If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor (17 page)

Later, we learned to put an artful "spin" on our answers.

Mr. Buffett: How much can I write off in the first year?

Bruce: That's an excellent question... for your tax attorney.

Sultan of Brunei: What's my liability?

Sam: You might want to consult your attorney on that.

Mrs. Gotrocks: How do you handle "Phantom Income"?

Rob: I'll bet your CPA has all kinds of ways...

The unspoken rule of raising money was simple: Start with the people closest to you and branch out from there. My father was investor #1. A brave man, but I think Mom browbeat him into it. From relatives you digress to friends:

"Hey, Stu... we had some great times in high school, didn't we? Who would have thought you'd be the king of scrap metal today? Hey, listen, I want to talk to you about something..." From friends, you move on to relatives of friends: "Try my uncle, he's always doing crazy things like this..." One particular uncle was a dentist. He ran in a pack with a bunch of other dentists and they invested money in numerous ventures, a certain percentage of it "crazy."

You really haven't lived until you've screened an unrated Super-8 film at a dinner party for four dentists and their wives, watching them squirm as a possessed creature (me, in this case) bites his own hand off. The bad news was -- we ruined their meals. The good news was -- we got some moola.

But, let's not forget the friends of friends:

"Hello, Mr. Stevens, this is Bruce Campbell. I'm a friend of Larry Dorfman who is a friend of a woman who used to babysit for your family. Anyway..." Finally, you're stuck with the
enemies
of friends and you realize that those people turn out to be your relatives, so you go back to them again.

Last on the list, and arriving all too soon, were the cold calls. A shiver ran up my spine as I word-processed this recollection. Just getting past the secretary of a potential investor was an entirely fresh hell.

"Hello, my name is Bruce Campbell and I'd like to speak with Mr. Jennings... No, he
won't
know what this is regarding, but I'm sure... what's that? This number? Oh, I got it out of the phone book and I... hello...
hell-oooo?"

We met an amazing array of people that ran the gamut from honest professionals who were willing to sit through our clumsy pitch, to the "I could write you a check right now for the whole amount" blowhard that deserved a slap in the face.

One sales pitch was conducted during a football game:

"So, guys, if I invest in this thing -- AWWW, come
on
Sanders, what are they payin' you all that money for?!"

Trying to put the squeeze on a young dad while his kids played in the backyard was also extremely productive:

"You guys really think you can pull this -- Billy! That thing could put your eye out! I'm sorry, what was the question?"

We once screened
Within the Woods
at our old haunt, Walnut Lake Market, for the owners -- in the soap isle. I had mopped it many times while working there after high school and at least knew where the power outlets were.

Merchants turned out to be the toughest sell of all. They were used to getting something very tangible for their money, like a shipment of frozen chickens, so something as ethereal as a film didn't compute.

It was always a special treat to screen our prototype, now badly scratched, in a corporate environment. Sam met a potential investor at the Kmart Photo Processing counter.

Sam: I was bringing in rolls of raw stock to be processed and he was there, I think getting back some of his kid's pictures. He wanted to know why I was developing so many rolls of Super-8 film. I said, "It's for a horror movie -- we're making a feature version of it eventually." He said, "Well, gosh, I've got some money, call me if you guys ever need an investor." He gave me his card. I couldn't believe it.

Bruce: The funny thing about that guy was that he never saw the movie.

Sam: Why not?

Bruce: He didn't want to. He said, "This is not my kind of movie. I can't handle this kind of movie -- show it to my colleagues." So, we showed it to a group of guys in suits in his fancy boardroom. He invested blindly on the advice of his associates.

The silver lining of this maddening process was the occasional "domino effect," whereby one hard-fought investor led quickly to a multitude of others. One such investor happened to casually mention our film to a buddy of his while golfing.

"Sounds good," his friend said, with a stroke of his pitching wedge. "Count me in."

He sent us the investment check sight unseen. To this day, we have only spoken to him on the phone.

Living on the edge of a fading industrial city did have its advantages -- Fortune 500 companies were easily within reach. Another investor, heir to the Delta three-way faucet fortune, chipped in and several relatives followed suit without question.

We also got some fairly clinical investments. One investor wasn't a person at all -- it was a law firm pension fund. In this case, it was
entity
investing in
entity.

We also got what would now be called "soft" money. We preferred the term "in kind." Our lawyers agreed to invest their fees into the film. When this wasn't enough, we managed to get hard currency out of them as well. Another fellow, clearly a man who had earned every dollar the hard way, informed us very casually that his investment was his Vegas gambling money and that he simply would refrain from going out West that year.

Hundreds of screenings later, the summer had passed us by. November was knocking at our door and the prospects of filming in northern Michigan during winter seemed like a
really
bad idea.

