Life in a Film Can

By Larry Revene

Hear first-hand behind-the-scenes accounts of shooting movies for legendary cult directors Chuck Vincent, Roger Watkins, Joe D'Amato, and Gerard Damiano, and working with superstars as diverse as Chris Lemmon, OJ Simson and Charlton Heston! Learn the tricks of the photographer's trade in the days of shooting on film with a limited budget and schedule!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Larry Revene
• Release date: Apr 8, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310146398

Larry Revene

Artist, writer, musician and filmmaker. 40 years in the motion picture industry.

Book preview

Chapter One

LIFE IN A FILM CAN

Who's Larry Revene?

Get me Larry Revene!

Get me a young Larry Revene.

Who's Larry Revene?

The cycle is complete. For some a tidy ending is the goal, for others the ride is everything.

Crossing paths with the famous, infamous, saints and sinners, has been my delight. I have learned from the best and worst players in motion pictures. Making friends or foes is inevitable, but investing in a good reputation is the one common thread running through all situations. Not easily attained, as it turns out, because for some folks besmirching a reputation is a way of inflating their own ego, while on the other hand some lavish cherished kudos' that result in a measure of one's own worth.

At the beginning of my film career, swept up by passion and curiosity, all avenues of opportunity were open to exploration resulting, bit by bit, in my own select interest being shelved due to the imperatives of a work-a-day world. Just as life happens, so does the course of a career evolve. Changes in unimagined directions, some good and some bad, buffered my original goals. Now, recognition of my initial intentions are revisited, no longer affected by the all consuming influences of the mainstream. I am now able, due to a steady income, to pursue my own interest.

Recapturing one's spirit, setting new courses, charting destinations with the knowledge of past journeys – I proceed. Not always the destination envisioned, but accepted as where I belong. A comfort that others much greater than myself have set their sails for similar destinations, but were battered more cruelly before reaching their goal. Solace, by comparison, assures that things could have been worse.

Once the domain of a private filing cabinet, advanced technologies surpass an individual's own records, making accessible to the remotely interested, the collective works of a life. Correlating accomplishments and failures are publicly transparent with the inevitable scrutiny expected from such exposure. What was once thought ephemeral, now goes on a permanent record. This might be a curse or a blessing? A double edge sword that cuts both ways.

Just as a cycle of events connects a diameter, intersecting arcs produce a sphere once the sum is reached, it seems that except for personal satisfaction or regrets, our total worth and contributions, however meager, are now gauged by ourselves as well as others.

The first time I looked at the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) list of my films, I was astonished to see many titles I had forgotten. Thus started a cascade of memories of those projects and also some films not listed. Funny how saline recollections outweigh the saccharine remembrances. Perhaps it is my own selective memory of pungent experiences etched deeper in my cortex of generally bad experiences that offer more emotional involvement, while happy times fade - enjoyed at the moment with little residue. It is hard to forget pain, but even harder to remember sweetness simply because we have no scar tissue that shows.

One of the tenets of storytelling is conflict. I have elected to tell of the conflict and harmony that goes on behind the camera and the various irascible or lovable characters involved during what seemed like a lifetime of each production. Not a sanitized tale of the joys of filmmaking here, not withstanding there have been many pleasant moments in my career. I tell both of sour episodes and memorable moments sweetened by age that occurred during different projects.

My original attraction to the motion picture medium, fresh from a career in music, was the possibility of making films on my own, not involving the inevitable complications of working with others. An unrealistic expectation realized the first time I needed a model to fulfill a concept. Still, I had control, or so I thought, over the making of the films and the subsequent finished product. Much of what I was doing with film at the beginning were landscapes, void of people. Visual rhythms or poems, as I thought of them.

In New York City new cultures, exotic food, and most of all people began shaping my mailable attitude. I was open to the influences and felt I was on the right path. Surreal themes caught my imagination once I was deposited in New York. Attempting to impart my own experiences to the viewer, involving them in my visions, I dove into the medium of film as my way of expressing my awe and wonder. Only through the eyes of a young, impressionable freshly transplanted citizen, can new impressions subjectively show the behemoth metropolis' mysteries. Recurring dreams of traveling through tunnels, the subway, evoked a bizarre existence. I sensed a rebirth in Gotham and the subterranean train travel was akin to traveling through a Fallopian tube. Subway: People ride in a hole in the ground. New York, New York, a place so nice, they had to name it twice. I awoke early each morning with the sound of a city already active and bustling, knowing I had better get going if I wanted to ride. Swept up by the curl of a wave, propelled forward on the crest of the surging roll, hanging tight to not wash out or be washed up before the conclusion of the breaker.

