Stephen Metcalfe

As hard as it is to believe, I directed a feature film once.  Yes, a real full-length movie, one that had producers and designers and actors and and a several million-dollar budget.  I rarely tell people about it because if I did, they might want to see it and I really don’t want to inflict that on them.  Is it really that bad?  Or should I say is it really not that good?  Uh… well, maybe, kinda… sorta… yes.  And I’ll take a good part of the blame for it.  What can I say, I got in over my head. 

I’d spent time on movie sets and watched how it all worked.  I’d directed stage plays, including some of my own, and I’d enjoyed the process, very much enjoyed working with the actors and the designers.  I  felt I had a visual sense that would translate to film.  Could I do a superhero movie laden with special effects?  No, but that wasn’t what I was interested in. Beautiful Joe was a character driven romantic comedy/drama.  It was about a plain speaking, innately decent, working man, Joe, who, suddenly faced with his own mortality, realizes he’s never had any kind of an adventure in his life.  He goes in search of that adventure and much to his surprise, finds it in a down-on-her-luck, Southern belle named Hush, a single woman/con artist with two small children.  Opposites in this case don’t so much attract as they collide on a road trip across America that starts in New York, moves through Kentucky and ends in Las Vegas.

Much to my surprise (I’m always surprised), people liked the screenplay.  It was optioned by a producer who I knew and respected who then, for a reason never explained, optioned the rights to an English production company.  Perhaps that should have been my first warning.  English production company.  For what was an innately American story. Their first suggestion?  Perhaps I might consider setting the film in Europe as it might be cheaper to shoot over “here”.  Uhh… okay… maybe… I guess.  The story could start in Dublin as opposed to New York, our couple could meet outside London as opposed to Kentucky and they could travel to Monte Carlo as opposed to Vegas.  And I guess, well, yeah, maybe if I was to do it this way, Joe could maybe be “Irish”.  There wouldn’t be different words, just a different accent.  Okay, sure, why not give it a try.

Was I out of my mind?  Yes, most definitely.  But it had been my experience that a successful film can often be a culmination of things no one expected or planned for.  And heck, shooting in Europe sounded like a paid vacation.  I did a quick rewrite and other than locations the script and story felt pretty much the same to me.  Ultimately Europe became a no go, but people found Joe as an “Irishman” interesting.  Translation?  More talkative.

You start meeting actors.  At least you’re supposed to.  I had been thinking of someone like Sylvester Stallone for Joe and maybe Meg Ryan or Uma Thurmon for Hush.  Well, that sure didn’t happen.  However, I did have a meeting with a lovely, young actress named Jennifer Lopez who was coming off a film I hadn’t seen yet.  I didn’t think she was quite right for the part. I thought the actress Andie McDowal might be, but she was filming something in the Carolinas and a meeting was never arranged.  If you can believe it, the producers flew me to London to meet a potential, “Irish Joe”, the actor, John Hannah, known for his role in Four Weddings and a Funeral.  A terrific guy but not quite a Joe.  And then, somehow, and out of nowhere, it happened.  “She who shall remain nameless” was interested in the role of Hush; a quote-unquote bankable movie star, meaning an actor who could give investors’ confidence by ensuring a large box-office return.  I suppose going panty less on camera, which this actress had done, can do that.

A meeting was arranged.  Said actress – okay, the heck with nameless, we’ll call her “SWSRN” –  was doing a “fashion shoot” in LA and she would take time to sit down with me and discuss the role of Hush.  Only that didn’t quite happen.  I showed up at the “shoot” at the arranged time and was – there was only way to put it – completely ignored.  I stood watching as a horde of assistants and fashionistas hovered and pampered.  It was as if I didn’t exist, as if the potential project didn’t exist.  I’d never encountered an attitude like this, and I finally left.  I called the producers and told them, “This ain’t gonna work”.  They called back and told me that “SWSRN” would now like to meet one on one at her house in the hills.  They encouraged me to do so.  Nothing like perceived rejection to make an actor more open-minded.  The house, on a secluded lot, above Belair, was beautiful and very obviously professionally decorated.  You had a sense no one really lived there and if anyone did, it was only on a part-time basis.  “SWSRN” told me about her background – as I remember she said she was from a working-class family in Pennsylvania.  She felt the character of Joe could have come from that family.  She told me she was married to a journalist based in San Francisco and spent a lot of time there.  She was now pleasant and soft spoken and if still a bit distant, seemingly semi-normal and suddenly it seemed as if could work.

What did I know.

When and how the Scottish actor/comedian Billy Connelly, “the Big Yin”, entered the picture I’ll never know.  Connelly was an improvisational comedian, an actor, and a musician.  He’d done TV specials, television sitcoms, had, at that point, done small roles in several movies.  He was, I was told, world renown everywhere but America.  That he was talented was without question.  But was he a Joe?  An Irish Joe, perhaps and it seemed that this was the direction the role was now going.

A dinner was arranged at, of all places, the Belair Hotel, movie star central.  An associate producer and I sat and patiently waited at a corner table.  Billy made his entrance first wearing a wildly brocaded shirt, a madras plaid suit, and sandals with no socks.  His hair cascaded down around his shoulders, he was heavily bearded and the only thing louder than the plaid suit, which could have stopped traffic at midnight, was his voice.  It was as if a Scottish Falstaff had arrived in the building. 

