by Harlan Kennedy Compactly built, with thick brown (now Gdansk) for the birth of Alexan- hair and a sliver of a Mexican accent, der; moved on to Leningrad for six Is it a bird? Is it a plane? I1ya is the third-generation whiz-child in months' directorship of the State Opera; No, it's Metropolis and a hot-off-the- the family of stateless wizards that has and then fled Russia for Berlin to press Daily Planet Exclusive on the been patrolling world cinema since produce his first films, among them Salkinds. 1924. Grandfather Mikhail (1892-1974) G. W Pabst's 1925 Joyless Street, starring See it leap tall legends at a single and father Alexander, still flourishing, Asta Nielsen and featuring two little- bound. Listen to it swoosh over language are his forebears. Ever since they struck known actresses, Greta Garbo and barriers. Marvel as it spans three con- it rich with the Three and Four Muske- Marlene Dietrich. Movie history was in tinents and dips back into the 19th cen- teers, Alex and I1ya have been pursuing the making. tury .. . the One Film ethos like a moving-target Holy Grail. Superman was the event Sixty years later-and after many in- PARIS. \"In my father's day,\" says Al- movie of 1978, Superman 2 scooped a tervening troughs, several triumphs, small fortune in 1981, and now three and a catalogue of self-confessed exander Salkind, \"and in mine, when further titles beginning with the talis- clinkers-the Salkinds are a household manic \"S\" are lining up to leapfrog each name. But there are some bullet holes in we made films it was the actor's job to other into the Top Grossers pantheon. the letters to mark their baptism into the bully-boy world of big movie business. Back in 1922 things were a little dif- act, the director's job to direct, and the ferent. Mikhail Salkind, a Russian law- yer, fled Minsk with his pregnant wife producer was expected to serve the film and the family jewels sewn into his suit (the Bolsheviks had taken the rest of financially and realize as big a return as their worldly wealth); stopped in Danzig possible for the investors. If that meant cutting it into two pieces or into twenty- two pieces and selling it as a serial, then fine!\" Alexander Salkind thumps a frightened Perrier bottle in emphasis. \"That was proper. That was business. Today the industry has grown, ex- panded, and there are new rules and proprieties. The cinema may be better for it-but the business is, let's say, more 'complex.' \" LONDON. I1ya Salkind, in Pinewood Studios, agrees. He and his father are now completing Superman 3, putting Su- pergirl into production, and planning for Santa Claus. \"For us, as producers,\" says I1ya Salkind, \"the point of making a film is that moviegoers looking through the newspaper pages in any big . city will \\ want to see ... one film! And fight now, we hope that's Superman 3. \" Alexander Salkind.
First in the Musketeer films, later in the thing on the Superman poster I don't And Alex's own first youthful step into the film jungle? We had begun an Superman saga, the irresistible force of like, I pick up the telephone to Warners after-lunch stroll through statue-stud- Salkind entrepreneurialism met the im- and want to know why it's there. And ded gardens-a regular Salkind Senior constitutional-and his eyes lit up in movable object of artists' agents and between us we decide whether or not it total recall. lawyers . Contracts were pawed and stays. ''I'll tell you,\" he beamed, \"I was 23 years old. And it taught me just how up pored over. First Raquel Welch (for \"Right from when we began in Eu- and down the movie business is. We had Musketeers) and later Mario Puzo, Ri- rope, my father, Mikhail, and I made moved to Mexico, it was 1945, and we chard Donner, and Marlon Brando (for sure we never gave up control over our had a comedy script called El Moderno Barba Azul-Rocket to the Moon. We Superman) contested Salkind's right to films or the long-term rights to them. wanted an American star for it, so I went to Hollywood and I saw an actors' agent cut one movie contract into cloth for two That goes for the ancillary rights , too. there who let me go through his books. I went through the A list, the top stars- feature films. All the disputes were set- And this was before TV and video, when we couldn't afford them-then the B list, then the C. And halfway through tled out of court, however, and the only you couldn't predict the extra earnings a this, I found a name I recognized. Buster Keaton! I said, 'Is this the Buster lasting offspring they've left posterity is film might make from nontheatrical Keaton?' And the agent looked at me and said, 'Yes, yes, but you don't want a legal rubric now known as \"the Salkind showings. There used to be a sentence him, he's on the bottle these days, totally unreliable, and he hasn' t made a Clause.\" • in contracts that contained the phrase, successful film in years.' I said, 'I'll take \"and any future rights that might arise.\" him.' I meet Salkind pere at his hotel in When I sold a movie, that was the sen- \"And the next thing, I was introduced to Keaton and the first sight of him I'll Paris, where we eat and talk in a me- tence I always crossed out! Why give never forget. Sitting very shyly, sheep- ishly, fiddling with a hat between his lange of languages: French, Spanish, away today what you can sell tomorrow? knees, looking as if he never expected to be offered another part in his life. We English, Italian. First topic: the famed So we still own all our movies. And right made the film. Keaton came to Mexico, never touched a drop during shooting, and still unforgouen legal and verbal on- now I'm negotiating video outlets with and we paid him $5,000. Which even then was ridiculous for a legend-peo- slaughts of Brando, Donner, Reeve, different countries for films like Joyless ple at that time didn't realize the impres- sion Keaton had made on the world. Kidder, and others. Street, Austerlitz, and The Trial. Some The film did well in every country where we sold it. Only one country \"That's history now,\" says Alex, bat- twenty titles have just been sold to EMI wouldn't buy Rocket to the Moon and never has. And that's America. I'm still ting the topic politely away in Spanish. in Britain.\" waiting for offers.\" \"We none of us lose any sleep over it. If Born in the free port of Danzig, • you'r~ in the business of big money pro- whisked off successively to Leningrad, Four decades on, while Salkind pere ductions, everyone likes to make a little Berlin, Paris, and later still Cuba and minds the company's money matters on one side of the English Channel, stir now and then with lawyers. It's part Mexico, Alexander Salkind is one of Salkind fils and production partner Pierre Spengler sit in their offices on the of their career, part finding the rules of Moviedom's most amazing survivors- other, putting the finishing touches to the company's latest rocket to the box the game, and part genuine misunder- virtually a one-man history of political office, Superman 3. standings. In the Musketeers dispute, it's cataclysm in the 20th century. Today he Catch IIya on any average day, when the engines of his movie enthusiasm are my opinion we could have gone to court lives partly in Paris, partly in Switzer- thrumming away, and he'll happily en- trust you with the story of the birth of and won the case, no problem. But no land, where he enjoys diplomatic status Superman-the film that, after launch- off with the Musketeers, finally shot the one wants to drag these affairs through as an honorary representative of a Latin Salkinds into Outer Space. the courts; it's expensive, and it's a very American country. \"When I first had the idea,\" he said, \"I took it to my father and he said, 'Su- long business whether you win or lose. \"As a child I learned to live out of a perman? Who's Superman?' He'd never heard of him. I explained, I showed him So with the Musketeers we agreed to suitcase,\" he declares, \"and that's how I the comics, and gradually he liked the give the people involved a percentage of still live\"-though the sumptuous sur- the second film, The Four Musketeers. roundings of his hotel show that he's The Superman dispute, that too, though now moved on to satin-lined Vuitton. it was more protracted, we finally settled \"Wherever we found ourselves back in out of court. those years, whatever city or country, \"But still for me this is a strange way my father would set up business as if we to make films,\" he continues, modulat- had always been there. After Joyless ing into French. \"I grew up in a world Street in Berlin, we were in Paris and where filmmakers were free to put their Mikhail produced Pabst's Don Quixote ideas into the camera, without being with Chaliapin, the great Russian opera afraid of small print in contracts, or this, star, whom my father had brought from that, and the other. It's good that there's Leningrad. When we left Paris-and protection for artists and technicians, of there were many more pictures-it was course. But sometimes too much protec- in 1942, and the Germans ... well, that tion means too little freedom for pro- story has nothing to do with film. We got ducers. out on one of the last, if not the last, \"We've always tried to stay free. We boats to leave France. Our port of call started off as a 'roving' company and we was Cuba, where my father proceeded still are that. We're not tied to any coun- to buy up the distribution rights for the try or major studio. Right now, I be- very popular films of Cantinflas. In lieve, we're the only big independent those years Mexican film production producers who finance and own their was beginning to boom and the market films. We hire Warner Bros. to release in South America was enormous. And so and distribute them, but we keep the we moved there and went into business rights and maintain a consultative status. producing about 20 films for the Latin I give you an example. If I see some- American market. \" 50
The first two Superman pictures cost more than $100 million between them. Superman cost so much that ifit hadn't clicked we'd have been totally wiped out . .. Even after successfully releasing Superman 2, we still owe the banks money. Greta Garbo in Joyless Street. idea. this guy swung it, and two minutes after ner's direction? \"Then of course we didn't know it hearing that Brando would play Jor-EI, 1 \"The problem was, he was just too would be an obstacle course just to get to Day One of shooting. First my father had Hackman on the telephone to say slow. He would do retake after retake had to hammer out an agreement with NPP, who owned the rights to Super- he would do Lex Luthor.\" after retake. On an intimate little film rruln. Alex owns all the Superrruln film rights for 25 years now, until 1999. One Soon, with Mario Puzo's first-draft this is fine, when you're not spending of their less exacting demands was that no Superrruln movie should cost less than script for Superman revamped by David millions simply keeping the movie to- $5 million. Little did they know. Little did we know! First we had a writer, Wil- and Leslie Newman and Robert Ben- gether technically-the sets, the effects. liam Goldman, who didn't click with the project. Then we signed up a director, ton, only two things remained: the What happened eventually, of course, Guy Hamilton, who, as pre-production dragged on,couldn't stay in England to vexed blank space where a director's was that the first two Superrruln pictures make the film because of tax reasons. Then we couldn't get stars to take the name should be, and an empty cape and cost more than $100 million between parts. Paul Newman was offered a choice of Jor-El or Luthor and turned boots where newcomer-Superman them. So there were horrrible aggrava- both down. Burt Reynolds was also ap- proached, and several others. should fit. tions between Donner and me. The at- \"But once our luck broke, everything \"I saw The Omen one night,\" says mosphere on the set was poison. And started to swim along. An agent I knew suddenly scurried up to me and said, 'I I1ya, \"and 1 liked Dick Donner's work finally 1 hired Dick Lester in a producer can get you Brando.' 1 said, 'Are you crazy?' Brando was then very big, after and we signed him up. Christopher capacity, uncredited, to be a kind of Godfather and Last Tango. But somehow Reeve we picked out of the proverbial high-profile go-between. And he got hundreds-though Donner didn't like things moving. But Superrruln cost so him at first and needed some persuading much that if it hadn't clicked at the box -because 1 thought he looked good, office we'd have been totally wiped out. and 1saw he could also act. Once we had Miraculously, the bloody picture the cast and crew together and were roIl- worked. And it's my favorite, ironically, ing, it was always our aim, Alex's and of the two so far. But even so, and even mine and Pierre Spengler's, to have two after successfully releasing Superman 2, movies in the can at the end of shooting. we still owe the banks money. \" Not to economize on actors, but so that The third corner of the Salkind pro- we wouldn't have to rebuild the very duction triangle today is Russian-born expensive sets.\" Pierre Spengler. He's the company's le- When did the hassles start over Don- gal eagle and administrative wizard. He 51
specializes in preparing budgets and Oliver Reed, Michael York, Richard Chamberlain in The Three Musketeers. schedules, helping to knock contracts into shape, and, with Ilya, supervising to use her services for two films, and When the Russian Revolution comes, production. rather than go to court and hold up the he's stripped of his possessions and movie, we gave the artists a percentage barred from practice by the Bolsheviks. Spengler started working for Alex in Four Musketeers .\" They take everything they set eyes on! Salkind \"when I was 17, as a teaboy, Luckily they don't set eyes on the fam- answering telephones and in general as a • ily gems my father hides in his suit. gofer. But Ilya and I met six years be- When my parents flee Minsk they have fore ,\" he says. \"Ilya's mother, Berta Popular media lore in recen,t years has to stop in Danzig, because my mother Dominguez, had written a play which depicted the Salkinds as a father-son was in labor, and that is the beginning of was being produced in Paris. My stepfa- team of globe-hopping billionaires, each me. therwas acting in it. And there was a role born with a silver spoon-nay, a whole for a little boy and my stepfather said, tea service-in his mouth. But a glance \"My father's six months at the Lenin- 'Ah! I have my son, who'd be ideal.' at the prolific pre-Musketeer filmography grad Opera-that was his baptism into And so he brought me there and I met ofllya, Alex, and Mikhail shows an awe- dealing with creative people. Then we Ilya, who was auditioning for the same some catalogue of money-losers. flee to Berlin with many other White role! As it happened , I didn't do the play Russian emigres. It was a time of up- because the role was that of a Mexican Ilya in London: \"We didn't have any heaval you couldn't believe. In Berlin and as you can see I don't look very big world-wide hits before Musketeers. my father isn't able to continue his law Mexican. My only consolation is that We had a lot of interesting films, some practice, because under German law at Ilya, who was Mexican, didn't get the great actors and directors: Garbo, Jean that time he would have had to appren- part either. From that point we became Gabin, Pabst, Orson Welles, Abel tice himself again for five years. So with friends .\" Gance. And by selling the foreign rights the opera behind him, he tried his hand to our films on the best possible terms, at the new art of the 20th century. He Spengler is coolheaded about the le- we mostly balanced out 'the gains and produced his first film. The great Pabst, gal tantrums of the Musketeers and Su- losses. But there were horrible flops . Garbo, Dietrich, Asta Nielsen-quite a perman, though in both cases he was the Romain Gary's Kill, a disaster! Rape of beginning!\" Salkinds' judicial specialist and the man the Sabines, terrible! If Musketeers plunged into the boiling seas of small hadn't come along, then Superman, 2. Don Quixote (1933). Alex: \"Cha- print, along with some expert lawyers. we'd still be struggling from co-produc- liapin, who played Don Quixote, was a tion to co-production.\" great friend of my father's. He brought \"The legal arguments were really ar- him from the Leningrad Opera. Here in guments of position, where the partici- But beneath the appearance of chaos, this photo\"-he searches in his brief- pants were taking one stance and we the early Salkind movie history is scat- case and draws forth a small sheaf of another. You ask me, didn't the con- tered with amazing firsts, and each film letters and photographs-\"you can see tracts specifically state this or that? Well, has a chunk of fascinating life-history us together, me and Chaliapin in Paris, the contracts say a certain thing but in sewn into its lining. where Mikhail made the film. Again each sentence, in each word there are with Pabst directing.\" Photo of towering three or four different interpretations l. Joyless Street (1925). \"My father's Ivan the Terrible-like singer-actor and you can make. In the American legal first big film,\" says Alex. \"And that he system, if you want to take a case to survived to make it at all was a miracle. court it costs only $52. But the real cost is Picture this man, a qualified lawyer. time. A case can drag on for three, four, five years. Our Superman disputes got settled out of court, thank God, where finally-having gone through the whole business of 'discovery,' the pre-trial writ- ten cross-questionings between each party's lawyers-we worked things out to everyone's satisfaction.\" The precedent for the Superman wrangle was the dispute during the Mus- keteers movies-another Salkind Spe- cial case of two films being hatched from one production schedule. Alex in Paris: \"I'll tell you what hap- pened. Midway through shooting Three Musketeers we realized we already had five hours of picture. So what we did, we got the screenwriter, George Macdonald Fraser, to make another script for a second film, The Four Musketeers. And both movies would be ready at the end of shooting. But when the actors heard about this they weren't happy. Miss Ra- quel Welch's lawyer disputed our right 52