As Shakespeare wrote:Like as the waves make towards the pebbl'd shore, so do our minutes, hasten to their end.

Chapter Two

ONE STEP BACK, TWO STEPS FORWARD

Film is the longest distance between two points.

Robert Flaherty

Already a filmmaker for a dozen years by the late Seventies, I was shooting, editing or producing my own short films. Having suffered through five years of shooting X rated loops and dealing with some unsavory characters, I swore off bottom feeders and set my sights on higher goals. I worked on documentaries and had lensed two Hispanic action features when I met a new contact, the Amero brothers, in 1978. They were looking for a still photographer for a film they were producing called Blonde Ambition. The Amero’s were true film lovers and spent a lot of time tweaking their offspring. The principal photography took a couple of weeks, then they spent years finessing their baby. Being the on-set still photographer, watching director of photography Roberta Findlay work, I learned new approaches to the recurring film production problems invariably encountered on every project. The best type of on the job training one can imagine.

Blonde Ambition (coined a decade before Madonna used the title), was a sexploitation musical comedy. The Amero’s and Roberta came from a low budget film background that explored soft-core sex in the era of big screen's marginal exposure of flesh. The Amero’s were fans of the MGM musicals; Roberta started as an actress in the black and white days of titillation pictures. Combining their talent, with Roberta now on camera, they assembled a team of seasoned professionals. Roberta learned her skills from her husband Mike Findlay, a cameraman killed in the infamous 1977 Pan Am building helicopter crash.

John and Lem had gone up to the heliport on the roof of the Pan Am building to see Mike off to the Cannes Film Festival to accept an award for his 3D camera system. By the time the brothers' elevator reached the ground, Mike was dead by decapitation from a flying rotor blade. There was more than just a working relationship with the Amero brothers and Roberta, there was a bond forged by sharing the grief and pain left in Mike's absence.

Despite limited budgets, the Amero’s brought glitter and glamour to their films. Much credit for the look of the film has to go to the two guys comprising the art department, Larue Watts and Fabian Stuarts. The group worked together for years and there was a comfortable level of familiarity, punctuated with riotous humor.

Lem directed, edited and John produced. Lem was fair haired, with boyish qualities, and John is a well-spoken, dark haired, congenial chap. Their proper Gloucester, New England accents, giving directions during a nude scene, belied their true rebellious nature. They had a sex scene on ice skates, probably a first and last of its kind. They filmed in hotel ballrooms and lush bedrooms. I enjoyed watching them work and the mutual respect they displayed for each other.

I worked as a still photographer in Virginia, before moving to New York, so still photo work was not foreign to me. Experienced on film sets, I knew how to be unobtrusive, staying out of the way while getting the best possible promotional photos. Playing stepchild of the crew, the still photographer seemed the least important person on set, but I had a very important mandate. I operated independently with my own objectives, taking photos for advertising - a key to selling a film.

You cannot take pictures during sound recording because of the click of the camera. During most rehearsals, actors might not be in full costume, a jacket off, or a woman still in pin curls, might not want to mess her makeup for the on camera kiss. The biggest challenge is that the film camera always has the best vantage point - always - anything off the axis of the lens does not have the same lighting effect or the best background, not to mention a grip stand or a light in the shot. Often crouching close as possible to the movie camera, the camera assistant heaped disdain on me or a grip kvetched about my being in the way was my plight. Clicking off a shot in the seconds between the slate, and the call for action, was the best I could do. It is nearly impossible to commandeer the actors between scenes as they have to get into makeup and wardrobe for the next scene and the crew is moving the lights and camera as soon as cut, print it is called.

I repeated the same still camera duties on Armand Weston's film, Take Off, shortly after completing the Amero's project. The skill I developed from those two experiences was useful passing on to other still photographers faced with the same problems on shoots when I was running the film camera.

Often people think that the production shots are taken directly from the negative of the actual film. This is rarely the case because more often than not there is not the right composition for a still. Also the blur that is inherent in a frame of motion picture film is not objectionable for a moving image but unacceptable for a still photograph. Motion picture cameras can film under lower light levels than a still photographer’s, and for this reason, because a flash is never used, another hurdle getting good production stills is put in the way of the still photographer - the bastard of the shoot.

