Groupies is a Movie

When a Burlington film crew suddenly gets serious and a dream comes to life, the cast and crew of local musicians, actors, writers and technicians get busy. Guppyboy's guitarist and singer Zachary Ward documents the experience.

How do you make a movie? Not a "let's-grab-the-video-camera-and-see-what-happens" kind of movie. We're talking about an hour and a half or so of an original screenplay shot on 16mm film. With real actors. And a grip. And someone clicking the slate and yelling, "Action!" We're talking legit.

A trip to the movie theater will provide answers on how to do it one way: spend a ton of money on special effects and hire the hunk of the month to flex in front of the camera. OK. Not a bad answer. That seems to be the Hollywood way.

But what if you don't have millions? And you don't live in Los Angeles? Then the question becomes much more tricky. And the answers become much more interesting.

Keith Spiegel has given an answer. He is the force behind the film Groupies; the writer, director, and editor of the film that was shot in Rutland and Chittenden counties this past year.

To give some idea of the time it takes to put a movie together, Spiegel began working on the project in September 1993. At the time he had just graduated from Brown University and was living in a school bus in Maine. He spent a month living in a bus with friends, and he says that experience is what fueled one of the ideas for the plot. (In the film, a group of ex-child actors are kidnapped and driven around in a Winnebago by a man who wants their canceled show revived).

It wasn't the first time Spiegel had started the long process of writing a screenplay. He had written two prior to starting Groupies. Actually, he began doing it at a very young age. He got his first experience in 1979. His best friend's father had recently acquired a video camera, and he told the eight-year-old Spiegel that he could use it if he wrote a script first. So he spent "weeks and weeks" writing a script that was "a few pages long" by the time his mother finished typing it. It was an experience that revealed to him what he wanted to do.

Spiegel grew up in Los Angeles, California. With all that star dust out there, it's no wonder that he developed a passion for movie making early on. But by the time he had graduated from high school he knew he wanted to come to New England. His decision had come down to USC film school or Brown. He says he chose Brown in order to escape the "superficialities" of a place where everyone is concerned with "what kind of car they drive."

A film maker grows up in L.A. and then makes a conscious decision to leave? It does seem a little odd, but when you've got the wit and ambition that Spiegel has, it doesn't make much difference where you are. It also makes for plenty of interesting stories.

Spiegel first came to Vermont the summer after graduating from college, when he took a bus trip across the state. By chance, his bus connection took him to Burlington. He wound up staying only one night, but his first impression was strong. He found a place that was "culturally speaking, 180 degrees in the opposite direction" from California. He told himself he would have to come back.

The next summer he did. He got a job teaching video to high school students at the University of Vermont. By this time the outline for Groupies was nearly complete. Josh Bridgman, who helped Spiegel on rewrites of the script, describes the film as a "satire of media and hype" playing off such popular icons as John Hinkley Jr., David Koresh, Mark David Chapman, and The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. Autumn of '94 and early winter of '95 was spent writing the dialogue, and by January 1995 80 percent of that was finished. At that point Spiegel put the screenplay up for six months and went to work at Vermont ETV, doing freelance production for the video magazine Points North. The screenplay was finished up with Bridgman's help from August 1994 to January 1995.

So you're living in Burlington and you have a screenplay. Where do you go from there? That is the question that Spiegel was faced with. His screenplay, a mock documentary, revolves around the kidnapping of a group of ex-child actors who were in a popular '70s television show called the Junior Defenders. While visiting his family in L.A. he began to wonder if he could film some "testimonials" from celebrities in order to generate some outside interest in the project. The innovative Spiegel set a voicemail account that served as his "office" and he tried to use some of his connections from his high school days. He had gone to school with Sally Field's son, so he got in touch with her publicist. She said "No." Mayim "Blossom" Biaylzk's father had been Spiegel's 8th grade film teacher, so he tried to pitch the idea to her. The result was the same. Time was running out, so Spiegel began to think about some east coast options. He had heard that Michael Dukakis was teaching at Northeastern University in Boston. A phone call to his office revealed that Dukakis wasn't at Northeastern that semester; he was at UCLA on a visiting professorship. UCLA happened to be a mile or so from Spiegel's father's office. A couple of phone calls and a fax later and Spiegel had a shoot with Dukakis scheduled.

Spiegel assembled a bare bones crew and showed up only to find that the Governor had not read the fax, and was not aware of the semi-serious nature of the film. For a few tense minutes it seemed possible that Dukakis would change his mind. After all, politicians are serious people with serious public images to uphold. But as Dukakis read his script he began to smile. He cracked jokes with the grip. A couple of takes later and he was on board.

Shortly after returning to Burlington in February '96 Spiegel was walking by the old Vermont Pasta when he saw a sign advertising a show by Peter Tork of the Monkees. It was comparatively easy to set up that shoot. Tork was willing, and with the aid of Joe Bookchin (from Burlington College) Tork's testimonial was filmed.

