A Very Candid Conversation with Jackie Giroux

 

Jackie (2010)

    

Actress. Screenwriter. Still Photographer. Film producer. Director. Streaming channel creator. Jackie Giroux has done them all in the film industry. Jackie has worn all those hats for nearly fifty years, which is remarkable because the film industry is not known for longevity when it comes to careers. There’s a saying, “You go with what you have, not with what you want.” Throughout Jackie’s career, many of her accomplishments, whether she was a producer or an actress, weren’t necessarily what she had initially out set out to do but instead were things that were offered to her at the time.

Jackie’s career started with the Christian-themed film The Cross and the Switchblade (1970). The film was about Reverend David Wilkerson and his use of Christian faith to help inner-city problems, such as crime and drug abuse. Jackie played a heroin addict and the girlfriend of Erik Estrada, a gang member. While that film started her career, the films she would act in would be completely different from The Cross and the Switchblade. Unable to find work because of her ethnic looks, she found employment in non-union low-budget films using a pseudonym of Robyn Whitting or Valdesta. (Jackie used a pseudonym because she was a member of the Screen Actors Guild and didn’t want them to know that she was violating Guild rules by doing these pictures). Most of the low-budget films were either horror or exploitation, such as A Taste of Decadence (1975) or Drive-In Massacre (1976).  By 1980, Jackie also wrote (one of which she won an award for in best writer), and was a still photographer for and acted in pornography films. She did not participate in any of the porn scenes.

Jackie would get her chance to be a lead using her real name in Trick or Treats (1982) where she played a babysitter and was pranked by the kid she was babysitting. Adding to her trouble, the kid’s father escaped from the mental institution and planned to kill everyone at the house. In the A-list film To Live and Die in L.A. (1985), Jackie played John Turturro’s girlfriend. Unfortunately, most of her role ended up on the cutting room floor. During the filming, Jackie had taken an interest in the making of the film. The film’s director, William Friedkin, encouraged her to start producing.

Jackie then switched careers in producing, where she produced (and in some cases) co-wrote several films: Distortions (1988), Forever (1992) and Tryst (1994). The films would present challenges, as the films had limited budgets, but Jackie produced these films within the initial budget that was financed.

In 2010, Jackie took a break from the film industry to work for FoneFriend, a company that offered free long-distance calling. After the company was sold to Skype, Jackie came back to the film industry, only this time films were being watched by streaming services rather than in theaters or on physical media. She acquired a streaming channel called Crimes & Capers, as well a film distribution service called Final Chance Films (Their website is here.)

As you can tell from this bio, Jackie has had a long career with many accomplishments. In fact, neither Jackie nor I have the time to go through everything she has done, but I wanted to get her film highlights. I went to several of my film fanatic friends (also known as my film brothers-in-arms) to make sure I did not overlook Jackie’s accomplishments. Special thanks to Casey Scott, Chris Poggiali, and Art Ettinger for providing me with some excellent questions to ask Jackie. But most of all, I want to thank Jackie for letting me tell her long and impressive career.

Jeff Cramer: So what got you interested in the film industry?

Jackie Giroux: I was from a very small town in rural Connecticut. Everybody became a teacher or got married, and I had no interest in doing any of that. So, I hitchhiked to New York when I was seventeen, and I auditioned for the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. I had seen an ad in New York, and I just walked in and said, “I'd like to audition.” And they said, “Do you have a scene?” I didn't even know what a scene was.  

So, I decided to ad lib something. Then they said to me, “Can you do any Shakespeare?” I said, “I've got to be honest with you. I'm not even familiar with Shakespeare.”

So, the person who interviewed me, an elderly man, said, “Tell me about yourself.” I told him the whole story. I said, “I'm from Connecticut. I'm about to graduate with about twenty-five kids in a small graduation class. I live on a dirt road, and I have two jobs.”

He just was blown away by me. He said, “I'm going to take you into the school as a student.” I asked how much it cost. Now, keep in mind, this was a long time ago. It was like $250 at that time, which today would be $1,000, I think. So, I said, “I can't afford this.”

Anyway, he gave me a scholarship. I got a year's scholarship at the American Academy. So, then I was locked into acting.

I was at the American Academy for probably two months when I was asked to be in an off-Broadway play. The school had a policy that if you act and you got paid for it, then you couldn’t go to school. And I thought to myself, Well, okay, I can go to school on a scholarship and make no money, or I can go act. So, I left school and went into acting because I got paid, right? 

I mean, I might have been from a small town, but I had a few brains in my head, you know? And that's what started the whole thing.

JC: Okay. Your first film, The Cross and the Switchblade, was very different film from the other films you would later either act in or made. That was your debut, if I understand that correctly.

JG: That's true. Yes, it was my first film. Dick Ross was the producer, and he didn't want to hire me. He said I looked too healthy. I have—I still do—a round face. I have a younger look, but a fatter face, and Dick wanted someone more emaciated to play the drug addict part that I was playing, which was based on a girl. I don't think they could find her, but she wouldn't sign the contract even if they could. So, they had to change her name from Maria to Rosa.

And it was Don Murray who fought for me. He was the director, and he had done The Hoodlum Priest, you know, and he was religious, but in a very different religious way. When he acted, he would take part of his acting salary and go to Europe and buy machinery for third-world country people to survive and produce food.

And so he had a lot of instincts, and he saw a lot of purity in me, because, again, I came from a small town. I didn't know anything about drugs. I never even smoked marijuana. The strongest thing I'd ever had in my life at that point was having a beer.

Don fought for me. He told Dick that I had the innocence of the character and it didn't matter about the look. So anyway, he went out, and they hired me, finally. I stayed with the movie after it was made. I toured with the film for about six months. [To watch the trailer for The Cross and the Switchblade, click here.]

JC: Really?

JG: I went to every single state in the United States to help out that movie. And to tell my story, because you've got to remember, this is going back to '67, '68. Drugs were not prevalent at that time. All the heroin was up in Harlem. I had to go up to Harlem with Reverend Wilkerson to learn about heroin and see real heroin addicts because I didn't know.

So when I toured with the film, I told those stories about the people I met, and so they kept me on tour because I was selling out a lot of tickets.

JC: Yeah. I also read that Erik Estrada confesses in his autobiography that he got interested in you during the film.

Erik Estrada and Jackie in The Cross and the Switchblade (1970) 

JG: Oh, you mean as a romantic couple? He and I? Is that what you're saying?

JC: Yeah, that's what I'm saying. He was thinking about it.

JG: Yeah. No, no. We were involved.

JC: Oh, you were?

JG: Oh, yeah, we were involved. I mean, we worked very closely together, and he was a lot more experienced than I was. He had lived in Harlem. Well, he was a funny guy. You know, if he really wanted a part or something, he would go to this medium—I guess she was a medium or something—and he would do all kinds of crazy things to get the part and stuff. He was the first one who ever told me, “If you want to get into voodoo, you put a dead chicken on somebody's door,” or something like that.

JC: What? 

JG: I mean, I remember like it was yesterday. We didn't do it. But he said, “Hey, if somebody is really treating you badly, go get a dead chicken and nail it to their door or something.” He was a very outgoing person, far more outgoing than I was. At that time, I wasn't hardly outgoing at all. And of course, that changed.

Erik and I went to Serendipity's a lot, and we hung around together. He was a lot more worldly than I was. And so we did become involved, and then  we just kind of separated after the movie was over.

JC: And the movies going forward were very different from The Cross and the Switchblade.

JG: Yeah. I have to say, The Cross and the Switchblade was a great experience for me because the director, Don Murray, was so good. And I figured all directors would be that good, but I later found out that wasn’t true. A lot of times I did things that didn't turn out the way I hoped they would turn out because the directors were not as good as Don Murray.

That movie got me to Hollywood, you know, and that was a good thing. I didn't really want to go. I loved New York. I absolutely adored New York.  I got an agency, William Morris, and the agent believed in me. And then I moved on to agent Meyer Mishkin because of Richard Dreyfuss. He was with Mishkin, and Richard and I became friends. And so the rest is history. I just stayed out in LA and did what everybody else did, you know. Try out for parts.

JC: But the next thing we get into, starting from that, there begins parts, and this is also where we get to see the pseudonyms of Robyn Whitting and Valdesta.

JG: Well, you can't work on a non-union part if you’re in the Screen Actors Guild [SAG].  You can now, though. Most people don't know this. A Screen Actors Guild actor or actress can do one non-union part a year. But at that time, you couldn't. And I wasn't getting the roles I was going up for because I was too ethnic-looking. I had long black hair, dark brown eyes, and people would say, “She just looks very ethnic.” They never said Spanish. They never said anything. They just said Hispanic. They just said, “She's too ethnic for this.” And I wasn't getting any roles.

