Director's Cut

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This is the ring that my granddad, Jack, gave to my nana. And it's the ring that my dad gave to my mom. And now... Sarah Jane Cassidy...

both laugh nervously

I want to give it to you.

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Jack, I-I can't take that. I'll lose it. I lose my glasses. I lose my phone, like, twice a week. Look. Stop, stop, stop. - I don't want to-- You're not gonna lose it. -

laughs

laughs

It's perfect.

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Hi, welcome to Director's Cut. I'm Pete Schwaba, and that was a clip from Angel's Perch, a film about a man on an emotional roller coaster as he deals with the death of his young wife and his ailing grandmother simultaneously. We're joined today by the film's writer/producer and lead actor, J.T. Arbogast. J.T., welcome to Director's Cut. Thanks for having me. - That's a lot to do. On a film. -

laughs

All those hats. - Yeah, yeah. Tell us a little bit more about what's going on here, a little bit about your movie. We gave a brief synopsis there, but... Yeah... it's really about a young guy who is living in Pittsburgh and having, obviously, a very successful career, and his life just sorts to-- just starts to unravel around him in multiple ways. He's called home because his grandmother is found wandering. He's the last living relative. And he has to make a choice, as many families do who are faced with an elderly person who's suffering from the disease. He has to make a choice. It's time to either move her into a care facility where she can be watched over on a daily basis or take on the responsibility of being a caregiver and, obviously, making some big changes in his life. So it's something that a lot of families deal with and, obviously, a challenging thing, to say the least. Talk a little bit about your connection to the film's setting. That's where you're from, and you shot in West Virginia. Tell us what that was like. - Yeah. Yeah, my family is from this very small town in rural West Virginia-- Cass, West Virginia. It's an old logging railroad. My mom grew up in the house that we shot in. That was my grandmother's house. Oh, wow. The town, like so many towns in that area of the country, was a booming logging town at the turn of the century. When the industry left, the town was sort of left without an identity and my grandparents, along with a lot of the locals, petitioned the state to purchase the town, turn it into a state park, where it has been thriving for now, over 50 years. That railroad still runs every summer. It takes tours up and down the mountain to sort of give them a glimpse of what life was like when it was an old logging town. But it's a beautiful area of the country that just doesn't get seen all that often, and it was really important to me when I wrote this film to shine a light on that area, the community of people that live there, because they're such great people. How important is that to you? Because I remember when I made a film, some of the producers wanted to do it in L.A. just for convenience sake, but you go to this small town-- you're sacrificing a lot, too, but it is worth it, right? I mean, for the authenticity and-- Absolutely, yeah. We--, obviously these films can-- we can fake these locations in multiple areas of the country, including L.A. I don't know that we would have gotten the railroad, but we could have certainly faked the interior sections of the film, but it was really important to me to do as much as I could to shine an authentic light on this place that I love so much and this community that I love so much. We have locals in the film. The doctor is a guy who works at the radio observatory right around the corner, and he's great. Homer Hunter, who's in the film, that plays Delbert, is just an incredible-- and he's a guy that never acted before in his life. So we--I think our film really benefited from the fact-- even though there were challenges with being in a rural area, without necessarily the infrastructure, we benefitted from the fact that we-- this community rallied around us to tell this story and make this film. So we were very proud of that. And, no self-service aside, like you were saying, that'll drive a film crew crazy, but, uh-- Yeah, we had-- we had walkies, but it was-- what was great about not having self-service meant that, as we were prepping for the next shot or as we were planning for the next day, nobody was on their phone. Everybody was really focused on telling the best story that we could tell and making the best film that we could make. And, like I said, as much as, that may have been a detriment for the first day, where people were like, "I can't check my--why can't I--" You know? The balance-- You don't need to surf the web. We're making a movie here. - Exactly, yeah. The balance of that was, everybody was, like, hanging out and getting to know each other. And we had-- it was-- we were there for 18 days on the shoot, so about a month. And everybody just rallied and had a great time. Just had a lot of messages to return when they were done with the film. Yeah, exactly.

laughs

Let's take another look at a clip from Angel's Perch. Da-dee Da-dum, da-da-da, da-dum You keep doing all this good work, I might just keep you on.

both laugh

You might want to wait till I'm finished before you say that. What can I do, anything? - Nope. Just sit there and relax.

