I started with the title, then I made the film.
To many artists,
that’s like naming a baby before conceiving the baby in question.
As my film inches
towards its world premiere (a cast, crew, friends and family only
event), I consider the process of having made the film, what it means to me now
that it is complete, and how it has evolved and morphed over the period of its
production.
Years ago, though,
I was struck by a particular combination of words when shooting another
project, a rather unfocused documentary about a close friend, a woman whose
uniqueness is unrivaled. She then lived
in a small, windowless Upper East Side apartment with her 100-year-old mother
and nineteen cats. I do not
exaggerate. This arrangement reminded me
at least somewhat of Grey Gardens
(and as it turns out, she happened to have once been the secretary of Grey Gardens filmmaker Al Maysles). Speaking off the cuff about what being Jewish
meant to her growing up on an upstate chicken farm resided over by her beloved
Socialist poet stepfather (whose fifteen minutes of fame came in writing lyrics
to the Paul Robeson tune “Spring Song”), she said, “You know, you had bagels on
Sunday and you raised your kids on seltzer, and that was it. That’s what I thought it meant to be
Jewish.” I never finished that
particular project because it never really took me anywhere, but the words
“Raise Your Kids on Seltzer” echoed through my synapses years after she first
uttered them.
Over six years
later, her mother is gone (having passed at the age of 101) and the number of
cats has dwindled from nineteen to three.
I knew I wanted to
one day make a film entitled Raise Your
Kids on Seltzer, but I could not imagine the subject matter. Would it be about a seltzer dynasty,
kind of like Visconti’s The Damned, perhaps replacing that movie family’s metallurgy industry with a soda water empire? The truth is, I just like the way it
sounded. It was snappy, it was punchy,
it was catchy, and the word “Seltzer” looked attractive to me on paper, and not
just in the merit of the drink itself.
When I shot the
still-in-editing Ezer Kenegdo
throughout 2013 with my collaborator Deniz Demirer in the San Francisco Bay
Area, I had the tremendous fortune of meeting most of the members of the
current Rob Nilsson filmmaking troupe, who are now my fulltime filmmaking
partners following my move to San Francisco in March of this year. Never let it be said that a single fateful
meeting (in this case, my meeting Deniz and having an epic six-hour conversation
with him on an initial 2012 business trip to San Francisco) cannot dictate the
unpredictable direction your life takes.
On one of my trips
to shoot that project, I was able to catch a rough cut of Rob’s film A Leap to Take, an ensemble feature set
at a wayfaring birthday bacchanal and shot in a single night (in what was
originally planned as a single unbroken take).
Two minor characters, a sculptress and her blind husband, were played by
Penny Werner and Jeff Kao. Quite simply,
I found them incredibly funny and charming together onscreen, and thought a
film in which they were front and center playing a married couple would be
priceless. I even voiced my delight to
Deniz that night, with a cockeyed smile still in the midst of reacting
to them as a team: “I want to make a film with Jeff and Penny. That’s my next project.”
Now, what’s funny
is that I had first met them individually and never saw them together before
seeing them in Rob’s movie. And I think
Deniz first deemed my random musing a “haha, that’s funny” lark of a
comment. But I was serious. Really serious. They really turned my wheels that night, and they
were really only in two scenes.
So, I went about
approaching them to suggest this project.
All I said to them was, “I want to do a movie where you guys play a
married couple, and I already have the title.
Raise Your Kids on Seltzer.” They were suitably puzzled, as was I. “I don’t know why, or what any of it has to
do with seltzer, but that’s what I want to call it,” I told them. At the foundation level, I wanted them to
play a corporate video production tagteam notorious for their unintentionally
funny affectations. They were to make
corporate media with style…bad style.
This was, of course, based on my many years working in the world of
corporate media and wanting to scream at the top of my lungs just to spite how
indescribably boring it all was. I
thought, the movie could be about how we all try to enliven the drudgery in our
lives, by injecting it with whatever dose of art and making it personally
fulfilling in spite of itself.