Things were moving along, albeit slowly, for the aspiring film maker. He now had an idea that he could pitch to producers and agents, along with the added attraction of cameos by Peter Tork and Michael Dukakis. The initial idea was that production could be done from Burlington (with the legitimacy of an L.A. "office"), followed by an intensive one week shoot in California. This would have saved the expense of flying people into Vermont from the West Coast and putting them up in hotels.

While he was turning these ideas over in his head Spiegel took out a free ad in the Hollywood Reporter, trying to sell his idea to anyone that would listen. He used his phone mail number and his father's office as a postal address. His screenplay received national attention when E! (the cable network) called him up interested in doing a story on the ex-Monkee now doing film! This exposure served as another selling point in Spiegel's pitch. Many things that now gave the project an air of legitimacy, even though there was no cast to speak of and very little money to spend.

Casting the show seemed to be a logical next step. The first role Spiegel wanted to cast was that of Jimmy Fletcher. In the movie Jimmy is one of the Junior Defenders who gets kidnapped. He is a "cynical, bitter, ex-child actor" according to Spiegel. Ideally the part would be played by a real ex-child actor, but Spiegel was aware of the potential problems that that might pose. "Overall, the portrayals are empathetic. But it was a tough thing to sell," he admits.

Avoiding agents ("They would have seen right through me", he says) Spiegel decided direct contact with actors would be his best bet. Through the internet he got in touch with Justin Henry. Henry was the youngest actor ever to be nominated for an Oscar for his performance in Kramer vs. Kramer. Initially Henry was angry that he had been called at home. But he asked to see the script anyway. After he had seen it he called Spiegel back with questions. Was there any money? Was it a SAG (Screen Actor's Guild) show? Spiegel explained that he had a limited-exhibition agreement with the Guild. This made it possible for him to be able to pay SAG members $50 a day instead of the usual $500. When he hung up the phone with him the second time, Spiegel was sure Henry was not going to do it. But within a week Henry's agent called saying he liked the script and he would encourage his client.

It now seemed possible that this was a film that was going to be able to be cast. But there was still a big problem. There wasn't nearly enough money to even begin thinking about getting it off the ground. There had been money raised, but only enough to pay the phone bill and pay for postage. But one day Spiegel was in Kinko's attempting to fax Melissa Gilbert of Little House On The Prairie fame when he realized he didn't have any money for the fax machine.

So he called Brooke Wetzel, founder and artistic director of Northern Stage, to ask if he could use her fax. As it turned out, she had been away for three months working on production for Jay Craven's Stranger In The Kingdom. Having just literally walked in the door, her fax machine was not hooked up. But she invited him to stop by anyway. He dropped a script off, not expecting her to be too interested. But she called him a couple of days later and told him that she wanted to produce the film for him. She was the connection to many of the local people who ended up working on the film. She passed the idea on to Cabot Orton, who had helped successfully produce Stranger . . . and he came on board as executive producer. She was also the connection to Ally Sheedy, and it was her idea to see if Sheedy would be interested in being involved. Wetzel called Sheedy's husband David Lansbury, who had starred in Stranger In The Kingdom. A script was sent and the first answer was no. Sheedy was concerned about playing a washed up-actress. Wetzel encouraged her to work with the character, and arranged a meeting for the next week in New York. At the meeting Sheedy, for all of her reservations, was very enthusiastic. A week later she called back and said that she would do it. It was January 1997.

Two weeks later everyone was flown in and filming began in Rutland. The initial shoot was seven days long. Cast and crew were treated to donated Ben & Jerry's, and Jen Taber, now at Burlington City Arts, was responsible for donations of lumber to help construct the sets. After a week of very little sleep, 70 percent of the footage had been shot.

According to Spiegel the filming went very smoothly. In reviewing the footage, Spiegel found only one shot that he wasn't satisfied with. March and April found a crew at the Flynn Theatre filming scenes for an awards ceremony. After that there were two days of "pick up" shots in August, and all the filming was complete. In all, it took 20 days to shoot roughly 10 hours of raw footage.

This fall was spent editing the film. It was a process that took a few weeks with the help of an editing software called "Speed Razor." Groupies was the first feature length film to use Speed Razor, and the software company took an active interest in Spiegel's experiences with it.

So you live in Burlington and you have a feature length film that has been shot and edited. How to you get an audience? Spiegel says that there's neither rhyme nor reason in the world of film distribution. Cable television and videocassette offer alternatives that didn't exist 20 years ago. But for now Spiegel is setting his sights on getting the film into a film festival. At the time of this writing he is waiting to hear back from The Sundance Film Festival. For now that is all he can do, because Sundance does not allow its applicants to submit their films anywhere else. He also has plans to submit Groupies to film festivals in Santa Barbara and Toronto.

That is the long answer to the question "How do you make a movie?" The short answer is this; you need time, talent, ambition and you need to be in an environment that stimulates your creativity. Spiegel thinks he has found that in Burlington. He is obviously a young man who is addicted to making movies. He has found a great deal of support from our community in the past. Here's hoping he (along with others like him) can find that same support in the future. ~GC~

Zachary Ward is a singer-songwriter from Jeffersonville, Vermont with a very distinctive voice that can be heard on his band Guppyboy's CD Jeffersonville on the Sudden Shame record label.