 

Jackie Giroux headshot photo (1971)

And so what happened is I met people like Stu Segall, a producer, who was in exploitation movies, and—I can't remember everybody's name—but a guy with the last name Fredericks or something. They said to me, “You're beautiful. You know, don't let Hollywood do this to you, and put you in a box. ”

So I had to change my name in order to work non-SAG. I changed the name to Robyn Whitting because of the fact that I had gone to UCLA, and I had trained with a man called the Major, who was into regression and progression under hypnosis.

JC: Okay.

JG: And so in one of my past lives, I saw the name Robyn Whitting, and that's the name I picked.

JC: Even though it's a very short role, you played Ed McMahon’s wife in Slaughter’s Big Rip-Off [1973] under the Jackie name.

JG: Yeah. Gordon Douglas directed that movie. And I'm not quite sure how I got that role, to be honest with you. But I guess the agent sent me up, and I auditioned and got the part. It was an interesting role. I mean, it got me on The Tonight Show. I was on The Tonight Show like, I don't know, six times or something, over a couple of years. So it was a nice exposure part for me, because being on The Tonight Show was great exposure at that time.

Ed and I became great friends. I used to go to his house. Ed had a butler, and the butler would drive him around. I had never seen that. I didn't know that people could have a butler. Again, I came from a small town. And this man lived with him, drove him around, and did his clothes.

But the best thing about Ed was his sense of humor. I mean, just like what you saw on The Tonight Show was exactly how he was. He was just really a phenomenal person. 

JC: I want to talk about some of the other movies you did during the seventies. The first one is Drive-In Massacre.

JG: I'm amazed by that because I never saw the film. You're the third person who's asked me about that movie. And I don't know why I didn't see it—whether when they screened it and I was out of town. Because normally, every movie you made at that time—not always today, but at that time—they screened them.

Drive-In Massacre was Stu Segall, and I don't remember where I met him. But he was a writer-director-producer who later became very, very successful. He did Hunter with Stephen Cannell, and A Team and a bunch of TV. He became extremely powerful in the industry, and a great producer.

So anyway, he hired me for that movie. I don't know why exactly. All I did in the movie as I recall was went around screaming at the drive-in, when the theater people's heads were rolling out of cars and the maniac was on the loose. It was a nice experience, except it was all filmed night, so it was pretty grueling. But yeah, it's turned into kind of a cult horror movie, I guess.

 

Drive-In Massacre (1976) (Jackie is in the acting credits under Valdesta) 

JC: I'm going to talk about another cult movie, Ilsa She Wolf of the SS, even though you're not credited for it.

JG: Oh yeah, that’s right. I don't remember his first name, but his last name is Fredericks or Frederickson or something. I don't know. But that was really interesting, because even though that was exploitation, it was a strong movie about prisoners in a German camp. And that affected me, you know, really, really badly, because if I remember correctly, I had to cut somebody's throat in that movie. I remember they said, “You have to get it right on one take. We can only do this once.” And I was going like, “Well, what if it goes through and really cuts his throat?” They said, “Don’t worry about it. Just do it.” I was really affected by that because it had a real strong core of truth to it, what they were doing to people in concentration camps. And nobody was making movies like that at that time. I really enjoyed making the movie because I learned a lot about history even though it was, again, exploitation. Dyanne Thorne, the lead, she was pretty big in the industry. I really didn't know her when I did the movie. She wasn't like the kind of person that became friends with you or anything. [To watch the trailer for Ilsa, click here.]

JC: I have a bunch of friends who are real versed in seventies low-budget films and they had some questions. First, I'm going to ask about you about playing Snow White in Cinderella 2000.

 

Jackie in New York News Magazine (1974)

JG: Yeah, I don't really remember too much about that. I did a lot of films, so there's some that I remember because of a great experience or a great director, or I just really liked the story. But then there's others that I don't really recall. And I know I'm in the movie, but I really couldn't tell you much about it because I don't recall that much.

JC: Another question is about Regina, which was a mid-seventies movie that was advertised as "an action-packed love story in rock opera style." You played a skydiver and race car driver in that movie." Ring a bell, by any chance?

JG: Yes, I remember Regina, which we filmed on weekends.  I nearly got killed on a motorcycle driving in the film.  It slid on a corner that had sand on it.  The director said, "Hey we're losing the light . . . get back on the bike and try not to fall."  [laughs]  that is independent film making.  I also had to jump out of a plane because I was told the stunt double got injured.  I never thought that if the stunt double got injured, what could happen to me.  

JC: Very brave woman. You met cinematographer Gary Graver. How did you two meet? You two have a very long working relationship in movies.

JG: Very long, yeah. Gary did a lot of different types of movies, from being Ron Howard's DOP [director of photography] all the way down to doing porno films. And with the pseudonym Robert McCallum.

But next door to me was a production manager who did a lot of low-budget movies and knew Gary. And he introduced us. And so what happened was Gary came to me and said, “You know, you're a good writer, and why don't you write some films and I'll get them made?” And so that's what I did. I started writing for Gary and a bunch of other people. And then if it became a porno film, they would just take my story and then put the sex in it because I didn't do porno films. I did exploitation. I did nudity. But I didn't do porno.

JC: One of my friends is a major adult film historian. He had a question about one of the adult films that you wrote for Gary. You also acted in it where you played Bonnie as in Bonnie and Clyde for Garage Girls [1980].  

JG: Well, again, it's not a story I remember that much about, but I do remember that we had to drive this old car. I don't even remember the guy who played Clyde, but he was a good actor. I remember we had to drive through a mural or something. Gary played the painter who had just painted the mural, a French painter, and we had to drive through it. We had to do it in one take because there was no other mural. And we didn't have a lot of money to make these pictures, you know. We shot it in San Francisco, because I remember driving that old car down these hills, and I was just praying that the brakes were good, you know, because San Francisco has a lot of hills.

JC: The other question is about working with adult filmmaker Ted Paramore. My friend wanted to know what was it like working with Ted.

JG: Well, you know, when I first met Ted, he was with his wife—I don't remember her name—but they were still together in a house in the Hollywood Hills. And Ted said to me, “I need writers, so you write them, and then I will put the sex in them. You don't have to worry about that. You know, we'll add that later, because, I mean, how do you write about sex?”

So anyway, I started writing for Ted, and then eventually I was making a lot of money. I mean, he was shooting like a film a month. And yeah, and it was so funny, because one of the films I had written won the Best Adult Film and the Best Writer. And my husband at the time was horrified. He said, “You can't go.” And I go, “But I want to go.” And he said, “No, you can't go.” So I said, “How about I wear a blonde wig and then no one will know it's me?” And he said, “Oh, okay.” And then about two months later I went blonde with my real hair.

Blonde Jackie and her then-husband Steve Railsback (year unknown) 

JC: You did more than just adult films with Gary.

JG: Basically, Gary and I became very, very good friends, and for a short time, I was on the male tennis circuit as a photojournalist. And when I quit that, Gary was the one in 1980 who said, “Why don't you become a still photographer and do my movies with me, and we could shoot for Ron Howard and Orson Welles and a lot of other people too.”

JC: You starred in one of the films that Gary did. It was the Trick or Treats movie.

JG: Yes. Mm-hmm. Well, Gary and I kind of worked together on that. He had the idea, and he was in with Lone Star, and I can't remember that guy’s name. There were three men. And one of them liked me, and he said, “Gary, I'll give you $100,000 if you get Jackie to take off her clothes in the movie.” And I thought that was kind of odd because I had taken my clothes off in a lot of other movies. But at this time, I was married, I was doing more straight roles, you know. So anyway, so we devised the shower scene where I was nude, but there was plastic, so all you see is a silhouette. You really didn't see the nudity.

We did it for $100,000. And we actually opened the movie in New York. It was in the middle of a snowstorm. And it was not Halloween. It was after Halloween. So it kind of was stupid, the way that Lone Star took the movie out—it was just dumb, to be honest with you. Just dumb. You don't take a Halloween movie out in the middle of a snowstorm around Christmas.

JC: Okay. It was around Christmas. Not a good idea. But in the film, you’re a babysitter, and the kid you’re babysitting plays pranks on you. He is driving you so crazy that I think you’re about to kill the kid himself before the killer arrives to the house. 

JG: The kid—that was Chris—that was Gary's son.  Chris wanted to be an actor, and I've seen Chris now in his adult age. But in that movie, he’s a kid so advanced in his thinking and tenacious. I don't know. It was quite a different story.

JC: I wonder if he or any of you thought about Trick or Treats when you watched Home Alone, because Macaulay Culkin was a little like the kid you were babysitting.

