A lot of struggling filmmakers and actors have begun to ask Mars Callahan the same question lately: How'd you do it? Callahan, the 31-year-old director, co-writer, and charismatic star of the feature film Poolhall Junkies, isn't really sure how he managed to rope in three heavyweight actors for his little movie, which took 10 years to get made and another two years to get its theatrical release, this week.
Between completing the film and getting distribution, Callahan struggled further. The film was rejected by the Sundance Film Festival's programmers (shame on them), and it wasn't until online film maven Harry Knowles wrote a gushing review of the film after seeing it at the Las Vegas Film Festival in June, followed by similarly positive reviews in the trades, that the industry took notice of the film and this "new" talent.
"I guess I just never gave up. If anything, that's it: Never, ever give up," said Callahan, who leads a supporting cast that includes Christopher Walken, Chazz Palminteri, and the late Rod Steiger. It's pretty clear what drew these veteran performers to the project: the script, which has the kind of sharp-shooting dialogue and richly etched characters that allow actors to strut their stuff. And, boy, do these actors strut. Poolhall Junkies tells the story of Johnny Doyle, a pool hustler who once had dreams of playing the pro pool circuit but whose seedy manager (Palminteri) has turned him into a con artist. When Johnny realizes years later that his manager has betrayed his trust, Johnny vows to give up the game for good. Of course his retirement doesn't last long.
Met His Match
The making of Poolhall Junkies began in a Los Angeles pool hall when Callahan, then a 19-year-old pool hustler at the top of his game, played a match with a 40-something stranger named Chris Corso. At the time, Callahan considered himself the best pool player on the West Coast. Corso managed to pull off the unthinkable--he out-hustled Callahan.
"Chris was the only person in the entire city who beat me at that time," claimed Callahan, who in addition to shooting a mean game of pool was a working actor since the age of 12, landing guest spots on TV as a teenager, including a recurring part on The Wonder Years.
Callahan and Corso struck up an instant friendship that fateful night, and over the next six months they collaborated on a screenplay that paid homage to their mutual love for the sport. The resulting script mostly sat on production companies' shelves, collecting dust in dead-end option deals.
During the decade it took for Junkies to get made, Callahan began to direct films between small acting gigs (Kalifornia, That Thing You Do!, ER). His directing debut, a 16mm short he wrote and acted in, caught the attention of a producer, who hired Callahan to write and direct a film starring Jason Priestley. (Callahan begged me not to name it, but it's easy to look up on imdb.com.) It wound up a disaster, according to Callahan, who unsuccessfully lobbied to have his name taken off the film after one of the producers picked up a camera and proceeded to re-cast, re-shoot, and re-edit Callahan's version.
Callahan had not intended to direct Poolhall Junkies. For years he was merely hoping for a supporting role in the film. Indeed, he and Corso had written the part of Johnny's younger brother, Danny, as an acting vehicle for Callahan. But so many years had passed that Callahan became too old to portray the 18-year-old Danny (played in the film by Michael Rosenbaum, the young Lex Luthor on WB's Smallville).
"As I got older, the only role left for me to play was either Johnny or [Johnny's poolhall nemesis] Brad," said Callahan, who had come to the conclusion that the only way Poolhall Junkies would ever get made was if he directed it. He also boldly decided that the best person to play Johnny was himself, and Corso couldn't agree more.
When casting the film, Callahan tapped a number of actors he was friends with, including Glenn Plummer as a gang leader, and Rosenbaum, Anson Mount, Phillip Glasser, and Ernie Reyez Jr. as a close-knit group of high school seniors who idolize Johnny. Through a mutual friend, Callahan cast Alison Eastwood as Johnny's girlfriend. He even cast one of his former acting coaches, Michael Aronin, in a small role.
In the part of Brad, Callahan asked Rick Schroder to fill in. The two first met years ago at a final callback for Across the Tracks, at which Callahan was up for the role of Schroder's brother; the director went with a then-unknown Brad Pitt instead. Years later, Callahan was a guest on NYPD Blue, when Schroder was a series regular, and Schroder remembered him. They stayed in touch after that.