At this point, we did have some money in the bank. At $85,000 it was
almost
enough to start shooting. Unfortunately, our anal-retentive legal document stipulated that all funds would be held in a special escrow account until $90,000 was raised -- enough to "get it in the can."

Having hit this virtual cash wall, we were left with no other option than to beg. We sent a thinly veiled "plead" letter to the investors, asking to release the funds early.

"There would be no adverse effects at all," we wrote.

None except the fact that this was not nearly enough to make the film and we had no prospects for getting another nickel out of the Motor City, praise the film gods... the investors agreed and we were on our way.

17

WHAT ELSE HAVE I GOT TO DO

FOR THE NEXT SIX WEEKS?

With a bank account filled with investors' cash, it was time to get the big ball rolling. Phase one: find actors...
real
actors.

Casting in Detroit became an interesting process. There were certainly actors, but all the legit folks I had run across as a production assistant were in that damnable Screen Actors Guild. Their "type" was
way
too expensive for our meager budget.

The trick was finding qualified actors who wanted desperately to be in the union, but just hadn't figured out how yet. Theater wasn't huge in this culturally-challenged town, so it took some research.

Our first round of calls led us to agencies like Affiliated Models, the Weist/Barron School of Acting, and the ever-popular Specs/Howard School of Broadcasting. Had we needed a good DJ, this would have been the place -- but actors? Not quite...

Sam: We took out an ad in
The Detroit News
-- a little tiny ad. It probably looked like a porno picture and they were supposed to meet in my basement. The whole thing sounded so seedy.

Bruce: Yeah, I remember a lot of them came with their boyfriends.

Sam: And with good reason with you there.

Getting willing participants was anything but easy. Personally, as an actor, I was flabbergasted. Since when do you have to talk an actor into
anything?

"C'mon, Betsy, it'll be cool. You'll turn into a monster and we'll cover you in all kinds of horrible makeup. Then, you attack your boyfriend and he, get
this...
cuts your head off and your decapitated body writhes all over him... sound good?"

Most of our meetings took place in very public places. We met Theresa at the Nugget restaurant. Betsy Baker and fiancé met us at Pasquales, an Italian joint, where Loretta and her "escort" met us twenty minutes later. On the other hand, Carol and her muscular mate preferred the upscale Bloomfield Charlies.

The Big Boy restaurant chain became the mainstay for future interviews. With bottomless cups of coffee and a killer lemon meringue pie, you couldn't have a better "office."

"Casting again, fellas?" the waitress would inquire. "You know, I've done a commercial or two..."

THE CAST

By early October, we held official "scream tests" at Sam's house. "We had readings and they had two chairs and they pretended they were driving in a car," Sam recalled. "Then we had them scream and shriek." From the trickle of hopefuls, we culled our actors. They were:

Teresa Seyferth -- daughter of the accountant who did our financial projections. Because she was a member of the Screen Actors Guild, and this was a decidedly nonunion shoot, she felt compelled to change her name. She started with Theresa Tilly, then T. Tilly. We urged her to "class it up" a little and concocted the name Sarah York. Either way, it didn't work. The union found out and fined her. She was last heard of in Chicago, working as a DJ.

Betsy Baker -- back in the Motor City, she had done some "Industrials" as a spokeswoman and was cast for her girl-next-door demeanor. After
Evil Dead,
she abandoned the acting life entirely and got into the motor home rental business. Hey, made a hell of a lot of sense to me...

Rich Demanincor -- with a "What else have I got to do for the next six weeks?" attitude toward the whole thing, Rich dove in. He also had "union" jitters, so Rich adopted the stage name, Hal Delrich. This was the result of combining the first names of his roommates at the time: Hal and Del. Rich also got nabbed by the union and eventually worked his way out of the business. Last seen: driving a truck in rural Michigan.

Ellen Sandweiss -- as an old high school pal and former Super-8 starlet, she was a natural for the part. Ellen also phased out of show biz after this film (I'm sensing a pattern here). She is currently living a respectable life as a married mother of two in Michigan.

That guy named Bruce -- a "veteran" of those same Super-8 films, but never did anything other than "schtick" acting. The concept of creating and maintaining a "real" character was a totally new concept.

All actors were contracted to make a staggering $100 per week. Fortunately for us, this was well before the age of overtime, forced calls, meal penalties, night premiums and residuals. It wasn't about money. An actor
acted...
period.

The first read through at Sam's house was a little on the clumsy side. It was really hard to get a sense of the film, when the dialogue in the climax consisted of:

"Ahhhhh! Grrrr. Noooo!!! Hellllp! I can't feel my legs!"