountered who would go on to bigger things. The next film was The Crazies, which was directed by George Romero. Were you familiar with Romero? Had you seen Night of the Living Dead? [To see the trailer for The Crazies, click here.]

LL: I had seen it. I was somewhat familiar. I didn’t really think of him as this incredible horror genre director at that point. I don’t think that he was at that point. I guess it had gotten a lot of attention, that film at that point, but I really had never met him and didn’t really know anything about him except that he’d done that film.

JC: Your roles in Sugar Cookies and I Drink Your Blood were not typical roles to begin with, but this would be a new direction with The Crazies.

LL: It was really an interesting part because she actually has the symptoms the very first time you see her, but I didn’t want the audience to know that right off the bat. So, I tried to find a line where I could show that she was a little hyper sensitive, but not so much that she would be considered crazy. That was my goal with the character. I wanted to let those senses build as the film moved ahead. Working with Richard Liberty, he was so great because he was such a good actor and so supportive and all of our scenes were, or almost all of them were, together, so we had to really roll it back to a very believable relationship between the two of us.

JC: You and Liberty were father and daughter in that film. After coming off love scenes with Mary in Sugar Cookies, now, you were going to have to do an incest love scene.

LL: Yeah. I knew that that’s what we were gonna have to do. I never really try to think about things like that or how I’m gonna do it exactly because we really can’t rehearse or figure out things like that. We just have to kind of take it in the moment and see what it is, and again, try to look for the honesty and the believability of where the characters are at that particular point. At that point, she’s pretty crazy, and he has no idea that he’s her father and she’s his daughter. So, I think that that’s sort of how we were able to pull that off; we were imagining that we were really other people rather than father and daughter, which is very disturbing.

It was interesting because when I was doing the remake, I talked to the director about it and about the original. He told me that when they were putting the script together, they weren’t sure whether he was going to do the incest scene. He didn’t because he felt that incest at this point in today’s time would not be a good thing to have in the movie. I like to think they eliminated it because, again, our characters are so memorable and recognizable that too many people would have been saying, “Oh, Dick did that part and Lynn did that part,” and that sort of thing.

JC: You have a very unique death scene in the film. First, you start off with a monologue and then when you’re shot, you simply go, “Oh.” Describe shooting that scene for me.

LL: Well, so, first off, that monologue leading into me being shot was not written. So, George said, “You know, improvise.” At that particular point in my life, I really hadn’t had a lot of acting experience. I mean, I studied acting in college, I’d gone to stock and all of that, but I hadn’t really studied a lot of acting in New York. Improv was not my forte at all. I was just a wreck, like, “What am I gonna say?” and all of that. But then, I kept thinking, “In the end, I’ll get to die and I’ll get to have this great death scene, and I’ll get to crawl toward the soldiers and beg for my life, die and get up, and crawl some more, and these big dramatic things.”

So, I thought, “Well, that’ll save it if my improv is bad, and I’ll get to do that.” And then when George told me what he wanted, I just couldn’t believe it. I just thought, “Oh no, that’s not gonna work. That’s gonna be really bad. It’s just gonna be lame,” but of course, George was the director, and you do what the director wants you to do. So, I did that and when I saw the movie - when I finally saw the whole movie finished - I still even thought it at that point; and my friend who was with me, he just laughed when he saw it. He just couldn’t - he thought it was silly.

And as the years have passed, and I’ve seen the movie now many times, I realize that you couldn’t really – because of the rape scene and then going into that scene, you really couldn’t fill this in another way. The simplicity and the innocence of that “oh,” it just is perfect. And I can’t tell you how many fans have told me that that’s their favorite moment in the movie. And also, when I autograph people’s pictures they’ll want me to share my “oh” on the picture. So, George was definitely right, and it just shows you that you’ve gotta listen to the director a lot of times because they know what they’re doing.

JC: Now your next film was Score; talk about that one, because as I understand it, the film started off as an Off Broadway play and became this X-rated film and it was based partly on Virginia Woolf. Talk about how that happened. [To watch the trailer for Score, click here.]

LL: Radley Metzger spoke to Lee Hessel, who was the producer of The Crazies. He had seen me in Crazies and he spoke to Lee and he recommended me. So that’s how I got the part but it was an Off Broadway comedy, and actually, Sylvester Stallone was in the Off Broadway comedy. He played the telephone repairman. And Radley didn’t want him in the movie because I don’t think he thought he was good looking enough, so he cast Carl Parker, but my understanding was that it was not an X-rated film-it was going to be R-rated and everything was going to be soft.

And again, I had specifically put in my contract that nothing below the waist was really supposed to be shown of me. So, I went into the film thinking that that’s what it was gonna be, and Claire Wilbur and I really didn’t do anything that was hardcore in any way, shape, or form. There is one shot of a curl in the pubic area in the film that’s supposed to be me, but it’s not me. It was some shot he put in. So, what happened was the men, Cal Culver and Gerry Grant, who were both absolute dolls and both gay, I guess when it came time for them to do their scene, they just really got into it and they really did it. So, the film became this X-rated film because of the two men.

JC: Did they both decide they really wanted to do the scene for real, then, at that point, or was it scripted?

LL: Well, I don’t know if Radley really wanted it to be for real or if it just sort of escalated into that, and he just decided, “Well, you know what, yeah, they’re doing it for real, so let’s get that on film.” I don’t know if he had intentions beforehand of doing that, because he certainly never tried to prompt either myself or Claire to do anything that was that pornographic. So, I really kind of think it just sort of accidentally happened, but the funny thing was that when the film debuted, it premiered at this porno house on 42nd street in New York, and I was at that time, starring in an NBC soap opera called How to Survive a Marriage, and I was just absolutely petrified that the NBC people were going to find out that I was in this porno on 42nd Street and I was gonna get fired, but they never found out. Since then, Radley had brought out another version of the film which I think actually works much better for the overall feel of the film, because the goals are not hardcore; so, I think it’s a much nicer film now. I love the film. It’s very funny. I saw it one night with, like, an all gay audience and had no idea how funny the movie was, but they just loved it, and it was just such a treat to hear all the laughs and really see how it was supposed to play out.

JC: Well, that actually is interesting because a director’s cut exists, but you can tell that it’s cut. Some people who were reviewing the DVD didn’t understand why he preferred this version as opposed to the uncut version.

LL: Yeah, I don’t know. I know he’s bringing it out again because we did an interview. I did an interview for it last year to go in the extras, and I think he’s bringing out the same version that he brought out before, but with a lot of behind the scenes stuff and all that kind of thing. So, I don’t know.

JC: When Matthew Broderick did Torch Song Trilogy with Harvey Fierstein, someone went up to him and said, “How did it feel doing a same sex love scene?” His response was, “It’s equally as uncomfortable as with the opposite sex. It’s with a stranger.” Would you agree with that, from your experiences in Score and Sugar Cookies?

LL: Well, Score was very uncomfortable because Claire Wilbur hated me.

JC: She hated you?

LL: Yes. She totally hated me. When we were on the airplane flying to Yugoslavia - I was very naïve at that point - somehow or another, the subject of what everyone was making money-wise came up and I was very open about what I was making, thinking that everyone else was making more, or definitely that she was making more, because she’d been in the Off Broadway show. It turned out that I was making more than anyone else, and she was livid. Yeah, she was livid at that point. I mean, we weren’t making very much. I think I was making, like, $600 a week. So we’re not talking about, like, hundreds of thousands of dollars, but she was very unhappy, and when we got to Yugoslavia, she, like, went right to Radley and she was furious. From that point on, she was very jealous of me and felt that I was always getting the close-ups and I was always getting the attention and that Radley liked me better, none of which was true because Claire is gorgeous in the film and she’s got many close-ups and she was fabulous. It definitely put a very negative thing on the love making scene, because she didn’t want me to really touch her. She didn’t want me to touch her hair. It was very difficult. And one time, we did amyl nitrate, and I had never done it, but we actually had some so–

JC: Are you saying that wasn’t simulated?

LL: No, no, that was real. We did amyl nitrate in that scene and I felt that kind of crazy and I messed her hair up. She was so mad that I messed her hair up and it just was very, very difficult. When we were kissing or anything like that, she would always want to be covered if it wasn’t showing. So, it was very uncomfortable doing the scenes with her, whereas it wasn’t uncomfortable at all doing them with Mary.

JC: Okay. Your next film was Shivers, which was also one of David Cronenberg’s first films. Shivers is actually the first film I saw you in. How did Shivers come about?[To see the trailer for Shivers, click here.]

LL: Well, I don’t remember how they came across me. They must have seen one of my other films, but Ivan Reitman came to New York and met with me. We had lunch, and they wanted me to do the movie. So I flew to Montreal to shoot with them and it was great. It was incredible. Unlike not remembering who Oliver Stone was, I did know who David Cronenberg was, and he was just a wonderful director. And it was one of his first films, if not his very first, and he was very enthusiastic about everything, but pretty much let me run my course.

I think he felt that I knew what I was doing and could get in where he needed - unlike Susan Petrie, who was a comedic actress, who David had to, like, slap around to get her to be emotional and cry. Susan asked him to do that, so it wasn’t like he just walked up and slapped her. It was just that Susan needed that to help her prepare. One time, he asked me though; he said, “Do you need some help with that emotional scene, Lynn?” And I said, “No, David, I can act.” So, that was kind of our joke, but it was great.

It was funny because for a long time, I didn’t seem to like Paul Hampton’s portrayal of the character in the film. Paul was a little bit difficult to work with because he was just very kind of - he always seemed to be sort of not involved. He sort of seemed to be kind of unemotional or that kind of energy, and I was used to working with people who really gave you a lot. It wasn’t my favorite work experience, but I saw the film actually not too long ago, and I realized that he actually was very good in the film, because how else could you respond to what’s going on around you except to kind of go away from it? So, I think that the choices that he made as an actor were very good and that they worked well in the script.

There is a funny little anecdote about the scene that I had where I’m getting undressed and changing out of my nurse outfit. So, I’m supposed to be looking at Paul Hampton while he is on the phone talking. I was actually looking at David - David was actually doing that. Paul was gone and David was sitting there pretending to be on the phone while I did that scene. So, I just thought that was sort of fun.

JC: That’s interesting because that was when I really noticed you. You were undressing in front of him while he was on the phone, and it’s clear - you really come across like you really want that guy. You really want his attention, though you certainly didn’t have a problem getting my attention. You know?

LL: Right. He was really kind of indifferent towards me but I guess at that point, I just wanted him to be in love with me in the script. I guess I thought that that’s the way it should have been played, and he didn’t play it that way. I think now, it’s made it even more interesting that he didn’t.

JC: There’s a similar type of scene near the end when you’re in the swimming pool and you’re possessed.

LL: Right. Well, actually, the swimming pool scene, I was not supposed to be in that scene. They had wrapped me and sent me back to New York from LA. That’s where I lived then. I guess they decided that it would be more interesting to see me give him the parasite, so they brought me back, which I’m so glad they did, because that’s just my all-time favorite scene. I just love where I come up out of the pool and turn and start towards him with this. Every time I see that, I get goose bumps, and I just love the mixture of the evil and the sensual quality that I have in that. It’s just my favorite film moment of anything I’ve ever done.

JC: Your next film was Fighting Mad. You have two really good scenes in it. The first one is after you and Peter Fonda make love. From the way you’re eating the apple, it’s clear that the bedroom activity wasn’t that great. The other scene is near the end. Peter is finally gonna get his revenge. Before he goes on his quest, you slap him. Even though you’ve seen all the damage the bad guys have done, you’re not supporting his quest for vigilante justice. You’re not a “stand by your man” type of girl in that film. [To watch the trailer for Fighting Mad, click here.]

LL: Yeah. I thought my part in that film was pretty interesting, and I’m sorry it wasn’t more successful and more people didn’t get to see it, but yeah, in that first scene, she’s obviously not happy about his attentions. In the last scene, Jonathan Demme wanted me to slap Peter Fonda, and Peter was very adamant about me not doing that. He did not want to be slapped and really just said “no.” Then Jonathan took me aside and told me to do it anyway, which put me in a really bad situation there, because I didn’t wanna do something Peter Fonda didn’t want me to do. But I needed to do what the director wanted me to do, so, I did it, and Peter was very angry - very, very angry with me. So, I explained to him that I had to do it, and he got over it, but he wasn’t very happy about it.

JC: Could you tell me about your relationships with both Peter Fonda and Jonathan Demme on that film?

LL: Well, Jonathan was just great because it was one of his first films. He pretty much let me - I think that the directors that I worked with were very good in casting the right people in parts, so that they sort of - not that they didn’t direct them, but that we were already kind of that part and we were able to just deliver what they needed. So, he was just great. I went there to meet him in Arkansas before we actually started shooting, and we went around to the different places, and I just had a very good relationship with him. I saw him again afterwards, in New York, on many occasions. I thought it’d be real cool to work with him again, and I was very sorry that that didn’t happen. Although, it almost did happen because I was actually cast in The Last Embrace, but, Roy Scheider, at the last minute decided he wanted his girlfriend to do the part. So, I didn’t get to do that part, but I still get residuals for it because I was actually under contract and everything.

Peter was a very interesting man. He was very private. It was hard for him to go out because a lot of people would come up to him and a lot of them were unsavory, although a lot of those types were really his true fans. It was a little bit dangerous for him. I remember one time, we did go out for dinner and these two guys came over, and they were, like, insisting that he come with them to their house or have dinner with them. It was that kind of thing. And he said that he would love to do that and maybe they could schedule that for later in the week. I think that was actually the last time he went out and had dinner in a restaurant. But he was very professional- always knew what he wanted, what his lines were and everything-very easy to work with.

JC: Now, there was a six-year gap between that film and the next one, Cat People. What happened during that time?

LL: Well, what happened was, I was living in New York City. I was doing a lot of theater and I decided to make the move out to California.

Lynn doing a play

So, I did that and I can’t remember if it was the writers who went on strike or the directors, but it was a very difficult time because it was California and the agents who I was trying to get to represent me were mostly people who were just interested in what the last television show was that you did. Certainly, the big casting directors in Los Angeles who were casting all the TV and major films were not interested in knowing that I did I Drink Your Blood.

I just never really even told anyone that. And it just was very difficult to get established, so there was a big period of time that passed. I did a soap opera called Generations during that period and I also did a film with Lynne Littman called Once a Daughter. I did that and maybe a couple of TV movies of the week. It was pretty difficult to get represented.

JC: How did Paul Schrader get you for Cat People?

LL: My agent got me an audition and I went in and saw what they wanted. I saw what was called for in the script. That sort of thing’s always been very easy for me: to show peril and scream and all that sort of stuff. So, when I got in the office with Paul, they wanted me to do the scene, and I said, “Well, do you want me to do the scene full out?” because it was in their office, and I thought, “There’s people in the other room, and will they really want that?” So, he said, “Oh yeah, sure; go ahead.” So, I did. I did - pretty much what you saw in the movie, I did in their office that day.

I used the door to get out to the outer room. Everybody in the outer room was just sitting there with their mouths open looking at me crawling out on my hands and knees, and they all like broke into applause when they saw me. That was it. They loved it. They thought, “Well, God, if she can do that here in the office, she sure can do it there.” So that’s how I got that part.

JC: You wouldn’t have many credits after Cat People until we reached the 21^st century. What happened during your time out of the limelight?

LL: Well, what happened, basically, was I sort of at that point gave up. But I still did theater. I never knew during that little period, that I was a cult horror personality. I didn’t know that there was this huge base of horror films that were done and that those people might be interested in using me. I just had no idea. I was wrapped up in the theater, trying to get into the mainstream and it just never occurred to me there was this other need. It just got to a point where I actually went up for a role on Roseanne and the part had, like, five lines. I could have phoned it in. It was such an easy part, and I got right in there, and they probably had about 200 actresses there to read for this five-line part. They were like every shape, size, hair color . . . It wasn’t even like they had decided on a type. I said to myself at that point, I said, “You know, if I get this part, I’m gonna go on with this, and if I don’t get it, I’m not.” Well, I got a call back and I thought, “Wow, I got a call back. That’s cool.” So, I went back for the call back, and I think that there were 100 actresses there for the call back. They were fat, short, skinny, red haired, blond haired, you name it. I didn’t get it, and I’d just had it with really pursuing it, so I just took a break. I started teaching acting and commercial workshops, and was still doing my theater, and just got involved in that aspect of my life.

JC: Well, I know that one of the things was that you were a jazz singer. How did you get into music?

Lynn performing at a nightclub.

LL: Well, my dad, who passed away last March, was a jazz trumpet player, and he loved to go out and sit in with groups. He always wanted me to come and sit in with him. I actually played the trumpet, by the way, when I was age 5, until, like, 15. I decided to learn how to play so I could go with him and share that world of music with him. Really, all I wanted to do was get to a point where I could actually go out with him and sit in, but we started doing shows together in Atlanta, and then I started doing shows out here, and I had a jazz trio. I would just play music in the evening, mostly all from the '40s, but '30s, '40s, and '50s music, and told jokes and changed clothes and started to learn how to be improvisational, because that’s what it’s like being in a night club and never knowing what’s gonna happen. You had to be able to do that and be in the moment. That was a lot of fun, and I still go out and sit in with people, but I’m not really pursuing doing the shows any longer.

JC: I did notice one credit that appears in the middle of the '90s and it’s a film with Brigitte Nielsen and Dana Plato, Compelling Evidence. How did that film come about?

LL: I had seen an ad in Backstage for a monologue for a horror film that was casting, so I sent my picture. Donald Farmer was the director and he was a big, big fan of mine and knew me from all of my previous films. And that’s actually when I first started thinking, “Oh, he knows who I am and blah, blah.” I don’t know if they actually did that film that I sent him the picture for, but they decided to do this one and he had a part for me and wanted me to do it. So, I flew to - I think we shot it in Tennessee. I didn’t have any scenes with Brigitte, but it was fun and I hadn’t done anything film-wise in a long time, so it was kind of an interesting and fun experience.

JC: Donald Farmer gave you a hint there, but at what point did you realize that there were a lot more people who remembered what you had done?

LL: Well, actually, two things happened. I was in my room in my office, and I decided one day to type in my name on the Internet to see if there was anything on me. So, I typed in my name and, like, I don’t know, 30, 40, 50 pages of stuff came up of me and the stuff that I had done. And I was just like - I was really floored by it.

The second thing that happened was Bob Murawski, who was the editor for the Spiderman film and recently won the academy award for editing The Hurt Locker, called me one day out of the blue and said, “Are you Lynn Lowry who was in I Drink Your Blood?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “Oh my God, I’m such a fan. I’ve seen it, like, 25 times.” I almost hung up on him, and he said, “Oh wait, wait, I’m the editor of all these films.” So, I listened and he said, “I just met with David Durston and he’s got the original 35 millimeter director’s version of the film and we’re gonna put it out on DVD and we wanna know if you’ll do an interview.” That was really sort of the beginning of it. Then, I did another one for Blue Underground for The Crazies, and then I started to do conventions, and then people started asking me to do movies. That’s sort of how it all happened.

JC: Now, one of the films I notice you even produced. It was called Schism. Can you talk about that?

LL: Well, the truth is, I came up with the original idea for the film with the director and his wife Erika Purtell, and Erika actually wrote the script based on my ideas. I helped her with it, but she mostly wrote it. Derek and I put the money up, so that was kind of my producing part on this, because I was in LA and they were in New York. So, I really didn’t have as active a part in it as I would have liked, had I been there. I really have to give them credit for truly producing the film, even though I have credit on the film. They really did all the work and got the crew and the cast, the locations, and everything together for when I was able to go there for the ten days I was there to act in the movie. It was a great opportunity for me to play the different roles in the film, which was very challenging, and I have a lot of screen time, and I hadn’t really had that much screen time in a long, long time. Doing the work on the film was much harder than some of the other things I had done, because it was, like, 14-hour days, and everybody I worked with was, like, 25 years old. They could have worked for 24 hours straight, and I was always the one going, “No, I gotta go to bed. I’m tired.” So, they were such a great group of people, and they did so much work on it. It’s still not quite finished, and we’re working on the extras at this point.

JC: Okay. One film that you were in I did catch at the Philadelphia Film Fest Terror Festival: Basement Jack. I thought that was a small film that worked pretty well, and I also liked your portrayal of this sort of crazy mother who made Basement Jack what he is.

LL: I won the best supporting actress award at that festival for that film. I love that film. It was a lot of fun for me because I’d never done a part like that before. She’s just, like, totally an evil person and just a mess. So, it was interesting for me to work on it, because I didn’t want the character just to be mean; I wanted to make her seem like she was mentally ill, so I tried to work more towards that angle, rather than portraying her as just a mean, cruel person. The people on the set were afraid of me at first because they thought I was like that, but later, I would hear them saying, “My God she’s so nice. How does she do that?” It was good. Working with Michael Shelton was great because he’s such a big FX person and so good with the special effects and everything. I thought it came out really well and looked really good for what it is.

JC: Now let’s talk about The Crazies remake. Here’s a small film that you did back then that’s now a big budget remake. [To watch the trailer for The Crazies remake click here.]

LL: Right. I was very excited about it. I learned about it a couple of years before they actually did it, and I e-mailed the producer at that time. I don’t remember exactly, but I introduced myself and told him that I was really interested in being involved in it, so they would have my name. They sort of knew who I was, and then, I guess after they saw the original a few times, they began to realize who I was because it’s this big Hollywood movie. The film had, like, a $21 million budget. They did cast me and it was thrilling to be a part of it, and I think it was great that they were paying homage to the original film, but of course, I would have liked to have had a little bit bigger of a role in it. I might be crazy if I didn’t say that. There were a couple of other parts in the film that I felt that I could have done and would have loved to have done, but I sometimes think that they don’t want so much recognizable - they don’t want the people in the audience to be going so much, “Oh, that’s Lynn. She was in the original.” So, by just giving you a cameo, they get you in and out real quick, and they don’t have so much of that. I was told that when my part came up, the audience yelled and whistled. So, I think everybody pretty much knew I was in it and it was me.

JC: Even though it’s very little screen time, I think you are used very effectively in the film. You’re on the bicycle, in your own little world, and singing some song.

LL: Yeah, it’s a nice little vignette. I actually didn’t get that song until the night before, so I was up at, like, midnight trying to learn this song.

JC: Now, after The Crazies, what are you doing? What are you working on next?

LL: Well, I did a film last year called George’s Intervention. I just finished a film called The Super, and I think it’s gonna be very good. I’m getting ready to do Dante Tomaselli’s film Torture Chamber. Right after that, I’m doing a film called Next Door, which we’re shooting in New Hampshire. Immediately following that, I’m doing a film in Long Island called The Wicked Little Princess, which is a musical comedy horror film based on an old Shirley Temple movie.

JC: You’ve got quite a lot of roles coming up! You haven’t been this busy since the '70s. At the same time, they are honoring your past by doing a $21 million remake of one of the small films you did back then. It’s like things have come full circle. Your thoughts on that?

LL: Well I’ll tell you, those movies that I did in the '70s are remarkable. It didn’t occur to me at that point that any of those films that I was doing were ever going to be part of the “cult genre” of films, which they’ve become. I was just sort of using them as a stepping stone to hopefully move on to some more mainstream films and different kinds of parts than those. It’s still a complete surprise to me. I’m really proud that I did all of them, but I’m still amazed at how many people know them and know my work in them and everything.

As for remakes, I think everybody now is trying to remake and kind of recapture what that was, and you really can’t recapture it because it was an adventure then. It was new. It was different. People were doing it not just because it was a job, but because, obviously, the money wasn’t that great, but we were doing it because it was an art and we wanted to do it. We didn’t rely then on special effects and all the things that everybody relies on now. When we did the original Crazies, we didn’t have seven levels of makeup to show that you were crazy by the end. You had to act it. You had to be it. We actually tried to do a remake of I Drink Your Blood -

JC: Really?

LL: David Durston wrote a script and he put a really nice part for me in it, so we’re hoping to do that, and I’m sure that there’s gonna be a remake of Shivers at some point, and I just hope that with each one, the people who do it really wanna pay homage to that film and will give me a part, because I’d love to do them again, but it was great to be a part of it the first time, and it’s great to be remembered for all those roles.

I’m just hoping that the new things I’m doing will become part of my legacy and that people will remember those as well, because I’m actually a much better actress now than I ever was. I’m sure that that shows and comes through. Now, I’m playing a character, whereas back then, I just played myself being crazy. I’m getting to play all different kinds of people, and that’s very exciting and challenging.

Lynn has a website at www.lynnlowry.com Readers who want to ask her more questions or request an autograph can contact her through the site.

A Very Candid Conversation with Mark Patton

2010-04-03T09:32:00.000-07:00

A Nightmare on Elm Street 2 stars Mark Patton, Kim Myers and myself at the Monstermania convention. March 2010.

Mark Patton got off to an early start in his career when he starred in the Broadway production of Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, directed by legendary director Robert Altman and starring Cher and Kathy Bates. In it, he plays a man who undergoes a sex change operation and becomes Karen Black. He would reprise the same role in the film version which also starred Cher, and Bates, and which Altman also directed.

Mark followed Jimmy Dean with a supporting role in a sci-fi tale, Anna to the Infinite Power. Next came his first leading role – and his most famous role of all – playing Jesse Walsh in A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge. The sequel is an unusual entry in the Elm Street series. First off, it has a male lead, which is rare in the horror genre; the lead is usually a tom-boyish girl. Second, it deals with the theme of Freddy Krueger (played by Robert Englund) wanting to possess someone – in this case, Jesse Walsh. The only other time Freddy would choose to possess someone would be Jason Vorhees in Freddy vs. Jason. Third (and most controversially), it contains several homoerotic elements. There is no female nudity, only male nudity, in the picture. Also there is one scene where-in Jesse dreams he visits his gym coach in a gay S&M leather bar. There is another moment where Jesse is making out with his girlfriend, but when he sees Freddy’s tongue come out of his mouth, he panics and goes over to his best friend Grady’s house. The following dialogue is exchanged. (Jesse: “Something is trying to get inside my body.” Grady: “Yeah, and she's female, and she's waiting for you in the cabana. And *you* wanna sleep with me”.) A Nightmare on Elm Street 2’s director Jack Sholder and writer David Chaskin have denied any homoerotic elements were intentional, but many viewers have continued to comment on them. In fact, one IMDB person commented that A Nightmare on Elm Street 2 was “gay porn for [him] as a teen.”

After the success of A Nightmare on Elm Street 2, Mark never did another picture again. Nor did he appear in the public eye for a while. Producers were unable to find him for commentary when A Nightmare on Elm Street 2 became available on DVD. When he finally resurfaced for the Elm Street documentary, Never Sleep Again, a photo was taken of the producers of the documentary wearing shirts that show his face and say, “He Has Been Found.”

In this candid conversation, Mark and I discuss Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, his time making A Nightmare on Elm Street 2, his thoughts on the homoerotic elements of that film, and why he hasn’t been heard from till now. I interviewed Mark through Skype at his home in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. I want to thank Mark for taking the time to do this interview.

Jeff Cramer: So where were you born?

Mark Patton: I was born in Kansas City, Missouri. I moved to New York when I was 17 to go to college at New York City.

JC: Okay. So what made you decide you wanted to become an actor?

MP: Well, I had an amazing, amazing teacher in high school: her name was Mildred Fulton. I was trying to decide what I wanted to do with my life, and she was a very wise woman. Very smart. I went to her and said, “I don't know what I'm gonna do. I don't know what I'm gonna do.” She said, “You're going to go to New York, and you're going to be an actor. That's what your life is going to be.” I said “Okay,” and that's what I did. And I thank her every day.

JC: Now, when I was a kid, I read this little book called The Nightmare on Elm Street Companion. The book has a little bio on you. The bio said you were deciding between being an actor or a country-western singer.

MP: That's correct. I was offered a recording contract when I was 11 years old.

JC: Really?

MP: Yeah, very soulful, kind of cut-your-throat honky-tonk music, which I still love; but my father wouldn't let me take the recording contract because I would have had to sing in bars, and he thought I was way too young.

JC: Well, you were 11, so I can understand your father’s point of view.

MP: I resented him at the time, but now in retrospect I realize he was probably wiser than I.

JC: The bio also said you qualified for the Junior Olympics.

MP: Yes, I was. I was qualified in the State of Missouri for the Junior Olympics, and I represented in gymnastics. I took sixth place in the still ring, sixth place on the floor exercise, and a bronze medal on the vaults.

JC: But you decided to be an actor and went to New York.

MP: I thought New York was the wisest place for me to be. I had fallen in love with A Chorus Line and Chicago, and I just wanted to be there. I just knew in my heart that it was the place for me to be, so I got on a plane and off I went. When I lived there, there was a guy named Dan Monahan who lived down the hall from me, and Dan – you may or may not know – was the star of Porky's, which was a big, big movie.

JC: Oh, yes, he played Pee Wee.

MP: Pee Wee, yeah. Well, Pee Wee lived down the hall from me, and everybody in the building whispered about how much money he made, so I thought I'm just gonna follow him one day and see where he goes. So I followed him to his manager's office, and I said, “Well, if he can do it, I can do it”. There was a big sign that said, “Do not knock on the door,” and of course, I knocked. The door opened, and the owner of the management company was there. It was very early in the morning, and he said, "What do you want?" I said, “Well, I'm an actor and I'm here to be an actor.” He said, “Okay, well come back at 11:00 a.m.” – and that was Stewart Sokol and Helene Sokol, and they were my managers for 25 years.

JC: Twenty-five years?

MP: Twenty-five years, yeah. They started me off doing television commercials, and that was my first experience. I made a lot of television commercials, Coke and Pepsi, and I got my equity card in Philadelphia doing Oliver. Then, I did a little play in New York, and then I got the audition for Jimmy Dean and that began that.

JC: Right, I understand that the Broadway version of Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean was directed by the same man who later directed the film version; and that it also features the same cast? [A custom-made trailer for Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean can be viewed by clicking here.]

MP: Yes, the movie and the play are exactly the same. Robert Altman directed the production of the Broadway version and everybody involved in the production are exactly the same people as in the film. Sandy Dennis, Cher, Karen Black, Kathy Bates (before Kathy Bates was really Kathy Bates), Marta Heflin, Sudie Bond, and myself. We opened that play on Broadway. The opening was huge. It had press from everybody in the world. Literally, at that time, I met – if you were famous, I got to meet you and it was great – David Bowie, Mick Jagger, Greta Garbo. I mean, literally everybody, because they came to see Robert Altman.

When the show closed, it didn't get great reviews, but we immediately turned around two weeks later and filmed the movie, which went on to the Cannes Film Festival. It won the Golden Lion, and of course, it's a cult favorite at this point for many people.

JC: Now, your character becomes Karen Black later on. Did you and Karen have to, sort of, coordinate together?

MP: Actually, we did, and it was very strange. Karen and I would talk on the phone every night so she could get the inflection of my voice, which she felt was the most important thing. I really believe Karen did an amazing, amazing job in that movie. She took a lot of flack, which I came to understand better when I did Nightmare on Elm Street – the kind of flack that was given to her. Many people said, “Oh, she is a transvestite. She's a transsexual – look at her hands, look at her feet; they're so big.” A lot of people were very unkind to her, but I thought she was just amazing – amazing – in that movie.

JC: Also, at the same time, what was interesting about it was that Cher at that time wasn't known as a serious actress at that time.

MP: That's correct, sure. Yeah, well, actually, Cher had been turned down by a number of people. Cher had gone to Joseph Papp at the public theater to put her name in a hat, like Linda Ronstadt had done, so on and so forth, and said, “You know, I want it private.” And Joe Papp literally laughed her out of the building and said, “Like, we don't have room for you, sorry. Katherine Altman, Bob Altman’s wife, happened to be friends with Cher's mom and she said to Cher's mom, “You know, Bob's doing a movie, and maybe he has a part for Cher in it.”

That's actually how that happened, just one mother talking to another mother, trying to get her daughter a job – and it worked out great for Cher.

JC: Also no one knew who Kathy Bates was at the time.

MP: Oh, yeah. Kathy was amazing because Kathy actually was not supposed to be in Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean. A girl named Susan Kingsley was gonna be in Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean. She was from Louisville. Suddenly, she was in a car accident and was killed. Kathy was doing a Beth Henley play, and just stepped in at the last moment.

JC: Well, based on the movie, she did very well for a last-minute replacement.

MP: Well, you know, Kathy is a very unique person – and Kathy has watched a lot of pretty girls get famous. I had the good fortune – of right after Jimmy Dean closed and we finished making the movie – I did a play in Boston called Almost an Eagle, and Kathy was at American Repertory Theater doing 'Night Mother, and she was doing it in a studio production. They were building the production to go to Broadway, and I saw it with cardboard boxes and 20 people in a room, and it just blew me – I mean, I can't tell you the experience.

When my show very quickly closed in New York, she got our stage manager and our theater, so I got to watch that show about 100 times. I would just sneak in, in the afternoon when I had nothing to do and watch Kathy, and I knew in my heart of hearts from the moment I saw that play that Kathy was destined for greatness. She is amazing. If you see her in that or in Primary Colors, she's an amazing, amazing actress; and I love that she's a real sweetheart too.

JC: What was your experience of working with Robert Altman?

MP: Robert Altman was a fantastic director to work with. You hear that all the time regarding actors, but Bob was also a very good business-man and very, very smart. He also knew how to get people to work for him for free, which is a really good trick because he was a pretty wealthy man. He was just as good to me as could be – he and Scott Bushnell, the producer.

I auditioned for them, auditioned a second day, and then on a Saturday afternoon – and this is where he's really smart – I got a call at my home and it was Scotty Bushnell. Scott said, “Would you be interested in speaking to Mr. Altman?” I said, “Well, sure.” Mr. Altman got on the phone, and said, “Hey, how would you like to come and be on Broadway with us?” I'm like, “My God, I would love to.” Well, of course, I couldn't negotiate my contract then. He knew I wanted to do it, and I was gonna take any money they gave me, which I would have anyway. Bob, of course, was a genius and I'm thrilled that I got to work with him.

JC: Now, was that play exactly the way they shot the movie? The five and dime store is the only set. There are scenes where Karen is looking in the mirror and sees you as a reflection.

MP: It was a little baffling that way, as it was on Broadway, but dialogue wise it had to be because by the time we reached the filming stage, there was a lawsuit between Ed Graczyk and the producer. Ed wrote Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean and he felt like Robert had ruined his play. He felt like he really had a masterpiece, and he felt like it had been destroyed by Robert Altman, which I thought was really sad on his part.

JC: Yeah, I’m not sure I saw the destruction that Ed is talking about.

MP: So by that time, we were having the lawsuit, and we had to read those lines as they were written; so there were agents on set, lawyers on set –everything had to be done exactly as it was written. No ad-libbing in that movie, which Altman is also famous for: just letting actors have the moment, because he shoots with three or four cameras at the same time so you really never know when you're on camera. You might think you're sitting over there doing nothing, but actually he's just filming you the entire time. That's how he gets those wonderful, sort-of relaxed, dreamy shots; because the people don't actually know they're being filmed at the time.

JC: Okay, now we go to another film. Anna to the Infinite Power, which is going to being released on DVD shortly. [To watch the trailer for Anna to the Infinite Power, click here.]

MP: Yeah, it is actually, and I just did an interview for the DVD version. I love that movie. I was offered Anna to the Infinite Power because of Dina Merrill, who was very good friends with Robert Altman. She had done A Wedding and a number of other movies with him. Dina was doing this movie, and she suggested me to the producer, and that's how I came about doing that movie.

JC: You and Martha Byrne had a real brother/sister chemistry on that film.

MP: Yeah, yeah. I love Martha. That was Martha's first. Actually, all of us on that movie had very good relationships: very close. We filmed in a very beautiful part of New Jersey, and it was just green, lush, everything was really nice, and the people were kind. Martha was, as you know, one of the most beautiful little girls that you ever laid your eyes on, and we just had a really wonderful time. I think you can tell the relationship, basically – with Martha and I – from the little scene where Martha and I are sitting by the side of a lake, and it looked like a multi-million-dollar Disney film; it's so beautifully rich, and it's just perfect.

I have a very good relationship with Dina also – and you know, what an interesting woman. She's one of the wealthiest women in the world. She's the daughter of Marjorie Merriweather Post, the heiress of the Kellogg fortune. She’s just a billionairess and making little movies, you know. And I'm so happy to be in that movie, because of all the things I've done in my career, all of my nieces know all of the words to Anna to the Infinite Power. They can act it out; they've all seen it at least 50 times, and they're about ten years old.

I think it's a great way to introduce the Holocaust to children who are young enough that they can comprehend it; but in a gentle way, where you can open up that conversation and say, “Well, yeah, this did happen.” It's a great way to have that conversation, and it's a pretty movie and wonderful for children.

JC: Yeah, even as an adult, I found the story very interesting, especially with the human cloning thing. And we’re still dealing the themes of human cloning today.

MP: Oh, yeah, absolutely. There's no doubt about it. It was ahead of its time. I think it is a very good movie, and I think it stands the test of time. The fact that they're re-releasing it proves that, I think.

JC: Okay, after Anna to the Infinite Power, you would audition for the first Nightmare on Elm Street.

MP: That's correct. I had gone to California and I was on General Hospital for quite a while in between Anna and Nightmare on Elm Street. I had done a couple Westerns, and I did a series with Chuck Connors, but I auditioned for the first Nightmare on Elm Street. I had never seen a horror movie.

JC: You had never seen a horror movie?

MP: I had seen scary stuff like Vincent Price but nothing like Elm Street. It didn't matter to me; it was just another audition. I went in, and it didn't work out – and then Nightmare on Elm Street came out. I took a little notice of it, but not really a lot. And then they came back, and I ended up being the star of the second one.

