Written By
Ted Nicolaou
During the Making of Subspecies
September – December 1990

NOV 26 — Mon — I come downstairs for coffee and see Anders alone at a table. I sit, he extends his hand and says, “Peace?” We shake and a bit of the tension swirling in my brain evaporates. Everybody’s going crazy here, everyone’s drinking too much wine, the situation’s volatile to begin with, so the explosions happen and pass quickly, and I’m learning to let them roll off my back.

We meet Laura, Michelle, and Keith in the lobby and trek over to the Brutalist Intercontinental Hotel Pan Am office for our showdown with Ion. Ion arrives and goes in to talk with his friend, the Chief of the office. Meanwhile Laura and Michelle confirm their reservations for the 8th. Keith’s ticket is economy class, not business as he’s been promised. Ion swears he can’t deliver the business class ticket today. Maybe tomorrow or the next day, but Keith has been promised the ticket today (and for weeks now). He’s furious, and says he’s not working till it’s resolved. Anders’ ticket is non-negotiable, even though he was promised in LA that he could change it to route himself home through Copenhagen to take care of some personal business before returning to LA. He threatens not to work until that problem is resolved. My ticket, which is supposed to be business class is economy. Ion swears he can’t change it immediately, but will do it within a few days. I still have my business class ticket which I received in LA, but Ion insists we hand the originals over to him so he can exchange them for the Buftea-bought tickets on Romanian airline Tarom, which Ion will then change into Pan Am tickets, since no one wants to ride on the Communist-era buckets-of-bolts Tarom planes. I flew Tarom once on my initial scouting mission to Bucharest, and I swore never again.

Ion and Anders stay at the Pan AM office to work on his ticket. I walk back to the hotel with Keith, who’s so fed up with the whole situation he wants to leave this week. I offer to buy his ticket with my card if Ion doesn’t get it worked out. But Keith goes to his room and calls his father, who’s on the verge of calling the State Department and having Keith airlifted out of here. But if Keith refuses to work, he could be sued, so his father advises him to work today, and if the ticket isn’t resolved by Thursday, he’ll buy a ticket and get Keith out of here.

We have two days left for Michael Watson. If we don’t work today, there’s no way to finish what’s left with him before he flies home on Wednesday.

I head to the studio at noon to see what’s up. The Sleeping Chamber set, which was promised to be ready by noon is not even remotely ready to shoot. The crew has been there since 11, waiting.

Keith and Anders show up about 2, and begin the 3 hour makeup routine. The plan is to shoot the final scenes between Michael and Laura first while Anders is in makeup, then when Anders is ready, we’ll finish the sword fight.

But even under the best of circumstances, I fear there’s no way to shoot the originally scripted 3 pages of dialogue between Michael and Laura in the Sleeping Chamber, the sword fight that carries on from the throne room to the Sleeping Chamber, and the sword fight that we still haven’t finished in the Throne Room, all in this one day. This is the moment of truth I’ve hoped wouldn’t come. I’ve wracked my brain for weeks trying to come up with a way to simplify the ending in case we ran out of time.

As originally scripted the fight begins in the Throne Room, then Stefan and Michele run up the stairs to the Sleeping Chamber, lock themselves in, there’s some dialogue, Michele offers her blood to Stefan to energize him. He drinks her blood, she becomes a vampire, Radu and Lillian break down the door, and they all fight — then the fight returns to the Throne Room for the final action. Throne Room/Sleeping Chamber/Throne Room — with the Popeye the Sailor Man moment where Michele offers her blood like spinach to Stefan; I have a sudden inspiration that’s so simple I should’ve thought of it much sooner. Let the entire fight play out in the Throne Room. Instead of breaking the sword fight into three short scenes, we could use the same choreography to make one long fight. It would eliminate the Popeye/spinach thing, which I’ve always thought was a goofy interruption in the middle of the climax.

This change would make the day possible. It would eliminate 2 1/2 pages of dialogue and some fight action in the Sleeping Chamber. For the resolution of Michele becoming a vampire by Stefan’s bite, we’ll have to change two beats of action already shot. In the pre-fight scene in which Radu has Michele in bed and is about to suck her blood before Stefan’s eyes, which we shot so that just as his teeth descend on her neck, Karl enters and interrupts the action, we now have to see Radu’s teeth pierce her throat and Radu sucking her blood. One big closeup will solve that problem. And one other shot near the resolution will have to be re-shot with puncture marks on Michele’s neck.

And in the sword fight scene, which we’ve barely scratched the surface of anyway, we have to get Michele (Laura) off the stairway behind Stefan to her fight with Lillian under the chandelier, early on in the sequence. With these few changes, I think we can fix the ending without doing any damage to the story or the material already shot, and perhaps, additionally, create a more sombre ending for the film.

Anyway, there’s not much choice. Otherwise we won’t finish the film. It’s 3:30, and Michael still hasn’t arrived. The crew is grumbling about waiting for the Americans —as if we haven’t waited for them a few times.

Another problem for the day -- actor Angus Scrimm, the star of PHANTASM, who’s been cast to play the Vampire King Vladislas, father to Radu and Stefan, didn’t arrive in Bucharest on Saturday as scheduled. He arrived on Sunday instead -- but due to the fog in Bucharest, his flight was diverted to Timisoara, a city in the north, an 8 hour drive away. It’s still foggy today, so he’s stuck in Timisoara, under guard in a hotel, since there’s no customs facility there. If he can’t get to Bucharest tomorrow, production asks me, how will we shoot the scene between the King and Stefan on Michael’s last day? I tell them we have enough problems to solve just to get through today, and after that we’ll figure out tomorrow.

I explain the new ending to Vlad, Pusa the script supervisor, Relu the occasional AD, Laura, and when he finally shows up, to Michael. I ask Michael to help improvise some dialogue in the final scene where Michele, bitten by Radu, fears she will become a malignant vampire like him, and begs Stefan to finish the job and make her more like him, a vampire with a human heart. Michael gets excited about the challenge and we rough out the dialogue. He and Laura rehearse, she improvises additional dialogue, and we refine it until the scene works pretty well.

Leaving Michael to hurry through makeup I head down to the stage to prepare to shoot. Thirty minutes later, Michael’s still not down, so I send Carmen up to fetch him. She returns with a look of horror on her face and tells me there’s a problem upstairs. Broken chairs. Shattered glass. Anders and Michael in a drunken rampage. Aw for fuck’s sake. I hurry up to see what the hell’s going on now.

STILL MORE TO COME. . .

Thanks for reading. If you’re enjoying the journal, please take a moment to hit the “like” button, tell your friends, and come back for more. I promise - the worst is yet to come.

Ted Nicolaou

Subspecies the film

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Link to my IMDB page

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Written By
Ted Nicolaou
During the Making of Subspecies
September – December 1990

NOV 25 — Sun — The coffeeshop’s closed when I come downstairs. I plead with the waiter and he lets me in for a couple of cups. I run into Tani in the lobby, and he explains why he had to speak to the pimp/dick when we got home last night. The night before last, his girlfriend left his leather jacket in the bar, with her return ticket in the pocket. They forgot it there for a few hours, and when Tani went back for it, it was gone. When we got home last night, Tani asked the pimp/dick for his help getting it back. This morning Tani got his jacket back with the plane ticket still in the pocket. Maybe pimp/hotel detective is a good combination after all.

Vlad and Oana are taking Michael and Brenna to the flea market. They invited me, but they’re getting a late start, and I feel like eating a real lunch and plotting out a scene we’re shooting Tuesday, so I stay at the hotel.

Ion has arranged for us to shoot 5 hours today, beginning at 5 PM, to make up for the time lost last Thursday when the sword broke and the crew went home.

We gather in the lobby at 4:30 for the trip to Buftea. Laura throws a fit about the transportation, insisting that there better be a place for her in the Mercedes when she wraps. Apparently, the other night, Michelle beat her into the car, and Laura had to wait until the it circled back for a ride to the hotel. Everybody is pissed that Brenna always tags along, taking up a precious space in the car. They have a point and I agree, but I’m sick of being the receiver of these complaints. They should talk directly to Ion.

I herd everyone out of the hotel, insisting we have to be at Buftea at 5 o’clock sharp in order to finish the sword fight tonight.

We arrive at the studio. Vlad shows up 30 minutes late with Michael and Brenna. I scold them about the 10% of the night’s work they’ve cost us with their tardiness.

Vlad and I walk onto the set and I show him where I’d like to begin shooting. He looks at me sadly. There’s trouble brewing, I can feel it. Viorel the stunt coordinator comes in and asks if Ion is here. He needs to be paid for working on Sunday, and none of the production team has any money. Vlad also needs to talk to Ion before he’ll start working. There are some problems that still have to be worked out for him and his crew. Stellica the main production guy on set gets Ion on the phone, and Vlad talks to him awhile. After Vlad’s finished, I get on the phone with Ion, and Ion asks if there’s any way that Tani the Steadicam operator can shoot tonight instead of Vlad. I ask Ion if he’s crazy or what. The electrical crew is Vlad’s. If Vlad’s not working, no one’s working. I tell Ion if there’s a problem with Vlad’s contract, it needs to be settled. Ion swears on his Mother that he just now found out there’s a problem.

Lying asshole. He knew. That’s why he asked me last Thursday to ask Vlad if he’ll agree to work on Sunday. Ion was scared to ask himself because he knew what the answer would be.

Ion and Vlad talk some more, and somehow the problem gets resolved.

We set up for the sword fight.

I go upstairs to the green room to tell Anders and Michael and find them drinking wine. I take the bottles away and ask them what they think they’re doing, drinking before this fight scene with the saw blade swords. But they’re so fed up with everything that they’re out of control.

The set is lit and we call them down to rehearse. By the time we’re ready for the first shot, the fight looks pretty good. We shoot two takes, go for a third, and as the swords clash — CLANG! — Radu’s sword — the one that was repaired the other night — breaks again. Luckily no one’s hurt.

We’re stuck again until the sword can be welded together tomorrow morning. It’s Sunday night. Michael’s last day is Tuesday.

Anders is on a drunken roll. He jokingly calls my assistant Carmen a bitch, and Carmen takes offense. He tries to apologize, but she’s had enough of his rude behavior, and doesn’t accept his apology. Which makes him even more furious. I tell him to lay off Carmen, she’s not the cause of his problems, and doesn’t deserve his abuse. He says he has enough problems of his own and bellows “FUCK YOU, TED!!!” at the top of his lungs. I tell him he’s not making any sense and go on about my business, planning tomorrow’s work. He storms off, then returns a few minutes later to apologize to Carmen.

Everyone walks off the stage. Ion is waiting out in the corridor. The production team descends on him. The translators, including Carmen, gather around to get some satisfaction for their many hours of overtime. Ion gives them the runaround with the excuse that since they’re not studio employees, Buftea cannot pay them overtime at all. He tells them he’s not a money tree and can’t help them either.

So Catalina quits. Carmen threatens to quit, but I assure her I’ll pay her out of my pocket for her invaluable work. There aren’t enough seats in the two Mercedes to ferry all the actors plus Brenna back to the hotel, and after Laura’s snit fit and Anders’ tirade, I don’t feel like riding with them, so I arrange for Laura and Anders and Keith to ride with Colombo in my car. Ion doesn’t offer to take anyone to the hotel, and I don’t feel like riding with him anyway, so I board the crew bus for the slow ride back to Bucharest.

Translators Catalina and Ioana are on the bus with me. I call Catalina over and ask her to tell me what’s going on with their salaries, thinking maybe I’ll have to speak with Vasille, the head of Buftea tomorrow on their behalf. She tells me there’s a more pressing problem. The bus driver refuses drop them off at their homes on the outskirts of the city, and they can’t afford the taxi fares home, and they’re scared to ride alone in taxis anyway, so they face the prospect of being stranded in the dead of night in Bucharest. Luckily, Valentin from production is on the bus, so I badger him for awhile, asking why is it that these young women are not being taken care of. I offer to pay their cab fares home, but somehow, Valentin feels guilty enough that he intervenes and sorts it out with the bus driver.

I get back to the hotel hungry and feeling like hell. Go to the restaurant and luckily don’t see any of the actors, so I get an out of the way table for myself and eat, brooding about it all, scribbling a song about the gloom of night in Bucharest on a random page of my script.

