(Excerpted from my memoir, TWELVE DEAD FROGS and Other Stories, ©2017, Light Video Books)
INTRODUCTION
Ever since I began making films in the early 1970s I've straddled the line between fiction and non-fiction storytelling, including utilizing actor's real-life stories within the structure of my scripted dramas. It seemed that the real gold to be mined for the screen always lay within people's abilities to be brutally honest about themselves and their human frailties.
“SLEEPER TRILOGY” (Back Cover)––”Three Undiscovered First Features by Rick Schmidt 1973-1983 : Told by Himself”
During my first feature, A Man, A Woman, And A Killer, co- directed with my then-roommate Wayne Wang, of Joy Luck Club and Smoke fame, the three lead actors, Ed Nylund, Dick Richardson, and Carolyn Zaremba, were each brought into the recording studio to tell where they were born, how they were raised, and share important facts about their childhoods. It was fascinating for me to hear how their lives had developed, their recollections more powerful than anything we could ever have invented for a script.
(Showboat) 1988-The Remake—TRAILER.
My next feature, 1988-The Remake, took this a step further, when I dedicated a good deal of its 93 minutes to illustrating the life of actor Ed Nylund. I admired his courage as he described his highs (being valedictorian in junior high school, getting into medical school during the depression years), and lows (failure to complete a Master's degree in music, a painful divorce, and the lost relationship with his son).
In my third Feature, Emerald Cities, I finally stepped up to the plate myself, introducing several stories from my own childhood as part of a surreal, media mix of 1984 I included in the cut; TV shows on past-life hypnotism, nuclear war footage, other Reagan-era lunacies juxtaposed with music from punk bands Flipper and The Mutants. One of the stories I told was about the trauma around getting a haircut at age nine, while my father looked on (retold in these pages (‘12 DEAD FROGS’) under the heading COWLICK). So in Emerald Cities I finally acknowledged my own cache of personal stories, and found the courage to share part of my own life with others.
Morgan's Cake, my fourth feature, was solely devoted to my son Morgan's real-life teenage angst, the stories reflecting what he was living during the last week before he turned 18. The scenes were created using his real best friend, real girlfriend, his real situations as a teenager, and centered on his current love life (including the fantasized announcement of a pregnancy), loss of job, college choices, registration for the draft (or not), and the problem of being caught between divorced parents. Real-life had, by that point, totally invaded my moviemaking process. Fortunately it went over well with audiences, programmers and critics, resulting in over a dozen international film festival screenings and a rave review by Janet Maslin of The New York Times.
American Orpheus––TRAILER.
For American Orpheus, my most ambitious feature ($75,000 from three investors), I bet the whole production on a single mom, Jody Esther, who was struggling to keep her young daughter separated from an abusive father. The script was based on a few months of our conversations, and inevitably I asked her to play the lead role herself (to her utter shock and chagrin). Her courage in performing her real life for the camera resulted in a premieres of the film at the Seattle and Rotterdam International Film Festivals.
My next feature, Blues For The Avatar, a collaborative effort co-directed with five first-time feature filmmakers at my inaugural Feature Workshop in 1993, included seven real-life stories told to the camera (almost half of the 73 minute film’s running time) juxtaposed against a fictional storyline. This film premiered at Slamdance International Film Festival in Park City, Houston Intl.—SILVER AWARD; "One of the Best Low-Budget/Experimental Features of the Year." (1996). And later, at Figueira da Foz International in Portugal, it was selected for ‘BEST SCRIPT” in the MAIN FEATURE COMPETITION (not bad, for a fully-improv feature film!)
Given all these years devoted to excavating with film and video, it seemed only natural that I would finally commit to paper the numerous stories from my own childhood and beyond. JOE’S SANDWICHES (page 158 in ‘Memoir’), about an old grocer who was a one-man welfare program for his older Italian community in Oakland, CA, is one of my favorites. I’ve found that I’ve functioned both as a reporter of the big stories, and also as a chronicler of minuscule moments. I’ve learned that a person's life doesn’t swing from large event to large event, but is lived between small ironies, tripped up and altered by the smallest pebble, changed forever by a chance meeting or incident that each of us rarely share.
————
Share this post