"FEATURE FILMMAKING AT USED-CAR PRICES" (Viking Penguin 1988, 1995, 2000). Used by Kevin Smith to make CLERKS, and Vin Diesel's mother bought him a copy.

My first film book--lots of affordable copies here:): https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?cm_sp=SearchF-_-topnav-_-Results&ds=20&kn=feature%20filmmaking%20at%20used%20car%20prices%20rick%20

FEATURE FILMMAKING AT USED-CAR PRICES

(Excerpted from NEW DARK AGES––How a Punk Movie EMERALD CITIES Got Its IMPROV (available on amazon)

MY BOOK DEAL
How a C- English Student Wrote a Filmmaking Book that Helped Launch Kevin Smith & Vin Diesel.

At the completion of Emerald Cities, early in 1984, my feature was invited by programmer Linda Blackaby of Philadelphia’s International House showcase, to screen in their large 400+ seat theatre. I would receive a good rental fee and an in-person salary, so the paid gig was greatly welcome. When on the phone with Linda, she asked me if I’d like to earn an additional $100 by conducting a workshop. Of course, was my answer.

“OK,” Linda responded. “What title should we use for it?”

U m ... I had no immediate answer. “Let me call you back in five minutes,” I said. After hanging up, my mind for some reason turned to the sale of my old ’39 Dodge pickup. Obviously, that had been a somewhat emotional event for me. The truck had magically come into my life, in 1969,* when I was roaming around Berkeley one day with no address to my name following the breakup of my first marriage. The truck, bought for $25 from a total stranger, had been a faithful ride right up until the day I sold it.***

(***More about this in my memoir, “Twelve Dead Frogs and Other Stories. a Filmmaker’s Memoir,” Section “Energy From the Ground”).

In a moment, a phrase to advertise the proposed workshop came to mind. What it would be about was, feature filmmaking at used-car prices. After all, my transportation for ten years had been my dear truck, and that was my car. I called Linda back and gave her my title. Because of completing my movie on the back of selling my used car, it helped create the title for my as-yet-unwritten book.

Flashing forward, to Spring, 1985, two years after Emerald Cities had premiered at the St. Marks theatre in New York as midnight fare, as well as having been selected for the Australian Film Institute’s Seven City Tour and Rotterdam International Film Festival in The Netherlands (they bought my plane ticket and supplied housing), I was again stuck with an impossible lab debt––and Julie, was expecting! I called up a friend, David Heintz, Chair of the Film Department at CCAC, and asked him, probably half-pleading, to please consider letting me conduct something I called, Feature Workshops. I proposed a three-month gig where a handful of students and I would complete a feature film within the summer college curriculum. I certainly needed the pay, but also hoped that my improv style could generate a real indie feature in a school setting, created by myself and people basically off the street. Amazingly, David said Yes, and I immediately begin to plan for and promote the 90-day production.

In support of the Workshop class, I quickly designed and placed an ad in Film Comment magazine to troll for my future collaborators. And, of course, I called it “Feature Filmmaking at Used-Car Prices Workshop.” Lo and behold, the used-car filmmaking ad got me four paying students (You can see that the truck-sale kept rewarding me, years after the painful sacrifice of parting with it.)

At CCAC summer school (Oakland, CA) we scripted, shot, edited and printed a feature-length 16mm movie entitled, The Last Roommate. I had religiously audio- taped each class session throughout the entire process, figuring that these recordings would help to produce a book.

Several months after the workshop, mid-December, 1985, when my second son, Marlon, was born, I found myself awake at 6AM every morning instead of the usual 7-8AM. At that earlier time, my wife Julie was getting dressed and hurriedly grabbing some breakfast so she could commute 20+ miles to her job as a graphic designer. And my new role of Mr. Mom entailed feeding, cleaning and dressing baby Marlon, while trying to figure out how to get my artistic life and money-earning back on track. Without payment in- hand to once again clear my lab debt, there was no possibilityofanyfuturefilmmaking. Somyoptions were limited.

Strangely enough, the only obvious tool I had at my disposal was an electric typewriter left over at the tail end of the $7500 National Endowment For the Arts (NEA) grant, awarded to complete Emerald Cities. To my desperate mind, the logical, and only path towards salvation was getting on that machine and writing that book. And the pressure of being a new older father certainly helped me overlook the fact that I’d never done anything remotely like that before.

I soon learned that to deliver a full-length book takes constant output, returning day after day after day to a writing desk. And, not surprisingly, the beginning days for me were very difficult. The job required showing up daily, for months on end (years, perhaps), until black-stamped letters of the alphabet had been typed onto reams of blank white paper, with bottlesofWhite-Outcorrectivefluidwithinreach. A professional book needed around 100,000 carefully chosen words, resulting in 250-300+ pages. I found that my work-ethic was severely challenged during that initial first week-and-a-half. During that 10-day period of trying to become a working author, my mind concocted every possible excuse for quitting:

Why are you wasting this time? You’re not a writer! This is stupid!
It will never get published!
Plus the ultimate: Just stop, before you make a fool of yourself!

Only the most obstinate (desperate) of mortals can overcome one’s own DNA, when it constantly challenges doing something this far out of their normal experience. And if you tell anyone what you’re up to, they will shut down your activity so fast it will make your head spin.

You’re doing what? WHY!?

What’s important to understand is that between my blindly typing up transcripts of my classes, and actually trying to write something to reach some book advance money, it took a breathtaking set of miracles. In advance of you perhaps building your own individual pathway to the holy grail of getting published, here are some of the obstacles you could encounter, which I overcame against all odds.

(Miracles coming up next!)

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