Today I'm thrilled to offer the first of my two part interview with Rick Schmidlin, the man who produced the restoration of Houdini's The Grim Game. From the first hint of its existence in April of last year to the Hollywood premiere last month, Rick oversaw every aspect of the project. Now he tells us of his remarkable journey and what it took to bring Houdini's best film back to the silver screen.
WAH: First off, were you aware that Houdini made silent films before you became involved in
The Grim Game project?
RICK: The interesting thing is, like yourself and others, when I saw the [Tony Curtis]
Houdini film on television when I was young, I loved Houdini. And then later on, it was the '60s, I got the Kreskin ESP set and the Blackstone magic set. But I found out I wasn't a good magician. I always enjoyed magic, but I decided I was a good audience for it, not a practitioner. Years later in Hollywood in the ‘80s, I used to go to the magic store on Hollywood Boulevard [
Hollywood Magic], and at one point I started buying little magic tricks. But, again, with the rings and the tricks I bought, I was not good. When people would ask me to do it again, I would and would sometimes get caught. So I decided I was not a very good magician.
What made me also very interested in Houdini was that I lived for a short time in the ‘70s at the corner of Lookout and Laurel Canyon in a massive log cabin which had a lot of Frank Zappa alumni living in it. The house next door was empty. It was the big white house with a big pool, and we used to hang out there sometimes. So when I lived in Laurel Canyon over the years -- and I lived in the ‘80s on Kirkwood -- when I would go to Universal or go over the hill to the valley, I would pass that house everyday. So I always knew as I passed the big white ghost, that that was where
Houdini had been once. So in regards to Houdini, I was familiar with him since a child in the ‘60s watching on television, and he stayed with me throughout.
Now, like the rest of you, I have other areas I go into, which is partly silent film. I produce restorations of silent film and I’m considered for my work in silent film restoration and preservation, a historian. So that's what draws the interest and the connection.
WAH: So how did
The Grim Game adventure begin for you?
RICK: I was in Colorado for a week doing some work cataloging an art collection for a group in New York, and I had been invited to speak on my film
Touch of Evil by
Brane Živkovic at NYU -- once for the students and once for faculty. In route, I stopped at Scranton, Pennsylvania to visit my mother who was there. She was in a home and I spent the whole day with her. Before I went, I asked her if there was anything I could do in Scranton, and she said, “You know Dick and Dorothy from the
Houdini Museum?” I said yes, because I had given lectures on The Doors at Keystone College back in the ‘80s, and that’s where I had met them. I called them and asked if they would like to get together for dinner.
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| The Houdini Museum in Scranton, PA. |
So I met them and took them out for dinner. During dinner we chatted about different things, the social issues of the times, and I told them that I was now involved in film preservation and restoration. It was the first nice day of spring, I’d say it was around April 14 or so. We went to the Houdini Museum, it was so nice, we went on the outside patio and we talked, and they told me about
The Grim Game. What they told me was a man in Brooklyn -- and they didn’t say Larry’s name at the time – had it, but he was holding out for a lot of money. Everyone was after him, and he was not allowing it to be sold. Also, they were not sure if he even still had it. They were very clear that they weren’t sure that he had it, that he had possibly loaned it to somebody and they had never returned it and maybe the wrong film was in the can. So that was how that started.
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| Grim Game Godfather, Charles Tabesh |
When I got to New York, I wrote an email to
Charlie Tabesh, the senior VP of programing at Turner, and said there’s a possibility that we may have found the lost Houdini film,
The Grim Game. Is there any interest for
TCM? In my original pitch, I sent him links to your site, including the
Everson article. He read all that. So you were involved, but didn't know it. And he said, “Yes, find out what you have, create a budget, and investigate further and get back to me.”
WAH: If TCM wasn’t interested, would you have still pursued it?
RICK: Of course, yes. But I knew this was the only place that would have been a slam-dunk. And I know this is where the slam-dunk was because I had done
Greed and
London After Midnight for them. So I had done those projects for them and I knew they were the right avenue and would have enough to fund it. So I wrote Dick and Dorothy and said, “Give me more information, TCM may be interested.”
Then I did my lectures, met Brane [Živkovic], and had a wonderful time in New York. Then I went back to Stratford, Ontario where I was living at the time. I had not heard from Dick and Dorothy for almost two weeks. I finally sent them a email asking, “What’s going on – TCM is interested and I hadn’t heard?” And one evening, I remember vividly, I got a phone call from both of them and they said they talked to Larry. They said, “He won’t talk to us about any kind of deal or anything, but he’s willing to talk to you.” They said they had talked about my work. I asked if they wanted to set everything up and they said, “No-no, you have to talk to him. We just set the introduction up for you.”
So I called Larry up on the phone, and Larry’s hearing was not great, as anyone who’s spoken to him in recent years knows. I told him who I was, and all he wanted to talk about was, “How much?” “How much?” I told him I was in Ontario, but I could fly down immediately and meet with him and talk to him. TCM had agreed to that. He knew the name Warner Bros., but he had never heard of Turner Classic Movies. But he said he would like to meet with me.
WAH: At his home in Brooklyn?
