Hey folks, Harry here with that sailor of the 19 seas and belcher of beefy burps.. That's right, Quint. Quint went on a dangerous set visit of the most scary type. A Paul Schrader set... Would he come back sane? Would he have a tatoo? What about a mohawk? There was much speculation that he'd marry Kinnear too. But the true story of Quint's journey is here for your contemplation... Ponder this...
Ahoy squirts! 'Tis I, the resident crusty seaman, Quint, here to give you folks the first in-depth look at screenwriter/director Paul Schrader's newest undertaking, Auto Focus, a bio-pic chronicling the legendary (and notoriously kinky) exploits of Bob Crane of Hogan's Heroes fame starring Greg Kinnear as the doomed Crane and Willem Dafoe as John Carpenter (not that one), one of Crane's closest buddies and an essential player in Crane's untimely demise.
I knew next to nothing about the life of Bob Crane before I got the invitation to visit the set. Sure, I had seen Hogan's Heroes and some of Crane's '70s Disney flicks, but I didn't even know he had been murdered, I was that in the dark about the man's life. In quick fashion I read up on the case, which blew me away. Crane was a sex addict. More than that, he was a bit of an exhibitionist and chronicled his sexual encounters with photographs of the dirty deeds. To be clear, Crane didn't abuse the women he had sex with or forced them to do anything against their will. He just liked sex and even more than that, liked to document his encounters. Think of the sheer numbers of willing groupies for TV stars of today... Now think of that kind of fan living back in the AIDS-free '70s. Apparently Crane had many hundreds of encounters.
When the first commercial video cameras came out on the market in the '70s, Crane was fascinated. It was a way to cheaply and quickly (and most important of all, privately) record his encounters. He ended up hooking up with a fellow by the name of John Carpenter, who had the equipment and the knowledge that Crane needed. Carpenter gave Crane his equipment and technical expertise and Crane gave him an all access pass behind the scenes of celebrity and the perks thereof.
Crane was found brutally murdered one day in a hotel room in Scottsdale, Arizona. He was there doing a play. Carpenter was the main suspect, was tried and acquitted of the murder. That's the quick and skinny of the story as I understand it from the research I've done. I have not read Schrader's screenplay, so I do not know how much of that is incorporated in the film, but that's the story.
So, I found myself in LA, headed towards the famous and historical Ambassador Hotel... Yeah, the place where Bobby Kennedy was assassinated. If you know the man's filmography and reputation, you'd know The Ambassador is the perfect place for a Paul Schrader movie set. Apparently, the majority of the shoot was in the Ambassador, but that's not where we were headed. That day, second to last day of shooting, the set was across the street at a bar called The Prince.
To step inside this place was like stepping through a portal back to the '70s. The real '70s, not the glamorized, pastel '70s from current TV comedy, but gritty, atmospherically lit and with just the right amount of tackiness to bring that '70s feel home. Of course there were always a few dozen crew members in t-shirts and god knows how many tons of lighting and camera equipment around to keep me from truly escaping reality, but speaking from the camera's point of view, the place was perfectly dressed.
The walls were a deep velvet colored red overlaid with gold foil floral patterns of varying shapes and sizes. There were hunting lodge-style paintings decorating the walls of the restaurant area, where the camera was pointed and all the commotion was centered. I was sat down at the bar, on the other side of the rather small structure, by the publicity girl.
This was rather weird for me. Every set I've ever been on, I've been there either unofficially (i.e. I was a sneaky seaman) or was there by invitation from one of the filmmakers, never offially studio approved. When I covered The Rules of Attraction set, it was at the invitation of Roger Avary. When I covered Ghosts of Mars, it was the invitation of Greg Nicotero (who somehow got John Carpenter (yes, the filmmaker, not the prime suspect in the Crane murder) to agree to my visit). This was the first set where I went in cold. I knew nobody there, not one cast member, not one crew member. And I had a publicity person buzzing around me all the time, bugging the director and cast for interviews... Don't get me wrong, it was nice not having to do all the work for me, I just wasn't used to that. In short, it was a real, official studio supported set visit, the same kind granted to people like Entertainment Weekly and Variety.
