As part of the 25 Days of Sine Fine Films extravaganza leading up the 25th Anniversary I have decided to write a series of posts celebrating the 25 actors who have been the most dedicated by participating in the most productions.
Actor of the Day: Edward Stasheff
Edward was a part of the company right from the beginning when we filmed Destiny in the summer of 1996. He has participated in 10 productions as cast and/or crew.
When I first wrote Destiny I asked Amy, who played Telana, who she wanted her character to end up with romantically and she said "I don't know...a sheik?". I thought, yeah I can do that, because I knew that my mother had a Lawrence of Arabia costume and I had a brother who would fit it. So I asked Ed if he'd be in the movie I was filming and he agreed.
He played Ali-Jinjil who was written into the script for two reasons 1) to be the love interest for Telana and 2) to buy Melantha a coat. The actress who played Telana had trouble making it to film shoots because she had...you know...a life. So eventually I had to kill off the character and Ali-Jinjil went from being a lover for Telana to more of a father figure to Melantha, which is a change I really liked. He was still able to fulfill his other reason for being in the script when he bought Melantha a coat...at a middle east marketplace...on a volleyball court.
Since Destiny II was a prequel Ali-Jinjil wasn't in it so Ed was not needed to film that. I had originally cast him as King Ferdinand, but he was busy with college and couldn't make back to film. So unreasonable. Oh wait, that was me. I was being unreasonable. Basically I could only film with him in the summer and I was really lucky I got to film with him so much.
Destiny III was filmed primarily in the summer of 1997 and since it was the summer Edward was back for filming. Yay! Ali-Jinjil was in a lot of scenes so Ed did a lot of shooting that summer. There were hot days, long days, and days when he didn't have a lot of lines but had a lot of screen time but he filmed them all without complaint.
I think the worst day for him was when we were shooting the chase scene at Allerton and I told the actors to run back and forth into a large set of hedges. Ed's long robes were a tripping hazard and he ended up diving straight into the bushes across a gravel path with a face full of tiny rocks. He still has a scar on his arm from it to this very day. Sorry Ed!
His first time helping out as crew beyond what all the actors have to do from time to time of holding the script or hauling costumes was when we were filming the big fight scenes at the end of the movie between Esteban and Balthazar. He helped choreograph the fight so it looked much better. He also let us use his cool looking bayonet, which I later lost. Sorry bro. That was my bad.
It wasn't until the winter of 1998 that I was able to film with him again when he took a Saturday to come back to CU and film for The King of Eflin's Daughter. I cast him as the King of Eflin because he was one of the older actors in the group and I thought he would do a good job. He did of course. Ed is a great actor and a lot of fun to film with.
There was a lot more filming for The King of Eflin's Daughter but the rest of it was shot in the summer so he was more free to film then (only when he wasn't working though). The biggest joke on set was the fact that he was supposed to be the King of Elves, but he was 6'2. That's the tallest dang elf I've ever seen!
During the summers when he was back from college Ed was one of my go-to guys anytime I suddenly needed an actor. The fact that we lived in the same house made it easy to kidnap him ask him nicely to film with me. That's how he ended up being in The Perfect Combination. I needed someone to be a police officer so I asked him to put on a blue shirt (not a cop's outfit, I didn't care enough to bother getting one I guess), handcuff Jill Hutchison, and dump her in a chair in the basement. I know that sounds weird but that's basically all he had to do. I think was a line too, but it was only one. Thanks Ed!
Sometime in 1998, Ed wrote (or rather adapted) Mind Games and asked me if we could film it. I agreed and that summer Ed directed his first scene. We filmed Annamarie and Rachel sitting on our back porch drinking a mixture of cold coffee and warm coke while pretending to be in a space ship. I tried to stop filming after The Vigil but since I had already filmed one scene of Mind Games it didn't take that much for Ed and Chris to convince me to finish filming it.
I've talked about Edward and Mind Games in both the Top 5 Writers post and the Top 5 Directors post (he's #1 in both and I promise it's not just because he's my brother!), so I'm not going to discuss his writing and directing contributions here and will just focus on his acting instead.
Ed did actually act in Mind Games as well, playing the voice of the computer Astrolabe. It didn't take much to do it since it's the monotone voice of an emotionless robot which is probably how Ed felt at the end of every Planetarium film shoot so acting that part came easy to him by that point in the day.