I didn’t dislike that idea, but it just wasn’t enough. It ran the risk of being precious and twee. I asked myself, how could I make it really intriguing? So, I probably did what any writer would do. I gave the characters a past. A doozy of a past. A humdinger of a past.
As a teenager, I
was rather obsessed with cults and the charismatic individuals at their helm
who had an uncanny power to control people.
Mind control as a subject was one in which I was steeped. I knew the most minute details concerning the Manson Family case and the
Jonestown massacre, and would often pour over literature written about
cults. At many junctures, I got the
feeling that my parents were concerned about this obsession. So, with Raise
Your Kids on Seltzer, it was about time I made a film that put my
“magnificent obsession” to use.
I considered Martha Marcy May Marlene to be one of
the finest films of the new decade, but I started a regiment of watching and
re-watching slightly older movies about the cult phenomenon, pictures made at
the height of the boom, like Ticket to
Heaven (1981), Blinded by the Light
(1980), Split Image (1982), and Guyana Tragedy (1980). A fairly consistent but backgrounded element
in these dramas was the figure of the deprogrammer, the person called upon to
kidnap and counsel the main character out of their brainwashed state. Normally, the deprogrammer enters the story
as the third act begins, and ultimately saves the day. They are the deus ex machina. What interested me in watching these films
was something the directors of them didn’t seem to care much about: What kind
of person deprograms cult members for a living?
How does one become a deprogrammer?
What are their lives
like? Only in Ted Kotcheff’s Split Image do we get a sense of the
character of the deprogrammer, played by a deliciously unhinged James
Woods. But the problem for me was that
the character felt cartoonish and overbaked.
I contacted Jeff
and Penny and told them that they were now playing retired (and all too human) cult deprogrammers
(kind of a good cop/bad cop mom-and-pop operation, if you will) who, in the
last 5-10 years, switched professions to corporate media, and are now running
away from their past. They ran away from
deprogramming, despite its lucrative-ness.
Penny’s first reaction: “Whoa! That’s heavy!” I expressed my passion for the idea, and with
equal doses of trepidation and excitement, they immediately got to work on
researching the roles, as did I. As the
center of my own research was the real-life figure of Ted Patrick, the “father
of deprogramming,” and perhaps the most famous in the “business.” Patrick earned a reputation and notoriety
because of his liberal use of physical violence and indiscriminate abuse of all
varieties, in order to initialize the rousing of his subjects from their
mentally comatose state. He was often
met with lawsuits from “clients” after the fact.
All of this reading
and researching of the process fascinated me, but what really intrigued me was
the story of the marriage itself. I
remembered something that Alan Alda claimed that a friend told him, which
inspired his 1981 comedy The Four Seasons. Friendships and relationships go through
seasons: spring, summer, fall, winter. I
wanted to examine the winter of a healthy marriage. I wanted them to get downright nasty and
abusive towards each other, but know deep down that love hadn’t died.
It was around then
that the McGuffin of the movie hit me. I
had conspired at one point to write a short story about a “snail mail” letter
that makes a claim for a character’s complicity in a suicide. The letter would suggest that the main
character was named as an “accessory” in the suicide note, or rather a reason
for this person’s decision to kill him/herself, either because of a previous
transgression the character had committed against the deceased, or some other
unknown reason. The baffled, emotionally
dumbstruck accused would then go about the rest of the story questioning why,
and what he really did to inspire the suicide, questioning his own actions,
grilling and thus torturing himself with guilt.
I worked that concept into the film.
The letter would throw a monkey wrench into both their marriage, and
into their efforts to effectively put their past behind them. It would also jumpstart the rest of the
story. The deprogrammers would now get
such a letter from one of their ex-clients.
Then came the idea
of “ritual,” as it exists in the home.
The notion came to me gradually.
To what degree are any of us “programmed”? How much of life and love is based in the
idea of control? How much do we stoop to
control, and how much do we allow ourselves to be controlled? I then encountered a literary quotation from
Jorge Luis Borges: “To fall in love is to create a religion that has a fallible
god.” A few such rituals were deleted
from the final cut, but a vital one that remains involves the dream diary
sequences, in which the characters keep daily written accounts of the dreams
they have, then share them at the breakfast table.