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Well, when you're done with that, I got a lawn you can mow.

giggles

Ginny.

both laughing

Hey. Hey, Miss Berkeley. How do? I didn't even know you were still around here. Oh, well, I didn't even know you still cared. Oh.

laughing

I deserve that. -

laughs

How you been? Oh, good. Yeah, I've been... been real good. Just, uh, well, taking care of Mama's shop. I thought Betsy told me you were down south somewhere? Oh, yeah. You didn't hear? I'm just in South Carolina. I'm living at the beach and running a surf shop. Oh.

laughs

I just kind of ran into, uh...

sighs

Well, Mama retired and went down to Phoenix. So I'm here. That's great. Yeah, I suppose. You know... I mean, it's home. I heard you got married. - Yeah. Yeah, it was, uh, really small... wedding, so... That's always an awkward moment. "Yeah, it was really small, 400 people. We couldn't possibly have invited you." Yeah, yeah. So you wrote and produced, and you're the lead actor. Mm-hmm. - You did not direct. Correct. Talk a little bit about that decision. Yeah. - Was it an option, or... No, I knew... I knew that when we made the decision to make this film, uh, that there were only so many hats that-- my wife, Kim, ultimately, really was the lead producer on this thing once we got into production, because it was just-- there was no way I could focus on the performance. And I knew I didn't have the skill set to be a director as of yet. It's something I'm interested in doing down the road, but it certainly wasn't something I could do now. So we went out and found Charles Haine, who had a connection to the disease. His grandmother also suffered from it, and we just knew we wanted to bring in somebody else's eye who would be able to take the script that I had written and bring it to life in a way that we just didn't have the capability of doing. Do you--talk a little bit about your cast. You brought some people in from L.A., but obviously, on a low budget, you can't fly everybody in. For sure. - You found some local actors. You also used some soap opera actors. We did. - Was that a conscious choice? Or did it just... - It wasn't. The cast came together in a really incredible way. Ellen Crawford, who is in the film-- a lot of people would know her from ER-- was our first member. And we thought of her pretty immediately for the role of Betsy. And we sent the script to her. She, when she got the script, was on her way to a memorial service for her husband's-- I believe it was her husband's mother, who had passed away from the disease. So a connection-- again, another connection to the disease. Yeah, right. - She jumped on board. Ally Walker came on second, was very interested in playing the character because she thought it was something different than a lot of the other stuff that she was being given. Yeah, she's great. Yeah. Ashley Jones, who was our last-- she was a last-minute cast. We had a hard time finding our Ginny, and she came to us last minute. And Joyce Van Patten, who plays our Polly, is just, I mean-- just, again, a connection to Ally. We had a tough time finding that. Ally put in a call. Joyce was set to be in a play where she was playing a character named Polly who was suffering from dementia right after our film. So she jumped in. But our locals-- Homer Hunter, who plays our Delbert, and Mike Holstine, who plays our Doc-- it just came together with this great mix of talent. We found talent there that we, we sort of hoped was there. But ultimately, you watch the film, and you see, like, oh, these people, like-- it's tough to find the line between the locals who-- It's a gamble. You're hoping you find great talent. Yeah. - And, uh, that's great. So talk a little bit about-- you don't really ever mention your parents, or Jack's parents, I should say. Talk about that decision. We spoke about that a little bit about not addressing whatever happened to Jack's parents. Yeah, I think, in a lot of ways, we're not a traditional Hollywood film, right? In a traditional Hollywood film-- in the Hollywood version of this film, there would be the--I think I mentioned to you-- there would probably be the flashback, where we would see-- we would get that informa-- we'd hand that information to the audience, but we wanted this to feel as authentic as possible, and in some ways, you know, we know that we know as storytellers that Jack lost his parents when he was very young and that they were in a car accident and that Polly became the guardian and took Jack in, which, you know, obviously, the relationship that you see on screen is sort of the result of that. But, uh, we didn't want to spoon-feed it to the audience. We felt like, also, this guy's dealing with so much loss in his life and such a-- He's having a tough year. - Yeah, he's had a-- Right, right. We felt like that would just be, that--it's just one thing that we would let the audience infer as opposed to necessarily handing it to 'em. Let's see another clip from Angel's Perch. Dude. I know this isn't ideal, all right? But we can make this work. Jack, real work happens in person. If I wanted to work with a guy on the Internet, I'd hire 15 Indian guys who wouldn't own half the company. Look, Kev, she's all I have left. Just give me a couple of days. I will have the designs. I will be back, ready to go. Now, hon. - Uh-huh? I want you to take a look at that roof. You see up there? - Yeah. I do. Now, what do you call what that is, buckling? Those are the shingles and-- yeah, the shingles are-- But they're buckling? Yeah, they're buckling a little. Now, I don't want to say it was three months ago. It was just a short time ago that they did that work. Yeah? - And it's already buckling. Well, it's hard to find people that do good work anymore. No, it's hard to find people who care about the kind of work that they do. I would agree with that. - It's just all different now. It's all different. - I know. I know.