flict for Nick Nolte's workaholic cop: pIe whose sexiness is as overtly sign- posted as it often is in movies. There Man and while he was out palling around with is something e1atingly lifelike about Eddie Murphy (on Leslie Fiedler's the gradual, cumulative way in which an Annette O'Toole impinges on our Superwoman crowded raft), the home fires burned awareness. It's the emotional appeal invitingly. Hill scotched that idea of partial as opposed to total nudity: attributes that we are forced to when he opted for relentless propul- conjure exert a more powerful hold on the imagination than those we can't The Man of Steel (or at least his cast- sive energy above all. (It was as ifhe'd escape. ing director) has marvelous taste. The just seen The Road Warrior and felt Of course, this subtler (though more durable) brand of sexiness is unsung genius who tagged Margot some worthy competition breathing founded on more than physical quali- fications, although O'Toole certainly Kidder as Lois Lane, in Superman 1 down his neck.) O'Toole was photo- has those as well. The sculpted fea- tures are strong rather than soft, and and 2, has followed that coup with graphed so that her skin glowed in the voluptuousness is not often em- phasized either in dress or deport- another, equally impressive: Annette some of the most vivid glamour-girl ment. The beauty is undeniable; what will matter more, in the long O'Toole portrays rebound love-inter- c10seups in recent memory. Though run, are her consistent qualities of alertness and intelligence. est Lana Lang in Supie 3. her scissored performance trailed off, One of O'Toole's gifts is a knack for O'Toole, a fine actress of demon- her luminous appeal was evoked even seeming to be listening and reacting to the other players in a scene, proc- strable sexiness, seems long overdue more powerfully for not being quite essing information. And responsive- ness, that glimmer of attentive eager- for big-time wealth and fame. The fully exploited. It was only when it ness, is inherently sexy. (Debra Winger also has it, to the point ofavid- signals couldn't be clearer: in some was offered and then denied that we ity, and in the Young Male camp, Mickey Rourke. It's a classic seduc- quarters, the horny lobby chatter after realized how much we'd wanted it. tion technique.) Cat People focused less on Nastassia And in fact, O'Toole's secret, all Annette O'Toole is sexy but she isn't goddessy. There are intimations Kinski's nude nature walks than on along, has been a gift for sensual un- ofstrength and substance that suggest staying power. She will continue to O'Toole's one brief skinny-dip. And derstatement. The message may not grow, and to grow on us. something like a collective moan of be blatant enough for TV-trained -DAvmCHUTE frustration arose when a ballyhooed filmgoers, but others have picked up With Nolte in scene cut from 48 Hours. shower sequence in 48 HRS (heralded on those artfully half-concealed quali- by a stimulating still· of O'Toole in ties all along. It has been said, often, Playboy's annual \"Sex in Cinema\" that cinematic sexiness (and not only survey) was callously omitted from re- in porn films) has an inescapable doc- lease prints of the movie. umentary element. When any But if this sleek red-head brings so performer, however highly skilled, much masculine blood to a rolling boil strips down for the camera, the theat- (you may well ask) why isn't she a rical illusion vanishes; we're no longer star already? watching Frances Farmer sudsing up My guess is that O'Toole, like Kid- in the tub, we're watching Jessica der, is simply too strong an actress to Lange. achieve (or covet) easy sex-star status: This rule of thumb seems to apply her talent may be perceived as a threat to personalities as well as bodies. In by ordinary-schmoe moviegoers, and the normal course of events, we meet it may also have shut her off from and are attracted to relatively few peo-. overtly steamy roles. Her own profes- sional pride (and the prejudices of dim-souled moguls on the look-out for a sure thing) may have precluded the raunchier options from the outset. But the alternatives, so far, have been almost equally insulting. O'Toole, until her truncated stint in 48 HRS, was mostly employed as an icon of wholesome, scrubbed loveli- ness: as a home-town beauty contest- ant in Smile; as the prettiest co-ed on campus in One On One and Foolin' Around; as TV's Tammy Wynette, standing by her man; as the nice girl whom John Heard \"settled for\" after the monotonously exotic Kinski grew \\ fur and fangs. In 48 HRS, though, O'Toole proved that she could smolder with the best of them-a secret obvious to some of us almost from the outset. O'Toole's hot-barmaid role in Walter Hill's ac- tion rave-up was cooked up, presum- ably, to supply a token emotional con- Annette O'Toole. S3
tiny boy of ten. \"These letters and the pattern of the partnership has stayed agreed to read the script, which Alex photos you see here are just the top of the same.\" took down personally to him. the iceberg. I have trunlifuls of docu- ments and photos and family letters 5. The Trial (1962). I1ya: \"Most of the \"And he was extraordinarily positive. from that time. Here, you see, is my interiors were filmed in the Gare He said, 'I know you guys don't have a father's birth certificate in Russian . And d'Orsay, this giant disused railway sta- dollar. Everyone in the industry knows a letter from Pabst, another from Garbo. tion in Paris. That was Orson Welles' that. I'm going to give you a chance. I'll One day when there's a little time, a idea. He was fantastic as a director. And give you three months to promote my little space between pictures, I am he did something that I really want to name with this picture if you will give thinking of writing my memoirs. Not for say because it's typical of him. There me $80,000. Then if you're successful, my satisfaction only, but for the memory was a scene we were filming in Zagreb in I'll take a million dollars.' And that was of my father and his time. And most a huge office with about a hundred type- our first million dollar pay-out. The film important as a gift to I1ya, who knew and writers. And Orson wanted more, but did well and we were on our feet again.\" worked with his grandfather.\" Mikhail had to say, 'There's no more money. We just don' t have it.' Which 8. Kill (1970). I1ya: \"I produced this 3. Le Temps de L'Amour (1952). Alex: caused Mikhail a lot of pain, because one. Romain Gary, the writer and direc- that was his nature, his character. He tor, was 50 and he was the great hero of \"After we returned to France from Mex- was as depressed as Orson. And Orson the liberation. Jean Seberg, Stephen ico-that was in 1948-we made this. said, 'OK , I'll pay for it.' And he paid for Boyd, James Mason were all in it. And Claude Dauphin and Gaby Moday 100 extra typewriters. I mean, that's a whatever hopes we had for it were played the leads. And the special inter- great man. I've never heard of that in dashed. The picture turned out to be est of the movie is that we included this business. And he never charged for bad, extremely bad. I was in Rome and I extracts from a film we'd made 20 years it. He's a gentleman and a very generous took a girl to see it and the couple in earlier with them, playing the same man. \" front of us, obviously married, were ar- characters much younger. That was guing, the husband saying, 'Why are we Nous Ne Sommes Plus Des Enfants. We 6. Rape of the Sabines (1962). Alex: watching this garbage?' and the wife, thus solved the aging problem without \"No good.\" I1ya: \"Terrible.\" 'Wait, wait, it might get good.' And the any help from the makeup depart- guy was getting angrier and angrier and ment!\" 7. The Light at the Edge of the World started saying he wanted his money (1970). I1ya: \"This was my own big back. And there I was with my date, 4. Austerlitz (1959). I1ya: \"I was 11 break. Before it I hadn't made a film , sitting behind him and shrinking down years old; it was around the time Pierre though I'd come up with one or two in my seat. After all, he was right. You and I auditioned together for my ideas which gave my father some respect can't beat the Italian public. It was there mother's play. And I would wander onto for my judgment. I remember once we in from of me. Anger and Hope spring- these huge glamorous Napoleonic sets, went to see a Japanese sci-fi film-lots ing eternal. But we've sold it to televi- a little boy, and meet the great Abel of color and action and flying monsters! sion. \" Gance, and Jean Marais, Orson Welles And we were really peddling in those ... .Austerlitz was a very expensive years, buying a little film for $1,000 and 9 & 10. The Three and Four Musketeers movie, about a billion French francs, or selling it for $1,500. It was a terrible time 3 or 4 million dollars, which was a lot in just struggling to pay the rent. And I said (1974/5). I1ya: \"We were talking in St. those days. Everyone had high hopes, to Alex, 'You should buy that Japanese Paul de Vence, at the Colombe d'Or, not least Mikhail and Alex. It was the film, I think it's exciting, there's some- and my father was there and Raquel first big international co-production in thing for all kinds of audience.' So we Welch, who'd just finished a movie. And Europe, with four countries involved: bought it, and the film delivered and we were wondering what to do next. France, Germany, Italy, and Yugoslavia, made $20,000. I went all over France And I said, let's do a picture with the where the battles were shot. It was also and Italy doing my shtick and hyping the Beatles. And there was a girl there who the first time you had big American ac- movie to local exhibitors and even said suddenly-why not do the Muske- tors in an international cast. So it wasn't translating the English subtitles while teers? And we said, but there are three an 'English' picture or a 'French' picture the movie ran. Musketeers and four Beatles. No, she or an 'American' picture. It was a said, there are four Musketeers .. . no, Mikhail and Alex picture. \"After that, Light at the Edge of the there are .. . .Well, it was an exciting World was a script I picked up acciden- idea anyway. And then we thought, \"But the picture bombed. It was a big tally in someone else's office. I said well, the Beatles are too modern. And I success in France and Belgium, but it said why not do it with Jerry Lewis, didn't click at all in the rest of the world. could I read it, he said yes. And r liked it Danny Kaye, and Bob Hope? My father And for a film that had cost a lot, it was a gave me a look, and we kept on think- little bit of a disaster. But now, in the straight away: a Jules Verne story, very mg. wake ofNapoleon and interest in Gance, exciting, two great parts. my father and I are thinking of reviving \"And meanwhile I started looking for it: perhaps devoted to my grandfather. \"And I was looking round for a star, a director, and I saw Tom Jones again, All the movies of this period were really and one day I was in Paris reading Va- and I thought, that's it! THAT'S IT! his children. In those years his participa- riety. Variety was not something Euro- Very fast, colorful, snappy. And I had tion was the mirror of mine today. Like peans read in those days; now of course this big list of directors, and I talked to me he was on the creative side, the it's read everywhere. Maybe not Minsk, Tony Richardson, but that didn't work movie side perhaps, while Alex then and but everywhere else. And I read that out. And the name I kept passing was now was more the financier. So while Kirk Douglas was in the south of France. Lester. And I thought, why not? He had there's been a generation switch be- Well, at this point a whole lot of actors the comic touch, and he could handle tween Mikhail and myself, Alex's role in had said no to the movie. In those days drama. He was in a bad patch then, they wanted a written offer with a bank hadn't done a film in five years, was guarantee; it was a whole different ball game. So Alex called Kirk and Kirk 54
Ifyou switch on Ilya Salkind on the subject ofSanta Claus, you need a fire extinguisher to put him out. \"It's mind-boggling . .. orgasmic . .. /' m waking up at night . .. a giftfor children they'll come back to every Christmas. \" Annette O'Toole, Margot Kidder and Christopher Reeve in Superman III. doing commercials, and refusing Salkind'-they usually knew his name Supergirl, helmed by Jeannot Szwarc already, but even if they didn't- 'I'm and due out Christmas 1983, boasts a movIes. staying in such and such a room.' And he promise of high-magnitude special ef- \"Well, I called him and first he said, would take little bottles of perfume out fects, New Yorker and graduate of the of his pockets and give one to each of the High School of the Performing Arts (See 'Oh, come on, what the hell are the girls and say, 'You're going to have a lot kids, itcan be done!) Helen Slater in the Musketeers-that's for children.' And I of work with me!' And the girls were lead role-with new and startlingly dif- said, 'Have you read the book?' He said, charmed immediately. After that, no ferent measurements from Christopher 'No.' So I sent it to him, he read it, and one else but Mikhail could get a call Reeve-and a free-flying Faye Duna- the next day called and said, 'I'll do it.' through!\" way. No wire harnesses. Because the book is quite different from what people think. Very rich , very Ten years later, not all the duty-free And if you switch on lIya Salkind on strong, very good characters. Not a kids' perfumes of Arabia would be enough to the subject of Santa Claus (expected go round the cohorts of switchboard op- Christmas 1984), you need a fire extin- book at all.\" erators working for the Salkinds. guisher to put him out. \"It's mind-bog- The Musketeers duly crashed into Superman 3 is about to fall bouncing into gling ... orgasmic .... I'm waking up at the world, with the caped crusader fight- night. .. 500 elves by Rambaldi or Free- daylight, rapiers flashing , minted ing evil once again and this time fasten- born . .. the world's top box-office star money, and hurricaned the Salkinds' ing the cockles of his heart on the lus- [name not divulged so as not to disap- name into instant transatlantic fame. cious Lana Lang, played by Annette point other world top box-office stars] as And Mikhail Salkind, 82, lived to see O'Toole (see box, page 53). someoneotherthan Santa Claus ... a gift the premiere of the picture. He died in for children they' ll come back to every 1974, having completed the mighty \"We're starting preparations on Santa Christmas.\" journey from Minsk to Musketeer Claus, like now, and I'm still in the Three generations of Salkind brio and France. process of delivering Superman 3 to resilience suggestthatwhen Santa Claus \"He was a very chivalrous, very char- Warner Bros.,\" continues Pierre lands his sleigh atop the Variety charts Spengler. \"So I will be involved with chimney, lIya and Alex will be snow- ismatic old gentleman,\" Pierre Spengler Supergirl only in a consultative capacity. deep in at least three more projects. Su- recalls. \"And a great diplomat. The Timothy Burrill will produce that one perman IV? Superdog? Orson Welles as thing I remember most about him was, for Alex with lIya as Executive Pro- The Four Musketeers? Reindeers of the whenever he arrived a a hotel when he ducer. This is a busy time and that's the was traveling, the first thing he would do best kind of news.\" Lost Ark? ® would be to go straight to the ladies at the telephone switchboard. He would say to the operators, 'Hello, I'm Mr. 55
by Joe Dante And exactly how guilty are these plea- sures supposed to be, anyway? I could As William K. Everson pointed out in defend currently unfashionable one- his own thoughtful and witty Guilty time greats like High Noon, Forbidden Pleasures piece in the November/De- Games, or A Walk in the Sun. Or take cember 1979 FILM COMMENT, the nat- perverse critical stands: I like Fellini's ural inclination of most contributors is to II Bidone but not La Strada; Targets is share discoveries that others may not Peter Bogdanovich's best picture; Kiss have had the opportunity or the inclina- Me Deadly is the greatest movie of the tion t~ make for themselves-with the Fifties; George Reeves is an underrated emphasis on those wonderful, myste- actor. How about a list of Favorite Un- ribus impressions that movies make on sung Masterpieces? Almost every direc- the viewer at an early, critically defense- tor has at least one-The Narrow Margin less age. Which still leaves me, at least, (Richard Fleischer), Law and Order with the problem of exactly what tack to (Edward L. Cahn), Baby Face Nelson take. A few years ago, when it was a lot (Don Siegel), Hellzapoppin (H.C. Pot- harder to get people to talk seriously ter), It's a Small World, (William Castle), about I Walked With a Zombie or Once Reign of Terror (Anthony Mann), Eye of Upon a Time in the West as great movies, I the Devil (J. Lee Thompson), The Ballad could have simply waxed enthusiastic of Cable Hogue (Peckinpah), etc. And over most of my favorite pictures, secure what about shorts and cartoons? I in the knowledge that to most people haven't heard anybody singing the they would qualify as suitably oddball praises of Flip the Frog lately. And who choices. But since then; film apprecia- speaks for Scrappy? Or Puppetoons? tion has opened up to a point where, Whew. The job's just too big for that happily, J. Hoberman can attempt a se- approach, so instead of listing hundreds rious analysis of Edward D. Wood in of titles, I picked a bunch of movies I these pages and nobody bats an eye. So like a lot, sort of at random-although let's face it, the search for the obscure, there does seem to be a preponderance the forgotten, and the disreputable has of horror pictures. Hmmm. It tums out, anyway, that there's nothing at all guilty about these pleasures. I only feel guilty (} (} (} (} (} (} (} (} (} (} (} (} tall?! Then we could call it Attack of the Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman (1958, 50Ft. Woman!\"). This leads to such sub- Nathan Juran). I heard that Paul Morris- lime conceits as having her awaken, gi- sey hopes to remake this, but I hope ant-size (SO feet tall, remember), in her somebody can convince him to switch to normal-size bed (in the upstairs bed- The Amazing Colossal Man instead. This room), with the camera shooting past version is perfect, so wonderful in fact her giant papier-mache hand lying on that director Juran felt compelled to ap- the pillow, the rest of her apparently ply the same pseudonym he used on extending off-screen into the houses Brainfrom Planet Arous. Allison Hayes, next door. The cast, meanwhile, stares a Saturday Matinee siren of my youth, in dutiful horror at the only part of her gives it all she's got as an alcoholic there is to look at: her wrist. heiress who thwarts her greedy hus- I haven't even mentioned the great band's plot to put her \"in the nuthouse\" paranoid sequence in which a news- by encountering a huge transparent caster harrasses Allison 'from inside her alien and then waking up one morning TV set, or the marvelously precise dia- SO feet tall. logue. (Sheriff to Fleeing Extras: \"Was That's a fairly cogent account of the it a giant woman?\") I don't mean to plot, but the great thing is that the gi- imply a hint of Golden Turkey supercil- antess angle appears to have been added iousness to my recommendation of this at the last minute (\"Hey, wait a minute film (or any other); it's just fine the way -what if we make her 25, no, SO feet it is. At last, a movie worthy of its title.
