BOONVILLE REDEMPTION – My Day as a ‘Background’
This day of adventure actually started a couple of
weeks ago, with a call from Sheri Keenan, Peter Sherayko’s assistant at Caravan West, his company that provides
props, saddles, costumes, guns and horses for Western movies, TV shows and
commercials. Caravan West also provides The
Buckaroos, which started as a group of horsemen Peter corralled to ride on
both sides of the law in the film TOMBSTONE, and now includes history-savvy
background actors with their own accurate wardrobe and props. Peter knows that I’ll always jump at the
chance to be on-set on a western, to watch the work, and interview cast and crew
for The Round-up. But it got
better. Sheri asked, “How’d you like to
be a victim of the of the San Francisco earthquake?”
“Who wouldn’t!?” Last November Peter put me in the movie
WESTERN RELIGION as a background poker-player in a saloon-gunfight sequence, and
I’d had a great time. I said ‘yes!’
right away. “The film is called
BOONEVILLE REDEMPTION.” She told me it
was the story of a young girl in 1906 Boonville, California, searching for her
father. “Pat Boone plays the doctor, and
you’ll be a patient, probably with a broken leg. You were asleep when the quake hit, and your
cabin caved in, so you just pulled on what clothes you could grab as you ran
out.” No problem – that’s how I usually
dress!
Sheri is in charge of ‘background casting’. ‘Background’
is the current term for a job that has been called ‘supernumeraries’ on stage,
and ‘atmosphere’, but usually ‘extras’ on film. If
MUZAK, or ‘elevator music’, is the music you don’t hear, ‘backgrounds’ are the
people you don’t see, but you’d sense something was wrong if you didn’t see them. There’s something eerie and post-apocalyptic
about streets that are deserted aside from the principal actors.
Last week Sheri called me in for a costume fitting,
and I headed to Agua Dulce, where Peter has his wardrobe and props, and a small
western town. I modeled a succession of
long-john shirts, period western pants with suspenders, and rough tweed jackets
– the best jacket had a bullet-hole, but thankfully no blood. Yet. Last,
I squeezed into nearly a dozen pairs of boots until we found the right ones to
complete the ‘dressed-with-a-broken-leg-while-my-house-crashed-about-me’
ensemble. They would decide on-set if I needed a splint
for my leg, if I’d have one or both boots on – I was hoping for one, with a big
toe sticking through a sock-hole – and
if one or both suspenders would be on my shoulders. I was told that if I wore my costume to set
it would save time. Sheri also suggested
I not put on the boots until I got to set, unless I was used to driving with
them.
Monday morning I was up before seven, dressed and
out and on the road before 7:30, heading for the Paramount Ranch in Agoura
Hills. It was a quick drive – only twice as long as the half-hour my optimistic
GPS predicted – to one of the oldest of the still-standing western towns in the
TMZ. (Note: that TMZ that folks always
refer to is short for ‘thirty mile zone.’
Back in the old Hollywood studio days, the corner of La Cienega and
Beverly Boulevard – home of the original Academy of Motion Picture Arts and
Sciences – was deemed the center of the L.A. film industry. Any location more than thirty miles from that
point was ‘out of the TMZ,’ and required additional travel payments to movie
company employees.)
Still-standing may be a misnomer, since the current
western street is at least the third to have graced this rural area so close to
L.A. proper. Paramount Pictures bought the land in 1927, and for decades shot dozens
of big and small, western and non-western films there – here’s a link to a partial
list: http://www.nps.gov/samo/planyourvisit/upload/ParamountRanchFilmList.pdf
By the mid-1940s the ranch was used less and less, and
Paramount sold it. The Hertz family bought
the ranch land in 1953, bought buildings from RKO’s western town in Encino (built
for CIMMARON in 1931), which Howard Hughes was bulldozing, and trucked them to Agoura
Hills. In 1980 the ranch was bought by the
National Park Service, and re-built to the old RKO specifications for the TV
series DR. QUINN, MEDICINE WOMAN. It’s a
popular filming location for features, TV, and new media – recently the HULU
comedy-western series QUICK DRAW filmed their first and second seasons here,
and in the past few years I’d been present for the shooting of GANG OF ROSES 2
and WYATT EARP’S REVENGE. The hip-hop
group Insane Clown Posse shot their
western movie BIG MONEY RUSTLAS there.
