Episode 747: Scarecrow in a Garden of Cucumber (1972)

Oh Gie is boot it show Die? People say good money to see this movie. When they go out to a theater. They want cold sodas, hot popcorn, and no monsters. In the protection booth, everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring.

Got it off, Ody, We've given you everything you've ever want? How can you do this to work? Doctor Nighthouse, your own car, swimming pool? What more do you want? I want to be a star?

Hello, Holy, then I ain't going to meet a real man. Richard Nixon is a lesbian. I didn't know what. Welcome to the Projection Booth. I'm your host, Mike White.

Join me once again as Miss Rain Alexander Hello, also joining us for the first time as Miss Elizabeth Brashall Anyware. We wrap up our month discussing hard to find, lost and underseen films with a discussion of Scarecrow in a Garden of Cucumbers. This is one of the few success stories we have this month, as Scarecrow was thought to have been lost for many years, but has since been found and restored and will hopefully be available on Blu Ray in June of this year. Scarecrow is the story of Eve Harrington played by Hollywoodlawn, a young woman from Kansas who comes to the big city and encounters a whole lot of unusual characters who, like Eve, share names with other film characters. I'm not sure if we can spoil this film via our discussion, but we sure are going to try so.

If you don't want anything to ruin, turn off the podcast and track down the movie. We will still be here eating ice cream rain Was this the first time watch for you? It was. I hadn't really even paid attention to its existence until you brought it up today. I'm still singing songs from it in my head, like It's I will Lack successively in the coming minutes on this podcast.

And Elizabeth, I know this wasn't a first time watching for you. When was the first time you saw this? The first time I saw this film was three or four years ago at this point. There's a film that I've been aware of for a long time. I think, either through Hollywood Blawn's memoir Low Life and High Heels, or just researching her and blos films in general.

A friend of. Mine was able to get a video transfer that was done at some point in the eighties and snuck it to me. When I watched it, it was like, Hollywood, Liwn is wonderful, Tali Brown is wonderful. I don't know about the rest of the movie, but I think that was mostly just because of the poor quality. And then when I finally got a chance to show the restoration, I did a screening of it in early twenty twenty three at Alma and Austin.

That was when I really fully clicked with me and I realized just how wonderful the film is and how much it plays with an audience, even now, all these years later. It's a really unusual film. It's interesting that Kelly Brown is in this because it reminds me of another film I think, probably the only other thing that I've seen her in. I know she was in a few things, but it reminds me a lot of brand X, the Chamberlain film, and just that kind of out there stream of consciousness feel to it. Though I have to say that I think Scarecrow is definitely much more structured film, and I don't know, it's fun and this.

Movie is so much fun. Like you talked about watching it with an audience, I can't even imagine watching this with an audience because just in my own living room. I was like, Wow, this is great. There's some really good jokes in there, and I could see had I seen this movie twenty thirty years ago, I'd probably be quoting from it very regularly, just because there are a lot of great lines to this one. Yeah, I agree with that.

I really want to see this in a group setting. There's so much going on in many of the frames too, that I was glad to be able to watch it a couple of times before we got to record this podcast, because there's I mean definitely things I missed the first time that I had to stop and rewind a little bit. There's a sequence where our heroin is looking for a roommate and she ends up in one of the possible rooms and the insufferable roommate steeds her a milk bone dog biscuit. Oh my god, is that a milk bone dog biscuit? Box freeze rewind and you know, just that little touch is I mean, it's not even acknowledged that it's a dog biscuit.

Right. Yeah. There's a lot of stuff just going on behind the scenes with this one, just. A lot of stuff. It's just a lot of odd things that it's doing.

You mentioned the roommates. The twins are great, and just how they turn out to be like total manhunters, the way that they're completing each other's sentences and everything. It's like, Okay, I didn't expect this. They just seemed like such wholesome American girls, but then they end up being like vicious man haters. Do you think maybe you can help me find a nice annoyingly.

Oh man, men are nothing but little boys who's. Never grown up. They're selfish, evil, egotistical, all sex crazy and repressed. Man this day and age, we are strengthening ourselves so we can do the work any ten men people are handed to quite an idea and join us in Wounds Women Over then Rain Sunshine. Yeah.

I think it's a film that's just so over eager to please that it just minds every possible joke, even if it's not funny. But because it's going at such a rapid pace, even when they're not landing, they're also landing a split second later, So it just seems like the entire movie is walldwall funny, even if it's very up and down at points, And it's something where I just wonder how it originally was envisioned because like so many of the guys, like the whole thing was missus Miniver who's calling her throughout the film, or the thing with the sausage order or the ice cream. Cone jokes, or like what was all that meant to be? And like how was this fixton post in a way that just makes adds this layer of psychic disorientation to it that makes it so much more enjoyable than it probably was like initially intended to be.

Brand Nicks reminded me of something very stream of consciousness, though I know it probably wasn't. It just feels like all of these pieces are interconnected. Like you mentioned the ice cream thing, and at first I didn't even realize that was going to be a running joke, but then it ended up being a running joke and it just keeps coming back and they keep playing with it. At first, I was just like, Okay, this is going to be. A young girl comes to the big city and quickly gets disillusioned, Like there's the guy, can't remember if he brings up her bags or no.

He knocks on her door very soon after she arrives, and she goes to the Chelsea hotel after she's driven there by a foul talking nun who is fantastic. But the guy who comes in, he's just like, oh, yeah, I'm looking for the five ninety five blowjob. And I was like, oh, geez, here we go. Oh she's going to be, you know, tempted into this life of prostitute. No, no, she's not going to be tempted into a life of prostitution.

She's just going to. Find out who in this city gives five ninety five blow jobs. That happens to be one of her best friends apparently. And then it becomes the quest for the roommate pretty soon after that, and that really takes up the majority of the film, like I think, all the way up until the end, when she finally finds an old roommate. Who is that her brother Joe Buck the roommate's brother, the one who reminds me of Natasha from right right.

Yeah, they're game ballwinkle Yeah. And then right towards the end, it's like, oh, no, I'm done with this city. I'm going to Hollywood. The city isn't good enough for me. But along the way, it just the base of everything.

It never really takes a break which I really appreciate. I mean, it does bring to mind a question why didn't she go to Hollywood in the first place. Maybe her pantsless parents couldn't have handled that. Really, that's the first joke of the movie, right when her parents around and walk away and neither one of them are wearing chants. And I will say, the original version of the film that I saw all however, many years ago, which is like a video transfer, was so bad you couldn't even make out the fact that they're not wearing pants, So like, the quality was so bad that the jokes weren't even there.

What I love about cook portrayal, like, she really nails this ingenu thing in a wave. It is very broad, very slapsticky, but also it's almost believable even though we all were we as a wise audience, you're seeing Hollywood law. We know she's seen some things as the actual human being, but you know she's got this joke early on about the Chelsea Hotel. Sounds nice, right, So she gets a room at the Chelsea Hotel, which apparently many people haven't heard of. In the film, which is also very funny, is immediately, as you say, got commissioned for fullatio from five to ninety five, which okay, five ninety like there's one with tax is this we're saying you're five ninety five?

She says no, she slams the door. She's not going to do it. And then within two or three more minutes she you know, we repeat a juke, but she asks what's fellatio? And it's like it's a line. The first time that I watched it, I do not catch that at all.

Like the second time, I'm like, oh my god, she like actually has no idea. And I mean, as something of a horn fit a genue myself in my young years, how many times that I hadn't seen in my own life where that feels very re isn't it. I do want to note that within place in five ninety five is about forty five dollars, still a bargain. Yeah, Hollywood. Lawn's performance in this is just amazing.

She pulls these faces, like when she's in the back of that cab and you just see all of the expressions on her face. When the elevator doors open and there's the guy with the gas mask and those crazy sleeves, I don't know what's going on with that guy's sleeves. He looks like he's just from a rocket ship or something. And you see her as soon as the door's open, and she's got this great scared look on her face, like super broad. It's almost like she's acting in a silent movie, is how broad her face gets sometimes with some of these looks, or like when somebody calls up and she doesn't recognize the voice and has these big eyes and stuff.