The scene I was there to witness filming was a dinner conversation between Greg Kinnear, in full Crane guise complete with near black contacts and jet black hair, and Maria Bello (of ER and Coyote Ugly fame), who was playing the replacement Inga on Hogan's Heroes, who just happened to later become Crane's second wife. I couldn't hear all the dialogue, but I know this was one of their first times meeting each other and they both played it very flirty. Kinnear had the charm turned up to the max and the scene ended with the very pretty Ms. Bello giving her best sultry come hither look over the top of her menu and Kinnear calling for the check. I can't say I blame him. If she had given me that look, I would have probably just grabbed her and run, check be damned.
Anyway, I know it's not much, but everything I saw on set was different variations of that scene. Different angels, takes, over the shoulders, close-ups, etc. Something that did make me smile, though... The shot before was of Crane telling Bello a joke and the shot I saw picks up after the punchline is delivered, which required Bello to be reacting to the joke that in reality hasn't been said. She kept telling Kinnear to make her laugh before the cameras rolled, so she'd be in the moment. That's a dangerous thing to tell somebody as quick and good with humor as Kinnear... All I can tell you is she laughed every single take (to the point of snorting more often than not) and I heard something about Kinnear's "Big thing." What could it all mean? I leave that one up to you.
After a while, there was a pause in filming and I was told to be prepared to be taken to Schrader. Now, I've done my share of celebrity interviews. It's not a big thing anymore to talk to a director or actor or screenwriter. But let me tell you... I was sweating when I was led to Paul Schrader. I was prepared and was excited to talk to the man behind some of Scorsese's best films, including Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, but what had me really excited about the interview was his amazingly interesting non-film background. Raised by strict Calvinists, he wasn't allowed to see a movie until his late teens... I don't know, I just found the fact that he was denied access to film, which ended up becoming his life's work and passion insanely interesting. Not to mention the fact that he came from such a strict, religious background, yet seems to find himself most comfortable while exploring the hidden and often grotesque underbelly of humanity. I mean, the man came up with Travis Bickle, for God's Sake!
So, I had a potentially amazing character interview on my hands, but at the same time I was battling two things. One, I was there at his most busiest, the end of a long shoot. I knew he wasn't going to want to do a long interview or be too distracted from the job at hand. Two, his reputation for chewing up and spitting out people he didn't take a fancy towards. In the end, I was right about that first battle and mostly wrong about that second. The man just doesn't have a problem cutting through the bullshit. He doesn't hem and haw. If he doesn't want to do something, he says so. Some people take that as rude. I didn't find it rude, but I do miss the interview the below could have been. In the end, he was right. I wasn't there to talk about his past, I was there to talk about Auto Focus. At any rate, here's the short interview we did:
QUINT: I READ THAT YOU DIDN'T SEE YOUR FIRST FILM UNTIL YOU WERE 18 YEARS OLD. IS THAT TRUE?
PAUL SCHRADER: Umm... 16, 17, somewhere in there, yeah.
QUINT: WHAT WAS IT LIKE TO EXPERIENCE FILM AT THAT YOUNG....
PAUL SCHRADER: Uh... Way-way-way-way-way- wait. Let's not do "The Paul Schrader Story." Let's just do the Auto Focus plug, if it's alright with you.
QUINT: NO, THAT'S FINE. THAT'S FINE.
PAUL SCHRADER: Yeah... (laughs) I've done "The Paul Schrader Story" too many times in my life. It bores me.
QUINT: AUTO FOCUS IS ABOUT THE LIFE AND DEATH OF BOB CRANE... WHAT DREW YOU TO THIS TRUE LIFE STORY?
