With a Brotherly Shove, Film Is Made, Screened

The difference between Philip Creager and the multitude of other bartenders trying to sell a screenplay is what Creager did when the studio said ho-hum.

Having no experience in film production, he decided to film it himself.

The result, “Face Down in the Family Pool,” about an AIDS death in the family, is in its first--and so far, only--commercial engagement at Edwards University theater in Irvine.

The one-week run opened Friday with Creager pacing the lobby. He said he has no expectation of making back the $80,000 invested in the film. But if it does eventually make a profit, he said, he has pledged to donate all proceeds to the local AIDS Walk. (An Edwards spokesman said Monday the Irvine run will not be extended past Thursday because over the weekend each screening averaged only four viewers.)

The profit, he said, will be any attention from Hollywood the movie brings him and his 13-member cast, all of whom are trying to get started in the business.

Creager started in 1990 when at age 29, he quit his job at a Detroit advertising agency, moved to Huntington Beach--which he thought was “right next door to Hollywood”--and started tending bar at the Warehouse in Newport Beach.

After writing nearly 30 unsuccessful movie and TV scripts--”I don’t call them failures, but they’re buried in the backyard”--his tragicomic script about his brother’s death from AIDS got a nibble.

“The studio wanted to change it to cancer,” Creager said. “They said it’s a cleaner disease, whatever that means.”

By then it was 1997, and he had moved to Woodland Hills and married Pennie Leigh Orcutt, an actress also trying to start a movie career.

It was her idea to make the film, Creager said. Also a bartender, she took a second job performing at children’s birthday parties so he could work full time on the movie. She wound up acting in the film.

Creager began a crash course in movie production by reading all the books he could at bookstores before being asked to leave. He plundered his and his wife’s savings accounts, borrowed heavily from his family and tapped a wealthy friend of a friend.

The resulting $80,000 did not even qualify as low-budget by movie standards, he said. “It’s more like no-budget.”

But it was enough to enable him to shoot in 35mm film, he said. When completed, “Face Down” would at least look like a real movie, and that counts with people trying to assemble convincing videotape resumes of their work.

Cinematographer Jennifer Lane signed on for the dim possibility of a share of the profits. So did the the cast, enlisted from about 1,000 resumes sent in reaction to Creager’s ad in a trade paper. The only ones to be paid, said Creager, were technicians, film suppliers, film processors and the owners of a pawnshop and a diner used for location shots.

Filming took three weeks. Creager hired a film editor to show him how the editing machine worked, then did the editing himself. “I was a bulldog on this thing,” he said.

Part of the reason is the autobiographical nature of the script, he said. The story is an “about 60%” accurate retelling of the death in 1994 of Creager’s gay brother, Curt, from AIDS.

In it, four brothers from a dysfunctional family play a game in which they predict which notables will die in the coming year. To the shock of everyone, Curt, who knows he has the disease, chooses himself. As a dying wish, he asks that the estranged family members gather for one last Christmas at home.

There is pathos but also an edgy humor to the family reunion, which includes a shrewish sister and a seemingly uncaring father--the same people who in reality helped bankroll the production.

Last summer, they all flew to Los Angeles for a screening of the film. Creager said he bought his father a bottle of scotch before the filming and nervously awaited the family’s reactions.

“They loved it,” he said. “They laughed at themselves, and I’m proud of them for it. They realized it was for Curt. My father, he puts his arm around me and says he’s proud of me. Then he says, ‘You can leave me out of the next one.’ ” Entered last fall in the Fort Lauderdale (Fla.) Film Festival, “Face Down” received mixed reviews.

Film Journal International described the movie as “impressive” and a “poignant family drama.” The film’s “intensity and honesty” made it “a festival standout.”

But the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel gave the film a thorough panning, lumping it with other films that “exploit AIDS as a cheap plot device to throw together a group of people with heavy emotional baggage.”

“We thought there was a chance it would go on to Sundance and be the big hit,” Creager said, “but when we came back from Fort Lauderdale and we didn’t get any offers, we decided perhaps to take a different route.”

Creager said he “harassed the living hell” out of an Edwards Theaters’ film buyer, arguing that the film had a group of theatergoers--families with AIDS sufferers--already interested in the film’s topic. Edwards agreed to book it for a week, and Creager distributed 9,000 fliers promoting it at the June 6 AIDS Walk Orange County.

He said he plans to try the same in other cities, specifically Los Angeles and San Francisco, when their AIDS walks are scheduled.

“I’m not Mother Teresa,” Creager said. “My thinking is, the actors and I will perhaps get some recognition out of this. Maybe we’ll get some more money for the next film. I have an agent because of this. It’s turning out to be a great marketing toy.”

Steve Emmons can be reached by e-mail at Steve.Emmons@latimes.com.