I love the physicality of her performance too, where running across the street. There's a scene later on where she's running and trying to find a phone booth and she just keeps going from phone booth to phone booth. And she's got I mean, she's got decent legs and everything, but the way she runs, she looks like she's a chicken or something. And I'm just like, the. Physicality that you are able to pull off is really nice.

She's the translute seal ball. That doesn't say bugs funny, but I think both ways work also. I think trans Blundson bugs onunny is kind of an oxymoron me. Yeah, what do y'all think of those scenes where I think it happened like two or three times in the movie where the movie will just be playing and then it feels like we go into a flashback or a dream. I'm not exactly sure what it is.

There's one point where she's on the phone and she I guess it's a fantasy, but it also kind of looks like a flashback to her getting off of the bus and then all of these people on these stairs and you have these three kind of heavy women that all take off their skirts. They've got these like pink skirts underneath, and that kind of stuff happens at least two or three times where we just kind of move into these sequences and she'll still be talking over them, so it's not like she's remember what do you make of those? No, That's what I was kind of saying, Like I was wondering if that was stuff that just didn't work and it was just their way of fixing it in post or you know, how do we either make time or how do we get this stuff in in a way where it makes sense?

Question Mark, I don't know, it's such a weird narrative thing to do, it. Is, but I also think this really settled in with the black and white the film Secrets, where you know, she imagines herself as a Shirley Temple lesque character walking up the stairs, which is actually just a very touching and you know, just a kind of a raw moment, like a very unexpectedly raw moment in this very broad and goofy film. But I mean, I think, you know, she's dealing with trauma here, like she's reflecting on traumas the sequence to Lily Tomlin makes a off camera appearance doing her operator character that we all became familiar with later. You know, that whole. Sequence, which is kind of this goofun this payphone idea that they're making a joke out of, is backed by arguably, as you know, sexual assault, which is kind of misty and hard to discern why it's coming up, but it's clearly this internal experience.

And I mean, I think that if we look at it from the strict narrative of the film, these are the things that she's thinking about why New York is not place for her. She's got to go somewhere else. I mean, I think this is how they all link together, these internal dialogues or internal monologues. I guess I should say that she's experiencing and maybe even just a little bit of disassociation and like who amongst us, especially if your trans don't have a really deep familiarity with dissociation. Yeah, I was trying to remember the sexual salt part of it, because I definitely remember the little girl that's going in there?

Is that also the same sequence where it's the musical number or that's all black and white. That's at the end of the acting school sequence. Hepia sequence is the song that's sung by Bette Midler, who I believe things multiple songs in the films. She does the title theme and Balini apps. That's right, it's called Strawberries or something.

I think Strawberry is like back in line. It's pretty amazing just that it was Bette Midler doing these songs all the way back then. You know, this is really because I'm trying to remember when her first album came out. I want to say it was seventy two as well, But she was so involved in all these different scenes, and especially like the artists scene. I mean, when I was younger, it seems so strange to me that she ended up mirroring one of the Kipper kids, and I was like, well, that's such a weird combination.

You know, because I'm thinking of Bette Midler, like when Beneath My Wings Bet Midler, rather than Divide Miss m type Bete Midler, where I'm like, oh, okay, that makes more sense, like really being into that, like Mondo New York type scene, I'm like, all right, I get this now. She came up performing in the bath houses along with Barry Manhelo and a lot of others. Looks like that. I can't get over how good this movie looks. It is astounding.

I mean, Elizabeth, you talked about how seeing it in that shitty VHS version, just how much you were missing, And I understand because I've seen a lot of bad VHS transfers over the year. There's a lot of bootleg stuff that you're just like, oh my god. You know, I can barely make out the image to this, But this restored version of it just looks so good. And more than that, it sounds amazing. And those songs that we hear throughout, especially the one that gets repeated a few times where it's bet and I can't remember the name of the singer, but a male singer going back and forth.

Those are amazing sequences. And yeah, the sound and during that part, and I love that I could hear every bit of dialogue. Like you said, Rain, I had to go back and watch it a couple of times, just because the jokes do come fast and furious. I'm like, Okay, I missed that one before, I missed that one before. I almost you know, I'm.

Excited to buy the Blu ray of this because I'm hoping there's some subtitle tracks on here, because that's how I end up watching most of my movies these days, because I miss so much. Yeah, and I will say too if you ever get a chance to see it in the theater. The Academy to strike a brand new I believe all photochemical thirty five milimeters print, so that exists as well. But yeah, I mean it's such a beautifully shot film. I think it's an early work by Paul Glickman, who went on to work with Larry Cohen very heavily, along with Radley Metzker.

So I feel like you kind of get like the gorilla shooting style of Larry Cohen and then also just the lessness and the production design and overload of like Radley Metsker in the film. Yeah, like those scenes in Central Park. It's such a nice time capsule of what Central Park looked like back then. But then yeah, seeing it with the beautiful colors, I mean, those greens and everything just really stand out, and it feels like we just filmed this yesterday and everybody looks. Like they're having so much fun.

I mean, it was such a joy to rewatch because of that, where I you know, how many films do I see now that look like they're actually fun to make? I don't feel like that exists so much in current films, and it made me yearn for that. It's what gives me so much joy watching films from this time period, even when their lower budget, when they've got the problems that come along with a lower budget, they're. Trying some real different stuff. You know.

I've mentioned CPA, tone, black and white. We've talked about musical sequences. I mean, even like the introduction of Tally Brown is Mary Poppins, The way she's being carried across by all those men and the way she comes down the stairs and all that. I mean, it's like taking you know, a musical number and then slowing it down and just showing like how much fun again, Like you said, Rain, how much fun? She's having And yeah, everybody seems to be just really tuned into this.

Everyone who is in this movie is just acting. At the storm. And I love this whole like melodramatic way that they approach everything. And then just like the little stupid stuff like how our friend so she's Eve, Then who's the other one on Margo Channing? How she invites her out.

To Central Park to for a boat ride and then makes me Eve, you know, row the boat. It's just like she can't catch a break, you know, she just constantly is like the butt of the joke. It's because she's dresses like she watches Pat Boon records. One of the things that I loved about the Mary Poppins character, well, okay, a couple. One of them is that she's the villain, right, seemingly one of the villains, I guess, so Mary Poppins as a villain, but she really prefigures Queen carl Wata from the John Waters universe in so many ways, and it's impossible for me to separate the two of them.

You know, there's there's so much of that same vibe. You know, maybe they would be rival queens and some kind of whatever that version of Manhattan is versus Mortville. I think that would be a movie I would love to see. It's like a Man versus Batman, but a movie I actually want to see. I mean, I feel like, as someone who lives in New York, I feel like anyone involved in housing is the old mcdylan.

So I guess he's not technically a landlord, but he is a broker. One and a purveyor of computer dating with her computer system named Heathcliff. I have to imagine that that's a Heights reference, because it feels like everybody in this movie. I mean, we've mentioned. Eve and Margo and Joe Buck and Mary Poppins, and then at one point Eve is at a party and she gets picked up by a man named rhtt Butler an amazing use of split screen and then just doubles and everything to have Holly playing both of those roles.

And I kept looking for there's one part where they're standing there's a fan in the middle, and it's Holly as rhet on one side and Holly is Eve on the other side. I'm like, I don't see the scene. I imagine it has to be that poll of the fan. But everything looks really nice to me. This is, you know, nineteen seventy two, this was made, and it looks terrific.

Yeah, I agree, And I've been watching this film in this historical moment. For me is amazing because I feel like I'm really in my dual role era. I've seen Sinners twice. I just saw Mickey seventeen. Finally, even the most recent Black Mirror, the final episode of that is a lot of dual roles.

Everybody's doing dual roles now, air acting with each other, you know, with them cells which I'm just I'm. In love with, or our friends Bett Midler and Lily Tomlin both in big Business. I mean, I was gonna say too, going off of what you were saying a few minutes ago. It also does prefigure Divine playing the dual role in Female Trouble. Yeah, and of course, you know, we've got the good jokes in here about the cops, you know, like poor Eve needs some help, and what happens.

