Who drew the cartoon family portrait that is glimpsed at the end of the film?
That’s a good question. [Pause] You know, I have a copy of that portrait on my wall, but I don’t remember who drew it. It might have been one of the cartoonists from Mad magazine. It looks like a Mort Drucker, but I don’t think it was him. [10] Maybe it was one of Drucker’s disciples.
Is it true that you encountered some distribution problems with Full Moon High? I know the film was delayed.
Well, AIP distributed the film, and one of the problems we encountered was they had sold Full Moon High to the tax shelter, just as they had done previously with The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover. So, they had made a profit on the movie before it had even played anywhere. With the picture already in profit before it was finished, they didn’t have to play the movie to make money. In fact, if they risked too much money on advertising and putting the film into theaters they would have stood a chance of losing money, whereas if they did nothing, they would end up making money. They had to distribute Full Moon High in a token fashion to satisfy the requirements of the government. To qualify as a tax shelter, the picture had to actually play, but they didn’t have to play it that much in order to make money. It was a rather confusing scenario, but there you have it. The film went into profit and the studio made some money. I’ve been receiving cheques and making dough off Full Moon High for thirty years, even though it didn’t really get a wide release. So, not only do I have a warm spot for the picture in my heart, every time I receive a cheque I get a warm spot in my wallet, too! [Chuckles]
Although Full Moon High is not one of your most accomplished efforts, it does seem to be one of your most fondly remembered films.
Everybody liked Full Moon High. Audiences just warmed to that movie and still do. It’s constantly playing in the United States on cable and the DVD is out, so what can you say? After all these years, its still getting seen by people and that makes me very happy because a lot of films get lost along the way. I don’t remember what kind of reviews it got from the critics at the time of its release, but it did receive a few positive notices. I do recall that one critic thought it was “second-rate Mel Brooks.” It probably was, but I didn’t mind being a second-rate Mel Brooks. It’s interesting that you should mention distribution problems because I was just talking to Mel on the phone the other day. He was commiserating with me about how much trouble he’s having even trying to put the financing together for a picture. Mel said, “Nobody wants to put up the money anymore. All the financing has dried up.” Not only is he having difficulty financing projects as a director, he’s having difficulties also as a producer. As you may know, Mel has produced movies such as The Elephant Man and The Fly. So, even though he is an older filmmaker, he could still produce, but nobody seems to want to give him any money. Now, I totally understand what that’s like because it’s tough for us all. The business has changed so much it’s hard to really get a movie out there in the theaters. You know, I’ve been through the valleys like this before when things were slow. But then you sell something and it picks up again and you make another movie. You can’t get discouraged by it. I don’t get discouraged by it. It’s just one of those things you have to go through and there’s always a light at the end of the tunnel. Making movies, or tying to make movies, is not always as bad as some people make it out to be. It always looks depressing if the answer is no, but then somebody eventually says yes and all is right with the world again.
Speaking of Mel Brooks, one of his most cherished players, Kenneth Mars, appears as the football coach. Were you a fan of his?
Oh, I was a big fan. Kenneth was a great guy. He had terrific humour and charm about him. He was a very inventive comedic actor. In Mel’s film The Producers, Kenneth famously played the Nazi who wrote the play “Springtime for Hitler” — a terrific performance. He’d also appeared in Young Frankenstein for Mel and was fantastic in both movies. In fact, Kenneth was fantastic in everything he ever did. He was a wonderful talent, and I was very sad to hear that he recently passed. [11] When we were making Full Moon High, Kenneth was always willing to try anything and was brimming with energy and enthusiasm. He was a dream to work with, actually. That whole cast was a dream. I couldn’t have been happier with them. That’s why I always look back on the experience of making Full Moon High with such affection.
Is it harder doing improvisations in a comedy than it is in a horror or science fiction film, particularly if you aren’t working with a seasoned comedic actor?
Some actors do have better comedic timing than others, that’s true. When you are improvising in a dramatic movie, even the mistakes can prove beneficial. It’s funny how it sometimes works, but if the actors are fumbling for something, it can lend their performance a reality that you just don’t get if they are simply delivering the lines as written. But comedy is slightly different and requires certain skills. You can fail more easily because humour can mean very different things to different people.