Blood And Black Lace (1964, Ma- Woolner Brothers in California-ever The relentlessly sententious dialogue rio Bava). The word \"Lurid\" achieves imagined anybody going to this much begins to make almost cosmic sense by new complexity when applied to the col- trouble to see his work. But I'd love to the end of the picture, in which Price is lected works of Mario Bava, an Italian be able to tell him about the near-riot last glimpsed floating down a sewer, em- cinematographer-turned-director whose that ensued during What! just as Chris- bracing the dragon-lady heroine, and still intermittent brilliance is likely to remain topher Lee picked up his whip and ad- pondering the Meaning of It All: \"Was forever obscured behind titles like the vanced toward Dahlia Lavi ... this just another girl in my arms-or was above, not to men tion Hatchetfor a Hon- she a kind of Destiny for me?\" I couldn't Confessions Of An Opium Eater tell you, and I've seen it plenty. But take eymoon, Kill Baby Kill, Planet ofthe Vam- (1962, Albert Zugsmith). Conventional my word for it, this is good stuff. pires, Evil Eye, and the ineffable Twitch scuttlebutt has it that Zug, like William ofthe Death Nerve . An unwitting pioneer Castle, is best thought of, if at all, as a The Sadist (1962, James T. Landis). in what has come to be known as producer of mainstream masterworks by Before his Big Break as cinematog- the \"stalk and slash\" genre, Bava's inge- other, better directors (Orson Welles' rapher on McCabe & Mrs. Miller, niously conceived and lovingly photo- Touch of Evil, Jack Arnold's The Incredi- Vilmos Zsigmond used to work as Wil- graphed scenes of murder and mayhem ble Shrinking Man, Douglas Sirk's Writ- liam Zsigmond, the moniker he used are choreographed and mounted to blur ten on the Wind, Alfred E. Green's in- when he shot this sleazy mini-budget the disturbing line between horror and comparable Invasion, U.S .A.). And with drive-in item about a teenage psycho beauty. His florid camerawork and styl- his own credits running to epic titles like holding three frightened teachers hos- ized color lighting have influenced a lot Sex Kittens Go to College and The Incredi- tage in a desert junkyard, all presented of current filmmakers who, like me, ble Sex Revolution, who am I to quibble? in 94 minutes of consecutive \"real could probably recount numerous ap- Nevertheless, in his heyday Zug exhib- time.\" As directed by one James T. propriately Bava-esque brushes with vi- ited some of the sensational tabloid lean- Landis (no relation to John; I asked), olent death in the inner-city flea palaces ings, if not the style, of Sam Fuller or, if whose other credits are uniformly unex- where these pictures invariably played. you will, of an earlier-day Larry Cohen. ceptional, it's tight, tense, and And yet not even his teen-nair classic tive far beyond sensible expectati I caught most of the above titles in College Confidential-Steve Allen as a especially since it was obviousl Philadelphia, at the inaptly named Fam- crusading campus sex researcher-can conceived as a vehicle for Arch Hall, ily Theatre on Market Street (three hold a candle to Opium Eater (alias Souls Jr., the beefy son of the owner of Fair- movies for 60 cents; it smelled like disin- for Sale) for sheer, ingenuous, and possi- way International Pictures, a long-since fectant if you were lucky-and never, bly unintentional pop-poetry. forgotten distributor. Hall, who looks never go down to the men's room), like a huge demented baby, gives an where my friends and I constantly faced This triumphantly surreal parade of eye-rolling homage-to-Dwight Frye the True Film Buffs Test: how much do seemingly inexplicable images stars Vin- performance that's too nutty not to you really want to see this picture? cent Price as a desperately philosophical prove ultimately unsettling. Enough to change seats every reel? The soldier of fortune who takes drugs and experience of sitting through the movie endures various weird , serial-style tor- The mise-en-scene possibilities are, was always a bit scarier than the movie tures while busting a girls-for-sale ring in to say the least, squeezed dry as every itself, but maybe that was part of the turn-of-the-century Chinatown, eco- possible \"good shot\" through every appeal. The management was not above nomically represented by an old West- available piece of foreground is ex- tricks like turning the heat up to brain- ern backlot. Price has probably con- hausted. Its triumph over the most sizzling levels during The Day the Earth sumed more drugs onscreen than minimal of resources makes this an Caught Fire, so the general tempera- anyone except Bela Lugosi, and his ideal film for student filmmakers to ment of the audience was pretty unpre- \"trip\" sequence here tops them all. Ev- study; just try and find it. It used to be dictable. But since these were really the erything and anything is included, from on TVunderthe title Face ofTerror, but only places you could see these films, stock-footage alligators with hiccups on not lately. Maybe it'll turn out to be in we went. the soundtrack to some of the dreamiest the public domain and show up on slow-motion imagery I've ever seen- hordes of dupey, fuzzy, video cassettes. I doubt whether Bava-reputedly a rich, shadowy black-and-white stuff by That's supposed to be better than un- shy and insecure fellow who constantly Joe Biroc. availability, but I'm not so sure. refused invitations to work for the 57 Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977, John Boorman). The day it opened in Hollywood, audiences exiting the the- ater were warning total strangers on line to go home and save their money- never a good sign. Nevertheless, de- spite some Duel in the Sun-size story \\ and performance problems, this is probably the most prodigiously imagi- native American movie of the past dec- ade, as visually innovative as it is meta- physically ambitious. A later cut, re-mixed to smooth out deletions from the release print, is the extant version, but, as exhaustively detailed by Todd McCarthy in these pages (September! October 1977), it's pretty much a com-
The Wolf The Gamma People (1955, John Gilling). Paul Douglas and Leslie Phil- Neill). Neill, lips are reporters on their way to the res, really comes Salzburg Music Festival, no less, when fifth entry in the then- their train car is detached and rolls into rsal series which, de- the \"closed state\" of Gudavia, where a studio second-guessing, vaguely Germanic scientist practices a rich pictorial style that com- nasty mind control experiments with quite favorably with Rowland V. gamma rays. I've always been fond of Lee's far higher-budgeted, more ex- this rather strange, oddly charming film pressionistic Son ofFrankenstein. Com- which balances comedy, science-fan- positional ingenuity at its most effi- tasy, melodrama, and politics none too cient. Andrew Sarris once grudgingly dexterously. It's certainly less auda- granted Neill the status of \"minor styl- cious than John Farrow's His Kind of ist,\" but with this material, on these Woman, which boldly intercuts slap- budgets, that ain't chopped liver. The stick and torture, but in never being opening shot alone is probably the quite what it seems, The Gamma People t single take in a B-movie of the maintains a nicely quizzical, even fa- Okay, okay, except for Gun ble-like tone throughout. Besides, Paul Douglas reminds me of my grandfa- ther. Invaders from Mars (1952, William all-a-dream ending. Other Menzies de- Cameron Menzies). As an examination signed-and-directed films are nearly as of childhood paranoia it's not exactly good (particularly Address Unknown, Night ofthe Hunter, but there's a vision- 1944), but they lack Invaders' mythic ary impact to Menzies' carefully off- situations and sometimes tend to disin- center compositions and vague, mini- tegrate into a succession of storyboard- malist sets that completely like tableaux. A practical note: the re- overshadows the subject matter. A truly dressing and stylized re-use of a few definitive dream movie-nothing is real simple sets in this picture, notably the -and one of the few that completely police station, should by required study justifies, even ennobles its hoary it's- for every low-budget art director. Truck Turner (1974, Jonathan Ka- plan). Signaling the end of the black exploitation cycle, this unjustly ob- scure AlP action picture manages to tread the fine line between hard violence and distancing parody better than almost anything you can name from the period. Its furiously escalating mayhem transcends itself in much the same wayan urban The Wild Bunch might. For a while I thought this was Kaplan's best picture, but his current Heart Like a Wheel is even better. Too bad if you're not supposed to include pictures made by your friends. Jimmy Hunt and Helena Carter in Invaders from Mars. 58
Long John Silver (1954, Byron you. (He was no slouch as Blackbeard, It's a Gift (Norman Z. McLeod , Haskin). When I was a kid this was the 1934). W.C. Fields drives his family pirate movie, made in far-off Australia either. ) to California to claim a nonexistent and therefore able to flaunt all the It's been a long time since I saw this, orange grove. There's not much I can scruffiness, scariness, and timber-shiv- say about this picture , you really ering that the earlier Disney version, but I particularly remember a scene in need to see it for yourself. It's not also directed by Haskin, had tended to which Newton was served a drink he only hilarious and elegiac, it's one of soft-pedal. Was there ever a filthier, expected to be rum. \"AharrRRG- the great movies about America, es- crazier, more dangerous pirate than Ro- GHH!\" he gasped, spitting it all over. pecially small-town America, if such bert Newton? Don't let the parrot fool \"This be Milk!!\" You had to be there. a thing exists anymore; it's still as you, he'd cut your throat soon as look at Which is harder than ever these days, dangerous as the frontier. W.C Fields because this picture seems to have dis- exemplifies most of what made this country endure. John Wayne is ter- from distribution. rific, but who can be John Wayne? Any of us can be, and have been, w.e. Fields. Tomb of Ligeia (1965, Roger Cor- man). I saw this at the Palace Theatre the day it opened, at the first show for $1.25. All I can tell you is it was money well spent, and I'm sure Roger would agree. Personal experience admittedly colors my affection for Roger's work. The Trip, for example, is Roger's most revealing picture, and if you want to know why, you work for him for five years. _Li... 1.. Vincent Price. Abbott and Costello. Recent \"rev- is, so they decide to \"ask somebody\", A.C. Lyles Westerns (1964-1967). Maybe these are guilty pleasures. Di- elations\" about their private lives have normal people like you or me that any- rected by such specialists in the prolific as Lesley Selander, William F. Claxton, only reinforced the feeling I had as a one might find on the sidewalk. It's just and R.G. Springsteen and employing every aging character player in town, kid: The fact that you couldn't be sure that the mere mention of the street or this likable series of Techniscope Para- mount programmers pretty much whether they really liked each other or the hats sends everyone they meet into proved to be the Last Roundup in more ways than one. With titles like Stage to not gave their routines real tension, and either fits of violent derangement or Thunder Rock, Law of the Lawless, and Red Tomahawk, these are Just Movies, hence meaningful humor. Cinemati- homicidal fury. Ifyou can't see how this that's all. Their total absence of style or substance makes for prototypical cally their legacy is pretty tattered-no fits in with modern life then you owe filmgoing, where the reward lies in the simple appreciation of basic craftsman- directors like Frank Tashlin gave their yourself a walk around the block. ship and Hollywood myth-making. relationship the kind of perspective Away from Universal in the late For- The fact that the myths were in a terminal stage adds poignance to the Martin & Lewis might occasionally ties they made the less typical (no musi- pleasure of watching such icons as Bar- ton MacLane, Richard Arlen, Brian achieve (Artists and Models). Their cal interludes, no romantic subplot) The Do nlevy, William Bendix, Lon Cha- ney, et al. switching roles from film to films were mostly a procession of as- Noose Hangs High, a sort of noirish film-authority symbol in one, outlaw in the next. In addition, every so often sembly-line vehicles as well-produced comedy appropriately made for Eagle- somebody like Lyle Bettgerwould give one of his best performances (Tom as they were rigid in format. The best Lion, my favorite B-picture studio. Tamer). Paramount's Western street is gone now, and so are most of these ones are either ruthlessly edited (Hold Bud and Lou are a little older, a little people, but the pictures are still around -cheery examples of the last of their Thnt Ghost) or built around a subsidiary tired, and the rejoinders come off- own kind. ® genre (Abbott and Costello Meet Whnt- handedly-they know the words so well ever). that they can just turn them on and go. Their best moments are the ones in The most privileged moments are which their curiously dead-ended ver- \\ those in which it appears that the direc- bal gymnastics are given free rein: an tor and editor have passed out, particu- unsupervised quickie like Abbott and larly a long, rambling dinner scene in Costello In Society grinds to a welcome which they run through a decade's halt for one of my favorite routines, worth of material with the sloppy grace Bagle Street. Bud and Lou find them- of unemployed vaudevillians. They selves compelled, for no good reason, would have made a great pair of Sun- to deliver some hats to the Sus- shine Boys. I would have loved to have quahanna Hat Shop on Bagle Street. seen them do The Dumb Waiter, but I They don't know where Bagle Street don't mind settling for Buck Privates. 59
cation that one may best understand the short television films for the Labor by DanYakir appearance of Hamsin (Heat Wave), a Party, to urge people to vote for them. I Israel has never occupied a significant film which depicts the relationship be- don't necessarily prefer them to the place on the map of world cinema, per- haps because its movies have seldom tween a Jewish cattle rancher named Likkud-I dislike both-and I felt un- addressed the nation's basic conflicts. Except for isolated spurts of personal, Gedalia (Shlomo Tarshish) and his Arab comfortable doing it. I needed the lyrical filmmaking in the Sixties and Seventies, most Israeli films fit comfort- laborer, Khaled (Yasin Shawap). The money. Anyway, one short was about ably within the category of bourekas pic- tures-mostly lowbrow comedies with setting is a moshava, a small agricultural what would happen when the Likkud fairy tale elements and folk story con- ceits, exploiting ethnic differences be- community, in the Galilee where local took over-it showed riots and strikes. tween Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews for a laugh. In short, a typically Eastern rednecks harass their Arab laborers. Ge- _Begin attacked the film, but today it Mediterranean cinema. dalia is friendly and protective, until looks prophetic. But I don't try to offer So, naturally, when I recently visited Israel, the local movie theater was hardly Khaled sleeps with his sister. Outraged. solutions. Hamsin, at best, tries to en- my top priority. The streets were much more eventful: the government, its Gedalia murders him. critics and the press argued over the value of publication of the investigation This authentic Israeli \"Western\" has committee report on the responsibility of the Israeli high command in Sabra and had a strong political impact (lOO,OOO Shatila; the killing of a Leftist demon- strator by the Right Wing marked the patrons, a large number for Israel, espe- first act of domestic political terror among Jews and sundered the grudging cially for a domestic film) in its depiction but peaceful coexistence of political op- ponents; and the historic division along of racism and the long slide away from ethnic, political and religious lines wid- ened. The politically conservative, reli- the value of Jewish labor, which built giously fanatic and economically disad- vantaged Sephardi Jews, and their the country, toward the ways of the ex- Ashkenazi brethren-more liberal, bet- ter educated, religiously indifferent and ploitive West by employing Arabs to do higher on the economic ladder-edged closer to chaos. Unity, held not only sa- the \"dirty work.\" The reaction from the cred but essential for Israel's survival, has never more seemed jeopardized by Right was swift: \"I've been called a dissent and intolerance. back-stabber, a maker of anti-Israeli With the Left denouncing the gov- ernment as fascist and the Right doing films,\" says 36-year-old Daniel Wach- its best to silence any voice of dissent, Israeli cinema has begun to lose its tradi- smann, who directed it. \"But I made the tional timidity, as filmmakers venture beyond escapist fare . The Lebanese film because I care about what happens War and the continued occupation of the West Bank and Gaza sparked intense to my country and I believe in exposing soul-searching among filmmakers who have come to re-think the Arabs, regard- things rather than sweeping them under less of their unlikely reciprocation. the rug. People ask me if I'd let my It is out of this desire for moral purifi- daughter sleep with an Arab. She's still an infant, but I'd like to be prepared for Daniel Wachsmann. the possibility.\" Wachsmann adds, \"Just as anti-Semi- courage people to think. I'm seeking a tism and the pogroms brought back the place to belong and my film is like tak- Jewish dream of Zion, our treatment of ing stock of one's house. I check the Israeli Arabs helps their nationalism. base and the pillars, hoping to discover They' re Israeli citizens, but after Leba- what's going on.\" non they discovered they are Palestin- It is ironic but telling that the Israel ians. Hamsin is about the inevitability of Film Board, which is appointed by the the explosion between Jew and Jew as government, chose Hamsin as its Acad- well as Jew and Arab. As long as we emy Award nominee for best foreign don't let them feel that they belong, we language picture. More recently, the have a problem. I have to admit it film also won the coveted Israel Prize frightens me.\" for the arts which may well mean that But the filmmaker's fear also has to do criticism on celluloid does have an im- with the need to \"unlearn the national- pact in Israel. Director Wachsmann ism and patriotism you're taught.\" In went on national television to express insular Israel, airing one's dirty laundry his delighted surprise. \"Oscar Film is in public amounts to treason because it Critical oflsrael,\" announced an equally arms the enemy with propaganda, and surprised headline in The New York propagandize is something Wachsmann Times. will not do. \"I refuse to think of film as a But the real surprise was the recep- political tool,\" he said. \"I don't belong tion given the film overseas. The Berlin to any political party, but I made some Film Festival, which had shown Wachs- 60