Addie Radpour
I shed my sneaks, pulled on my boots, and followed
the ‘base camp’ signs, trodding the bridge Dr. Quinn often crossed in a
carriage, and entered the western street.
It was already getting hot. It
would reach the low nineties later in the day.
I spotted Addie Radpour as he trotted by. An excellent rider and polo player, I can’t
recall visiting a Western set when he wasn’t present and on a horse. He pointed me down the western street, past and
behind the Dr.’s office.
Hidden back there is an open but covered picnic area
with about twenty long tables. That’s
where the crew will be fed, and cast and crew can hang out between takes. “This is where they’re holding the background
people,” a production assistant told me.
They’d been shooting for a couple of weeks, and on some days had used
quite a few people, but today there were just eight of us, counting Sheri, who
looked very elegant before going into make-up.
She did a very kind thing for me right away: she told me to lose the
jacket. It looked good, but I’d melt in
it on a day like that. All those present
worked for Peter before, except for one couple whose names I didn’t get, who
were investors in the film.
Sheri helps Dian with her costume
Dapper with bowler and walking-stick, Allen Gonzalez
is a Buckaroo going back to TOMBSTONE: “I was one of the red-sash gang,” he
told me. He has made a study of ways to
‘distress’ clothes to look natural – he had a lot of suggestions for making my
boots look better and my shirt look worse.
He looked at the way my pants fit, tucked into my boots. An actor that he had worked with, “…noticed
that my britches were all messed and kept riding up. He suggested that if I wanted to keep them
neat, I go to a bicycle shop, buy two of the two-inch wide straps with the
Velcro on ‘em. Then take the boots off,
tie the pants down flat with the Velcro straps, pull the boots back up. He said, they’ll look clean, very neat, and
they will not bunch up on you. Jack
Palance told me that.”
“Wow! What movie did you do with Jack Palance?”
“I did a Taco Bell commercial with Jack Palance.”
“Did he have any other good advice?”
“Yes, about horses: don’t trust ‘em!” He laughed. “He said look at their ears, and if their ears
starting turning back and leaning a little bit, back off, and let them do what
they’re going to do. And sometimes if
their tail is starting to rise, they’re going to swat you with it. And when they do that, they’ll turn their
hips to knock you off.”
(Note: Jack Palance did not start off as a great
horseman in his first western, SHANE. He
initially had so much trouble getting on and off of his horse smoothly that, in
his first scene, they played the film of his dismount in reverse to fake his
re-mount.)
Allen told me that since becoming a Buckaroo he’d
worked in Westerns with Peter every year for more than twenty. “I’ve enjoyed it because they’re so many
things to learn, so many things to see, so many people to meet. You may be dressed up and looking very
dapper; the next thing you know you’re all greased up, beaten up, beaten down,
broken leg . Whatever they want you to
do for the next scene. You never
know. I have been from an Indian to a
miner to a hobo. They’ve cut off my ear,
branded my cheek – you never know what they’re going to have you do.”
Sheri with Peter Sherayko
We were then all lined up while the costume
designer, Martha, looked us over, and approved us all, though telling me I
couldn’t wear my glasses for the shoot.
I’d learned on WESTERN RELIGION that while most modern eyeglass lenses
were rectangular, 19th and early 20th century lenses were
perfect Harry Potter (or Harold Lloyd) circles.
'The Wolf' making Allen look bad
Two at a time we were escorted to the make-up
trailer to be beaten up – or actually made to look beaten up, and dirty.
Make-up man Mike Michaels, a.k.a. ‘The Wolf’, did a job on Allen and
then me, dirtying up our faces, necks and hands with paints and powders, and
giving us wounds and injuries – in the picture you can see the break he gave
Allen across the bridge of his nose.
When I mentioned that I wished my character had a hat, he thoughtfully
sprayed my balding pate with sunscreen.
'The Wolf' did a job on me as well
Back in the ‘holding area’ I chatted with the rest
of us backgrounders. Evangelos Themelis might
sound like an untypical westerner – aside from Western Athens – but America has
always been the melting pot for the world, never more so than after the Gold
Rush helped open up the West. Besides, he’s got a great look for the period,
with long black hair, black clothes, and an eagle-eyed intensity. I asked him how a guy of obviously Greek
background drifted out west. He
laughed. “It was easy; I just got a
horse. I’m an actor – this is what I
do. I’ve been working with Peter
Sherayko for two or three years. I’ve
been in a lot of movies. I’m in RED
STATE. I’m in THE MUPPETS. I love Westerns. I love the clothing, the style, the boots – I
love wearing boots. You know what they say:
once you go Western, you never go back.”