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Well, there she is. How you doing, Polly? - How do? You remember this one, don't you? Well, I'll be. He's the spitting image of his daddy. -

laughs

Yeah, you don't remember me, do you? Uh, no, sorry, I don't... Delbert Thomas. Back Mountain Boys. Uh, your grandmom here used to sing with us every Saturday night on the dinner train. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry, I didn't recognize you. Well, I had cancer a few years back. Probably one of the best diets I'd ever went on. Sorry to hear that. - Well, I'm still here. So there ain't nothing much to be sorry about. Plus, you wouldn't believe how many women come around when they think you might be dying. Yeah. I couldn't stop 'em from bringing me food and trying to take care of me, and some of them in ways you wouldn't hardly believe. Oh, uh, well, that seems a little... Yeah, of course, I always had a soft spot for your grandmom here, but, uh, your granddaddy snatched her up before I even had the chance. You, you are just as ornery as ever. Yeah. Here's your mail. And, uh, we'll see you all tomorrow probably. Thank you. - Okay. That's a great scene. Uh, talk a little bit about, you have a comedy background. Mm-hmm. Talk about using comedy in a story like this where it's pretty emotionally charged. You got to pick your spots, I'm sure. Was that a challenge at all, or... It was, yeah, but I felt like, in some ways, my family's experience with the disease-- obviously the film isn't autobiographical, but we definitely, uh-- it's definitely influenced by what we went through, the choices we had to make. And Jack is really representative of my whole family and the choices that we faced. But, in the struggle that we went through with the disease, with my grandmother, one of the things that always stood out to me were these moments of humor that just happened. And they're just part of life. And so being able to make sure that we were utilizing that as a way for the audience to give them a little bit of distance, to give them a little bit of an understanding that, like, it's not all like, "Oh, my gosh, what are we gonna do?" It can't be that heavy, either, probably, throughout the whole-- yeah. For 94 minutes? It would be a really rough run. But, like, there were moments in-- I remember my mom and I were sitting with my grandmother as she was sleeping on the couch, and she started to fidget a little bit, and we were--both had this moment of, like, "Oh, my gosh, like, we need to make sure she's okay." And she, like--her hand popped out from under the blanket and she had a cookie in her hand. And she took a bite of cookie, and she chewed it and went back to sleep-- and we just, like... It was just this moment of real life that was so funny that it was like it's not all doom and gloom. Like, obviously, we're-- that's life. Life is laughter; life is sadness; life is all of those things. So making sure that we had that as part of the film was important. So you have a theater background. You have a masters and... does theater acting help film acting as a starting point? Does it matter? Talk a little bit about that. 'Cause they are very different in a lot of ways. Yeah, they--I mean, I think it's a totally different skill set. I definitely think that, for both my wife and I-- we met in graduate school as theater practitioners, and we're both still actors. I definitely think that it helped us just from a range of emotion, but that being said, like I--it's just, they're two totally different skill sets, and so both require a certain amount of practice and a certain amount of work to sort of hone. Because when you're performing theater, obviously you're aiming for the back row, you're aiming for the people who are in the last seat, and film is, like, nope, it's right here. Like, it's, like, right in front of your face. So I definitely think it is an adjustment, and theater actors, oftentimes, they're too big. And that was something that we dealt with as we were getting our feet wet into film and TV. But I would think, from an emotional standpoint and from a skill set standpoint, it definitely helped. Not as much of a need for jazz hands in a film. Yeah, yeah, no tap numbers, no jazz hands. Right. - Yeah. Let's see another clip from Angel's Perch. Got another one of those?