PAUL SCHRADER: I sorta sworn off biographies, having done a number of them. Jake LaMotta (RAGING BULL), Patty Hearst (PATTY HEARST), Yukio Mishima (MISHIMA: A LIFE IN FOUR CHAPTERS), Jesus Christ (THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST)... I wrote 4 others that weren't made. I didn't care much for the genre. I had been passing on the whole biography idea and then somebody sent me this script on Bob Crane, which when I received it was a kinda conventional bio-pic, but I saw underneath it a story that had the force of fiction. A story not unlike the one of Joe Orton and Kenneth in Prick Up Your Ears, although this would be a middle-aged American heterosexual TV celebrity version. (laughs)
But the odd contract between these two men, Bob Crane and John Carpenter, and the rich resulting themes of the corrosiveness of celebrity for both parties, both the celebrity and the fan... The notion of a folio duex, where two people do something that neither would have done separately... The whole issue of sexual addiction... And then the advent of home video and the birth, essentially, of home pornography. And, of course, the nature of Crane himself and the huge self-deception he lived. All these elements are very rich in the kind of stuff I felt comfortable with and I don't think a movie about these kind of complex shadings had really been done. So, I embarked on a rather substantial rewrite and brought it, hopefully, from the area of a strict bio-pic into an area of a study of a certain kind of American manhood from a certain period, from '65 to '78.
QUINT: I READ UP A LITTLE BIT ON THE CASE BEFORE COMING OUT HERE. IT'S AN INCREDIBLE MYSTERY. IS THAT HOW YOU'RE PRESENTING IT OR...
PAUL SCHRADER: Are you talking about the actual murder?
QUINT: YEAH.
PAUL SCHRADER: I'm not that interested in the actual murder.
QUINT: SO, THE FILM CENTERS ON THE FRIENDSHIP BETWEEN CRANE AND CARPENTER?
PAUL SCHRADER: Well, the film ends with the end of Bob Crane's life under the presumption that John Carpenter killed him, although the film does not actually say that because Carpenter got off and in fact there were a number of other valid subjects. But, it's certainly about the relationship between Crane and Carpenter. But I'm not really as interested in finding the murderer as I am in exploring that relationship.
QUINT: WHAT DID YOU SEE IN GREG KINNEAR THAT MADE YOU CAST HIM AS BOB CRANE?
PAUL SCHRADER: Well, in many ways, he and Crane are in fact similar. They both began in radio, they have that disc jockey mentality, that fear of dead air, that feeling of always being on, always being alive, always being hip. They moved from the radio world to the world of light comedy. Crane was never talented enough to become a serious actor plus his sexual addictions and obsessions were already derailing him at that point.
But I think Greg has the chops to make this next step and play the full range, the full arc of the character. I tend to make films essentially about a person and they tend to be in every single scene. I do character studies. There are lots of colors out there. When you're in every scene of a movie, you have to play a lot of colors. Some scenes you hand them away, some scenes you take them and so forth.
QUINT: WHAT ABOUT WILLEM DAFOE? WHAT MADE HIM YOUR JOHN CARPENTER?
PAUL SCHRADER: Willem's a friend. This'll be our fourth film together. He's a very strong actor and also has a physical resemblance to Carpenter who was half Indian. It just seemed a natural fit. Also, I like the idea of Greg and Will together. It's a very odd couple, a very odd pairing. It kinda re-enforces the oddness of the relationship.
QUINT: I THINK THAT'S ABOUT IT, I KNOW YOU'RE IN THE MIDDLE OF YOUR DAY AND DON'T WANT TO TAKE UP TOO MUCH OF YOUR TIME.
With that, he jumped back into work and I was pulled away after Greg Kinnear. I was told that Greg had agreed to do an interview, but we had to go track him down, as lunch had been called. We headed for the row of cast trailers, where we located Kinnear.
