“To mirth, to merriment… to manslaughter.”
Film and television director Barry Sonnenfeld will be the keynote speaker for opening night of the St. Louis Jewish Book Festival on Sunday, November 1st. Visit stljewishbookfestival.org for the latest information. Ticket information for this online Barry Sonnenfeld event can be found HERE
Barry Sonnenfeld’s outrageous and hilarious memoir Barry Sonnenfeld, Call Your Mother traces his idiosyncratic upbringing in New York City, his breaking into film as a cinematographer with the Coen brothers, and his unexpected career as the director behind such huge film franchises as The Addams Family and Men in Black, and beloved work like Get Shorty, Pushing Daises,and A Series of Unfortunate Events. Written with poignant insight and real-life irony, the book follows Sonnenfeld from childhood as a French horn player through graduate film school at NYU, where he developed his talent for cinematography. His first job after graduating was shooting nine feature length pornos in nine days. From that humble entrée, he went on to form a friendship with the Coen Brothers, launching his career shooting their first three films. Though Sonnenfeld had no ambition to direct, Scott Rudin convinced him to be the director of The Addams Family. It was a successful career move. He went on to direct many more films and television shows. Will Smith once joked that he wanted to take Sonnenfeld to Philadelphia public schools and say, “If this guy could end up as a successful film director on big budget films, anyone can.” This book is a fascinating and hilarious roadmap for anyone who thinks they can’t succeed in life because of a rough beginning.
Barry Sonnenfeld took the time to talk to We Are Movie Geeks about his book, his career, and of course, his mother.
Interview conducted by Tom Stockman October 11th, 2020
Tom Stockman: Hello Barry, so you’re promoting your book titled Barry Sonnenfeld, Call Your Mother.
Barry Sonnenfeld: That’s right
TS: What inspired you to write your memoirs?
BS: About 15 years ago, when I had nothing to do and just for fun, I wrote what would end up being one of the chapters of the book. I did nothing with it, it was just something to do. For ten years I had a column in Esquire magazine. The Editor–in-Chief of Esquire left and became a literary agent. He took me to lunch one day and asked me if I thought I had a book in me. So I told him about the story I had written 10 years earlier. That story was about my nine-day career filming nine full-length pornographic films. He said that if I could come up with two more stories, then we can sell it. So I wrote two more chapters. One on my fear of flying and one about being paged at Madison Square Garden while Jimi Hendrix was warming up to perform there. The page came over Madison Square Gardens PA system and everyone heard “Barry Sonnenfeld, call your mother!“ and that’s how the book got its title.
TS: Well that must’ve been embarrassing.
BS: It was profoundly embarrassing I was 17 years old and on a date with my high school girlfriend and there’s nothing worse than an entire section of Madison Square Garden chanting “Barry! Barry!“ as they could see me stand up and run to the payphone. That was in 1970.
TS: What was so important for your mother to have done that?
BS: She was worried about me. She told me I had to be home by 2am and it was 2:20am. First of all, it was amazing that she even got anyone to answer the phone at The Garden, and then get the message up the chain of command to get someone to announce it on the PA like it was a life or death situation. So asked her “Didn’t they tell you that the concert was still going on?“ and she said “Well they did, but they couldn’t prove that you were there.“ I was 20 minutes late for my arrival back home so she assumed that I was dead on the A-Train subway heading back up to Washington Heights.
TS: Was that typical behavior for her? What was your mother like?
BS: Yes, she was an overprotective Jewish mother. I was an only child. She said that if I ever went away to “Sleepaway School“ which most people call “college”, she would commit suicide. So I had to live at home for three years while I was in college. Then I could transfer as a senior to another college and my mother would commit suicide, so there I would have killed two birds with one stone. But then she reneged on her threat.
TS: If your mother were still living, what do you think she would think of your new book?
BS: The book is fairly mean to my parents but in the second to last chapter, I become nicer to them and explain some things. So she would probably read it, then cry for a while, then call me up and say “Oh Barry, Did you have to do that? “ She was proud of me but both of my parents were narcissists so they were both proud of me and competitive of me. I made eight appearances on the David Letterman show and each time I was on the Letterman show, my father would call me up afterwards and critique it like it was a one-man show and I could somehow make corrections to it the next day. He would say things like I seemed too nervous or I would cross my legs too much. I would just say “Thanks dad“. But my mother would probably be upset about the book, but at the same time enjoy the martyrdom and the fame of being ridiculed. It would be a mixed blessing, But the book iss pretty mean.
TS: Was your mother aware that you were working in the pornography industry?
BS: Not at the time. I went to graduate film school and discovered that I had a certain ability to be a cameraman. I had a basic understanding of how to light things and I had respect for certain lenses and how they were used. So when I got out of graduate film school, I decided that if I owned a camera, I could call myself a cameraman. So I bought a used 16 mm camera. This was long before the days of video of course. The buddy that I bought the camera with knew a producer of porno’s, so he got us a job shooting these nine feature-length porno film. But we could only charge them nine days of camera rental which paid for almost half of the cost of buying the camera. We did the porns so we could pay half the cost of the camera and make some money as crewmembers. But believe me, if you ever were to work on a porno movie, you would never want to watch one again. It was a truly horrific and unerotic experience.