Billy was followed a short time later by the academy awards on steroids.  “SWSRN” made her entrance on the far side of the bar and proceeded to stop at every table in the room, loudly and brightly acknowledging attention whether it was being given to her or not.  She finally got to our table, sank into a chair, and went off for an annoyed ten minutes on how it was “impossible to go anywhere without being besieged by fans”.

I don’t remember if we talked about the script.  I don’t remember if we talked to one another.  I really don’t remember anything.  I think I was in a fugue state – a mindless state of shock where I didn’t know who I was or what I was doing.  I do remember this.  Driving home that night, I wondered if I could get out of this if I crashed my car into a tree.

No, too late.  We were a go.  And when you’re a go in the film business as a first time director, you go.

CUT TO:

Four months later.  Vancouver, Canada of all places where the producers have decided to shoot the film.  This means hiring Canadian actors which means all the American actors I had specifically in mind, friends, countrymen, to play different characters are out of the picture. 

CROSS CUT TO:

The English actor, Ian Holm, is hired to play by the producers to play the role of the Kentucky based, nerdie/bad guy.  A brilliant, classical actor, a name actor, but totally wrong for the part.  I knew this but what the heck, I didn’t say no.  There didn’t seem as if there was anyone else in Canada.

CROSS FADE TO:

A film “trip” that was supposed to be across the continental United States meant thirty-six separate locations in and around greater Vancouver in twenty-five days.  Someone also forgot to mention that late spring and early summer nights in Vancouver are maybe six hours long at most. We had three lengthy night shoots scheduled.  An experienced director might have known this timetable was semi-impossible.  The key word here is experienced.  With so little time, as the shoot progressed we usually ended up filming a master shot, necessary close ups – one or two takes at most – and then we wrapped and moved on.  Time, time time… see what’s become of me.

JUMP CUT TO:

SWSRN not just designing her own wardrobe but deciding that the character wears different, extravagant  wigs for different occasions – different colors, different lengths.   She had decided that Hush was a “look at me, look at me!” character when in fact Hush was just the opposite – she’d been there, done that sort of thing and she didn’t want that anymore.  There was no explaining this to SWSRN – and because she was late to the set, we didn’t have the time for her to go change.  Oh – did I mention that she didn’t like to rehearse?  

INSERT:

The loss of the third day of shooting because the camera lens was out of focus.  We had to reshoot the entire day with a different supporting cast. 

CUT TO:

The idiot writer/director (me) rewrites an early scene that shows Hush at work in an adult night club.  As first written, she hates the job and stays behind the scenes as much as possible.  Producers have suggested that because SWSRN can “play to a crowd”, she should get up and entertain.  She can and she does.  Wrong, wrong, wrong.  My fault entirely.  I was working on uncertainty as much as adrenaline.

INSERT

The loss of half a day of shooting because the electric grid at the location short circuited.  We improvised outside – tried to.

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The loss of half a day of shooting because the producers hadn’t been received a security clearance at the airport and forgot to tell us… 

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The total loss of three days of shooting towards the end of the shoot because SWSRN’s husband had a medical problem on a Wednesday and declaring it an emergency, she flew to San Francisco on Thursday morning.  The husband was back at work the following Monday, but SWSRN didn’t return to Vancouver until the following Wednesday.  Oh, but she did find the time to appear on the Tonight Show in LA that Monday night.  We shot “around” her for three days, trying to find ways to explain why an essential character wasn’t in the scenes.

FLASHBACK TO:

A seagull pooping on my head when we were filming near the harbor in Vancouver.  I considered it an omen of things to come.

INTERCUT:

Sundays spent sitting brain dead and exhausted in my hotel room, trying to convince myself it was all going well, at the same time wondering when it would be over.

FAST FORWARD TO:

London.  Postproduction.  Putting the film together with an editor made me feel like a writer without enough words at my disposal.  We had what we had, simple as that, and there were not a lot of choices to be made with the material.  There were moments and scenes that worked but there were many that didn’t because you didn’t care enough about the characters.  It was as if they were vying for attention.  The subtle humor in the script that bound them together, two very different people quietly reacting to one one another, and slowly learning to trust one another, just wasn’t there.   I hadn’t been able to convey that subtle journey to the actors.  Maybe I hadn’t realized it myself. 

There was no “director’s cut”.  The film was ultimately taken and reedited by some English someone I didn’t know and never spent a moment of time with.  I never had any say on the soundtrack, which was a disappointment as well.  Beautiful Joe?  No, me. Beautiful Jerk.

Looking back now, I can tell you it takes a certain obsessive quality to be a film director – enormous self-confidence, an uncompromising, singular vision, an almost fanatical attention to detail – plus patience, patience, and more patience.  My ADHD brain had none of these attributes.  I can admit it now.  Like I said, I was in over my head from the beginning.

A big sigh.  Over.  Done with.   Twenty years past.  On a “positive” note, the experience drove me out of film and pushed me towards the writing of fiction.  The money ain’t been as good but there’s been a certain satisfaction to it.