After finally coercing Kinnear out of his trailer, we ended up doing this interview outside in the parking lot. As I was getting my equipment in hand, he asked who I wrote for. I said, "Ain't It Cool News." He didn't recognize it. I said, "You know, it's run by that big red-haired guy, Harry Knowles..." His eyes lit up and smile appeared on his face and he said something along the lines of "Oh! The Harry Site. He wasn't very nice to me on something... Was it The Gift?" This is when I actually turned on the tape recorder... Here's the rest of the conversation:
QUINT: NO... IF I REMEMBER CORRECTLY THE GIFT WAS PRETTY WELL RECEIVED ON THE SITE.
GREG KINNEAR: Oh, good.
QUINT: SO, I DON'T KNOW... MAYBE HE WAS MEAN TO YOU FOR SOME OF YOUR EARLY STUFF. (LAUGHS)
GREG KINNEAR: No, I like their stuff though. It's a cool site.
QUINT: THANKS! NOW LET'S SEE IF WE CAN SMASH THIS STUFF OUT SO YOU CAN GET BACK TO WORK... I NEED TO ASK YOU ABOUT HOW YOU'RE PREPARING YOURSELF TO PLAY BOB CRANE. YOU'VE NEVER REALLY HAD A ROLE LIKE THIS BEFORE.
GREG KINNEAR: No, this is kinda of an unusual... Well, it's an unusual picture, it's an unusual story. I'm lucky that I'm working with a director like Paul Schrader. That sounds like a real kind of (UNDER HIS BREATH) jerk-off line, but it's genuinely the truth. He's really, really big into research and into information. Because of the stuff he started sending me even three months before we started production on this I got to know my FedEx man on a first name basis. Every day he's coming by with, like, boxes of, like, creepy tapes from Crane's early years, his middle years, his later years... You know, we got tons of written information.
A lot of stuff you can find on the web. Bob was a relatively contemporary TV star, so access to his life and video of his life... in some cases more than you really need to see... is out there and available. So, I guess it's been through all these different resources I've been kinda culling through. We had the advantage of knowing we were going to shoot this 3 or 4 months before we started. That and I spent some time with Scotty Crane, who was very helpful and showed me some early tapes and films of his father. Also, Robert Crane, his son from his first marriage, who actually did a cameo in the movie... He's great! He was remarkably forthcoming with not only stories and information but he also had a lot of old recordings of his father's early radio days when he came to LA to start at KNX which is now, I don't know if you know, but KNX is a news station here in town, but back then it was a kind of Top 40 station. Bob had a 4 hour job he did every morning where he'd have guests come on like Steve Allen and Jonathan Winters... I mean, anybody who was happenin' would go on Bob's show. He'd just have fun. They were great recordings. They were a lot of fun. So, I've had access to those as well.
QUINT: PAUL BROUGHT THIS UP IN THE INTERVIEW WE JUST DID AND YOU BROUGHT IT UP JUST NOW WHEN TALKING ABOUT CRANE'S START ON RADIO... BOB CRANE'S LIFE HAS KIND OF MIRRORED YOUR OWN. YOU STARTED IN RADIO, THEN WENT ONTO A POPULAR TV SHOW...
GREG KINNEAR: Not to mention my porn website.
QUINT: EXACTLY. BUT, HONESTLY, I THINK YOU'RE CHARGING TOO MUCH FOR THE MEMBERSHIPS ON YOUR SITE.
GREG KINNEAR: (laughs) You think so? Yeah... Yeah, maybe you're right.
QUINT: KNOCK 5 BUCKS OFF AND YOU'D MAKE A LOT MORE MONEY.
GREG KINNEAR: Actually, there is a BobCrane.com (CLICK HERE ). You know that, right? Have you been there?
QUINT: YEAH, I FOUND IT WHILE DOING RESEARCH FOR THIS SET VISIT.
GREG KINNEAR: Did you pay the money to go on?
QUINT: NO, I JUST SAW THE NON-MEMBERS SECTION. IS IT WORTH IT?
