IF I COULD BE A TEEN POP STAR: An interview with Boychick director Glenn Gaylord. By Warren Curry 4/24/02 Part 1 of 3

Photos Courtesy of Brad Bergman

I was first introduced to the work of writer/director Glenn Gaylord at the March installment of the L.A. Film School's Friday Night Shorts program. Glenn's short Boychick was the 4th or 5th film of the evening, but was the first that really made me sit up and take notice. Its broad, yet self-assured comic sensibility was completely refreshing and elicited an overwhelmingly enthusiastic response from the large crowd.

Knowing that an IndieSpeak interview with the mastermind behind the film was essential, I tracked Glenn down and, in typical Hollywood style, we were able to chat over lunch. The filmmaker's myriad of diverse experiences (which includes a stint as a nude model for American History X director Tony Kaye) and substantial history in the movie biz (he started working in the industry in the early 80's) made him quite the interesting subject. I'll also always have a fond spot for Glenn, as he was the first person ever to inquire into the availability of CinemaSpeak.com clothing. Needless to say, his fashion sense is impeccable.

Boychick is Glenn's second short, and his first one, Lost Cause (which he is now working on as a feature project), can be seen on Atom Films.com. Boychick is currently making its was through the festival rounds and is absolutely guaranteed not to disappoint. The film stars Ben Lang in the lead role, Greg Siff, Andrea LaBella and Lindsey Girardot as the Britney Spears-like pop star, Ashley Hart.

Read on

(Watch Lost Cause)

Tell us a bit about your background. I know you went to film school at UCLA --how did you get from there to where you are now?

When I graduated from UCLA, I went immediately into film production, starting at the bottom and staying at the bottom for quite some time. I was a production assistant on Blame it on the Night, which was the first film I ever worked on and was produced by Sydney Pollack for TriStar Pictures. It was a very low budget movie, based on an idea by Mick Jagger and I was more than happy to be paid $200 a week to work 100 hours a week as a P.A. straight out of school. I learned so much and I went to dailies every night, which the director noticed. He thought it would be a good idea to transfer me over to apprentice editor during post-production. It was a lucky break that I took such an interest in the film process that I was able to get the next job. Strangely enough, I got a promotion in title, but made $50 less per week, but I was more than happy to suffer because it was a great opportunity and I learned a lot about editing that I didn't necessarily learn in film school. I learned the actual hardcore reality of why certain decisions are made based on commercial considerations. I also worked as a post-production P.A. on Terms of Endearment and then I just got more jobs. I did set P.A. work and location scouting for John McTiernan's first movie, which is called Nomads and I saw his career take off from that. It was great to work on these productions that were really low budget, mostly shot at night, with crews that wanted to be there. It was the 80's and everybody was just having a good time; a little too good a time.

I eventually fell into production accounting, when I saw that the jobs that I was taking on films didn't allow me any time to write. Film school never taught us that production accountants even existed, and I certainly couldn't balance my checkbook, but the person who hired me told me that wasn't what I needed to know for the job. She told me that what I really needed to know was the nuts and bolts of filmmaking to allow them to estimate what people are going to do and how much that's going to cost. She told me that she could teach me how to balance my checkbook and how to add numbers, and so I learned the ropes through a great mentor. I found that I was good at the job and it allowed me time to do other things. Even though the hours were long, it wasn't quite the same as lugging cables on the set. I did that (production accounting) for a number of years, got a little burnt out doing it, and on my last film, had such a great time doing it, that I thought it was a great time to stop. Then I decided to stop working in film production for about 8 years. I took that time to write and worked at a non-profit organization helping out people, as opposed to working on things that ended up on a video box on a store. I found myself writing a lot; writing for magazines and I wrote a book and had such an amazing range of experiences that I finally felt ready to start telling stories. I was encouraged by that and started writing scripts. I realized that I wanted to direct those scripts and the best way to showcase that was to just go out and make something, so I made a short and that's basically where we are today.

Where did the idea for Boychick come from?

Boychick was written under pressure. I had received a grant from my first short, Lost Cause, from a group called the Peter S. Reed filmmaker foundation. Peter was a filmmaker who died of AIDS right after completing his feature film debut and in his will he set up a foundation to give grants to other aspiring filmmakers. Somebody caught Lost Cause, which was AIDS themed, and said, "You would be perfect to give this grant to. Can we nominate you?" I wasn't about to get in the way and low and behold I won this grant that gave me seed money to make my next short. I had already written another short, but the grant was less than I anticipated and the short I was going to make was going to cost way too much money. I had a deadline; I had to complete the short in a certain amount of time. I quickly changed gears and wrote something else. I had been working on a script where there was a supporting character that's much like the Boychick character, and I thought it would be a really great exercise to make a short around that character, so I could learn more about the character. Some people like to write biographies about their characters, I made a short instead and tried to figure out what's happening during the day, during this once scene that I didn't write about in this other script. It stemmed from that and one of the actors in the film, who as an aspiring actor said, he'll know he's made it as an actor when he gets to pose on the cover of TV Guide with Heather Locklear. My response to him was, "You're so gay -- you want to pose with her and most guys want to sleep with her." Then I thought, "Hmmmthat's not a bad premise for a short;" to have somebody who wants something out of sex symbol that other people might not want. I didn't want to do it about Heather Locklear -- it just didn't make sense at the time -- and I wanted to do something with this young character. I said, "Who would this young teenage gay boy like? Who is his Liza Minnelli or his Judy Garland?" Well, that would be Britney Spears; that's kind of obvious. So, I took it from there.