Before we even finished filming and editing all of Mind Games I had already begun work on my next production, Pandora's Box. Ed was not cast in the original first five episodes, but since those original episodes went from being Episodes 1-5 to Episodes 1-3, Episode 11, and Episode 24 obviously I wrote and filmed a few extra scripts. In the winter of 1999 I wrote a script that introduced a new character - Cordero, the King of Cutthroats.
Ed was into Dagorhir and Renaissance Festivals so I knew he would have some sort of costume for Cordero, and being a fighter he had a great menacing aura when he wanted to. He went a step further and gave Cordero an eyepatch and made him look like a total bad ass. He was fantastic! I only needed him for one night of shooting so even though he was busy he was still able to do it.
The next summer, in 2000, Diana and I wrote three more episodes (Eps 21-23) that included Cordero. This time there were three or four shoots he needed to be at, but Ed was able and willing to make the time to film with us. The original costume he wore was a big fancy to be fighting in the woods with so I made him a new, less pretty looking but still nice version.
We did forget which eye he had the eyepatch on and rather than doing the smart thing and looking it up on the footage I just guessed. I was wrong. But that's okay. It had been thirteen episodes since he had last appeared so no one would notice, right? Anyway, he proceeded to kick everyone ass while fighting in the rain, which looked really cool. He also choreographed those fight scenes which explains why they looked so awesome.
Halfway through Episode 23, Cordero dies while protecting his son in a very touching and emotional farewell. What was less touching about the scene was filming it because he had to lie on the wet forest floor in the grass with his face covered in fake blood pretending to be dead while a hundred mosquitoes made a buffet out of him. The fake blood was chocolate sauce and red Kool-aid, so yeah. Bug city. On his face. While he had to pretend to be dead. I am so sorry Ed!
I was filming Episode 2 of Eidolon in the summer of 2004 when I realized I had forgotten to cast one of the parts - a ghost of a drunk, homeless man who was a victim of organ harvesters along with two other ghosts. It was a Saturday and I knew Ed wasn't busy so I called him up and asked if he could come out to the MacLeod Farm to film a few scenes with us oh and by the way can you dress up like a drunk homeless dead guy? Of course he said yes, because he's awesome like that, and drove out to film with us. He did a great job and it was really nice to film with him again. Oh and he let us film a few scenes in his house. Thanks's bro!
Sine Fine Films celebrated it's 10th Anniversary in the summer of 2006 so that spring I wrote and directed an anniversary production. The Cursed Destiny of Pandora's Gift Box was, as you can guess from the title, a mashup spoof of all my other productions and various tropes. I needed lots of extras to be ballroom dancers and later to be actual extras who had to be sorted into specific cliches. Luckily Ed was free the day I needed the extras and agreed to come film with me. Yay for filming! He got to head bang in the background while wearing a bad wig so it was a...good day? It was certainly a fun day. that's for sure!
A year later in the fall of 2007 I sent out a call for writers to help with my latest production, Quatrain. I needed four writers and Ed was one of the ones who answered the call. I'm not going to elaborate on his writing and directing contributions to Quatrain because I've done that in the Writers post and the Directors post, but I will say he also acted in Quatrain.
We filmed Quatrain in the summer of 2008. One scene has a birthday party so everyone on set had to be guests at the party including Ed. He dutifully put on a party hat and sang Happy Birthday, then played along as Brittany and Jacob's characters crashed the party and stole the cake. And a balloon. And I think they stole the cat too... He also appeared a drunk homeless guy lying on a bench in the park who wakes up and scares the bejesus out of Annamarie's character in Scene 3B. He was directing and needed an actor for that scene so decided to play the part himself. Go Ed!
I haven't been able to work with him again after that. Life became busy, I moved to Kansas for a few years, came back to CU, moved away again, then back again, then away again. Ed's life mirrored mine in many ways he just went to different places for different reasons. Eventually we found ourselves back together in CU help take care of my father when his Parkinson's Disease took a sharp turn and he need more assistance.
Despite being together we were both busy and I didn't really film much during that time. He and I no longer live in the same state and although we see each other for holidays a couple times a year I highly doubt we will ever film together again. But you never know. Now that I have corrupted introduced our nieces and nephews to filming productions I might be able to convince him to film with us again.
In the past 25 years, Ed has filmed in blistering heat and freezing cold. He's gotten scars from diving into a bush, was devoured by mosquitoes, fought with mono-vision in a downpour, and probably caught the flu from filming at least once. That's a very loving brother there. How many older brothers would do that? My brother's the best. He's my favorite brother in the whole world. Yes, I know he's my only brother but that's not the point. The point is Edward is awesome. Thanks for filming with me all these years. I love ya bro!
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