Great drawing by son Morgan Schmidt-Feng (age 9)—How he imagined the power of film when it was being projected.
Morgan is about to turn 18, he lives in a small room with his father, his girlfriend may be pregnant, his mother is indifferent, and he doesn't want to register for the the draft. His dad shares a story of how he avoided military service in the late 1960's.
“One of the most promising films of this year’s New Directors/New Films series.”
— Janet Maslin, THE NEW YORK TIMES
nytimes.com/movie/review?res=950DE7DC1E3FF936A15750C0A96F948260
"To capture real life on film, Schmidt fashions a creative weave out of the threads of narrative, documentary, and docu-drama film forms. His actors draw on their own experience enabling him to create a unique blend of fact and fiction. In the end, Schmidt makes art and life intermingle and imitate each other." — Vic Skolnick, CINEMA ARTS CENTER
“At last there’s a film about adolescence that resounds with truth and humor.” — DENVER INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
Actors Leon Kenin (left), Morgan Schmidt-Feng (right), me center with camera (©1987 L.L. productions. (I’M SHOOTING IN THE BACKYARD OF NICK BERTONI’S (he was on-location sound recordist, also actor) and his wife Judy Ehrlich (future co-writer/co-director of THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN IN AMERICA—DANIEL ELLSBERG AND THE PENTAGON PAPERS).
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“This is Schmidt’s personal attempt to answer his son’s and other young people’s questions: to understand what these kids really want out of life and what motivates them.” — BERLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
“Rick Schmidt’s approach to independent filmmaking doesn’t aim to beat down the doors to Hollywood. His latest “no-budget” film (Morgan’s Cake) has a refreshingly personal point of view and captures sympathetically and with quiet humor the life of a late-’80s California teenager.”
— Lawrence Smith, SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL
Willie Boy Walker played Morgan’s son in the movie—Variety review called his performance ‘hilarious.”
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Here's an excerpt from my book, "THE MIRACLE OF MORGAN'S CAKE – PRODUCTION SECRETS OF A $15,000 SUNDANCE FEATURE," where I explain the process of shooting a fully-improv feature in 9-days of production. amazon.com/Miracle-Morgans-Cake-Production-Sundance/dp/136642882X
Excerpt, “THE MIRACLE OF MORGAN’S CAKE,” (free on Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B075FHS8KB).
Sometimes it takes the constant prodding of another person to actually get moving forward with your dream of making a feature-length movie. In the case of MORGAN'S CAKE, it took the persistent urging of my then 17-year-old son, Morgan, to get me started. Over the course of production of my first three features, A MAN, A WOMAN, AND A KILLER vimeo.com/ondemand/manwomankiller (Morgan was six years old when it was completed), SHOWBOAT 1988-THE REMAKE vimeo.com/ondemand/showboat1988 (Morgan then nine-years-old), and EMERALD CITIES (Morgan fourteen). So Morgan, and his sister, Heather, had seen a lot of the moviemaking process. (In fact, Heather, age eight, had been spending a week with me in Palmer’s Lab, and I’d run all 10 hours of film & mag soundtrack rushes of SHOWBOAT 1988 in the rear screening room, with her in attendance! As little kids they had spent considerable time in my little cubby-hole editing room at the now-defunct Palmer Films lab in San Francisco, and had sat around patiently for hours while I screened everything from rough footage to the latest fine-cut in the lab's screening room. And they’d been with me after the prints had finally been struck and locally screened in all their 16mm glory, at San Francisco theaters like the Larkin, Electric and the cavernous Strand on Market street.
At the Larkin premiere, where SHOWBOAT 1988 had toured as one of the winners of the Ann Arbor Film Festival (1978), a telling “Morgan” incident occurred. At some point during the screening, the theatre manager approached me and complained that a little boy was bothering people, running all over the theatre, up and down the aisles, tapping people on the shoulder and describing in detail what scenes were coming up next: "The nun takes her clothes off after she dances with her dog...and then a guy jumps over flaming swords." At nine years old, Morgan, a veteran of countless screenings, had inadvertently memorized the order of the assembly and wanted to share his discoveries.
Morgan (14), and Heather (16,) had also attended Strand Theatre's San Francisco premiere of my post-punk rock extravaganza, EMERALD CITIES https://bynwr.com/videos/emerald-cities where bands FLIPPER and THE MUTANTS performed live after the screening. Their music and performances were featured extensively in the soundtrack (members of both bands were friends of mine from art school days). It was a star-studded affair, with hundreds of punks there to see the movie and hear the two bands shouting their undecipherable song lyrics over the super-powered A-2 speakers. In the movie, the songs have subtitles, but these fans knew the lyrics by heart. At any rate, I suppose just attending that one screening would have been enough to convince Morgan that moviemaking was a thrill-ride worth taking.
PS. And Morgan DID catch the moviemaking bug! Here's his 'must see' Slamdance feature: www.onherownfilm.com. Heather also has gravitated toward moviemaking, having had executive jobs at both Pixar and Skydance companies.
His website: <www.filmsight.com>
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Kevin Smith encourages me to make MORGAN’S CAKE 2**, when presented me with a Lifetime Achievement Award, Rome Intl Film Festival
**Here’s possible script (STARTING POINT FOR AN IMPROV FEATURE…) for MORGAN’S CAKE 2. Hit spacebar to stop @ any particular page!): <https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/183904350>.
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