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A
National Board member for almost 40 years
and a valued voice on the NBR's Board
of Directors, Roy Frumkes has been producing,
writing and directing films for three
decades. Captivated by stories of vaudeville
from his grandfather, a leading booking
agent in the 1920's, Roy grew up in Westchester
and followed his childhood dream into
New York City and film business.
NBR:
Do you remember any specific film
you saw as a child that fueled your aspiration
to work in the motion picture industry?
ROY
FRUMKES: Well, a lot of it was
in the horror genre. War of
the Worlds by George Pal, in 1954.
The Invasion of the Body Snatchers
in 1956, which had my brother, Lewis,
and I looking under the beds to see if
our parents had planted any pods there.
And earlier, on TV, were the old
Val Lewton Films like The Body Snatcher
with Boris Karloff, or Cat People,
with Simone Simon, who I later became
friendly with, and have visited three
times in Paris (she's now 93 and in full
possession of her faculties.) But
The Ten Commandments was the
first film I saw that made me aware of
film as an art form (1956), and Chaplin's
films had a revival while I was in college,
and they made me aware that it was a means
of personal expression.
Roy's
first film, where he served as Assistant
Director and Associate Producer, was The
Projectionist starring a then-unknown
Rodney Dangerfield in his film debut.
It developed a cult following and was
chosen (along with McCabe and Mrs.
Miller and Death in Venice )
by The Museum of Modern Art as one of
the three best films of 1971. Roy also
directed the TV special An Evening
at Dangerfield's , from the famed
New York City comedy club, and later wrote
and directed Burt's Bikers ,
a docudrama about Down's Syndrome children
narrated by Academy Award winner Glenda
Jackson and telecast on NBC.
NBR:
What was it like to work with Rodney Dangerfield?
Did he do anything funny on the set?
RF:
Well, not that it was funny, but Chuck
McCann was being very demanding of our
time, and Dangerfield, noticing that,
started one-upping him comedically to
divert him away from us and let us do
our jobs. It was very thoughtful.
Rodney was a lovely guy, probably
one of the two nicest I've worked with
in 35 years of producing. When
I directed An Evening at Dangerfield's,
which covered the weekend his nightclub
opened, all the standup stars turned out
to pay tribute. We were planning
the seating arrangements so that I'd know
where to aim the cameras when the stars'
names were announced, and he mentioned
that Michael Dunn, a remarkably talented
dwarf actor who went up for the Academy
Award for Ship of Fools, had
written asking for seats to the opening.
Rodney asked what he should do
about that: “I don't know him.
Do I comp him the seats, or just
make sure he gets two good seats?”
We asked what he would expect if he'd
asked Dunne for seats to Ship of Fools.
He then said, “Okay, I'll let him
pay for the seats, but I won't charge
him for the telephone books.”
In
1978, Roy appeared in the cult horror
film, Dawn of the Dead , as a
zombie (the “First Pie-in-Face Zombie,”
to be exact). Around the same time, he
began work on a project that would take
11 years to bring to completion. Document
of the Dead was a comprehensive
documentary study of independent filmmaking
in the US, focusing on the career of director
George Romero. A special edition of Document
of the Dead was released on DVD
by Synapse Films in 1998, featuring commentary
by Roy and others involved in its production.
NBR:
Was Dawn of the Dead your only
acting gig or did you try to make a career
out of acting?
RF:
I'm too uptight to be an actor.
A zombie, yes. An actor,
no. But I have appeared in most
of my films, and maybe that's a function
of working in low budget indies.
Everyone in the staff and crew eventually
appears on screen to save money.
In
1982, Roy wrote the story for the film
The Comeback Trail which starred
Buster Crabbe, and five years later he
wrote and produced the feature Street
Trash, an aggressive black comedy
destined for cult status. It won several
foreign festival awards, and is still
shown globally at film festivals, most
recently at Fantasia Montreal and Fantasia
Toronto, both in 1998.
NBR:
Do you like the label "cult film"
or "cult classic"? Many of your
movies seem to fall into this category
- what do you think makes a good cult
film?
RF:
Sometimes, as in the case of The
Projectionist , the term is euphemistic
for ‘box office failure'. That
film was experimental in form and never
stood a chance, but those who came to
see it, appreciated its eccentric form
and so it became a ‘cult' hit.
A film like Street Trash I'd
say became a cult classic by pure luck.
I wrote it to democratically offend
every group on the planet, and as a result
the youth market embraced it as a renegade
work, and it played midnight shows.
But I don't know if you can preplan a
cult film. Maybe.
With
writing partner Rocco Simonelli, Roy has
written several screenplays over the past
eighteen years. The Substitute ,
starring Tom Berenger as a mercenary undercover
at a high school, did very well, particularly
on video, and generated Substitute 2,
Substitute 3 (HBO, August '99), Substitute
4, and talk of a TV Series.