“Were you born in Greece?”
“Yes. I came
here when I was fifteen.”
“Did you see Westerns in Greece?”
Evangelos
“Yes, of course.
I loved the cowboys and Indians.
I love the Sergio Leone movies. Clint
Eastwood stuff. I love John Wayne; that
guy was a cowboy. He was great, and he was a stuntman before he
became an actor. First a football
player, then a stuntman, then an actor.
For myself, I can’t pick a favorite role because they’re all so unique,
they’re all so different. It’s this
world of fantasy that you live in, and it’s unended. And every day you learn something.”
Rayne and Dian
Dian Roberts comes from Trinidad and Tobago. She’d recently decided, after eighteen years,
to retire from background work: the shoots were usually in downtown L.A., and
the commutes were endless. But when she
can do a local job like this, especially a Western, she’s eager to. Rayne Davis has done it for a long time as
well. Dressed in overalls, with a big
tan cowboy hat, he was quickly nicknamed ‘Farmer John’ on this production, and
he is the spitting image of the man on the sausage labels.
The mood on a set is usually generated by the people
on top. Director Don Schroder,
writer-producer Judy Belshe-Toernblom, and star Pat Boone are all in a great
mood, and it trickles down. The tension
is minimal. While treated respectfully,
background actors know they’re not the center of attention, and must be patient
until they’re needed. When I did WESTERN
RELIGION, I was on-set at eight-thirty a.m., but not needed until after 9
p.m. So I was very happy when, in the
late morning, we were needed. As we were
being led to the set, Sheri called me back, and put a hat on me. Hot, bright, and sunny as it would be, I was
very grateful.
Our first set-up was just outside the doctor’s
office. There were two short benches,
and four of us wounded survivors of the quake sat out there, waiting for help
from Doc Woods (Pat Boone). Nobody had
said anything further to me about a broken leg, and I didn’t remind them – all
at once the idea of wearing a splint for hours had lost its appeal. A couple of young women came up to freshen
our make-up, wounds and dirt, and to make our clothes look not so good. Folks like me, who had been provided
wardrobe, were fine with it. Not so,
folks who wore their own; they said that what the women wanted to put on the
clothes was not dirt, but paint. Once on
the clothes, the paint was difficult and expensive to dry-clean out; they opted
to rub dirt from the street on themselves.
In the scene, post earthquake, Melinda (Emily
Hoffman), the little girl who is the center of the story, is pleading with her mother,
Alice (Shari Rigby), to let an injured friend stay with them. Mother says they can’t, and friend Doris
(Stephanie Linus Okereke), volunteers to let the boy stay with her and her
Uncle James (Gregory Thompson). (Note:
Stephanie plays the daughter of freed slaves from Nigeria. She is in fact from Nigeria, and a major film
star there and in Ghana, as well as a writer, director and producer.)
Doris and Uncle James had just ridden into the scene
in a buckboard. They’ll ride out again
at the end of the sequence. While the
wagon is stopped, the back end of the horse is in frame. Just out of the shot, wrangler Kevin McNiven
holds the horse’s head. He rubs the
horse’s chest, just under the neck, continuously – just like I do at home, with
my Jack Russell. It keeps the horse
calm, so he doesn’t move, and move the wagon, which could ruin the shot.
While the big drama is taking place in the
foreground, in sharp focus, in the blurry background me, Evangelos, Dian and
Rayne are waiting to see the doctor.
Evangelos is having a very animated silent conversation, back and forth
with me and Dian. I, method actor that I
am (hah!), am trying to decide what parts of my body hurt the most. I decide to stick a leg straight out, like
it’s busted. Then I realize that I
can’t: they’ve already done one take, and everything has to match. I concentrate on breathing heavily, and
feeling light-headed. As the day gets
hotter, I don’t have to fake either one.
After covering the action from several angles, we
break for lunch. As a general rule, the
etiquette is that actors eat first, crew second, background last. There was salad, two kinds of pasta, chicken
cutlets, a stew with sausage, and some vegetable thing. Not wanting to be a glutton, I skipped the
vegetable thing.
