A MAN, A WOMAN, AND A KILLER is the story of a small-time gangster (DICK RICHARDSON) writing his journal in a Mendocino, California, farmhouse, as he awaits a hit man who is coming to kill him. In this first part of a trilogy, realities continue to shift between the story, and the actual making of the film, as seen through unscripted scenes, real-life narrations by lead actors, and the real relationship that developed on the set between Richardson and the actress (CAROLYN ZAREMBA) who played his girlfriend. A bumbling, local librarian (Ed Nylund) is mistaken for the "killer" and plays along with the game.
(Excerpted from TWELVE DEAD FROGS AND OTHER STORIES, A Filmmaker’s Memoir, by Rick Schmidt ©2017).
1944 (1972)
About the time Wayne Wang graduated from CCAC, he and I rented a small apartment together on Hudson Street, just off of College Avenue in Oakland. Another friend, Bill Farley, had lived in that exact apartment a few years before, paying a measly $42 per month for rent. Now the rent was $100 per month, but split two ways, to $50 each, wasn’t so bad (the same apartment rents today for over $1900 per month). As soon as I had that kind of “normal” living quarters, my ex-wife Mary-Ann decided that I should start being responsible for our little kids on weekends, babysitting them Friday night to Monday mornings in the apartment. Poor Wayne was quickly overrun by Heather (age 5), Morgan (age 3), and Bowbay (age 1 and still in diapers––the child of my ex-wife and her new partner, later husband). Somehow, though, Wayne survived this nursery scene long enough for us to make a few good films together.
The first ‘professional’ project Wayne and I were involved in together was to shoot a little film with our mutual friend, actor Bruce Parry, about a guy in the process of breaking up with his girlfriend. While Wayne wrote most of it, playing out his influences from the French “New Wave,” I threw in a couple of good lines. In one stretch of dialogue, Bruce is sitting in a bar, depressed and moping next to a drinking buddy, as they watch the entertainment (we were able to later fill in the source of their attention by filming a young Japanese woman singing the soulful song, “The Bride From Seito Island,” at a bar in Japan Town, San Francisco). When asked, “What’s wrong?” by his friend, the Bruce character responds,“It’s the (sad)song.” The other character responds with surprise, “But it’s a happy song!” Two different people seeing the world through entirely opposite lenses.
Another contribution I made was to use my subtitling device (English titles for the exact same English spoken words). I had used subtitles in my two previous films, The Masseuse, and What Flirting Cost Me It had taken a couple of months to do the subtitling for 1944, but it worked beautifully against the black and white images we shot.
It was during the making of this film that Wayne and I worked out our method of collaborating. I shot the camera while he directed the actors. He scripted mostly before we shot, I scripted mostly during editing, creating narrations, titles, inventing the dramatic structure, mixing sound, arranging conforming, hanging tight during the difficult months it took to complete a film through the lab. And since I still had some of my father’s inheritance, I was able to pay the small costs (small films have relatively small costs!) of our early efforts.
When 1944 was completed we entered it in the Ann Arbor Film Festival where it won a First Prize (they awarded six). Suddenly Wayne and I were riding high, members of a winning team.
FEATURE-LENGTH DREAMS (1973)
Dick Richardson, a mutual friend of ours, saw our 1944 film and loved it, saying that Wayne and I should do whatever we did together only bigger (feature-length), and better (using his writings and his performance, of course). Late one afternoon, while we were talking movies, I told Wayne that I had to spend of all my money before entering divorce court again. Six months earlier at the preliminary hearing I had been instructed to pay my soon-to-be ex-wife $600 per month for six months before a final court appearance. I wondered just how long I would be able to continue making payments of that magnitude without a job. I had around $11,000 left from my inheritance, but it was obvious that this particular amount of money was headed for eradication. I knew that in six months I wanted to be broke, so any payment I was instructed to make would reflect my true financial situation (no money, no job), not an inflated one. The worst thing imaginable would have been to be hauled into court repeatedly for not keeping up the steep payments. Without hesitation Wayne immediately blurted out, “Then let’s make a movie!”
