During MORGAN'S CAKE, as writer/director, I temporarily ran out of ideas more than once! In NICK BERTONI'S basement I finally remembered his father's story. It's great MAKING movies with old friends!

SEE "MORGAN' CAKE" TRAILER: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/morganscake

(Excerpted from book, THE MIRACLE OF MORGAN'S CAKE––Production Secrets of a $15,000 IMPROV Sundance Feature").

Stalling For Ideas on the Set

Before we left Nick Bertoni’s house, I asked if he’d be up for doing a quiet scene with Morgan, just the two of them, as if Morgan had maybe returned later to do more work and they had become friendly over time. I was hoping I could shoot an older man talking to, perhaps advising, teenage Morgan about his personal life. Nick asked me what exact topic I wanted them to discuss and I had no immediate answer. He was OK with waiting for my idea until I had it figured out.

We explored his basement, walking through a catacomb of garage sale finds, finally arriving at a small alcove in the rear that contained work tables littered with electronic parts and soldering tools. I liked what I saw and we set up a plan to shoot there that evening.

Nick Bertoni, soundman, talked about his father with Morgan. (He still recorded their dialogue with a hidden Nagra tape recorder and mike concealed on the shelf in front of them, setting volume levels before they got seated.

Returning with Morgan after dinner, I showed Director of photography (DP) Kathleen Beeler*** the tight basement space and asked her to start trying to light it. I remember that Kathleen asked me repeatedly what the scene was about. Since I didn’t know yet, this question made me nervous. I put her off as best I could, saying I’d explain more after the lights were set up. I refused to admit that I had absolutely no idea what would be filmed down there. Just Morgan and Nick talking about something (what?). That was not the kind of answer that works for a professional Director of Photography.

***For the record, Kathleen added a tremendous amount of quality to the movie. She became a top DP, winning the the “Best of Sundance” award for A Tale of Love (1995) by Trinh T. Minh-Ha, Also she became a top visual effects expert, working on many famous Hollywood features including Jurassic Park and The hobbit, among many others (a bunch for lucasfilm). So I was lucky to be working with her on my movie!

Perhaps Kathleen was hoping to anticipate the mood of the scene in order to support it with a particular lighting. And with me always operating the camera – she only loaded filmstock in the camera’s magazines and set F-stops – she was probably getting pretty damn bored and frustrated. She did the grunt work – not for professional-level fees either, though I signed her to a deferred salary of $10,000 for the week – while I got to be artistic. At any rate, it was a little frightening to be put on the spot like that.

I wondered later how well I’d do on a real Hollywood set, with scores of technicians asking me that same question. I’d read somewhere that tough-guy director Sam Peckinpah, (The Wild Bunch, Straw Dogs, etc), had literally thrown up between each take on the set of his first big Hollywood picture, just from the pressure of dealing with those knowledgeable technicians.

As Kathleen set the lights “over there,” aimed at “the workbench” (where I finally committed my scene to take place), I stood around with Nick and Morgan and tried to get my act together. What could they talk about? It took a couple of tense minutes to finally get the needed concept.

Finally, I remembered Nick telling me a story years before about his father, who had suddenly dropped dead at age 50. Nick believed that his father died because he’d been overworked and over-stressed at his corporate job.

There it was! Because of my close friendship with Nick I was able to pull up a story I’d heard five or ten years earlier, and fashion it to perfectly support the developing sub-theme of Morgan’s Cake. The question, “Should a person go along with the system or not,” could apply to corporate life as well as to the military.

Before we rolled camera, Nick moved his Nagra recorder out of sight, and placed his Sennheiser microphone nearby, aimed back toward where he and Morgan were sitting. With the sound gear within easy access he could record sync sound and act at the same time. (You can see him reaching out and adjusting sound levels during the actual scene).*

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Here’s some of the dialogue, as transcribed for a foreign language “subtitle text” I needed for several European film festivals, such as Florence International, Italy, and Berlin International. The names and initials I’ve added to show which character is speaking would not normally be included in such a list. (If you’re fortunate and your feature gets accepted at a foreign film festival or showcase, you will need to spend a week or so listening to an audio tape of your movie’s soundtrack and typing out titles like these ones, carefully designed to duplicate on-screen pauses, vocal delivery, and the width of a movie screen):

Nick: “Well, my dad was a mechanical guy.

He worked for the telephone company...

...and he was a good hardworking guy,

but they took advantage of him...

...and screwed him, and basically it killed him.

He couldn’t do what he wanted. He always thought...

...he was going to get to do what he wanted...and...

Morgan: How did it turn out?

N: Well, he had a heart attack and died.

He was basically just a victim of a lot of stress, you know.

M: Did he drink or smoke?

N: No, he didn’t drink.

He smoked a little when he was younger, but...

...it wasn’t anything.