JG: No, that [Home Alone] came much later. I mean, Home Alone was its own different animal because it really was a clever movie, and what we did was a quasi-horror picture. It never really qualified as being a true horror picture, you know?

Look at the cast of that. Carrie Snodgress was married to Neil Young at the time, you know, which makes me laugh, because now Neil Young hates Joe Rogan. I mean, God, Carrie was a lot worse than Joe Rogan was, and Neil was married to her. You know, we shot in their house.

JC: So it was shot in Neil Young's house, then?

JG: That’s right. It was in Neil Young's house where we shot that movie in. And I mean, Tim Rossovich, the football player, was in it. And David Carradine was in it. I mean, what a funny guy. I so enjoyed working with him. He was out there, but he wasn't nuts. He was far from being nuts.  

JC: Yeah. I'm curious, with Carradine, his character tries to make a pass at you when you just came in to do your babysitting.

JG: Oh yeah, he tried to make a pass at me, and then Carrie came in and broke it up. But yeah, it was a nice moment between us, I thought. He was really easy to act opposite. I think what Gary was trying to say is the whole world was a little nuts, you know. And he's right. It is. Especially now, it's really nuts. But yeah, it was Gary's sense of humor. He had a wonderful sense of humor, and it came out in that film.

But for its day, you know, $100,000 on film was pretty good. And they made their money back, that's for damn sure. [To watch the Trick or Treats trailer, click here.]

JC: Orson Welles is in the credits of that movie as magical advisor.

JG: Oh, well, you know, Gary was Orson's DOP. He did all those commercials, you know—Paul Masson wines, and several magic shows. Orson was really big into magic, and Gary shot all of his magic shows on tour. And, yeah, I don't think Orson was in the movie, though. I don't recall—

JC: No, he isn't, but he gets a credit as magical advisor.

JG: Well, Gary and Orson were really good friends. So that's possible.

JC: Did you have any personal involvement with Orson?

JG: Well, Orson was a bit difficult. I don't remember what I did. I was the still photographer on his stuff, and Gary was the DOP. Orson would walk on the set, and he would say to Gary, after Gary lit the entire set, “I don't like that light there. Move it over there.” He always found fault with what Gary did. And I thought, God, what a nasty person.

But later I realized he was teaching Gary that there was more than one way to light a set. He was a great teacher, Orson Welles.

Anyway, we were doing that wine commercial, and honest to God, I don't remember what I did, but I did something that he didn't like, and he yelled at me. I mean, at the top of his lungs, “Jackie, you know . . . blah blah blah.” I don't remember what he said, but  I was horrified.

But after that day's shot was over, he came up to me and apologized and gave me a $100  bill. I mean, that's the kind of guy Orson was. You know? And several times he'd say to Gary, “Oh, I love this restaurant in North Hollywood.” And he would say, “Oh, bring Jackie over. Let's have lunch.” And we would sit outside at that time. You know, it was a pretty crazy place.

He would have lunch with us for three or four hours, and drink wine. He’d order different wines and different foods. And he would talk about when he was in France and England. Orson Welles had quite a life, and he loved to talk about it.

When he wasn't working, he was really an excellent, wonderful person. But when he worked, he had this other side to him, you know? So anyway, what can I tell you?

JC:  You managed to get into an A-list film, To Live and Die in LA.

JG: Well, when I went out for To Live and Die in L.A. for Billy Friedkin . . . I mean, that was an interesting story.

Because, you know, I felt Billy wasn't going to hire me because, again, I wasn't a big name. And a lot of the people that were being auditioned were bigger stars than I was. And so when I went in the room to audition, he said, “Oh, that was really good.” And I said, “Well, you're not going to hire me anyway.” So he said, “Well, what do you mean?” And I said, “Well, you're going to hire a name, you know, and that's what everybody does in this town. You bring in everybody to justify the Screen Actors Guild that's you're seeing people, but you always turn around and hire the star.”

And he hired me. If you look closely at his career, he's had a lot of stars out of a lot of unknowns.

JC: Right.

JG: Yeah. John Turturro, Willem Dafoe, Billy Petersen. They're all in To Live and Die in L.A. So Billy had this ability to really read into people, and he was a very good director. Now having said that, at that time, you know, Billy was the one who suggested I start producing movies. And he suggested that because I was always on the set watching him, where the other actors were in their dressing rooms. And he would say to me, “Why are you here?” And I said, “I really want to learn about filmmaking. I didn't think I could be a director. But I wanted to see all the nuts and bolts of making a movie. ”

He was the first director of the first movie I did that took their time. Everything I did was like you were done after one or two takes. Master medium shot, close up. That's it. And he actually would try different things. I learned a lot from watching him.

And so when he was in the editing room, he cut it up at Universal. I had a house near Universal Studios, and he invited me up there. I thought, Oh, he wants me to see the picture. And I go up there, and he said, “I want to tell you something. You’re a really good actress. But we're going to have to cut a lot of you out, and other women, too, because you're not with the lead actor, you’re with John Turturro, the bad guy, and blah blah blah. ”

And I said, “Why are you cutting me out?” And he said, “Because I have to do a car chase. “

JC: Oh yes.

JG: And I go, “So what?” He said, “Well, the car chase has to be seven to ten minutes, so I have to cut something out of the picture. And women do not sell tickets. So here's my suggestion to you. Why don't you start producing? Because there's not many women producers.” And one year from that day I did my first movie I produced.

JC: We're going to go into your career as a film producer. The first one you did was Distortions [1988]. So that was the first beginning of your producing?

JG: Distortions was a year after Friedkin told me, “Go find a script and work on it.” Yeah, that was the first one. First of all, Distortions was great for me because it was a thriller, and thrillers are cheap to make. Originally, the budget was $1.5 million. Bob Rehme was at New World at that time thought it was $1.5 million.

Distortions poster (1988)

Well, guess what? We made the picture for $430,000. And what I want to say is that no one was thinking thrillers at that time. I was told this movie was going to be the kiss of death because there were no thrillers and I had to do action pictures. And I said I didn't want to do an action picture. So anyway, we made Distortions, and it didn't win, but it went to a competition at Cannes. It got me to meet a lot of heavyweights, such as the head of Columbia, and at Universal when Pollock was running it. I got to meet Pollock. I got to meet a lot of heavyweights from doing that one movie, so it helped my career a lot.

Then, from there, I got signed by Charles Fries, and I was the first female producer he ever hired, but that turned into a nightmare because his sons didn't get along. They had Tom on the eleventh floor, and Butch on the twelfth floor, and they hated each other. I remember cutting Deadly Intent [1988], my second film, and Tom would say “Do this,” and I'd do it, and then Butch Fries would say, “I don't like that. Take it out. Do this.” And then I would do that. It went back and forth. I was like cutting that picture forever.

I got smart. I had a contract for six months, and it went into eight months because of the stupidity of editing. So I wrote myself another check for $35,000, and they went ballistic. And I said, “But, guys, my contract ended at six months, and we're now eight months. You have to pay me double.” And they did. They couldn't do anything about it because I was right, so I thought, Well, if you guys want to dick around, I can dick around too.

I had a three-picture deal with them, and I was supposed to do a second picture. And it was a picture I had found called Escape to Canada, which I wish to hell we had made it, because it's so timely, like today, with what's going on with the virus and everything.

Jimmy Woods wanted to do it. I'd known Jimmy for many, many years. Jimmy and I got together, and he goes, “Yeah, I want to do this.” And then Sharon Stone wanted to do it.  And Sharon wasn't a big actress at that time. So I went to Chuck, the head honcho, and he said, “Oh, we're not going to do this picture.” And I went, “Why?” And he said, “We're going to do a horror movie. You're going to produce this movie,” and he gave it to me. The script was so horrible. I had a young daughter and it was like, “I'm sorry, I can't do this film.” “Well, you have to.” And I said, “No,” and I walked out.

Now . . . I want to tell you another story. This is interesting. There was a guy named  Peter Iliff, and he’d just wrote a script that Antonio Banderas starred in for Millennium. Peter came to my house—I had an office in back of my house—and said, “I have a great script called Prayer of the Rollerboys.”

JC: Okay. Yeah. I've heard of that. 

JG: And I read it, and I loved it. I brought it to Chuck Fries, and Chuck wouldn't do it. I said, “Well, let me out of my contract. I would like to do it.” And they wouldn't do that.

So I brought it to Academy Video, who had bought Distortion. They were a pretty big outfit. And I got the movie partially financed. I was instrumental in bringing Corey Haim to that movie. Corey and I remained friends. The Frieses wouldn't let me out of my contract, but I met Corey Haim, which helped me later on in life producing.

JC: But the next film you did, Forever, actually has stars. Sean Young was a big deal at the time. Keith Coogan had just done Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead, and in 1987, Sally Kirkland had gotten nominated for Anna.

