Dan O'Brien

Then what...?
I worked my way through school by working on radio stations as a DJ or news announcer and was from time-to-time a projectionist at a 24-hour movie house downtown.  The school had a TV studio and had a heavy schedule of televised undergraduate classes.  These weren’t the camera stuck in the classroom ceiling-type things that schools do today.  These were in-studio, multi-camera, fully scripted deals with props and graphics.

When I graduated and came back home in 1966, Milt had signed on WDCA-TV, Channel 20 in Washington, D.C.  I got a summer job in the film department as a film editor.  We edited everything: feature films, sports raw footage, commercials, syndicated shows and the one thing you learned to be was efficient and fast.  Quite often I would be madly splicing together Reel 2 of whatever while Reel 1 of whatever was running on the air.

After awhile I became a director primarily on kids’ shows and we began to film contest segments and short features for the kids.  That’s my introduction to film.

I was recently in Washington, D.C. and by happenstance heard a radio call-in show the topic of which was people who were, as kids, participants in kids’ TV shows or on-air contests.  It was amazing to hear how detailed people’s memories were about incidental things that happened some years ago.  The positive effect these little shows had on their school spirit and personal self esteem was far beyond anything I had ever imagined.  I’ve won Ad Club and local Emmy awards but none of them would match the satisfaction I felt listening to that radio show.

What was your first job on a set?
My first job on a film set was as a director.  I know that sounds crazy to today’s up-and-comers.  Most people at that time started in film and then transitioned into television, if they transitioned at all.  TV was considered a step down from film for a long time but it was a great way to learn composition, montage and other skills that would make the transition into film quite easy.  It required a great deal of discipline because almost all of it was live and you had to learn to visualize a script and make corrections while you were on the air. 

Nobody had the time to storyboard anything and have multiple read-through sessions.  You usually had four days with one afternoon of “hot” [with cameras] rehearsal and then you just went.  A well-written history of this sort of production can be found in the various memoirs written about Your Show of Shows including the Mel Brooks movie My Favorite Year and Neil Simon’s play, Laughter on the 23rd Floor.

What other jobs have you done on film?
There are very few jobs that I haven’t done at one time or the other and with varying degrees of success.  One of the great benefits of independent production at the time was that those guys were always short-handed so I learned by volunteering and actually doing various things and finding out whether I had a knack for it.  I rigged lights, did continuity, dressed sets, loaded and unloaded film and sat at the film lab watching answer prints spool out.  I think that experience was invaluable to my skills as a director.  I knew what was possible because I had done it myself.  Those positions are usually highly unionized now and so you have a little less flexibility but there are still independents that will let you learn and experience the trades.  In my case, producing, directing and writing were my strengths and so I went with that.

Have you ever wanted to get out of the business?
Yes, every time I started a new project.

I’m kidding about that.  I did get out of the business and for reasons that I think will strike a chord with a lot of people.  To understand my mindset, you’re going to need a little bit of history.  Starting around 1980 with the Reagan Administration, the FCC came under the control of an ideologue named Mark Fowler.  In his 1958 speech to the Radio and Television News Directors’ Association, Edward R. Murrow said the following:

This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box. There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought against ignorance, intolerance and indifference. This weapon of television could be useful.

Mark Fowler, on the other hand, declared the TV in the living room “no different than a toaster or any other household appliance.”  He then went on to deregulate the medium, increasing the number stations that could be owned by a single company and a whole bunch of other limitations such as the currently-controversial Fairness Doctrine, the Prime-Time Access Rule and the Financial Interest and Syndication Rules all culminating in the Communications Act of 1996 which pretty much deregulated everything else.

Well, the fast-buck artists came into broadcasting like a tsunami.  Stations and even networks were being bought and sold like property in a Monopoly game and anything that was locally produced was simply an expense to be eliminated.  I enjoy working in an environment that’s demanding and nurturing but I wound up in a series of positions where I was repeatedly teaching the very basics of the business to hot-shot entrepreneurs who could care less, made a hell of a lot more money than I did and just wanted to flip the station and then go lease boxcars or trade metal futures.  Sound familiar?

It was the day that the station owner came in with a bunch of VHS tapes that he had rented at Blockbuster.  He announced that these movies were much newer and better than the ones the station had under license and he was going to start airing them.  Why were we so stupid that we would license movies for thousand of dollars when we could just rent better ones for $3.99?  I had just started a dissertation on Copyright 101 and licensing when I was informed that I wasn’t a “team player.”  I had never experienced the phenomenon “seeing red” before but that day at that hour in that conference room I “saw red.”  I told the guy that his idea was “a wonderful approach” and I wished him and his “team” good luck in court and I walked out.  As Howard Beale said in Patty Chayefsky’s Network, “I just ran out of bull***t.” 

Whenever you work in an organization there’s always a certain amount of obsequiousness, politics, ass-kissing and the like because the bottom line is that there’s a check at the end of the week and you’ve got a spouse or family depending on you bringing home the bacon.  We all know people who excel at politics and ass-kissing and they can be very successful in organizations.  More often than not, ass-kissing is their only real skill.  At the same time, there’s the question of integrity, personal and professional, and how much can you compromise before you lose your mind.  It’s a different answer for everybody.