JC: Okay, now the role that you had auditioned for was the one that became Johnny Depp's role.

MP: That's correct, yes.

JC: Do you ever think for a second that, maybe if you got Depp’s role, maybe you could have gotten Depp’s career?

MP: Well, it’s funny, because at the time I was a bigger name then Johnny Depp was. Johnny Depp was just Johnny Depp. Nobody knew who he was. It's just mean to me that he doesn't really talk about Nightmare on Elm Street, which I think is a little short-sighted on his part, because most of the good things that came to him – that was the beginning, that's where they came from. If you don't do your homework as an actor, it's really sad. Bob Shaye gave Johnny Depp his first job.

I mean, my God, Wes Craven gave him his first job when he was a nobody. That's a stroke of good fortune that money can't buy. So I think it would be sweet of him if he could acknowledge that once in a while. As for his career, I think everybody's got their own path. I'm not Johnny Depp; I'm not like that. I would have liked to have had his life on some level, but I don't know if his life would have fit me very well, to be honest with you.

JC: It’s interesting what you said about Depp not talking about Nightmare on Elm Street, because Kevin Bacon was in the original Friday the 13th and you rarely get to see him talk about that.

MP: Yeah. I think for my generation of people, there was some embarrassment about doing horror movies. I'm not really sure. I have friends who were actors who really never worked, you know. They just never worked, and a lot of them berated me. They would be like, “I would never do that. I would never, ever, ever be in one of those movies.” My first thought was, “Well, nobody asked you, so how would you make that decision today?” And you know, it's like when I was a kid, I loved to go to Vincent Price movies, and I loved The Pit and the Pendulum.

And then, when I signed to do Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2, Bob Shaye set up a screening for me on Hollywood Boulevard at 10:00, and I went with a friend to an empty theater and saw Nightmare on Elm Street for the first time. I went, “My God, this is gonna me in just a little bit of time.” I started shooting the next week.

JC: Also you were going to have to carry this film, because you’re the lead in this. The male is rarely a lead in a horror movie. [To watch the trailer for A Nightmare on Elm Street 2, please click here.]

MP: When I read the script, because I'm a New York-trained actor, I just read what's on the page, and some of the things began to strike me as a little odd. The phrasing, it was… - it wasn't good grammar, but I was committed to that movie. I didn't care how I looked. If I had cared how I looked, I would have – There were a lot of things I would never have done. I would never have let them shoot below my neck. I would never have let them shoot my stomach. I would never have let you see me in my underwear. All of that stuff was in my control. I had all of the power in that situation, but what I did was let them do what they wanted to do. I feel like – the only regret that I have in regard to Nightmare on Elm Street and this conversation we're having is I wish I would have been a little older, a little wiser; and I wish I could have read the script a little deeper.

I only had a week from the time I was hired until the time I started. I would have made Jesse a little darker. Instead of putting him in all those light colors, I would have probably put him in a black t-shirt. I would have rather not have had my hair cut. I had very long hair, and I would have left the hair long, and I would have made him seriously depressed. I would have decorated the room …

JC: Interesting, because Friday the 13th Part V was released the same year as Elm Street 2; and like Elm Street 2, it had a male lead, Tommy Jarvis, who didn’t dress in dark clothing, but he was clearly alienated and depressed.

MP: Right. Well, those were manufactured by the movie, but the thing is if I had built that character, he would be different. I mean, I would have made him more difficult to get to, less friendly. I would have made him more – he could have gone very dark, which would have been really cool in a different movie.

JC: Although, I have to say in the beginning scene of the movie, you don’t look very great in the bus.

MP: Yeah, they tried to make me look as sick as possible in that movie, but I don't mean so much in the fact of my physical looks. I mean, more in the sense of an alienated teenager, because that would have made the relationship between Freddy and I even more unusual. I wanted Jesse to be more like the girl in The Breakfast Club. What was her name?

JC: Oh, yeah. Ally Sheedy.

MP: More like Ally Sheedy. Actually, in Never Sleep Again they asked us to contemplate scenarios for Nightmare on Elm Street, and whether we had ever wished that we would direct one, and so on and so forth – like that. I had a fabulous, fabulous Nightmare on Elm Street in my head that I would have loved to make; but I made the one that I did, and I enjoyed it. It's been great.

JC: Now, what was your relationship with Robert Englund in this movie? You would have to deal with him in a different way than most teens. Obviously, he didn’t want to kill you, but he wanted to possess you.

MP: My relationship with Robert Englund was actually very, very good, and Robert was very respectful of me. Our camera operator had filmed Ordinary People with Timothy Hutton, and he and Robert had a conversation one day. The man said, ”I have not been happy working with a young person of this quality since I worked on Ordinary People.” Robert’s and my chemistry together was great. I had known Robert as an actor before in a movie called Buster and Billie. I don't know if you remember that movie.

JC: I've heard of it, but I haven't seen it.

MP: And I couldn't figure out how they found an albino that could act. It just befuddled me for years. It's like, “oh, my God, what a casting choice!” When I realized that was Robert, I realized I was dealing with genius on a certain level. I know there's a lot of controversy around about the Nightmare on Elm Street remake. They didn't choose Robert – they didn't ask Robert to be Freddy Krueger and all this kind of stuff – but I think Robert Englund is gonna have a second act that people aren't gonna comprehend. I don't think they realize what a great actor he is.

I mean, I know a lot of people love him as Freddy, but before . . . If you wanted to be terrified, like when we were doing those scenes, it was before his voice was modified, because his voice is always modified in movies. They put in work. But when we were acting together, it was just him and me. All I heard was his voice and his eyes, and he would scare the bejesus out of me. It was much scarier than what ended up in the films. I think Robert will go on to have a very prestigious, different type of career than if he had gone ahead and continued to be Freddy Krueger. So even though I know a lot of people are disappointed that he's not going to be Freddy Krueger, I think it's gonna be a big blessing for him in the end.

JC: Well, I actually saw Robert first as the friendly alien in V, Willie; so that was my first impression of him. My friend and I, actually – when we first saw A Nightmare on Elm Street – were surprised to see him going from such a nice guy as Willie to playing such a mean guy as Freddy Krueger.

MP: Right. He's got a lot of chops as far as… He really is just at the right age now where he can really just sort of – you know – the world could be his oyster. That's a real world class character, man. He has a lot of fans inside the movie industry also, because Robert is a real gentleman; he's professional. It's hard. Elm Street, that is really, really hard to do. The makeup, it's incredible. I mean, my transformation scene took four days to shoot and I had that ugly tongue in my mouth for ten and half hours, non-stop; it can't come out. Robert had a new mask every day, and that's like five hours makeup every morning, and then you go on to a full day of shooting.

I mean, it's a lot of work, and then you have to really keep your sanity. You have to hold onto your sanity in those things, because it can get very tedious.

JC: It looks you had to endure several makeup days. First, there’s you with the tongue, and then there’s Freddy coming out of your body.

MP: Well, when they build your body-cast, they bury you. They put the straw in your nostrils and you're covered completely in plastic, and they make that mold. Mark Shostrom did that, and that took a certain amount of time, but the actual transformation that you see on the screen – even if it looks a little old-fashioned today – at the time, it was what it was. That took four days to shoot. Four solid days of shooting to get those shots, and you're covered in fake blood, which smells horrible, and then you gotta get cleaned up and do it again. By the end, it's just blah. You know, you get in, and you scream. You scream like a girl, and then you scream some more.

But I think that scene is really exciting. I think it really works with the acting, the props, and everything coming together in that scene where Grady gets killed. I think that's genuinely a scary part of the movie.

JC: Now we come to some questions that I know fans have been waiting to ask about Elm Street II. The first is that I have to ask your thoughts on the homoerotic elements of the films.

MP: Well, I have to tell you, I never dreamed 25 years later I would still be talking about this; but I'll give you the info. I mean, like with the scene with Grady and I in the bedroom, it doesn't make any sense, but we would just do what they told us to do. I knew this writer for many years, and many people have been on the record as saying that they had no idea that this was being written as a subliminal gay movie. I do have to say that in Never Sleep Again, I do call out the writer because I know as a matter of fact that he did know what he was writing . . . because I had other friends on the crew that came and told me. They went to him and said, "Don't you know what you're doing?" And he said, "Oh, yes, I do. Isn't it funny?"

I don't know his sexuality. I don't anything about him really, but I think it's time he has enough balls to admit to what he did – whether he was making a joke against me, or for the movie, or whatever the case may be. I think it's time for him to just sort of come clean and say, “Yeah, I knew I was doing this.” But for me, it turned out to be a great thing. A lot of people on the internet would say, “Oh, you know, did Nightmare on Elm Street make Mark gay, or was Jesse gay?”

There’s one question I've waited for somebody to ask and it doesn't seem like anybody's going to, so I'll ask and answer it myself: If Jesse Walsh is gay, right, what about Freddy? I mean, Freddy's the one that's abusing Jesse; Jesse's not abusing Freddy, you know, so it adds a whole dimension of things in there that a lot of people just did not want to talk about in that multi-million-dollar franchise. The one that always wanted to be with me was Freddy, you know.

JC: Well, also Lisa did too.

MP: Oh, yeah, well Lisa loves me; but really, on an intellectual level, I always wondered why people never asked that question, because the bond between Jesse and Freddy is very intimate. I mean, if you look at those scenes on the stairs, where his fingers are in my eyes and, you know, Robert's an amazing actor. Nobody should ever underestimate what an amazing actor he is. So I think with Freddy, Grady, and the coach all that good stuff, I really think, honestly, the writer knew – and that if he didn't, and [director] Jack Sholder didn't . . .

JC: Well, Jack – to this day – claims that he had no idea.

MP: Yes, I know, but all I can say is – and I don't mean to be condescending –but if he didn't know, he's an idiot. He lives in New York and California. I mean, – we're having this conversation; he had to know. I think he absolutely had to know. And I think what the case was is that he thought he was making a joke that was very subtle, and he just wasn't quite confident enough to make a subtle joke, and it just became what it was. But that's the way it goes in the world of show business. You know, that's how it happens.

JC: These were the days before Philadelphia and Brokeback Mountain. Could it be that Jack didn’t feel comfortable admitting it during this time?

MP: Well, I would never have understood what his agenda was. I wouldn't understand why he would have to have an agenda. I mean, Jack's not gay. I know his children, I know his wife, you know what I mean; he would have no agenda. Now, on one hand, Jack wouldn't allow the party scene to be done unless it was integrated. It had to be integrated. There had to be all different races in it, black, Asians, Caucasians. Because originally, they wanted all Caucasians at the party, so he had some social consciousness, you know what I mean, in that regard, but . . . I just don't know. I don't believe he – I have to be honest and say that those two, and the writer – I just don't believe they didn't know.

I don't want to call them liars, but I come as close to that as I can and just say, I don't think they have the courage of their own convictions, which is sad.

By the way, I’m getting ready to go to Amsterdam, then I'm going to Germany, and then I'm going to Monster Mania in New Jersey, right; and I had some t-shirts made for Germany that are special t-shirts. I'm only doing a few of them. I want to see how people respond to them, but I'm having one with a beautiful picture of me on the front of it - a young me, of course – and then on the back it says, “Jesse Walsh is a homo.” I just want to see how people respond to that, because a lot of people – now that this has transpired – they loved it. It actually turned out to be very helpful to a lot of young people over the course of time.

JC: Next question, which I know everyone else has asked you about, and you know what I'm about to ask you - I want to talk about that scene where you're asked to clean up your room, and you put on the music and do such a crazy dance. Was that all ad-libbed, or was it in the script? [To watch the dance, click here.]

MP: It was all ad-libbed. They asked me to choreograph the dance myself, and so I did. The actual music that I'm dancing to is Tina Turner's “Steel Claw,” but they couldn't afford that song for the movie. They overdubbed it with that “touch me feel me all night long” song, and it always amazes me how much people get a kick out of that. You cannot imagine my embarrassment. The day the movie opened in New York City, I was in New York. It was on Halloween. At 10:00 a.m., it was on 400 screens in New York City; it had sold out, you couldn't buy a ticket. Thousands and thousands and thousands of people waiting in line, and when that scene played, I was just humiliated. I thought, “Oh, my God, this is so stupid!” I’m always surprised people liked that as much as they did. In the documentary, they asked me to recreate it, and it was really fun.

JC: They must have also asked you in the documentary to recreate your scream. I mean, you really scream! Even though you were the guy, you did give the girls a run for their money.

MP: I mean, I have to be honest one sec that I'm not the type of person, until recently, that Google's myself every 20 minutes or something to see where I'm sitting on the internet. Once in a while, I might feel nostalgic and I look on IMDb or something. I would read those comments, and I would see, “Oh, you know, Jesse's a fag. He screams like a girl. He ruined that movie, blah, blah, blah.” And I’m like, “Ugh, whatever.”

Then I thought, if you had a ten inch steel knife stuck in your eye, you would scream like a girl too because that's what screaming really sounds like. When you're scared, you don't scream like a boy or a girl, you just scream.

JC: Okay. What was the reaction back then when they first showed Elm Street 2 back in '85?

MP: The reviews were generally, for that subgenre, pretty good. They were good, and I actually got a lot of very nice reviews from people like the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune – those types of legitimate newspapers. Now, on the other hand, Fangoria, and those type of situations; I went to a Fangoria convention and I just gave an interview with Fangoria after 25 years, and they were very happy to have an interview with me. A Nightmare on Elm Street 2 made a lot of money for the time, which was the purpose. It kept the franchise alive. I mean, it really is the reason for the franchise, and by and large it was positive.

The reaction in Hollywood for me personally was not that great. It was pre-Scream. Like after Scream came out, it became a different world in Hollywood. Being in a horror movie, now it can turn you into a star. Before Scream, that was not the case. It was like doing a soap opera; it was something you did for money basically.

JC: Did they ever offer you any of the Elm Streets? Like, did they ever ask Jesse to come back at any point?

MP: No, they never did. The only people that are actually alive in Elm Street - the lead characters that are technically alive - are Heather and I. It would be really, really, really good – great – marketing of the people of the new Nightmare on Elm Street to offer me the second Nightmare on Elm Street. Maybe I could be in it as some tongue in cheek thing, and something would be funny. If they asked me, I would love to do that.

JC: You do get a thanks for Freddy Vs. Jason.

MP: Oh, yeah, they gave us a stipend for the rights to use our image at the beginning and, of course, they used mine in the beginning. They used it for, like, whatever – a millisecond; and I think my first residual check from that was $37,000. I just signed my name and that was it. I'm happy to do that. I mean, I didn't think anything about it. If a friend asked me to do something like that, I would do it for free and just sign it.

JC: You had done both an art-house film and a mainstream horror film, which were successful. Your career was starting to go, and that was the last we heard of you. Why?

MP: Somebody called me the Greta Garbo of gore movies. It's like, I want to be alone. Perhaps if I would have stuck it out for a couple more years – who knows? I do have to say, criticism of Nightmare on Elm Street did help me make the decision to stop acting. It did, because a lot of it was very, very negative.

But I also saw so many of my friends, who were gay, live in total fear that they were gonna be outed – and that meant the end of your career. No matter what anybody thinks, homophobia is rampant in Hollywood. The saddest people are the people who are closeted gays themselves. They're the meanest and cruelest. The casting directors are horrible. Gay, male casting directors are horrible. They don't want to hire gay actors. They want to hire straight actors because they feel straight actors are better qualified for later on down the road – what will come. I think that's kind of horrible. If you're Jim J. Bullock, it's one thing. I mean, if you're like the third Nellie and you’re funny, if you're the Paul Lynde of today, then it's okay to be gay.

I remember going one time to an audition, and there were ten men, who I assume were gay, sitting around the table. This was gonna be on a television series, and I was gonna play a gay character. They were asking me, in dead seriousness, would I be comfortable being a gay character because people would think I was gay and would ask me a lot of questions, but of course I would have to say that I wasn't gay. I thought, I'm sitting around the table with a bunch of hypocrites. It's 1986, there are people dying all over the country with HIV, and I'm really kind of sick of this bullshit.

I mean, I got into this to be free, not to be put in some closet because I'm me and “me,” as a person, is going to offend somebody. I literally just walked away from it. I thought, this is not the life for me, and I think I walked away at the right time, because I don't believe that it was . . . I don’t think I would have been very good at being hunted like an animal. I'm not a real good sport.

I was going through personal issues at the time. Many, many, many of my friends were dying, and they were dying horribly. When my friend [Dallas actor] Timothy Patrick Murphy died, National Enquirer broke into his hospital room and took pictures of him dying. They came to his funeral, took pictures of everybody that was at the funeral home. David Marshall Grant gave the eulogy. They just took pictures of everybody who walked in so they could say who was gay and who was not gay. For me, I was honestly just appalled. I became sickened by the world at that point, and that's when I decided to leave.

JC: Okay, so what did you do after you left show business right after Elm Street 2?

MP: Well, I gave up show business a thing at a time. First I said, “Well, I won't do any more commercials.” Then I wouldn't do any more soap operas, no more television. I'd tell my agent, “I don't want to do this,” and people would call and, I mean, I was offered a lot of work. I was just going through this process of letting go of this dream that I had, and the only time I regretted it was with Angels of America. I wanted to be in Angels of America really badly. I was working on the Theater Development Fund, which is TDF, a half-price ticket organization, and they have a grant writing department and they have all sorts of services in there. I began to direct shows there. I have a reading series that I took part in. I brought in old actors; big, big stars would come and read for the evening, sort of like selected shorts. It was at the Atlantic Theater Company.

Then I had work on and off for some very serious high-end furniture stores in SoHo and antique stores. I was offered a job in David Rago's Antique Road show. I was just kicking bags back and forth and met with this really nice lady, and she said, “Well, I can't afford such and such a person for my main house, but this is a little job.” I said, “Well, I'll do it for you.” She was my first rich lady, and from that I opened my own firm, and I worked in New York and Palm Beach. I built homes from scratch, from the beginning all the way to the sheets, and that's all self-trained. I just love women. I get along with women very well, which you have to do if you're an interior designer. I like to shop. I have good people skills. That became my world, and that's what I did.

Then I started painting, and I came to Mexico the first time when the second President Bush was elected.

JC: What made you come to Mexico?

MP: I thank God every day that I'm a citizen of the United States. I thank God that I have that passport, but I have to say – without sounding unkind – that I’ve become very disassociated with living in the United States. I have an apartment in New York, and I remember one day, just stepping over a homeless person in the street, and it seemed like an inconvenience to me that this person was in my way. I was cold, I wanted to get to my house, and there was this person sleeping in my way. Literally, I thought that this is not healthy for my mind. And then I began to watch my nieces and nephews grow up, and they're wonderful children, but their priorities are so screwed.

I travel the world a lot, and while this is a second-world/third-world country that is in a Napoleonic state – I mean, the police, they can stop you if they want, there's no just-cause – but I honestly have to tell you that I find more freedom than I find in the United States: a personal freedom, the freedom to just be yourself. Like, if I lived in West Hollywood, I would never go to a gay bar. Never, never, never. You would never find me in a club dancing, because when you're over 25 years old, you're old; but down here, if you're 80 and you can still dance, they're like, “Come on, let's dance,” – and that's straight people and gay people alike. You can watch the big old fat gals at the center of the dance floor dancing and having a good time.

Family is very important. Talking is very important. Knowing people is important. On the street that my store is on, I know every person that lives on that street, and I'm involved with them. I know if they have something to eat; I know if they don't. I know who’s running numbers, who's not – and for me, I love that. I love it that it's a tourist town also, so you get the coming and going of all the taxicabs and whatnot. So my friends are real people. I know people whose main, number-one concern today is how they are going to get the money to get something to eat. Their problem is not, “Oh, my God, I can't afford $5,000 for a pair of shoes.”

In Mexico, I have a very successful gallery and a very successful store. A lot of the things in my store are painted by me, so I'm trying to get enough ready because this is our high season. I've been working pretty hard. It's just a matter of little by little.

I work with . . . I don't want to say underprivileged people, but I work with very poor people and teach them to become capitalists. I have touched people's lives in profound ways, over the course of a lifetime. Just like that school teacher touched me. You know, Mrs. Fulton, my teacher, touched me one day, and she showed me the way to go. Well, I just try to pay it back. I see people who are struggling, and I feel bad for them, and I say, “Okay, here's the way to go,” and I'm gonna take their hand and we're gonna go there.

I have one girl that works for me. When she came to me, she was selling her boxes for ten pesos apiece. Her last job, she got paid $10,000 US for it. She lived in a shack; now she lives in a two bedroom apartment.

I have a domestic partnership in Mexico with my partner, Hector Morales Mondragon, and we have a dog, a house; we have a very good life.

In retrospect, I'm beginning to see the way my life has gone. I've had a very successful life. If you could see where I'm sitting, which you can't on your Skype, but I'm on the edge of one of the largest bays in the world. I live in a tropical rainforest. I live in paradise. The weather is like Maui, the people are fantastic, the food is fabulous, and you know, I go into my store and I talk to people all day.

Plus I make a lot of money, so I can't complain. I mean, the residuals from Nightmare on Elm Street never stop.

JC: So you're still getting money from Elm Street 2?

MP: Oh, yeah, and I have my whole life – every single month. It's my trust fund. It's my Walsh-family trust fund. I would also say once a week, since I did Never Sleep Alone, I've been offered some type of movie. They're usually low-budget movies, but I figure one of these days, someone will come along and say, “Do you want to do this?” and I might say “Sure, why not?” and who knows what the next chapter will be? You just never know. Somebody's gonna roll along and offer me something interesting, and I'm gonna do it, and it'll be fun and we'll see where it takes me. But right now, my life is here, and I'm very involved in my life. I love my life.

I learned in my life I was born under a lucky star. I went to an astrologer a long time ago, and he said, “Your life is not even going to begin to be fabulous until you’re 50.” I just turned 50, and it's like the fab luck started again.

A Very Candid Conversation with William Norton

2010-01-16T18:08:00.000-08:00

William Norton was a prolific screenwriter during the late '60s and the '70s. He wrote for both big-budget and low-budget pictures. Some of the big-budget pictures include The Scalphunters with Burt Lancaster, The Hunting Party with Gene Hackman(a personal favorite of this interviewer,) and several action vehicles starring Burt Reynolds. His low-budget pictures include cult classics I Dismember Mama, Day of the Animals with Leslie Nielsen, and Big Bad Mama with Angie Dickinson. These films have received much commentary, but very little has been written on the man who wrote them.

As I conducted my interview with William Norton, I came to realize the screenwriting days were a middle chapter of this man’s extraordinary life. Before writing screenplays, William Norton had served in World War II, fighting with General Patton’s army. (William would tell me that his adventures with Patton would give him the experience he needed to write action films for Burt Reynolds and John Wayne.) In the '50s, he was asked to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee for his support of Henry Wallace, a 3rd Party candidate. William was a park ranger and the HUAC was suspicious of civil service employees’ political activities. Then, we come to his screenplay career. After his screenplay days, the story doesn’t end. William Norton was sympathetic to the struggle in Ireland and smuggled guns to help the Irish cause. In this candid conversation, we cover all these fascinating segments of his life.

William’s family is no stranger to the entertainment industry either. His son Bill is a successful director of TV shows as The Unit and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. His grandson Ace is a successful music video director. Ace has directed videos for Norah Jones, Mandy Moore, and The Fray. I want to thank Joan Norton for helping me get the interview with William, but most of all, I want to thank William himself.

Jeff Cramer: Where were you born?

William Norton: In Ogden, Utah. I’m an escapee from the Mormon folks.

JC: I see.

WN: When I was, oh, I guess six or seven years old, I heard from the Mormon Sunday School that the Mormons were God’s chosen people and God was going to send them to heaven and everybody else was going to hell, unfortunately. And in my school geography book, I saw that the size of Utah was this little tiny speck within the United States, and there were also the vast areas of the world, China and so on. And I concluded that God was not that stupid, so that formed my approach to all religions, which is a toleration and interest, but not joining in their belief.

JC: What happened before you went to fight in World War II?

WN: Well, my father and mother and I moved from Berkley, California because of the depression. My father had lost his job, moved back to the home state of Utah, in order to run a store. It was difficult, depression years. One time, my father used to say that he had only five cents in his pocket, and no job and three children. So that consciousness of unemployment is an issue, which set my direction and my character. The fact that . . .Where did all the jobs go? The land is still here, the trees are still here, everything is – and all the sudden, this disaster, economic disaster. And eventually, it led me to accepting a pamphlet or a leaflet from a socialist party origin. I began to study all those theories. Anyhow, that shaped my relationship to other folks. I couldn’t see any sense at all in the economic blight that is caused by competition of rival capitalists who break the market and make money by it. We’re in one of those things right now, unfortunately.

Also, of course, as I became a reader, and most intelligent people are, artists and so on were disillusioned with World War I. My father had fought in World War I, and he would tell me stories about it, and he suffered nightmares and so on. So I formed a notion when I was very young that war was a racket, and it was a bad thing, and so on. But when I turned 18, I was drafted into the Army. After a while, I volunteered for the infantry and went to Ft. Benning, Georgia to join the 71st Division. I went overseas and went into combat in Patton’s Third Army. We walked all the way across Germany, fighting battles in different places.

I had holes shot through my clothes, and then in Austria, with our unit, the Fifth Infantry Regiment, liberated the Mauthausen Concentration Camp. It was simply a shock. Some of the prisoners were standing beside the road at the camp while we kept marching down the road, going after the German Army. Medics and people like that were taking and doing the necessary things in the camp. But it was simply and unbelievable shock that human beings could do that to other human beings.

JC: What’s interesting is that you mentioned your father suffered nightmares from World War I. You think war is a bad thing but here you are, fighting in World War II. What made you go?

WN: From various readings, I understood that fascism was paid and supported and came into being through capitalist financiers. It was the capitalist method of controlling an unruly social situation, as we later did in Chile, when General Pinochet was the wrong man to stop the socialist-oriented president that had been elected. So I was totally anti-fascist, and I was, what would you say, I was not only a dutiful soldier, but I was a volunteering kind of soldier. I was not opposed to the war in any way.

JC: How did you feel fighting for General Patton?

WN: Well, my impression, after the war ended . . . We paraded for General Patton, I think it was three times, and he spoke to us and so on. My impression and analysis of him was great admiration because he was a winner. He didn’t fiddle around; he gained more territory for the allies ‘cause he killed more Germans than any other commander, and in doing so, he lost fewer men. He was just a gifted military leader, and I have great admiration for him.

JC: Was the George C. Scott movie an accurate film on him?

WN: Well, I enjoyed it and thought it was a heck of a good movie and there were things in it that I wasn’t aware of. I wasn’t in the campaign in Italy, and so on. His political statements, which kind of vaguely drifted ‘round: “Well, let’s go fight the Russians.” I’m not sure he said that. But I would have classified it as utter nonsense. The Russians defeated the German Army, and if that hadn’t happened, we, as Americans, wouldn’t have been able to defeat the German Army. So I never believed in hostility, from a practical point of view. The Cold War was utter nonsense.

JC: You would go on to support Henry Wallace, a third party candidate, running against Truman. It was your support of Wallace that would later cause you to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Can you talk about your support?

WN: I thought Truman was an asshole and a murderer because, well, I was still in Germany (I hadn’t come home yet) when I read in Stars and Stripes of the nuclear weapon, the atomic bomb. It was just shattering that I’d seen airplanes and bombs that had devastated cities and so on, that this mass killing of civilians was just unspeakable. I read from various places that the Japanese had tried to negotiate surrender before. So it was an ugly, murderous crime. There was no reason; that’s my feeling. I thought that Truman was a, you know, he was a patriotic idiot, and some patriots are idiots. Nuclear weapons just are unthinkable to an infantry soldier because the German cities were like piles of bricks, piles of rubble, one after another. That’s what came just from the amount of bombing that we did. It’s a horror to murder civilians through bombing. And ultimately, it just is unthinkable for a nuclear war.

I became a red through association with people in that movement. And that was the anti-war movement, of that time, which was, “Hey, let’s not nuke the Russians. We don’t have to do that and have them nuke us, etc., etc.” That guided the course of my life and my reactions since that time.

JC: And of course, we ended up not doing that, in the end.

WN: Yes, and thank God for that. It worked itself out because it’s practical. The human species should improve and continue the experimentation of human life. And so we hope for the best.

God did not make the world in seven days. He made it in an infinite number of millions of years. It is unknown, and the unknown something that we give that folk name to is God. We are a species in transition and evolving ourselves from being cannibals, from being murderous, terribly murderous. We’re trying to get to be better, folks. I feel content about my life and I will when I go to the big sleep because I really have tried to do the best I could, even though it’s nothing, but towards this sense of a better humanity and a better world.

JC: What happened after the war?

WN: My son was born when I was 18, and it was a high school love affair. I was student body president, my wife was secretary of the student body, and I was an in-love person. And lo and behold, out of it came marriage and the birth of my son. I have felt great joy in him, to this time. We’re good friends and kid each other and so on. So when I returned home from the war, I experimented around at different jobs. I always vaguely wanted to be a writer because of the influence of my high school journalism teacher, Bennett Patterson. He had encouraged me toward writing.

So I went to work at a small, hometown weekly newspaper. I enjoyed that, for a while, but, I kind of became uninterested in it because of the trivial nature of what small-town journalism is about. The town was Del Monte, east of Los Angeles, and the Chamber of Commerce and the concerns about this and that, and so on. And near the office, where I would pass, there was a telephone building being constructed. Here are these working men, doing this and doing that, and it was sort of like a Whitman poem about the labor class. So I decided that that was what I was going to do.

So I went into construction work, which took a lot of out of you. You’d be on one job, and then that’s finished, and another one and another one. After surviving at that noble experiment for several years . . . And by then, we had two daughters, so there were three children. Then, I read an item in the newspaper about a civil service examination for the California State Park Service. So I took the exam, and then, anyhow, so I spent 11 years in the State Park Service, still trying to be a writer, making all those attempts and then acted with a little theater group, where new plays were performed, and that was a wonderful thing.

JC: It was during that time as a park ranger you were called before the House Un-American Activities Committee.

WN: James Moulder was the Chairman of the festivities. So I went and took a tranquilizer and went down there. This was the first time I met a lady named Dorothy Healey, who was Chairman of the Southern California Communist Party. I had read about her in things, so it was nice to meet her.

I had figured out a line of approach to the situation. When I was questioned, I asked, “Well, with what crime am I charged?”

Chairman Moulder said, “Well, no crime. Just tell us about evil associates.”

I just said, “Well, I’m very pleased that Chairman Moulder and the House Un-American Activities Committee and the United States Government have declared that I have not violated any laws. I would be happy to write a 10,000 word analysis of what I have seen of the socialist and radical movement in the United States. But as far as telling the names of individual people that I saw at the meetings, I’m just not gonna do that.”

It was churned out in a way that caused the audience to laugh. The left wing militants, at that time, had their lawyers say, “Oh, we refuse to answer on the grounds of the Fifth Amendment.”

The way I approached it was, “I’m not gonna try to be a Philadelphia lawyer and split up the U.S. Constitution, but I’m not gonna give these names, on the basis of the whole Constitution.” That caused the audience to laugh and by that time, the people, nobody was angry at me. They just let it go, and that was the end of that.

The people in the Park Service were, let’s see, they were a little embarrassed by it, but it happened that the Assistant District Superintendent, his name maybe was Griffith or something like that, he came down to see me, and I was at Los Encinos State Historical Monument, an old adobe, and it was preserved as a state thing. He came down to see me. I explained the whole process, that I was a would-be writer with curiosity and this and this and this, and he, in effect, said, “Well, that sounds reasonable. That’s okay with me.” The official State Park Service never bothered me any way on that question, so I respected him very much for that.

JC: Talk about your writing attempts during this time.

WN: I’d go down to Los Angeles to be friends with this theater group. Then my friend, Paul Leder, who had directed one of my plays at the little theater, he had the notion that we were gonna make a movie out of it. He scratched up the small amount of investment and organized people, and low and behold, they made a movie that was never really distributed.

But it’s interesting, Rue McClanahan, who became a very successful star in The Golden Girls, was the woman or the girl in the story. I haven’t seen Rue since those days, but my son directed a TV movie not too long ago that she and Ed Asner were in. So anyhow, out of it emerged a conversation about those theater days and she sent along good wishes and everything.

JC: When Rue McClanahan became famous, they reissued one of the movies you did with her called The Rotten Apple.

WN: The Rotten Apple was one of them. Another of them was The Marigold Man. That had been a play, and the notion was that in order to correct depression and unemployment, this fellow believed that we should plant a field of marigolds all the way across the country and make a park out of it.

JC: Another film I saw that you did with Paul Leder was The Farmer’s Other Daughter.

WN: Yeah. Paul was kind of the deal maker, and he came across a distributor of nudie films and various things. So he put up the money for Paul and me to make a comedy film in which there would be a mild bit of nudity. And I think the nudity –

JC: Yeah, I’ve seen it, and it’s very tame for that day, or now.

WN: But anyhow, that’s how that came about. I think it made a little bit of money for the distributor, but Paul and I worked for nothing. The crew was paid, but we . . . Well that was one of those ill-formed attempts at the fringes of the movie business.

JC: The most famous of the films that you and Paul did is the one called Poor Albert and Little Annie. The movie became more famous when it was reissued under the name I Dismember Mama. This title confuses most people, because mom is never hurt or even in danger in that movie. I’m sure you and Paul didn’t really think of that title. [Readers can watch the trailer for I Dismember Mama by clicking here.]

WN: No. Essentially, the story was a play that I wrote at one time at the little theater. Albert’s the son of a wealthy family, and he’s crazy, and so on. And so he’s so goofy, he’s going to fall in love with a little nine-year old girl, and it’s something like that. It was an innocuous sort of literary attempt, and that’s why Leon Roth got interested in it. He had found the money and organized the whole thing. He was a very nice guy, and his wife, Mimi Roth, was a very nice person. She worked at UA.

The film came out in the era of Deep Throat. A distributor came along and changed the title to I Dismember Mama. The guy who felt worse about the whole thing, undoubtedly, was Leon Roth.

If someone had come along and offered me a meager amount of money to write a film called I Dismember Mama¸ I would have come up with some sort of plot.

JC: Well, the film remains a cult film precisely because of that title. But during this time, while you were doing all these Leder films, what led to The Scalphunters, starring Burt Lancaster?

WN: I wrote a spec script called The Scalphunters, which dealt with two phenomena in the western period; one, the fur trapper era, and two, the government, the state government of the territory of Arizona, actually, offered fifty dollars apiece for Indian scalps. I learned this from a history professor friend. This seemed to me to be a shocking kind of a thing that an element of the U.S. Government would offer to pay $50.00 for an Indian scalp.

So I wrote a spec script interested in the idea of an escaped slave, and the confrontation, because I loved Shaw. Shaw would . . . He, in a talented, intelligent way, would play games with ideas-two sides or three sides or whatever of a social question. I was trying to do that with this spec script, where the fur trapper is illiterate, but the escaped slave can read and write. So the script kicked around Hollywood for five years.

An actor friend of Paul’s named Alex Nichol was trying to get Sidney Poitier and somebody to do a production of it. Then finally, another friend of Alex’s named Dan Barton gave it to an agent that he knew named Mike Wise. Mike, nice guy, I worked with him for many years . . . Mike gave it to television producers, Levy-Gardner-Laven, who had done a western series called The Rifleman, with Chuck Connors, who was a baseball player. They wanted to do a feature film and they got it to United Artists in New York. I can’t remember the name of the guy, but he became interested in it, and he sent it to Burt Lancaster, who had a production company. When Lancaster said he’d like to do it, then, all of the sudden, I had a movie career, where I was actually paid for my work. And off I went, and I was very grateful for it. I found the ups and the downs of it.

JC: That was also the beginning of Sydney Pollack’s directing career as well. He hadn’t done many films by that point.

WN: He had done some live TV, and Lancaster had, and I don’t know what that contact had been, but he had wanted to have a talented young TV director do the project. So that’s how that came about. And Lancaster was an influential star, so UA gave him what he wanted.

JC: Ossie Davis did a fine job of playing the escaped slave.

WN: Oh, now, that was Lancaster’s choice. Now, interesting about that, I had exchanged letters with Ossie Davis before, but never met him. I got a short story published, and he had also, in a left wing magazine, quarterly magazine, called Masses and Mainstream. So I knew Ossie a little bit, just by exchanging the letters with him. I was very delighted when it turns out he’s the guy that was gonna be in the film.

JC: After The Scalphunters, this would begin a long relationship with Levy-Gardner-Laven. You had also written for The Big Valley.

WN: Yes, that was their series. Mike Wise sold the contract that included The Scalphunters movie script, and then I worked with them for a monthly salary. Then also, I would do whatever the hell Levy-Gardner-Laven wanted me to do. So they had me do, I think I did three of them, or something like that, or maybe it was four. I found them good guys to work for.

The only sharp words that I ever had was when Art Gardner, Jules Levy and I were talking about the rewrites from the first draft of the White Lightning script; Joe Sargent was the director. I was listening to what they said. Jules’s son-a young man that I’d seen around the office, a nice pleasant young guy started to misbehave in this story conference, and I said, “Sit down and shut up!” which I was thinking, as a father, was a discourteous thing to say to him. But it’s the only conflict that I ever had. They were nice people to work for. Art has now died; he was the oldest. I have exchanged pleasant phone calls with him in the last couple of years.

JC: White Lightning was one of several Levy-Gardner-Laven productions with Burt Reynolds that you would write. [The trailer for White Lightning can be found here.]

