Texas had a Film Commission, but cities like Houston and Dallas felt it was more advantageous to have a commission of their own, as well.
In addition, we also had the Motion Picture Council of Houston (MPCH). It was made up primarily of local production companies, their executives and peripheral industry personnel: technicians, suppliers, crew personnel, and the such.
There were only a handful of actor members when I joined, but I made such an impact on the board of directors that their attitude officially changed for the better: where before actors weren't allowed to be full voting members they were now encouraged to join and participate fully.
I even ran for the board when elections came up and won a seat, handily.
My agent, Sharon Hendricks of the Sherry Young Agency, hadn't felt I was right for the MPCH: she felt it was an organization reserved for the production side of the business...not actors.
I told her we were all interested in bringing quality productions to the area and, to top it off, I told her I “knew”, psychically, that I was going to be elected President.
She laughed and said that would be impossible.
Officers were elected by the board at the first joint meeting of the old and new boards.
I won the Presidency as I had predicted! It was a major accomplishment and the news raced through the industry. It brought more credibility to the acting profession by making the statement that actors, too, were committed to working for the betterment of the industry.
We went from meetings with 20-25 attendees to 150 or more, from all facets of the business, with me at the podium. And the membership ranks grew as well. Not just with actors but mostly with technical and crew personnel as well.
We brought top notch industry speakers in as guests.
One was Jay Bernstein, Executive Producer of the Mike Hammer TV series. He managed the cream of Hollywood: Jim Carey, Drew Barrymore, Brooke Shields, Sammy Davis, Jr., Glen Ford and others.
He came and spoke to us about the investment benefits of the industry of the future.
To recognize excellence in the local industry I initiated a Member of the Month award and we presented "Oscar" looking trophies to the recipients. It was a great morale booster and solidified the community even more.
And all the while I was making commercials and films.
One film that is very special to me is "Square Dance".
J David Moeller with Winona Ryder
at the "Square Dance Wrap Party
I was called up to Dallas to audition for the role of Brother Dub Moseley, a Texas evangelist. Daniel Petrie, the director, told me he wanted him to be a man of Texas but didn't want his accent to get in the way of the character.
It was a small part but highly visible. The character is Ryder's favorite preacher and she listens to him on the radio all the time. The scene I'm in is where she and her mother come to one of my revivals and then come down to get saved.
I looked at this role differently than most of my others. I felt I had mission to, first, get the part, and then to do some good with it. I also felt the hand of God on my shoulder on this one.
Petrie and Alexander (co-producer with former “Monkey” Mike Nesmith and Charles Haid of “Hill Street Blues” fame) were both at the audition. Jane took me completely by surprise when she told me she knew my work.
I knew this was a good sign.
I had spent time earlier in the day going over the lines in a park not far from the production office headquartered in a motel in Red Sands, Texas between Dallas and Waxahachie.
While there I felt an assuredness come over me as I strolled beside a tiny streamlet running through the park. I dipped my fingers into the water and baptized myself in the early afternoon sun.
In the scene I'm preaching and quoting scripture. In the audition I did it with just the tiniest hint of a Texas accent. There were other actors there for the same role, but I knew it would be mine.
I went back to Houston and waited and waited and waited and no one called. The casting director, whose name will forever be banished from my lips, didn't think to call me and tell me I had the part for a full four days after I'd actually gotten it.
When it came time to do the shoot I was ready. The costumer outfitted me in a beautiful 3-piece non breathing, 100% polyester suit just perfect for a humid, breezeless, 90 plus degreed Texas day in an outdoor, sun baked, open-air pavilion under the lights.
I sweated most of the liquid I had in my system out the first fifteen minutes I had the suit on.
The shot sequence in the script was to start on me, pull in for close ups, cut away to shots of Jane and Winona sitting in the pews listening, and then back to me on the stage with my choir singing away behind me as I call for the congregation to come and be saved.
It was not a real-time sequence. There would be gaps in the sermon and activity on the stage to indicate the course of a full revival.
I had learned my lines in sequence, even though there are time breaks in the shot sequence. I did it that way because the passion in my preaching builds to where, like other revival preachers, I finally have tears streaming down my face, totally immersed in what I'm saying.
But for some reason known only to Dan Petrie, he made all his camera set ups in sequence with the edited shot list.
In other words, instead of leaving the camera in one spot and shooting all my scenes from that angle, then breaking it down and moving over to shoot the cut-away sequences of Jane and Winona, Dan shot the opening lines of my sermon, broke the camera down, moved it across the pavillion and shot the ladies, brought it back to where it had been before and shot more of my scene.
The result was a terribly awkward break in the rhythm of my sermon. I had learned the lines with the emotional build built in.