mann's Transit, turned it down without that says \"Whoever stays in the middle, membership in an elite corps. Cross cur- explanation. The Venice Film Festival gets hit by both sides.\" rents of peer pressure and fear of losing returned the cans unopened. \"And,\" self-respect prevent him from request- says the director, \"a film that reveals Magash Hakessef, a thriller that the ing a transfer to a less demanding unit; the back slope, the other face of Israel filmmaker sees in the tradition of Pa- he eventually commits suicide. \" In Is- also doesn't get too much help from Jew- kula's Parallax View and Bertolucci's The rael, every Jewish citizen is obliged to ish distributors abroad. They'd be de- Conformist, is loosely based on the true serve in the military for three years and lighted to buy a similar picture from Ar- case of Udi Adiv, who ten years ago then live with it for thirty or forty years as gentina, Chile or Poland. They'd say, joined a militant Jewish-Arab group that a member of the reserve force. It's an 'At last they spoke up!' But not from upheld armed struggle. Adiv was suc- integral part of life; being a soldier Israel. You see, there is no censorship in cessfully recruited by Syrian intelli- means being a man, a whole person. For Israel-we can do anything. The cen- gence and is now in jail in Israel. \"But,\" thirty years there was a consensus in sorship is elsewhere.\" Israel that if you don't meet this chal- says Judd, \"it's as if reaIlty superseded lenge, you're tainted for life-you don't • the film: in the script, when the group belong. talks of cultural change, they mean the Taking stock is also what Yehuda establishment of an Arab university on \"Recently,\" continues Ne'eman, \"Judd\" Ne'eman aims to do in Fellow the West Bank. Recently, the govern- \"there was a trial of an army officer who Travellers, a reference to the McCarthy ment refused to allow an Arab university mistreated suspected Arab terrorists in era term for Communist sympathizers to open in Nazareth ... \" the West Bank. In his defense, he cited (the Hebrew title, MagashHakessef, re- a directive from the Chief of Staff allow- fers to a poem by Nathan Alterman re- To get financing for his touchy sub- ing the military to harass (letarter in He- minding that Israel wasn't handed to the ject, Judd went to German and British television (the Israeli Film Board also Shlomo Tarshish and Yasin Shawap in Hamsin. Yehuda \"Judd\" Ne' eman's Fellow Travelers. Jews on a silver platter). The picture is contributed). Although he believes that brew) suspects. It's a word taken from about Yoni (Gidi Gov), an ex-kibbutznik \"ideology should be in the subtext and military jargon and refers to the lot of and army officer, who wants to help not part of the film's face value-I sim- newly- recruited soldiers. But under this Arabs in Israel find a measure of cultural ply wanted to show the web in which all innocent word lies an abuse of power. autonomy. He collaborates with a Left- of us are entangled,\" he found his cast The military serves as a training ground ist Arab group, until its members and crew extremely reluctant to present for the desensitization of the would-be- embrace terrorism. Dissenting, Yoni such controversial characters. The direc- citizen, vis-a-vis laws that concern him refuses the group money he raised in tor attributes the growing dissent in Is- and others: if within the military you can Europe and consequently becomes rael to the aftermath of the Yom Kippur get away with doing things that are, in hunted by both them and Israel's secu- War in 1973, when Israelis became a bit fact, felonies-and if Moshe Dayan rity services (the Shin Bet). less cocky and more introspective, a could get away with an illegal antique process that reached its zenith after the collection and countless traffic violations \"The Jews always had a talent to see Lebanese War. Post-1977, with the rise -why shouldn't everybody else try? the middle, because they belonged no-\\ of the Likkud, the Left has no longer This set of unwritten regulations applies where, but in Israel we have our own felt compelled to keep quiet as it had to a sense of lawlessness toward another side, we're no longer history's rejects. done during the reign of the Labor person as well, especially an Arab. I'm Still, something of our Jewishness still Party. It started voicing its discontent. not really surprised that I had so many remains after three decades of Israeli . Judd has doubted the military bun- difficulties making the film. A foreigner independence. I feel the two clashing ker-mentality before. In Massa may consider it mild compared to Ku- withinmeandsolrefusetoadoptsides. Ha' Alunkot (Paratroopers), he depicted brick's Paths of Glory or Lumet's The I find myself in the classical Jewish posi- a soldier (Moni Moshonov) who can't Hill, but here people are enormously tion-the middle,\" says Ne'eman, 47, tolerate the mental and physical strain of sensitive. Why I restrained myself also who then cited a character in his film 61
Director Dan Wolman on the set ofHide and Seek. Soldier of the Night. has to do with my relationship with the uniform and arms and starts slaughtering reserve service. Everybody I spoke to cast and crew who, here too, refused to soldiers as part of his own \"patriotic\" about it, said, 'The Arabs killed him. He go any further about the army. army. The film explores the damage was probably given a lift by one of them done by \"the fathers generation\" which who took him to some village and then \"When it first opened in 1977, most bestowed mostly a military ethos, and it shot him in the head.' I was terribly reviews weren't overtly favorable, but it offers a terrifying scenario about the bothered by this: aren't we, in fact, con- had 100,000 admissions, which wasn't price of conformity. ditioned to attribute our own brutality to bad then and would be even better to- our gypsies, the Arabs? So I thought, day with declining moviegoing. The \"Because of the political situation,\" what if a Jew killed him? And a good, military, which denied me all assistance Wolman explains, \"you suddenly feel athletic, well bred member of society at when I was shooting, later bought a print that the military has become the execu- that? You see, I feel more liberated, less which became a subject for analysis by tive arm for policies that you may dis- repressed, less concerned with what officers and military psychologists, an agree with. In all my films I show charac- people will think. I'm increasingly pre- integral part of military education. I'm ters who don' t belong and who are pared to do something disturbing.\" still baffled by it. Two years ago, how- therefore punished by society. Here I ever, it was shown on Israeli TV with a have a man who is deprived of this asset Wolman, who shot Soldier ofthe Night round-table discussion. It was after sev- and therefore crosses the line of what's on and off over the past year and a half eral soldiers actually committed suicide, permitted. He ends up killing his father. on a shoestring budget that included his and the audience responded very well. I feel it's psychologically and politically salary for the upcoming Golan-Globus At that time, the military no longer was true for him. I have always resented au- production of Nann, an erotic picture the sacred cow it had been.\" thority, be it my father, or the school loosely based on the Emile Zola novel, uniform, or the youth movement or the has taken risks before. His previous pic- • military, but I didn' t set out to make a ture, Hide and Seek (Machboim) at- film against Begin or Sharon. Somehow, tracted few spectators (about 9000), per- Dan Wolman, 42, Israel's best-known reality infiltrated into the picture; I feel haps because it offended. One of the director, further shatters the myth of the it represents the political situation in Is- major characters, a young man (Doron military in his yet unreleased Soldier of Tavori) is suspected as a spy by the kid the Night (Chayal Halayla) . The picture rael now. he tutors because of his mysterious airs. is about the son (Ze'ev Shimshoni) of a \"Soldier of the Night started from a The tutor, however, is a homosexual high army officer, whose dream of glo- who has an Arab lover. \"The under- rious military service is destroyed when true incident: a friend of mine from Tel ground-the story takes place in 1948, he's rejected for medical reasons. His Aviv was murdered in the Galilee desire to conform is such that he buys a (mostly populated by Arabs) while on 62
on the eve of Israel's independence- cept the assumption that there's a di- is about a painful problem too, but one that means very little to my generation, the Palmach that we all admired, \" says chotomy between the two. With each which was reflected at the box-office. It's about an aging German Jew (Gedalia Wolman, \"punished him because he film, I build myself a home in which I Besser) who, as he works in his antique shop, dreams of going back to Berlin, was not a participant in their goals. For stay for two or three years. I live in my told from the point of view of his son. It's about the breakdown of the family struc- us, who were taught to love the military, pictures maybe because my life isn't too ture, the generation gap, people who remain outsiders. We were given roots it's a slap in the face. It's similar to what difficult . .. It's a total substitute.\" by our parents, roots of other lands that in part they themselves never had, and Ze'ev unveils in ChayaL HaLayLa. But If Wolman's heroes are the exception, here we started from scratch and we still don't have much ... \" Set in Palestine in three decades ago it was much more Ne'eman's are the rule. The characters 194617, just prior to the establishment of Israel, Wachsmann's next project is tragic to be an outcast in a society so portrayed by Gidi Gov, a singing idol about the conflict between two brothers, one an extreme nationalist totally mobilized to achieve its goals.\" turned actor in both Paratroopers and who uses any means to fight for state- hood and the other a beleaguered refu- All of Wolman's characters are FeLLow TraveLLers, are \"not outstanding gee who wants to coexist with the British and not risk the lives of the members of doomed: his debut, The Dreamer in any way. He's a typical Israeli: he his household. (Hatimhoni, 1968) shows a young man exudes indifference, his attitude is non- Like Hamsin, FeLLow TraveLLers and Soldier of the Night, Wachsmann's and torn between his attraction to a young chalant. He's masculine and tough but Ne'eman's new projects are thrillers, a genre heretofore neglected in Israel. woman on the one hand and to the old does have weaknesses that he is careful Perhaps it's the genre most suitable for evoking Israeli filmmakers' dark mood people in the home for the aged where not to reveal. Although what he does in and the pessimism of their world view. Why not? Life in Israel today is nothing he works, on the other; it neatly encap- FeLLow Travellers is, for most Israelis, not less than a thriller. -;:..~ sulates the need to live in the here and simply an aberration but absolute anath- now in Israel while having to let go of the ema, the audience can still relate to soul of its European, Jewish past. His him.\" Ne'eman is now taking Fellow second, Floch (1972), is about a middle- Travellers a step further, as he develops a aged man who, determined to have his project about \"a Sabra who's sobered up, name carried on after his son is killed in a young man of the Left; another one an accident, divorces his wife and looks who didn' t-his father-who's an intel- for another to bear him a child. In My ligence officer; and a third one who's still Michael (MichaeL SheLi, 1975), based on Jewish-his ex-wife who is an American the novel by writer and kibbutznik Jew leading a bohemian life in Paris.\" Amos Oz, a young woman never quite By contrast, Wachsmann's protago- manages to break out of her private fan- nists in Hamsin are admittedly \"none too tasy world to communicate with others, typical. Gedalia is very introverted and including her husband. In the past, doesn't have a relationship with a Wolman chose characters who had some woman. His only rapport is with his Arab quality that made them outcasts, and his worker. In one scene they splash water films consisted of pleas for compassion over each other, which is the most sen- Announcing!-Publication of all-new and understanding. In ChayaL HaLayLa, sual moment Gedalia is involved in, but Canyon Cinema Catalog #5 he goes a step further to issue a grim it doesn't go any further. You see, he warning about the outcome of false lives in the shadow of his father, whose values and mistaken ideology. strength he lacks. And Khaled also isn't Like Wolman, Ne'eman's first cine- so typical. He's the laborer who doesn't Canyon Cinema is a Canyon Cinema film distribution carries over 1800 matic steps were in a rather lyrical vein. want to get involved. I wanted him to be films by 300 film company specializ· artists: experimen- A medical doctor who won a decoration alone and have the reactionary forces ing in indepen· tal/ art films, anima· tion, documentary- for treating wounded soldiers under fire, use pressure on him, so as to have him dently·produced current work and short films for the classic shorts by the he lived a \"comfortable, pleasant\" life in torn between Gedalia and the other best artists in the educational field. pre-1967 Tel Aviv. \"I had no reason for Arab laborers who want radical action. (college/ university) , museum, and media dissent nor suffering,\" he admits. \"Ev- The Arabs I meet see the film as a hand center/ film society erything was small and provincial, and offered them by an Israeli, but some market. there was very little cinema. In the have complained that I show individual world, nobody was talking anymore and not mass struggle. But that's a politi- about the French New Wave, but for us cal line that isn't mine. Canyon Cinema, Inc. 2325 ThIrd Street, Suite #338 cinema could mean nothing but.\" The \"That's not what my film is about. It's San Francisco, CA 94107 Dress (Hasimla , 1966-1968), a vignette a story about Jews and what's happening (415) 626-2255 film that marked his directorial debut, to us. Hamsin is the outcome of some- was clearly influenced by that move- thing I've been carrying within me since ment. All three episodes deal with the my childhood. I lived in the mixed city Please call or write for illustrated catalog. urban loneliness and malaise of young, of Nazareth and I remember the stone- people; the longest segment ,\"Thomas throwing wars we had with the Arabs ... Returns;' explored a unique triangle that The Arab girls threw them real hard! But was admittedly inspired by JuLes et Jim . it's also about my fears of them . I was AUTHORS WANTED BY NEW YORK PUBLISHER \"My adolescence was one long series of taught not to trust them, because they'd Leading subsidy book publisher seeks manuscripts escapes,\" he remembers, \"from a pro- 'stab you in the back!' It wasn't easy to of all types : fiction. non-fiction. poetry, scholarly and juvenile works. etc. New authors welcomed. fession, from home, from a relationship sober up from all that. And the Arabs Send for free, illustrated 40-page brochure H-83 Vantage Press, 516 W . 34 St., New York, N .Y. 10001 with loved ones be it my parents or my have the same problem, too, when it first wife. I finally came to terms with comes to communicating with us. life through the·cinema. I refuse to ac- \"My previous (and first) film, Transit, 63
Charles Ahearn interviewed by Harlan Jacobson There's something delirious about movie called The Deadly Art of Survival dark, right-he's introducing me to the camera as reporter, taking one into which was a commercial art super-8 epic these people saying I'm making a movie foreign waters, or behind enemy lines, with a large cast of kids of the Lower about the Chief Rocker, Busy Bee, and or penetrating political curtains where East Side. It had a lot of graffiti back- that I'm a big film producer-you the shape of the country on some school- drops, and I had met Lee (Quinones) know, that's the way it went. From that days map is the only image one has. who's the star of this movie at that time moment on I was swamped with talent. True of China until 1972, true of Af- and he was as elusive as he is in the I also gave slide shows in the Bronx; I'd ghanistan until 1979, probably still true movie. take pictures in discos and rap places of Albania, and definitely true of the and ,then set up two projectors and show South Bronx, today, twenty minutes The guy's got tremendous guts-he them to all the rappers and of course away from this typewriter. did some murals as long as 100 feet by 13 people would come and introduce feet high-huge murals ... very expres- themselves-\"Yeah, I'm a rapper too\" What we know of the South Bronx is sive social content, with a real pop, real or \"I dance\" whatever or \"I do graffiti\" pictures of a lot of rubble and even more comic-strip, wonderful quality to them. - I became like a talent agent. failure: the Dresden of the American So finally we were going to do this fight Dream. But out of the wreckage come scene in front of one of the murals, and How did you get somebody else to be- ghosts that write on subway trains at he came by on his little scooter with a big night, write on the maps that are the Afro, and I went over to him and told lieve in this to produce it? keys to survival on Hell's roadway. What him I really wanted him in the movie. Yeah, it was extremely hard, I'll tell kind of people are these? He said, \"Sure,\" and I said, \"How can I get in touch with you?\", and he said \"I'll you, the US of A wa~ not so interested in Charles Ahearn has found out. While be around.\" I didn't see him for two and it, especially all the funding services that I was being angry at the paint on my a half more years. are normally available to c.ocumentary trains-in the company of my own kind, filmmakers. They responded very nega- I still am-Ahearn traced down the Were you clear on what the narrative tively-I've got letters from CPB ... ghosts and in Wild Style accomplished something rare. He did what great direc- was going to be? The Corporation for Public Broadcast- tors have always known: if you follow No. First, I wanted to center it in the anyone around with a camera long ing? enough, in their frame of reference, Bronx, but even that really didn' t come Washington, yes. They've now put their actions become sane, logical, pas- in until after I had been involved for a sionate, arguable, even moral. while. Now everyone says, \"South up an enormous amount of money for a Bronx, rap music, graffiti.\" The film documentary on the subject, but when I Ahearn has introduced in Wild Style was built on locations, then characters, approached them two years ago I got a remarkable people who can't act very and then gradually the script. I didn't letter with exclamation marks saying, well, but who are so good at being who approach people and say, \"You know, \"So, the mess on the subways is art!\" I they are that it doesn't matter. Lee Qui- maybe you would fit into this character.\" didn't care what those meatheads nones, Pink Fabara, Chief Rocker Busy thought-except that they weren't giv- Bee, the Cold Crush, and Double Trou- How were you able to get them to partic- ing me any money. I got letters from ble, among others, are all night-writers Channel 13 saying \"Subject matter not of the soul, all artists. It has just been ipate in the film? of national interest, something for local easier not to listen. What could a guy Well, this will give you an idea of the magazine format only,\" while I'm get- with a home entertainment center on his ting calls from Japan, Rome, you name shoulder have to say? way it was: Fred had heard about some- it, right. I did the thing with Channel 4 thing in a place called \"The Valley\"- in London practically on a phone call- It will still be longer before they are like an outdoor amphitheater, right. they gave me $30,000. They're real, real accepted, though Cincinnati has bought The entire stage is maybe four times as risk-takers. I hit them, I was the first an old New York City bus and has asked big as this room, little tiny thing. Any- program that they funded-I was lucky Quinones to come do it. Before Wild way, we went to this park in the Bronx Style, I had noticed this much: whoever and it's almost pitch dark, full of kids was doing this graffiti stuff at least re- wandering around-a very scary situa- spected private property. It's not clear tion because I don' tknowwhat I'm get- private property has ever reciprocated. ting into or what's going to happen. I'm just with Fred, and we go up and meet Charlie Ahearn has made me nervous. Busy Bee, who later becomes very im- There is nothing as exciting to me now portant in the movie, and I tell Busy Bee as seeing the side of a subway car shoot I'm interested in making a movie about by-Shazam!-or, better yet, pop out rap music. Five minutes later he's got between buildings and disappear on two me right up on stage, he's introducing me to these hordes of people-in the •elevated tracks to Heaven. -HJ. Where did this picture come from? Well, it kind ofgrew out of an involve- ment between myself and Fred Braithwaite in the summer of 1980- June of 1980, specifically-I had done a 64
