NO TEARS FOR BANKERS

Writer/Director Rick’s Schmidt’s DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

NO TEARS FOR BANKER is not only my 25th feature, but it’s the 25th time I’ve written/directed (shot, edited and produced) a fully-improv feature-length movie. When you discuss the concept of having ‘improvisational scenes’ in a feature you’re usually met with doubts as to whether such loose moviemaking can be effective. And that’s for just a scene or two. From my earliest efforts in feature filmmaking, from A MAN, A WOMAN, AND A KILLER (co-directed with my then-roommate Wayne Wang, ©1975), the movies I’ve been involved with as an artist-filmmaker have been fueled by the improv process, coupled with performances by non-actors. And real-life stories have also been included in the mix from the very start. ‘A MAN…needed a narration to pull the footage together, so I brought the three lead actors into a recording studio and asked them personal questions about their youth, how they were raised, what they thought of their fellow actors, etc. What was most fascinating to me was combining real life with the fictional structure in storytelling. Jumping back and forth added a new dimension to the material.

NO TEARS OF BANKERS also benefited from such juxtapositions, and a fully improv approach. Before flying into Rome, Georgia to join my co-producer and lead actor Barry Norman, little was settled in the story except for the facts that (1) Barry would be owner of a Victorian B&B headed for foreclosure, (2) that we’d located someone to play his movie wife, and (3) that it would be shot at the Claremont House B&B where I’d been housed one year that I’d screened a feature and received a (unbeknowingly to me) lifetime achievement award, presented via DVD by Kevin Smith. Kevin had used my book, Feature Filmmaking at Used-Car Prices to make his first CLERKS, and he returned the favor for this honor of mine.

At any rate, I traveled in to make up a movie on the fly, with basically ‘no story,’ no cast, and barely a location. Once assigned my room at the Claremont (the same gorgeous, pink-walled Victorian bedroom with adjoining bathroom I’d stayed in before) ideas stared flooding in. This room would of course be the master bedroom for Barry and his wife. I told Barry (and he told our future production manager/supporting actor Allen Bell) that we needed (1) some bankers for scenes, and (2) a woman to play Barry’s wife. Barry had already set up two rather grand situations, one for the following Tuesday (I arrived on a Sunday…) at the local Victorian Tea Room where we’d be joined by the entire Rome Red Hat Ladies chapter (45 elderly women decked out in red-plumed hats and scarfs) and secondly, for the upcoming Friday night, where famed indie band’s songwriter/guitarist and singer Roger Miller would play a set at a local deli. OK. Something was ‘solid’ even though I wondered how these seemingly unrelated events would fit into the story. Oh well. It would all have to become clear (or not…), at some point before I hopped a plane back to Oakland!

After years of conducting my Feature Workshops at an seemingly-impossible pace, participants and myself collaborate on creating a feature in just ten days (shooting five, editing another five to get a finished cut, resulting in 17 finished festival-ready works in so many years), I reminded myself that a good movie can come out of such chaos. In fact, Barry Norman had been in the first Feature Workshops in 1995, where we co-created BLUES FOR THE AVATAR with four others. And that movie had played Slamdance Film Festival (one of only 17 features selected out of 800 submitted) and had won a Silver Award at Houston International. Barry and I were hoping we could succeed again. After all, we had gone through this kind of thing before, with less!

When the actual owners of the Claremont House, Holly and Chris McHagge, agreed to play the ‘help’ things looked more promising (I had rented the entire B&B for a week). And when Barry’s old friend Gregg Parnell with teenage daughters showed up, along with world famous wrestler Sid Eudy (AKA Sid Vicious) we suddenly had a couple wild card! Also, when a guest the McHagge’s had fitted into an unused B&B room (to save me some rental fees), famed southern attorney Stan Jackson, agreed to do a real-life story for the camera, there was another piece of the puzzle. Most importantly, when Allen’s brother, Derek Bell, brought a woman friend, Brittany Hannah, to the set, someone he thought could play ‘the wife,’ there was hope to covering that role! Thankfully she agreed(!), joining us between her photography gigs. Derek also performed a real-life story and the role of ‘landscaper’ (more story pieces!). It was fun to incorporate his role, someone who’s ‘contracted work’ on the B&B’s front yard would be in direct conflict with owner Barry, who had already been alerted by a banker (played by E. Wright Ledbetter, of Ledbetter Properties, Rome, GA) that foreclosure was almost inevitable. Since one thing leads to another in the improv process, I automatically envisioned more scenes. Barry argument on the bed with Britt, angry that she had a secret stash of her own money to hire the landscaper, allowed for a great exchange between the two actors. And later, during editing, I had an opportunity to juxtapose one of eight real-life stories by Barry, recounting his first real marriage, losing his house, money, everything through divorce. So scenes I knew nothing about, with actors I hadn’t yet seen or chosen, and stories from Barry I hadn’t heard before, all lined up to make a great sequence come to life a year later in the editing room!

And how did the Red Hat Ladies get included? They became a backdrop for the last meal of the unhappy couple before the foreclosure deadline. And Roger Miller’s concert? His powerful soundtrack handed me the energy for an exciting ending and credits.

With an improv approach – trading fear for amazing discoveries and total focus under pressure – a very lively and present-tense movie can be formed. I like to think of it as ‘a letter home.’ And while it may take many months of difficult editing to locate the solid foundation of your cut (with more than a ten day limit, a filmmaker can dig deeper…), the results can be well worth it.