Did the famous quote by Edmund Gwenn “Dying is easy, comedy is hard” apply in your experience of making of Full Moon High? [12]
Well, firstly, let me just say there are various arguments about who actually said that quote. Edwin Booth [13] has been quoted as saying it. A lot of other people have been quoted as saying it. Somebody then suggested it was Edmund Gwenn, but it’s been attributed to all these various individuals and improperly I would say. I don’t even know if the statement itself is actually true. Secondly, I don’t think that a comedy like Full Moon High is hard to make, but how a comedy plays to an audience may be a different issue entirely. When you make a dramatic film and it plays in the theater, you are not required to have a dramatic response from the people who are watching it. The audience just sits in their seats and watches the movie. However, when you make a comedy film, you are called upon to get an audible response from the audience every minute or so. If you are sitting in the theater watching a comedy and you don’t hear anyone laughing, the audience quickly becomes aware that the picture is dying. That’s why I think comedy can sometimes be harder. It’s not the making of it as much as the reaction to it. If a comedy picture doesn’t work, then you truly do die, and what a painful and miserable death it is. So, I would like to offer my own little twist on that famous quote: “Comedy is easy, but when the comedy dies in the theater it’s very, very hard!”
See China and Die (1981)
Shortly after completing Full Moon High, you wrote and directed the little-seen TV movie See China and Die. How did that project get started?
See China and Die was originally a pilot for NBC. It was intended to be a series called Momma the Detective that would star Ester Rolle, a well-known television comedy star, who had appeared in the CBS show Good Times. [1] Ester was ripe to have another series, as she was extremely popular with audiences. Momma the Detective was an attempt to get her back into television again with a show that I would create, write, and direct. Regrettably, our series didn’t get on the air.
What was it about?
It was about a Black maid named Momma Sykes, who loves reading detective fiction and whose son is actually a detective. She works as a housekeeper at a luxurious tower block for the richest people in Manhattan. Although her clients are incredibly wealthy, this maid is much smarter than the people she works for. She knows all about the rich tenants — their secrets and affairs and indiscretions — every nefarious thing they ever do. She knows something about everybody, but nobody knows anything about her. None of the people who employ her even know where she lives, which is usually the case with employers of household help. The thread of the mystery is that one of her clients is murdered shortly after returning from a trip to China. This film was set right after the Chinese Government had allowed tourism into their country. Unfortunately, he saw something over there which has caused him to be killed. The police begin to investigate the murder, but the maid then decides to solve the crime herself. Obviously, if the pilot had gone to series the maid woul
d have investigated various crimes in each subsequent episode. Momma the Detective was similar in that respect to Murder, She Wrote, which appeared several years later. Both shows feature a woman who solves crimes in each episode and there is a parade of guest stars appearing every week in supporting roles. That was the idea anyway.
As much as I know these kinds of questions annoy you, may I enquire what the budget for the pilot was?
Sure, but I don’t remember exactly. I think it was somewhere around a million dollars.
Did you have high hopes for Momma the Detective?
Yeah, I thought it was a good idea. When we got a deal with NBC to make it, Momma the Detective was supposed to be an hour-long pilot, and that would have been the title of the series had NBC continued with it. But I decided to make a ninety-minute version out of it and that eventually became See China and Die. My reasoning was that if I was going to make the hour-long pilot, I might as well make a ninety-minute version, so that it could be made as a theatrical movie, or as a TV movie, I could then sell into syndication. The fact is there’s nothing more useless than an unsold one-hour pilot because there is no place to play it. A one-hour pilot has no value whatsoever as you can’t market them in any way. I was able to make the ninety-minute version for the same money as the sixty-minute pilot, and we did indeed succeed in selling it into syndication. When I did the feature, I had to come up with a different title, and so Momma the Detective then became See China and Die, and has played many times on different cable stations under that title. So, we were able to make some money off the project in the backend after the show wasn’t picked up. The hour-long version was telecast on NBC, but by the time it was on the network had already decided not to make the series.
Why?