As I’m leaving, I spot Anders, Laura, and Michelle at their table, and go over to say goodnight. I ask Anders to please not bellow “FUCK YOU, TED” at the top of his lungs at me anymore, and furthermore, to have a little sympathy for the pain everyone on this production is experiencing, especially the people like Carmen who are fighting for their tiny salaries which are less than Anders pisses away every day in wine alone. This leads to another session of table pounding by me and Anders both, followed by a close call with broken glass as Laura stands up and says she doesn’t care about the others, “if they want to quit they should quit, they have other jobs, and anyway, Ted, you talked me into staying here and I expect you to take care of me!!!!!” She leans across the table at me, yelling louder and louder, building up to the obligatory “FUCK YOU, TED!” Michelle and I quickly clear all the bottles and glasses out of her reach before it turns into another night of shattered glass. And all at once the absurdity of the moment passes into a temporary calm.

STILL MORE TO COME. . .

Thanks for reading. If you’re enjoying the journal, please take a moment to hit the “like” button, tell your friends, and come back for more. I promise - the worst is yet to come.

Ted Nicolaou

Subspecies the film

LInk to my full bio

Link to my IMDB page

Leave a comment

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Written By
Ted Nicolaou
During the Making of Subspecies
September – December 1990

NOV 24 — Sat — While we were shooting at the cemetery last night I missed some excitement at the hotel. Anders, Michelle, and Keith were refused entrance to the restaurant because of the way Anders was dressed — sweats with gym shorts worn over them. Anders went to the reception desk to complain about being held to an arbitrary dress code while they allow prostitutes and their pimp to lurk in the bar at all hours of the day and night. After being booted from the restaurant, Anders and the others sat in the bar by the pimp and his girls, drinking for hours, Anders haranguing the pimp, saying he should be ashamed of himself, which made the pimp angrier and angrier. Finally, at midnight, the restaurant accepted Anders and his crew, but by that time there was no food left, and they were served one apple each. They returned to the bar, where Anders in his drunken anger, threatened that he was going to have the pimp thrown out of the hotel. He marched to the reception desk to complain again, with the pimp at his heels. Rude words were exchanged. The pimp pulled out a set of handcuffs and was about to clamp them on Anders. Turns out the pimp is also the house detective. Tani saved Anders from being arrested by calmly walking up to the pimp/hotel dick and asking for a light. The pimp/dick, confused, stopped harassing Anders and lit Tani’s cigarette.

But the biggest scandal of yesterday was that Michael, Brenna, Laura, and Michelle went to the Pan Am office in Bucharest to check on their reservations for their flights home. When the airline couldn’t find their names in the computer they freaked out. Michael and Brenna used their original tickets, purchased in the States, to make their own reservations last week when they gave up on waiting for Ion. Ion has been trying to get us to hand over our original tickets so he can exchange them for tickets bought here in the local currency. No one trusts Ion enough to part with their tickets home. Since those tickets were already bought and paid for, I assume Ion is trying to turn the tickets into some extra cash by converting them into local prices, a questionable practice, but also smart.

So Ion cancelled Michael’s and Brenna’s reservations and made his own reservations for them, seated in different rows, a move that strikes everyone as rude and also illegal. Keith checked his own ticket and found out that all the seats are filled for Dec. 15, the date Ion assured him he had booked the reservations for Keith and me. Everyone was upset and furious. Laura made reservations for herself for Dec 5, which is too early for us to realistically finish with her. And now Keith refuses to work until his ticket is straightened out.

All of this anxiety is exacerbated by rising civil unrest in Bucharest. December 22 is the anniversary of the revolution that ended Ceausescu’s reign. The Romanians are growing dissatisfied with his successor, Iliescu. Since the price hikes a few weeks ago, there have been demonstrations in Bucharest. December 22 is the day they will announce further price increases, and everyone is predicting another series of demonstrations, bigger than ever.

The government is prepping the military to respond. On the TV news the army shows off its might, its riot control tactics, soldiers target-practicing on cardboard silhouettes. It feels like there really could be another revolution on December 22. And seeing the reminders of last year’s uprising, the bullet-pocked buildings on the boulevards outside our hotel, this is not the place to be when bedlam erupts. The threat of riots and the constant paranoia about our flights home cause a gnawing dread in all of us.

So the first thing this morning, I phone Keith to discuss his ticket problem to try and figure a way to resolve it so he’ll agree to continue working until the Pan Am ticket office reopens on Monday. I hate how my desire to help my colleagues is so wrapped up in my need to force them to keep working on the film, but that’s where I’m at. We have to shoot with Radu tonight in order to finish the festival sequence or the schedule collapses ahead of us. We agree to give Ion one last chance to straighten out our tickets on Monday morning. I call Ion and tell him to meet Keith and me at the Pan Am office at 9 AM Monday to get us confirmed seats from Bucharest to LA, or else we’ll use the tickets in our possession and make our own reservations.

At 2 PM I’m scheduled to go location scouting for some nearby ruins with Lucian and Carmen, so I hit the restaurant to eat my first sit-down meal since last Monday.

The location scout is a bust. The ruins in the old center of Bucharest that we hoped might double for the ruins at Rasnov for the long-delayed and about to be omitted Ion and Rosa death scene are being restored and converted into a modern office building or a trendy shopping mall and have lost their ancient crumbling allure.

Carmen and I get to Cernica Monastery an hour before crew call. I sit in the cemetery roughing-out a schedule for the remaining two weeks of principle photography. Every day looks incredibly tight, but I’m pessimistically optimistic.

When the crew arrives I talk to Vlad about working tomorrow (Sunday) for just five hours in order to shoot the sword fight scene that got shut down a few nights ago. Vlad tells me that before he agrees he has to speak with Ion about his contract. I suddenly understand why he’s been looking so grumpy and troubled for the last week or so. In his original contract, the money paid to him by the Romanian side of the production was to be equalled by Ion and Charlie Band. But now Ion has cancelled that agreement, and Vlad stands to make half of what he was promised. The same goes for his camera crew.

Same goes for Tibi, our sound recordist, who regretfully warns me that tonight will be his last day with the film, due to some money/contractual problems he’s had with Ion.

Vlad agrees to work Sunday, but he’s really having to bite the bullet, as we all are, our compulsion to finish the film stretching the limits of our tolerance.

To let off some steam I throw a mini-tantrum at the Production team about my having to deal with the actors’ call times and transportation schedules.

As night falls, I start urging/begging Vlad to work as fast as we can. We have a great deal to accomplish, and I want to finish the dialogue scenes with our leads with time left over to shoot more material of the festival action.

Miraculously, we actually begin shooting at 6 PM, and everything goes smoothly. We get the actors in and out faster than ever before, and are able to shoot more shots of the dancers and the climax of the ceremony. I feel happier and more energized on the set than I have in weeks. Until the Steadicam breaks down at the last minute. But thankfully we got almost all of the shots I was hoping for.

I imagined this night might go till dawn, but by 2 AM we’re on the last setup.

Tani and I get back to the hotel about 3 AM. Tani goes over to talk to the pimp/dick about god knows what, and I head up to my room. I’m getting tired of late night room service sandwiches, fearful of the health effects of salami abuse, so I eat a candy bar and fall into bed.

STILL MORE TO COME. . .

Thanks for reading. If you’re enjoying the journal, please take a moment to hit the “like” button, tell your friends, and come back for more.

Ted Nicolaou

Subspecies the film

LInk to my full bio

Link to my IMDB page

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

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Written By
Ted Nicolaou
During the Making of Subspecies
September – December 1990

NOV 23 — Fri — I stumble down to breakfast to find Anders drinking his usual dozen cups of Nescafe. I down a couple myself and order a bottle of mineral water to take to the set. We ask for the bill. The waiter deducts Anders’ 105 lei breakfast allowance from the total, checks my room number and tells me I’ve already signed for breakfast this morning. I tell him this is the first time I’ve been down here today and ask again for him to deduct my 105 lei so we can settle the bill and leave. The Chief of the restaurant comes hustling over, refusing to hear my side of the story. He knows all about our incidents at Hotel Flora and how we skip out on our bills. Anders starts to complicate things with a premise that there are 12 of us on 105 lei allowances, and since all 12 of us don’t usually eat breakfast, the ones that do should be allowed to spend the unused allowances. I cut Anders off, take the Chief aside and insist that he hear me out. Eventually he calms down and lets me pay what I owe, and Anders and I escape, furious that we have to deal with these little grifts every day.

I’m scheduled to leave the hotel at 1 PM to scout the location of our festival sequence, a cemetery at Cernica Monastery on the outskirts of Bucharest. The hotel restaurant opens for lunch at 12:30, and since all I had to eat yesterday was the late night room service salami sandwiches, I really should eat before leaving. At 12:30 sharp, I’m at the door, but the door stays locked until 12:45. When it finally opens I rush into the restaurant and ask the waiter to PLEASE turn in my order quickly, I have to leave for work soon. He’s unusually accommodating by local waiter standards, and takes off with my order. But 1 o’clock arrives and my soup has not materialized. I step out to the lobby and find Carmen, Colombo, Valentin, and Lucian the art director waiting for me. I apologize and promise to hurry, but I really have to eat. I rush back to the restaurant, wolf down my soup and pray the steak comes soon, but it doesn’t. I pay the tab, leave a big tip for the waiter for trying, and head out.

We get to the monastery and explore the grounds. It’s my first time to lay eyes on the place. After we abandoned the Purcarene location due to scheduling hangups and the no-show Steadicam, there hasn’t been an opportunity to scout alternate locations. Art Director Lucian picked Cernica. It’s not exactly what I had in mind, but imagining how it will look after dark, Vlad assures me it will be fine. We find one area of the cemetery that we all agree will work best for our scenes.

The festival in our film is based on a peasant superstition we learned about during preproduction from a professor of anthropology named Doctor Popp. Romanians scoff at the idea of vampires. To them, Dracula is a stupid western invention. But in the old days, and in some places even today, there’s a belief, when misfortune or disease plagues a village, that the cause is a body in the graveyard, interred but undead. The remedy is to find the blighted grave through a ceremony involving a white horse, to exhume the corpse, cut out its heart, and boil it in a cauldron of soup for the village to consume. Intrigued by this grisly tale, I revised a section of the screenplay to weave it into our festival. Costume Designer Oana commissioned a local artist to make the folk masks, and choreographer Dan Ionescu styled the ceremony.

The horizon glows with a spectacular sunset. As the lights are beging rigged, I ask Vlad to get the camera and shoot the sunset. But the camera truck isn’t here yet, so the moment is lost.

Tani arrives and begins setting up the Steadicam. But the small magazines for the Arriflex are missing, left behind at Buftea. The camera assistants claim no one told them we’d be shooting sync sound with the Steadicam. I don’t feel like hassling the camera crew, even if it was their mistake. They are one department that’s consistently good at their jobs and I like them a lot. So I ask Production to send a car to Buftea to fetch the magazines.

It takes a long time to light the first shot, a complicated 2 minute Steadicam move through the procession, starting with the horse, 45 masked dancers, and 60 extras, discovering Laura and Irina, and ending on Lili Dumitrescu, the Crone, weaving through the crowd stirring up trouble. It’s the kind of shot that’s an interesting challenge, but it’s also a gamble. If it works it’s worth it, but if it doesn’t, you’ve burned a lot of time orchestrating it, and you better leave yourself some options for editing. I pace around in a state of nervous energy, sorting out cues for the various bits of action. The horse, ridden by Viorel the stunt man, is spooked by the crowd, and it’s almost impossible to get it to stand still for the beginning of the shot, then when it moves, it keeps bumping into the Steadicam.

The two minute take doesn’t work out so well, so we cover ourselves with enough takes to piece together all the beats of the sequence. By 10 PM we’re ready to move on to the closer setups. We have two nights here, so we prioritize shots with our leads in the midst of the extras.

We wrap at 2:30, and head for the cars to go home. But there’s a problem. Colombo drove Tani back to the hotel a few hours ago, and no one told him to come back for a second run. So there’s one Mercedes left to transport Michael, Brenna, Laura, Irina, Lili Dumitrescu, Carmen, and me. Irina’s been here since 3 o’clock and is not feeling well. Lili is tired and worried about getting home so late. Relu tries to blame Carmen for not telling Colombo to come back and that makes her furious. I’m peeved because I’m seeing my quick ride home and my salami sandwiches fading away. I send Irina and Lili to fill up the Mercedes, and Carmen and I take the slow bus to Bucharest with the extras and dancers, dropping people off all around city before letting me off, the last passenger, at the hotel after 4 AM.

I call room service, have some sandwiches and a beer and go to bed, marveling at the never ending variety of things that can go wrong on one film. Dancing in graveyards, drinking blood in monasteries, I’m beginning to wonder if we’ve awakened some ancient vengeful spirits. The production is like a runaway train, with Vlad and me at the controls.

