Crew Diaries:
BILL BRISTOW
Artist / Consultant
Professor of Art
Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas

zapped but still breathing

The voice on the phone from L.A. caught me completely off guard.

"Bill, I'm doing a real Hollywood film with real Hollywood actors and half of it will be filmed in San Antonio. I need an ink drawing of a tree....You taught me to see the beauty in nature and how trees are works of art, and I hope you won't say 'No.'"

"Sure, I can draw a tree for you," I said.

"Well, one of my characters pushes a shopping cart around with a tree stuffed into it to give him shade while he plays his saxophone. I need a shopping cart with a tree in it, an image we can identify with the film."

My brain was somersaulting, trying to get a grip on the image.

"I need it by Tuesday. I'll send you a script," said Jim Robinson (Class of '78), a former student I remembered as chipper, firm in his convictions but with a kind heart and a marvelous sense of the absurd. This was him alright!

"Still Breathing: A Romance," which Jim had written and was now preparing to direct, arrived in the mail. Sure enough, on page 1:

"A MAN ENTERS FRAME -- the kind of man who makes his life on the street. He is pushing a shopping cart -- but instead of junk, the CART IS FILLED WITH A HUGE TREE. Its roots pack the cart and its branches stretch out above, full with leaves."

I completed my assignment and assumed that was that.



You can imagine my surprise when Jim's assistant called, asking if I could come to work for ZapPictures, Jim's production company. "Just two eight hour days," she assured me. Summer break was beginning, and I was looking forward to unbroken tranquility devoted to creative projects in my studio. I had to think it over.

Inspired by a fortune cookie that promised "Grand adventures await those willing to turn the corner," I decided to go for it! When I called back and asked when I should report, the assistant replied, "Would six a.m. tomorrow be alright?" She asked if I'd read the script, and I admitted I hadn't gotten past page 1. "Come on anyway," she said. And with that breezy retort, my film career was underway.

The San Antonio offices of ZapPictures were a study in loosely organized chaos. At the front desk, a pleasant young man with a shaved head and single earring was feeding an abandoned baby dove with an eye dropper. He directed me to the inner office where Jim was standing at his computer and Xeroxed copies of my little tree drawing adorned the bulletin boards. More surprises were in store. The production accountant who logged in my Social Security number, turned out to be a smiling Cynthia Garcia Walker ('83), my student in drawing 301. Wow! Small world.

After a quick stop for morning cappuccino--my grande half decaf, low fat latte evoking shades of Steve Martin's L.A. Story--Jim and I headed for the Alamo Heights home where filming would begin in three days. En route Jim delivered a sort of "film 101" lecture from which I learned, among other things, that anything an actor touches on camera is the domain of the prop department; anything on camera an actor doesn't touch is the set department's responsibility. As film artist, I would function in both realms.

Inside the grand old ivy-covered, oak-shaded home, the already eclectic taste of the owners had been transformed into a private fantasy world for the film's leading man by Denise Pizzini Robinson--Jim's wife and a former San Antonian--and her crew of set dressers. Denise, an easy going and open woman whose mental wheels cranked feverishly behind misleadingly soft Mediterranean eyes had also designed sets for Like Water for Chocolate and A Walk in the Clouds. Another wow! I was definitely in stellar company.

My first assignment was to finish an heroic collage mural devoted to spinning out the dreams of the male lead as he sought to visualize the perfect woman. As we plunged into finishing the mural, I overheard someone say, " I hear Barney is coming tomorrow, and he'll make everything right." I didn't have a clue what this meant until bright and early the next morning.

In walked goateed Bob West ('78), another of my former students, with a breezy "Hi, Bristow!" Holy Tyrannosaurus Rex! Here was the "voice" of the famous purple dinosaur "moonlighting" as art director for his Trinity pal. Work with Bob went smoothly as we knew each other's creative temperaments from our student/teacher days. Besides deepening my appreciation of the film maker's art, he taught me to imitate Sean Connery in one word. (Call me and I'll say it for you.)

Soon former Trintonians began popping up all over the set. Byron Smith ('79) was the sound mixer on the film. I'm told he's one of the best in the business. Rose Blagaich ('85), who I remembered from my basic drawing class, was location assistant. Previously she was road director for Linda Rondstadt, worked for Tina Turner, and, survived a stint with Vanilla Ice. She had been brought on board by Johanna Woollcott Busby '80, the unit production manager, whose unique talent for throwing knives came in handy when the script called for the leading lady to fling a blade or two. Peter Koelling ('77) was the Texas production attorney and Ken Ashe ('75) handled behind the scenes video production. Jazz great Jim Cullum '65 had a featured role in the film. Also, Mike Smith, former Trinity photography professor who had taught some of these same Trinitonians, was on the set taking still photos. It was like a Trinity reunion and remarkable to witness Trinity networking in practice.

