In 1998, an aspiring filmmaker enlisted bay area friends, strangers and locations for a short movie he hoped would launch his career. That was the easy part.
By LENNIE BENNETT
Published March 19, 2004
[Times photos: Cherie Diez 1998]
John Reimer, as Johnny Blue, and Sherry Romito, as Amy, one of his friends, film a scene from Johnny Blue in downtown St. Petersburg.
Gene Howes, the writer-producer-director of Johnny Blue, sits in his office at Tampa Digital Studios in front of a painting of Johnny Blue done by a friend.
John Reimer works for a fashion designer in Tampa and is a part-time artist, doing metal kinetic sculptures, such as this one titled Red Vines, that are sold in local galleries. He has had some commercial work since Johnny Blue but no film work.
John Reimer is filmed walking down Third Street N across from Williams Park in St. Petersburg. Johnny Blue was shot over three weeks in 1998.
Gene Howes has waited five years for his moment. Or his 29 moments, to be specific, the running time in minutes of Johnny Blue, a short film he wrote and directed.
It's premiering tonight at the Performing Arts Theater on the Ybor City campus of Hillsborough Community College, part of the Festival of the Moving Image being held through Sunday in Tampa.
Even Howes, who tends to be an unreconstructed optimist, anticipates nothing great happening, expects no supernova flash of acclaim. He's happy Johnny Blue is finally getting a public airing. And that many of the cast and crew will be reunited, briefly, at the opening.
Like the romantic, sweetly sad plot of the movie, real life has conferred no Hollywood happy ending on Johnny Blue's participants. Most have simply gotten on with their lives since filming ended 51/2 years ago. Some still work in commercial film and video production, as Howes does. One lives in a retirement community in Michigan. The whereabouts of another, unknown.
But in 1998, when Johnny Blue was filmed, only hope and great expectations lay before the group.
Howes, then 32, and his business partner, Rhonda Davis, 33, owned a commercial film and video company, Skyway Productions, in St. Petersburg. Howes aspired to make movies - not training films or company videos, but real movies - so they teamed up to make a short one, with Davis producing. They hoped to launch it on the film festival circuit, considered a stepping-stone to breaking into feature films.
Johnny Blue was shot around St. Petersburg during September and October. John Reimer, who had done work in commercials locally but earned a living selling exercise equipment, was cast as Johnny. Megan Brown, a student who had never studied acting, was Nikolle, the object of his desire. Dallas Zonkers, a retired city administrator who developed a second career as an older character actor in commercials and local theater, played Johnny's landlord.
The quirkiest addition was Larry, a homeless man who routinely gave business owners in downtown's Jannus Landing area fits because of his constant panhandling and the full-time residence he set up on benches along Central Avenue, including one outside the offices of Skyway Productions.
Larry, the cast and crew would discover, did not consider inclusion in the movie a chance to change his lifestyle; between takes, he used his time to solicit handouts, consume cheap alcoholic beverages or wander off. Larry also had several suppurating wounds Howes and Davis suspected were serious staph infections. He seemed unwilling to take either medicine or much direction. An informal pool gave low odds that Larry would stick around for the entire shooting schedule.
The production was sophisticated. Howes had originally planned to make a 15-minute black and white movie without sound. But Red Lizard Films, a Tampa production company, lent an upgraded camera package that allowed for dialogue. First Unit, a lighting company, donated a 3-ton light truck to create a consistent and moody ambience. Howes had planned to be the cameraman, too, but Rob Allen, a local cinematographer, signed on.
The cast and crew - several dozen total and almost all professionals in their assigned duties - donated their time.
"It's difficult when everyone's a volunteer," says Davis, who was in charge of scheduling the shoots. "As much as you try to manage that process, you really can't, in the end."
But she managed to corral everyone for a good part of three weeks for the shoot. A city street was blocked off so a camera attached to a boom on a crane could film Johnny outside his rundown apartment. She persuaded the owners of the old train station on 22nd Street S to open it, and a set designer converted one of its dusty, sweltering rooms into a cool interior where Johnny lived.
The building had no power, so they snaked yards of heavy-duty extension cords around it, and Davis borrowed massive fans to keep everyone from heat prostration in the windowless, unair-conditioned space. She commandeered Budious Maximus, a hip downtown nightclub, and filled it with friends who bought their own drinks at the bar, simultaneously throwing a party and getting a scene down. A large collection of paintings was crucial to the story, so Davis convinced several dozen local artists to create and donate them, and a gallery owner to put them up for several days during the shoot. Then Davis sold them at an auction that brought in several thousand dollars for the cash-strapped production.
It was one of many ways she and Howes raised a good part of the $30,000 needed to pay for expenses they couldn't get donated: the celluloid, for example.
She estimates that another $90,000 accrued in donated time and equipment.
Filming wrapped in October, and Howes began editing the movie. Another friend wrote the soundtrack.
Howes and Davis hoped to premiere the movie with a big splash in January 1999 at the Beach Theatre in St. Pete Beach. From there, next stop Sundance or Toronto . . . after that, who knew?