Wayne and I had gone through the previous difficulties of collecting actors, technicians, helpers for just a short film shoot, so we decided this time to compact the process. For this feature-length effort, based on Dick’s writings done over the last 20 years, we would script for two weeks, then immediately leave to film the results during the following two weeks, about a one month-long process. This outing would nicely conform with Wayne’s scheduled vacation from the English Language Center in San Francisco where he was currently working. So that was our plan. It was time to crank out a feature.
To make it as real for Dick and Wayne as possible, I decided to pay them each $500 for their scripting ($250 per week), and dealt out five fifty-dollar bills to each of them at our first get-together. Their eyes opened pretty wide when they saw the money flow.
Some readers will undoubtedly fault me for not just giving over that first $1000 to my ex-wife, Mary-Ann, and the kids. Should I have come to my senses, killed my own dream in order to give her money? I was almost four years out of her life by that point (exactly the same length of time we’d been married). Would that money have directly affected the well- being of my kids, whom I now cared for from Thursday night to Monday mornings? I took care of the three little kids without the help of any live-in girlfriend, basically half of the week, and tried to have a life the other half. You can imagine my surprise when Mary-Ann agreed to cover me for the weeks of babysitting I would miss during the shoot. And the kids seemed to enjoy the changes in the air, probably learning an important lesson from dad’s positive new energy. I’m sure my good mood was infectious. It was exciting to know in every fiber of my being why I was put here on planet earth, attempting to create something of beauty. This is the reward for living an artist’s life.
At the corner second-hand store a quarter block away, on College and Hudson Street, Wayne and I bought a nice 1930s- style red Formica kitchen table and hauled it back to the apartment. At that desk the scripting began. While Wayne reviewed Dick’s personal diaries, piles of his old writings, new rants and raves, and re-wrote the material up as scenes, I ordered filmstock from Kodak, reserved an Eclair NPR camera package and lights at Adolph Gassers motion picture rentals in San Francisco, hired sound people, did the Production Manager’s job of having all the hardware ready in two weeks for our big shoot.
PRODUCTION MIRACLE (1973)
After a week of scripting and compiling for our forthcoming movie (eventual title; A Man, a Woman, and a Killer), Wayne and I took off with Dick in his car, searching for some location that might make sense to the developing storyline – A gangster hides out at a farmhouse, waiting for a hit man to come and kill him. We ended up driving on California coastal Route 1, and reached Mendocino in a few hours, with its old hotel and Victorian houses. We wondered if this little town might be an ideal spot to shoot, but at a rental agency we quickly learned that all the affordable summer rentals were already taken. In spite of this, I asked Dick to just drive us over to the edge of town, near the bluffs.
At the corner of town we noticed a great old house, red, with white trim, which I immediately sensed would be a stunning combination for our black and white filmstock. Imagining that interplay between the black (red) and white actually got my pulse racing. I knew that we had to film in that building!
Noticing some people on the front steps, I told Dick to stop the car. While Wayne and Dick waited, I got out and walked over. Talking to a nice woman with long brown hair (in her mid-thirties), who was out catching some sun on the porch with her young son, I explained that we were trying to secure a house for making a movie, “Not Hollywood style by any means,” I said, “Just an artistic endeavor.” I mentioned we had attended the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland and at that point she smiled, saying that she had once been a student there herself. Bingo! She agreed to rent me her house (for $400), if I agreed to relocate her family to a nearby motel for the two weeks. So for about $650 total, I secured the perfect house for our cast and crew to live in and shoot.
So again, just as when I found my 1939 Dodge truck and free studio in Berkeley during my sculpting days in the late 1960s, just mentioning the name of my art school brought a wonderful gift to my life (see “ENERGY FROM THE GROUND” in my memoir…). Now the miracles that had somehow helped me survive my divorce, and the early years of emotional turmoil, were playing a large role in my quest to make films.
