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•Sl•SSUe published bimonthly by the Film Society of Lincoln Center Volume 25, Number 2 March-April 1989 Duncan's Doughboys ............ 11 Midsection: Borrowed Images .... 27 In the never ending saga of The film record is perma- the war that wouldn't die, Vietnam vet turned film- nent, the membrane is per- maker Patrick Duncan loads the viewer into his backpack meable. For seven decades in 84 Charlie Mopic. A stun- ning victory, reports Karen hair-dos and baby names Jaehne, who also records a peace parley in Hawaii where have slid through the screen. U.S. and Vietnamese direc- tors traded war stories ( 14). Our habits and needs have 'What A Dump' ................. 20 been absorbed and reflected ~ back. But the film aesthetic, It is with tne profoundest admiration that The Film the way of seeing and mov- Society of Lincoln Center honors a lady of lightning, ing, has radiated out into the Bette Davis, and sincerely hopes she does not pro- arts. Senior editor Marlaine nounce the above judgment upon our house. Richard Glicksman charts the out- Schickel appreciates. ward ripples into Architec- ture, as observed by Leon van Schaik (page 28); Music, by Armond White (36); Multi-Media art, explained by artist Robert Longo 42); Dance, by Bob Morris (47); and Photogra- phy, by Rick Woodward (51). Also in this issue: Hot Hanks ................. 16 Books: Goldwyn ............ 76 So Big. That's Tom Hanks, angry Andrew Sarris grapples with Sam Journals .................... 2 young wiseapple. Beverly Walker Goldwyn, rethought in two new Ace cartoonist Chuck Jones thinks goes to his comedy store and takes bios. back to when he was six (1918), Inventory. remembers his finnicky neighbor, Orbits: Richard Roud ....... 78 Charlie Chaplin, and draws his own Riff of 'Scandal' ............ 56 The first director of the New York conclusions. And Marsha Can't recognize the players in Scan- Film Festival, remembered by Rich- McCreadie returns from Arizona to dal, the new film about the grand- ard Corliss. the Slaves of New YQrk. Wants a daddy of modern~day sexploits, the breath of stale air. 1963 Profumo Affair, without our Letters .................... 79 team giving you their numbers: Roger Ebert and Armond White Oscar de la Yentas ........... 9 First, Graham Fuller on the deep thumb wrestle. We poll our savvy jury, 12 blind mice threat, then Gavin Smith grills John and two alternates, to handicap the Hurt (64), and Marlaine Glicksman Back Page: Quiz #36 ....... 80 Academy Awards. Their guess is as unwraps Roland Gift (68). good as yours. How 'bout the best The 1988 FILM COMMENT foreign film? Howard A. Rodman 14th Annual Grosses Gloss ...56 Index explains why the one you did see New meaning for the Indie 500: the isn't nominated. number of little companies that Cover photo : The John Kobal crashed and burned last year. Anne Collection. Thompson kept score. Editor: Harlan Jacobson. Editorial Director: Richard Corliss. Senior Editor: Marlaine Glicksman. Assistant Editor: Gavin Smith. Art Director and Cover Design: Elliot Schulman . Advertising and Circulation Manager: Tony Impavido. Business Manager: Doris Fellerman. Production: Deborah Dichter Edmonds. West Coast Editor: Anne Thompson. European Editor: Harlan Kennedy. Research Consultant: Mary Corliss. Controller: Domingo Hornilla, Jr. Executive Director, Film Society of Lincoln Center: Joanne Koch. Copyright © 1989 by the Film Society of Lincoln Center. All rights reserved. The opinions expressed in FILM COMME NT do not represent Film Society of Lincoln Center policy. Publication is made possible in part by support from the New York State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. This publication is fully protected by domestic and international copyright. Subscription rates in the United States: $14.95 for 6 numbers, $26.95 for 12 numbers. Elsewhere, $37 for 6 numbers , $70 for 12 numbers , payable in U.S. funds only. New subscribers should include their occupations and zip codes. Distributed by Eastern News Distributors , Sandusky OH 44870. FILM COMMENT (lSSN 0015-1l9X) is published bimonthl y by the Film Society of Lincoln Center, 140 W. 65th St., New York NY 10023. Second- class postage paid at New York NY and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: send address changes to FILM COMME NT, P. O. Box 3000, Denville , NJ 07834-9925
oumals 132 TakesITh-Th-Thafs All Folks by Chuck Jones (Age 6) two blocks to the corner of La Br~a Avenue, be able to watch through an B etween the ages of six and eigh t open link fence Charlie Chaplin at (1918-1920) the Jones clan work, which, I am sorry to say, I often (including this Jones), lived in found deadly dull. an orange grove directly across from Hollywood High School on Sunset Bou- I loved his films; so easy, so natural, so appealing to my sense of rebellious- It took Chaplin more than 100 takes to teach a girl how to hand over a flower, and only the love showed. levard. If I thought about the matter at all, I would not have considered myself privileged: As far as I knew, any Ii boy in the world could, by the simple process of sitting down on his own front steps, watch Mary Pickford ride by on a white horse as the honorary colonel of the 160th Infantry; or could, by doing nothing whatever, have the comedy team of \"Ham and Bud\" drop in for the sole purpose, as far as I could discern , of letting me put on Bud's Woolly cow- boy chaps and gun belts. He was my size in every department but the hat; his sombrero had to be hung on my head like a garbage-can lid. Or, as far as I knew, any other boy could, by walking 2
ness and anarchy, they were a sorry are doing; the second is that you must AVAILABLE contrast to the endless repetition of the be willing to do the often-dull and ON VIDEO shooting itself, which I found almost tiring work necessary to bring each cre- unbearably tiresome. ative endeavor to completion ... and in 87 min . that endeavor only the love should show. B&W \"Why,\" I asked myself, \"not do it right in the first place? Can't he learn It took Chaplin more than 100 takes COLOR how to do it right by watching his own to teach a girl how to hand over a flower, movies?\" and only the love showed. Rick Schmidt is the Marley's Ghost of modern Bill Scott, of Bullwinkle fame, told It took Chaplin more than 100 takes movie makers. -Lowell Darling me that when he started working with 10,000 times to bring his incredible us at Warner Bros. he proudly wrote craft to the screen he loved so well, and As with Rick Schmidt's earlier low·budget features (A home to his grandmother that he was never, never did the work show. MAN, A WOMAN, AND A KILLER, 1988-THE RE· writing scripts for Bugs Bunny. The old MAKE, EMERALD CITIES) , his fourth film , MORGAN'S lady rather indignantly replied , \"Why The essence of all great comedy, CAKE, also engages the viewer by capturing real are you writing for Bugs Bunny? He's perhaps of all great drama, is timing, moments of human emotion , reality as it intersects with funny enough just as he is .\" and no director, as Chaplin so abso- the illusion of moviemaking, The film begins with lutely demonstrates , can afford to Morgan (played by Morgan Schmidt·Feng) explaining And that is exactly how I felt about ignore the value of a single frame of that his mom named him after the famous British black Charlie Chaplin: \"He's funny enough film-one 24th of a second-to him and comedy MORGAN, and muses that he wishes life was just as he is ,\" and one day I lost faith in eventually to me. The success or failure more like that movie, just \"unserious and funny.\" What both Chaplin and my father when he of a given scene may hang on that follows is such an unending series of problems confron- frame , that single frame , which is the ting Morgan that the full impact rings of comic absurdity. (my father) came home one evening to essential atom of our trade. His problems include a love affair, his divorced parents, tell us that he had seen Chaplin shoot a draft registration, car payments, economics which force single is-second scene 132 times . Jackie Gleason said comedy is the him to share asmall office where his father must sleep Either my father was lying (a possibility most exacting form of dramatic art on top of a desk. While not a remake of MORGAN, I could not ignore) or Chaplin didn't because it has an instant critic: laugh- MORGAN'S CAKE pays acertain homage to the earlier know what he was doing (which , obser- ter. And the making of film comedy film with its ribald humor, most notably in atour·de·force vation had taught me , I could not ignore adds what to the performing comedian performance by Willie Boy Walker as Morgan's dad , who either). must seem an almost unbearable disci- describes in outrageous detail how he got out of the draft pline: The film must be complete in its by acting like a crazy man . Like many kids in America, But the term 132 stuck in my stub- naked entirety before it is exposed to an Morgan is basically cut adrift from any real and lasting born cerebellum like a cockle bur audience. This most exact of all come- support system , and must quickly learn to fend for him- under a saddle, and only when a bril- dic ventures was pioneered by Charlie self. MORGAN'S CAKE, while a film about teenagers, liant old art teacher named Fran<;ois Chaplin, a giant among giants such as is not at all like its \" Breakfast Club\" Hollywood counter· Murphy at Chouinard Art Institute Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Harry parts, This film deals with the mysteries of growing up repeated to a shocked beginner class, Langdon, etc. as told by the real teenagers themselves, \"Every one of you birds has 100,000 bad drawings in you. The sooner you Today we seem to be too often besot MORGAN'S CAKE is now available for 16mm screen- get rid of them, the better it will be for by fake giants among real pygmies. In ings with director Rick Schmidt in person. Video copies everybody,\" did that 132 surface with those days they were all giants explor- may be rentedlpurchased at the following stores: the beginning of my understanding of ing, blazing through an unknown land , the two primary rules of all creativity: and one of the greatest, if not the great- • • • • • •• FRONT ROW VIDEO (Berkeley) ••••••• The first is that you must Jove what you est, was Charlie Chaplin. •••••••• PALMER'S VIDEO (Berkeley) •••••••• ••••••••••• VIDEOPHILE (Seattle) ••••••••••• 132. A magic number. • ••••••••• VIDIOTS (Santa Monica) •••••••••• ••••••••••• CAPTAIN VIDEO (S.F.) ••••••••••• BIG BAD ApPLE Or purchase your VHSIBETA cassettes (please specify) T here are only two images from for $49,95 plus $3 per copy for shipping I handling. Tama Janowitz's Slaves of New York , the new Ismail Please send LIGHT VIDEO Merchant-James Ivory film, that are , as money order people not from Manhattan say, \" so payable to Fa Box 342 New York. \" PT Richmond, 1. They got the arms right, anyway. [415] 235-7466 CA 94801 Bernadette Peters has the same stick- thin, \"antenna-like\" arms as Eleanor. But getting the sole hearty laugh from a New York preview audience were three transvestites whipping down the street in red gowns and singing the Supremes' oeuvre.