JG: There was Diane Ladd. She got nominated for Rambling Rose right after my movie Forever wrapped. It was originally called Hollywoodland, and it was about the death of William Desmond Taylor, the director. [William Desmond Taylor was a silent film director who was mysteriously murdered.] I wrote it with Tom Palmer, and we thought we had what really happened. We thought we had the true story, and we still believe we have the true story. We shot it in my house, which was a nightmare, but we made that movie for $600,000.

Pretty aggressive. We were the first people to use lasers in special effects. No one had ever done it before. And so we were ahead of our time, to be honest with you. We were way ahead of our time. And it wasn't a well-received movie. In fact, I'm glad you're bringing this up because I bought a streaming channel, Crimes & Capers, and that's one of the movies that will be streaming on it. We’re going to play Forever because a lot of people have never seen it. 

JC: I interviewed Keith Coogan about the film. He tells me he came in at the very last minute.

JG: Oh, well, that's because I wanted Brad Pitt. Yeah. And Brad Pitt wanted to do it.

JC: Oh, he did?

JG: But keep in mind, Brad had only done one movie at that time. So Keith did come in last, and to be quite frank with you, he wasn't the right actor for the part.

JC: That's fine. He's told me that too.

JG: He was the wrong actor. It's not that he's not a good actor. They wanted him because he was a television actor, Keith Coogan, at that time. And he's a nice guy, and he is a good actor, but just not for that role. I mean, when he does that bathtub love scene with Sean Young, it looks like she could eat him alive. [To watch what almost was Brad Pitt’s first starring role, click here on this music video featuring images of Forever.]

I'm not trying put down Keith at all. That's not what I'm trying to do here. I'm just telling you, look at Brad—and I don't mean today Brad Pitt. Look at Brad Pitt in his early days, even before he did Seven. Look at Brad Pitt and look at Keith Coogan. They're two different actors. I mean, you wouldn't go out there and hire Tom Cruise to do a Will Ferrell job. You wouldn't do it. And I kept trying to tell everybody.

Triad was the distributor, and I say that lightly because they really had a deal with—I can’t remember . . . Steven Paul's company. I mean, this story is incredible. They changed the title from Hollywoodland to Forever. And they really wanted the movie because Steven Paul was going to sell three of his movies with my movie, so he would split all the money four ways, but it was my movie that had the draw power. And I didn't take lightly to that, and I told them all where to go. I did it for the actors and for the people who worked so hard on that movie, and then just got screwed by Triad and Steven Paul and everybody who was involved with him.

And it wasn't right. So nobody saw the movie because it was a dollars-and-cents film to pocket. It wasn't the movie it should have been. It was ahead of its time. But we're going to play it on Crimes & Capers, our streaming channel, and we'll let people make their own judgment call at this time.

JC: There is another film I saw where you were behind the camera: Tryst.

JG: Yeah, with Barbara Carrera?

JC: Yeah.

JG: Yeah, I produced that as well. That was an interesting story. At that time, Tryst got picked up by Orion. Tryst was actually for a small company, and they said to me, “If you can bring in some names, we'll give you the money to make the picture, but you have to finish it in four months.” And I said, “Oh, my God, that's a tight window.” We shot over Thanksgiving. We shot in Santa Barbara. And we finished it in four months, and we finished it during an earthquake as well.

The picture got picked up by MGM. Chris McGurk, who now runs Cinedigm, he came in to see it. He didn't stay for the whole picture, but he said it looked so good.

We actually hired a DOP who was an artist. I can't remember his name, but God, he was great. And he used a lot of colors in that. McGurk said to me on the way out of the screening room, “I don't even care what the picture's about. It looks so good. We're going to buy it.” And he took it. [To watch the trailer for Tryst, click here.]

JC: I remember there was one other film I saw. You reteamed with Sean Young. Richard Grieco was in it.

JG: Oh my God, they hated each other.

JC: Oh, they hated each other?

JG: Oh my God.  That was a nightmare. Oh, God almighty. I don't know what I can say about Bolt. That was the one you're talking about.

JC: Right. That's it. Yeah.

JG: Somebody else had written the script. I liked the script. I rewrote it. Chuck Smiley came in from to produce it in Canada. We were at Cannes when the deal was made. I was told if I can get Richard Grieco and Sean Young, the picture will be financed. So I went back, and Grieco's agent wouldn't even talk to me. I mean, he was so, “You know, you don't have enough money . . . you know, you're nobody, blah, blah, blah.”

Anyway, there was a big club at that time where Richard hung out, and I hung out at the club, and I could try to talk to him, and of course, he didn’t want talk to me. One night, I followed him home. And the next day I went there, and I stood on my car and I jumped over his fence. He had a privacy fence, and I jumped over it. I scared the hell out of him.

I said, “Look, let me tell you, you have four bikes in here. Four Harleys.” And he said, “Yeah.” I said, “Would you like a fifth one?” And he said, “Yeah.” I said, “Which one?” He said, “A lowrider.” I said, “Okay, if I can get you a lowrider, will you do this movie?” And he said “Yeah. Let me read it,” and then he said “Yeah.” His agent was pissed. And I said, “Too bad.”

Then we went to Canada, and he got paid. He wasn't paid scale [scale is the minimum an actor can get paid] or anything. I mean, he got paid well.

So anyway, we made the movie. Richard and Sean didn't like each other. We had cut a couple of love scenes that just were taken out, just totally gone. And nobody wanted to stand behind the picture.

I guess we'll be playing that on Crimes & Capers, my new streaming channel, because nobody saw it. And all these movies I produced have reverted back to my company. We’re going to play them on Crimes & Capers, and the people will make up their minds if they like it or not. Not a distributor. People. The audience. Movies are not made for distributors. They're made for audiences. And if a distributor won't show it to anybody, how does the audience know it exists? They don't.

Bolt (under alternate title Rebel Run, 1995) 

JC:   I want to talk about several of other films you produced. One of them you directed. How was it as a director?

JG: Well, let me tell you why I started directing. I couldn't raise enough money to produce films and get a director for the kind of wages. Directors were starting to get more and more money, and I couldn't get it in the budget.

You know, everybody thinks it's so easy to go out and get a star. I just finished a screenplay and got it to a star. He wants $1 million. And then you go to a distributor, they say, “He's not worth $1 million.” This is how it goes down.

And so at that time, with the budgets I was given, and the one you're talking about, which I believe is Coo Coo Café, I was told, “We have $100,000. Do you have a screenplay with a couple of names in it?” And anyway, I said, “Yeah, I can get Barbara Carrera and Wayne Rogers.” “Great. We'll give you the $100,000.” Well, guess what? It was $100,000 Canadian, which was really $68,000 USD at that time. I didn't know that. That was the first picture on a Canon XL1. That's what we shot that picture on.

We had to cross the border from the United States into Canada, and then hide the equipment. We didn't have work permits. You know? And we had to hide everybody. We were just tourists. Now luckily, nobody knew what a Canon XL1 was at that time. It looked small and didn’t look like a movie camera.

 

 A Canon XL1 camera

So luckily, you know, we got in. Well, that came back to bite me later on too.

But anyway, basically, we'd go up there, and the executive producer said to me, “I didn't believe you were coming.” I said, “Well, we're here.” He goes, “I don't have the hotel rooms or anything.” And I said, “Okay.”

So we go to nice hotel, and it was like midnight. I walked in there and  asked for the manager. Of course, no manager was on at midnight, so  I said to the woman, “Look, we're doing a movie, and we have Barbara Carrera, Wayne Rogers, and here's a few other actors in the picture, and we need rooms.”

So she called the manager and got him up, and he said, “Well, how much can you afford?” And I said, “Well, I'm going to put up my credit card, so probably $25 a night. And again, I was thinking USD. That would have been like $10 or $11 Canadian.” And he said, “Okay. How long are you going to be here?” “Two weeks.” “Okay. And you'll give us a credit in the movie?” “Yeah.” “Yeah. Okay.”

Our bar bill was the biggest expense on that entire film. We drank champagne like you wouldn't believe. The first day we walked on the set. Now keep in mind, I had never directed before. But I had Gary, and I knew Gary would watch my ass, you know?

When we walked on the set, the executive producer said, “Okay, you're going to shoot in this pizzeria.” I said, “People can't eat here while we're shooting. I mean, I've got a sound problem.” “Well, I can't shut down the restaurant,” he said. So we had to shoot nights. 

We were in the middle of a snow blizzard. It was the end of November, the beginning of December. It was a blizzard in New Brunswick, you know, and we were freezing cold.