Then Jane, unknowingly, threw a monkey wrench into the works: she decided (as was her right as the producer) to move some paragraphs around in my speeches.
This did me in. I'm embarrassed to say, I screwed up royally.
I committed the greatest sin of an actor.
I couldn't find the texture, the rhythm, the passion, the emotion, nor the religion in it anymore.
All my "headwork" was out the window and gone.
On top of it all, I was suffering near heat prostration. I was confused and couldn’t concentrate as I should have. I went up.
We muddled through, got the shots, did some voice over work for scenes where I'm just a voice on a radio, and I was wrapped.
I was devastated.
I had never once in my career “gone up”.
Going up is forgetting lines. It happens to every actor sooner or later. Some recover. Some don’t.
There’s a story that Dame Edith Evans, the celebrated English actress once “went up” during a stage performance. After a bit of a pause, and noticing all her fellow actor’s eyes staring expectantly at her, she simply said, “Well?” and then continued with her assigned lines.
Many times just breaking the ice with sound brings back the dialogue.
Unfortunately, I was too deeply lost and, now, mentally confused to save myself.
Lesson: Learn your lines! Learn your lines! Learn your lines!
Earlier, when we broke for lunch, before the debacle of the lines, quite a few people came up to me and told me they'd decided to devote their lives to Christ because of what they'd heard me saying up there. They said I'd touched them deeply.
It made me feel pretty good that my craft could do that for people.
And I was actually quite a popular autograph that day. I was signing away when a production assistant had to come drag me away for lunch. I would have stayed there signing autographs as long as there were people in line...and there were a good twenty that I didn't get to before I ate.
I still felt good about the film and the character I had portrayed.
I knew it was a "small" film, but I was proud to have been a "small" part of it.
In the film, Rob Lowe’s character falls in love with Winona’s. It is, in my opinion, the best acting job of Lowe's career.
Winona was magnificent.
Winona's mother and father, Michael and Cindy Horowitz, were on the set shooting home videos of everything that went on and probably have, literally, miles and miles of tape on their little girl's first big film role.
Including my “breakdown”.
A few months later I got a call from the same casting director from hell who then earned her standing in my estimation of her, by launching into a tirade that I was a terrible actor and that I hadn't done the character the way I did it in the audition and they, now, had to fly me out to Los Angeles to "loop" (re-record) my lines.
I was starring in the play Breakfast with Les And Bess at the time and told her I was available from Monday until 4pm Thursday, when I had to be back in Texas for an 8 o'clock curtain.
She wanted me to fly in Friday.
I told her I couldn't do it. She was pissed. She couldn't seem to understand that I wasn't just waiting around for her to call.
I had a life.
She called again later and said to forget it; they were going to have someone else voice the part...meaning you'd see me but hear someone else (not at all uncommon in the movies).
I pleaded with her not to let that happen.
Again she called and said they’d arranged it for me to fly out Monday.
Still she called back, again, and said forget it, they'd run out of time in the studio. She was pissed and wouldn't give me anything other than repeating what a lousy actor I was.
I fired off an apologetic letter to Dan Petrie telling him I had pulled back on the accent because I felt Christians would hear the word of God and be happy with the character and the rest of the movie-going audience wouldn't be turned off by a loud and country sounding hick preacher which would mean they'd have to work harder to try to get back into the flow of the movie.
It turns out that, while they didn’t use it, they did indeed fly an actor out to re-voice it.
But in the end, the actor you see and hear is me.
Jane Alexander wrote and said she was sorry "our moment of salvation" had been cut from the film but she felt I'd be happy with the rest of it.
I was. I looked really good in the part.
Lesson: Always be nice to film editors if you meet them.
When released, there were only two shots of me. One was a long shot establishing where we were and then a closer shot of me preaching. There was a lot of footage with my voice over the picture.
I was flattered and quite taken aback when people who’d seen the film recognized me on the street and commented on the character: how real it seemed to them.
Square Dance was shot before evangelist Jimmy Swaggart's fall from grace when he publicly admitted cavorting with prostitutes. It was a huge scandal.
It was this type of evangelist I was trying to avoid any semblance of in my characterization. I didn't want "my" preacher to appear in any way like the stereotypical bible thumping tent revivalist with a gimmick. I wanted my man to be pure in every respect...so the audience would have no doubts about his devotion and authenticity. This is what I had explained to Dan.
To this day, especially in lieu of the Swaggart scandal, I feel I made the right choices in the characterization.
After all, I was guided by God on this one. It may not have been what Hollywood wanted, but it's what God, and I, had wanted.
Lesson: The Boss is always the boss!
No comments:
Post a Comment