Interview with Mike Ferris, Part II.

 

      Mike Plante/ CineMad Magazine:

He understood social atmosphere, and what’s going on in actors’ minds as a film is being made as well as what was going on inside a character’s mind.

 

     Michael Ferris/ John Cassavetes’ Cameraman:

I think it is unique to his personality and what he was. I read somewhere that he had grown up in a wild and wonderful family atmosphere where there were no rules. You could sing at the dinner table. The parents never stopped that. Ever since I read that, I though it made the most sense. It freed him to say and do what he wanted, to be creative.

     Like the spaghetti sequence in WOMAN. It was a place for a social gathering. You are going to eat but you could also laugh, cry, scream, sing, dance. I could always see him dancing on the table. It could be wild but if there was a reason… I got to know his mother and father, they’re in the movie. They were the most gracious, kind, interesting people. His father was a philosopher, he was Greek. And the way he looked at life, I know, had a huge effect on his son. His mother was full of love. The thing about becoming part of John’s family, I think I say this almost every time I talk after a film, is you – in the audience – now that you have sat through his film, you are now part of John’s family. You felt this, and experienced this, and that’s what he would have wanted.

     I did something in the beginning that I think bonded John and me for all time. I was green, I had been working on pictures and working my way up. You learn how to load film, you earn how to behave on the set, you learn to assist the more important assistants. I was at the loader/second stage. I did not have a lot of experience. We had a hiccup in the first month. We had a cameraman he didn’t like and that man went. John looked at me and said, “Mike, you and me are going to shoot the rest of the movie.” Which was three weeks. That amazed me. Also gave me an enormous amount of drive and desire.

     During that transition week, a number of big time union cameramen came in. because John was loved by everyone, they had done HUSBANDS (1970) or one of his union pictures. We started to have problems, we were getting negative scratches on (all the) dailies. We couldn’t figure it out. John was tearing his hair out – he was getting stuff he loved and he couldn’t use it. This went on for days and days.

     What had happened was when I took over loading Mitchells, which was a new camera to me, one of the union guys showed me how to loop the film through. He either showed me the wrong way or I got it wrong. Whatever it was, I was loading it wrong and was too dumb to know. After this went on for a week, I went home one night and sat down and said to myself, just make the assumption that I’m doing something wrong. I made diagrams of everything I was doing.

     Next day I walked in and I said, “Look. This is what I’m doing. Could it be something that I’m doing that’s wrong?” They jumped up and said yeah, that’s it. John never forgot that. The fact that I was so straight and honest. I’m just looking for a solution. John  created the atmosphere where you would do anything for him. It was painful to see his face, coming out of dailies…and not have any control over it. I was excited to find out I was to blame. Because we could do something about it. And (the problem) was over just like that.

 

     MP: Did he like acting in his own films? Or was it a necessity to save money?

 

     MF: I think he liked it. He was an actor. The thing you gotta look at, he always played the worst characters. The worst, the meanest, the lowest. If you look at THE DIRTY DOZEN (1967), the guy he played was such a lowlife. Any good actor wants to play bad guys because there is so much you can do. In a hero you wear a white suit and a white hat and stick out your jaw and look heroic. Look at MINNIE AND MOSKOWITZ. (John) isn’t in it very long, but what a creep. He slaps Gena in his first scene. In OPENING NIGHT he’s her opposite number and they’re having a relationship. Well, his character is so self-centered, he only wants to know what she can do for him. A sleezeball! He loved being an actor. He was also an experimentalist in life. He did what most good writer-directors do out of self-defense. So they can get their vision across without someone else filtering it.

     MIKEY AND NICKY, he’s the bad guy in that, but he’s extraordinary. Written and directed by Elaine May, except we did a month of photography on the film for her, and he was hugely influential in that time. I’m not going to say he directed, he wouldn’t like me to say that, but he was in control for the period of time when Elaine was in trouble. The studio was closing down the shop on her. Elaine had a line of sight on Cassavetes stuff unlike others did. When we talk about other people trying to do what he does, they can’t. (John and Elaine) got along very well. He helped her out when she was in the same tough situation he was in so many times with the studios.

 

     MP: You said sometimes the production would need money. He would just leave town for a month then come back with the money.

 

     MF: Oh yeah. The time I remember best, we closed down for a month. John took up and left, went to New York. I don’t know what he did or who he saw, came back with two big bags of money and off we went. We picked up as if we had never stopped.

     He told me at the end of OPENING NIGHT, he put his arm around me and took me up the street. He said, “Listen, I just want to tell you personally, the next show is going to be in New York for GLORIA (1980). It’s going to be a union show. Gena’s really tired of me putting the house up every time.” But then the last picture he did, LOVE STREAMS (1984), was back in his house.

 

     MP: When did you decide to get into camerawork?

   

     MF: I’m originally from San Diego, but my dad was in the Navy. I was born during the war, in 1943. After the war he was stationed in Brooklyn. I grew up there. Once I got into 8^th grade they moved out of the city, to a town called Manhasset on the north shore of Long Island. Incorporated in the 1600s, blue blood. Right next to it is Port Washington, where John grew up.