NBR:
How did you meet Rocco and what
did you first collaborate on?
RF:
Rocco was my
most talented screenwriting student in
25 years of teaching. He was in
my class at SVA twenty years ago, and
later, when both my writing partners (one
was Al Kilgore, who created Bullwinkle)
died in the same year, Roc miraculously
called out of the blue and told me his
writing partner (Rico…Rocco & Rico?)
had gotten married and gone into a normal
business, and then asked if I would I
consider writing with him. I took
it as one or both of my deceased former
partners looking out for me from beyond,
and took him up on it. Ten years
later, we created the Substitute
franchise, and have another one, Slay
the Bully! about to be filmed at
New Line.
NBR:
What was your inspiration for the
Substitute films? Did you have
a badass sub in high school one time?
RF:
Nah, I was the badass, at least my id
was, and many of my scripted protagonists
are my alter egos, and are pretty menacing.
In order to research the script,
which I originally wrote before Roc and
I hooked up, I tracked down real mercenary
soldiers and interviewed them on tape,
playing all the other roles myself, so
that I would get their terminology right.
Very interesting. Then,
when the script was watered down by the
studio, and these mercenaries names were
in the credits as technical advisors,
one of them called me and said I'd better
watch my back.
Roy
has been a member of the National Board
of Review of Motion Pictures since he
graduated from Tulane in 1966. He wrote
for the Board's publication, Films
in Review , for thirty years before
purchasing the magazine from the NBR in
1996 and converting it to an online format
(www.filmsinreview.com
) where he serves as editor-in-chief
and reviewer.
NBR:
Any favorite interviews or pieces that
you wrote for FIR?
RF:
Well, I was proud of a huge piece that
I did with my friend Al Kilgore in the
70's, the result of a two day interview
with the (still stunning) Sri Lankan actress,
Merle Oberon. She later said it
was the best interview she'd ever done.
I also did several-part pieces
on the restoration of Lawrence of
Arabia which were quite good, and
were reprinted in a book on the making
of the film.
From
1985 to 1994 Roy co-produced and co-directed
the annual NBR Awards Gala, working with
the actors like Bette Davis, William Hurt,
Steven Spielberg, Sidney Poitier, Jodie
Foster and Sean Connery.
NBR:
Tell us one of your funniest memories
from the early galas.
RF:
The first one I co-produced, which
was held at the Players Club, had Tony
Randall as host, and Paul Newman presenting
a Life Achievement award to John Huston.
Huston was too ill to fly in, so
I had a speaker system hooked up to the
Club's phones, so that when Newman talked
with Huston, it would be played over the
loudspeakers. All went well, and
I was ushering Newman out, when suddenly
the system switched over to the Club's
normal phone lines, and the phone on the
stage started ringing. Randall,
up at the dais, picked it up, and it was
one of the member's wives calling to remind
him to bring home the groceries.
Randall, sensing the absurdity of the
situation, started repeating this into
the mic, and Newman literally doubled
over laughing. It was a riot.
Currently,
Roy teaches filmmaking and screenwriting
at The School of Visual Arts in Manhattan
and serves as the Chairman of the National
Board of Review's Scholarship and Endowment
Committee that works to give grants to
promising film students.
NBR:
Who were some of your memorable students
at SVA?
RF:
My most famous students at SVA and NYU
were Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects,
X-Men), Spike Lee (Do the Right
Thing, The 25 th Hour), Jimmy Muro
(the world's foremost steadicam operator,
on films like The Insider, Terminator
2, and Titanic , and now
a director of photography on Open
Range), Ernest Dickerson (cinematographer
on Malcolm X, and now director
of Never Die Alone ), Frank Prinzi
(Emmy-award winning cinematographer for
Northern Exposure), among others.
Mainly what I remember about them
was their determination, not their talent.
Spike, for instance, was in an
overcrowded class at NYU, 35 students,
and I felt bad that I couldn't possibly
make contact with all of them.
But each week I had two sessions where
students could meet with me in the faculty
office, and Spike was there for every
one. He was 100% committed to his
work, whereas others I never saw even
once.
NBR:
And as every column ends, we like to ask
what are your top five all-time favorite
films?
RF:
Thank god you didn't say ‘five
best'. I mean, Citizen Kane
is certainly one of the best, but
if I were stuck on a desert island with
five films, I wouldn't want that to be
one of them. No, it's the favorites
that I've tried to replicate in one way
or another over the years; those are the
ones that influenced me, and they are
the ones that I can see over and over
again. Chaplin's The Circus.
Darby O'Gill and the Little
People . John Wayne's The
Alamo. The Lovers of Teruel
with Ludmila Tcherina (who died
earlier this year in Paris). Jules
Dassin's Night and the City.
And Darker Than Amber
with Rod Taylor and William Smith.
Oops…that's six.
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