If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor (22 page)

The cabin was so rural that we never thought anything of leaving the equipment in place and going four miles "home" to eat lunch or dinner. The driveway had become so inaccessible that only a damn fool would try and steal anything -- or so we thought.

Returning from a late night lunch, we discovered that our power tools were missing. The loss: a skill-saw, saber-saw, drill and chainsaw. The ironic thing about the whole incident was that a $20,000 Arriflex camera, sitting out in the open, wasn't touched. Value is a subjective thing, particularly in rural Tennessee.

This incident led us to post a watchman at the cabin after wrapping each night. That lucky person got to shiver on a hard floor next to the dying fire until someone relieved them the next afternoon.

Just when our defenses reached an all-time low, we came face-to-face with an indescribable substance known as Goody's chili. We returned to the house for "lunch" (at 2:00 A.M.) only to find Goody sound asleep in a La-Z-Boy chair in front of a TV test pattern, surrounded by Snicker's Bar wrappers. When we asked him where lunch was, he groggily pointed to the stovetop.

Dave: You guys had been working really hard for six or seven nights, so I said, "just come home and I'll make you guys a real meal." I made this chili -- a really intensive meat experience -- three or four pounds of beef and I threw in some lamb and beans and a lot of jalepenos and Tobasco sauce and a lot of seasoning. Everybody comes home and they eat and I've got bread and cheese and sour cream and it's like a real meal and everybody's hungry and they start eating like animals.

Bruce: That's when the trouble began...

Dave: I went to bed and then I came up the next morning and I saw Sam. He was asleep, with his head on the table. You were underneath --

Bruce: I was underneath the table.

Dave: You were snoring and Rob was passed out in his chair.

Bruce: No one was able to move after that meal.

Dave: I woke everybody up and Sam turned to me and he goes, "You drugged me and violated me, didn't you?"

As if that wasn't bad enough, there was so much left over that we had the same meal the next night and the same thing happened -- two nights of work, down the crapper because of Goodman's chili.

With Goodman, you never really knew what kind of sustenance you were going to get from day to day. Another night, he confused baking powder with baking soda and the crew was treated to "pizza cake." Most of us threw our portions in the fire.

As the weather became more volatile, so did Goody. After a while, he simply refused to bring the food down to the cabin.

Dave: The road is too slippery.

Bruce: No shit, Dave.

Dave: I'm gonna leave it at the top of the driveway. Fuck it. I don't care. You're not paying me enough to bring it all the way down...

Bruce: Sure, whatever is convenient for you. We wouldn't want you to miss the soaps...

Life at the house became surreal. Tom Sullivan slept in the laundry room. Apparently, he was fine with the idea of nesting among weeks of unwashed crew clothing. Eventually, a horrid stench began to emanate from the room. We secretly discussed Tom's hygiene, but someone had seen him take a shower a few weeks before, so it couldn't be him...
could it?

After Tom returned home to Michigan, we discovered the source of the smell: rotting chicken bones that he had used for several ghoulish props.

About 3:00 A.M. one night, Sam awoke to an eerie wind, whispering through his bedroom window. Like the dedicated filmmaker that he was, he immediately rousted sound man John Mason.

Sam: I woke John up and I asked him to record it because it was so scary and so unique.

Bruce: And so you got a couple minutes of that or whatever?

Sam: Yeah, we wound up using it in the finished film a lot, actually. I couldn't believe it was natural -- it sounded so fake.

REALITY BITES

Our back room telephone had been knocked off its perch so many times during the course of the shoot that to make or receive a call, you had to hold a delicate lever in place to keep from hanging up.

One frigid night, while shooting a difficult sequence, I got a cryptic call.

"Joe's Pool Hall, who in the hall do you want?" I answered, assuming that it was Goody, calling to complain about something.

"Who is this?" the irritated voice wanted to know.

"Who wants to know?" I shot back, not recognizing the caller.

"Bruce, this is Dad. When are you coming back?"

I rubbed my eyes and tried to make a joke. "Never. We're having way too much fun."

"Quit screwing around. Have you heard from your mother?" Dad asked, in an uncharacteristically stern tone.

"No, why?"

"Because she's not here. I don't know where she went or when she's coming back."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"Just what I said." He sounded more sad than worried.

"Uh, well, God, I don't know, Dad. I'll be home in a couple of weeks, I guess. I'm not sure. What's going on up there? Is everything all right?"

