Category Archives: Eulogies and Obituaries

Carl Weathers is Also Dead

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He played Apollo Creed in the Rocky movies. He was also a guest star on an episode of Danger Bay which I directed. As a courtesy, I met him when he arrived at the Vancouver airport. He made it very clear that we were not going to be friends. He wasn’t happy to be doing a guest appearance in “Danger Bay” and I remember him saying something about only doing it to get a new television set.

I escorted Mr. Weathers to the registration desk of the Bayshore Inn and asked the desk clerk if she had a room for him. “It’s a suite, isn’t it,” he said, in a tone that implied it bloody well better be a suite.

“Is it a suite?” I asked, and was relieved to learn that it was.

The next morning on set, I watched him put a gold ring in his nose. This is not something that made me happy, and, as the director, I suppose I could have told him that this wasn’t in the style of the show. But I knew what he was doing. He was making a distinction between his character in this guest appearance and his character as the helicopter pilot in Magnum PI. And who was I to tell a black man what his culture was about. Also, this was still in the days when Donnelly Rhodes was doing what he called “Breaking in a new director.” I couldn’t make a decision without Donnelly raising an objection and suggesting an alternative, to the point where I was convinced he was trying to see if he could get me mad enough to hit him. He would have liked that. Nothing Donnelly liked better than a fight. He and Weathers we getting along gang busters, laughing and joking like old frat mates. I was intimidated and felt out gunned.

Thinking back on this I now realize that Carl Weathers gave me a gift. Until this happened I taken the role of director on episodic television with the same attitude I took to directing a feature, the assumption that the director is the authority on set and gets to call the shots when it comes to the everything the audience is going to see. I was comfortable with that. I expected my decisions to carry the authority of the director, and was happy to stand alone in that position. But this doesn’t work on episodic TV. I should have been on the phone to the line producer and requested his presence on set. I needed backup, but didn’t know it. So I ignored the ring in the nose and we shot the scenes.

When the brass saw the dailies, the shit really hit the fan. Every black father or mother in America was going to call the network to complain that their kid wants a ring in his nose like Carl Weathers has. Who is this Canadian director? What kind of idiot is he?

I had a three show contract on “Danger Bay”. The Disney brass wanted to cancel my next two shows. I’m pretty sure the only reason they didn’t was that the show had a tight budget and they didn’t want to pay me not to direct.

In the final scene of that episode, Donnelly Rhodes says goodbye to Carl Weathers and sends him back to his job in Africa, trying to control the trade in endangered species hides. I suggested that they should hug. That was too gay for Mr. Weathers. We settled on a manly handshake.

Carl Weathers and I did not become friends, but I do appreciate the contribution he made to my education as an episodic television director. It took a couple more hard lessons before I took this one to heart. Some might say I’m a slow learner and never did internalize this lesson until now, looking back at my career from the safety of retirement.

To any aspiring TV directors that might be reading this I will add this: Pay attention to the power and the money. Form relationships with the people who can give you work. Just being a good director isn’t enough.

Norman Jewison is Dead at 97.

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But what a legacy he leaves behind. Norman directed a lot of fluff and schlock, starting with his breakthrough journeyman work on Pillow Talk with Rock Hudson and Doris Day as he moved from directing Canadian television to Hollywood in 1959. By the time I met him in 1982 he had a filmography full of important classics – “Fiddler on the Roof”, “Jesus Christ Super Star”, “Moon struck” and “In the Heat of the Night” to name just a few. His eclectic list of movie titles, with romantic comedy scattered in to social commentary, received 46 Academy Award nominations and won 12 Oscars.

A very much younger Zale Dalen with Norman on the set of “Best Friends”, staring Burt Reynolds and Goldie Hawn, romantic comedy fluff at its finest. In this photograph he’s showing me the difference between planning a television shoot and planning a feature film. According to Norman, what I was doing was television – laying out camera positions and blocking for the actors. A feature film director works in images, story boards, and planned transitions. I’m afraid I could never catch on to this approach. The images were in my head and the planning went from my head straight into the viewfinder thence into the camera. But sometimes I would adopt a combination derived from Norman’s kind lesson, but usually my planning involved camera positions and blocking, with sometimes lens notations thrown in.

Norman was very kind to me. I don’t think he was please when I told him I was leaving before his shoot was finished. I had to get back to Toronto to direct an episode of “For the Record” an anthology drama series for CBC television, an opportunity I wasn’t about to pass up, not even to sit at the feet of the master.

Walking the beach at Malabu, just outside Norman’s home there, he told me about his deal with the major for “Jesus Christ Superstar”. He’d seen the stage version in London and purchased the rights to make the movie, but he wanted a gross deal. That would mean that he got a percentage of the returns from first dollar, before the studio subtracted their expenses and worked their accountant magic on the returns, famously charging every production for every pencil the studio used. A net returns deal meant that the director and the backers wouldn’t see a penny, even if the film made millions at the box office. But there was no way the studio would agree to a gross deal for above the line participants. It just wasn’t going to happen. At that time, however, the studio considered returns from record sales to be small change, not worth fighting over. So they compromised by giving Norman Jewison a gross deal on the record sales.
I had that album. So did many of my friends. A gross deal on the sale of “Jesus Christ Superstar” had to be worth millions. That alone made Norman a happy, and very wealthy, man.

For this Canadian boy who had never seen an A list director with an A list cast and crew at work, the shear luxury of the production was astonishing. I’d seen well stocked craft services snack tables, and eaten from gourmet quality craft services food trucks, but this was a whole different level. For example: one morning Norman announced to everybody, “Hey folks, we were all out late last night and we’re not really firing on all cylinders this morning. Let’s call it a day and come back refreshed tomorrow.” For me that was a shock. Any production I had ever worked was managed people schooled in Frank Taylor style time and motion efficiency expectations. Getting the shots in the can was everything. The schedule was always squeaky tight and taking a break that wasn’t absolutely necessary just didn’t fit in the shooting board. This was pure luxury.
And then there was the private nurse Burt Reynolds requested. She was bored stiff and spent her time handing out vitamins and supplements, but she was there at a good salary just because Burt, or somebody else, might need medical attention Again, pure luxury. It was another way of doing business at the top of the food chain.

I was also impressed by the efficiency with which Norman worked. He only shot what he needed to make the film, working calmly and smiling with quiet dignity even when tested by the oversized egos of his stars. I immediately lost any desire to hang out with those stars, or be their friend. I had arranged a special screening of “The Hounds of Notre Dame”, my second feature, for Burt Reynolds because I’d been told that he had his own distribution company. The day after the screening I asked him what he thought. “We’ll talk.” he said. I learned that in Hollywood “We’ll talk” means “We won’t talk.” I had already learned that “Trust me.” in Hollywood means “Fuck you.”

Goldie Hawn bit my head off, figuratively speaking, when I tried to introduce myself. I suppose I had chosen a bad time to approach her, but still… Not my kind of people.

Dead at 97, Norman Jewison had a good run. Still, he died too young.