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Bernadette Peters in Slaves of New York: Merchant-Ivory go downtown. 2. The New York in this Slaves has of The January Man , or the burned out Still , there's the terrible shock of rec- chairs that constantly collapse-a wry browns of Tap. (Who hates color? West ognition , as Eddie falls down the sub- reminder of social occasions when pass- Side Story is great in color, but color was way stairs after being attacked by a thug ing the brie and a glass of$3.00 Chablis half the point: You think it's urban who .. .uh ... is masquerading as a dis- is accomplished by 300 people in an grunge, but look at all these nice peo- placed Grand Whozee of the White apartment the size of a phone booth , all pie all dressed up like the Montagues People's Party (very big in New York). sitting on the same seat (when they had and Capulets out on a Saturday night in It's the Double L , you think , remember- seats) and complimenting the host on· the old country.) ing that no one you have ever known the track lightin g. who has taken the Double L either N Ow take True Believer. Here's a knew where it went or has ever been either of these bits is in the Jan- movie-whether or not you like it heard from again. owitz original. or its w ild-eyed lawyer/ hero Eddie Dodd (James Woods)- you have to B ack to reality (ha!). Consider the What city are we in here , anyway ? admit simply reeks of the city. Was it poor-man's version of the Plaza as The only time N ew York looks like Sensurround or my projection (or the a symbol for N ew York: Times Square, New York is when director Ivory got a theater ?) th at I thou ght I actuall y little nervous and used opera scores to sniffed urine waftin g from around the or 42nd Street. E ven if the dance accompany Vericolor po stcard-like shadowy corners of Sheridan Square shots of the city. There's a soup<;on of where Eddie has hi s office above the sequence in Tap is too effervescent to graffiti , a lot of ga rbage, and a ga ng of cigar store? dogs-but no telltale steamin g mounds typify the city, at least the jackhammer the size ofM t. Rushmore. Sla ves is like. Wino pee is not exactly in the cutesy a colorful Renaissa nce fair shot aga inst \"oh, yeah\" tradition of Manhattan sounds Gregory Hines springs from some otherwise uninhabited downtown sym bols, heretofore elevated to charac- buildings. ter ~ tatu s in Woody Allen movies. Oh , seem familiar. Sla ves dips into the con- no , this is the reali sm of Marshall On the upsi de , Sla ves won ' t be crit- McCluhan ... is that G landular or ve nient cess pool of 42nd Street for a icized for being too talky. In fact, these Global Village? I forget. characters hardly ever .bother to open little easy ew York flavor and a snippet their yaps at all. The only chitchat is But Wesley Strick, the screenwriter about rents and parent-subsidized of True Believer, said in a recent phone of Stash in midtown. But this just apartments. And Janowi tz' main slave, interview on another topic that the orig- Stash, can' t even mumble civilly. inal plan was to shoot True Believer in doesn' t seem like Stash somehow. Why the East Village. But the East Village No, give me grainy black and whites was just too real. So they shot it in San would he leave his apartment and his for the Manhattan we all hate ourselves Francisco. (I never once got scared in for lov ing , rather than the high- Slaves. E ven the destruction of Stash 's TV? saturation Crayolas and Day-Glos of paintings was handled in a most genteel Slaves. The movie matches the book fashion , sort of like the white-gloved Come to think of it, Eleanor's and jacket, but it looks like nothing on robber in To Catch a Thief. ) Ave nue C. Stash's space isn' t that bad. Messy, of I'll even take the steamy blue-grays course, but nothing a flamethrower couldn't cure. What's the square foot- age? Is there another one like it in their building? Maybe I can take the super out to Lutece and over Babette's Feast promise him a pension from my future FILM COMMENT freelance tooth-fairy fee ? -MARSHA MCCREADIE 6
THE FIVE NOMINEES and Spain have all had their selecting screening, are marked with a 4, 6, 8, or orgs reselected within the past 10, with 10 being the best. You have the AND How THEY GREW decade-the system remains the same. opportunity to revise a tentative vote in Most of the organizations exist for the light of fuller knowledge. And for E very year, in the dead of Los sole purpose of selecting Oscar con- foreign-language films in general Angeles winter, a few hundred tenders, though others, like Italy's release, you can see them outside of the xenocinephilic members of the Assoziazione Na zionale Industrie Cine- official Academy screenings should you Academy of Motion Picture Arts and matografiche E Audiovisive and desire. Sciences gather on Wednesdays, Satur- France's Commission de selection pour days, and Sundays in a large, darkened les Festivals Internationaux or the With the exception of English sub- room to decide which five foreign- Centre National de la Cinematographie titling, Academy rules stipulate that language films they will nominate for have, according to the Academy's exec- the films screened must be identical to an Oscar. utive administrator Bruce Davis, \"other the version released in the country of than just Academy fish to fry.\" origin. Because Pel{e the Conqueror Like a Masonic Lodge, or the Fourth had been edited for U.S. release, it International, the Academy's foreign- Though it frees the Academy from seemed that both versions might have language committee can be baffling to charges of American cultural imperial- to be screened this year for Academy the uninitiated. Its workings can bewil- ism, this system does not always result members-one for foreign-language der even the motion-picture executives in the designation of what Academy consideration, one for all other catego- and publicists for whom the foreign- members regard as the \"best\" film. ries. \"The logic was inexorable,\" says language Oscar may (Babette's Feast), The Japanese body, for instance , Davis, \"but it leads to an absurd dance or may not (The Assault), be worth its bypassed Ran in favor of a film on at the end.\" Eventually, the differences weight in boxoffice gold . Alzheimer's disease. between the two Pelles were deemed insufficient to invoke the rule's strictest Before there was a foreign-language Once the films are designated-this interpretation. Oscar, there was Robert M. W. Vogel. year there were some 33 entries, more He's a hale, gravel-voiced man who than ever before-they are screened , There are other seemingly draconian drives a classic T-bird and serves as the just once each , before some several stipulations. For example, Wim foreign-language committee's presi- hundred self-selected members of the Wenders' Wings of Desire, because it dent. Just after WWII, while he was Academy. \"Unlike directors or cine- was eligible , though not nominated, for manager of the 50-person International matographers,\" says Davis, \"there is no best foreign-language film of 1987 , Department of MGM, Bob Vogel was branch of foreigners.\" Adds Vogel, cannot now be considered in general called in by the Academy's Board of \"Originally in '56, when the awards categories like Cinematography- Governors. moved up from the honorary awards though it was only in 1988 that Henri category to become a part of the regular Alekan's Berlin-to-the-bone camera- \"There were some great pictures out Oscars , we tried to choose people who work first unspooled before American there,\" Vogel recalls, \"but it didn't knew a little bit more about the world audiences. mean anything to Hollywood. Partic- outside the U. S., and a large number of ularly great stuff from France, Italy, those are still on the committee. But The screening season begins just Japan. We'd be accused of provincial- my feeling is, the more the merrier.\" before Christmas and ends in early ism if we ignored them. The Academy The most stringent qualifying crite- February. The five films with the high- said to me, 'Keep your ear to the rion, other than Academy membership, est vote totals are certified as nominees , ground, look for something outstand- is sitzJleisch-in order to vote, you have screened twice more, and presented to ing.' I felt it presumptuous to do this on to sit through 80 percent of the foreign the entire Academy. As with the docu- my own, so I contacted my opposite films screened. mentaries, but unlike other categories, numbers at two other studios. The Academy members must certify that three of us made recommendations for B ecause so few people were willing they' ve seen all five in order to vote. an Honorary Award. One of the first was to commit themselves to some 12 Because the foreign-language commit- to one of the great newcomers, a man or 13 often-arduous double bills, the tee members have most likely already named DeSica. \" committee embarked two years ago on seen all five, they carry a large weight an experiment: Split (arbitrarily) the in the general balloting. By 1956, Vogel says, to avoid the voters into \"red\" and \"blue\" teams. arrogance of America telling the world \"We' felt that more people would com- C ritics of the foreign-language what its best films were, the committee mit to seeing 80 percent of15 films than awards talk about the commit- decided to have the foreign films nomi- 80 percent of 30,\" says Davis, a cheer- tee-headed by Vogel, with ace editor nated by the foreign countries them- ful, mustachioed former academic. Rudy A. Fehr and actress Nina Foch selves. Then executive director \"The statisticians at Price Waterhouse serving as co-chairs-as if it were a Margaret Herrick made two trips to were pretty sure that it would be okay. closed, conspiratorial group of geriatrics Europe to find or create selecting And it seems to have worked for us-the with tight control over what gets bodies. \"We wanted,\" says Vogel, \"to membership in the committee has screened, what gets nominated, what have the proper representation of film jumped from around 200 to around 400 wins. \"They're doddering fossils float- people, not just financiers or this year.\" ing around, running it like it was their ministers. \" own little area,\" says one critic. A dis- Once you 've seen your \"quota\"- gruntled distributor points an accusing A lthough the foreign selecting roughly 12 films, you can vote for any finger at producer Arthur Cohn, who, organizations are occasionally films you 've seen in any screening, red having sent chocolates and other gifts to or blue. Ballots , dropped off after each disenfranchised-Denmark, Mexico, (Continued on page 80) 8