GREG KINNEAR: No! It's a rip-off! Paul told me early on, "You gotta check this website out." So, I joined. It's one of those things where, like, if you don't write 106 letters to exactly the right people, you never are no longer a member. You continue to be a member and continue to get a monthly bill of, like, $14.95 for the rest of eternity. So, I don't know how much that's cost me.
But yeah, I did... My first entertainment job was in radio, I guess. That's where I started. Then I hosted some shows and did that sort of thing for a while... I guess there are certain parallels between our paths. Whether Bob would've gone into film had he stayed around... Actually, he did go into film. He did (pause)...
QUINT: SUPERDAD.
GREG KINNEAR: He did Superdad and he did, of course, Gus. I don't know if you've seen Gus.
QUINT: YEAH, THE DISNEY MULE MOVIE.
GREG KINNEAR: That's right. Do you just know film like crazy?
QUINT: YEAH, I'D SAY A BIT MORE THAN AVERAGE. I'M A FILM GEEK! WHY DO YOU THINK I'M WEARING A "ONE RING" AROUND MY NECK RIGHT NOW?
GREG KINNEAR: (laughs) You know, I got Superdad in here (points to his trailer). I watched that. Ed Begley Jr. did a cameo in the movie (Auto Focus) and he was like, "You know, I was in Superdad." I said, "I know. I know."
QUINT: I NOTICED ED BEGLEY JR. IS IN A LOT OF PAUL SCHRADER FILMS. I FOUND OUT I WAS COMING OUT HERE LAST WEEK AND WAS IN A MAD RUSH TO CATCH UP ON AS MUCH OF HIS WORK AS I COULD. BASED ON HIS REPUTATION, I FIGURED I HAD BETTER BE PREPARED OR HE'D SKIN ME ALIVE.
GREG KINNEAR: What's your favorite of his movies?
QUINT: HARDCORE. HARDCORE'S MY FAVORITE. I LOVE BLUE COLLAR AS WELL.
GREG KINNEAR: I'm a big fan of The Comfort of Strangers. It's Helen Mirren, Rupert Everett, Natasha Richardson and Christopher Walken.
QUINT: I MISSED THAT ONE, BUT I'LL WATCH ANYTHING WITH CHRISTOPHER WALKEN IN IT.
GREG KINNEAR: It's one of the best things he's ever done, I think. You gotta check it out. It's staggeringly good.
QUINT: THIS NEXT ONE IS MORE A STANDARD BULLSHIT QUESTION, BUT I'M CURIOUS AS TO WHAT YOU THINK AUDIENCES AND CRITICS ARE GOING TO TAKE AWAY FROM THIS MOVIE.
GREG KINNEAR: Well, the script deals with some very racy material... The first people I saw it from, an early draft of it, was Larry Karaszewski and Scott Alexander who did Ed Wood and The People Vs. Larry Flynt. It was really very funny. I thought there was a lot of humor to the story and a lot of potential in the story. It's an idea for a movie that if you mention in passing to people creates, like, a nice lull in the conversation, where they kinda look at you, like, "Huh?" Then they start to go, "Oh! Didn't he have some weird..." So many people, particularly in my generation, who... you know, it's kinda like remembering where you were when John Lennon was shot. You remember the moment where you heard somebody say, "You know, that Bob Crane guy wasn't everything people said he was."
The idea of somebody who has such a kinda dual life, has these dual personalities, and such a self contradiction in his nature... I mean, he was selling himself as a one woman man right up 'til the day they found him murdered with thousands of photographs of him with other woman. Bob was a mixed bag of tricks. Some people he was alarmingly forthcoming with his lifestyle choices and the kind of life he was leading on the one hand and on the other hand he was incredibly secretive and coy and sometimes very protective of his lifestyle. But I just think all of those elements, the humor of the story, the drama of it and the tragedy of it as well... I don't want to pass judgment on the guy. He chose his life choices... whatever. But clearly he lost his way at some point. I think that's interesting subject matter.