She gets tapped by a cop who's just like, oh, I'm about to make my first arrest of the night kind of. I'm like, yeah, cops have always been bastards. Okay, yep, we got that, and then the way that like Ret Butler turns into a werewolf and then comes back later on at the end, and again it's like, Okay, I didn't expect to see this character come back, but sure enough. And then it was so smart because then it's somebody in a mask. We don't have to have Holly in that role.

Again, well, it's interesting. There's that shot in that first sequence where it's like a deep focused shot where you see've Bred in the foreground making the drinks and then Holly in the background, even the background, and it's funny with the quality of the restoration, you can kind of tell that that's clearly a sis woman or someone in a wig playing the Eve character in the background, and then Holly as Rep. Butler in the front. So this is really wonderful, like a genius filmmaking. I would love to know more about Tally Brown because whenever she's on screen, she just shines, and that musical act that she has is just fantastic.

She just seems like she would have been a real powerhouse. Roseadon Brownheim, the great German gay filmmaker, made a documentary in nineteen seventy nine Clued Tally Brown New York and it's a documentary portrait of Tally Brown, but like a documentary portrait of New York and kind of how New York is Tally Brown and Tally Brown is New York. And one of my favorite sequences in the film is it has a couple different sequences with Tally's friends and lovers and acquaintances. And there's this one sequence that's shot at Reno Sweeney, which was a famous cabaret bar in the village of Manhattan, and we see Hollywoodlawn do her cabaret act and then it's just the two of them on stage together talking for about five or ten minutes about how being a Warhol superstar was cool, but you know, no one's gotten any money from it, and how you know, it's just wonderful to seeing them talking.

You know, I guess six or seven years after the making of this film together, neither of them ever really fully made it, but they're kind of enduring. I mean, it's one of the best documentaries I've ever made. But also just that sequence alone, I think it's just really incredible. I'm definitely going to have to check that out. Yeah, I would love to know more about her other than Tally Brown seeing her in a few other things, and you know, especially like said brand X, Sorry keep bringing that one up.

It just feels very like a spiritual cousin to this film. I don't really recognize too many people from the film other than David Margalace, who I mean, he's the guy, surprisingly of all the people that are in this he's the guy that most people will know, and I think most people will know him maybe from Masventur, but definitely from Ghostbusters, where he played the mayor. And as soon as he comes on screen, even though it is what twelve years before Ghostbusters, he just sticks out like a sore thumb to me because I'm just like, oh, I know this face, even with the longer hair and the glasses. As soon as he starts to speak, I'm like, Okay, yeah, this guy I know. And he is fantastic.

His whole acting class is wonderful and just the intensity that he brings to all this and so many silly things happen in this movie, such as the Native American guy who can only say the word how. I can't really do much more. Than that, just playing the typical Native American with the arms crossed and everything and then to find out. I'm trying to remember which actor that is, but he plays what like six roles. In the movie.

I counted eight during the couple credits utility player. And I didn't recognize him from one thing to another. I mean, I recognize the guy who comes to ask for the five ninety five blow job is the same guy as the matre d at the club that Margo's at. But then I think maybe he's supposed to be the same guy because he talks about the blowjob, and I think they have a nickname for Margo that her name is Bargain. I think that, so I'm thinking he's the same dude.

I mean, it's supposed to be the same characters. What I'm trying to say, I. Think if only one of the eight characters ages badly, then I think it's a pretty good batting average. Especially from nineteen seventy two. I mean, we didn't have anybody in blackface, and even.

The Joe buff character. You know this, there's getting back to the heart affected this movie. So we've got sunny Boy Hayes, who is actually a professional wrestler. He's a little person, and we get to see a full wrestling match, right, which is phenomenal. I think it was really thrilling, really great, a great match in of itself.

And you know, his character is Joe Buck, and he's dressed like Joe Buck, so he's got you know, he's pulling off that whole vibe. He's courting our heroin and gets really close that he gets rejected ultimately because she's leaving. They're okay, now I'm a spoyl on the movie. You want to spoil the movie, we're doing it. He gets rejected, but you know there's no obvious bigotry going on here based on his height.

He's not a joke at all, which I thought was great. And of course he gets it like, oh shit, I'm really big rejected here, and you know he SLINKs off and he's bummed out, and of course just like tears at your heart a little bit because you know, he's a good character, right, probably better than the John Voight Joe Bucks. But in the end, right, I think it was so easy for films of this era and of this kind of tone to just be equal opportunity offenders, you know, all this kind of thing. But this movie has so much honesty at its core too, that just makes it work in a way that I really did not expect. Well, the day that they spend out together, that Joe and Eve and then I guess it's Joe's manager and manager's girlfriend.

I guess it is the day that they spend out in New York. A different film technique to use this photo montage with this song going over it, and the montage lasts for a long time, and it just looks like they were having a blast going around the village and it looks maybe like not Little Lialy, but maybe Chinatown and they places, and I'm just like, this looks like a great time. I mean, even when they're in like amongst the meat see you know, I guess it's a slaughterhouse they're in at one point, but they're like, you know, in all these different delis with fish and all this stuff. I'm like, Okay, looks like you guys had a wonderful time. Looks like I would like to be there, Like when they're going down the dock and all kind of marching along with each other and everything.

Because we do eventually go from photos to live action again, I'm like, this looks like you guys had one of the best days in New York you could have had. I just wonder what happened to those slides. Probably in a box someplace, and that they even have title cards on screen, and you know, there's like the opening one, but then during that kind of montage sequence, there's another one that shows up and says one more time. I'm like, that's really nice, you know the again, I can't imagine the joy that you must have had in the theater watching this with a whole group of people. Yeah.

I mean, I think one of the other fascinating things about this film is just that it's made by the director who went on to make the Jaws parody Gums, which is I think surely one of the least erotic films ever made. And it's funny, Like I think there is actually a through line that's another zany comedy. It's another one that's just really, really outrageous. I believe did you cover this on the podcast once. I wanted to watch Gums when we were doing Jaws, but I didn't get around to it.

Gums is about a killer mermaid who is biting the penises off of men swimming in the ocean. The Quinn character is played by brother Theodore, who is a full on Nazi and in real life was a prisoner at a concentration camp and is in the film playing and honest to god Nazi. In the final reel of the film, the characters just all become replaced by puppets for no particular reason. It's a musical songs, and I think the thing that's really funny about Gums Too is that there's a softcore version of it which features cartoons drawn over all of the naughty material. So instead of being a blowdrop at someone's it's a Gums brand toothpaste, or it's a major look like a toothbrush, or there's a crab on top of an underwater scene.

It's the same kind of zany Robert Downey esque humor that you see very much in Scarecrow, but really in a disgusting, knotty way. The filmmaker also produced a film by Howard Goldberg called Apple Pie, which is on twob and I highly recommend checking that out too. It's another one like this that has a really loose, shaggy New York sensibility to it, and it ends with a fifteen minute long street dance scene with original music by Hall and Oates. Is this pre smooth Hall of Oates. Is this like the rougher edge of Hall Oates.

I think this is like pre officially Hollen Oates. This is like the John Hall and Darrel Oates band era Hall and Oates. I think the thing that's exciting to me about a film like Scarecrow is it's the one where if you watch it and you like it, it can really lead you into all these different pasts and places that you never thought you would go into. And you know, from this film, you get into the Jaws porn parody, you get into other New York indies like apple Pie, you get into the Warhol world, you get into Beat Meddler and Lily Tomlin. And all this other stuff.

It's really really fascinating and inspiring and exciting. The title being taken from a verse in Jeremiah, a Bible verse in Jeremiah, which is still a little bit perplexing as much as I've gone back and looked at what's going on here? Why is this the title? But it immediately linked to this other Beat Middler film called The Thorn from right around the same time, which is a lampoon on the Jesus story. And imagine team just from from the Mighty Jumpstones.