The Night the Rains Came R ain Man will reign on Oscar night, and the film's biggest prize: jane Fonda and Herb Ross doing the inevita- artistic savant, Barry Levinson, will be named best ble Hollywood remake. As for Hampton, he's British: director. Pelle will conquer in the foreign-language race, aren't they supposed to write better? and Christopher Hampton's sneering wit will wither all competition for best adapted screenplay. So says FILM After these four categories, whose leaders all copped at COMMENT's burgeoning panel of Academy experts, in our least ten of14 possible votes, things get interesting. All the eleventh annual fling at forecasting the Oscars. Rain Man actor's slots are deemed wide open: incendiary Hackman looks to be the beneficiary of a Mississippi burnout; Alan vs. introvert Hoffman; Guinness and Landau in the battle Parker's civil rights melodrama never caught fire at the of the noble geezers; and a half-dozen actresses who must boxoffice, and most folks found the debate over the film's be thrilled it's not Meryl Streep's year. For the hint of a veracity about as alluring as a magazine researcher's red sweep, tune in early on March 29 to see if Rain Man wins check. Our swamis figure that Pelle's chief rival, Women on the cinematography award. If that happens, it could be statuettes all round for the picture nobody wanted to make. the Verge 0/ a Nervous Breakdown, has already won its -R.C. BEST PICTURE Kevin Kline, A Fish Called Wanda DG BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY The AccidentaL Tourist, Warner Bros. Frank Galati and Lawrence Kasdan, Dangerous Liaisons, Warner Bros. Martin Landau, Tucker: The Man and Mississippi Burning, Orion The AccidentaL Tourist SB, RE Rain Man, United Artists ALL 14 His Dream DA, SB, HJ, LK, RS Christopher Hampton, Dangerous Working GirL, Fox River Phoenix, Running on Empty Liaisons DA, DG, AH, HJ, GK, LK, Dean Stockwell, Married to the Mob GorilLa),eCR, RS, SS, JS, AT, AW RE,CR,AW • i\\ Ann, Hamaton Phelan, Mist ,. BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS \\. joan Cusack, Working GirL Geena Davis, The AccidentaL Tourist DA Frances McDormand, Mississippi Burning SB, RE, DG, HJ Michelle Pfeiffer, Dangerous Liaisons CR,JS Sigourney Weaver, Working GirL AH, GK,LK,RS,SS,AT,AW BEST ACTOR BEST DIRECTOR Christine Edzard, LittLe Dorrit Gene Hackman, Mississippi Burning Charles Crichton, A Fish Called jean-Claude Carriere and Philip Wanda DA,RE,HJ,GK,CR,SS Martin Scorsese, The Last Temptation Kaufman, The Unbearable Lightness Tom Hanks, Big LK o/Being Dustin Hoffman, Rain Man SB, DG, o/Christ Alan Parker, Mississippi Burning BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY AH, RS, JS, AT, AW Barry Levinson, Rain Man ALL 14 Peter Biziou, Mississippi Burning LK Edward james Olmos, Stand and Mike Nichols, Working GirL john Seale, Rain Man DA, GK, RS Conrad L. Hall, Tequila Sunrise SB, DeLiver BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY Max von Sydow, Pelle the Conqueror Gary Ross and Anne Spielberg, Big CR AH,AW Ron Shelton, BuLL Durham AH, RE, Sven Nykvist, The UnbearabLe BEST ACTRESS Lightness o/Being AT, DG, HJ Glenn Close, Dangerous Liaisons DG, HJ, GK, RS, JS, AT Dean Cundey, Who Framed Roger john Cleese, A Fish Called Wanda DG Rabbit RE, CR, SS, JS AH, HJ,AW Ronald Bass and Barry Morrow, Rain jodie Foster, The Accused GK, CR, RS, BEST FOREIGN FILM* Man DA, SB, LK, SS, AW Hanussen, Hungary JS,AT Naomi Foner, Running on Empty The Music Teacher, Belgium Melanie Griffith, Working GirL DA, Pelle the Conqueror, Denmark DA, RE, AH, GK, LK, CR, RS, SS, AT, AW RE, LK, SS SaLaam Bombay!, India HJ Meryl Streep, A Cry in the Dark Sigourney Weaver, Gorillas in the Mist Women on the Verge 0/a Nervous SB Breakdown, Spain DG, JS BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR ·Stuart Byron abstains from voting in [his category Alec Guinness, LittLe Dorrit AH, GK, SS,JS, AT D~VID ANS~N, Newsweek. STUART BYRON, industry analyst. ROGER EBERT, Chicago Sun-Times. DONNA GIGLIOTTI, Onon ClaSSICS. ALJEAN HARMETZ. The New York Times. HARLAN JACOBSON, Film Comment. GREGG KILDAY, freeLance writer, LEONARD KLADY, Los AngeLes Times. CARRIE RICKEY, Philadelphia Inquirer. RICHARD SCHICKEL, Time. STEPHEN SCHIFF, Vanity Fair. JAY SCOTT, The Toronto Globe & Mail. ANNE THOMPSON, L.A. WeekLy. ARMOND WHITE, The City Sun. 9
Discover the World of Great Films Mil: hclallgclo 1\\l1t rJllion i 's THE ECLIPSE TImlrK~~~~ • •-....'.\"\"\"\". l o,:lIIul'.. WHITE The dramatic, passionate and, SHEIK ultimately, devastating portrait of the \\ - - - - - - --,---1 A starry·eyed bride runs off with The end of one love affair and the beginning of another, and the young White Sheik, her fantasy comic book woman who runs between ttlem both, hero, only to discover that in reality searching for the truth behind he is nothing like he appears to be. attraction. The crowning achievement A masterful comedy about romantic of Michelangelo Antonioni's great illusion and caustic reality from the trilogy (after L'AVVENTURA and LA director of AMARCORD and 8'12 . \"One NOTTE) THE ECLIPSE received of the very best films of all time.., worldwide acctaim and won the Grand -John Simon Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. ,...\"\"'-_-'--''-'-_ _ _ --''''---1 Starring Alberto Sordi, Starring Monica Villi, Alain Delon, Giulietta Masina, Brunella Bova, Francisco Rabal, Louis Seigner. :'''::';::;': :;';''~'.N_. 1\\Io,IM;w\\o_h>,,~ ft,_llo. · Leopolda Trieste. t ~oJf Hj\\11I01l11\"\"'JI , Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. L....._ _ _ _ __ _ _--l Directed by Federico Fellini. In lIalian with English subtitles. In lIalian with English subtitles. 1962/123 minutes/Black and White 1952/86 minutes/Black and White PRESENTED IN VIDEOSCOPE CVC·l0121S59.95 CVC·1019/S79.95 Federico Felllnj's n... s..~->f.' r,M.. ,,1 s.~ , Alberto Laltuada's ~mI Su...\".ui\" ,' ..d n'II 'f'->n VARIETY ON~8AHA In war·ravaged medieval Japan, a LIGHTS mother and daughter eke out a savage existence by murdering stray soldiers fWerico FelUni. AtbertQUl1u3d,a'1 and selling Iheir armor for food. When The delightful musical comedy about one soldier seduces the daughter, the backstage world of a touring her mother sets in motion a hideous vaudeville troupe, which turns upside down when a beautiful young girl 1 - -- -....; revenge. ONIBABA is a brilliantly joins the company and becomes textured story of VIolence, sex and romantically involved with its maestro. The joy, absurdity and indestructible death-perhaps the most powerful hope which make up Fellini 's fantastical vision are already on ghost story ever told onscreen. ':.4 impressive display. \"An occasion for cheering and joy .... Unmistakably witches ' blend of terror and death.., Fellini.\"-Newsweek -New York Times Starring Giulietta Masina, Peppino De Filippo, Carla del Poggio, Falco Lulli. Starring Nobuko Otowa, Jitsuko Produced and Directed by Federico Yoshimura, Kei Sato. Fellini and Alberto Lattuada. L....._ _ _ __ _ _ _--l Written and Oirected by In lIalian with English subtittes. 1951/93 minutes/Black and White Kanelo Shindo. CVC·1016/S59.95 In Japanese with English subtilles. 1964/103 minutes/Black and White CVC·1018/S79.95 VO L4 CAll TOll FREE FOR ORDERS: (800) 356-3577 IN CALIFORNIA: (916) 895-3429 _ .~ CONNOISSEUR VJOEOCOllECllON e~~ rROM THE Jfl.NuSfllMSCOLlECllON b thu!VtI VO'lrl buICd~V _ S455i1t; ...e rl vel~dS IlI'e3(!' (o, AIIUelllS.CA9OG4a t A~~;'Rf Uf S INTE R~IAt IO:.At ' llMS lTD _ !IO CohIlUflStIlG,Rd lel121Jt6SJ-II81J CNco. C')'%916 r... Fbl2'3 J fi51 · ~5S
'Charlie Mopic' Shoots to Kill an COmpany by Karen Jaehne book for the Big Fight, the Good Fight, late. 84 Charlie Mopic is as much about which turned out to be neither. But we facing the demise of the Am'erican M an with a movie camera: would not know that until it was too Dream as about the death of comrades 84 Charlie Mopic is an In arms. extraordinary tour de In Duncan's Vietnam, force in the use of the this is finally a \"I never intended to become a pro- fessional Vietnam vet,\" says Patrick first-person camera, doing for Vietnam corporate world that is Duncan, writer/director of the film . run by Labor, when the Toronto Globe & Mail critic Jay SCOtt war movies what Lewis Milestone's ver- soldiers treat L.T. as described 84 Charlie Mopic as \"the movie Stanley Kubrick wanted to sion of Erich Maria Remarque's All the useless piece of make\" when he made Full Metal management he is- Jacket. The film is Duncan's second Quiet on the Western Front did for he's even informed at Vietnam tour, however, having served as the creator, supervising writer, and declared wars. More indirectly-and the point ofa gun that if co-prod ucer of HBO's Vietnam War Stories. what will make it most accessible to he fucks up, they'll cut their losses by air- Paradoxically, the man who made those of us tired of waging war on the this movie talks about such morbid conditioning him before things as cultural, political, or physical silver screen-84 Charlie Mopic dis- Charlie does. death in the tempered tones of some- one who views the U.S. Army not as a plays that constant dilemma of modern finishing school for manhood, as his upper-middle-class sergeant L. T. life: how to sustain a relationship, how does, but rather as the great democra- tizer that Norman Mailer documented to reach out and save the guy you love in The Naked and the Dead. Duncan more than anybody in the world at that moment when forces you neither understand nor can identify claim him . The war movie becomes a metaphor for the frustrations of reaching out for someone only inches away and grasping at-nothing. Nobody ever told us war or life would be like this. There were rules. Our education , including basic training, was to supply a basic hand-
also appreciates th at the wa r mac hine othe r. I was neve r in Saigon, so I don' t that's why it was so important to me to seduced participation for all sorts of know what we nt dow n the re. They make this movie my way. I knew that reasons: from jail to Qu ay le to th e were primitive, but they had values th at the only way to make sense out of a G I Bill , Vie tn a m was a n e qu a l- made se nse to me . They are wa rriors vision of personal responsibility sus- opportunity e mploye r. and taught me what th at mea ns- and tained by people who have never been what it has mea nt for thousa nd s of trained to do anything but survive-and Vie tnam was D unca n's sc hool of hard yea rs. that's self-taught-was by turning the knocks, so he ca n' t he lp but be tray hi s audie nce into the me mory of the pla- \"To mos t Ame rica ns, they are an toon. The n they have to go away askin g ske ptic ism towa rd the Ya le-e ducate d alie n culture, and if you need someone about how responsible they were for director of BAT 21, Pete r Markle. Dun- to bl ame the war on , they' re the logical Vietnam and any othe r wa rs. ca n can und e rstand directin g a film as target. Forget that we m isca lcu lated the \"work,\" just as he we nt to Vietn am situ ation and we nt in the re in igno- \"I get tired of say in g this, but there initiall y as \"work or as an alte rn ative to rance. Racism is a much eas ier response are a lot of questions people have to ask jail ,\" as he says. Yet D unca n be lieves and makes you feel better about your- before you send all your 19-year-old s off that if your job is to make a Vie tn am se lf,\" says Dunca n. \"It's also the hard- to fi ght. I was one of the lucky ones, film , the film will be tray your lack of est thing to undo.