Photo Gallery

The making of JAKE POWERS

The following are excerpts from Mark’s book TRULY INDEPENDENT FILMMAKING;

            Originally I was going to make a very short 5 – 10 minute comedy featuring Jake Powers, the fantasy hero from PETER’S TREASURE, in another adventure that I would show much like a short film before a feature presentation. As I was planning this, I received a call from my friends in Washington, D.C.; Andy Battmer, Roger Kitterman and John Lynch were living and working there, and wanted me to come out for a week to visit. So I came up with a great idea; I would shoot some scenes in D.C. for this Jake Powers adventure, and expand the story to involve him saving the President of the United States.

“It was fun again to have Leatherwood involved. Anytime I think you can get actors who are interesting and really talented and funny it adds to it. And I’m convinced that you and he, you’re the two guys who should have gone on to be stars.” – Johnny Johntz  

            We almost were kicked out of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. while filming the scenes with the three ‘secret service agents’. We had shot about half of the footage when a park ranger walked up and asked to see our permit. I had no idea we needed a permit to film at a public park, but D.C. is a city filled with bureaucracy, loopholes and hidden agendas. Somehow I was able to convince the ranger that we were shooting a small student film and pointed to our home video camera and VHS deck. Of course I had three actors, a script and a boom operator holding a microphone - but she still let us continue shooting. We were gathering quite a crowd watching us shoot, including a group of school kids probably in the fifth grade. In one shot Roger kept throwing his umbrella up and having it crash onto the floor in front of him, which eventually led to it’s destruction. He gave the broken prop to one of these kids, who thought this was the coolest thing and asked if we were making a real movie. Roger told them it would be hitting theaters by next spring. I always wondered if that kid kept going to the movies looking for the scene with secret service agents throwing umbrellas at the Lincoln Memorial. 

                “I do remember filming the scenes in DC,” Roger Kitterman recalled. “Particularly Lynch's rendition of ‘Roxanne’. Shooting the scene at the Lincoln Memorial was fun - having an audience that thought it was ‘real’. I remember you saying ‘student film’ over and over to the people who came to question whether we could be there. It was a simple scene but hard to keep a straight face through it. By the time we finished, a significant crowd had gathered. Since my umbrella was broken, I gave it to the kid hoping for the reaction ‘wow, I got a prop from a real movie.’ Hopefully it would mean something to him and it had no value for me. I wasn't nervous until the park police came and asked us what we were doing. That was my favorite scene to shoot. My least favorite was the scene around the White House. Driving around and around trying to get the right take with the right background - it seemed to take forever.”  

                Andy Battmer recalled the shoot, “I remember we went up to the Lincoln Memorial. This was silly and so typical of Washington D.C. ; We were in our trench coats and those glasses and the Park Ranger, who was in charge of the Memorial, walks up to us and she was worried that we were some spy or something. (Laughs) She just had to figure out what we were up to, what was going on. I remember she was like, ‘I saw you here with the trench coats and the glasses. I just wanted to make sure everything was on the up and up.’ Yeah, we’re just filming a movie.”

            The costume for The Big Cheese was the most complicated to make up to that time. I had to depict Adam’s character as surviving a nuclear holocaust, and being essentially ‘rebuilt’ by Dr. J.B. into a half-man/half-machine. So I tried to piece together a costume using several different items including a scuba diver’s hood, a Dracula-style cape, a hubcap, a meat thermometer and half a facemask to create a cross between Darth Vader and the Phantom of the Opera. Adam even joked about his costume one day on the set; “I bet Mark watched STAR WARS before he wrote this movie. I bet he rented the whole STAR WARS Trilogy! (Adam turns to Ali Rezaee.) You don’t know how close you came to being an Ewok!”

            Adam recalled the uncomfortable costume, “I remember it, again, being about a thousand degrees in the sub-basement of The Star. And it seems like that costume was something that I could meander about freely on one of the global poles and be very comfortable. (Smiles while remembering the scuba divers hood and various other costume parts he had to wear) Well, prop budget was never a concern at Adamstar, was it? (Laughs) I think that maybe the costume took away from the character. I understand what was trying to be achieved with it, and it was the best that we could do at the time. But looking back on it, again you’re kind of out of luck if you haven’t seen the prior production (PETER’S TREASURE) in terms of how all of that happened (with The Big Cheese surviving a nuclear blast). You’re a bunch of guys. You‘ve got a $20.00 budget. How do you craft a costume that reflects a character that’s been a victim of that kind of trauma? It’s tough. And I understand the mechanized approach, but the costume just didn’t seem connected to me. The thermometer behind my ear and the thing on my hand? It just didn’t seem to come together and say, ‘what happened to this character’. I think that’s what a costume ought to do. It needs to be a part of that character and needs to reflect, to a certain extent, that character’s role in the larger picture. And I didn’t think that costume did that. And it was SO hot! Oh, it was hot! Didn’t we film that in the middle of summer? Can’t we film a winter film, Mark? (Laughs) Can we get together in the plains of South Dakota in say, end of January or beginning of February, and shoot something under cooler conditions? (Continues to laugh)”

