New Filmmaker Gives Transition ‘Rave Review’ : Movies: Director Jeff Seymour draws upon his grueling experience at the Gnu Theatre to make a low-budget comedy.

Jeff Seymour, it turns out, had been misled.

“People would say to me-- about handling the pressure of making a film--’Jeff, you’ve done Equity-waiver theater, but film is a lot more difficult.’ And after making the film,” Seymour says, “I can honestly say that they were just completely wrong.”

Maybe those people misunderstood how things worked at Seymour’s Gnu Theatre in North Hollywood. Maybe they couldn’t imagine building sets between rehearsals and acting classes. Maybe they didn’t realize that directing responsibilities included vacuuming before performances.

Maybe after seeing Seymour’s first film, “Rave Review,” which opened Wednesday at Laemmle’s Monica, they’ll get it.

His low-budget comedy draws unabashedly on his experience as the director of the Gnu: the late nights, the cash-strapped productions, the condescending Hollywood executives. The main character--played by Seymour--is a director who will go to any length to keep his theater afloat, including threatening the city’s most vitriolic critic to get a good review.

“I couldn’t think of another film where the artist goes after the critic to get his success,” says Seymour, 38. “If you’re going to blackmail anybody, forget the director, forget the producer, it’s the critic. If you get an above-the-fold rave--with a picture--that says, ‘Quit what you’re doing right now. Go out and see this play or this movie. Hire this guy right now,’ you are going to be set. . . . That’s what this movie is about--the guy who finally figures it out and goes after the meanest critic in the world.”

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It’s hard to believe that Seymour would harbor such animosity toward critics. He staged about 20 plays in seven years at the 49-seat Gnu, including the critically acclaimed “El Salvador,” “American Buffalo” and “Best Wishes.” “El Salvador” won four Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle awards in 1989, including distinguished production. In 1992, Drama-Logue honored him with its Publisher’s Award for his body of work. And last year the low-budget “Rave Review” won the Gold Award for best comedy feature at the Houston Worldfest.

“I certainly now don’t feel like killing any critics. I have felt like choking a few in the past, maybe just until they turned blue,” he says. “They have so much power. The artist works so hard, and then one night, in an hour and a half or two hours, they watch and they go home and they write what they will. Theater is hanging on by its fingernails as it is.”

At least that’s how things were at the Gnu Theatre. Seymour subsidized the theater by teaching acting classes. He produced shows for about $3,500 by doing everything himself. “Essentially each show had to be successful critically, or I was going to go down,” he says.

Seymour loved theater but he also wanted to make movies. He tried to produce a $3-million adaptation of the play “Brothers” in 1992, but the deal fell apart. Then, on Independence Day, 1993--symbolism fully intended--he closed the Gnu and gutted it. “I just decided that if I closed the theater, I would have to make a movie. I would be so desperate, I would just have to make that happen, because I was used to working all the time,” he says.

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He drew on his theater for things other than inspiration. The two people who financed the $250,000 film were Gnu subscribers and almost all the actors in the film, including Joe Spano and Bruce Kirby, had performed at the Gnu. Ed Begley Jr., who has a small role, had attended plays at the Gnu.

Kevin Hunt, who plays the director’s best friend, was--and is--a student in Seymour’s acting class. He audited the class with a friend and was so impressed that he enrolled.

“I was absolutely blown away by his sensibilities as an actor and director. There’s a positive energy that he exudes that permeated the class and the Gnu. And that carried right over onto the set,” says Hunt, one of 12 actors from the Gnu Theatre who earned SAG cards on the film.

Co-producer Dana Lustig says Seymour was so used to doing everything himself that they had to remind him that other people could pick up lumber at Home Depot. Directing and acting was enough work, by movie standards. “He did a scene and then he had to run to the video screen and watch his performance and everyone else’s performance,” she says. “He couldn’t see what he was doing because he was in it.”

Reviewing every shot didn’t slow Seymour down. “Rave Review,” which has 47 speaking roles, was filmed in 18 days--about five times faster than most commercial movies. But despite Seymour’s workaholic ways, the crew never worked more than 12 hours a day. Seymour figured that he could direct on little sleep but that it would show in his acting.

That respect for acting earned Seymour praise from his casts both at the Gnu and on the set of “Rave Review.” Veteran film and TV actor James Handy, who plays a detective in the film, compares Seymour to other actor-directors. “They just give you a key sentence of a few key words to keep you on track or nail the character,” Handy says.

“Rave Review” landed Seymour an agent, but he isn’t waiting for the Hollywood machine to churn out a project with his name on it. He can’t sit still that long. He wrote three more scripts last year, and Lustig and co-producer Ram Bergman have agreed to produce his next low-budget feature, called “My Artist Father.”

For now, Seymour is ready to commit his career to film. His life was so saturated by theater for so many years, he says, that he doesn’t miss it. Yet.

“If somebody offered me a theater [job], directing something I liked, I would do it now. Heck, I’d even design the set,” he says. He pauses about half a beat. “I wouldn’t build it, though.”