Producer-director of Kodak's troubled 'Christmas Carol' plans repeat performance

Could it be the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come?

Culture Monster readers may be familiar with the sorry saga of producer-director Kevin Von Feldt and his ill-fated "A Christmas Carol" (Dec. 22-Jan.4)  As detailed in several of our posts, the show experienced casting and technical problems and, despite a starry lineup that included John Goodman, Jane Leeves and Christopher Lloyd (left), ended up realizing only 18.8% of the potential box office.

And since the show closed, some involved in the production began appending comments to our story about producer-director Von Feldt's difficulties with the show -- as well as to F. Kathleen Foley's review of the production -- complaining that Von Feldt had not paid them for their work.

After weeks of refusing Culture Monster's requests for a telephone interview, Von Feldt finally called to acknowledge that there are indeed many bills he has left partially unpaid to creditors in the wake of the show's financial failure.

But -- and this is the surprising part -- Von Feldt believes the best way to pay his bills is to produce "A Christmas Carol" again next year.

Von Feldt says that, instead of paying any one individual off in full, he chose to use what little funds he had available at the end of the run to pay everybody at least something toward the total owed. That way, everybody is only sort of unhappy, instead of some people being "horribly unhappy," he said.

One of those creditors has been sort of unhappy for more than 15 years ...

Scenic designer Bryan Ryman designed the sets for Von Feldt's 1994 "A Christmas Carol"  at Pasadena's Raymond Theatre, which was also plagued with production problems, debt and unpaid bills; this time around he received a credit as "design consultant." Not only did Ryman receive only partial payment for services rendered on the new production, Von Feldt confirmed that Ryman never received the $35,000 owed to him in 1994. But "nobody got paid on that," Von Feldt explained.

Von Feldt insists that he will pay everyone off someday.  Towards that goal, he said he preferred to send token amounts to all instead of filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and paying no one.

And Von Feldt figures the chance to do the show again next Christmas -- "somewhere outside Los Angeles" -- will earn him enough money to pay everybody off from this year. For this reason, he says he has put some of the funds he has left from "A Christmas Carol" in his bank account in his home base in Wisconsin.

"If I paid everything out that I have right now ... I don't have money left to mount the show, and take advantage of the fact that we have the set built, and the costumes; then, I have a problem," Von Feldt says. "That's my dilemma -- figuring it out." 

The reason Von Feldt finally decided to phone Culture Monster?  He thinks all those negative comments that creditors have appended to our recent posts about "A Christmas Carol" might get in the way of producing next year's show.

"People get upset about money, they have bills to pay," he said. "The only way they can think of helping themselves is to call you, thinking that you will write something -- that's not going to help them get paid. It goes the opposite way. I can't get an actor to go out and play in the Midwest so I can pay this stuff because the actor's agent is reading this stuff in the paper. It doesn't help."

-- Diane Haithman

Photo: Christopher Lloyd as Ebenezer Scrooge in the Kodak's "A Christmas Carol." Credit: Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times

Comments

[anon]

Diane, thank you for staying on top of this. The idea of Mr. Von Feldt swindling another group of people out of their time for his benefit is sickening. He needs to figure out another line of work (i.e. something other than con artist).

He made a comment on one of your previous articles that he made and agreement with the painters that they would not get paid until the proceeds came in from the Kodak, and that they "received extra compensation for doing this". (http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2008/12/kodaks-christma.html#comment-144689156) This, I suppose, was an attempt at clearing his name. He hoped that all of this would go away.

He has paid a lot of the crew just half of what they agreed to. In order to shift the blame from himself, he has insulted and berated them in response to their requests to get paid. Very cruel and unprofessional.

Interested readers should check out the Jan 10th edition of KPCC's Off-Ramp for an inside view of the production from Barry Cutler, who played Marley.

http://www.scpr.org/programs/offramp/shows/2009/01/10/index.html
go to 22:49, or scroll down for a link to the .ram file

Maybe bankruptcy is better than empty promises about future payments. That way, he won't have the possibility of securing funding for future productions, and therefore won't put future crews through this same experience of counting on money around the holiday season that never comes.

[anonymous]

Diane --

You should check out this article, if you haven't already.

http://www.fairfieldweekly.com/article.cfm?aid=10498

Gene Wilder was interviewed in mid-November '08 by his Connecticut hometown newspaper, and he mentions agreeing to be in Von Feldt's production -- apparently a "six-week-long engagement" at the time. It's laughable when you see the promises/statements Von Feldt made to him and/or his agents ... Thank goodness he didn't stay involved.

[Kevin Von Feldt]

We did have a purchase agreement for the Madison Square Garden set. And yes, it was contained on twenty semi trailers. Plans to use it had to be scrapped when we discovered that it would take eight days to put it together at the Kodak. Eight days before opening that weren't available. In fact, the cost of purchasing the $10,000,000 MSG was not that much higher than what was incurred building the last-minute replacement from scratch. The wonderful thing about blogs is that writers are free to say whatever is on their mind, whether accurate or not
Kevin Von Feldt