Roberta Findlay was an example of someone who had been in the movie business long enough performing her task effortlessly, while peppering her comments with barbed witticisms. I can see her standing at the camera, her too short bell bottom pants exposing her ankles, looking through the eyepiece and saying:

What’s wrong with this picture? Or, Move that light, it’s giving me a headache. Brushing an actor accidentally, she said, Ugh, he touched me.

John and Lem had a long established relationship with Roberta and her new partner, sound-man Walter Sear. Always armed with a bag of sugary candy, Walter passed around sweets to the crew so they would not flag late in the day from loss of energy. Walter was best known for the tubas he manufactured. The Sear Tuba was considered one of the best instruments available. Walter and Roberta owned a sound mixing studio and at the end of the room next to the screen used for playback there was a large closet; open the door and there were hundreds of tubas neatly shelved from floor to ceiling.

After John and Lem finished the principal photography, they did a lot of insert shots. They came to me for additional footage; I had a studio and we did pick-up shots over a period of several months. For one shot I filmed the 59th St. side of the Plaza Hotel's Trader Vick entrance. We matted out the top part of the frame and double exposed a sign Lem made of a white light miniature constructed from little Italian Christmas tree bulbs reading Che’ Gosh. Combining the real building with people and traffic made the miniature sign work movie magic. Lem did a shot of a miniature plane, filmed upside down to conceal the mono-filament supports. Aware of concerns regarding screen direction, a tidbit I learned from them was that the proper orientation of a plane flying from New York to California is the nose facing frame left - heading West. This, no doubt, is referencing a map with the left coast's position.

In my studio we did a close-up of a pistol firing a shot with a bunch of chicken feathers flying up from under the camera as if the chicken was hit. Pure camp, or poultry in motion. The best gag was a sign put on the side of a nearby building establishing a fictitious movie company, reading: Home of Miracle Pictures: ‘If it’s a good picture, it’s a Miracle.

John did other films under the name of Francis Ellie. Those were gay films and he asked me to shoot for him. I had no problem doing gay films - I had already done some for Bob Anthony and Toby Ross. John was such a delight to work with that doing gay porn was like any other type of filming. These were films that were shown in gay theaters, of which in the late seventies, there were about a dozen in New York.

These were the days after the Stonewall riots of '69, and the beginning of the Gay Pride Parade. The last remnants of the piers that ran from 59th St to Canal St., along the elevated West-side Highway become the haunts of gays looking for illicit sex. Christopher St. was alive with bars and shops all catering to the gay trade. There were public baths for men, movie theaters, and cruising sections in parks, but in a short period of ten years, the openly homosexual activity was short lived due to the AIDS crisis that loomed just a few years in the future.

John did a film, Navy Blue, and he wanted to shoot in public places, creating scenes like two sailors engaging in fellatio on the Brooklyn Bridge or at the Botanical Gardens. We even took the Island helicopter 15 minute tour around Manhattan. The premise of not being discovered was that the pilot would not turn around, but just to be on the safe side, John sat up front in the co-pilot’s seat and diverted the pilot’s attention from looking in the back by sticking his pointer finger under the pilot's nose, almost pushing the man’s head in a direction away from looking at the passengers. What’s that over there? he asked just to keep the pilot’s attention away from the guys doing the bad thing in the rear seats. I filmed from the jump seat facing them. Just as the copter was setting down, Jack Wrangler got his pecker caught in his zipper and there was quite a surprised look on the attendant’s face when he opened the door to help us out. We should have used the authentic fourteen button bell-bottoms. Two guys in sailor suits, one covering his crotch with his cap, and someone with a camera might have been a clue as to our mischief.

Through my association with the Amero brothers, I met some of the most influential people in the N.Y. adult film business.

I remember film critic Andrew Sarris saying in one of my grad classes at NYU: You don’t get work from your reel or resume, it’s because you know the secretary who gives you a plug to her boss.

I have found this to be true. While shooting at a location with John for a film called Boots and Saddles, I met Chuck Vincent while filming in his loft. Little could I have guessed at the time that I would do forty films with Chuck over the next ten years.

Filming with John, I was doing what I always did, setting and rigging lights, stringing cable and loading and shooting a 16mm camera. Chuck was impressed with this and I recall him making a grandiose gesture at lunchtime saying to Marco Nero, his housekeeper, fix this man a steak.

