Eric Fleming was a successful screenwriter in Hollywood, with a top agent and manager (UTA and 3Arts Entertainment, respectively) and a number of studio and network assignments to his name. But he put all of this aside these past two years to write, direct, and star in his own independently made feature, The Almost Guys, which premiered earlier this year at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colo.
The character-driven comedy features Fleming as a down-on-his-luck repo man who, with his elderly partner (I Spy's Robert Culp), repossesses a car only to find a famous baseball pitcher (James Edson) bound and gagged in the trunk. With the World Series three days away, time is running out to get the player back in the game, and, with double-crossing kidnappers chasing them, they must think fast. To say more would give away key plot points, and as Fleming is currently in talks to secure distribution, perhaps you'll find out what happens next in a theatre near you.
After graduating as an English major from Boston College, Fleming began his career as an actor in New York but was quickly diverted to writing and gigs behind the camera, including a stint as a second AD for filmmaker Hal Hartley. "Rejection as an actor is a lot more personal [than as a writer]," shares Fleming. "I found it really discouraging. At least when you get rejected as a writer, you walk away with the script and you can take it somewhere else. So I put acting on the back burner."
Fleming went on to attend Florida State University's film program, for which he directed an ambitious short, a World War II drama that he and his crew shot aboard the only flying B-29 existing in the world and, with the help of model makers, staged a realistic plane crash. The film (which he did not write) went on to win a number of awards and aired on the Discovery Channel. Likewise, his screenwriting was getting noticed in competitions. In 1994, after graduating, Fleming tried his luck in Hollywood and, like many aspiring writers, found the doors to be closed.
"I was not prepared for how dismal it would be," he recalls with a laugh. "It was just horrible. I had no connections; no one was there to greet me at the border. It was really rough. For three or four years I just worked as a grip. I read scripts for companies. I couldn't get anyone to look at anything."
Then, seemingly out of nowhere, his break presented itself about five years ago.
"A friend of mine was working for a company that made Kingpin, the Farrelly brother's film, and they had some short ends left over. They wanted to do a short film. So I literally wrote it in two hours and faxed it over to them. They thought it was funny, and the next weekend we shot it in two days. A friend of mine, who was a Groundling [a member of the famed Los Angeles improv company], I cast as the lead. We edited it overnight at some TV show that someone was assisting on. Within two weeks we made 20 copies, and the producer gave them to friends who were assistants to producers around town."
The short, Fallen Arches, depicted Ronald McDonald as a washed-up drunk and quickly became an underground hit within the industry. "Within a week and a half I started getting phone calls from everyone. Producers. Agents. Eddie Murphy's brother was one of the first people to call me from New York. It was already in New York! People had been making copies of it. Variety called and did an article on me. I had people coming to my house to sign me as a writer. It was a really strange Hollywood experience. Overnight I had deals and an agent and a manager and a career. It was crazy. I'd go to lunch with Ron Howard. I'd bring a tape with me and say, 'Ron, I brought this tape. You want to see the movie?' He says, 'Oh, I've already seen it. Mel gave me a copy.' Mel Gibson gave him a copy."
However, Fleming would come to appreciate the saying, "Careful what you wish for. You just might get it." He goes on to explain, "I just got thrust into the development world—of signing deals and making money, which was fantastic for a guy who was broke, but it was so frustrating. I was writing for TV. I did three TV pilots, one with Michael Keaton that we wrote together. I was meeting with everyone. I did studio stuff, writing for Paramount … but everything would get shelved. I was attached to a project at United Artists, but they fired the studio head, and that was the end of that. I thought, 'Man, I gotta get something done. I gotta get something in the can. I just can't just keep doing this development stuff.' "
So Fleming wrote a script for no one but himself, The Almost Guys, which he says was particularly inspired by classic character-driven action films of the 1970s, including Michael Cimino's first feature, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, and Sidney Lumet's Dog Day Afternoon. Once the script was complete, Fleming's girlfriend, Andrea Michaud, set out to find financing for the feature. While this was Michaud's first time producing a feature, she had experience working in TV production and development at 20th Century Fox, HBO, DreamWorks, Disney, and Nickelodeon. She had also produced several short films. The biggest obstacle in getting the money together for this project was having Fleming attached as the lead. As he shares, he missed acting and decided to stick to his guns and remain the star of his movie.
Says Fleming, "We just held to it and said, 'This is the way we're going to do it.' I figured if I can do it this time, this may be the only chance to make that kind of demand." Despite the pressure from interested investors to substitute Fleming with a bankable actor, he and Michaud didn't budge and eventually raised enough cash to shoot the film on 35mm, something that Fleming was also insistent on. (Fleming would not reveal the budget, but said that it was "very low.")
In choosing a camera rental house, Fleming and Michaud shopped for the most affordable package. He says, "Although Cathy Pierce at Panavision is very supportive of smaller-budget films, we found a more favorable deal at Hollywood Camera, but I would try Cathy again. Panavision will try to work with your budget. Sometimes they can't compete with smaller rental houses, however. You will do much better if you're shooting when not a lot of films are in production around town; they have more cameras sitting on the shelves. The good thing about working with a company like Panavision is that their cameras are in great shape and better maintained, and they are quick to service a camera if you have problems during your production. For us, it was necessary to find the rock-bottom rental price."
Fleming's DP, Brian Hoodenpyle, shot most of the film using an Arriflex BL-4 camera, "a very heavy camera." For handheld shots, the DP used a lighter Arri 3. Adds Fleming, "We also used a steadicam one day for a fight sequence.… We had a modest lighting package but it did include a couple of HMIs. The most complex lighting was probably traveling in the car at night." The film was shot in an exhaustive 25 days and had numerous locations, something that first-time filmmakers should think hard about, as it makes a production much more complicated.
Fleming and his team shot on Fuji and purchased "re-cans" and short ends from Media Distributors. He adds, "Diane Upson at Kodak is wonderful. She will do everything she can to get you a reasonable rate. Unfortunately our budget was so tight and our location costs continued to rise, so we went with Fuji. Fuji is always cheaper than Kodak but tends to be greener." Fleming and his team processed their film at CFI but found that the lab was too busy to handle their needs on such a tight deadline. So they switched over to a FotoKem (both are in Burbank) when it came time to do their color correction and strike a print. "FotoKem was fantastic. They bent over backwards to get us a timed print for the HBO Comedy Festival. They're also very sensitive to your budget constraints. Good people."
Unfortunately their experience with a post-house—which will go unnamed— was not a positive one. Says Fleming, "They were really cheap. Unfortunately the quality of the work was, too. We rented our AVID from this company [and edited at Fleming's rented production office]. They also did our telecine and opticals. This was a miserable experience across the board. When you are always looking for the best deal, this kind of thing happens."
As for his return to acting, Fleming admits it was a challenge wearing so many different hats, but he has no regrets. "There were times even right up to before production when I thought it would be a lot easier to get someone else to [play the lead], and the script was getting decent response from people, so we probably could have done that but … I don't know, I really had a good time doing this," says the triple-threat, adding, "The thing about writing is, it's so solitary, and I really like being around people and collaborating with them—you don't get to do that in a room, typing. I'm glad I got the chance to [act again] and get in the mix. It's a little scary, because you don't want to look like an egotist who's putting himself in a film, so I tried to be unselfish on the set, as far as giving away lines to other people, and I made sure that my character never got the girl and got his ass kicked in every fight." BSW
The Shooting Star is a column devoted to films in which actors star, as well as write, direct, and/or produce. If you'd like to share information about your project, contact Jamie Painter Young at jyoung@backstage.com.