STILL MORE TO COME. . .

Thanks for reading. If you’re enjoying the journal, please take a moment to hit the “like” button, tell your friends, and come back for more.

Ted Nicolaou

Subspecies the film

LInk to my full bio

Link to my IMDB page

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

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Written By
Ted Nicolaou
During the Making of Subspecies
September – December 1990

NOV 22 — Thurs —Thanksgiving Day — Continued: Crew call was 1 PM. We’re ready to begin shooting at 4:30. We knock off the first scene without problems, and begin setting the lights and readying the Steadicam for the sword fight. The cast is in a lighter mood, playful and focused on the work. Perhaps they’re feeling optimistic, seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, a few more weeks of work and we’re done. Perhaps it’s the controlled environment of the studio, with its spaciousness and green room upstairs. There’s still too much alcohol consumed on off hours at the hotel. Though I drink with them for the camaraderie, the truth is I’m a lightweight; marijuana is my preferred vice. The effect of alcohol I hate most, and the one I strenuously avoid is the bed spinning out from under me when I close my eyes to sleep, so in all these weeks with the cast, I’ve only been drunk a handful of times.

We roll on the first setup of the sword fight about 8:30 -- I estimate that with good luck and economical shooting, we can finish this sequence in about 4 hours. The first bit of action involves Michael leaping off the platform after Karl frees him from the chains, taking up a sword, helping Laura off the bed where Radu has just violated het, and rushing to fight Radu. Anders arrives in his makeup and stands off-camera with his sword to give Michael an eye line. We shoot two takes that are pretty good, but there’s one moment I want to be certain the camera catches, so we set up for a third take. The camera rolls, I call action, Michael leaps off the platform, and suddenly there’s a loud metallic CLANG off to the left. We all look at Anders, standing there with a sheepish, guilty look. His totally fearsome magical-looking sword has broken in two, the blade sheared off at the hilt.

I ask Viorel and the prop guys if we have a double for the sword. They shake their heads. Are there any other longswords to be had? Yes but they’re in the prop warehouse, which is locked at this hour and the Man With the Key has gone home. There’s a welding shop at the studio, but it’s closed too and its Man With the Key is gone too. I summon the Production team and Jimmy the AD, who’s put in a special appearance tonight, and tell them to find the key, break into the prop warehouse, I don’t care how they do it, but bring me some swords, quick. They rush off to see what they can do, or to at least give the appearance of doing something. They return a short time later with a few puny looking swords, none with the gravitas of a Radu weapon. They’re also lighter weight than Michael’s sword, so the difference in weight could pose a danger to them both. One of the prop guys comes back with a solution. They’ve found a welding shop in town that’s open, and rush off to repair Radu’s sword, saying they’ll be back in an hour. It’s 9 PM. To not lose time we change our plan and go to work on the aftermath of the sword fight, the shots of Michael disarmed, fallen back by the fireplace, taking up the burning spear, and plunging it into Radu’s chest, followed by the final moments of Michael beheading Radu. Unfortunately, with lack of time and problems with the props, these shots have to be done in closeups instead of 2-shots.

At 10:15, we have one more setup to complete this sequence. But the crew has other plans. They gather around Nelu the production man and tell him they’re tired of working for the day and insist that we wrap. They’re exhausted. One of them fainted. Ten hours is enough. They can’t take it anymore.

I’m a sensitive person. I empathize and feel some responsibility for everyone who’s contributing to the film. If the crew is exhausted to the point of fainting, there’s definitely something wrong. Maybe it’s because they don’t get a meal break. Or water on the set. Maybe it’s the money they’re owed and the only power they have is to stop work. In all this I can’t be angry with them. Anyone with a heart can see that everybody here needs money desperately. The financial transactions are between Ion and Charlie Band. I know the money usually comes later than promised, and usually when someone visits us with cash, but I trust it will come. Charlie wants to finish this fucking movie as much as I do.

Maybe I sound like some kind of a Nineteenth Century water cures kook, but I’ve been ragging on Ion about water on the set from the first day of preproduction. I repeat my plea to Valentin now, and he agrees. But Ion refuses to spring for the 25 dollars a day.

After some pleading on my part, and with Vlad’s encouragement, the crew agrees to work another half hour so we can finish this sequence with the beheading of Radu. We leave the sword fight for another day. Radu’s sword never comes.

After we wrap I take Valentin aside and tell him that unless Production works out something to satisfy the crew, we’ll never finish Michael’s scenes by the time he leaves.

We’re basically improvising now, adjusting our daily shot list in response to chaotic happenstance. No one’s making call sheets for the cast and crew anymore, so everyone comes to me to ask when they need to be on set. In addition to trying to direct the film and to keep a tally of the scenes and shots we’ve left behind, these questions are starting to drive me crazy. The drivers need their schedules, so they come to me. What’s the location for tomorrow’s festival scene? I don’t have a clue.

I call Ion as soon as we get back at the hotel. I tell him that if we can’t make the crew happy enough to work, we might as well stop shooting right now. I tell him I can no longer deal with organizational details that Production should be taking care of. He calls me naive. I start shouting. He’s impossible to reason with. And he carps back at me for being too friendly to the crew and smiling too much.

A little later, reflecting on this with a cooler head, I’m sure Ion is suffering too, waiting for money that’s always late, dodging demands that he cannot meet. I also ponder something that hasn’t occurred to me: am I the asshole here, driving the crew too hard, thinking only of the film with disregard for its toll on everyone around me? My only excuse is that after all we’ve been through for this film, and the quality I can feel in much of it, I’m hell-bent to see it to the end.

The cast and I settle in for a lurk in the lobby. We call room service and order up some sandwiches and wine. The waiter overcharges us by at least 1000 lei, and when we ask for the bill to break it down, he brings us a receipt that neither he nor we can decipher. We pay without contest, beaten into submission by the persistent schemes of these fledgling capitalists.

STILL MORE TO COME. . .

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Ted Nicolaou

Subspecies the film

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Written By
Ted Nicolaou
During the Making of Subspecies
September – December 1990

Nov 21 — Wed — First day on the Throne Room set — Continued: We have to wrap today by midnight so our turnaround doesn’t keep pushing our days later and later. That leaves us seven hours to shoot. I’ve broken down the sequences with an eye toward Michael Watson’s fast approaching last day. We’ll shoot every angle the includes Michael first, and leave everything that’s left over to pick up next week.

I’m so frustrated about the delays and stressed about getting the sequence right, I spend the whole day and night scowling and yelling for “Liniste!!!”

Part of the sequence involves a short struggle between Michelle, now a vampire, and Ivan, who’s come to rescue them. Michelle’s worried about the axe in Ivan’s hand, with which he’s just cut Michael’s “Stefan” free from the chains. We work out the blocking so that he drops the axe before she attacks him, but it really pisses him off that no one trusts him.

The same worries pop up later, when his character charges Radu with a spear. He refuses to rehearse the action the way Stunt Coordinator Viorel demonstrates, until we all insist that he cooperate. It doesn’t help matters that Stunt Coordinator Viorel seems drunk.

When we wrap at midnight, Catalina informs me that with Michael’s wife Brenna, there are too many of us to fit in the two Mercedes, so the first car will drop off its passengers at the hotel and circle back for Anders after his makeup is removed. Anders has been grumbling all day - rightfully so - about going through makeup and then waiting around for hours before he shoots, so the last thing we need is for him to finally get out of makeup and have to wait around for a car to travel back from Bucharest to bring him home. I go upstairs to keep him company while Keith works. Fortunately, there ends up being room for two more in Colombo’s car, if Laura and Irina don’t mind waiting a few extra minutes while he showers. They wait, we send Anders and Keith home, and Carmen, Catalina, and I sit on the studio’s front steps, waiting another half hour for the first Mercedes to circle back from Bucharest.

I get to the hotel about 1:20, and have a glass of wine and some sandwiches with Anders, Laura, and Michelle in Anders’ room. We entertain ourselves imagining the scathing things we might say when we’re interviewed for the “Making of --” video.

NOV 22 — Thurs — Thanksgiving Day. We sit down to our breakfast of Nescafe, tomatoes and toast and take a moment to reflect on all we have to be thankful for.

We set off for the studio at noon, Anders, Michael, Stunt Coordinator Viorel, and I, to rehearse the sword fight sequence we’re scheduled to shoot today. I feel unusually happy on my way to the studio. Perhaps since I just talked on the phone to Becky and my daughter Corinna who’s home from school in Berkeley with her new boyfriend.

The set is pre-lit. Anders and Michael are looking forward to the swordplay. I have a pretty solid plan for shooting out Michael and coming back next week to pick up what’s left of the sequence. Maybe this will be a good day of work.

We step onto the stage at 12:40. It’s completely dark. The electricians who are supposed to turn on the work lights have not arrived. Since so few people own cars, most of the crew have to travel to the studio together from Bucharest by the Romaniafilm bus. Eventually the electricians show up and after much coaxing by me and Viorel, they turn on the lights and we begin rehearsing..

The swords from the studio’s prop warehouse are heavy longswords. Not lightweight props designed for safety. Real steel swords. Their blades, clashed countless times over decades of medieval battle scenes, are serrated down their whole length, gnarly edges sharp enough to draw blood or lop off a limb. Noting the risks, we rehearse cautiously. Anders and Michael, both trained in stage combat, and both a little crazy, relish the thrill of danger.

By the time Vlad and the crew arrives, the sword fight is shaping up. We send Anders up to begin his makeup, and in the time he’s gone, we’ll shoot the short scene with Ivan, Michael, and Laura after Radu is beheaded.

But the crew refuses to start working until they renegotiate their contracts again, to reflect our working nights and Saturday. Even Vlad, my closest friend and collaborator here, seems tired and depressed. Production is screwing him around on his contract too. He wants to keep working. He knows how crucial it is that we don’t slip behind today. The scenes have to be completed tonight for us to stay on schedule for Michael’s departure. I assure him that whatever the money problems Producer Ion is suffering, I’ll help sort it out with Charlie Band as soon as possible.

Vlad rallies his crew and they begin setting lights. Then he suddenly excuses himself and rushes out of the studio, saying he’ll be back in two minutes. After 15 minutes, I’m starting to worry. When he eventually returns, Oana explains that he heard that a man outside had meat for sale, so he rushed out to buy some. It’s becoming harder and harder to find meat in the shops or the usually dependable black market. It’s Thanksgiving Day and I realize how fortunate I am to have Vlad and Oana as my guides and friends through these crazy months.

STILL MORE TO COME. . .

Thanks for reading. Please hit the “like” button, tell your friends, and come back for more.

Ted Nicolaou

Subspecies the film

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Written By
Ted Nicolaou
During the Making of Subspecies
September – December 1990

NOV 20 — Tues — Continued: We’re supposed to leave for the studio at 2 PM, but by the time everyone’s checked-in to Hotel Bucharest, it’s 3 o'clock.

Arriving at Buftea I step onto the throne room set, expecting to be dazzled and for it to be ready by 5. There are still no lights. The set dressing is all wrong, and I have to confer with Lucian about changes. The crew is having another meeting with the men from Buftea about their pay and debating whether or not they’ll agree to work Saturday.

I can’t fault the crew for wanting to be paid, and I understand their frustrations. They’ve worked their asses off for the film. My relationship with them is good. But money problems are out of my control. What weighs on me is if we can’t work Saturday, the schedule with Michael falls to pieces.

It’s obvious we’re not going to shoot on the throne room set until tomorrow, so we move back to the dungeon to hopefully complete our work there.

We set up to begin shooting, hoping that Ion will sort out the per diem situation with Anders. Late in the afternoon, I get word that Tani has arrived from Rome with money, so Anders and Keith are on their way upstairs to the makeup room to begin the three hour job.

Ion’s new punishment to the actors for making his life difficult is that he expects everyone to leave for the studio at the same call time every day. Whether we’re shooting with them right off or four hours later. I tell him that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard, and he can expect them to rebel. He says he can’t afford to send the cars back and forth all day long. I tell him that’s too bad, because that’s what he promised in the beginning. We’ll see how long the actors will stand for this new treatment.

We shoot the remaining scenes in the dungeon set. I’m feeling a bit more optimistic. At least we’re knocking off some pages. Vlad and his crew, despite the money worries, continue to move the film forward with positive energy.

Keith and Anders now have a decent makeup room at the studio, so at the end of the day, since there’s only one car left to takes us to the hotel, we have to wait another 45 minutes while Keith removes the makeup.