WN: Yes. I had done Sam Whiskey with Burt before White Lightning. Because of reading about his work or meeting with him or something, they wanted to cast him, and UA said fine, and so that was the reason for that. And then after Sam Whiskey, then they cast him for White Lightning, and then another kind of picture, Gator.

JC: Gator would be the sequel to White Lightning, which would be Burt’s directing debut. What was your relationship with Burt?

WN: Pleasant. Robert-Jules Levy’s son that I had told him to sit down and shut up, became the boss on Gator. Part of his boss-hood was to not invite me to come on the shoot to locations and participate with the director, which was Burt. Now, I got along fine with Burt, never did have any arguments with him, and he seemed like a well-motivated human being. But I blame Robert for not permitting me to work more closely with him.

It’s interesting how my relationships with various people go. Raquel Welch once invited me to go home with her after I finished a story conference with her, and I, as a gentleman, declined. I did a film with John Wayne called Brannigan and never said a word to him. He walked through the office, and that was it. [Editor’s note: Branningan’s trailer can be viewed here.] With Burt Lancaster, he took a hands-on participation in the rewrites and so on. That’s the movie business.

JC: One rumor was that on one Burt Reynolds movie, this western called The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing, for which you’re not credited, Burt brought you along to rewrite it.

WN: Yes. That’s an interesting story. I think the script had had troubles, a couple of good writers, and there was a woman author of the book. The director was a guy named Richard Sarafian. The project was kind of floundering around. I was hired to do a rewrite, which I did. I had a pleasant relationship with the woman writer of the book. With Sarafian, I had an argument with him over a scene in the movie where the lady was lost or wandering around, and I had the western movie star give her a blanket and be nice to her. Dick Sarafian had said, “No he’s not gonna give this blanket. He’s gonna treat her very mean.” So I tried my best to persuade him that that it wouldn’t be a kind of a weakling psychological projection. So that was all of my participation with it. And I did, indeed, do a rewrite of it.

JC: How much did you rewrite?

WN: Oh, a hell of a lot, I don’t know how much ended up on the screen. I don’t think I ever saw the film.

JC: I’d like to talk about the two other Levy-Gardner-Laven projects you did. The first one is The McKenzie Break.

WN: Well The McKenzie Break was based on a book by a well-known writer. He wrote about this prison camp of German U-Boat officers in Canada. In the movie, it takes places in Ireland. I read the book and wrote the thing centered on a movie star here. Brian Keith was the actor. The director was Lamont Johnson. I had, maybe, one meeting with him. He didn’t want me to go over and participate. He had a notion that he was going to humanize the prisoners, whereas my attitude was, “Oh, these are Nazi guys, so our hero movie star is going to handle them.” He brought another dimension of depth to it, which he . . . Or people told me that it kind of portrayed with more sympathy the feelings and so on of the prisoners, themselves. I don’t think I ever saw the film.

JC: The next one is The Hunting Party.

WN: My relationship with Don Medford, who directed The Hunting Party, was the best coworker relationship I had.

JC: The Hunting Party is a very unusual film. People get shot in this film, but not in the way they are in a John Wayne or Clint Eastwood film. It feels they are really dying in this film. Many people have talked about the really “downer” ending of that movie. [The Hunting Party’s trailer can be watched here.]

WN: Lou Morheim was the story editor for The Big Valley series. I had dealings with him, briefly, on one of those Big Valley scripts. Jules Levy probably told Lou, “Hey, why don’t you have this story where there’s this school teacher, and along come the outlaws and they kidnap her?” Jules’s gimmick story was that the teacher’s husband can get some sort of long range rifle, so the business guys are going to defeat these outlaws. Jules used to have different guns sometimes in the trunk of his car. He was like a guy who never fought in the Army, but he sort of wished that he had, and he also would like to see business guys prove to be effective with their special new gimmick rifle.

Lou took his best shot at that subject matter. Then, for some reason, Jules wanted me to do a rewrite. So anyhow, I did, and to me, the outlaws were the hero guys, the role later played by the British actor, Oliver Reed. Reed is interesting. When I met him in Spain, when they were shooting it, Don Medford introduced me to him and we had a little chat. I said a few things: “Well, Jules Levy is a good guy. He has the uncomfortable job of haggling over contracts with people all the time, and that’s a tough – “ Reed got pissed off at me. So I felt that he really was angry at producers.

Medford was an unusually nice guy. He decided he was going to, sort of, make it a Peckinpah tough film. I’d liked him, and he would tell me to do rewrites, and I would do them, and I felt comfortable with it. The only thing I ever suggested to him or talked with him . . .At some stage, I said, “Well, there aren’t any palm trees in the west.” But he put in palm trees anyhow. I think he did a hell of a good job when I saw the thing on TV. I felt it was downbeat, as you said. Now, the curious thing was that the critic for The LA Times, Charles Champlin, who was an okay guy, hated the film, and he especially hated the attempted rape scene of Candice Bergen.

JC: In today’s political climate, you couldn’t have done that. You would go on to do one of your most well known films, Big Bad Mama, with Angie Dickinson and William Shatner. [To watch the trailer for Big Bad Mama, click here.]

WN: Oh, yes. That was Roger Corman. Roger Corman was a nice guy to work with. His wife was a nice person. My wife and I had lunch with them here in Santa Barbara. There was a lady who worked for him, Frances Doel. I had a pleasant relationship with her. She was the office person. Frances gave me the copy of this story, which was, as she later used the terminology, on the road, on the run movie. The story was that, and I didn’t know she had done it, but she had promoted the story with Roger, and so that became a project. So I turned that into a screenplay. When things were over, I talked with Frances and with Roger Corman, saying that the story for this, I didn’t invent the story, and therefore, the credit should be a story by so-and-so, whoever he is, and then the screenplay by Bill Norton. Well, it turned out that Frances was the writer of it. I felt happy about that, that I had done, what would you say, is kind of a morally correct thing, which is to credit another writer for what they have done. We became kind of mildly friendly off and on. She felt grateful for it because she’d never had a screen credit of any kind, and she liked that. So she was the writer of the story and I wrote the screenplay and Steve Carver directed it. He seemed like a nice, talented, good guy. I don’t recall being involved with rewrites on the set, or any of that kind of stuff.

Roger was a nice guy, and I see him every once in a while. And then, when he had people shoot films, it was efficiently done. I did two other films with him: A Small Town in Texas, produced by his wife Julie and directed by Jack Starrett, and Moving Violation.

JC: Now, we come to Day of the Animals with Leslie Nielsen. [To watch the trailer for Day of the Animals, click here.]

WN: Oh, okay. Day of the Animals was with a fellow named Bill Girdler, who was a nice guy. He was killed in The Philippines in a helicopter that hit the power lines. Now, I don’t know the origin of it, but I met Bill Girdler, and then he introduced me to his money raiser producer guy. The money raiser producer guy’s idea was that the air goes all wrong, and then, so it drives all the animals crazy. So I think it was, sort of, they were thinking of, “Oh, Jaws was a big hit, so we’re gonna do all these animals driven crazy by the contaminated air.”

It was a pleasant relationship. Bill Girdler shot the film, and my wife Ellie worked with me on the script. When I finally saw it, I didn’t care for it because it didn’t really work. I felt disappointed in it, but I never said that to Bill.

JC: There are two last films I want to talk about. The first one is Dirty Tricks with Elliott Gould.

WN: Elliott Gould, I met him riding on an airplane up to Canada to do rewrites on an existing script. He was a nice guy to talk to. I enjoyed it. The director was Alvin Rakoff. I don’t think I ever saw the film.

JC: The second one is Night of the Juggler .

WN: Night of the Juggler was based on a book, with Sidney Furie to direct and Jay Weston to produce. I was hired to do rewrites on the script. That felt okay, and then I went to New York with Sidney. He wanted me to stay with him through all of it because he was afraid of the violence. But I didn’t want to stay all that time, and also, Ellie wanted me to come home.

Jim Brolin was the actor, and we became good friends. I respect him very much. Sidney Furie broke his leg, and so Sidney quit. Then, a cameraman finished the shooting.

JC: Okay. Now we come to the next chapter in your life, the gun smuggling days. Talk about that.

WN: Ellie and I had been in support groups for the Central American people and Guatemala. Anyhow, a woman came to the door, and just looking at her and talking briefly with her, I got the impression that she was an ex-nun, or she was a nun wearing civilian clothes. So I assumed from this lady that she just had the look and attitude that she came from that religious kind of background.

Anyhow, she asked me if I would help in the purchase and shipment of arms for Guatemala. She told me the name of the group and I’ve forgotten it. But anyhow, it was the Guatemala revolutionary group. So we went out in the backyard, and I said, “Let’s go talk out here.” So that was the first time I purchased guns.

The way you do it, you got to one of these gun shows and she was the one who had the suggestion where you look in the newspaper for guns for sale, and if it seems logical, then you purchase it and put it in the trunk of your car and so on. You go to the gun show out at Pomona, where there’s a big fairgrounds building, and there’s a whole bunch of people with tables, and they’re all selling guns to each other- hunters and whatever, shotguns and rifles and pistols, etc. The groups will have a certain small number of weapons that they wish to purchase. They don’t want just random things. They liked the AR-15, which is an American automatic. It’s a semi-automatic, meaning you pull the trigger, and you get one shot. Then you pull the trigger again and you get another one. A full automatic weapon is one where you pull the trigger and it keeps shooting in automatic fire. Well, this AR-15 and AR-16 are American weapons that American people would sell to each other and buy, and so on. They would just pull the trigger once and it shoots once. But they, then, did some kind of small amount of work, and they would convert it into a fully automatic one. The Latin American groups wanted just a few, let’s see, like a revolver pistol instead of an automatic because the revolver doesn’t jam as much. The same thing, ultimately, was true of the Irish; they would have a certain specified type of weapons that they would want and not others.

Anyhow, I started doing it a bit, going to the gun shows, and then I would meet in a certain parking lot where a guy in a pickup truck would be, and I would recognize him because he’s got fishing poles and so on. And the reason he had that was that pickup truck would then have weapons concealed in the sides of the truck body or the bottom of the truck body. And the fellow’s name was John. He seemed like a school teacher kind of guy. (But this is interesting, he was a Basque, and the Basque people have a revolutionary tradition. They had an arms struggle in their own country against the Spanish government, so that the Basque region would be independent.) So this fellow that I knew, that I’d seen, met every once in a while in a parking lot of a certain restaurant or a certain place, I’d take the four or five guns out of the trunk, my trunk, and then he’d put them in his pickup and they’d be out of sight under fishing gear. Anyhow, I did that, or Ellie and I both did that, for Guatemala, Nicaragua, and El Salvador, supplied weapons and also money.

And then, in our travels, we participated with the hunger striker people of the Irish movement, and one time I was taken to a prison as a relative to visit a prisoner. The prisoner comes in; he’s all long haired and clothed in a blanket. That was a spectacular visual. We became involved in the Irish struggle for equal rights for people in Ireland and civil rights and housing.

I was working at Disney on contract to do whatever the hell they wanted me to do. Yet Ellie and I were gonna retire because by that time, I was sixty, and I could get a Writers Guild pension of a meager sort, but enough to live on. We were going to move to Belfast and participate in that struggle over there, which we did. When we were over there, a fellow that we had known there wanted us to purchase and transport arms for, not for the IRA, but for the Irish National Liberation Army, as a project for self defense.

JC: I’m sorry, what’s the difference between the IRA and them?

WN: They are related, actually. The origin of the INLA was a socialist guy named Costello. The IRA, Irish Republican Army, was non-political. They did not want to get mixed up in this socialism.

The fellow that wanted us to buy arms for the INLA came over and was in charge. He told us to purchase a pickup camper, and then arrange in the compartments of the back of the pickup, a narrow space, 15 rifles and 20 pistols. You would ship that by boat over to France or to Holland. The first load we did went to Holland and then, we’d go over there as vacationers, and we were going to travel around Europe and go to Ireland. That was our story, that we were American vacationers, and then the guns would be unloaded in Ireland at some specific place out in the boondocks. So when we unloaded the weapons, it was a little dodgy because the wrong guy showed up when we were supposed to unload them. Then, another guy got into our vehicle, and he was giving us directions where to go. But we finished that first shipment successfully.

After a while, we were asked to do it again. We had questions about him, but we went on the second trip. On the second trip, we were to pick up the vehicle, with its hidden guns on it, in France, this time. When we walked into the shipping office, there is the cops. So that was the end of our career as gun runners.

We were in prison and waited around for the trial. There was a women’s part of the prison, where Ellie was, and the men’s part. I began a project where I wrote letters to the Pope and everyone- the president and senators and congressmen and government officials all over hell- trying to talk about the right of self defense of the republican people in the north of Ireland. I had traced the origins of the Catholic right to self defense doctrine, and it was this guy that I’ve forgotten the name of, and he replied, “Well, yeah, I can see your religious point of view here, but that does not give you the right to smuggle guns to the IRA.” The response that I got from a variety of letters in many countries was respectful and reasonable and so on.

JC: But none of them came to your defense?

WN: No, no. Well, I didn’t really want them to do that because I pitched all of this not because we were in prison, but rather in support of the principles of Irish self-determination and I didn’t want to say, “Oh, I’m in jail.” I never thought in that area, but I wrote to all kinds of countries and all kinds of religious people.

Ellie and I were sentenced to four years. Then, on an appeal, it was reduced to two years. My son had come over to see the trial, and it was wonderful to see him. We did our best to center around this question of self-determination and the right to self-determination, which I believe in.

When we were released, we were going to be sent back to Chicago, where the FBI was going to try us for having purchased the guns in the United States. By that time, one of the other ladies that was arrested with us, Susan had gone to the embassies or the consulates of Nicaragua in Ireland, and also in Paris, and finally, at the last moment, the permission came through that we could get visas to go to Nicaragua rather than being deported to Chicago and the FBI. So we were very happy about that.

When we lived there in Nicaragua, there would be the Contra movement, who’d be shooting around at night around different places. You’d just hear it. We purchased a house there that the El Salvador movement used to store food for their activist movement. Eventually, we gave it to the El Salvador people; they were going to use it as an orphanage for refugees.

People would come around to the house and set fires. Ellie and I would alternate being on guard at night, just keeping watch. One night, three guys came to the door with what looked like petitions, and they were talking to me, and boom, they pulled out guns and robbed me. Ellie was away at the market or something. But there, I’m tied up on the floor with these guys with guns, and I’m thinking, “How in the hell did I wind up here?” But they didn’t do any violence; they just robbed the house and then left.

Then, another time, Ellie was keeping watch; she told me that there was a noise outside. I took out a Kalashnikov, which is like an AR-50. I went into a bedroom that had been a guest room. I opened the door and I saw a guy, a shadow of a figure at the window, starting to come in there. It was a Contra. Just like a reflex action, I put one in him, and hit him right in the head, and that was the end of that Contra. Then the police came, and our El Salvador friend intervened, so there were no consequences to it.

After Ortega lost the election, and the Contras had full sway, I thought, “We ought to get out of Nicaragua.” Through our El Salvador friend, we got permission to go to Cuba, where I thought there wouldn’t be Contras roaming around and breaking into your house. I spent a couple of years there in comfortable circumstances, meeting many people that were interesting. One of the people I met there was Sydney Pollack, when he came down for some sort of film conference.

JC: So you saw him after all these years in Cuba?

WN: Yeah. I saw him at this conference. He, later, made a film about Cuba, Havana. Then, Ellie suffered illness and she was in the hospital in Cuba. Her father was a lawyer, and he had arranged things so that she could come back to a hospital here in Los Angeles. I thought at the airport that she was so ill that I would never see her again, but the hospital was excellent and she recovered. I continued to stay down there.

JC: So you were in Cuba while she was back in the U.S?

WN: Yes.

JC: And I take it, you weren’t Cuban, because I know you can’t leave the country if you’re a citizen.

WN: Actually, we were Nicaraguan citizens. The Nicaraguans had given us passports. I wanted to come back to the states and so the Cubans were fine with it. So I went on a plane to Nicaragua with the Nicaraguan passport. I intended to go up to Mexico, and then, get up to the border in Tijuana, where you can just drive over.

Of course, I was nervous, and I thought it would turn into a disaster, but it didn’t. I took a plane up to Mexico City, and then, from there, to Tijuana. My daughters came down and picked me up and drove across the border, and that was it for foreign travels.

JC: Were you able to become a U.S. citizen?

WN: Well, see, when you’re a citizen, you’re a citizen and they can’t cancel your citizenship. The only thing they could do is arrest you for some crime that you’ve done and have a trial, and then have proof of it in the course of a trial. Ellie’s father, as a lawyer, was very aware of the specifics. Also, her brother, is a lawyer and worked for the district attorney’s office, so their research showed that the government did not intend to or were unable to bring specific charges of purchasing these weapons at that time, and putting them on this pickup truck, and loading that pickup truck to go to Holland. They didn’t have that specific paperwork. They didn’t put out an arrest warrant on me. So it just kind of dwindled away.

JC: What did you do back in the US?

WN: My son said, “Well, pop, you’re retired. Why don’t you do something?” He had an art gallery friend. So I did paintings, a hell a lot of paintings, and there was a show of them at the Santa Monica gallery place. It got a good review for the LA Times and some art magazine also gave a good review, far better than the painting deserved. However, nobody has wanted to buy them, so I got rid of my hobby.

The guy from the little theater where I did my plays, named Phil Mishkin, had heard I was back, and he called up and he talked to Mike Wise who had been my agent. Mike talked to me about two different projects.

First, he put together a deal where I went to see a producer, I’ve forgotten his name, and they had a story about three over the hill western characters who are hired by a lady they used to know because a bad guy was gonna extort money out of her and kill her or something like that. So from the point of view that westerns are sort of action-packed tough things, I had formed a little story outline. So I went to the meeting, and I sat in the office. And there was a film called Grumpy Old Men with Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau which had been successful. The producer began trying to switch this around to kind of the cutes. He thought it was funny that these old duffers are hired by this lady. So I said, “Well, I think you guys want a different writer, not me.” So I got up and left. I apologized later to Mike for the fact that he tried to get a paying job for me and I just screwed it up with my opinions.

Second, Phil, from the little theater, and Mike, my agent, thought I should do a screenplay of the whole adventure in Ireland, Nicaragua and Cuba. Phil was good friends and worked with Rob Reiner. Rob, before he got to be successful in television, acted in the little theater where Phil and I had done work before. Phil talked to Rob Reiner, and eventually he was trying to get a production going. He was going to get Richard Dreyfuss to play the role of me. Mary Steenburgen would play Ellie. Richard Dreyfuss said, “Okay, I’ll do it.” Rob Reiner said, “No, I don’t like anything to do with guns.” So that was the end of that.

I never felt right about it. In fact, I just didn’t want to do it. But Mike talked me into it, and it never went any place. But all right, that’s enough sad stories. Here’s one story I’ll end on just for fun.

Here’s the idea here. What if there’s this fur trapper, and he’s got this load of furs and he’s going to take them in and sell them? He runs into a guy who’s got a pedal sewing machine in the back of his wagon. He’s making pants out of old canvas- canvas sails and canvas wagon covers.This is related to Levi Strauss, the historic figure, who did that in San Francisco. He started making pants out of old sails. Now, there’s a lady that’s driving this wagon for him. It’s a Mormon lady, and she’s on the run. She was the seventh wife of this bearded old guffer. Then, the African American slave, who’s escaped, comes into the story when he wants the fur trapper to teach him how to cheat at cards.

Then, the scalphunters, the bad guys, and some confederate deserters are encountered. The confederate deserters say, “Why the hell should we be fighting this war for rich plantation owners? They never owned any slaves, and the land was too steep to plow.” There was a Northern Louisiana movement that I’ve read about who were anti-war confederate people. That’s who these deserters would be based on. So out of that, episodic western event, I would try to do Scalphunters II.

A Very Candid Conversation with Arch Hall Jr.

2009-12-20T11:41:00.001-08:00

Arch Hall Sr. ran Fairway International, which was a low-budget drive-in film company from the late 50s-early 60s. Arch’s son Arch Hall Jr. would star in six of his father’s productions from 1959-1964. These films would be completed before Arch Hall Jr. turned 21. After starring in his father’s films, Arch would leave the film industry to become a pilot. Yet, the films he acted in would remain cult classics.

In the first three films Arch did for his father, Arch would not only act, but also sing and play guitar in them as well. In 1962’s Eegah, Arch gets to sing songs and rescue his girlfriend(Marilyn Manning) and her father(Arch Hall Sr.) from a pre-historic caveman(Richard Kiel, who would go on to play Jaws in the James Bond films)! Although Arch’s early films did fairly well in the drive-in theater circuit, they were not always the most well received and were often dismissed as silly low budget fare. In fact, Eegah has been made fun of on Mystery Science Theater 3000.

However, Fairway International would show it was capable of quality stuff when they released The Sadist. The film is a 1963 thriller in which a serial killer and his girlfriend hold three teachers hostage at an abandoned gas station. It is very atmospheric, suspenseful and well filmed by legendary cinematographer Vilmos Zsgimond(The Deer Hunter, Deliverance, and Close Encounters). Arch Hall Jr. plays the title character and delivers his best performance here. Any thoughts that this Arch is just a teenager who got a lucky break from his father are erased when you see The Sadist.

The music that Arch sang in the movies was in the vein of Frankie Avalon and Fabian. However, a listen to Arch’s CD Wild Guitar, shows that Arch was far more capable of the teenybopper stuff. Arch’s band ,The Archers, would do a lot of blues and R&B standards. At one point, The Archers were the backing band for Dobie Gray (most famous for “The In Crowd” and “Drift Away).

In this candid conversation, we discuss the six films that Arch did, his musical career with the Archers and why he left and became a pilot. I met Arch at Cinema Wasteland, and I would like to thank him for taking the time out to do a phone interview with me.

Jeff Cramer: Just for the record, when and where were you born?

Arch Hall Jr.: I was born in Los Angeles, California actually, in the City of Van Nuys, which is San Fernando Valley, down in LA. It was December 2, 1943 which makes me a pretty old guy now.

JC: Was your passion initially in music or was it acting?

AH: I think initially it was music and music still is the primary focus of my enthusiasm. I was just, 9, 10 or 11 years old, when it kind of started.

JC: Did your passion for music start by hearing something on the radio or did you grow up in a musical family?

AH: My family wasn’t terribly musical. My dad did have a guitar lying around and he would sing cowboy songs. My interest in music pretty much came out of early rock and roll. I’d listen to blues bands and stuff like T-Bone Walker and BB King. My first experience in hearing an electrified guitar was just absolutely astonishing, exciting and strange for me.

JC: Your father obviously is gonna be a big part of this whole interview. Could you give me a little background on him?

AH: Well my dad was involved in stage acting and eventually got into radio. As a very young man, he had gone to Hollywood in the late ‘20s to the early ‘30s. For a couple of years, he tried to get involved in as many playhouses and acting workshops as he could. He was trying to get an agent and get in some movies as a cowboy actor. He was a natural authentic cowboy from South Dakota, and had a tough time.

It wasn’t really easy at first, but he finally got an agent and then lo and behold, we got a telegram that said his father requested him to return to his family ranch because they had a blizzard and they lost almost all their cattle and they needed his help. So he responded and returned and did not return to Hollywood until 1935 or ’36. In ’37, he started getting into movies again. That’s when he appeared in Dick Tracy Returns and The Three Musketeers with John Wayne. He did a lot of westerns for Republic and Monogram pictures. Then he went onto radio broadcasting.

Along came World War II. My dad was with a whole bunch of guys. Most of them were pilots, but they were too old to be fighter pilots. The army gave them an option. They could either be glider pilots which were troop glider pilots going into Northern Europe with the infantry, or they could try to go out and raise money for war bonds, which was desperately needed of course during the war.

The military realized they were much more valuable raising money, so that’s what my dad did in World War II. There was a fellow name Bill Bowers who was a writer. There were a bunch of ancedotes that seemed pretty funny to Bill Bowers; he wrote this script The Last Time I Saw Archie, based on Bill Bowers’ knowledge of what my dad did during World War II. And lo and behold, it was picked up and made into a movie for Robert Mitchum who played my dad. It was kind of farfetched. In the end, there was a Japanese spy and it was kind of a little contrived, but it was probably a tough movie to make. It didn’t make a whole lot of sense to my dad because it didn’t seem like it had anything to do with him, other than the vagaries of what Bill Bowers saw. My dad thought it wasn’t that good of a script.

Anyway, my dad went on and decided that he was getting too old to fool around anymore. If he was going to make movies, it was something he was going to have to do on his own. So he decided to be an independent producer where he would write, star in and direct all kinds of ideas himself. He came up with the idea of Rushmore Productions, which became Fairway International Films. The property that he had in Burbank, California, became the Fairway Studio, the place where all these ideas were hatched and films were made. The films mostly played in drive-in theaters during that time, but they were very successful inside that theater circuit.

JC: The first thing you did before the films was the single-“Konga Joe/Monkey on My Hatband.” How did that single begin?

AH: Well, I had started fooling around with a guitar and I ended up composing a couple of songs. Maybe more than a couple but those were the two that were kinda unique. There was a guy who took the idea to Steve Allen’s company, Signature Records, and they liked it. They wanted to branch out into something strange and different. I didn’t really do much in promoting it or anything. Of course, I was in high school. It was sort of my first experience working with studio musicians and all that. I had to teach them what it was I was doing and they had contributed some little ideas. It was very foreign to me, but it was a new adventure. It was fun.

JC: Well, around this time, you did your first film The Choppers. Did you want to do it or did your dad say you should do it? Or was it a mutual decision?

AH: Well, I think it was probably more of the latter. It was something that he was concocting, and the next thing I knew, it was something we were both doing. It was going to be about teenaged car thieves and as it progressed and everything, I realized how I was going to be a part of it and play this character, Jack ‘Cruiser’ Bryan.

Of course, The Choppers was a full-blown union operation, so it had to comply with all the regulations and everything. One time I moved the car about maybe four or five feet, to get out the way of the cameraman. The camera operator was carrying a heavy blimp camera, and because he called down to somebody to help him out and nobody helped him, I said, “Do you want me to move the car?” and he said, “Yeah.” I jumped in and moved the car, like I said, four or five feet.

That turned into a huge violation of union rules because of the teamsters -actors can drive prop cars on camera and in rehearsals-, but they could not touch or move them on the set without notifying a union guy. And so I violated that. Of course, I did it innocently. I was just a kid at the time, but that didn’t make any difference. They filed violations and fines and everything. To keep the set open that day, my dad had to promise that he was going to either double the amount of drivers he needed for the rest of the week or double the time he had with his current drivers. My dad blamed me in some ways because I was the cause of it, but then again, he forgave me because he realized I was innocent to know what the taboos are on a movie set.

JC: Also in the Choppers you’re singing the single “Monkey in My Hatband.” How did you get to sing in the film?

AH: I don’t know. I think there were a lot of movies at the time where there’s a young kid who plays the guitar and he’s going to sing with his buddies or something. It’s kind of an almost Elvis Presley-esque kind of thing. I didn’t engineer it and I don’t really know who did. My dad did some of the writing, but a lot of the things were done by some other people too. So it was just part of the story and it was sort of a little bit hokey, but that’s the way a lot of the films were in those days.

JC: At the same time, you were also beginning your band, the Archers. How did this band form?

AH: It started out as a duo really. I mean you could trace it back to only two people- myself and my oldest boyhood friend, Deke Lussier, who later in life changed his name to Richards. Deke Richards became a famous songwriter and producer for Motown Records. He and I grew up together and we both liked music. We would sing for private parties or just sing or play the guitar together and have a good time. It just seemed a natural evolution of our friendship.

Then later on, he had to work and moved away. I had a relationship by meeting Alan O’Day, who’s an extremely talented individual. Our paths crossed early in life in the Palm Desert, Indio area. Alan went on to do really wonderful songs in the pop world for Helen Reddy and the Righteous Brothers. The list goes on and on and on. Some people have recorded some of his songs six or eight times. Very poetic and very much a talented songwriter. But really, behind all of that, is an incredibly talented blues man, where Alan, when he takes off his pop hat and gets into a dirty night club with a Hammond B-3 Organ or something that’s a little as a harmonica, he can just knock your socks off.

Alan and I collaborated together and then we added another drummer for a while, who was a guy named Dave Sullivan, and then he became an Archer, and then Dave left and one of my high school friends by the name of Ernie Gurolla became the drummer. Then we had a bass player by the name of Joel Christie. Extremely talented individual. And then we had four pieces at that time. And it remained that way, and then we added Dobie Gray, the famous R&B pop singer and then later he got into country music. It was the Archers’ plus Dobie Gray, you might say. He was part of the duo.

JC: How did Dobie come to the Archers?

AH: I don’t know. I can’t remember. I think we just kind of crossed thorns one time with somebody. His agent or somebody booked us somewhere and we kind of hit it off.

But there was another Archer that came along after Joel Christie had to leave. He was from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He was Jerry Mann. His real name was Jerry Levin. Jerry passed away about a year ago. He was an amazing talent too and he picked up where Joel left off. He was a singer; he was a humorous entertainer and a wonderful bass player. Those were the only people that became the Archers.

JC: Now when we come to Eegah. [Readers can watch the trailer for Eegah by clicking here.] How did that film happen?

AH: Well, my dad wanted to do something with Richard Kiel. He knew that Richard Kiel was a physically commanding and interesting person. So he had Richard over for an interview in his office one day and ran an idea for a movie that he had on the front burner. He thought it was kind of a horror-strange, almost like an Island of Dr. Moreau sort of a thing. It was called Straganza and I think at the time, maybe just a portion of the script was written. As he was explaining this to Richard, he immediately saw body language that Richard didn’t want this.

So rather than have Richard just walk out of the office, he started ad libbing.“I’ve got an idea. It’s about a prehistoric giant of a man in the hills of Palm Springs and other things. We’ll fill in the details. What do you think about this idea? Guy is a giant, he’s in Palm Springs, blah, blah, blah,” and Richard said, “Yeah, that sounds pretty good.” So that’s how, that was kind of the nucleus of how Eegah came out. Of course it went on to be filmed in the summer of ’61 at Palm Springs.

JC: You got to a sing a little in The Choppers but now they are having you sing a lot more in Eegah. How did you get the chance to do more music?

AH: It was probably sort of written around the fact that Deke Richards and I, were singing together at the time. My dad was aware of that and he just sort of in the back of his mind concocted this. So I don’t think there’s anything mystical about it.

JC: Also, in Eegah, your costar Marilyn Manning plays your girlfriend. She would also be your girlfriend in The Sadist. How did your dad come across her?

AH: Actually, there were some other offices and businesses that were in the building complex at Fairway, which was owned by my dad. One of the tenants, I think was a chiropractor. As I recall, Marilyn Manning was a receptionist at the chiropractor’s office. So she was around. She was an attractive lady, and she always saw the craziness and the nonsense that was going on 24 hours a day at Fairway with music and making movies and sort of got sucked in it. I think in Eegah she had a little bit of “deer in the headlights”. But it was her first experience. However, I thought the job that she did in Sadist was magnificent.

JC: In Eegah, Marilyn plays your girlfriend Roxy. Yet in the movie, you sing two songs about two different girls name Valerie and Vickie. We find out who Vickie is when we get to the film Wild Guitar, but we never find out who Valerie is. Why is there no song on Roxy in Eegah?

AH: Yeah, I had written a song called “Valerie” along with my dad. He co-wrote it with me. The thing is, the guy’s girlfriend is named Roxy, and he’s singing about a girl named Valerie. But it wasn’t done by accident. It was done to maybe make a real petty jealousy thing or something. There was no idea behind it. But the song was written deliberately not to have Roxy’s name. So what can I say? It seemed like a good idea at the time.

JC: Well, I read an online review on Eegah that said one thing he learned from the film is that “I can sing songs about other girls and my girlfriend will be OK with it.”

AH: Yeah. [Laughs]

JC: In Eegah, there would be times where they only showed you with a guitar, but when you start playing, you managed to get an off-screen orchestra behind you.

AH: That was one of those things that was just done in those days. It wasn’t done to be campy. I mean, Hal Wallis did it often with Elvis. It was just done and people didn’t think anything about it. In retrospect, it probably, it goes back to the ‘40s and ‘30s. People were out on desert islands strumming their guitars and then suddenly you hear violins and everything. Today, we think, “Well, that’s stupid.” But there was a time when it wasn’t stupid. It was just the way it was done.

JC: Did you have any idea that Richard Kiel was going to go onto bigger things, such as playing Jaws in the James Bond films?

AH: Oh yeah, absolutely. There’s no question about it. Richard Kiel is a dedicated and persistent man. He is very committed to his craft. People probably didn’t have him in mind until he showed up and thought that part could be Richard Kiel. This guy could take it to another level. I think that’s when people started to see how good of an actor he was and how much fun he was to work with. He can be very intimidating. His casting agents probably thought, “If we don’t hire this guy, he might come back and break our legs or something.”

But he’s a very gentle, very intelligent and an intellectual person. Most people aren’t ready to accept that, because of the various characters he played. But yes, he’s a very, very smart man and I knew he was destined for success. I’m very happy that he had such a wonderful career all these years.

JC: Now I know Eegah did very well at the box-office. In fact, there’s a quote from your father that goes, “It was always a subject of laughter that the darn thing did so well. “ Why was it a subject of laughter?

AH: Well, he was referring to a sort of an ironic humor in so much as that they made a lot of money for somebody, but it wasn’t the producer or the studio. And I suppose it takes a pretty big-hearted guy to be able to laugh about it when the bank is calling you and wanting the money. The lab’s calling; they want their money; and everybody wants their money, but there’s no money to give, or very little. So that’s the sick humor I think my dad’s referring to.

Eegah played all over the north, south, east, west, and mid-west. You name it. It played these places and wore out print after print. It made very little return as far as profit or return on the investment that my dad made. Most of the money that came in went right out to pay for the negative cost or cost of prints themselves because they’re very expensive.

Color prints, 35-millimeter prints- I think even back then in the early ‘60s were about $2,500 to $3,500 for one print. You’d send them all over the country, and the shipping was expensive. They were these very heavy, two huge cans of 35-millimeter reels taken to theaters. Projectionists would rip and tear them up. Then there would be natural wear and tear. The print would go out. Hopefully they would be able to play it, be shipped around- in minor recondition, and keep recovering money, but many times they would go out once or twice and come back almost destroyed.

Of course, nobody was going to pay for it, fess up, live up to it or pay for damages. You just had to get another print- another $3,500 or whatever that was. So I think his laughter and humor came from knowing how much gross revenue was brought in by theater owners and distributors in regions by this movie and its companion movies and how ridiculously little came in- in the final analysis.

JC: Now the next film is Wild Guitar. [Readers can watch the trailer for Wild Guitar by clicking here.] How did that film happen?

AH: That came out of a story idea that my dad hatched about this kid that came from Spearfish, South Dakota, who was an aspiring singer and all this stuff. Obviously, he had me in mind to play that role of Bud Eagle, the character from Wild Guitar. So it was just a natural outgrowth to keep everybody working. We were there to make movies and we would make music, and that’s what we did. So it was better and different.

JC: Of course it was the directorial debut of Ray Dennis Steckler. What was it like working with Ray Dennis Steckler?

AH: Oh, Ray was great. He was a little older than me, but he was very serious in some ways and humorous in others. Extremely talented. He knew so much about all aspects of movie making- from the serious to the creative to the technical things like dancing. He was actually a great dancer.

JC: Tell me a little bit about that.

AH: People may not know that, but he was. He was very athletic and a very talented dancer. He could do comedy; he could take pratfalls and do a lot of comedy things like Buster Keaton or Laurel and Hardy type stuff. He could be a bad-ass too. I mean the character he played in Wild Guitar, Steak, was not a very likeable person. He played that beautifully, and he knew his stuff. Ray carved out a niche for himself in the industry.

There was always a little part of the business for Ray to stay in. He knew about the ins and outs of the entire business. He worked with Vilmos Zsgimond as an assistant cameraman.

At the time, he was just another young guy, but his dedication to everything was incredible, and nobody was complaining. We were working sometimes 35, 45 hours without sleep and little food, which we’re not even allowed to do that with people in Guantanamo. Ray was always cracking the whip, saying, “Let’s go, let’s go” and this was after a straight 42 hours of work. Ray was great and I missed him a lot.

JC: On the Wild Guitar CD, they have a concert of you and the Archers at a drive-in promoting the film Wild Guitar. What’s interesting about the concert is that you do a lot of R&B covers. It is music that is much different than the music you played in Wild Guitar.

AH: Right. That was pretty much a reflection of what we did when we played clubs. When we played clubs, we played pop music, such as The Beatles but we kind of dipped into more of the harder edge blues stuff- Lonnie Mack and BB King and James Brown. Our bass player was an incredible singer, and he could emulate James Brown. And we played Bobbie ‘Blue’ Bland. I mean these are the people that made my hair stand up. I mean, I heard Bobbie ‘Blue’ Bland, BB King, Albert King, Freddie King. But there was no reason to put it into any of the movies because we had to use original music and sort of keep it in the vein of what we were doing. The movies like Wild Guitar were our original stuff that we came up with, but when we played clubs, we played a lot of Little Walter and Delta-style blues, slide guitar stuff. And of course that was not any, any part of teenage Hollywood. But that music stimulated us the most and gave us the most fun to play live.

That sort of music is not the popular music to play. If somebody told the young people, “We’re going to go hear a bunch of guys play blues,” they’d probably go, “No, I think I’ll pass.” But once you get them there and they hear it, they would love it. This was before it became more popular.

JC: I heard that your Wild Guitar co-star Nancy Czar, who played your girlfriend Vickie, got the job of being the go-go dancer at the concert that was recorded for the Wild Guitar. How did she get that role?

