Little Triumphs Help to Make ‘Big’

With stars the stature of Kevin Spacey and Danny DeVito in major roles, “The Big Kahuna” doesn’t fit most people’s idea of guerrilla filmmaking. This isn’t, after all, the latest credit card-financed debut put together on the fly by kids who work day jobs at Kinko’s--not by a long shot.

On the other hand, how many movies do you know with a producer-star who committed larceny to get the picture made?

OK, maybe we should rephrase that.

How many movies do you know with a producer-star who admits to petty larceny (namely, stealing a room service table, and tablecloth and food) to provide props for a scene?

Spacey cops to the deed. “You got to do what you got to do,” he says, laughing over the lengths to which one will go for art. “I was just doing my producerial job,” he says.

Or course, Spacey doesn’t say whether the getaway car he had idling near the back door of his New York hotel came equipped with a chauffeur. Such a detail, were it true, might detract from the tale. But he shot “Kahuna” while in rehearsals for the Broadway production of “The Iceman Cometh,” days after finishing “American Beauty.” He’s a busy man. Who could blame him if he used a limousine, like the one that ferried director John Swanbeck to breakfast the other day to discuss the movie with a reporter.

That doesn’t jibe with the guerrilla filmmaker image, either. But cut them some slack. It’s their tale--let them tell it.

“We shot the movie in 16 days,” says Swanbeck, a thin man in a baseball cap rehashing the joy and agony of making this, his first film. “All we had time for was instinct, pure, raw instinct. . . . There was no time to think. If you think you fall behind.”

“The Big Kahuna”--which opens Friday--is the first big release from Spacey’s production company, Trigger Street Productions. It’s the sort of small, intimate movie he wants the company to concentrate on--an actors’ piece, adapted from a play by Chicago playwright Roger Rueff, who also wrote the screenplay. “There’s something about box drama that I like,” Spacey says by telephone.

The $1.8-million movie with three main characters is set almost entirely in one room, a Wichita hotel hospitality suite where three salesmen at a convention are awaiting the arrival of an important client. Because the scenes were shot in sequence, in the order in which they appear in the finished film, Spacey says the movie felt like a play.

“I enjoy being able to make the larger-end movies,” he says, “but at the same time I don’t want to ever give up this kind of movie.”

Swanbeck, a friend Spacey has known since they worked on “Hurlyburly” on Broadway in the mid-1980s, brought “Kahuna” to the actor. Spacey was an understudy on “Hurlyburly” and Swanbeck was an assistant to director Mike Nichols.

Swanbeck Became Spacey’s Coach

The two men used to run, or recite, lines back stage during performances. The relationship continued as Spacey’s career took off. “I would help him run lines from time to time, and coach him on characters,” says Swanbeck, who went on to a career as a theatrical director in Chicago. “As his movie career started to take off he began to sometimes call for help with characters.”

It was the talent Swanbeck showed working with actors that first persuaded Spacey that his friend could direct a movie. When the actor suggested that they make “Kahuna” as a movie and that Swanbeck direct it, “he at first thought I was joking,” the actor says.

The conversation took place over dinner in Chicago, while Spacey was filming “The Negotiator.” “He said he wanted to launch his company by putting out a guerrilla-style film,” Swanbeck remembers.

When Spacey went to London for “Iceman,” Swanbeck set to work on “Kahuna.” Swanbeck and Nancy Lane Scanlon, his partner, put their own theatrical production company on hold. He read books on movie producing and directing and began studying films to see how they were made.

Scanlon suggested that they make a short film. They put together a cast and crew from the Chicago theater and independent film community and they shot the movie in three days. “We basically put ourselves through film school by making a movie,” he says.

But this was when the real agony began. Spacey called from London. The two men talked for an hour. Spacey spoke about the projects he had planned, but he never mentioned “Kahuna.”

Previously, when Swanbeck and Spacey had talked of doing Broadway plays together, Swanbeck waited for Spacey, the big star with clout, to get things going. “Those two projects never happened, and I think it’s because I waited,” he says now.

