March 22, 2010

Since several people I’ve known, loved, celebrated with, and mourned with over the course of the past 25 years work in movies and TV, I’ve often had access to situations that don’t arise for your average film fanatic. For instance, I once hung out for about an hour at the Chelsea Hotel (Sid stabbed Nancy there!) because I was tipped off that, at some point, Lena Olin would be walking by wearing a men’s suit jacket, a lace teddy, and a pair of garters...and this was a sight worth seeing. She did. And it was.

I also make a big-screen appearance - quite clearly, and for several long moments - in the first shot of the San Gennaro Festival sequence in “The Godfather Part III;” that’s the parade scene where Joe Mantegna’s character takes a bullet, if you can remember anything at all about that unfortunate, embarrassing, shitty-ass movie. I’m right in the middle of the screen, front and center. I had long hair back then, and I’m wearing wraparound Ray-Ban sunglasses. I have a black overcoat on, and I’m eating an Italian sausage and peppers sandwich. You really can’t miss me.

Then there’s the time I posed with that severed head Jodie Foster finds in “The Silence of the Lambs.” This was at least 10 months before the movie ever saw the light of day, so I didn’t jump quite as high as you did when Clarice discovered said noggin in that dusty storage space out in New Jersey. I just thought, “Hey— I know that guy's head!”

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Still, perhaps my favorite movie-related “me” story concerns the time Martin Scorsese sent me a letter. Sort of.

In 1989, two of my best buddies, Chris Swartout and Mike DeCasper, had already left Gainesville, FL for the lights, overpriced housing, and great hot dogs of New York City. I would follow in a year or so. New to the movie industry, but eventually to become full-fledged assistant directors, Chris and Mike were working as lowly production assistants on an upcoming Martin Scorsese picture that was then called “Wise Guys,” but would eventually be released as “Goodfellas.”

Actually I was visiting Manhattan when Chris and Mike attended their first production meeting for the film. I remember the three of us reading a copy of the script in front of Rockefeller Center and jumping up and down over how cool it all seemed. I was especially taken with the “how to properly slice garlic in prison” stuff.

I need to backtrack at this point, though, to set up the story. When Chris and Mike were still students down in Florida, I shared a huge house with Chris and several other movie-crazy friends of mine. We watched lots and lots of motion pictures together, and often got into verbal sparring matches when trying to select our next title at the video store.

Another friend of mine, Chris Keathley, who’s now an associate professor of film and media culture at Middlebury College in Vermont, was quite taken with a 1974 Richard Lester movie called “Juggernaut.” Now, Lester, as you may or may not know, directed “A Hard Days Night” and “Help,” as well as several other well-regarded, often darkly satirical movies. But here’s the trailer for “Juggernaut,” and you tell me if you’d be hot to watch this. I certainly wasn’t.

Looks fine to me, I suppose - I always like Richard Harris - but I didn’t care about some guy blowing up a cruise ship. I just didn’t care. And I didn’t want to spend two hours of my life sitting through “Juggernaut,” regardless of Lester’s connection to the Beatles, and nothing the other guys said or did could convince me otherwise.

It got to the point that it became a running joke between all of us. Whenever somebody said, “Let’s watch a movie tonight,” somebody else would immediately say, “Let’s watch ‘Juggernaut.’” Then we’d laugh, and end up watching anything except “Juggernaut.”

Anyway, Chris and Mike moved up to New York and they were working on “Goodfellas.” One day, they even called me and held the phone up so that I could hear the piano part from “Layla” being blasted out of some speakers while Scorsese had a camera slowly creep around a pink Cadillac containing two murdered corpses. That’s cool as hell, and I’m sure you remember it from the movie. But I’m digressing. It’s not the story I’m telling.

The actual story opens by my saying that Chris and Mike got to be decent buddies with Scorsese on the “Goodfellas” set, because Scorsese will happily talk about movies from the moment he rolls out of bed until he climbs back in at night. Mike and Chris knew their stuff, and he’d occasionally shoot the bull with them if there was some free time. One day, during one of their bull sessions, Chris told Scorsese about his friend, Paul, and the entire “Juggernaut” situation. Scorsese said I was making a mistake; “Juggernaut” is terrific, and one of his favorite Lester movies. I really should watch it.

This gave Chris an idea.

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A couple days later, I was watching TV down in Gainesville, knowing nothing about Chris and Mike’s conversation with “Marty,” as they now called him, when I decided to go out and get the mail. Amongst all the usual junk and bills, I found a letter addressed to me with a Warner Bros. logo on the envelope. Curious, I opened it up, and this was the typed letter contained within, dated 7-11-89. I still have it:

Paul,

Please watch Richard Lester’s “Juggernaut” as soon as possible. You should listen to your friends. They know a well directed, exciting action thriller when they see one.

Then he signed it, “Thank you, Martin Scorsese.”

That’s right, arguably the greatest director of the 1970s had sided with my friends and was now pretty much demanding that I watch “Juggernaut.” Chris typed the letter up and gave it to Scorsese, who read it, and said, “Yeah, I’ll sign that.” Originally it said “we know a well directed…etc.”, but Scorsese crossed the “we’s” out and wrote “they’s.” Apparently, he was comfortable calling Joe Pesci his friend, but was having problems committing to me. Nevertheless, I respected that he played along, and I laughed out loud. Then I went out and rented “Juggernaut.“

And I loved it. It’s not an action movie or even a thriller, not really, and its disaster movie-style poster is so misguided it appears to be advertising another picture altogether. Although there are bombs hidden on a cruise ship, the narrative unfolds as more of a multiple character study that’s very funny and quite singular in its conception; there are more dry, cynical jokes in it than you get in most straight comedies. “Juggernaut” wasn’t what I expected it to be at all, and was great fun to watch. I had been…wrong.

So I wrote a brief note and sent it to Chris to give to Scorsese. This is what I said.

Dear Mr. Scorsese,

Sincerely,
Paul Tatara

When Chris handed the note to Scorsese on the “Goodfellas” set, Scorsese burst out laughing and walked around showing it to various members of the crew. I suspect, given the general uneasiness even brilliant filmmakers can have when shooting a new movie, that it helped him feel like he was on the right track— after all, there may not be a film in all of American cinema that has more guns and pasta in it than “Goodfellas.”

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That would have been the end of it, had Chris not been hired, about a year later, as a production assistant on Scorsese’s remake of “Cape Fear.” Here’s a clip from “Cape Fear,” in case you’ve forgotten the tender hand with which Scorsese guided such elegant, understated material (our tattooed friend, Chuck, is in the corner cell when De Niro is exiting the prison, but that's another another story).

He’s so obviously influenced by Tati.

Anyway, Chris hadn’t laid eyes on Scorsese since the last day of filming “Goodfellas,” and production assistants don’t go breaking in to shake hands with the director on a new movie, even if they sort of know the guy. So, during Chris’s first day on the “Cape Fear” set, Scorsese noticed him standing there with his headset and walkie-talkie, and they had this exchange:

Scorsese: “Hey! I didn’t know you were working on this, too!”

Chris: “Yeah, I’m from the area, so they wanted people who know where everything is around here.”

Scorsese: “Good. Great! Hey. Tell your friend— no guns or pasta in this one, either!”

Unfortunately, by the time Scorsese had wrapped "Cape Fear," there was also a complete lack of both good taste and good scenes. But I didn't write to tell him.

Paul Tatara