EMERALD CITIES wrap––Heading back to Oakland, CA, but still shooting!

SEE MOVIE: https://bynwr.com/videos/emerald-cities

THE ROAD HOME; Difficult Permission to Shoot at a Motel

Rising early on DAY-4, the morning of our drive home, I suddenly imagined a shot of Ted and Z exiting “their motel room,” including a long walk across the parking lot to his car, and started planning it. I was intent upon grabbing every morsel of scene- making shots before hitting the highway again. Suddenly I was fixated on getting that coverage. It seemed crucial to me––seeing Ted and Z walking together––as it would pick up the story again while giving the Ted and Z characters more screen-time presence. So, as a precaution, I approached the desk clerk to get permission for the shots. I don't always ask, since there is always a possibility of being turned down, but with so little filmstock I thought I’d better make sure I wasn’t going to be stopped in the middle. Anyway, I decided to take the risk of letting him know my intentions. I somehow doubted that there would be a problem (thinking positive here!), but I was completely wrong. He immediately turned me down, with an emphatic “No.”

Umm...what?

He elaborated. “I can’t allow any shooting in the motel area.” I was stunned. I looked deep into the clerk’s face––dark skin, so maybe he was Middle Eastern, Iranian or Saudi, probably from one of those places, though he could have been Native American.

Wherever he was from, he spoke perfect English. But none of this mattered. All I knew was, I HAD TO GET MY SHOTS. In my mind, the film couldn’t afford to lose the material.

Co-cameraman Bill Kimberlin was standing with me in the office, and indicated I should follow him outside. Out front, talking together on the sidewalk with the stream of cars zipping down the highway in the distance while cast and crew stood there in limbo, he reminded me about using a cash incentive, like I’d done offering $50 to Charlie to get a “Yes.” So back in the office, that’s what I did. But even with money offered, the man repeated No again, which was incredibly disturbing, to say the least.

I continued to press my argument (“I spent money on four rooms,” and “It won’t take very long,” etc.). And I begged––I really need the shots!!–– but he wasn’t swayed. I may have walked outside for a second time to gather my thoughts.

Bill was out of suggestions, as confused as I was at hitting the wall. I have no idea how all this was being viewed by my production group, but I wasn't anywhere near ready to give up.

In my mind there had to be some words that would unlock that stubborn guy. But I kept getting No.

Then, after several more tries (how many, I lost track), I somehow stumbled onto the magical word combination.

Presenting my case again across the counter, I finally got it right. Here’s what I said:

“Working on this movie is, for me, just like working on your car is...maybe...for you. There is no money I’m making here. This is my hobby, my joy. I’m doing it out of love...as an artist. That’s all.”

And somewhere in the midst of those pleading words he softened, came around somehow, finally agreeing to let me complete my task. I jumped on it immediately, before he could change his mind.

Quickly setting my camera up next to Ted’s distant car, I tested my long zoom to the motel door where he and Z would emerge, signaled the actors to exit on a door-tap cue, and got a close-up framing before calling “ACTION.”

Band FLIPPER’S Ted Falconi. Photo by Julie Schachter.

After nailing their long (and windy) walk to the car, begun with a hefty zoom-out, I filmed a close-up of the couple seen through the car window––Z reliving Ed’s “3-song music calculator debacle” and her worry about his survival as a lonely drunk, with Ted caught up in performing some basic Zen breathing techniques to survive his car-mate’s distressful babble about leaving her old dad behind.

Repositioning the camera for a final time, I shot Ted’s Pinto backing up out of its parking space, coming within millimeters of the camera and me. Ted hit the brakes just when my pre-set focus could read his bumper sticker, They Shoot Students, Don’t They, then drove the car out of frame. And that was it. Two days of shooting were double wrapped. We arrived back home in Oakland (DAY-4), late that night.

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Because it was a film shoot, I had to drop off the six 400’ rolls of 16mm exposed film at a lab the next day, with hope that the results would be of sufficient quality to establish that my movie was actually in-progress. Since I’d used Color-Negative stock, there was quite a good leeway for the shots being salvageable, even if the f- stops weren’t perfect (5-8 stops off would deliver good negative density!). Happily, upon seeing the gorgeous color footage projected as workprint, synced up with Nick’s 1/4” on-location Nagra sound recordings transferred to 16mm mag track, all my doubts evaporated. There was a movie here!

