Five minutes into Lady in White, it starts defying expectations. If you came to see a ghost story, which the ads certainly lead you to expect, you're surprised to find yourself in a charming study of childhood losses and fears, led by another perfectly guileless performance by Lucas Haas (the little boy from Witness). When the ghosts finally do show up, they're not extravagant Spielberg poltergeists or Beetlejuice nightmares but something much more terrifying - they uncover lurking childhood fears of the unknown, of wonder about the hereafter. What could have been your standard ghost-o-rama has been transformed into an unconventional and personal piece of filmmaking.

LaLoggia made his first feature in 1981, a low-budget horror film called Fear No Evil. He insists that you shouldn't hold it against him since it was totally reworked by others. After that predictably horrifying Hollywood experience, he swore that it would never happen to him again - which normally might mean he would never work again. Instead, he finished his second picture, Lady in White, without any outside interference whatsoever. The film you see is the one he made. Here's how he got away with it.
 
 

WEEKLY: Did you set out to write a ghost story?

LALOGGIA: It plays as a ghost story, but there's a lot more going on. One of the strongest themes has to do with familial bonding and loss. It's no accident that everyone in the picture has suffered some loss - that's what ties everything together. From the point of view of a kid, loss is one of the most devastating fears. At first. I wasn't really driven by this premise, but as the story evolved I realized there was no escaping it. And the films that deal with sensitive issues the most powerfully are those that never set out to do so.

WEEKLY: You weren't condescending in any way when it came to the children.

LALOGGIA: You can't be condescending to kids or you are doing yourself a tremendous injustice. They're the most gloriously honest human beings you will ever encounter. What you see is what you get. What they have to say , with their bodies, with their eyes, is as truthful of a response as you'll ever find in life. It became a challenge to see if I could be just as honest about them. There were lots of things I had to confront about myself in the process. As a result, I think every moment was an honest one.

WEEKLY: Did you create the score and the script at the same time?

LALOGGIA: I wrote a lot of the screenplay at my piano because a flow of feeling, a melody or rhythm, would begin to happen concurrently with the writing of the scene. Often the pacing of the music would dictate the rhythm of the scene as I wrote it. I recorded my themes and I would sometimes play them on cassettes for the actors. After the filming was done, I transferred the film to video and recorded all my arrangements to the picture with a Yamaha DX-7 synthesizer and a Fostex 16 track recorder. Then I gave the completed film, with synthesized arrangements, to an orchestrator.

WEEKLY: What did you do with the script when you finished it?

LALOGGIA: I submitted it to actors and crew people. It never went to a studio. Not for one moment did I entertain the thought. That, in fact, was the biggest problem - how to finance a $5,000,000 picture without getting tied into one of the majors or mini - majors. I didn't even want to pre-sell video because I was absolutely terrified by the prospect of one of these guys telling me what to do - being seduced by being handed all the dough if "all you have to do is this..."

WEEKLY: So how did you raise the money?

LALOGGIA: My cousin Charlie LaLoggia was the executive producer; he's an investment analyst and advisor in Rochester , New York. About three years ago, he examined the stock market with the prospect of taking our company public. As I was working on the script , he was putting together the financial vehicle and seeking out stockbrokers who might be interested in taking us public as a penny stock. That means that we went out at ten cents a share. Eventually, we sold stock over the counter with about 100 brokers across the country, minor firms, many of whom aren't even in business anymore. We managed to raise $5 million on this basis at ten cents a share. It's traded freely on the open market on a daily basis, Just like Kodak. At one point during pre production it dipped to as low as 3 cents a share, but later it got as high as 16 cents.

WEEKLY: Did investors read the script?

LALOGGIA: No, what they got was prospectus, a basic story line, and the blessing of the SEC. Essentially what they were looking at was the referral by their stockbroker. I would venture to guess that many of them didn't know what the hell the company was going to do. But once they began to get wind of what was happening - that we were going to make a quality motion picture - it became an intriguing prospect. We had people come in for as little as $200 and as much as $100,000. You could do that with our offering. But I don't want to make it sound simple. We were in the process of casting the picture. I had already hired a number of key people, and about 5 weeks before we were to start production, everything fell apart. So we were sitting there with about $500,00 in the bank with a picture budgeted at $4.7 million. We made phone calls for 2 days an magically found a couple of new brokerage firms ready to come aboard at the last minute. But we began production with only about $700,000 in the bank.

WEEKLY: That's pretty dangerous.

LALOGGIA: With independent pictures, I'm sure it happens all the time. We felt it was a gamble worth taking because of the people involved, but nobody on the set knew that it was virtually week to week. Charlie would come by the set and I'd say "How'd we do today?" and he'd say "Eighty thousand dollars" and I'd say "Great" or he'd say "Twenty thousand dollars" and I'd say "Ullggh." Making a movie under these kind of grueling circumstances can definitely take it's toll. It's not a good idea, But when your back's against the wall, you have to make the decision to proceed or stop. We got the film all the way through production on it's own, without having to go to anyone else to secure completion money.

WEEKLY: Were there any disadvantages to trying to sell a completed picture?

LALOGGIA: The advantages far outweigh the disadvantages. How many times does a filmmaker get to go out there and make a film with this kind of budget without any interference? Preview audiences thought it was too long, so I took it back to the editing room and cut out 13 minutes, but nobody told me to make a single cut or change the picture in anyway.

WEEKLY: But don't the distributors have you over a barrel when you try to sell them a completed film, since you need them more than they need you?

LALOGGIA: They do - you are definitely at their mercy. But I went into this with the sincere belief - with every ounce of naiveté I had left in me. - that I was going to make a good film, and they'd respond to it. They did, but in a way I wasn't prepared for. They wanted it, but they still wanted to rake me over the coals. I went to New Century/Vista because they seemed to have something at stake. They needed the picture.

WEEKLY: Were you scared to make the film so stylish?

LALOGGIA: I had the opportunity to do something the way I saw it. It's a blessing and a curse. If people don't respond, I can't say the writer screwed me up.
 
 

 

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