“Love & Taxe$,” a new film directed by Craig Tollis and Ken Feinberg, is playing at the Cobb International Film Festival on Aug. 2.
The film is set in the 1970s, following the tumultuous love story between a waitress (Alexis Abrams) and her accountant (Jake Reiner), each scene taking place during their once-a-year meeting where he helps her with her taxes. The script was written by TV writer and producer Lloyd J. Schwartz, the son of “Gilligan’s Island” and “The Brady Bunch” creator Sherwood Schwartz.
Feinberg, who also founded the Atlanta-based acting studio Creative Studios of Atlanta, met Schwartz through mutual friends upwards of 20 years ago. According to Feinberg, Schwartz offered him the script to “Love & Taxe$” around that time,, but it was only during the pandemic that he found the time and money to be able to make something of it.
Ahead of the Aug. 2 screening, which takes place at 6 p.m., Rough Draft Atlanta spoke with Feinberg about the making of the film. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
I was listening to an interview with you, and I heard you mention that Lloyd J. Schwartz, who wrote this script, was a mentor of yours. Could you talk about that relationship and how you guys met?
Ken Feinberg: I met him, like, 20 plus years ago. Somebody who was friends with my parents – I can’t remember who it is now – went on a cruise, and they met Lloyd’s parents, Sherwood Schwartz and his wife. Sherwood was the creator of “Gilligan’s Island” and “The Brady Bunch,” and Lloyd was his son, who worked for him.
They became friends on this cruise. I don’t know if you have ever been on a cruise or not, but you sit with the same people for dinner. I guess they were at the same table with Lloyd’s parents. I got this phone call – go meet Sherwood Schwartz!
He was very kind. He was like, I can’t help you, I’m retired. But you should meet my son. I met Lloyd, and Lloyd was very nice. He would answer all of my questions. He offered me this script a long time ago. “I got this script that you could make on a low budget.” Problem was, I didn’t have enough nickels to scrape together to make a low budget film at that point in my career. Then, during the [COVID-19] pandemic, I was like, I’ve gotta do something creative here. What can I do that’s not expensive? This movie came up.
Wow. So it’s been percolating for 20 or so years.
Feinberg: Juan Feldman – who’s a producer of this film – he loved the script too, and he wanted to [direct] it, but he could never get it going. He wants to direct the stage play, he wants to do all kinds of stuff. When it came about, I was like, Juan – do you want to direct this? He’s like, I just can’t do it right now. Lloyd was like, I’m so glad you decided to produce this, because I was going to shoot next year if you hadn’t. It’s been long enough.
The entire point of the whole thing was to take this play that [Schwartz] wrote and shoot it in one take. That was the idea from the beginning. In order to make this interesting, you have to find a way to shoot it all in one take. You could shoot it conventionally, but it’s just not that interesting, because it’s all in one room. But when you shoot in one take, and you move the camera around, you move the actors around, you feel like you’re actually in the room with them. It’s that intimate.
I want to talk about the one-take stuff, but I’m curious – since this script has been around for so long, has it evolved much? What are the different iterations it has gone through?
Feinberg: I don’t think it’s evolved much. I think Lloyd wrote it in the late 70s or early 80s … When we started to produce it, he goes – you want me to rewrite it and update it to today? No! Don’t do that. It loses a lot of the charm. Because the charm is about, in the 1970s, if you had a meeting somewhere, you didn’t have a cell phone. You didn’t have a pager. You didn’t have anything. You had to trust that the person you’re going to meet is going to be at the location when you get there. We had to teach actors how to use a rotary phone, because they’d never seen a rotary phone before. It was sort of nostalgic, and sort of a throwback.
Could you talk about the casting process and getting Jake Reiner and Alexis Abrams together?
Feinberg: Because I was an actor – I was on “Star Trek,” and “Buffy” – I knew that I wanted to find the best actors I could. This movie is solely on the acting. I can’t edit around their performances. We put out a casting call for actors, and we had over 12,000 actors submit for these two roles. Being an actor and being a director who wants to find the best actor, I went through every single of those 12,000 submissions. I invited about 450 actors to audition, and from that audition, I called back around 40 actors. As an actor, I know you sometimes can be lucky, or sometimes you can be slick in an audition. I wanted to see if they could recreate what they did in the first one. That’s what the callbacks are – can you do it again?
We narrowed it down to four actors … We had what’s called a chemistry read. We would mix and match the guys and the girls, have them perform the stuff and see who had the chemistry. These two had just amazing chemistry together. Alexis [Abrams], she’d only done stage before. She did Shakespeare, “A Doll’s House,” all kinds.. Jake [Reiner], his dad is Rob Reiner and his grandfather is Carl Reiner. He earned the part based on his work, not on his name. But having his name is nice [laughs], because it’s his first leading man role. And also, his dad gave us a quote.
