I probably shouldn't be writing in about this film, because I'm in it so I should be biased about it. But I'm fairly proud that I appear in this oddball movie because when I finally saw it I really enjoyed it.
Dead Boys was shot under the title Neon Red in Brooklyn and Manhattan in late summer 1988. A friend of mine (Matt Mitler -- you really need to see his movie Cracking Up) had auditioned for it and he called me and told me there was a part I could do in it, so I called for an audition myself. The director's office was in the same Times Square building that Geraldo was doing his then talk show and the elevator had a full-length mirror in it (so Geraldo could check himself out while going to the soundstage). Since I'm not really an actor (at the time I was a playwright and stage director) I didn't even have a head shot with me. I just told the folks that I was recommended to audition. The production staff looked at me funny but I read for the part of the suicidal attorney and they liked me, called me back where I met Howard the director and they videotaped my second reading and cast me. This was a surprise to me but I was glad to do it. At the time I was working as First AD on another low budget production and when I learned Neon Red was still looking for a lead actor to play the Nam vet janitor I recommended David John, who was starring in the other film I was working on. They cast David on my recommendation -- he was a great guy and I really enjoyed working with him.
The shoot was three weeks, extremely low budget. Pay was ridiculous and very non-union -- I got $50 a day! Still I got a great kick out of working on Neon Red. The cast and crew were fun and young and energetic. Brad Friedman, who played Goose the lead psycho, was a terrific and charismatic hardworking actor who had done some stage stuff with Robert Wilson. We were shooting the hostage scenes in the "tallest building in Brooklyn" (as we were told).
I was lucky enough to have my suicide scene be the first sequence shot for the film, so we spent some eight hours shooting it from every angle over and over again. It took forever but we all pretty satisfied when we moved on. But I mostly recall the final day of the shoot in that building -- it was an eighteen hour day because we HAD to finish shooting that day there, we had no more time. So the whole climax had to be shot in that very short time and it was totally rushed and improvised. My character was hanged but the scaffolding that was brought in was too tall for the room we were in and so they suspended a bar and when I dropped I was holding myself by my hands on the bar and they kept a tight closeup of my face. Then they shot my feet dangling and I kicked one of my shoes off -- which wasn't in the script and which got applause from the crew. In that final 18-hour day the only craft service we had was cold pizza! Like I say, LOW budget.
Still when I finally saw Dead Boys Cant Fly in 1995, two years after the film finally was released on video, I expected to see a real piece of crap and instead found a disturbing, unrelenting and mean film with some unsubtle humor and a surprisingly decent ending. I've been in a few other films, but none of them are as interesting as this thing. It's not a bad way to spend 90 minutes, as long as you're not too squeamish.
My name I believe is spelled correctly in the film -- Bennett Theissen -- but in the database and in most references to the film my last name has become Thiessen. So when I found my death scene listed on the Cinemorgue website, along with a photo of me being hanged, it's under "Thiessen." It'd be nice if that was corrected but it doesn't bother me too much.