\" and you don' t find many vets making experie nce if you have not done time. movies . But I'm not anti-military. I'm C halle nged that 84 Charlie Mopic not bl amin g anyone-eve n though it Hi s nuts-and-bolts attitud e about hi s wags its fin ger at us a few times, took me fi ve years after w riting it to get wa r expe rie nce as we ll as hi s impatie nt Duncan cl arifies: \"Excuse me for lec- Charlie Mopic made. I guess the movie inte llect (poss ibly a bit too sharp for turin g but th at's the lie ute nant who Hollywood ) issue a regular volley of desc ribes the wa r as a business. Th at The Vietnamese were \" Don' t q uote me on thi s but. ..\" For monologue is one of the reasons we los t overwhelmed at the D uncan, the business of Vie tn am, both the wa r. We had peo ple who consid e red punji-stick-sharp in the fi ghtin g and in the transforma- it a business . They saw the cos t in li ves portrayal oftheir tion of the wa r to art, is in everythin g in the sa me way a guy in D e troit fi gures but the killin g and d yi ng. 84 Ch arlie worke rs are going to lose a few fin gers; experience ofthe Mopic's kid s e mbark on a reconn ais- th at's written into the 'in surance pro- trailways offighting sa nce mi ss ion, whe re the ir ord e rs are to gram , and they ca n swa ll ow it as part of gathe r information , but the ir mi ss ion is the overhead . that war. They to su rvive. embraced Duncan, \" But how many peo ple consid e r they thanked him, they \"W he n you' re in the bush just the ir sons' lives as part of the overhead even went dancing in a watc hin g to see how the for world domin ation? I put L.T. in Honolulu nightclub e ne my is spe nding hi s day, what he's the re to show how alie n that is to a guy eatin g, how ofte n he takes a shit, you with some K-rations and an M-1 6 get- with him. get a very human picture of th at guy. So tin g shot at. L. T. thinks bein g a wa r if you have to kill him-and units like hero will give him an e dge as a junior business may be a lot like the Army. You thi s a lso have snip e r cap a biliti es - exec uti ve, but the res t of the guys just gotta keep lookin g until you find you' re not killin g a Vietn amese, not a know they've bee n ea rnin g th at for some bod y willin g to take a little gook , not \" the e ne my,\" but anothe r him . The medal's give n to him for lead- responsibility, somebody besi des the hum an be in g whose face you've seen ing a unit he knows jack about. \" guys behind the camera. laughin g, los in g at ca rds, and just doin g his job. \" At this point, M ichae l Nolin , who \" If it hadn ' t been for the Army and , produced 84 Charlie Mopic but who possibly, for Vietnam, I might still be Mos t America ns neve r saw the Viet- was an anti-war acti vist, says that Dun- picking fruit , a mi grant worker. I was namese as folks like the mselves: They can directed Jonath an E merson , who the eldest of eleven ch ildren and had to may have had sympathy for the Viet- pl ayed L. T., to pl ay him as an e me rgin g be responsible for all these kid s, and namese people , or they may have envi- Olive r North . Certainly the film is rid- the idea of doing what I'm doing now. .. sione d a ll of th e m as murd e rou s dle d with the hubri s of contemporary Well , you just ca n' t im ag ine how \"gooks,\" but se ldom has the reason for Ame ri ca, a qu a lity we do not now remote such a thin g is. But it's dramatic those overwhe lmin g attitude s been so ascribe to those soldie rs, the n, in our to recognize th at, to your own govern- played out in group di alogue . \"Some atte mpt to forgive and forge t. T he me nt you are di spe nsa ble in a los ing peo ple build up a hu ge hatre d to justify \" L e t's get a few scalp s\" attitude th at battle. A lot of guys never have th at morall y the ir actions in the context of a these boys adopt in 84 Charlie Mopic is degree of authentic drama surge up in wa r,\" says Dunca n. \"They may be will- neither the hubri s of a G reat Nation the ir ow n lives. And if they do , what are ing to be lieve lies th at, dee p w ithin , About To Be Brought L ow nor Oliver they goin g to do with it ? D e ny it in one they know are lies, just so they don' t S tone 's Pla toon- sket c he d C hri sti a n way or another, right? have to dea l with the guilt-and the re is diagram of the new se nsitive soldi er's guilt-in killin g. Ca lva ry. Dunca n m a rri es hubri s to mac hi smo in fatal, futile action. \" I tried to de pe rsonalize the Vie t- namese as much as I could. I didn ' t sit \" I see us as res ponsible for ourse lves down and come to th at; it was how I got and never more so th an in rea lly crucial th rough be in g a wa rrior, on the one and particul arly morall y dicey situ a- ha nd , whil e a lso d eve lo pin g cl ose tions,\" says Dunca n. \"You could say frie nd ships with Montagnard s in the that's what I got out of Vie tnam. And hi ghl and s whe re I was pos te d , on the 12
\"I couldn't deny what I'd learned in made by Ted Post and starred Burt is truth. Vietnam because it was possibly the Lancaster, w ho was fighting, as all Watching 84 Charlie Mopic, one first time I'd learned anything in a usual generals do, the previous war. systematic and simultaneously subver- Sidney Furie's The Boys in Company C se nses Dunca n putting all these pre- sive way-which appealed to me, since mapped out the Marine Corps training vious film s to the test of hi s experience. I was who I was in the Sixties. It was a camp procedures and the actual bat- For example, the old cliche of soldiers time to question authority, sometimes tling as cinematic terrain that would be sharing a cigarette in a foxhole goes up at'a cost we couldn't really understand. claimed by Kubrick for Full Metal in smoke when a cigarette is ripped out You learned how to survive at the same Jacket . of L.T's mouth ; nothing spreqds the time you learned that the big guys in news of America n presence like wafts of charge didn' t know the foundations of Until now, only Oliver Stone could Winstons. Moreover, L. T seems like survival in Vietnam. A lot of film- claim to bring personal experience to Oliver Stone on his way from Platoon to makers have tried to relay that mes- the screen, but considering his privi- Wall Street: In Duncan's Vietnam , thi s sage, but how could they know if they leged background , he could hardl y is finally a corporate world that is run by didn ' t also recognize those surviva l res- claim to offer the grunt's eye view, the Labor, as the soldiers treat L. T as the sons as the only ones they' d get for a vantage point, that is, of people whose useless piece of management he is- lifetime?\" best or only option was to se ize the he's even informed at the point of a gun hand grenade of the draft and serve that if he fucks up, they' ll cut their T he authenticity of the Vietnam Uncle Sam. Stone, who'd put Vietnam losses by ai r-conditioning him before experiences offered onscreen has far behind him to enter the movie bi z, C harlie does . was dedicated to an authentic \"You-are- W ithout havin g to develop a Director Patrick Duncan on the set of84 Charlie Mopic. character-a journalist, a medic, a grunt with a father fixation-to pre- always been an issue , whether it was there\" Vietnam that was exploited by tend to the objectivity of hi s observa- the Gospel According to John (Wayne) the marketers but ultimately his own tions , Duncan's use of the camera's eye in The Green Berets, Michael Cimino's thematic agenda overwhelmed it. He view kee ps us asking whether or not the metaphor of Russian roulette in The was offering war as a religious experi- gimmick is working, until the camera- Deer Hunter , John Milius and Francis ence as well as an anti-war tract-which man abruptly revea ls himself to explain Ford Coppola's pulsating Heart of ignored the thesis of the anti-war move- what brou ght him here: watching reels Darkness quest in Apocalypse Now, or ment that people shouldn't go, needn' t of film sent back from Vietnam th at Coming Home , Jane Fonda's way of say- go. went on and on and then , suddenly, ing \"Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa,\" kept running even though you could apology both for going over there as well Whether as a grunt or a grouch, we tell that nobody was there to focus. The a,s for staying home. have had a decade's \"experience\" of film just ran out-because the camera- Vietnam at the bijou-and now, couch man's life had run out at some indeter- The spate of Vietnam films made potatoes all, we are prepared to relive minate point. since 1978 have tried to document the whatever side of the divide we were on cost in bodies and souls of Vietnam; then , 13 inch.es above the rug. 84 Char- The first-person imperative of see- although Cimino and Fonda could lie Mopic is in the same format that ing the entire story through the lens of brawl backstage on Oscar night that brought us the war from 1967 to 1975. the camera is Duncan's attempt to guar- year, neither of them could claim first- Yet even if we make the mental adjust- antee authentici ty-desired by an era hand experience in fighting. Even Go ment from viewing Vietnam as news to peculiarly dedicated to autobiogra- Tell the Spartans , which many believe viewing it as entertainment, the adage phy-but for fashion's sake it begs the provided a blueprint for Platoon, was still holds true : The first casualty of war leap of faith th at authors in other eras trusted an audience to make. There is no way out here ; Duncan tries to force us into an identification with the pla- toon of seven (functioning with the motor reflexes and hand-eye coordina- tion of a single being) by implying th at since we're along for the ride , we'd better not have subversive hearts and minds. The camera is not just a technologi- cal extension of Charlie Mopic (Army jargon for MOtion PICture unit). Because the entire film is seen through Charlie Mopic's camera, it becomes the visual equivalent of literary synec- doche. Taking the \"I am a camera\" idea further, while admitting to the common view that Vietnam was the first war-as-media event, Duncan seizes the medium away from the authority of net- work journalism and claims it for the 13
