LOS ANGELES
Summer Movies
A special section featuring the art of the blockbuster, offbeat indies, a new Nancy Drew, The Simpsons and more.
TO make it in Hollywood, a slick short on YouTube might get you noticed, and a degree from a top film school never hurts. But the surest bet might be to befriend Scott Spiegel. Hey, it worked for the directors Sam Raimi, Quentin Tarantino and Eli Roth.
Chances are you have never heard of Scott Spiegel. But once you start asking around, it seems as if half of Hollywood grew up with him, roomed with him, appeared in one of his movies or got a major career break thanks to his vast and varied connections. He is also the common link among three of this season’s most anticipated releases: Mr. Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’s “Grindhouse” (which impressed critics, if not ticket buyers when it opened in April); Mr. Raimi’s “Spider-Man 3” (which opened on Friday); and Mr. Roth’s “Hostel: Part II” (which opens nationwide on June 8).
Mr. Spiegel has demonstrated a knack for rubbing shoulders with celebrities over the years. As a teenager he received a check for $500 from the comedian Tom Smothers, who encouraged his filmmaking when they met at a summer theater in Michigan; he has pulled the shaving-cream-on-the-phone-receiver gag on the filmmaker Ethan Coen; and, after Mr. Raimi cast him in a small role in “The Quick and the Dead,” hung out with Russell Crowe, one of its stars.
“The guy gets around,” said the actor Bruce Campbell, a friend of Mr. Spiegel’s since their childhood in the Detroit suburb Walnut Lake and one of several people who spoke by telephone about Mr. Spiegel. “He’s sort of the Forrest Gump of Hollywood.”
Mr. Spiegel lives in Hollywood, in an apartment that is both residence and shrine to the pop-culture obsessions of his Midwestern adolescence. Although he’s a gonzo Three Stooges fan and notorious prankster, he isn’t kidding when he says, “Every day is Halloween around here.”
An immaculate display case houses vintage Aurora models of Frankenstein’s monster, Dracula, the Wolfman and every other screen ghoul of note. There are rows of monster masks. The wall surrounding his bed is papered with covers of the cult fanzine Famous Monsters of Filmland. The kitchen houses jars of wax lips, candy cigarettes and old boxes of discontinued breakfast cereals. In the living room are hundreds of movies and television shows on videocassette and DVD, including every episode of “The Twilight Zone.”
“I’d love to have an ice cream fountain and a cotton candy maker,” said Mr. Spiegel, a gregarious fellow in jeans, T-shirt and sneakers, rather than a Bela Lugosi cape, “but there are space limitations.”
Mr. Campbell, 48, and Mr. Spiegel, 49, bonded as eighth graders when they discovered a shared passion for making Super-8 movies. In high school they befriended another budding filmmaker, Sam Raimi, now 47, whose father had a sound camera. With Mr. Campbell as the primary actor, and Mr. Raimi and Mr. Spiegel writing and directing, their films eventually progressed from early Three Stooges-inspired shorts to nearly feature-length productions.
“When I met Scott, the impressive thing was how extensively he was into it,” Mr. Campbell recalled. “Most people that age are shooting home movies, but he wrote scripts, built sets. He was going for it.”
When Mr. Raimi and Mr. Campbell left for college in 1976, Mr. Spiegel, whose parents had divorced when he was 10, stayed home and worked at a market to help support his family.
Three years later Mr. Raimi — with his roommate at Michigan State, Rob Tapert, as his producer and Mr. Campbell as his star — wrote and directed “The Evil Dead,” a low-budget horror movie that became a classic of the genre.
Mr. Spiegel had not been able to join his friends and help make the movie (one of the characters is even named Scotty), but inspired by their success he jumped at the chance to work on Mr. Raimi’s second film, the 1985 comedy “Crimewave.” “I quit my job and gave it my all,” he said. (Mr. Raimi, who was busy readying “Spider-Man 3” for its release, was unable to comment for this article.)
