First time director, Jeff Kingery, talks about his new film, “Table 47.” Before becoming a film director, Jeff was the radio play-by-play broadcaster for the NBA’s Denver Nuggets for 11 years and for MLB’s Colorado Rockies for 17 seasons.
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You were a sports broadcaster on radio and television for over 30 years. Now you’ve made a feature film. Why the switch?
“I’ve always loved movies and used to shoot 8mm monster and spy movies with the neighborhood kids when I was growing up. So you could say it is a return to my first love. When I decided to retire from broadcasting, my one concern was filling the creative void left by not being on the air. I felt writing and ultimately directing movies would be the creative challenge I was looking for and I was right!”
You broadcast NBA games and Major League Baseball. Any comparisons between professional sports and making movies?
“Many. Teams look for the best players coming out of training camp. Essentially, that’s what an audition does. Managers and coaches try to put their players in situations where their strengths are utilized. That’s what a director does. He uses the audition process to find the most talented actors and then works with them in their roles so that their particular ability can shine.”
Do you “win” making a movie like a team wins a game?
“There’s a saying I like in sports – “It isn’t a try hard league, it’s a do good league.” So while you have to have effort to be successful, it’s not enough. You need superior performances from your actors and skilled work from your crew. And the best teams, whether on the field or on the set, succeed because they have a passion for what they do. Also, failure is not an option. In sports, failure can mean the loss of a game. In making a movie, we have the luxury of another take.”
How did Table 47 come about?
“My writing partner, Mike Brody, and I had written a few scripts, but we felt that none of those were right for a first film. Most of that had to do with cost. So our idea was to write an engrossing screenplay. And we wanted a movie that had very few locations, few, if any, special effects, and zero stunts, all with the idea of keeping costs low. I told Mike of a story that had been in my mind for a while. It was the basic idea for Table 47. He said he liked it. I said, “You write it, I’ll direct it.” We both put in some money. We found investors that graciously helped us with the rest and here we are.”
How tough is it to raise money?
“Tougher than making the movie! It’s not easy asking people to give you money when you can’t guarantee them anything in return. I mean, we hope the film is successful and that we make money, but there is no way to predict that. Our investors understand, but they believe in us and the project. For that we are eternally grateful, because without them, we wouldn’t have a movie.”
What was yours and Mike’s thoughts about the theme of the film and where you wanted it to go?
“I’ve always liked film noir. The good guy who gets in too deep with the femme fatale. Then I like the idea of him figuring it out. Is it too late? Does she get away with murder? Does he turn the tables? Does he survive? Our thought in this one was that, “Things aren’t always what they seem.” The main character even says that line. And we tried to be true to that in each character. There is a mystery involving all of them, their goals, their needs and how they go about getting what they want.”
What about the ending. You have two?
“I’ve always been a guy who stays through the credits. You never know what might pop up. Think of Matthew Broderick at the very end of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Or outtakes. Or in the case of Table 47, something critical to the resolution of the story. I liked the idea of having Table 47 end with a certain scene and feeling, then starting the credits and THEN showing another scene before the final fade out. It will create interesting conversations because the audience members who leave at the very end will have a different take on what happens than the person who leaves when the credits start.”
What did you learn making your first feature, Table 47?
“I’m still learning. What I found is that the crew on more than one occasion saved a rookie director. I put a lot of faith in that group. I learned to listen to the cast, because they had ideas that made a scene better. I also learned that everyone looks to you, as the director, to make the final call. On everything. So you listen to ideas, you take what works for you, you make a decision and you move forward. Like Don Henley sings, “Don’t look back, you can never look back.”
“I’ll tell you what scared me. We were shooting a scene in a hot tub. We had lights and even though we had crew members watching them like a hawk, I knew the water and electricity didn’t mix. And when one of the actors in the tub accidentally hit the button that turned on the jets, everybody jumped! Then we all had a good laugh and shot the scene.”
“We had a day where our two lead actors, Mike Haskins (The Aviation Cocktail, I Saw the Light) and Danielle Prall (Teddy Boy), had very emotional scenes. I’m amazed at whatever place it is where an actor goes to pull up the feelings needed. In our case, it must have been a very dark place. At the end of that day, they asked me how I felt. I felt terrific! Walking on air, because they had given me what I wanted in the scenes. I asked them how they felt and they both said they were exhausted. They’d left it all on the set. They wanted to go home and sleep and I wanted to celebrate. Very different emotions and yet everybody was happy.”
You used some local celebrities in a scene.
“I had a popular Denver radio morning team in mind to play a scene with lead actor Mike Haskins. They all met the day we were going to shoot the scene. I told them I needed about 30 seconds and where the scene started and what needed to happen. They went off to discuss what they wanted to do, figured out the lines and came back. I didn’t know what they were going to do. We used a master shot and they did two flawless takes. We used the first one.”
“Sort of. Risa Scott (Jean Claude Van Damme’s Damn Van) read for the lead female role of Amy Cain. We thought she wasn’t right for that, but loved her ability. There was a male role to be cast, that of the main male character’s wing man. After seeing Risa, we knew a woman would bring a different dimension to the role and that more could be done with a female character. So “Scott” became “Scottie.” And strange the role was written as “Scott” and it turned out Risa had the same last name as well.”
“Not so much bad, as understanding what making a film is all about and the limits of the crew. We worked on a very small budget. Most of the crew had other jobs. We’d have a crew call for 6am and people would come in having barely slept because their full time job had ended a few hours before. One day we just stopped early and sent everyone home because we weren’t getting good work done. As the shoot went on, we tried when we could make the set calls a little later.”
You finish shooting, but you still have to put it all together.
“For that I thank Jeff Deel. He’s a phenomenal editor who did all our post production work. I think the editor-director relationship is one of the most critical. We were on the same page quite a bit in terms of what we were looking for and he brought all of that to life in the way he cut the film. I also was thrilled to work with Austin Lawrence, a brilliant young talent who composed the score and a fabulous singer/songwriter Kandyce Knight, who wrote and sang the title track, “RUN.”
Where do you get character names? And Table 47?
“For the main character, Peter Gryszek, the inspiration was a baseball player named Doug Gwosdz. He was a catcher who played for the San Diego Padres in the early ‘80s. I always remembered him because of the spelling of his name and his nickname: “Eyechart.” The spelling of Gryszek fell into place after that and the nickname was used in the script. We say our movie is film noir. Stark. Dark. Moody. Cynical. With plot twists and unexpected endings. The main female character’s name, Amy Cain, is an homage to the master of that genre, James M. Cain. A lot of Table 47 takes place at a table in Gryszek’s Bar and Restaurant. As a baseball broadcaster, I always enjoyed watching Tom Glavine pitch for the Braves. He won over 300 games and is now in the Hall of Fame. He wore number 47.”
“I’ve got several in ideas mind, one I wrote and one my partner wrote and one that’s just floating in my head.”
“I have to thank our wonderful distributor, Indie Rights. They believed in our film and because of their hard work Table 47 is available on many popular video sources (Amazon Prime, iTunes, Vudu, Google Play, Vimeo) plus Blu-ray and DVD through the website: http://www.table47.com or the Table 47 Facebook page.”
Director Jeff Kingery Talks About His Latest Film, “Table 47” First time director, Jeff Kingery, talks about his new film, "Table 47." Before becoming a film director, Jeff was the radio play-by-play broadcaster for the NBA's Denver Nuggets for 11 years and for MLB's Colorado Rockies for 17 seasons.