Dragging ourselves through the hotel lobby, we’re hailed by three hookers lurking in the bar. For a frightening moment, Keith and I both think it’s Luminita. We don’t wait for the slow-moving elevator, we go flying up the stairs.

NOV 21 —Wed — Anders, Keith, Michael, and I are scheduled to leave the hotel at noon to rehearse the sword fight on the set with Romanian Stunt Coordinator Viorel Plavitiu. I phone Michael when I wake up at 10 to make sure he’s aware of the call. He claims no one notified him. At noon, Anders, Keith, and I are waiting in the lobby. Michael doesn’t come downstairs until 12:30. We drive to the studio, all of us seething at him for making us wait.

But when we arrive at the studio, Viorel is nowhere to be found, and he doesn’t show up until an hour after that. By this time we’re all going crazy. The electricians are lighting the set, crew people are sitting around. We rehearse as best we can, then Anders and Keith head upstairs to begin the makeup.

By the time the set is lit and ready to shoot, it’s 5 PM -- a full day later than promised. Knowing how much work these last sequences involve, I’ve sunk into my by-now-routine 4-hour-waiting-to-shoot despair. The actors are complaining about the wait, but I’ve pretty much lost my ability to sympathize with them about it. This is how it is here. If Vlad can’t move things any faster, no one can. We know it’s fucked up, so please just shut up.

The Production team are barely visible now that we’re at Buftea. Ion comes around for an hour or so to distribute the per diems, but there’s none for me until next week when the “Making of ” videographer arrives. Jimmy the 2nd AD is sick with liver trouble from his former days of hard living. And Relu, my 1st AD hasn’t stepped on the set in days.

Most of the crew just sits at the edge of the set and watches. They don’t appear to have any duties most of the time, and their chatter drives the actors crazy. I have to clear the set repeatedly before rehearsals and takes, but they soon drift back in and just sit there talking and watching with sleepy expressions. Anders and I have learned the word “Liniste!!!” (QUIET), but you have to repeat it two or three times louder and louder until you’re bellowing, to get them to quiet down. With no AD around, my voice is getting hoarse just trying to manage the ambient chatter.

STILL MORE TO COME. . .

Thanks for reading. Please hit the “like” button, tell your friends, and come back for more.

Ted Nicolaou

Subspecies the film

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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. . .

Thanks for reading. Please hit the “like” button, tell your friends, and come back for more.

Ted Nicolaou

Subspecies the film

LInk to my full bio

Link to my IMDB page

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Written By
Ted Nicolaou
During the Making of Subspecies
September – December 1990

NOV 18 — Sun — Sleep til 11. Go down for coffee, feeling depressed and dehydrated. There’s no mineral water in the breakfast room. Keith and Michelle are finishing breakfast, getting ready to take a walk. I decline their invitation to join them. I have work to do, breaking down scenes for the coming week, going through the script to see what remains to be filmed, since there’s no official schedule to consult. I work for a couple of hours and come down for lunch to find the rest of the gang eating with Michelle and Keith, who still haven’t gotten it together to go for their walk. After lunch I continue working, while the others walk to the nearby park and ride the roller coaster, putting their faith in the rusty technology.

I request a phone call home, and it goes through much faster than I expected, so I wake Becky up and we talk for awhile, but since our son Alex is still sleeping, I have to call back later to talk to him. I work awhile, turn on the TV and find some awful Italian sci-fi movie dubbed into Romanian. I lie down awhile and watch it.

My second call home comes through, and Alex sings me the main title theme from GILLIGAN’S ISLE, which resonates more than he can ever know.

Vlad and Oana come to the hotel to talk, and then Carmen and Valentin, a production man from Buftea Studios, who seems more earnestly helpful than our regular production team. We discuss the coming week, with me stressing the importance of working full days, having everything ready to shoot, so we can wrap Michael’s scenes before he leaves a week from Tuesday. Valentin informs us that none of the sets have been dressed yet. And we’re scheduled to start shooting tomorrow afternoon. Vlad seems depressed and pessimistic about the prospects for the coming week.

It’s PASTA NIGHT. The one meal of the week everyone looks forward to. Valentin hand delivered the ingredients to the chef earlier in the day -- a one kilo package of pasta, and one small box of tomato sauce, which I don’t see how is going to feed 12 of us.

I order soup and salad just to be safe, and when the pasta is ladled onto our plates and the small gravy boat of sauce is passed around, I let everyone else serve themselves first, and end up with the last smattering of sauce. I add some butter to make it edible. Laura orders a plate of sausages to add to the pasta, and somehow the waiter understands she’s ordering sausage dinners for everyone. When the waiters bring the sausage dinners, we don’t accept them -- only four of us take the dinners. But when we get the bill, it’s 4673 lei for 12 people -- 400 lei each -- equal to about 11 dollars per person, which sounds cheap by American standards, but seems expensive here, especially since it includes food we didn’t order.

We call the waiter over to dispute the bill. He turns belligerent, insisting we ordered sausage dinners for everyone. He refuses to acknowledge that we sent back 8 of the dinners. He summons the head waiter, who’s even more antagonistic. Finally, our waiter snatches the bill out of my hand, saying we don’t have to pay. But we don’t accept the guilt trip. I chase him into the kitchen and try to give him the money we calculated that we owe, but he refuses it. I leave it on the counter, but he takes it out to the reception desk and leaves it there. We explain to the reception lady what happened. She’s no friendlier than the waiters, telling us to speak with the chief of the restaurant. We go back and find the chief and try to tell him what happened. He doesn’t speak English, so the head waiter translates for us. God knows what he’s saying. We make a list of everything we ate, and the chief finally returns to tell us we’ll settle it tomorrow.

By now it’s beginning to feel like everyone at Hotel Flora hates us. We decide to check out of this remote clinic and move to the Hotel Bucharest in the center of town. Carmen must think we’re all crazy assholes, but she remains calm, promises to talk to Ion, and she and Valentin will organize the move by Tuesday.

We buy a few more bottles of wine and go outside to talk. Lurking in the lobby here doesn’t seem like a wise option, so we go up to the mezzanine rec room. Laura is drunk and wild. She starts wrestling with me and we go spinning around the room. The hotel detective and a policeman burst in to tell us to be quiet. We retreat upstairs to Michael and Brenna’s room. I intended to go to bed early, but they insist that I stay and hang with them. Laura is out of control, like a hippie on a bad acid trip on the retro cop show DRAGNET, pacing the balcony, flopping on the bed, calling Ion on the phone to make wild demands.

By midnight, I’ve had enough punishment for one day. I have to meet Assistant Direcctor Relu and my assistant Carmen at 11:30 in the morning to go to Buftea Studios to meet with Vlad and Art Director Lucian at noon. I head to my room, add this day to my journal, and crawl in bed.

NOV 19 — Mon — Woke up from a bad sleep. Crazy mixed-up stress dreams and rumpled sheets. Got out of bed and found this note under my door:

DEAR TED,

I KNOW YOU’RE IN DIRE STRAIGHTS, BUT I’VE BEEN FIGHTING WITH MY PRINCIPLES ALL NIGHT AND I’D RATHER FIGHT WITH YOU THAN THEM. PLEASE BE INFORMED THAT I’M NOT WORKING UNTIL I GET WHAT’S OWED TO ME IN MY CONTRACT -- NAMELY, (DOLLARS) CASH PER DIEM WHICH COMES OUT TO FROM LAST THURS. TO MONDAY (TODAY), A TOTAL OF $75.00. IF THE CASH IS NOT FORTHCOMING, PLEASE DO NOT WAKE ME UP TO DISCUSS LOYALTIES BECAUSE MY MAIN LOYALTY IS TO MY CONSCIENCE. TED, PLEASE KNOW THAT THROUGH ALL THIS STRIFE I’VE ALWAYS LOVED YOU AND THINK YOU HAVE A SEXY SMILE. KEEP GOOD CHEER. GILLIGAN’S ISLAND IS ONLY A PLANE RIDE AWAY.

MICHAEL R. WATSON

I call Ion and tell him the news. He swears he has no money to pay for anything. We were expecting Steadicam operator Tani Canevari to arrive from Italy last night with cash from the States, but Tani wasn’t on the plane. I understand everyone’s concerns over money, and fully support their right to expect timely payment. But the sums here are so minor, and the stakes for the film so huge. Am I going to have to pay out of my own pocket to keep the production afloat? If we miss shooting with Michael today, it jeopardizes the whole film. Every hour counts now with him leaving on the 28th.

STILL MORE TO COME. . .

Thanks for reading. Please hit the “like” button, tell your friends, and come back for more.

Ted Nicolaou

Subspecies the film

LInk to my full bio

Link to my IMDB page

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Written By
Ted Nicolaou
During the Making of Subspecies
September – December 1990

NOV 17 — Sat — The phone on the nightstand rings at 8:30 AM, waking me from a restless sleep.

“Hello,” I croak.
“Ted?”
“Yes.”
“Ted?”
“Who is this?”
“Sleep?”
“Yes. Who is this?”
“Luminita.”
“I’m sorry, I have to go, Luminita. Goodbye.” I set down the receiver.

I have to get up and pack my stuff for the trip back to Bucharest. Before we leave, I’m meeting Vlad and his camera crew to shoot a few atmosphere shots at Rasnov we’ve been hoping to pick up. I pack my bags and jump in the shower.

There’s a knock at my door.

“Who is it?”

No answer. Just another knock. I turn the tap on full and wait for hot water. There’s another knock, louder this time.

“Who is it?”

No reply. More knocking, louder and louder.

“Who is it?” I yell. “I’m in the shower!!!”

I hear her voice.

“Luminita.”

My heart starts pounding - not with ardor - but with a sudden fear she’ll get the maid to unlock the door, rush in and kill me with a witchy jeweled dagger. “If I can’t have you, no one can.” Thankfully she stays out in the hallway, pacing back and forth outside my room for a really long time.

I go down to breakfast before heading out with Vlad and his crew. Luminita’s waiting in the lobby to kiss me goodbye.

We shoot some final landscape shots at Rasnov fortress and head back to the hotel for lunch before we take off for Bucharest.

Over lunch, Oana tells me a story told to her by Mara, the actress playing Rosa. I was very apologetic to Mara last night. We’ve called her to Brasov from Bucharest three times now and barely shot with her at all due to our scheduling complications. But according to Mara our film seemed super organized compared to the Russian co-production she just finished working on. With the Russians, everyone — cast and crew — were drunk all the time. One actor she had a scene with was so drunk it took three days of shooting before he nailed his two lines of dialogue. The Russians would run out of liquor, go into the actresses’ dressing rooms, steal their perfume and drink it mixed with mineral water. When there was no perfume to be had, they’d drink rubbing alcohol, or spread shoe polish on bread like it was butter, and eat it.

We take the Wild Ride back to Bucharest. Michelle, Laura, Anders and I in Viorel’s Mercedes, John Lennon, Dire Straits, Benny Goodman on the stereo. Former race car driver Viorel speeding around mountain curves, slamming on the brakes to avoid collisions, hitting the gas so hard your neck snaps. The Wild Ride always makes me carsick. And the roadside shrines whizzing by make me pray to the god I don’t believe in to please please get me home safe after all this is over.

By late afternoon we’re in Bucharest at Hotel Flora — our home for the next few weeks.

Like other fancy hotels in Bucharest, it’s grandiose, brutalist, weirdly decorated, hazy with cigarette smoke, and so dark from the shortage of light bulbs you feel like you’re going blind.

Bu the lobby is filled with people. There’s a wedding in the ballroom, people dressed up, music and dancing. Life that we didn’t experience in Poiana Brasov. Compared to the people around us we’re dressed like tramps. There are signs throughout the hotel proclaiming: NON-STOP YOUTH. It sounds like the slogan of some hip underground youth scene, which lifts our hearts, but upon closer examination of the posters, and exploration of the hotel, we realize NON-STOP YOUTH is a slogan for GEROVITAL treatments, the original Romanian anti-aging formula. That’s when we start noticing the nurses gliding by carrying trays of serums and hypodermic needles.

We’re hungry, so we head to the restaurant and sink into the hard-bottomed red velour seats.

I’m already missing Poiana Brasov, and starting to think we had it pretty good there.

We order chicken ciorba (soup), and are pleased to find no bones in the brew, only juicy morsels of white meat in a pleasantly creamy and sour broth. The salad’s pretty tasty, with lettuce, peppers, and tomatoes. Encouraged, we order some chicken to do a serious comparison of city versus Transylvanian poultry. When our plates arrive, we stare at them in disbelief. The scrawniest drumsticks connected to puny little thighs, and nothing more. All the white meat went into the ciorba. Or possibly to the fancier guests. We pick at the bones in disappointment.