Incidentally, today’s aspiring movie and TV people could benefit from reading Ed Murrow’s speech of 50 years ago.  It can be found at http://www.rtnda.org/pages/media_items/edward-r.-murrow-speech998.php or you can screen George Clooney’s wonderful Good Night and Good Luck where David Strathairn plays Ed Murrow giving that speech.

I didn’t really get out of the business entirely but I went to law school at night and became a lawyer in the entertainment industry.

If you knew then what you know now, would you have stayed in film?
I don’t think it’s useful to regret decisions or play “what if” with your life.  I have made some career decisions that turned out to be painful even to this day but only because I now have the hindsight to put things into perspective.  You make the best decision you can at the time . . . and then you move on from there.  You never know, really, what’s at the end of the road not traveled.

Tell me about your mentor?
My mentor in the film business was the recently deceased John Frankenheimer.  John had a similar career track, moving from TV to film and he was a highly skilled director with a sense of humor and a man’s man.  I found him in a very odd way.  Early in my career I was being considered for a directing job by a major production company.  I was fairly young and the guy I interviewed with said he really wanted someone with more experience.  He wanted “somebody like John Frankenheimer!”  Now this job was crap and the money was peanuts.  Frankenheimer was directing features and had just finished Grand Prix with James Garner, Eva Marie Saint and Yves Montand.  This was a Super Panavision 70 movie with 70mm six-track sound and the likelihood of him being interested in the job I was up for was zero.

So, I wrote John Frankenheimer a letter and told him that this job was available and what the pay was and if he wanted the job he should contact the guy I interviewed with ‘cause the guy really wanted him.  However, if he wasn’t interested, would he please let me know?  John wrote me back a personal letter from Budapest, Hungary and said that he was already committed to film The Fixer and that I should pursue the job with his recommendation . . . or a job in comedy writing.  I did both.

One night I was driving home late and John was a guest on Larry King’s radio show.  When I got home I called in and got the opportunity to thank him publicly for all the help he had given me.  I really felt good about that.

I was quite moved recently, and not long before his death, to see a profile of him on The Directors series that runs on some obscure cable channel.  He lived seemingly a charmed life going from one big deal project to the next.  In his profile, however, he discusses very candidly his dry periods, self-doubt, professional loneliness and career misfires.  You can see the pain in his face and hear it in his voice.  A number of these profiles in this series have big-name directors recounting painful periods and bad experiences in their personal and professional life and I think it would be worthwhile for young aspiring filmmakers to screen these in order to ground themselves in reality that it’s not all cake and Chardonnay.

Any advice for the thousands of new filmmakers who graduate from film school every year?
Not really.  They’ve just been robbed!  After working with a number of recent graduates from various film schools, I truly wonder who’s teaching what in film schools today.  Not to be judgmental, but the few instructors that I’ve met in my opinion have no business teaching anybody.  The basics remain the same.  “Filmmaker” is just a fancy term for “Shanachie,” the English translation of the ancient Gaelic word for “storyteller.”  You need to know how to recognize good writing, how to motivate and inspire your cast and your crew.  You have a professional obligation to your cast, your crew and your audience to do the best you can with what you have to work with.

Now that cheap equipment lets anyone make a movie, how has the field changed?
Well, everybody can buy a pencil and a pad of paper but not everybody is Dan Brown or Steven King, if you get my drift.  The industry is always changing.  There was the studio system; then the influence of “foreign” films and the auteur theory; then the rise of the independents and so on.  Yes you can use a Panasonic high-def video camera that you can hang on your belt instead of a Mitchell 65mm with anamorphic lenses and video assist on a Chapman crane but so what?  That’s not really where the money goes, is it?  You can make small personal films that are low budget, easier to edit and can be shown on a big screen but where are you gong to show it?  The financing and distribution systems haven’t adapted to the small film. 

The real revolution will come when it becomes possible to distribute first-run through Netflix or through video streaming once the problems of compensation and anti-piracy get worked out.  Once you can bypass the gatekeepers of the theatre chains and TV networks, everything will start to match up.  Then it’s a matter of talent and, of course, luck and connections.

What was your most recent film project?
My most recent film project was a long-form music video about which the less said the better.  It turned out O.K. but it lacked any personal satisfaction because of the constant internecine off-set power struggles involved.

What’s your next project?
My next project as a producer is still under wraps.  It’s a series of short documentaries filmed on location about lifestyle changes in the 21st Century and how to cope with them.  I’m also writing a screenplay based on a short story of mine.

What was the worst thing that ever happened on a movie?
I’ve been very fortunate so far.  I would like to have back the day that a grip drove a golf cart with a lot of equipment including a six-foot tripod strapped to the back through a five-foot gate and then off a dock into a lake.  They said I would laugh about that someday but that day has yet to arrive.

Any regrets that you became a filmmaker?
Again, regret is not a very useful emotion.  My career has allowed me to meet interesting people and go to awesome places I would never have been able to do otherwise.  It has also been a source of great frustration and loss.  On the whole, I think it comes out to the positive.  I was in an industry in the right place at the right time and I was swept up in it.  Times are different now.  People are different now, too.  They’re much more cynical and self-indulgent but that’s to be expected in cynical and self-indulgent times.

Which film of yours is your favorite?
My live-to-tape production of J.B. by Archibald MacLeish.  It was my first major project and it turned out very well.

If you could do one thing over again, what would it be…?
I would take the job at Universal and I would apologize to Hal.