Anyway, if you look at that movie, we made it for $68,000, and we had a lift—we didn't have a dolly. We used the carriages from grocery stores. And we used a tree cutter and a cherry picker to get the high-up shots down. And look at the picture, for $68,000, you know? But again, it was shot on a Canon XL1, and it had a different look. And that threw a lot of people off, and it got its money back, but not much more than that. You’ll see it on Crimes & Capers.

JC: I want to talk about The Hostage Game [2010]. This would be Corey Haim's last movie.

JG: It was, yes. And that was originally called American Sunset, and it was called American Sunset because it was supposed to be taking place in America, but the distributor didn't like the name, so he changed it to The Hostage Game.

I was in Canada producing that movie, and we had a female actress who raised her rate. And I said, “I can't afford to pay you this.” And she said, “Too bad, I'm not showing up.”

I turned around and rewrote the part for a male rather than a female, and I called up Corey, and Corey said, “I'll do it for your rate.” Now Corey got sick on that picture—he got bronchitis. So I went online and started hiring a new actor to take some of the slack off of him because he was sick, really sick. And so basically, he was a joy to work with. I mean, Corey knew every line. He never argued with the director. And he was easygoing, a lot of fun, great stories.

During that movie, The Hostage Game, a good friend of both of ours, Marc Rocco, died. He was the son of Alex Rocco, the actor. [Marc is also the director of Dream a Little Dream and Murder in the First.] I got Marc his first camera. I knew Marc because I bought Alex Rocco's house. Alex was a good actor. He was in The Godfather. So I knew Marc. I knew all of Alex's kids, and I knew his first wife, Sandy.

Marc died while we were making The Hostage Game. It was very shocking. He was very young. And so we were both very disturbed by that.

Corey wanted to go to the funeral, but they told him in Canada that they weren't going to let him back in if he left. So he couldn't leave. Then, by the time we finished the movie, he couldn't get into America, either.

JC: Oh. Why not? 

JG: Yeah, because he owed taxes or something. It was like a harrowing story. But he did get in. We got him a lawyer, and he went in through upstate New York, Niagara Falls. So he did get back into the country, but the lawyer had to get him back in. People don't understand that actors rely on other people, and if those people don't do what they're supposed to do, that's what happens. They get behind on their taxes. I think Chris Rock is going through that right now, And of course, we all know about Wesley Snipes.

Anyway, the bottom line of this is that Corey was a joy to work with. He wasn't using drugs. Everybody said, “Oh, he died because of a drug overdose.” No, he didn't. He died because the bronchitis went into pneumonia, and his lungs were large. I wasn't there where he died, but the next day I was there with his mother. And she said he kept saying, “I don't feel well.” They brought a doctor—he was staying at that time at Oakwood Suites. The doctor went over there. The doctors gave him medicine. But what the doctor didn't recognize was that there was so much fluid on his lungs, and his lungs were overextended. They were large.

Now that could have been from drug use in the past, or it could have just been from a long infection. We don't really know. But the bottom line is that he died in her arms. And it's very, very sad because he should have been in the freaking hospital.

Jackie being interviewed about The Hostage Game (2010)

JC: Looking at the IMDB right now, and after 2010, it sounds like you took a break from it. Is that what happened?

JG: In Coo Coo Café, at the end of it, you will see the FoneFriend.  It’s actually used in the movie. It was free long-distance phone calling. And it's at the end of the movie. I have a blurb there, and it says, “Yes, this really works.” Well, from that movie, that company raised about a half a million dollars, and I was asked to run the company. So I moved to Carlsbad [California], and I had to quit the movie business. I was doing commercials for it, and I was traveling to Europe a lot. And then I took the company public. After a couple of years, Infinicall took it over, and we sold off to Skype. So that’s what happened and why I wasn't in the movie business.

JC: I don't know if you can talk about it, but I'm looking at an upcoming project you have. This one has Mike Tyson in it.

JG: Well, you know what? I was supposed to do it with Wesley Snipes. It's called Rockland Boulevard. Mike Tyson wanted to do it, and Snipes said he would do it. It  took us about a year to raise the money. When the real estate market crashed, it sort of busted the movie business. If we can speak frankly, everybody was going into a tizzy. So yeah, it took us a year to raise the money, and then Snipes wanted $1 million.  And the distributor said, “No, he's not worth $1 million.”

By the time we were doing Rockland, there was no video business anymore—that was completely erased. Theatrical release was how many companies? Not that many for the US. There was no video, very limited theatres for US, and all that was left is pay TV and cable TV. That was it. It's a pretty skinny market for a lot of films in the US. The budget on the film was like $3 million. I couldn't give Wesley Snipes $1 million. There was no way I could do that.

And so I went foreign. I got one company, Millennium, and they called Snipes up. I don't know if they talked to Snipes or what, but he said, “Oh, I don't want to do it anymore. I'm doing business with Eddie Murphy.” And I said, “Oh my God,” after doing three rewrites for him, and now he was going to throw me under the bus? And that's what he did. He threw me under the bus. So where is he today?

He's in pictures with Eddie Murphy. And he's a damned good actor, but boy, he's as arrogant as they come. And, you know, what goes around comes around. Nobody wanted Mike Tyson. Everybody wanted Snipes. And Snipes was too expensive.

Then Mike Tyson gets all these fights going. He goes back to boxing. There is a business you either jump on it while it's ready because you can't wait. Because this year's flavor is definitely not going to be next year's flavor. I can promise you that.  Much different business today than in the eighties and the nineties.

JC: Yeah, you mentioned how the films you produced are going to a streaming channel. You're getting into what's obviously the new territory of where films are being watched, through streaming.

JG: Absolutely. And the reason I'm doing that is not just because of my movies. I've made seventeen films. It's not just because of my movies, but there are movies out there that have never been seen. We're not a film festival, okay? And we're not saying you must make this movie in the last three years. You could have made this movie any time you want. And you give it to us to stream and I'm going to send out to buyers, and I know a lot of buyers, especially foreign. When you look at all the countries in the world, excluding Canada and the US, you're looking at thirty-five avenues. You don't need the US and you don't need Canada, okay? I'm just here to tell you that.

So, I guess you would have a budget that isn't excessive. You can make it work. So that's what I plan to do, is I'm going to be streaming movies. We’re going to have a channel called Final Chance Films. You don't come to us first. You come to us last.

I'm going into that business. It's something I have a passion about. I've already picked up a series. We're in negotiations. It's a damned good series. I can't talk about it because we haven't signed, and somebody could hear this and beat me to it, but it's got names in it—big names. Nobody would release the series, and we're going to do. It’s seventeen episodes.

So there's a lot of product out there. And we're going to do that. That’s my passion.

JC: It's been a very long career, but you kept going for all of this. What would you like to say about having been in it so long?

JG: Well, I’m not going to die, if that's what you mean. Look, I've had a wonderful career—like I said, from hitchhiking to New York, to getting into drama, and a prestigious drama school on a scholarship, you know? I mean, that started it, right? I think that was an indication there isn't anything I can't do. At least to myself it was an indication there wasn't anything I can't do.

When I was in school, the guidance counselor said to me, “You want to be what? An actress? Nobody's an actress. You're in Monroe, Connecticut. Who here is an actress? Tell me who is an actress in Connecticut? Tell me, tell me, tell me.”

And I said, “You know what? Everybody had to come from somewhere.” So I proved them all wrong. You know? I proved every one of them wrong. I wasn't Meryl Streep, but I had a passion about me. And I still have that same passion. It's not like a fire that you can put out. You're born with it or something.

You get an idea, and it's like fueling the fire, and your passion flames up again. You can't just take it out. You have to continue going, you know? And so I do. I find little outlets that are meaningful to me, because right now, I'm debt free. I own a house. I own a condo. I own two cars. Everything is paid for. I have nothing to lose. I do what I want to do now. But I want to be in the industry because I love it.

 

 

 

A Very Candid Conversation with Michael James

 

Michael James at work (1999)

Michael James got his start in music when he was nineteen years old. He started as a recording artist and then became interested in the recording process. Michael started off working for Ethan James, keyboardist for rock band Blue Cheer, who owned a recording studio. Ethan had noticed Michael’s interest in recording. He gave Michael an opportunity to learn recording by leaving Michael alone in the studio at night until the morning. Michael’s first break in producing music came when Ethan, who was producing alternative rock band Too Much Joy, asked Michael to sit on a session. The band was so impressed by Michael that they ask him to produce their next record, Son of Sam I Am [1989].

After working with Too Much Joy, Michael began his career as a recording engineer/producer. He also worked for Sub Pop, the record label that began grunge, where he produced L7 and Hole. Some of the other artists Michael has worked with are Edwin McCain, Robben Ford, and Chicago. His biggest credit as engineer is the New Radicals’ platinum album Maybe You’ve Been Brainwashed Too [1998], on which Michael also played guitar. Michael has been very prolific as a producer/engineer. From 1994 to 1997, he amassed more than 100 credits. Today, he either produces or mixes (Mixing is the process of optimizing and combining multitrack recordings into a final mono, stereo, or surround-sound product ) more than 250 songs a year. In addition, he has written for Billboard magazine, critiquing a lack of innovation in the music industry.