By 10 PM, the teeming life of the hotel lobby is fading fast. We explore, checking out the pool, the Gerovital treatment centers, the closed dollar shops, the bar that’s closing, starting to realize this might not be the city life we’ve been dreaming of.

Anders, Keith and I decide to take a cab to the Hotel Intercontinental to check it out and have a beer. We get there, but the doorman won’t let us in, telling us it’s closed.

We walk to the Athenee Palace, a more historic hotel with a basement cabaret that features a weird floor show: magic act, Romanian songbirds, contortionists, and a goofy Batman dance number that Ion brought me to see at the start of preproduction. We try to talk our way in the door without reservations but the doorman refuses us. We walk to the Hotel Bucurest, another modern hotel on the boulevard, and feel encouraged by the brightly lit lobby. We head for the lobby bar and order beers, but the bartender tells us the bar is closed, and he won’t even accept some extra dollars for beers. He tells us we can buy 3 beers for 5 dollars at the desk, but the lady at the desk tells us she has no beer, to go to the snack bar, but the snack bar door is just being locked as we approach. We give up, hail a cab and head back to the Flora.

Another Saturday night, searching for fun that keeps slipping away like a mirage. You know there’s some kind of action out there in the night, but maybe it’s not for foreigners like us. We’re in Bucharest now, without Vlad and Oana or our interpreters in our midst, suddenly on our own in a suspicious and sinister city.

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Ted Nicolaou

Subspecies the film

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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

Subspecies the film

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Written By
Ted Nicolaou
During the Making of Subspecies
September – December 1990

Nov 15 – Thurs night – Continued:

Sitting at the table of broken glass, eyeing my admirer across the restaurant, my imagination running wild with all the ways a witch could put the whammy on me, I barely notice when Carmen and Ioana sit down and join our “party.” Moments later, the waitress returns with a handwritten note for me.

IF I CAN TELL YOU, MY FEELINGS, I WILL BE A HAPPY WOMAN. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION.

LUMINITA

P.S. PLEASE ANSWER ME

Is Luminita (pronounced Loomineetsa) really a witch? Or just a sweet lonely person reaching out for comfort in this bleak hotel? I sit there paralyzed with doubt while my table mates laugh at my panic. The waitress, growing annoyed with shuttling back and forth and maybe by the fact I haven’t tipped her for work as emissary, says Luminita will cry if I don’t answer her. Brenna and Carmen offer to help me compose my reply. And just in case Luminita really IS a witch, Carmen offers to write the note in her handwriting. Brave, noble Carmen.

I send the waitress back with my reply:

DEAR LUMINITA,

I AM VERY FLATTERED BY YOUR ATTENTION, BUT I AM HAPPILY MARRIED AND DO NOT WANT ANY OTHER RELATIONSHIP.

SINCERELY, TED

PLEASE UNDERSTAND. I DO NOT WANT TO HURT YOUR FEELINGS.

I hope that’s the end of it, but minutes later, the waitress comes back, smirking, with another note:

DEAR TED

I UNDERSTAND YOU, BUT I WANT TO STAY WITH YOU A FEW MINUTES. THAT’S ALL

THANKS

Oana translates as the waitress cajoles me in Romanian: “She just wants to talk with you for a few minutes. What’s the problem?” I send the waitress back with an invitation for Luminita to join us at our table. She brings a male friend with her to act as translator. She tells me she likes me very much as a man. She feels I’m a gentle soul. She’s here every other week with tour groups from Turkey, and would like to spend some time with me. I tell her we’re very busy working on our film, and unfortunately we’re leaving on Saturday to continue our work in Bucharest. That last bit of news seems to upset her. She asks if we can spend some time together tomorrow. Jeezus, these Transylvanian witches don’t take no for an answer. I tell her we’re working long hours and that maybe I’ll see her tomorrow night in the restaurant. I excuse myself, saying I have to go up and do my homework for tomorrow. She and her translator friend say their goodbyes and walk away. But then a few minutes later he returns with something wrapped in a paper napkin, a gift from Luminita. It’s a white gold charm from her necklace. A token of affection? Or a devious bit of witchery?

I sneak up to my room, hoping I won’t run into Luminita on my way through the lobby. Luckily the coast is clear.

Special effects makeup artist Keith Edmier, who wanted to flee the country when he first arrived, but somehow got swept up in the spooky comfort of our social cocoon, has been here for a month now, and has only worked 5 days. He and Anders are both going stir crazy. Keith’s quote for the day: I’M STARTING TO HATE MY LIFE.

NOV 16 — Fri — Crew call’s at 11:30 at the citadel of Rasnov, where we began our shoot weeks ago. The electricians have to stop off in Brasov first to bring the lights from the church. Vlad and I arrive at Rasnov at noon and find the electricians waiting at the bottom of the steep dirt road through the forest that leads to the hilltop citadel. When Vlad asks why they’re not working, they say the driver of one of the trucks got too drunk last night and didn’t feel like driving this morning.

We have a lot planned for today: the reverse angles of yesterday’s secret castle door scene, the three girls against a forest background to make it seem like Bran castle stands in the woods, instead of on a main highway; the students arriving at the fortress gate in the Trabant; two scenes in Radu’s crypt -- Karl and Michelle searching for Radu’s coffin, and Radu waking up and rising from his coffin; the Carciuma (a drinking establishment) interior and exterior; the Ion and Rosa love scene, and Radu attacking them. Vlad and I know this is an impossible amount to accomplish, but we will do the best we can for as long as the crew will work. For me, facing a shoot day with an impossible schedule fills me with dread and saps the joy out of the work.

While we’re waiting for the lights to come up the hill, we set the camera for the shots of the girls in the forest, the cheated reverse angle for when they’re standing outside the secret exit tunnel. Since it’s supposed to be moments after sunset, we have to position the action in the shade of the trees, but the sun keeps peeking out, forcing us to continually move the camera and the actors.

We wrap the scene about 3, and since the Trabant hasn’t arrived yet to shoot the arrival at the fortress gate, we head up to plot the setups in Radu’s crypt so Vlad’s crew can start lighting. Radu’s dusty crypt and the stone passageways that double for the subterranean tunnels beneath the castle are part of the complex of buildings and ruins that once was the walled village at the top of the hill. The views of the landscape from the hilltop, and the underground passages are so perfect for the film, that I once again marvel at our good fortune, even as we are constantly challenged by circumstance.

Producer Ion comes to inform us that the Trabant has been here for an hour, waiting at the bottom of the hill, but no one bothered to let us know. He sends for the Trabant and the cast, and we move the camera into position to be ready for them.

It’s 3:30. The light will be gone by 4. And Ivan comes up to tell us he just saw them in Colombo’s car heading for the Hotel Alpin. Apparently, they left some of the wardrobe for this scene at the hotel. Since there are no official call sheets anymore, no strict schedule to speak of, just Vlad and me, thinking on the fly, grabbing what we can whenever we are able to, production claims they didn’t know we were going to shoot this scene today.

Before the cast gets back with their wardrobe, the daylight’s gone. Vlad throws a screaming tantrum. This is the second time we’ve tried to shoot this scene and been shut down by the waning hours of daylight.

We hike back up to Radu’s crypt. The lights are just being unloaded. Anders arrives in full Radu makeup. His call was to be ready on the set by 4, which would have been reasonable, if this were a reasonable shoot, but the set won’t be lit for awhile, so we send him back to the hotel to wait in greater comfort.

I sit by the set as the work progresses, in the state of depressed frustration and schedule despair that is beginning to characterize the first half of every shooting day.

Thanks for reading. Please hit the “like” button, tell your friends, and come back for more.

Ted Nicolaou

Subspecies the film

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Link to my IMDB page

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Written By
Ted Nicolaou
During the Making of Subspecies
September – December 1990

Nov 14 – Wed – Continued:

After a drama-filled day, we’re back at the hotel around 11:30. Vlad, Oana, and I join Anders, Ion, and Laura at the now-closed restaurant table for some room service wine and sandwiches. Anders by this point has had more idle days at the hotel than shoot days, he’s being as patient as he can be, but he’s like a race horse chomping at the bit to work. Thankfully he’ll be much busier when we move back to Bucharest.

As she takes her seat, Laura announces that if Ivan gives her any more trouble on the set, she’s going to refuse to work with him, and I can just shoot their scenes in single shots. I tell her that that’s not a viable solution, and that we have to work out something more productive, or we might as well all just go home. She grows more and more agitated, until she jumps out of her chair, screaming that it’s either her or him, sweeping wine glasses and bottles across the table, shattering glass in Anders’ and my direction, storming out of the restaurant. By some amazing stroke of luck, Ivan must have been listening just outside the restaurant, because he comes casually strolling in to see what’s up. Laura follows him back inside, and I ask Ivan to sit down. I tell him that his attitude has hit the breaking point , that he’s completely upset his co-actors, the crew, and no one wants to work with him like this. He denies any wrongdoing, and says he’s just keeping to himself, and taking care of his own performance. His continued denials make me so furious I end up yelling at him, pounding my hand on the table among the shards of glass, saying his attitude is sick and negative and hampering everyone’s ability to do their work. He quietly gets up and leaves the table.

Laura sits down, and we all stare at each other as the adrenaline jitters dissipate. At this point, Ivan will either see the light and straighten up, or tomorrow he’ll be booking his flight home from Bucharest.

Providence rings in the form of a phone call from Anders’ agent, who also happens to represent Ivan. Anders rushes to the phone to inform their rep how disruptive Ivan is being.

A short time later, Ivan returns to the table and says, “Okay, what’s the problem?” Laura pours out her side of the story. Her litany is interrupted by the desk clerk summoning Ivan to the phone to speak to his agent.

Ivan returns ten minutes later, and listens to the end of Laura’s plea. When she’s finished, he’s quiet for a long time, then . . . he actually APOLOGIZES, and promises to be more cooperative going forwrd. He’ll still keep to himself, mind you, but he’ll behave more professionally on set. He asks if there’s anything more, and Anders starts in on him about treating your fellow actors with dignity, about how Ivan seems to think he can say anything to anybody, but when Anders tried to tell him that some time back, Ivan stopped talking to him. By the end, Ivan looks like he finally understands. He says goodnight, and heads up to bed.

We all sit there in stunned silence, then gradually filter up to our rooms.

Charlie calls about 2 AM and says he hears everything’s going great.

NOV 15 — Thurs — Carmen wakes me with a phone call saying that Assistant Director Relu wants to meet with us at 10 in the lobby. I head downstairs for some coffee, and find Romanian actress Mara Grigore and Anders at the table. Mara’s here to play ROSA, the housekeeper / assistant to Karl at the fortified monastery where he lives. Maybe she’s uncomfortable around so many strangers speaking English, and a crew that’s bonded from working together for awhile now (if she only knew the truth) Mara comes off as incredibly shy, lonely, and deeply sad.

Carmen and I sit down with Relu, who says we need to shoot the Ion and Rosa scene tonight (Ion is Karl’s other assistant). In the story, Ion and Rosa sneak out at night to make love under the stars, and Radu attacks them. Adrian, the actor playing Ion is leaving on the 28th for an engagement in Germany, and if we don’t shoot the scene tonight, we might not be able to shoot it at all. I don’t see how it’s possible to shoot the scene tonight, given the time we’ll be forced to wrap to allow us the turnaround necessary to leave enough time for the scenes we have to shoot tomorrow. I wish someone in production would figure this kind of stuff out and hand me a schedule. I promise I’ll be ready for anything.

Mara doesn’t speak much English, so I ask Carmen to join us. We sit with Mara in the lobby. I ask her if our producer Ion had discussed the issue of nudity in the scene. He told me they had spoken and it wasn’t a problem, but I don’t entirely trust Ion and want to make sure. Mara looks at me like this is the first she’s heard of it. I assure her that it will be tasteful and the set will be closed. She says she has to talk to Relu, and she’ll give me her answer later.

Crew call’s at noon to head to Bran castle to shoot an exterior scene. We have an impromptu production meeting shortly before noon, trying to plan the next two days’ work, and by the time Vlad and Carmen and I head out the door it’s 12:20. Down at the Ciucas hotel the crew is still milling around. The looseness of our call times suddenly makes me furious. I grab Carmen and storm down to the trucks and find Stellica, the head production man. I blow up at him about punctuality, about the hours it will take to shoot this scene, about the dwindling autumn daylight and how important it is to be on time for these split-day shoots.