AH: Nancy made herself available to go on tour to promote the film. That recording was in Pensacola, Florida. I remember it was colder than hell, about 32 degrees, very hard to play guitar. But we did it again and again, time and time again at whatever venue, whatever it was, all across the south primarily. And Nancy was a real trooper. Two years before Wild Guitar, she made the almost to last final cut for the Olympics as a figure skater.

Later in life, she actually turned into an incredibly savvy businesswoman. She was doing an import/export business and bunch of other things. I haven’t seen her in decades, but I did hear that she was living in Beverly Hills and she might make herself available for some personal appearances. So I hope to maybe see her again one of these days.

JC: Okay, now we come to what many people, including myself, think is your best performance: The Sadist. [Readers can watch the trailer for The Sadist by clicking here.] I mean, I haven’t seen a single bad review of that film. They are all unanimously good reviews.

AH: The Sadist has been the subject of study in film schools, overseas, abroad, domestically and everything. It freaked people out because it was riveting and terrifying. Here’s a low-budget movie, shot in black and white with so many limitations with a basically unknown actress. How did this happen? It’s one of those enigmas that occasionally happen. The stars are aligned and everything kind of clicks. One, it wasn’t a tremendous box office success because it had nothing to do with its merit as a –

JC: It wasn’t as successful as Eegah?

AH: It was successful, but it could have been incredibly successful if it was promoted correctly. What I’m saying is it was successful on a lesser level, but it had the potential to be a very successful movie, and a lot of people knew it; they felt it; they saw it. If it was bought out by another person and re-released, it certainly might have something big come out of it. But at the time it was part of the Fairway package, that goes out and tries to recover some money and recoup some of the return on the investment that they had.

The Sadist, though, did have people asking,”Who was this guy Arch Hall Sr.? Who was he and where did he come from? How can he do this stuff and how can he come up with these things?” You know, he had an offer from Warner Bros. shortly after The Sadist to be a contract producer for them. They wanted an unconditional commitment from him that he would drop all aspects of Fairway and come down the street to Warner Bros and just work with them on their projects. They would assign him as a producer. They wanted him badly, and he turned that down. That’s something that, quite frankly, I don’t understand why he did it, but it was his choice.

JC: This was now going to be a very different role for you. How were you involved?

AH: Well, it started with James Landis, who was the director and writer of the original screenplay which was called 12:01. It wasn’t called The Sadist. Landis had gotten a few gigs before he came to Fairway. I think he did some I Dream of Jeannie and Combat episodes. Landis was very direct with my dad, and said, “I just don’t think Jr. can carry this.” He had a couple guys read for the part. They were extremely talented young actors.

I pretty much thought that I would be doing the boom operator or something on the technical side. I didn’t want the stress of having to do something that was too serious that I couldn’t handle it. I didn’t want to screw something up.

However after certain actors read for Landis, my dad asked, “Well why don’t we just give Jr. a chance? Why don’t you work with him a little bit and maybe give him a chance?”

So Landis started seriously working with me and realized that I didn’t really have a whole lot of background. I sort of put my entire faith in him, and I said, “Jim, I don’t know what I’m doing here. You’d better just mold me like clay and tell me what kind of a character this is.”

Landis was a very, very physical person. He would make faces and hand motions. He was just very descriptive using every kind of sense in describing the delivery of a line or how a scene would play. I just soaked it up like a sponge. He told me, “Well, why don’t you try to figure out how you think this guy would dress?”

So I figured out that he would be wearing probably engineer boots and wearing just a Levi jacket and his work shirt. And we started from that as a basis as a data point and worked out from there. Landis started to get fascinated working with me. He went to my dad and said, “You know, if we had enough time I think Jr. could do this. He would do it in a different way and make Charlie Tibbs a different character than I had envisioned Charlie Tibbs being. Damn, he’s got something.” So that’s how it all came about. I have to thank Mr. James Landis for my success in the role and creating the character of Charlie Tibbs.

It was scary because I didn’t want to be involved in anything that I couldn’t pull off and people would say, “Oh, this is stupid. This guy should have never been cast in that. He’s terrible.”

Yet, Landis gave me the confidence and told me, “You can do it, but you’ve got to do it very carefully. You got to listen to me all the time.” So, I felt I could proceed on that basis, and so I did it. When something wouldn’t work for me the way he had originally thought of it, he would modify it so it would fit me better. Sometimes, he would say, “In some cases, I actually I think you did it better than I had written here.” So we worked together, collaboratively.

JC: Did he also work with Marilyn Manning because when you compared her performance here to the performance in Eegah-

AH: Absolutely.

JC: She seems much more comfortable and relaxed.

AH: Yes. She did a magnificent job with Landis working with her. He found it more menacing for her to use her face and her expressions.

JC: When I watched The Sadist with my friend, he found the gas station to be like a set off the Twilight Zone. Did you actually use a gas station or was this like a studio set?

AH: Oh, no, that was filmed on location in the summertime in north of the San Fernando Valley. It was on a ranch. The cars were hauled in and the gas pump was hauled. It was all basically set dressing by Fairway to make that into a creepy looking place just off the highway. Right now, you wouldn’t be able to even find it because it’s all condominiums.

JC: Another thing about The Sadist is I didn’t realize that Helen Hovey who played the sole survivor was your cousin.

AH: Yeah, she was–she’s my cousin. She recently passed away of cervical cancer. After she did The Sadist, she went on to be quite a stage actress and she played on the road and in London. She was very, very talented and capable. I don’t say this because she’s my cousin because we rarely ever saw each other. She lived in Kentucky and I grew up in California. But she was an extremely gifted person, and she knew her craft very well. She also was crafted by Landis in playing a very prim and proper school teacher. Helen was unique, because the depth of her acting, it was not superficial, but it was a little bit below the surface. She had a little bit of an accent in her speech pattern which just made her so angelic and innocent. In some cases after Landis yelled cut, he’d have tears in his eyes. He'd say to Helen, “You did that better than in rehearsals. Where did you get that from?”

JC: Of course, we can’t leave The Sadist without mentioning Vilmos Zsgimond. How did Vilmos become involved?

AH: Like everybody, he needed a job. He called himself Willy during the early years. He had a Studebaker he would sleep in sometimes. I think that he knows that some of the elements of what he brought to the table for The Sadist and some of the things that happened in The Sadist were way beyond his wildest expectations ever. There was a documentary film about Vilmos called No Subtitles Necessary. They were screening in Los Angeles and Ray Steckler asked me if I wanted to come out there.

JC: When Ray passed away, Fangoria showed a picture of you, Ray and Vilmos.

AH: Yeah, I was there and it was a very touching thing. I thought it was riveting, that Vilmos had done all these major pictures including Close Encounters, but the one thing that’s sort of the centerpiece of this entire documentary film is an excerpt from The Sadist, of all things. The audience, a filled auditorium of who’s who in Hollywood, all roared when The Sadist came on.

JC: Okay, now we come to The Nasty Rabbit which is a strange choice to follow up The Sadist with. It wouldn’t seem so strange after Wild Guitar, but it was a little strange after The Sadist.

AH: Yeah, that’s the way Fairway was. The things came up at different times. Misha Terr was a Russian who was a classically trained musician, conductor, composer,and was quite successful in his life, but had a burning desire to be an actor. He comes to the door of Fairway and my dad’s analyzing everything-anybody and everybody that comes through the door. Here’s a guy with this heavy accent, almost like Bela Lugosi. What kind of an acting job could he possibly have? Misha would contribute financing. He would pay for some of that because he wanted to be an actor before he became too old and died. He thinks he might even be able to be a comedian. The average person would say to this middle-aged Russian, “You’re out of your mind. Save your money and go away.” However, my dad said, “You know, we might be able to write something around this.” So he came up with a ridiculous kind of story line. It was this tenacious bacteria planted in the vial around a rabbit’s neck and it came from a submarine around the coast of Santa Barbara. At night, he’d write down on yellow pads everything that he came up and started writing a story. Then, he brought Misha in and read him that. Misha’s eyes lit up. “Oh my God! I love it. I love it,” he said.

JC: That explains why he’s the lead in this picture.

AH: Absolutely. The Nasty Rabbit is comedy that went all crazy. My dad was a cowboy star and an old ‘30s rodeo rider and all that stuff, and in this movie he plays in drag as a comedy bit. Lazlo Kovacs plays a moron guy that’s cooking a chicken over an open fire. Lazlo wanted to play this character with no front teeth, so he blacked his teeth out. Everyone had fun on it. It was relief from the stress of the high drama and violence of The Sadist. It was totally from the other end of the spectrum.

JC: I like the instrumental you played in The Nasty Rabbit: “The Spy Waltz” I find it musically interesting because of its rhythm structure.

AH: Yeah.

JC: Just like when I saw your acting in The Sadist, when I first heard “The Spy Waltz,” I thought, “Man, there’s more here to Arch Hall Jr. than I thought.” In fact I remember reading several user comments from the IMDB. These were people who weren’t fans of the Frankie Avalon and Fabian stuff you did in your films, but when you do “The Spy Waltz”, they said, “That’s an interesting piece. Where did that come from?”

AH: Alan and I were co-writing things and “The Spy Waltz” was something we came up with. Yeah, that was good. It was a nice little waltz. You don’t hear many things written in ¾ time-not in pop music anyway.

JC: Even though she didn’t become as big as Richard Kiel, Liz Renay (who is billed as Melissa Morgan) had a career after Fairway. She went on to do several John Waters films.

AH: Yeah, this is a terrific gal who had a long and interesting life.

JC: Yeah, she was a Vegas showgirl.

AH: Yeah, yeah, she was involved with a mobster. She was known as Mickey Cohen’s girlfriend at one time. Mickey was a famous, very flashy mobster in Hollywood. She did time in prison. She never ratted on anybody so the mob respected her and she respected the mob. Liz Renay was a wonderful person. She was no phony. Unfortunately, she’s gone now, but was a class act all the way.

JC: Now we come to another change in roles: Deadwood ’76. How did that project happen?

AH: Well, it’s kind of full circle. My dad started out in Hollywood, in the early ‘30s with people like Ray Corrigan and John Wayne himself. My dad did several movies with him. He loves westerns. He loves the West. He was a cowboy, not a wannabe cowboy, but a real cowboy. He grew up on a ranch and he was riding and shooting. He had his first horse when he was like seven years old or so and carried a six-gun when he was eleven. I mean he loved the western genre. But he wanted something … He ultimately loved South Dakota, and he loves the native Sioux and the Native American Sioux Indians, and my dad could speak the language. So there was much love and desire for him.

I think at the same time, he could see from a financial standpoint that his endeavor and desire to continue on to make movies with Fairway, in his particular style, was being forced to close by bankers. People were demanding more and more money, and the costs were going up, and he was still trying to pay off the residual debt from previous movies. So he thought before it closes, he wanted to make a western.

JC: So this would also be Fairway’s last picture?

AH: It may not have been the last picture, that he tried to package and sell as far as a package to television or something. It was the last picture that I ever did, and it was the last picture, as far as I know, that Fairway ever did.

But anyway, his love of westerns and his love of seeing cowboys be real cowboys and Indians be real Indians … He wanted to film it in certain areas that he was very familiar with. Just like the movie opens, I mean, with the opening of the movie, it’s just you see this vast landscape and it looks like a big production film with this beautiful voice of Roye Baker singing “Billy Boy.” (Roye has two names: Roye Baker and Rex Holman. He has a fantastic voice. He’s been involved in acting. I saw him in a TV show not too long ago and he was in Choppers playing Flip.) We filmed in South Dakota. We used real Sioux Indians to portray real Sioux Indians. Some of it was shot in Simi Valley, California. There were many terrific character actors. The fella who played the preacher was Richard Cowl. Richard was also in Choppers. Richard played the drunk-Torch (Robert Paget)’s father.

JC: I thought they were two different actors completely, so wow!

AH: Yeah, Richard calls me every Saturday. The old civil war veteran that is in the wagon was played by Jack Lester. The Indian girl was La Donna Cottier. She’s a real Sioux Indian, and descended from Chief Crazy Horse. There couldn’t be a more authentic Indian on the planet cast for that role.

JC: How did it feel playing a cowboy, cause it was different from your other roles?

AH: I felt real comfortable because I had not been around horses too much or anything. My dad gave me a few pointers and everything. I did some rather dangerous things, even within cowboy standards, which is riding through a herd of buffalo. I don’t advise anybody to try it. Riding through a herd of buffalo on a horse could provoke an attack, and a buffalo is not like a domesticated bull, cow or steer. I mean, it has a mind of its own. It’s like a freight train. it can just hit a horse and rock it, just go right through it, crush it. I didn’t even really know that until after we did it. My dad said, “Man, that’s the scariest thing I’ve ever seen. I don’t know of many people who would ride through a herd of buffalo like that.” At the time, I didn’t know the dangers, so I guess if you don’t know it’s dangerous, it’s okay.

JC: What’s interesting is that Deadwood ‘76 has an ending where the good guys don’t win. I mean, they hang the preacher in this film. I don’t know of any Western that has that.

AH: No it’s terrible. Nobody would even think of doing that. It’s such a down ending. When the Indian girl puts this feather on Billy, that was just one of the little significant things that my dad was real passionate about because he knew in real life, that’s what a Sioux Indian girl would do. So it was his passionate thing to have something involving his love of the Black Hills, his love of the Sioux Indians and to pull something off as a nice western. Unfortunately, timing being what it was, at that particular point in time, westerns were at a low ebb. There was a period of time when they just weren’t that popular.

JC: Anyway, so this would be your last film role. You would go on to be a pilot.

AH: Yeah. My dad sort of wanted me to have the same love and commitment to be part of the business, but frankly considering how the business was to my dad, how much he put his life into it both early on and then after he left and came back in his later years to be committed to it, it wasn’t so good to him. It wasn’t so good to him in the beginning and it wasn’t so good to him in the end. And yet, he still loved the business. When I hold that up to the light, I can’t see it pass the same test, the litmus test for me. I got bit by another bug which was aviation, and I also saw the tragedy of disappointment and unhappiness that comes out of not being able to control your destiny in a very volatile business that’s wracked with crooks.

JC: Would you still continue with the Archers or did that end when you started the piloting?

AH: When I was taking flying lessons at the Van Nuys Airport, I was playing at beer bars and things but with different people, not with the Archers.

JC: As a pilot, who did you fly for?

AH: I worked for a small company in Burbank called Mercer Airlines, flying DC3s and DC2s and the DC4. Then, I went to Flying Tigers in 1989.Flying Tigers was bought out by Federal Express so I finished my career with Federal Express. It was a wonderful company and I feel very lucky because many of my colleagues with major airlines like Eastern and Pan Am specifically, ended up falling by the wayside. A lot of things ended in tragedy with their lives falling apart and everything. So that’s not to say that any business isn’t tough. We talked about independent distribution, but aviation is also a very treacherous business. One can find their career evaporating, or they could work all their career and have no retirement or pension–those are typical pitfalls of aviation. So it’s not exactly the safest thing you can do. And I didn’t get into it because it was safe or any other reason. I got into it because it was exciting and I was very committed to fly. Still do. So when you love to do something, you’re 100 percent committed to that over good times, bad times or anything in between. You’re probably going to be pretty good at it if you just love what you do. And I think I’m a pretty good pilot. I did 36 ½ years of flying everything from small prop planes to 747s around the world in peace time and war time. I flew with passengers and cargo. Knock on wood, I never had an accident and never injured anyone or killed anyone. So that’s a fairly good career to say I made it. I made it through to the end of some sort of mandatory retirement age.

JC: Now, were there any other activities you were doing during the pilot years? Like did you ever play again?

AH: I’ve always been collecting guitars-vintage guitars, especially Fender. I maintained friendships with my old colleagues as Alan O’ Day and Deke Richards. But I haven’t had too many occasions until just a few years ago to get back, to get together with them and play. I played the first time at Ponderosa stop, which is down in New Orleans. I’d like to do more in the future. Next year, there’s a possibility that I might be doing a lot of musical hits,and I’m hoping that the other guys will want to do it. If they do, fine, and if they can’t, I think I’m still going to be doing it on my own as best I can, because, as I said, I love music. I love to be around people who love music and like to play it and be part of live music.

JC: I understand you wrote a book.

AH: I wrote a novel, yes, an adventure novel titled Apsara Jet. I did that back in 2001 prior to my retirement. I did that because I felt I wanted to. I wanted to write an erotic adventure novel involving aviation, and it’s been quite well received. It was a foreign hit in Thailand. It is actually selling over there in tourist book stores in Bangkok. It was on Amazon.com here in the U.S. too. You won’t find it in bookstores. It’s sort of a naughty book. It was a collaboration of years and years of hanging around aviators and trying to write an adventure book. It’s primarily a guy book; it’s not a chick book

JC: You also have a new website.

AH: Well, it’s going to be archhalljr.com. No secrets there. Actually, it could be called watch-out-for-snakes@archhalljr.com which is sort of a byline from Eegah which is also apropos for The Sadist-Charlie Tibbs.

JC: Yeah, right. Its kind of interesting, that line; although you had no idea at the time it would take on a different meaning after The Sadist.

AH: Yeah, exactly. Many people ask me, “Darn it Arch, why don’t you do your own website and everything? It would be a lot of fun. Do some stuff. Have some things up on there. People would love to have an autograph, DVD or autographed CD, or a t-Shirt. You have so many neat things. It would be so fun to have a little blog or somebody contributing, your friends and cohorts contributing to it from time to time.”

So I said, “Okay, we’ll do that”. So it’s sort of in its infancy now. It’s up and running. It’s archhalljr.com. I think in the next few days we’re going to get some sort of way to put together a way someone can order the book, which will be autographed and first edition. I’m going to work out some t-shirts, some real nice t-shirts. It will be a clearinghouse for what’s going on with me. For instance, if I will be making any appearances at conventions or the possibility of a concert early next year out in Vegas doing a rockabilly thing. It’s not finalized yet. So yeah, it’s going to be enhanced in the days and weeks to come. People can check on it and see what’s happening. So that’s about it.

A Very Candid Conversation with Craig Gruber

2009-11-14T15:38:00.000-08:00

Craig Gruber is a name that should be very familiar to fans of Ronnie James Dio-he played bass with Dio in the early years of Dio’s career. In the early 70s, Craig got his start in Dio’s band Elf. Elf went on to open for Deep Purple and travel stadiums around the world between 1972-1975. Of course, all Deep Purple fans know that the guitarist Ritchie Blackmore later formed a band with Elf by kicking out Elf’s guitarist Steve Edwards. The new band with Ritchie would became Rainbow- this was the original lineup of a group that would have many lineups to come.

Rainbow was not the last time Craig hooked up with Dio; when Dio took over Ozzy Osbourne’s role in Black Sabbath, bass player Geezer Butler left because he feared the band had no future without Ozzy. Craig filled in for Geezer and worked on sessions of what would become the legendary 1980 Heaven and Hell album. Geezer later heard the album sessions and return to Sabbath.

Craig then went on to play with Gary Moore; his work on ”Shapes of Things” on the We Want Moore album is this interviewer’s personal favorite. While he was in Gary Moore’s band, they played the Monsters of Rock festival of 1984. Some of the acts in that festival included Mötley Crüe, Ozzy Osbourne, and Van Halen.

His work with Gary Moore was the last we’d heard from Craig- until now. Craig has gone back into basses, but this time he’s not playing them, he’s making them. Craig’s new company, Infinite Metal Werkz, features his own line of new basses. His basses have already attracted the attention of two legendary bassists: Billy Sheehan and Victor Wooten. Readers of this interview can go to Craig’s website: http://www.kahlerbass.com for more information on his new project.

In this candid conversation with Craig, we cover his days with Elf, Rainbow, Sabbath, and Gary Moore. We also talk about a rare band he was in, Bible Black. Craig formed Bible Black with Elf/Rainbow drummer Gary Driscoll and Jesus Christ Superstar lead Jeff Fenholt. We talk about his plans for his new bass company Infinite Metal Werkz and of course, since Craig spent a lot time on the road, he shares some wild road stories.

I want to thank Craig for taking time out to do this interview.

Jeff Cramer: How did you get into music?

Craig Gruber: Just like everybody else that’s in the industry; they all start out just hearing something on the radio or something that kind of piques your interest.

My roots go all the way back to Muddy Waters; that’s where I came from. I mean I’m totally a blues guy way, way, way down deep inside. I mean that groove and that feel of the blues is what got me interested in music to begin with.

And then moving the clock up a little bit, my father was a big band enthusiast, so he always had Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey playing in the house. We came from New York City, so he used to go see those guys play live when he was younger. There was always music in the house.

JC: What made you decide to become a bassist?

CG: When Hendrix came out, I had already bought a guitar and I was playing it around the house. I just couldn’t figure chords out. I mean I could find the root note, I could finger the string and know what key it was in, but I could never figure out the chords. That’s what kind of prompted me to play the bass. I accidentally broke some strings through months of trying to play chords and all I had left was the A, B, and G strings, which is essentially the bass. My ear was trained towards the bass for some reason. I don’t know why. It just naturally picked it up from there. You know, when you learn a couple of notes, it kind-of gets encouraging. From there, I saw fame and fortune. I saw chicks. Everybody wants chicks, you know what I mean?

JC: [Laughs]

CG: I then ran into this bassist- he was a jazz bassist who lived right down the block from me. I used to walk by his house on the way back and forth from school every day. About 3:30 in the afternoon, I’d walk by his house and I’d hear this bass playing because you could hear it coming through the room. One day I peeked in the window and he caught me. I went, “Oh shit, I’m busted” He looked at me and just kind of waved to me, like, “Hey, come on in, man.” This guy was like a monster. I told him I wanted to play the bass. So he was instrumental in really teaching me scales and things that most people don’t know. I mean if you learn by yourself, you’re very limited unless you reach out. I learned a lot of scales and I didn’t have any theory. I still don’t have any theory. I don’t care. I’ll just play up and down the neck

JC: So what were you doing before you got the gig in Elf?

CG: I had played the bass for like five or six years at that time. I was in progressive bands- I liked Yes a lot back then. I liked Genesis. So anyway, I was in this band with this killer drummer. His name was Mark Nauseef and we were a three-piece band. It was piano, keyboards, Mark Nauseef on drums and me. We were playing this progressive- like metal, this crazy weird shit. The name of the band was Earth and we just played shitty bars- anywhere we could play. The bar would hold 200-300 people, and everybody screamed at us, “Turn it down.” We weren’t playing anything commercial at all. We weren’t playing the hits or nothing, so we were like outcasts. I don’t even know why people booked us. I really don’t. I mean we were just excessively loud and playing in 5/4 or 7/4. It was crazy shit.

One night, Gary Driscoll, the drummer from Elf came into a club we were playing at and stood off to the side of the stage, watching Mark and I. When we finished the set, I can’t remember exactly what he said, but something like, “You’re unbelievable. I’ve never seen anybody play like that. I’m in this band called the Electric Elves. [They were called the Electric Elves back then.] Have you ever heard of us?” I’m like, “Yeah.” I mean they were a regional success and they were gods. I said, “You’re Gary Driscoll, right?” and he goes, “Yeah. Ronnie Dio, our singer, is thinking about stepping down from the bass and just going up front. We’re looking for a bassist.” I’m 19 and I say, “Well, that’s pretty cool, but obviously it ain’t me.” But he says, “I’d like you to meet Ronnie. I think I could possibly put something together. I’ll set up an interview or a meeting with Ronnie and the rest of the band and we’ll go from there.” And that’s kind-of what opened the door.

JC: The name Elf had came from the short size of most of the members.

CG: David “Rock” Feinstein, was the original guitarist. He’s Ronnie Dio’s cousin. So from the back, both Rock and Ronnie had long black, thick Italian hair to the waist; they looked like one of those dolls, those fucking weird dolls. The drummer, Gary Driscoll was my height, 5’8”. Mickey Lee Soule, the keyboard player, was about 5’7”. So with Mickey Lee sitting down behind the piano and Rock and Ronnie up front, and me standing back a little bit, we were only five feet tall. That’s where the name came from. It was the Electric Elves and then Deep Purple said, “Just change it to one word. Elf.”

JC: So you aren’t that short? Not that much of an elf?

CG: No. I would go up to the front and sing backup with Ronnie and then you could see I was about six inches taller than him. It was kind of funny.

JC: So after you got Elf, they had already released one album and they were opening for Deep Purple. Purple were at their biggest at this point. It must have been a real jump from playing clubs to now playing stadiums.

CG: Yeah. They had their own 727 jet. I mean there were two jets made by Butler Aviation; they were called Starship 1 and 2. Led Zeppelin had one and Deep Purple had the other. So yeah, it was rock and roll excess to the max. It was just insane.

I remember the first time on tour with them. We only had about 20 minutes to do our sound check. Purple had done theirs and all their gear was set up on this huge stage, and then our gear was in front. So we only had about 20 feet from our amplifiers to the front of the stage. So anyway, it was pretty scary because I’m used to having my amplifiers like about a foot from my elbow, and I would like lean on them and shit. Now I’ve got like 30 feet one way and 20 feet another way.

It was pretty scary. With the first couple of gigs, I didn’t even dare go to the front of the stage. I remember I had such stage fright. I was scared to death, dude. I was shitting bricks. Finally, Ronnie said, “You need to get up front a little bit, Craig. These people really want to see us.” Ronnie was up front with the microphone and doing all kinds of cool shit he had worked out. I had never been exposed to that. So I just kind of crept up to the front and the crowd got enthusiastic, so I got a little closer.

Within two or three days, by the end of the week, I was standing on the monitors pushing my reverse Thunderbird bass into their faces. I got off on it, but it was really intimidating the first couple of times.

JC: Elf must have been very different for you to play in. It’s not progressive rock but more honky tonk.

CG: I know, dude, it was a cool transition, but we grew together as a band. Deep Purple picked us up and signed us to Purple Records, and we did Carolina County Ball. They flew us to England, we moved in to the Manor Studios in Oxford and lived there for about nine months in a 13th century castle owned by Richard Branson- crazy place. We evolved as a band because we were kind of bored with the material. I was now in the band and Gary and I would play different rhythms.

Rock quit the band and we hired another guitarist that I knew named Steve Edwards. Steve Edwards was more like an Eric Clapton-ish, you know, kind of guitarist-the early ‘60s Eric Clapton. The music Elf had written on their first album was a really cool groove; it had a bluesy, honky tonk, like you say, groove to it. But that little mix in people, that change in lineup created a new musical direction. If you listen to Carolina County Ball, you’ll hear the progression. It’s still linked to the first album, but the progression is there.

JC: On your third album, Trying to Burn the Sun, I hear echoes of what’s about to come with Rainbow, especially on the song “Wonderworld.”

CG: Yeah, that album was a natural progression. It was unconscious. We weren’t trying to change anything. We were growing as musicians and growing as a band and our direction was becoming more defined. Roger Glover had a lot to do with it too. He’s a brilliant producer and engineer and has great ideas. We had Ronnie’s vocal range. Gary and I could play just about any kind of rhythm and Mickey Lee, the keyboard player, is great.

Steve Edwards was the guitarist. He would take direction very well, but he wasn’t that innovative. Like you put Steve in a room and you said, “Okay, what are your ideas for the lead?” He just couldn’t come up with stuff. That’s why he didn’t stay with us. I’m not saying anything bad against him. He’s a great guy, but he just was not that innovative. He just couldn’t come up with parts. It was difficult for him.

JC: Yeah, I’m not saying Steve’s bad, but I remember Rock’s stuff vividly on the first album, whereas nothing from Steve sticks out.

CG: Steve was more like Eric Clapton. Less is more to him. He was a great blues guitarist, but he wasn’t aggressive. Rock was more like balls to the walls. He was out front, cranking on one knee with his hair falling forward. He’s still like that with The Rods.

JC: Trying To Burn The Sun also had Mark Nauseef credited on percussion. Was he now a member of Elf? Did you have two percussionists on stage now?

CG: Yes, to both questions. That one summer tour we did in 1974, we brought Mark back in because Mark was a friend of the band. Mark was also looking for a working situation but not necessarily with us, but he was so good that we incorporated him into the band to play that one summer tour. We were going to do another world tour with Deep Purple again, so we figured it would help out Mark. Somebody would see him play and then he would get a gig out of it. He did get a gig- he ended up in the Ian Gillan Band and that helped launch his career.

JC: I’d like to get briefly away from the musical side of things. While you were with Elf, I’m sure you must have a lot stories from being the road with Deep Purple. I know there are a lot of interesting stories just about Ritchie Blackmore himself.

CG: Ritchie was a real introvert. I mean super, super introverted. Very intelligent, a real like kind of spiritual kind of guy too but he was very contained. Backstage, we all had our own dressing room. There was the Deep Purple side, there was our side, and then whatever bands were there. But Ritchie, even though he was with Purple, still had a separate dressing room from the band. He had his own meals. I mean, he had a tune up room specifically away from the band. I mean it’s crazy shit. It was so odd. That’s why the band broke up so many times. He was a very domineering type of person, and if you didn’t do it Ritchie’s way, you weren’t doing it any way.

I mean I remember being on tour with him where we didn’t sell out. Elf always went on at like 8:00. And by 8:45, we were off and then Purple went on at like 9:00 sharp. It’s all done union. You have to follow the curfew and all that in those concert halls. Ritchie would peek out behind the curtain and if the whole floor wasn’t full, if the whole thing wasn’t packed, he wouldn’t fucking play.

JC: Oh my god! You mean he wouldn’t play the show at all?

CG: No. He was just so temperamental. If it wasn’t sold out, he wouldn’t play, so he would take a separate car back to the hotel, stay in his room and then go back to the plane (if we were using the Starship back then), or take a separate flight to the next gig. So he wasn’t around anybody. There was no one who could get to him and tell him that you have to play or anything. Then they’d get sued. You don’t play, you get sued. That’s a contractual agreement, and there’s tens of thousands of dollars in cash put out by the promoter for the insurance. You have to rent that hall and there’s an insurance binder for that night. If you don’t play, you get sued for that amount of money and then some. And, of course the fans go crazy, break shit.

It didn’t happen that often, but it happened, and that was new to me. I mean I had never seen anything like that.

JC: What about groupies or trashing hotel rooms?

CG: The backstage areas were crazy. I mean there was between 100 and 500 chicks a night or more. The crew really worked them over- that was their fun. Back in the ‘70s, a groupie was like a superstar. I met this one chick, she’s got a book. She was called “The Black Widow.” I met her and hung out with her in San Francisco. Sweet Tiny from Omaha, NE; Grand Funk Railroad wrote a song about her. She came in, sat on my lap, told me how cute I was and said the first one’s free, blah, blah, blah. I’m like, “Oh my God, dude.” But yeah, there was some crazy shit, and we set some hotel rooms on fire. My room burned when I was in Coventry, England.

JC: How did it get on fire?

CG: I went down to the hotel bar and the road manager, Colin Hart pointed to the room and he said, “Go back to your fucking room. I know what you’re going to do tonight.” So before I left, I grabbed a bottle of scotch from the hotel bar, and went back to my room. And I had this chick, this really cool chick. We went back to my room and we were going to watch some TV and hang out. We got into it, had some fun and we were just chilling out. We had the lights out, we were in bed, and somebody had taken an envelope-I think it was an envelope or a small book or something- lit it on fire, and stuck it under my door.

The paint started to burn off my door; I’m smelling fumes and shit. I get up out of bed and my door’s on fucking fire. So I got no clothes on, the chick’s got no clothes on. The crew had planned this shit and they busted into my hotel room. They came and grabbed the chick and me, and pull us out into the hallway. They took my bed and box spring, throw them down the hallway, and let the fucking room burn.

Gary, our drummer, freaked out when he saw the fire. In England, in those days, they had huge fire extinguishers like those ones that used to be in high schools. They were big metal things that looked like they were made out of brass and were about three feet long. So Gary grabbed that fire extinguisher, brought it back into the room, and started trying to put it out the fire. It didn’t go out. I said, “Turn that thing off, dude.” He said, “What am I going to do with it?” I said, “Throw it in the fucking bathroom. Shut the door.” So he threw it and it weighed so much that when it landed in the toilet, it broke the toilet off at the floor. The water was fucking screaming up out of there. The place was on fire. That was a fun night in Coventry, England. Crazy shit.

I mean I’ve got a hundred more of those stories, probably. They just start to come back after I start thinking about it.

JC: How did this whole Rainbow thing come up?

CG: All right. Roger Glover and Ian Gillan finally –they weren’t fired– they finally quit for like the eighth time. They left in 1973. So, they hired Glenn Hughes on bass and vocals from Trapeze, and David Coverdale to do the Burn album. Well, Ritchie didn’t like it because they’re too soulful. Glenn’s like a funk metal bass player. But he played with his thumb often, and Ritchie, if you played anything that’s got any kind of a funk overtone to it, he’d give you that death ray and he’d stop playing and walk off the stage.

There was this song Ritchie wanted to record; it was by Quartermass, and it was called “Black Sheep of the Family.” It was just a little, simple song, but they wouldn’t play it. They wouldn’t record it and Ritchie – I mean, if you go against Ritchie, it’s over.

They went through the tour and we opened up for them for the whole year. I went backstage, and Ronnie and Ritchie were collaborating. Ritchie had this like $90 guitar with a hole in it, this acoustic guitar. He played it all the time. And Ronnie and him were sitting around, and they’re writing. They’re playing these chords and shit. I said, “That’s pretty cool Ritchie and Ronnie are getting along. Isn’t that nice?”

The next year, ’74 came along, and we were doing the Stormbringer tour with them. I remember we were in Cleveland, Ohio when Colin, our road manager said, “Quick, get in the car. We’re going to the studio today.” And I said, “What are you fucking talking about? We’re playing tonight.” He said, “No. We’ve booked time in the studio. We’ve only got about four hours and we’ve got to get back to get a sound check. Ritchie and Ronnie have written a song and we’re going to go in and record it.” What? So anyway, so we jump in the car.

We went to this kind of shitty, crummy studio, downtown Cleveland, and Ritchie comes in, starts playing this riff. All right- he’s smiling, he’s kind of really super friendly, and it’s really out of character for him. Ronnie said, “We wrote this song, Craig. It’s called “16th Century Greensleeves”, which is one Ritchie and I had been working on. And we’re just going to put out as a single, and it’s going to be on Ritchie’s solo album,” and I went, “Wow, that’s fucking amazing. We’re going to back Ritchie Blackmore.” We knocked it out in about an hour. It came out great. There’s some really cool stuff in it.

That was actually the beginning of Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow. At the end of the tour, we had a little meeting between us and Ronnie came and said, “I don’t know if you know this, lads, but this is Ritchie’s last tour. He’s done with Deep Purple and we’re thinking about putting a band together. It would be kind of like the new Deep Purple.” We just looked at each other and went, “What?” He said, “Remember the song we did? Okay, it’s already pressed. It’s already master mixed and they put it out in England and it’s No. 7 on the British Charts right now.” This was like about six months later.

Ronnie also said, “Ritchie liked the direction, so keep this under your hat. Don’t say anything and at the end of the tour, Elf is no more, and we’re forming a band with Ritchie Blackmore”. I’m like, “Holy shit, dude.” That was actually the beginning of Rainbow.

JC: Oh, so what about Steve Edwards, did he have any idea what was about to happen?

CG: No, he didn’t know, and the rest of the guys in Deep Purple didn’t know. It was like hush, hush, hush. I felt pretty shitty because it was like we were cheating on them or something. You know? It just got really weird. Musicians are real perceptive. They know shit that’s going on. I remember Glenn Hughes got really, really drunk one night at the hotel bar, and he knew. Glenn came over to me, starting strong-arming me and was actually going to fucking deck me. He’s tall and he could have really knocked me out.

I said, “We went into the studio and we cut some tunes.” Glenn asked, “What’s really fucking going on? I want to know what the fuck is going on with you guys. This is bullshit. I don’t want to be kept in the dark.” I said, “You need to talk to management. You don’t punch me out because I’m the new bass player.” It got pretty heated there. Ronnie stepped in and said, “Listen. This is the wrong place for this kind of thing. All this stuff will be settled soon.” It was pretty bad. I mean, it wasn’t comfortable, that’s for sure.

The rest of the tour was real quiet and somber because they knew it was over. It was a pretty interesting transition. The tour ended; we went back to New York, they went back to England. Ritchie left Purple, rented a house out in Malibu, California, and then about four weeks later, we got a phone call from our management company in New York, Thames Talent, which also booked Purple. They said, “You guys are going to California. We’re going to look for some houses, you’re going out there to write the album and then we’re going to form a band.”

JC: So this would be the first of many lineups that Ritchie would have. As you know, he’s never kept the same lineup for more than one album.

CG: Yeah, there were a lot of changes. At one point, I sat down and added up that there was twenty-seven different members for the first five years.

JC: The music in Rainbow would be entirely different than Elf.

CG: Yeah, Elf had broken the zippers, if you will, and just busted out of our seams. Elf had been touring with Purple for almost three years straight and in our rehearsals I always brought in the Zeppelin kind of feel or the Deep Purple kind of feel. That’s the kind of rhythm stuff I played, but it just didn’t fit in Elf. Ronnie would say, “That’s a really great riff, Craig, oh my god, that’s killer shit, but really, it doesn’t fit on this album.” So the transition was right.

JC: There’s one thing I have to comment on regarding Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow. I know the credits read Blackmore/Dio for “If You Don’t Like Rock’N’Roll,” but there’s no way Ritchie wrote it. It sounds very much like an Elf tune.