I hatched a subplot idea of a reformed,
ex-cult leader in the couple’s circle, who is ironically being “controlled” and
“programmed” by his own daughter, whose job it is to handle him, especially in
his dealings with potential outside influences (like our main character, in his
efforts to write a book partly about him).
The ideas flowed like a pulsating river current, with one idea bleeding
into another, lending everything an added complexity. An off-handed comical remark from Penny about
a “twin” single-handedly invented a rich, new aspect of the story, and before
we knew it, we had a strange creature of a movie. A sasquatch.
I was asked by my mentor Sidney Furie, “It’s really interesting, but
what would you call it? A comedy? A thriller?
A drama?” I couldn’t answer. I don’t think he expected me to.
A few days before
departing for the west coast (I still lived in New York when the film was
shot), I met up with director Josh Safdie (Daddy Longlegs, the newly released and acclaimed Heaven Knows What)
to record ADR for Ezer Kenegdo, in
which he plays a key role. At the end, I
told him I was about to embark on shooting Raise
Your Kids on Seltzer, and we proceeded to discuss cults, about which he
seemed to have much knowledge. We
discussed “cult leader” Mel Liman, the related appearance of Zabriskie Point stars Mark Frechette
(“The main purpose of the community is to serve Mel Liman”) and Daria Halprin
on The Dick Cavett Show, what became of Frechette, and what became of Mel
Liman’s “community.” Josh instructed me
to be careful, stating that he tried to write and direct a film about a cult at
one point, and that it just got too messy for him.
Shooting the
project over fourteen days, with nothing but a detailed outline, in late
April/early May 2014, predominantly in Lafayette in the East Bay, Raise Your Kids on Seltzer quite
organically took root by the time we turned our cameras on. A “Siamese pickle” that I found in a jar the
night before departing to San Francisco from New York for shooting played a
major role in the first sequence we shot.
We arrived in the daytime and staged a beautiful scene around the pickle
that night, hitting the ground running.
I started with something I thought would be fun and I knew from their
performances that we were in business.
My trusty cinematographer
Aaron Hollander was back on hand, devising some of his most painterly lighting
and shot design yet (we based much of the visual style on his namesake Adam
Holender’s gorgeous work in Jerry Schatzberg’s Puzzle of a Downfall Child, with its delicate, earthy mix of
exterior and interior light, which spoke to our primary location needs as well
as our themes). The camera style was to
be deliberate, mostly steady, locked off, with selected moments of
“embedded-war documentary photography,” domestic-style.
Though much of the
film was “stolen” guerrilla-style in terms of shooting strategy, we shot most
of the film in a house belonging to two of our friends, who were moving out of
it at the end of the month. So, we went
into it knowing there was no possibility of reshoots (as the house would also
to be redesigned and renovated after move-out).
The house, however, was too perfect not to use and, with its wide-open
windows, suggested many high-concept motivations for its use. “Those who live in glass houses shouldn’t
throw stones,” for one. Another idea for
me was the couple being, in a way, exposed, out in the open for all to
see. There were no secrets anymore. Look inside and you can see them at their
most pathetic with little effort.
One of the great discoveries of the film was the 17-year-old actress Nancy Kimball, who made her feature debut in Raise Your Kids on Seltzer, after starring in a short film called Charlie co-starring the great Andrea Marcovicci the previous year. It is rare that I shoot only one take on any scene or piece of coverage. Usually, I am always in favor of doing "one more for safety," but Nancy so impressed all of us, especially me, on her first major day of shooting a big emotional scene that I opted to move on without even thinking for a moment that we could get it better. She is a prodigy, a rare breed of young actor who is truly and absolutely born for it. She has a bright future ahead. Unfortunately, Nancy will not be able to make it to the premiere because she is away at an acting camp this summer.