We jump in the Mercedes and head for Bran castle, twenty minutes away, the 14th century fortress on the historical border between Wallachia and Transylvania, touristically known as Dracula’s castle or the castle of Vlad the Impaler, though neither the fictional vampire or the actual impaler ever lived there.

We arrive about 1, then proceed to sit on our asses until 3:30, while the driver of the generator truck, who I suppose is pissed about not yet being paid his overtime, goes into the restaurant and eats lunch before positioning the generator truck so the electricians can run cable to the lights.

While I’m sitting and stewing, Stellica approaches and says “I guess you’re angry.” Yeah, I am. He launches into a 20 minute explanation about the Romanian mentality, their bad work ethic from decades of communism, their satisfaction at seeing things go badly for other people, and the impossibility of changing these cultural legacies overnight. I understand what he’s saying, but I’ve heard enough for one day. I get up and say let’s go to work

.

I had planned 3 to 4 hours to shoot this scene, the girls finding the secret door, Lillian reaching in to open it, her arm getting bitten by Radu, but by the time it’s lit and ready to go, we have about an hour before daylight’s gone. We rush through the scene and manage to complete all the angles towards Bran castle, leaving behind the reverse angles for tomorrow, which we figure we can cheat in the forest outside Rasnov.

As night falls Vlad lights the castle for some establishing shots, then Anders arrives for a few shots of Radu coming out the door and seeing the girls for the first time.

We get back to the hotel at 9 and head for the restaurant for some food and wine. Vlad, Oana, Anders, Brenna, Ion, and I. My Turkish/Romanian admirer comes out of nowhere and rests her hand lovingly on the back of my head, startling me. We say our hellos, I invite her to sit with us, but she looks at me plaintively, shakes her head like I’m such a dumb American, and walks away, disappointed. Relieved, I turn back to my comrades who tease me about this new soap opera in our stunted social life.

A bit later, I spot her at a table across the restaurant, watching us. A waitress comes over and speaks to Vlad and Oana. They can barely contain their laughter as they translate for me -- the woman over there would like to spend some time with you in the lobby. At the very least she would like your signature on a piece of paper so she can sleep with it. It sounds funny. But it’s the strangest thing I’ve heard yet in my sheltered life. And it sets my horror imagination ablaze: my secret admirer is a witch or worse, and god knows what she could do with my signature, what spells she could cast or powers she could wield over me.

On the other hand. If she’s not a witch, just a normal person, looking for some warm attention, I certainly don’t want to hurt her feelings. Or lead her on. And I’m definitely not in the right frame of mind at the moment for a Transylvanian romance. So I decline her invitation. The waitress crosses the big restaurant to deliver my answer. I see her eyes searching mine from across the room, and I’m honestly terrified.

More to come . . .

Thanks for checking it out. Please “like” and share and come back for more.
Ted Nicolaou

Subspecies the film

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Written By
Ted Nicolaou
During the Making of Subspecies
September – December 1990

NOV 14 — Wed — I come down for some coffee and find Brenna and Keith at the table. A waiter comes over and asks me to follow him. He brings me to another table where a woman is eating breakfast alone. She’s in her mid-thirties, pleasant face, short hair, pear-shaped body. She doesn’t speak English, the waiter barely speaks English, but he makes an effort to translate for her. “I ate you.” He tries to say. The woman and I smile at each other stupidly. The waiter tries again. “I like you. I ate you.” Realizing she likes me and she’s inviting me to eat with her, I sit down for a moment. She asks me if I speak Turkish. Being Greek, I do have a somewhat Balkan look. With the waiter’s help I gather that she’s Romanian/Turkish, she works for some tourist agency bringing Turkish tourists here to Poiana Brasov, that she’s here for a week at a time, and she’d like me to join her. I don’t fancy grinning dumbly at someone over a wordless meal, so I invite her to join us at our table. I get up to return to our table, and she follows. She tries to talk to Brenna and Keith, but her lack of English is a solid barrier. She pulls out pictures of her two children and her husband, we all smile and coo over the pictures, then she excuses herself to go to the sauna.

Crew call’s at noon. Waiting in the lobby for Vlad to arrive, I run into Ivan, who asks me what time he’s due on set. I sit him down and let him know that I expect if he comes to the set today, that he’ll be there until the sequence is finished. That he needs to either jump off the boat right now or stay and contribute 100% like the rest of us. I expect him to be professional, and treat the others with equal respect. Blah blah blah, the same thing I’ve been telling him for weeks now. He claims his innocence of all misbehavior, but I insist he can’t deny it, and to just listen to me and think about it.

We arrive at the First School at 12:30. The door to the set is still locked. Someone from production neglected to notify the caretaker that we’d be coming. We wait around till 1:30 while they search for the Man with the Key. This problem with the key is a common motif here. For any location or storage area or truck or car that opens with a key, there exists just one key. One key in the possession of one MAN WITH THE KEY. Sometimes he’s waiting there to open the gate or door or whatever, sometimes he’s off somewhere, not to be found, drunk, or still at home, or god knows what. And you’re out of luck until the Man with the Key shows up.

The Man with the Key arrives and lets us in, whining some excuse I don’t understand, and work begins. The actors arrive at 1, but due to some novel idea of A.D. Relu’s their makeup is to be done on set today. Most likely to save money on that hotel/dressing room. The problem is, there’s no decent place for makeup in the church, so Production sets off to find another hotel room, since they released the one we’ve rented for the last two days. Three hotels later, they manage to book a room. Michelle and Laura take off for the hotel, but the minivan driver is drunk or crazy or something, and drives so maniacally, laughing at their terror, that they jump out of the van and walk back to the set, furious.

There’s a new problem brewing between the interpreters Catalina, Ioana and Carmen. Catalina has been accusing Ioana of siding with the Americans against the Romanians, and ill feelings are escalating among the Romanians toward some of the actors who they think are cursing them and calling them stupid. The drunk driver incident brings this conflict to a head, and I have to sit Catalina down with the actors and get to the bottom of her resentment. It comes down to a case of hurt feelings that has been festering for the last week or so. I suspect it also has to do with my giving Carmen more responsibilities than the others, since she is the most capable among them.

It takes forever to light the set, while the actors head for the hotel with Colombo. I sit by the heater which emanates frigid air for two hours. Finally by 4:30, we begin blocking the scene. Ivan’s a little better behaved toward almost everyone, but he’s still being a prick to Laura.

Carmen has disappeared from the set for the last hour or so. While Vlad’s lighting the set for the last shot, Ivan tells me that he saw Carmen crying, being led down the sidewalk to the cars by Relu. He thinks she’s been fired. I explode. I know something has been brewing this afternoon between Relu and Carmen, and possibly Ion and Carmen. If she’s being fired, I’ll re-hire her on my own. I find Stellica the head production stooge and ask him what’s going on with Carmen. He acts like he doesn’t know; he says she went up to the hotel to get some luggage. Someone tells me she’s down by the cars parked in the street. I rush down there and Viorel tells me she just left for the hotel with Colombo. I rush back to Stellica and start yelling. If Carmen’s not back in 45 minutes, I’m quitting the film. I don’t want to hear any excuses, just bring her back here immediately. I grab Ioana and take her down to Viorel’s car. She’s the only one I can trust with this assignment. I tell her and Viorel to speed back to the hotel and find Carmen. That if she’s not back here in 45 minutes, the production stops. I’m so crazed, they take off like a rocket.

I go back to the set, pacing around like a maniac to work off my adrenaline. We finish the scene by 6, and head to the church to complete the sequence we began last night. The 45 minute deadline for my quitting approaches. I feel in my heart that Carmen will come back, but I have to go through with my threat. I walk outside and look around. Thank God, I see Carmen’s silhouette coming up from the street escorted by Ioana. I rush out to her, hug Ioana and hug Carmen, who’s crying. Carmen and I take a walk and talk so I can hear exactly what happened. She had a big fight with Pusa (prounounced Poo-sha), the script supervisor, stemming from my insistence on clearing the set for our rehearsals, a habit which we’ve formed to avoid the chatter of the crew while we’re trying to concentrate. Carmen, in her overzealousness, cleared out everyone, including Pusa, who’s job it is to be there, and when the time came to film the scene, we had to search for her to come in and handle the slate. The fight between them, in addition to the bad attitude of Relu toward Carmen, caused Carmen to quit. I tell her she can’t quit, and she agrees.

I sit Pusa down and explain that it was my fault, that the actors’ tension has caused misunderstandings on the set, and I’ll set Carmen straight on Pusa’s responsibilities to the film. Pusa’s feelings are hurt, her pride is wounded, but she’ll come around eventually.

Ivan’s attitude toward Laura deteriorates further, and in a scene where it’s just the two of them, it’s difficult on everyone. Ivan has a prop shotgun, which the scene calls for him to aim in Laura’s direction. Laura wants to double check the chamber to make certain for herself that it’s not loaded. Ivan let’s her look, but before she’s looked well enough to satisfy herself, he grabs it away from her. She grabs it back, and in the process they almost conk each other on the head.

We wrap at 11 and head back to the hotel to the night of shattered glass.

More to come . . .

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Ted Nicolaou

Subspecies the film

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Written By
Ted Nicolaou
During the Making of Subspecies
September – December 1990

NOV 13 — Tues — Continued:

Call time is 3 PM, but by the time Vlad takes care of some camera business, it’s 4 when we leave the hotel. Production has delayed crew call til 4 since the film stock we’re expecting from Bucharest won’t be arriving till around 5. When the film does arrive, it turns out to be much less than we were told was coming, and it’s all short ends. (not full 1000 foot rolls - ten minutes of film per roll) Short ends make shooting more challenging and frustrate the actors because the camera is always rolling out in the middle of a take, interrupting performances and forcing multiple retakes. Another night of economical and disjointed shooting.

Assistant Director Relu informs me that due to a scheduling conflict — one of the Romanian actors we shoot tomorrow has to return to Bucharest to rehearse a play tomorrow evening, and must leave Brasov by 3 PM — so we have to wrap early enough tonight to give cast and crew enough turnaround to start shooting by noon tomorrow in order for us to finish his shots in time for him to leave for Bucharest, which has the domino effect of: we can’t finish all the scenes we had scheduled for the church tonight, and have to return and relight to finish the church tomorrow evening. There’s no way around it. Actors here are contracted to their theaters, so any film work has to be scheduled around their stage commitments.

The actors arrive almost an hour later than their call time. We shoot the first scene in the library between Stefan and Michele pretty quickly, then move on to the chapel, which requires time for lighting before we’re ready to shoot. Ivan finds me on set and tells me he doesn’t want to do his closeups for the scene acting with Laura, he would prefer to shoot the scene with Carmen delivering Laura’s off-camera lines. I tell him to be cool and act professional and help us get through the night. We rehearse a few times with Laura. Ivan does the whole scene without looking at her once. Luckily, it works for the scene, since Karl is lost in a memory. Laura, in revenge, wants to do the scene without once looking at Karl, but I insist that it’s necessary for her to react to some of what he’s saying.

Once again, in his own bullying style, Ivan demands absolute silence on the set, for rehearsals as well as while shooting. The slightest movement at the far end of the church, the slightest creaking of a chair causes an outburst of rage. I walk back through the church insisting on absolute stillness from the crew.

We make it through the master, then move in for Ivan’s closeup. Laura has to pee, so she goes outside. Ivan says let’s get on with it, we don’t need Laura, so poor Carmen is called into service to feed him off-camera lines. Right in the middle of a take, there’s a banging at the church door, which is being held closed to keep noise to a minimum. It’s Laura, banging to be let in.

When the time comes to shoot Laura’s closeup, and for Ivan to deliver the off-camera lines, Ivan pulls out his script and proceeds to read his lines at top speed, with no dramatic inflections whatsoever, forcing Laura to act in fast motion, trying to synchronize her reactions with Karl’s monologue. After the first take, she asks for another at the right speed. I direct Ivan to do it again at normal speed. She asks if someone else can read it. Ivan gets mad and says he has to pee. He stalks off, and I see him across the church talking to some of the production people. I realize he’s arranging a car to take him across town to the hotel where the bathroom is, instead of just going outside to the bushes like all the other guys. This is the last take of the last shot of the night, and he intends to disappear for a twenty minute pee. I chase after him and catch him climbing into the car. I cajole him to please come back, it’s the last shot, and we need his hand on camera. He grudgingly comes back, pulls out his script, and reads the scene at top speed again. In the middle of the scene, I shout at him to slow it down.

