This post first appeared in my e-newsletter I WAS BIGFOOT'S SHEMP, which you can subscribe to in the sidebar.
I have been remiss in not talking about two things.
First, my brother called BS on me for not including John Cougar Mellencamp's "Scarecrow" on my Secret Soundtrack of songs for SCARECROW COUNTY, and he was totally right--not only the obvious title but Mellencamp's Hoosier roots.
Second, I keep forgetting to talk about watching Orson Welles' formerly long-lost final film THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND, which I watched right in the middle of the week between the two big shooting spates on SCARECROW COUNTY. The caveat here is that it fits right in my groove--that time period when the studio system, staggering and out of touch, imploded on itself and gave rise to independent film, as goaded on by French, Italian, and Japanese filmmakers--that is, until movies like STAR WARS and JAWS and other summer blockbusters pushed it to the margins again. I liked it so much I immediately stayed up late watching the documentary on its making, THEY'LL LOVE ME WHEN I'M DEAD and am just about done listening to the audiobook ORSON WELLES' LAST MOVIE by Josh Karp.
Orson Welles, whose CITIZEN KANE is so visionary, mostly because there was nobody around to tell him not to do things, and he didn't know any better. Then decades of crashed projects and unrealized dreams, a few more flawed masterpieces, and then, at the end of his life, tooling around with a skeleton crew of hippies pretending to be a college film crew to avoid permits, and outrunning bills to finish one more crazy movie. Broke, crashing at Peter Bogdanovich's place, doing commercials for cheap wine to get to the next day.
Welles, an ogre, a charmer, larger than life, petty and small. But lurking in the background of this story is Gary Graver, a prolific b-movie and adult film director who gave his life over to Welles for six years as DP of this film, hoping it would catapult him into the big leagues alongside the legendary auteur.
It didn't.
Gary Graver crashed his marriages, burned up his life and died young. Gary Graver, a guy making pornos who boldly called Orson Welles up one day and said he wanted to shoot a movie for him, and, astoundingly, Orson Welles answered "okay." Despite everything that happened after it doesn't seem like Graver regretted it.
Orson Welles is a legend and a master now and forever, but my heart is with Gary Graver, one of us.
I've quit the b-movie biz before, and have been tempted to again from time to time. But I once told an actress who was thinking about quitting movies that you can quit but you'll never stop thinking about it. If you don't do movies, you'll think about plays, podcasts, something. When I am not thinking about screenwriting I'm thinking about playwriting or drawing comics or writing a pulp paperback of some kind. I crashed very hard at the end of CRAWLSPACE and very hard again at the end of SCARECROW COUNTY and yet here I am typing and thinking about Gary Graver.
It's a long ways for most of my loyal readers, but the awesome independent movie house Film Scene is screening THE GIRL IN THE CRAWLSPACE in April in downtown Iowa City, and how cool is that?
More soon. Thanks for reading.
I have been remiss in not talking about two things.
First, my brother called BS on me for not including John Cougar Mellencamp's "Scarecrow" on my Secret Soundtrack of songs for SCARECROW COUNTY, and he was totally right--not only the obvious title but Mellencamp's Hoosier roots.
Second, I keep forgetting to talk about watching Orson Welles' formerly long-lost final film THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND, which I watched right in the middle of the week between the two big shooting spates on SCARECROW COUNTY. The caveat here is that it fits right in my groove--that time period when the studio system, staggering and out of touch, imploded on itself and gave rise to independent film, as goaded on by French, Italian, and Japanese filmmakers--that is, until movies like STAR WARS and JAWS and other summer blockbusters pushed it to the margins again. I liked it so much I immediately stayed up late watching the documentary on its making, THEY'LL LOVE ME WHEN I'M DEAD and am just about done listening to the audiobook ORSON WELLES' LAST MOVIE by Josh Karp.
Orson Welles, whose CITIZEN KANE is so visionary, mostly because there was nobody around to tell him not to do things, and he didn't know any better. Then decades of crashed projects and unrealized dreams, a few more flawed masterpieces, and then, at the end of his life, tooling around with a skeleton crew of hippies pretending to be a college film crew to avoid permits, and outrunning bills to finish one more crazy movie. Broke, crashing at Peter Bogdanovich's place, doing commercials for cheap wine to get to the next day.
Welles, an ogre, a charmer, larger than life, petty and small. But lurking in the background of this story is Gary Graver, a prolific b-movie and adult film director who gave his life over to Welles for six years as DP of this film, hoping it would catapult him into the big leagues alongside the legendary auteur.
It didn't.
Gary Graver crashed his marriages, burned up his life and died young. Gary Graver, a guy making pornos who boldly called Orson Welles up one day and said he wanted to shoot a movie for him, and, astoundingly, Orson Welles answered "okay." Despite everything that happened after it doesn't seem like Graver regretted it.
Orson Welles is a legend and a master now and forever, but my heart is with Gary Graver, one of us.
I've quit the b-movie biz before, and have been tempted to again from time to time. But I once told an actress who was thinking about quitting movies that you can quit but you'll never stop thinking about it. If you don't do movies, you'll think about plays, podcasts, something. When I am not thinking about screenwriting I'm thinking about playwriting or drawing comics or writing a pulp paperback of some kind. I crashed very hard at the end of CRAWLSPACE and very hard again at the end of SCARECROW COUNTY and yet here I am typing and thinking about Gary Graver.
It's a long ways for most of my loyal readers, but the awesome independent movie house Film Scene is screening THE GIRL IN THE CRAWLSPACE in April in downtown Iowa City, and how cool is that?
More soon. Thanks for reading.
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