One of the great discoveries of the film was the 17-year-old actress Nancy Kimball, who made her feature debut in Raise Your Kids on Seltzer, after starring in a short film called Charlie co-starring the great Andrea Marcovicci the previous year. It is rare that I shoot only one take on any scene or piece of coverage. Usually, I am always in favor of doing "one more for safety," but Nancy so impressed all of us, especially me, on her first major day of shooting a big emotional scene that I opted to move on without even thinking for a moment that we could get it better. She is a prodigy, a rare breed of young actor who is truly and absolutely born for it. She has a bright future ahead. Unfortunately, Nancy will not be able to make it to the premiere because she is away at an acting camp this summer.
At this point, we
still didn’t really have a handle on the title’s meaning. I concocted that it was a mantra they used
when deprogramming: “Raise your kids on seltzer, bubble per bubble. The best things are the most painful going
down.” The code for the deprogramming
location became “the RYKOS center,” and the film itself became commonly known
as Rykos. Only after picture wrap on
principal photography did someone inquire, “Does the title have anything to do
with Kool-Aid?” The problem was thus
immediately solved. “For those who’d
rather not drink the Kool-Aid, raise your kids on seltzer!” We went back to include it later in the
pickup shots. The title also speaks to
the theme of complacency. Kool-Aid is
sweet and non-abrasive. Seltzer is
refreshing because of its roughness; the bubbles seizes the throat and, when
the carbonation is potent, provides a wake-up call to the gullet and the taste
buds. The central marriage in the film
needs such an awakening from complacency.
Two additional
pick-up scenes included a special appearance from actor Barry Newman (Vanishing Point, “Petrocelli”, The Limey), who did me a favor in
playing the attorney of the film’s central Neoneida (Nee-oh-nigh-dah) cult.
The name Neoneida
is a conflation of Neo and Oneida, adopting the principles of John Humphrey
Noyes’s original Oneida colony, founded in the 1860’s, whose members practiced
free love, complex marriage (a polite word for polygamy) and believed in the
notion of Perfectionism (bringing about the Christian milennial kingdom on
Earth, freeing oneself of sin in this life, and being perfect in this world and
not just the next). John Humphrey Noyes
is a historical figure that has fascinated me since my high school days, mostly
because I perceived him very much as an early cult leader in America, and
because his community possessed all the qualities of a cult and what one does
to its members.
Editing proved a
formidable challenge because of the number and variety of story threads, and
how they subsisted on each other and flowed into each other. You couldn’t excise one of the threads
without affecting or negatively impacting the others. As I joked with Aaron and the cast, “I think
maybe we got too ambitious on this one.”
Narratively, the film was a juggling act during the post-production
process. It was akin to arranging and
conducting for a mega orchestra. I had
to establish the nine individual plot threads, fade them out for some stretches,
bring in another, fade that one out, bring in another, etc. while considering
how they would cohesively fit into the film’s larger context. Success came only in striking the most
delicate balance.
The film took the
better part of a whole year to reach an assembly cut. In addition to the fact that I was trying to
finish my book on Sidney J. Furie, the meticulous plot thread “orchestration” took
time and care. And because the film was
improvised within tight parameters, every take was different.
Raise Your Kids on Seltzer has screened
four times in rough cut form and, with each successive screening, I made
adjustments and organized two important reshoots. It was during this stage of the process that
I was made aware of the movie Faults,
an independent film about a former deprogrammer employed to spring a young
woman from the cult of the title. I was
motified when I discovered it, because I was convinced that I had something
utterly original. I saw my way to
actually scoring a copy of the film, but upon seeing it, I was relieved to
discover that not only was it a radically different film, but that I also
didn’t care for it very much.
Now, it is in
picture lock mode. The film is as good as I hoped it would be
with the material shot, and reactions have been fairly uniformly positive and,
I daresay, even enthusiastic. Like I had
hoped, people connect with the couple’s story, seeing the cult material as an
intriguing and compelling backdrop for the story of a relationship. I look forward to unleashing it to audiences
after the premiere screening next month. It is a quantum leap forward for me in terms of my own filmmaking, and was a personal triumph for me in the creative process.
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