About Tony Todd... You Probably Didn't Know

My introduction to Tony Todd was terrifying. After I closed at Athletic Xpress and my friends wrapped their shifts at (the much cooler) Paradise Bakery around 9 p.m. at the Superstition Springs Mall in Mesa, AZ, we went downstairs to the mall’s Super Saver dollar theater to catch a show. In the past, I had seen movies such as “Groundhog Day,” “Cop and a Half” and “Bad Boys” here. I usually went for comedy or action. But on this cool spring night in 1993, the group wanted to see “Candyman,” and since we were late, the only seats available were in the very first row. So that’s where we sat, and where I watched most of the movie with my eyes mostly covered.

“Heeeeeelllllleeeeeennnnnn.” Tony’s very chilling entrance in “Candyman” sticks with me to this day. As he slowly paces across the frigid, empty Chicago parking garage to confront Virginia Madsen, I further recoiled into my seat, thinking I was in for a very unpleasant evening. I was right, and had to keep a light on while falling asleep for many weeks after my front-row experience. Thanks, Tony.

“I think you need someone with gravitas to open the film” says my friend Daniel Schweiger to me while casting my horror film “Bryan Loves You” in 2006. A talented albeit unknown actor was set to play the role of Narrator, who sets up the story in the film’s first scene. I said sure, but, like, do you know anyone with gravitas, because I don’t. Daniel had a connection to Tony Todd’s agent. Tony accepted the role. When I heard the news, I felt like I had won the lottery. Not only did my micro-micro-budget film now have an iconic horror star, but ironically, probably the actor who most scared me care of that fateful night at the dollar theater. Thirteen years later and about 20 miles from that movie house in Mesa, we filmed Candyman’s…er, Tony’s…scene in my movie. Small world. Everything is connected.

About 10 years ago our mutual friend told me Tony had been really sick, but was able to pull through. I hadn’t spoken with him in years, but of course reached out and he confirmed he was doing well. So when another friend texted me last week that “Tony Todd died”, I thought that couldn’t be true. No! He got better!

Most of the worldwide media covering Tony’s passing pretty much listed his principal film and TV roles. But they didn’t say he was one of the most passionate, kind-hearted artists in the history of show business. He was. They also couldn’t have known the side of him that few did, a true thespian whose first love was quite possibly theater (or “hitting the planks” as he would say.). And they really couldn’t have known how badly he wanted to direct. But I know. I was one of maybe half a dozen people on his development team. Here's what happened…

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Tony and I kept in touch after “Bryan Loves You” wrapped. When I received the news that Starz/Anchor Bay Entertainment decided to pick up the movie for distribution, it was the single most rewarding day in my life and career at that point in time. It was the culmination of 24-7 pure unadulterated work (and hearing a lot of “no”) from when I moved to Los Angeles at the start of 2000, to that point in March 2008. But it wasn’t Anchor Bay who broke the news. Tony Todd did. Of course. He was like an angel on Earth. With the very unassuming email subject line “Wasssup”, Tony informed me his guy at the company let him know “Bryan Loves You” was acquired for distribution. It was my movie, and he knew before I knew. But hey, Tony is famous and I’m not, and famous people have more connections and subsequently more info. Shortly after Tony’s email, I did actually get a call from the company officially letting me know.

When Anchor Bay planned a DVD signing in September 2008 on the film’s release date, even Tony’s friends told me it was a long-shot he would show. He was super busy always. He was invited to promotional opportunities ad nauseam. Tony said he’d be there; but his good friend Chuck Williams (who was also in the movie) told me: “Don’t take it personally if Tony doesn’t actually go.” He was our biggest draw by far. I was really hoping he’d make it. In case he did, I had a private parking space reserved for him behind Dark Delicacies in Burbank, the famous San Fernando Valley horror store and site of the signing. As it was getting late and the event was about to start, a black Cadillac CTS pulled into the space, and Tony Todd emerged. After greeting him, I pointed to my new car parked next to his, a silver 2008 Acura TL, my first ever new/nice vehicle, to which Tony gave me the most sincere congratulatory “Yeah!” and (strong) high-five I have ever received to this day. It was just a car. But he could tell how much it meant to me, and he was so sincerely happy for me, it struck me in the moment of how incredibly rare is that kind of joy for another’s success.