SPEAK YOUR PEACE H ere's w.hat. Richard Nixon and Gene Hackman ;n BAT 21. tion the rest of the audience , were Ho Chi Minh should have done stunned. at the time: gone to the movies. At the namese home to argue with the Hawaii International Film Festival , homeowner. To enter a home unin- Another evening brought a debate under the auspices of \"The Vietnam vited is taboo, explained the Viet- over the treatment of POWs and the Film Project,\" the Socialist Republic namese. Besides , the Vietnamese in foul impression of The Deer Hunter. of Vietnam and the U.S. sat down and the film tries to talk to our hero, but it To an audience of cynics and infidels, saw each other's movies. Over five remained unsubtitled, indicating a the Vietnamese insisted that they had evenings at the Pearl Harbor Memo- total disregard for what the Viet- conformed fastidiously to the Geneva rial Theater, an American film about namese might have to say, com- convention. Then a reluctant observer Vietnam was shown, followed by a plained the delegation. This, it should stepped forth to say, \"Excuse me, I Vietnamese film. In subsequent have been pointed out, is how we got didn't come here to talk, but I was a panels American filmmakers and the into that mess in the first place . POW and spent five years in Viet- Vietnamese delegation sat down on nam .. .. I was treated with great kind- the same side of a table facing an The dialogue between the Viet- ness ... ate what everybody else ate, auditOrium full of American military namese and the Americans was possi- even when there was not enough to go personnel and film professionals to bl y the frankest exchange that ever around ... and wound up in the Hanoi hash it out. took place between the two nations, Hilton. They were very kind to me, precisely because it could focus on but they were the worst years of my From Vietnam came three men of film images, while pleading for dis- life. It's a question of perspective.\" strikingly different temperaments. tance from implicit insults. (\"We\" Spokesman Bui Dinh Hac founded nice people , who had come to talk to As the perspectives cleared and we the Vietnam Cinema Department; one another, didn't make \"those\" hobnobbed with abandon , a former Dinh Quang is a drama critic and images. Only \"unevolved\" movie Vietnam film star was invited home to former head of the censorship com- moguls/bureaucrats were so venal.) work again after having been banned mittee , a body that he assures us no Every evening exposed new wounds to corrupt capitalist Hollywood , longer exists ; Dang Nhat Minh is a and brought new approaches to heal- where all she ' d ever played was a film directOr working with Stone Age ing them. And the balmy clime of hooker. Seeing Coming Home, the technology and ideology with surpris- Hawaii reinforced the sense of ther- Vietnamese effusively praised the ing lyrical results. The state of Viet- apy, of group grope-rather than that great aft of that great people's artist, namese cinema approximates that of sense we often have, after seeing a Jane Fonda. The film reminded them , Cuban cinema circa 1968-that is , full Vietnam War movie, of having ripped they said , of their own problems with of vitalitv and enthusiasm for their open the stitches too soon. reintegrating their vets after the war- peacetime endeavors as a new nation the su bject of thei r 1986 film Brothers hampered onl y by an apparent man- T he incongruities and absurd and Relations. date to instruct audiences and beliefs moments cannot be overlooked, that will foster social progress. (A of course. The first night brought BAT 21 director Peter Markle main- package of the Vietnamese films will forth an American vet with a \"reborn\" tained a healthy objectivity and tour the U.S. as arranged by Jeff glow to present the Vietnamese a waited until the final evening to Gilmore of the UCLA Film and Televi- scroll with an apology in ornate callig- express his caution that Vietnam had sion Archives.) raphy, signed by a long roll call of sent \"the minister of propaganda\" to veteran s for \"a war we never under- the panel. But even Markle didn't From the outset, the Vietnamese stood. \" The Vietnamese, not to men- deny the degree of propaganda and Americans attempted to be polite embedded in Hollywood \"enter- about each other's movies, despite tainment. \" barely veiled distrust and disbelief of the filmic images. Finally a weird moment from the interstices of American film criticism: Too often, as in one Vietnamese A reigning feminist rose from the film that focused on the buzzing and audience to congratulate the Viet- bombing of the Mekong Delta, the namese on their careful inclusion of American officers were loud , long- positive female role models. haired, dissolute engineers of their own failure, who spoke only in halting \"Thank you, \" said Bui Dinh Hac. English (as they were played by Viet- \"Ho Chi Minh was always praising namese; the sizable contingent of vet- Vietnamese women. It is our natural eran G.I.s who have returned to desire to praise women. For that rea- Honolulu bristled at the license son, creating pictures of beautiful taken). The Vietnamese were exaspe- women is our sacred duty.\" rated with American films showing them to be bumbling, conniving, and \"Ah ,\" she said. What purity, these duplicitous. Worse , in Peter Markle's \"fascinating pre-sexist attitudes.\" BAT 21, an American enters a Viet- Some days you mau-mau the flak catchers, some days they mau-mau you . -KJ. 14
infantryman. The effect is like wit- The boys of84 Charlie Mopic. vehicle but a film dedicated to the nessing an illiterate's discovery of the unknown soldiers who fought an unde- Written Word ... with a bootleg video- As we make the mental clared war that brought them no honor. tape of The Iliad. adjustment from It was easier under those circumstances for everybody in the room to clear their The movie opens with a film slate viewing Vietnam as throats and move on to the next identifying the scene and take. The news to viewing it as Meatballs. clapper claps, and a soldier stands entertainment, the before us reciting the mission of the adage still holds true: The test they had shot aided Nolin new officer in charge: \"Our goal is to The first casualty of when he approached Larry Estes at record procedures peculiar to this con- RcA/Columbia Video. Here was a,sym- flict. ... \" At first glance, the operative war is truth. pathetic eye and ear-even an imagina- phrase here is the \"peculiar pro- tion willing to put up the mere $1 cedures\" that prompted the Army to try David Puttnam agreed to let them million budget. The film was shot on to figure out how to wage guerrilla war- shoot a sample reel to see if it would super 16mm in four weeks and pre- fare. We are about to witness the imme- work-but that was before Puttnam miered six months later at the Hawaii diate, unexpurgated, possibly classi- found his own Mekong Delta. Nolin International Film Festival. The recep- fied war in Vietnam. Whether or not the had worked at studios and knew the tion was astonishing, not just because experience eludes filmmakers dealing routine, but as an executive participat- people liked it but because of who liked with Vietnam is a moot point subject to ing in the Sundance Institute, he had it most. the conditions of production, studio seen the cachet it could lend to such a demand and casting. project, and 84 Charlie Mopic was sub- The Vietnamese delegation was mitted to Sundance treatment. Among overwhelmed and expressed unstinting \"I didn't need Michael Herr,\" says volunteer performers were Hume Cro- praise for the film's punji-stick-sharp Duncan. \"I respect him, but his is once nyn, Karl Malden, Peter Coyote, Aidan portrayal of their experiEnce of the trail- more the point of view of an educated Quinn, Robert Joy, and even Elizabeth ways of fighting that war. They observer, someone who can put himself McGovern (there are no female roles). embraced Duncan, they thanked him, outside the conflict to understand it. I they even went dancing in a Honolulu was in it, I felt it from the inside, and I Even with the seal of approval, nightclub with him. Most meaningful express it from within. This will sound funders were still leery. Some thought it to Duncan , at least, the Vietnamese pretentious but I'm going to say it could all be saved by a rock'n'roll sound want him to come back to Vietnam to anyway-it's like singing a song about it track, but Duncan wanted only the nat- shoot a film he has wanted to make that instead of providing a historical docu- ural sounds of guys on patrol-burping, cannot be made by borrowing from the ment. Both are needed, and I think a panting, swearing. Someone else sets for China Beach, as he did for 84 lot of people prefer Herr's approach wanted to cast the Brat Pack. Duncan Charlie Mopic . because it gives you enough distance pointed out that it had already been not to feel the horrible disaster of dying done, that it was precisely not a star Duncan won ' t tell us about the film at the hands of an unseen enemy. but says, \"If you think this is authentic , Nobody knows how they die , much less wait till you see the next one. \" Well , why. \" maybe he will become a professional vet. His country, Vietnam, is calling There are surely moments in 84 Charlie Mopic that answer Burt Lan- him. ® caster's anguished demand in Go Tell the Spartans to know \"what we're doing over there.\" Why did it take so long to make the Vietnam movie that would transcend the fear of fighting that war but not wallow in the bog of extended metaphors? T he hurdle to getting the movie made was Duncan's insistence on seeing all action through the camera lens. This writer read the script and was bowled over. But after hearing Duncan explain why the film's integrity is steeped in focus through the camera- and even agreeing with him-I never thought it would get made. Who would trust a screenwriter to direct a cast of unknowns for a fickle audience of star- gazers who want more Vietnam the way roaches want Combat? Film executives as numerous as Vietnam colonels rejected the project, but Duncan and producer Nolin plugged away. 15
by Beverly Walker T om Hanks' confident demeanor is as daunting as Mt. Rushmore and just as effective in discour- aging speculation about who those men really are. In his office at Walt Disney studios in Burbank, California, the 32-year-old actor is courteous and humorous , shrug- ging off the future as capable of taking care of itself. Charming, intelligent, Hanks carefully maintains a certain distance , as if he had long ago drawn a circle around himself-like a moat. Come to think of it, most of the characters Hanks has played since Bachelor Party (1983) have been detached from the mess they find them- selves in. That 's what gets them through , and maybe that's what got Hanks through a knockabout childhood. Born in 1956 in Concord, California (north of San Francisco), Hanks was the third of four children. His parents divorced . when he was young , and Hanks grew up with his father, who worked in restaurants up and down the coast, settling in the Berkeley area when Tom was a teenager. Step-parents came and went. He married at 20 and has two children, a son of 10 and a daughter, age 6. Divorced from his first wife, he is currently married to Rita Wilson, his co-star from Volunteers (1985). Hanks undoubtedly made his own life decisions without benefit of paren- tal counsel. His Dennis the Menace appearance notwithstanding, he is well able to look after the store. Hanks' cheekiness brought him notice in Splash , Nothing in Common, and Drag- net. Yet, it wasn't until Big , his tenth film and ri skiest assignment-to skewer the Eighties' Male as an overgrown junior-high schooler-went into release last June that critics saw more than a quirky kid at play. When Punchline followed in September, Hanks' fully contoured, edgy performance as a tor- mented stand-up comic more than stood up to critics of the film; it announced the arrival of Tom Hanks as a major player.