We get the reactions we need from Laura, and wrap for the night.

Back at the hotel around midnight, Ivan informs me that unless he hears from his agent by tomorrow, he’ll only work long enough tomorrow to complete one of the three scenes for which he’s needed. And this, he tells me, is just for me. I tell him thanks a lot for his goodwill, but we need him for all three scenes, or the whole schedule topples. He says, sorry, it’s not his problem, and heads up to his room.

Vlad and Oana and I sit in the lobby after everyone’s gone and commiserate over a bottle of wine. The desk clerk calls out, “Phone call for Mister Ted.” I hurry to the desk, hoping it’s Charlie, Albert, or at least Tom with some good news, but it’s just Ivan again, telling me he’s just had a nice bath, and is feeling mellow, and will agree to a compromise. He’ll work tomorrow, but ONLY from 1 PM til 9:30. If we don’t finish the scenes by then, tough luck. I say thanks, but how about 1:30 til 10:30. There’s no way to accurately predict how long it will take or even what time anyone will show up, regardless of the call time. He thinks for a long moment, then agrees. In the end, he wants to finish the film too, he just needs to unload some of his misery onto someone else, and that someone is Laura and me.

More to come . . .

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Ted Nicolaou

Subspecies the film

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Written By
Ted Nicolaou
During the Making of Subspecies
September – December 1990

Nov 12 — Monday — Continued: Crew call is 2 PM. Many of the crew are returning from Bucharest after the weekend, and the grip and electrical crews have to go to Prejmer to bring the rest of the equipment to today’s location, the First Romanian School in Brasov, where our library set is located in an old side chapel of the church. I can’t believe our good fortune to have permission to shoot here. It’s the first Romanian school in the country, built on the grounds of the 15th Century Saint Nicholas Church in 1495, and rebuilt in stone in 1597. It’s a fantastic location with vaulted arches, decaying frescoes everywhere, the Orthodox church adorned with gold and silver, and the library patina’d with centuries of history and incense, brought to life with Lucian Nicolau’s (no relation) impeccable art direction.

I arrive at 3 PM to sit on the set in silence and plot out the shots -- we have one scene of three and a half pages to shoot, and if we can accomplish that it will be our biggest page count day so far - actually quite a puny page count for a low-budget film, but given the circumstances, it feels like a lot.

First problem for the day -- the latest shipment of film sent from Italy is exterior stock, useless on this interior set. And all we have left of interior stock is approximately 1500 feet, which means a shooting ratio of about 5 to 1. We’ll have to rehearse the scene well, economize on setups, and try to shoot as few takes as possible. Pressures that I hate, when trying to get the best performances.

Second problem for the day -- The lights and electrical crew that were supposed to be here by 4 don’t arrive till nearly 6 o’clock. We send my interpreter/assistant Carmen back to the hotel to try and head-off the actors and delay their call time. She takes off, but she misses them by minutes at the hotel, and they arrive at 6 PM sharp. We send them off to dinner at a local restaurant, so at least we won’t have a meal interruption when and if we finally get to work.

Third problem for the day -- Ion is still complaining about the pain in his heart. He can’t get Charlie on the phone. We have these problems that only money can solve, and the money Ion’s supposed to be receiving has not been coming on schedule. So when the actors arrive on set, there’s no provision for bathroom facilities or a warm place for them to dress. I huddle with Vlad and we send the production stooges off to rent a room in a nearby hotel.

The lights are set by 8:30. The actors hurry to their hotel room for their wardrobe. We rehearse the scene a number of times to get the lengthy dialogue down.

Miraculously, Michael’s on his best behavior, humorous, creative, helpful. A totally different guy. I’m glad we had our talk yesterday, and I think he is too. It also makes him happy that Vlad is treating him more respectfully now.

We finish the scene by 2 AM and head back to the hotel for some wine and room service salami sandwiches. Anders and Tani are waiting up for us, and we all lurk in the lobby talking till 3:30.

NOV 13 — Tues — Wake up at 10:30, go down for a cup of coffee and to plot out the shots for today’s scenes at The First School’s Saint Nicholas Church -- including Michelle and Karl sheltering in the church -- IF Ivan is working today. I phone Ion who informs me that the money from the States arrived from Bucharest, but instead of the expected $1500, $800 was stolen from the DHL pouch, leaving only $700. I tell him I want the $400 I advanced him, and he agrees. He’s still holed up in his room, sick. Still hasn’t been able to get Charlie on the phone, but he’s explained our situation to Tom in LA, who promised to contact Ivan’s agent and have the agent get in touch with Ivan. They’ve looked over Ivan’s contract, and it doesn’t seem to indicate anything about overtime, but they agree not to mention that to Ivan yet. Ion hasn’t yet talked to Ivan about working today, so I guess that’s my pleasure for the morning.

I phone Ivan and tell him I’m coming up. We sit out in the hall and I tell him that the discussion with his agent is in the works, but I really need him to work today. I explain all the reasons why, how many people’s lives are hanging in the balance, everyone’s working overtime, the schedule of the film is at stake, indeed the completion of the film hinges totally on our finishing in Brasov this week and moving on to Buftea Studios in Bucharest for the sound stage shooting. He thinks about it for a moment, and says, “I’ll tell you what.” He agrees to work today IF -- Ion pays him $135 in cash for his part of the perdiem owed to him through next Sunday. Plus -- the fifty lei he was shorted on his weekly per diem this week. AND -- if his agent doesn’t get in touch with him by tomorrow at 4 PM, he won’t work tomorrow. AND FURTHERMORE -- if this overtime issue doesn’t get settled, he’ll walk off the film for good. AND HEREAFTER -- he’ll only work 10 hours (including travel to and from the set) per day, after which he’s out the door, whether the scene’s finished or not -- though after I badger him a little more he relents and agrees to work 11 hours. We do this negotiating with cagey grins, but inside I’m seething at the stress he’s adding to the situation.

I go upstairs and tell Ion the news. He looks like hell, still in bed. He pays me back the $400, counts out Ivan’s money, and tells me if he doesn’t hear from Charlie or Albert by Friday HE’S going to shut the film down -- he’s out of money, and FULL MOON has not kept up their part of the payments.

This job is taking me so far above and beyond the duties of a film director, I can’t believe I’m holding onto my sanity. Then again, maybe I lost it weeks ago in Bucharest, and the fact that I still can see humor in this chaos is proof of a disturbed mind.

Still more to come . . .

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Ted Nicolaou

Subspecies the film

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Written By
Ted Nicolaou
During the Making of Subspecies
September – December 1990

NOV 11 — Sun — I’m determined to spend the day in my room, steering clear of the cast and their troubles, studying the script to see how I can simplify the ending to make it shootable, but every time I start working on it, I get sleepy and have to lie down. I’m too deeply into it now to get the perspective and the time I need to clear my head and find some new directions to explore. The most obvious simplification I could do would change the whole ending, in which Michelle sacrifices herself to save Stefan, and I don’t want to tamper with that if I don’t absolutely have to.

I go down to lunch. Ivan’s there, eating at our big table. The latest bee up his butt is that he refuses to work this week until Ion calls Charlie and Charlie calls Ivan’s agent and Ivan’s agent calls Ivan and tells him the issue of his overtime from Friday night is settled. Jesus. That many phone calls in and out of Romania could take a fucking week. I tell him I’ll personally guarantee his overtime if he’ll just keep working. Michael has announced that his absolute cutoff date is November 28th, so it’s imperative we keep on schedule until then. There was a time, weeks ago, when Ivan tried to convince me to let his character live in the end. Now I spend at least a part of every day trying to figure out a way to kill him off as quickly and gruesomely as possible.

Back to my room to work, but this feeling of unspoken hostility between Michael and me keeps rattling my brain. I call him up and ask him to come and talk. We hash out our feelings for a couple of hours -- his frustrations, my frustrations, what I hope and expect from our collaboration, why his attitude has become so rotten, how hurt and angry I was about his “He who makes decisions which leave much to be desired” superhero name for me, and on and on. By the end, we’re laughing, and I think the air is clear for at least the rest of the day.

A little later, I’m working on the script again. He knocks on my door to let me know he’s still thinking about his character and shows me a scene he’s written between Stefan and Radu. It’s not a great scene, but I do appreciate the effort. At least he’s engaged again.

As the sun goes down, eight of us -- Anders, Laura, Michelle, Vlad, Oana, Tani the Steadicam operator, Keith, and I -- head down to Brasov to the Chinese restaurant. The bright light and saturated colors of the place have the same effect on the others as they had on me. As Michelle and Laura say, it’s like entering Crystal City in the Wizard of Oz. Casting dark looks at us from across the tables, Ivan has made his own reservation for himself and interpreters Carmen and Ioana and refuses our invitation to join us for dinner. The food is pretty good compared to what we’ve been eating, especially the appetizers, the service is warm, and our faces beam with bliss to not be eating the same scrawny chicken and limp fried potatoes at the Hotel Alpin.

We laugh and have a great time, then taxi back to the hotel craving dessert and coffee, and though customers are still eating in the restaurant, the waiters refuse to serve us. We beg and plead and eventually, they give in. We get cake and coffee -- lukewarm -- to let us know not to buck the system.

NOV 12 — Mon — Ivan still refuses to work until he hears from his agent, so we have to shoot around him in the library of the fortress. There’s enough work to fill the day, so we’re not in trouble yet.

Producer Ion starts complaining about a pain in his heart. He stays in bed all day, looking drained and depressed. The stress of the production has finally gotten to him.

I sit down to grab lunch alone before crew call. Vlad and Oana show up soon after. I take this opportunity to talk to Vlad about Michael, whose feelings are hurt that Vlad has been treating him harshly on the set. It started going bad that night in the forest when Vlad got angry at Michael for being drunk on set, and barked at him when he was standing next to the camera to feed lines to Laura and unintentionally blocked a light. I tell Vlad to remember the time at the beginning of the shoot, when he and Michael liked each other. The feud between them has festered too long and they’re both too proud to take the first step toward resolving it. Vlad admits he likes Michael, but says it also makes him nervous that Michael doesn’t feel the need to hit his marks, which makes Vlad’s job of lighting and focus more difficult. I ask Vlad to please make an effort to be more gentle with Michael, so we can tone down the tensions on set. A few minutes later Michael and Brenna come down to eat. I slip over and tell him the groundwork is laid for reconciliation, that now it’s down to two proud and stubborn guys, and one or the other just has to make the first move. I leave, giving them the chance to talk.

More to come . . .

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Ted Nicolaou

Subspecies the film

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Written By
Ted Nicolaou
During the Making of Subspecies
September – December 1990

Nov 9 — Fri — continued. I walk around the monastery and stew for awhile, then go upstairs to watch the crew set up to shoot the scene between Stefan and Michelle in Stefan’s coffin room, where Michelle offers to help him destroy Radu. When the lights and camera are ready, we call Michael and Laura to the set. For days now, Laura’s been feeding off of Michael’s self-destructive energy — the movie’s shit, the script is shit, the production’s inept, so why try anymore, just walk through the part and go home. Laura’s so suggestible, that she’s fallen under this awful spell. We rehearse the scene. They can’t find a way to make it work, and they brush off my suggestions for the blocking without even trying, which causes us to totally re-light the scene in a way that Laura thinks will help her do the scene. I’m furious with the both of them. They’ve psyched themselves out to the point where they can’t believe in what they’re doing anymore. We rehearse and it doesn’t work. We shoot it and it still doesn’t work.

I’ve had enough of their complaining and blow up at them. I drag Michael down the corridor away from the crew, and let him have it for his shitty attitude, his drinking on the job, for undermining me, for letting his frustration with the overall situation destroy his connection with the role he came to play. I tell him I know and seen that he’s capable of good work, that I expect him to come to the set and act from his heart, not to cut himself off from his work in a way that’s destructive to himself and to everyone around him. We’re both furious with each other, growling nose to nose like a couple of mad dogs. I tell him he’s an asshole, but I basically like him, respect his work, and expect him to be here and be my fucking collaborator whether he likes it or not. He says his frustration stems from trying to work with Laura, who is simply not a strong actress. Nothing he does gets the slightest response from her. We both gradually calm down and walk back to the set. I take Laura down the corridor with me and have the same intense talk with her, how I expect her to work with her heart when she’s on the set, and not indulge in this self-destructive and insecure posturing of distancing herself from her performance.

I rarely blow up like this. I prefer a calm and focused set, but when I lose my shit I really explode, it’s a little bit ridiculous, and it shocks people. Laura and I walk back up to the set and try to shoot the scene again. We shoot it once, print it. I don’t know if it’s that much better than the earlier takes, but somehow it feels better andI feel like the air is clearer. I’ve regained a bit of control over the situation.

