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: Jacob MacLeod
Jacob had been a part of the company from the very beginning when we filmed Destiny. He has participated in 12 productions as cast and/or crew.
He's one of what I call the Founding Members. They were all part of the adventure in a cornfield on the night when we first had the idea of making a movie. Although the original concept was nothing like the actual script, Destiny is what resulted from that night and Jacob had a starring role.
I met Jacob when Annamarie had a sleep over at the MacLeod farm and introduced her brother Jacob to everyone there. I actually saw a picture of him of on the fridge first and his long hair was loose around his shoulders so I said to Annamarie, "I didn't know you had a sister." A very annoyed voice announced from the door way that she didn't - he was her brother. I remember being very embarrassed. Sorry Jacob! Despite that bad first impression we got a long pretty well and he became a permanent member of our friends group, and also joined the Gypsy Wanderers, the dancing troupe I formed in 1995, with everyone else.
Although Jacob was a good guy in the Adventure in the Corn Field, he was a bodyguard assassin so that made me ultimately cast him as the assassin and main villain Balthazar in Destiny. We filmed in the summer of 1996 and Jacob went through the same terrible conditions I put all the others through including long nights, hot days, and un-choreographed fight scenes.
He was willing to return to play Balthazar again in Destiny II in the winter of 1996. The character was beginning to be more complex and there were some dramatic moments that Jacob did a great job with particularly the big scene in the ballroom where he has to make a difficult choice. He and Tanino were fantastic together and I think he had fun filming it.
He had enough fun to come back for a third time and film Destiny III, reprising the role of Balthazar once again. He asked if Balthazar could have a softer side or fall in love or something so I wrote him falling in love with Elaina. That led to some tender moments for him to act and some great character development, it made him more human, so thanks for the request Jacob!
I didn't film with him again until the early spring of 1998 when we had the really cold first film shoot for The King of Elflin's Daughter. He agreed to play one of the minstrels - Fiddle - and luckily survived the cold to continue playing the character into the summer. He also somehow managed to survive the numerous rainy film shoots and did not get pneumonia as far as a I know. He'd always been good at standing out as Balthazar but this was his first chance to blend in with an ensemble group, the minstrels, and act together. He did a wonderful job and I'm glad he agreed to film with me again.
While filming The King of Eflin's Daughter I was also shooting The Perfect Combination, doing two productions at the same time. I had decided that it was time to see Jacob the playing the lead hero. The Perfect Combination is the only movie I ever made that was actually a book first. Most of my scripts eventually turn into novels, but The Perfect Combination's screenplay was adapted from a novel I had written.
Jacob plays Michael Winters, an assassin who runs into trouble when he tries to turn against his boss for personal reasons. The trouble he runs into is the talented thief Catherine Summers, played by Jill Hutchison, and a love-hate relationship turns into a romance. The movie is a silly, slapstick comedy with some serious moments. It was the first time that Jacob got to show off his innate talent for playing comedic roles.
He has great comic timing, is really funny, and yet it still able to switch to serious acting for the dramatic moments. I still think that his is performance as Michael Winters is one of his best. Not as great as Turlo, but I think it was actually better than Balthazar. You could really see that Jacob had matured as an actor.
In the late spring of 1999 we were wrapping up filming for Mind Games, the psychological sci-fi thriller written and directed by Edward Stasheff. One of the scenes left to film were the final scenes with a trio of mysterious people called the Psi Squad. Jacob played the medic, Deitrich. Most of what the Psi Squad had to do was look creepy and mysterious and he, Margaret Olson, and Jen Weber all did a great job.
While shooting Mind Games in 1999 I decided to re-edit the Destiny Trilogy into a mini-series that would air on PCE-TV (Parkland College Educational Television). I had recently discovered the beauty of machines that were actually designed to edit (instead of just two VCRs hook up to each other) and embarked on the first production I re-edited. There were some scenes left un-filmed from the Destiny II and Destiny III, so I took the opportunity to film them and edit them in. Adding those scenes made a huge difference.
I was able to get Jacob back to reprise his role as Balthazar. The one problem is that in the two years it had been since he last played Balthazar he cut off his long hair so that was a major continuity error. We tried to hide it with a hat and a hooded cloak in the garden scene from Destiny II, and that worked out well.
But there was no real hiding it when we filmed other scenes because even with Balthazar's trademark black hat the lack of long hair was obvious. Oh well, it was still better to have those scene with or without hair, and for the record I couldn't use a wig because I have never seen and certainly did not own a wig that even came close to what his natural long hair looked like.
While I was still re-editing Destiny and before Mind Games had even premiered I began filming for my next production, Pandora's Box. It was the first TV show I had actually written and filmed to be a TV show (unlike Destiny). It was only supposed to be five episdoes filmed in one month with a new episode each week. It didn't work out that way. When we finally wrapped up filming in the summer of 2000 and editing in the fall, we had been working on Pandora's Box for 18 months and had 24 episodes.
Jacob had agreed to play the brilliant scientist turned con-artist turned rebel, Turlo Mason. Of course he had no idea he would be stuck filming it for more than a year or he might have said no. Turlo is a complex character and has an interesting road to redemption when turning from criminal to rebel. Jacob brought a lot to the character and helped develop him into an even more interesting and important character.
His acting was amazing, especially in the scene where Turlo goes mad and attacks Zarc, and Turlo is definitely his best performance in my opinion. Unfortunately for me he's quite a ham on set and goofed off a lot which was hilarious for everyone else, but it took longer to get things done so I wasn't as amused. Looking back, of course, his silly antics and ad libs are some of the funniest bloopers. Sorry I was upset at the time, Jacob.
