by Mark Burger photos by Devender Sellars
David Wells, Ed Asner, Jack Kehler.
Despite the title, Elephant Sighs isn’t about elephants.
It is, in the words of its creator, Ed Simpson, “about what makes men tick. It‘s about loss and support and self-worth.”
Elephant Sighs began life as an idea, and then a stage play. Simpson, the chair of High Point University’s Performance Arts Department, is not only the playwright but has also directed it onstage. And now, more than a decade after he first conceived the story, Simpson is making his directorial debut with the screen version of Elephant Sighs.
Filmed in and around High Point last month, the film stars seven-time Emmy Awardand five-time Golden Globe Award-winner Edward Asner in the pivotal role of Leo, a character directly inspired by Simpson’s own father, Harold.
Much of the film takes place in a community center located in a small Pennsylvania town, where a group of middleaged men convene regularly to talk about good days and bad, friends lost and dreams dashed. It is through each other they find strength and support. They’re always there for each other, now more than ever since one of their members recently died.
The unofficial ringmaster of the group is Asner’s Leo, and the newcomer to the group is Nick (Mark Fite), an uptight lawyer who’s not quite sure what he’s doing there.
“Ultimately, he needs them — their companionship and their support,” says Simpson. “He’s mesmerized by what they’re talking about, [without] knowing what he was there for.”
In addition to Asner and Fite (who appeared in Fight Club and Independence Day), the ensemble cast includes John Cariani (a Tony Award nominee for the Broadway revival of Fiddler on the Roof), Jack Kehler (The Big Lebowski) and David Wells (Charlie Wilson’s War). Both Kehler and Wells have appeared in stage productions of Elephant Sighs and Wells (also a co-producer of the film) has directed it onstage as well.
The play has been performed on both coasts to considerable acclaim (“… unexpected, often hilarious…,” said The New York Times, “a warm, funny, and life-affirming tale …” added Backstage West) and was compared to Neil Simon and David Mamet.
That didn’t make it any easier to pitch as a prospective film, even with the acclaim the play received. That it seemed something different yet relevant was, Simpson thought initially, a neat hook.
“There was nothing to really compare it to,” says Simpson, “and that worried some [money] people.”
Originally, another play of Simpson’s had been optioned for screen treatment, but when that project was put into turnaround, he and his partners in New Garden Media, which include Les Butchart and fellow Guilford alumni Wells and ML Carr (the former NBA superstar), began looking at Elephant Sighs as their back-up project. For an inaugural project, they thought it might be an easier story to tackle — and some thought a better one.
“We had no idea what it meant to put financing for something like this together,” Simpson says, although later he laughingly amends his statement: “We didn’t know what the hell we were doing.”
But they always knew what they wanted to do — and that was to tell a heartfelt, humorous story about characters in transition, trying to come to terms with the hand life has dealt them… and which, in some cases, they have dealt themselves.
“I’ve seen countless middle-aged guys walking around in a daze, thinking ‘What the fuck happened?’” Simpson says. “Hell, I’ve been that guy!” Simpson admits that he could easily identify with the themes. He’s a father (and soon to be a grandfather for the first time). He’s been divorced. He’s lost close friends and family. He’s made mistakes. He’s seen the best-laid plans go awry through no fault of his own. There have been times, he says, “when I didn’t quite know where I was going” — and he believes that feeling is common among men, regardless of age.
When he began work on the play, “I really didn’t think I had anything left.”
But he soon discovered otherwise. When he began writing, Simpson immediately laid down two laws for himself: No long discussions about sports and no diatribes against women. If the men of Elephant Sighs talk about the women in their lives in a critical way, it more frequently reflects their own neuroses and misperceptions then anything else.
The character of Leo is based, to a large extent, on Simpson’s father Harold, the first principal at West Forsyth Senior High School (the gymnasium there is named in his honor). “Dad is embedded in this play in a very real way,” says Simpson.
Simpson always had Kehler, Wells and Cariani in mind for the screen version of Elephant Sighs, and he and his partners were determined to at least get a copy of the script to Asner, whom Simpson always envisioned for the role of Leo.
For years, whenever watching Asner on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” or “Lou Grant,” Simpson and his friends and family couldn’t help but note the similarities between Harold Simpson and the character (“’There’s Dad,’ we’d say,” laughs Simpson).
The script was sent to the actor’s agent. “He read it. He liked it. It was that easy and that complex,” says Simpson.
For one thing, Asner is still much in demand for film and television roles, coming off Pixar’s animated feature Up, which was both a box-office smash and one of the best-reviewed films of 2009, earning five Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Animated Feature.
For another, Asner had been on tour with his oneman show FDR, in which he plays the 32 nd President of the United States. Add to this a close relationship with his children and grandchildren, and it becomes clear that, at an age when most people have retired (Asner is 81), he’s as busy as he’s ever been.
