Sunday, September 26, 1993                             

A YOUNG VIEW 

GUILDERLAND 15-YEAR-OLD TAKES A CRACK AT THE MOVIES

BY AMY BIANCOLLI

Staff writer

photo by Luanne M. Ferris/TU 

Erich von Stroheim he isn't. Clad in a black T-shirt and plain blue jeans, his limbs as loose as any teenager's, Joe Glickman has neither the mien nor the jodhpurs of a stern auteur. What he has is ambition.

"Where's the other script? We need that one right there," said Glickman, 15, on location for his first feature-length film, "Back in Time." One of his crew -- an ad-hoc handful of volunteer helpers -- spotted the script on a pile of boxes and handed it to him. With hardly time for a breath Glickman bounced over to the sound equipment and took quick stock of the knobs.

"Dolby is on, right? Dolby is on?" A small boy in large earphones nodded. "OK, now, don't touch any controls on the mixer." The boy nodded again. He knew that.

On with the show.

It was late afternoon on a Tuesday, and Glickman's film crew had taken up temporary residence at the end of Providence Street in Guilderland.

This was not an operation of Spielbergian proportions; besides Glickman and his band of helpers, visual evidence of a working movie set was limited to a lump of junk food, the buzz of a nearby generator, the tangle of electronic bric-a-brac and one 16mm camera perched on a wobbly tripod. Hollywood it wasn't.

Glickman didn't care. Director, producer, writer and star of "Back in Time," the Colonie sophomore is approaching his first crack at film art with unflagging zeal. He is deeply in love with cinema.

Filmmaking is "definitely ... without a doubt" going to be his life's work, said the slim, brown-haired high schooler, as his crew prepared for the shoot. "There's so much that's involved. There's construction involved in filming. ... There's medical stuff, hairdressing. You can use your imagination -- and I like using my imagination."

He's had to use it liberally for his film, a Capital Region spin-off of Steven Spielberg's "Back to the Future" series. Funded with Glickman's own savings and a $3,000 bank loan, the short feature -- from 45 minutes to an hour long -- is being shot throughout the Capital Region on a $6,000 budget. That means no frills, no paychecks, no piece of equipment purchased full price.

"I've been working off the loan by working this summer for the city (at Bleecker Stadium). It pays good," Glickman said. "And there are other ways of paying it off -- like bottle collecting."

Bottle collecting?

"Yeah. People might think that's kind of eccentric, but ..."

But the bottom line is this: 11 1/2 minutes of 16mm film cost $108.56. Glickman has the figure memorized, pronouncing it with equal parts fear and awe. This is a big job he's doing, and he knows it. He has never before made a film of any sort.

"I did shoot test footage before we started filming," he confessed. "That was a tech shoot." Until he ducked behind the camera for "Back in Time's" first shoot, all he knew about filmmaking had come from the library. It's a subject that has long fascinated him, he said, ever since he caught his first snatch of behind-the-scenes work while he was watching a favorite television show.

"It was probably about five years ago. I used to watch 'Crime Story' -- it was a show kids weren't supposed to watch because of violence, but I did watch it anyway," he recalled. "In between (one of the episodes) it showed behind the scenes of 'Crime Story.' I thought, 'Cool.' There were people yelling 'Action!' with cameras."

After that, he said, "I saw all the 'behind-the-scenes' stuff" -- meaning, TV specials -- "for movies. ... I thought it was so cool. And I saw video equipment, and I thought it wasn't cool." (Video looked too easy, he explained.)

Glickman came up with the idea for "Back in Time" four years ago, shortly after watching "Back to the Future, Part II." "I rewrote it using some sequences I dreamt of," he said. The characters are similar: Glickman plays Mike Johnson, inspired by the Michael J. Fox role, while his uncle, Dave Brocca, plays Doc Emerson, a version of the mad scientist made famous in the Spielberg films by Christopher Lloyd.

Once again, the two main characters vault from era to era -- from 1992 to 2019 to 1972 -- chasing and being chased by some manner of bad guys. As in the original, the heroes do their century-hopping in a souped-up car, in this case Brocca's gray Mazda (a DeLorean being somewhat outside the movie's budget). But beyond that, Glickman said, "It's a whole different plot.

"I tend to like that kind of thing," he said. "I like time-travel stuff, especially future stuff. I studied that -- time travel -- for about two years in the library. I actually thought I would time travel."

On the Tuesday in question, Glickman and Co. were filming a scene set in 1992, right after Mike and Doc return from the future. The two are in Doc's time-traveling Mazda, which is nestled, for moviemaking purposes, in the woods off of Providence Street. A "time laser" hooked to the hood has fallen off, and Mike has to run to Doc's house to get a nut. This he does, but not without running into the aforementioned bad guys. Doc saves the day, or at least the moment, by peeling out of the bushes and zapping the bullies ("he doesn't kill 'em") with his laser.

That's how the scene appears on paper. In reality, Glickman and his crew -- some of them friends of his uncle, some of them his own friends, some of them spanking-new acquaintances who stumbled across the production and promptly offered to help -- had to wait a long time before the camera rolled, thanks primarily to a high, continuous whine that kept appearing in the sound boy's earphones.

Glickman fiddled with the controls. Still, it whined. He toyed with electrical adaptors. Still, it whined.

"Technical difficulties," he finally said with a laugh, and threw up his arms in resignation. Only when a crew member happened to hold the microphone did the whine disappear. For whatever reason, she alone was able to ground it; from then on, her job was to crouch in the back of the Mazda and clutch the mike with both hands. Such are the vagaries of filmmaking.

"He loves movies, filming," said Brocca of his nephew, who lives with his grandmother and three brothers and sisters. "He really doesn't want to be an actor so much as be behind the scenes. He told me he wants to entertain -- that's his calling."

Shooting for "Back in Time" was due to wrap up this month. Assuming Glickman finds some help with the editing process, the film should be ready for viewing by early November. He plans to enter it in independent film festivals around the country, he said, and will "definitely" screen it in a theater somewhere. In the meantime, he is also trying to find an agent to hawk his second screenplay, "Get a Job," which he describes as a Bill Murray comedy.

"I like writing comedies," Glickman offered. "I don't want to get too depressed." Depressed, or depressing? "Both."

 

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