Synopsis

It’s 1926, and the world of film is about to change forever.

On the cusp of “talkies,” directors and actors fear their greatest days might soon be behind them. Patrick J. Shepard, a director at the end of his career, has just completed his masterpiece, his vehicle for eternal fame. But there’s one problem: Ohio.

Harold Dawdry, the young, second-string minister at a small church in a corner of Ohio, has been appointed to the State Film Censorship Board. He regards this appointment as his ticket to the power and relevance he desperately craves. And there is one director who has particularly rankled his delicate sensibilities: Patrick J. Shepard. The minister feels Ohio is best served if Shepard makes drastic cuts to his final film.

The silent film era is about to get loud.

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Excerpt

The French Student was weeks behind in its editing schedule. Unexpected demands had come in from Pennsylvania and New York for changes to title and dialogue cards and scenes that needed to be shortened or eliminated altogether. Broadly, Pennsylvania didn’t like sex, New York didn’t like a hint of corruption, and Chicago disallowed any suggestion of disrespect of authority; narrowly, the definitions, the nuances, the subtleties of these categorizations changed picture by picture. Shepard was of the mind that the people requesting the changes knew nothing about film. They were probably either friends of the governor of their respective states or had donated a large enough amount of money that the governor felt compelled to reward them with some iota of power and a title—something the appointed censors could crow about in their business or club gatherings. If there was one thing Shepard understood about human nature, it was this: when somebody is appointed to a body referred to as a “censorship board,” sure as hell they were going to censor.

“Change title card from Habeas Corpus for the release of Pierre Montrot—signed by the Judge! to Signed by the judge!”

“Remove all seductive scenes between Brigitte and M. Montrot, that is, where Brigitte and M. Montrot appear together.”

They went on from there.

“Oh, for crying out loud,” he muttered. The listed title changes accomplished little beyond creating jump cuts, illogical continuity, and nonsensical narrative. They altered but certainly did not improve, as if it was their role to enhance his product in the first place. But this level of involvement, this meddling, had been going on for years. These edits were like sand thrown into an engine. Once again, he would need the head of studio, Patches, to appeal to the film distributors’ president, Will Hays. And now he was behind in his script for his final film, The Mating Seas-On, a project that had consumed his thoughts for months. Sets were being constructed; shooting would begin in mere weeks. His timeline was compressed.

—

Shepard got up from his chair and went to the window. When he first moved into this office—well, hell, when he very first moved into this office, this office was a barn (for years, his favorite joke had been: “My officemates were horses, now they’re just jackasses”)—he had looked out on rows of aging fig and apricot trees. The farmer who owned the acres proved more adept at selling real estate than he was at agriculture. The smell of the forgotten fruit competed with the smell of barn animals, which competed with the early morning coffee brewed to wake up both cast and crew. Not one minute of daylight could be wasted in those early days. Now, as far as the eye could see from his window were studios, production support buildings, construction shops, scenery storage facilities, administrative offices. He felt as if he had lived multiple careers, one layered on top of another, over the past twenty, twenty-five years, not to count the years in theater that had led up to his entrance into the motion picture industry. Referring to the creation of film entertainments as an industry in 1902 would have made those involved at the time laugh. It was a game, a mere pastime, an exhausting way to spend days and earn pay between Broadway shows. But then Porter’s film, short as it was, shined a spotlight on what moving pictures—movies—could be. Edwin S. Porter was brilliant with the technology and hardware advancements, but he couldn’t direct worth a lick; actors hadn’t a clue what he wanted or what it was they should be doing. Were they to walk about? Move their arms? Were they sad or unhappy? Were they to say actual lines to one another, or simply talk and gesticulate about the day’s weather, only appearing to have a meaningful conversation? Were they experimenting or truly acting? Were they inventing something new, or placing something old within a new medium?

D.W. Griffith had fixed all that. An actor himself, he approached the exercise from the character’s perspective. He left the technical aspects to Bitzer while he talked through every scene, every emotion, every gesture with his actors. They were his puppets and he was the master. Porter could go back to tinkering with gadgets, his artistic and cinematic highlight having been a feverish one-reeler about two trains barreling toward each other on the same track.

When the studio announced that Shepard was scripting what would be his “retirement” film—his swan song—the marketing department had begun lining up interviews with the daily press and trade magazines. In one recent interview, Shepard pointed out that he had started in the Porter camp but shifted over to the Griffith style. He recognized that he himself may not have had breakthrough ideas in his career, but he prided himself in at least recognizing brilliance when he saw it in others and adapting to it. That was one of the reasons he had weathered years of fast growth, ever-looming bankruptcies, mergers, and scandals within the industry. Studio heads knew they could count on Shepard to deliver something of value. He was level-headed in an increasingly manic, celebrity-driven environment. Over the last two decades, everything in this industry had become over-sized: cameras, production crews, studios, movie palaces, budgets, egos, and risks. Especially risks. Shepard was exhausted.

And yet, how many people had read his name up on the screen? Hundreds of thousands? Millions? He may hide it well, but he, too, had an ego. It was a defining quality of living in this town. He was just more adept at hiding his, more accomplished at the sleight of hand required to do so. Over the past year, he had begun to think of his legacy, what the last twenty-some years of output had meant to this industry, if anything. It was the perceived permanence of celluloid that allowed many directors to lure the stars of Broadway and opera into the film studios of Fort Lee, the glass boxes. “You will be immortalized,” Shepard had said to countless Broadway actors, his friends and connections from theater days, persuading them to come across the Hudson for a few days of shooting. “Immortality, my ass,” the thespian—he refused to be identified as a mere actor—Walter Cameron had said, “just give me the cash, Paddie, and keep my name off your film.” Cameron, among others, would eventually regret that point of view, begging in a telegram, years later, for his name to be added onto those earlier pictures. TOO LATE, Shepard had responded, THAT BOAT SAILED STOP.

How many films did it take before one became a legend, to go down in history? How many screenings throughout the United States? Europe? How many knew his name by heart? How many went to the film specifically because it was directed by Patrick J. Shepard, no matter who was in it? How many used the term “Shepardian” to describe a film technique or story slant? Anyone? Anywhere? It’s tiring to even try to calculate, he thought. How does one chase—or catch—fame? At this point he had all the money he, his kids, and all their kids would ever need. It had stopped being about the money years ago. At this point, he was looking for his Gold Rush, that perfect balance between humor and pathos, or for his Potemkin, in which technical aspects facilitate the storytelling, rather than distract from it. It felt like threading a needle. He needed the right story, the right actors, the top technicians, and the critical reviews. Even then, audiences might forget about it five minutes after departing the theater. If they even came.

He was not going to catch fame of any sort with Pennsylvania out there. With the censors of New York, Ohio, Indiana, Kansas, the Chicago cops—cops!—for Chrissake. They were all nibbling away at Hollywood films, striving to import not art, but mere mediocrity and a patch of gray for their hamlets and villages of their grim little states. What could they possibly know about film? About his films?

About the Author

GLENN R. MILLER: is the author of the critically acclaimed and award-winning novel “Doorman Wanted” which was named 2026 Plymouth Reads Book of the Year. “Rough Cuts” is his second novel, forthcoming from Koehler Books. Miller launched his professional career by working on television soap operas and game shows on the back lots of NBC Burbank. He holds a master’s degree from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism and has served as a CBS-affiliate news producer, public television producer, and creative director at production agencies within the Twin Cities. Glenn and his wife live in Minneapolis, and are the parents of two grown sons.

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