Written By
Ted Nicolaou
During the Making of Subspecies
September – December 1990
NOV 19 – Mon – Continued: Anders, Keith, and Laura wake up this morning with spider and/or bedbug bites all over their bodies and faces. Anders’ eyelid is swollen almost shut. They demand that we move to Hotel Bucharest by noon tomorrow. I’m a little shocked - after everything else that’s going on - that they’re willing to endure one more day of this weird hotel. Keith and I are discussing this in the hall when a grim looking doctor and nurse glide by with a tray of vials and syringes.
Vlad and I take off for Buftea Studios for a noon meeting with Lucian the Art Director, to make sure everything’s ready for the call time this afternoon.
After we’re gone, the cast comes down for lunch in the hotel restaurant and gets nasty attitude and dirty dishes. Waiters here wield tremendous power over you. Some of them are bitter and sadistic. They can make you wait forever while they chat by the kitchen, smirking and smoking with a vengeance.
Vlad and I walk onto the stage for our meeting with Lucian to find him screaming at his crew and tearing his hair out. None of the sets are ready. The prop man he asked to be cut loose from Poiana Brasov last Thursday didn’t arrive until today. The dungeon set can’t possibly be ready before tonight. And the throne room probably not until late tomorrow.
The lights that the electricians were to begin unloading this morning at 7:30 are nowhere in sight. Nor is the crew.
We find Vasile, Buftea’s head of production and Vlad lays out our problems in sharp-tongued Romanian. Their solution is to put on a second shift of electricians to pre-light the throne room as the art department dresses it. Which makes it ready to shoot tomorrow (Tues) by 5 PM.
As for today, Lucian’s crew will work full speed on the smaller dungeon set. Vlad will pre-light it this afternoon. If that all goes like clockwork we can shoot in the dungeon today at 5.
To complete the stage sequences that involve Michael Watson, his capture in the dungeon and the climactic sword fight, I was hoping for a full week. Now, if we can start shooting in the throne room tomorrow evening, that’s three and a half days.
Everywhere I go there’s a new kink in the schedule. Assistant Director Relu informs me that Mara and Adrian, the actors playing Ion and Rosa, both have heavy rehearsal schedules at their theaters this week. In Romania, actors’ commitments to their theaters take precedence over film work. Mara rehearses til 10:30 every morning, Adrian after 3 PM. The thought of trying to shoot the climax around the schedules of minor characters’ seems crazy. Apologies to Mara and Adrian, but we have to cut them both out of the sequence. They give us more carnage but they’re not essential to the story, and simplifying the action is a relief when there’s so much to do and so little time.
It’s not just the schedules of the minor characters. Irina, who plays Mara, the Romanian of the three female leads, also has theater commitments this week. And since she’s been with us in Transylvania for so long, she can’t get out of them. Another maddening complication. With another cut to the script, Karl will kill Mara with his rosary bead-loaded shotgun early on in the sequence, instead of including her in the further action. Another simplification which doesn’t sacrifice too much in terms of the climactic struggle.
Even so, it hurts to be forced into emergency script cutting on the spot. This is turning into one of the most soul crushing days yet.
The actors’ call time is set for 5 PM, but when I get back to the stage, things are still moving slowly. My spirits sink. Michael arrives and I pull a hundred dollar bill out of my pocket and hand it over to him so we can work.
Steadicam operator Tani still hasn’t arrived from Rome. We only have enough film stock left to shoot today and tomorrow - IF we restrict the coverage and the number of takes. And if he doesn’t show tonight, there’s no per diem money for the rest of the cast and no film stock either.
We don’t actually begin shooting until 8:30 PM. Nine hours after Vlad and I came to Buftea. I feel so stressed and exhausted from dealing with all the stuff that I shouldn’t have to think about I can barely think straight. Thankfully, the scenes in the dungeon are short, with little dialogue, and with Michael paid up and the cast acting their hearts out, and withVlad and his focus puller Nica Constantin’s excellent craft, we finish the day with enough negative left for tomorrow.
NOV 20 — Tues — I come down for my last breakfast at Hotel Flora and find Keith and Anders at the table. We order the number 2 breakfast, included in the price of the room. The waiter brings us much more food than the number 2 breakfast, then hands us a bill for 1700 lei. Fed up with being screwed with, we refuse to pay. The desk manager has to come in to referee the shouting match. We hand her the bill and tell her to let Valentin, the production man from Buftea sort it out.
Our turnaround has gotten so out of whack with all the delays, we’re shooting split day/nights now, even though we’re on a stage. Call time today is 2 PM.
The move to Hotel Bucharest is scheduled for noon. We pack our bags and wait in the Flora lobby.
Sitting there, Anders informs me he won’t work today unless he receives his per diem in dollars. Ivan refuses to work unless he receives his per diem AND is checked into the Hotel Bucharest no later than noon. Suddenly, I’ve had enough. I tell them to stop unloading their demands on me. Take them to our Producer Ion. I have enough to worry about at the moment, directing the film.
Hotel Bucharest is a multi-story stack of brutalist concrete, more sober inside than the tacky frilly Flora. Huge lobby with a long reception desk. No guests other than ourselves. Lobby bar that’s mostly empty except for the occasional prostitutes and former secret policemen keeping an eye on foreigners. Apparently our reputation as restaurant deadbeats precedes our arrival. They refuse to serve us in the restaurant unless a Romanian interpreter is with us at all times.
To sort all this out we need our Producer Ion, but Ion is laying low these days, holing up at his villa at Lake Snagov, waiting for money and phone calls that never come.
Added to all this there’s one more problem that has to be resolved to keep the cast on track. According to our contracts, breakfast and lunch is to be paid by the production, and we’re responsible for our dinners and other expenses from our modest per diems. With inflation gripping the country and the generally more expensive restaurants in Bucharest, this is a looming problem for us. One cup of Nescafe costs between 75 and 100 lei. Our living allowance amounts 350 lei per day. Buftea has a limit of 100 lei per day to cover our lunches, and somewhere between that 100 lei and the real cost of food there’s a question as to who’s going to pay. The cast refuses to pay out of their pockets. Buftea’s hands are tied. And Ion, who has previously covered the overages with money from the States, now claims it’s our problem. Every discussion we’ve had about it up to now always ends in confusion and yelling, and the mystery still remains.
STILL MORE TO COME. . .
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Ted Nicolaou
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