Sometime during the last week before we were to depart for our shoot, Wayne and I had a showdown about using my. actor friend Ed Nylund in the movie. Wayne didn’t want Ed, but I insisted. Wayne’s idea of talent was already very different than mine. I went with the people whose hearts I believed in, while Wayne favored recognized actors with resumes. (Not to say that professional actors don’t have big hearts too. I’m just talking priorities here. I wanted someone whom I respected for his life and ideas, and didn’t give a damn if he/she could memorize a script or not) Wayne favored the more traditional approach, that of written dialogue delivered by seasoned thespians. My final Producer’s words were, “No Ed (who was a librarian in real life), no movie!” Wayne begrudgingly agreed.
FIVE MINUTE FILM SCHOOL (1973)
Before we departed from Oakland to Mendocino to begin our 13-day shoot (two days were included or travel, so just 11 days for actual filming), I had to pick up all the film gear at Adolph Gasser’s in San Francisco. Because of a recommendation by Ann Arbor Film Festival founder/director George Manupelli––he encouraged us to use soft light––I rented two of those, along with various other items needed to shoot (tripods, spreader, extra lens, light meter, three 50’ extension cords, sand bags to weigh down tripod ends, apple boxes to stand on, to shoot from just one foot higher than usual), etc. George had written/directed a series of feature-length films dealing with a main character, Dr. Chicago, and certainly was a very accomplished filmmaker (my luck to have so wise a friend at that point in time!). On-location sound was already arranged, with professionals Neelon Crawford and Lee Serrie, committed to the production with half-salary paid up front. But the one thing I hadn’t accounted for was that I had never loaded film into an Eclair NPR camera, like the one I was renting. Somehow it hadn’t occurred to me that this would be a problem. But as I stood at the equipment window at Gassers on that July morning, it seemed insurmountable.
A young guy stared at me from across the open counter as I asked if he could show me how to load a 400’ roll of film into the camera. He said “no problem” and pulled an exposed roll of 16mm filmstock out from beneath the counter. He said that the demonstration would take about five minutes. As he started talking about installing the core, threading the sprockets correctly, and measuring the exact size of the loop, I quickly understood the ramifications of what was taking place. It was obvious that if I missed any single point in his demonstration, and failed to repeat it by myself later, I would blow the whole shoot. I had loaded the CCAC Bolex camera many times, but had no idea that the Eclair would be so complicated. I could feel myself seized with terror.
For maybe the first time in my life I had to really learn something of vital importance to my life. I concentrated with all my might, opened my eyes wider than ever before, and focused on each small detail he explained. I could sense my mind leaping into overdrive, filing and re-filing every move the clerk made with his hands. I tried to memorize every word he spoke, so that I could duplicate this same procedure at the Mendocino, California farmhouse, 150 miles away (I had bought 45 400’ rolls of B&W 16MM filmstock for the shoot, which meant I would have to repeat the procedure 45 times). Once there, I would have no such technical help, no one to assist me while I loaded and unloaded film. It was an intense five minutes. And in the wink of an eye it was over. The technician was now moving on to complete my billing, while answering questions from the next customer, closing lids of equipment boxes, lifting some gear to me over the counter top, doing his other duties as a ‘lowly clerk’––someone upon whom my entire shoot depended!
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Official Selection ROTTERDAM INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
WINNER, 'Director's Choice,' ANN ARBOR FILM FESTIVAL
“An extremely intriguing first feature by filmmakers Rick Schmidt and Wayne Wang. Beautifully shot in the Mendocino, California landscape, the film flows back and forth between the fiction of the script and the half-submerged reality of the actual writing of the script.”
— Marc Weiss, BLEECKER CINEMA, NYC, POV, etc.
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