SCIENCE FICTION OSCAR NOMINEE

Director Jonathan Heap made Richard Lupoff’s story a genre mini-masterpiece.

By Sheldon Teitelbaum

Jonathan Heap, one of 19 finalists competing to direct a small film with major clout in Hollywood, was handed several pages of random, virtually incoherent dialogue with no character or scene headings. Instructed he could not rewrite any of it, Heap was given a video camera, and told to come back at the end of the day with the edited footage.

“It was dialogue like, ‘What are you doing?’ ‘Give me that!’ ‘Oh, no!’ ‘Open the door,’ and ‘What’s out there?’” recalled the 32-year-old filmmaker. “It made no sense at all.” Heap’s solution? “I set it in an insane asylum.”

Directing Smith in the traffic circle that opens and closes the tragic time loop story of Heap's 30-minute short.

Kurtwood Smith, the memorabie villain of ROBOCOP, displays amazing versatility with his moving portrayal of Myron Castleman, a quiet little man trapped by the banality of his life.

The ploy worked. Heap became one of six would-be filmmakers commissioned by the prestigious “Discovery Project” to direct a half-hour motion picture that would be seen by the same crowd of producers, directors and agents who scout for talent at the major cinema schools and film festivals.

Heap’s contribution was a riveting science fiction film called 12:01 P.M., which he based on a short story by San Francisco-based author and talk show host Richard Lupoff, telecast last fall on cable's Showtime. ROBOCOP’s Kurtwood Smith stars as a hapless wimp doomed to repeat the same hour of his life over and over, due to a glitch in the space/time continuum called a “time bounce.” 12:01 P.M. won widespread critical accolades, and opened the hitherto impenetrable caverns of Hollywood to Heap as if he were some latter day Ali Baba.

The Discovery program was established three years ago by erstwhile Columbia Pictures head David Putnam, together with associates Jonathan Sanger and Jana Sue Memal. Its mandate was to afford individuals already at work within the film industry a crack at directing, under the assumption that intolerably few qualified people would ever get such a chance under normalcircumstances,

Each year, after a rigorous selection process, a tiny group of fledgling filmmakers is given the bartered services of an impressive array of top-notch Hollywood production and acting talent sometimes worth (some say)a cool million. To make their short, but otherwise feature-quality motion pictures, the filmmakers are also given an actual budget of some $35,000 tocover the cost of crew who might not benefit by association with the project as well as craft services, catering and other direct expenses,

Heap, a native of Greenwich, Connecticut, had already gone the film school route at Ithaca College of New York. His thesis film in fact landed him a deal with independent producer David Picker, who hired Joel and Ethan Coen (MILLER’S CROSSING) to write a thriller based on Heap’s premise of a family harboringa murderer known only tooncof the children. The project was pitched at Warner Bros, where Mark Rosenberg commissioned Heap, with associate Phillip Morton, to develop and, ultimately, direct the film. Rosenberg finally took the project to Mirage Productions, a company he had formed with director Sidney Pollack. Heap and Morton did another rewrite, but the project never quite jelled. Heap noted, however, that in the wake of his success with 12:01 P.M.,the project is back under consideration at Warners.

Heap directs Laura Harrington as the pretty young girl Smith longs to approach.

It was during his sojourn in development hell that Heap applied to the Discovery Project for a director's gig. Turned down the first time, he came back with a screenplay based upon a Richard Lupoff story he had read in an issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction during the early 70s, when he wasfourteen. Heap had secured Lupoff's permission to adapt the story as a screenplay, indicating that if chosen, the Discovery Project would secure legal rights to the story. Lupoff agreed happily.

When asked by the Discovery committee to describe his take on the story, Heap pitched it as a straightforward science fiction story with little in the way of complex character development, a nightmare in which Myron Castleman, a quiet, unreflective, routine-bound man, literally becomes trapped by the banality of his life. The film opens at 12:01 p.m. with Castleman encircled in street trafficas he walks tothe park tocat lunch. One hour later, Castleman finds himself back where he beganat 12:01 p.m.,readyto repeat the same hour endlessly ae loop that only he is aware of.

