“Blood Red”...Behind the Scenes

Drive 140 miles due east of San Francisco and be prepared to enter The Twilight Zone; horse and buggies, feed stores, livery stables, bars with louver swinging doors that start at the shoulders and end at the waist. The old hotel is exactly as it was when drunks gun fought in the town square over women, theft, horses and gold.  Blood Red, on ‘Starz’ all this month, was shot in 1989 in this town called Sanora. To this day the town is a preserved gold mining town, intact, as it was in the late 1800's.

The film was directed by Peter Masterson and starred Dennis Hopper, Eric Roberts, Giancarlo Giannini, Burt Young, Michael Madson, Elias Koteas, Lara Harris, Carlin Glynn, Lexi Masterson, the late Aldo Ray and - yours truly.

In the film, Julia Roberts, Erics little sister, played - his little sister. It was Julia's first film in an unremarkable role with few lines. No one would have put down thier muskets or gold sifting trays to look at her as anything more than... Eric's little sister.  Nor could anyone have projected that she would become one of the most powerful people in the film industry.

Four years ago Pete, Carlin Glynn (Peter's wife) and I  shot "Whiskey School" with Pete directing Carlin, thier daughter Mary Stuart Masterson, Olympia Dukakis and fellow Actors Studio members Lainie Kazan, Robert Walden and David Margulies. I helped produce that film and played the leading role, Leapold Di Angeli, based on the intervention of playwright and friend, Leaonard Melfi. (Buy it on line at Warners, Amazon or Blockbuster and help me pay back the investors).

For "Blood Red" I grew a beard to help play the part of a young Senator Endicott from California. I researched Progressive Senators from the turn of the century and worked hard on the acting problems before me. The film focused on an Italian immigrant family (Eric, Julia, Giancarlo and the unsung Francesca Di Sapio) duped by an Irish business man played by Dennis Hopper. My character was also conned by Hopper's Berrigan character until my character comes to the realization that he has been using the Italians to grab their land. 

In the early part of the shoot, I befriended Julia Roberts. One day we both were not on call and we walked the town of Sanora. She was sweet, alive, smart and interested. I saw her on a film set ten years later. I had no beard and she was ... Julia Roberts.  I asked her if she remembered me. She looked hard and said, "I remember those eyes" then she laughed that twenty two million dollar - a  - picture  - laugh and said, "Of course I remember you, Gary. How are you"? 

Between scenes in William Bradford Brennigan's (Dennis Hopper) 1800's office, dressed in top hats, spats and long black formal garb, Dennis and I waited to shoot with a Big Ben Clock ticking behind Dennis. He'd been off drugs, clean and sober for years and told me stories about the days when he wore a Mexican Serape while holding loaded guns hidden under the cape, tripping on a mixture of drugs, sure that everyone was out to get him. But he told me that he still had some echo's, still sometimes had flashbacks from that era.  A strange and distant look came over his face. For a second, he disappeared into his thoughts. "Do you hear ticking?" I suggested he turn around.  He examined the Big Ben. We both laughed and he said, "Oh, wow, Man...  Scared me. Thought I was back."

Burt Young and I sat at a local bar after a day of shooting "Blood Red" feeling a time warp, that we were back in an 1800's bar, both in costumes that would be worn in that bar at that time. Burt played Hopper's henchmen in the film and was appropriately dressed like a Black Bart from an old Western. He is a man of intelligence and humor with insights into the human condition that are simple, philosophical and almost always correctly reflected in the depth of all the parts he has ever played.

Next to him,  a beautiful young lady who had spent some time with him held on to his shoulder, obviously star struck to be in his company. He finally looked at her and told her politely to leave the bar, go back to her room and he would call her later.  She started to cry and walked out. Burt looked at me, sipped his drink and said, "Sometimes, you have to torcha dem"...