Chuck had several successful X films, like Bad Penny or Dirty Lily, that were current at the time. I have never met anyone quite like Chuck. He was short, round and a real dynamo. He loved laughing at his own jokes or anything that struck him funny. Chuck could also be dead serious when appropriate. He was always busy with a deal, a script or any number of interests he had. There was always something cooking with Chuck.

Other work acquaintances followed as I broadened my network of producers and directors.

It was illegal to import hardcore film from abroad but there were plenty of soft core French, Swedish or Danish films that could be bought and brought here. One purveyor of these films was Radley Metzger, more widely known by his screen name Henry Paris. He made the film The Opening of Misty Beethoven, receiving much acclaim for its innovation. Radley was partners with Ava Leighton under the banner of a company called Audubon Films. Radley hired me to shoot some hardcore inserts to be cut into the films he imported. This, of course, involved matching body doubles, lighting and backgrounds. Shooting a daily newspaper’s front page with the slate was required to prove that the footage was filmed stateside in case of any legal problems. This whole process was left entirely up to me, including finding the talent.

I also shot complete scenes for Radley and Ava for two films he was making simultaneously. One was called Maraschino Cherry and the other Barbara Broadcast, the first of his patchwork pictures incorporating outtakes from Misty Beethoven which got him into legal hot water when star Constance Money sued him for using her image in another film for which she had not signed a release. Eventually, they settled out of court. The scenes I photographed, with Radley directing, had no script or story, but were done in a kind of modular fashion. I found Radley to be a bit capricious and able to tell more what he did not want, as opposed to what he did want. This, unfortunately, is not rare. Radley looked like a younger Leonard Bernstein and he had a rather arrogant air about him and never ceased to make disparaging comments about my southern accent. For me it was water off a duck’s back as I knew he was incapable of doing any of this stuff without my help and I always charged him double.

Armand Weston was doing a feature around this time and he asked me to shoot second unit photography while also doing production stills for Take Off. Again, it was my pleasure to watch another director of photography, Joao' Fernandez, who worked with Armand often, plying his skill for the upscale picture. Although I shot Heat Wave previously with Armand, Joao' was far more experienced. Happily joining the B team, I learned a lot observing Joao's method of lighting. This was the biggest production I had worked on to date - and very beneficial for me to be part of a large scale shoot.

Doing second unit is interesting work, operating separately with less fuss than the main production, but with the support needed to accomplish individual shots. For instance: I did a shot for a pool party scene with nude Vanessa Del Rio doing the backstroke while a nerdy guy (winner of a Screw Magazine contest) tried to keep up with his head buried in her crotch. Great fun! I made up shots for other scenes that were needed for inserts.

Take Off was produced under the auspices of a company called Mature Pictures. Sam Lake owned the company and Bobby Sumner was the executive producer. There was a nucleus of adult film producers in NYC and I was ushered into their inner circle courtesy of the Ameros, Chuck Vincent and Armand Weston.

I got a call from Chucks Vincent’s office to meet with him. He wanted me to work on his next production, MisBehavin', not as director of photography but as camera assistant (AC). Arthur Marks was shooting the film and he had previously worked with Chuck on several other pictures. A lot of the film was exterior and it rained most of the time we were shooting at Vinnie Romeo's house in Connecticut.

Being camera assistant is a very demanding job and there are a lot of mistakes to be made that can ruin a shot or a whole day’s work. In 35mm, the focus is a critical factor and if a shot is out of focus it cannot be used. The operator of the camera is unable to tell if the focus is slightly soft while looking at postage size image through the viewfinder, but when the image is projected on a large screen it is quite noticeable. Constant tape measurements are taken from the camera to the subject to ensure focus. There is a very definite skill eyeing the most subtle changes in movement of the subject. Loading magazines and canning out the exposed film is the job of the 2nd assistant - especially if a lot of film is being shot. Matt Vogel was loader on the film. He later became known for his special effects work.

We had an incident that illustrates how one person, the AC, can negate the work of a complete production. We were shooting at an indoor swimming pool with lots of extras, and had made several elaborate dolly shots during the day. I was taking the camera off of the shoulder of Arthur after he completed a hand held shot while sitting at the pool's edge. The shot was at the end of the day. The 1,000 ft. round camera magazine contained most of the footage from the day's shooting. When I rolled the heavy camera off Arthur’s shoulder, using my leg as a brace, the latch on the magazine, which was not taped as recommended, slid open and the better part of the day's work was exposed to the light and ruined. Chuck collected the insurance for the disastrous shoot day ($10,000) and we re-shot the scene on Jones Beach with just two actors.

