Dirty Harry’s Place…

Writer/director/actor D.B. Sweeney with the MP’s after a screening of Two Tickets To Paradise at the Al Asad Marine Base in Western Iraq

D. B. Sweeney in an email to me: There’s nothing on this planet like the feeling of watching 500 combat ready Marines come to attention for the playing of the Star Spangled banner before they screen your movie.

Nothing.

Actors like D.B. Sweeney don’t come around much anymore, actors you easily identify with who are also sympathetic, talented, and carry with them a touch of pathos which alerts you to something deeper stirring within them. And it’s that “something deeper” that makes Sweeney’s characters instantly memorable and interesting. Whether its his iconic turn as the lovesick Dish in Lonesome Dove, the tortured ‘Shoeless’ Joe Jackson in Eight Men Out, or  the Tamer of the Spoiled in The Cutting Edge, Sweeney’s mere presence tells us to hang in there, that there’s something going on within this character more than worth the ninety-minutes to find out.  

After two decades of steady, reliable work as an actor, something happened after September 11th, 2001 that convinced him to step away for a while and risk his own money on Two Tickets To Paradise (due on DVD July 22nd), a film he co-wrote, directed, and stars in. A passion piece produced with care for the kind of people Hollywood doesn’t make movies for anymore.

Since completion, Sweeney’s brought a little bit of Hollywood directly to the men and women who volunteer to do the dangerous work of insuring 9/11 never happens again. Here’s just a few of his screening stops:

15 US installations in Germany and Italy, 7 air ground/bases in Iraq, 1 in Kuwait
Aboard the USS NIMITZ in the middle of the Pacific (en route from Honolulu to San Diego); Camp Pendleton; Ft Bragg; Ft Gordon; Ft Hood; Ft Bliss; Ft McPherson; Ft Benning; for Navy and Marine recruiters in L.A.

And more coming. Next is Ft Lewis. In between, Two Tickets has been playing the festival scene, picking up a small horde of awards along the way. 

D.B. was gracious enough to agree to an interview which will run here in two parts. The second half will post Monday.  (There’s a purchase link below for Two Tickets to Paradise, but you can also help the movie’s pre-orders by immediately adding it to your Netflix of Blockbuster queue.)

DIRTY HARRY’S PLACE: First off, D.B., thanks so much for doing this. I’ve no doubt that with the July 22^nd DVD release date for Two Tickets To Paradise, these are busy times, so thanks for taking a little with us. On the phone you told me the story of where the idea came from to make a film/ this film. It was September 11^th and some firefighters.

D.B. SWEENEY: I’m from NY; most of the guys I grew up with became cops, teachers, fireman or went into the Service. I’m the only one in show biz. Back in the Fall and Winter of 2001, there were simply not enough NYFD honor guards to properly honor all the fallen right away. So these funerals went on for months. One night in December I was sitting with two guys who had been to their umpteenth fire department funeral and corresponding ‘night at the pub’ after and I suggested they take a break from the bar part of the routine for a night. ‘Go bowling…go to a movie’ They looked at each other and one said ‘Movie? Nobody makes movies for us anymore’. I immediately knew he was right and decided to try to do something about it. I just didn’t expect it to take so long.

Two Tickets is listed on IMDB as your directing debut. Had you ever directed before in any capacity? A short film…?

I directed a short called “the Window” a few years back. With the great Charlie Durning and Martin Sheen. Only a one day shoot but a good experience.

So, you step onto the set day one with the added pressure of having to direct yourself. What did you shoot? How did you prepare? What did it feel like?

I was pretty confident directing. I started out directing plays back in the early ‘80’s, so I knew how to talk to actors. Plus to last as long as I have in this business, you learn to take care of yourself when the director is flailing about trying to figure how to shoot a scene. I knew it was always good to ‘make’ your first day (complete the day’s scheduled work), so I planned a bit on the light side. Give the crew would confidence we could get the movie done. I knew the script inside and out and I had a sense of what I wanted it to look like, so I felt very confident. I didn’t story board except for action sequences. My fingerpaintings always got a good, derisive laugh.

How many days was the shoot?

DB: We had scheduled to shoot 25 days in Wilmington, NC then 3 days in CA (the stadium stuff and the Ed Harris carnival. I ended up shooting three more pickup days. (A camera and five guys on the crew) and then did my edit. After the movie played a few Festivals, I felt like I could make it better. I remember winning the Savannah film festival and walking up to the stage thinking “I’ve got a lot of work to do”. So I pulled the movie back, shot three more days (tiny crew again) and then finally two days in Miami. (Me operating the camera with a non-English speaking assistant camera man…as bare bones as you can get…)

You told me that you put your own money into the film. Was that your only source of financing?

I had saved some money and had equity in my house to borrow against. So I did. Foolishly. Luckily, I found an angel to take half of it off of me and that eased the pressure a little.

So, you and your writing partner, Brian Currie, want to tell a story — want to make a movie. Where did the idea come from, the seed that grew Two Tickets into a feature?

I really wanted to play a comedic role. Somehow I got put into the ‘intense actor’ cubby hole and don’t get many comedies to look at it. So I wanted to create a role for myself. I had a notion of making fun of all the crappy yet egotistical musicians who have a blindspot about their singing or playing (dozens of actors…and major stars fit this mold). Brian (Currie) and I had a lot of conversations about what we liked and disliked in movies. We really wanted to do a movie about ‘guys’. American guys, not Hollywood guys. The guys we grew up with on the East Coast. Guys who never left home. Guys who feel like maybe they didn’t get everything they thought was coming their way. And that became one of the themes: disappointment. As we both had athletic backgrounds, we drew on a lot of our experiences and observations of people who had great success in high school. Writing with Brian was the best part of the movie. We laughed and laughed.

You know, I’ve never worked with a writing partner and have always wondered how you make it work. Are you guys in the same room all the time? Is he doing one scene while you do another? How did you work through the creative differences?

The good part about having a partner to write with is you’ve got company. Writing is a very lonely process and it makes it more fun to go through the ups and downs with somebody. The bad news is, you have to schedule writing sessions and that’s inefficient. It’s also like any other relationship: you never get everything you want but you live with the things you don’t like (in terms of your partner’s input) because you know the relationship is worth it. We’re working on some new stuff together and it’s really hard for us now because Brian’s in Boston looking after his sick Mom.

How long did it take to write the draft you considered done? How many drafts? How many months? Creative, how did you find your way to the draft you were finally ready to show others? What were the difficult moments in finishing the script?

We did 25 drafts give or take. I’m blessed to have some really talented writer friends who read later drafts. Tony Gilroy took the trouble and so did Clark Gregg. I think you have to be careful not to solicit too many opinions. Those two guys were a huge help, but sometimes readers forget what it is you’re asking for: a few concrete suggestions for improvement. Not the script they would have written. We spent almost 2 years getting it right. Not non-stop…we were both doing it in between making a living.

So, you have a finished draft you’re happy with. Did you know you wanted to direct it? That you were the only one to tell this story?

It’s all tricky. You think you’re in a good spot, you put it aside for three weeks and then you realize “a new scene here” would really help a section but that means altered a chunk of it structurally. I did NOT intend to direct it. That was not my initial intention. I just wanted to play Billy McGriff. The directors who were ‘get-able’ were not attractive to me. I thought I could wreck it as well as any of them.

Did you shop it at all, or just go to work producing it yourself?

We took it around and had a few offers on the script. But the conditions of setting it up somewhere always seemed to defeat why I wanted to do it in the first place. They were okay with me as McGriff but the guys they wanted for the other two roles were not acceptable to us. So I dove in and never looked back.

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