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Things like this stand out so strongly and clearly in my head about Anthony Tiran Todd (his email handle was “TTTHISTIME”). Someone so kind and generous, who meant so much to so many, shouldn’t be dead.

Several months after the DVD signing, I was elated when Tony asked me to be on his production team for his directorial debut, titled “Eerrie, PA”. To this day, I don’t know if “Eerrie” was unintentionally misspelled (the story’s setting is “Erie, PA”). And I never asked him in all those years. Me and only about five or six others on his creative team, mainly in 2009, received quite a few drafts of his “Eerrie” script and another script he was hired to write, called “Catalytic” about a witch doctor in New Orleans. Tony was an artist all the time. He spoke and wrote more in poetry than in normal syntax and prose. For example, when sending me and the others a new draft, he wouldn’t write “Hey guys, please find the latest iteration of the script attached. Thanks!” He wrote “Sssssshhhhhh” in the subject line. Then, in the body of the email it said:

Quiet. It's starting again.

Listen

Peace

T

Offline, just him and I one-on-one, Tony would send me inspirations for the movie, like news story links pertaining to the film’s themes, or music he wanted to use in certain scenes. Prior to all of the script back and forth, myself and several others were invited to an 8:30 p.m. (!!!) kickoff preproduction meeting for “Eerrie” in L.A.’s Crenshaw neighborhood. I don’t remember much about that 2ish-hour get-together with the newly-formed team, other than Tony telling us the “money from Chicago” was close. It never came. (No reflection on Tony: money to finance indie films rarely comes.) I think he saw me as someone who knew how to produce and had a good eye for scripts and story. Otherwise I don’t know why else I would be on his small, hand-picked team. All I know is I was honored then, and am honored now, to have had those experiences working so closely with a legend. Tony worked with a lot of people and had a ton of credits. But I don’t think he truly confided in very many, nor brought them into his own personal creative space. My opinion.

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Around this time when I was on Team Tony, he was performing a two-man theater show called “The Island” at the Lucy Florence Cultural Center in Crenshaw (same location as the above-mentioned one and only “Eerrie” preproduction meeting). Me and about 10 other people watched him one wintery 2009 evening emote with his fellow actor in a very simplistic and raw theater show. There were no stagehands, no sets really. It was watching two guys just act on a bare stage for a couple hours. It felt super experimental. Like something you’d see in an avant-garde NYC Times Square theater. Not many people, literally, saw this kind of Tony Todd show.

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I think Tony, a successful and famous actor for so many years, found it extremely frustrating to live the life of just another independent filmmaker; scrounging and begging for money for an unproven product that most likely, per the odds, wouldn’t make its investment back for many years, if at all. I was with him for approximately two years total trying to bring his projects to light. At one point towards the end of the endeavor, I remember talking to him on the phone and him telling me Michael Bay wanted to create a horror production company division, similar to what kingpin producer Joel Silver did with Dark Castle films. And since Tony had worked with Bay on “The Rock” and was again working with Bay on “Transformers,” maybe that could be the way forward. But Michael Bay never launched his own Dark Castle. The money from Chicago never arrived. And I never got to be Tony Todd’s producer. But we tried.

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Later, Tony still introduced me to a few others he was working with, hoping to get me in the door as someone else’s producer. It didn’t happen. At this point, looking back, it’s so much more valuable to have had the discerning Tony Todd’s stamp of approval than a one-and-done production job. Although back then, I really did need the job. I eventually could no longer afford Los Angeles because of things like this. Close but not close enoughs. Some really amazing people may believe in you, but if not the right combination of right people at the right time…

I only connected with Tony a few times after leaving Los Angeles. I watched his social feeds from afar, thoroughly enjoying his lust for life, him often posting about music, food, art and his cats at home in Marina del Rey, just north of LAX. #Caturday was a favorite weekend hashtag.

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Maybe this gives you a little more insight into Tony. That he was a creative beyond reproach and an exacting artiste, that he loved the theater eminently, that he really wanted to write and direct, that he maybe didn’t do everything in his life that he wanted to. But who does? And if Tony Todd can be genuinely happy with doing some but not all of what he intended…well, maybe you and I can too. I haven’t met a more genuine person who loved living and helping others more. I once saw you write this to one of your friends, T. And now, sadly, I’m writing it to you: Rest in Power, sir.