Biography
When writer-producer-director Dennis F. Stevens asked his father to guarantee completion on his first feature motion picture, "The Harrad Experiment" (1973), Frank W. Stevens did not hesitate. He trusted his son. By this time the son had already built somewhat of a track record in the film industry, first as a writer for Dick Powell and Four Star Productions; and secondly as an aerial cinematographer for Air Log and the Department of Defense.
Frank Stevens posted the ubiquitous completion bond, thus personally guarantying payment of the production's outstanding liabilities; which payments, among others, included the deferred laboratory, equipment, dubbing and scoring costs.
Fortunately the picture was a major hit and these deferred costs were timely paid out of box office receipts. But that didn't mean that everything was kosher between father and son.
Frank Stevens, a devout Mormon, felt that his son had deceived him as to the film's "R" rating and in an effort to redeem himself gave a good deal of his share of profits to the Church. As further redemption, he and his wife (Fern Lee) volunteered for an eighteen month mission with the Church, serving in the Holbrook (Arizona) Mission.
The son, Dennis, was devastated. As a typical Hollywood liberal of the time, he hadn't taken into account the effect the film would have on his conservative parents. However, he needed his father to post completion on the sequel film, "Harrad Summer" (1974), otherwise production would be unduly delayed or possibly even canceled.
Father and son negotiated terms. The bottom line was Frank's name would not be on the credits and the sequel would not be an "R" rated film, which it wasn't. On the other hand, in box office receipts, at a time when low budgeted "R" rated pictures were doing very well, the sequel did only sixty percent of the original. Fortunately, that was still enough to return profits to everyone involved.
But despite the profit, Frank was not satisfied with the content of the sequel. He felt that it still contained elements that put him in conflict with the teachings of his religion. He informed his son that in the future he would only post completion guarantees on "G" rated films. Fortunately today, twenty plus years after "The Harrad Experiment," family films are doing very well at the box office. But in the early 1970s, such films were considered unreleasable.
This left the son with a dilemma. He could either find another completion guarantor, which would cost about twice the guarantor fee he was paying his father, or find a script that could be produced as a successful and releasable "G" rated film. Further complicating the matter was that major completion companies, such as Film Finance, required full funding plus ten percent. Dennis had made both of the Harrad pictures by deferring most of the production costs so that they could be paid from receipts generated from the picture's exploitation, rather than by investors. The downside of this arrangement is, of course, that should the film fail, the guarantor would be personally liable for not only the film's completion but the deferments, as well.
The son's instincts told him to stick to the "R" rated product. But in deference to his father's wishes he acquiesced and went with a "G" rated murder comedy entitled "I Wonder Who's Killing Her Now?," written by Mickey Rose.
Dennis admired Mickey's collaborations with Woody Allen, including "Take the Money and Run," and "Bananas," and he loved the "Killing Her Now" screenplay. He sent the script to Peter Sellers' CMA agent, Mike Wise, with the result that Sellers agreed to do the film.
The budget was set at $1.2 million, of which the laboratory, equipment and musical scoring costs would be deferred. Father and son were elated at how smoothly things were going. But then the hammer fell. The insurance company, not to be confused with the completion guarantor, informed the production company that Peter Sellers had failed to pass the physical exam and thus could not be insured. Did the production company, Cinema Arts Productions, Inc., wish to proceed with Sellers, sans insurance? Unfortunately, that was a gamble Frank W. Stevens was unwilling to make.
In hindsight, it was a decision both father and son lived to regret. Peter Sellers went on to make seven subsequent films before he died on 24 July 1980. But for the most part, these films were self insured by the studios, a risk that an independent company like Cinema Arts could not afford to take.
With the loss of Peter Sellers, the majority of the investors in "I Wonder Who's Killing Her Now" bailed out. The question was, could a lower budget film be made with the remaining funds? And, if so, would Frank Stevens still post completion? The answer was "yes," and "yes."
Unfortunately, due to the drastic budget cuts, the subsequent version could not live up to the quality of the original script despite a gallant effort by director Steven H. Stern. Too many key scenes were cut and casting compromises made. Ironically, neither Mickey Rose nor Steve Stern held Dennis F. Stevens responsible for the film's box-office failure, although it was Stevens' decision to green-light the project at the lower budget. Stern could have withdrawn from the project but chose to stick it out.
Obviously the competitive desire to get a feature film project into production clouded the judgment of an otherwise rational producer. Was this the end of the father-son relationship? Hardly.
Frank W. Stevens went on to executive produce and post completion for the "Ad Lib" (1981) television series, as well as "The Rocky Road" television series of the same year. And, yes: both series were "G" rated fare distributed to the Black Entertainment Network (BET) and the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service (AFRTS), respectively.