CG: It wasn’t initially gonna be on that album because if you listen to the album, it’s kind of a misfit song. It was a song that Elf had come up with the riff and partially written it. It was supposed to be at the end of the Trying to Burn the Sun album. The album was pretty much done, in the bag, and we had that song left over. We just came up with it too late and it ended up on the Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow album.

JC: So you went ahead and you recorded the Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow album, but Ritchie went on tour with the Rising lineup. What happened?

CG: We had bought houses out on the Coast. The band was a viable band, and then we got in to actual rehearsals to go out on tour. The rehearsals just weren’t going good. I mean Ritchie kept putting the guitar down and walking away and it was like Deep Purple all over again. So there was a band meeting and they wanted to make some changes. They wanted to bring in Cozy Powell. Cozy Powell was and still is in my mind, first of all, a great person. One of the sweetest guys and one of the funniest guys you’d ever meet in your life. He’s an amazing guy and a machine on drums. Gary, our drummer from Elf, was amazing in his own way too. Gary had an R&B kind of a groove, funk feel where Cozy had like a metal feel. Gary kind of dabbled around in between the beats and played a little bit too many little fill kind of things, if you will, for that type of music. Cozy just laid it down, played across the beat and just like laid down this monster thing.

So they brought Cozy in to rehearse for a week and didn’t tell Gary. Here’s Gary, living right down the beach from me, not even a hundred yards from my house, and we’re going in to Hollywood every day to SIR Studios and we’re fucking rehearsing to go out on tour. Oh my God, how fucking horrible.

That caused a huge upheaval in the band. Mickey Lee and Gary were in the band for so many years before I joined. Mickey Lee had a fit. He didn’t show up one day. Mickey Lee got so smashed. I mean he just drank an incredible amount of scotch and he just got fucking trashed. We couldn’t find him for a couple of days, and then finally, Colin came in and said, “I found him. He’s at the beach now.” Mickey Lee said, “If you’re getting rid of Chops –that was Gary’s nickname– then I’m leaving too. This is not the band I want. This is not what we did. This is not what we worked our lives, heart, lungs and liver out for, to be sliced and fucking diced”. So Mickey Lee quit.

There was a huge explosion. Then they told Gary and he literally cried. Literally fucking cried. That’s when I said, “You know what? Fuck this. If this is the way this thing is going, it’s only going to be a matter of time before you fucking pluck me too.” They were left with Cozy, Ronnie and Ritchie.

JC: I also heard that you were rehired in 1977.

CG: Yeah, they threw Jimmy Bain out and they brought in Mark Clarke from this band called Tempest. Mark Clarke is like a jazz-fusion bassist. He’s kind-of like a metal version of Stanley Clarke but Ritchie hated him because he played a lot of notes. So anyways, Ronnie calls me back in ’77 and said, “Listen, you know, we’ve gone through some bassists and we realize that you were the founding member. You’ve got a fucking great groove. The band hasn’t felt the same since you left. It would be great to have a friend in the band. Would you like to come back?” So I flew back out and rehearsed with them. It’s like dating a crack head- it just doesn’t change. Ritchie’s pulling the same shit. Ronnie and Ritchie are in different dressing rooms. This fucking temperamental bullshit. I was bringing in a lot of musical ideas and directions that Ritchie didn’t want to know about. Automatically I started to get constantly fucking hit on. It was like, “Look, Roger wouldn’t play it that way. Roger this, Roger that.” I said, “Well, go fucking hire Roger.” It was great though, playing with Cozy, because Cozy was an animal.

JC: Ritchie eventually did hire Roger Glover. Was Tony Carey in the band while you were there?

CG: Yup, Tony Carey was in the band.

JC: I heard that he was another character that was also separate from most of the band members.

CG: I never really got to know him. I mean we would say, “Hello, how you doing?” and then you’d say, “Great. Come on over here,” and we’d figure out some counter-melody parts to play and some rudimental bass parts that matched his stuff. He was like an employee, I mean, he wasn’t even like a band member. He was like a stagehand and he just was always in the background. The only time he said anything was at an interview when somebody put the mic in front of him and asked him some questions. He wasn’t a weird guy, but not real personable.

JC: What did you do after Rainbow?

CG: I was burned out from playing four or five years straight; it was about 200 nights a year. I stayed in Los Angeles for another year after that and then I moved into the Record Plant. I had a really good friend that was an engineer and he says, “Look. We’re close friends. Why don’t you come in and just do some work with me?” So I said, “All right.”

I was engaged; I finally had a girlfriend. We had got a house and everything was nice. I was at the Record Plant for two years and I played on anybody’s album that needed a bass player. I was doing $3,000 to $4,000 a week. I mean, that’s like $10,000 a week now. And I went at eight at night until like six in the morning. Then I’d go home, have breakfast, and hang out. It was like the vampire life, but it was the studio life and I loved it.

JC: Who did you play with during those studio years? I know you probably can’t name all of them, but can you name some of them?

CG: I did some James Taylor sessions. I did a thing with Aretha Franklin. The Brecker Brothers. I met the guys from Steely Dan and played on some shit that was never released.

JC: Now, I came across one album that you recorded at the Record Plant; Ozz’s Take No Prisoners.

CG: Oh, yeah. The guitarist, Gregg Parker, was a good friend of Ringo Starr’s and Ronnie Wood from the Stones, so they were kind of instrumental in helping him get a deal with CBS. He was like a Jimi Hendrix kind of a guy, and he actually introduced me to Donnelle Hagan, the drummer on there that was playing with Aretha Franklin. Thanks to Donnelle, I got the gig with Aretha.

JC: Oh yeah, that must have been cool.

CG: It was unreal who you met because everybody recorded at the Record Plant. The Record Plant was the fucking place. I mean I actually recorded in Studio C, where Hendrix did the Electric Ladyland album. I actually recorded on that same marble stage. Standing there where Hendrix recorded, in the same studio, on the same piece of marble was unreal. There were even road cases there that read “Electric Ladyland Music.” I was like, “Man, this is Hendrix’ shit.” It was great.

JC: How did the Sabbath thing get started?

CG: Ronnie calls me up. I just don’t know how he got my phone number because it was unlisted and I hadn’t seen him and I didn’t hang out with his people. But my phone rings and it’s Ronnie. “Craig, it’s Ron.” “Ron who?” “You probably don’t remember me, do you?” and I went,“Ron who?” “Ronnie.” And I went, “Fucking unbelievable, dude.” He said, “Listen, before you hang up, blah, blah, blah. I know you’re pissed, but hear me out.” I said, “The only reason you’re calling me, Ronnie is because you fucking want something. You never call anybody if it’s going to do them any good. You’re one of those.” “Fuck you, Craig, blah, blah, blah.” He hangs up.

Ronnie calls back, and he says, “Listen, I just joined Black Sabbath,” and I laughed right out loud. Then I remember saying, “Those fucking dinosaurs,” and that’s a terrible thing to say. They were done at the time. Never Say Die was the last album and it was horrible. He goes, “Listen. We wrote some material. I’m a full member of the band. Oz is gone for good and Geezer just quit.” I say, “If Ozzy’s gone and Geezer left, then you’re pretty much fucked then.” He said, “We’ve got a big house up in Bel Air. We’ve been rehearsing for about two months. We’ve looked at some bass players, but no one can do what we need them to do. You’re the only guy I know. It would be great to have a friend in the band again.” I said, “That’s what you told me in fricking Rainbow. This is the same story.” He goes, “No, please, please.” I said, “I’m happy. I’m at the Record Plant. I’m happy. I’m making really big, really good cash, and I’m home every morning.” He says, “I’m going to come down. We’re going to talk and I just want you to come up. I just want you to hear what we’re doing.” Anyway, I said, “Okay.”

So they came and got me and we drove up to this five-car garage and a gorgeous house. I said, “Ah, it looks like you’ve got some money. That’s a good sign.” Ronnie and I walk up the door. Bill Ward opens the door. It’s about six at night. All he’s got on are his boxer shorts and he’s got a 16-ounce can of Schlitz in his hand. He hasn’t shaven for like five days. I didn’t know who he was because he didn’t look like the pictures; he looked like a garage guy that fixes cars. He said, “Come in mates. I’ll take you into the living room and you can meet Tony and the rest of us and we’ll have a little chat.” Ronnie goes, “This is Bill. Bill Ward. This is Craig,” and I went, “Okay, it’s a pleasure to meet you in your underwear.”

We walked into the living room and there’s Tony because I recognized the real thick, squared-off helmet hair that he had back then. He’s standing there and he’s got a couple of Marshall cabinets in the middle of this living room, cranking metal. So I just sat and chatted a little bit, and then Bill got behind the drums. There’s a drum kit right in the living room and the drum leg, you know the little legs, they digging right into this beautiful floor. They didn’t give a shit. There were beer cans and shit on the floor of this house. They went into “Children Of the Sea.” So he goes, “See if you can follow this. It’s an A Craig.” So I dropped in, no problem.

Then they showed me “Wishing Well” and I can’t remember the third song. But anyway, we played there for about an hour or two. I mean just kind-of jammed in the house and Ronnie said, “What’s it feel like to you?” and I said, “I don’t know. It didn’t feel like anything.” He goes, “Well think about it. I’m going to talk to these guys for a couple of days and I’ll call you back.” So they took me back to my house, and a couple days later, Ronnie rings me back and he said, “We rented SIR Studios in Hollywood, we got a full setup and we’d like you to come back in and play for a day and see what happens.” So that’s how the Sabbath thing started.

JC: Now did you help write any tunes that would show up on the Heaven and Hell album?

CG: Yeah, I brought in “Die Young.“ They didn’t have an upbeat, really strong, up-tempo song. We had moved to Miami to do the album, so we took over one of the Bee Gees’ houses. We rented one of Barry Gibbs’ houses there right in Biscayne Bay. We would do the album at Criteria Studios. Tony said, “I need something that’s a cruncher, like something up tempo, something that’s going to change the tempo of this album. Do you have anything?” I had this song called “Blinder“ and it was kind of like a “Kill the King“ kind of a song. It was really fast and I ended up using that with Gary Moore. I also had this idea that’s called “Die Young.” Ronnie says, “What’s that about?” I said, “Well, it’s self explanatory. My idea in life is get in, get what you want, and get out quick.” He goes, “Okay, cool. Let’s see what you’ve got.” So I played the riff. It was in the key of E, so it was easy to drop in on, and then we worked that up. In about an hour, we had “Die Young” done.

When we got in to the studio, we changed the middle eighth section where it drops down into like the half tempo piece. I didn’t write that piece. Ronnie wanted to bring it down. But the actual riff itself and the idea were mine.

JC: Okay, cool. Was there anything else besides “Die Young” or was that it?

CG: No, I wasn’t instrumental in writing any other pieces. I mean Tony and I bounced ideas off of each other and chord structures, but I’m not going to take credit for anything that I didn’t do, no.

JC: Okay. Now at a certain point, Geezer came back into the band.

CG: Yeah, the album was done and then we all were burned out and kind of fried, so we took a week off and I went to Key West. When I came back, we all got back together and we were making plans for rehearsals and the date that the album was going to come out. Ronnie said, “We’ve had a band meeting, Craig, and there’s something we need to discuss with you.” I said, “Okay, no problem.”

So we all kind of sat down and he said, “Geezer has been in contact with the band. Of course, he’s been in the band for fifteen years. While you were gone, him and Tony were on the phone together and we actually sent him a copy of what we’ve done. He’s very interested. He really, really is excited about the band again and he loves what we’ve done. We’re trying to make this transition equitable for everybody and we really think it would be better if Geezer came back to the band. How do you feel about that?”

I said, “Well, musically, I think it’s probably the smartest thing you could do because he’s an original member. Really what I did was kind of just filled his shoes. I never expected to be the bassist in this band. I didn’t come in here to replace Geezer. You can’t replace the guy. On the other hand, I’m pissed because you pulled me out of a situation that I had and I kind of was hoping to go forward with this thing. I know this album is definitely going to be something that’s going to make a mark on music. I mean I can hear it. That portion of the genre of music is dead right now and I think this album is going to reignite it,” which it did.

JC: Indeed it did.

CG: I said, “You know, we could probably fix that with a discussion. You could buy me out or whatever. We’ll talk money and we’ll go from there, but I do want credits for the album. I want my name on it. I want my writer’s credits and when the thing does go gold and platinum, I want my record awards and I want the residual income that goes with it.” So that’s kind of where that ended.

JC: Okay. Could you elaborate on what Geoff Nichols’ role was all in this?

CG: Geoff Nichols was and still is a very close friend of Tony’s. He was with an English band called Quartz. He’s a really funny guy. He’s a really great rhythm guitar player. He plays fill-in keyboards, although not a great keyboard player. When they hired me, Geoff Nichols wasn’t even part of the scenario. It was Ronnie, me, Tony and Bill. And then when we moved to Miami to do the album that’s when Geoff showed up, at the Miami house. A truck pulled up and this real tall skinny British guy got out with some gear and whatnot. He looked like a roadie.

JC: That’s cool. Now, right after Sabbath, you had the group Bible Black. Bible Black reteamed with you Gary Driscoll from Elf and Rainbow. The lead singer is the guy who was Jesus in Jesus Christ Superstar: Jeff Fenholt. How did Bible Black take place?

CG: After I left Sabbath, I moved. I bought a house in New York and I wanted to get out of L.A. I just had been up there for literally about nine years, and I love LA, but I needed a change. I was in upstate New York, and I found this house overlooking a lake in the middle of a vineyard. I guess it was, like a hundred thousand bucks, which was a great deal. Brand new house, four-bedroom house, had a full basement. I finished it all off into a studio. I said, “This is the shit, dude. I can get drunk and I live in a vineyard.”

I joined The Rods for about a year, and I played a bunch of dates with them, like maybe a hundred dates or so. Then, I left, and that’s when I formed Bible Black.

I had been in touch with this management team in New York: Harold Orenstein. Harold was Jeff Fenholt’s personal attorney and kind of confidante. He was instrumental in getting The Robert Stigwood Organization that was running Jesus Christ Superstar show on Broadway. Harold was like the liaison in getting Jeff Fenholt hooked up in that show.

Jeff was the original singer, the original Jesus Christ in Jesus Christ Superstar. If you go back and look at Time Magazine, Jeff’s actually on the cover of Time Magazine. So, he was the original before Ted Neeley. I mean, Jeff was the original singer, and he’s got an incredible voice, incredible range. He’s a great guy. Deep down inside, he’s a blues singer, too. He’s like a Paul Rodgers kind of singer, just awesome.

JC: Was Jeff already more spiritually inclined by that point?

CG: Yeah, he was very spiritual and he always had a Bible with him. He would read things and whatnot. I’m very much into God and Christ, and we hit it off very, very well.

Anyway, with Bible Black, I brought Gary in. We were like brothers. Then, I flew to New York and I met with Jeff. He owned one of Gregory Peck’s houses in Long Island. That’s how much money he had. I only went down there to meet him for a weekend, and I ended up staying for two weeks. We started writing material in that house.

We didn’t have a guitarist; we auditioned four or five guitarists. I mean, even we were thinking about getting Leslie West. That’s how I got in contact with Felix Pappalardi, who did all the Cream albums and ended up doing the album. We finally found this guitar player. His name is Andrew MacDonald; his nickname was Duck MacDonald, and he’s a very good friend of mine. We went back to my house in New York for, like, six months and just wrote material.

Bible Black did a bunch of dates. I mean, we played the Midwest. We played some summer festivals in North America. We went out; we probably did between forty and maybe sixty gigs and then four or five big festivals, and we got a huge response. Everything was great. It was a great live band because we’re all really good players and comfortable in front of twenty thousand people.

I hooked up with producer Jeff Glixman, who produced Kansas, to produce our album. I know him very well.

JC: Now, that album’s never been released.

CG: It was never released. I have the master of it. We went to Atlanta because Jeff Glixman was living there at Axis Studios. Axis Studios is where he did all the Kansas albums because all the guys from Kansas were from that area. So we went to Axis Studios for about a month and we recorded the album. We brought Felix in to engineer it and help us with the sounds and everything because I loved the sounds of Mountain and I loved Cream. I loved Felix. He’s one of the greatest bassists that ever breathed. Plus, he’s a great guy. He’s just awesome.

We all kind of split up and went our separate ways because Jeff was gonna shop the record for us. He had all the connections with the labels and whatnot. We had some offers, and they just weren’t what we were looking for. Jeff Fenholt wasn’t real sure if he wanted to stay or not. He thought things were gonna happen right away, which we did, too. I mean, we had put a lot of money into this thing. We spent our own money on it. Of course, he had some, and I had some, so it wasn’t like a big drain or nothing, but it was the time factor. Like, a year went by, and we still didn’t get a deal.

So he was looking at other things, and Gary, the drummer, moved back in with his girlfriend; she was in the Midwest. Duck went back and started playing with some other metal bands, and I was the only one left. So I said, “Well, I need a break from this,” so I moved to London for, like, a couple of months. I just went over and rented a flat just to get out. Anyway, to make a long story short, I brought, of course, the master with me, and I went to EMI. I called up EMI, and I said, “Look, I’m in London,” and he said, “Bring it. I want to hear it.”

I brought it in. I played four songs for EMI, and they immediately offered me 200,000 pounds right there, which is about 350 grand, for a deal to go back, reorganize the band, re-record the album, write some new songs, and we were gonna put this album out under EMI. Well, that same week, I went to see Ronnie play at the Hammersmith Odeon in London. That was his first Dio tour. I went back and was hanging out, and who did I run into? Ian Paice and Gary Moore.

Gary Moore had just finished the Victims of the Future album. He just had fired Neil Murray for, like, the tenth time and didn’t have a bass player. And they had a world tour booked, ready to go, and they said, “What are you doing now?” I said, “Nothing. In fact, my return ticket’s on the tenth of the month. I have about eight more days here, and I’m going back.” “Well, you ain’t going back. We want you to stay, if you’d like to.” So we rehearsed, and I learned all the songs off the new album.

We went in and we did rehearsals for about a week and a half, and it sounded awesome. I mean, it was just great because I had known Ian for years, and it just locked in. I love Gary Moore. I mean, he, Steve Vai, Jeff Beck, Eddie Van Halen - there’s very few people that can accomplish what those guys can do on guitar. So, I sacked the Bible Black thing. I called them back and said I had just joined Gary Moore’s band, and I was gonna stay with them.

JC: Bible Black has some tragedy. Both Gary Driscoll and Felix Pappalardi are no longer with us.

CG: Yeah, Felix is gone, and that was a tough, horrible, terrible thing. That just floored us right there. Of course, Gary, three years later was murdered. It was very, very tough. I mean, I just kind of wanted to forget about it for a while. There was too much pain. It was a tough time for me, too. I mean, my musical career was way high. Then, it went down and flat and I rebuilt it. I went through a divorce during that time period, too, so it wasn’t a good time.

JC: What did you do with Gary Moore?

CG: I stayed with Gary Moore for three years. I did the Double Life andWe Want Moore albums, and a couple of videos.

JC: You were on tour with Gary Moore with The Monsters of Rock festival. Talk about that festival.

CG: Yeah, that was an awesome thing. We toured England, Germany, France, and Austria. It was us, AC/DC, Ozzy, Van Halen, Accept, Mötley Crüe, and that was a fun thing. We did about 90 dates or so. That was May through December. That was crazy; the back-stage area was just all opened up. It was just like a huge barbecue, like a family back-yard barbecue. It was all roped off and secure and all that, but we didn’t really give a shit if the fans came back. I mean, we couldn’t have 10,000 of them back there, but it was cool to have guys jump the fence and shit and want to come in and hang out. We gave them drinks and we hung out.

The chicks were there. There were tons of chicks. I mean, monster chicks, naked chicks drinking beer every day. What a view, dude! The press was so fucking cool. Most of these guys in the press are musicians. Most of them play an instrument, and they love music. After about a few weeks of talking with these people, they followed us everywhere; it became like this fucking entourage.

It was a lot of fun and I became very good friends with Tommy Lee. Tommy Lee told me his story. He said, “I always wanted to play drums. I drove my mother nuts. I grew up in West Covina, a tiny, shitty suburb of Los Angeles, and my mother, she was single. She didn’t have the money to buy a fucking set of drums. I had an accordion. She made me play piano and then in the school band, I would play accordion. I had my accordion hooked up to an amplifier in my bedroom and I used to put it up against the window and play “Smoke on the Water” to the neighbors. Then, finally, I got a set of drums.”

Tommy and I just kind of hit it off really well. We were drinking partners, and we’d keep the bar open no matter where we were every night. We would all just get pounded. We knew we had to play the next day and their tour managers would come around and give us that look like, “Come on, guys, you know. Come on, you have to play tomorrow.” I mean, we got fucked up. I remember a couple of times Tommy and I got thrown out of the hotel bars.

I remember walking up beside the stage because Mötley Crüe was an opening act then; they weren’t headlining yet. I’m watching Tommy play through the set. He plays really hard. I’m looking over, he’s looking at me, and he’s fucking rolling his eyes. He’s purple because the alcohol’s coming out of him. He’s sweating his ass off and I’m just pointing at him, laughing. He’s looking at me going, “We fucking fucked ourselves up last night. I don’t know how I’m going to get through this set,” but he did it.

It was such a relief to get through the set because, I mean, literally, it’s a hundred degrees. Europe in the summer is as hot as it is in Florida. Yeah, we sweated our asses off. The backstage area was great.

JC: I know that Ozzy and Eddie Van Halen are big drinkers.

CG: Yeah, it was nuts. Every night was like New Years’ Eve. We were all young then and stupid. I mean, whatever came into our mind, somebody would do something crazy and we’d all try and outdo them. The most fun part was being able to play with everybody because backstage, everybody had their gear on, and it was just an open area back there. I would just walk from one dressing room to the next with a bass on, just walk in and just crank it.

We all knew the same songs because we all grew up in the same era. Somebody would go into “Living, Loving Maid,” a Led Zeppelin song, and then we’d do a bunch of Cream riffs and shit. It was crazy. It was just so much fucking fun. That was the best part of it, I think: being able to play with everybody, be buddies and be friends and shit.

JC: Why did you leave Gary Moore?

CG: Let’s see, I left at the end of the second year, and I just couldn’t see myself staying in the band indefinitely. I wasn’t able to write. The only thing I wrote was "Blinder." We used my song, “Blinder” as a single, but Gary was in complete control of everything, which he should be, but I was more of a sideman. I mean, I was in the band, but I wasn’t like a full member, so I was paid differently than Ian Paice. Paice got a ton of money, which he should have, but I wasn’t making a lot of money. I wasn’t writing. I was just floating the ship trying to figure out what I wanted to do.

I almost went with Ozzy Osbourne.

JC: Really?

CG: Yeah. Bob Daisley left Ozzy. When I left, Gary hired on Bob Daisley, and Bob said, “Listen, Ozzy’s cool. You’ll love him. You’re a perfect fit for him.” We had some conversations. I spoke with Sharon a number of times. I sent him off some tapes, and they said, “We know all about you, Craig. We’re not in the dark about you. We’ve seen you play many, many times. You’re a phenomenal bassist. Your attitude is really a lot like ours. It would be a good fit. Why don’t we talk about this?”

Truthfully, a couple of weeks went by, and I just never pursued it. That’s something you don’t turn your back on. You know what I mean? I really wasn’t enthused about it. I mean, truthfully, the money that we were talking about wasn’t gonna be huge. To me, it was gonna be like me playing in another great band as a supporting musician. I just didn’t want to do that again.

JC: Ozzy seems to have a habit of having bass players write lyrics. There’s Geezer. There’s Bob Daisley. I mean even Lemmy wrote, “Mama, I’m Coming Home.” You might have not gotten credit, but you might have had a chance to get your lyrics out.

CG: I know I probably could have written some stuff. I know that because I know that kind of music, but it just wasn’t what I wanted.

JC: Right after Gary Moore’s, you come back into The Rods.

CG: Yeah, I came back from England, and I had known David for years from Elf and Carl Canedy, I had known him as a drummer for years. He’s a great drummer. They had a bass player, and I think it’s the same guy they have now, Gary Bordonaro, but Gary didn’t want – at that time, didn’t want a commitment. He didn’t want to play a lot of dates, for whatever reason: I guess family reasons or personal reasons. I just signed back on and did Heavier Than Thou with them as a bassist and then we did a few dates up until about ’87.

JC: The Rods would be your last gig. Why?

CG: I just needed some time, and time turns into more time, and I kind of retired. I moved to Florida. I got a house down here near the water, and I just started building stuff. I started building basses and playing the basses that I have. I’m a mechanic, too. I restore cars. I bought a 1972 Porsche 911 and disassembled it. It took four years just to take it apart by hand and just disassembled it piece by piece right down to the bottom, and then I reassembled it with all new parts: new-old stock parts. I’ve just been kind of living a really happy life. I mean, I don’t drink. I don’t do drugs. I don’t party. I’m single.

I got divorced for the second time, and I got custody of my son; my son’s twenty-four now. We have a really simple life. It’s great. I started getting re-interested in the music portion of it again, and I play around here with just some local guys. I went to New York and play with The Rods. I did a few dates with them.

JC: Talk about your bass company, Infinite Metal Werkz.

CG: When I was playing, I had endorsements with Hamer, Fender, Ibanez and Schechter. These are great companies and they would build me anything that I wanted specification-wise. They could make little changes in the neck and the circuitries to get the sounds that I wanted, but they were always limited. I mean, they’re great basses, and I admire what they do, but I was always needing something else. It was never what I wanted.

Also, if you look at every bass that’s out there, they’re beautiful, they’re brown, and they’re boring. It’s like, “What the fuck?” You know what I mean? I love the colors of wood, and I’m not trying to put anything down, but nothing got me excited.

I figured, “You know what, I’m a bassist. Who better to build a bass than somebody that’s been playing the instrument for 30 years? Nothing’s changed in the bass world in 20 years. It’s time for a change. No one’s building any colorful stuff.” So I took Ferrari yellow, Porsche GT3 biker green and the Lamborghini colors and kind-of – I can’t call them those colors because I’ll get sued, but those are exciting colors, and I built an overdrive system in it and a Kahler tailpiece that’s a solo piece, and you can go out and play some monster shit with that. That bass will play more different kinds of tones and sounds than any other bass on the market.

I created a body that’s sexy-looking. It’s comfortable to play. The balance is perfect. You don’t have to hold the neck up and it’s got a really clean sound- if you want that sound. It’s got a three-band equalizer built right into the bass, so with a twist of a knob, you can go from clean, you know, Stanley Clarke deep funk to like an overdriven Felix Pappalardi sound on the same bass without having to change the tones on your amplifiers.

Then with the hip shot tremolos set up, (I got a deal with Kahler), there’s nothing you can’t do. It’s a perfect transition from a normal bass in one instrument to something that’s a solo bass. I used to have to put down one bass when it was time to do a solo and pick up another bass- this one, all you do is add the bar to it. Then you can go out there and just spin some crazy shit and play some monster stuff. You can’t stop playing it. Once you pick it up, you can’t stop playing it.

JC: I see that two of the finest bassists in the world picked your basses up: Billy Sheehan and Victor Wooten.

CG: I’ve known Billy forever, since way back. We’re only like 75 miles from each other and used to play in the same club. I figured he’d be a perfect guy to show this to. He picked it up, played it and just started to laugh and shit, and he said, “Wow, this is fucking amazing good.” I’m shipping him one out.

Then, about a month ago, Victor Wooten played here at the beach where I live at the Freebird Café, which is Lynyrd Skynyrd’s bar here. It holds about a thousand people. I brought one over, and went and talked to the stage manager in the afternoon. He goes, “Yeah, Victor, I’m sure he’d like to take a look at that,” so that was really simple.

At the end of the gig, I had one in the car in a gig bag and I said, “This is a bass.” I handed him a note and an overview of what it was, and he said, “Yeah, man, come on in. You’re the bass player with Rainbow and Sabbath? Wow.” I never met him before. He’s a cool dude. He’s so fucking down to earth. I brought him that biker green one, and I said, “Here, this is what I’m building.” He said, “Wow.” He sat down and just started playing. He played it for about 20 minutes straight and just said, “This is fucking unbelievable. This is one of the greatest basses I’ve ever played in my entire life. Where do I get one?” I said, “Well, I build them, and the company’s Infinite Metal Werkz.”

JC: These basses you can get on your website or on eBay. Is there any plan to distribute them offline? Do you plan to sell them at Guitar Center or Sam Ash?

CG: Yeah, we’re taking those steps. The main plan right now is to get into the NAMM show. Once you get into the NAMM, that’s the show. That’s the biggest music show on the planet earth, and over 100,000 people are going to go through there in four days and I’m hoping for some kind of a little buzz there, I’m hoping. Next step would be get a licensing agreement with a large distribution worldwide and then put them in stores. That’s the plan. That’s the big picture.

JC: Anything else we can expect you from besides the basses?

CG: I think we’re going to do an Elf reunion album. I really think that’s in the works.

JC: Really!?

CG: Yeah. David went off to see Ronnie. I think it was in June. He stayed two weeks out there with Ronnie and they were writing stuff. David came back and said, “You know what, Ronnie brought it up. I think it would be the best time to do this. The music industry is right for that kind of music, and we’re all still alive, thank God, and it might be something we want to really consider.” Mickey Lee’s back in town, back in New York, and he was speaking with Ronnie. I think 2010 might see David Feinstein, me, Ronnie Dio and Mickey Lee back together again as Elf and we’ll find a drummer.

JC: I hope that’s the case next year. Well, I think that covers everything. Thank you, Craig.

CG: Thank you, Jeff.

A Brief But Very Candid Conversation with Betsy Rue

2009-10-13T16:34:00.000-07:00

Betsy Rue has a small part in My Bloody Valentine 3-D, but it is a part that most viewers will not forget. In her scene, Betsy’s character, Irene, has just finished having sex with Frank, a truck driver (portrayed by My Bloody Valentine’s screenwriter Todd Farmer), in a motel room. Frank has made a home movie of their sexual activities. As Frank walks out, Irene grabs a gun from her purse. Although she hasn’t gotten dressed yet, that doesn’t stop her from her coming out of the motel. The naked Irene follows Frank to the parking lot and points her gun at him. Frank laughs because the gun is filled with blanks. Unfortunately for Frank, the killer is behind him and hacks him to death with a pickaxe. The killer then chases Irene back into the hotel room. Although Irene locks the door and hides, the killer manages to break in, find her and kill her.

Besides My Bloody Valentine, Betsy has kept busy for the last three years. She has made several appearances in film and television. 2009 has been a particularly good year for Betsy. In addition to My Bloody Valentine, Betsy can be seen in Rob Zombie’s H2 as a redneck girl who falls victim to Michael Myers, and on the hit HBO series True Blood, chasing Ryan Kwanten’s character Jason Stackhouse.

In this brief but candid conversation, Betsy and I discuss her famous scene from My Bloody Valentine. We also discuss her appearances in H2 and True Blood.

I met Betsy at the Horrorfind Weekend convention in Hunt Valley, MD. I want to thank her for taking the time to do this interview with me.

Jeff Cramer: How did you get started in acting?

Betsy Rue: I moved to L.A. about three years ago and I got started because a casting director noticed me in a coffee shop and asked me if I was an actress. I said “No”, because I was coming out to L.A. to go to school. She said, ”Well, you should come in for an audition.” I had no idea what an audition was. I had no idea how to act. I had no idea how to read. I went in and it was Days of Our Lives. They must have been desperate because they gave me the job, so I worked on Days of Our Lives and I loved it. I’ve never quit acting since.

JC: What other roles did you do before My Bloody Valentine?

BR: Before My Bloody Valentine, I did a lot of television spots. I was on How I Met Your Mother, According to Jim, Bones, NCIS, and CSI. I did a little movie called Deep in the Valley, which is a comedy, and I did a movie called Miss March, which is also a comedy. Then I got My Bloody Valentine.

JC: Now, when you were reading the script for My Bloody Valentine, did you have an idea of what type of role you were about to play?

BR: You know, I didn't actually get the script before I auditioned. I knew that there was some nudity involved, but I didn't know the capacity of the nudity, so I went in and I auditioned. I waited about two weeks and I didn't hear anything, then pretty soon I got a call from Patrick [Lussier, director of My Bloody Valentine.] They wanted to offer me the job, but they wanted to make sure that I was going to be comfortable with everything before I did it, so I knew what it entailed before I went in and actually, the end product was a lot more than they expected. When you're watching the movie, if you look at the part where I take the gun out of the purse, before I come out into the parking lot, I grab a sheet off the bed.

We did this many times with the sheet, and it just wasn't working, so I said, “Forget the sheet, I am leaving the sheet behind.” So that's how I ended up getting so much more nude.

JC: So this was your idea? Not the screenplay's idea?

BR: It was partly my idea, yes. Because, as an actor, I just felt a lot better forgetting the sheet. I felt like it was more real. I felt like I was in my reality. I was, like, “I would not be worrying about this stupid sheet right now! I just want the tape back.”

JC: I was watching My Bloody Valentine with a very noisy crowd. Everyone was kind of talking through the movie, but the minute you walk out into the parking lot, all that stops. Everyone was, like –

BR: Everyone was, like, “Oh, what's going to happen?”

JC: Yes, because you are only wearing high heels!

BR: Yeah, that was pretty crazy. They actually wanted me to wear UGG boots, you know, like the winter-type boots. That's what they wanted me to have and I was, like, “Oh no, this girl would be in heels all the way!”

JC: Did the script have you running back with the sheet on in the hotel?

BR: I wrap the sheet around me and I never take it off, so therefore, I die with the sheet on, but the sheet got left behind, as it should have.

JC: That’s very interesting. A lot of people, like me, were speculating on what courage you must have had, to just go ahead and do all this.

BR: Oh, I did. I said, “Forget it, if you want this, I'm going to go balls to the walls and here it is.”

JC: Can you give me the reaction of what it's been like since that movie came out?

BR: Yeah, it's been awesome. The reviews are really awesome and I was worried that I was going to be the naked girl. I definitely am the naked girl, but I'm glad that I made an impression. I felt that the reviews and a lot of people's reactions were that it was such a memorable scene. A lot of it, obviously, had to do with the nudity, but some people say that by the end of it, when I was dying, they didn't even remember that I was nude because they were just so scared for me. That, to me, was very important as a character. Forget about the nudity, what is happening right now? I am going to get killed!

JC: I don't know if you saw Eastern Promises with Viggo Mortensen. There’s a scene that is very similar to what you just described to me. He’s sitting in a bathhouse and these two guys are about to kill him. So he has to defend himself while he is naked. If there had been a towel in the scene that would have been more distracting to me.

BR: It’s true. It's funny that you mention that because when my manager, Patrick and I all got on the phone, that's how he described the scene. It was like Viggo Mortensen's scene.

JC: Let's talk about Halloween II. H2, how did that come about?

BR: That came about because I was actually going to do the first Halloween and I couldn't do it. I was actually going to play Kristina Klebe's part in Halloween, then I was going to come in and play the part of Mya [Bree Grant’s role] in Halloween II but I was filming True Blood so I couldn't get away. Rob Zombie and I talked and we really wanted to work together, so basically he wrote the part for me in Halloween II because I only had a couple days. I went in and shot it. It was poorly lit, but that's all right.

JC: That's probably one of the reasons I didn't catch you right away.

BR: A lot of people haven't been able to recognize me. They ask, “You were in Halloween II?” and I say, “Yes, I was.” It's so funny because so many people were in that movie and they got cut out. I actually didn't get cut out, but you just can't see me. It's all right, it was so fun working with Rob Zombie; he is amazing, I love him, so it was just an honor to be working with him.

JC: A few online reviews mistakenly credit you as the stripper in the bunny ranch.

BR: They think that's me?

JC: One review said something like that.

BR: (gives a brief disapproving look for a second) That's what they do. That's okay.

JC: Let’s talk about True Blood.

BR: I did a couple episodes of season two and I'm going to be coming on for season three. I can't really talk about it, other than that I'm going to be on it.

JC: Can you talk about season two?

BR: Season two I play Shawnelle, and basically, I'm trying to get the Jason character to have sex with me. I have the hots for Jason Stackhouse, who doesn’t?

JC: (Laughs)

BR: You haven’t watched it yet. So anyway, that's what I do and season three, they're maybe going to give me a shot to –

JC: Become a regular?

BR: Well, I'm going to be doing a few episodes, so we'll see what happens.

JC: Any other projects besides True Blood?

BR: Well, they're working on Halloween 3D right now. [Note: Shortly after this interview, Dimension Films postponed the production of Halloween 3D.] Patrick [Lussier, director of My Bloody Valentine] and Todd [Farmer, screenwriter of My Bloody Valentine] are doing it, so I am in talks with them, as well as Dimension, to do it, so we'll see. I have another film I'm going to be doing in January, but I have signed a confidentiality agreement about, so I can't talk about that. Other than that, I have a guest appearance on the show Eastwick this fall. I'm playing Melody and I’m going out with Rebecca Romijn’s ex-boyfriend, so I fight with her, she's a witch. She might have to put spells on me. That's it.

JC: Okay, any last words you want to say out to your fans?

BR: Oh, my God! You guys, I love you. Thank you so much for not judging me. I know that I took a risk and I went balls to the wall with going fully nude. It was awesome and it was liberating. Thank you guys, so much, for not bashing me for it.

A Very Candid Conversation with Paul Kratka

2009-10-08T16:53:00.000-07:00

Paul Kratka plays Rick, the love interest of Dana Kimmell’s character, in Friday the 13th Part III. Like many characters in the Friday the 13th series, he does not meet a happy ending when he comes across Jason. However, his death scene is one of the most memorable ones in the Friday the 13th saga. It depicts Jason squeezing Paul’s head so hard that his eyeball pops out of its socket. That was Paul’s only screen credit for the next 23 years. Paul left acting to become a chiropractor.