RICK: Yes. So it was arranged in a week that I would fly down. I stayed in a hotel in midtown, right across from Radio City Music Hall, where the NFL draft was going on. Everyone else was concerned around me with media and the NFL draft, and I’m wondering about
The Grim Game. Have I found a lost film? Because for people in my field, that’s very important. It happens maybe once in a lifetime.
The next day I took a cab to Larry’s. I got there early, so I walked around the neighborhood a little bit. At the appropriate time, I walked up the five floors to his apartment where I was greeted by Larry and his nurse – a woman who had been working with him and taking care of him. We sat down, and for about the first 1 1/2 hours we did not discuss
The Grim Game. We discussed everything else under the sun. He told me his stories of Irvin Berlin. He told me his stories of the war years, because he was very much interested in that. He had been to the veterans hospital recently and he had his little veterans hat on. He told me about his juggling and showed me brochures of his juggling, and pointed out in the room -- "this is one of Houdini’s bookshelves, this is his brass shaving urn…" He told me he had scrapbooks, which he had one, and it was in very bad shape. And we just chatted for a while. I talked to him about Dick and Dorothy and he said, “Yeah, yeah, I know them. Is that how we got in touch?” He wasn’t sure how the loop had gone in. He said, “Yeah I knew Dick as a kid.”
So what happened then was that I eventually mentioned the name of man named Zinn Arthur, whom I knew. Zinn Arthur had been a big band leader in New York in the 1930’s, and was big in the Borsht Belt back in the pre-war years. And Larry lit up like a Christmas tree. All the magic connections, studios, everything else were just like, "Okay, I’ve heard it before." But here I know somebody that was from his past. Who was a contemporary. And Zinn Arthur has done some home movies with Larry during
This Is The Army. So that was the connection: Zinn Arthur. When you do something like this, you have to remember that sometimes the littlest name is the biggest key. And that was the key. I was a buddy of a buddy of his, and that made me good.
He then pulled out a few film cans. Now, what had happened that I did not know prior to my visit was
Fred Pittella, who was a close friend of Larry’s, had been there a couple days prior to search through Larry’s closet to see what was there was on
The Grim Game. Larry didn’t pull the film out. He had a closet full of film and
The Grim Game was buried somewhere in there. So Fred prepared that for Larry so when Larry sat with me he could say, take a look at this.
WAH: So Fred Pittella was involved.
RICK: Fred was very involved. But I didn’t realize that until late, near the end. I did not know Fred’s name at that time.
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| Fred Pittella with Larry Weeks and Dorothy Young (Houdini's assistant). |
WAH: So what did Larry have exactly?
RICK: There was one short reel I couldn’t inspect because it looked a little fragile. But there was another reel that was an oversized reel. It was a sunny day in Larry’s apartment, and it said on the can, “Possibly The Grim Game.” It did not say
The Grim Game. It was a label that would have come from even maybe the ‘60s that was kind of falling off. So I open that up and there was an oversized reel. I had to by hand very carefully unspool it, and at first I wasn’t sure because the first thing you see is the end, and the next thing you see is them reading the newspaper, which is not what I had seen on the Kino video segment. That scene did not exist.
WAH: Yeah, that Kino short ends after the plane crash.
RICK: So, of course, my heart went down. So then I looked a little further, and it was 16mm so very small, and I saw fields and then I saw them [Houdini and Ann Forrest] again, and they were dressed differently. Hmmm. It might be. Then I went a little further and I could see the plane coming down. Because it was tails out, which was lucky.
WAH: That was your eureka moment?
RICK: That was the moment I know I had a major big reel that was bigger than even five reels. It was on one reel.
WAH: Oh, the whole movie was on one reel?
RICK: On one reel. And that was when I had the moment where it was like, okay, yes, this is the film.
WAH: So what you saw on that one reel was a 16mm positive print, correct?
RICK: Yes. The other was negative – it was heads up but very fragile and so I couldn’t tell what it was. There were two cans. One had two reels and one was a full.
After that, Larry and I went through everything -- the kind of money we’re talking -- and agreed to get together after I talked to the studio. He was excited and he almost didn’t want me to leave. He enjoyed talking about the war years and he enjoyed talking about Zinn Arthur. He said, “Don’t you want to project the film?” I told him I had to arrange for a facility. We didn’t want to put it on his little projector and just run it. So I said I would be back. And he said, “You promise?” And I said, “Yes.” And that was how we left it. He stood by his little door after about 4 hours and waved.
WAH: That's great.
RICK: Then I met with Brane, and he told me Kimberly Tarr had given a tour of the
Barbara Goldsmith Preservation & Conservation Department at the NYU library. So we went there and I met with Paula De Stefano, because Kimberly wasn’t there, and I told her about finding
The Grim Game. I said my plan would be to bring it there as soon as I could and put it on a flatbed with Ben Moskowitz, and that we could bring Larry and inspect the film. They all agreed 100%, and I asked if they would come onboard and help on the project and they said yes. That night I had dinner with Brane and I said, “You’ve been teaching for 26 years composition for film and television at NYU, you would be great for the score.” So Brane agreed. Then I went back to Ontario.