Dick Carballo played one of the two characters in the scene. He was cast as the Devil. Dick was a legend in film circles for his biting wit and take no hostages methods. He worked primarily as a production manager and stories abound about his tactics - like the duck that would not stand still in a position needed for a TV commercial. Dick grabbed a staple gun and ca-chunk! in the webbing. Problem solved. A film crew he was managing had not been paid on time, so Dick told them all to sit down and not work. He went to the production office on the tenth floor of the building to the producer office, picked up a typewriter and slung it out the window and said to the producer, Pay the crew or you’re next. A short, stocky guy, Dick, seemingly not a threat, morphed into a pit bull when angered. Due to his heavy drinking, he turned out to be more of a threat to himself than others. He found out his wife was having an affair and while she and some friends were playing cards one night, he went up the stairs to the bedroom, got a gun and halfway back down the stairs blew his brains out in front of them. Needless to say, it was a shock to everyone that knew him, but Dick was very direct and in his way was saying that he could not abide being betrayed. Rest his soul.

Howard Winters produced Heat Wave, which I shot with the late Armand Weston directing. Howard was ratcheting up productions and had teamed up with Ron Sullivan under the name of Scope Pictures. Ron (deceased) was married to Radley Metzger’s niece and paid homage to Radley by using the screen name Henri Pachard (after Henry Paris). Ron was to direct the film October Silk, which Howard asked me to shoot. Ron was the kind of director who always outperformed the performers. He had a billowing, booming voice that after the day’s shoot you could still hear ringing in your ear. He could be very funny, but also very exasperating. Always referring to his Marine background, he directed like a drill sergeant: All right men get ready – girls - tune ‘em up.

Ron was always quoting some platitude like, People work hardest to keep things the same. He would also jokingly say, I like that idea enough to take credit for it.

We did three films that year, 1979, and they were all about the same budget and shooting duration, usually five days. This was up from the three day wonders which had been the standard until then. The market was more competitive in the late Seventies, with new players, both producers and talent. Enhanced production value was needed to remain relevant for audiences; thus more shoot days. These were films targeted for theatrical distribution, the advent of VHS home video was still to come, and new movie screens were popping up all over the country. The search for new faces, especially girls, was key to audiences who wanted fresh, new people. A number of talent agents appeared on the scene, West coast and East coast, specializing in casting for X films. Talent was being flown in from L.A. for N.Y. shoots and locations were expanding from the merely convenient to the elaborate.

Chapter Three

PUTTING THE SIN IN CINEMA

There’ll be no pratfalls in my movies.

Chuck Vincent

When I signed on as director of photography with Chuck Vincent, I had a sense we would work well together. My first film with him as camera assistant was really a trial to see if he liked the way I performed. Chuck was efficient, with well-planned ideas of what he wanted and how he would achieve the end result. My first film with Chuck, with me shooting, was Jack 'n' Jill. It starred Jack Wrangler and Samantha Fox. We shot most of the picture in Chuck’s loft on 35th St. and Eighth Ave located in the garment district of the city. Working from a finished script, with enough advanced planning, it was possible to preconceive lighting and dolly moves. I knew the location’s benefits and difficulties, which helped me plan out shooting logistics.

Somehow there is a misconception that the DP (director of photography) does not need to look at the script. Chuck demanded I know every scene by its scene number, a task I found useful in communicating during script discussions. I always study a script thoroughly, looking for ways to convey the mood of a scene and giving the film a cohesive look while linking transitions from scene to scene, connecting last shot of one scene to the first shot of the next. Using color as an emotional element, the different hues can make a completed film have an overall tone. I confer with the art department and wardrobe to try and achieve a look for a film. Not only can I identify any scene by its scene number, but often know the lines of dialogue better than the script supervisor. This caused trouble for me because instead of being viewed as having done my homework, it is seen as being a know it all. Chuck respected the fact that I studied and digested the script. This was one element that made our collaborations work with a mutual respect. I had never met a more industrious individual and he was glad I could keep up with his hyper pace by knowing the material and what was required next.