He was brought back into the acting fold by independent filmmaker Scott Goldberg. They have done several films together. One memorable film they did is Loss of Hope. The film is only a couple minutes long, but despite its length, Paul delivers a much stronger performance than he did in Friday the 13th Part III. Readers of this interview can watch this film by clicking on this link.

When he is not working with Scott, Paul continues his other passion: health. He runs a website, which is primarily focused on eating and living healthy. Readers can click on his website: http://www.drkratka.com

In this candid conversation, we discuss his experience on Friday the 13th Part III, his time away from acting, practicing medicine, his work with Scott Goldberg, and his website.

I want to thank Scott Goldberg for getting Paul and I together to do this interview. But most of all, I want to thank Paul.

Jeff Cramer: Just for the record, when and where were you born?

Paul Kratka: I was born in L.A. in 1955.

JC: What made you decide to become an actor?

PK: Well, I ended up at Santa Monica City College when I was, I guess, 19. I don’t know, there’s always been something in the back of my mind where I just thought it’d be something fun to try. I hadn’t done anything in high school. I wasn’t really part of the whole drama scene, but I guess there was some kind of desire deep in my psyche to do something like that.

When I was at Santa Monica College, I took their drama class. On the first day of the semester they said, “Oh, by the way, we’re having auditions for this semester’s productions this week, and you’re welcome to come out.” I thought, “Oh, I’ll just go watch and see what that process is like”. So I went to that and I was sitting there going, “Oh, I think I can do this. At least do the audition.” So I did and I ended up getting one of the principal roles in the production. It was the play Harvey and I got the role of Dr. Lyman Sanderson. At that point, I was hooked to really follow-up and keep going.

JC: What other acting had you done before Friday the 13th Part III?

PK: Well, I had been studying privately in North Hollywood, studying acting and just scrambling around trying to get jobs. I was doing some on-camera spokesman work, some commercials, and had done a small part on General Hospital.

JC: That’s kind of interesting that you had mentioned General Hospital knowing you would eventually become a doctor.

PK: Now, the funny part of that story too is that when I went in to read for Friday the 13th, the casting director had told me that he had gone home one day at lunch, which he normally does not do. His wife, who normally doesn’t watch soap operas, happened to have it on the TV and it just happened to be that episode that I was on.

He saw me and commented to his wife, “Wow, that guy did a pretty decent job in that little bit that he just did.” I had no reason to believe that he was just patronizing me or anything. I mean, he seemed sincere when he said it, but it was just a very coincidental exposure prior to going in for that particular meeting.

JC: So during that audition, how did you land the part of Rick?

PK: Well, one of my buddies at the acting school I was at in North Hollywood was a guy named Harris Kal, an actor who had a recurring role on Happy Days. He had gone in to read for Friday the 13th, although it wasn’t called that at that point. They were going back and forth whether they were gonna do it as a non-union picture or not.

Anyway, so he went in to read for this. He told me, “Paul, you really should meet these guys. They’re the coolest casting directors I’ve ever read for.” Because sometimes casting people can be a little short with you or not necessarily pleasant or polite.

So anyway, I managed to go in and read for the casting directors, Dave Eman and Bill Lytle. I went in with the understanding that I was going in to read for the same part that Harris had read for, which was the part of Andy in Part III. I think Andy was the guy who walks on his hands.

The casting directors were indeed totally cool. At the end of that thing they said, “You’re really not right for that part at all, but we think you might be just right for the lead. Can you come back and read for the director and the producer in the next day or so?” I said, “Yeah, of course I can do that.” They then said, “You know, this character Derek (at the time the character was called Derek, not Rick) he’s not a city boy, he lives out in the country and works as a carpenter. So, when you come in for this reading for the director and the producer, just keep that in mind. You don’t have to dress nicely or anything like that for this meeting.”

I went in for the next meeting with Steve Miner and Frank Mancuso Jr. I dressed in blue jeans, work boots, and work parka, but I also carried in a couple of 2x4s on my shoulder, and a skill saw. They just thought that was really cool, they just laughed about it, and they thought it was really neat that I had done that. So it kind of got off on the right foot. I had a good reading and clearly they were interested, but it took a long time. It was probably two months that I read over with various actresses that they were trying to nail down the true star of the picture.

JC: Okay, so Dana Kimmell hadn’t been cast yet?

PK: Yeah, I don’t know if they wanted her and she was unavailable, or they wanted Amy Steel and she wasn’t available. I don’t know. There was something going on like that where the person they really wanted wasn’t going to be there. So they were really stressing over who was gonna be the lead. So they had me keep reading over and over with people. Yet, I didn’t have a contract or anything so it was really nerve-racking for me because I felt like I had the part, but I didn’t in terms of having a signed contract or an agreement or anything.

So it was a long two months for sure, going through that process. But it was a learning experience as well and Steve Miner was really cool. I really like him.

JC: Had you seen Friday I or II?

PK: No. To this day I’m not really a horror film fan. It’s not something I would go seek out or watch. I have a tremendous respect for that genre and a really big respect for the fans.

That’s another funny story. When I went in for that meeting with Frank Mancuso Jr. and Steve Miner, they asked me, “Well, have you seen Part I or Part II?” I said, “No, to be quite honest, it’s not really my kind of movie. I haven’t seen that.” They looked at each other, just kinda shrugged and went, “Yeah, just our luck. We’ve got some joker in here that hasn’t seen it.” I think they also appreciated that I was honest with them. I didn’t say, “Oh, yeah. It was great. I loved them both.” Or come up with some story that was a bunch of BS.

JC: What was it like working with Steve Miner? Did you have any idea he would go on to bigger things?

PK: No, I was 26 years old at the time and it was a really big deal to get a role like that at that stage in my career. I was just so excited and it was just so cool to be on a big project. Steve Miner and I, you know, we kinda developed a friendship. We played tennis a few times together.

There were moments when we were shooting where I’d get frustrated because I didn’t feel like I had gotten into a rhythm. We were just moving on to the next shot. Steve would just say, “Hey, Paul man, this is about getting this thing done in an efficient manner, on budget, and on time. This isn’t an old class movie. This is a horror movie that we’re trying to shoot here.” So we would have our little runs now and then, but we got along really well. He’s got a great sense of humor and we had a good time working together.

JC: Friday the 13th Part III was shot in 3D. Could you describe what it was like working on that three dimensional project?

PK: Yeah, a couple of other 3Ds like Amityville 3D and Jaws 3D came out and it was because that new technology had been developed. I don’t understand it all together, but its kinda like two lenses are stacked on top of one another or something to that effect. So it just took longer for every shot to get set up because there was just more sensitivity or more attention paid to the depth of field of focus, the lighting, and all that sort of thing. There was just definitely more. Because this was the third in the Friday the 13th series, more money was being spent and they’d clearly had a successful franchise. More money was being spent because it was 3D.

So things just took longer and I think it was more frustrating for the technical crew to get it together for each shot. They also used this special type of crane. One time the crane was on some special dolly, the whole dolly collapsed, and somebody almost got killed. So there was some drama.

JC: What happened there?

PK: I mean, they had this ramp built where the dolly and the crane were going up. They built this kind of truss-like structure. In the process the thing just kinda fell over because the crane, the dolly and everything was really heavy. The person didn’t really get hurt, but it was really close. I mean they got hurt, but it wasn’t catastrophic by any means.

But that was just one of kind of a number of things that happened on the set. We had really extreme weather. It’d be really cold, and it was supposed to be taking place in the summer, like my opening scene where Dana Kimmell arrives at the cabin and I’m hiding behind the door sort of thing. That whole scene, I’m wearing short sleeve and she’s wearing a short sleeve shirt. I mean it was really cold and we were bundled up in coats up until the moment they were ready to actually roll the cameras. Our breath was fogging and so they were getting frustrated with that. Two weeks later we had major heat waves and it was just unbearably hot. Then one weekend some 50,000 bees were inside the cabin. That delayed things. It was just kind of on and on.

JC: Of course in that movie, everybody knows your scene was the eyeball popping out of your socket. How did it feel when you watched that?

PK: Well, the first time I watched the whole movie, start to finish, I was really impressed with all aspects of it; the way that it finally came together. When you’re making a movie you’re just shooting these little segments and you’re just there doing your thing. It’s very disjointed, segmented, distracting, and there’s no sound effects, there’s no music, there’s no nothing. Then, when you sit down in a theater and you watch the whole thing it’s really thrilling.

Of course, as a young actor, it was just completely captivating to me. I really enjoyed it. Now, as far as my death scene, I thought it was pretty cool but now 27 years later it looks kinda hokey, but at the time it looked pretty cool and worked pretty well.

The actual filming of that scene was an interesting experience for me because a couple of months before the movie started filming I went out to a special effects lab. They made this mold of my upper body, which is really an interesting experience to be completely encased from my mid-chest all the way up over my head and face and everything with Plaster of Paris. Then they made a mold of that and a reversible blah, blah, blah, and they made this life-like mannequin of my upper body. It was made of this kind of silicone material that had collapsible plates within the skull so that they could do multiple takes of the crushing of the head.

We did that a couple months before we started and then the time that we actually filmed that scene, we were working nights at that point. We were working from 7:00 at night to 7:00 in the morning. And so we’re out in the middle of these woods, it’s dark, it’s 3:00 in the morning and it was the first time I’d ever seen it. They wheeled out this thing on a stand. They wheeled this life-like mannequin of me out. It looked so much like me. It was really unnerving and surreal at the same time to see that.

To see it when it came out in the final version I thought it looked pretty cool. And then of course, like you said, there was so much notoriety surrounding that particular death scene.

JC: Do you still keep in contact with anyone from Part III?

PK: Yeah, I talk to Larry Zerner now and then. We’ll see each other at various promotional events and so forth. I have limited contact with Dana Kimmell. It’s funny, I run into Richard Brooker at the oddest times. I live in the San Diego area and one time I was up in LA. I was at some restaurant up in Malibu. It was just some small kinda tucked away little restaurant and there was Richard Brooker. I mean he’s a real character and a really cool guy. I always have a good laugh whenever I’m around him. I did see David Katims or talked to him not long ago. I don’t know when that was, but other than that, that’s pretty much it. Oh, Tracy Savage, I actually saw her at Scream Fest LA a couple of years ago. That was really cool to see her, but other than that, not necessarily. I don’t really talk to them or see them too often.

JC: What’s the reaction that you’ve been getting from fans of the series, either in conventions or over email?

PK: It’s just so amazing for me. I mean, hardly a week goes by where I don’t get an email or a letter from literally around the world; from countries in Europe and all over the United States and so forth. I think it’s just a really cool thing that -- it’s clearly a hobby or an interest for an entire group of people, and they’re always extraordinarily gracious and grateful whenever they send me something to autograph and I send it back to them. They’re always really nice. So I just love it.

I think it’s really cool, and I’m totally amazed that 27 years later that there’s still – and clearly, half of these people were in diapers when that movie came out. Yet they’ve discovered it or come across it and it’s part of their interest and I think that’s just really a neat thing. It’s a really interesting and exciting phenomenon for me. I enjoy it.

JC: Now, this would be your last role until you hooked up with Scott. Why was it your last acting role?

PK: Well, after doing Friday the 13th, I made the mistake of changing agents. The agent I changed to felt that because I had done this part in Friday the 13th that in his mind or his strategy I should say, that kinda put me into the next league and that was a mistake. I mean, it was a mistake for me to change agents, but it was also a mistake on his part, because I was reading for roles against people like Christopher Walken. We should have just built upon where we were. You know just say, “Okay, we did this. Let’s just do something else similar to this.” I was getting frustrated that I wasn’t getting more work, and at the same time I started to go, “Gosh, do I really wanna dedicate my entire life and professional career to something that is so unpredictable? There are so many extraordinary actors and actresses who literally languish in poverty their entire careers.” That worried me and concerned me.

I had done well between Friday the 13th and some of the other work I’d done in commercials, so I said, “Maybe I’ll use this time and money to go back to school and complete my education.” So I did that. One thing led to another, and I ended up in chiropractic school.

JC: Was being a chiropractor something you had always thought about? It’s very different from acting.

PK: No. When I went back to school, I was actually taking all the classes that would enable me to transfer into UCLA and get a degree in Marine Biology. So I was taking Chemistry, Physics, Physiology, Biology and all these various heavy science courses. I’ve always had an interest in health, in general and preventative health, in particular.

I had met a chiropractor and got under care with him. He knew that I was taking a heavy science load and that I was interested in health. He said, “You know, you really ought to consider going on to Chiropractic school because I think that might fulfill some of what you wanna get from your life’s purpose in the educational direction you’re headed.” That planted the seed for me to go on to graduate school and get my doctorate of chiropractic.

JC: While you were practicing, did you ever come across any patients who said, “Hey, I know this guy. He was in Friday the 13th Part III.”?

PK: For the most part, no, not really. But in the late ‘90s and the early part of the year 2000, when the internet became more common and people started using it, people would do searches and come across that. That would be a funny moment when they would confront me about it or ask me about it. It became kind of a running joke between that particular patient and I.

JC: Scott referred me to your website, which has a lot of advice on losing weight. Actually, believe it or not, I actually have used some of that advice to shed some pounds. Could you talk about that site?

PK: Well, thank you for asking. We’re really at a kind of a tipping point here in our culture in that we’ve never been unhealthier. There’s this whole debate right now in the political arena about this whole health care reform. The truth is if everybody had unlimited access to doctors, drugs and surgery, it wouldn’t make us any healthier because the problems we have with our health are because of our lifestyle choices.

We have to, as a culture and a society, own up to this and face that reality. The truth is that we are just an extraordinarily overweight society. The picture of cancer is an overweight person. The picture of heart disease is an overweight person. The picture of diabetes is an overweight person. It’s not just about being overweight. It means you’re unhealthy. So with that in mind, that is a huge issue.

The short version of that for those who might be reading this interview is that genetically we are the same as we were as hunter gatherers 40,000 years ago, in the Paleolithic area when we were Stone Age people. During that period, what we ate was fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds, and lean, natural fed animals. So the two main food groups that people eat today: dairy and grains did not even exist when our genes were formed. They’ve only been around for the last 10,000 years when agriculture started, and then shortly after that, domestication or animal husbandry.

So the crux of the matter is that we should not eat grains or dairy products. I realize for the average person to hear that is so shocking or surprising, but that is the key. You just eat an inordinate amount of vegetables and really good quality protein because again there are two things that are happening here. One is that we need to supply our diet and our lifestyle with sufficient nutrition and purity and at the same time avoid toxicity and deficiency.

We need to eat lots of vegetables and lots of fruits, nuts and seeds. The quality of the meat we eat has to be taken into consideration as well. So when talking about pure food, the difference between a grain-fed cow and a cow that is out in a pasture eating grass is a night and day difference to consumers. A grass fed animal’s meat is so much more nutritious. It’s very analogous to the difference between conventionally grown produce and organically grown produce. Conventionally grown produce is grown up in soil that has no nutrients. They just dump a bunch of fertilizers to make it grow and then they have to dump a bunch of insecticides and pesticides. So not only do we ingest toxic pesticides and insecticides, but we’re also ingesting food that has no nutrients to it, similarly with the protein.

Basically, if you eat lots of vegetables and quality protein, nuts, and seeds, you can’t gain weight because the body is self limiting. You just can’t eat that much salad or that much meat. Now, there are people that eat way too much meat. That’s because they’re not eating enough vegetables at the same time. The truth is all you have to do is stop eating grains and stop eating dairy, which is very difficult. I’m not saying it’s not. I realize that our culture is based on eating bread, cereals, crackers, etc, and literally it is the foundation of our diet. Then dairy, of course, follows right behind it.

But you’d be amazed what it’s like to go and eat a grain free, dairy free diet. It’s like if you put diesel in your car, and how screwed up your car would work, that’s how our bodies work on grain and dairy. It just takes 20 or 30 years before it starts breaking down.

JC: Interesting because a lot of health foods markets recommend whole grain products and soymilk. What’s your opinion?

PK: First of all, we should just stay away from dairy products altogether. There are so many ways that it affects the body in a bad way, destructively. There are alternatives. There’s almond milk. There’s rice milk and as you mentioned, soymilk. I was just visiting a buddy of mine Dr. Bruce Wong in Hawaii. He makes hemp seed milk that was just fantastic. So there’s lots of ways to find that. But the truth is you don’t need to have that type of stuff unless it’s to make smoothies with.

But you’re right, there are a lot of people that advocate eating whole grains. The problem with grains is no. 1, they cause a real spike in our insulin levels, which is just extraordinarily destructive to the body. I mean, insulin is like the master hormone and when you have elevated insulin levels, it not only causes diabetes, but it is just the root cause of many, many health issues.

The other thing that grains do(particularly wheat, barley, and things of that nature) have what’s called gluten. Gluten is very pro-inflammatory in the body when it’s broken down. That again is every single disease process, whether it’s diabetes, arthritis, autoimmune disease, heart disease, cancer, all of those have inflammatory components to them.

I just pulled an article today out of Scientific America about inflammation being one of the key elements of cancer. So if someone is going to eat grains, they need to eat them very sparingly, and eat totally whole grain. The problem is that there are a lot of food products out there that say whole grain on them but they’re not.

The other thing that has to be mentioned is that there are just some things that we should never ever eat and they’re soda pop, deep fried food, artificial sweeteners and refined sugar. Those things just tear your body apart. The problem is, is that they don’t do it in an acute manner. Our culture has this perception that if it doesn’t cause you to have an immediate toxic reaction, if you don’t immediately vomit, have bloody diarrhea, pass out, have a heart attack and wake up with a huge tumor the next morning, then it’s okay to do it in moderation.

I just recently wrote a blog post about that the big lie in our culture is that everyone says, “Oh, you just do everything in moderation.” That’s killing us because we’re taking in all this toxic food little by little and over time it’s just destroying our health.

JC: Was there anything else on the site besides dieting?

PK: Well, I have also formulated a whole food supplement because we live in a time where we’re very stressed. We’re exposed to a lot of toxic pollutants and we don’t eat as well. So it’s really important that we supplement our diet. Now, this is not a replacement, but a supplement is in the old days was called a vitamin. Vitamins historically have been made of bulk pharmaceutical chemicals. Truthfully, the things we should take should be always made of food.

So I made what’s called a Whole Food Supplement. It’s a powder that you mix with water and drink, or you put it in a smoothie. It has a mint flavor and it’s slightly sweet. It’s very delicious. So I formulated that. That’s my own product that I sell on the website. Probably the thing that I really should mention is that in a month from now, we’re gonna be launching ---- me and two doctors, one from Hawaii, Dr. Bruce Wong, I just mentioned, and Dr. Stephen Franson out of Boston.

We’ve spent the last two years creating an online health transformation, or a lifestyle transformation program called Bonfire Health, where we’ve identified the essential nutrients, if you will, in the area of eating, moving, and thinking that are necessary to create health. We’ve got this really awesome interactive, community-based, step-by-step program that’s gonna be coming out. It’s called Bonfire Health. It’ll be on http://www.bonfirehealth.com

It’s really exciting. I mean we just have been working literally two years creating this, and we’re close to launch date. People have menu plans, recipes, shopping lists, different levels of exercises with still photos, and video coaching on how to do them. All these other exercise and lesson plans take people through a lifestyle transformation program.

JC: When you teamed up with Scott, was that your beginning back into acting?

PK: Yes. I mean, I’d done some theater locally in San Diego in… I don’t know when that was, probably late ‘90s. I wish I could do more theater. It just takes so much time. It’s really hard to fit that in with a busy schedule and a family life for sure. But Scott definitely was kind of my re-entry into the film world for sure.

JC: How did you team up with him?

PK: He contacted me via email and said, “Hey, I’m a young filmmaker out here in New York. I’m making a horror movie. I’d love you to be part of it. Would you consider it?” I didn’t know who he was. It just took a while for me to kinda get to know him and see if he was legit. I don’t know when that was. I think it was 2005 maybe, 2004 something like that when we did The Day They Came Back, and we’ve done three or four projects since then. I really enjoy working with Scott. He’s really talented.

JC: Could you mention the work that you’ve done with Scott?

PK: Well, one film that was finished about six months ago, or last year sometime was called Loss of Hope. It’s real powerful. It has kind of a post apocalyptic feel to it. I did a small role in a film he did that’s coming out very shortly. I think in a few weeks actually. It’s called Mr. Mullen and that’s a political/social-statement type of film. Right now we’re doing another project called Militia 15, which is about mind control and the government. It is centered around this now abandoned military base out on the tip of Long Island and Montauk called Camp Hero, which has a lot of controversy to this day regarding governmental experiments. So that’s what we’re working on right now. It should be finished by the end of this year or the beginning of next year.

JC: I have seen Loss of Hope. I saw Scott’s talent there, but I also noticed your performance – he got a lot of range out of you in just a short time considering how short the film is. Definitely a lot more range than you got to do than in Part III. How did Scott get it out of you?

PK: Well, it wasn’t so much he got it out of me. We just had a good script to work from and a good idea. Probably two-thirds of what we filmed of that particular scene didn’t even make it in the final version. So I really was grateful that I had that opportunity to do something with that range and get to head in that direction because that’s something every actor likes to do like giving a long speech in a courtroom, or something to that effect. It’s something you can kinda sink your teeth into.

JC: Since I’ve come to know Scott, I’ve realized he’s very political. Are you political as well?

PK: Not to the degree he is. That’s where his passion lies right now really in the truthful exposure of governmental shenanigans and corruption. He does a lot of reading and a lot of research. That’s why his films have gone that direction. I certainly have political views, but not on the scale that he does.

JC: Was there anything else besides the films you’re shooting with Scott that you did ?

PK: No, I’m just trying to get this demo reel put together of the stuff I did with Scott right now. I need to find an editor to do that. Then I’m gonna try to get it in the hands of filmmakers. I’m probably going up to LA and see if I can maybe get an agent to look at it, maybe resurrect my career on some level. Nothing else in the works at this point, but hopefully.

JC: Are there any words you would like to say to your fans or anyone else who would be reading our interview?

PK: I just think that the fans are an amazing group of people. They’re so kind. One thing I would say is that everybody who approaches me at a convention, sends me an email, or writes me a letter, I’m just grateful that I have that type of interaction.

Danny Steinmann Interview

2009-06-02T17:17:00.000-07:00

For those who wish to read the Danny Steinmann interview, click here.

Bloodrock-Bloodrock (1970)

2009-05-31T17:06:00.000-07:00

To hear sample song Melvin Laid An Egg, click here.

Bloodrock was a Texas hard rock band that were best known for their only top 40 hit, DOA. The song was about a dying man in an airplane crash. A keyboard riff simulates a heart monitor. The lyrics are the man's last thoughts before he dies. It ended with the keyboard simulating a flat line. A few radio stations refused to play it when it was a hit and after September 11th, no station will play it now. Bloodrock was reportedly a favorite among troops in Vietnam. They were often the opening band for Grand Funk Railroad and broke up in 1973.

Despite the band's name and biggest hit, Bloodrock was not a band that focused on morbid songs. Their music is mostly akin to Deep Purple and Uriah Heep in that the music has a boogie beat and tons of organ/guitar interplay. They also share a similarity with the Grateful Dead. Non-member Robert Hunter wrote most of the Grateful Dead's lyrics. Likewise, Texas blues guitarist John Nitzinger wrote most of Bloodrock's music. Yet, he never became a member.

The band started out with a strong eponymous first release. Like Grand Funk Railroad, the band liked to jam. There is a lot of jamming in the opening number Gotta Find A Way as well as Timepiece. The heavy riffs of Double Cross, Melvin Laid an Egg and Wicked Truth will satisfy most heavy metal fans. There is also a Doors-like number in Fantastic Piece of Architecture. All these songs wouldn't shine if it weren't for Jim Rutledge's rural sounding lead vocals and Stevie Hill's colorful organ playing.

Whereas most heavy music lyrics either focused on sex, Satan or getting high, Bloodrock's lyrics were different. Timepiece's words deal with a death row prisoner counting the seconds of his life before he is sent to the gallows. Fantastic Piece of Architecture concerns a man making his artistic masterpiece. The song Melvin Laid An Egg involves a sideshow carny trying to make a buck. (One website has suggested that the song refers to Nixon's defense secretary Melvin Laird, his laid egg being the Vietnam War.)

Grand Funk Railroad's Terry Knight produced their debut album. Like Grand Funk Railroad, Bloodrock was a band that was better on stage than in the studio. Knight almost gets the band to match the quality of their live performances.

The band never achieved the fame of their hard rock/heavy metal peers like Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and Grand Funk Railroad. However, this debut album remains an interesting listen for those who like early heavy metal.

Leaf Hound-Growers of Mushrooms(1971)

2009-05-18T18:20:00.000-07:00

To hear sample song Freelance Fiend, click here.

Singer Peter French was asked to join a British blues rock band, Black Cat Bones. Rod Price, their guitarist, would then leave Black Cat Bones to join Foghat. After Price's departure, French and his cousin, guitarist Mick Halls reorganized Black Cat Bones, hired a new drummer and became Leaf Hound.

Leaf Hound toured heavily for a year and blew their headliners off the stage. Their prowess on stage landed them a record deal with Decca, who for unknown reasons, originally was going to not release the record. When Leaf Hound heard this, they broke up. A year later, Decca finally released the record but with no band to promote, they only issued a limited number of copies.

However, those who did buy the record really liked what they heard, but word traveled slowly. In 1993 Record Collector magazine decided to do a cover story on Leaf Hound and their album Growers of Mushrooms. As a result, the album was reissued on CD to great critical acclaim. The few original vinyl recordings of Growers of Mushrooms are a collectors' item. The asking price is said to be in the thousands.

The album is a hard rock classic and deserving of its reputation. Like Badfinger is to the Beatles, Leaf Hound is to Led Zeppelin. Also like Badfinger, Leaf Hound is not especially innovative and clearly imitating a better known band, but they also manage to imitate the nuances and spirits of their source.

It is not only Peter French's Robert Plant-like voice(he sounds like Rod Stewart in the softer numbers) that makes one think of Zeppelin but it is also some of the numbers as well. Stray is propelled by a Heartbreaker-like riff. The ballad With a Minute To Go sounds like Thank You.

Zeppelin are not the only ones they seem to be inspired by. There are traces of the Who in Sad Road To The Sea and the title track. The album opener Freelance Fiend has a cowbell that makes the song reminiscent of Mountain's Mississippi Queen. (I choose it as the sample song, because like any good album opening, it grabs you right by the throat and pulls you into the album.) The B-side to one of Leaf Hound's single Its Gonna Get Better (one of the CD's extra tracks) sounds like it would neatly fit onto a Paul McCartney album.

Though not likely, Leaf Hound appears to be influencing other artists as well. One can hear future echoes of Soundgarden in Drowned My Life In Fear. You also have to wonder if the mighty Zeppelin was listening to Stagnant Pool when they decided to do The Ocean. Not only did Zeppelin refer to a body of water in the song title, but they seem to have copied Stagnant Pool's main guitar riff.

Contrary to what some might think, the band name Leaf Hound does not refer to smoking pot. The name is taken from a short story by Ray Bradbury; a dog returns from the dead covered in mud and leaves. Even the album and song title Growers of Mushrooms are not drug related, it refers to a poisonous mushroom.

Singer Peter French had some success after Leaf Hound's demise. He sang for two mildly successful bands in the 70s, Cactus and Atomic Rooster. When he learned about the belated acclaim that Leaf Hound received, he formed a group of new musicians and currently tours as Leaf Hound. It's a shame they are only touring in Britain. American fans are deprived!

The Gong Show Movie (1980)

2009-05-05T16:49:00.000-07:00

Chuck Barris does Fellini

Favorite Joke: Father Ed: Today I'd like to pose a biblical question. Is there reincarnation after death? And if there is, does an individual return to a higher or lower state than he or she held in his or her mortal life?
Chuck:That's an interesting question. What's the answer? Father Ed: Beats the shit out of me.

As a kid, I used to love the The Gong Show. There was an irresistible schadenfreude in watching those no-talents humiliated on TV. American Idol owes loads to The Gong Show. Let's face it, we don't watch the show just for the Kelly Clarksons and Carrie Underwoods. We mainly watch it to see Simon Cowell rip the contestants to shreds.

The host, Chuck Barris, has done quite a lot in his career. He was the creator of other hugely successful game shows; The Dating Game and The Newlywed Game. He was the writer of hit songs such as Palisades Park and he supposedly was a real-life secret agent. Long before George Clooney made a film about him, Chuck decided to do one himself. He would write(with Robert Downey Sr.), direct and compose the music for The Gong Show Movie.

The hook for this film are some real life Gong Show scenes that were too risque for TV; Judge Jaye P. Morgan flashing her breasts or foul mouthed jokes by the Unknown Comic and Father Ed. At first glance, this would seem like a vanity movie strictly for Gong Show fans. Yet, that observation would be off the mark. The film is dark. It details his distaste for fame and his hatred of fans. This is Barris' 8 1/2.

We know from his autobiography Confessions of a Dangerous Mind that living a double life was tough, but in The Gong Show Movie, Barris tells us his one life as the host was too much. During the opening credits, there's a theme song sung by Barris telling us how it doesn't pay to get out of bed. Everywhere he goes, people want to be on the show. Those who do get to audition are usually people who are even less talented than those who get "gonged" on the Gong Show.

Barris complains about the grueling shooting schedule. When he is not holding auditions or filming his show, his boss, Mr. Didlo(James B. Douglas) warns him of "impending slippage" (the ratings will fall this year) and as a result, Didlo has to cut costs. He also warns that the show is getting too raunchy and could lose TV affiliates if Barris doesn't clean up his act. Even detractors won't leave poor Chuck alone. A huge man starts a fight with Chuck and kicks his ass. While the fight is going on, two fans try to ask Chuck for an autograph.

All this craziness puts Barris on the verge of a nervous breakdown. He leaves the show, breaks up with his young girlfriend, and escapes to the Morocco desert. His entourage follows and begs him to come back.

The most shocking moment in Clooney's cinematic adapation of Confessions of A Dangerous Mind was when the real life Chuck Barris says it was miraculous that he didn't kill himself. While watching The Gong Show Movie, you expect Chuck to pull out a gun and blow his brains out. He puts his show and fans on the chopping block, but its Barris himself who appears the more pitiful and vacuous. He is a tortured, empty soul. His face seems devoid of human compassion. He gets his kicks debasing himself. He has a dog attack him, eggs are thrown in his face and he's even pissed on.

The movie is badly acted, poorly written and terribly directed. Although his TV shows were unbelievably successful, the creator turns out to be a confused, depressing excuse for a man. But for anyone who is curious about Barris, this film offers an deep look into his twisted psyche which the Clooney film was unable to do.

Since Barris was doing everything he could to alienate his potential audience, its not a surprise that The Gong Show Movie bombed. Yet I think Barris felt his picture was a success because very shortly after the film's release, his tv Gong Show was cancelled.

To Kill A Clown(1972)

2009-04-23T10:01:00.000-07:00

Before he was Hawkeye, Alan Alda was Major Ritchie!

Favorite Monologue: Put your shirt on. Button it. I want that shirt buttoned. Every single button buttoned. There were wild savages roaming around for 1000 years before buttons came. Buttons changed this country. The United States of America is what it is because of buttons. What do you wanna wear? Beads? Feathers? Run Around Naked? You don't deserve to wear buttons.

The year is 1972. The Vietnam War is still creating havoc and Nixon is about to win in a landslide. The only major studio film about the Vietnam War made while it was being fought was John Wayne's Green Berets. However, it was OK to portray a Vietnam Vet disillusioned by the war as long as the film wasn't specifically about Vietnam. For instance, Warner Bros. didn't care about Tom Laughlin's politics as long as Billy Jack wasn't explicitly about the war. Likewise, To Kill A Clown was released by 20th Century Fox, has a Vietnam Vet character and politics that clearly aren't pro-Vietnam, but none of that matters as long the film isn't about the war.

The film is then a topical retelling of The Most Dangerous Game. Lily (Blythe Danner in her screen debut) and Timothy (Heath Lamberts) are a bickering married couple who rent a cottage on a beach island to save their troubled marriage. Timothy is a hippie-like artist, mime performer and photographer. Their landlord, Major Ritchie(Alan Alda), is a crippled Vietnam Veteran with 2 Dobermans by his side. Timothy has some suspicions about Ritchie but Lily feels sorry for him due to his handicaps. It is clear that Ritchie is attracted to Lily.

One night, Timothy, Ritchie and Lily are drunk. Timothy tries to mime a gorilla but is too drunk to perform. Ritchie talks about gorillas and how men imprisoned them. He then asks if Timothy could handle being locked up. Lily doubts it but Timothy says he could, no problem. Ritchie wants to give him that chance.

The next day, Timothy discovers Ritchie at his door and learns last night's challenge was for real. Ritchie commands him to stand at attention and clean up around the island. He makes sure that one of the Dobermans guards Timothy wherever he goes. Ritchie then rids their cottage of any knives, belts or blades and has their car towed away. Realizing that Ritchie has imprisoned them, Timothy and Lily try to escape but are unsuccessful. Timothy now understands he must shed his pacifist hippie beliefs and fight Ritchie and his Dobermans to survive.

Describing the plot doesn't capture the essence of the movie. Every scene ends with a freeze frame. The late Heath Lamberts told me that all the actors had to improvise their dialogue. The improvised dialogue leads to some pretentious-like scenes; Lily notices Timothy drawing pictures of his hand repeatedly. When she asks why he is doing it, he replies, "It is like keeping a diary."

Because there were huge anti-Vietnam sentiments in the film, director George Bloomfield was unable to make a director's cut. The result is a very choppy film. For instance, there's a fourth character in the film, Stanley, played by Eric Clavering. It is not clear what he does in the film. Nor does his character have any relevance to the main storyline. Also, the ending is not very clear on what happened to Timothy.

Despite its many flaws, the film does work when it comes to suspense. This is mainly due to the chilling performance of Alda. People were surprised by Alda's villainous turns in Crimes and Misdemeanors and The Aviator. Clearly, they hadn't seen To Kill A Clown. The pre-MASH Alda is excellent throughout, especially in a complex scene where Lily tries to seduce him into letting both her and her husband off the island. We see both his anguish in being unable to respond to her and his anger knowing that she doesn't really care for him.

While the movie is not a classic, it nevertheless remains a minor film emblematic of a time showing how Hollywood was dealing with an ongoing and unpopular war.

Future posts

2009-04-23T09:53:00.000-07:00

First off, I thank everyone who has read the Danny Steinmann interview and those who have left comments. I've spoken to Danny about the reactions we got so far to the interview and he's very happy about it. Going forward, these blogs will contains reviews of rare film and music. I'm taking a month-long break from interviews but will start again.

A Very Candid Conversation with Danny Steinmann

2009-03-28T09:35:00.001-07:00

Danny Steinmann is best known for directing Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning. Yet, because there is so little information about him, he is considered the most elusive of all the Friday the 13th directors. To this day, several people who interviewed him have told me they had trouble finding him. The only press he has ever done is when Part V came out with several horror trade magazines.

He does not have a large filmography, but all of his films have been remembered to this day. As long as the Friday the 13th series goes on, Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning will not be forgotten. Savage Streets and The Unseen(a film he took his name off) are cult classics. The hard core pornographic High Rise is considered a classic of the porno genre.

There has been later information of Danny in recent years, such as Peter M. Bracke’s Crystal Lake Memories and on the DVD of The Unseen. Most of the information from the book and DVD is not very flattering as Danny is portrayed as a very difficult individual. Like most horror fans, I had read Crystal Lake Memories and thought Danny must have been a real crazy guy. I was a bit apprehensive when meeting him at the Texas Fear Fest. I realized the second I talked to him that he was very different from what I had read about him. I found Danny to be a very kind and intelligent man.

I was not the only one who thought so. Benson Hurst had done a documentary on pornography in the 70s and found Danny to be a very sweet guy. In fact, Benson mentioned that Danny was considered one of the nicest guys in the porn industry.

Despite what was written about Danny in Crystal Lake Memories, Peter M. Bracke shared my opinion of Danny. He had not interviewed Danny for the first edition of Crystal Lake Memories. When Bracke interviewed him for the upcoming edition of Crystal Lake Memories, he found Danny to be much different than what people told him initially.

As I talked to him in Texas, I realized there was so little information on him and what was there wasn’t very accurate. Someone had to tell his story and tell it straight.

Much more about Danny Steinmann is finally being revealed. Whether as an actor, directing porn, taking his name off The Unseen or little known facts about Friday the 13th Part V, we cover it all. Some of the criticisms that were made about him in Crystal Lake Memories and The Unseen DVD are answered.

While many people will expect Stephen Furst, Linda Blair and John Shepherd to be supporting players in Danny’s story, readers will be surprised to discover that others include Charles Bronson, Telly Salavas, special effects wizard Stan Winston and Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry.

To make things easier for the reader, I have broken it up into 7 chapters. While reading the entire story is recommended, I realize there are some readers who just want to read about the films he did, therefore you have the option to jump to each film such as Friday V and read about it.

For this interview, I thank Benson Hurst and Peter M. Bracke for taking time out of their busy schedule to either email me or chat and for giving very helpful advice. But most of all, I want to thank Danny.

Chapter I: The Early Years (Acting-TV Commericals)

Chapter II: High Rise

Chapter III: Working with Gene Roddenberry

Chapter IV: The Unseen

Chapter V: Savage Streets

Chapter VI: Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning

Chapter VII: After Friday V

Chapter I: The Early Years(Acting-Directing TV Commericals)

2009-03-28T09:33:00.001-07:00

There is very limited history on Danny Steinmann. Just about all the biographical information have indicated that his career started with the hard core pornographic High Rise. Actually, Danny’s career began long before High Rise. In this chapter, Danny discusses the very beginning of his career as an actor and TV commercial director.