Do you see art as revolutionary? I think it can be used to be revolution- ary-I don't know what you mean- you mean an as an, you mean can it be revolutionary? I mean that's really a question. An itself isn't revolutionary... Lee stole paint, went out surreptitiously at night to paint these murals in his neighborhood. They're murals which have not been touched since they've been made, which is highly unusual for any wall surface on the Lower East Side. All those mural projects have specific - I got them before they got swamped. thing else, but if you're really going to intentions-whether it's to say that the Now it's impossible to get funding from say that doing your artwork on the sub- races can be friends or that the people them. You know, it's like one of those ways is a pursuit which is valuable-to must unite or that work is good and things: you run with the ball, you look yourself and the people around you- bosses are bad-and frankly they're a for an opening and wherever you can you have to do it as a loner and incog- little on the dull side. I'm not down on find it, you go. nito. There's no other way to do it. them, but I'm just saying that when one You see the film as a statement ofchaos There's no easy answer to it. I was on compares them to the big kind of bom- and decay? that line the whole time during the film: bastic spirit that you see in a mural by I certainly was not making that state- is this character going to go legit or is he Lee-those things read from six blocks ment. It's such a simple thing to go to going to continue? I could not say he's away-they don' t necessarily say a lot. the South Bronx and make a film about going to be a graffiti artist to the end, and People from Europe always say, \"We how shitty it all looks. I avoided that- goddamit he's going to go down like don't like your graffiti-it doesn't have the only place where I played that up \"The Harder They Come\" Jimmy Cliff anything to say-it's not political.\" And was as a joke-you know, when Patti goes down. I didn't want a martyr trip ofcourse that's their idea of politics, that Astor comes in her car and I play a where the graffiti artist is shot to pieces. politics means you write the word \"anti- \"Blondie\" song saying something like, I wanted to say the character is as close nuke\" and you've made a political state- \"she's such a dream, she's neon and as he can be true to himself in the end, ment. But if you do something that's she's a dream\" and all that stuff. Any but he's obviously not the same charac- aesthetic-graffiti is entirely-it's like journalist can come into the South Bronx ter-he's changed. Vlaminck and the Fauves. Vlaminck and what they see is a bunch of broken Some part of that conflict was Canvas used to say \"They throw bombs, I paint down old buildings; that's cheap. I was versus Train. Remember, they're having a pictures.\" In other words, the whole against the idea, I completely played conversation and then all of a sudden, idea of the modem artist as a rebel, down the idea-there's no violence. bang!, the train pops out of the sky. The someone making some kind of social You made it clear that it was a place form is so basic to the artwork, yet it won't statement coming out of himself rather where the police don't matter-it is its own make money and it will be regarded as than a committee, and the idea of the world and yet within it you found people socially challenging. modern anist as an outlaw-all these who are social outcasts with a kind of It's against the law. Maybe better things have twisted around Pollack, and optimism that popped offthe screen. They than making a canvas for an an collector in a way have come out in the most showed a kind of hunger for legitimacy at or maybe better than doing graffiti is natural form in this whole graffiti move- the same time they were suspicious ofit. doing some kind of public work that ment. Well, certainly that's the dilemma df combines the best aspects of what your Do you think the museums of the world the main character. an is, doing some kind of public work. are enough to choke off the vitality-by Whether to come inside or not? Sure, the canvas that he makes for (the buying the art and taking it offthe trains? It's quite obvious that publicity is an dealer) is obviously stupid; it's this You can't be Huckleberry Finn for the what a graffiti anist wants most but it's big and it looks like a piece of shit-the rest of your life-you know, 43 year-old also the very thing that will kill his spray can can't work on that scale, it guys going around the subway with \"do- chances of continuing in that role. It doesn't make sense, right. I didn't want rags\" on their heads. Sure, it's obvious in doesn't mean that he can't use graffiti to to say it's wrong because I don't believe the film where my hean's at, like the get publicity to get to the next step, that. I think that making money for any guy in the beginning of the movie is the which may be to a museum or some- anist is important, it's survival. cool guy, right, and he's being chased by 6S
It's like Vlaminck and the Fauves. Vlaminck used to say, \"They throw bombs, I paint pictures. \" police. He does the Zoro thing, but then - included ZROC, the white boy. I never there's the process where he starts to enter the world, and I'm not going to tell tried to make anyone look tough. No one him at the end of the movie, go back into the subway yards-and I'm also not was told \"Wear your best clothes on the saying that he shouldn't, either. The process , the artistic process of growing set.\" I never tried to give them an image up and the real process--sure all the abstract expressionists killed them- like you see in all these teen movies selves, right-but they were such a mo- rose group of people, compared to the coming out, you know Matt Dillon. I graffiti artists who have their romantic side, but they' re hip also. They're not a made it very clear to people not to spruce bunch of abstract expressionists. In a sense they relate to that whole outlaw up, don't wear a coat and tie, but look trip that the abstract expressionists were into-anti-society-but on the other good, the way you really are on the street, hand they're the first ones in line to want to get their picture taken. not like The Warriors. How many artists started out scrawling So anyway getting back to the rappers \"CHICO 178\" on the subway map? -the whole thing about rapping is about All of them. Where else do you get a start? We' re no longer in the same place yourself but with style and narration we were two years ago, three years ago. New York City kids are so sophisticated added to it to describe something that -they don't read Vincent Canby's re- view-but they certainlv got word-of- you've been through. But you always mouth on the movie. It's also all over the city if some graffiti artist has a show- come back to doing a rhyme about your they know about it, even in junior high school. I find really amazing the fact that ChiefRocker Busy Bee. name. A rock musician would never do junior high school kids are so interested that, but rappers always come back at the in aesthetics, in art, and it is art-there's no way around it. didn't see is that in the yard-I've been end of their rhyme and end it with their In some of those scenes it is not simply in the yards many times with them doing name. So in that sense, it's the same the courage of being there, but the abso- it-there's only two ways you can do it. process of trying to get your name out lute conviction of the drawn line ... it was Either you have some kind of ladder or there like the graffiti artist. done with such mastery it was scary. Oh, they are masters of what they are something or normally what you do is Does the element ofstyle visually in the doing. There's a story of Giotto going to pick two trains that are parked next to graffiti relate to the do a chapel scene in-I don't know if it was Padua, Italy-the Pope called ev- each other. These cars are like nine feet ... cutting ofrecords in breakdancing? erybody in and you were supposed to bring your work and this guy comes in from the bottom to the top and they're 45 I think it's a kind of kinetic cubism; it and they say \"where's your work?\" Giotto took awall and a piece ofchalk and feet long; they've got to cover this with a relates to a certain kind ofstyle ofcubism made a perfect circle on it-of course that's very Renaissance in conception- drawing first and then go back in and fill -cutting up and rearranging-like the the idea ofa perfect circle, everyone else doing all these weird figures , right. Re- in colors, then go for your touches and way the records are heard in the back- naissance comes and he does a perfect circle, and he got the job-sort of like highlights. Now think of two cars this far ground. Often you hear the same fifteen when you see these kids perfectly doing apart, which means this is your reach, and seconds-sometimes even five seconds these arcs. And colors-you had another line in this is how far back you can get from a -sometimes two seconds of record be- there, \"Iknow my colors.\" 45-foot long piece of work-which ing repeated and remanipulated. Some- \"I know my colors by heart.\" He does means entirely the scale is in here, it's all times the needle would only go thatfaron itin the dark. Which means it's being done mentally. in here (points to his head). Unfortu- the record for the entire night. \"Wild- Oh, yeah. The other thing that you nately, the film doesn't have the real style\" refers to pieces that are disjointed classics, because they were gone-you and then re-put together and added with know, they only last two weeks. So the a great deal ofstyle. When the breakdan- only way you can see them is Henry cercomes offadance he ends up like this, Chalfant's photographs, really. He has like that. If you look at the (graffiti) probably a hundred whole cars with com- letters, they're doing the exact same plete designs over the entire surface. thing-it's like a pose-I always hear Andthen the city gets them? graffiti artists going \"He makes those Yeah, they're usually buffed within a letters dance .\" That's what it's like-he week. Henry goes out the next day and gives them animation, life. The letters gets the pictures or they get crossed out have a kind oflike life. Graffiti puts kind byanotherwriter. of a muscular, acrobatic power into the Is there something aesthetically analo- style of the letters, and I think that's a big gous between graffitiandrapping? partofit. Oh yeah. The rapper at the end is What did thepicture cost? rapping about writing graffiti and stuff in That's usually the first question and his rap; meanwhile he's also one of the the second question is \"Where did you leading graffiti artists. And many of the get the money?, and the next question is Drs-the guy that's djing is also one of -no, that's usually the end of the inter- the best breakdancers. These guys are view. I guess it cost somewhere around also damn good basketball players, too. $250,000-1 don't know-that's what I Rapping is basically done in predomi- usually tell people, so I guess it's okay. nantly black and also Hispanic, teenage You know for what we did I don't think neighborhoods, but graffiti goes across it's a miracle, because I know I could class and race completely. That's why I havedoneitforless. @ 66
Headsploitation by Charlie Haas by very few people, and for excellent happen to you.\" reason, but pfevious subjects have re- I nod. The room becomes dark, and I'll be glad when this costume party's over ported a daunting range of perceptual and these creeps grow up and start earning effects. I have been warned, for exam- there is a slight whirring noise, but I'm a living like everybody else. ple, that colors may appear faded or un- not sure whether the film has \"come on\" naturally reddish; that time may seem to yet. Then, suddenly, everything seems -A cop, in Richard Rush's Psych-Out \"stretch out\" interminably during static bathed in a shimmering, electric-blue two-shots or aimless dialogue ex- light, and I see words floating in front of February 9, 12:53 P.M. I arrive at changes; that I will often find myself me, something about pictures that are the \"screening facility, \" a modest, func- giggling hysterically for no reason (at any American and yet international. A slight tional building on an anonymous side rate, for no reason intended by the film- giddiness, as an irrelevant thought, street in Hollywood. I am met by the makers); and that many psychedelic something about wild bikinis, leaps into West Coast editor of FILM COMMENT, films have been badly \"cut\"-adulter- my mind. I swallow, push the thought who wears flowing, colorful clothes and ated-with cheap, vertiginous special away, and find a new image in front of an open, friendly smile. I feel that I can effects. I am told that, ten or 15 years me: Peter Fonda, directing a TV com- trust her, but this does little to allay my after these films were synthesized, one mercial for perfume on a beach and argu- intense nervousness. can still be \"blown away\" by the palpa- ing with Susan Strasberg, whom he's in ble \"rush\" of major and minor film stu- the middle of divorcing. A moment For research purposes and out of my dios to transmute a series of mayfly later, I have the sensation of staring own curiosity, I am subjecting myself to trends into similarly quick bucks. (That through a factory-second kaleidoscope several sessions of \"psychedelic\" or they were so rarely successful, it is said, -a feeling I will have many times dur- \"headsploitation\" cinema, a sub-genre supports the heartening argument that ing these sessions-as credits inform me of the late Sixties and early SeventieS even people who'd buy red and gold ~hat this is Roger Corman's The Trip that, for many young filmmakers, sateen Nehru jackets still drew the line (1967). opened \"the doors of work.\" The somewhere. ) grounds for my apprehension are sim- Most of the picture's action takes ple: in these experiments, my conscious 1:00 P.M. I am led into the \"screening place at a house in Los Angeles whose mind will be propelled on a \" trip\" room,\" where several rows of chairs face walls have been covered, to the inch, through some of the least expensively a blank white surface covering most of a with day-glo stripes and smears, merci- achieved and most rapidly forgotten im- wall. I sit in one of the chairs; it is deep fully softened by a little smog residue. agery ever committed to film. Some of and comfortable. \"}ust relax,\" the FILM I (\"Boy,\" says Fonda, \"this place is really the pictures I will see have been viewed COMMENT editor says. \"Try to let go of pulled together.\") Fonda is here for his your critical preconceptions. Just let it first acid trip and, as it begins, I am plunged into the special effects I have 67
