FILMING ON AND OFF THE UNIVERSAL LOT

As the postproduction on our movie continued, we realized that we needed to film some additional sequences so that the new cut would make sense. We took Peter to lunch to discuss and as we crossed the lot on the way to the commissary, there on one of the loading docks was the star of a new Universal picture. This actor had been given the name of Bruce and he was a twenty-five-foot-long mechanical rubber shark for Universal’s new movie, Jaws. As we stared at this prosthetic beast, Peter said, “You guys should still meet Spielberg. I know he’d want to meet you.” (Later we were told he was now on location in Martha’s Vineyard on the East Coast.)

After our pitch, Peter used his political skills to wrangle us some budget to shoot the desired scenes. It always helps to have an advocate working for you in a studio environment. Peter made an impassioned plea to Mr. Sheinberg and we had our cash. Since we were working on the Universal lot, the pickup shoot was envisioned with a full union crew; the amount budgeted of $80,000 would buy us just three days of shooting. Something was just plain wrong about us shooting for seventy-some days on our little indie picture down in Long Beach and then for similar money only getting three days on the Universal lot. But what the hell, we didn’t care and it wasn’t our money! Craig and I would be directing a full union crew on the Universal Studios lot and I had just turned twenty.

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The filming went well, the crew was competent and helpful, but every once in a while our indie roots would cause us to cross a line and we’d actually get yelled at. On a traditional movie, crew members would never dare have the audacity to yell at the director. The director is treated like a king on the set and the only one who might raise their voice could be a difficult actor or a powerful producer. But crew, never!

One night we were shooting on location in an alley in the port district of San Pedro and I noticed some rusted-out old trash cans and I darted over and dragged them into frame to add some texture to the scene. “Hey, you can’t do that!” Suddenly these burly art department guys were in my face and giving me a dressing down about how only set decorators were allowed to touch the scenery. I, of course, demurred and slunk back to my position behind camera. But it would get even better.

Later in the shoot one of our actresses was having a hard time getting the scene right. Craig and I had developed a shorthand way of working so we could get extra takes by blaming it on a tech issue to take pressure off the actors. “We need another one. Glitch in the focus!” That way we could do ten or twelve takes and the actor could relax, figuring it wasn’t their fault. We learned early that we would always get a better performance from a relaxed actor.

We were filming a scene on the Universal lot with a new actress and she just didn’t have a handle on the reading. We had already done five takes; she was getting jumpy and we were running out of time. So I called out, “Camera missed it! Nice take but one more for camera.” The actress breathed a sigh of relief but then the union camera operator let out a yelp and hurtled off the camera dolly and charged me. “That move was perfect! Where the hell do you get off popping your mouth off in front of the crew that my work is bad!!!” I couldn’t do anything right with this crew.

As the last day of Universal pickup shots came to an end, it was apparent that we would not complete two major new sequences that were important and necessary to finish the story. Back on the lot Craig and I hatched a plan. Why couldn’t we just shoot the missing scenes down in Long Beach with our indie crew? We conspired with Peter over lunch in the Universal commissary and pleaded with him to get us four thousand dollars to cover the film and camera rental costs. In exchange we would return with the finished sequences for just a fraction of what a Universal crew day would cost. Peter resisted at first, concerned that things just were not done that way at Universal and the studio heads and the craft unions would definitely not approve. It was a hard argument for Peter to win, though, as we were relentless in our youthful exuberance and just browbeat him until he finally conceded that it might be possible to advance some “expense reimbursement.” Even though Peter predicted trouble, and demanded utmost secrecy of us, he went to bat for us and managed to get the check cut for our production money.

That weekend we got the gang back together at my parents’ house and spent two nights shooting scenes around Jim’s old car. It all went down perfectly until that next Monday when I made a fatal, greedy error. Our Universal assistant editor heard us talking about the shoot and volunteered to hand-deliver our film over to the camera department and get it processed and printed, at no charge to us. I should have realized then that this would lead to trouble but the tantalizing prospect of getting free lab work did me in. I handed over the negative and within hours the shit had hit the proverbial fan.

Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined that this small mistake would have the most powerful man in Hollywood in a lather and our good friend Peter called on the studio boss’s carpet begging forgiveness. Lew Wasserman was a titan of the film industry and stories abound about his ruthless rise to power and total domination of first the agency business and then the television and movie businesses. He was an old-school mogul much like the Harry Cohns and Louis B. Mayers of old. Wasserman set an exacting standard and woe to the junior executive who crossed him. Evidently when his fiery temper took hold, legend had it that grown men would cower as he berated them, spittle flying from his mouth as he cursed them.

That day Peter received a summons to the fifteenth floor of the Universal executive building. Mr. Wasserman wanted to see him. I can only imagine what was going through Peter’s mind on the long ride up the elevator to the top of Universal’s feared Black Tower. He was probably seeing his Universal career evaporating in front of his eyes. When he arrived in Wasserman’s grand, antique-filled office, Peter could immediately tell that Lew was not happy. A union head had phoned Lew and, irate, he challenged the studio boss as to why Universal could possibly be doing nonunion filming. Wasserman demanded an immediate answer from Peter. Were they doing nonunion filming? Did Peter, in fact, attempt to subvert the union labor contract that had been so laboriously negotiated to keep the labor peace? And of course, Peter did the only thing he could do. He blamed it on us. “Those kids! I can’t control them! They went out and did it on their own!” This excuse did catch the studio boss by surprise. As the distracted Lew Wasserman ruminated on how these two teenage filmmakers might destabilize Universal’s carefully structured labor relations, like many Universal executives before him, Peter quickly made himself scarce and backed out of Wasserman’s office.

Peter immediately informed us of our transgressions and I’m not sure we had much sympathy for him. Coming from our sixties and seventies upbringings I guess we always saw Universal and the Black Tower as the proverbial Man, as in “working for the Man,” that mythical, oppressive figure that always needed to be talked back to and rebelled against. Boy, were we naïve.

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Later in postproduction when Sid and his marketing team affixed the title of Story of a Teenager to our film, we saw it as another example of the Man, out of touch and uncool, influencing our film in a bad way. I had the temerity to write a memo of protest to Sid on behalf of Craig and myself. At that time, Sid Sheinberg ran Universal Studios with an iron fist and answered only to Mr. Wasserman, who might have been an even tougher hombre than he was. This memo of mine basically stated that we hated the title and demanded that he change it. Sid immediately responded by interoffice memo and quickly put us in our places. His written slap-down, dripping with sarcasm, basically said that if we were so smart and knew so much about everything, that we should be happy to refund Universal all the money they had expended and then go out and distribute the film ourselves the way we wanted.

As we read Sid’s memo, Craig and I looked at each other in shock. The money Universal had advanced to us was all gone! My father had been reimbursed, all the cast and crew had been paid their deferments, and Craig had leased a new Porsche and I had bought a used Corvette. This was the first of many wake-up calls to come about how much the power of money dominates the filmmaking process. The person, or studio, with the financial power runs the show. Period. The end. Those few moments of terror really taught us something about how fortunate we were to have a major studio backing us, and a major studio boss giving us pretty much whatever we wanted to finish our movie. If Sid wanted to call the film Story of a Teenager, then that was his call. What did we know anyway? We never could come up with a title we liked before we came to Universal. Sid’s title was as good a title as any. We immediately wrote a dutifully apologetic memo back to Sid, thanking him for his support and stating that we were more than happy to move forward with Story of a Teenager as our title.