Jeff Cramer: Just for the record, when and where you were born?

Danny Steinmann: 1-7-42, New York City. That would make me 67 years old. It's hard to believe. I never thought I'd live this long: James Dean/ 24, Buddy Holly/ 25, Marilyn Monroe/ 37, Martin Luther King/ 38, Elvis/42, JFK/ 44, Bobby Berglass/ 25. Bobby was my best friend who died from a heroin overdose in 1966. Knew me better than anyone and I still think of him often. It’s all gone so fast.

JC: When did you decide entertainment was your calling?

DS: As a young boy, I was often taken to plays, movies, concerts and operas by my parents. In school, I acted in as many plays as I could. I was a pretty rebellious kid and was kicked out of quite a few schools, for fighting mostly. I never liked to take shit from anyone. Still don't. How I graduated from high school and college, I have no idea. I always loved to read and still do. Maybe that's how I sneaked by.

I had an older sister who became an accomplished author and screenwriter. She wrote many of the Cagney & Lacey scripts. My older brother, who has always been there for me, is a brilliant lawyer with a beautiful family. I am the youngest and was bitten by the entertainment bug at an early age. I acted in many plays in summer stock with names you will not recognize, but I'll list a few anyway: Pat O'Brien, Dody Goodman, Faye Emerson, Eddie Bracken and Joe E. Brown. I feel so fucking old.

JC: How'd you get started in the industry?

DS: Okay. My mother was a psychologist who lectured and did studies around the world. My father dabbled in the movie business after selling his pharmaceutical company. He would go to the Cannes Film Festival each year to buy a foreign film for US distribution. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg was his most profitable acquisition.

A group of film investors asked him if he would care to participate in a very low budget movie to be shot in Spain. The script was called Hallucination Generation. He told them about me, that I might be right for a part in the movie. A few days later, I made a screen test for a fine director, Ed Mann. I guess it was okay and off I went to Madrid to shoot the film. While there, I was told that the picture was not fully financed and it might be a while before principal photography began.

I met a few Americans who told me that they were part of a stock company that acted in the many films being shot in and around Madrid. Spain had become a little Hollywood because of the much lower costs to shoot a movie compared to the States. I became part of this group of actors and was cast in a few films. In Beyond the Mountains, I played a Russian officer tracking down Maximilian Schell. In The Battle of the Bulge, I was a German one day and a GI the next.

JC: In the Savage Streets commentary, you mentioned you were friends with Charles Bronson and Telly Savalas. Tell me about them.

DS: One night, I noticed that a decent sized poker game was going on. I had played poker all of my life. And though I'm my own worst critic, I've always felt very comfortable about my abilities at a poker table. On second glance, most of the players looked familiar. Henry Fonda, Telly Savalas, Charles Bronson, Alain Delon, Robert Ryan, Ty Hardin, a cowboy actor and an empty seat.

I asked if I could get in the game and for the next month and a half, a game was on at the Hilton Hotel in Madrid. This was decades before Texas Hold 'em. We played Jacks or better or low ball. Luck and a bit of skill made me the dominant player at the table. I would not have lasted more than one night if I had lost that first night.

I became good friends with Telly and Charles. Life was good. Never felt so alive. Girls, great food, money, bullfights, youth, and a picture to shoot. On top of the world Ma!

Finally Hallucination Generation was fully financed. George Montgomery, a pretty famous Western movie star was cast in the lead. The story was basically about a young guy trying to find himself. He gets talked into taking acid and comes apart. George played the heavy. His character was loosely based on Timothy Leary, the man who preached the wonder of LSD and told the youth of the '60s to "drop out."

The film was shot in black and white in Barcelona and a tiny island off the coast of Spain named Ibitha, which supposedly gave birth to the hippie movement. Although I was in a relationship back in the States, I was thunderstruck by the leading lady who was cast as my love interest, a German actress named Renata. We immediately were lovers and suddenly life became extraordinarily wondrous.

During the filming, a tall, thin man would hang around the set; drink in hand. He would show up faithfully every day. He spoke to the director about his experience as an actor and tried in vain to have George Montgomery fired so that he could replace him. He was finally ushered off the set and warned not to come back. This man was Clifford Irving, soon to be the guy who claimed to be Howard Hughes’ biographer-the ultimate conman.

Principal photography was almost over. Renata and I went back to Madrid and found ourselves unable to get a hotel room. The city was packed solid for some reason. I bumped into Charles Bronson and told him about our situation. He told me to take over his suite at the Ritz hotel. I said I couldn't do that to him, but he insisted. He had an apartment that he could use.

Three weeks later when I went to pay the bill, the concierge told me it had already been paid by Mr. Bronson. Most people think that Bronson must have been this hard, fuck you type of guy. But in fact, he was one of the nicest, sweetest men I've ever known. He would get me an agent back in LA and always insisted on picking up the restaurant bills when we and our wives would dine out. When his wife Jill Ireland was dying of cancer, no words exist to describe his agony.

Finally, the film was completed. Renata and I had to leave each other. We promised to write and call often and planned to get together in two months. The separation would be brutal, but I would never see Renata again.

JC: Was Hallucination Generation ever released? Were you happy with the product?

DS: It was bought by AIP and shelved. They were producing a film called The Trip starring Peter Fonda and Bruce Dern. The story was about a troubled youth who was talked into taking acid. AIP didn't want any competition. Hallucination Generation made a modest profit, but was never seen. I saw a trailer for the film recently on the internet 45 years later. Thank God the film was never released. I'm totally embarrassed and profoundly apologetic.

JC: What did you do after Spain?

DS: Back in New York City, 1967. I and a few million other guys had a real problem, Vietnam. My parents explained that any day I could receive a draft notice from the army. I was thrown out of two military schools and knew that army life wasn't for me. My parents strongly suggested that I marry either Susie, my girlfriend in the city, or Renata. I told them I didn't want to marry anyone for any reason.

Luckily, a friend of mine was able to hook me up with an army recruiting officer who got me into the reserves. I was sent to basic training in South Carolina. Surprisingly, I did well and enjoyed the experience. After basic, I only had to be a soldier a weekend a month and two weeks in the summer. My unit was never called up, and thankfully, I never went to Vietnam. If I didn't have money or connections, I certainly would have gone.

My relationship in New York was over. Renata and I had not kept up with each other. The adage that there is only one person in the world who you are meant to be with is bullshit. I've been in love many times with many different women. Go figure.

Anyway, it was time to go to LA; time to become a true actor. I stayed at a hotel called the Sunset Marquis where many film people stayed. And there were many women. So many incredible women. I got an agent and worked on a few films and a TV series. George Montgomery and I became the best of friends. We went out to different clubs and strip bars all the time.

One night, we were eating in a restaurant on the strip and a guy comes over to our table and says to me, "Don't I know you from somewhere?" It was Sal Mineo, a solid actor. It turns out that he had seen Hallucination Generation at a screening and thought I was pretty good. George and I talked to him for a while. After he left, George said, "That kid's time is running out."

The next night, same restaurant, we were seated opposite Roman Polanski and his wife Sharon Tate who was incredibly gorgeous and pregnant. Sadly, her time was almost over.

I also hung out with Telly. I got off on his bigger than life persona. He travelled with an entourage and enjoyed his newly acquired fame. Truthfully, this man was not close to handsome, but I've never met anyone who was as successful with women as Telly. He would meet a waitress, a secretary or an actress and five minutes later, he would excuse himself and take her into a backroom or a vacant office and return with her fifteen minutes later, the scent of sex on both of them. I witnessed this many times. Hard to believe, but true.

We went to Vegas quite often. He wouldn't fly; always drove. He invariably lost or broke even. Never won, at least when I was with him. His brother, George, constantly complained that Telly wouldn't help him until Kojak came along and Telly proved his brother wrong.

Years later, I saw Telly a month before he died. He was barely recognizable. As I was leaving, he said to me, "Who loves you, Danny?" I answered, "You, Tel. Only you."

I worked off and on, but never exerted or prepared myself for an interview or a part that I wanted. I was having too good a time. LA was like Disneyland to me -- always something going on: parties, women, gambling, golf, more women, and glorious weather. I should have studied, gotten serious, and committed myself to succeed, but I didn't. Truth was I really didn't think I was any good as an actor. I didn't really know this, but I felt it.

One night, I went to a party and met my first wife. Paula was breathtaking. We hit it off right away. She came from Brooklyn and was going to college. We had a lot of things in common and she was so damn sexy. We spent each day and night together. I was 27, and she was 20.

She went back to New York. I stayed in LA and became a basket case. I missed her so much. While talking to her on the phone one night, I asked her to marry me. She said yes and I considered myself a very lucky man.

We were soon married and living in New York City. I gave up acting and had to find an occupation that would support us.

JC: Talk about your transition from acting to direction.

DS: I was offered a job in Puerto Rico. I was hired by a small production company that shot commercials. They needed someone to help beef up the company and attract business. I would see what life was like behind the camera and start to learn the rudiments of the film business.

The company had a 10 year tax-free status. Their cost was about half the price compared to the States. We took an apartment in the heart of San Juan. The country was like Shangra-La; paradise on Earth. We lived very well for very little money.

I was enjoying the experience and working hard. After about 4 months, the head of the company felt that I could handle the job of directing commercials. I dove right in. I filmed spots for Fargo Trucks, Goya Food, Chase Manhattan Bank, Wesson Oil, and many others. I was shooting from the hip but doing OK. A good friend of mine was the head of marketing for the House of Pancakes. He came down, and I shot two 60-second spots for him. Later that year, they were both seen on the Super Bowl telecast(1971).

Unfortunately, my wife, being very pretty and sexy, would walk down the streets of San Juan and was aggressively accosted. We lived in Puerto Rico for over a year, and it was time to move on.

We moved back to New York and into a new apartment. I took a job in the Bronx working for a production company that only shot toy commercials. Kenner, Whitman, Mattel, Remco, and others were all clients. It was a smooth operation that produced quality commercials. It was to become my next film school.

The owner, Andre Durona was a crazy person and I loved him. He allowed me free access to learn and evolve as a filmmaker. His crew was wonderful. They gracefully answered my many questions. I was pretty much on my own. I worked and studied where I chose; with the DP, sound, lighting-all departments. I spent over two months in the editing room and a great deal of time at film labs. They shouldn't have paid me a salary. I should have paid them.

Chapter II: High Rise

2009-03-28T09:30:00.001-07:00

High Rise is a porno film made in the early 70s. It is considered a classic of the era along with Deep Throat and The Devil in Miss Jones. The film is the lightest and happiest film of Steinmann’s entire filmography. It is a very interesting and creative film.

Jeff Cramer: How did High Rise get started?

Danny Steinmann: While I was walking along Times Square, I spotted a long line waiting to enter a movie theater. The name of the film was Deep Throat. At the time, a movie cost $2.50. They were charging $5.00. The film was one of the first full-length porno movies. I had read an article about the film, calling it porno chic. It was now permissible for a middle class couple or even a woman by herself to be part of the audience.

I waited on line, paid the five bucks, and went in. The theater was packed. It was 3:00 in the afternoon. The film started, and for the next hour and a half, I watched a sophomoric attempt to bring humor to graphic sexual scenes, shot as hardcore as possible.

The gimmick was that the female lead, Linda Lovelace, could do to a cock what a sword swallower could do with a sword. I had seen plenty of hardcore porno reels at parties and card games with a bunch of guys, but never sat among a mixed group of men and women. This was something new and some people were going to make a lot of money. I walked home and wondered whether I could pull something like this off. I was working at a small film studio that had sets, film equipment and a full crew. Later I talked to pregnant Paula and she thought it was a great idea.

The next day, I met with Andre Durona. He said, of course I could do it and it would cost me nothing. I told him that I loved him. He hugged me and said, "Let's see if you've learned anything." What a terrific man he was. I next met with the owner of the World Theater and the distributor of Deep Throat, Sam Lake. He was very encouraging and told me if my film was any good, it would replace Deep Throat after its initial run was over.

All I had to do now was to come up with a thin storyline, hire the actors and finance the film. My father gave me $5,000.00 to get started. Two lawyer friends of my sister invested about 10 grand and I got another 13 from smaller investors. They all received a percentage of the film. I would retain 51 percent.

After I settled on the title of the movie High Rise, the story came quickly. I’ve always loved plays and movies that employed a story within a story device, so I threw that in the mix. I placed casting notices in various newspapers and magazines, and hired a topnotch female assistant. I had the crew in the Bronx building sets. I decided to shoot in 16 rather than 35 mm. Big mistake, especially in the editing room.

JC: The music is very good for a porno film. In fact, the music is so good that I would consider buying the soundtrack. Who did the music?

DS: I asked my really good friend, Jacques Urbont, a musical genius, if he would compose the score. He charged me nothing. I only had to pay the musicians. It's good to have friends.

JC: You used some big name porn stars such as Harry Reems and Jamie Gillis. Tell me about working with them.

DS: I rented an office in the city and began to cast the film. I instructed my right-hand girl to always be with me during auditions.

I interviewed scores of actors, but the pickings were slim until Harry Reems (Herb Streicher) showed up. He was a great guy who spread the word that High Rise needed actors. He would become my good friend for many years. Jamie Gillis popped in and also helped enormously.

Although the shooting schedule was only two and a half days, I prepped the film for a month and a half. This porno was not going to be thrown together. I wanted it to be shot professionally, all gears running smoothly. The crew was more than excited. Having spent many years shooting toy commercials, they couldn't hide their smiles. With less than a week away from shooting, I still hadn't found the leading actress.

Finally, she showed up. She had an almost pretty face, an almost plump body, and a quirky off-the-wall quality about her, which was exactly what I was looking for. She called herself Tammy Trevor. She said she had done some hardcore reels and was a "sexual plaything type person." PERFECT!!

I began shooting High Rise. I felt comfortable and confident directing this small picture. I would use one foot of film for every two feet shot. The cast were all treated with a great deal of respect. The crew worked smoothly and happily. No actor was self-conscious or complained except for Tammy. She had to lie down. She needed water. Could someone clean her feet? Could she go outside for a while?

I became more of a therapist to her than a director. Harry came over to me and said that he couldn't get in there. She’s got something stuck in her pussy. I asked her if she did have something in there. She poked around and withdrew a sponge saying, “I don't know who put it in there, and it’s not even mine.” Filming continued.

I didn’t shoot cum shots, I thought they looked messy. My mistake. And I didn’t shoot any extreme close-ups either. They reminded me of watching an operation. I understand that today’s porno actresses detest high definition technology. All their imperfections are clearly shown.

Jamie Gillis asked me what time we were wrapping. He had finished a one-on-one sex scene with Tammy, and was in the middle of a ménage à trois. He said he had a heavy date that night and didn’t want to be late. A male nymphomaniac is called a satyr. Jamie definitely was a member of that club. How these guys retained hard-ons all day amazed me.

In the orgy scene, a guy was eating this girl’s pussy. Suddenly, most of his face was covered with blood. The girl was having her period and didn’t tell anyone. Tammy ran over, raised her hand and asked if she could take the girl’s place. She was a trip. She did her very best and I think she was terrific!

In two and a half days, the filming was over. Everyone seemed to enjoy the experience. Post-production began immediately. I started editing the film with Durona’s editor. Cutting in 16 mm is a bit more difficult than 35 mm. When we had a rough cut, Jacques Urbont began laying down the music. Opticals were chosen and sound effects added. The 16 mm film was blown up to 35 mm, which gave it an interesting look. A month after the completion of the movie, it was ready to be exhibited.

Trouble was that Deep Throat had not finished its run. It would be two more months until High Rise opened at the World Theatre in New York. It would be released nationwide in the next three weeks. The theater was always crowded. Business was sensational and the reviews were terrific; Variety, New York Post, Daily News, Playboy, and many others raved about the film.

Each week, Variety puts out a list of the top 50 films. When High Rise was released across the U.S., Variety had High Rise as the No. 1 film in the country. Not bad. Two and a half days. Less than $28,000.00. I was proud of myself and proud of the cast and crew; thankful to the investors and especially to Andre Durona, who believed in me.

I began to understand the complexity and wonder of how images spliced together could inform, entertain and even electrify.

I made quite a bit of money, as did all the investors. I sold my rights four or five years later. It was a bulk sum. This was about a decade before VHS. How the fuck would I know that a revolution was on its way; that people would be able to rent and buy tapes to watch in the comfort of their homes. All my ancillary rights were given away.

It was about this time that our son, Robby, was born. He was beautiful, and we loved him so. How could life be any better? That was 37 years ago.

JC: Although it disappointed some raincoat audiences who wanted to see more “generic” porn, High Rise still made a lot of money. Why didn’t you make another porn film?

DS: I had more than a few offers to shoot additional pornos. I turned them down because I wanted to film stories in different genres. Children’s films and Westerns interested me the most.

We were in our apartment one night and the phone rang. I picked it up and it was Renata. She was downstairs and crying. She wanted me to come down and see her. I told her I was married now and couldn't do this to my wife. We fumbled for the next two minutes on the phone, then said good-bye.

Chapter III: Working with Gene Roddenberry

2009-03-28T09:28:00.000-07:00

Before directing other films, Danny got an opportunity that most Trekkies would kill for: working with the Star Trek creator, Gene Roddenberry.

Danny Steinmann: Back to LA, the three of us moved into an apartment on Halloway Drive. A few years later, Sal Mineo would be murdered in the garage of our building. Kind of spooky.

I was hired to work on a film entitled The Man in the Glass Booth, loosely based on the Adolf Eichmann trial. It was to be a big budget movie directed by Arthur Hiller.

To watch the filming of a movie and work behind the scenes was a great way to learn about the film business. I met the makeup man, Stan Winston (Note: Stan Winston would go on to do the makeup for Alien, The Terminator and Jurassic Park.) and we became instant friends. For the next ten years, we and our families would do just about everything together. Our wives were close friends, and our kids – best friends.

The shooting of the film ended and I was out of a job. One of the producers of the film was Mort Abrahams – probably the sweetest, kindest man I’ve ever known. He and Arthur Jacobs would produce all of the Planet of the Apes films. We tried to develop a film project together, but failed. Mort would become my mentor and I’ve always felt so lucky to have known him.

Over the years, Arthur Hiller could not have been nicer to me. He introduced me to Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, who was looking for a right-hand man. We hit it off right away, and the next day, I had an office at Paramount. Gene was working on a few scripts and asking for my input. I didn’t know it at the time, but he had become a celebrity with a legion of fans. Truthfully, I was not a follower of Star Trek, but kept this to myself.

He would travel often, giving lectures and talks to thousands of admirers. He had a small company set up to deal with the fan mail and publish his monthly newsletter. He was a huge man physically and spiritually. He and his wife, Majel, were a loving couple with an adorable kid. They always held hands and hugged and kissed each other.

Finally, he got the nod to produce his script, Spectre, for 20th Century Fox. It was to be shot in England and directed by Clive Donner, starring Robert Culp, Gig Young, and John Hurt. Sort of Sherlock Holmes and Watson investigating the occult. Gene would produce and I would be the associate producer. We both took our wives and kids to London. I was surprised that the studio would finance the film because I felt the script was a piece of shit. But what did I know?

I felt fortunate to be around these gifted men, appreciated their abilities, and would learn and grow from the experience. Twice while filming, a large group of men and women would descend on the set. They were not dressed in costume, but all wore a nametag with a Star Trek figure on it. When Gene approached, they became silent and reverential. He led them off the set and filming continued.

Quite often, Gene and I went out together after dinner. Invariably, we would wind up in the neighborhood where porno shops were located. We would enter a store and Gene would rifle through the magazines, express interest in the sex toys and leave. He would never buy anything. We would then go into the next porno shop and Gene would repeat the same behavior. A bit odd.

Principal photography ended and Paula and Robby went home. Post-production was taking forever. I was anxious to get back to the States. I missed my family so much. Gene wanted me to remain in London until the end. Weeks went by and for some insane reason, I flew home. Gene called me after I got back, but I never returned his call. I’ve done some terribly hurtful things in my life – things that I can’t take back. This was pretty close to the top of the list.

Gene and Majel are gone now. Their ashes were launched into space. I hope they found each other. I’m sorry, Gene.

Over the next few years, I worked on some films produced by the BBC and HBO. I loved being an associate producer. It gave me the freedom, most times, to place myself where the action was, to ask questions, make suggestions and hopefully digest new information that I would use in the future. Two of the films were once again shot in England: Deadly Game with George Segal, Trevor Howard, and Robert Morley, directed by George Schaefer, and Separate Tables with Julie Christie and Alan Bates, directed by John Schlesinger.

Chapter IV: The Unseen

2009-03-28T09:26:00.000-07:00

Code Red released The Unseen on DVD in August 2008. People involved with the project are on the DVD: Anthony Unger, Stephen Furst, Craig Reardon and Tom Burman. There is a lot of (mostly negative) talk about the director and the writer of The Unseen: Danny Steinmann, but no word from Danny himself on the project. Danny has not spoken about the project in any great detail since he took his name off the film and used a ‘Peter Foleg’ psuedonym. Until now.

Danny Steinmann: Back home, Stan Winston and I remained the best of friends. We were both great fans of Jerry Lewis and were constantly imitating him. We couldn’t get through a meal without both of us being overcome by hysterical laughter. Stan would secretly stuff food in his mouth and begin to tell me his opinions on the nuclear arms race while big chunks of food would fly out of his mouth. We acted like 12-year-olds and loved it.

On rare occasions, we got serious and talked about doing a movie together. He would produce and I would direct. The idea we came up with is about a middle-aged couple that pose as husband and wife who are actually brother and sister. They have an overgrown child who has not developed mentally and is kept in the cellar. Add to that three young women who become guests in their incestuous, secluded home and soon are targets by an unseen force. The Unseen, being the overgrown man-child who lives in the cellar and is sadly an innocent killer.

We hired a writer who we thought could do a formidable job, Michael Grace. A month later we received a script that ignored our concept, was not understandable and contained dialogue written by an idiot. We paid him in full and literally threw him out of the house. There’s more to be said a bit later about this no-talent asshole.

About this time, my marriage was coming apart. We went to a marriage counselor, which only made things worse. We were getting a divorce. Shit!

Stan and I decided to open up an office in Hollywood. He insisted that I could write the screenplay. I tried to work with Kim Henkel (Texas Chainsaw Massacre) on the script but had accomplished nothing. So I was deposited in a hotel and told I couldn’t leave until the script was finished. A production assistant came by each day with notes on the pages that I had written. I completed a first draft in about ten days. Stan was pleased. It wasn’t half-bad. We now could look for investors and begin casting.

Stan told his friend Tom Burman (make-up man for Planet of the Apes) about our project. Burman liked the script and asked us to stop by his studio. I had cast Stephen Furst (Animal House) as The Unseen. His improv audition was impressive. Tom had made a small clay sculpture of Stephen in diapers. I thanked him and asked if he would think of any action or bits of behavior that The Unseen might do.

A couple of days later he gave me a page and a half of suggested movements for Stephen; hiding behind garbage, splashing water that was on the floor with his hand over and over again and playing with an electric outlet. We thanked him and appreciated his thoughts. But more about Tom Burman a bit later.

My father had invested some seed money into our work. He gathered a few of his investor friends and told Stan and I to come to New York for a meeting to help finance the film. We did but there were no takers.

Stan was very concerned about being unemployed and needed the cash back that he had fronted the project. He had a wife and two beautiful kids to support. My father gave him back all the money that he had spent. Now I was on my own desperately looking for backers. I met with studio executives, independent producers and financiers.

Eli Landau, a producer with major credits said he could package the movie if I would cast James Mason (one of my all-time favorite actors) and Claire Bloom as the brother and sister/father and mother. I said no. I said no? The reason being I only saw Sydney Lassick in the lead. I had written the script with him in mind. One of the dumbest moves I’ve ever made. Imagine turning down James Mason. His performance in Lolita is one of the all-time great works in film. Who was I? Nobody.

And along came Tony Unger, who had produced some decent films. He claimed he could raise the money and produce the picture. He thought I had a hot property that he could finance by pre-selling it to foreign markets. He and his partner only needed a name actor that was known throughout Europe. My dad, lovingly, was still in as an investor. Finally, Barbara Bach, she was one of the Bond girls. I forget which picture she was in.

Jeff Cramer: The Spy Who Loved Me.

DS: The Spy Who Loved Me?

JC: Yes.

DS: She would star, which helped secure the financing.

Tony and I put a cast and crew together and were finally getting ready to go. For some reason I felt secure. I never had any doubts I wouldn’t be able to direct this script into a decent horror film that audiences might like. I had lived with the project for over two years. Promises broken, expectations that were never met, and lie after lie. Anytime these two words are spoken to you, run away as fast as you can. “Trust Me.”

Principal photography began and things were going well. All departments were doing good jobs. The rushes looked excellent and the DP was super. Tony was pleased and the actors were performing nicely.

Barbara Bach was a sweetheart. She’s an intelligent woman and a wonderful mother. Her acting experience was minimal but she performed valiantly. She would often ask after a take, “Was that okay, Was it what you wanted?” And she’s drop-dead gorgeous. She was bruised and battered once or twice during filming but never complained. After being dragged down the cellar stairs quite a few times, she never objected and insisted on doing it herself.

The next day I was told that she was badly bruised and in considerable pain. I went to her trailer and asked to see the damage. Large portions of the skin on her back were blood red and inflamed. I was responsible. I wanted to shoot around her for a few days to give a little time for her injury to heal. She was quite adamant about continuing on schedule and was on the set in a few hours.

As The Unseen was being shot, I was going through a painful divorce and child custody case. My son was ten and a complete joy. He was on the set a few times and was stoked.

Meanwhile I began to have problems with Sydney Lassick. He was having trouble remembering his lines and looked and felt uncomfortable onscreen. I had a bunch of pep talks with him and he seemed to lighten up, gaining confidence. One time he pulled me aside and claimed he couldn’t do the kissing scene. He told me he was gay, which I obviously knew. He said he was repulsed by the kiss and begged me to find another way. I told him that the actress playing the part of his sister was really a man. I made him swear he wouldn’t reveal the secret to anyone. Overjoyed, he gave me a big hug and flitted away. After shooting the scene, the actress playing his sister told me that Sydney tried to French kiss her.

Shooting in Solvang was a bit awkward. The three young women played a news team covering the Solvang festival. We had to shoot the celebration one month before principal photography began. We only had this one day to get what we needed. The town knew that a feature film was there to shoot the parade and all other activities that were taking place. About midday, one of the town elders ordered us to stop shooting. Somehow, he had discovered that we were filming a horror movie and told us to leave. He was paid off and we finished shooting. Money always works.

My biggest mistake was not shooting the cellar scenes on a soundstage. I could have done it in half the time. Instead, I needed 14 or 15 days on location. The cellar was claustrophobic. The air was heavy and damp. There were pillars that we had to shoot around and it was very difficult to light the set. The cast and crew were not pleased with this environment and neither was I but we all worked hard and survived.

I tried to create enough suspense and moments of horror to satisfy the audience. I am an avid sci-fi and horror film buff. I knew that there were elements in the horror genre that, if executed well, would surprise and shock most horror fans.

Although this was soft-core horror, I felt the lack of blood and guts would not be missed because I put great emphasis on making the viewer feel at ease just when a shadow crosses in front of the lens. I spent time with and without actors, shooting enigmatic points of view to maximize the payoff. More on this later.

As the picture was ending and I reviewed the individual sequences that had been shot and included the sound and music to be added in my head, I thought that I had done alright. I believed that there were at least five or six moments of jolting horror that the audience would react to and more importantly, feel both rage and sadness toward the demise of this strange family.

As the picture wrapped, I was told by Tony Unger to take three or four days off and be rested for the most creative aspect of movie making, in which I felt the most skilled; editing. Anxious as I was to get started, I took Tony’s advice and crashed.

Three days later, I went to the screening room to see the last day’s rushes. When the lights were turned down and the first images appeared onscreen, my nightmare began. I was watching a fine cut of my film which I barely recognized. The producers had hired a European editor as I began principal photography and instructed him to cut the film scene by scene. Each completed episode would then be screened, commented on and then fine cut. This was done behind my back so as not to create an explosion which they knew was coming. As I watched silently, my only thought was, “Who do I kill first?”

When the lights were finally turned on, I remained silent. Unger quickly explained that the Cannes Film Festival was only a month away. They knew they had a winner and would cash in big time at Cannes where films were bought and sold to individual countries. He said my father had been consulted from the beginning and enthusiastically supported the decision. Tony’s partner claimed that the film was terrific and the editor had done a masterful job. I somehow didn’t react at all and left.

In the book, The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, the main character, Howard Roark, was an architect who created innovative apartment and office buildings, which were turned into cheap, common, and unsafe monstrosities by greedy builders. Roark’s only option was to burn and destroy these abominations. I’m certainly not comparing his wonderful talent to mine, just that my film was turned into an abortion by greedy, lowlife cocksuckers. The Unseen became slow, bland and tame with no suspense, no scares.

For the next two nights until dawn, I sat in my car, heart racing, parked a block away from the editing room, small cans of gasoline riding shotgun. It’s truly some kind of small miracle when an independent film gets made. I had to let go or people would get hurt and I would spend the rest of my life in prison or worse. Believe me, these are not just words. I almost did some very bad things.

So I took my name off the film. Not being permitted to cut my own movie even now reeks of insanity. I had the answers, they chose to ignore that fact; instead the picture was left on the editing room floor.

I went to New York and got a call from the Writers’ Guild of America about three weeks later. It seems that when I took my name off the film, the WGA released this fact in the trades and were contacted by four people claiming to be the true writers of The Unseen.

Michael Grace, Kim Henkel, Tom Burman and a young girl who was a production assistant on the film all came to a meeting at the Writers’ Guild to make their case. Outside of Burman’s page and a half of behavior by The Unseen, I wrote every line, every word of the script. I’m not very proud of it. I think it’s an average vehicle with many flaws but I wrote every fucking word.

As a result of the meeting, they all received a writer’s credit. Ready for the punch line? Michael Grace, this low-life, piece of shit scumbag was awarded and paid $50,000.

I really should be on death row right now. Sadly, I trust noone. Always on guard and alert. These are memories that should have remained dead and buried. That the picture tanked is no surprise. I’ve never seen it.

A transcript of Unger’s comments on the new DVD was recently sent to me. This tub of guts better hope he stays deep in the shadows. Friends have told me that he and his partner have done very well with The Unseen and have received a nice paycheck recently from the sale of the new DVD with extras. Neither my brother nor I have received a check! For shame, Tony, you’ve been a very bad boy. Webs of deceit! Not nice. You need a good spanking.

JC: What does the pseudonym Peter Foleg stand for?

DS: Peter is my brother’s name and Foleg is Gelof spelled backwards and Gelof is my mother’s maiden name.

JC: What made you choose Solvang?

DS: I liked the idea of the women coming to a place that was full of life, fun and visually exciting and slowly entering a world full of nightmares and death.

JC: Why did you want Sydney Lassick so bad that you chose him over James Mason? Lassick has a creepy cartoonish look to him, but at the same time, he is a bit effeminate, so I'm curious why you saw him as a father figure.

DS: I don't think Ely Landau ever offered the part to James Mason or to Claire Bloom; though he thought they were available and would agree to do the picture. I can't think of any reason why I dismissed his offer; it baffles me. While I was writing the script, I kept thinking of Sydney Lassick for the role; I saw him as an innocent, funny character. Problem was that I had not seen any work by him playing an evil, sadistic psychopath. In time, I discovered that no matter how I prepared him for the role, he wouldn't be able to deliver. Sheer idiocy on my part.

As to Sydney's effeminate side, I believed at the time it would create another level of mystery for the audience to consider.

JC: Many people, including myself, wonder why Stephen Furst did this film shortly after Animal House. In other words, what attracted Furst to the film?

DS: I'm afraid you're going to have to ask Stephen. I suppose when a person is very good in a role and can perform a part so well- so effortlessly, you would want to display your craft to an audience. It was an extremely challenging part and that might have affected his decision.

JC: The reason Unger claims he took you away from the editing room were for two reasons. The first is that you had an agreement with them when he agreed to finance the film? Do you recall any agreement or signing a contract? The second reason is that you were taking forever to edit the film. They didn’t have the time and budget to wait. What happened?

DS: Motherfucker!! I never cut the film. I had nothing at all to do with the fucking finished product. Let me say it a little differently, I never cut the fucking film!! Their objective was to get the film to Cannes as quickly as possible. Unger and Goldfarb thought that they had a very saleable picture; they thought I was not needed to cut my own film. As far as signing a contract stating that I knew the film had to be released by a certain date, they're full of shit. Let me say in it a different way, they're full of shit!!

JC: Unger also claims that the actress Lois Young, who had the nude bathtub scene, had problems with full frontal nudity. Do you remember that?

DS: Yeah. Lois Young was eager to do the nude bathtub scene. She had a very cute body and gave me no indication whatsoever that she was unwilling to show it. As a matter of fact, after the dailies were shown, she asked me to please reshoot the scene; she wasn't happy about the way she looked. Was it the lighting? The make-up? I don’t know, but I found time during the next few days to reshoot the scene. She saw the dailies and was very pleased. Hey Unger, stay deep in the shadows pal.

JC: The first death; Junior jumps out of one of the grates and starts to drag the girl, Lois Young, into the grate with him. She resists and the grate door falls on her neck, breaking it and killing her. While this is going on, the film crosscuts with a chicken getting its head cut off. Was that your decision?

DS: Okay, you’ve hit on a big mistake that I regret. There's no way for Junior to exit that grate in the bedroom. He's just too big. You got me. Crosscutting between this scene, and what's taking place in the barn, is indeed in the script.

I wonder how the editor cut these scenes. I filmed a series of shots of chickens at rest. Then as the chicken is grabbed, individual shots of chickens beginning to cluck. Back to the girl being grabbed. We only hear the sounds of the chickens rising sharply. Back to the barn. Pan across a series of chickens flapping their wings. The sounds of them clucking wildly continue as the chicken is put on the chopping block. Back to the girl, the chicken noises are stifling, she is pulled down, and the grate severs her neck. Back to the barn as the chicken's head is cut off while the noise of the chickens are at its height. Cut to the exterior of the house. Silence. Just a few birds. Cut to the exterior of the barn. Silence. Only the wind.

JC: I’m curious to know the actor’s name who did the voice of the father.

DS: The actor who played the father – forgive me, I don’t remember his name, but when I was a kid in the '50s, this gentleman was on a TV series called The Millionaire. Each week he gave away a million dollars to some deserving family. It wasn't a game show; it was a fictional TV series. While writing the monologue, I thought of him as the father. His voice was unique.

That scene was fine cut in my head; I had a variety of tricks and jolts that would add to the impact of the history of this sick family. Remembering and commentating on this mess is not very easy. As a matter of fact, it's very painful.

JC: Stephen Furst has said people have come up to him and asked him to sign Unseen posters. Some people have told him that’s one of their favorite films. He’s also heard from a restaurant that has a “Junior” night where they only serve chicken. What would your reaction be if you met one of these fans?

DS: That I’m very grateful. Remember, I shot every piece of footage in that movie. But in post-production, in the editing room, you can possibly make a bad film fair, a fair film good, and a good film very good. The reverse is also true. So much of The Unseen is in the presentation; the sounds, opticals, and crisp editing add to the quality of the piece. Creativity and imagination are what’s lacking. The jolt-scare moments must be set up. A sudden eight-frame musical blare at the right moment can lift you from your seat. But it’s enough already for The Unseen. It was more than 25 years ago and you can’t change the past.

Chapter V: Savage Streets

2009-03-28T09:22:00.000-07:00

Savage Streets is a revenge thriller starring Linda Blair. The film has lots of camp humor and brutal violence. Quentin Tarantino has claimed to be a fan of the movie.

Jeff Cramer: How did you become involved with the project?

Danny Steinmann: I was working on a miniseries for Playboy Television starring Britt Ekland, when I got a call from a good friend of mine, Billy Fine. He was in big trouble. The picture that he was producing with Linda Blair was to begin literally tomorrow, problem was, he’d just fired the director. Would I take over? Playboy understood. I was free to go.

About midday, I went to Billy’s office and it was mobbed. I was given a script of Savage Streets and told to read it. I went into a side office, and came out about 45 minutes later. I remember I felt challenged, but optimistic. Principal photography began the next day. The night before I didn’t sleep. I read the script twice more and made serious cuts and a few additions. The script would change over time, and then change again.

JC: What do you remember of the original screenplay before you rewrote it?

DS: The basic story would be the same. I got rid of whole scenes, dialogue, and characters. I tried to keep the film moving. There was a love interest that Linda had, a subplot concerning the police. Lots of gags that I thought wouldn’t work, scenes that would slow the film down. My main objective was to keep the audience involved and interested in this silly movie by eliminating clichéd dialogue and action. In the original writer’s defense, he wrote a low budget revenge exploitation film. It may have been one of the first movies starring a young woman as a Charles Bronson facsimile. I thought he did a good job.

The problem was you had a gang that viciously raped an innocent deaf mute girl and threw another girl off a bridge. To combine that with an innocent hackneyed story is not possible, at least not by me.

JC: A fired director would not be the only problem for this film. What else happened?

DS: As soon as I started filming, things were, surprisingly, going very well. Linda Blair was giving a solid performance and the rushes looked good. I felt in control and comfortable. I was having fun! Then, after two and a half weeks of principal photography, the cast and crews’ checks bounced. The shooting stopped. There was no more money. Two of the producers told me to hang in; we’d be fully financed shortly. That, unfortunately, would not be the case. I expressed my displeasure and told them I was offered another film and would not be available after week’s end. This was a lie but I was pissed!

