A Life as Art

“Weeds” director John Hancock devoted nearly a decade to getting the picture made, at one point mortgaging his home to finance its development. The film, about a hardened San Quentin inmate (played by Nick Nolte) who finds a kind of salvation with the production of his own play about prison injustice, is finally in the theaters.

And Hancock (“Bang the Drum Slowly,” “California Dreaming”) has been counting Rick Cluchey among its fans--Cluchey being the former San Quentin lifer whose true-life saga inspired the movie.

“Cluchey likes the film,” said Hancock. “He called it powerful . . . powerful.”

Not quite. Cluchey is singing a different tune. The ex-con-now-playwright, who got $20,000 for the dramatic rights to his life story, feels betrayed and is refusing to return Hancock’s numerous calls to his Chicago home.

In fact, Hancock and De Laurentiis Entertainment had no idea where Cluchey was. We tracked him down in Hernando Beach, Fla., where he was enrolling his children in school. He told us he had no intention of communicating with Hancock.

“I basically can’t forgive them,” said Cluchey of Hancock and his screenwriter-wife Dorothy Tristan. “It boils down to about four seconds in the film. It’s when Umstetter (the character patterned on Cluchey) tells the cast that he plagiarized from Genet. I can’t tell you how much I resent that. If I had stolen from (Genet’s) ‘Death Watch,’ why did Hancock produce the play?

“I can’t dispute that Hancock is a genius of a director. I found moments very powerful. But he’s a facile personality--everything just rolls off his back. After I saw the rough cut, I was less than enthusiastic. I told him I felt wounded by the assertion that I’d plagiarized and he assured me I wasn’t seeing the final cut--things could still be changed.

“I was foolish to consider him a friend. It was a mistake to give him permission to fictionalize my life.”

Background: Serving time for armed robbery with aggravated assault and kidnaping, Cluchey co-founded the San Quentin Theater Workshop and created the acclaimed prison drama “The Cage.” As artistic director of the San Francisco Actor’s Workshop, Hancock staged it with “The Beard” in 1965. Directed by Ken Kitch, it was the first production of “The Cage” outside San Quentin.

In 1966, Barbara Blayden, drama critic at the San Mateo Times, successfully campaigned to win a parole for Cluchey. Upon release, he toured the show in North America and Europe, marrying Blayden in 1967 (they divorced in 1973).

Hancock now downplays Cluchey’s connection to the film: “Lee Umstetter is not Cluchey. I don’t believe Rick plagiarized to the degree the character did in the film. You’ve got to remember that we incorporated the experiences of other prison drama groups and all the terrible things that happened to us at the Actor’s Workshop.”

“Weeds,” according to Hancock, evolved out of a conversation with Kitch about their theater days and the frustration of making films. Hancock told his wife about some ideas he had and she wrote the first screenplay. They later went to see Cluchey in Essen, West Germany, where he was acting and directing plays by himself and Samuel Beckett, his idol and current mentor.

“In 1982, I signed a contract which amounted to ensuring the film could only be made with my participation,” Cluchey stated. “I was promised a role in the film and work for San Quentin Workshop members--basically the right to be involved in (the portrayal of) our lives.”

Cluchey got only a bit part without dialogue, “but none of that would have mattered if the end result respected our experience. I understood when I saw an early draft that had group members asking Umstetter if he’d swiped the material and he denied it. It’s an obvious question--you don’t expect someone with my background to be writing plays in stir. The problem’s not the accusation but the character’s admission.”

Hancock responded: “It’s difficult to handle essentially documentary material without producing something that’s too long and complicated. I’m sympathetic to the concerns of those people the story’s about. I really don’t know what they make of it.”

Cluchey, who’s recently completed two new plays and will be a resident artist at the University of Maryland next fall, affirmed that he’s basically in favor of “Weeds” on its artistic merits.

“I’m just perplexed as to why they felt a need to tarnish the character. I revered Hancock for spending his last penny (at the Actor’s Workshop) to stage ‘The Cage.’ Years later, I was told it was put on for cynical reasons--they felt it would be controversial and get them a lot of press.

“I didn’t believe it then, but now it’s a very sobering to wonder if Hancock’s been trading on me for years.”