All the main actors in Pandora's Box got to make a request that I would write into one of the episodes. Jacob's request was to choreograph and film a major martial-arts style fight scene for the final episode. He and Chris Lamb did an incredible job and the only problem was that they had to film the fight on one of the hottest days of filming in SFF history. Because of the nature of the fight they had to shoot in an open field in the bright (and hot) sunlight. They were completely wiped out by the end of it and I'm pretty one or both of them had heatstroke.
In the fall of 1999, while we were in the middle of filming Pandora's Box, I went away to SIUC for my first semester at college. I took my first, and sadly only, real film class and actually got to shoot and edit on real 8mm film. My first big class project was called Day Dreams and was about a girl who runs away from the real world and ends up in a fantasy-like garden where she sees the giant statue of a man. The statue turns into a real human and the man takes her to explore the gardens where she decides to stay.
I couldn't use dialogue for the film (that was a more advanced class) so I had to tell the movie as a montage, but luckily I'm good at that. I think the film is nice, nothing special but fun to watch. Unfortunately for Jacob, who played the living statue, he couldn't wear a shirt with sleeves and it was November. If you want to know more about his suffering you can check out the Survivor's Club post, The Right to Bare Arms.
By the summer of 2000 we were still filming episodes for Pandora's Box and the actors were starting to get tired of it. They thought they were done, but I turned up back in CU in the summer with 8 new scripts that turned into 10 new episodes. Jacob and the others agreed to continue filming, but then I went crazy, got mad at him for no good reason, and basically threw him out of the company. Because I was insane, and a terrible horrible person. I am SO sorry Jacob!
Once I became medicated and stabilized I was able to see that what I thought he had been doing and saying was completely wrong and I was, to put it nicely, a complete and total asshole. I had treated both him and Kali very unfairly and I will never fully forgive myself for how I treated them. I wrote them each a long letter to apologize a few years later, but I never expected to work with or even talk to either one of them again. I have always said that being by bipolar is an explanation for my actions, but it is not an excuse and it doesn't change what I did.
I had met Jacob from time to time when I visited the farm, but he had left for college while I was still at SIUC. We were civil to each other but I honestly did not know how to act or what to say given how badly I had treated him and how ashamed I was. He was still nice to me and although we talked little on the rare occasions we did meet he was clearly better able to put the past behind us and move forward.
This became clear in 2007 when I sent out the call for people to write short scripts for Quatrain, an experiment in filming that, unlike my other attempts, actually worked. I was shocked when he agreed and was really happy to work with him again. The writing workshop we had in September of 2007 was a really fun day of creativity and laughter and I was really glad that he had joined in.
He took on the task of writing the monologues of Scene 1 and did a really impressive job. Writing monologues isn't easy and all the Quatrain writers had restrictions and rules that made their scenes even more challenging. If you want to know more about Jacob as a writer you can check out the Top 5 writers post.
He also agreed to be one of the four main actors in Quatrain, Actor 2 or 3 but I can't remember which one. I think it was 2. In the summer of 2008 we spent two days filmed 14 or the 16 short films. Most of his scenes were filmed with Brittany Ann Whalen and they were such a hilarious comedic duo that somehow their characters made it into other scenes and their separate films could almost be watched as as very full and weird day for Bruce and Susie.
At the last minute, when I still didn't have a fourth director and had put out the call for one, Jacob said he was interested to try his hand at directing. I was so happy and relieved to have another director! Thank you! Jacob turned out to be one of the best and most promising directors I have ever met and I really regret that I was never able to force convince him to direct again. For more information about Jacob's directing check out the Top 5 Directors post.
At the very end of 2009 I began filming the first of seven short films for Twisted Tales, which takes a traditional fairy or folk tale and puts some sort of a twist on it like setting it in the modern world or switching the genders of the characters. Diana wrote the script for Hulde, based on the tale of Mother Hulde which was the original name of the script. When the time came to film it I somehow did not have anyone to play the character of Hulde.
Since Jacob was living there at the time - or at least back to visit for the holidays - he agreed to step into the role at the last minute. The character is really gender-neutral so the only change was dropping the "Mother" from the title and just called it Hulde. We filmed in the middle of a blizzard and when the sun finally came out it was freezing cold. Jacob braved the winter weather with the rest of us of course and did a wonderful job as the grumpy Hulde who is tired of people crashing his place in search of adventure.
That was the last time I was ever able to film with Jacob again. He moved away to the West Coast and I went back and forth between moving away, moving back to CU, and moving away again. I'm not even sure if I've seen him again since filming Hulde. I know he's living a fulfilling and fun life on the West Coast and although it's a little sad that he never or very rarely comes back to CU for visits where I could meet him again, I am truly glad that he has found a home and happiness in this life. He deserves it.
It's been incredible to watch Jacob grow as both an actor and a person in all the years he filmed with us. He was just 13 when he played Balthazar in Destiny and he both himself and his acting matured in many ways over the years, which I realize is an obvious statement, but oh well. I like to state the obvious. Jacob is very talented, not just as an actor but also as a writer and director. He is smart, funny, compassionate, kind, quirky, and an overall amazing man. He has a lot of talent and it's not just in the arts. He's also a great cook, a carpenter, a musician, a surfer, an archer, and a dancer who can teach tango to name just a few of his many talents.
It's truly been my pleasure to know and work with Jacob over the years and although I know it is very unlikely to happen I would love to work with him again in any capacity whether it's acting, writing, or directing. Honestly I'd love to just hang out with him again at an SFF reunion. Thank you for everything Jacob, I'm so sorry I went crazy and was really mean to you!
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