This is happening right now, right yeah, just these like goog these goofy religious wampoons that I think we're really emanating from this group of people at this same time in that in the Thorn, that mother plays Mary the Mother of Jesus, and that film ends up being a much more it's more like sketch comedy than Scarecrow is this says suggests that there'd be a lot more religious content to this film than there is. To my mind, we do have Mary Poppins doing kind of a Sherman in Central Park, kind of an extended sermon, and I'm still not entirely sure what this is supposed to say about her. Is she a fake evangelist who's putting on a show, or is there some aspect of like her moralism which is making her like a evil agent within this CD underground.

You know, like both of those realities seem possible to me. What crazy thing about the title is that if you thought Scarecrounder Nickikumbers is a weird title for this film, the original title that it was shot under is the Sliding Pond. We're going to take a break and we'll be back with a pair of interviews. First up, you're going to hear from the author of Love You Medley Hollywoodlawn, Jeff Copeland. After that, you are going to hear from the screenwriter of Scarecrow and Garden of Cucumbers, Sandra Scopatone, and we'll be back with both of those right after these brief messages.

Hello everyone, this is Malcolm McDowell. I just want to say that this is a request to listeners of the Projection Booth podcast to become patrons of the show via Patreon dot com p A T eo n dot com slash Projection Booth. That's pretty simple. I think you can do that. It's a great show and Mike he provides hours of great entertainment.

So now it's time to give back my little drovies. Settle down and take a listen and have a sip of the old Molocco and then. You'll be ready for a little. Of the old in Out, in Out real horror show. Bye bye.

I'm so curious about this new book. Why now, what brought this new one to bear? Hollywood Lawn meant a lot to me because she was the first person in Los Angeles to give me a chance, to give me an opportunity to write. I wrote Love You, Mady Hollywood Lawn because I didn't want to forget all the outrageous absurdity that we experienced. My father had Alzheimer's and I saw what that did to him, and so I just wanted to create a record for myself, just so it was still fresh in my memory.

This was back in twenty sixteen. I had spent thirty years in television and my career was winding down. And I remember sitting in my living room in Los Angeles, and I was just sitting there with a glass of wine and thinking about the last thirty years and all the shows I worked on and all the wonderful celebrities I met, and nothing compared to the magical whirlwind that I experienced with Hollywood Lawn. It was just rich and so much fun, and there was so much joy that I started writing it down. I just started jotting down notes, just random notes, and then when I got to one hundred pages, I thought, well, maybe this would be an interesting magazine article.

But then I got so much going on I thought, well, Jesus Christ, surely this is not a book. What's this going to be a novella? What the hell am I working on our short story? But that just kept pouring out out and then before you know it, I had four hundred pages. Now I should explain that I wrote about one hundred pages back in twenty sixteen, but it wasn't until covid HIT.

I had left Los Angeles. I'd moved back to the boondocks in the Midwest to take care of my parents, and then covid HIT. I moved here in twenty nineteen. Covid HIT shortly after, and I was on lockdown, and that's when I picked it up again. And you know, the world was in a state of chaos.

It seemed everything was just so awful. So I just retreated into the nineteen eighties and I stayed there for a good year. Was all this from memory or had you kept diaries of this? Because the details are fantastic. A lot of the memories were just indelibly burned into my brain because they were so vivid and so colorful.

I mean, I would never forget how I met Hollywood, but I'd never forget the parties we went to once a low life and how yeals came out there were certain things I would never forget. I would never forget the fact that she disappeared and then I had to find an apartment for her. There were just things that were just so crazy. I also had a scrap book filled with pictures. I had like five boxes of archive materials with notes and not really diaries, but receipts from restaurants, from my taxes, mileage logs, cars and letters.

Oddly that like I had written to my great aunt Dorothy, and then after she died, her daughter sent them all back to me. And those were a wealth of material cards that I had sent to my parents that I found when I was liquidating their estate, you know, letters to my sisters with all this information and now basically those served to give me more detail. But overall I pretty much remembered everything. I remember the party we went to where there was another writer, jonesing for the project. There are some scenes like that party scene there.

I can't even say the word algamations. Amalgamations, that's it. It's my side that hadn't speak anyway. Yeah, so I would combine say, three parties into one. That horrible person that approached us and gave us so much attitude was actually at a different party.

There was so much material and it was so fragmented. What I did. I just had to put it into a cohesive structure. And who cares if that asshole was, you know six months later? You know, I just put them up because it just made for a better scene and proved the point that was the night Holly and I bonded, you know, was that that first second part They all blur together.

What is your process when it comes to writing books? Because it sounds like you did a lot of interviews with Holly, had audio tapes of those, but then for this one, you've got your own receipts, like literally your own receipts. But what's kind of your typical method of approaching a project? Forgot to mention, I also have audio tapes of me and Holly working. I have video of his working together, and I have all our audio tapes, well most of them of us working together.

But my process is a real pain in the ass, okay, because writing to me is so arduous. I call myself a rewriter more than I'm a writer. And what I'll do is I'll sit down and I'll just bang out the scene, maybe three or four pages, right, and then I got to go back and I'll go back over that ten times. I mean, I just wrote it an essay for the DVD release of Scarecrow and a Garden of Cucumbers, which we're going to talk about so hard. Thank god they loved it when it was done.

But my thought process is all fucked up. I mean, thoughts come from all different directions and I put them down and they don't make a damn bit of sense. And then I got to restructure them and figure out, well, this is going to go there, and that's going to go there, And what the hell kind of point are you trying to make here? It? What is your overall intent?

What is this paragraph about? That kind of horseshit? Well, you mentioned. Scarecrow, and I told you before we started recording that it's been a minute since I've read Low Life and High Heels. Can you tell me a little bit.

Of where Holly was in her career when that movie came about. Oh, Scarecrow and a Garden of Cucumbers. Oh, yes, we write about it and Low Life. So Holly had finished Women in Revolt and she was hired to do Scarecrow in a Garden of Cucumbers director and the producer really they loved Holly and they felt like she really was the only person who could do that role because she had a sense of vulnerability that I guess a lot of people didn't have or show at that time. When it came to the trans performers, Holly was basically a mess.

I mean, she wasn't grounded. The producer and the director they paid her money to be in the movie, and they got her situated at the Chelsea Hotel so she had a place to live. She had some stability. Because Holly never. Had a home.

She was always CouchSurfing, you know, she was all over the pork and then she was always drinking and then she'd run off and do speed. You know, she was running around with that whole underground theater bunch in New York and she was just unhinged. So they moved to the Chelsea and Holly is thrilled. She's got a party or ass off. They shoot the first scene in a tavern and Holly, you know, there's a lot of waiting around on a movie.

You can have a twelve hour shoot day and you're waiting more for most of it. Well, she got bored. It's a tavern, there's a fully stocked bar, so she starts hitting the bottle. She got totally loaded. And that night when they're driving her home, she freaked out and jumped out of the car into traffic and started sobbing hysterically.

I mean, she was just as good. Bless her right now. The reason why I can tell you all this is because I just read all that material again for my essay, so it's fresh in my head. But and I could see in Scarecrow where she was a little off, because what happened was they realized they had a problem, okay, and it was decided that Holly should move out of the Chelsea because she was partying there too much their friends. She spray painted the terrorist gold.

She was just off the hook, and they moved her in with the screenwriter Sandra Scopitone. Believe that's how you see her name, because they felt, according to Holly, they felt that Sandra would be a good influence on her because Sandra didn't drink. So Holly stayed there and they continued the movie and it all would really smooth after that first episode. But then filming wrapped and Holly moved back to the Chelsea. By this time her young boyfriend Johnny had come back into the scene, and that was just a lot of drama.

Holly God, she's so crazy. So they went back to the Chelsea and they started boozing and balling and blew through all her cash, of course, and then she had to go. I guess she moved to Alphabet City and started, you know, instead of taken acting lessons, she took up heroin. For so long it was impossible to see. Did you have problems when you were doing your own research being able to see everything that she was in?