He seemed to be in good health.

50 years old......

…he keeled over dead.

M: So it’s like he worked really hard looking forward to retiring...

...and just kind of over-worked himself?

N: Well, the company, you know, they squeeze you between...

...you know, you work for the company,

and you try and do a good job, and...

...they take advantage of you, and you...

It’s just hard to make it...

...make a go of it...

cause they’re basically trying to exploit

whatever you have.

This was the kind of truth I had set out to discover with my real-life moviemaking techniques. By setting up situations with non-actors and forming a fiction-style matrix around their lives, I could occasionally snag some personal truths to pass along to the viewing audience. Nick’s pain about losing his father had impelled him to think differently about how he would live his own life. Here's a bit more of the transcript, where Morgan and Nick discuss how to balance daily economic needs with spiritual ones:

N: He had a lot of skills and he was handy with his hands and stuff...

…and I learned a lot of that from him...

...but I decided this wasn’t going to happen to me.

I was going to be independent, you know.

M: But he made good money, though.

You guys lived well, didn’t you?

You had the bills paid.

N: Yeah, but I’d rather have my father than have the bills paid.

You know, the bills will always take care of themselves.

Really.

M: Yeah.

N: There’s always some way it’s going to work out.

M: Yeah, you’re right.

N: And so, the important thing, I think, is to have your integrity, you know...

…and let the rest of it flow.

It’ll work out OK..

Anyway, there’s some optimism for you! It’s not to say that there won’t be some difficulty, even real pain, choosing an independent path, which Nick and Morgan discussed further as the scene progressed over seven minutes of screen time. Still, it’s nice to be reminded that, as people, we sometimes have to stand alone in the face of other people’s attitudes, take that lonely road by ourselves, without signposts or logic to guide us along. That is how it will feel at times, being a DV/film moviemaker. But somehow, as you gain confidence, you’ll get a better understanding of your particular life’s path. Maybe it requires us to sometimes quit a job that is over-stressing us, no matter what the cost of losing income and some kind of built-in status. You have to believe that it’ll ultimately…work out...OK(!).

Risking the “Cake” Punch-Line

The following morning (Day-Eight) we arrived at Leon’s house in Oakland, and began by setting up a dolly shot at the kitchen table. The Victorian-era walls looked like they would give a special feel to the scenes shot there. If you select the right locations, you can effectively “dress your set” by using what’s already there for props and backdrops. I had had Morgan bring the Hi-8 video camera and crane-pole along, and planned to have him fiddling around with it while Leon read aloud some of the “Grab Bag” anecdotes from the San Francisco Chronicle. When I had let my film attorney, Peter Buchanan, read the rough script of Morgan’s Cake, he had suggested I lay in the information about it being illegal to make a pastry reproduction of the White House some where in the middle of the movie, as well as at the climactic end. What? Wa she serious, I wondered? If I let the (perceptive) audience hear the information about how it was illegal to make a White- House-shaped cake halfway through the movie, wouldn’t that undercut the finalé? No, said Peter. Try it.

I still couldn’t believe that Peter’s advice about “foreshadowing” wouldn't ruin the ending, but on the set I gave it a chance. I decided to let Leon read a few other Grab Bag facts before coming to the “White House cake” lines, hoping that would play down the delivery of the vital information. And perhaps the dolly shot I had planned (again using a borrowed wheelchair), would create a little visual smokescreen as well. Leon first read a blurb about how the Canadian Mounted Police do the combined jobs of our FBI, Secret Service, Border Patrol, police, even part of the CIA. Next, he read that “more than half of the hysterectomies in the 1970s were unjustified,” adding that, “that should be illegal.” Then he laid in the White House cake info, commenting, “I wonder why’s that?” And, without giving any dramatic pause, he immediately followed up with, “mallard ducks commit rape.”

Just after he spoke that last line, I motioned for Leon’s dad, Eliot Kenin to enter the scene, telling him with a quick voice command, Ask Morgan about expensive camera and crane pole. Fortunately Eliot, a professional musician, had no problem improvising some dialogue with the boys as well as later sharing a great real-life story that fit well into the draft registration theme of the movie. I used the Hi-8 video camera (Morgan's POV) to record Eliot taking down the wash from the backyard line as he explained how he had avoided the draft in WWII, by going out of his way to appear publicly “Red.” So here was more good “conscientious objector” material for the crazy-quilt media piece I was weaving.

NOTE: If your movie's ending depends on a punch line or a new fact you’re trying to convey (such as a White House-shaped pastry being illegal...) then don’t be too timid to risk supplying the audience with a foreshadowing of the idea. With some finesse you can state the key information twice or more! The Greek philosopher Aristotle was said to recommend a three-part repetition for good storytelling: (1) tell them you’re going to tell them, (2) tell them, and (3 ) tell them you’ve told them.

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