Lights, Camera, Action

Did you ever wake up one morning and after wobbling into the bathroom to brush your teeth you discover from the mirror-messenger that you have become old?  Yeah, bummer.  Then, after denial and the other steps to acceptance, you start composing your obit, and as the years drift by, you do many, many revisions. One line in mine might read, "...he was one break short of becoming a giant star of the silver screen."

A verse in the Rubaiyat of Omar Kahyyam reads:

"The moving finger writes and having writ,
 Moves on; nor all thy Piety nor Wit
 Shall lure it back to cancel half a line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it."

Yeah, Omar, no do-overs, right?

In the early 1970s Hollywood came to the University of Oregon in Eugene with a plan to make a movie about basketball using the university's iconic MacArthur Court as its principal location for the shoot. After the huge success of the movie, "Easy Rider," one of the emerging stars of that film, Jack Nicholson, got the go-ahead to direct a movie about his favorite sport: basketball.  The movie  titled, "Drive He Said." would use well known actors Bruce Dern  and Karen Black.  As the associate athletic director at the time, I became the liaison between the movie company and the university.

It was the first day of my contact with the movie's production manager. After introductions and make nice chats he said, "So, Bill, have you ever done any acting? You look like our man to play the coaching assistant to our head coach, Bruce Dern."  Bill:{nervously modest) "Well, I did have one of the leads in a high school production of, 'My sister Eileen'".

PM:  "I think you're our man."

Bill:(to himself "YeeHawww")

How to grease the skids for future production needs.

First day on the set I'm seated on the bench next to Bruce Dern. I ask, " Is this going to be a good movie, Bruce?"

Dern: "Bill, this is a piece of shit."

I had one close up scene where I delivered the line, "Nice shooting Bloom!"  Bloom was the young star of the movie who's only future roles would be standing in food lines).  With Nicholson behind the camera, flood lights on me, I delivered the line (without forgetting the words.)

One take. Time is not wasted on scenes that will never make it past the cutting room.

Bruce was not wrong about the movie.  In the Time magazine review of "Drive He Said" the critic summarized, "When future bad movies are made, this may well be the model they choose."

I could'a been a contender, but Jack Nicholson didn't give me the break I needed.