Chuck loved to block (position) the actors and have them move around a set. We would shoot three hundred and sixty degrees in a shot. Normally when shooting there is a dead wall for the lights, but with Chuck everything had to be rigged and hung from the ceiling. His loft had two walls of windows that looked out over a great view of Manhattan's midtown, but in order to see this on film the light in the loft had to be brought up to the brightness of the outside or the view would burn out. Windows could be gelled with neutral density material to help reduce the exterior light but this was expensive and time consuming - plus we were working thirteen stories up, which precluded attenuating the light easily by large sheets of gel from the outside.

Even though we had a full crew (camera assistants, gaffers and grips), Chuck insisted on playing dolly grip himself. He had an old wheelchair that, for him, was the ideal camera dolly. He whipped that thing around to move with or counter the action. The problem for the camera, besides whiplash, was keeping focus. The camera assistants really had to be alert and I, as operator, had to hand-hold the camera perched on an apple box on the wheel chair so as to not be shooting up into the overhead lights. It took a couple of films with Chuck to convince him this was not the optimum situation. The camera was always at the same height, and additional takes of the same shot could not be repeated with any degree of accuracy. Control is key for repeating shots.

There was a synchronicity in that first film with Chuck which came across on the screen. The film, Jack ‘n’ Jill, was a huge success.

Not only did it get rave reviews but also was a smash hit at the box office. People had never seen an X rated film with such energy. Samantha Fox and Jack Wrangler played the leads and they complemented the frenetic energy with their own brand of hyper performance. This was Chuck personified. At this point, Chuck and I became joined at the hip for the next decade, until the end of his career.

I did films for other producers, of course, between working with Chuck, so I became very busy shooting one film after another. On the films that were not with Chuck, I could usually look forward to extremely long shoot days. These long hours were not due to the film being more complicated or elaborate, but because the production did not have its act together. Stupid delays caused by producers trying to save a couple of bucks by hiring inexperienced people:

What are we waiting on now?

Oh, the Production Assistant, who has the keys to the parked van, has gone to town to get paper cups and we can’t move the vehicle for the next set up until he gets back.

Chuck was an absolute master of organization. I became spoiled with his efficiency. He had the ability to take very complicated problems and reduce them to the simplest method of execution. This made it hard to work with inefficient people because it was my time they were wasting. Without union guidelines, overtime, or regimented meal breaks, it was a lot like working in the early days of film when there were no rules. Some producers were better than others, but some shoots the crew had to revolt to get lunch. It was not uncommon to work three or four eighteen hour days in a row. The 10 hour overnight turnaround eventually became a standard. Some of those clowns thought that when ‘cut’ was called on the last setup of the day, the clock started running for the next day's call time. It was easy for a producer to say before the guidelines were forced on them, We finished at 2 am and the call is at 7:00 am. This of course did not factor in the wrap and load out from a location, and more often than not the complications of securing the equipment truck at some overnight parking garage and then going home by subway for a couple of winks only to turn around and do it again. Food was a perennial problem; it got so pizza and Chinese takeout were not considered food. I like pizza, but not every day for weeks on end. Every producer thought he was being original, frugal, and clever by ordering out from the nearest pizza joint. The expression mushroom philosophy took hold: keep 'em in the dark, feed 'em shit and watch 'em grow! I am happy to say Chuck was not guilty of any of these shortcomings.

On one film, Alexandra, we shot twenty-four hours straight and at the end of the first day we were one day behind schedule. I got a fresh crew in and we continued to shoot another twenty-four hours and then we were two days behind schedule. On the third day we caught up to schedule. This was a case of the production manager scheduling twenty pages a day, when ten pages were normally considered a lot and an average would be more like six to eight.

There was a director/producer making films at this time by the name of Kemal Horulu, a middle-aged, swarthy, dumpy sort of guy. He was Turkish and I did two pictures with him. He was a nice man, but could display rather quirky traits at times.

He pulled me aside once. Larry, you’re shooting too much film.

I said, So call cut.

He got very angry. When his production manager Bobby Gallagher gave me the wrong address for the locations two days in a row, I got very angry.

In halting English, Kemal’s favorite expression was lem’ my explain. He was not bad to work with on the whole, and was very tolerant of the talent. Vanessa Del Rio broke a fingernail during a shot and we must have waited an hour for the repair, and then she had to pee in a bottle and could not make herself go. She drank voluminous quantities of ice water to no avail. It was the first time I had seen a woman have to perform like a man doing a physical action that could not be fudged. She did not want anybody to move or talk and at one point she said, Who’s jingling the change in their pocket? It’s distracting, stop it.

