My life (almost) on the silver screen
By Sol Sussman
The date for my debut on DVD is finally here.
I was waiting for June 29, the release date for Die Mommie Die , for months, ever since I read a review that started talking about the character named Sol Sussman, a movie producer whose wife is played in drag by playwright/screenwriter and leading actor Charles Busch.
If I had a more familiar name like James Duncan or Pedro García, I might not find this quite as entertaining an idea. But I had pretty much gotten used to being the only Soll Sussman around.
I now have a test for deciding whether my friends are true movie fans. The ones who get excited when I tell them about this are movie fans; the others, who don't understand why this should be a big deal, are not.
Of course, I had to find out why this character had my name, even if it's spelled with one “l” instead of two. Perhaps Busch, better known as the author of Psycho Beach Party , had seen my byline somewhere and decided it was an oddball enough name to be borrowed? After going through the usual gyrations with movie press agents to get hold of Busch, I've determined that wasn't the case.
“Dear Mr. Sussman,” Busch wrote in an e-mail before last Christmas, after the movie's release, “It seems that you share the same name as my late grandfather. I thought it was a very fitting name for a distinguished producer of prestige pictures, Hollywood royalty. Hope you enjoyed the movie. And have a lovely holiday season. Charles.”
Actually, I had already seen the movie by the time the e-mail arrived. Die Mommie Die had received the usual sporadic release of an independent movie. Although it opened and closed rapidly, I was there to catch it.
I thought the movie was somewhat dated, that it would have been daring and provocative ten years earlier. But Busch's gracious answer to my question made me wish I had liked it more, and I may have to give it another try now that it's on DVD. It's wonderful to be a major character in a minor motion picture, even if your character turns out to be a movie producer whose wife tries to kill you before she ends up in a three-way with the movers who come to clean out your office.
For a less sordid role, I would suggest seeing the scene that I'm almost a part of in The Falcon and the Snowman , the 1985 movie about two young spies starring Sean Penn and Timothy Hutton.
After interviewing Hutton near the start of production at Estudios Churubusco in Mexico City for a story for the Associated Press, I was called back and offered the chance to play a reporter in a scene where the two stars walk down a hallway in prison uniforms.
They filmed me three times shouting out a question, but I should have known when I overheard director John Schlesinger mention that he was looking for an “impression” of reporters and media buzz that I was going to be left on the cutting room floor. I was part of the mood.
For my greatest moment almost on the silver screen, you have to get The Ballad of the Sad Café . My scene, if you know where to look, is when the cook comes through the kitchen door. He's stirring a cast-iron skillet, coming into the main part of Vanessa Redgrave's general store.
I'm crouched in the corner, right off-screen, trying to make sure that the boiling water put inside the skillet at the last possible moment is hot enough to throw off some steam. If you could see me, it would almost be as good as my place in that off-screen flurry in Falcon . Not only can you not see me, you also don't see any steam.
I'd come back to Texas in 1990, ostensibly to write a screenplay but really to flee Canadian winters. Merchant-Ivory Productions came to town a couple of months after I did and, with the cachet of some recent hits like A Room with a View , started recruiting volunteer interns for their new movie.
I'd already had enough weeks at my new home in Austin by then to learn that writing a screenplay was going to be harder than I had imagined. Thinking that I would get a clearer view of moviemaking by seeing one being made, I planned to work on the set enough to gain inspiration for my own writing efforts.
What I learned even more quickly was that building a chicken coop, digging fence posts, and hammering shingles onto log walls, even in 100-degree heat, gave me more than enough reason to stay away from home so that I wouldn't ever have to write. It was a perfect deal. I got to hang out with Vanessa Redgrave one day at lunch, got a screen credit as a production assistant, and found a viable excuse to not write my screenplay. By the way, if I'd ever written it instead of painting and hammering, the world would have had by now a riveting mystery set among Texans living in Washington .
Ballad of the Sad Café flopped, critically and commercially. I saved the New York Times ' review from March 28, 1991, because it contained some of my favorite nasty lines ever. Calling it a “seriously misguided hoot,” critic Vincent Canby described Redgrave as one of the greatest English-speaking actresses ever but concluded, “When she goes off the track, as she does here, she continues to barrel forward with the momentum of a transcontinental express train that will not be stopped. The spectacle takes your breath away.”
For the record, I thought she was horribly miscast but was a pretty cool lady just the same.
With the release of Die Mommie Die , I have a trilogy of movies that are part of my life. I may have to invite my friends over for a screening party, or at least invite the friends who are movie fans.
( Sol Sussman reported from Mexico, Central America, and Canada for The Associated Press before returning to Texas . He is now a freelance writer in Austin . He has previously written for LareDOS and other state, local, and national publications .)
