Working on a play with Peter Bogdanovich, David Worth learned a lesson about art and artifice. His cautionary tale for filmmakers and storytellers.
I was working on a play with Peter Bogdanovich that was adapted from an early F. Scott Fitzgerald novel, “The Beautiful and Damned.” Peter was a true gentleman and included yours truly, who was merely a visiting journeyman filmmaker in the creative process often encouraging my input and seeking out my opinion.
While paging through his working copy of the novel, I could see the herculean effort that Mr. Bogdanovich had made in turning the lengthy prose into useable dialogue. We were already in our off, off Broadway run, with the cast that included Dustin Hoffman and Diane Keaton, who always managed to wear the most beguiling, enticing and intoxicating perfume that I had ever had the privilege of inhaling…
There had already been an afternoon run through and Peter asked me if I had watched it, but I informed him that I was waiting to watch the next performance on order for the actors to settle into their characters a bit more.
One of the lesser cast members was miffed about exactly how much money Dustin Hoffman was receiving and almost in unison both Peter and I were informing him that no one in the audience was coming to see this gentleman’s performance or really even the work of the director, Mr. Bogdanovich. All they were coming to see was the stars, Dustin Hoffman and Diane Keaton and without their participation, none of us would have a job!
Then I woke up!
I was not working with Mr. Bogdanovich or Mr. Hoffman or Ms. Keaton. There was no beguiling perfume and I was in my room of my shared apartment in Westwood California, near UCLA where I was a part time professor, teaching filmmaking to the next generation of filmmakers.
This had been one of the best dreams of my life, but it had never happened, it wasn’t about to happen and in fact it was never in my lifetime going to happen. This left me profoundly aware of exactly what I had managed to accomplished in the Business of Show and wondering if the door was still open for me to do more.
Way back in the day, during the 1970’s, without any connections into the film industry I had still managed to claw my way up as an independent cinematographer and editor doing a fistful of totally forgettable and forgotten feature films. Three of those films, Death Game, A Great Ride, and Hollywood Knight, barely saw any form of distribution and all three of the budgets combined would not total $500,000.00, but they happened to be the right films in the right place at the right time and led directly to me being the director of photography on two Clint Eastwood films: Bronco Billy and Any Which Way You Can.
That piece of luck and timing gave me the credibility to go on and have a career and led to my being the cinematographer on Bloodsport and the director on Kickboxer, which launched the career of the man who brought the art to martial arts, Jean-Claude Van Damme. Eventually, I made over 35 independent feature films as a director and DP not only in Hollywood, but in many corners of the world: Hong Kong, Bangkok, Macau, Indonesia, Italy, Israel, South America, South Africa and Bulgaria.
Then the phone calls stopped coming…
This happens to everyone and not just in the Business of Show, but everyone. Still it stings when it happens to you, but you have to adapt, adjust and move on. There’s a classic Hollywood saying that describes the five stages of your career, you can insert nearly anyone’s name into it and it goes like this:
1. Who’s Jean-Luc Godard?
2. Get me Jean-Luc Godard!
3. Get me a young Jean-Luc Godard.
4. Get me the next Jean-Luc Godard.
5. Who’s Jean-Luc Godard?
This cycle is true of nearly everyone but especially in the Business of Show. In fact whenever I mention the names of many classic directors and their films to my students, I get nothing back but a blank stare… Many of today’s students and young filmmakers have been raised on Television, the Internet, YouTube and are the descendants of Video Cameras, the iPhone and the iPad…
Since they have the ability to make films instantly with today’s modern technology many of them feel no real need or desire to study and learn from the visionary filmmaking masters of the past 100 years. Men whose shoulders they are standing on every day whenever they capture on their DSLR, edit on their Final Cut Pro and sell their DVD’s on their Websites or upload their films to the Internet.
Like, in the recent Martin Scorsese 3D epic Hugo, where the inventive filmmaker from the early 1900’s Georges Méliès’, was found late in his life selling toys and trinkets in a train station in Paris, the masterful French filmmaker Abel Gance, who made the staggering achievement of Napoleon in 1927 was found in the 1950’s selling pencils in the streets of Paris.
Able Gance was literally the, (tragically missed) Tony Scott of the 1920’s who’s film Napoleon boasted the futuristic techniques of hand held cameras, cameras on horseback, cameras on pendulums, fast cutting and superimpositions that predated the techniques of MTV by fifty years. As well as, three cameras and projectors side by side for the last reel of his epic that was in both black & white and color and predated three-camera Cinerama by thirty years!
Also, the American film master D. W. Griffith who literally invented the language of filmmaking while he and his cameraman Billy Bitzer were making over four hundred and fifty (450!) one and two reel films in the early 1900’s. Before making the first blockbuster The Birth of a Nation in 1915 and one of the most artful and inventive films of the last century Intolerance in 1916, died an alcoholic, in the late 1940’s, forgotten and rejected in the Knickerbocker Hotel only a few yards from Hollywood Boulevard in the town and industry that he had literally created.
The great actor Sir Anthony Hopkins is quoted as saying about the Business of Show: “Accept everything and expect nothing…” That more or less sums it up. As long as you go into filmmaking because you have to do it. Because you love the process and because you are passionate about making films…
Fine… Now is the best time to become a filmmaker. But kindly take the time to first study the visionary films and filmmakers of the last century on Netflix… (Email me, and I’ll send you the list!) Then you can also study your favorite modern films and filmmakers. Purchase a DSLR HD Camera and Final Cut Pro, gather a small team of your friends and become your own studio. In the 1990’s there were garage bands… Today there are garage studios!
There are even young film artists who are making film after film by just their subscriptions from YouTube or other social media. It is a totally new paradigm and a brave new world of filmmaking out there on the horizon. Give it all you’ve got, give it your best shot, dream big and make those dreams a reality. You can also do it on weekends, like the guy who just did Bindlestiffs…
Google it and see how you can make your film while still in school or not giving up your day job…
Hey, even I could do that!
David Worth (www.davidworthfilm.com )has a resume of well over thirty five feature films as a Director of Photography and Director and has worked with talents like Clint Eastwood, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Shelly Winters, Roy Scheider, Dennis Hopper, Sondra Locke and Bruce Campbell. He has taught filmmaking at Chapman University, USC and at Chapman Singapore where he also lectured at the NYU Tisch Asia campus. He is an adjunct professor at his Alma Mater, UCLA and at The Academy of Art University in San Francisco. His first textbook, The Citizen Kane Crash Course in Cinematography, was published in 2008 and is available at www. amazon.com.
Related filmmaking guides
- Film directing: getting good performances
- Coverage and the master shot
- Camera angles in film: a beginner’s guide
Keep learning filmmaking
Want more lessons like this? Join StudentFilmmakers free for live webinars with working pros, and stream on-demand filmmaking classes in cinematography, directing, screenwriting, sound and post.