            I entered JAKE POWERS into a couple of film festivals and it did nothing. (This was nearly 7 years before Mike Myers came out with his first AUSTIN POWERS movie, but I’m positive that he never saw my film. So don’t worry, Mike, I won’t sue! I can call you ‘Mike’, can’t I?) When I showed the film to people, they seemed disappointed. I was initially happy with the final film, but I didn’t see what was really wrong with it. For me, this was a superior film technically to WAR, DEATH AND PIZZA. I had better camera work and lighting, and was able to edit at KU again. And I had some very impressive locations, including the Washington D.C. footage. I shot the interior of the Treasury Building at the Kansas City Star newspaper downtown building, where they stored their huge rolls of paper. I shot under a B-1 bomber at the US Air Force Museum in Dayton Ohio . What I didn’t see at the time was that the story was uninteresting and the characters fell flat.

            Johnny Johntz enjoyed shooting at the more interesting locations, “It’s fun getting to go to unique locations, in the Kansas City Star down in their basement area where they’ve got those massive rolls of paper is an example of that. You had other examples in a lot of your films - I mean you came up with some great locations whether it was on a big (aircraft carrier, for the 1992 film JUDGMENT DAY) or in my apartment. (Laughs) No, but I think choosing unique locations adds not only an interesting dynamic to the film - it can help carry pieces of film just by the uniqueness of the setting but it makes it a lot more interesting to shoot, too.”

            Despite the awkward costume, Adam enjoyed making JAKE POWERS as well, “That was another one that was fun to make. We were lucky to have the folks at The Star be so cooperative about letting us get down there (to the sub-basement). That was one of the neat things about that film; that was one of the first ones we did ‘on location’. I think that was one of the first one we did at a unique location shot. And I remember it took, oh probably about an hour, to get all the equipment in and downstairs. It seems to me like we had to take more than one trip. We had to cross through the tunnel that connected the warehouse to the main building underneath Grand (Avenue in downtown Kansas City ). And then wind around and way back in there. So in terms of technical, we had some challenges with sound, had some challenges with lighting. But I think it turned out OK.”

Agent Smith tries to explain the situation while Jake Powers waits for his uniform to be cleaned

Mark Adams and Adam Leatherwood shooting on location in the Kansas City Star offices

            For Kevin Walker, the shoot in the offices of the Kansas City Star had a different feel to it, “I just remember (during the shoot at the KC STAR) I almost felt like we weren’t suppose to be there. I almost felt like we broke into the place. I knew we had permission because one of your friends worked there, and we were able to go in. But it’s like, ‘we’re sitting in the Kansas City Star, we shouldn’t be here, and we’re filming this just corny movie.’ And the whole time - the only thing I’m thinking is, ‘we’re going to get busted for breaking into the Star!’ So everything else that was going on was sort of extra in my mind. I had this underlying fear we’re going to get busted. I was working with some of your friends who you knew from high school, that we didn’t really hang out with in college. They had gone to other schools so I didn’t know them that well. It wasn’t quite as a jovial, relaxed atmosphere only because I didn’t know the people. I kind of knew them, and it was fun, but it wasn’t like doing things with Scott (Aldridge) and Ali (Rezaee) and Brian (Powell) and all of the other people because I had known those people and we did everything together. It was sort of more business-like, and then that fear factor, ‘we’re going to get busted because we’re at the Star.’ It was just a whole different atmosphere to that film for me, personally.”

Cover the hand at the left of the photo and it almost looks like a real plane flying through the air with Jake Powers in the cockpit

Ali Rezaee and Johnny Johntz find themselves in another silly Adamstar film

            This was a sequel to the earlier film, but I saw it more as just a continuing adventure of one of the characters. I did nothing new with those characters and they were still very one-dimensional. After WAR, DEATH AND PIZZA people saw this as a step backwards, returning to the sillier slapstick of my earlier films. For someone who never saw PETER’S TREASURE, they had nothing to start from, and didn’t know why certain things were happening. I still like to watch it because I do enjoy some of those little moments like Andy’s “Bitch in Heat” radio call and my speech in the back of the car while driving by the White House. I was surprised to hear Roger Kitterman’s impression of the film, “I liked the film as a whole - it had a campy-ness that worked pretty well. Not as tight as WAR, DEATH AND PIZZA but still fun. The special effects were taken to a new level as well.” But I don’t really show this to anyone these days, I would have to show the first film and it’s not worth it. The few people who have seen it agree that this was not one of my better films, and I learned another important lesson: Great locations alone do not make a film good, strong characters and a well-written story are essential. This also made me vary wary of making sequels. Johnny felt that the script wasn’t as strong, either, “I feel like, to me, that was a film (JAKE POWERS) where we weren’t necessarily progressing in terms of plot and theme and characters, there was character development – we developed your character (Jake Powers). But I think it was fun and it was suppose to be absurd. And I think though during this time period you were doing a phenomenal job of developing your understanding of editing, and the Adamstar logo and stuff, and it was all adding a quality of professionalism to your work.”