HankstoYou Failure to perceive the size of Hanks' Because I had less at stake, I devel- that other stuff. gift reflects more upon the continuing oped an observational point of view. I Did you watch the great comedians second-class status of comedy in this was constantly thrown into a lot of more than any other actors? country than of any startling develop- brand-new situations, though I was No, I didn't see my first Marx ment or deepening on his part. Comics never intimidated by them. are still given short shrift when it comes Brothers movie until I was in college. to respect and encomiums. Nonethe- Your characters have enormous And I've never watched comedies par- less, Hanks is sure to receive an Oscar confidence. ticularly more avidly than anything That's probably why I was attracted else. nomination for one of the two films, and to them. y ou began your career in classic there are those who think he may stun Do you recall when you first became repertory under Vincent Dowl- the favorite, Gene Hackman, and win. ing, now head of the Abbey Theatre in interested in movies? When I was in junior high I remem- M ost ofyour characters use humor ber watching everything from Beauty Dublin. How'd that happen? to keep people at a distance or and the Beast to The Seven Samurai on a It was the biggest break in the world. diffuse hostility, to keep themselves in \"a safe place.\" Is the comic an isolated On The' burbs: I was in my third year at California State figure? Is the comic spirit an expression \"Here's a guy with a University in Sacramento. In addition ofhuman isolation? great life-a nice to acting, I was learning to stage man- age, work the light board, and so on. I guess the comic is something of a house, a wife, a solitary figure. The thing about com- beautiful tree, a nice Once, when I didn't get cast in a edy is you can do it alone. What you get neighborhood, and he's show and all my friends did, I went from a comic is his point of view.. .his downtown and auditioned for a commu- philosophy. Even in an ensemble-the nity theater that was doing The Cherry Marx Brothers or Monty Python- Orchard. Vincent Dowling was the Groucho is very different from Chico, guest director. I got cast as Yasha, a servant. In the John Cleese from Graham Chapman, happy. Next day, he course of doing the role, I began to George from Ringo, and so on. You work as a stage carpenter on a kind of accept their individuality because their hates it all. I thought scholarship basis. Vincent was then playing together does not necessarily something must've with the Great Lakes Shakespeare Fes- make a cohesive statement: You're still happened to him tival in Cleveland, and he was attempt- reacting to each individual. ing something quite audacious-a six- play repertory season. He needed Did you hone your comic skills from real life-for example, were you a cutup offstage.\" cheap manpower, so he asked a couple as a kid? of us to come back with him as interns. Not in the sense that I got into trou- During the first season, I got the part ble, but I never had problems getting TV program called Film Odyssey. Later, of Grumio in Taming of the Shrew. It up in front of my friends and doing when I lived in Berkeley, I went to a toured Ohio under a state grant-and stuff. massive theater called the U. C. It was that's how I got my union card. And It probably is a self-defense mecha- about to go out of business 'til the guy started making the masterful sum of nism in order to keep the world not just who owned it decided to show a differ- about $210 a week. at bay but in proper perspective. The ent double bill every night. That's how I began. A lot of flukes growing up that I did, well, you could Did any particular movie just hit you but also being able to deliver the goods easily say, \"Oh, gosh, what a nightmare out ofthe blue one day and set you offon at the right time. They invited me back that must've been.\" But all growing up an actor's path? the second season to do Proteus in Two is nightmarish to some extent, and my [Almost reluctantly] Yeah, when I Gentlemen of Verona , along with other siblings and I have always thought that was 13 years old, 2001: A Space Odys- roles, and I returned the following year ours was just different from many sey showed me what could be commu- as well. others, not necessarily worse. We prob- nicated just by image-silent image. What'd you learn? ably had some advantages over other By somebody's vision and a camera they To know what is and isn't important. people. could com~unicate something as You have a finite amount of preparation You had one another. earth-shattering as man's place in the time, and in some cases what's impor- That's really it. I grew up with an universe. It was a heady thing. I've tant is to know your lines and show up older sister and brother, and they were probably seen the movie 22 times. on time. It was a pressure cooker. the people I was around more than It got me into a sensation that you No discussion of interpretation and anyone else, including either of my get, whether you're alone or with two or acting technique? parents. Since I was the youngest of the 20. You sit there completely trans- You got that from other members of three, less was expected of me. posed ... suspension of disbelief and all the company. It was an eclectic group 17
with lots of professional credentials- lectualize about it aren't funn y. That's executive and another about a guy and some worked in televi sion , others had true about acting in general. But com- his parents. Which part did you want to studied at RADA or had been with the edy's more instinctual. do the most? Or was it both? Guthrie in Minneapolis . And then I don't know if it's possible to have a Both . I thought that was what was there was me who was just learning how specific \"approach. \" I don't have a sys- unique about it-life is really hard right to walk and talk on stage. tem or even think about it very much . next to when it's really fun ... right next When I finally moved to New York in Something happens, but it's always dif- to when it's sad .. .. Life slams against 1978, I had acting skills but no knowl- ferent. A lot of it's just common sense. itself. edge of the business. Didn't even know With Big , that certainly was the I also thought it was a timely movie- you had to have a picture and resume. I case. The ground rules were laid out America 1985. Aging parents, dissat- could collect unemployment, so I definitively by the script and from dis- isfaction with one's career, learning that didn't have to take a survival job like cussion with Penny [Marshall]. We what lasts is not our jobs and what we do selling shoes. I auditioned for every- called it INSH: innocence and shyness. with them . thing that was going on and connected The two governing traits of this kid. In short, an awful lot of emotion was up with the Riverside Shakespeare Did you try out any of that stuff pri- invested in the movie, and that was the Co., a scrappy c1assical/comedia group vately before you did it on the set? first time it had ever happened to me. that got grants here and there and put Yes , I worked with a videotape at So it really changed me and started me on shows. home-just for myself. I did the same looking at my position in-moviemaking I met my manager, Simon Maslow, in thing on Punchline. in a different way. 1979, and I got a little role in a hack- You looked at the video to see ifwhat Was Jackie Gleason a handful? and-slash movie shot on Staten Isla~d , you were feeling inside was being mani- No , because we all understood that which got me into SAG. Then I audi- fested outside ? you do it Jackie's way. It comes with the tioned for ABC, and out of countless Yeah. territory. After all, that's why you want people I was cast by Joyce Selznick, a Do you like to rehearse ? him in the movie in the first place. legendary name, in a T V series , Bosom Depends. We rehearsed more on Big Everybody has a different way of Buddies . That was in January of '83 , approaching comedy, and it's pretty and by April I'd moved to L.A. It was The tasks o/actors: simple to adjust. Maybe it goes back to blind luck. \"to actually walk in this working in repertory. You don't have to world, to reflect what's like or respect someone in order to work L et me read some hoit.y-toity defini- with them. tions ofcomedy to you: Did you pick up any tricks of the Raymond Durgnant: \". .. a salutary trade from Jackie ? Not to make excuses for anything. going on in society, tokickback against a too-well-ordered world.\" be a breathing He never assigned blame or showed Aristotle: \".. .things which are incon- character others can remorse. He wasn't theoretical , he just got up and did it, and I had to be ready gruous or exaggerated .\" recognl.ze.\" for whatever came around . Schopenhauer : \"Recognition of the There's a take that actually illus- disparity between reality and ideal con- cept. The triumph of comedy is that we trates that. He caught me in the mouth have recognized the incongruous and than on any film I've ever made-for with his elbow when he opened the can deal with it .\" about three weeks before we started- refrigerator. Because it was Jackie and a Bergson: \".. .an intellectual process to the point of almost being numb. But very intense scene, it didn't throw me. because it stemsfrom perceptions.\" it helped in the long run because once I just kept right on going. That's what you've done it so many different ways, you learn about filmmaking , of How do you approach comedy ? you cast off all your bad habits. course-to keep it going no matter what. And that's what Gleason did. Blindly. I think it takes care of itself. O n which ofyour films did you turn a corner? Both Nothing in Common and It's there in the writing ? N.othing in Common (1986). I was Punchline focus on young men defining involved from the beginning with the themselves in the world. Why, in Sometimes it's not there in the writ- producer, Alex Rose, and the guys who Punchline, is the breakdown scene in wrote it even before Garry Marshall front of the father never dealt with ing. It may be there in the theme, but came in to direct. We were all hungry further? and wanted to prove something, score a you don't know if it'll make an audience touchdown or whatever. That's all there ever was. I don't think it's important, as long as you get laugh or not. During the eight months of rewrites, the sense of intimidation he feels. Oth- When I say comed.y takes care of after Ray Stark said yes , we talked erwise the movie could have become about what we were going to do with it. the story of Steven Gold and his father, itself, I mean it's an assumption the I was able to say, \"Here's why I want to and that's not what Punchline is about. do this character, and here's what I actor has to make-and then pay no think the movie is about\" -from my What's wrong with Steven Gold is own selfish actor's point of view. that his chromosomes are goofed up. attention to. You have to go on to the He's the black sheep of his family, and It worked despite feeling like two dif- there's nothing that's going to make him more specific tasks of actors: to actually ferent movies, one about an advertising feel good about who he is and who his parents are. walk in this world, to reflect what's cghoainragc\\toe-n.: in society, retocobgeni.azeb. reathing others can I consider myself an actor before I consider myself a comedian, but I'm certainly aware that I'm funny and that my movies are comedies. I disagree with the guy who said comedy is an intellectual process. People who intel- 18
