Writing and Film: Reel to Reel Talk

BY HELEN RICHMAN

It is finally a film...a realized dream...and what a winding road it took to get here!

About six years ago, Peter Mark Richman began writing the four characters who appear in the film, "4 Faces". Then he exchanged his writer's hat for his actor's hat and brought them in to the Actors Studio West, where they became the fully endowed and believably portrayed men that we now see on the screen.

As with most projects in life into which you put your heart, an opportunity presented itself to mount the four characters on the stage as a one man show. It was at this point that I became the official director and we premiered "4 Faces" at Chapman University in Orange, California. The reviews were very positive. The Los Angeles Times theater critic wrote:
         "Proves his artistry as a performer and reveals what's on his mind...
        Richman has carefully linked all four pieces...
        It feels as honest as it looks terrific."

We then presented the play at the Ventura Court Theatre in Studio City, CA, for two months, followed by a run at the Odyssey Theater in West Lost Angeles. Then the artistic director of the New York Actors Studio, Arthur Penn, invited us to perform it at the prestigious and famous New York Actors Studio in Manhattan. Since this was the place where Peter Mark began as a young New York actor, it was like coming home, even enjoying a picture of himself on the wall attending a session in the old days with fellow participants, Eli Wallach, Marilyn Monroe, Patricia Neal, Maureen Stapleton, Ann Bancroft, James Dean, etc.

There you have the first three stages of the "4 Faces" saga: writing it, working it up as the actor, and presenting it as a play.

Now comes the miracle!!! A wonderful philanthropic friend, who had seen the play at Chapman University, came to dinner, and after dinner we went into Peter Mark's art studio where there was a poster of "4 Faces" hanging on the wall. He said, "Let's do something with that wonderful play", and that quickly we had our financier for the movie. He said, "Of course you will need a screenplay" and Peter Mark said, "no problem" and two weeks later he had written the shooting script for the film of "4 Faces".

So, there we were at stage four,with Peter Mark becoming a first time film producer, and having to find a complete movie crew, cast the other six actors and decide on the proper film director, cinematographer, art director, etc. His background in the film industry enabled him to successfully hire sixty specialized people to carry out the tasks required for film production and then additional personnel for post production. The only pre-ordained entity was the composer. We are fortunate to have as our son, Lucas Richman, who is currently the assistant conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony. His composition, "The Seven Circles of Life", is familiar to those who heard it at the Tenth World Subud Congress in Spokane with the Spokane Symphony. Lucas wrote the haunting score for the movie, including the song for the closing credits called "Daddy's Wisdom" which is a duet of a father and child, with the child's part sung by our gifted seven year old grandaughter, Jenny Lester.

We were so grateful to have as our director, Ted Post, who's great appreciation for the material and the acting transferred into a wonderful creative partnership between him and Peter Mark. They had worked together many times in television over the years. All the rest of the cast and crew just fell into place, even though Peter Mark compelled our son, Orien Richman, to audition for the young man in the final segment to avoid blatant nepotism. He certainly made a good choice! So, that makes two sons and a grandaughter in the film, but he didn't want to leave anyone out so our son, Roger, and our son, Howard and his wife, Lisa are congregants in the church in the opening segment...and in the church choir, two of the singers are our daughter, Kelly Lester and Lucas' wife, Debbie Richman. Of course Peter Mark didn't want to slight his wife (I was a professional actress...we met in summer stock all those years ago!) so in the second segment, I am one of the enablers in the drug intervention center who cries a lot.

The movie was shot in ten days. The opening segment in which Peter Mark plays a Fundamentalist Pastor who is informed that he is suspected of taking liberties with some female congregants, was shot in a lovely little church in Santa Monica which our financier arranged for us. He knew the pastor who was pleased to allow the film to location there. In fact, the next sequence of the father who reveals his difficult ordeal to a drug intervention group concerning his son, was shot in an adjoining building in a church recreation room. For the interior scenes, our son, Orien, was kind enough to let us use his little house in Hollywood. (at a modest price...FREE!) The third character of a former SS Nazi officer living comfortably somewhere in South America who has a visit from his grandson, was shot on the estate of our financier in Newport Beach. The final story of an 83 year old Holocaust survivor who meets a young man in the park and reveals his philosophy of life, was shot in Griffith Park here in Los Angeles.

So stage four is complete...we have a film. It has already been in the Santa Clarita International Film Festival and the Newport Beach Film Festival. It has been chosen by the Directors Guild of America to kick off their Directors Finder Series for 2000 with a screening at the Guild and we follow that with a screening for the residents of the Motion Picture and TV Country Home in Calabasas, CA in their lovely Louis B. Mayer Theatre.

Stage five...DISTRUBUTION!!!

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