Michael has released two solo albums. The first was the instrumental album Marchesano (2015). His most recent album, Shelter in Place (2021), reflects a variety of themes such as loneliness, racism, and drunk driving. In addition, it has covers as the Beatles’ “Something” and the Frank Sinatra classic “Fly Me to the Moon.”

In this candid conversation, we look at Michael’s prolific career as a producer/engineer, as well as his new album. I want to thank Nichole Peters-Good from Get Good PR, but most of all, I want to thank Michael.

Jeff Cramer:   What got you interested in music?

Michael James:  One day when I was a teenager, I was listening to a Joe Walsh album called You Can't Argue with a Sick Mind. It was recorded live, and instead of just hearing the song as a whole, I actually started hearing the component parts of the songs. I found this really cool countermelody down at the bottom of a really big sound—it was moving around, outlining the chords, providing a foundation—and it turned out to be the bass guitar, and it was played by Willie Weeks, I believe. And I thought, Wow, that's cool. I just became fascinated with the way that so many things could fit together and help tell a story on an emotional level. And then I discovered Steely Dan, and I analyzed the way their songs came together, and I just loved the puzzle pieces.

Then I started writing poetry with no idea that I'd ever be a musician myself, and some of my buddies taught me a few chords on guitar. I started putting my words to music and stuck with it. When I was nineteen, I was on a full scholarship to UCLA, and I was recording my own music in a recording studio. The guy who had the keys to the studio was a junkie and he needed a fix, so I paid him $15 to use the studio for three hours—that's my understanding of the story, anyway. The owner of a record company walked in and heard what I was doing, and he said, “Why don't you do a deal with me? I can get your song played on KROQ; I'm confident in it."

KROQ, by the way, was a premier radio station in Los Angeles for what they called “alternative rock” or “new wave” back in the day. And I said, "Naw, I'm not really interested. I'm not a musician. I'm a student." He said, "Yeah, student? When that gets old, just give me a call and I’ll make a record with you." A few months later, I thought, Shoot, I may never have this opportunity again.  I was nineteen at the time, and again, I just went for it, and forty-plus years later, here we are.

JC:      So what happened when the owner gave you your shot?

MJ:      I was a recording artist for a few years. It was myself, Michael James, and then I was in a band called Waves of Grain, and when neither of those panned out the way I expected, I did sessions as a guitarist for various local bands in LA and took an interest in the recording process. There was a guy named Ethan James—no relation—who was the keyboardist in Blue Cheer, and actually I think his name back then was Ralph Burns Kellogg.

Ethan owned a studio, and he knew I took an interest, and he gave me the keys and said, "The place is yours from midnight until 8:00 a.m.," and so I became a self-taught recording engineer.

JC:      Your first break was doing Too Much Joy's second album, Son of Sam I Am. 

MJ:      Yes, that was my first major label break. Do you want the story behind that?

JC:      Sure.

MJ:      Kinda fascinating. Ethan—the guy I just told you about—had three days booked with Too Much Joy. Ethan couldn't make the middle date, which was an overdub [overdub is defined as recording additional sounds on an existing recording] date. Day one was the basic tracks, day two was the overdubs, and day three was the mix.

Since Ethan couldn't make it on day two, he said, "Well, I think you're ready now to run a session, and even if you're not, you have to be because I can't make it, and this is important. So, show up, do a great job, and call someone if you get stuck.” Turns out that the session pretty much ran itself and I was doing good work, but they got stuck on some background vocal arrangements, so they turned to me. When you're an engineer, you really need to remember that there's a reason that God gave you two ears but only one mouth, and if you open your mouth, it should be in a way that supports the artist or don't open it at all. 

So, the band asked, "What do you think?" I said, "Well, I really love your songs, and I think that the one that you're working on right now could be cooler if you added these background parts."

They got around the mic, they sang the parts, and they said, "Really cool. Got any other ideas?" I said, "Yeah, I think this guitar part could be a cool countermelody." And all of a sudden, the songs took a new life. The band asked, "Can you come mix us tomorrow?" I said, “Sure.”

The next day, Ethan called me and said, "Hey, good job yesterday. I got a great report, but you can't mix the band. I need to mix them." The band liked the mixes that Ethan did, but they loved working with me. So, the band asked, "When we get our major label record deal, will you produce our album?" I said, "Sure," thinking, Yeah, that's going to happen. It never happens. Because you play the odds. Nobody ever gets a major label record deal.

Sure enough, it sort of, kind of happened. Too Much Joy got a deal with Alias Records, which was a well-funded indie label, and we did the entire album on a $12,000 budget, and that's ridiculously low. They wanted to pay me $1,500 to do the album, and they wanted to do it over the course of four weeks. I made a deal with the studio: "Why don't you go on vacation? I'll take all of the money and I'll give you this percentage of it, and my paycheck will be whatever's left." The band agreed to it, the label agreed to it. It was one of the first all-in deals that I knew about.

As we got near the end of the album, we realized that another $4,000 could make it a great album—make it sound, in our minds, like a $250,000 album instead of $12,000. And I called up the record company after speaking with the band, and I said, "Hey, can we have $4,000 more?"

And they said, "Why?" And I pled my case, and they said, "You want to do it, pay yourself." I told the band, "The label said no. We gotta spend our own money to make it happen." So, they said, "Well, if you want to make it happen, let's figure out a way to make it happen."

I threw $800 on the table, so then the other guys grabbed their checkbooks and did the same. One of the guys said, "I need to call my mom." And so we scrounged up the other $4,000.

It ended up getting a very favorable review as an indie band in Rolling Stone. Irving Azoff [manager of the Eagles] took notice, and apparently Warner Brothers had just given him $30 million to start Giant Records. Too Much Joy was one of the first bands that he signed.

My fee went up exponential when the A&R [artists and repertoire] man called and asked how much I needed to get paid. I misunderstood the question and told him what the whole album cost, and before I could finish explaining, he said, "So your fee is $16,000 a song?” And I kept my mouth shut, and all of a sudden, I was in business, and I was a major label producer, and had a fee. [To hear Too Much Joy’s single “That’s a Lie,” click here.]

JC:      You would be working with Sub Pop, the label that began grunge. [Grunge pioneers Nirvana got their start by recording for Sub Pop] How did that come about?

MJ:      There was a local band called Seizure Salad, which I did the best job that I could with them, and we had fun in the studio. Seizure Salad had some friends who were hanging out in the back of the studio. There were four young women who had a grungy look. I got a phone call from one of the women who said, “Hey, I have a band, and I was hanging out when you were working with Seizure Salad, and I loved the fun that you guys had and the energy and stuff. Would you produce our new album?” And I said, “Depends. What is it?” And she said, “We’re a band called L7, and we’re pretty heavy. We’re a girl band.” And I said something like, “I don’t believe in girl bands. I believe you’re either a band or you’re not a band. It has nothing to do with girl or boy. So, are you a great band?” And she said, “Yeah, I think we’re a great band." I'm like, "Great, then I’m interested."

And so, we got together. I loved what L7 was doing, and I ended up doing half of the album called Smell the Magic [1990], which was released on Sub Pop. [To hear L7’s “Fast and Frightening,”click. here.]

Jonathan Poneman at Sub Pop liked the work I was doing there, so the next thing he had me doing was Hole. When he was pitching Hole to me, he said, "Hey, we have this band called Hole, and I think that you'd be a really good fit for them. It's a priority for us. The singer is Courtney Love."

And I thought he meant Whole, so I asked, "Wow, how did you know that I'm into holistic stuff? I wear Birkenstocks and eat granola and stuff.” He said, "What are you talking about? No, there’s no w. it’s not holistic." “Okay. So, they have a little attitude, right?" He said, "Oh, yeah."

Do you want me to tell you the story of my first session with Hole? It's a pretty good one.

JC:      Sure.

MJ:      So, the first time I meet the band, it looked like there were four women in the band. And then I realized it looked like one of the people with long hair was a dude, and it was Eric Erlandson, the guitarist. Eric had this rat's nest of effects pedals. There was no pedal board under it. It was just pedals and wires and stuff, just this mess on the floor. Eric asked me, "Hey, do you want to use your fancy studio effects ’cause they got a cleaner sound?" I asked him, "Do you like your sound?" He said, "I love my sound." And I said, "Well, let's hear it." By the way there was a big lesson in this: let’s hear your sound.