After lunch, we backgrounds were brought to a
two-story building across from the doctor’s office. Being across the street instead of close-by
on the porch, I couldn’t tell what the gist of the scene being filmed was, but
it really didn’t matter. We were making
our own little movie, albeit in long-shot and out-of-focus. We’d been through the earthquake too, and had
our own stories to live. One couple was
placed on the steps halfway up to the second floor. Others were crossing. Dian and I were walking along the street
together in the first run-through. As we
were walking back, I offered her my arm.
She took it, and on the second run-through we walked arm-in-arm. An assistant director saw and liked it. “Why don’t you support her, like she’s been
injured, and you’re taking her to the doctor?”
Great – it started feeling very real, very natural.
Allen commented, “She looks too classy for
you, Henry. But now she’s lost her
home. Now she needs you.” There were a lot of run-throughs, a lot of
takes, and our story got better and better.
After an hour and a half of this,
I was telling her about how much money I’d saved from prospecting; that I’d had
my eye on a few prime acres with good water.
I don’t know how the other
movie was going, but by the time they were done with the set-up, our characters
were engaged!
The next scene was back in front of Doc Woods’
office. If it sounds like we’re spending
much too long a time in one place, that’s the way movies are always shot: you
shoot all the scenes for the entire
movie that will take place at any given location before moving on. This scene would take place earlier in the
story than the first one, much sooner after the quake. Melinda and her friend, a boy named
Shakespeare (Nicholas Neve) ride up in a wagon to the doctor’s office. The boy’s leg is badly injured, bleeding, held
with a tourniquet. The make-up is
creepily convincing. Doc Woods will come
out, see the injury, and get help to carry the boy inside.
Pat Boone crossing, Gregory Thompson by wagon, Emily Hoffman
and Nicholas Neve in wagon, director Don Schroder in Panama hat
Emily and injured Nicholas in the wagon
The camera is set up to shoot the long way down the
street. There will have to be a lot of
background action. Props are scattered
to suggest the aftermath of a quake: signs are dangling, furniture tipped,
lumber spilled across the boardwalk and street.
As we do run-throughs, we
backgrounders are trying to come up with business to do – righting fallen
chairs and such. Of course, the more
things you straighten up, the more you’ll have to tip over again for the next
run-through. Then an assistant director
asks me, “How would you feel about lifting a plank. And carrying it over your shoulder.”
“Sure.”
I’m given a 1 inch by 8 inch plank, about ten feet
long. I see Rayne is given a 1 inch by 12 inch plank – I figure he’s got a
better agent than I do. Then I find out I’ve got a lot more business to do with
mine. After one or two walk-throughs,
they decide it’s more natural under my arm than over my shoulder. Here’s the action: shot opens on me – well, on my arm, and the plank
under it. On action I start walking, and the plank disappears to reveal Melinda
and Shakespeare in the back of the wagon.
I will continue walking until I’m clear of everyone with my plank, make
a right turn, and walk down the street, where I’ll be seen – or at least I’ll
be visible – leaning my plank against a building, then starting to straighten
things again. I’m told it looks great
through the lens!
Costars Pat Boone and Emily Hoffman
For the next hour and a half, every couple of
minutes I hoist up my plank and start walking.
They do a lot of takes from a lot of angles. Incredibly, with all the times I turn with
that ten foot long plank under my arm, I never hit the camera, or the director,
or the kids in the wagon, or the horses, or Melinda’s mother, who’s waiting for
her cue to run in.
Costars plank and me
I must have done it half a dozen times before I
realized that, beside the wagon with Melinda and Shakespeare, is a
buckboard. And sitting in that one are
Dian and Allen. Looking cozy. Dian, my fiancé
from the previous scene. And Allen, the
one who brought us together in the first place!
And every time the director called “Action!” I had to heft my plank and march
by that buckboard and pretend I wasn’t dying inside! Women are fickle. So are friends.
I’d had a chance to do a fast interview with Emily
Hoffman between set-ups, while she was petting Addie’s horse. Now, between takes, I chatted with her and Nicholas
Neve, as they waited in the back of the wagon, and I was struck by what nice
kids they were. Patient and cheerful,
funny without being wise guys.
Professional, and clearly happy to be there. Contrast them with the tourist kids who
turned up from time-to-time to watch the filming. Concepts as basic as ‘don’t talk and don’t
move for two minutes – we’re doing a take’ was beyond them. No discipline at home. In one case I saw the dad of a pair of trolls
sitting in his car in the distance, too lazy to get out and supervise his
spawn.
I was startled to hear, “That’s a wrap! The actors can go.” It was barely six. We all seemed to move reluctantly to pack up
and go. It was a great experience. It always is.