Mr. Spiegel says that Mr. Raimi was so pleased with his contributions that when Mr. Raimi began planning “Evil Dead II,” which he envisioned as a melding of horror and slapstick comedy, he asked Mr. Spiegel to write it with him. When he moved to Los Angeles to work on the script, Mr. Spiegel lived east of Hollywood in a house in Silver Lake with Mr. Raimi and two future Oscar-winning actresses, Holly Hunter and Frances McDormand. Two more future Oscar winners, Joel and Ethan Coen, who wrote “Crimewave” and had recently made their first film, “Blood Simple,” starring Ms. McDormand, were frequent visitors.
His involvement with “Evil Dead II” providing a career boost, Mr. Spiegel met the writer and director Boaz Yakin through Mr. Raimi, and together the two men wrote the action drama “The Rookie.” The script sold for $500,000 and was made into a 1990 movie starring Charlie Sheen and Clint Eastwood, who also directed.
Awaiting the sale of “The Rookie,” Mr. Spiegel wrote and directed his first feature, the slasher-in-a-supermarket thriller “Intruder.” His producer, whom he had met through Mr. Yakin, was Lawrence Bender, a former dancer angling to break into movies. Shortly afterward, at a Memorial Day barbecue, Mr. Spiegel introduced Mr. Bender to Mr. Tarantino, whom he had met through the screenwriter and director Sheldon Lettich, a frequent collaborator with the actor Jean-Claude Van Damme.
“When I met Scott, I was as broke as you can possibly imagine,” said Mr. Tarantino, who spent many nights on Mr. Spiegel’s sofa. “But he got me meetings with people who made low-budget horror movies, and all of a sudden, in the smallest way, I was in the game. He ultimately helped me get my first paying gig as a writer.”
At the barbecue Mr. Bender and Mr. Tarantino clicked and were soon making “Reservoir Dogs,” which put Mr. Tarantino on a path to global fame. But just as Mr. Spiegel’s friends’ careers were revving up, his own stalled with the 1992 mistaken-identity farce “The Nutty Nut” (released on video as “The Nutt House”).
The script, written by Mr. Spiegel, Mr. Raimi, Mr. Campbell and Ron Zwang, an actor and sometime screenwriter, “was a total throwback to a Jerry Lewis movie,” said Richard Gladstein, a producer who developed the project at Live Entertainment before it was acquired by another company. “While being distinct and wacky, it had a foundation that felt like, if you did it right, you could reinvent the genre a little bit.”
Unfortunately little went right with “The Nutty Nut.” Creative tensions between Mr. Spiegel and one of the film’s producers, Brad Wyman (who would go on to produce “Monster”), resulted in Mr. Spiegel’s being replaced by another director, Adam Rifkin, three weeks into production. When the producers brought in the new director and a new writer, the four original writers decided “to bail,” as Mr. Campbell put it, and use pseudonyms instead of their own names in the credits.
The way Mr. Spiegel was treated still rankles Mr. Yakin. “Scott’s dailies on ‘The Nutty Nut’ were great — like Tim Burton meets the Three Stooges,” he said. “But the people he was making that movie for had no idea what they were doing. Unfortunately that experience derailed Scott for a while. In a lot of ways I think that was his opportunity to make a real mark.”
Mr. Wyman has his own regrets about making the film with Mr. Spiegel. “I was not a very good producer at that point, and he was not on top of his game as a filmmaker then,” Mr. Wyman said. “If he had had a better producer than me, he would have succeeded earlier.” Speaking of the failure of “The Nutty Nut,” he added: “ If it was a mixture of the financers, or me, probably the least person to blame was Scott. I wish it had been later in my career, and I could have helped him more. He’s tremendously talented.”
Although several of his friends have made their mark and then some, Mr. Spiegel shows no sign of bitterness. “I’m so happy for everyone’s success,” he said. “With Sam I actually thought it should have come a lot sooner. I knew Quentin would succeed. I just couldn’t have predicted to what degree.”
Mr. Spiegel is “just not a resentful guy,” said Mr. Bender, who also produced Mr. Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction,” “Jackie Brown” and the “Kill Bill” movies. “He’s happy for all of us who have done well.”
