CU-led team does pas de deux onto the screen

By Clint Talbott

By formal education, Erika Randall is neither a filmmaker nor a screenwriter. She is an assistant professor of dance who trained at The Juilliard School and got her master of fine arts in choreography from Ohio State University.

Six years ago, however, she began writing a screenplay, which turned into a short film, which enticed some investors, which helped Randall and her husband make a movie on a budget approximating a shoestring.

The result is an “impressive first feature film,” Variety magazine wrote of the work, titled “Leading Ladies." As Variety opined, the film “belies both the paucity of its budget and its helmers' relative inexperience.”

“Leading Ladies” premiered this spring and landed in the Sonoma International Film Festival, where it won a “Showcase” award. The film has been or will be shown at 21 film festivals across the United States and in Italy and Hong Kong.

On Nov. 6 and Nov. 7, the film will make its Colorado debut at the Starz Denver Film Festival. One might say Randall is pleased with her work’s reception and eager to make another film. One might be understating things.



Randall met co-writer Jennifer Bechtel in 2004 and spent every Monday for the next three years writing the screenplay. They spent another year in drafting. In 2009, Randall and her husband Daniel Beahm shot a scene from the film, “The Toothbrush Tango,” that they presented in dance for the camera film festivals that year.

“We had no money. We just kept forging ahead.” At one point, “Teahm Beahm” had amassed $1,500, which was followed by two major investors, which paved the way for a few more.

The cast and crew included eight CU students. The crew also included members volunteering their time, and it drew upon the strengths of Markas Henry, CU assistant professor of theatre and dance and costume shop advisor. Randall said Henry was “spectacular” and a “consummate professional.”

Through mutual connections, they got Peter Biagi, who shot Robert Altman’s last two films, to be cinematographer. Biagi gave Randall a crash-course in filmmaking.

Anthony “Ace” Cabral, an independent filmmaker, was hired as first assistant director. On day one, Randall told him, “Your number-one job is not to make me look like an a—.”

What, Cabral asked, did she need to know? “When to say ‘action,’” she replied.

When the time came, Cabral gave a surreptitious gesture. Randall yelled “Action!” Twenty-four days later, it was a wrap.

“I knew what I wanted character wise, and I knew what I wanted visually,” Randall recalls. But she also knew there was much she did not know. As she told Indie Film Magazine: “I knew what I liked. I knew how to ask for it, and I knew when to shut up and listen to the folks around me who knew more.”

When filming was done, editing began. Beahm, a musician and computer whiz, did the first cut. Biagi recommended industry insiders who could critique the work. The result was 25 minutes of film consigned to the cutting-room floor.

Randall says she couldn’t watch the cutting itself. “I’d have to leave the room and then come in and say ‘yes’ or ‘no.’”

As she notes, making an independent film is “a ton of work.” And given that she’s married to the co-director and producer, the work seems omnipresent. But that’s not all bad.

“We feel like new parents. We go out and all we talk about is the baby. … Every conversation goes back to it.”

The movie is described as an offbeat romantic comedy involving a middle-aged ballroom star who is an overbearing mother of two daughters, one of whom falls passionately in love with another woman. Their romance blooms in the realm of dance, and, as the filmmakers say, the family learns to “Let Love Lead,” a phrase that serves as the film’s motif.

Randall’s love of dance and of choreography in movies goes back to her teens, when she first saw “Dirty Dancing.” Though the female protagonist, played by Jennifer Grey, was “nerdy,” Randall says, she was also desirable and hot, though “not in a way that makes you embarrassed.”

“It impacted our sense of burgeoning sexuality in a powerful way. … My girlfriends and I watched it every weekend.”

“Dirty Dancing” was a dance-filled variation on the ugly-duckling theme. In “Leading Ladies,” however, “We turn our ugly duckling into a penguin instead of into a swan.”

Randall knew that a critic from Variety had seen “Leading Ladies,” and, knowing that the magazine pulls few punches, she had “braced myself to read it.” The reviewer said the “easygoing musical skillfully weaves disparate elements without missing a step: Family drama, gay-consciousness themes and dance-contest movie tropes all do-se-do together in curious harmony.”

Randall was thrilled. “The thing that has been even better is that I’ve had teen-age kids coming up, crying and saying ‘thank you’” for the uplifting portrayal of same-sex romance, Randall says.

Randall also says the realms of film and dance are more intertwined than some might think. Many films have highly choreographed sequences, even if the movement is not, strictly speaking, dance.

When teaching at CU, Randall shows students film clips illustrating this point. For instance, she notes, the movie “Brazil” shows a crowd of workers punching the clock, moving papers, dodging each other. It’s a “great choreography of people.”

“I believe in the dance of everyday life,” Randall says. Students, too, begin to see that “there’s dance everywhere.”

Buoyed by the success of “Leading Ladies,” Randall isn’t ready to hang up the director’s cap. She’s working on several scripts. One is about the first woman to throw for Major League Baseball. The script is called “Junk.”

The release of “Leading Ladies” coincides with the 50^th anniversary of CU’s Department of Theatre and Dance and could be seen as one of many indications of the department’s success.

“Leading Ladies” will be screened at the Starz Denver Film Festival on Nov. 6 at 6:30 p.m. and Nov. 7 at 4:30 p.m. at the Denver FilmCenter/Colfax. There will be an “after party” following at Pete's Bank (two blocks west of the festival venue). For more information on the film festival, see www.denverfilm.org/festival. For more information about “Leading Ladies,” see www.leadingladiesmovie.com.