The Boys : A Memoir of Hollywood and Family(74)
We needed to have a talk. Kodak’s Teenager Filmmakers Contest offered cash prizes to the top three finishers in each category and I knew that Ron needed me, so I was in a great bargaining position. Acting as my own agent, I told Ron that if he wanted me in his film, it was going to take what we in the industry call gross points—say, 50 percent of them! Otherwise, he was welcome to scout out Toluca Lake for another boy to play his lead. I was not about to endure another Wild Country–style negotiation disaster.
My brother and I shook hands and he gave me a call time to report for work. Shooting in continuity made the process more thrilling and suspenseful; as we got close to the finish line, there was real pressure not to screw up. It felt like a two-minute drill, with Ron as the quarterback.
And guess what? Our little film cashed! Most of the other kids, intimidated by the time and editing constraints, did animated or claymation films. Deed of Daring-Do was one of the few live-action entries. The judges sent Ron a certificate lauding the film for its “good storyline,” “effective use of camera angle,” and “very good cuts.” That’s a better review than the one he got in his hometown paper for Apollo 13. Personally, I was pissed that we came in second, but still—not bad, given that there were thousands of entries.
Best of all, though, second place meant serious prize money: one hundred dollars. When Ron received the good news, he wasn’t up in his room for more than two minutes before I bounded up the stairs and demanded, “Where’s my fifty bucks?” Honestly, I was giving him a break, because he also won a case of Kodak Super 8 cartridges, which I had no interest in splitting with him. Ron resisted my petition for payment. I was forced to call in Dad to mediate. Our testimony lasted only a few minutes before Dad ruled in my favor. Ron forked over the greenbacks. I went out and bought baseball cards, while my big brother went on to have a billion-dollar filmmaking career.
RON
Clint’s demand was ballsy, but a deal was a deal and we split the money. It wasn’t as important to me as finishing in the top three. This wasn’t a local contest; the submissions had come in from all over the country. It was such a validation for me, a rocket boost precisely when I needed it.
R. W. Howard was determined not to let up. I used any excuse I could to make more films. For a school assignment about the Great Depression, I persuaded my history teacher to let me make a documentary rather than write a paper. This was my first talkie, albeit a primitive one. First, I recorded some audio interviews with adults who had lived through the Depression: Mom, Dad, Hoke Howell, Mr. Alley, and a few other people. Then I checked out some history books from the Burbank Public Library to scan them for good photos. I bought some diopter lenses, which allowed me to zoom in on faces and details and then widen out to reveal further visual information in the photo—basically, I was executing a crude, artless version of what later became known, justifiably, as “the Ken Burns effect.” Then, for the presentation, I carefully synced the audio to the video, using a projector and a tape player. My history teacher so liked the result that he had me show my film to all five of his classes that day. That was another huge lift for me.
Next, I made a more “proper” narrative film, though the sound was still limited to voice-over audio. Once again, I concocted a movie to get out of doing a written assignment, this time for psychology class, where I would interview a subject about his or her life. I cooked up a completely phony story—let’s call it what it was, a lie—that I told my teacher about an almost-one-hundred-year-old man at the senior home run by the Motion Picture & Television Fund. I explained he had been a real cowboy before getting into the movie industry during the silent era. What a subject for a school film!
Thereby granted permission to go forth and begin filming, I borrowed a 16 mm camera from the cinematographer on The Smith Family. Working with his fancy Canon Scoopic 16 mm rig was a huge step up for me. It allowed for more tricks, such as dissolves from one scene to another, and a soundtrack, albeit sound added in postproduction, not while I was filming. The film stock cost me a bundle, too, five times as much as 8 mm. Being under eighteen, I still didn’t have ready access to my childhood earnings, so I tightened my belt and spent less on date nights and gasoline. Fortunately, one four-dollar fill-up was all that my fuel-efficient VDub needed to get me around greater Burbank for a month.
The nonexistent nonagenarian was not to feature in my film, at least not on-screen. I would dramatize a sad story he had told me about a beautiful young woman he had been forced to leave behind. The old man would appear on the audio track, singing a baleful version of the traditional cowboy song “I Ride an Old Paint” that he had customized to describe his plight.
You’ll remember that my dad had once dreamed of being a singing cowboy but couldn’t sing. Well, now he got his chance. His singing voice still wasn’t up to professional standards, but my bespoke version of “I Ride an Old Paint,” sung by Rance Howard in a hushed, wheezy baritone and accompanied by my pal Noel Salvatore’s accordion, sounded credibly like the musical lament of an ancient guy at death’s door.
My dad had a good friend named Bob Jones, an actor turned assistant director, who lived out in Agoura Hills and was willing to loan me his two horses. Another of Dad’s friends, a character actor named Bill Conklin, agreed to appear in my movie, now called Old Paint, as the stationmaster at my Old West depot. I scouted locations and found an abandoned train station in Piru, about an hour’s drive northwest of us, that had the right look.