“The time bounce permits him to realize how he’s been living,” said Heap. “It gives him a chance to realize, with each successful reconstitution in the traffic circle, a little bit more about himself. Intheend, he finaly takes action. Of course by then, it’s too late.”

Heap said that Kurtwood Smith agreed to play Castleman because the role offered the actor a departure from the villainous characters he had been depicting so often. “Kurtwood and I talked a lot about the character,” recalled Heap. “Castleman was passionless. He had never created a good relationship with a woman, He was very introspective, more of an observer than a partaker.

Heap directs Smith in Latayette Park, reliving the same hour over for the fortieth time, a jow-tech approach to science fiction that won Heap an Oscar nomination for “Best Short”

66 The Discovery Program, a non-profit organization devoted to developing new directing talent, lavished Heap with top-notch Hollywood production and acting “talent estimated by some to be worth a cool million 99

“I didn't want the guy to bea nerd, someone who was bowed over and defeated. But he has to think he’s together and organized when he’s really not. He's been through this bounce maybe forty times, but ithasn't awakened him enough tocause him to be angry.”

Heap’s script was chosen in July, 1989. But production was not slated to begin until November. Heap used the time propitiously, commissioning a rewrite by well-known Hollywood writer Stephen Tolkin, who also scripted the unreleased CAPTAIN AMERICA. “I had a vision of what I wanted,” recalled Heap, “but felt a little limited in realizing it. My script wasa little thin on establishing the theme that the time-bounce was a metaphor for Myron’s life, and his developing awareness, emotionally. Another writer, I thought, could deepen and enrich the story.”

One of the more interesting changes in plot had to do with the manner of Castleman's eventual, ostensible demise, In the Lupoff story, the character succumbs, at the end, toa fatal heart attack—one which does not, however, provide him with the expected surcease from interminable time-hopping. Jonathan Sanger suggested that Heap have hischaracter shoot himself. “He felt the audience might cheer him on just to get some relief,” said Heap. “This fit very nicely with my theme of a man who is actionless taking action.”

Preproduction began in early October, 1989. Locations were found within greater Los Angeles, notably downtown near the Hotel Bonaventure, in Lafayette Park, and at a reclamation plant in the Valley. Much of that time was devoted to developing the one special effect in the film—the time bounce. “I wanted the bounce to be almost a rebirth,” said Heap. “Each time Myron goes through it, he gets sucked into the darkness and is then shot out through a white light and colors, popping into the street. I wanted it to be violent, explosive and disruptive.”

Heap had initially envisioned something akin to the experience depicted in the TV show QUANTUM LEAP. But that would have cost big bucks, and the San Fernando Valley company that agreed to dohiseffects, R. & B., was working for nothing. Within the limits of reason, however, the company did not stint. It devised an effect based upon the use of different colored gels, requiring five camera passes, each taking eight hours to complete. Heap was delighted with the result.

Heap shot the film in six days in November 1989, for the most part on schedule and within budget. Heap | said his toughest challenge was staging the repeated scenes in Lafayette Park, filmed from various vantage points, using mostly untrained talent. Recent screenings on the festival circuit have included a showing at the U. S. Film Festival in Park City, Utah, last January.

Perhaps Heap’s biggest surrig was the reception accorded is little film, including an Oscar nomination for “Best Live- Action Short.” Heap had initially felt his film might bea bit slow, particularly during the first half, when nothing much happens beyond Castleman having lunch witha pretty young woman, warmly played by Laura Harrington, whom the shy Castleman has longed to approach.

Audiences didnt agree, In fact, at one screening, after Castleman had done a manly job of blowing his brains out, only to reappear, seconds later, alive and despairing, in his traffic circle, the audience applauded. “I guess they felt it was the right way toend it,” said Heap. o