But, as Simpson had hoped, Asner liked the character and liked the story. “It’s a great part for him,” Simpson notes.
Schedules were arranged so that Asner could fly to North Carolina right after New Year’s and shoot the film.
Just before Christmas, Simpson flew to Los Angeles for a three-day rehearsal period in which the cast hashed through the script and got to know one another, creating the sort of camaraderie that was integral to the characters and the story.
“Every day,” says Simpson, “the group got better.
The group got closer. By the third day, the work was so good.”
“I know him,” Asner says of Leo. “He’s like a witch doctor. He senses souls in need. They fill the emptiness in his life. If he wasn’t a nurturer, he’d be molding in his room.”
It’s that quality, Simpson says, that very much makes Leo the center of the story, as well as a direct reflection of his father’s disposition.
“It’s about coming to grips with my own mortality and accepting the inevitable,” says Simpson, “which is something that we all have to accept.”
Harold Simpson, says his son, was “a fast-food connoisseur and an internal-combustion engine,” a hearty and boisterous man whose gruffness masked, none too successfully, a warm and gentle heart.
The elder Simpson actually died twice. The first time was while
doing work in the yard with Ed when he suffered a heart seizure. Ed
turned to say something and saw his father had collapsed. He
rushed over and attempted CPR while
someone called 911. The paramedics
arrived almost immediately and
attempted resuscitation — with no
luck. They were ready to write him
off but decided that one more attempt
wouldn’t hurt.
Later that evening, Simpson remembers,
“Dad was sitting up in bed in the
hospital, complaining about the food
and trying to talk us into smuggling in
Bojangles.”
Harold Simpson lived five more
years, and every day he considered “to
be all dessert,” says Simpson.
Harold Simpson died shortly before
the stage premiere of Elephant Sighs,
but he’d read the script ahead of time
and heartily approved.
A CAST OF CHARACTERS
To
a man, each member of cast
retains a strong love for the theater
and a desire to return as soon as possible
(or feasible). That Elephant
Sighs had been a successful play was
definitely an incentive, and even in
the midst of production the actors are
already counting it a personal favorite.
Fite was a latecomer to the cast.
Another actor had previously been
cast, but a scheduling conflict meant
he had to drop out. Not unlike the
character he plays, Fite found himself
in the company of men who were
already acquainted with one another.
“Mark is terrific,” says Simpson.
“He’s great for the part and really hungry.
Everything fell into place.”
“They’ve been really gracious in
bringing me in,” Fite says, and he was
particularly taken by what he immediately
saw as “good writing. You feel it.
It feels right and it feels natural.”
“You can readily identify with
the characters,” observes Cariani.
“They’re all fleshed out and well
rounded and very distinctive. These
people all have points of view.”
Kehler, reprising his stage character
for the film, found it easy to slip back
into the role of Dink, even with the
alterations to the script. “It’s not been
a problem,” he says. “This is a character
I love — they’re all great characters
— and it’s a great joy to play him
again. It’s a privilege to do something
this good with people this good.”
Having directed Elephant Sighs on
stage, Wells admits he was initially
surprised by how much text had been
cut in the translation. “I think so,” he
says, but when he revisited his script
for the play, the reasons became clear.
“It’s wordy,” he says.
“There’s a
ton of dialogue. It may have been too
large, and you worry that it may not
be telling the story. Film and stage are
very different. A lot of what went were
transitional things that you have to
lead a stage audience through but not
necessarily a film audience.”
His initial worries assuaged, “I’m
really happy with the script,” he says.
“It’s a beautiful story and it strikes a
nerve. It’s unbelievable, talking about
it and then being able to do it.”
Some of the outdoor shooting took
place on the coldest days (and nights)
of the month. “It was four days of bitter
cold, and it kept getting worse!”
Simpson recalls. But, given the story’s
setting, “this is Western Pennsylvania
weather, so I was sort of happy for
that.”
Even then, “nobody ever complained,”
he recalls. “Oh, we all
bitched about how cold it was, but
everyone really believed what we
were doing. It was never an unhappy
set.”
“The crew were first rate,” says
Simpson. “A lot of them were youngsters,
and they were talented, hardworking,
disciplined. I was really
impressed, and there’s no question we
want to do more work together again.”
“ED THE GREATER”
Early in the production, people began
referring to “Ed the Greater”
and “Ed the Lesser” — “you can guess
which was which,” quips Simpson —
but shortly thereafter, he notes, Asner
started referring to Elephant Sighs as
“our film” rather than “your film,” and
it was a sentiment shared by the cast
and crew throughout the production.
It’s impossible to resist asking
Asner about his career, which spans
more than 50 years and includes dozens
of movies and hundreds of stage
and TV appearances. He’s worked
with almost everyone in the business.
