Film
Set Piece
What was it like to produce a western directed by a first-timer from Copenhagen? Scenes from the making of Bull-Fighter.
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Me: "Okay. But why?"
Him: "It's the actors. They ask too many questions. They have too many opinions."
Me: "They're actors . . . acting."
Cynthia: "But you're making a movie!!!!"
Him: "Yeah. But in our culture it's not such a big deal to want to direct a movie. I can go back to Denmark. Maybe become a teacher."
Cynthia and I take a hard look at Rune: He's panicking, but it's nothing serious. We shake our heads: "Nope. We're not shutting down the show."
Him: "Okay. I'll keep directing as long as I don't have to direct the actors."
Me: "Direct what then?"
Him: "I'll direct the action scenes. The trucks."
Majken bursts into tears: "You can't do this! You can't stop! Five years I've been working just to make this movie! Five years!"
Can things get crazier? I volunteer to back up Rune, to do the talking with the actors. (Later, one of the actors half-jokes, "What does Rune expect actors to do? Just jump into his little storyboard photos?") We all go back to work. Rune directs more than trucks. Nobody blinks.
First-Timer Rule #3: Nobody quits. Once a movie starts, it doesn't belong to any one person—not even the director—and it doesn't stop.
February 17 Just before midnight things do get crazier. Unexpectedly, the crew's union representatives phone our motel room. We meet them at our warehouse production office at two in the morning. They threaten to organize a strike unless we make all new deals with the crew.
We agree to work this out. No strike. Just keep talking.
February 18 Six and a half hours later, they strike. Before noon we sign a new deal with the unions. The strike ends. (A whole other story for a business magazine—maybe a monkey business magazine.)
Then a funnier thing happens: Michael Parks counterstrikes. He won't come out of his trailer. He's angry at the crew for not honoring their original deals: "Can't they keep their word? They wanted this job. You gave 'em this job. They signed their contracts. Now they're trying to change the deal? F— 'em. I don't wanna work with 'em."
Cynthia and Majken persuade Michael (all of them absurdly frustrated) to go back to work.
February 27 We're at Alamo Village in Brackettville, the famous desert location where John Wayne shot The Alamo. Two crews are working the all-night shift in two little replicas of Mexican towns. Uphill, Rune directs Donnie Wahlberg, Robert Rodriguez, Michelle Forbes, and Olivier Martinez. Downhill, we're shooting action stuff with Guillermo.
And here, at a click past halfway through the shoot . . . the movie lifts off. The exhaustion of trying to hold everything together cracks. We put the multilevel craziness behind us. We're free.
It's gut-instinct time; we try anything and it works. Guillermo sketches quick storyboards for shots on a cardboard box on the set. We make up and shoot new sequences on the run. Guillermo (in what I call his gunswinger costume) and Willem Dafoe (in his warrior-priest chain mail costume) challenge each other to a chest-butting contest. They leap into the air and bang into each other as they warm up for their plotted-out sequence: six-shooters versus broadsword.
Maybe it was the ghosts who worked this place: John Wayne, John Ford, Laurence Harvey, and James Stewart finally took us over.
Maybe it was too many smart people up in the middle of the night and out in the middle of nowhere under the Texas stars just making a movie. No spotlights on anybody. Nothing famous going on here.
Maybe it was that more than any movie we've worked on, this one was a collective effort.
Maybe it was that we all went nuts.
It was a blast.
September 9 L.A. to N.Y. on the red-eye. The first sneak screening, semi-secret, at Planet Hollywood in New York. A wet, straight-from-the-lab print of the movie for friends and cast. It's a blind shot: in front of naked eyes who've seen not a single frame of the film before. And the screening reaction stuns. It more or less explodes. Chuckling at the start; surprised laughing at the right jokes; choked-up crying at the end.
Johnnie Planco, the head of the motion picture department at the William Morris Agency in New York, edges around the post-screening party till it's almost over. He keeps catching my eye and signaling: We gotta talk. It's unlike Johnnie. Usually he shakes hands and he's gone.
Finally he nudges me into a corner.
Me: "What? Johnnie, you've been waiting and you never wait. What?"
He glares, eyes slightly popping, sweating, looming closer.
Him: "I'm going to say two words to you."
Me: "Hmm?"
Him: Pause. "Pulp." Pause. "Fiction. Except funnier."
Me: "That's four words, Johnnie."
Him: "Right! 'Cause it's much funnier. How'd you make it so funny?"
Good question. But sometimes, somehow, after who knows how many whacked-out days and nights, it happens again. Maybe, from that blessed craziness, funny happens.
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