WHAT HAPPENS WHEN MARISSA TOMEI'S BORROWED DRESS GOES MISSING ON YOUR BROKE-ASS MUSICAL

THERE IS NO SHORT FILM JAIL. BUT THERE IS A DRY CLEANER IN WEST HOLLYWOOD WHO ALMOST ENDED MY EARLY CAREER.

by Jeff Fisher

There are moments in life when you look around at the favors you’ve called in, the credit cards you’ve maxed out, the Steadicam operator who showed up on a handshake — and think: How exactly are we going to pull this thing off?

This is the story of one of those moments.

ANSWERING OTHER PEOPLE’S PHONES

I had already made one short film — a 30-minute romantic comedy called Garage Sale starring Claire Forlani and Nestor Carbonell. It did well on the festival circuit. It won some awards. I loved making it.

But it didn’t do the one thing I actually needed it to do: get me a paid directing job. I was still an assistant answering other people’s phones and making their lunch reservations.

There’s another problem with Garage Sale that I’d only recognize in hindsight: it had a LOT of location moves. Trucks. Permits. A lot of the energy went into logistics.

So for my next project, I wanted to write something that took place in one location and was a little bigger in scale.

I wanted to make a musical.

Musicals like Grease had always made me happy. I was a twenty-something grinding through assistant jobs in the entertainment industry —and I thought the world could use all the happiness it could get. I certainly could. I was spending lots of time in the Copy Room making copies of other people’s scripts and trying to figure out my next big swing.

So I wrote Angels, Baby! — a story about two guardian angels who have to match a shy couple at a Los Angeles bar, set to songs by George Gershwin and Frank Loesser. I applied for a few more credit cards and got to work.

SOAP OPERAS, BONG HITS AND STEVEN SPIELBERG

Okay, this is probably too much backstory, but here goes:

I was a huge fan of the soap opera One Life to Live in college. Embarrassing fact: my neighbor Jack and I had a game where we’d take a bong hit every time the Tina character whined. Needless to say, we’d get pretty high.

The producers of One Life to Live apparently got snubbed at the real Daytime Emmys (perhaps Tina’s whine was an acquired taste), so they made an episode with their own fictional awards show called The Daisy Awards. Jessica Tuck’s character Megan sang a banging musical number to open the show. Jessica was AWESOME. Fun, campy, clever. I never forgot that number. You can watch it here.

Around the same time, Steven Spielberg was doing press for Always — his remake of the 1943 film A Guy Named Joe about a man who comes back as a ghost to help his wife find a new husband. Spielberg mentioned the idea of a guardian angel: that sometimes on set, when he wasn’t sure where to put the camera, he’d get a creative impulse and liked to think maybe a great director from the past — Frank Capra on his shoulder — was giving him advice.

His story stuck with me and I wrote the draft of this short musical.

I also wrote Jessica Tuck a letter, sent it to her agent, and was over the moon when she said yes to meeting and ultimately to being in the short.

ENTER SYDNEY FROM MELROSE PLACE

My friends Rick, Tom, Pam and I had standing Monday night dates to watch Melrose Place. We were obsessed. This was like Stranger Things on steroids for us, except there were up to 30 episodes each season, instead of eight. Laura Leighton played Sydney — my favorite character on the show — and when the casting breakdown went out, word came back that she might be interested.

I could barely even process this information.

We got on a phone call. I sent her a VHS tape of Garage Sale and a music video I’d directed. She was warm and gracious and I couldn’t believe it was actually happening.

Here’s what I didn’t know going into that call: Laura had been in Up With People before Melrose Place. The woman could sing and dance. Laura wasn’t just famous — she was the perfect actress for this role.

THE TWITCH

Then I started finding out what it actually takes to make a musical.

A musical director with actual Broadway chops. Orchestrations. Pre-records. Studio time. A choreographer. A Steadicam rig for the opening shot. Enough lighting to make a club look like a movie. Something my DP friend Dino called a Louma Crane . I pretended I knew what that was. “Of course, yes…a Louma Crane. Great.”

It was around this time I developed a twitch.

I called my great friend Cornelia Ryan (now Taylor), who had produced another short with me, and convinced her to come back for another round. I wrote to Travis Payne — a choreographer who worked with Michael Jackson — who somehow read the script and said yes. That awesome DP Dino Parks (who would go on to shoot Yellowstone, among many other things) was in. My friend Alan said he’d AD. And a friend of Dino’s had a truck with that crane, a Steadicam rig, and all the lights we’d need for the big finale — and he’d show up for cash on the morning of the shoot.

Besides Jessica and Laura, we lucked out with Larry Poindexter and Chris Jacobs for the other two leads and some great supporting players. The pre-records were done and mixed and we were ready to shoot.

We were doing this thing.

THE GEOMETRY TEST THAT ROBBED HOLLYWOOD OF A STAR

Before we go on, I have to tell you a little about my mom.

Mom had always wanted to be an actress. She went to the same high school as Anne Baxter — who went on to star in All About Eve opposite Bette Davis. Family legend has it that there was an open call audition in the city my mom didn’t go to because she was too scared to miss a Geometry test. Anne went. Anne became a movie star.

I grew up hearing this story. It was like Sliding Doors, if Gwyneth Paltrow was from Brooklyn and was a whiz with a pressure cooker.

Mom stayed theatrical her whole life. And she was the one who took me to see The Poseidon Adventure when I was five years old. That movie — Gene Hackman, Shelley Winters, a capsized ocean liner — is what got me hooked on movies. She supported my dream every step of the way, even if hers got sidetracked by a protractor.