And he played me something that didn't make any sense to me, but he loved it, and I said, "Let's record that because maybe it'll make sense in the track.” He said, "Wow, you're awesome. No other recording engineer or producer has ever let me do that." "Do what?" I asked. He said, "Record with my stuff. I love my gear; I love my sound."

Eric was able to convey an emotion with his pedal. We get sounds on all the instruments. Courtney is actually a really solid rhythm guitarist. She has a good style, a good groove, and the band was actually quite good. Anybody who says Courtney was all about Kurt Cobain or Billy Corgan, they’re mistaken. She had something before she was even connected with those guys. I digress.

They’re playing this ambient, textural, moody thing, and then all of a sudden, boom, there is this scream, and the loudness, and I thought I was gonna launch off the chair like a rocket right through the roof. I was so startled, and that’s when I understood the dynamics and the intensity that was Hole. And by the way, Eric’s sound in the context of the song fit it perfectly. [To hear Hole’s “Dicknail,” click here.]

Sub Pop, circling back to them, really loved the results, and they then asked me to record and produce the Reverend Horton Heat, which was a psychobilly [psychobilly merges punk rock and rockabilly] band. I really don't remember how many records I did with them; it was just great working on them. I remember them like it was yesterday.

JC:      One of the things I guess which would have been your biggest record, was the New Radicals record, Maybe You’ve Been Brainwashed Too.

MJ:      I think that sales-wise, at least in the US, it was probably the biggest. It went double platinum, and most of the records that I do tend to be more cool than big sales, but that's just my opinion. So, New Radicals was totally serendipitous. On paper, Gregg Alexander [frontman of the New Radicals] is the producer, and technically Gregg is New Radicals, but I did have a large hand in the production of it. Gregg and I, we had a rolodex, and we worked on a bunch of tunes together at EMI Demo Studios, courtesy of his lover at the time, Danielle Brisebois, who had a publishing deal with EMI. Danielle would call us down to the studio to listen to a couple of tunes, and say, "Oh, yeah, just like I remember, they sound good."

Gregg and I would work on tunes. And he's 100 percent the songwriter, but I was definitely his wingman on quite a bit of it. I played guitar on it, engineered, mixed. Thought I was actually going to get a production credit, but he said it was important that he had the full production credit, and that was fine because we made a deal otherwise that compensated me for that. Feels like this happened all the time.

Another part that you may not know is that I actually shopped the band. I just knew that if I found a band I loved and wanted to work with, I'd be able to get them a deal, but it didn't happen with these guys. I'd taken it to A&M, RCA—I don't even remember where else I took it, but basically everywhere, and even though I had the credibility, I couldn't get ’em a deal. And Ken Hertz, an attorney, stepped in. Ken said, "I can make this happen." Ken went over to Michael Rosenblatt at MCA, and Michael just got it right away. He gave the band a good deal.

I think there's only one bonafide guitar solo on the record on the song “Crying like a Church on Monday.” It's the last song on the album, and actually you'll notice I played two solos on it. When we were recording it, Gregg asked, "Do you play slide guitar?" And I said, "I have a slide in my toolbox." He was like, "Great, put it on."

I really don't know what I'm doing; I get lucky and come up with something cool. Gregg said, "All right, let's double it now." I'm like, "I don't even know what I just did. That was luck." And so, we picked it apart, figured out how to double it pretty much exactly. And what you’re hearing on the album is actually a double track solo on it, and that particular tune, by the way, we never even did the proper mix. That was just the demo mix because I had to get on a plane and fly to Boston to produce another band. [To hear “Crying like a Church on Monday,” click here.]

JC:      In addition to producing, you also wrote for Billboard in 1998.

MJ:      I wrote an op-ed piece on Billboard where I basically I said, "Stop chasing everything else because by the time you chase and emulate what's already out there, it's too late." With all due respect to certain other bands, Jeff, I'm sure you know Nirvana, right?

Michael James at studio (2009)

 

JC:      Yes.

MJ:      Do you remember Candlebox or the Afghan Whigs?

JC:      I remember them, but I can't say I've listened to them recently.

MJ:      Right, and that to me is precisely what the point of the article was. It's a metaphor for it, in that Nirvana was first. So, with Candlebox or the Afghan Whigs, they probably had their own thing, but everybody was chasing that quiet-loud-quiet-loud crazy dynamic sound that Nirvana was doing. Smashing Pumpkins and Soundgarden were also lumped into that grunge category. They had their own thing. They weren't copying Nirvana.

And thirty years later, you still know Nirvana songs, but I can't remember an Afghan Whigs or a Candlebox song to save my life. And again, I really got to stress this is no disrespect to either of those bands. I'm just using them because they come to mind as a good way to illustrate my point here. Yeah, so with the presence of the Billboard article, I just saw that it was a losing battle to keep chasing stuff that was already done.

Now, I actually don't think that was totally the reason for the collapse of the music business. Long story short, I think that free music more killed the industry than the innovation versus emulation. But the innovation would have helped.

Michael James at studio (2015)

JC:      Before we get into your new solo album, is there any artist that you worked with that we haven’t mention here in this interview?

MJ:      A blues artist named Robben Ford. Are you familiar with him?

JC:      Yes, I am.

MJ:      I remember the way I connected with Robben was that I ended up producing an album for AJ Croce, Jim Croce's son, and when I was going through some of his previous catalogue, I asked, "Hey, man, what was it like to work with Robben Ford? He's one of my favorite guitarists . . . actually one of my favorite musicians." And AJ said, "Oh, Robben’s great. You guys would be like two peas in a pod. He's a very spiritual cat. He moved to Ojai [California] so he could help give a Zen Buddhist community a start there. He's just a good dude. Here's his number, call him." Eventually I did call him.

Robben and I clicked, and next thing we were writing some tunes together, mixing some of his records. On the first mix he came right into the control room. He walked right past this wall of guitar amps and guitars that I had there, and went right over to my producer racks, which is where I have all my compressors and EQs [music equalizer]. We listened to the first tune that I mixed for him, and he was grooving, standing up at the console. He asked, "Can I turn it up?" And I said, "Yeah, turn it up." I was behind him thinking, Slam dunk, he loves this. This is cool.

And then he turned around afterwards, and he had this huge smile on his face, and he said, "Can I hear it again?" He listened to it again. Track finished playing and it was quiet, and he turned around to me and he smiled again, saying, "Wow, it's so clear, I can hear everything. I don't even remember playing some of those parts. I don't know what to listen to." I just said, "Huh, very interesting. What do you want to hear and what don't you want to hear?" And he said, "I think I would just turn my voice and my guitar up and leave everything else the same. It'll put the focus more on them. I'm a blues man. I sing and I play guitar." I turned them up one decibel louder—just one, which is the least that you can for sure hear a difference, according to some people at least. And turned it up, played it for him, and he was like, "That's it. Now everything is focused, it's in place. Now I'm feeling the guy singing and playing." And it occurred to me, "Don't make a record to impress your engineer friends. Make a record that's gonna make somebody feel something."

I just figured I had to name drop Robben on that one, because the lesson for me was huge, and if I could give any lesson to people who aspire to do what I do, not as an artist, but as a producer and a mix engineer, I'd say that. Focus on telling the story and focus on making that story have the right emotion. [To hear Robben Ford’s “Don’t Deny Your Love (Remix),” click here.]

Michael’s home studio (year unknown)

 

JC:      Let’s now talk about your album, Shelter in Place. You came up with this during the pandemic. And so, tell me the beginning of what inspired this.

MJ:      About ten years prior to the pandemic, I had my studio set up so that I could livestream my console and I could look at you on FaceTime video, or some equivalent to that, even if you're sitting in Melbourne, Australia, and I'm in San Francisco or Los Angeles. You could look at me, and you could listen to my console with a live stream of music, and we could bring a mix across together, or I could play guitar parts for you, and you could tell me what you want to change, and I'd do it right there on the spot.

I had no difference in terms of my workflow and my schedule did not slow down during the pandemic. I decided I was gonna write a song and call it "I Tell Myself that Everything’s Okay." Pretend that everything's okay. I did a quick demo and I thought, I'm just gonna put this up online and I'll make some crazy name, not Michael James, but maybe I'll make the band called something like, Music for Vacuuming. Something like that. I played my buddy, Aaron Durr, a song and asked, "What do you think?" And he said, "Man, that's a riot. It's hilarious. I think people need to laugh right now." I said, "I agree. It'd be nice to laugh. Pretend that everything's okay." And I asked, "Would you sing it?" And he said, "I'd love to sing it, but that doesn't really suit my brand as an artist, so if you want to rewrite it and take the good parts and tell the story about it, yeah, I'd be happy to sing it for you." I said, "Well, you got any ideas? Why don't we do the rewrite together?" And he said, "Yeah, I do have some ideas."