TS: I can imagine. So your mother found out eventually?
BS: Yes I think my father was proud, but my mother was slightly horrified but everything I did was OK with her to a certain extent, so it all worked out.
TS: What did you learn shooting these porno film?
BS: It’s a very woman-centered business. The women have all the power because they can either help or hurt a man in maintaining an erection. I also learned that for all of these male actors, that’s their profession, that’s their living, and they’re good at it for the most part. Their problem is actually ejaculating so they could have sex for hours, but because they had to maintain that erection and avoid climaxing until we got all of those angles. It would take 10 minutes to do the dialogue for a scene, then 15 minutes to shoot various sexual positions and then anywhere from 3 to 4 hours of just taking naps and sitting around while the guy was getting ready to actually ejaculate. It was a very banal and depressing experience. Not what you would expect. There was no Joy or sexual excitement about being on a porn set.
TS: You went to NYU Film School in the 70s. Who were some of your well-known fellow students from that time?
BS: I was in the graduate program. There was an undergraduate program, and they were not related in the sense that they were on totally different campuses. In my class at NYU Graduate Film School from 1973 to 1976 there was Jim Jarmusch, Spike Lee, Bill Pope, another cinematographer who went on to shoot the Matrix movies. In fact he shot MEN IN BLACK Part 3 for me There was Susan Morse who left the film school to become an assistant editor and then went on to edit many Woody Allen movies. A guy named Barry Fanaro, who became the show runner and head writer for The Golden Girls. There were 26 students in my class and it’s amazing how many of them actually went on to have a successful career in the film business.
TS: How did you hook up with the Coen brothers?
BS: Totally by accident, but then again it goes back to me owning that 16mm Camera. I was at a Christmas party with a girl I knew named Hillary May. Joel Coen had gone to boarding school with Hillary. She had grown up in Connecticut, and there was all these people from Connecticut at this party and I really didn’t know anyone there. There was another guy there that I thought looked a bit like Howard Stern and he and I started talking. It was Joel Coen and he mentioned to me that he and his brother Ethan had just written their script for BLOOD SIMPLE. He said that he and Ethan we’re going to shoot a trailer as if it were a finished movie, with things like inserts in the back of cowboy boots, an abandoned road, things like that. No actors or dialogue. They were going to shoot this trailer and use that to raise money to make the film. They were going to show it to investment groups and people with money. They knew you can’t show a finished screenplay to an investment group that’s made up of people like doctors and dentists because they wouldn’t be able to read it and recognize it if was any good or not. By shooting a trailer and showing that to these investor groups they could think it looks like a good movie and something that they could invest in. The trailer showed that Joel and Ethan knew what they were doing and that it looked professional. Joel said that he was about to shoot this trailer and I told him that I owned a 16mm camera and Joel hired me on the spot. So I shot the trailer for them and it went really well. We became friends and it took about one year to raise the money for the feature which was $750,000. We had become such good friends that I was hired to shoot the movie. The first day on the set of BLOOD SIMPLE was the first day that either Joel, Ethan, or I had ever been on a movie set. None of us had worked our way up. Joel was never an assistant director or this or that. Ethan has never produced anything and I have never shot anything except those nine days of filming that pornography as well as a couple of short documentaries and industrial films. One of the things that I tell people in the book is to decide what you want to do in life, then figure out a way to do it. It’s something my dad told me so we decided that we were cameramen and producers and directors and followed through on it. None of us worked our way through the industry at all.
TS: When you were growing up were you a movie buff?
BS: Not at all! Joel and Ethan were, but I had no interest in the movies at all. It was just something that I discovered that I was good at. I thought that I wanted to be a still photographer. So there was the visual end of things that I really liked but I was not a movie buff. I rarely went to movies, even to this day. I am presently in Vancouver shooting a series for Apple, and the show’s writer keeps referencing these movie musicals and finally he stopped because he realize that perhaps with the exception of SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN or THE MUSIC MAN, I have never even seen a musical. But that has not stopped me from directing musicals. It’s been a lot of fun.
TS: Well maybe that’s why you have such a unique style to your directing. You were never trying to capture the style of a favorite director because you were never a movie buff. And that’s interesting.
BS: It is interesting and I think that more than movies, what influenced me the most in my shooting style is that I’m an only child. I think that with all of the movies that I both directed and was cinematographer on, there has been the camera, which is me. If you look at some of the films I’ve shot like RAISING ARIZONA or THREE O’CLOCK HIGH, or the Men in Black movies or THROW MAMA FROM THE TRAIN, The camera is definitely a character and has a point of view. I always say that the camera should be a storytelling device and not just a recording device. So many cameramen and directors use it just to record a story instead of using the camera to help tell the story in terms of camera moves or angles or how to design a scene for the most visual impact. So yes, I don’t feel like I am emulating some other director that I studied when I was growing up or anything like that.
