PLUME: What about your first written/directed film, Last Chance? I was reading some of the user comments about that, on IMDb …
CRANSTON: As artists, we are subjected – by virtue of our chosen profession – we are subjected to criticism. If you cannot handle that, you’re in the wrong business. So that doesn’t bother me. It doesn’t even have to be constructive – just be specific… that’s what we look for. Specificity, so that it’s not, “I don’t know. I just didn’t like it.” What didn’t work for you? You know, I mean – it just makes me angry. Do you know what I mean?
PLUME: Well, you have to wonder how valid their own personal take on it is, if they can’t even quantify it beyond that “I hated it.”
CRANSTON: Right. I remember I belonged to a movie club not that long ago with civilians, and I liked the idea of being with people who are not in the business. It was intriguing to me. We were reviewing and giving our opinions on American Beauty, when that came out. I was saying, “I loved this movie, it really moved me. It pulled at me. I was worried about it, and I was surprised by it.” It really held me. I went on with that, and one woman said, “I didn’t like this movie at all, it really pissed me off.” “Really? What?” “I don’t even want to talk about it, because it was just upsetting.” I kept prodding, “Please. I’m so eager to hear your opinions on specifically what didn’t work for you.” She goes, “You want to know? I’m a business woman. I’ve been running my own business for 17 years. I just despise it when movies just treat businesses like they’re nothing.” I went, “I don’t know, are you talking about the movie?” She said, “Oh yes. You know when he screws his company, when he’s leaving his company, he screws them. He has that fight with his manager and he just fucks them over?” I went, “Oh my God.” She didn’t like the movie because the guy, this character, screwed over his boss.
PLUME: No matter how legitimate, within the context of the story or to the character, that may have been…
CRANSTON: Yeah. Exactly. It was anti-business, and therefore, “Screw you, I’m not following it and I don’t like it.” Wow. I thought, “Well, there you have it. There you have the subjective art form. Right there.” So, Last Chance… I made Last Chance as a gift to my wife. I wrote it for her for a birthday present and realized, “Oh my God, it’s a screenplay. It’s not done until we make this! What am I thinking?”
PLUME: This is your anniversary gift, too.
CRANSTON: Yeah, anniversary and next birthday present – for the next 5 years. I actually optioned another script that I wrote to two different production companies over the course of five years and had meetings for five years. Productive meetings on this script, that eventually got back to me and didn’t do anything. After the five years, I was just beaten up by the whole idea of meeting after meeting after meeting. What I was listening to were people’s opinions…
PLUME: So they were doing their own rewrites…
CRANSTON: Yeah … I finally had to come up with a criteria. I have to listen to every comment, and then I have to decide, “Does this make the movie different, or better?” If I think it makes the movie better, I’ll do it. If I think it makes the movie different, I won’t do it.
PLUME: How would you rate the percentages as to what you were hearing?
CRANSTON: Most were “make the change to make it different.” I went to an acquaintance of mine, who is a line producer for Roger Corman. I said, “I want to make a low-budget film.” He said, “Fine.” He read the script – it was Last Chance – and it was with the idea of doing it on my own, so when I was writing it, I had the confines of budget in mind. It takes place in the desert at a café and a motel, and it’s a very small character piece. He read it, and I said, “Can you give me a breakdown?” He said, “Well, yeah, I can, but that’s not going to do you any good.” I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “That’s not the way it’s done. You want to know how it’s done in our world, compared to the Paramount or Universal or Fox world? They take and breakdown a script and say, ‘Okay, you need 4.5 million for this low-budget, or 27.5 million is the budget.’ What we do is I’ll ask you a question. My question is: How much do you have? You tell me a number, and then I tell you if I can do it for that, and I’ll tell you what you can have and what you can’t have.” I went, “Boy, this is bizarre.” So I gave him a number of a figure that I thought that I could raise from family and friends, and he said, “Okay, I’ll budget it for that amount.” He came back with a budget fitting exactly that amount, and he was low – I’m not supposed to tell anybody, but very low – and we did it. We made the movie. It was a great experience… a good little film on a miniscule budget.
PLUME: Was anything compromised due to the budget?
CRANSTON: Always. I think something’s always compromised. On my daily shot list, I had what I need to get under one column, what I want to get under another, and what I hope to get under another. I can tell you honestly, I never, ever got to the hope list. Not in the 18 days of shooting did I ever get to the hope list.
PLUME: Was it disappointing, or were you realistic enough?
CRANSTON: Sure, it’s disappointing.
PLUME: What was an example of something on the hope list? Fifteen extra takes? A speedboat chase?
CRANSTON: Extra coverage, just interesting angles… a crane for another day to do an interesting thing.
