This story came back to me when I was writing about how I once
stood in line to see the filming of a pilot made by my co-workers when I was expected
instead as an apparent VIP to simply walk into the studio. (Oh, how “Everyman” am I!)
I no longer remember the name of the pilot, but I know that it
was never picked up for series. I also
recall that it starred veteran character actor Jack Gilford – he played
“Hysterium” in A Funny Thing Happened On
The Way To The Forum – a man who was then in his late sixties. (That last part I looked up.)
The show centered on the Jack Gilford character who, similar
to “Broadway Danny Rose”, played a small time agent for fringe – meaning barely
working and far from topping the bill – show biz entertainers. (The failed pilot, shot in 1977, predated the
Woody Allen movie by seven years. I
looked that up too. Thank God Google
doesn’t charge anything. And thank
God they don’t read this or I might have given them an idea.)
Anyway…
In the pilot episode, Jack Gilford represents an itinerant
“Knife Thrower” – you cannot get much more “fringe show biz entertainer” than that – and a crisis arises when the
knife thrower’s assistant is suddenly unavailable and the reluctant Jack
Gilford character is pressed into service to fill in.
At the climactic point in the story, Gilford is about to be
fastened to a large wheel, which will then be spun very quickly while the knife
thrower flings his “Implements of Death” around the perimeter of his quivering
body.
Offering rapid-fire alternatives to his torturous destiny,
at the last moment during his desperate pleading for a reprieve Jack Gilford
suddenly “goes up” on his lines. Meaning
he forgets what comes next.
The director yells “Cut!”
The actor apologizes for “drying” – which means the same
thing as “going up” – and, after the Script Supervisor steps up and reminds him
of the line, they go for “Take Two” from
the spot where they left off.
Gilford goes into his speech while being secured tightly to
the wheel. But when they are about to
give it a vigorous spin… wouldn’t you know it…?
Gilford “goes up” in his again. At exactly the same spot.
Well… it happens. And
the live audience loves it. This is the
exciting part of coming to a filming.
You get to witness the mistakes.
Then later when they are watching, they can tell their viewing
companions “He kept ‘fluffing’ that line” with a big smile on their face
because they were there in the audience when he “fluffed” it.
0
Now, after the producers have kibitzed playfully with the
actor to calm him down, we proceed to “Take Three.”
And he does it again.
Swearing after the
director yells, “Cut!”
“And then he swore!”
crows the aficionado of the actual experience.
It is now officially embarrassing. The actor is detectably upset, snapping
angrily at the Script Supervisor as she approaches…
“I don’t need that. I
know the line!”
Causing her to slink humiliated into the shadows, her
reaction, a mixture of sympathy for the actor’s situation, and wondering if she
should call up her union and register a “Grievance.”
It’s an unrealistic reaction, but at moments like these, you
cannot help feeling, “I’m going to die before they finish this scene.”
They try a couple of more times.
Same thing.
The actor is beside himself, the director, superficially at
least, patient, the studio audience uncomfortable, confused by this
thespicanical “meltdown.”
“One line. Why is it
so hard?”
Finally, after six blown “takes”, they move on regardless,
deciding to shoot the abandoned scene later in “pick-ups” (parts of filming
they “pick up” after the audience has been released.
Finally, the Assistant Director yells, “That’s a wrap!” and
the audience files out.
I myself remain behind.
I want to watch them shoot the “Knife Throwing” scene in “pick-ups.”
And hang around for the party.
Once again, they set up for the scene they’d skipped over,
the scene the actor’s ineptitude had made impossible to complete.
And then it hit me.
The reason for that ineptitude.
Jack Gilford did not
forget the line because he was approaching seventy and his mind was going. He forgot the line because he knew that after
he delivered that line…
They would be spinning
him on a wheel!
His unconscious strategy, therefore:
“When I say the line, they are spinning me on that wheel.”
“I don’t want them to spin me on that wheel.”
Unconscious solution:
“I am not saying the line.”
And he didn’t.
Six times in a row.
(Note: The
knives are not a problem. Timed to the
throwing motion, they are rigged to spring out from the inside of the wheel.)
Now, however, minus the added pressure of the audience, Jack
Gilford made it mercifully through the speech and the “Knife Throwing” scene
was finally “in the can.” (They got it.)
No valuable lesson ingrained in my “Memory Bank”. No “Witness to History.” It’s not like “I was at Ford’s Theater the
night they shot President Lincoln.”
Why has this story stayed with me for nigh on to forty years?
It just killed me to watch the man spin.
1 comment:
Sounds like "Don't Call Us", a TV movie from 1976. I assume it got good enough ratings that they tried to turn it into a TV show which almost never works.
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