Unfortunately, NBC had received two or three complaint letters — and I mean just two or three — from various Black organizations. They had apparently objected to a Black woman being depicted as a maid as they felt that idea was repellent. Yes, the character of Momma Sykes was a menial servant, but we strongly indicated that she was much cleverer than all the rich people she worked for. For example, there’s a scene I like where Momma Sykes asks this tax expert, played by Fritz Weaver, to help with her taxes, but she soon demonstrates that she knows more than he does about income tax. There were a number of scenes like that, moments where she revealed just how smart she was. Of course, on top of everything, she successfully solves the murders and wins the day, but none of this seemed to matter. Certain people still felt that this kind of portrayal was demeaning and derogatory, and should not be seen on television. They failed to appreciate that this formidable woman was actually extremely intelligent, talented, and resourceful, despite her apparent low status and occupation. That was really the whole point of the story: Momma was far, far better than what she appeared to be or the manner in which she was perceived by others. Anyway, these isolated complaints were all NBC needed to hear. They quickly decided that they weren’t going to put the show on the air, and so, ultimately, Momma the Detective was an exercise in futility.
Who informed you about the negative letters that were coming into the network?
I believe it was the agents who represented the project. Look, all it took back then was for two or three letters to filter in from some organization and that was it! Who knows if that particular organization was representing no more than two or three people? If they have a letterhead on their letter the whole network trembles and suddenly falls apart. At any rate, I don’t think NBC even looked at the pilot when it came in.
Interestingly, Ester Rolle had previously played the housekeeper, Florida Evans, in the CBS sitcom Maude and, as you said, had continued with the role in its spin-off show, Good Times. She’d also played a maid in Summer for my German Soldier for which she won an Emmy.
Yeah, that’s right, Ester had played maids before. What can I tell you?
Despite that, her performance in See China and Die has been likened to the “maid-mammy” characters of Hattie McDaniel, who famously played maids in Gone with the Wind, Judge Priest, Alice Adams, George Washington Slept Here, and The Golden West. How do you feel about accusations that you were deliberately styling the character of Momma Sykes on McDaniel’s work?
I deny them, because that’s not accurate. Momma Sykes was much more intelligent and sophisticated than the maids that had been depicted in previous films and television shows. The servants in most of those movies you mentioned were either situated during slavery or on the fringes of slavery. What was objectionable about those characters was that they always seemed happy to be slaves, whereas Momma Sykes was extremely independent. Not only was she smarter than the people she worked for, she knew that she was smarter than the people she worked for. Eventually, the people she worked for realized she was smarter than them, too! In a curious way, See China and Die was an outgrowth of Black Caesar and Hell up in Harlem. We had a couple of scenes in those movies where the household help suddenly pulled out guns and shot the people they were working for. See China and Die was kind of a sanitized, tone-downed version of that idea. What I found interesting is that the household help are almost invisible in rich homes because they are there all the time. They see and know everything, but the employers see and know nothing of the household help. They don’t know where the help live, or how many kids they have, or what their background is. So, there is an interesting split that exists between them and I thought I could exploit that division dramatically.
Did you secure all of your first choices for the project?
Oh yeah, we had a wonderful cast. The British actress Jean Marsh from Upstairs, Downstairs was in it. She was in New York at the time and was available, so we cast her. We also hired Paul Dooley [2], who is a great character actor, and Frank Converse, who had played the lead in Coronet Blue. I brought back Andy Duggan, who, as you know, had been in a lot of my movies, and Fritz Weaver, who had appeared in “Medal for a Turncoat.” Fritz was always a very pleasant man and a true professional, and he does comedy so well. The same can be said about Paul Dooley. Paul has been in a lot of movies and is a lovely guy. I ran into him just recently and asked how he was doing. It turns out that he’s doing great as his wife wrote the book for the musical, Wicked, one of the biggest musicals on Broadway and on tour. In every country in the world, they are doing productions of Wicked, and since Paul’s wife wrote the book, she gets three and a half percent of all ticket sales worldwide. You can only imagine how many millions of dollars are flooding into Paul Dooley’s bank account — next to his wife, of course — so he is a very happy man. I also hired Kene Holliday to play Momma’s detective son. Kene was a nice fellow, but I don’t know whatever happened to him. [3] There was also an interesting Spanish actor in the cast who played a small supporting role. [4] He was actually a Puerto Rican playwright, who had written Short Eyes, a very famous off-Broadway play about a gay prisoner in jail. So, we had some very compelling actors in the piece, and they were all extremely cooperative. They simply came in and did their jobs, which is all you can ask for. The great thing about dealing with talented people like Jean Marsh and Fritz Weaver is you don’t have to tell them what to do. They already know their business.
Larry Cohen Page 30