WHAT HAPPENED WAS...                                   (click here for THE WIFE)

When I went into production of WHAT HAPPENED WAS... as a play I had no specific plan to make it into a movie.  I wanted to make a movie eventually - doing this play was a way to prepare me for such a project. But it was so much fun doing the play that I didn't want it to end - making a movie of it seemed one way to keep going on. So I began to invite all my friends in and out of the business to see if they thought WHAT HAPPENED WAS... had the potential to be a film.

One advantage of the play's production was that I had staged in ‘in the round' or environmentally. I took all the regular seating out of my theater and created an apartment in the space. We used almost no theatrical lighting and had only one light cue (a 200 count fade down and a 200 count fade up during Jackie's reading of her children's story). Paul Clay designed the lights. He used primarily very tiny spot lights, hidden throughout the space. This type of lighting scheme is most often used in architectural and movie lighting.  (Paul Clay shared the gaffing job in the film shoot with Joe Foley and received credit as Visual Consultant. He and Kathryn Nixon, who designed and built the costumes for both the play and the movie, were long time friends and were invaluable in the development of the script, throughout the rehearsal and performance period. )

When we performed, the audience walked into what looked like a typical New York apartment - they sat on folding chairs set up throughout the space. I remember one person saying that the experience was like "seeing a movie in person". Contributing to this effect was the fact that the play took place real time.  In fact, rather then compressing time, which is the norm in plays and movies today, I wanted to expand time, taking two hours to reveal events that in life would have taken not much more than an hour (link).

Several of my friends, most notably Ted Hope (who co-ran GOOD MACHINE) said they thought the play could make a movie - I made the decision during the last week of the theatrical run to take the plunge.  We chose the 1992 Christmas because most films don't shoot on that holiday and there might be quality crew and equipment available at a reasonable rate. Ted also invited Scott Macaulay and Robin O'Hara (who later became my producers) to the play, along with Dolly Hall who brought long Joe DeSalvo who offered to be my DP.

Even with a start date, a crew, and location set, I was still ambivalent about making a movie. Despite my claim this was what I wanted most in life, I didn't feel like I could do it - I depended on the energy and enthusiasm from nearly everyone involved for me to go on. At this point if it were not for Scott and Robin and Joe I would probably have not made the movie. I didn't want to be so 'in control' any more. I wanted this project to be made because not just because I needed to make the movie - everyone involved needed to make the movie for it to happen.

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One (among many) advantage of doing the script in play form before shooting was that most of the crew and the production team had all seen the production. They understood the story and the dynamics of the drama. When it came to shooting, everyone knew what each of the scenes was about - everyone was on the same page, emotionally and psychologically. I can't tell you how helpful that was. Also because I was acting in the movie, having done the part for months beforehand made it easier for me as both a director and an actor.

So for the rest of the summer we planned the production. I had videotaped the play (without an audience) just after the play closed. I spent the rest of the summer editing this footage. By September Joe DeSalvo and I were spending several days a week studying the tape and looking at other movies we loved.  We began the process of shot listing and story boarding the movie. This went on for nearly four months with production designer, Dan Ouellette, in on many of these sessions. I wanted Dan to design because, besides being one of the top designers around, he was also a filmmaker and tremendous graphic artist. His input was especially important in the area of color scheme. Color was not something I had much appreciation or ‘feel' for at that point.

See Dan Oullette's art

During the fall we rehearsed the script with many of the film crew present. We had found a location in mid-town Manhattan and it was booked for a month before the shoot so we could rehearse as the set was built to see if all the elements ‘worked' together. In these rehearsals Karen Sillas (who had done the play) and I would run the play from beginning to end with the crew as audience. Joe DeSalvo would shoot the rehearsals with a video camera. Much of the time he would sit in a wheelchair (a stand-in for the dolly) and our dolly grip would push him around as he taped. We would then cut together and studied this footage, further refining our shot plan, working out the exact timing for dolly moves, etc. I also cut some of this material together to get a feel for the type of edit rhythm I thought would best serve the story.

THE WIFE                              (click here for WHAT HAPPENED WAS...)

We began rehearsals on September 29, 1993 by going to the Bronx Zoo and then having a big Italian dinner celebrating Karen Young's birthday. This was followed by getting together a couple times a week for the next month just to hang out and get to know one another. The first readthrough of the script didn't take place for at two weeks. I would have preferred waiting even longer but the actors were chomping at the bit so I invited them up to our house in the country where we would spend the weekend together on the location we would eventually shoot the movie. On Saturday afternoon we read through the script for the first time. I thought it was a disaster but everyone else seemed excited and relieved to be finally saying the words.

The next day we read through it again and this time I thought it went even worse. As we talked about the story I was struck with an idea - what if Jack and Rita were Cosmo's therapists? Nobody hated the idea so I told them we would not read through it again for a week or two, during which time I would rework the story with that angle in mind. Ten days or so we all got together at the Paradise Theater and read through the rewrite. It still seemed awful to me but it was starting to make a little sense. That week we met a few more times to work through the script, with me rewriting like crazy between each session. At the end of this period we took a break of two weeks and agreed we would start back in on rehearsing in earnest right over Thanksgiving with a hopefully finalized script.

