A New Remedy: Directing

Eriq La Salle checked out of NBC’s “ER” in November after eight seasons as arrogant but brilliant surgeon Dr. Peter Benton, and he hasn’t had a chance to catch his breath since.

He and director D.J. Caruso have had their production company, Humble Journey, firmly entrenched at Warner Bros. for the last five years. La Salle is one of the executive producers of Caruso’s upcoming film “The Salton Sea,” starring Val Kilmer. La Salle also will be seen later this year in the Robin Williams movie “One Hour Photo.” And tonight, his feature film directorial debut, “Crazy as Hell,” opens the 10th annual Pan African Film Festival.

“I’m actually getting a little excited,” La Salle said at the Humble Journey offices on the Warner lot in Burbank. “We have been getting RSVPs from most of the major studios and the small studios. We have a really good lineup.”

Besides directing the psychological thriller, La Salle is a producer, writer and star. He plays a man who checks himself into a mental institution claiming to be Satan. With his bald pate, fancy earrings, long fingernails and outlandish clothes, La Salle’s character is something of an outrageous dandy with a wicked smile. He unnerves a maverick psychiatrist (Michael Beach), who is being followed around-the-clock by a documentary film crew. Beach’s character, though, seems in need of a shrink himself as he is constantly haunted by the specters of his dead wife and 7-year-old daughter.

“We had fun with it,” says La Salle, who is far friendlier and more down-to-earth than his longtime, brooding small-screen persona.

La Salle had the script for “Crazy as Hell” for four years trying to interest major studios and independent companies. “I wanted to do this thing, and I wanted to do it the way I wanted to do it,” he says. “I wanted to have certain freedoms.”

But it was a hard sell. “Some people don’t get it,” says La Salle. “They don’t get the psychological thriller aspect of it because the whole point of the movie is you don’t know [if he is Satan]. If you have the character performing some supernatural feats, then that defeats the purpose. We wanted to have the audience guess. If it were a big studio film, walls would be bleeding. That was not the type of film we were trying to make.”

“We had an offer the year before to make ‘Crazy,’” says Caruso. “We had a lot more money that was going to be given to us from an independent company, but they had rules and stipulations on whom to cast and how to make it. That is just part of the independent world. There were suggestions for the cast that turned us off.”

The impetus to do the film his way came as a result of La Salle seeing Darren Aronofsky’s dark drama “Requiem for a Dream.”

“I thought it was such a beautifully disturbing film,” says La Salle, 39. “I felt it was uncompromised. I felt like this was a story that this filmmaker wanted to tell, and I really admired it. I just said, ‘I am going to go and shoot my movie.’”

La Salle, who made $27 million for his last three years on “ER,” financed the film himself. “I can’t say what the budget was,” he says with a smile. “I’d have to kill you.”

He cast himself as the man who would be Satan because, he says, actors get turned on doing interesting roles and characters. “When I read this and saw the potential of this outlandish character, I obviously was attracted to it. When we were going the studio route, I toyed with not playing the role. And then at some point, I said, go for it.

“The other reason I did it was I definitely wanted my first project done post-’ER’ to be something so far removed from what people’s impression of me as an actor was or how they associated me with a specific character for nine years. This was very, very different. I had a ball.”

“Crazy as Hell” was shot in 19 days on 24-frame-per-second digital video--the same format George Lucas used for his upcoming “Star Wars: Episode II--Attack of the Clones.”

“I liked the Steadicam,” he says. “I didn’t want to overdo it. But we felt it made sense and saved time--and, of course, saved money. I wanted to add fluidity to the film. Low-budget filmmaking can still have eye candy. I think you can still have things aesthetically pleasing. That is what we were going for.”

La Salle also cast actors Beach, John C. McGinley and Ronny Cox, whom he had worked with on other films he directed--the award-winning short “Psalms From the Underground” and the HBO film “Rebound: The Legend of Earl ‘The Goat’ Manigault.”

Beach, a regular on “Third Watch,” has known La Salle for nearly two decades. He says that the two have a form of shorthand communication on the set. “All he needs is to say one or two things, and I understand him,” says Beach. “I see where he’s coming from. We already have a very similar way about how we think about acting and how we feel about it. So it makes it a lot easier.”

“Crazy as Hell” is the first film to open the Pan African Film & Arts Festival that doesn’t already have a distributor. About 150 movies will unspool at the festival, North America’s largest event dedicated to independent black films from the U.S. and around the world. It runs today through Feb. 18 at the Magic Johnson Theatres. Tonight’s gala takes place at the Loews Cineplex Odeon Century Plaza.

The Humble Journey logo has a little boy facing mountains. La Salle says he chose the name because “no matter how successful you think you are, there is always something that I think will put you in check. I am appreciative of that. Just because I was on the No. 1 show for eight years does not guarantee that I will step into a situation where everything will be handed to you. That keeps you humble, and everything is a journey. Everything is a lesson. There are always peaks and valleys.”

And he doesn’t want to lose the little boy inside him--the one who grew up in Hartford, Conn., idolizing Sidney Poitier. “You always want to stay in touch with the little boy because that little boy used to dream of telling stories, used to dream of being an actor, used to dream of when I grow up I want to do this. It wasn’t about contracts or the size of your trailer. It was about the love of being fascinated by stories. So long as you can keep in touch with that and keep it a priority, that keeps you honest and humble.”

La Salle is still under contract to “ER” for the rest of this season. Though his character was written out in the fall, he could be called back for more appearances. But he’s set against coming back next season and says he doesn’t regret giving up his “ER” paycheck.

“The big secret that a lot of people don’t understand about most actors is that if you are really true artists, you’ll do this for free,” he says. “‘ER’ has given me a successful career and put me in a position to do films. It is a major part of my life and my career, but the decision to leave was truly not an obstacle. If I had continued to stay, it would have been just for the money, and that is not the artist I would want to be, and I don’t think it is what the fans deserve. My passions lie elsewhere.”

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“Crazy as Hell” screens tonight at the Loews Cineplex Odeon, Century Plaza, 2030 Avenue of the Stars, Century City. Tickets for the opening night gala are $75. Opening night tickets are on sale at Ticketmaster and at Eso Won Books, 3655 La Brea Ave., L.A. (323) 294-0324.

All other films in the Pan African Film & Arts Festival take place at the Magic Johnson Theatres, 3650 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. Admission to screenings is $8.50; $5.75 for matinees and seniors 62 and over; and $5.25 for students under 12. For Pan African Film Festival information, call (213) 896-8221 or the Magic Johnson Theatre box office at (323) 290-5900.

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Black Film Festival

Many movies at the Pan African Film & Arts Festival are by first-time directors.

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