Now he realized what Spacey was doing: “He’s going to make me work for this,” Swanbeck recalls thinking. “He’s going to make me go after it.”

Spacey never told Swanbeck how to go about preparing for the movie. Swanbeck thinks the actor was consciously setting a bar for him to reach, and then each time Swanbeck reached it he would set it a little higher. “Basically he gave me an opportunity and said if you can rise to the occasion we’ll do it.”

But couldn’t it just be that Spacey was too busy to deal with “Kahuna”?

“I know Kevin really well,” Swanbeck says, “and there is very little that Kevin does that he’s not conscious of. I think that he was sitting back saying I’ll give you 150% but you’ve got to work for it.”

Once Spacey was satisfied that Swanbeck could do it, “the raising of the bar stopped,” the director says. “Then he began setting the bar for himself as the movie’s producer.”

But before any of this could happen, Swanbeck had to prove that he was capable.

“Nancy said get on a plane and go to London,” he recalls. Soon after getting to Spacey’s home, the actor took a telephone call in another room. Swanbeck overheard him complain about a producer who wanted him to commit to a project and yet was not prepared.

Swanbeck quickly rearranged the furniture and lined the floor with storyboards. “He walked into the room and saw the storyboards on the floor and he broke out laughing,” Swanbeck says. “Then he got all excited and rolled up his shirt sleeves.”

Swanbeck Raised Some Seed Money

Swanbeck also had brought with him a proposed shooting schedule, and he’d made deals to raise a quarter of a million dollars toward making the movie. “For the next three hours, Kevin was completely focused and jazzed and excited to see that somebody was going to take this seriously.”

To Swanbeck’s dismay, though, Spacey later informed him that the 24-day shooting schedule they had discussed would have to be reduced to 21 days, then 18 days, then 16. It was all the time Spacey could spare between projects. Furthermore, he couldn’t say for sure when filming could start.

Swanbeck put together a first-rate crew on the strength of Spacey’s involvement. That had been Spacey’s only request: “Get the best crew you can possibly find.” As a first-time director on a short schedule, he needed to be able to lean on old pros.

When he finally got the call from Spacey, Swanbeck only had three weeks lead time before the start of shooting. Worst, he had to find an actor to replace one who’d dropped out for scheduling reasons.

The character of Phil, a burned-out salesman who recently lost his wife, is pivotal to the play, which starts out as a comedy before settling down to deal with profound issues of faith and friendship. The other characters are Larry (Spacey), a brash cynic, and Bob, a young, idealistic and God-fearing salesman played by newcomer Peter Facinelli.

“The Friday before we were to start shooting [on Wednesday] Kevin said who do you want?” Swanbeck says. He’d always wanted DeVito, but previously he’d been told the actor’s schedule wouldn’t allow him to do it. But Spacey learned that DeVito now was available because the movie he’d planned to do had fallen through.

DeVito read it Saturday night, then flew to New York. “I met him the night before we started shooting,” Swanbeck says.

It was near the end of shooting that Spacey stole the room service table.

Swanbeck was to shoot two scenes that would run back to back that were very similar in tone. The two men often talked to each other by telephone at 2 or 3 a.m. about the next day’s shooting. During the conversation before those scenes were to be shot, Spacey came up with the solution. The two old friends that Spacey and DeVito play are like an old married couple. Why not film them as if they’re having a talk at the kitchen table over breakfast? Props were a problem, but Spacey told Swanbeck not to worry.

“I ordered breakfast in my room the next morning and then I stole the room service cart and all of the silverware,” Spacey says with a devilish chuckle. Somewhere, he says, he imagines there is security camera footage of him wheeling the cart to the elevator and then sneaking it out of the building to his car.

It worked. The scene turned out beautifully, both men agree.

Did Spacey return the cart and silverware to the hotel afterward? He says no, “it’s in someone’s apartment in New York.”