MORGAN'S CAKE (SEE IT!)--"A deadpan, unpretentious delight."-Janet Maslin, New York Times.(84 min., ©1988). Sundance, Berlin Intl. (Panorama), New Directors.

FREE FULL MOVIE HERE: https://vimeo.com/168153085

MORGAN’S CAKE (Sundance GRAND JURY PRIZE Nomination, 1989)

“Schmidt’s Morgan’s Cake is a deadpan, unpretentious delight. The title character, played by the film maker’s son, Morgan Schmidt-Feng, is no less comically out of sync with the world around him than the gorilla-suited David Warner character in the 1966 movie for which Morgan was named. Morgan’s Cake adopts his point of view and reflects his bewilderment in sly, fresh, unexpectedly comic ways. One of the most promising films of this year’s New Directors/New Films series.”
— Janet Maslin, THE NEW YORK TIMES

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Here's an excerpt from MY book,"THE MIRACLE OF MORGAN'S CAKE – PRODUCTION SECRETS OF A $15,000 IMPROV SUNDANCE FEATURE."

To begin the film, it took vital help from my then 17-year-old son, Morgan Schmidt'Feng (<onherownfilm.com/>), who had the lead role and Associate produced.

"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 (Morgan was six years old when it was completed), SHOWBOAT 1988-THE REMAKE (Morgan turned nine), and EMERALD CITIES (Morgan at fourteen), Morgan, and his sister, Heather, had seen a lot of my moviemaking process.

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 were 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, 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.

Son Morgan (14), and daughter Heather (16,) had also attended Strand Theatre's San Francisco premiere of my post-punk rock extravaganza, 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.

And so 17-year-old Morgan continued to entreat me, "Let’s make a movie together, Dad!" A few weeks would go by and I’d hear it again. "Maybe me and my friends could act..." I had no money, in fact still owed the lab thousands from finishing EMERALD CITIES, so I couldn't imagine making a new feature anytime soon. But Morgan was indomitable. We can do it!

Morgan (rt.) and best friend Leon Kenin, who appears in MORGAN’S CAKE.

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REVIEWS

“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

“At last there’s a film about adolescence that resounds with truth and humor. Filmed in an ofhanded, matter-of fact way, the film deals with the serious issues of growing up, and yet is filled with straightforward moments of ribald humor. Willie Boy Walker, in a phenomenal performance as Morgan’s dad, describes in outrageous detail how he avoided the draft by acting like a crazy man. In an era in which the norm is shallow, surface gloss films about teenagers who could only exist in the Hollywood imagination, it is refreshing to see a film about real teenagers that deals with the contradictions, problems, and absurdities of growing up in the ‘80s. If you’ve been worried about the state of independent American film, you need to see MORGAN’S CAKE. --DENVER INTL. 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.” (Sundance Grand Prize nomination).
— Lawrence Smith, SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL, Dramatic Competition.

“Twenty-Five years after his 1975 feature filmmaking debut, American Independent Rick Schmidt remains a free-wheeling derring-do filmmaker holding fast to the notion that people’s real lives are more truly dramatic, hilarious, exciting and as exasperating as those manufactured by Hollywood’s minions. Most everyone falls in and out of love, rejects and gets rejected, contends with failure and success, hatred, ambition, the death of loved ones...It’s all there.

"To capture real life on film, Schmidt fashions a creative weave out of the threads of narrative, documentary, and docu-drama film forms. In the end, Schmidt makes art and life intermingle and imitate each other.”
— Vic Skolnick, CINEMA ARTS CENTER

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Morgan, 18, using video camera ON POLE, in scene from MORGAN’S CAKE shoot, Point Richmond, CA.

(THE MIRACLE OF MORGAN’S CAKE, -From amazon Books)

Every day, in varied fields such as music, theatre, feature films and Youtube videos, the word IMPROV is being heard as the 'NEXT BIG THING.' But up until now, though, there has been NO BOOK that aptly describes the actual day-to-day IMPROV FILMMAKING process, where a writer/director must rely on actors to move a story ahead through the minefield of an improv production. THE MIRACLE OF MORGAN'S CAKE - PRODUCTION SECRETS OF A $15,000 IMPROV SUNDANCE FEATURE explains this REAL-LIFE approach, as writer/director Rick Schmidt recounts each of his nine shooting days for his festival hit, MORGAN'S CAKE. With 'PRODUCTION SECRETS' you will gain trust in yourself and in the improv system, helping you take the necessary risks of creation. You will learn how to direct IMPROV PERFORMANCES, and even how to adjust for when friends drop in (incorporating them as 'extras' - real girlfriend, real best friends - to make the movie more interesting. Using SPONTANEOUS LOCATIONS will also become second-nature.

You'll learn how to construct multi-idea, multi-level sequences in the very-tight ONE-TO-ONE SHOOTING RATIO, where the strict shooting ratio will actually HELP your creativity. You'll discover how to adapt the moviemaking process so it FOLLOWS A SPONTANEOUS THEME. Rick's book will give a dose of confidence that things will work out - (keep shooting! Keep editing!). You'll be discovering ways of designing cuts as part of your free-flowing process - calling 'freeze' and changing camera angles - while you consider what direction the words/ideas should take when you call 'action' again. Todays moviemaker has all the tools of production in hand, literally (iPhone!), and it only takes the INTENT OF PURPOSE to make her IMPROV moviemaking dreams finally come true.

BUY BOOK HERE

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