Oh? Yeah, we couldn't see anything. I mean, the only film that was available that we had access to was Trash. I don't think Women in Revolt was out yet, and if it was, we couldn't get it at the video store. You know, this is free Internet.

You couldn't just go on Amazon and order it. We had to run around and go to the various video stores and Trash was the only one we could find. So yeah, it was a challenge. And that film, as I understand, it was lost in a vault. So very exciting that the Academy chose to restore it.

The stories that you tell in this new book are just amazing, And I can't even imagine how you handled that big of a personality and and that difficult sometimes of a personality. I mean, you're doing things like getting her job, getting her place. You have to find a place that allows pets, because she's got this precious dog that she just gives away at some point and you're like, oh, her. Baby, I know, how do you forget that? Shit?

Like I said, it's like so ingrained in my memory because I really think I was traumatized. If you were the truth. It was such a challenge. I loved Holly dearly when we were working together on a Low Life and High Heels. I considered Holly my best friend very close.

But it didn't come without his challenges. And the biggest challenge was it Holly drank. That was her big vice. She was an alcoholic. She loved white wine, Glenn Allen.

That was the brand that she bought all the time at the West and West Hollywood, the Los Angeles Pavilions, Hancock Park. That's we live close to there, you know, she told me in the book Kuipa say is the only French you needed to know because she loved that that mind, but she couldn't afford it four dollar bottle of jumbo sized bottle of Gwenellen. And to think that you're working a full time job at the same time exactly. And that's what actually made it all so special is because there were just so many crazy like, you know, we ate off an ironing board, We were poor. It was one debacle after another.

And then Holly, you know, she gets her job at Wacko and she's only there a few weeks and decide she's got to go on vacation. It takes off to Europe. I mean it was insane. Yeah, Like I said, you're working full time job, you're getting occasional other gigs. You know, it's writing script here, writing a piece there, and it's just I mean, what happens after that, Like do you blossom?

Do you become like the production assistant to the star, and just like take off from there? Because there's I'll be honest, there's many Jeff Copeland's on IMDb, and I think at least two of them are you. There's one that's me and my credits aren't even complete. I'll tell you what happened is I wound up broke okay on the verge of being penniless, and I had to start all over, right. I was thirty years old, and I wound up working on a PBS series that starred Jeff Gobelin that was called Future Quest, and they needed a receptionist and I landed that job, and I decided that I was going to be the best receptionist they'd ever seen, because you know, I'd worked at Paramount for three years.

I'm not sure if you get that, but I worked her Amount for three years, and I worked my ass off and I couldn't get out of that production assistant Trench. I mean, I was either a production assistant or I was a writer secretary. I didn't want to be a writer secretary. I didn't want to be an assistant. I wanted to be a writer, or at least a producer.

And so I got this job. Thirty years old. I'm at the bottom of the heap once again. I get my job as a receptionist. And the executive producer, Kathleen French said to me three months into my gig, she says, you know you're too smart to be answering phones.

We're going to make your production coordinator. And there was another producer there. Her name was Debbie Reid, and basically Kathleen French and Debbie Reid took me under a wing and they showed me how to coordinate productions all over the world for this high folutant science documentary series, very high quality, and I mean, I'm working with all these brains, these wonderful people, these great producers, award winning ppo. And so what happened was Debbie red landed another series and she took me over to that series, and it was another science series. It was a documentary series for the Discovery Channel.

And so I just kind of like, you know, hopped from being a receptionist to a production coordinator to a production manager. Then I became a segment producer, then a field director, and then a writer producer and then a supervising producer. And it's just it kind of like skyrote, you know, it's kind of like climbed the hard way. I mean, I started the bottom and worked my ass off. It was Tara Sandler and Jennifer Davidson at Pigtown Productions who actually gave me the opportunity to write.

They were my first writing job I was working on. It was a travel show, two travel shows for the Learning Channel. This is back when the Learning Channel was actually about learning only TV hadn't come in yet. It was on the horizon, but it hadn't taken over like it has now. You know, back then everything was scripted.

I mean, you didn't sleep your way to the top, Jeff, Come. On, I know I should say that I did, because it would be so much more colorful and interesting. Actually, yeah, so I got to work on that. Who can I say? I slept with Shelley Winners.

Okay, I met Shelley Winners in the supermarket. My favorite Hollywood story. This is no joke. I'm in Ralph's Supermarket in Beverly Hills and I'm standing in the express lane and this little disheveled woman turns around and looks at me and says, she a little plastic bag of nuts. And she says, Honey, can you open this bag of nuts for me?

Plastic has ruined the world. And I didn't recognize her face because she looked like a homeless person. That I recognized her voice and I'm thinking, holy shit, this is Shelley Winners. And I have got a horror script that I've written that is perfect for her. Long story short.

I told her about my script and she invited me over to her house to bring it over and chat, and then I, you know, fucked her bug eye and the rest is history. You're bringing out the worst in me, Mike. She was wonderful. Yeah, I never did that. I would never fuck my weight into anything, but it's sure it's the think that maybe I could.

So you're writing more scripts? Are you reading other books after you write Low Life in High Heels? I never wanted to write a book. That was never my ambition. Once Low Life was done, I was working on my Discovery Channel show Right.

I'd gone on a rogue trip to do a shoot and Mammoth Right, and I was with my executive producer Dana Milliken, and Debbie read. We we're all driving back. It's a law drive. And when we and Dana were talking about our childhoods, sharing experiences of what it was like growing up in a redneck environment, and we just laughed our asses off. Long story short, she said, Jeff, that has got to be your next screenplay about your childhood.

So I did. I wrote this script. It was called The Long Haired Depression, and it took about six years for it to get any sort of attention. But eventually what happened was Madonna. Madonna optioned it, she gave me a deal on it.

That script went to Whitney Houston's company as a writing sample because she needed a writer or I think it was Sleeping Beauty, And so I was submitted. And what happened was Steve Lappek, who was her development guy, he called my agent and he said, you know, Whitney had a drug problem. They weren't talking about it, but you know she wasn't in shape to make Sleeping Beauty. And he said to my agent, do you mind if I take this to Madonna? So my agent called me and says, is this okay?

He takes it to Madonna and I'm like, well, fuck yeah. Because Madonna was, you know, fresh off of a vita by this, you know, she was just a force. So Madonna read it. Her manager, Caurice Henry loved it, and Carise Henry and Steep Lappett partnered up to produce it. And that wasn't the only stro I wrote.

You know a handful of scripts. What happened is they all wound up and development hell, the joy of development. Hell. So what my goal is, I'm going to take every script and now I'm going to novelize it. So I'm in the middle of the long haired depression right now.

That's what it's called longer depression. And that keeps me busy. But that is hard. You talk about those moments where you catch other people looking askance at Holly and just not knowing how to deal with a trans person in the late eighties, early nineties, and I mean, I so wonder what hollywould be like now, Like if she was a presence now, could she even make it in today's world with the alcoholism or what would you think a Hollywood lawn in twenty twenty five would be like? I don't know, because Holly was inconsistent and her acting ability.

I mean, I saw Holly in the film Milwaukee, Minnesota with Josh Brolin. I thought she was wonderful. She is a riot. I loved her in Billie's Hollywood screen Kiss. You know, with the right material, I think she could pack a powerful punch.

But Holly needed a firm hand. She needed someone to ground her. That's what I did. I grounded her, and unfortunately in her later years she. Didn't have that.

Holly could be of force if she worked hard enough at it. But unfortunately, what I had to learn the hard way is that Holly shied away from hard work. So I worked thirty years in television. All those shows are lost and forgotten. Who cares, No one remembers any of that stuff.

It has no resonance with today's culture. But Holly Woodlawn because of all that's going on with transgender issues, because of her film career, and because of the Internet. You know, it blows me away when I when I go on the Internet, I see people writing about low life and high Heels. I wanted to create something that celebrated her and paid tribute to her, and something that would mean something twenty years from now with this diversity and inclusion business being upset with the straation. Okay, see, I want to know what.

