(Excerpted from “Sleeper trilogy—Three Undiscovered First Features by Rick Schmidt 1973-1983.”)
SHOW BOATING (1975)
While I awaited the big $9918 AFI GRANT check I reread my application form and started thinking about my new film. I knew it would be dedicated to presenting Ed Nylund’s real life, his story delivered in images and narrations. Over the years Ed had described to me how his life, which began with a happy childhood, later unraveled as a result of his father's tragic bout with cancer, and other personal disappointments (his divorce, dropping out of the Manhattan School of Music in New York, etc.). I figured that Ed’s history could be presented in juxtaposition to the backdrop of people auditioning for a role in Showboat.
When I hired Bill Farley’s writers (Nick Kazan and Henry Bean) I really wasn't fully aware of my artistic goals for this film, so the three writers were free to mostly go their own way for awhile. They decided to focus mainly on making sense out of who the Ed, Dick, and Z characters were, compared to the original “Showboat” characters in the original story. And their writing definitely did help create a strong structure, invent valuable scenes, and move the film ahead. It took a couple of years stuck in the editing room for me to discover what I personally wanted to accomplish, which was to urge the viewer to take risks, be creative with life, leap into the unknown, follow dreams in spite of all logic.
CONCEPT ESCALATION (1975)
While Farley and his friends were creating a first rough draft of the Showboat 1988 script, the concept began to escalate all by itself. While I was trying to contact someone to rent a small theatre at Walnut Street Park in Berkeley, a friend recommended a very large and possibly affordable space in San Francisco, called California Hall, which, I was told, had been used on numerous occasions for movie auditions. When I discovered that I could rent the hall for around $1100 for three nights I reserved it without a further thought. That one decision turned the audition from an almost private affair, into a city-wide event.
Then, during a conversation with Joe DiVincenzo, my advertising and art buddy from CCAC days (he had created the “Man, Woman, Killer” poster), he offered to devise a poster, press release, logo, if I could just afford $1,000 to cover his basic costs. I agreed, of course, flattered that someone of his immense talents would want to be involved.
When I saw Joe’s huge poster paste-up for Showboat 1988-The Remake poster I was astounded. It looked so...real! The poster read, “Undiscovered Talent, Professional, Amateur, Strange. Whatever your act is, if you like to do it, we want to see it and film it, at the auditions of Showboat 1988–The Remake.”
(Joe used a photo of some unknown Hollywood starlet I had bought for $5 at a flea market for both the press release and poster).
An advertising colleague of Joe’s had encouraged him to use the word “Undiscovered,” saying that everybody feels that way––that they are unknown to the world.
Joe seemed to enjoy putting his advertising skills to such a direct test, without any interference from clients. We were encouraging every talented, and not-so- talented (but ballsy!) showoff, performer, and on-looker, to just stroll down to California Hall (Polk at Turk Street) and do their thing.
I realized if the poster worked we’d have a room full of auditioners. If it failed, it being the only ad campaign for the event that I could afford (aside from a tiny ad I ran in the SF Chronicle classifieds), then we’d be sitting in the large hall all alone, with a bunch of wasted film equipment. I did spend a couple hours putting the posters up on Polk street, in San Francisco––watched a couple being torn off the walls as I worked the opposite side, and that momentarily gave me a strange sense of hope that things would work out OK!
Joe's press release was sent out to all the media outlets and brought a cavalcade of print and TV coverage upon us. San Francisco Ant Farm Art Cooperative's member Doug Michaels had insisted I use their ‘Media List” from their now-famous Media Burn event earlier that summer ("Rick, you'll need this––it's current!"), and it worked! We ended up having one of the biggest auditions in SF history!
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“The big hit of the Ann Arbor Film Festival, it’s easy to see why. The film has carved a unique nitch for itself, somewhere between FREAKS and Fellini’s 8 1/2. It’s as though someone forgot to lock the studio door and Luis Bunuel and William Burroughs sneaked in and began a hatchet job on Hollywood."— David Harris, THE BOSTON PHOENIX
1st PRIZE – ANN ARBOR FILM FESTIVAL. Additional Fests: ROTTERDAM INTERNATIONAL, LONDON FILM FESTIVAL, FLORENCE FILM FESTIVAL (Italy), FIGUEIRA DA FOZ (Portugal).
Three (out of four) Stars (***) -"Movies on TV" / Steven H. Scheuer. Village Voice "Choice of the Week" / J. Hoberman. TV premiere: CHANNEL FOUR , UK.
Featuring performances by rock star Sylvester, bluesman J.C. Burris, Jesus Christ Satan,Ral-pheno, others.
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