I guess you don't agree that environ- know what you' ll want? wife, a beautiful tree, a nice nei ghbor- ment makes the man ? It's a gestalt kind of communication hood , and he's happy. Next day, he hates it all. I thought something It's a combination of things. But how that goes down among us , in which we must've happe ned to him offstage. is it that sociopaths are born in this understand the big priority that variety world? Yes, environment plays a part. is more important than anything else. But what I did is just bac kstory Steven Gold's environment was terrible There is no formula. At the same time , embellishment that any actor w ill do. for him. The hope for his redemption there are a realistic set of guidelines. Perhaps from my repertory experience, does not lie with his family; he needs to There's no reason for me to play a I don' t ask a director for motivation . If shake off his famil y... which is the psycho killer who butchers people with he says, \"Go over to the window,\" I find opposite of what Nothing in Common is razor-sharp hubcaps. the reason myself. about. The nature of the movies should be I s a dire ctor important to you? How often do comics break down like something I haven' t already done. Big Aspects of a director are. Communi- that? was such a character piece... bu t he was cation is the key. I consider the vision- a kid. The ' burbs is an ensemble piece , ary aspects of a movie a subjective play About as much as bank tellers , I and Turner and Hooch is about an adult on the director's part. It's not for me to with a responsible job who is changed say to him , \" Here's how I want you to think. by the way of something normal and of see this movie.\" Better I say, \"Here's this world. how I see this guy. If you agree, let's go, W hat are you doing here at and if you don't, then please fire me, or Disney? There's an awful lot of kooky guy/ walk off the picture or I will, or what- I have a relationship with Disney that straitlaced girl, or vice versa, scripts out ever. ... \" will last for a number of films that I there; the Peter Pan syndrome guy who bring to them or they to me. I don't will not grow up, not get involved in a Is there a particular performer who know if I have the acumen for this or if I has influenced you? like the process. I did it once before at Penny Marshall directs Hanks in Big. another studio and the timing was not relationship-a ton of that garbage Robert Duvall. Though he's not par- correct for either of us. But here , these around; or the poor schnook who gets ticularly a chameleon, it took me a long guys are entrenched. They have a phi- involved in a bunch of shenanigans; and time to recognize him from one movie losophy of making movies ... it's like a unrequited love: the man who sees a to another. He's not unique looking- huge Juggernaut.. .. But it's no more vision far more beautiful than anything doesn' t put a hump in his back or do imposing than somebody else's style of he has ever seen before. My objective is much more than walk a little different. doing movies. to be somewhat surprising, which Yet this man keeps entire movies means I like to be surprised as well as together, as in The Godfather pictures. How do you choose your projects ? anybody else. As Boo Radley in To Kill a Mock- It's an avalanche theory. They all fall ingbird, he stood behind a door and down on top of you and eventually you In The' burbs-weird neighbors communicated something worse than dig your way out with something. I have move into a dead-end street in the your worst nightmares. He made you a manager, an agent, a story editor, and suburbs-it sounds like one kind of feel sorry for him , too. To me, this is a all the people here at Disney, as well as movie, but because Joe Dante directed film actor: a man who conveys so much myself reading scripts. it and Bruce Oem and Carrie Fisher are without saying anything. Your first picture for Disney will be in it, it ends up taking a whole different Turner and Hooch . What's it about ? spin. Do you have any \"grand plan\" for It's the story of a man who's changed even the next couple ofyears? by a dog. I'm attracted to it because it Someone told me you created such a contains a filmmaking problem I've rich history for your character in The No plan at all. There are people who never faced before-just because a dog ' burbs that it was incorporated into the try to manipulate their careers all the is involved. Since I'm connected to him film, changing it. time, and it simply doesn't work. throughout the movie, that means trainers and my own individual work Sometimes there's more of an oppor- y ou seem to be in a moment of with the dog. It'll be directed by Henry tunity to create than others. Here's a transition, and in a position most Winkler. [Winkler was replaced by guy with a great life-a nice house, a performers would envy. You're obviously Roger Spottiswoode in February '89 not a beginner anymore; you have a after 12 days of shooting.] choice of just about anything you want Then being at Disney and having this to do; you have power. multi-picture pact does not mean you're going to take the same kind ofinterest in The only power I have is the power finding pictures for yourself that many to say no . Even if I say yes, I still have female stars do , for example, Sally to convince guys in suits with brief- Field or Jessica Lange ? cases and checks that they need to My point of view is different. Those make this movie as well. I have to take ladies are very driven people with a advantage of the opportunity when it's very particular philosophy, which I there; I can't manufacture it. I just have don't happen to share. But they also to swing away. have the acumen to do it. I couldn't produce something I'll be in. Not now. That strikes me as having an awful When the time is right, I'll know it. lot oftrust in the world out there to send How do the people who read for you something your way. I guess it's a bit of faith in serendipity. ® 19
by Richard Schickel Oscar) aspirations. With their part of the historical record. For in ceaselessly moaning scores, their por- effect it guaranteed the truthfulness of T he brisk way she clipped her tentously shadowed lighting, their her febrile screen presence, reassuring words and the singular pauses cameras endlessly inching in for linger- us that it was something more than she often made between sylla- ing close-ups of the heroine's suffering mere star acting, a set of mannerisms bles: Nobody took command of the features, they typified the high Holly- she could shrug offlike a costume at the language in quite the way that she did, wood style of their day. But they were end of a day's work. It is one reason she bending it to her rhythms rather than not typical of its best (or best beloved) is a legend and such sometime competi- submitting to its tyranny. The abrupt manner. That was all quick cuts, brash tors as Ruth Chatterton, Miriam Hop- gestures that accompanied her dialogue, and bustling movement kins, and Kay Francis are not. speeches: It was as if she was brushing through the frame. Edgy, wayward, aside the gnats of insincerity and inde- domineering, Davis daringly supplied One wonders: Would she have suc- cision that so often distract ordinary the equivalent qualities for the lugubri- ceeded so well if her path had been mortals. The impatient twitch of her ous genre that had claimed her. And easier? There is no question that penny- shoulders: It indicated something less made it her own. Her pictures all ran on wise Jack Warner, who disguised his than gladness in the face of foolishness her energy and stand the test of time shrewd peasant's paranoia under the (even, on occasion, her own) and because of the tensile strength, that flashy manner of a carny huckster, at strongly implied she could bear trag- inimitable electroplating of heedless- first impeded the development of edy, if that's where fate was leading her, ness and vulnerability, her soul's chem- Davis' screen character. But it is possi- more readily than she could stand istry provided them. ble that his permanent opposition to dither. her ambitions and the corporate culture T he creation of this screen person- that he created at the studio that bore No actress more boldly flaunted her ality was no easy matter, and her his family's name-it was mannerisms than Bette Davis or earned battle to develop and establish it was a more gratitude by so doing. For we matter of public record when she fought sensed that her style reflected an it. There was a notable court case, authentically seething substance. And which she lost, when she ran away from that is precisely what the movies in Warner Bros. in 1936 to try to make a which she made her first, indelible picture in England she liked better mark needed. \"Women's pictures\" was than the lumberjack drama the studio the patronizing term for them, it being wanted her to do (in which she was their business to encourage the female ultimately replaced by that towering audience to bleary contemplation of the figure, Beverly Roberts). Her fight to seemingly infinite ways in which their assert herself-\"J. .. am ambitious to sex could be victimized. become known as a great actress,\" she dared to write Jack Warner just before Talk about dither! These movies, decamping-also forms a significa often rustling with period costumes, always gurgling with fancy talk , were generally ponderous with self- importance and literary (not to say
the studio's output, which was not all gangster films and Busby Berkeley musicals but was definitel y biased toward urban , working-class melo- dramas. Especially when Darry l Zanuck was head of production , these pictures tended to be smash-and-grab jobs , short in length , produced on two- and three-week sc hedules , full of f<l:st cross talk, fistfi ghts , and sudden death but with no leisure for, shall we say, the nuanced development of character. Especially female characters. The guys-Robinson and Cagney most famously, but just about everyone else in pants as well-got most of the screen time and all of the good lines . Joan Blondell fit in gorgeously with this crowd, but it was more typical of women on this lot to stand around watching the men strut their stuff. Davis did not yet have the creden- tials to be given lead s in the occasional weeper the studio added to its product mix. So she found herse lf doing thin gs like Parachute Jump er and Bureau of Missing Persons and , the most unlikely title in her filmograph y, Fashions of 1934. Yes, she would draw the line at The Case of the Howling Dog, in which she was supposed to play Perry Mason's sec retary, Della Street, if (humiliation upon humiliation ) she would accede to Jack Warner's order to \"w rap up her bulbs\" (breasts). But still most of her roles in these yea rs could as well have been essayed by such interchangeable Warner girls as Patricia Ellis, Mary Brian , Marian Nixon, or, yes, Beve rl y Roberts. Indeed , one imagines the stu- dio kept picking up her option mainl y because its stories occasionally called for a classy dame-Cabin in the Cotton: or Jimmy the Gent (which was, at least, a good Cagney comed y, if not exactly a breakthrou gh for Davis). I t was a loanout, to RKO for OfHuman Bondage , that firmly instructed Davis, and moviegoers , in her true worth. The trouble was, Jack Warner was slow to take the hint. Yes , she got Bordertown , which hinted at glorious neuroses to come, and Dangerous, which was in the same vei n and brought her her first Oscar, and The Petrified Forest , which was a classy project by the standards of the day, though a lugu- brious and pompous movie . But these enterprises were surrounded by a lot of the same old stuff, and it was after the inept adaptation of The Maltese Falcon , which the studio called Satan Met a Lady, that she made her famous and
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ultimately effective bolt to Britain. to tremble in the dark on their behalf, entered the little world any movie is. When she returned she got Marked our minds shouting silent warnings to High-spirited she departed it. This was them. But both the logic of the Freud- no small gift to the women in her audi- Woman, a crime story, but one that gave ian age (just now beginning to be ence. Symbolically she claimed for her excellent opportunities for charac- broadcast in the popular arts) and the them the right to yield to their own terological transformation and colorful actress' own firm belief in what she was impulses (which movie males had suffering. By this time the world was doing dictated that these ladies be the always enjoyed), to live by their own changing and so was Warner Bros ., last to comprehend the full conse- standards (which movie males had usu- where Zanuck's replacement, smooth, quences of what they were doing to ally dictated). It was no small gift to the shrewd Hal Wallis, was now firml y in themselves. As a rule their troubles rest of us , either. For she accomplished charge of production. His literacy was came home to them precisely because what George Cukor said great stars of a different order from Zanuck's (peo- they refused to be the passive play- must always do, finding in what might ple could speak in paragraphs and met- things of standard morality and social have been rather conventionalized roles aphors in his pictures), and his visual rules. Boldl y they grasped at romantic \"the reality beneath convention.