Swinging and not missing

It hit.

The story Victor Simpkins '76 was telling centered around a woman who killed her husband with a leg of lamb. When the police come to her house, she is cooking the murder weapon.

"Lambs of the Slaughter" was part of a mischievously macabre series called "Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected." Dahl was an author better known for writing twisted children's tales such as "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory." And it was different from anything Simpkins, who produced the series for a British production company, had done before.

The narrative story-structure was a stark contrast to the natural history documentaries he was used to producing at Survival Anglia, an American subsidiary of its British parent group. But the limited air-time for television was restrictive, prompting him to consider other possibilities.

Simpkins had become president of Anglia only six years after joining the company, but now he watched as the fun seeped out of the career he had chosen over medicine because of its creative possibilities. A sense of stagnation that Simpkins had not seen coming suddenly hit, and he knew it was time for a change.

So Simpkins left his job at Anglia — taking his career in a different direction, one that would lead him 11 years later to produce a $500,000 independent film called "Swingers," starring a little-known actor named Vince Vaughn.

He had been happy. Simpkins sped through his undergraduate years, slipping farther and farther away from his biology major and medical school aspirations as his involvement in Triangle Club expanded. He organized the national tour as a sophomore, served on the board for three years and was president of the club his senior year.

In his science courses at Princeton, Simpkins learned to discern between fact and fiction and design the right questions to tease out the truth.

But after graduation, he abandoned his plan to become a doctor and eagerly accepted a position under Triangle trustee Jack Ball '52 with Survival Anglia, an American subsidiary of a British television production company.

As a production executive, Simpkins was immersed in editing, voice-over narrations, marketing and the crafting of nature documentaries and history specials, which aired on stations ranging from CBS to NBC to the Disney Channel.

"I didn't know why at the time, but I knew that this was more right for me," Simpkins said. "The thing is, in the end, I really discovered that it's not that different. Biology is the study of life and filmmaking is the same thing. It's just a different way of dealing with the same issues."

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He thought he had made the right decision. But now he did not know what to do.

"One hits it at some point in your 20s — you work for a few years and realize one day this isn't quite as much fun as it was in college," Simpkins said. "You hit this point — and realization — where it's not going to change unless you change it. There's no curriculum to plan for next year. You've got to make your own moves here."

So he left Anglia and moved to Los Angeles where he landed a job at Playboy, producing shows ranging from half-hour home videos to the series "Comedy After Hours," which featured comedians ranging from Ellen DeGeneres to Henry Youngman telling each other jokes.

"It wasn't exactly what you might think," Simpkins said of his days at Playboy. "Not that there would have been anything wrong with that."

He went on to produce the first original film for the new Turner Network Television network. "Dead on the Money" (1991) was a dark comedy — evocative of Roald Dahl — starring Corbin Bernsen ("L.A. Law") about two men and a woman whose lives are tangled in the pursuit of a family fortune. One year later he co-produced "Final Verdict" for TNT, detailing the story of trial lawyer Earl Rogers from the perspective of his daughter.

And then it was a return to black humor with "Getting In" (1994, Trimark Films) about the murderous path of students struggling to gain admission into medical school. Though the stellar cast included Andrew McCarthy, Kristy Swanson, Calista Flockhart and Christine Baranski, the name that would influence Simpkins' career most deeply would be the director: Doug Liman.

Simpkins had learned quickly that Hollywood had its limitations. The waiters want to be actors, the bartenders screenwriters, the crew the director. He saw people constantly searching for chances to snatch away the lives of somebody else, and the studio executives, nervous about the hopefuls hovering behind first weekend grosses, were weak and indifferent.

"They're all looking over their shoulders all the time," Simpkins said. "Their role becomes one of self-preservation, not of the creation of things. The biggest film-going audience is young teenage males. That's fine, but I don't only want to make movies for young teenage males."

Simpkins said that every movie he has made has been a struggle.

"The hardest thing to do in the world is finance a film," he said. "It's pure risk. There's no asset until you're done and even then you don't know if it's going to be worth anything. It's strange. It's a very risky business."

So when Simpkins received a copy of the script for "Swingers" from Jon Favreau '89, he advised Favreau to send it to agents and try to entice actors to attach their names to the project.

Everybody praised the script. No one would make the film.

Frustrated and angered by his inability to attract anyone to the project, Favreau returned to Simpkins and asked for help.

"Let's figure out a way to make this ourselves," he said.

Simpkins and his partner looked at each other.

Hollywood is so messed up, they decided. Why not?

They went to his partner's garage, moved her car and installed a phone line. That became their headquarters. They signed the unknown Vaughn, who had been wandering around Hollywood searching for work for 10 years. And on a $500,000 budget, they crafted a movie about an aspiring actor who leaves his girlfriend behind in New York and moves to Los Angeles.

"It's like creating a corporation that doesn't exist," Simpkins said. "It's starting out from ground zero. You have to hire, cast, get all the equipment, decide who's going to have what for lunch every day, how this is all going to happen — and make an interesting film."

Credited for sparking a revival in swing dancing and introducing the phrase "you're so money" into the American lexicon, "Swingers" was an international success, breaking box office records in New York and Los Angeles.

"I've always been a firmly entrenched outsider because I work in the independent film arena, rather than in the studio system," Simpkins said. "After 'Swingers' I was well known."

That was both good and bad.

"People do bad things to each other out here in the name of trying to get ahead," he said, refusing to elaborate. "I don't play those games, basically, and so after a while of trying to get my feet set out here, you learn that's really the way that it is and you either sell out to it or you say I'm not going to be that way."

"Has that hurt? It depends on what you think is successful or winning," he said. "I guess it hurts me. But as a person, I'd rather be the person I am."

Now Simpkins is busy promoting a film that resonates with his own early experience. "Dean Quixote" is about a recent college graduate coasting cheerfully through his chosen life when he is struck with the realization that he is not happy at all.

"It's the first time you get confronted with the fact that things aren't what they seem to be," Simpkins said. "What you make of it, and how you make it fit, helps determine who you become as a person."

His favorite book right now is "Journey is the Destination," a collection of journals written by a boy who was killed in Africa at the age of 18.

"And he's right," Simpkins said. "That's what it's all about. It resonates with me still. Because the journey's the destination. Life isn't clear. There is no way to plan."