Written By
Ted Nicolaou
During the Making of Subspecies
September – December 1990
NOV 16 -- Fri – Continued: Crew call was 11:30 at the Rasnov fortress. At 3 we wrapped the short scene of cheated reverse angles on the girls outside the castle door that we left behind at Bran Castle yesterday. I sit fretting at the top of the hill while the tunnels are being lit. At 6 PM the lights are set and we start rehearsing the action -- Ivan and Laura creeping through the passageways to Radu’s crypt. Tani had to go to Rome for a few days, but he left us the Steadicam and taught Vlad and his assistant Sorin Dumitrescu how to use it. Sorin buckles it on. It’s a heavy device, and he hasn’t had much practice, so I pray the shots will be useable.
Anders arrives back on the set about 7, and finds out we’re still not ready for him, so he goes back to the hotel to await our call. He’s been in makeup for hours, having started about noon. Luckily, he’s gone beyond anger with the delays and the frustration of being ready long before he’s needed, and into another zone of disbelief at the disorganization of our production. I haven’t eaten since breakfast, and the food truck’s at the bottom of the hill. Carmen shows up with some potatoes and mititei sausages and Vlad and I chow down between setups -- the first mititei I’ve eaten since my bout of Ceausescu’s revenge weeks ago.
I haven’t seen our AD Relu for days now. Jimmy, the second AD just stands around looking grim, and every time he sees the worried look on my face he shakes his head and says with his incredible intensity: “I understand. I understand. Production.”
We call Anders back and shoot Radu rising from his coffin. We wrap the crypt about 9 PM. Crew call was 11:30 AM so we’re running out of our 12 hour day. And we leave for Bucharest tomorrow, and there’s too much left to shoot. Vlad and I consider our options:
Go for the exterior shots of the circiuma, a seedy sort of peasants’ pub, which is near to Radu’s crypt, so the cables are ready and we can shoot it fast. But fast could take an hour.
Or should we jump straight to the Ion and Rosa killing scene, which will take more time to shoot and is most powerful here among the broken ruins of Rasnov. We can find a seedy exterior for the circiuma back in Bucharest no problem.
But there’s also the circiuma interior, also ready to shoot, closeby in the small museum in the cluster of buildings at the top of the hill. Beautifully decorated by art director Lucian Nicolau, it’s atmospheric as hell.
We decide If we kill Ion and Rosa tonight, we can come back for a short few hours tomorrow before we leave for Bucharest and shoot the interior which would be a shame to miss.
Adrian and Mara, the actors playing Ion and Rosa have arrived from their rehearsals in Bucharest. Relu advised me from afar that we should shoot the Ion and Rosa scene as soon as possible, because Adrian has to leave for an engagement in Germany on Nov. 28. I go over and talk to Adrian, wondering if it might be possible to put this scene off till later. He’s really leaving, but he says he could put it off til the 30th if necessary. I take Mara aside and ask her if she’s talked to Relu about her contract for the nudity. She hasn’t, and she doesn’t want to shoot it until she renegotiates with AD Relu or Producer Ion. She doesn’t object to doing the scene, she just wants to get paid for it.
Unfortunately, Ion disappeared an hour or so ago, in the middle of negotiating with the crew about working overtime tonight so we can finish these scenes. They demanded too much money, so he walked away, ordering us to wrap at 11:30. This is not my understanding from my discussions with both Ion and Charlie, who agreed to as much overtime as necessary to maintain our schedule. But given the way things work here, I bet Ion hasn’t received some cash from the states, and has nothing to pay pay. According to Ion, the crew is starting to demand outrageous sums for overtime. And to work the short day tomorrow -- Saturday -- they want 4000 lei -- more than most of them make in a month.
In order to shoot the Ion and Rosa scene tonight, Ion has to come back and deal with Mara. I call for Nelu, one of the production team, and insist he phone Ion, or drive up to the hotel and bring him back by force if necessary. Nelu says there’s no phone here, and no car to drive him to the hotel, but I don’t shut up about it, and he takes off.
Eventually Ion arrives and starts his discussion with Mara. I walk up the hill to the spot where we’ll shoot the scene, and imagine it in real space as I wait for the lights to come up. I lie down a moment and look up at the stars. After what seems like a long time, no lights are coming, and no crew either, so I head back down the hill and discover the crew in a big circle, yelling back and forth, arguing about overtime, with Vlad screaming Romanian at them at the top of his lungs. Carmen and Keith and I sit in despair and watch it happen. After awhile, the crew starts packing up the gear. Carmen translates -- they’re leaving, and they’re not working tomorrow either. They want to go home.
She tries to explains: to the Romanian way of thinking, democracy means working less and making more money.
The argument continues as the crew walks away, Vlad still yelling after them, god knows what curse words. We hike down the dirt road hill and head for the hotel, stopping first at the Ciucas Hotel, where Vlad makes one last effort to rally the crew into shooting tomorrow, so we can make use of the beautiful circiuma set, but they want 4000 lei for tomorrow and that’s that.
I’m bitterly disappointed. But being a Libra, I can empathize with both sides of a conflict. Our crew is a talented, hard working team. I believe people should be paid fairly for their work, and deserve protection from abusive conditions. I’ve appealed to Charlie numerous times for more money and better conditions for the cast and crew, but the “give a man a hand and he’ll take your arm” mentality really guides the production team’s decisions here. On the other side of the Libra scale, for me a 12 hour day flies by way too fast. As a director, I want to keep working until we’ve gotten everything we came for. But sometimes you hit the brick wall reality that the work that’s scheduled is impossible to achieve. We’ve been driving the crew hard, up and down the hill and over rough terrain, and they’re wiped out, they want to go home, see their families, and rest up for the continuation of our shoot in Bucharest. So it’s goodbye to the beautiful circiuma set, and goodby to the Ion and Rosa sequence, as I start re-editing the film in my head.
We walk up to the Alpin to find Anders, Laura, Michael, Brenna, and Keith lurking in the lobby. We drink wine and eat room service sandwiches till 3 AM, feeling depressed about cutting the scenes and disgusted about being the villains in the standoff with the crew. Brenna tries to cheer me up, saying Luminita’s been asking about me all day.
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Ted Nicolaou
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