We move to Lillian’s room to complete a scene we started last week. Vlad can’t remember exactly how the lights were set. By 1 AM we call the actors to the set to rehearse. Ivan, who’s been waiting in the green room since 6 PM when we shot his last scene, is seething. Michael’s eyes are red from drinking. Laura’s trying to be more cooperative since our talk. The scene calls for Ivan to enter with his vampire-killing shotgun. The problem is, the prop man decided to leave at 11 PM, got in his truck, and drove to Bucharest. So we have no shotgun. I like most of the crew, but some of them are hard to read. We try substituting a spear, but Ivan hates it and goes storming around the set pounding the spear on the floor. Producer Ion tells me to shoot some closeups first, he’ll round up a shotgun. We do the closeups, and a short time later, Ion returns with a gun, having called some people around the village, woken them up, and borrowed one. Score one big point for Ion.

We finish at 3:30 AM and head for the hotel. Call room service and order salami sandwiches and wine. Laura’s waiting up and sits with us, smiling at me, I think to let me know she’s still with the program, Vlad and Oana, Ion, Anders, whose energy and professionalism I appreciate more each day, and Colombo the driver, who’s furious because Ivan cursed him for driving him home too slowly.

By 5:30 AM, I feel I’ve had enough abuse for one day, head upstairs and sleep.

NOV 10 — Sat — Sleep till noon, go down to the restaurant and have a cup of coffee, mercifully alone. The money Ion’s expecting from the States has arrived in Bucharest, but no one’s there to pick it up, so Ion can’t pay me back my $400 yet. Go up to work on the script before lunch, but instead write yesterday’s journal. After lunch, try to work on the script some more, but Anders calls, inviting me for a walk up the mountain with him, Keith, Michelle and Laura. I need some relaxation, these are my favorite people, so I go along.

We hike up through the snow, throw snowballs, follow bear tracks, hit some other hotels’ dollar shops in search of chocolate. The dollar shops cater primarily to the necessities of Romanian tourism -- booze and cigarettes -- sometimes there’s chocolate, but today we’re out of luck.

Back to the hotel to work on the script before pasta night. Ion comes by to tell me they’ve arranged for us to screen dailies tonight at 9 at a cinema down in Brasov, so Vlad, Oana, and I eat our pasta quickly and head down the mountain in Vlad’s car. Of course, production neglected to tell us which cinema in Brasov we’re to go to, but we know it’s near the Black Church, so we find it without much trouble. Ion’s car is parked out front, with Ion still in it. It turns out the projectionist went home at 8, so we’re out of luck. I think production just thought they could show up, slip the guy some lei, and walk right in.

Vlad and I get it in our heads to eat someplace different tomorrow night, so we stop by the Chinese restaurant in Piața Sfatului by the Black Church to see if we can make reservations. We’ve been hearing of this place since we arrived in Poiana Brasov, but until now, it’s been closed for renovation. Tonight it’s open, so we go in to make our reservations. It’s beautiful inside, brand-new, brightly colored in reds, blues, and gold, gaudy with Chinese decor, but so bright and clean and colorful in contrast to the dingy browns and puke greens and dim light of our hotel that it fills my heart with an incredible joy and anticipation. Saturday night, and three tables out of about 25 are occupied, so getting a reservation for tomorrow is not a problem. We sit and peruse the menu, so hungry am I for some culinary variety, and so happy to be sitting in a brightly lit place. We ask if there’s a real Chinese chef in the kitchen, and are told no, but he studied in China for 15 years. At least there are two Chinese people eating there, a good sign. Vlad and I have to fork over 800 lei as good faith money to make our reservation for 12 to 15 people. Fair enough. Anything for some variety.

We head back up the mountain, bummed that we didn’t get to see dailies, but with a feeling of accomplishment about the restaurant. I remember the advice of our 1st AD — in Romania, if you can get one thing done in a day, you should feel happy.

We get back to the hotel, drink wine, lurk in the restaurant till way past closing. Anders and Ion break into the grand piano with a bent fork, and Anders tickles the keys while Michelle and Laura reprise their lounge singer act. I watch for a little while, then slip off to bed.

More to come . . .

If you enjoy what you see on this page, or want to share your own stories, please comment, bring your friends around, and by all means share your thoughts and experiences and let’s see if we can turn this into a global forum for independent filmmakers in the trenches. All content free to subscribers.

Thanks for checking it out. Please come back for more.
Ted Nicolaou

Subspecies the film

LInk to my full bio

Link to my IMDB page

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Written By
Ted Nicolaou
During the Making of Subspecies
September – December 1990

NOV 8 — Thurs — Ivan has been planning to go to Munich today to get away from it all and recharge his brain. The only thing that would stop him is bad weather which would force a change in our scheduled festival scene and move us to a cover set for scenes that require him. He calls me on the phone, waking me at 8:30 saying, “This is the voice of your conscience, look outside.” I look out my window and my heart sinks lower than it has this whole production -- It’s snowing cats and dogs.

It’s also snowing in Purcareni, so we postpone the festival and return to the fortified monastery at Prejmer to continue filming interiors. Poor Ivan will have to put off his trip to Munich for another week or so.

My first priority for the day is to repair the “fuck you, Ted” situation with Laura. I call her to come down and rehearse the scenes we’ll shoot with Michael today, tell her I know she’s furious with me, apologize for my harsh words, and hope she’ll find it in her heart to forgive me and move on. She forgives me, and after an hour or so of talking, it seems our relationship is back to our abnormal normal.

Having to start from scratch with the lighting since we wrapped out yesterday slows us down from the start. The crew’s tired and cold, though the fortress is warmer inside than last night’s forest location — 40 degrees Fahrenheit. The cast seems to have given up their demands for heaters. They come in bundled up, rehearse, toss off their coats and blankets, shoot the scene, and bundle up again. But something’s gone, the spirit of the work is damaged. Ivan has focused all his anger on the girls. The girls are alternately giddy and bitchy. The most fundamental things, like getting another light on the set, or setting up the smoke machine cause interminable delays. We’ve got five scenes to shoot today, but with the slow pace, there’s no way we’ll get them done. Michael’s so impatient he snaps at the Romanians.

NOV 9 -- Fri -- It’s snowing still. I wake up at 10 and go down for my two cups of coffee. I sit alone in the restaurant, brooding, watching the beautiful snow fall. Come up to my room to catch up on these notes. Ivan knocks on the door, comes in, and tells me he’s just had a meeting with Ion, and wants to let me know the results. As of today, he’ll no longer take his meals in the restaurant. Last night he had it out with Anders; he can no longer take Anders’ bitching and razzing of the Romanians, although the way I heard it last night, it was Anders giving Ivan hell for his rotten attitude and constant bad vibing of his cast mates, which sounds more in character to me. The truth is, we’re all going crazy, dealing with the uncertainties of the work, hashing the same shit over and over. In addition, Ivan declares, he’ll no longer drive to the set with Michelle and Laura. It’s incredibly disheartening to see a cast turn on each other, disassociating themselves from each other, from the script, from their characters, all because of the difficult conditions and grinding labor of trying to get what you need to maintain your dignity in this situation, all of which stems from the dishonest incompetence of our production team. On the surface it seems that way, but who knows? I’m sure production is dealing with challenges of their own, and I’m sure dealing with a bunch of wimpy bitch-ass Americans is not something communism prepared them for.

It also makes me realize you shouldn’t direct a script that you don’t believe in with all your heart. I’ve done some revisions to the script, adapting it to the locations and what we’ve learned here in Romania, but it’s not my script. And the constant harping of the cast chips away at my confidence in it. There’s no way to defend it when the actors can’t find the truth in scenes. And there’s too much soul-burning work making a film to waste yourself and everyone else on trash.

Today the mountain is a snowy wonderland. The roads are clear. So we head down to Prejmer to try to finish the remaining scenes there, no matter how long it takes. We arrive on the set at 2 PM, and we’re ready to shoot by 3:30. Michael comes onto the set and through Ioana the translator offers a half-assed apology to the crew, saying that he’s sorry if they’ve gotten the impression he’s been cursing at them; he’s not cursing at the Romanians, he’s cursing at the frustrating situation. The Romanians, who are ready to kill him, say, “We hope so,” which sets Michael off even more. He tells them if they can’t accept his apology graciously, then he takes it back. He says he’d love it if some Romanians would try to pick a fight with him, because he feels like bashing somebody’s head in. It’s cold inside, emotionally and physically. I can tell this is going to be a hard day.

I go to the green room to warm up for a minute between setups. Michael’s on a tear today. He’s given various people superhero pseudonyms. He tells me mine: “He who makes decisions which leave much to be desired.” For days now, this inebriated sociopath has been dissing his fellow actors and psyching-out Anders about the way I have him playing Radu, and now he’s trying to undermine me with his snotty self-indulgent immature sense of his own superiority. I tell him he’s an asshole and to go fuck himself, put on my coat and storm out of the room.

More to come . . .

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Ted Nicolaou

Subspecies the film

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Written By
Ted Nicolaou
During the Making of Subspecies
September – December 1990

NOV 7 — Wed — Today is scheduled to be a short one to finish the lost-in-the-woods sequence by 10 PM so the crew can pack up the lights to take them to Purcareni tomorrow at noon to begin pre-lighting the mask festival sequence. Vlad and I arrive at the ruins in Rasnov at 3 PM to shoot a short scene of the three students arriving at the fortress gate. Their call time is 3:30, and we see to it that the camera is set up and ready for their arrival so we can finish the scene before the daylight fades. Due to a production screwup, the makeup artist didn’t know where to meet the actors for their makeup call (this being the first day they were going to try using the beauty parlor in the hotel), the actors don’t arrive till 4:15, by which time the light has gone.

We walk down the trail to the forest location. Tonight, the trailer is parked closer to the set, so the cast can keep warm without a long hike. Things go smoothly enough and we finish the sequence by about 10:30.

Starving when I get back to the hotel, I order some room service sandwiches and go to sit in the restaurant, where I find Anders, Michael, Laura, Michelle, etc. -- the same old crew, pounding away at the same issues and problems of our production. There’s a certain point late every night, when Anders has drunk too much wine, and his anger and frustration pour out in incredible diatribes. He and Michael have been drinking since 6, and they start in on me about the stupidity of the script, and how there needs to be a scene where the two vampires meet face to face and talk about something substantial, perhaps Radu offering to let Stefan join him in evil, Stefan refusing. I don’t disagree with them, but after the frustrations of the last few months, the thought of going into the script to find a place to put such a scene where it wouldn’t throw other scenes out of whack is more than I want to entertain at this moment. I just want to eat my sandwich and drink a glass of wine and go to bed. But they keep hammering away at the idea with wine-fueled enthusiasm.

Laura sits there watching me, and finally jumps into the fray with some suggestion that sounds like a challenge to me. I tell her to buzz off in a way that comes off as ruder than I meant, though I just wanted to be left alone. She gets up from the table with a “Fuck you, Ted. I really mean it. Fuck you.” I follow her out, explaining that I felt ganged-up on and wasn’t in the most receptive mood. Her “Fuck you” still stands.

1:00 AM. I go to my room, feeling sick and stupid. Lie on my bed, trying to clear my head. If I could just stop thinking about this film, this cast, all their problems, and the hopelessness of the schedule for a few hours, I could revitalize myself and my love for the film.

The phone rings. It’s Irina, wondering if she could come in for a while to run her lines for tomorrow’s festival scene, in which she has a lot of difficult dialogue. I say of course, though I feel like hiding under the bedcovers. We rehearse for a while, then I climb in bed, put my headphones on and listen to the Love Notes mix tape Becky made for me. The phone wakes me from a half-stupor. It’s Tom from LA, asking how things are going. Pretty fucked I tell him. It’s so cold, the conditions haven’t changed a bit from two weeks ago when Albert came to sort things out, the actors are going mad, and there’s no one in the production department with a handle on things. At least we have a Steadicam and Tani the upbeat Steadicam operator from Rome who’s probably wondering what he did to deserve being stuck here with us.

More to come . . .

If you enjoy what you see on this page, or want to share your own stories, please comment, bring your friends around, and by all means share your thoughts and experiences and let’s see if we can turn this into a global forum for independent filmmakers in the trenches. All content free to subscribers.

Thanks for checking it out. Please come back for more.
Ted Nicolaou

Subspecies the film

LInk to my full bio

Link to my IMDB page

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

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