dog barking faintly, insects buzzing and chirping

both laughing

What? You are so lazy. -

laughs

thunder rumbling

God, I hope it rains. We need it so bad. Where is she, Jack? She's in there, sleeping in the chair. I'm not talking about Nana. She died. What? About six months ago. How? What--where-- We were having a baby, and there were... Complications. Jack, I'm so sorry. I had no idea. - It's okay. Nobody here knows. - Not even your nana? She knew, but she forgot. The morning it happened... I was in this hospital waiting room. It was so sterile. I called her, and she just sobbed. Kept asking me why, and I-- I was just asking the same thing. So I'm a writer too, and I think that's the hardest process of the whole thing, is getting the script. And it's the most important, because you have to have a good script, or else these people have nothing to do, so... -

laughs

What was your biggest challenge in writing the script? Oh... well, I started writing this, uh, with no intention of producing it. I started writing this because it was a story that was kicking around in my head after the-- after my grandmother passed away. And I think it was just something that I had to get out. And the first draft was not great, and I just kept sort of chipping away at it and chipping-- it was lots of rewrites. And, ultimately, when I shared it with Kim, we were at a point-- I was at a point where I felt like, all right, I need to see if this thing is something that is worth us, like, taking a look at maybe producing. At that point, I wasn't even thinking about being in it. I just was like, "Here's this thing that I wrote, and I need to know what you think of it." And she read it, and, uh, it was like, "No, I think this is a story we should tell. Like, it's good." But to get back to your point about the script, I think it was-- it was rewrites. It was writing and rewrites. And ultimately, Charles, our director-- Kim and I worked on it for a long time together. I would take a pass and hand it to her for notes. We had a lot of people that we felt confident in in their feedback read it and give us some thoughts. Charles and I worked pretty relentlessly right up until a week before shooting to continue to hone and chip away and make sure that we were trimming the fat and telling the best story that we could. Every scene was about moving the plot forward or giving us some insight into keeping the script-- and making sure that every character made sense and had a role and a purpose in the film. Yeah. But, yeah, I think-- I think it was just-- to me, it was all about rewrites and continuing to chip away. Is it--was it hard being directed by someone else in, basically, what is your story? -

laughs

I--no. It was funny. When we met Charles, we had a ten-minute meeting. It was the shortest director meeting that we had, and we interviewed a few different people. And we were running late, and Charles had a meeting, and we said, like, "Hey, we can reschedule this." And we sat down, and he's, like, "We're only gonna need ten minutes." Like, "We don't need to talk anymore than that." And we were like, "Oh, this--who's this guy?" Like, he comes in as, like, ego and cocky-- "My schedules too packed." - Yeah, right? "I got a ton of meetings." - Yeah, yeah, yes. But he said, he was like, "It's like a first date, right?" Like pretty quickly if you're gonna ask that person out on a second date. And when we walked out of the meeting, sure enough, we were like, "No, this is our guy." And I trusted Charles implicitly. It was a lot of--we had-- I think we'd spent so much time working together and talking about the story and talking about the script and talking about the characters that I trusted him implicitly to tell the story that we were trying to tell. So I just--as an actor, I couldn't second-guess. I just turned myself over to him and let him-- and ultimately, he was great. Like, we just-- I couldn't have asked for a better collaborator. That's excellent. So what was your toughest-- you wore these three hats. Yeah. What did you find the most challenging? -

