For 20 years Dean Huh worked with mutual funds in Massachusetts.
Buying. Selling. Selling. Buying.
But that up-and-down world of Wall Street is all behind him now. A year ago, Huh left to follow his dream into the even iffier world of moviemaking.
Starting at 7 o'clock Sunday night, he'll be waiting anxiously to see what the public thinks of his made-in-Rhode-Island By the Sea. That's when his film will have its world premiere at the Castle Cinema Cafe as the closing-night event in the Providence Festival of New Latin American Cinema.
Not that By the Sea, which was filmed in Westerly last October, is exactly a Latin American film. It's in English. But it does revolve around a pretty Cuban-born pastry chef who takes a job at a South County resort, where she encounters the ghost of her baseball-playing Cuban grandfather. That's why Huh has turned up for an interview carrying a Cuban cone conga drum, one of the film's props.
Actually, Huh, who is of Korean-Swedish descent, is no stranger to show business. His grandmother was a Ziegfeld Follies girl in the 1930s. He has been in the limelight himself since age 10, when he did voiceovers for Boston radio stations with the likes of Lucille Ball and Ted Williams.
He has been writing scripts since 18, has produced a cable TV variety series and produced the 1995 Hasty Pudding Awards Show at Harvard -- the year they went to Tom Hanks and Michelle Pfeiffer -- for the Showtime cable network. He still retains the TV rights to the Hasty Pudding event, although he hasn't done one since "because I felt there wasn't anything new to say."
Even while working in mutual funds, "I would do one show-business project a year . . . acting, writing, producing," says the soft-spoken and affable Huh.
Now, at 44, "I finally jumped in."
And jumped in in a big way. Huh put his money where his dream was, financing By the Sea with producing partner Dean Barnes, who works on post-production and visual effects at the Fox TV Studios in Los Angeles. Barnes, who co-wrote the script long-distance with Huh, came East last fall to direct the film.
"We are the studio," says Huh. "That's why we greenlighted it so quickly. There are no outside backers."
Then he added with a chuckle, "I don't think Fortune magazine is going to chase us down for any investment strategy."
A long friendship
Huh has known Barnes nearly 20 years, meeting him when Huh was a student at Pepperdine University in Malibu doing research on film production. Barnes, who has an extensive background in film and TV production and second-unit direction, was working at Paramount Studios at the time.
Although they eventually lived on different coasts, a long-standing friendship developed.
"Baseball has kept us together," says Huh, who loves the game and made it a key element of their script.
Barnes played for Paramount's studio team and was once scouted by the Houston Astros. Several years ago Huh brought him East to visit the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., followed by a memorable game at Fenway Park.
So Barnes immediately liked the idea Huh had for By the Sea, which came to him while vacationing by the sea at the Ocean House in Watch Hill and noticing postcards there of ballplayers in turn-of-the-century uniforms.
"We'd been pitching film ideas to the studios," explains Huh, when he had his brainstorm. "I called Dean on my cell phone during my vacation. I wound up spending a lot of time at the Westerly Library doing research.
"I found that there were baseball teams that played for the seven grand hotels that were originally down there. I even found some Cuban ballplayers who had played there."
Huh wrote his script nights while working days in mutual funds, beginning his first draft in February 2001 and working all summer on revising it. Barnes, on the West Coast, would send him suggestions.
"Thank God for e-mail," says Huh.
Cruise control
In June, he convinced Barnes to come East to look over the coastal hotels that still existed in the area.
"I knew within 10 minutes of our drive down there that we were going to make a film," Huh says. By August, Huh was auditioning actors in Providence and New York City.
He found their star, Elena Aaron, the minute she walked in the door at the New York audition.
"I knew from the start," says Huh. "It was a rhythm, the way she was reading the script. She pulled me into it."
Aaron, who plays a waitress in a bar on the TV soap opera All My Children and has a recurring role as a bartender at the Ba-Da-Bing Bar in The Sopranos, remembers the day well.
"I was going to the beach," she says by phone from her apartment in New York. "It was a summer day. I was wearing a sun dress. I was just so happy to be there.
"And when I walked into the waiting room I saw all of the girls' expressions change -- What is that all about? But I just felt it was as natural as the stars and moon. It was the first time I'd ever experienced this particular feeling in a waiting room."
Huh felt she was right, and so did Bob Pemberton, whom Huh had picked to play her romantic interest. But he had to get Barnes's approval, so he crossed his fingers when he sent off the audition tapes for him to review in Los Angeles. Fortunately, Barnes concurred. "We just were on cruise control from then on."
Aaron will be appearing with morning show hosts Giovanni & Kim this morning about 7:45 on WPRO-FM. Chris Rivaro, who portrays a young baseball player in the film, will throw out the first pitch at the PawSox game tonight. Aaron and Pemberton will be on hand as well.
Getting the job done
They were in luck with last October's fine, warm weather, since the movie was set during the summer. Things went smoothly with the cast and crew, too, even though it was Aaron's first movie and even though Barnes didn't have the time or money for rehearsals.
He arrived from Los Angeles "after midnight, drove down to Westerly, got five hours of sleep and started to work. I met the actors that day in a park in Westerly. It was the first time I'd met Elena face to face."
Fortunately, things started off for Barnes on the right foot. "I got out of the car, took two steps and found a $10 bill on the ground in front of me. So I felt, 'Wow, I'm already making money on this!'
"The day went well. A lot of directing is making decisions, thinking fast and keeping it moving. We worked until dark."
"The actors were going only two takes, three takes," remembers Huh. "The crew was amazing. Brian Heller, the [Providence-based] cinematographer, had brought in a lot of the guys, and I knew we had something going for us when I walked into the first meeting with them in Providence and saw a lot of people I'd seen on other major projects.
"I don't think I've ever been on a project where there have been so few problems. If something needed to be done, it was done."
After that first day of the three-week shoot, Barnes visited the Weekapaug Inn, where he would later shoot many scenes, to finally get his first look at its interior.
"I can't remember working that hard and having that much fun," Barnes added. "I kept feeling blessed with the whole thing."
High hopes
Shooting on digital video made the shoot go even faster, although post-production has taken months. It included negotiations with a recording company to use Gloria Estefan's Here We Are as a replacement for another Estefan song that had originally been selected for one scene but had turned out not to fit its mood.
Despite the risky outlook for independent films that have low budgets and no big-name stars, Barnes thinks things will work out for By the Sea, although he admits to being a little nervous.
"But I'm also seeing something that is coming together very very well. It's a fine product. We shouldn't have a problem generating interest in this. If not a theatrical run, there's always home video, cable, a lot of places to go."
"We like to say we made the film out of love," adds Huh, "but it would be nice to make a distribution deal.
"Because I have my next story running in my head, hopefully I won't have to go back to mutual funds."
The Castle Cinema Cafe is at 1039 Chalkstone Ave., Providence. By the Sea will be shown at 7 Sunday night. Admission is $3.