In Howard Hawks’ El Dorado (1967),
he’s the nasty rancher pitted against
John Wayne and Robert Mitchum.
Although the two men shared little
in common politically — Asner veers
to the left about as sharply as Wayne
veered to the right — they established
a good-natured banter during the filming.
Wayne liked to rib his younger
co-stars, and Asner ribbed right back.
“He would call me ‘that New York
actor’ as if I were just starting out,”
Asner recalls with a smile, “which is
strange, because I’d been working for
several years and I didn’t come from
New York — I came from Kansas. But
he was okay.”
He rolls his eyes when asked about
the 1976 live-action Disney comedy
Gus, in which he played a pro football
coach who recruits a field-goalkicking
mule (that would be Gus), but when other crew members
also excitedly recall the film, he chuckles. “It’s good to be
remembered.”
One of Asner’s best and most controversial films was the 1981 police drama Fort Apache, the Bronx, in which he played a by-the-book police captain who clashes with maverick patrolmen Paul Newman and Ken Wahl, trying to hold the line in a community burned by crime, corruption and bureaucratic apathy. The film was shot on location, which added to the realism. Maybe too much.
“The people of the Bronx did not want us there,” he remembers with wry understatement, “and they certainly made their feelings known to us.”
Nevertheless, that real-life tension translated onto the screen, and many of the events dramatized in the film have actually come to pass in the ensuing years. “And worse… and worse…,” Asner laments.
A few years later, Asner starred as the principal of “The Bronx Zoo,” a prime-time NBC-TV series about the students and staff of an embattled high school located in the heart of New York’s favorite borough.
The Bronx were none too happy (once again) to have
their neighborhood depicted in what they perceived as an unfavorable
light, despite the many real-life issues the series tackled (teen
pregnancy, illiteracy, drug
abuse). They didn’t want their school compared to a zoo.
What’s more, Asner bemusedly recalls, “the curator of the Bronx Zoo sent protest letters to the network, saying that he wanted the show’s name to be changed, because it reflected badly on his esteemed zoo. You know the saying ‘You can’t please all of the people all of the time’? Well, we couldn’t please any of the people any of the time.”
The vehement reactions, however, only served to convince Asner that “The Bronx Zoo” was hitting close to home. “It was a good show,” he says.
Despite critical acclaim, the series lasted only a single season. “Brandon Tartikoff [then the head of the network] apologized for the cancellation, which I thought was big of him,” Asner says, “but I wish the show had gone on.”
The 1993 satire Heads saw Asner again playing a newspaper editor — albeit light years away from “Lou Grant” — enmeshed in a series of small-town decapitation murders. Yes, it’s a comedy and, yes, it’s funny.
“You liked Heads?” Asner asks.
“You’ve got great taste!” Coming from Lou Grant, that’s high praise for any journalist.
As for the success of Up, Asner (who has done countless voiceovers on film and TV), was pleased but not really surprised. Pixar/Disney, he noted, has a reputation for making animated films that achieve success across the board, both critically and financially.
When a crew member jokingly says she “loved his makeup job” on Up, Asner ups the curmudgeon level. “It didn’t look like me at all!” he protests.
Asner’s well-known activism, which has occasionally put him at odds with the Hollywood establishment, remains undiminished. If there’s a cause he feels strongly about, he’ll make his feelings known “wherever and whenever I can.”
Asner enjoys watching his own work “when I’m good,” he says. “I’ve been surprised a few times. At this point, acting is my great joy, and I’m better at it than I’ve ever been in my life.”
“Ed was really ‘one of the guys’ in the best of all possible ways,” praises Simpson, who recalls that Asner ignored the dressing room prepared especially for him and preferred instead to hang out with his co-stars during downtime.
“He is about as hard-working a person as I’ve ever been around — a real inspiration to all of us,” says Simpson, who adds with a laugh that he’s proud being the “lesser” to Asner’s “greater.”
With principal photography now completed, Simpson will retire to the editing room — while also balancing the rigors of teaching at High Point University — and begin piecing together Elephant Sighs. He hopes to have something ready by the end of spring, and then he and his fellow producers will determine the next course of action. Whether it will mean an outright sale to a distributor or screenings on the filmfestival circuit, he’s not yet certain.
But he is absolutely certain that the hard work was worth it and that making Elephant Sighs was an experience to treasure. At one point during filming, Simpson recalls Wells saying to Asner “This is something we’re all going to be proud of,” to which Asner replied: “I’m already proud of it.”
“The thing I think I’m going to remember the most is the laughter,” says Simpson. “We all developed a great affection for each other.”
Having completed his first, “it’s a big beast making a movie,” says Simpson, “but it never felt like it was an arduous thing. It was exciting. It’s the old adage: If I’d known how much fun it was, I’d have done it sooner!”