I wanted to talk to you a little bit about directing actors. You mentioned Alexis – when someone comes in and they’ve done mostly stage, how do you work with them to get them adjusted to film acting, which is a different type of acting?
Feinberg: A lot of the emotional work is the same, but the way you present it is different … On stage, you’re using your entire body to indicate, to have the person in the back row know without a doubt what you’re saying, what’s going on. In film, you don’t need to indicate that. You just need to be. You don’t need to do. Stage, you do. Film, you be. You don’t need to show that you’re angry, or show that you’re sad. When you see someone’s eyes, you can tell. The camera’s right here in your eyes, you know?
We did a lot of rehearsal, went through a lot of the relationships and how the feelings change, how the emotions shift during the scene – what the lines mean, where the jokes are, how to set them up and that kind of stuff. We shot this feature film in three days, and I figured if I could get the actors in the emotional place I wanted them to be, then we could do this.
When I got on set, I would say something like – you’re not performing, you’re just having a conversation. My teaching method, which I probably used when I was directing, is based on what I call “The Big Four,” which is connect, listen, feel, respond. You can connect by looking at someone in the eye, holding their eyes to your eyes. Then you put all your energy, attention, and focus on them and just listen to what they say. When you do that in real life, you’re going to have a feeling. You’re going to respond to that – you like what they’re saying, or you don’t like what they’re saying. What they’re saying is going to be funny, or it’s going to make you angry, or it’s going to make you sad – whatever it is. If you’re really connected and listening, you really don’t have to do much, except allow yourself to feel whatever you’re feeling. Then, you respond with whatever you’re feeling.
It’s very, very easy once you know it, but you have to take it from knowing and put it in your body and practice it, so that it becomes second nature, like muscle memory for an athlete. So, if [Alexis] didn’t have any stage experience, that might concern me more. But the fact that she had done Nora in “A Doll’s House,” and she had done Ophelia in “Hamlet,” and she had done some of these other things, I was like, okay – I think I can trust her with the dialogue and the performance. Then it’s just a matter of getting her to understand the material and how to present it.
You co-directed this with Craig Tollis and you guys have done a ton of projects together. What is that relationship like, the sort of breakdown of duties?
Feinberg: Our joke was, I’m in charge of the love and he’s in charge of the taxes. Craig would say that’s really not a bad analogy. For example, I’m in charge of working with the actors and having them find the relationships, and having them find the moments, and doing the blocking and really getting them prepared. Craig was working with the lighting department, and the camera department, and the technical aspects of what was going on.
It’s almost like we’re editing while we’re filming. We have to figure out how we’re going to shoot this beforehand. A lot of times, you shoot stuff and you get to post and you say, okay – I need a shot at this, I need to cut away to that. The joke is, there’s three versions of your movie: the version you write, the version you shoot, and the version you edit. But we don’t have any edit choices here. We take the one take that we like – because, if we didn’t like the take, we’d shoot it again, you know? If you’re 15 minutes into the shot and you flub a line, or you bump into the furniture, you bump into the camera, oh well – we’ve got to go back and start all over again. That’s the challenge, right? The big, cinematic challenge is, how can you create the longest shot you can?
Doing one take is very difficult, for all of the reasons you just mentioned. How many takes would you do on a normal scene?
Feinberg: The first day, there’s the two actors, and then there’s the camera operator, who’s this amazing Latina woman, Angelica Perez-Castro. She’s little – she’s a Steadicam operator, so she can get into little nooks and crannies, and stuff like that. But then you’ve got the sound guy, the boom operator, Jorge [Del Valle] – he’s got the boom, and he’s got to travel everywhere. They had to learn how to dance together, so they wouldn’t bump into each other. Then, the two of them had to dance with the actors. They had to figure out how they were going to work together … The first take, it took us a little while to figure it out, because [Perez-Castro] had to see the action. She had to figure out where she was going to go, how she was going to do it. But the more we worked together, the easier it got. We shot in the order of the movie. So, by the second day, the third day, we weren’t taking as many takes.
This is the Georgia premiere for this film, but I know you guys have been at other festivals. What has the response been like?
Feinberg: It has been fantastic. We’ve won awards for acting, for best movie, for writing, for directing, for production design, so far … I keep telling people, this is a throwback to my childhood – a movie with characters, and story. It’s not a fast-paced, quick-cut [movie]. There’s no extended action sequences, there’s no car chases, nothing blowing up. There’s nobody getting killed. There are no flashy superhero uniforms. It’s not a movie that people are making. But the people that have seen it say, this is the kind of movie we want to see because it’s humorous, it’s heartfelt. It’s the kind of movie you want to see in a movie theater with a lot of people because you can hear all the laughter, and be part of that energy and part of that experience.
That makes me feel good. This is the best part about making the movie, when you show it to other people, and they enjoy it.