I don't think people understand how important it is to recognize kid's identity or who's struggling with his identity or her identity. You know, it seems like people aren't taking it seriously. But I think Hollywoodlawn story, especially of low Life and high Heels, if Holly had grown up in a supportive environment, if she didn't feel so shameful, would she have run away to New York. I mean, she ran away to New York and had an amazing experience, you know, became an Andy Warhol superstar, and that was fantastic. That's because Holly, you know, was driven to run away.

You know, she couldn't be herself. Brian Hamilton, who was a good friend of Holly's, told me, because I went to Holly's close friends and I asked them to read the manuscript because I wanted them to sign off on it, and he told me that one reason Holly ran away from home is because Holly was adopted. Holly was born in Puerto Rico. His mother didn't have a father. The father was an American soldier who abandoned mom, and she moved to New York and met Joe Eichenberg.

They married. Joe officially adopted Holly when Holly was fifteen, and Joe was Jewish, so he wanted Holly to get circumcised. Brian said that they forced Harold to get circumcised, and you know, if you're an adult, a grown kid, getting circumcised is very painful. So that contributed to this Holly not feeling safe, Holly's needs not being acknowledged, if you don't get circumcised and your parents make you. And then one thing I also want to bring up.

You'll notice that a lot of later photos of Holly, her chin is off to one side. I wanted to write about this because I always wanted to explain it, but I don't think I fitted into the story because it was just such a non sequitur. But Holly had like an abscessed tooth, and after it was after her low life and how he has been written, she might have been living with Teresa Convoy, but she went to the dentist in West Hollywood and he's cushion and fucking around with her lower jaw. And what he didn't know is Holly had a chin implant. And she had her chin implant back during her cabaret hey Day in New York, and he dislodged her chin and on the side of her face, I mean awful.

So that's why you see these pictures. And Holly's got this lopsided chin. Well, a friend of hers, hey, it is some money and God blessom he paid for Holly to have that fixed. That chinn back. Well, I'm curious too.

You talked about going back to these older screenplays that you wrote, all these things that were stuck in development. How which I hear from a lot of writers. It's like, sometimes I talk with screenwriters, I'm like, what have you done for the last twenty years? You have no credits? But obviously you're not homeless, you know, because they get that same solo script here, resold it over there.

But how is that for you? Now? Revisiting stuff that you wrote earlier and now. Putting in thin as a book. What's liberating?

It's wonderful. I don't think I ever want to go back to screenwriting. It doesn't appeal to me. Honestly, it just doesn't appeal to me. I love the freedom of writing a book.

There's a lot of freedom. And you know, with a screenplay, you got to follow that formula, no matter how unconventional you try to be, there's still a formula. There's still you know, the certain beat you got to hit. And in a book, you don't have that kind of restraint. You know what I mean.

So the book I'm writing now, there's so much freedom. I'm just running away from the script. The script is the basis. But I discovered that, oh what if I just did this and just totally fucking went off the deep end over here and did something else. There were so many stupid hurdles I had to jump through with working with people on my stories.

It wasn't fun, Let's put it that way. It was more frustrating than anything, especially when you've written a personal story and it's based on your childhood and it's based on your parents, and then suddenly you got a development executive saying, let's take this character and make her more like this, make her more like share. You're like, what, it's kind of disrespectful to me. I just want creative freedom. I want to have fun.

I want to enjoy writing, and just I like writing material that makes me laugh out loud. But I know you say that writing is pretty painful sometimes with the rewriting and everything, which I think is very admirable because I think it was Charles Wilofford that said that the key to writing is rewriting, you know, and I totally agree with that. But I have to say that your pro style is so easy to read and so delightful, because it has taken me a long time to get all the way through a book recently, other than audio books. But love you madly holly Woodlawn. I was just eating that up, and I'm reading fifty sixty pages a night, which normally I'm doing ten because you grab me and you keep me in there and it's just so easy to read.

Well, that's my television experience, you know, when you're a writer in television, especially if you're doing short segments, I mean, you've got to grab them immediately. But the last show I worked on, I was the lead story producer on a show called America Now at Lesa Gimmons, and you know you have to grab them instantly because it's the top story and you just got to take them on a ride. And it's got to be a white knuckler. I mean, everything in that story is true, but it's really all in how you craft it, because it could have been really boring, like the drive through California, the drive through the desert. That could have been a real snooze.

But that's faith that this is a book about writing a book. How exciting is that me. I've never read a book about the writing of a book like this before. Thank you, because you know what, Oh God, Mike, I couldn't get people to read it. The worst thing about being a writer is when you can't get people to read your work.

You know, I wrote The Long Haired Depression, I think in nineteen ninety four, and I couldn't get it read until what was it two thousand? I mean, that's stupid. And then they read it and they flipped for it. I mean, it's just absurd. And when I was trying to get an agent to represent Love You Medley Hollywood Lawn, I couldn't get anybody to take it on.

Well there was one agent though, who he was very complimentary, but he said that Hollywood stories weren't a big seller and he would have trouble take place again. So I respect that you want an easy sale, right, So I am beyond thrilled that you've said that. That's by day. Thank you. Are you in a better place now?

Do you have a better agent and do you think that these next few books will be placed pretty easily? I don't have it agent. I got Faraoh House because I was hustling for a publisher. I couldn't get an agent. And you know what was frustrating is you would weary an agent.

Oh god, here's the worst experience. Oh lord. I had a literary manager who came recommended, and I sent her my pitch and she enjoyed the pitch, and she had her beta reader read the manuscript and this person flipped for it and told me it was fantastic. So the manager couldn't wait to read it. But yet it was going to take her six months to read it.

Well, it actually took nine. While I'm waiting. You know, they don't want you to hustle other agents. But basically what I'm doing is I'm trying to figure out what's the backup plan here? And Faraell House was one of the backup plans.

So she finally said she rejected it. It was awful. Yeah, it's frustrating. I thought, what do you do? But basically what I would do is I would find books out there.

While I'm waiting for her to respond the nine months, I'm finding what books are out there that are similar to mine, and I buy them and I read them, and then I would contact their publisher. Well, Faraoh House had come out with the book on Vampira. I must sure if you're familiar with that, it's called Glamour Ghoul, I believe, and Vampira you know about this neighbor. So I was rivetted with this book, and I reached out to Faraoell House with a pitch. I guess you call it a query.

Well they didn't respond. Oh fuck man, it was crickets. Okay, I'm thinking, how is it that Faraal House has not responded? So I decided I was going to go in through the back door. I was going to sneak in with a licensing request, because if you want to license one of the photograph from their book, you got to go through a whole different process.

So I reached out to them and said, hey, I'mage Resident licensing a photo of vampire for my book. I got an immediate response, and so it was from Jessica the publisher, and I brought her back thank you so much. By the way, I was just curious, I never heard from you regarding my you know, love you madly, hollywoodlawn very and she was like, oh, you know, it's really not for us. It's not a hard no, but if we were to have taken on, it would have to be reworked considerably. And I was like, okay.

I left that door open for about a year while I hustled other publishers and got more rejections, and then if I finally decided that I was going to rewrite it, and I rewrote it and I cut one hundred pages out, and then I resubmitted it to Farrell House and they responded and she said, you know what, it's remarkably better, but it's not quite there. You've got to do a little work on your direction and your tone. And I was like, great, give me six weeks. So how a new draft? Yeah, And so I sent the new draft in six weeks and they loved it.

Writing is a lot of work. Well, and that's the other thing that your book really transmits is just how much work it is, even though you don't get into the minutia of like, well and on this page, on this day, I wrote twenty pages. But there are times where it's like I wrote these three pages, and now I had to make it into twenty, and it's just like wow, gosh, you know, I don't think I could do that. And I don't think I could do all the rewriting and the chopping up on my own work. I mean, just cutting one hundred pages.

Whatever you did, it worked. I drank lots of coffee. That coffee house that you talk about in the book. I'm just like that seems like a fueled. Him Lizard's Coffee House.