I can’t count the number of times actors, stuntmen, extras, and people
on every crew position imaginable have said to me, “You’re getting paid to play
cowboys and Indians. How can you beat
that?”
Next Round-up, I’ll have my interviews with Pat
Boone and Emily Hoffman, writer and producer Judy Bleshe-Toernblom, and
director Don Schroder.
SAN FERNANDO VALLEY RELICS!
Most cities have FaceBook pages devoted to their
histories – I follow some from New York City, Brooklyn, L.A., San Francisco and
Burbank. One of my favorites for the
last couple of years is San Fernando Valley Relics – they post great, often
nostalgic, images of people and places from the Valley, mostly from the 20th
Century. But I was surprised to learn that,
while most such sites are a state of mind, floating in the ether, there is an
actual, physical place for Relics, The
San Fernando Valley Relics Cultural Museum.
Writer Julie Ann Ream has invited me to several
great-sounding events at this place, but I’ve never been able to get to one
until this Friday night, when I attended their Valley Relics and April Lief's Kids of
The San Fernando Valley present The Big Summer Bash! The museum is
located in Chattsworth, which was home to the legendary Iverson Movie
Ranch. The wide open spaces are pretty
much gone now in Chattsworth.
The museum
is in an industrial area, and the signs on the warehouse building mention not
only Relics but Tiles. The event was
from six to eleven, and it was the only thing
happening that night in that part of Chattsworth. I parked a block away, and my wife and I
strolled towards the ever-louder sound of the Brian Setzer Orchestra, and the
aroma from the grilled cheese sandwich truck in front. There were more than a dozen classic cars
parked there, mostly from the fifties and sixties, and plenty of enthusiasts
milling about. Inside, the first several
rooms were full of cabinets of Valley memorabilia – high school yearbooks,
class photos, dozens of ashtrays, match-packs and brochures from restaurants and amusement
areas that are no more.
On the left was a room of Julie
Anne Ream’s family memorabilia – and what a family. She’s cousin or niece or granddaughter to
crème de la crème western wardrobe designer Nudie; last of the singing cowboys
Rex Allen; western singer and character actor Cactus Mack; and sometime western
villain, sometime western composer, sometime Frankenstein, and sometimes
bartender at Miss Kitty’s Longbranch, Glenn Strange. The room is full of posters, photos, lobby
cards, costumes by Nudie, and even the little rocking-horse he had in his store
for kids to ride.
Nudie jackets
Nudie horse
The next room was the BIG one, with
a collection of giant electric signs rescued from iconic Valley
businesses. The Palomino Club was the
top venue for country and western music, and later rock, for Southern
California. Other favorites that exist in signage only are
Valley Ranch Barbecue, Love’s Barbecue, The White Horse Inn, and Henry’s Tacos. Items of particular interest to Western fans
are flyers from the Corriganville Movie Ranch, a slate-shaped sign from Iverson’s
Movie Ranch, and several Nudie-customized cars, including wagon-styled trailer
he made for Roy Rogers.
It’s an eye-bugging, mind-boggling
jumble that will delight anyone who’s lived in the area, or interested in
pop-culture of the 1950s-1980s. What’s
needed most of all is more labeling of mystery items and pictures, but I’m sure
that’s coming. This obvious
labor-of-love is opened to the public only on Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.,
and you can arrange private tours Monday through Friday from ten ‘til
three. The address is 21630 Marilla St., Chattsworth 91311. The phone is 818-678-4934. You can learn plenty more at their site,
here: http://valleyrelics.org/
MENAHEM GOLAN – 'ISRAELI WESTERN' PRODUCER – DIES
Israel-born writer and producer Menahem Golan, who
with his partner Yoram Globus built CANNON FILMS into an action powerhouse in
the 1980s, has died. He produced over
200 movies, including a pair of Israel-lensed Spaghetti Westerns top-lining Lee
Van Cleef; GOD’S GUN (1976), and VENGEANCE (1977), aka KID VENGEANCE, aka TAKE
ANOTHER HARD RIDE.
THAT’S A WRAP!
That’s it for today! Next week, in addition to part two of my
BOONVILLE REDEMPTION coverage, I’ll have my review of the newest four-pack of
Gene Autry movies, and who knows what else!
Have a great week!
Happy Trails,
Henry
All Original Contents Copyright
August 2014 by Henry C. Parke – All Rights Reserved