TS: If someone were to make a film based on your memoir Barry Sonnenfeld Call Your Mother, what actor would you like to see play you and who would you like to see play your mother?
BS: Even though he is dead, the person that I could see best playing my mother is Vincent Gardenia.
TS: You’d like to see Vincent Gardenia play your mother?
BS: Yes. You heard me Vincent gardenia would have perfectly played my mother. Roger Ebert could have too, but Vincent is a better actor so I’m going to go with the dead Vincent Gardenia for my mother and I’ve had several discussions already with Max Greenfield to play me, although he is way better looking. One time I was on the David Letterman show, and you know they pre-interview ahead of time. I talked about my mother a lot, about being paged at Madison Square Garden, and told them about some other stuff. The night I was going to be on the show, the producer told me that they would like to talk about my relationship with my mother but he was worried that it could get kind of harsh. I told him to tell Dave to go wherever he wanted and I would follow, so he started to bring up my mother and I told him that Vincent Gardenia could be my mother’s photo double. What I didn’t know was that Dave was going to cut then to a photo of Vincent Gardenia. That got a big laugh. My mother was still alive at the time and I told him “my mother has more facial hair“. So again, my mom got to be a martyr and her friends would call and ask her how Barry could say such a thing. She got so much attention that it was sort of a mixed blessing for her.
TS: What projects are you working on now?
BS: I just started shooting this new show. The first day of shooting was last Friday. It’s for Apple and it is a six-part musical comedy with a great cast. Cecily Strong from Saturday Night Live, Keegan-Michael Key, Kristin Chenoweth, Alan Cumming, lots of great actors. In addition to that, I am in development with several other television ideas. I’ve really enjoyed working on television for the past five or six years, more than I did working on films. I directed half of the episodes for the show A Series of Unfortunate Events for Netflix over three years. One thing I have in development is that Warner Bros. has optioned my book Barry Sonnenfeld Call Your Mother. Max Greenfeld has already agreed, if it ever gets picked up, to play me. I’ve got some other projects that are not off the ground yet, but nine out of ten of these things never happen. You can develop a lot, but very few of these things ever really go all the way from an idea to a finished product.
TS: Your last theatrical film was NINE LIVES which I had some positive things to say on our site’s podcast at the time. I rather enjoyed that film.
BS: Thank you. I think that film didn’t know what it wanted to be. It was not juvenile enough to be a movie for children and it had some mature themes but not enough to appeal to adults. It fell between a rock and a hard place. I really enjoyed working on that film with a girl name Malina Weissman, who I ended up working with again on A Series of Unfortunate Events. I also enjoyed working with Jennifer Garner and Christopher Walken, who has always been one of my heroes.
TS: I thought Kevin Spacey was a bit oddly cast in the lead of NINE LIVES.
BS: Kevin was already cast before I came aboard that production I was not involved in his casting. I’ll leave it at that.
TS: How has the Covid and the shutdown affected things for you?
BS: It’s definitely affected the industry. I’m in Vancouver right now and it is one of the safest cities and the studio has a protocol in place so there are different zones when different people are allowed on the set. When the actors come in, the rest of the crew, the grips and electricians, have to leave. We have to rehearse to something they called a ‘witness camera’ so all of the people that would normally be on the set, like the stand-ins, have to watch from another room. So this all slows things down a little bit, Everyone gets tested three times a week but I’m surprised it hasn’t slowed us down more.
TS: You live in Colorado, correct?
BS: Actually my wife and I just sold our house in Colorado. it was on 62 acres and we loved it. We were at 10,000 feet though, and frankly living at that elevation starts to wear on you, It’s harder to sleep, it’s harder to recover from illness. So my wife and I have bought property here in Vancouver and moved here. We’ve bought a 42 acre farm which we call Green Acres because we are city folk living on the farm.
TS: Is it true that you have a private bathroom designed to look like a public bathroom complete with stalls and urinals?
BS: No. We did not design it to look like a public bathroom. That rumor got started because I’ve always been a big believer in the urinal. It’s the end of the husband and wife discussion of seat up/seat down so for the last 20 years, whenever we’ve built or bought a house I’ve always put in a urinal.
TS: Best of luck with the book and all of your future projects. Thanks you taking the time to speak to me today. I have been a fan of your work for many years.
BS: It’s been my pleasure.
On Sunday, November 1st, Barry Sonnenfeld will speak about his new book Call Your Mother: Memoirs of a Neurotic Filmmaker. Now in its 42nd year, the Festival is nationally recognized for both its excellence and its size – it is one of the largest in the country. People from all backgrounds and faiths come to Festival events to hear premier speakers on topics such as history, music, politics, cooking, family, religion, sports, and more. This year, the Festival expects to attract even more people through its accessible online format. The Jewish Book Festival, which runs November 1-8, is a program of the Jewish Community Center. Festival-goers can take advantage of the Premier Pass, which grants access to all Jewish Book Festival Events in November including preview events before the official start.. Passes will go on sale September 1st. Visit stljewishbookfestival.org for the latest information on summer events leading up to the festival.