The Big Sleep
While it was a challenge to simultaneously direct and star in this film, Callahan found the easiest part of making Poolhall Junkies was acting in it.
How about directing the rest of the cast, though? "You cast the right person in the right role and you let them do what they do best in that role," he said. "I'd like to take credit for all these great performances, but I was dealing with pros. You cannot get better than Christopher Walken [as big-stakes gambler Uncle Mike]. Chazz can do [his] character better than anybody in the business. Steiger [as a tough-as-nails poolhall owner] is a legend, God bless his soul."
Said Callahan, "In the 22nd hour of the day, I'd be just dead on my feet and exhausted, and I'd start to question a particular call. Or [the producers] were telling me that I needed to do something or that I was shooting too much film--all the different constraints, pressures, and obligations that you have as a director on a film. Chazz would just take me aside and say, 'Listen, Mars. You make your movie your way, and if you go down, you go down with your own guns.' "
Walken and Steiger were equally supportive, he said. "Sometimes you hear war stories about people's attitudes on-set and how hard they are to work with. But when Christopher, Chazz, and Rod showed up, these guys gave me all the respect in the world. They never second-guessed me."
My Name Is Mars
Long before becoming a pool hustler, Callahan learned not to give in to intimidation. As he shared, "Intimidation was not a factor where I grew up." As the only white student at gang-ridden Virgil Junior High in L.A.'s Koreatown, Callahan had no choice but to be tough. It didn't help that his birth name was Mars. "I had enough targets on my chest as it was," he said, "but with the name Mars it was brutal. I got in a lot of fights as a kid."
While still in junior high, Callahan transferred to a magnet school for the performing arts. "It was like going to Disneyland," he recalled. His mother, tired of having to be called by the principal when his son got in fights, insisted that her son change his name. "I was a big fan of Gregory Peck when I was a kid," he said, "So I just picked Gregory and I went by Gregory Martin for years." It wasn't until he reached his mid-20s that he returned to using his real name.
Callahan wanted to act for as long as he can remember. At the age of 11, he began to sift through his neighbors' subscription to Drama-Logue, and at 12 he posed as his own agent and conned his way into an audition posted in the paper's casting section--and got the part.
"It was a play called Holy Ghost by Romulus Linney. It played at the McCadden Place Theatre. It was this amazing show with an amazing cast, and these actors all took me under their wing and taught me how to act. The show kept getting extended, and then one night an agent came to the show and saw me and said, 'You want an agent, kid?' He sent me out on an audition, and a couple of auditions later I booked a job, and the rest is history."
Callahan spent the next 17 years honing his craft, preparing for his first starring role in Poolhall Junkies at the age of 29. If there is a lesson to be learned in this actor's story of perseverance it is that when given the opportunity to shine, Callahan was ready.
He advised Back Stage West's readers, "The main thing is to always be pro-active. An actor acts. They don't sit around at the Coffee Bean talking about how they're going to be a movie star someday. You want to be an actor? OK, how many monologues do you have memorized? Can you do something from Tennessee Williams? Can you do something from Shakespeare? How many accents can you do? Can you sing and dance?
"Utilize your instrument. Work at it. You've got to be out there doing something all the time. Write a one-man show. Do a play. Go do summer stock. Work begets work. The more you hone your craft, you work at yourself. When you walk in the room and you've been doing it every day, you're not nervous. You're not intimidated. You've paid your dues.
"But the thing is that many actors don't want to put in the hard work. They don't want to be actors. They want to be movie stars."
Callahan may very well wind up a movie star, but right now he's just concentrating on making another movie with Corso. They recently finished their second script, Big Bank Hank, which Callahan described as "a heist movie like you've never seen done before." Callahan hopes to direct--and, yes, there are a couple characters in it that he'd be perfect to play. BSW