I know you went through a bit of an ordeal with the school location you used in the film. In the spirit of relaying the obligatory indie production horror story, can you tell us about that conflict?

As the location manager on the film, I had to come up with the dreaded task of finding a high school willing to allow us to shoot on the weekend. It was a lesson in which I learned that I don't want to write any classroom scenes any time soon, because they are very difficult locations to secure. It took about four months to finally find a high school to allow us to do this and the one that agreed was really enthusiastic -- Manual Arts High School down by USC. They thought it would be a great educational experience for their students to watch the filmmaking process and learn. Some of them were extras in the film and a lot of them got to stand around and ask questions while we were shooting. Well, a couple of days before production I got a call from the school and they said, "Sorry, you can't shoot here. We have SAT's scheduled this weekend." The train had left the station at this point. The crew was all ready, the cast was all in place, there was no turning around. I went down to the school, met with the principal and reminded him that he signed a contract allowing us to shoot and came up with an alternative solution to move the SAT's to the cafeteria, so we could shoot in the school classroom building. It didn't quite work out that way, but we had to be really quiet for the first several hours of shooting and they never knew we were there. That was our major concern; that we were disrupting the most important test in these students' lives. It wasn't so much that we wanted to make our film, but we wanted to make it in the best conditions

Tell us a bit about how you assembled your cast for Boychick.

I met the casting director Patrick Baca at a film festival where I was showing my previous short. He approached me and said, "Great cast. Who did it? I didn't see a credit." I told him that I did it. He said, "Great job. Can I cast your next one?" Never to look a gift horse in the mouth, and I had known who he was and what his experience had been, I said, "Of course." I sent him a script, he loved it and was really enthusiastic about casting it. He basically cast the three leading teenage characters. We had casting sessions; we called in a lot of people, one of whom was probably not right for the part, but every other actor who came in was amazing and perfect. I could've made 99 other films with different cast and been happy. I was very impressed with the caliber of talent he was bringing in. Other casting choices I made from people I had worked with previously that I was loyal to and believed in their talent. The main person that was cast before we started auditioning the kids was the mother (Andrea LaBella), who played the receptionist in Lost Cause. We were fortunate enough to have her on board so she could read with all these kids that were coming in, so it was easy to match her up. It was a fun process and I'm really impressed with the level of talent that's out there that are willing to work for free on a short film. And these are all Screen Actors Guild members.

When you cast the character Debate Boy (Greg Siff) were you just purely seeking a good-looking guy who could dance?

He and Lindsey Girardot, who plays the Britney Spears like dancer (Ashley Hart), don't have any lines in the film, but in the audition process I wrote monologues for each character, because I wanted to see how they were going to approach this. Even though it's completely conveyed visually what they do, I wanted to see what they were bringing to get to that level. Both of them are fantastic actors. It wasn't based on just looks alone, because we had lots of great looking people auditioning for this part. -- people that they would even admit are better looking than they are. It was based on how they were going to visually convey the spirit of that character. With Debate Boy, for example, I wanted him to be this rather benign presence that wasn't going to be threatening to this kid, but at the 10th reunion, Boychick is probably going to go, "What was I thinking? Why did I like him?" That was the idea behind that; this guy who never knows he's alive, but probably wouldn't beat him up if he approached him.

How difficult was it to shoot the dance sequences?

It was the most fun, but also the most difficult, because it took forever to light. We had one day specifically reserved for the dance scenes and, on that day, the key grip decided to quit. We didn't have a key grip to help us set up everything we needed, so we had major delays and didn't start shooting the dance sequence until after lunch. We were just waiting around all morning while trying to light this sucker. Once we started the dance sequence, and working with Kelly Devine who was the choreographer, it completely elevated the mood on the set. I think anybody working on a film all of a sudden starts to get more energy when they see this fun sequence being made. There was applause after every take and everyone was dancing around having a good time. I felt a little bit sorry for Ben (Lang), who plays Boychick, because he's not a dancer by profession and he had to do that sequence about 35 times in a row, not tire out and appear to be doing it for the first time every time. He impressed us and did a great job.

The dedication to Britney Spears in the end credits -- I assume that's tongue in cheek?

Well, not really. Under this parody of this Britney Spears character there is really more there. I don't see the film as a parody at all. We dismiss these pop culture icons without realizing the effect they can have on their fans or young people in general. Somebody like Britney Spears is often viewed as this disposable pop star; she produces forgettable songs, she's nothing more than her body or the way she dances like a stripper and she's not the greatest singer. None of that really matters if you can see the effect she has on somebody like this character Boychick, who is afraid to take this little baby step in his life. He doesn't get his inspiration from his mother trying her damndest to be supportive. He's not getting it from his schoolteacher (Nick Arnzen), who is really opening the door for him or his classmates who are clearly comfortable with the subject matter. He's getting it from this really bizarre source; he's getting it from this pop star who gives him confidence. I think that's a lot of good and that's why a lot of young kids like Britney Spears. They might like her music -- I don't know, I'm not going to speak to that. They might just like the attitude she conveys. She gives them that inspiration to take that little step. Boychick takes that step in a bizarre way, and because it's a movie, he gets to grab this guy's butt and then smell his fingers!

Click for Part Two

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