< been warned about. I have my first ends and the lights come up, I have the watch away. For some reason, felt like it \"flash,\" or deep realization: if AlP regu- was strangling my wrist. Also, a strange larly went to the moon for about $1.59, feeling that something has been urge to reread Michael McClure's they must have reasoned that the inside of Fonda's brain pan, being closer, could \"opened up\" in me-something power- Beard. be reached even more cheaply, which would explain the extra-loud Health ful, something profound. February 15, 12:00 Noon. As Ed.-film heartbeat sound effects and the squinting-at-an-Op-Art-looseleaf- • \"change of pace,\" I have agreed to try cover visuals. one of the \"heaviest\" known central- February 10,2:30 P.M. Today I am nervous-system depressants: the late- I find that I feel very good toward Sixties youth-unrest movie. My FILM Fonda, though-very warm and close. being exposed to Magical Mystery Tour, a COMMENT guide has suggested I try a So often, actors in movies will \"portray mildly sedative example of this sub-sub- characters\" by delivering \"effective line one-hour film featuring, and directed genre, such as The Revolutionary or Get- readings,\" but Fonda doesn't seem to ting Straight, or a \"bad laugh\" inducer feel any need to hide behind such cop- by, the Beatles, made for British TV in like Wild in the Streets or Riot on Sunset outs. When I see him pick up an orange Strip. Instead, in a moment of bravado, I and say, \"The life, man-flowing off it 1966. According to Philip Norman's request R .P.M. (1970), the most gruel- like energy!\", I have my first fit of laugh- ing, point-hammering \"downer\" of its ter, and it feels wonderful, a release of Beatles biography Shoutl, the film's class, directed by Stanley Kramer and deep tension. A number of Fonda's fan- written by Erich segal. There is music tasies are presented: him and a bl nde \"screenplay,\" by Paul McCartney, was by Melanie, who was the Marianne woman being followed througH Nature Faithfull (i.e., the current Marianne by black-robed horseback (lers, a dwarf \"a neatly inscribed circle, segmented Faithfull, the Dory Previn of punk) of bringing them sou rom a cauldron hip, and Anthony Quinn plays the radi- stirred by a witch, a haunted house. At with what were to be the visual high cal-sociology-prof-turned-embattled- this last, I a , suddenly overcome by an college-pres in the longest, flattest- almost teaifully beautiful sense of how points. In one segment, Paul had writ- footed talk scenes you have ever seen •.. pr NKlent the universe is: a haunted ten 'midgets'; in another, 'fat lady'; in ... But right in the middle of't I get ouse is what Fonda hallucinates, and a this flash, I mean thought, to the effect aunted house is what AlP has. yet another, 'lunch.'\" At today's session, that, like, why do I keep laying this whole judgment number on these onda also has a fantasy of s'ex wi I am particularly aware of the time-dis- movies, I mean why not just dig myself Strasberg and then the blonde woman, as a human watching these movies and but the'r bodies are covered with swir- torting properties of this genre: the hour these movies watching me, the pure ing Op-Art rojections, so that the effect moment of it, and then I have this idea is not titillatiQ but a mild motion sick- aele~mosst to last about three weeks. Like for like a chain of movie theaters for ness (check pe ote accounts for si i- all of the films I will see, this one people who can't get to sleep, called lar?).lhaveagath 'ngsenseofplodess- The Morpheum, and we could quadru- ness, and can almos eel Fellini falling cpntains long, aimless, home-movie- ple-bill R.P.M. with the Apu trilogy and into the wrong hands. t then Fonda the chairs could turn into futons and I flips out, runs away down unset Strip rke sequences in which characters wan- just think wow, Still don't know what's and seeks refuge in a psyche elic 'lght- happening to me but difference is not club for the first instance ofwhar ill be oer around and stare at the camera in hung up about it anymore, like don't the most relentlessly recurring imagery in these sessions (anything in Jung?): a ature, as if the directors' moms had care. mob dance sequence featuring body- painted topless women, mirror balls, been frightened by Sierra Club posters. • strobes, overhead projections of bob- bling food color, and a million fast cuts of The story here seems to involve the The First Day of the Rest of Feb- close-ups of nothing in particular in no ruary. I begin to grok that we could all particular focus, pointing up the moSIl Beatles and a number of older and be much more beautiful mutations if we poignant drawback of a genre preoccu- would peel back the penumbra from pied with the sort of experiences for squarer people hectoring each other on a around words and really listen to them. which you have to be there or be bo ed. Like maybe \"studio film\" is really \"stu- claustrophobic touring bus, with ocea- dent film,\" at least in the case ofDealing, Fonda winds up at a beach house with the blonde woman, but not before I ex- sional breaks for midget wrestling, chil- or the Berkeley-to-Boston-Forty-Brick- perience the (birthlike?) trauma of being Lost-Bag Blues (1972), which I see in San almost montaged to death by every short dren's tug of war, and a stripper working Francisco at a benefit screening for snip of film left over from the editing of Brownie Mary, a 58-year-old woman the previous sequences. At last, though, to the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band's who keeps getting busted for baking and they make heavily moire-patterned selling dope brownies. Dealing is based love, working up to a liberated op-age \"Death Cab for Cutie.\" At one point, a on a novel by Michael Crichton and his climax, in which both partners achieve brother Douglas, was directed by Paul dyslexia simultaneously. As the film tour guide says that the view from the Williams (The Revolutionary), and fea- tures the remarkable sleepwalking lead- bus's left-hand windows \"is not; very in- ing performance of Robert F. Lyons. John Lithgow is this rubber fish toy. I spiring\" (normal pleasant countryside), mean this friend of Lyons', who sends \"but if you look to your right,\" you see solarized countryside, improved by the enlightened use of blue hills and purple grass, green sky and greener clouds, and long, long dissolves. At around 3:30 I am aware of an uneasy feeling, which I rec- ognize as an uncertainty that this film will contain any exuberant-running- through-a-field-to-music footage, and I realize that I will, myself, feel \"un- whole\" if a Beatles film does not contain some of this. Fortunately, there is some soon, and I am able to \"mellow out\" by II ~ reflecting on what really unparalleled exuberant-musical-field-runners the four moptops were, and how this may have made Walkman jogging seem like a desirable end to so many people. February 11. No screening today. I feel that I am changing, that these films are affecting me in a way that I can barely understand. Beginning to ques- tion so many things for the first time: Is solarized nature really better? Did Alvin Duskin op-art minidresses ever look good? On way home from Magical Mys- tery Tour screening, threw my wrist- 68
\\, . ~~~ . . . \\ ' ~, . \") .. ., . ... , . . ' ,. ' !'\"
him to Berkeley where he buys pot with records it, will be featured constantly on whoa!-and there's stuff in a desert, in a peace symbols on the wrappers and the MTV cable channel, because its meets Barbara Hershey (not quite yet lyric incorporates all the heaviest, most harem, a \"reality factory,\" a confining then Seagull) and tells her, \"I really meaningful MTV cliches: think it's great that you don't w. ar un- black box, stuffwith Annette Funicello, derwear, I mean that's really prof, un .\" Mm you know there's a lot of dry ice She gets busted moving dope, tho gh, around my feet, said it's misty, with Victor Mature, stuff showing com- and he has to get her sprung and ha a eah ... shoot-out in the snow with bad co passion for the Vietnamese and stuff Charles Durning. I salCi hey I'm in a laboratory right now, showing contempt for the Italians, all of After it's over, and a dude from the Brownie Mary defense committee gets There are lip prints on it having something to do with the fellas' up and says, \"Hey, we're really sorry, like we didn't get to screen the movie in yeah ... purported search for authenticity and advance,\" I go over to rap with Brownie Da da now me and my band, witli 0 f Mary, who says, \"I think that was the their more actual desperate desire to worst movie I've ever seen.\" I look in hairdos, hey, her eyes and get this incredible hit ofher We're running around in a Third keep up at a time when keeping up was a just being a super wise person, almost like a shaman, you know, like the little World country revolving-door process, to be certified as guy in The Empire Strikes Back. Wh Ie poor people are staring at us, hip to what the new breed say, even if it More February Than You'U E ver ye h... Be. I am rapping with a filmbrother who But, d t doot doh, now we're chas- took: oating silver pillows, a Maharishi had a principal production credit on Dealing but thinks it would be too heavy ing tl1i anorexic model and there's ringer, t4 Q e jokes, obtuse political to be quoted by name. \"Why do you a wild a ' loose in the city, want to write about that awful movie?\" Mm yeah d some authority-type stuff (bonus poin Co cutting at self-se- he says. \"I've almost lost jobs because of people who don't like rock 'n' roll, that movie. You know, the whole plot of They're waggin their fingers at rious random from. tuff to Viet- Dealing consisted of smuggling dope oh yeah ... from Berkeley to Boston, which you did I say Whoa, I am I) own 'ay by the nam horror footage 1 ars before Let's by putting it in your carry-on luggage synchronicity here, be use I have just instead of checking it through. But come from a screening of Bob Rafelson's Spend the Night -ether did it), and an while the film was in post-production, Head (1968), written by Rafelson and there was this rash ofhijackings and they Jack Nicholson and starring the appearance 'he then-daring-seeming started searching everyone's carry-on Monkees, and like where does Eddie luggage, so the plot became meaning- think those cliches started being cliches? Stravins -Osterizer Frank Zappa to less. It was this picture that Warners Like, Head happened at this totally wanted to seem very hot and contempo- sidereal moment where the Monkees twit avey Jones, the teabag (or anyway rary, and it seemed about ten years old were moving out of their merely embar- the day it came out. rassing pseudo-early-Beades trip and abag-accented) Monkee, about their freeing themselves into a richly mortify- \"You know, they turned down a lot of ing pseudo-Sgt. Pepper's-pseudo-Yard- musIc. people, casting that picture. They birds-pseudo-Hollies deal, including a turned down Kris Kristofferson, turned lot of clothes you couldn't look at I find I am really getting inside the down Richard Dreyfuss, turned down straight on. Jill Clayburgh ... it was a very innovative So Head kind of worked the Hard Monkees' pain, like think how it is when picture, though-the first picture, as far Day's Night ploy (\"Right, lads, now we'll as I know , to shoot Toronto for Boston. \" market you by making a movie showing all you really want is to be a \"weirdo\" how badly we abuse you when we mar- Moon in Virgo. So much shining ket you and how you keep trying to and the only way you can get it is to hire harmonybeauty I have never noticed, escape from us\") but did it with a much while I was thinking about the movie more grimly primitive punishment-fan- an actor to playa cop and call you one. business. (Capsule reviews should re- tasy paranoia and in a series of discon- view capsules! One-sheets to the wind! nected and indeed MTV-predictive vi- When the pain is at its worst, the guys, The blind bidding the blind!) My note- gnettes in which the neomoptops are book is a living thingg. continuously chased, beaten, taunted, yes, wander around through nature, and and otherwise abused the fuck out of, as • if being the Monkees was a crime and the picture even ends where it began and their fault, giving the picture an oddly Today. I am saying hello to the sun- ambivalent preoccupation with the \"is- then runs backwards to the Columbia shine and eating a life-radiating salad at sue\" of their talent (or no) and their Hampton's in Hollywood when I meet a status as manufactured guys. logo and simulated film-burning like in beautiful child of mirthing, a laughter- At the outset, the Monkees break up man named Eddie Gorodetsky, a com- a bridge dedication and one of them Two-Lane Blacktop, so it's all, you know, edy writer from Boston. Eddie is trip- jumps into the drink for some underwa- ping out behind a mega-idea he has had: ter radioactive-art-nouveau solarized slo- •time is a loop and nothing lasts and, urn. he is writing a song that, no matter who mo, and then fans are ripping off the Dates Don't Matter, Eat the Cal- Monkees' clothes at a concert but the boys turn out to be mere mannequins- endar. Chrome waterfalls of rainbow snail illusion, the clown's teardrop, sandstorms of dwarf laughter, the spi- der's holy anagrams, and incense and rain. I call Bob Rafelson, director of Head and, more recently, Five Easy Pieces and Stay Hungry. \"The strange thing about Head,\" he says, \"is that the picture is now being taken very seriously.\" He laughs. \"I mean, video magazines are writing about it as kind of the father of all these MTV IOnds of shows and so on. On a technical level, as an attempt to find a sort of acidic representation, of an acid trip, say, the movie was a bi t ahead of its time. All IDose effects you see-the so- larization, the matted-on color effects- hadn't been evolved in 3S-millimeter film. We were literally discovering them.\" It seems to be a movie largely about the Monkees getting whupped on, I say. \"Exactly,\" says ~felson. \"I had found the Monkees and put them together for the television series. Near the tail end of that series, the Monkees became a sort 70
of object of ridicule, or disdain, on the simultaneously by Kubrick in 2001; the Seeker\" (Bruce Oem), and falls in part of the more esoteric rock fans, the pictures came out at practically the same hippie usrc'an:fiCK ic olson-what- older ones, because they were 'manu- tim'e-because the point was that all ever, 't all started looking good to , factured. ' So when we took the series off this success and acclaim was not going to the usual (but better than usu I~ sex the air, I decided to make a film on that resolve their personal attitudes about s , ditto the nature stuff a d lacklit- very subject. Nicholson at the time had their lives and the world. The picture abandoned his acting career, and we was an effort to sort through the possible ancing stuff, the boss eakout stuff were friends, so I said to him, 'Let's solutions. At the time, rock 'n' roll wa (Nicholson and fri n s grotesquely write and produce the Monkees picture being declared the greatest pure art fo made up as see y Henry Jaglom on together.' to come down the pike, so for e acid; Strasberg pursued by smoke and Monkees to declare that they were oth- \"We were dealing, in the picture, not ing but dandruff in Victor Matu e's hair fire on S 1; the way Rush does hip life only with the audience's ambivalence was not typical of the time. at was but with the Monkees' own ambiva- typical of the time was to s ,'If ro as p 1y squalid and dippy; and the lence. It was the same kind of ambiva- follow the words of the ari hi you bes -of-breed corny political move: lence that 15 years later-and only 15 will be led out of darknes ,' Here were years later-you would find coming all these proclamation lSeing made, oman outside of Haight church sneers from John Lennon, writing a long piece whereas we were saying that life is a at hippies, saying, \"The minister seems about how everything the Beatles did search, you go and search from one to like such a nice man-how can he stand was a sham, that Brian Epstein had engi- the other and every time you come out these people and the way they dress?\" as neered everything, that their music of the box you go back in the box be- camera pans past two carefully posed wasn't original. This was kind of proto- cause there are no answers. In fact, if longhairs to identically positioned and typical of what a rock group has to go you recall, Peter Tork reiterates almost bearded Christ-and-guy in stained glass through. In the last ten years, every time word for word what the Maharishi [char- window-I mean. (Also: Strawberry some rock group has come over here acter] says, ending with, 'Therefore, Alarm Clock and Sky Saxon and The from England, the first call they make why should I speak, since I know noth- Seeds.) is, 'Can we have a print of Head, we've ing?'-a very Zen statement, in fact. \" heard all about the movie,' whether it be And like as soon as I get back from Jagger or Lennon or The Who. I mean • Taos I am seeing everything, I mean The everybody keeps requesting it, and it's Magic Garden ofStanley Sweetheart, You always like, 'Yeah, that's what we went Now. My skull has been opened so Are What You Eat, Zachariah (\"The First through, only we didn't fuckin' talk wide it can never be closed. I who was Electric Western\"), Revolution (\"featur- about it.' Mr. \"White Collar Conservative flashing down the street pointing my plastic fin- ing Today Malone\"), Cisco Pike, Get to \"In Head, the Monkees are always ger,\" like Hendrix said, I have broken Know Your Rabbit, Chappaqua, LSD I being trapped in this black box, which through to the other side. Like today I Love You! Hey: Corman is core man, becomes the constant image-a black saw AlP's Psych-Out (1967), and maybe Arkoff is (arc!) off, and it's all box which, by the way, was being used it's just that the direction was stylish spllOHatllQOIlng all around you all over (Richard Rush), or the cinematograp y (Laszlo Kovacs), or the performances- .\\·t7.'r~tr'H'1r and Smithereens, deaf person Susan Strasberg shows up in the Haight lookiqg for her brother, a ! Dig it! Dig yourselfl tota Iy wigged sculptor Galled \"The ~
Goldman, Biro, and Nyuk-Nyuk-Nyuk. production designer, a cinematog- tism and economics, the power plays, by John Sayles rapher, an editor, a composer, and a di- politicking, nepotism, and professional Adventures in the Screen Trade, by Wil- rector. This final section is the best dis- insult that a screenwriter of Goldman's liam Goldman, 418 pp., Warner Books, New York, 1983, $17.50. cussion I've read of the pitfalls of echelon endures is anything compared Getting a story from script to screen tackling a screenplay. to the pressure he puts on himself. has always reminded me of pushing a bill through Congress. Someone authors I would have loved it if there had Goldman admits to agonizing over his the bill with a certain intention, but to pass it deals must be struck, amend- been a book like Goldman's available writing, tearing it apart, putting it to- ments made, riders attached, until the bill may be so watered down or altered when I started writing. Not so much to gether, tearing it apart again. He cares that its purpose has disappeared en- tirely. In screenwriting, as in Congres- pick up tips on how it's done but to hear about the screenplays he writes, not in a sional politics, the author is often en- couraged or ordered to do that watering the rap of somebody who has really been shallow, protective way, but because he down in the original writing process, thus saving its enemies and detractors Out There, who is still writing movies. wants the movies made from them to the effort. These are the strains that Goldman documents so well in his new take off on the screen and be great. He book-the struggles to protect the in- tegrity of a movie without getting fired says of the typical ex-agent now running from the production. a studio: \"What he doesn't understand, Adventures in the Screen Trade is split between descriptions of studio and star g~nerally speaking, is passion.\" Readers politics and discussions of writing tech- nique. In this way it mirrors the life of who keep Goldman's passion in mind the screenwriter. Ask any screenwriter why a certain moment exists in a movie during his litany of \"adventures\" will he's worked on and you're as likely to hear an anecdote about the producer's have some idea of what each of the wife or the cost of camel wranglers as you are to hear about plot, dialogue, or countless compromises his work has suf- pacing. The tension between these two -between what you hope for when you fered must have cost him. start a screenplay and what you settle for when it smacks up against the reality of Not that Goldman whines and not film production-runs up and down the spine of Goldman's book. that he's had a rougher time than other His opening section, \"The Powers screenwriters. There is a touch of Ray- That Be,\" is a breakdown of who the players are in Hollywood, how they mond Chandler's tarnished knight, Phil- function, and why they need but never fully trust each other. In the \"Ele- lip Marlowe, in the author's hard-guy ments\" section he reflects on the way movies are made and how the films are delivery and attitude along this Holly- perceived over a period of years. In \"Ad- ventures\" he shares his own experiences wood tour. \"This is the racket, kid,\" on several films; and finally in \"Da Vinci\" he guides us through his thought says the attitude. \"You want to play the process as he adapts a short story for the screen and then invites the input of a game, these are the rules. And how you cover your ass emotionally is your busi- ness. \" In this way, Adventures is a much more personal book than The Season, William GoLdman. Goldman's excellent dissection of the Broadway theater. When Goldman Like listening to a much-traveled sailor names names this time around there is before your first time at sea, Goldman personal history involved, first-hand ad- offers horror stories, tales of hardship, miration, distrust, rancor, and affection. and plenty of warnings, but through it all He tries to be diplomatic about people he weighs anchor in the exhilaration and he thinks have fucked up projects he transcendent moments that get you cared about, often prefacing descrip- hooked on the idea in the first place. tions of bad behavior with praise of the He has certainly been Out There, in perpetrator's other qualities or talents. the thick of it, since the beginning of his By being very frank about his own fears .screenwriting career. His first produced and failures, he narrowly avoids the script starred Paul Newman; Robert look-what-they-done-to-my-song-Ma Redford has been involved in five taste of sour grapes in so many other others; and he's dealt with heavyweight screenwriter tales of woe. And though producers Robert Evans and Joseph E. he doesn't talk about it, I sense an attrac- Levine. These are the Big Leagues, tion to the political aspect of the busi- where rewards are inflated beyond rea- ness, to the jockeying and trickery. son and failures are on a grand scale. Though he despairs at how little true There is incredible pressure at this alti- power the screenwriter has in these bat- tude. But I sense that none of the ego- tles, though he knows the score but 72