I called TCM and they were very excited. I told them the money we had talked about with Larry, and they said that was fine, and that they would arrange for another visit. I asked them to make it a simple bill of sale, because that explained all rights. I didn’t want to give Larry a 10-page studio contract. He didn’t need that. He was selling something. So I called Larry and made arrangements and booked the whole thing for the first part of June.
And then I got a phone call from him 2 days before I was supposed to leave. He was in the hospital. He was sick. And he didn’t know if he was going to get out.
Watch for the next installment on Sunday: Rick Schmidlin (Part II): Saving The Grim Game.
Related:
Just last month it was reported that Sony Pictures Television had sold a 10-episode TV series called Houdini And Doyle to Fox, ITV, and Shaw Media. The series would be produced by David Titcher, David Shore and David Hoselton, and would feature Houdini and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle solving mysteries with a paranormal twist.
Houdini as a spy! (*sigh*) That's the "hook" of The Secret Life of Houdini, which has been percolating at Summit-Lionsgate since they picked up the rights to the Kalush/Slomon biography of the same name back in 2009. The project has since gone through a turbulent development. Jeff Nathanson, Gary Ross, Joe Wright, and Dean Parisot have all come and gone as potential directors. Johnny Depp is said to be interested in starring, but his commitment may have been overstated. Ryan Gosling has also been rumored.
The Hollywood Reporter has been in the habit of breaking Houdini "exclusives" that go nowhere. That appears to be the case with ABC's "Modern-Day Houdini" TV series. In 2013 THR reported that David Hoberman's ABC-based production company, Mandeville was developing the project with writers Jeff Addis and Will Matthews. The plot involves the ghost of Houdini partnering with "an unusually gifted female detective to solve the cases that baffle the LAPD." Yep.
In February 2011 Syfy announced plans to make Among the Spirits, a dramatic "steampunk" television series featuring Houdini and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle solving mysteries in the 1920s. The series would be written and produced by Steve Valentine and Paul Chart, and is reportedly based on a graphic novel of the same name (although I've never been able to track down a copy). Last I heard the series had moved to NBC.
In 2011 DreamWorks purchased the original screenplay Voices from the Dead from screenwriter J. Michael Straczynski. The script finds Harry Houdini and, you guessed it, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle teaming up with a psychic to solve a set of murders in 1920's New York. Since the purchase, there has been no news.
In 2012, 20th Century Fox-based Chernin Entertainment purchased the film rights to Brian Selznick's illustrated children's book The Houdini Box. The book tells the story of a young boy who receives a box from Houdini just before the magician's death. In 2013 Chernin announced that Irish filmmaker Kealan O'Rourke would write and direct the project. O'Rourke is a veteran of short films and animation, The Houdini Box would mark his feature film debut. There's been no word since.
Based on the superb 2001 novel, Carter Beats The Devil by Glen David Gold -- which features Houdini in a small but significant role -- this project has long been in development. Paramount originally optioned the book in 2002 for Tom Cruise to star and produce. Once that deal lapsed, AMC took a stab at turning it into a TV series. That also didn't work out. Then in 2010 the project got back on track when Michael Gilio was tapped to write the screenplay with Jon Shestack producing for Warner Bros. In 2012 it was reported that 21 Jump Street directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller were in talks to direct. There's been no news since.
Based on Thomas Wheeler's fantasy-adventure novel, The Arcanum finds Houdini, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, H.P. Lovecraft and Marie Laveau teaming up to fight demons in 1919 New York. Wheeler penned the screenplay which was first purchased by Miramax in 1999. Gold Circle acquired the property in 2004. In 2007 it was reported that writer/director Randall Wallace had signed aboard to direct. No word since then. But Gold Circle is still in business, so presumably this one is still on the books.
The family film directed by William Dear from a script by Marty Colasuonno and Julian Ericsonn centers on "a young magician trying to save his family's animal rescue shelter with the help of a famous escape artist dog on the run from kidnappers." In 2014 Screen Daily reported that the Circus Road/Canal Street Films production would begin filming in Los Angeles in September. It now appears production will most likely happen in Canada in 2015.
The film rights to Simon Nicholson's series of Young Houdini books have been sold, but to whom I have no idea. But there's a producer out there who believes the adventures of Young Houdini would make a good movie.
The article also reproduces the famous photo of Houdini kissing his mother in "Rochester 1908" and have asked their readers to offer ideas of where the photo might have been taken. So far theories have suggested: Fitzhugh Street between Broad and Main streets, by the old City Hall; on South Clinton Avenue near Main Street, in front of the Universalist Church and East Side Savings Bank; or farther down West Main Street, near the current site of Nick Tahoe's.
For the next 18 years Hardeen presented the Milk Can as the closing feature of his show, actually performing it more times than Houdini. He had several close calls where he had to be released from the can before he made his escape.
Today we continue our interview with Rick Schmidlin, the man who produced the restoration of Houdini's The Grim Game. From the first hint of its existence to the Hollywood premiere, Rick oversaw every aspect of the project. Now he tells us of his remarkable journey.