"I don't know. We'll talk about it when you get back..."

"Okay. Bye, Dad.
Dad?"

It was too late -- the phone had hung up on itself.

On the home front, a problem that I didn't even know existed had reared its hydra head. The whole thing was too hard to grasp, so I went back to the set and got a bucket of blood dumped on me.

THAT'S A WRAP! SORT OF...

Eventually, our house rental agreement expired, and we were forced to vacate. Apparently, there were big plans for this house -- it was to be converted into a country brothel. Hauling out hastily gathered clothing and equipment, we passed the shiny brass beds of the new inhabitants -- for shame, Bible Belt, for shame.

The last few days of our shoot, the spent crew -- all five of us -- lived at the cabin. To stay warm, we burned any furniture that was no longer needed. There were still day shots and night shots to complete, so sleep wasn't really an option, but it didn't seem to matter -- getting the
hell
out of Tennessee was the only important thing.

For sheer absurdity, nothing could top an incident with a man named Fats. This fellow, who single-handedly perpetuated the Red Neck stereotype, hailed from the bowels of Newport County. This was an important distinction, because it was one of the few "wet" counties in Tennessee and Fats, a drinker's drinker, lived up to its reputation. He had visited the set with his girlfriend and small child many months before. His boy, all of four, displayed a vocabulary that was about seventy percent expletives.

"Goddam sumbitch, goddam sumbitch" he would say repeatedly. About 5:00 in the morning after our last night of filming, Fats's 1971 Plymouth Duster slid to a halt at the bottom of the driveway -- the one that had long been impassible. He was drunk and
determined
to get into the movie business.

"How're all my friends gonna know I knowed you, if you don't put me in yer pitcher...?" he slurred.

We could only stare at each other in amazement.

"Gee, Fats, we just wrapped for the night. Sorry." Sam explained, as rationally as he could for a man who had been up for almost two days straight.

"Wrapped, hell...
put me in yer pitcher."

We learned never to argue with a man who had a bullet hole in his car.

"Sure, Fats," Sam shrugged, "we'll put you in the movie."

With that, we mocked up a few props and proceeded to act out a scene from Sam's student film,
The Happy Valley Kid.
Fats was given the role of college professor and Josh was enlisted to portray the "Kid." Sam scribbled copious amounts of dialogue on the back of a script log and insisted that Fats adhere to every word.

"C'mon, Fats, you want to be an actor, don't you?"

"Well, I..."

"Let's shoot... Roll sound!"

"Yeah, but I don't know my --"

"Slate it!" Sam bellowed. For some reason I thought of Captain Ahab.

"Oh, shit, boy, I ain't ready fer --"

"Action, Fats --
ACTION!"

His drunken bluster reached new heights as he vainly struggled with material way past his third-grade education, but by golly, Fats was a movie star!

With that, on Wednesday, January 23, 1980, filming was declared "kind of finished." Everything that didn't absolutely have to return to Michigan was placed on a stump and blasted to bits with the remaining ammunition. The scraps were then tossed on a giant heap behind the cabin and ceremoniously burned.

To close out this life-altering experience, we gathered around the trapdoor, exchanged a few solemn words, and buried a primitive time capsule deep below the floor of the main room. This cigar box, filled with a spent shotgun shell, a sample of fake blood and a hand-written "visual code" to the film, commemorated the culmination of twelve grueling weeks filming our first "real" movie.

19

Aftermath

Upon limping back to Michigan (my wrenched, poked ankle made this a literal thing for me), we found ourselves penniless and with an incomplete film.

The cryptic phone call with Dad came to fruition as soon as I walked in the door of my house. My mother informed me that she was, in fact, leaving for good. After a borderline Vietnam experience, this was about the last thing I wanted to hear. It had been a long time since I cried, but tears flowed freely that day.

Ironically, my oldest brother Mike was about to get married. The family picture at the wedding was a hoot -- it was the classic Midwest, everything-is-all-right-on-the-outside portrait of a family in transition.

The prospects for additional funding were equally as grim, but life goes on -- we had come way too far to give up now.

The nearby suburb of Ferndale provided cheap office space, and we settled into an old dentist's office -- that seemed appropriate, since a good deal of our budget came from this profession and raising money was a lot like pulling teeth.

Ferndale was a quaint neighborhood. Tom, our building manager, lived with his Doberman, Duke, on the premises. I nave no doubt that our six years there led to his early insanity.