doesn't much like it, Goldman never close-readings, the major achievement suggests bucking the system or forging an alternative one. He finds it easier to ofProfane Mythology is to articulate why get his creative rocks off in writing novels and leaves control of the movie and how certain films communicate world to other \"elements\" within the powers-that-be. There is a good deal of both intellectually and emotionally. survivor's pride in between the lines of this book-pride that people who know For Bir6, although film records physi- what Goldman gets paid may not think is earned. But if you understand passion cal reality, it must do something more and realize that the minefields he has walked through in the studio system are than that to become \"film-thinking\" . very real ones, that survival is impres- sive . The filmmaker, she argues, transcends by Barbara Learning reality by judging, even denying it. This Profane Mythology : The Savage Mind of is one of the essential contradictions of the Cinema, by Yvette Bir6, 133 pp., Indiana University Press, Bloomington, cinema: to show the world only to con- 1982, $22.50 cloth, $7.95 paper. test it. Here, Biro is more penetrating ORIGINAL MOVIE POSTERS Yvette Bir6's Profane Mythology: The than an earlier writer like Siegfried Kra- Savage Mind of the Cinema is the latest C INEMA C ITY is a complete service for contribution to the surprisingly small • •cauer who didn't always fully under- cinema collectors. dealing with original curriculum of essential film theory that • •stand that the whole point of redeeming movi e posters. photos and related co llect- ranges from pioneers like Bela Balazs ables . Original motion picture graphics are and Hugo Munsterberg to more recent physical reality is somehow to get be- sought by co llectors throughout the world. texts by Jurij Lotman and Christian Origin al fil m posters are a unIque remem- Metz. Out of the morass ofcontradictory • •yond it: to ideas and emotions. In light brance of a memorable fil m. and because theories that inevitably vexes begin- • •of the current debate about representa- of their lim ited number, may become fine ning, even advanced, film students, • •tion in cinema and the other arts (realists investme nt pieces. Many items. Wit h their Bir6 has managed to synthesize a vigor- distinctive artwork. make attractive wa ll ous and viable way of looking at and • •vs. anti-realists, to put it somewhat decorations th at are sure to be the tO PICof talking about movies. At last here is the • •crudely), Bir6's position that \"to repre- discussion am ong movie lovers . perfect book with which to begin, or refresh, an acquaintance with film the- sent means to question, to reconstruct in All material is o rig inal - we deal with no ory, for it quickly and deftly sums up, copies. reprints. or anything of a bogus and occasionally even supersedes, much • •a variety of ways\" should prove refresh- nature. Our latest catalogue lists thousands that has been written on how films make of item s that incl ude posters. photos (over sense and why we watch them: the big • •ing. A filmmaker never just shows real- 30.000 in stock). lobby cards. pressbooks. questions theoreticians have been stalk- a nd other authentic fi lm memorab ilia. If ing for decades. Although there have • •ity (even if he's a so-called realist), but you're looking fo r a particular item that is been rare exceptions like Andre Bazin, not in o ur catalogue . we wi ll try to locate It as a group, film theoreticians aren' t es- takes a position in relation to it. for you. To receive our latest catalogue. pecially noted for lucidity or terseness of send $ 1.00 (refundable w ith first orde r) to: expression. The good news is that Bir6 • •This vital interpretive capacity is is another exception. Her book is clearly 'CII~ IE~\\A\\ 'Cl lr \", and forcefully argued: 133 pages that get • •what Bir6 (with a sideglance to Roland to the point. P.O .Box 101 2. De pt. FC • •Barthes' Mythologies) calls \"the mythi- Muskegon. Michigan 49441 Primarily, Bir6 examines the ways in •cizingrole ofthe medium.\" Thus, in her which film produces meaning by inter- preting, rather than merely transcribing, l~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~•!-~atonailsyosleasteoafnfdilmchsa, rBacirtoeriiszealtwhaoysse cfaorremfuall reality. Although other theoreticians are discussed, her emphasis is-correctly- techniques used to read reality: that is, on what filmmakers have actually done. Talking about how filmmakers transmit to discover meaning in the trivial details Gemini Video abstract ideas might lead some writers of everyday life. Hence, film affords a into fuzzy abstraction, but Bir6 avoids profane mythology, one rooted in mun- Presents this pitfall by sticking closely to familiar dane experience. Movies don't just works by directors like Luis Bufluel, Roads To Far Off Lands Pier Paolo Pasolini, and Andrzej Wajda. Still, for all the book's illuminating bring everyday details closer, but organ- ize them into meaningful structures. While Biro is as concerned as Bela Balazs La Cage Au x Folies II Hobson's Choice $54.95 was with the crucial role of the body in The Win slow Boy $54.95 film, her primary interest here is less ... $54.95 Lavender Hill Mob $54.95 \"the face of man\" (Balazs' famous Mr . Klein .. .. $54.95 The Servant .. .. $54.95 phrase), than how physical gestures may Story of A dele H $54.95 be located in a structured context that Golden Voyage of permits them to convey abstractions. Mr . Hulo t's Holiday Sinbad . . ... $65.95 . .$39.95 Chariots of Fire .. $65.95 Beaut y & . .$45.95 th e Beast . Love on the Run $54.95 Much that was still undeveloped or .... $54.95 merely implicit in such classical theore- ticians as Balazs and Kracauer is spelled ... $74.95 La Strada ...... $39.95 out in Bir6, whose vivid sense of struc- ...... $39.95 ture aligns her most closely with a cur- Metropolis . . .$69.95 Dpen City ....... $52.95 rent semiotician like Lotman. Cabinet of Pa:san . . ... $52.95 Eisenstein's unrealized plan to film Marx's Das Kapital, or Alexandre As- Dr. Caligari . . _.$49.95 Garden of Finzi - Das Boot. . . .$74.95 Continis ........ $54.95 La Dolce Vita . .. $69.95 truc's assertion that if Descartes were ........ $54.95 alive today he'd make his Discours de La Methode into a movie, are ideas that re- Kagemu sha Elvira Madigan ... $54.95 ally appeal to Bir6 for their pungent sug- Seven Samuraii gestion that cinematic images of reality Wild . are capable of expressing the subtlest Add $2. per film S&H. CT residents add 7l~ % Strawberries . . .. $39.95 and most difficult philosophical con- sales tax. cepts. This predilection for film- thought notwithstanding, Biro disagrees P.O. Box 2018B with those who have claimed that mod- Vernon. CT 06066 (203) 875·0052 73
ern film \"eliminated the story. On the nation.\" Since the Thirties, the official case for the defense in a gentle and ap- contrary, it has increased the power of aesthetic of Socialist Realism has. preciative manner. the story, expanding it to represent even nondramatic intellectual messages.\" haunted filmmaking in the East. Pur- More than any other comedians of the Thus, she feels, the ideas of Marx or Descanes would be expressed through porting to be an objective, transparent film era, the Stooges played on the hu- stories designed to embody, and to an- chor, their abstract insights. \"Film is al- account of reality, Socialist Realism put mor of grown men acting like children. . ways a story,\" says Biro, who recognizes that the significance of that story is built a stop to the energetic experimentation Curly Howard, a child's child, is de- into the precise manner and order in which it is told. With reference to Piaget that characterized the halcyon days of scribed as the funniest man of the 20th on cognitive psychology, Profane My- thology initiates a remarkable compari- Twenties' Soviet cinema. Century, and if he wasn't he was at least son between the manner in which film and the mind violate, fragment, and re- Thus Biro's text may be read as a the funniest kid. Lou Costello's slightly verse time. Film's gradual development response to .this \"simplifying theory of more esteemed \"baaaad boy\" is traced of the capacity to aniculate time paved realism\" that disguised its interpretation by Moe to a vaudeville show in Atlantic the way \"for an operational arrangement and intellectual structuring of things.\" of reality as a direct and unmediated City where Lou studied Curly from the presentation of truth. Indeed, the So- Wings. As a cineaste, Biro herself thinks and writes dialectically, montage-style: thus, cialist Realist cinema mythicized reality, Curly was a romantic fool, an inveter- in a panicularly compelling phrase, she notes film's ability \"to spark poetry out but, in its duplicity, pretended it wasn't ate dog collector, and a soft touch for a of mere existence, and to shape mental states into images.\" Significantly, be- doing so. Biro extends Banhes' concept hard luck story. He joined the Stooges in sides the lofty ideas of an intellectual cinema (as Eisenstein called it), these of myth by suggesting how, in film, vaudeville w.hen they were literally \"mental states\" can also be dreams, mythicization can be a positive, produc- memories, and emotions. In film , Biro tive enterprise when it isn't simply offi- stooges for popular comedian Ted says, \"Just as in child-thought or magical cial,. debilitating, and conformist-but thought, events follow not only logic but imaginative and, finally, liberating. .Healy. Curly shaved his head because also passionate motivations and driving Thus the unabashed \"mythicizing emotions. \" This is an insight that goes a power of European film,\" as Biro sug- he looked too much like Moe, though long way toward identifying the hitheno inexplicable power of certain sequences brother Shemp, whom Curly replaced, in films we love in which the connec- tions between shots-and their ineffable bore even closer resemblance. Shemp significance-must be sought in the film's dominant emotional (rather than was only the first Stooge Healy. purely intellectual) impact. Besides her vast erudition, Biro has, and nunures in gests, afforded her, and others in East- her readers, an intuitive grasp of things. One of her chief strengths as a theoreti- ern Europe,. an image of what the cin- cian, and as a writer, is to comprehend and express the reserves of feeling at ema could be (and, ironically, had been work in movies, not just in their stories, but in their structures as well. in the Soviet Union of the Twenties). A curious personal note is struck in .Keeping in mind the book's concep- the preface (signed \"Rome, 1981\") in tion in Eastern Europe, one begins to .\":\" I•.~\"· which Biro chronicles the book's con- ception \"in Eastern Europe, in Hun- understand why what is at stake here is gary.\" Says Biro: \"The primary aim was polemic: wanting to name what had less a manneristic reflexivity than a sys- been considered almost taboo for a very long time. To explore and sanction the tematic probing and re-shaping of real- mythicizing power of the European film -to oppose the reigning and simplifying ity. Make no mistake about it: Profane theory of realism-was an urgent need, pan-of a liberating will. My goal was not Mythology is not an anti-realist tract. merely to take issue with the official, debilitating conformism, but also, rather The films cited as examples-from ambitiously, to secure validity and gain acceptance for the morality of the imagi- Ingmar Bergman to Miklos Jansco to Dusan Makavejev-are narratives that, in their oven challenge to and confronta- tion with reality, exemplify that \"moral- ity of the imagination\" of which Biro speaks, and of which Profane Mythology is itself a decisive instance. Given the admittedly polemic aims of Profane My- thology (conceived in a time and place so . Healy esconed them to Hollywood, seemingly different from ours), there is a where, fed up with his drunken tyranny, special irony in its being the book that the Stooges broke with him and signed a we in America need to read just now to long-term contract with Columbia- remind us of the grave Iporal responsi- eventually the longest continuous studio bility of the cinematic imagination. pact ever. They went on, in various in- carnations, to produce almost two hun- by Jack Barth dred two-reel shorts. In the pre-pali- mony era, Moe Howard and Larry Fine The Three Stooges Scrapbook, by Jeff stayed together as Stooges for 50 years. Lenburg, Greg Lenburg, and Joan Ho- Moe was a belligerent leader ward Maurer, Citadel Press, $18.95 onscreen, but a calm and shrewd man- ager offscreen. Distinguished by his The Three Stooges have been ac- bowl-on-the-head haircut and his relent- cused of arrested development, exces- less violence, he was a living canoon. sive violence, and basic silliness, but The Larry's image, by contrast, was no im- Three Stooges Scrapbook, by Jeff Len- age at all . His behavior was unpredict- burg, Greg Lenburg, and Joan Howard able, sliding from Moe-aggressive to Maurer (Moe's daughter), complement- passed-out passive. He was the ultimate ing the earlier Moe Howard arui The man-in-the-middle: His hair sounded Stooges by Moe Howard, presents the great when Moe tore it out. He was 74
discovered in vaudeville playing in a Tbe16tb funny violin act on the same bill as International Healy. Tournee of Curly's hard drinking led to a stroke Animation on the set of their ninety-seventh short in 1946. He was insecure about his at- \"It's the most effervescent, tractiveness with a bald pate, and in ag- imaginative selection in ony with chronic back pain. He died years, with something to several years later at the age of 48. Healy intrigue all age groups in long since abandoned, Shemp returned the family.\" to replace Curly, and the Stooges carried Judy Stone on successfully. Shemp had his own dis- San Francisco Chronicle tinct character, and though Curly was missed, the laughs continued. They A festival of 20 award-winning animated films of fiction and fantasy from made seventy-three more shorts around the world, highlighted by Academy Award Winner, THE FLY; Acad- through 1956, when Shemp's health emy Nominee, HISTORY OF THE WORLD IN 3 MINUTES FLAT; Ottawa forced his departure. Festival Grand Prix Winner, the outrageous UBU; and winners from major festivals at Zagreb, Ottawa, and Berlin. At that point, the Stooges were get- ting old and would soon look pathetic, A feature-length program available for rental from : not funn y, as childish imbeciles. Joe Besser, Abbott and Costello's \"Stinky,\" 4530 18th Street filled in creditably, but they were run- San Francisco, Calif. 94114 ning out of steam. Ironically, in 1959 Columbia released their shorts to televi- (415) 863-6100 sion, and the Stooges became more pop- ular than ever. From this sprang a gener- IF YOU THINK THIS LOOKS GRIM... ation of fans , including the Lenburgs, who were raised on five shorts a week. You should see the hundreds of other dp.~:nAr·:ltA These fans purchased a flood of records, dangerous, improbable and inescapable predic- comic books, and other Stooges mer- .aments detailed in To Be Continued, a guide to chandise, all logged in detail in the every sound movie serial, with cast, credits, Scrapbook. synopses and more than 400 action-packed photos_ Available in bookstores, or from· Joe DeRita, who never found the Star Tre. Pre..; 114 Honeyspot Road, Stooges very amusing, was brought in to Stratford, Conn. 06497 replace Besser for the filming of several features , including Have Rocket, WiLL •Add $2.50 postage TraveL and The Three Stooges Meet Her- cuLes,and for personal appearances, one before a crowd of 85,000 in 1963. The Three Stooges had a talented crew of producers , directors , and writers, including Clyde Bruckman (who worked with Buster Keaton and Abbott and Costello), Elwood Ullman (who also worked with Abbott and Cos- tello, as well as Martin and Lewis, Ma and Pa Kettle, and The Bowery Boys), Jules White (who outlasted King Cohn at Columbia), and Felix Adler (who wrote for Laurel and Hardy). Their straight-on three-shots and sim- ple editing were like filmed vaudeville, though their twisted concept of \"sound effects\" and intentionally corny fades and dissolves took advantage of the technology while parodying their more respected contemporaries. None of this is discussed in this high-priced valen- tine, but what is covered is covered well, and illustrated lavishly. Perhaps because they were most pop- ular when they were least productive, The Three Stooges have been unjustly ignored.~ 75
