Classic Television Showbiz: 1967

Thursday, August 8, 2013

Funnyman starring Peter Bonerz (1967)

Peter Bonerz: This guy John Korty did two 16mm independent films in San Francisco that were highly acclaimed. Small films, almost European. He started as a documentarian and did Civil Rights stuff in Washington. He saw the [Committee] show and said, “I’m interested in the possibility of maybe working with you to write a movie about an actor in improvisational theater. A person who considers himself a little more than an actor.”

So we sat down. It was going to be improvised. We wrote the scenes out on 3x5 cards. We had a scene by scene map and went out and shot it. We raised the money locally, two hundred thousand dollars. 16mm, black and white and color. It really didn’t go anywhere. It received pretty good notices. We showed it at the New York Film Festival and it got me an agent. It got me William Morris. That, in turn, got me notice in Hollywood.

I was young and hot – or thought I was. The film was finally released, I think, by New Yorker Films. Dan Talbot ran a great movie house off-Broadway called the New Yorker during the sixties and seventies. He formed a releasing company and they released it. I think it played in art houses and university cities. And that was it.