The aforementioned October Silk, with Ron Sullivan and Howard Winters was followed by another of their films, Outlaw Ladies. I was also doing films with Chuck during this period. There was so much activity in the early Eighties I was shooting one film after another. I used to enjoy picking up the newspaper to see which film I worked on that was playing in New York theaters - there was always at least one. They were of course also playing nationwide.

October Silk and Outlaw Ladies were not especially memorable projects and the only real recollection I have was shooting at a suburban house in New Jersey. The police showed up. Howard sent out a production assistant to talk with them. All the illegal emigrant crew members and Howard took off into the woods behind the location. I thought this very poor of Howard. The cops did not bother us, but if they had, who was going to bail us out? Certainly not Howard.

Another memory was shooting in Ron and Howard’s offices. The offices were in the same building with several other porn producers located on Eighth Avenue across from Chuck’s loft. New York always has similar business enterprises clustered together. The meat packers, garment makers, the music and flower stores, all do better business together than being spread out. It was late at night and we had been shooting porn all day when someone on the crew spotted a woman undressing across the way in the New Yorker Hotel. Everyone, crew, actors, without exception ran to the window to look. This was a seminal moment for me understanding the true nature of voyeurism. The exciting thing is seeing something by chance that you are not supposed to see.

A scene filmed in Ron’s office was supposed to be a lawyer’s office and Eddie Heath was doing set design and wardrobe. Eddy is a first rate designer and it is to his credit that he did an incredible job for my film Blue Magic, as well as the classic film Hester Street.

Eddie put the maximum effort into whatever set he was dressing or the wardrobe he was supplying for a film. In this case he brought in a ton of law books to dress the wall to make it look like a lawyer’s office. There were floor to ceiling books in a bookcase on the wall opposite the entrance door to the oblong room. The desk was at the end of the room, at a right angle to the door; there were no books behind the desk. The wall that ran from the door to the desk had a couple of obligatory framed degrees hanging, but all the dressing was on the opposite wall.

The first shot establishes the screen direction for the rest of the scene. This is the method of keeping the audience orientated to where they are in a specific space.

Ron chose to shoot the entrance of the two characters from inside the room with the wall of books behind the camera. The camera pans in the characters from the door to the desk. In keeping with the correct screen orientation the camera moves to a medium two shot of the people at the desk. The person camera left is looking to the right at the person seated in front of the desk looking frame left. The problem is we are constantly looking at the minimally dressed wall and never seeing the books. I knew that if I did not shoot the books, Eddie would shoot me. I brought this to Ron's attention, suggesting a way to remedy the problem. A simple solution solved the conundrum, which was to have the person playing the lawyer stand and move to the wall with the books, then cut and move the camera to the opposite undecorated wall, putting the books in the background of the person standing.

Whenever there is a huddle with the director, script supervisor, and cameraman on a film set, you can bet it is a conference about screen direction. This is one of the more nebulous aspects of film making. Some will say it is not important to keep the audience oriented, but I feel it is paramount to keep the attention on the story and not have the audience working to figure out where they are in space. Some wrong directions during shooting can be slight, but can be disastrous when edited. I learned this the hard way when I first started shooting films, knowing less then, than I do now.

Another inexperienced cameraman and I were sent to film a tennis match. Without thinking, we set up the two cameras on opposite sides of the court. My camera was shooting the player serving left to right and his camera on the other side of the court was shooting the opposing player returning the ball left to right as well. Some head scratching went on when we viewed the footage with both players hitting the ball in the same direction. What we were unfamiliar with was the rule of not crossing the imaginary 180 degree line in a scene. Once the other camera crossed the center of the court, the reference regarding screen direction remained left to right instead of the desired right to left to show a face to face orientation.

If the script supervisor is doing continuity, which is not always the case, often there is confusion about screen direction issues and the principle has to be illustrated to them. The most recent example was a scene of an actress throwing darts at a picture of her boyfriend. The scene was broken into two shots with a dart coming into frame right (easier to get the bull’s eye with the thrower off camera). It hits the bull’s eye. Then we turn the camera around for a shot of the girl throwing the dart. The script girl insisted that the thrower should pitch the dart frame right, but the correct direction was frame left, so the dart looked like it was thrown by the same person. It is easy to see if you picture the camera panning the dart all the way through its travel. The camera would have to pan left to follow the dart, thus it has to enter frame right in the static shot.

Little subconscious bumps in the veneer of a story tend to distract the viewer for an instant. Cumulatively, they end up making a rough surface that