So, I was thrilled from the experience of seeing well-shot images and hearing great sound. That was the positive energy I needed to again begin scripting and planning the final components of my “dread of 1984” trilogy-completing flick. Because I had broken the deadlock of no-production money by selling my dear 1939 Dodge pickup, I now had my third feature up-and-running. So it had been worth it for me, venturing out of my comfort-zone, traveling to a faraway desert location with so little money that everything had to be shot in just two days. Succeeding against some difficult odds, I had returned to becoming functional again as a working, thinking filmmaker.———

THE BANDS

Within a couple weeks of the Death Valley shoot, that December of 1979, Ted Falconi informed me that his band Flipper, and also another friend’s band, The Mutants, both seemed interested in appearing in my movie. I’d barely known the two young Mutants women, Sally Webster and Sue White, from CCA (California College of the Arts), and I hadn’t remembered the lead singer, Freddie Fox. But he’s since told me that seeing my and Wayne Wang’s first feature, A Man, A Woman, And A Killer (I'd rented the Pacific Film Archive theatre in Berkeley for a preview and they had all attended), had convinced him that he could start a real band, because he’d been impressed with our real movie.

Another friend from school, Joe Rees, had created a recording facility with stage area in San Francisco, called Target Video, so my earlier friendships (just being at an art school leads to meeting creative people), brought me these great bands and the ability to properly film them in a top quality facility. Each band would take the stage, play their sets, while I shot 16mm film, with Joe shooting high-quality video.

Additional cameras were operated by friends Bill Farley and George Manupelli (founder of the Ann Arbor Film Festival and very early indie feature filmmaker of the Dr. Chicago series). Joe was well geared up in video production and he covered the bands beautifully, even arranging to have a separate 8- track sound recording done as the groups performed. Fortunately, I still had the two 400’ rolls of color negative filmstock left over from Death Valley, so the film production budget was viable. The lab had agreed to allow me to process/workprint eight rolls, so I was still covered.

During the days that led up to the band shoot, I quickly wrote some scenes that could come before and after the music, including scheduling in a Christmas themed announcement on stage led by friend Lowell Darling (who had run against Jerry Brown for governor of California). Lowell had created a highly-original “political” platform that included a statement that said he was actually running for Head Park Ranger, not President of the United States, and that he was going to get rid of the year 1984 because of the paranoia. We’d go from 1983 directly to 1985.

The Mutants then delivered their song list, including hits like “New Dark Ages,” “We Need a New Drug,” “Tribute To Russ Meyer,” “War Against Women,” and “Sofa Song.” Afterwards, Flipper took the stage, performing their wipeout slow punk dirges, including “Shine,” and especially their masterpiece-of-protest, “Love Canal. ”

Joe Rees video tapes singer Bruce Loose of Flipper, performing, “Love Canal.” Photo by Kathleen Beeler.

EDITING THE MOVIE
Video Artist Liz Sher Loans Her Movieola ––Life During & After Being Homeless.

Early on, the editing period for Emerald Cities got stymied due to lack of finances. While awaiting payment from the Channel Four UK sale of my Showboat 1988-The Remake our landlord said he would have to raise the rent. Bad timing to say the least! Julie and I were barely scraping by with the current (and below-market) $160/month, so this threatened our ability to live anywhere close by. I offered $240, the full extent of our pocketbook and he said he was thinking more like $440. For four years we had been watching over his 96- year-old mother who lived below us on the first floor of the majestic old brown shingle house in Oakland, on the border of expensive Piedmont, and it was her son who now decided to charge the much higher rate. When we moved out there was no immediate affordable place in which to relocate. So we spent nights on the floor of one friend’s house after another. Our friends were sympathetic.

In the middle of this unsettled living, I had been granted use of a Moviola editing table by video artist Elizabeth Sher, who has been a big fan of the punk scene. I had helped her shoot one of her movies and we had become friends. Her offer to let me edit in her studio, gave me time to cut the various types of footage into a cohesive work without per-hour fees. It took many hours of trial and error to successfully juxtapose FLIPPER and THE MUTANTS music against Death Valley scenes, and to create a solid story of Ed’s travel against TV footage from Target Video’s archive.

List of TARGET videos for later transferring to 16MM film, when I could finally afford the $50/minute cost at the lab!

Adding another complex element––telling my personal real-life stories (audio) to pictures of me and my parents from the 1950s (some images I’d taken with my Brownie camera and flash attachment)––made Liz’s gift of editing time even more crucial, to both the movie and my peace of mind. When she heard that Julie and I had no place to live, she and her husband, lawyer Phil Schnayerson, immediately offered us their vacant au pair apartment, downstairs in their house in the Berkeley hills. Saved! Suddenly we could think straight again. Julie would drive off to work in the morning and I’d continue on with solving the cut. (HUGE THANKS AGAIN Liz and Phil!).

(Read more about the full EMERALD CITIES production experience (also info on my first films…), by clicking here for article, “The Old New Dark Ages,” by Keith Phipps).

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