Yes, that was great. I loved that hangout, my friend. You know, I met some of my best friends there, Clinton Owie, who was one of the owners, me and Teresa, who was Holly's publicist and became her manager. We would hang out there all the time. I mean, it was just like this little scene in one of the derelict areas of Hollywood that no one would think to go to.

They were all going to Sunset Boulevard, you know, thinking they were all hot and cool. But it was really right there and that little niche, and it was just fascinating seeing Brandon Lee hanging out having coffee because he was going on stage that night next door, or having herb ritz upstairs. It was just amazing. Where is the best place for me to keep up with your work? So I can actually see when this new book is available?

Well, I'll have to reach out to you because I don't have a website. I never really needed one. That might change in the future. We'll see, I gotta we'll see how successful this book is. Fingers are crossed, definitely, fingers crossed.

Well, I will sink from the rooftops to make sure that more people know about this. Well, thank you, I appreciate that. Jeffrey, thank you so much for your time. This was so wonderful connecting with you. Oh my god, it was my pleasure.

Mike, thank you. Please tell me how did you get interested in writing and eventually become, you know, writer of both children's story as well as mysteries. I always wanted to be a writer from an age of five. Don't tell me, I don't ask me why. I just do something I knew.

How did I become one? I just wrote what you got to do, and then eventually I got an agent. That's what you also have to do. And she sold the UK which was the first book which it wasn't really a children's book. It was meant for adults.

It was a takeoff on certain books I mean, but it appealed apparently to lots of children and was published overnight. I mean, it wasn't actually published overnight. With what overnight? I became very successful. From what I understand?

Does he Lou was interested in making a TV show or a. Movie out of it, in a little pilot and anything ever came out of it. How did you get involved with Scarecrow in the Garden of Cucumbers. Well, Robert Chaplain, who was the director, came to me through my agents. I asked if I would do it and tell me what you wanted.

You know who he thought would be in it. So I thought why not? And I tried it and it worked for him. I don't know who else they worked for. He had very little, and I ended up.

I hate to say this, it is true, I ended up directing it myself because he wasn't any he wasn't teaching how to do it. It was a mess, and so I sort of I didn't mean to take over, but the actors started coming to me for certain things, and I sort of directed it myself. Well. It was scary, but I liked it. I liked doing it, and that was the end of it.

How was Hollywoodlawn to work with? She was lovely except for the first night this drunk. After all the setup and everything, he couldn't shoot. Robert asked me would I let her live with me? Where the remainder of the shoot, which was goa be about six weeks and was six weeks.

But I said sure, I'm not going to be with her every second, but I'll try to make sure she's not your first shoots, which I did, and he fixed me. I guess to do that because I am a recovered alcoholic. Had you had experience with directing or even writing. For screen, No, nothing, not at all. No, a shock.

Holly was a shock, but she was also very nice like her. What was it about the work that you had been doing that brought you to Captain's attention. I had been doing plays at that point. It'll play small projections and he, I guess, so on or wait a minute, Gloria who was my agent, Gloria Sapphire, just so we'd make a good combination. That's what happened.

Came to her for something and offered me help him, and it worked out, except, as I say, he honestly didn't know what he was doing. So there was a full fell on me, which was a lot, but I did enjoy it, and that was the end of my directing career. But I know you had other things that were adapted as well, including the after School special, The Late Great Me The Story of a teenage you call Alcoholic. I imagine that was based on personal experience. No, because I wasn't a tag teenage alcoholics.

I don't observed it, so I didn't know enough about alcoholism to know certain things. I didn't have anything to do with the production at all. It was all done in Hollywood, I. Think was Scarecrow? Was that completely shot at New York City?

Yes, it was lucky enough to get certain people. I'm sure you know. Lillie Toman did her telephone answering, servicing it and as a singer, became became honest, and it turned out to me. She turned out to me Bed Miller, who wasn't that Miller then? I mean she was, but she wasn't.

And she was also lovely. He I did work, would have not worked with those us involved. Really did it on her own off camera, which it is. But I got to know her too, and she was also a very nice person. Everybody was very nice.

It's involved with it probably, although he wasn't not nice. He just was foundering and then disappeared with the whole thing. So it's been all these years, but in nineteen seventy one, it's been all these years for me to see it. Did you finally manage to see it again? Yes?

Recently in the last couple of months. It's an awful movie. I mean, as movies go, it wasn't a good movie, but it's certainly very timely right now with all the transsexuals and everything. I think Holly was the best actress of all those people. Not the prettiest, but the best actress.

When you get to work with David mar Mark gullis, sorry, who. I David marvelous? He ended up having a huge career. He did in the sense of character parts. He never became a star.

David is wonderful. Was Betides Now a shoot a year ago? I think, and I'm sure rewatching it again all these years later must have brought back some memories. Well, I brought a shocking back, shocking memory back with how I looked he then I look now, just assume out of seeing it in a way that was something like thirty six years old. And there were friends of mine in it too, who just who crowded scenes and stuff they dragged them in.

It was interesting and shocking to see some people. There's some really funny I mean, as I say, it's an awful movie, but I shouldn't say that. But as movies go, it wasn't, you know, Hung together very well. But there were certainly the wonderful scenes, I think, funny scenes, amazing the names that I chose that they still ring true for some I guess some of the stuff in it is so viable. Were you a big fan of All about Eve?

I still am. Yes, I think it's one of our best, the you know movies. A lot of people wouldn't get that. For listeners, Joe Buck is a dwarf. Although I think that I'm not supposed to say that.

It's supposed to say a little person or something. What was the release of the film, like, was there a premiere? Well, I think you called that. It was opened it Waverley, the Waverley Theater and the Grand Village, and a few important people came and Holly arrived with big doves. Imagine that you could call it PREMI areas.

I'm curious about your Jack Early books. Why did you end up using a pseudonym for the for those. Just for three of them? I did because women writers are treated differently from male writers, especially books are like the ones I wrote grime books, and so I thought i'd try that, and in fact I was right, because one review, for instance, compared not compared me to said I was as good as King and Elmer, Leonards and somebody else I can, which no one would have said I had a woman's name. Unfortunately, that problem still goes on.

You know, people in the business and people outside of the business definitely looks at women's things one way and men's things men's things another way. Was just too bad all the same. I'm sure you have faced a lot of adversity. First being a woman writer or woman anything, and then being a lesbian writer anything on top of that must have made it even more difficult. I didn't believe it or not.

It's a woman thing more than anything else. Yes, nobody cared that much about lesbians. I'm glad to say now it's really the sexiest that people are about by, which is so stupid. Were you pretty public that it was you writing under pseudonym or did you try to keep that on the down low? When I first wrote the Jack Early books, I keep it quiet, But then little by little people found out, which was all right because it was already it had already been you know, really, et cetera.

What did you think of the adaptation of Donado and. Daughter Bells Ronson would not have been my first choice, but actually got made because of him. He was the one who wanted to do it. It wasn't bad. I mean, I've always thought he couldn't act very much, but the rest of them are pretty good.

It does have a great fast and it worked pretty well, I think. But again, did you ever see it any except for something on television at four in the morning. I didn't. I don't know why. I'm hoping some streaming place will pick it up.

Well, are you excited that Scarecrow is going to be available now for people to see? I am very glad. Yes, it'd be interesting to see what happened to it. I'm so sorry that how and around and because she was desperate to find that movie. Yeah, I'm very curious how audiences are going to react to this fifty five years later.

Yes, me too. What about you? What are you up to these days? I have a series out there, the book series. It's a detective name Laura Aronta, and I'm hoping that'll be picked up.

That's perfect. She is a last dance and it's presents the whole thing with those to the normal people. I like many books are going to do that. Well, I hope that that definitely gets picked up. I would love to read more of your fiction.

Well, I'm not going to read any more of those. I did it, you know, because a line I don't say, because the thing then it's said, and it is just two books. That's the last. Stop writing and say, sure, I just stop writing. I'm getting into it.

That's I'm thinking about ways to right right about. Well, Sandra, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate this. Well, I appreciate it, thank you very much. I'm not I'm not.