Mr. Raimi regularly casts Mr. Spiegel in his movies (including all three “Spider-Man” installments), and Mr. Tarantino introduced Mr. Spiegel to Bob Weinstein, the former co-chairman of Miramax. Mr. Weinstein hired him to direct “From Dusk Till Dawn II: Texas Blood Money,” the sequel to the 1996 vampire hit “From Dusk Till Dawn.” Mr. Weinstein also asked Mr. Spiegel to direct “My Name Is Modesty,” a resuscitation of the spy spoof “Modesty Blaise,” which was released on DVD in 2003 and on which Mr. Tarantino served as executive producer.
Like “Intruder,” “Texas Blood Money” and “My Name Is Modesty” are vivid examples of Mr. Spiegel’s sly, visual directing style. He is fond of strategically placed reflections, like a victim’s face flickering in the glint of a knife blade, and of unexpected point-of-view shots: from the bottom of a thirsty dog’s water dish, through the dripping fangs of an attacking vampire, or under the bristles of a broom as it sweeps a dusty floor.
Distinctive visual styles are another link between Mr. Spiegel and Mr. Raimi, who is known for his flamboyant camerawork. “Scott’s style calls attention to itself, and so does Sam’s,” Mr. Yakin said. “It’s hard to know who got more from whom — Sam from Scotty, or vice versa. I don’t want to put myself in an awkward position, but I think Sam learned a lot from working with Scott.”
If so, then why is Mr. Raimi directing the “Spider-Man” franchise and Mr. Spiegel making straight-to-DVD quickies like “My Name Is Modesty,” which was shot in Romania in 18 days?
The answer may have more to do with temperament than talent. Those who know him well say that Mr. Raimi, despite an outwardly easygoing nature, has always been driven, and consciously moved beyond genre material with films like “A Simple Plan” and “For Love of the Game.” “Sam’s found a way to combine his idiosyncratic style with a more mainstream style, and it’s clicked for him,” Mr. Yakin said. “But he’s been aggressively pushing for years. Scott’s not like that.”
As eager as he has always been to help others find work, Mr. Spiegel has not shown the same inclination where his own career is concerned. “When it comes to selling himself, Scott can be very passive,” Mr. Yakin said. “He doesn’t push, and this is a town where you have to push like a maniac.”
Still, the consensus among those who know him is that it’s only a matter of time before Mr. Spiegel makes a movie that earns him the recognition he deserves. Mr. Tarantino, who endured years of frustration before making “Reservoir Dogs,” offered this advice: “I think Scott should keep bringing his horror game up. Then, when he gets to a certain place, he can do something else.”
Mr. Spiegel appears to be on track to do just that. Three years ago, with Mr. Yakin and Mr. Roth, he formed Raw Nerve, a production company devoted to low-budget genre movies. The company had a hit with its first release, “Hostel,” and “Hostel: Part II” is arriving in theaters in June. Both were written and directed by Mr. Roth, who was one of the producers, and executive produced by Mr. Spiegel, Mr. Yakin and Mr. Tarantino.
The company’s development plans include an urban zombie thriller, “Dead by Daylight,” a collaboration with Dimension Films, which Mr. Spiegel plans to direct. The film would reunite Mr. Spiegel with Mr. Weinstein, Dimension’s top executive, who is as committed as any of Mr. Spiegel’s pals to giving him a long-overdue shot at wider recognition.
“We’ve all got his back,” Mr. Weinstein said. “Scott deserves his time, and he’ll have it.”
At the moment Mr. Spiegel sounds content. “It just feels like all of the pieces of the puzzle fit,” he said.
Eventually he wants to make another wild comedy in the vein of “The Nutty Nut.” Then again, he may simply plug away, grabbing opportunities as they come and quietly helping others get ahead. Which would be fine with him.
“Stanley Kubrick said something like, ‘What a marvelous gift to be able to make a motion picture,’ ” Mr. Spiegel said. “Since I came out here, I haven’t had to take a day job. So as far as I’m concerned, I’ve been very fortunate.”