Soon after, one of the many producers came to my hotel room, and gave me $10,000. He set me up in a two-story apartment right on the beach and gave me a new car for the duration. All he needed from me was to cut the footage that was shot and meet with investors who might finance the remaining production and post-production costs. I liked this deal. I cut the footage and met with a few investors. A month went by. I had time to rewrite and polish the remaining pages of the script. Finally, I was told that the film was fully financed.

I was asked to come to the production office and to meet with the new producers: six or seven of them. I was introduced to John Strong, who would act on their behalf. He would oversee the production to make sure the film stayed on budget and on time. I reminded them all that we were under budget and a day under schedule. Nevertheless, the decision had been made. John Strong was a big, powerful man. He was a funny, tireless guy, who assured me he would stay out of my way. I liked him.

JC: Around this time, Billy Fine wanted to fire you from the project. Why?

DS: When checks bounced and people took off, I tried to get in touch with Billy many times. Billy Fine was the producer who hired me to direct Savage Streets. We were friends for many years. I found out later that the other producers got into a huge argument with Billy. About what? I don’t know. When another producer, John Chambliss came and offered me the money, apartment and car, I accepted and was very pleased. Soon after I got a call from an outraged Billy claiming I betrayed and deceived him. I had taken sides. I told him I was unaware that he was fighting with the other producers.

He cursed me out and told me I was fired. Part of the money to finance the film had come from the mob and the very next day a dead fish was placed in front of Billy’s door. He left the film abruptly and I remained the director.

JC: In the film, there are a lot of colorful lines. You mentioned in the Savage Streets commentary that John Vernon’s line, “Go fuck an iceberg,” was adlibbed. What about these lines from Linda Blair, “Wouldn’t fuck him if he had the last dick on earth,” or “It’s too bad you’re not double-jointed so you can bend over and kiss your ass”? Ad-libbed or written?

DS: I asked John Vernon what he meant by his line, “Go fuck an iceberg.” He said it was a saying that many people used. Funny, I didn’t know that, but I thought I’d keep it in because it might get a laugh. Actually, if someone was trying to fuck an iceberg, it would be very uncomfortable, cause a lot of pain and frustrating because it would be almost impossible to get an erection. I believe Linda’s two lines were in the original script. If I had written them, I’d probably remember.

JC: How did Linda Blair react to doing her nude bathtub scene?

DS: Linda Blair is a true professional. She worked hard and never complained. She had no reservations about her scene in the nude. I used a skeleton crew and shot it quickly. Getting completely naked for her character was like the start of a transformation that would enable her to become a remorseless killer. You buy that?

JC: No. Nice Try. But anyway, there’s a certain tone that ranges from campy to very raw and gritty. The best example is when you show the catfight in the shower between Blair and the head cheerleader. While that’s going on, the film crosscuts with the gang rape of Blair’s sister. Was that tone intentional on your part as the director?

DS: I don’t remember if the two scenes were in the original script. Probably were. Also, I don’t remember if they were written to be intercut, but I do think it’s an effective device. I felt that the more harm and terror that the young girl experienced, the angrier the audience would be and their desire to get even would escalate. Linnea Quiqley did a terrific job and her performance holds up. The audience is torn between watching these two scenes happen at the same time.

They’re enjoying watching the fight in the shower, when they are abruptly witnessing a monstrous rape taking place, then suddenly back to naked girls in the shower. They don’t want to go back to this poor girl being raped but know that the act is not complete. Naked girls fighting juxtaposed with a vicious rape, I think it works.

JC: Why do Sal Landi and Bob Dryer kiss each other when they’re in the middle of the gang rape?

DS: Their action was not in the script or in rehearsals. It was totally unexpected and I was thrilled. It was completely in the moment and worked seamlessly. I was greatly impressed.

JC: The gang rape scene was cut by the MPAA. What was cut out?

DS: The girl’s torment was much more brutal. Each gang member took turns with her. It probably was overkill and what’s left is good enough.

JC: Sal Landi, who played one of the gang members, mentioned in the commentary that as a director, you often leave actors to their own devices, allowing them to improvise or add things to their roles. Stephen Furst and several Friday the 13th Part V actors pretty much said the same thing. Can you elaborate on that just a little more?

DS: I dealt with different actors differently. I allowed actors to use their skills and experiment. If I felt it wasn’t working, I’d ask them to try something else. Other actors are able to lock in a role and perform their part in exactly the same way on every take. Some needed line readings and others could dazzle you in rehearsals, but when the camera is rolling, they stiffen up and lose focus.

JC: The male gang works as a team when it comes to gang rape or throwing a woman off a bridge. However, the female gang almost does nothing together. It’s Blair alone who takes on the whole male gang. In fact, if you exclude the victims, you could eliminate the female gang and it would have no impact on the story. Was the gang a leftover from the original script?

DS: The female gang played at being a gang and were basically girls having a good time. John Strong convinced the producers to make Linda the only one who gets even. I disagreed strongly. You really have to be a bit naïve to think that she alone could take down the male gang, especially the two big guys. The girls working together as a team maybe, but many times more believable than just Linda. Towards the end of the film, I stopped arguing with John Strong. I was fighting a fight that was unwinnable.

JC: John Strong mentioned that he took a hand in script rewrites. Was there any truth to this?

DS: After principal photography ended, John Strong wrote two scenes and shot them. The first is when the gang members go to Johnny Venocur’s house to get him. He comes out, changes his clothes, and gets in the car. The second scene is when Linda comes to Johnny Venocur’s house and speaks to his father. They were both fantastic scenes that the Academy somehow overlooked.

JC: It seems there was a lot of tension between you and John Strong. Can you elaborate on it?

DS: Shortly after shooting started, he began to make his presence felt. He was involved in everyone’s business.

People came to me complaining. He was employed to protect the investors. I had agreed with their decision that John would act on their behalf and could do nothing to counteract them. John would look in the camera on most shots, talk with the actors, and always question me about everything. The reason that the producers were able to refinance the film must have had something to do with the cut footage and my vision of the ending. Why shackle me with this albatross?

Some of those remaining days were torturous. His ego was monumental and I struggled to finish the film. But my work with John was not over. He wanted to edit the film with me at his side. I think if John was able to write, direct, produce and star in a film of his own, all his dreams would come true. But I liked him and still do.

Part VI: Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning

2009-03-28T09:19:00.001-07:00

Friday the 13th Part V is the most controversial of the Friday the 13th series. Whereas certain entries in the series(Part I, The Final Chapter) are beloved by fans and certain series(Part VII: Jason Takes Manhattan, Jason Goes To Hell) are hated by fans, Part V has a mixed reaction from fans. A good number of fans dismissed it primarily for not having Jason as the main villain. (A similar fate happened with Halloween III when John Carpenter decided not to make a Halloween film with Michael Myers.) Other fans feel it is an underrated entry and if one overlooks that Jason isn’t there, it contains a lot of the elements that made the old Friday the 13th films special. Part V boosts the highest body count out of any Friday the 13th films. It also has an ending that left fans debating on what the final scene implies. This chapter focuses on the questions and issues fans have raised about the film and it also answers some of the criticism made about him in Crystal Lake Memories.

Jeff Cramer: What was your knowledge of Friday the 13th before you came on the film? Which of the films had you seen before directing Part V?

Danny Steinmann: I saw Friday I and Friday IV after I was hired. I told my son that I was offered to write and direct Friday V. He went ballistic. I didn’t realize how popular the series had become.

JC: Part V originated from a treatment that was originally written for Part III. What do you remember about the treatment before you rewrote it?

DS: Truthfully, I don’t remember seeing a treatment. That doesn’t mean I wasn’t given one, but I honestly don’t remember. It’s been 25 years. Katherine Hepburn said, “Growing old is not for sissies.” She was right.

JC: Were you allowed to use Jason at all in this film?

DS: Let me answer your question this way. I was doing a film called Savage Streets. They ran out of money about two-and-a half to three weeks into production. The producers frantically tried to raise the money by showing the cut footage to would-be investors. Phil Scuderi and Steve Minasian took a look at the cut scenes and were told the rest of the story.

They passed on Savage Streets, but said I should call them as soon as I was done working on the film. They told me to come up to Boston and meet with them. There they offered me a two-picture deal: Friday V and Last House on the Left Part II. I accepted their offer and was instructed to do two things on Friday V. I was to deliver a shock, scare, or kill every seven or eight minutes. Most importantly, I was to turn Tommy into Jason.

This was not a suggestion. These were orders. I complied and started writing the script. When shooting began, I wanted the audience to feel uncertain as to the identity of Jason. Had he escaped death or had someone else taken his place? Was it Tommy? Jason was not himself. He moved differently. His mask was not the same. The moments when Tommy saw Jason were the only times that the real Jason appeared. When the pretender assumed the identity of Jason, I felt that he became him, with the audience remaining skeptical throughout the film, I hoped for a bit of a mystery.

At the end of the movie as Tommy puts on the mask and is about to kill Pam, I felt I had delivered on the producers instructions to turn Tommy into Jason.

JC: Scuderi instructed you that certain people were supposed to be killed every couple of minutes. He even made a graph to illustrate this point. Can you elaborate on how you worked this idea into the film?

DS: The problem I had was that the Tommy/Jason story was really the essence of the film. Each time you cut away to strangers that had nothing to do with the halfway house and kill them, it dilutes much of the story. The movie’s purpose is to answer the question, “What the fuck is going on with Tommy?” Scuderi’s graph doesn’t give you much room to maneuver.

In Psycho, basically nothing happens for the first 45 minutes until you get into the shower. The Friday movies, Nightmare on Elm Street, and Halloween audiences demanded for there to be as many kills and thrills as possible. The mood is carnal. The faster, more intense, crazed, and horrific, the better.

JC: Who were the two motorcycle people that appear in the film? They either look like they’re from the ‘50s or part of the Al Pacino film Cruising.

DS: They were two guys that needed to be killed. They had nothing to do with the story.

JC: In other words, they were fitting within the graph?

DS: In order to comply with Scuderi’s graph, you had to introduce some characters and kill them three or four minutes later. Remember, the only people left alive at the end are Tommy, Pam, and Reggie, and Pam was on her way out.

JC: You named the medical institution Unger which is an obvious reference to The Unseen producer Tony Unger. This is supposed to imply the institution is incompetent or that Tony Unger himself belongs in the institution?

DS: Both. The guy really got to me. He still does. Unger needs a good spanking. I’m counting the days.

JC: We see the handwritten sign “Fadden was here” when Demon goes to the bathroom. Is that a reference to Vic Faden, the guy who chopped up Joey?

DS: Fadden was a golfing partner of my brother’s. Its an inside joke. Hope this clears up any mystery for the fans.

JC: Fans of the film have asked me to ask you where we are exactly. The mother and idiot son appear to be rednecks, but noone in the film has the same accents or background as they do.

DS: A lot of stuff there are no answers for. I tried to keep the film moving, put as many scares and kills in as possible, make the visuals interesting and the action exciting. If there are places for humor, go for it. If they question a character’s dialect, the movie isn’t for you. There are so many things in the film that are questionable but the mother and son’s background shouldn’t be on that list.

I’ll tell you what their story is, anyway. They previously had been living in Kvelding, a small town 45 miles southeast of Birmingham. Junior had gotten into trouble with the law. He was caught at a farm near Route 8, giving a blowjob to a three-legged goat. It was in all the papers. The two of them, mother and son, high-tailed it out of there, and drove and drove on Junior’s bike until they found this small cottage up north, which they rented. I think it was a six-month lease.

JC: What happened to the goat?

DS: [Laughs]

JC: Tell me about the first day of shooting Debi Sue’s love scene. Some people were taken aback by what they saw, especially from quotes in Crystal Lake Memories. Can you give your own version of the story?

DS: I shot a soft-core love scene, never showing the male genitalia or insertion. The sex was loving and gentle. In any other movie that wasn’t horror, it would’ve been labeled ‘R’, but with the blood and guts it became totally unacceptable. They cut the whole scene. Debi Sue was terrific throughout, never complained once. She’s a very bright and wonderful woman. I’d like to comment on Bracke’s book all at once at the end of this chapter.

JC: OK, at the end, is what happening a dream, or is Tommy really intending to kill Pam?

DS: I never saw Friday VI, but I was told they brought Jason back from the dead and the whole Tommy to Jason thing was thrown out. That decision to just eliminate Friday V and pretend it never happened was questionable, but understandable. For the record, Tommy really intended to kill Pam.

JC: That answers a lot of controversy. Tommy in Part VI is a much different character than he was in Part V.

DS: John Shepherd’s not in it though, right?

JC: A different actor plays him. They did ask him to appear though. In fact, he, Melanie Kinnaman, and Shavar Ross were all asked to come back for Part VI, but it didn’t happen for various reasons. Were you ever asked to come back for Part VI?

DS: I was never asked, but at the time, I was involved with a different project with the producers of the Friday the 13th films. I had a two-picture deal with them –Friday and Last House.

JC: Several people have said this and I sense it as well. There seems to be a level of camp humor in the film, such as Junior and Ethel, and the leather bikers, and the scene where Melanie’s fallen in the mud and doesn’t get up, even though there’s a killer chasing her. Was all that intentional?

DS: I hope any humor in the film is intentional, but I disagree with your last example. Sometimes when someone is living their worst nightmare, the body may not be able to perform and muscle control might break down. Plus, not being able to rise and run brings Jason closer. I didn’t find anything funny in her predicament. Melanie really was terrific. She refused to let a stuntwoman do anything.

JC: Several people have mentioned that you hosed Melanie down when she’s running from Roy/Jason so you could show her in a wet shirt. Is there any truth to that?

DS: Absolutely, 100 percent. Melanie is a very beautiful woman. She was my only choice from day one. When she runs from the monster, her torment is elevated if there’s thunder, lightning and rain. If she happens to be braless and the rain helps accentuate her breasts, ka-ching. It’s a done deal. How many guys would object to these choices I made?

JC: The MPAA cut a lot of the murder scenes out. In fact, out of all the films you’ve done, this one seems to be the most heavily cut of all your films. What scenes do you specifically remember being cut?

DS: Ironically, the only scene that was entirely eliminated was the love scene. Every bit of violence was significantly cut. Today, compared to the popular horror movies, I bet Friday V would get a ‘PG-13’. It’s unbelievable. The Hostel and Saw films are so graphic. I’m surprised they don’t get an ‘X’-rating. Frank Mancuso must have submitted Friday V to the MPAA eight times. They refused to accept both picture and sound. I believe what they finally allowed hurt the movie terribly. The tone of the film was negatively altered.

JC: If the MPAA hadn’t intervened, what would the film look like? How might it be different?

DS: The film would’ve been much more graphic and horrific. Even leading up to the kills the MPAA showed no mercy, but the deed was done. I’ve seen the film recently and it’s not that bad.

JC: Why did you make Roy the ambulance driver the vicious killer in the movie? Do you think it made sense?

DS: While the audience is taking a good look at Tommy grown up, the killer is either Jason back from the grave, someone pretending to be Jason, or Tommy himself. Tommy in transition must be accompanied by scenes of the killer doing his thing. When it turns out that Roy the ambulance driver was impersonating Jason because his son was brutally chopped up, I quickly cut to Tommy in the hospital bed, hoping that the audience would accept the thin explanation, suspend belief, and move on. I apologize to the viewer if they feel that the Roy/Jason revelation lacks credibility, but it is what it is.

JC: Time to bring up the book. As you know, there’s been some criticism of you in Crystal Lake Memories. Would you care to respond?

DS: Friday V made almost $22 million. Some of the actors were given their first opportunity to display their talents in a feature film. I remember seeing the movie when it first came out. The audience reaction was tumultuous. The criticism I and the picture have received has been curious and unwarranted. The film came in on schedule and under budget. The producer and I never had a serious argument or even a spat.

Did other people contribute ideas for the film? Absolutely. My responsibility was to shoot a decent movie, the best it could be. I didn’t reject ideas or dismiss suggestions. I gratefully accepted ideas that were better than mine. Always have.

As principal photography ended, I was given a beautiful copy of the Jason mask on which the cast and crew signed their names with lovely messages. I gave everyone a clock radio. Frank gave each of them a $100 bonus. This was not a “troubled” production.

The cast and I got along quite well. In Crystal Lake Memories, I was described as a paranoid, tense, out of control sex pervert and cocaine addict; desperate, crude, incompetent and an asshole with no talent. Some people like the movie, believe it or not. Some people hate it. But there’s no way it would retain this amount of controversy and interest if the director was basically a madman. The two films I had done prior to Friday V had both gotten away from me. I would not let Friday be another casualty. I have many faults, too many probably, but when I worked on a film I gave it my all and expected the people working with me to do the same.

For some, it is the highlight of their career. For others, it helped launch them into bigger and better things. I won’t trade insults with those that inexplicably turned on me, but I do thank the people that remember their participation in the movie fondly and have only the nicest things to say. Don’t believe everything you read!!!

Part V was the first film Danny had complete control over since High Rise and it paid off! While fans did miss Jason, they still made Part V a box-office hit.

Chapter VII: After Friday V

2009-03-28T09:16:00.000-07:00

Although Danny had his biggest hit, Friday V would be the last film he would ever make. If the saying “You’re only as good as your last film” is true, why did Danny never make another movie again? Why has he kept quiet till his most recent appearance in the Friday the 13th documentary His Name Was Jason? In this chapter, Danny breaks his silence and fills in what happened between 1985 and 2009.

Danny Steinmann: In NY, I took my mother out to dinner one night. A girl comes over to our table dressed beautifully and gorgeous and asks, “Are you Danny Steinmann?”

I said, “Yes.” And she told me who she was. When I was 16, this girl was my life. She was a cross between Natalie Wood and Ava Gardner. Not an exaggeration. We were inseparable for two years. She went away to college, and so did I. I saw her a few times, but the magic was mostly gone. She got married, and we went our separate ways.

Over 25 years later, she tells me she’s divorced and has two kids. I was divorced and had one son. She wrote down her address and phone number and left.

Friday was finished and the two guys from Boston had hired me to write and direct The Last House on the Left, Part 2. I began to flush out the story. I got together with Margie, the woman that now consumed my heart.

The two moneymen had gone to Cannes to pre-sell the film. A super-talented girl, Tina Landau, helped me write the script. I was being paid good money and anxious to get started. Although I was in my forties, I was experiencing life as I had when I was 16.

One of the producers asked me to go and look at some locations in Wisconsin. We went, taking my soon-to-be wife with us. After a day or so, I agreed that we could shoot there. About a week later, back in New York, I was told that there was a problem with the rights. It seemed that they had not secured permission from the original writer to shoot a sequel, and although they were paying me good money, their hands were tied and it couldn’t be done. So began a series of bad breaks and missed opportunities that eventually led me to a life without purpose, without hope, without the will to stay alive.

For the moment, no big deal; Margie and I got married and were madly in love. Friday V had done very well, and although not critically received, it was a good credit and I was getting offers.

I next signed on to write and direct a camp musical entitled Frankenstar. I met with the producers and music executives in order to coordinate a plan of action. I began to write the script and insisted on being paid each week. We went down to Baton Rouge and New Orleans to scout for locations. We met with the governor and various officials to secure locations and obtain permits. They made an offer to Ozzy Osbourne to star in the picture.

Back in LA with a finished first draft, I secured a crew and began pre production with everyone on board. I received a call telling me that one of the producers was arrested and the other had gone missing. The project collapsed and I was unemployed. I was super pissed, but could do nothing about it.

I was next offered to write and direct a feature film for Empire Films, a company with a track record for making small but commercially successful films – comedies, thrillers and horror. It was owned and run by the Band family, very nice to work with and financially sound. This time my agent made a deal with them that I would be paid in full whether the film was made or not.

The story was similar to The Descent. I was given an outline and began to write the script. A month later, they sent me to Italy to scout locations and begin to cast. I was taken to Cinecittà, a major studio in Rome where Empire shot many of their films. I was shown a bunch of caves in southern Italy and found one that would work nicely.

Back in LA, I met with Charles Band. He told me that Empire was out of business. They had declared bankruptcy. He implored me not to go after my unpaid salary. That he would make it up to me, pay and hire me as soon as he was back on his feet again. I acquiesced, and I’ve never been paid by, hired by, or spoken to Mr. Band again. What the fuck was going on?

Almost two years of marriage, it abruptly came to an end. We both discovered that we weren’t teenagers anymore and couldn’t handle life together as adults. It was my second divorce and I felt like a failure. Life tastes much better when you have someone to share it with.

I was next offered to direct a film that I had written called Caprice. It was to be shot in Seoul, South Korea. The story was about a girl who loved her father a bit too much. She kills her mother and sister ten pages into the script: a sexual thriller.

The moneyman screened two of his films for me. He traveled everywhere in his limo. He lived large. I hired three American actors. The rest of the cast would be Korean. I made the father the United States Ambassador.

Three days before I was to fly to Seoul, I met with my new agent who gave me the news. The film producer was a phony. He had duped a bunch of investors out of large sums of money. He was wanted in Europe for similar schemes. I was floored. I called the Beverly Wilshire, but he had checked out. Trust no one. Not a good time to go to Vegas.

About this time, I had been living in a nice apartment in the valley. I was thrown out of bed early one morning. The apartment started to come apart; the Northridge earthquake. It seemed to go on forever. Everything I owned was no more.

I moved in with a close friend, hoping my luck would change. I was on a horrible roll. I used to be a very physical person. If I didn’t run, play tennis, go to the gym, something each day, I had trouble functioning. One day I was riding a bicycle when for some reason a pickup truck slammed into me from behind. I flew through the air and landed on the back of a parked car. For some reason I didn’t put my arms out and took the crash full force with my head, crushing my cervical bones, No. 3 through 7.

I strongly advise wearing a helmet while riding a bike. Christopher Reeves’ fall off his horse obliterated all of the bones in his cervix. He was immediately paralyzed.

I was left with crushed knees and horrendous pain in my neck. I had successful surgery on my legs, but my neck was no easy fix. I saw many doctors, specialists and surgeons in LA. They came to no consensus and this was becoming expensive since I had no medical insurance.

I strongly advise to always have medical insurance.

I went to Miami and New York and back to LA trying to find the right doctor or surgeon to help me recover. My pain was becoming acute so I agreed to let a surgeon operate. He would take out the shattered bones and replace those with bones that he constructed from my hip, then sculpt and secure them with titanium plates and screws. He stated that after the operation I would virtually be pain free. That was not to be the case. Post-op I would remain in the hospital for 18 more days. I had trouble breathing on my own. After another attempt to correct my cervical spine, I was free to go and fend for myself. My pain had lessened, but had not gone away.

A good friend of mine asked me whether I was well enough to go to the Philippines and write and direct a documentary on the life of Imelda Marcos. I asked my doctor and he gave me thumbs up.

Less than a week later, I landed in Manila and was taken to a magnificent house with a huge pool, beautifully furnished, and quite a few servants. I was off my pain meds and feeling good. My luck had changed. That night I met with Madam Marcos at dinner and became entranced by her beauty and her spirit. I was anxious to get to work. The next morning I awoke in pain that I didn’t know existed; blinding, excruciating, stabbing. No words exist to express this torturous overwhelming feeling.

I was rushed to the hospital, given a shot of Demerol, and thankfully, passed out. I was to remain in this Manila hospital for the next 2½ months, given so many different medications, therapies, and tests; taking heavy doses of pain meds each day.

Gradually, I began to recover. I asked for any books or publications on the life of Madam Marcos. She also came to the hospital twice to be interviewed. I began to write. I believe it’s the best work that I’ve ever done. I underwent another surgery in the Philippines that they hoped would heal my condition.

The producer had gone back to the States and I was informed that the documentary was cancelled. When I was able, they put me on a plane back to LA. Mentally and physically, I was in a great deal of pain and now almost broke.

The next few months in LA are pretty much a blur. My only objective each day was to quiet the growing monster of pain as best I could. I was losing the battle. Almost every night was spent in different emergency wards around the city. I had no money to spend on doctors. My options shrunk. The pain continued to grow mercilessly.

I bought a knife. That night, I filled the bathtub with water, got in, and slit my wrists. Soon the water turned red. I closed my eyes and thought about my best friend who overdosed on heroin in the mid-sixties, that he had missed Neil Armstrong on the moon, Vietnam, Watergate, Monica Lewinsky, and I drifted away.

For some reason I hadn’t put the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door, which I had done every night. I was told that the maid had come in, saw me in the tub of this skanky motel, and rushed downstairs to the front desk. They called the police and five to ten minutes later there were over 12 people in my room. Talk about being embarrassed.

I was taken to the nearest hospital. There I was given a shot of Ativan and put into the psychiatric ward where I would stay for a week. The problem was I was not given any pain medication, not even Tylenol. I didn’t sleep the entire week. I begged, howled, and pleaded to no avail. They considered me an addict and was treated as one. Finally, I was discharged in a great deal of pain.

To this day, I don’t really know whether I was a pain pill addict or whether the pain came from a botched surgery or a combination of both. It didn’t matter. The agony was real and growing. I was still suicidal and super pissed that I was still alive. Each time I saw a bus or a truck coming toward me, I tried to throw myself in front of it, but I could never gather the courage. My mind was all over the place. I couldn’t retain any clear thoughts.

Somehow, I remembered I had an uncle who lived in Dover, Delaware; my mother’s brother. I hadn’t seen or heard from him in years. I found his telephone number, called, and told him my story. He said with no hesitation, “Get your ass down here.” That was thirteen years ago. Two weeks after my arrival in Dover, I had a wonderful doctor, Medicaid, and Social Security checks. I am virtually pain free now and have a life, not much of one, but it’ll do. Sadly, my uncle and his wife have passed away.

About eight months ago, strange things began to happen.

I was asked to do an interview for a book on the Friday the 13th series. Shortly after, I received an invitation to be part of a Friday V convention in Dallas and then did a radio interview for deadpit.com, then a commentary for the Savage Streets DVD, then was filmed for a documentary featuring High Rise. Shortly after that, I was asked to do a filmed interview for Friday V, a documentary on all the Friday films, shot in New York, I believe for Starz Cable. The Unseen, the picture I took my name off, has recently been released on DVD and a film I did as an actor in 1965 has resurfaced. I was invited to Cleveland by Cinema Wasteland the first week in April. (I had the best time. The people were wonderful.) A few weeks ago I went to LA to do a commentary and interview for Friday the 13th Part V. I went to a convention in Florida in mid-April and I was invited to NYC for Fangoria, June 5th-7th and then to Kentucky in August.

And that’s my story. My son is in LA trying to succeed as an actor/writer. He is so talented and gifted. The key, I think, is the ability to judge people correctly. It’s a tough business, lots of phonies and lots of good, honest people. Judge them correctly and always wear a helmet while riding a bike and always, always have medical insurance.

Inserts(1974)

2008-12-06T14:59:00.000-08:00

Richard Dreyfuss in a X-rated Film!?

Favorite Dialogue: "It's sure good to know, your rope can still rise"

Every now and then, Hollywood releases a film that is too risque for a R rating. Some films as Midnight Cowboy(1969) and Last Tango in Paris(1973) were films that were meant to get a R rating but got an X rating when they were released to theaters. (Today, both films now have a R rating.) Others films as Caligula (1980) and Showgirls (1995) were deliberately made to get no rating or a X rating or a NC-17 rating. Most films as American Pie(1998) or Basic Instinct(1992) are shot first and then edited down to get a R rating. The R rated cut is played in the theaters and then the filmmakers release the unedited (or unrated) cut onto DVD. In all three cases, the outcome of what rating the film got isn't so important. What is important is the fact that the film didn't get a R rating initially. That fact alone guarantees the film a lot of controversy and attention.

But not in Inserts' case.

Inserts(1974) received an X rating upon its initial release. Today, it is re rated to receive a NC-17. Like Boogie Nights (1997), it is about making porno films though the film itself is not a pornographic film. The reasons behind the rating is a bit unclear. It has a lot of full frontal nudity and simulated sex, which is natural, given the subject matter. However, Boogie Nights has its share of nudity and simulated sex as well. My guess is because the film either contains more seconds or minutes of nudity then Boogie Nights has.

Inserts must have been a real hard sell for its distributors. The X rating alone would guarantee that certain papers would not advertise the film nor would certain theaters play it. Not to mention, certain audience members were sure to stay away from it. Leading man Richard Dreyfuss had not reached the peak of his stardom. (Jaws and Close Encounters would be a few years later.) The film takes entirely place in Dreyfuss' mansion and relies more on dialogue than action, which makes the film feel more like a play. While the film is about making a porn film and contains a lot of nudity, there isn't enough on screen to satisfy someone who just wants to watch a porn film and get off on it. Finally, the film received mostly negative reviews when it was released.

The film disappeared in obscurity until it was released on DVD. Today, a small cult exists among those who've seen the film. Amazon.Com mentions that Inserts is the fifth highest selling DVD of all the films that Richard Dreyfuss has made.

What is this film?

The film is about Boy Wonder(Dreyfuss) who was a legendary silent film director. In the 30s, he is a director that found himself unemployed when talkies took over Hollywood. He is now reduced to making porn films. He lounges around in his decaying mansion wearing his robe and pajamas. He never goes outside. He is also unshaven, alcoholic and impotent.

Beyond meeting Boy Wonder, we meet his two leads for the current porn he is shooting. His female lead Harlene(Veronica Cartwright) is a former silent star who also found herself unemployed when talkies replaced silent films. This is no surprise as she has a voice that sounds like nails scratching on a blackboard. She also has a huge heroin problem. The male lead Rex(Stephen Davies), who works in the funeral parlor business when he doesn't do films, is dumb as a block of wood and has illusions of being a huge movie star one day.

His film is financed by Big Mac(Bob Hoskins), who's also planning to open a chain of gas stations and hamburger stands on a LA Freeway. (I wonder if the hamburger stand idea is why his character is called Big Mac.) We meet Big Mac as he arrives to the shooting of Boy Wonder's latest film with his fiancee Cathy Cake(Jessica Harper).

The shooting of the film goes well for the most part. Then everyone takes a break. Harlene goes upstairs to get a heroin fix and dies as result of an drug overdose. Knowing that Rex works in the funeral business, Big Mac convinces Rex to dispose of Harlene's corpse at Rex's funeral parlor.

This leaves Cathy and Boy Wonder alone with each other. (Big Mac doesn't mind leaving his girl alone with Boy Wonder, because he knows that Boy Wonder is impotent.) Cathy realizes the film is unfinished and what hasn't been shot are the "inserts"-close ups of genitals as well as shots showing penetration. She also senses that Boy Wonder has talent and with the right direction could make her into a star. She begin to convince Boy Wonder to finish the film using her for the "inserts." She also realizes that Boy Wonder's impotency is perhaps curable and that she might be the woman to help cure him of his problem.

Like Boogie Nights(1997), not only is the film about making porn, but it is also about an era. In this case, it is about the former silent generation who found themselves lost and forgotten in the 30s when silent films were no longer in vogue. There is also dialogue sprinkled about famous figures from the 20s to the 30s as Erich Von Stroheim and Wallace Reid. Even Clark Gable is mentioned here. Gable in this film is a unknown actor whose looking for Boy Wonder, because he believes Boy Wonder's directorial skills could make him a star. Gable knocks on the door of Boy Wonder's mansion, but Wonder doesn't answer the door.

However, both Inserts and Boogie Nights have different themes. Boogie Nights' usage of the 70 era and porn films is about many things: the rise and fall of stars, the "family" environment among the cast and crew, etc. Inserts' usage of 30s era and the porn films is mainly about Boy Wonder. The film he shoots is a reflection of his current state. His downward spiral from directing Hollywood films to porn films reflect the downward spiral of the man himself as well as the mansion he lives in. The camera he uses to shoot the film has to be manually cranked before it goes into action and inevitably winds down, thus reflecting his impotence. And while, he has no delusions that the film he is shooting is great art, he is determined to make it the best film he can make thus showing that Boy Wonder hasn't completely lost his directorial talent or interest in directing movies.

The film is also about the power plays between director and star. This happens when Cathy Cake offers to use herself for the "inserts" of the film. As she convinces and seduces Boy Wonder to finish the film, she is "directing" him. Likewise, when Boy Wonder turns on the camera to film her, he is "directing" her. Finally, when it comes to the "penetration" shot, it is not a case of mutual love, but a case of 2 parties who are both using each other. (She is using him to get into the movies, he is using her for his virility.) The scenes between Cathy Cake and Boy Wonder work well mainly due to the excellent performances of Richard Dreyfuss and Jessica Harper. They also have a great chemistry together and manage to make their "penetration" scene very erotic.

Dreyfuss and Harper are not the only good ones here. Bob Hoskins's performance here shows why he went on to bigger things after this. Veronica Cartwright and Stephen Davies are also fine as well.

I did mention that the film feels stagy due to the fact that the whole story takes place in Boy Wonder's mansion. Yet, at the same time, by staying in the mansion, the viewer gets a sense of Boy Wonder's agoraphobia. Also by staying in the apartment the viewer is reminded that Boy Wonder is shooting his porn film not on a set but in his bedroom instead.

This was the writer-director John Byrum's debut. Despite the promising start here, Byrum has never made a film as good as "Inserts" since then. Byrum went on to write the Diana Ross vehicle Mahogany (1975). He wrote and direct Bill Murray's misstep as a serious actor in The Razor's Edge(1984). He is also the author of the Gwyneth Paltrow turkey Duets(2000).

Update on things

2008-12-04T16:36:00.000-08:00

The interview is taking longer that I thought to complete. Its too complicated and too long to say why. Rest assured, Danny and I will complete the interview and it will be good. I just can't say when that will be. Just that I know it will happen.

But in the meantime, the blog must go on and not wait for the interview to finish. So, this weekend, I will do my first review of Inserts (1974) starring Richard Dreyfuss. You got a brief glimpse at my interview skills from the first quarter interview with Danny. Now look at my review skills coming either Saturday or Sunday.

Stay tuned.

First Blog Entry

2008-11-11T15:06:00.000-08:00

I'll be honest with you. For the most part, I don't like blogs. Blogs are usually the type of thing where a blogger is going through an Oprah/Dr. Phil self-analysis. Once the self-analysis is done, they inflict their "Woe is me" stories onto the poor reader. Well, I don't deny I have problems but you the reader doesn't need to hear them. I can save that for the therapy couch, thank you.

Having said that, there are great blogs out there. However all the blogs I read happen to be political. They range the entire political spectrum. So, starting from right to left, I read: Right Wing News, James Bowman, Andrew Sullivan, Glenn Greenwald, Progressive Daily Beacon, Counterpunch. I don't agree with everyone's opinion, (Greenwald may be the one I agree with the most) but I know good writing when I see it. As for me contributing to the political arena, I couldn't come close to any of these guys when it comes to political writing. Plus, with a lot comments on the recent Obama victory, I really don't think anyone needs to hear one more opinion about it.

So given my dislike of traditional blogs and my lack of talent in political blogs, it would seem that blogs would be a no-no for me.

However, that all changed this past weekend. I was in Texas. I was down for a horror film convention and to meet someone from work. (I had spoken to her over the phone for over a year now but never met her in person till this past Saturday.) The horror film convention's theme was a 23 year old reunion of Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning. A good deal of the cast and crew were there. One of the persons I met was the director of Friday the 13th Part V, Danny Steinmann. Danny and I hit it off well and we talked at great length. In the middle of our conversation, Danny was impressed with my knowledge of film and asked me if I ever thought of writing a book on what I knew about film. I told him I had written some fictional stuff, like screenplays or short stories, but nothing like what he was suggesting. I also didn't know the first thing about getting a book published in the marketplace, but I did know how to publish my writing on the net and that was by blogging. I then asked Danny if he would agree to an interview for the blog. He agreed.

And right there, I thought of Stone Cold Crazy, the blog. The name Stone Cold Crazy comes from the title of a Queen song, Stone Cold Crazy. Plus, I think you got to be a little Stone Cold Crazy to have all this knowledge that I do about film. Not to mention, you got to be a little Stone Cold Crazy to watch some of the films that will be talked about on this blog as well as listen to some of the music that will be talked about on this blog. The blog will focus on obscure films as well as obscure rock. My feeling is enough has been written about movies as Citizen Kane, Psycho, Gone With The Wind and as well as rockers as Zeppelin, Beatles, and Nirvana. You don't really need to read more about them. But not enough has been written about films as Crimes Of Passion, Scarecrow, and Inserts. And who has read about rockers as Bloodrock, Stories, and Leaf Hound? Its time for all these lost pieces of art to hit the spotlight and give them as much as exposure as I can.

But because Stone Cold Crazy would not exist without that conversation with Danny Steinmann, it only makes sense that the first real entry should be an interview with him. There may not be many interviews on Stone Cold Crazy, but it does fit with the purpose of the blog. Again, I'm taking a director not many people know about (just as many don't know about the films or music I will be talking about in the blogs) and trying to give him a little more exposure. Not to mention, Danny gave me some extra confidence in my own writing abilities. I mean, I've gotten praise from family, friends and a writing teacher about my writing and I am flattered when that happens. But to hear encouragement from an actual filmmaker, well, that's a whole different level together. Its like getting praise from a whole new planet.

So, sit tight, over the next couple of days, I will interview Danny Steinmann over the phone, make an MP3 and transcript of our interview.

--Jeff

Update #1- Just got off the phone with Danny tonight this Thursday. We agreed to next Friday, so you'll have to wait till then. It has to be a weekend day because we have a lot to discuss from his days in the 60s to 80s and possibly now.