I want to get the screen work, get it good, and get it. All right. We are back when we're talking about a scarecrow in the Garden of cucumbers, And yeah, I did wanted to talk a little bit more about The Thorn, which I imagine had to have been retitled after the Rose got big, right, I mean, here's what this movie was called before. I can't see it having that title when it came. Out, so far as I know, that was always the title of it.

I mean I only saw it on a decrepit videotape many many many years ago, so I don't know that that's ever gotten full restoration or a DD release. Somebody can correct me on that for sure, and maybe it's not an excellent movie the way that I think Scarecrow is an excellent movie. I will say that The Thorn was definitely a film that was made to poke at people in a fen, you know, and kind of press those envelopes an equal opportunity offender. In many ways, it doesn't have the heart the Scarecrow does, which is interesting. Yeah, I didn't get a lot of heart out of it, but it feels like a movie of the time.

This one came out a year earlier, in seventy one, and yeah, I guess I was looking at and I don't trust IMDb, but I was looking at IMDb and it says that the title while they were filming it was the greatest story over coold, Like, Okay, yeah, we've seen all these stories before, Yep, this is good. Kind of reminded me of Wakefield Pools the Bible a little bit with the way that it was taking on some of these themes and everything. And it also reminded me a little bit of Krey Parker and Matt Stone when they did that whole story of Aaron and Moses. Just something about that sacrilegiosity that I had, but I kind of like movies from this era, especially these really corny movies, and like so many of these jokes were just so corny.

I mean when they had the director at the beginning, who's playing like a Harpo Marx type character and him what was it the redo the MGM lion but it's him and I'm trying to remember what it says instead of art for art's sake. Oh shit, it had. Something good written above the title of it, and I was just like, again, corny as how, But just you know, it's all worthy. But I love that style of humor. No, I mean, it is a fun watch, and it's camera kick in this same way that just Scarecrow and Vinie and all the waters More WORL films, et cetera.

So yeah, it's definitely worth taking a look at. But if you're watching it for Bett Miller, you know you're only going to get a little bit of that. Looking around for some of these songs because I thought, oh, maybe some of the songs on the Scarecrow soundtrack are available on like old Bete Midler albums as far as I can tell, No, but there are so many Bete Midler bootleg sites and fan sites where they It feels like all of these folks were like me up until just recently, where I'm like, where the hell can I see this movie? I want to see this movie. And I think anybody who's a bet Midler fan who ends up watching Scarecrow will be like, Okay, yeah, this actually does scratch an itche because they use her songs quite often.

I mean, like you said, like two songs, then one of them comes back a few times, and they're pretty there are good songs too. Yeah, And I think the thing that's interesting is even though she's not physically in the film, she was a pretty big selling point for it. I like how the newspaper ad Matts say here Ben Miler sing strawberries, line back and line like you're going to go to the theater just to hear the one song sung by her. I mean, I think one thing it was interesting about this film is just doing the post mortem what if for Why did this. Not break through in the way that it should have.

I know that it had a terrible advertising campaign. I have an original poster for the film, and it's the strangest poster I've ever seen for a film because it is a circle. It is a movie poster sized circle, poorly designed with that photo of Hollywood Lawn with the tinsel on her head from the musical number, and it just says hooray for Hollywood Lawn, scarecrow and mcgarnier cucumbers, and it is like, frankly the most hideous movie postery own. And it's just so weird that a film like this that I think has so much appeal and is so genuinely funny, just like didn't get a good campaign and just kind of fell flat. I know that when it premiered at the Elegant Theater which is now IOC Center in the West Village.

I believe Candy Darling came to the premiere with a bag of tomatoes like in a threatening way, and then afterwards so that he did not throw any So I don't know, it's weird to think that this movie just never really broke through in a way that it should have. Yeah, And the only poster I've ever seen is just that, and it's got to be just what an ad Matt, the one that you're talking about with DC or come to hear Bete Midler thing. That's the only media I've ever seen for this whole movie. I haven't even seen that. Ugly post through that you're talking about.

It's hideous. And the funny thing too, is that I believe at some point in the seventies and early eighties New Line Cinema actually distributed it a little bit, so down around a little bit. It's just really just never came out. I think the director, Robert J. Kaplan, later wound up working in distribution.

He worked on frankenon latter's basket Case, And when I asked Frank about that, we had him out for a screening for the Weird Wednesday series that I do at the Alum on Brooklyn, and I mentioned the name to him and he started cursing like he was not happy with the works that Robert Kaplan did on basket Case because I think they were trying to sell it as like a midnight movie, and he did not want it to be sold as like a midnight movie. He just wanted to be like a regular movie. But I think that the really sweet full circle moment is that like he's someone who's very clearly inspired by Robert Downey Sr. And then he later wound up producing Robert Downey Senior's comeback movie in the eighties, which I believe was later released as America.

It's an interesting career and just someone who's just kind of been forgotten about it and then only exists in these traces and projects that he was involved with. But I'm curious what other stories there are about him. Well, it sounds like there wasn't a lot of love lost between him and sondrascopatone. I mean, according to her, she's the one that directed this movie, so we're like, oh, okay, she's not happy with what went down at all. So history's written by the winners, I guess.

So he's I'm glad he's still around. I was trying to get a hold of him but not able to. But yeah, she didn't have a whole lot of fun things to say about him. I think I just found that poster that you're talking about, the yeah hooray for Hollywood lawn. Holy cow.

Yeah, that is a weird poster. And is the poster a circle or is it actually a rectangle with a circle in the middle. It is actually a circle. Wow, Okay. And it immediately went into a tube because there's no way to frame it, and why would I want to put that on a wall, but I had to have it.

Yeah. World premiere engagement, Waiverley Theater, March nineteenth or fifteenth, nineteen seventy two. So yeah, all. Right, that the waver Lean a yell again. Yeah, I'm a little nervous that I haven't seen the announcement of the Blu Ray though it's supposed to be coming out for Pride months, so I'm excited for that.

I hope more people finally get to see this movie because I think they're going to have fun. And I'm glad that these screenings are happening because I really would love to see this in a movie theater. I imagine has to be similar to something like I don't know, The People's Joker or something where you're just like, yeah, I get a lot more out of this with an audience than I do just sitting in my living room alone. All Right, We're going to take another break and play a preview for next week's show right after these brief messages. That's right.

We'll be back next week with a look at the Exterminating Angel. Until then, I want to thank my co host Rain and Elizabeth. So Rain, what is keeping you busy man. I've got a new band finally and we're starting to play out which is very nice, fifty Foot Woman and the Worms. So if you're in the Baltimore, VC area, keep your eye out.

We'll be playing some shows. I've got a lot of art, a lot of art coming up this year which is really really exciting. So find me on the internet, find my website rain dot com and yes, sign up for my mailing list and all of which you know what's going on. And Elizabeth, how about yourself. At the time that this is being released, I've actually just had my first theatrical release through my new distribution company, which is called Muscle Distribution.

It's a brand new four K restoration of an early eighties punk new wave female centric drama comedy called Going Down. That's never had a US release before. It's really incredible film. Often touta is one of the seminal Australian independent films, but it's got a really incredible soundtrack with a bunch of local punk and New A bands. The Birthday Party has a song in it.

It's just the kind of movie that I feel like is a big sort of discovery kind of a title. If you like Smithereens or Times Square or After Hours. I think people really love it, so I think if this is out at the end of May, it'll still be in theaters and still playing around. So check out. Muscle Distribution at Instagram or muscle dash Distribution dot com and there's a lot of other kind of fun, crazy stuff coming up.

So I'm very excited for that. Thank you again, ladies for being on the show. Thanks to everybody for listening. If you want to hear more of me shooting off my mouth, check out some of the other shows that I work on. They are all available at Wadingwaymedia dot com.

Thanks especially to our Patreon community. If you want to join the community, visit Patreon dot com slash Projection Booth. Every donation we get helps the Projection Booth take over the world. Stro best. And live.

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