Eric Roberts was mercurial, brilliant with an occasional glance that indicated real danger. His mane was shoulder length.  He had been lifting weights every night at 2 AM so he was squared, cut and majestic. In one scene he had to walk through the town with his shirt off, on his way to face Dennis who had murdered his father. It was early morning and many of the actual towns people were in costume as extras for the scene, lining the dirt street of Sanora.  In rehearsal, Eric walked slowly to his mark carrying himself with the baring of a prince en rout for a fight to the death. The town girls were screaming so uncontrollably as Eric passed by, that the second A. D. had to beg them with a megaphone to watch him in silence. It took three takes to get them to be quiet as he passed.  

When I first arrived on the set for my first scene, it was night time. In progress, Pete had set up a shot by the side of a barn where Giancarlo, who played Eric's father, had just been beaten to death and hoisted by a bunch of Hopper's thugs - lead by Burt. It was to be a scene of profound horror as Giancarlo's dead, bloody body twisted on the end of a rope from a post jutting out of the apex of the barn. Eric was to find him, lift him off the rope and deal with his father's vicious murder.

The side of the barn was illuminated in the way that only movie lights can do, charged by the generator engines. Eric stood, in place, around the side of the barn.  He took a long drag on a cigarette and spoke to a key grip as the scene was prepped for one of the most emotional scenes an actor could play and Eric was --talking with a key grip and smoking. It was an odd picture of a well known actor making no effort to prepare for a scene that would call for great emotion and gravity of major magnitude.

The generator engines stopped and no one moved on the set. The First AD yelled "quiet, rolling" and Pete said "Action". Eric stepped on the cigarette,  walked around the corner of the barn and looked up at his suspended father. The entire set was stock still as he moved to Giancarlo. With grace and strength he lifted his father off the rope, set him on the ground and cradled him. From where I was standing, the scene had a strange yet effective gravity.  The AD yelled "Cut", Eric stood up and joked in a mock, sing - song, gay Charles Nelson Reily imitation  - "Six months to live". Everyone who had been pulled into his performance laughed but also felt a little betrayed by his lack of personal involvement. He did the "six months to live" joke after each take as though he were trying to off set the power of the scene.

On the day we were to shoot the end where we all had to walk through the town in the confrontation scene, Eric and I discussed our acting techniques as we waited for the last minute camera check.

I am and was trained by Lee Strasberg in "The Method" but Eric said that he had little interest in the internal work. He said that all he cared about was what the audience felt, not what he felt. He took that form of acting to new heights but I often wonder if a man of his extra ordinary gifts might not have gone farther if he had attempted to tap into his own complicated inner life....

Aldo Rey was a kind man, a bit befuddled with his gravely voice and innocent eyes. Pete gave him a new opportunity to overcome Aldo's reputation as a raging alcoholic resulting in his career as an actor in ruins.  In "Blood Red" he was to play a priest and friend to Giancarlo. I didn't have any scenes with him but I knew who he was having watched many of his war movies when I was a child. He was always the tough guy who got into fights with his fists or loaded guns, the antithesis of who he seemed to be in life. Pete had set up a guard duty around Aldo to keep him from going to a bar or getting booze. At one point he voluntarily agreed to have someone gaurd his door to keep him from slipping away into a the night and a bender. 

One morning Aldo did not show up to the set. Everyone fanned out and began looking in all the town watering holes. We later found out that he had bribed one of the town drunks to buy him a bottle of vodka, bring it to the side of the old hotel he was staying in. Aldo had secured an old lasso rope and brought it to his room to, he said, learn to twirl it. But, he lowered that rope from his second story window where the commiserating town drunk tied the bottle to the lasso.

Like a scene out of a bad movie, two guys carried Aldo to the set and sat him in a chair. They plied him with coffee. He kept sticking his head in a bucket and apologized to everyone who would listen. Eventually he got up and went to his mark. The pro in him took over and he shot the scene as drunk as anyone I've ever witnessed. But if you watch the film, you might never know it. That was a pro's pro and I was actually moved by his desire to do the scene and do it well.

"Blood Red" will be showing all this month on Starz. If you watch it, please drop me a note off my web page and let me know what you think of the film.

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Additional information at . www.garyswanson.org.