This being real life, Johnny Blue did not premiere that January. It wasn't even finished until 2002, when the original score was finally added, a drawn-out process that involved recording in, among other places, Nashville.
"When people are doing it for free, it's usually the last thing they get to," Howes says.
By that time, Skyway Productions had folded, a victim of the economy, he says. He entered the film into a number of big festivals, including Sundance.
"I was at Sundance two years ago," Howes says. "Johnny Blue wasn't. Maybe I didn't market it properly. Maybe it wasn't what they were looking for."
Probably not.
The story is a conventional romance in which Johnny and Nikolle dance around their attraction to each other but fail to connect because they won't risk rejection and can't declare their real feelings. It's a story - not a new one - of missed opportunities and misunderstandings delivered in a conventional narrative. It has a self-consciousness to it, especially in the actors' performances, and a lack of fluidity in its telling. Perhaps the best element is its music, a bluesy soundtrack richly delivered. It's certainly not in the league of Breathless, for example, Jean-Luc Godard's first film, in 1960, a plate-shifting movie that changed modern cinema.
"(Johnny Blue is) a very good first movie," says David Audet, an artist, filmmaker and organizer of the Festival of the Moving Image, in which Johnny Blue has been selected as one of five short feature films. "But all first-time movies have flaws."
Still, Audet concedes Johnny Blue is in this festival for possibly the same reason it was not selected by others.
"I suppose there is some politics involved, some aggressiveness with a lot of festivals," Audet says. "The truth is, I know the person who put Johnny Blue in my hands. I know John Reimer (Johnny), and he gave me a copy. I get lots of really good short films from all over the place for the festival, and I have to turn them down just because I don't have room for them. So maybe it is who you know."
Davis, who hasn't been involved with Johnny Blue for several years, is a freelance production manager living in Tampa "but working all over the place and doing really well." She says she doesn't see Howes often, but "Johnny Blue created a little family. A lot of the people who worked on it became really close friends that I see a lot."
Reimer, 39, still lives in St. Petersburg but works in Tampa in "sales and marketing" for a fashion designer. He also is a part-time artist, creating Calderlike mobiles sold in local galleries. He has secured commercial work but no other film work.
"This is a very large market for low-end production," Reimer says. "I don't have the faith or confidence in what they sell."
Megan Brown (Nikolle) is majoring in religion at Columbia University in New York.
"I still hope to be an actress," she says. "I find what I'm learning with Buddhism and Tantric studies and how we create and are created by perceptions a method for learning to be an actor."
She appeared in an off-Broadway show last year and has had small commercial jobs and roles in two other short films.
Davis, Reimer and Brown plan to attend the opening of their movie.
Dallas Zonkers (the landlord), 86, and his wife of 60 years live in Michigan near their family.
"That might have been his last acting job," says Zonkers' son-in-law, Michael Roman, who lives in Clio, Mich. "He was getting a little forgetful at that point. He has good days and bad days."
When his daughter, Bonnie Roman, asked him about Johnny Blue, he didn't remember it, she says.
Larry finished the shoot, but no one is sure of his later movements.
"We haven't seen him for several years," says Emmanuel Roux, who has a small part in Johnny Blue as a fisherman and whose Redwoods Restaurant sidewalk was a favorite loitering place of Larry's.
"I heard he died," Howes says.
Howes now works at Tampa Digital Studios, the place that provided free editing services, "writing and directing everything from commercial spots to long-format films like this piece on hate crimes I just finished that'll be shown to high school kids." He has won several advertising awards and completed a documentary for the Ybor City Museum Society.
Audet thinks films such as Johnny Blue have a difficult time being seen.
"There just aren't many places for them. Who's going to show it on TV? Maybe the Sundance Channel," Audet says. "A 30-minute movie is a learning tool."
Howes hopes that with one festival on Johnny Blue's resume, entry into others will be easier.
"But at this point," he says, "the best I can hope for is what I've already gotten, which is what I learned. All the mistakes, all the weak points are things to make stronger in the next one."
He's working on a script for a short movie "that will take place in my back yard. It has to do with the (Hillsborough) River. It'll be easier to make but not cheaper."
Howes has no idea how it will be financed; he says he still owes money to friends and family who extended loans during the final phases of Johnny Blue.
Along with lives having changed, so, too, have many of the places where Johnny Blue was shot. Budious Maximus closed several years ago. The coffee shop with the right retro appeal on the corner of Central Avenue and Third Street has gone through several culinary themes and is currently unoccupied. The railroad depot has been transformed into the St. Petersburg Clay Company and is now air-conditioned. The art gallery across from Williams Park is a hair salon.
Life goes on. So does the show.
Times researcher Kitty Bennett contributed to this story.
Johnny Blue will be shown at 9 tonight at the Performing Arts Center at the Ybor City campus of Hillsborough Community College on the corner of Palm Avenue and 14th Street in Tampa. Another short film, Joyce Story, also will be shown. Tickets are $5. The event is part of the Festival of the Moving Image, which continues through Sunday at venues throughout Tampa. For a full schedule and more information, go to www.yborfilmfestival.com
