Geoffrey Gould’s Blog

Last November I worked a day on a film called Lower Learning as Featured Background. As my on-set report reflects, based on results, I really should have been upgraded to Day Player for the scene. Not only was I part of a two-shot close-up with a principal, interacting with him but physically interacting with him (“albeit” a hand-shake), the director directed my personally (in actuality a director can only direct principals and other contract role players: featured and general background are directed by Assistant Directors: if the director wants something changed he tells the AD who tells the backgrounder).
But I figured, hey, it’s a tight shot of me with the pleasant and very funny Nat Faxon, so I patiently waited for the film to be released.
There is a concept of Life I’ve deduced, called Badger Luck. Those who are friends and/or good to me, tend to do Really Really Well. Those who do wrong by me or do wrong by my friends… tend to get karmic backlash. Years ago when I was booked to work five days on one film and at the very very end of the first day, about 90% of us were told we weren’t to return, that feature film Went Nowhere, never even got released (and it starred Kim Basinger Forest Whitaker, Tim Roth, Danny DeVito, Ray Liotta, et al). Never got released. Hmm.
Now with Lower Learning, (as of this blog entry’s date and time), its imdb entry still shows no release date. Ironically, at the bottom of its poster it does show October 10, 2008: I’d come across a small poster for it hastily affixed to a few local light poles, that it was only opening at the Laemmle Sunset 5. A producer friend of mine surmised this meant they could only just “four-wall it.” They couldn’t get a wider release.
I went and saw it this past Saturday morning and… well… apart from the fact my scene is omitted completely (being a flashback, not much of a real loss to the storyline: just “explaining” a minor backstory point that technically didn’t need explaining), based on the rest of the film… the flashback might have been considered the funniest scene of the film. The “comedy” is about a loser elementary school with a corrupt principal, in which pretty much all of the faculty have lost all will to teach, to inspire, or in some cases even to live. It’s almost surprising no character commits suicide in this feature, though one does come an instant away from actually doing so.
I think I actually laughed once, and there were two to three actual moments (not sequences), which had me chuckle. Beyond that the film seemed to strive towards depressing the audience as much as were its characters.
btw, apart from myself in the auditorium, there were five or six others who attended the same matinee, and they actually managed to sit through the entire film as well: I did not ask them if they’d worked on it in some capacity.
Now would the film have been a success (or at least watchable), had my scene been included, and/or even more so had they honourably upgraded me to Day Player contract? We’ll never really know. One can only go by what happened to/with the film after I wasn’t upgraded and after the scene on which I worked was cut. As always, results don’t lie.
(Ironically, I still added the title to my NetFlix queue, on the off chance its DVD contains Deleted Scene/s as Bonus Material…)