So I wrote her a part in Angels, Baby! : a singing cowgirl. And her boyfriend helped ease my credit card pain with a contribution to the budget.

At this point, the credit cards, the favors, and my mother’s hopes and dreams were all riding on the same two and a half days of shooting. No big deal.

MARISA TOMEI’S BORROWED HALF DRESS

We make it through the first two days of shooting. Flash to the last day . The one with the big, musical finale. The dance numbers were rehearsed. Travis and his assistant Stacey were there. The pre-records were done. The guy with the truck showed up with the crane and the Steadicam rig. Dino had enough light to finally light the whole club.

My friend Daniel — an extraordinarily talented costume designer — had arranged for us to borrow dresses from Marisa Tomei’s wardrobe from the movie Only You. One was the white dress for Jessica’s angel. The other was the dress for Laura’s character — modest at first, then transformed into something sexy when her guardian angel gives her magical courage for the big number.

Unlike bigger budget shows, we didn’t have any doubles for the hero costumes. Each night after wrap, we’d take the wardrobe to a cleaners in West Hollywood, have everything cleaned overnight, pick it up before heading to set.

I thought my biggest worry was the guy actually showing up with the big truck. I was wrong.

The actors go into wardrobe. Only half of Jessica’s dress is there. Just the bottom.

I didn’t even know the dress had two pieces.

There was no way to shoot the finale without the top. That would be a very different movie.

My friend Sandra — a New York fashionista who had flown out to help with wardrobe — got in my car and drove at lightning speed all the way across town to West Hollywood in search of the top.

The cleaners insisted the other half wasn’t there.

SANDRA IS FROM NEW JERSEY. SHE DOESN'T TAKE NO FOR AN ANSWER.

Sandra didn’t give up. She asked to go behind the counter herself. And she found it — folded like a pocket square on its own hanger, way in the back of the store. The dress had come apart in the machine and they thought the top was a handkerchief.

While Sandra was racing across town, I had no idea what we were going to do if she came back empty-handed. All the prep. All the expense. The short ends of Kodak film stock I’d driven across town to find. The people volunteering their time or working for almost nothing. Cornelia producing her heart out. The Steadicam operator there on a handshake.

I didn’t want to let any of them down.

Luckily, we had one thing going for us: the opening shot of the movie is a long Steadicam move through the bar — the angels haven’t appeared yet, and you’re discovering the space for the first time, landing on Melanie, this great singer, belting out Love Is Just Around The Corner. There was real camera choreography to figure out.

So we used every single minute Sandra was on the road to get that shot right.

She came back with the top of the dress. Man, she saved the day!

We shot the number. It looked great. Laura, Jessica, Chris, the dancers — they all killed it.

MOM’S BIG MOMENT

Now, a quick word about my Mom’s number, which was the last thing on the schedule.

I was honestly more nervous to shoot that than anything else.

Mom showed up, ready. She was, as always, a force of nature. She felt her existing costume — already a full cowgirl situation, satin and fringe, like all three of the Del Rubio Triplets rolled into one — needed a little more pizazz. Specifically, she felt her cowboy hat needed more bling.

She brought a brooch. We attached it to the hat. Yes, Diva.

She was honestly great. She found her inner cowgirl and brought down the house. When I watch her outtakes in the credits all these years later, it still gets me.

THE SPAGHETTI, THE BOULDER, AND THE POINT OF ALL OF IT

Angels, Baby! won the Audience Awards at festivals including Palm Springs, Ft. Lauderdale and Chicago. It helped me get my first real post-assistant directing gig, which eventually connected to Killer Movie premiering at Tribeca, which connected to Hallmark, which connected, thankfully, to more.

But here’s what I really want to tell you — the part that’s not in the highlight reel.

Even now, after two Paramount features and a career that’s been on this roller coaster longer than I care to admit, I still have many days where I’m just throwing spaghetti at the wall trying to find the one that sticks. Days where it feels like I’m pushing a Sisyphean boulder up a hill and it keeps rolling back down. I still have to talk myself into believing the next job is coming.

The boulder doesn’t go away. You just get better at pushing it.

Things are going to feel impossible. They felt impossible when I was broke and twitching and trying to make a musical. They sometimes feel impossible now. That’s not a sign you’re doing it wrong. That’s just the terrain.

Self-promotion isn’t easy for me. I don't think it's easy for anyuone. But no one is going to care about your script, your short film, your reel, your feature as much as you do. And they shouldn’t. That’s your job. Dig deep and find that inner promoter — the one who will drive across town for short ends of Kodak stock and cultivate a friend who will beg a dry cleaner to let her behind the counter.

There is no short film jail. You’re not going to get arrested if it isn’t perfect. Just give it your best shot.

The credit cards got paid off. The twitch went away. The memories of my mom singing on set, of Sandra tearing down La Cienega in my Nissan, of Laura, Jessica, Larry and Chris bringing everything they had to a scrappy little musical — those are priceless.

Give your mom her moment. Cast your dream. JUST MAKE IT.

If you'd like to check out ANGELS, BABY! you can watch it here: https://vimeo.com/205431967

Jeff Fisher is a director and writer whose credits include Paramount Pictures’ “The Stranger in My Home” and “The Image of You,” Hallmark’s highest-rated film of the year “My Christmas Love,” and reality hits spanning from “The Simple Life” to “Keeping Up With The Kardashians.” Visit www.jefffisherdirector.com to see his work and www.reeltalkwithjeff.com for more industry insights.

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