     In 1961 to ’65, I was in college. ’65 to ’69 I was in the Air Force. I mustered up to New York City, lived there for two years. I was in and out of Manhasset all the time.

     One day I’m driving and I look to my left and there’s a cemetery with all these limos and people. I slow down and pull over and look. They’re making a movie in there! I had seen people shooting in New York City shooting ON A CLEAR DAY YOU CAN SEE FOREVER (1970), big lights, police, it was fascinating. Somehow in New York City it was appropriate. But in Port Washington? So it peaked my interest. I decided to get serious about what I always said I’d do. I’m going to Hollywood. Now there’s a lot of luck in the things that you do. But if you point yourself in the right direction and you’re stubborn enough and you stick to something, one foot in front of another over a period of years, chances are you are going to do it.

     When I was first on a set, I saw the camera and realized that’s where I belonged. I wanted to be an insider in making films, be a part of it. The way it came out for me was the camera. I gritted my teeth and I got there. Seeing the film in Port Washongton, it was just another nudge to my unconscious. I didn’t put it together until I saw HUSBANDS that it was John filming.

 

     MP: How did you get into underwater photography?

 

     MF: I’ve always been a diver from when I was eight years old. I went and got a trident at a fishing store. Put a broom handle on it. I used to bring home blowfish. One thing led to another and I became a competent diver. I bought my first aqualung when I was 13.

     When I got in the union I could have gotten in at a higher level, but I chose to stay back. I felt politically it was a smart thing to do because it was a controlled environment and I felt I had to pay dues to the people ahead of me.

     I always had a dream about how I wanted to move up to operator. In the world of being a cameraman, operator is considered by most people on the set and the number one, best job. I’m sure some actors would disagree with you, but they understand the value. You are literally making the movie. I had a daydream about becoming an operator. A big time Hollywood cameraman taps me on the shoulder and takes me under his wing. The second John in my life in this business that came along and helped me was John Alonzo. He was a father figure. He died earlier this year. He was a gift, he was great.

     The first thing I did with Alonzo was a TV movie of the week called THE KID FROM NOWHERE (1982). Produced by Susan St. James, the first thing directed by Beau Bridges. It was about a single mother with a retarded child and they cast an actual retarded child. This was 1979 and unusual. The famous fistfight  John Cassavetes got into with (producer) Stanley Kramer was because they wouldn’t let John cast real retarded kids in A CHILD IS WAITING (1963). Here we are, almost 20 years late, catching up to John! Every great artist is in advance of them all.

 

     MP: Cassavetes’ acting style looks improve, so another impression is that the filmmaking was also freeform. The audience misconception that they might be able to make the same film. But there must have been a work ethic.

 

     MF: We didn’t re-shoot a lot of stuff. He would know on the set how  things were going. There were rehearsals of the script. Then John would say, “Let’s shoot and see where we go.” It was true, where would they go? A lot of the blocking the actors would do. That’s where they went. You look at any Hollywood set and the floor has twenty different colors of tape telling actors where to go, with arrows. John would never do that.

     You know (the character) Dr. Zepp in A WOMAN? He wasn’t an actor, he was a taxi driver. (Producer and longtime Cassavetes friend) Sam Shaw’s brother. John didn’t tell him what to do. The dialogue was there but where he wanted to go and what he wanted to do. He would talk to Gena and sort of drift over to her. Catherine [Cassavetes’ mother, who plays the mother in WOMAN], I always thought, instinctively stood near the kids, to protect them. But you don’t think about these things until you’re more experienced and better at being analytical. The actors found those places themselves. That came out of the freedom John gave them, saying, “Don’t ask me. You know what to do.” In that sense it was very improvisational.

     Zepp is a perfect example. Doctors are supposed to have authority, presence and save lives. Zepp didn’t have authority at all. He was scary, like a vampire. Which Gena used, making the cross with her fingers. He moved slow. He might have been frightened. Who knows? His performance is haunting. John created the atmosphere for that to happen.

     John Huston said it a hundred times – I worked with Huston on OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND – the hardest work is writing the script. You’re really done if you do the casting right. Your job is to sit back and watch. I think that actors want guidance, to know they’re headed in the right direction. Certain directors will offer ideas that are helpful. Mostly actors want a feeling of confidence that the director knows where he’s headed with all this, knows what he wants, they want to feel safe, to be able to expose their inner selves.

     John Cassavetes wouldn’t give that to them. He did this not out of perversity but out of a requirement that they find whatever it was themselves. If you fought for input he would fight back. When they return from the hospital scene, Gena asked John for a little bit, what would Mabel do here? John would say, “You know the answer to that, don’t ask me again.” Whatever her mood was, they got in to it. It was a family on the set. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen your parents argue, it’s just like that. “If I had a knife I’d put it through your heart right now.” She didn’t mean that, she loved him, it was theatrical. She was so angry. Gena Rowlands is one of the true ladies of the screen and the nicest you’ll ever meet in your life. Not just a lady of the theater or movies, she is a woman of great charm and grace.

     John was just true to his vision. You can’t copycat that. It comes out through his soul and in his characters.

 

     All photos courtesy Michael Ferris.