Brad Stevens - Monte Hellman - His Life and Films

Chapter 2

The Filmgroup Expansions, 1962-1963

Estragon: "Nothing to be done.

Vladimir: I'm beginning to come round to that opinion. All my life I've tried to put it from me, saying, Vladimir, be reasonable, you haven't yet tried everything. And I resumed the struggle."

Waiting for Godot

In 1960, Roger Corman gave Hellman's theater associate Harvey Berman the chance to make his first film The Wild Ride. As Corman recalls, "Harvey taught a high school drama class and ran a film course in Walnut Creek. He approached me with the idea that he could shoot one of our juvenile delinquent films with his students for very little money. That sounded good to me. Harvey started shooting, but when I saw the first day's rushes I told him to stop because it was clear we were on our way to making a truly amateurish film. 'Wait for summer vacation,' I told him. I'll send up a cameraman, a leading man, leading lady, art director, and my assistant.' So we held off. Then, I got Jack Nicholson and Georgianna Carter to play the male and female leads. I sent my art director, Danny Haller, and my assistant, Kinta Zabel, and gave Kinta a check for $30,000. 'You write the checks,' I instructed her, 'co-produce the film, keep track of everything, pay the bills'." 1Hellman was also enlisted as associate producer: "I was on location in Concord, CA, and on the set every day. This was when my friendship with Jack Nicholson began. I can't remember what my work consisted of, other than to be there to insure that Harvey didn't fuck up. I came back from the shoot with infectious mononucleosis, which is an extremely debilitating disease. I had only signed on as associate producer. Anyway, no one could make any sense out of the footage — there didn't even seem to be any slates on most of it — so Roger begged me to edit it. I told him I didn't even have the strength to go to the bathroom. He told me I only had to work a few hours in the morning, and could go to the beach in the afternoon. I finally agreed to edit the picture. I did everything myself, without even one assistant. I even edited the sound and music, neither of which I had done before (or since). I can't believe I survived the ordeal. Needless to say, it turned out to be 12 hours a day — the beach was a joke." 2

The Wild Ride is mainly of interest for its vague anticipations of Two-Lane Blacktop , and for the fact that, like many of Hellman's own films, it begins in the middle of a scene, with the action already in progress (the decision to open the film this way could well have been made by Hellman in the cutting room). Curiously, Hellman's name does not appear onscreen — Harvey Berman is credited as director and producer, Kinta Zertuche as executive producer, and "William Mayer" as editor: "I was a member of the editor's guild, but not yet allowed to edit. Also, it was a non-union film. So that's why I couldn't take the editing credit. I don't think William Mayer was a real person. If he was, he had nothing to do with the movie, I don't know why I didn't get the associate producer credit." 3

Hellman then worked on Corman's The Intruder (1961), adapted by Charles Beaumont from his own novel, but, like Corman's earlier Sorority Girl (1957), probably inspired by Calder Willingham's End as a Man (filmed by Jack Garfein in 1957 as The Strange One ) . As Corman told Joseph Gelmis, "It was about white and black relationships. The film was a magnificent critical success but did not make money. Thinking back on it, I decided that one of the reasons the film was not a commercial success was the fact that I believed so much in my subject matter that I pushed my own personal thoughts a little bit too heavily into it and the film became slightly propagandistic." 4This rare financial failure particularly annoyed Corman, who kept changing the film's title in order to make it more commercial (it is variously known as Shame , I Hate Your Guts and The Stranger ), and finally sold it to Mike Ripps, a distributor who had a big success with Poor White Trash. Hellman was asked to make The Intruder more suitable for Ripps' market by shooting additional sex scenes with anonymous actors: "Mike Ripps was involved in my added scenes. It is my recollection that, on one of his trips to meet with me in L. A., Mike was killed on the freeway while on his way to my house. But I see that a Mike Ripps directed a film in 1974, so if it's the same Mike Ripps, it was obviously someone else who was killed on the freeway — perhaps someone working for Mike." 5Sadly, prints of The Intruder containing Hellman's footage are no longer available: "All I remember is being embarrassed shooting the scenes, and putting pasties over the woman's nipples, and taping up the man's and woman's genitals." 6

Around this time, Hellman married again (to Jaclyn Hellman) and formed The New American Film Society, an organization which, according to its manifesto, was intended for "film professionals who have banded together with the purpose of screening films they could not otherwise see." As Charles Eastman recalls, "Monte asked me to recommend some films to be considered for the program, and so perhaps the viewing of Unfaithfully Yours was my idea. Night and Fog was Monte's, my first encounter with this Resnais film." 7Although the first screenings took place at the Directors' Guild, the society soon moved to Sunset Boulevard's Lytton Center of the Visual Arts, the basement screening room of a bank built on the site of the former Garden of Allah hotel: "The New American Film Society was basically formed by John Fles and myself. The original board of directors also included my wife Jackie (as she was credited on the flyer for the second season), Louis Barron, Fred Haines, Jack Hirschman, B. J. Merholz, Bill Schipp, Jack Schwartzman (my lawyer), Lisa Stein, Paula Touber and Selwyn Touber. The first series included A Man Escaped , Zero for Conduct , Another Sky by Gavin Lambert, Broken Blossoms , A Movie by Bruce Connor, El , Entr'acte , We Are the Lambeth Boys , L'Atalante , The Curse of the Cat Peo ple , The Shop Around the Corner , The Bicycle Thief. The second series consisted of Leopoldo Torre Nilsson's Summer Skin (there's a forgotten film!), White Mane , Port of Shadows , Lemon Hearts by Vernon Zimmerman, Outcast of the Islands , Swing Time , The Loves of Jeanne Ney. The third season was supposed to be Fires on the Plain , Queen Kelly , Fear and Desire , The Red Badge of Courage , Sawdust and Tinsel , The Birth of a Nation , M , The Gold Rush , Rome Open City , The Passion of Joan of Arc. I don't remember how much, if any, of this season was realized. Night and Fog and Unfaithfully Yours must have been introductory screenings before we announced our full program." 8