Daniel Scott Fine

Carla: "Thanks for agreeing to meet with me, Daniel. I know how busy you are. What are you working on these days?"

Daniel: "You know, above the sink in our Bagel Fish Productions office bathroom is a sign. 'So much of what a filmmaker does is not filmmaking.' David Cronenberg said that. It's so true. . .. I'm doing lots of things, but . . ."

Daniel: Film's an expensive medium. It's such a project to get the financing and assemble the parts. There are long periods of time between opportunities to do it. Still, we are concentrating on our main objective which is to achieve our prime objective -- be in pre-pro on BAGEL KING no later than this summer."

Carla: "This is, of course, complicated by the fact that you are the auteur-director, as they say, and that you have chosen to self-produce. What makes you so sure you want to do that?"

Daniel: In 2001, I directed G-SPOTS?, 12.5-minute time travel fantasy I co-wrote. It was a huge undertaking. Starring Keith David and Sandy Duncan. Over twenty locations in Connecticut during the winter's worst snowstorm. I'm hooked. I love film. But I have to admit my favorite parts of the process are pre, pro and post, not development."

Daniel: It's my personal story, a fictionalized chronicle of the year my father died - he had complications from an emergency colostomy. The coming of age thing. One young man's search for self and artistic expression, his father's search for absolution, how the journeys inevitably collide. Now seems like a time when people want to see stories like these, stories that are about real people making their way.

What am I saying? How do I know what people want to see? Like Roman Polanski says, you have to make the films that interest you, that say what you want to say."

Carla: BAGEL KING is really a very theatrical piece. I mean, with all your experience and training in the theater, why wouldn't you have written it as a play?

Daniel (cut version): Theater is magical, but it pretends to be realistic. You have to sit in chairs in front of a stage and be convinced you're in another world; you have to exercise your imagination. Film is a different kind of magic. It captures the grittiness of reality but allows us to see our dreams projected. You get transported in a way theater can't transport you, well I do. I get moments of clarity when I'm watching a film that I rarely got from watching plays.

Carla: But you talk about the myriad re-writes, the endless meetings with money people, the navigation of the funhouse assemblage of seeming supporters and wannabe's. Sounds like an endless tunnel. Frustrating!

Daniel: "But we're making progress. We're out of the country headed toward the highway. On Main Street, stopped at a red light with five or so lights in front of us, but moving."

Keith David has signed a letter of agreement to play a supporting role. To have an actor with the training, talent and experience of Keith David agree to work with us a second time is very validating. Affirming. He's also involved in developing our second feature script. "

Daniel: "Realistically, there are only a handful of Hollywood stars who can carry a film into financing. We'll create a strong ensemble. Corey Feldman loves our script; he is on board to play the protagonist's older brother.

We're seeking others too. But then you get caught up in the chicken/egg thing. Which comes first, financing or talent?

Belladonna Productions in New York is interested in co-producing. When we've raised the initial $200K of our $900K budget, they're in. They'll take us to their money sources, to their talent pool, to their crew, etc. Another affirmation - they have an established reputation. We're on our way. Though some days the end of the road seems really far off."

Daniel stretches and emits his characteristic throat clearing that sounds like he is about to say something profound. I wait. He is silent.

Carla: You graduated from the prestigious Carnegie Mellon directing program. When did know you wanted to be a director?

Daniel: At Bennett Junior High. Manchester, Connecticut. We were doing Dudley Moore's version of PETER AND THE WOLF. I just wanted to work with the puppets. I got cast as the narrator. Then, the director really got into the puppetry thing, thrust me into directing the actors. Against my will, I might add.

Daniel: 14. Then, when I was 19, I was artistic director of the Sandalwood Ensemble. I really never thought I'd do anything else.

Daniel: I studied abroad. In Ireland. I visited Greece to search out some great western drama right where it all began. I was in a multiplex theater in Athens, and there were posters for every play. I chose one that looked really good - great costumes, masks, animals, everything. I figured they'd use gestures and such, and being as how I didn't speak any Greek, that seemed like the play for me. What a disaster. Omigod. George Orwell's ANIMAL FARM. The Musical. In Greek. By the middle of the second act I had to leave. I was drawn by Tom Hanks' voice downstairs into a huge ballroom jammed with people smoking cigars, drinking oozo, totally absorbed in SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE. The power of film. As soon as I got back to school, I enrolled in the Pittsburgh Filmmakers because I knew I wanted to be part of that world."

Carla Stockton is Daniel Scott Fine's partner in Bagel Fish Productions. They are currently mounting a celebrity tribute reading honoring Arthur Penn which will go up on February 16, at the Directors' View Film Festival (see dvff.org) in Stamford, CT. At press time, the reading stars Sandy Duncan, Giancarlo Esposito, Barbara Feldon, Tony Goldwyn, Judith Light, Denise Lute, Joe Pantalione, Ivan Rutherford, and Phoebe Snow.