PLUME: So, artistic flourishes…
CRANSTON: Yeah, something that makes it more visual. As it was, I had to make it more verbal. I had to make the film stand on its own verbally and character-wise, as opposed to visual, because I had 18 days, shooting 35 mm, full shoot, and it was like run and gun. I knew it was going to be a meat and potatoes shoot, no frills, but sometimes it was just meat. You know, I was hoping for a potato, but there was just meat … then you run out of money in editing, and you go, “Okay, movie’s done.” Even though I look at it and go, “I want another pass. I want another trim.” Just like I go through my scripts, and every pass I go through my scripts I go, “Okay, that’s it. It’s tight, I don’t think I can even cut it anymore.” I stay away from it for three, four weeks, I come back and I trim more fat and make it tighter. My shooting script on Last Chance was 96 pages, and it turned out to be a 100 minute movie. I’m thinking, “Boy, 96 pages, perfect. It’ll be a 96 minute movie.” For some reason – what happened? But the tone of the movie is – the whole thing in a nutshell – this woman lives out in the wilderness and doesn’t feel that she has any choices in her life. That she’s stuck here, so the physicality becomes a character itself. It’s monotonous, and every day’s the same, and there’s a sense of, “Oh my God, how does she stand living out here?” One of the character’s says that to her, “Get out of here, this is dead here.” Well, in order to get a sense of a place that’s dead, you need to spend time with it. You can’t zip through. I went through once on my own, and cut out like 8 minutes and trim, trim, trim, trim, trim, and it snapped nicely. It moved, moved, moved, and I completely lost the sense of place … so that when the character said, “Get out of here, this place is dead.” I went, “No, it’s not that bad. It’s moving along.”
PLUME: It’s kind of snappy.
CRANSTON: Yeah, it’s kind of snappy. So I went, “Okay, here’s the dilemma that I have. In order to make this work, I have to ask my audience to be patient.” It’s still not a long movie, it’s 100 minutes … “Trim it down to 85 and we’ll buy it.” “Hmmm, 85 – how much will it get me? Oh, that’s not that much money.” So I’m going to spend all of that to go back in and re-edit and trim it down to your 85, so I just enhance the budget and make what I would think is a worse movie. Wow.
PLUME: That’s Hollywood in a nutshell, though, isn’t it? More money for less.
CRANSTON: I guess, yeah. It truly is. It doesn’t have to be that way, but it seems that that’s the standard, isn’t it?
PLUME: It certainly seems like a set psychology that people buy into, regardless of the logic.
CRANSTON: Yeah, and the foreign films, thank God, give us an opportunity to take our time. But, you know, it’s changing, because you look at now what the Golden Globes and the Academy is recognizing, and that’s smaller films that have something to say, something behind it. Not the explosion films, they’re not going to do it. Not the big extravaganzas, that’s not what holds an audience. It’s how you feel about these people.
PLUME: Well, there definitely is a segmentation to films these days, as to what categories these things automatically get placed in … if it’s over 100 million, it has to be a popcorn film, regardless of the artistic merits.
CRANSTON: Yup. It’s part of the dilemma that we live with.
PLUME: So where does Last Chance stand right now?
CRANSTON: It stands with a man who just had quintuple bypass surgery, my producer’s rep. He has faith in it from a buyer’s standpoint, certainly not from an artistic standpoint. Our first meeting, we were having a lunch meeting – he hadn’t seen the film yet – and he asked me how long it was. I said, “100 minutes,” and he said, “It’s too long.” I said, “How can you say that? You haven’t even seen it yet?” He goes, “It’s just too long. Got to be around 85, 86, up to 90.” So he’s looking at it from a totally business point of view. Instead of getting incensed about it, I thought, “You know, Bryan, maybe this is who you need.” Because I had two other guys before him going, “I love this movie, it really is sweet, it has a message.” And they weren’t able to do anything. So I thought, just go with the guy who’s like totally business on it. So I signed with him and started getting, “It’s too soft, it’s not quite exactly what we’re looking for,” whatever. It’s still out. There’s still about 20 to 25 unanswered inquiries on it. (Note: As mentioned in the intro, Last Chance has been picked up by Showtime and will be airing in the Fall, with a DVD release to follow).
PLUME: Is there any thought to taking it on the festival circuit?
CRANSTON: I took it on the festival circuit the year after I finished it, and it did relatively well. I went to about 12 festivals, something like that. Got about 4 best drama awards – all second tier festivals, for sure. I didn’t get in to Toronto, didn’t get in to Seattle. There’s a lot I did not get into, quite simply because I was on my own without any force behind me, without an ICM or a William Morris, a CAA, without a strong producer’s rep … I’m stuffing the envelopes myself and licking them and trying to hustle up business. Although good feedback, no one was really on the dime. The economy is starting to slip, and it’s like, “Oh man, what’s going on?” Plus, everyone and his brother had a film under his arm, by that time. I certainly wasn’t unique.
PLUME: That’s when the dotcom dollars were still flowing pretty well to finance the stuff that was there.
CRANSTON: Yeah, exactly. But it just wasn’t materializing.
PLUME: Have there been any thoughts of resubmitting?
CRANSTON: To festivals? I don’t know about that. I think that window has closed on me. I received 4 Best Drama awards and I got one place here out in L.A. called the Method Fest – which honors acting – and I got the best director award, and my wife, who’s in it, got the best actress award. I got about a half a dozen audience favorites. They list a group that were the audience’s favorites. So I know what works, I know who this movie appeals to, and it’s women over 30 as my general audience. So we’re looking at possibly Oxygen or Lifetime, or something like that, that might have some interest in handling it.
PLUME: Or just put it out on home video.
CRANSTON: Or put it out on home video – I have an offer to do that, and I was hesitating because this company only deals with the home video market. If I do that, then the possibility of a cable run is diminished, because a company doesn’t want to put their heart and soul into something when they know that the video rights are already gone. So, if that’s where you make the most money, I don’t want to throw that away. So I have to be careful, basically.
PLUME: Well, you certainly got a lot farther than a good chunk of people get. At least you have something in the can.
CRANSTON: Got it in the can, and I’m proud of it, so there we are.
Continued below…
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