            For Adam Leatherwood, JAKE POWERS was not a film can be looked at on it’s own, “This particular incarnation of the Jake Powers series, I think, was a transition somewhat between WAR, DEATH AND PIZZA and the earlier ones. (Even though it was made after WAR, DEATH AND PIZZA) We had a great time shooting it, but it still had not reached the point where it was one of those things, in my opinion, where you could really show it a great deal beyond our own circle (of family and friends). One of the advantages to WAR, DEATH AND PIZZA is that it was a script that was a little bit more palatable, in terms of its ‘appeal-ability’. It didn’t have a whole lot to deal with in terms of sets and costumes. And it seems like part of the disappointment with (JAKE POWERS) might have been that we were unable to provide the kind of costumes and sets that we really needed to pull that off in a way that would engage the audience. I mean, I think we did the best we could with what we had. I don’t see how it could have been drastically improved upon without, say, $20,000 to $30,000 to flesh out costumes and sets. WAR, DEATH AND PIZZA was - at that point in time - the Soviet Union had not collapsed. And things were chaotic enough that someone might actually hit the switch. And it had enough of the laconic humor with a scenario that was remotely plausible. But it was investigating what the fiber of a person is. I mean, when you’re facing death what are you going to do? And how do you react to that? And that is what (WAR, DEATH AND PIZZA) explored. Where as (JAKE POWERS), we were having fun. And I think it was fun. But I think you tapped into something with WAR, DEATH AND PIZZA that was a little deeper than that. I was very impressed with the locations. With WAR, DEATH AND PIZZA, the story line came into focus. And with (JAKE POWERS), not only did we evolve from the ‘no script, here just lets run with this’ to the script, something a little bit more structured. But the technical dynamics, dealing with the sound, lighting, locations, it just seemed that at that point in time I got the sense that, ‘Hey, you’re serious about this. And you’re going to go somewhere with this.’ This is no longer just a bunch of guys out fooling around with a video camera on a weekend. It’s a little bit different. But the locations for (JAKE POWERS) were very, very impressive, and the technological advancements. The little things that in previous films were rather choppy, were now smooth and integrated into the rest of the film so that it looked like it had been professionally done…that’s very enlightening to me. Now when I watch a film, I’m more critical. There will be a cut to one person, and a cut back to another person. I understand how that is shot now, from working with you. Seems very simple, but I had no knowledge of how that worked.”

            Kevin Walker wasn’t sure what to make of the film, “I didn’t know what to think of it. This stuff that’s going on in your mind just dumbfounds me. Being someone who’s as far from being creative as you can get, and had never done anything like filmmaking and I had no concept of what you’re doing and what you’re thinking and what it ends up being in the final product. I had no idea where you’re going. And like most filmmakers, you don’t film things in sequence. So as being one of your ‘actors’, if you want to call it that - I hesitate to call myself an actor – you’re switching from scene to scene and they’re so incongruous that when you’re doing it you don’t know what in the world is going on. And so when you sit down and finally watch the end product, it’s like, ‘ah, that’s kind of cool. I see what you were doing.’ I don’t know that the end product was any…they were just weird. You had some of the strangest concepts in the world that we turned (into a film). And I think your weird concepts and our bad acting just made for some really hellishly awful films. (Starts to laugh) And I don’t mean to say that in a bad way to you, because those were things that we were all learning and doing this on a three-dollar shoestring budget. And I think even you, you probably look at some of these things now and just duck your head under and go, ‘oh my God! I can’t believe my name’s on that!’ But at the same time, they’re a riot! They’re an absolute riot to watch. They’re fun to look at. I laugh – they bring back so many memories. And to see the end result of what you’ve done and the creativity that you had, even though they’re kind of twisted and they’re weird, the end products are just always neat. I don’t know if someone who’s disassociated with you and the filmmaking – I don’t know what they pull out of the end product. It could have been the worst piece of celluloid ever made, but to me they’ll always be great memories and fun to watch.”  

                In 2008, Mark decided to go back and take another look at his first sequel; “In honor of the 20^th Anniversary of PETER’S TREASURE, I decided to go back and re-cut the film using the original footage shot back in the summer of 1988. After I restored all of the footage back into the film I decided to name this version of the movie PETER’S TREASURE: The Final Cut. As a bonus I thought it would be fun to do the same with the 1990 sequel: JAKE POWERS. I took the raw/unedited footage and re-edited it in my non-linear editor to create the fully restored and digitally re-mastered versions of both of the films. I added some additional footage to JAKE POWERS: The Final Cut, including more model shots and an entire sequence of Jake Powers photos taken in downtown Kansas City discarded in the original edit. I also completely remade the opening titles and remixed additional music. JAKE POWERS was always intended to be a companion piece to PETER’S TREASURE, and not a follow-up to WAR, DEATH & PIZZA as people originally saw it. Now I hope people can enjoy JAKE POWERS as the continuing adventures of the bumbling superhero from the first film.”