Tom Kalin Swoon: The NON-Player

Actually, what Tom should really hope for are magazine editors who leave quotes like that in. Who knows, in fact, whether this somewhat desperate segue will ever see the light of day? The truth is, when I interview someone, I'm as quick as anyone to cut out the speechifying, but in this case, I'm happy to let Kalin speak his mind. We both want something from the other here-it's very much like doing a Hollywood deal. Besides, we both know how short-lived good press is. You can't eat your press clippings, for instance. A great man said that, I think. I can't remember who it was. Actually, I think it was Bette Midler.

"There's the paradox of the perceived fabulousness of fame," Kalin says, "and the reality that we just paid our entire advance to the film lab because we owe them every penny. I don't have health insurance, I have no salary-I am very broke. You get to go to the festivals and have great press and your day-to-day conditions aren't so great." He pauses, then continues with a touch of resignation, "There's a way out. I know it. I will make music videos. I'll do it. That's a real agenda for Christine and myself this year-short-term commercial work that's not too painful. To get health insurance-that's my goal for the next six months. It's pathetic."

But Tom--there's an answer to your money woes, and its name is Hollywood. Take it from me. With a hot film under your belt, now's just the time to make that movie. Well? "I'm not extremely familiar with the Hollywood filmmaking community," Kalin answers carefully. "Only by such fabulous things as You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again, which I read with great delight." You and me both. I tell Kalin that everything he thinks about Hollywood is true. "That's why I liked The Player," he smiles. "I knew it was telling the truth. It was also like reading a triple issue of People magazine-it was trashy in a great way." Kalin could come and do a well-needed number on Hollywood, I suppose, but I'm not going to sit here and try to convince him to do it-I wouldn't want that on my conscience.

"I just don't know how I would go about making feature films through the Hollywood system," Kalin says. "Because I don't ever want to make a movie I couldn't live with on every level." Isn't there something he can think of that would pique his interest in Hollywood? "Tell Juliette Lewis for me-if she wants to make me respectable, she can do it at any time. I have a script ready for her." Kalin lights up another cigarette. "I'm not a purist who hates Hollywood on principle. I just don't see how it'd work for me. I'd have to be on a long leash--very long. And I don't want everything to be made easy by a big fat check and development hell."

Big fat checks and development hell are what allow me to travel so often, but the fact is, Kalin is right. The CEO of Intolerance Productions, with his work-boots and his serious stride coming down the Hollywood corridors of power, would probably have all the execs under their desks, thinking "earthquake?" I don't even bother to ask Kalin if he's familiar with the Hollywood studio which, I happen to know, is gay-run top to bottom. What does it matter, since all they care about is lowest-common-denominator profit-making movies, just like everyone else?

Oh boy-all this Hollywood talk has me thinking about money. I am thinking about millions of dollars, and what they do and don't do for your sense of freedom. Filmically speaking, of course. Swoon's entire budget was probably less than Alec Baldwin's expense account, but Swoon is Kalin's movie. He didn't have to worry about Alec pausing mid-take to say with shake of the head, "I, ah, you know, I'm sorry, Tom, but-but Kim just doesn't see my character killing the kid."

Kalin has by now answered all of my questions and listened patiently while I rambled on in sleep-deprivation mode. It seems right, then, to tell him about what I came across in Lenny Bruce's autobiography. Lenny was explaining why Time magazine labeled him "'the sickest of them all.' The reason: In connection with the Leopold-Loeb case, I had said, 'Bobby Franks was snotty.' Of course, if Nathan Leopold had any sense of humor, the day he got out he would have grabbed another kid!" Kalin laughs knowingly-he's already heard it. "People were so offended," he says. "I mean, I probably shouldn't say this loudly or publicly-people are already annoyed-but I understand Lenny's point and I think it's funny myself. Swoon has a certain amount of black humor about it. Not to denigrate the horrible loss of a child, but there is a way in which treating murder in a really casual way, as a kind of hostile gesture-I understand that. Whether that's a good or a bad thing-it's certainly volatile."

On my way uptown, I stop off in a grim little hole-in-the-wall bar for a pick-me-up; through the cigar smoke, I can just make out a small, authentically yellowed poster of JFK on the wall, and a much larger one of 01' Blue Eyes. "It's Sinatra's World," the poster reads. "We just live in it." I take a moment to scan the place, noticing for the first time that it's filled with grizzled men in plaid jackets reading the Daily Racing Form. That would explain, I guess, the hostile looks coming my way, though it takes me a minute to realize the reason: my hair's over my collar, my earring's showing and I've asked for one of those foreign beers. Oh well, the hell with these guys. I hop a cab, the driver of which has some definite opinions about the Los Angeles riots: "I'll tell you, Archie Bunker, he said some great things and he said some really funny things. And one of the great things he said, which I also thought was funny, was: 'They ain't gonna be happy until they're white.'"

I ponder this for a moment. You know, I haven't actually been oppressed here-I am never oppressed, here or anywhere. I don't feel particularly guilty about that either, which probably explains why I am politically incorrect. And I am going back to Hollywood soon, where, as my idol Eli Cross says in The Stunt Man, "the setting sun bleeds into a million swimming pools a man can hide in." Hide I will, but for how long? Archie Bunker said some funny things and some great things. It is Sinatra's world, isn't it? And Wildmon's. I guess that's what Kalin has been telling me.

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Christopher Hunt wrote Moveline's "Edge of the Apocalypse" column. He is presently on sabbatical. Hunt's most recent film projects include Buddy!, a musical version of Mann's Buddenbrooks, and a sex farce, Sixteen If She's a Day.

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