exhales

Um... I think, uh... Wow, I think they were all challenging for different reasons. I think writing was challenging, because, in some ways, while the film is not autobiographical, I was still dealing with a lot of-- the emotional stuff of it was difficult to, at times, sort of put on paper. I would certainly say that acting in this film in the house that was my grandmother's house, where I spent every Christmas of my life and every holiday of my life and every summer of my life, and having these moments that, while not directly-- not directly representative of but certainly had elements of what I went through with my own grandmother, that was probably the hardest. This scene bleeds right into the scene where Polly doesn't recognize Jack for the first time. And I remember when that happened, when I was by myself with my grandmother, and she looked at me, and I just saw it in her eyes that she had no idea who I was. And she said to me, "Well, you can stay here tonight, "but tomorrow, you're gonna have to-- I'm gonna have to ask you to go." And she laid down and went to bed, and I went upstairs, and I just sobbed. I was like-- "I just--she's gone." Like, she just... And I woke up the next morning, and I came downstairs, and she was like, "What do you want for breakfast?" Yeah. Crazy. - Yeah. But, yeah, I would say that those moments were probably the hardest. Yeah. Well, let's take another look at a clip from Angel's Perch. Jack, Jack, I was looking for you. They want to start the-- Well... where did this come from? Ginny did it. Oh, it's beautiful. - Yeah. So beautiful. Why are you crying? - I'm not. Something happened. Something happened. No, everything's fine. No, you called early in the morning. You were crying. Something about a baby.

sighs

Oh, my God. - It's okay. -

whispers

Oh, my God.

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She died. - It's okay. The baby and she died. Yeah. Ohh. Not the face you want to see When? Uh...

sniffles

About six months ago. Six months?

chair scraping

It's okay. - How could I not remember that? It's okay. No. It's not okay. Everybody keeps saying it's okay. You're right. It's not. When my voice no longer... Jack. Where will we be? I'm losing my mind. Yeah, you are. When the world that we made Is nothing but dust -

exhales sharply

So the film's called An gel's Perch. You never mention the title... - Yeah. In the film. - Yep. Talk about that decision. - Sure. It took us a long-- the title was the last thing to fall into place. It took us a long time to get to--to that title. It went through a lot of different iterations. But we were looking at old railroad terms, and Kim came across "the angel's perch," which was a reference to an old-timey caboose-- those old red cabooses. There's four seats at the very top, if you think about the structure of that. And there's windows up there. And that area is know as "the angel's perch," and when she came across that, we were like, "Oh, my gosh, like, that resonates on so many levels," not just as a-- for the film overall, but obviously, like, we're tying back to the themes of the railroad. And what was funny was, as we got close to production, Charles, our director, looked at me-- we were reading through the script, and he's like, "You know, we have this-- we never say it, and we also don't have any scenes that take place there." So we rewrote the scene between Jack and Ginny to take place in the perch so that we would at least have a hat tip to it, which was a--obviously, a great decision from a storytelling standpoint, but a terribly difficult decision from a production standpoint, because if you imagine that space being, like-- we would be, like, here. Right. - And it being that big. And you put a camera and a DP and the ACs and the lighting guy and the sound guy, and, like, we're all-- I mean, this. It's why, at that point, it's just two shots. You told me you couldn't even get a two-shot in there. -

laughs

Yeah. Yeah, it's just singles. We just go back and forth, yeah. - Well, that's great. Well, we enjoyed the film a lot, and we appreciate you being here, J.T., thanks. I'm really thrilled to be here. Thank you so much for having me. - Yeah, great. And thank you for watching Director's Cut. For more information on Angel's Perch, please go to wpt.org and click on Director's Cut. While you're there, send us an email or find out how to submit a film. And also don't forget to like WPT on Facebook or follow us on Twitter. I'm Pete Schwaba, and don't forget to hug your nana. Thanks for watching, and we'll see you next time on Director's Cut.

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both

Blessed savior That will guide us Till we reach That blissful shore Where the angels Wait to join us In God's praise Forever more

cheers and applause

both

Whoa, that was good.