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Bob, because of your love of Bond and Super-8, you might get a kick out of this anti-climactic story:

MY LAST SUPER-8 FILM

Right out of college my buddy Bob Tull headed for New York to make his way as an actor. We were fast friends and did a couple of plays together in school, but the real reason for our great friendship was two things: we amazed each other with the fact that we were walking entertainment trivia encyclopedias, and that, outside of our friends in the film department, we had each made super-8mm movies as teenagers. So Tull and I were thick-as-thieves, and although we worked continuously making theater and films in college, we also made time to make a few films for our own enjoyment.

Two months after our college adventure, Tull moves to New York, and gets a day job in some office building in Manhattan. That July I get a phone call from Tull, and he invites me up to see his new digs and hang out a little. And guess what, he adds, "I found a few rolls of left-over film, and was thinking of doing a spy comedy." I was on the next train.

It was the first week of August, and very hot. I can't remember what the film was called, but I was cast as Manny Mojack, spy, and my co-star was Tull's girlfriend (and future ex-wife) Robin. She was the boss's sectretary, Miss Penny Nichols. I got into town late Friday night, dripping with sweat as I was lugging an extra suitcase full of the requisite wardrobe; tux, suits, ties, toy guns.

We didn't sleep much that Friday night. We stayed up way too late brain-storming gags. Early Saturday morning we got up and headed out to the office building were Tull worked. The place was closed for the weekend, and we were going to shoot all of our interiors there. My buddy Bob had keys to get in, and he had been only working there for --- five days. He had just started the previous Monday...

And so we got to work. Shooting sound-on-film. Slow process. Rehearse. Plan the sound dialogue cuts around the action because of the sync problems with sound-on-film. Shoot a take, maybe a second. Move on to the next set up. All was going great for the first hour or so, until we all went into this little office Tull had picked as a location for a short scene, and the door closed behind us.

And locked...

LOCKED. With no telephone, no window, no other doors. It was a kind of storage room.

It was funny for about thirty seconds. Until we realized that the doorknob had no keyhole, and that a credit card was useless and couldn't reach far enough in to touch the bolt, let alone move it. We pounded on the door. We screamed into the vent. After three hours, it began to get incredibly hot.

Six hours later, as I was still working on prying the hinge pins up and out of the hinges, we heard sounds on the other side of the door. We pounded again (which woke Robin up) and a security guard opened the door for us. He had just started his shift and was making his rounds when he saw the lights on in the back offices and saw the film equiptment.

We did finish the film that weekend. I haven't seen it in ages and ages. I do remember that my friend Bob started another job the following week.

That was my last Super-8mm film.

Mark Redfield
www.redfieldarts.com