During the last week of November we began rehearsing everyday on the script and by early December we were on our feet, testing out some initial blocking. I continued to rewrite but these were more line fixes or cuts - I didn't want to make any major structural changes at this late a date.

I continued to work with Joe DeSalvo and Dan Ouellette during November and December working out a color scheme and a shooting style based on what they were seeing at rehearsals. We spent several weekends at the shooting location upstate figuring out which elements should be included in the stage set. Dan began construction in the theater in December. We decided that the audience should feel like they are at a group therapy session. The theater is a 50' by 25' black box so we placed the dining room table at the center surrounded by a low bench that skirted the room in an ellipse. The bench could seat 60 to 70 people comfortably. We choose a warm orange as our main color - something that resembled fire light - the color also reminded me of the Hare Krishnas. The thought behind this was Jack and Rita were on the surface warm and friendly but in fact they were very cold and remote people - the orange would make that coolness stand out in relief. Everything on the set was earth tone and the only blue or green would be in Arlie's costume. In rehearsals I came to see her as the spiritual opposite of the other three characters. She was the only one of us that was really alive or present - and the only one who spoke from the heart no matter how politically incorrect. Her blue green dress would clash with the set the way she her behavior clashed with ours.

We painted a huge mandala on the orange rug which covered the floor of the theater using clear fluorescent dye. At the end of dinner when things are started to get out of control Jack would turn on a bank of black lights on the ceiling which make the invisible mandala glow in iridescent bluish green. We also used clear fluorescent dye on Arlie's dress and Jack's kimono which created a very striking effect under black light. It just so happened that Arlie's underwear glowed under black light which was a fortunate happenstance. (We never really found a way to bring these fluorescing elements into the film unfortunately).

The bench and the walls in the theater were covered in orange velvet. By law all this material had to be fireproof so the cost of the set soared well beyond what we had budgeted. We made all the lights on the set practical including the dimmers which was also an expensive proposition (in theater productions lights are almost never ‘practical' - usually when an actor turns a switch, the lighting operator backstage will turn on the light - this is also the case with sound effects and music cues. But in my productions I prefer to have the actors themselves actually change the lighting. Since those ‘cues' also include several supported theatrical lights hung from the ceiling, the switch the actor hits has to be able to handle very large amounts of electricity making it a complicated and expensive proposition.) But the audience sitting in the space I didn't think we had theatrical phoniness to a minimum.

Like WHAT HAPPENED WAS..., WIFEY was in real time. But since there was now four characters instead of two I was faced with the problem of how to handle scenes where, for example, JACK and COSMO were talking in one part of the house while ARLIE and RITA were talking in another. Originally these scenes were laid out to happen one after the other but in rehearsal it felt phony so I suggested we do these scenes simultaneously. The audience at one of the theater would hear one, the audience at the other would hear the other and those in the middle would hear snippets of both. When we first tried this technique it was a bit chaotic but with some rehearsal we found our way. It was fun being on stage watching the audience (since the audience is seated throughout the set and they are often closer to an actors than they are to each other, you can't avoid seeing them). They wouldn't know where to look or what to try to hear. This splitting of the focus would lead to all kinds of interesting interplay between the audience and the actors making the shows very different each night. Not everyone in the theater would have the same information so the story you would take home would in depend on where you sat. If we hadn't had the chance to let the script develop with a live audience I don't believe I could have ever been able to work out these simultaneous scenes in the film. The audience tells you what a story is about.

WIFEY opened on January 12, 1994. Unlike WHAT HAPPENED WAS... which was thoroughly unattended, the entire run sold out almost immediately. This was in part due to my having Gary Springer doing press for me. And WHAT HAPPENED WAS... had gotten into competition at the Sundance Festival. We six shows per week and ran fives weeks.

During the run WHAT HAPPENED WAS... won the Sundance awards and though I still didn't have the money to shoot the film I was feeling a little more confident.

The actors took a two week break once the play closed. Dan Ouellette, Joe DeSalvo, Robin O'Hara, Scott Macaulay and the rest of crew began the final preparations for the film. Dan, Joe, and I went up to the location and for one entire weekend worked on how to shoot the simultaneous scenes. We were also looking for visual themes that had arisen in the theater production that might work in the film.

The cast moved up the location ten days before the shoot on March 4, 1994. We began rehearsing in the space with some of the crew each day, shooting these rehearsals on video as we had with WHAT HAPPENED WAS... The editing system was installed on the location so we could cut this footage together to develop a rhythm for the editing and the camera moves. One of the biggest transitions from the theater to the location was that much of this story took place out doors, away from the house and there was four feet of snow on the ground (the story is supposed to take place on a wild winter night). To be suddenly acting in deep snow, in bitterly freezing weather in the middle of the night is big adjustment for everyone. The logistics of this were worked out during this final ten day pre-production period.
 

conceived

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cast

rehearsed

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edited

financed

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