More Apocalypse Now. by Amos Vogel them to passersby in cages as pets. An This film is an example of the post- addict injects heroin into a woman by Oshima generation, to which belong Berlin is among the few international force. From batteries of shining public also Kazuki Omori, Sogo Ishii, Mitsuo film festivals that do not slight the inde- telephones, a girl calls men , any man, Yanagimachi, and Yoichi Takabayashi, pendent cinema but recognize its crucial for sex. She inserts her remaining coins not yet seen in the West. Yamamoto's role. While there were twenty-three in- only to hear recorded recipes endlessly biographical notice , in its entirety, is dustry films in official competition this repeated . There is a delirious, five- symptomatic: \"Born January 24, 1956 in year, thirty-three in the German Series minute take of a wild dance to feverish Oita. Sign: Aquarius. Blood type: B. and forty-six retrospectives, over ninety rock, jaggedly captured by a hand-held Education: Meiji University. Currently independent works premiered in the camera. unemployed.\" The explicit, cold- Forum, the largest single component of the festival. The stagnation and inferior Masachi Yamamoto's Carnival of the Night. quality revealed in quite a few-plots long ago beaten into the ground, avant- The apocalyptic visions of the work blooded humanism ofBunuel's Los Olvi- garde derivatives, still more fatigued are enclosed within two ironic counter- dados has been transcended (though self-explorations-is frustrating. But points at start and end: a'young woman Yamamoto specifically mentions him as there is also at Berlin a somber, stabbing reading \"M r. Moon\" word by word to a major influence); here it must be in- revelation: the best independents traf- her child, whom she then leaves with ferred but cannot be missed. In the best ficked in degrees of desperation , tears her former husband for the duration of tradition of subversive art, this work re- and alienation far more pronounced than the film , to pursue, gun in pocket, her minds us that the bomber is hidden in previously. \"freedom\" around the city; and an ob- the basement and is ready. Will the New 'sessed engineer in a basement warren of York Film Festival have the courage to Take Japan. We used to think that the pipes and machinery who pores over show such an unfashionable work? horrifyi ng impact of atomic destruction maps ofthe city's supply systems-sew- had found its culminating cinematic age, water, electricity, subway-to de- If this film stood alone in the festival, equivalent in the magisterial works of termine the one point where a single it could (erroneously) be ascribed to a Oshima, in Diary of a Shinjuku Burglar. bomb will blow up all of Shinjuku. At director's neurosis; however, it doesn't. Empire of the Senses. Death by Han ging. the end of Carnival of the Night, he is There is no point in deluding ourselves; Not so. The year 1983 brings us Masachi ready; in rum , the mother smilingly wel- even the great directors of Germany Yamamoto's Carnival ofthe Night. a mon- comes the child back into her arms after (also destroyed by war and now again ument to \"decadence\" and apocalypse, a night of violence and murder. industrially dominant}-Fassbinder, a blow as if with a hammer. By no means HerLOg, Schloendorff, Wenders, Kluge, as perfect (seamless) as Oshima, it is deliberately jagged and expressionistic, a series of cinematic blocks of night-lit desperation and bestiality and unques- tionably one of the most important films of the festival. The locale is the Shinjuku district of Tokyo (rapidly becoming a symbol of contemporary hell beyond Dante). We are among crazed junkies, professional voyeurs, careless murderers, chicken hawks, brutalized sodomists, whimper- ing women offering money to maniacs for sex. In devastated urban \"land- scapes,\" we witness the ritual burning (with saki and insecticide) and hanging of hapless sex victims, then a girl steal- ing bones from a crematorium to sell them on the street, ground up , as fertil- izer, only to have the wind carry them off. Another young woman catches crows feeding on the city's offal and sells 76 1
Achternbusch-tear open huge bleed- drugged philosopher plying France's 2 FILMS BY JON JOST ing wounds in their films. It is frighten- rivers on an old canal barge on which he ing to realize where thoughtful artists are lives. Having fought alongside Yugoslav ~ \"at\" in highly developed, computer- partisans under Tito, and having been a lr ~ ized, plasticized, consumerized, and tel- CP member in the forties and a Mc- evision-drenched urban civilizations. Carthy era collaborator, Hayden is a man . --'io.~~ at war with himself, filled with artistic Take Herbert Achternbusch, a highly impotence, suicidal self-contempt, ob- ~:r-.... gifted author and filmmaker, whose stinate courage. The film does not works are so German in situations and flinch; the silences and drugged releva- CHAMELEON language that they have not been se- tions become unbearable. lected by festivals and cinemas abroad. Bob Glaudinj's performance as Terry is absolutely riveting. Jost Achternbusch was represented by Der The German independents also re- seems to have captured, more or less exactly. the> kind of Debb and bv The Glwst. Both offered minded that Jews were not the sole vic- ironic, s~l lized portraits of a poisonous tims of the concentration camps. Katrin California life-style that makes convention of the unconventional. brand of German pettv-bourgeois that Seybold-Melanie Spitta's It Went on All Jost's inventiveness has an irreppressible edge to it that stops preceded, nourished , and outlasted Day andAll Night, Dear Child deals with pretension in its tracks. Hitler-the kind of social satire we so the fate of the Gypsies. Survivors go to badly lack for our own burghers. Auschwitz and reminisce; time and Derek Malcolm again they must stop, overcome bv Menchest., Guardian Take Wim Wenders' latest, The State tears. The young German audience sits a/Things, an enormously uneven meta- A triumph of artistry over budget. Jost's day in the life of a lean, mean Los Angeles hustler is a cautionary tale about the self- destructiveness of American opportunism. Packed with bold phor on his Coppola experiences, a mix- in stunned silence; how to deal with visual metaphors, CHAMELEON is a nervy. intelligent, exciting ture of social impotence too graphically what occurred in their country, before advance. Nigel Andrew. portrayed, but also, in its last third, one they were born? American Film of the most corrosive, brilliant state- Also among the Germans must be Combining a freaky. trippy (in fact almost Corman-esque) saga of a dope-dealer and all-round hustler with an abstract distillation of ments on Hollywood captured on film. counted an Iranian , Sohrab Shahid Sa- patterns of colour and light, Josrs narrative not only holds together but unfolds through a fascinating succession of moods Fassbinder, too, reaches some sort of less, in German film since the Sixties. as Terry moves from appointment to appointment role to role. apotheosis in his last film, Querelle, His ironically titled Utopia is a daring, Rlch.rd Comb. Sighl .nd Sound based on Genet. It is probably the most often real-time study of the hour by hour LAST CHANTS FOR A naked, obsessive, abrasive, and literally workings of a brothel and the degrada- SLOW DANCE unsettling portrayal of certain gay reali- tion and enslavement of women. A (DEAD END) ties yet encountered on the screen; a deeplv depressing work, it derives The easiest and most disturbing of Jost's features , and to my testament to a tortured genius who power from the relentless accumulation mind the best, LAST CHANTS conceivably gets closer to the mentality of the alienated and seemingly motiveless killer than knew himself too well. of repetitive detail. The ending-the either Mailer or Capote. And Schloendorff, ever cerebral, col- women's \"liberation\"-is more pessi- Jonathan Rosenbaum Film Comment laborates once again (Autumn in Ger- mistic than the exposition that preceded LAST CHANTS is remarkable enough in its own terms but, many) with Heinrich Boell and Alexan- it. remarkable though it certainly is, that would seriously underestimate the film's importance. For LAST CHANTS does der Kluge on another political work, War Three films dealt with the romantici- what virtually no other film made in the USA in the seventies does · it exemplifies the possibility of a radical alternative and Peace, a collective, uneven, neces- zation of peasant life in present-day Ger- cinema, in economic , aesthetic and political terms · which does not inevitably condemn itself in advance to an avant·garde, sarily feature-length attack on nuclear many. Famed writer Tankred Dorst's elitist or otherwise narrow and sectarian audience. weaponry and exterminist mentality. cruel Eisenhans focuses on imbecility, Jim Hillier Movie From Germany, too, comes Hellmuth incest, hellish moments, and malignant Beautifully filmed and edited, LAST CHANTS has the impact of Costard's Realtime, in which, unbe- dream images. Michael Pilz' Heaven and a powerful short story. Truly remarkable. knownst to all, the military has satellite- Earth-five hours long-reproduces Vic Skolnick Cinema Film Folio mapped the earth with a grid that can the torpid rhythms of narrow provincial In its reconciliation of sophisticated filmic self-consciousness produce an entirely natural, spatial im- life, of people listening to storms or talk- with clear moral/political didactic intent, LAST CHANTS is as close as we have come to a Brechtian Cinema, a cinema for age of any location, within which one ing to animals rather than to humans, learning . can move in \"real time.\" These domina- and where killing a pig or cutting a tree David James S. Calif. Art Journal tors believe that the world is a perfectly assumes the stature of an archaic ritual. administered collection of data. The Xaver Schwar.lenberger's Silent Ocean characters moving through Realtime ulti- tells of a doctor who, having committed mately question whether they are real or a professional error, retires to a remote simulations, yet search within this ambi- rural area only to discover-just as the guity for redemption into reality. The villagers finally accept him-the sordid- mood is sad, distanced, mechanical; the ness and duplicity of their lives. intent oppositional. The message at Berlin is unmistaka- The end of a dream and the ulti- ble. Film is part of the social fabric, mately sad attempt to perpetuate it in which, judging by the filmic evidence, real life by other means is the real theme is unraveling. Though art is forever a For bookings and information please of Wolf-Eckart Buehler's important doc- surrogate act, it would be a denigration telephone: umentary on Sterling Hayden, Light- of our loftiest achievements to assume ,...... .;: \"1/~:.: house a/Chaos. The iconoclastic Ameri- that only misfits engage in it. There (201) 891-8240 .~ '- .~) i ..j Or write : can star-having broken with or been are reasons, none pleasant, why ours is F·1\"cJn k. !jn i.._CJkf;·S: bypassed by Hollywood-is here seen the centurv of Kafka, Beckett, Genet, r.~ ..'. e17A!7 as a radical outsider, alcoholic, and Celine.@ 77
...... NEW RELEASES FROM NEW YORKER FILMS \"REMARKABLE.\" \"STUNNING! ~JUdllh Gmt \" ABSOLUTELY - Vancenl Canby, NY Times MAGICAL',' i\\ \\argarethe von TROTTAS -Judith Crist, I)(MQH peND .... ~. , :i;\" MARIANNE ~\" '/> ~i:..:\" ....•··.•.\\i.... ','\"' . . .:: ~JULIANE A New Yorker Films Release \"****WRY, BITINGLY FUNNY... - Kathleen CarrOll , Daily Ne ,. s ~~';~\"~;. \\ CQ~KL~~f,! Starring LESUE CARON ANew Yolller Films Release ©1981 Coming Soon: Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker, Dieter Schidor's The Wizard of Babylon, Claude Goretta's A Girl from Lorraine, Reinhard Hauffs Slow Attack, Krzysztof Zanussi's The Constant Factor, Krzysztof Kieslowski's Camera Buff. *The Atomic Cafe is available for non-theatrical rental only. CALL FOR WRITE FOR OUR 1983 SPECIAL ATTRACTIONS CATALOGUE. \"tM!fU~a 16 West 61st Street, New York, NY 10023 (212) 247-6110
OSCARMIRE . A Bridge Too Far over the magician of A FILM BY RICK SCHMIDT \"Gandhi,\" wrote L.A. Herald-Exam- Jaws and CE3K. EMERALD iner columnist Joe Morgenstern, \"was If you had voted the straight Gandhi CITIES. everything the voting members of the ticket-all five eligible spots in the ten academy would like to be: moral, tan, categories we surveyed-and got no Rick Schmidt's film style is blending the and thin.\" He/it was not, alas , what the other selection right, you still would mad·cap humor of the Marx Brothers, a majority of our panel of industry ex- have finished above four of our heady version of American surrealism, and perts predicted would be the winner in swamIs. iconoclastic inspiration, perhaps, of Jean· so many major categories. Though six Luc Godard. of our eight aces picked Gandhi to cop What does this all mean? That, in the Best Film prize, nobody guessed their gauging of Hollywood sentiment - Vic Skolnick that Richard Attenborough would win (as well as in their own preferences), New Community Cinema for best director over Steven (Money eight savvy people can miss the appeal Can't Buy Me Love) Spielberg. On our of a motion picture that looks like EMERALD CITIES is an exhilarating pop panel's behalf, we must mention that failed David Lean and sounds likesu- cllitural explosion. their votes were entered before Sir per Stanley Kramer? That Anglophilia Dickie surprised most of Hollywood has ripened into Indomania? That one - Michael Silverblatt by winning the bellwether Directors should never underestimate the power L.A. Weekly Guild kudos-and that, really, it was of high-class hype? Hard to say-until one of the most misguided preferences next year, when the Academy 8 will be EMERALD CITIES also attacks, in Its way, in Hollywood history: the director of back, and will do better. contemporary life . .. by satirizing obvious murksprings of the American Way. CONTRIBUTORS gram at UCLA. John Sayles' most re- Jack Barth is a filmmaker and screen- cent film is Baby, It's You. Film critic - Calvin Ahlgren writer working in New York. L.M. Kit William Wolf is a contributing editor of S.F. Chronical Carson is an actor, journalist, and New York magazine. screenwriter living in New York. David ERRATA There are moments in its narrative Chute writes on film for The Los sequences, as well as in the musical Angeles Herald-Examiner. Joe Dante You always hurt the ones you love: interludes, of genuine apocalyptic is one offour co-directors ofThe Twilight We failed · to credit Variety motion craziness. Zone and is currently in production on picture editor Stephen Klain for his Gremlins for Warner Bros. David photograph of the late Gene Mosko- The film juxtaposes the Santa Claus myth, Ehrenstein is an L.A.-based film critic witz which appeared on page 77 of last nuclear war, punk rock, hypnotic self· currently at work on a biography of Issue. analysis, psychedelic drugs and video Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Stephen It should be known far and wide that manipulation - you know, all that stuff we Farber contributes re.gularly to The Roger Ebert, film critic for The Chicago usually think about. Featuring FLIPPER and New York Times from L.A. and is writing Sun-Times, does not, has not, and better THE MUTANTS, this is one of the best in· a book about Hollywood families. not smoke cigars, as we maintained dependent films we've seen all year - it Charlie Haas is co-screenwriter of the was his wont in a profile of Sneak Pre- puts SMITHEREENS to shame. youthsploitation films, Over the Edge views in our December issue. and Tex. Barbara Learning is the au- Finally, Lawrence Cohn has taken - Bruce D. Rhodewalt, thor of Polanski: The Filmmaker as Vo- umbrage over the omission of credit in Marci Marks, Craig Lee yeur (Simon & Schuster/Touchstone). the April annual \"Grosses Gloss' story Elliott Stein's article on the Indian re- by authors Lee Beaupre and Anne L.A. DEE DA action to Gandhi recently appeared in Thompson, who cited many of the pro- The Village Voice. Mitch Tuchman is duction budgets Cohn ferreted out and As with Schmidt's earlier 1988·THE senior editor of the Oral History pro- first printed in Variety. The authors re- REMAKE, EMERALD CITIES displays gret this error. editorial wizardry which mixes moods and media in a dizzying pace which at first may PHOTO CREDITS: Courtesy David Chute: p. 53 (1,2). Citadel Press: p. 75. Colum- seem haphazard, but which at a second bia Pictures: p. 23 (2). Embassy Pictures: p. IS, 16, 17. Films Around the World: p. 64, 65 , glance takes on an order which its material 66. Film Society of Lincoln Center: p. 20 (2) , 21 (2), 22 (2), 23 (3), 71. Filmverlag der would seem incapable of producing. Autoren: p. 2. Courtesy Harlan Kennedy: p. 4. MGM/UA: p. 20 (1) , 21 (1,2),41, 44. Museum of Modern Art/Film Stills Archive: p. 13, 18 (1 ,2), 19,20 (1) , 21 (1) , 22 (1),25 - Jon Jost (2),26 (1 ,2,),51.56 (1 ,2), 57, 58 (1 ,2,3), 59 (1 ,2,3). Orion: p. 34, 35, 36 (1 ,2), 37 (2 ,3) , 38. Paramount: p. 23 (1), 24 (2), 25 (1) , 37 (1) , 39. Courtesy William Richert: p. 42 (1,2). By For bookings and information please Elliott Stein:.p. 30 (2). Courtesy Elliott Stein: p. 28, 29 (1,2),30 (1) , 31 , 32. 20th Century- telephone : Fox: p. 45, 52. Universal: p. 24 (1),36 (3). Courtesy Amos Vogel: p. 72, 76. Warner Books: p. 72. Warner Bros: p. 49, 55. Courtesy Dan Yakir: p. 60, 61 (1 ,2),62 (1 ,2,3). Zodiac Pho- (201) 891-8240 tographers: p. 27 . Or write : 79
/' m Going on a Trip . .. To inaugurate our Back Page, here's a the 1976 King Kong, and Bedtime for You get a point for each item in the group FILM COMMENT Quiz based on a game Bonzo), and names a fourth performer- that the staffofThe Museum ofModern say, Fay Wray in the original King Kong . and another point for the correctly en- Art Department of Film used to play back in the 1960s. The questioner gives Got it? Scan the 25 groups below; tered fourth item, for a possible total of three things that have something in determine what they share (e.g., mon- common. \"I'm going on a trip,\" he says, keys) and what distinguishes each (e.g. , 100. The person (or, in case of a tie, \"and I'm taking Clint Eastwood , Jessica a film title), if pertinent; then add a Lange, and Ronald Reagan.\" The fourth item (e.g., Fay Wray). To help persons) with the highest score receives solver thinks for a moment, realizes that you, we've given a clue for each group in all three actors have co-starred with bold face; and to eight questions we've a free year of FILM COMMENT. Entries monkeys (in Every Which Way but Loose, affixed dates of FILM COMMENT issues in which relevant information appears. must be addressed to FILM COMMENT Back Page # 1, 140 West Sixty-fifth Street, New York, N.Y. 10023, and re- ceived by June 10, 1983. Answers and winner (s) will be announced next issue. Good luck to all! -R.C. 1. ALONE 10. THEIR INFINITE VARIETY 18. _ _ oRNoT _ _ Dorian Gray Thomas Mitchell & Beulah Bondi Francis of Assisi Cary Grant & Jessie Royce Landis Alfred Hitchcock Eleanora Duse Laurence Olivier & Eileen Herlie F rancis Ford Coppola 2. DYNAMITE MOVIES (May 1974) The Spanish Earth Chuck Jones (November 1980) Air Force 11. THAT'S A WRAP! Film Silent Movie 19. THE BEGINNING OF... 3. DISTRESS SIGNALS Nickelodeon Help out the seals Everything You Always Wanted to Know The Bitter Tea ofGeneral Yen He lives Federation ofInterstate Truckers About Sex . .. But Were Afraid to Ask Kin's Vacation 4. JANUS FILMS State Fair (May 1978) Variety Lights King Kong 12. WHERE HAVE ALL 20. THE END OF... The Navigator George Sanders THE FLOWERS GONE? Edward G. Robinson 5. MILITARY EXERCISES Arsenic and Old Lace Leonid Kinskey The Outlaw Sean Connery They Live by Night 21. RIVALRIES Gerard Depardieu George Sanders Tommy Chong 13. KICK IT AROUND Lillian Gish Gene Kelly Warren Beatty 6. SECOND TIME AROUND Stanley Donen Captain Carey, U .S.A . Van Johnson 22. CLOCKS The Towering Inferno An Officer and a Gentleman 14. MISSING IN ACTION WITH SOCKS George Sanders Zabriskie Point Lloyd Nolan Robert Montgomery Exorcist II: The Heretic 23. \"HALF A KAEL\" George Sanders Le Crabe Tambour (January 1980) Lupe Velez Margaret Sullavan 7. DON ... 15. BITE YOUR NOSE, 24. \"HALF A PASOLlNl\" Denis Kaufman MAKE You LAUGH Raymond N. Kienzle seamstress Lawrence ofArabia Werner Stipetic children's companion experimental filmmaker GungaDin (September 1980) Battle Cry (September 1982) 8.... ANDJUAN 16. WOMEN IN ACTION Roger Wade Lillian Gish 25. NUMBERS Chip Rossen 6 Greg Palokane Mabel Normand 288 66777 (January 1981) Liv Ullmann November 1972 9. ANDDoNANDJUAN 17. THEONEI LOVE (with acknowledgment to The Birth ofa Nation Jack Tyree Gary and Carol Carey Broken Blossoms Dominique Dunne and Russell Merritt) Handle With Care Gene Moskowitz 80
6 mg \"taC 0.6 mg nicotine avoper cigarette. by FTC method. %JeIu:xeCZIItwLipta Warning : The Surgeon General Has Determined Only 6mg,yet rich enough to be called deluxe. That Cigarette Smoking Is Dangerous to Your Health. Regular and Menthol.
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