But back to the business at hand: setting the scene for Still Breathing. Periodically, Jim would pop in and aesthetic debate would ensue. Normally a quiet guy, Jim would listen to our various opinions and suggestions then firmly announce, "I want it like this." As the director, full responsibility for all the expense, the talent, and the temperaments was riding on Jim's shoulders and everything mattered to him. An independent film maker without a blockbuster budget, Jim had to use incredible ingenuity get what he wanted. I realized what a fabulously creative arena film making was and how inherently creative Jim Robinson was as he focused all of his expertise gained from making documentaries, commercials and music videos on this labor of love.

As directors go, Jim was an unrelenting individualist in a world of cookie cutter sameness. He'd picked a hard path to walk, but his sense of accomplishment was sweeter, because he was his own person. It struck me that Jim exemplified the benefits of a liberal arts undergraduate background. Though he could have learned more about the technical side of film making elsewhere, he chose Trinity where he developed the mind set to discover things for himself and the ability to lead others toward his vision. Jim has the intellectual curiosity and the instinct for the poetic image which draw upon the vast array of understandings only the "artes liberales" can offer.

Once filming began, it was interesting to experience the role reversal. Jim, my student, became Jim, the teacher. As the vans and eighteen-wheelers rolled in with full catering and commissary facilities, dressing trailers, generators, police barricades and snakes of cable everywhere, it was like the circus had come to town, and Alamo Heights neighbors for blocks around got really serious about exercise and walking the dog, even in the stifling June heat.

Jim poured his love of the city into the San Antonio portion of the film, choosing locations like a remote section of the San Antonio River, Alamo Plaza, Mission San Josˇ, and a King William grill. Music figures prominently throughout the film, and the sounds of Jim Cullum and his Happy Jazz Band enhance the San Antonio ambiance. Jim, who had wanted to do a film here for fifteen or sixteen years said, "This movie is my way of telling people, hopefully the world, about San Antonio"

The first star I met was Brendan Fraser who plays the lead. He arrived on the set in a beautifully restored '60s "Impala" convertible (a film prop) with matted hair and a week's growth of beard, attired and groomed for his role as a romantic eccentric. When he noticed the red beans on the mountain laurel trees surrounding the set, I took the opportunity to deliver a sort of professor's lecture. I told him because the red hull is so hard they are difficult to propagate, and legend has it that the Indians drilled them out to use as beads. "So wherever you see a laurel tree, a dead Indian has fallen." He listened intently and revealed an unlimited curiosity about everything around him. His large muscled frame and brooding brow over almost glaring eyes could have been forbidding, but he was one of the friendliest, most gentle people I've ever met and instantly likable. I quickly became a fan. (One of Fraser's recent credits is George of the Jungle due soon from Disney.)

I was already a fan of the fellow who would play "Tree Man": the American legend, jazz singer Lou Rawls. "Lou" to everyone on the set, he graciously signed autographs for everybody who asked him. I sketched him from afar, and when I showed him my portrait, he lit up and said: "That's the man!"

Though I didn't have direct contact with the film great, Celeste Holm, who plays the grandma of Fraser's character, I did see her on the San Antonio River bank dressed in gossamer fabric and a sun hat. From my artist's eye, she is, at 77, still a classic beauty.

The film's female lead, the object of Fraser's search for the ideal woman, was Joanna Going, whose most famous role was in Wyatt Earp with Kevin Costner. (She is currently appearing in 20th Century Fox's Inventing the Abbotts.) Though we only met on the set, I really got to know her facial geography long before by putting together dozens of collages of her face which figure prominently in the script. I was also the ghost artist for her character who sketches her fears and dreams on scraps of paper throughout the film.

I must tell you being a film artist forced me to draw upon every creative resource I had, from surreal collages and darkly scratched gesture drawings to a soft, Raphael-like figure study. It was a great challenge and marvelous opportunity! It became even more so when Jim requested a twelve foot folding puppet set to resemble the Majestic Theatre's elaborate interior. In the end, "two eight hour days" stretched into 79 hours over the entire month of June, but I thoroughly enjoyed every minute.

Reflecting on the experience, I have to admit movie making gets into your blood, and I happily succumbed to the magnetic lure of "lights, camera, action!" To see a real "star" off camera or even to speak with them, to shake hands, or get an autograph, is to tap in, even momentarily, to a kind of American mythology, a charismatic Olympus.

Aside from the overall thrill of the film making milieu, it was especially rewarding to be surrounded by bright former students who've achieved the success of being able to do what they love to do and who brought their "old professor" into the midst of it. The cast and crew of Still Breathing were one big, warm, family, complete with puppies, kittens, and one recuperating dove. I'm forever grateful to Jim and Denise Pizzini Robinson for the wonderful opportunity of working on Still Breathing while living Bill's Great Adventure.

And I can't say enough good things about fortune cookies!

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