Not to mention the whole, very complex relationship he had with John Carpenter, played by Willem in the movie. These two guys had a very symbiotic relationship, they kind of needed each other and, I think, came along for each other at a time where it was very dangerous for both of them. Bob needed John's audio-visual expertise 'cause he was fascinated by the new technology... When I say new technology, I mean cameras the size of suitcases, by the way, with black and white grainy footage. But he was fascinated by it and John provided that for him. Bob was conduit for chicks for Carpenter. They worked very well for a while, then, as is the case with any kind of relationship built on those false, needy things, it starts to become dysfunctional and falls apart. We don't answer the question "Who murdered Bob Crane?" We leave that to the audience, but obviously Carpenter was, at least legally, who was the most likely subject.
QUINT: WELL, HE WAS FOUND NOT GUILTY IN THE END.
GREG KINNEAR: Well, a lot of the information was inadmissible, obviously, but I just spoke to the writer of The Murder of Bob Crane. He said that he really believed there was no question it really was Carpenter. You can discount a lot of things about a potential suspect, but when you have to throw out that one little nugget of information like they found a little bit of brain tissue in his car, that's when you start to roll your eyes and get a little suspicious. It was kind of an OJ thing for its time, just heavily botched by the Scottsdale Police Department, I think.
QUINT: WELL, WE'RE NEARING THE END OF THE INTERVIEW. I HAVE A STANDARD QUESTION I ASK EVERYBODY...
GREG KINNEAR: Is it what color would I be? What tree?
QUINT: CLOSE, BUT A LITTLE MORE FUN. SINCE YOU'RE A FUNNY GUY, I'M SURE YOU'LL DIG IT...
GREG KINNEAR: I'll let you down. Be prepared to be dismally disappointed.
QUINT: WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE DIRTY JOKE?
GREG KINNEAR: Dirty joke? Short or long?
QUINT: EITHER WAY. OR BOTH.
GREG KINNEAR: Well... The Devil comes across this guy in Hell. He's sitting in the corner, looking depressed. The Devil comes up to him and says, "Hey, man.What's wrong? What's got you down?" The guy says, "I don't think I'm gonna last down here. It's just too much. It's freakin' me out." The Devil says, "Relax! We have a great time down here! You like to drink?" The guys says, "Yeah, I drink." Devil says, "We got an open bar. 24 hours a day. Monday. Sunup to sundown, any kind of drink you want. We got every kind of Martini, every kind of Scotch. Anything you want, we take care of."
The guys goes, "That's pretty good." The Devil says, "You smoke a little weed every now and again? You like a little reefer?" The guy says, "Well, I smoked a little in college." Devil goes, "Maui Wowie, Tai Stick, you name it! Tuesday is pot day! We smoke all day long, sunup to sundown we're having a great time. It's a party!" The guy says, "Oh!" He starts cheer up a little bit. The Devil says, "You like gay sex?" The guy says, "No. I'm not into that." The Devil says, "Wednesdays are gonna be tough..." That's all I got.
That about wraps this one up, squirts. Everything has been said. After the Kinnear interview I was whisked to LAX and sent back to Austin. Hope you guys have a bit of an understanding of what this movie's going to be now. Given Schrader's damn near flawless directorial filmography, I'm sure he's going to take this material and run it for all it's worth, hopefully giving us something special.
Sorry I couldn't give you more firsthand information of the film, but there's only so much I can say about one scene in one room. But I can't complain. It was a fun time. I got some cool pics from the film for you fine folks, the first time any shots from the film have come out, by the way (that cool shot of Kinnear in his Hogan's Heroes jacket in Entertainment Weekly a while back was taken by an EW photographer a week before I arrived and isn't from the film). I'll be back soon, squirts, with more interviews, some reviews and maybe even another cool set visit. 'Til that day, squirts, this is Quint bidding you all a fond farewell and adieu.
-Quint
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