And so, we started banging out stuff and that one song turned into “Come Back, Lover,” which is not a joke song. I personally think “Come Back, Lover” is a beautiful song. Aaron and I wrote the song in the same way that I made the album, which is just like, “I want to hear what this song or this album would sound like, and nobody has made it before, so let's just make a cool album so that we can listen to it and enjoy it.” Make a custom playlist with new material. So that's how it all started. [To watch the video for “Come Back, Lover,” click here.]

Shelter in Place cover (2021)

JC:      One of the instrumental tracks “Scraping the Guardrail” actually reminded me of Jeff Beck.

MJ:      Jeff Beck, he's amazing. He's another Robben Ford to me. So, yeah, you just made my day. Are you looking for the story behind that?

JC:      Yes.

MJ:      My friend Warren Wellen and I were making up scenarios that would fit a “shelter in place“ lockdown theme. With “Scraping the Guardrail All the Way Down,” we were thinking of a scenario of somebody who actually makes out in the pandemic, workplace changes, and they get a promotion. Picture this newly minted corporate executive at a dinner party in the Hollywood Hills off Mulholland Highway, which is very torturous, it's very windy, bunch of hills up and down. People often drive off it when they they’re a little tipsy, and they land down in a ravine or something.

So, we were talking about that, just picturing this person having a little too much to drink, not taking an Uber to get home because they figure that they can drive, and then in the process of driving, basically scraping the guardrail. "Yay, they took out a few guardrails, but they made it down the mountain . . . woohoo, everybody lived."

We were trying to create the image of . . . how do I say this? Snowflakes delicately pirouetting on the smoldering wreckage below. Not that anybody's dead or not dead, but just the juxtaposition of someone taking out a guardrail, the car's down at the bottom of a ditch, it's smoldering and it's snowing, and they don't even know which side is up. That's where we were going with that. Of course, nobody who ever listens to the song is gonna have that as a takeaway. But yeah, we were going for that, and sometimes, I just wanted to convey a feeling without using words, and that's how that happened. [To hear “Scraping the Guardrail,” click here.]

JC:      What made you decide to cover the Beatles' “Something?”

MJ:      I really don't know. I always liked the song, but if I'm ever gonna cover a Beatles tune, I need to turn it inside out. And rather than focus on the implied lyrics, “Oh, she's beautiful, there's something in the way she moves,” I figured that I would focus on the bridge part where Harrison sings, "You're asking me will our love grow. I don't know.” I liked the melody, and I thought it would just be kind of cool to change all the chords and give it a different take.

JC:      You also have “Fly Me to the Moon."

MJ:      Well, "Fly Me to the Moon” . . . that's not my own song. That is the Bart Howard song. I wanted to have a good time. I wanted to basically be able to laugh at myself. You needed some uplifting stuff for this album because some people who've actually given it the time of day said they cried when they heard it. One guy actually called up and said, "Michael, are you okay?" "Yeah, I'm doing great, actually,” I said. He was like, "Wow, there's some heavy subject matter, but then there's also some really light stuff.” I was like, "Yeah, it's balanced. You need some yang to go with your yin." “Fly Me to the Moon" was me just wanting to have some fun and thought, Wouldn't it be really cool to play the Count Basie orchestra brass section on a guitar with a Brian May tone. I then had Aaron Durr, who sang “Come Back, Lover”, sing it. [To hear “Fly Me to the Moon,” click here.]

JC:      You also have “I Can't Make You Love Me"—that's the name of a famous Bonnie Raitt tune.

MJ:      I loved the melody from the Bonnie Raitt song, "I Can't Make You Love Me," which by the way she didn't write, but everybody associates the tune with her. By the way, I heard that the tune was written by some Nashville writers who would get together with coffee, bagels, and the newspaper, and they'd look for stories that would inspire their creative juices to flow. I don't know if this is true, but I really hope it is. And two guys are like, "Oh my God, look at this article. This dude is suing his wife for not loving him." And then they ended up turning it into a beautiful song even though they were laughing at the lack of machismo of the guy.

I worked up a beautiful arrangement of that tune that I was gonna do instrumentally, and then I thought, I'm intrigued by the idea, so let me just add a few more words to the title and make a new song. And I had some friends that I wanted to play on it. Kenny Bräck, the race car driver who won Indianapolis 500—he actually didn't end up playing on it, but he was sort of a spiritual guide and helped with the production of it.

And Chris Hesse, the drummer from Hoobastank, and of course, Warren Wellen, the keyboardist who played on “Scraping the Guardrail.” Frank Aledia, the singer who I met when he was singing in Kenny Bräck’s band maybe fifteen or sixteen years ago. We got together, and we did that.

So, yeah, I just made a new song. I actually wish the title was different, but those words just fit the song so perfectly. It's like, "Okay, add a few more words and it'll be a different title." That's the story there. [To see the video for “I Can’t Make You Love Me," click here.]

JC:      I'm guessing George Floyd inspired “Color of My Skin.”

MJ:      Yeah, so that's an interesting one for two reasons. One is that it initially didn't fit the concept of the album to me, and the second thing is that I knew it was going to be perceived as a political song, even though it has nothing to do with politics. It's about humanity and it's not gonna solve racism, but the start that most people could do, which is to open up your heart or open up a conversation and just listen. Open up your eyes, your ears, and your heart, and start talking, and it might lead to something. Not talking and making assumptions is not gonna be a good thing.

Circling back to the first part of it with it not fitting the arc of the album, I had conceived the album, and I knew everything that I wanted to do. I knew the titles that I wanted before I wrote the songs. The end of the album for me was supposed to be “Rise Up into Light.” “Color of My Skin” was actually a very important song,  but it was not part of Shelter in Place. But a couple of the coproducers on the album said, "Like it or not, Shelter in Place has turned into a time capsule of an album, and you have to put it there. You have to put that song on the album."

And so, the deal I made with my team was, "Okay, fine, I'll put that song on there after the natural spiritual arc of the album ends with “Rise up Into Light." The two conditions were that we needed some sort of an orchestral piece that kind of takes you back in time from the pandemic of 2020 to 1863, because the “Color of My Skin” starts with a field song, a blues spiritual. I started thinking, "Let's go back in time. Hey, you already let the soul go out of the body, so let's let it float back to 1863."

The George Floyd murder triggered it, but it's the reaction to the shit that I see all of my friends of color going through all the time. I’ve been able to see some things that a lot of people who do not look like me don't.  I don't want to get political here, and again, it's not political. It's humanity. Whether you want to believe in white privilege or not—let's forget about whether you believe it—but I'm just gonna say that I get the benefit of the doubt more often than my friends of color do. So, “Color of My Skin” was just thinking about stuff that happens and pointing out the differences of why I'm able to think about having a self-realized life. I'm not worried about different things that are more basic survival level. I'm worried about how can I be a better person? How can I be more productive in society? How can I be kind to my fellow humans? How can I basically have purpose?

I talk with Morris LeGrand, one of my best friends, who cowrote the song with me, who is Black, and he loves the song. It's very interesting that when he listens to Shelter in Place, he hears that I have the privilege of being able to think about different things, when I'm in vacation mode. He's thinking about how civil rights are taking a step backwards, and I'm thinking about how I can make the most out of the remaining years of my life.

I didn't want to end the album on that note because I know I'm gonna take heat for that song, because you can't please everybody. You can't cure racism with one song. But I did something, and even though people told me there are all different ways that I can get flamed for this, I thought, Well, there are ways you can get flamed for everything, and if somebody doesn't stand up and at least throw the first pitch, the game is never gonna get started. [To was the video for “Color of My Skin,” click here.] I had to end the album with—I hate to use this term, but a kumbaya moment, “Let's Connect Our Mind.” I just wanted to make sure that I ended on something that was very positive, very upbeat, very inclusive. [To hear “Let’s Connect Our Mind,” click here.]

JC:      When you look back when you started first as a musician, then as an engineer, and then as producer, and now today releasing an album, what would you have to say about it?

MJ:      I would have to say that from my perspective, I'm the luckiest guy on the face of the earth. I'm surrounded by love; I love what I do. One of these days is gonna be my last—I don't mean to sound morbid too. I don't know if that's gonna be forty years from now or forty minutes from now, but I'd have to say that even though there are a lot of things that I would like to do and wish I could have forever, I've had a pretty good run for now, and I just can't believe some of the things that have happened.

I get to spend hours of my life doing stuff that I love, and even if it wasn't the most pleasant thing at any given moment, you find a way to look at the good stuff. Look at the serendipity. I really hope I can continue doing this thing until my last day, right? Because it doesn't feel like work. Really to sum it up, if I had to put it all down to one word, it's just gratitude.