\" Her taste was different , too (darker, more fulfillment . Bravely they accepted the conviction, her wit, her capacity for expansive, with less quick cutting). consequences of that boldness. self-revelation-they redeemed Neither costumes nor psyc hology improbably tall tales and emotions for frightened him , either. He and hi s staff The price could be colorful but believable humanity. had a natural affinity for the kind of redeemable humiliation (Jezebel), or a stories that suited Davis. Moreover, narrowly avoided murder conviction It was no small gift, at last, for her- they discovered the affinity of house (The Letter); madness (Juarez) or a self. Her insistent assertion of her indi- talents like writer Casey Robinson for death penalty (deserved in Beyond the vidual's reality on the screen, her her kind of material. They even dared Forest, bitterly ironic in Dark Victory). refusal to project some democratic or to bring William Wyler in to direct her, Sometimes, to be sure, she settled corporate version of it, was the habit though the expense of his fussy work- moral accounts through long suffering that insured her against gentility's ing ways gave them fits. In effect, (Dangerous and The Old Maid). Occa- sionally, to our delight, she got off scot- enfeebling insinuations later. And Wallis and his courtiers presided over free (The Little Foxes) or received the against self-pity or our pity when the her coronation as Queen of the Lot, benison of a happy ending (Now, Voy- great days passed and she found herself while the boss sulked in the corner of ager). But her usual fate was melodra- with a leftover persona to employ in the abbey, refusing ever to be seen matic, or at best melancholic, and generally unworthy vehicles. Precisely kneeling at the royal ankle. always she embraced it without mur- because her ego proved to be as shat- mur of pain or protest, her fierce spirit terproof in age as it had been in youth, The pictures they provided Davis unbowed, the core of her being intact. she compelled attention even when the represented a shrewd reading of, and So deep, finall y, was our faith in her picture did not. And, occasionally, she projection of, her nature. As it had been spunk, her inner resources, that Bette was able to bestow upon us the ram- for her in her earlier professional life, so Davis, alone of all actresses, could bunctious rage for attention (and the it would be for her now on the screen. make spinsterhood seem like a bear- heartbreaking insecurity) of All About She would be the victim, yes, of many a able conclusion for a movie or a life. Eve, the cracked grandeur of Whatever dire or miserable circumstance. But she Happened to Baby Jane. These were would never be required to openly T hat was her glory. She refused to privileged moments she bought for us ac knowled ge her victim's status. And yield her essence under pressure. long ago, paid for with the sound, glow- why should she? The women she played \"High-spririted\" (popular fiction's would be-because they refused to gentle synonym for neurotic) she ing coin of her youth and brought out of acknowledge the conventions and the the trunk where she had stored them, cautions that bind more sensible, less to remind the grandchildren of what headstrong folk-the authors of their star acting in all its crazy glory used to own misery. And we were encouraged be. ® 24
27
Borrowed Images: Architecture Design forDreatning by Leon van Schaik have always co-existed. Certainly bards ing his belly, and in the process have woven buildings into their tales; becomes anth ro pomorph ically I ncreasingly it seems we are return- now architects envy film its expressive absorbed into a filmic representation of ing to films as the paradigm of our fluidity. But though film has not inher- meaning in architecture. world. In other times, architecture ited the substance of architecture, the served this purpose, providing sculp- power of filmic representation washes Some believe that the emergence of ted representations of knowledge of a out society's concern for the less imme- a postmodern approach to filmmaking fixed universe , set in stone as it were. diate, and there lies the rub. is following architecture's current embrace of decentered subjectivity. Both film and architecture share Today, as Michelangelo Antonioni's Others argue that films are structured in their monumental scale; both require film The Passenger (1974) resoundingly ways that parallel architectural layering vast amounts of money, planning, and demonstrates, even the greatest build- and narrative and that Belly is orga- manpower for completion. Good films ings can become dumb backdrops to nized in much the same way that Ter- and good buildings alike draw you in the doubtful proceedings of people in a ragni gave form to Dante's The Divine and keep you moving along, visually universe now rendered fluid by Comedy in his design of the Danteum: stimulated by their rhythm, repeti- mobility and uncertainty. It is only by Creating in a different medium a con- tions , illuminations, juxtapositions, recourse to the narrative, the inherent struct that arithmetically mimics the and plays of shadows and light. Films elements of the poem's structure. The are the cathedrals of the past made My father was an poem's tercets with interlinking present, an analogy that can certainly rhymes were translated to the overlap- be extended to movie palaces, where, architect. Manhattan ping, interlocking external walls. A like the cathedral, the organ or piano route through a sequence of spaces is was the instrument of choice and peo- was our Saturday arranged to evoke each stage of the ple went regularly to seek solace and journey from life to heaven, mimicking escape to another world. And like matinee town, and the poem's theme: A forest of columns churchgoing, film-watching is a group represents the forest through which the activity involving the connection of the Hollywood built much inferno is entered, and each space is individual to something larger than structured on a spiral to indicate himself. ofour mental space. progress. M onuments through the ages have relativity of the traveler's tale, that we It may be that Greenaway had some been the \"tangible diagrams\" can keep track. Media has displaced such architectural representation in for understanding our place in the uni- the monument as the key referent of mind. We do know that architects work verse. William Lethaby [\"Architec- society, while architects vie with film- on his film sets; Greenaway used archi- ture, Nature and Magic,\" Duckworth, makers to win back this role for their tect Nigel Coates, then teaching at the London (1956)] has described how the buildings. Architectural Association School (AA) Egyptian temple was a representation in London, on the set for The Draughts- of their universe: Rectangular in form P eter Greenaway's film The Belly of man's Contract. and acknowledging the north/south the Architect-which merely axis of the Nile's influence. But some of through its title opens discussions on But perhaps the traffic is in the other these monuments are harder to read the influence of architecture on film- direction. Film, being a way of seeing, now, partly because our very language puns its way through this lesson. encompasses and influences architec- embodies our own ·views; partly BoulIee [Etienne-Louis, the 18th- tural creation. Film has immediate cur- because the rituals that give meaning to century French-visionary architect, rency, fully engaging and repeatable; the symbols are now unfamiliar; partly whom American architect Kracklite architecture is on the margins of our because the highly colored pictorial (Brian Dennehy) is called to Rome to awareness and acts on us in ways of quality of these buildings-from the honor], belly, and dome: Greenaway which we are not necessarily conscious. Parthenon to the cathedrals-is no flaunts the flexibility of filmed repre- Though there is abundant evidence of longer evident in their remains. sentation against the tired classics of mutual admiration, filmmakers are as Rome, its architectural meaning spent likely to touch architecture through At some stage all civilizations have and reflected only in the music-hall other films as through direct experi- enshrined significant myths in stone, neo-fascism of denizens of the old cul- ence, while architects , who are necessarily using the medium of great- ture. Kracklite pursues the honoring of attracted to the creative power of film est impact. Today it's film. Architec- one of architecture's high priests- and its ability to reach large audiences, ture has given Vietnam a wall, but film famous for his domes-by photocopy- are beginning to attempt in form what has created its myth. they have seen in films. Perhaps the bard and the architect Having studied architecture, Mic- helangelo Antonioni has strong archi- 28
tectural connections. The Passenger is ity that, surely, the cathedrals captured. Motors Pavilion for the 1939 New York structured as a grand tour of his favorite Now it is that joy and emotion as public World's Fair in Flushing Meadows and Spanish architectural pieces. The film act that film monopolizes, leaving to Walter Dorwin Teague's nautical Ford opens in the architectural limbo of a architecture rare moments of private Exhibit (San Diego, 1935), these archi- desert in which the theme is stated: reflection or the empty gestures of cor- tects stooped elegantly over models of \"Your question reveals more about you porate towers. future cities such as Teague's soaring, than my answer could possibly tell of finned, and freeway-laced fyture me.... \" And though it tours the great A major shift in the balance of metropolis for the United States Steel works of the Catalan architect Gaudi, it architectural and filmic represen- Corporation and rushed off to solve culminates in an anonymous village tation seems to have occurred after crises, only a few of which were insur- square. Expressive architecture would World War II. Often it was difficult to mountable within the confines of an afternoon's viewing. 'ig-.·! 'I My father was an architect, and we r children watched him hunched over ,I' miniature cities, populating them with tiny figurines and au tomobiles made Hamilton's \"Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing?\" (1956). from our melted crayons and modeled on our grandfather's two-tone Packard. interfere with the filmic representation, be certain who was \"dreaming\" whom, His was a joint thesis with Robert Scott- we may conclude. In Pier Paolo Pas- architect or Hollywood. Brown and consisted of a podium and olini's Accatone (1961) (so admired by skyscraper modeled on the Lever some architects as the model for regain- Through my own childhood there Building in New York. Though we had ing their representative powers), \"life\" strode man y. Ayn Rand architect never actually been there, through is played out by pimps and prostitutes, heroes, pipe in hand, Hollywood evo- screen dramas we could read the refer- while Rome pulses and grows cations of the tetchy idols Frank Lloyd ences and the nuances of locations near obscenely around them. Flash Gor- Wright and Le Corbusier. Inhabiting Rockefeller Center. Manhattan was our don's sets also find architectural expres- impossibly gleaming, streamlined Saturday matinee town, and Hollywood sion (with all their verticality) but apartments and hovering over stupen- built much of our mental space. express none of the joy of defying grav- dous cities full of designs such as Nor- man Bel Geddes' swooping General It was a widescreen age: Buildings, freeways , refrigerators , and \"Easter bonnets\" all made obeisance to a free- flowing transport theme; we did not doubt that all of this was of a piece. Even Frank Lloyd Wright designed houses in Hollywood. And as in the movies , deep-focus space-seeming to show everything in reasonable continuity-linked the separate func- tions of our homes into flowing vistas of undetermined area. Like the camera on its dolly, we could flow from inside to outside without remarking on it, while in the Chevrolet (or Ford) we wafted from one scene of our lives to the next with as little fuss as the camera eye. Widescreen continuity and open- ness was the commonly adopted view- point of the sweeping confidence of architectural visions, the Marshall Plan, and the dream of progress . You could see the confident breadth in the new towns, the new universities, tbe reconstructed cities, all created and panned with an evenness of lighting and detail that unfolded their calm rea- sonableness on the screen of the mind. K orea, Hungary, and TV shattered this mirrored continuity. In retro- spect, the continuity was always an illu- sion, a valiant attempt to wrest some- thing whole from the unbearable discontinuities revealed by the wars. Of course, the Europeans were more used 29
Architect Kracklite (Brian Dennehy) is obsessed with his belly in Greenaway's The Belly of an Architect. to confronting discontinuity, but with pean directors, on the other hand, used rare exceptions the popular vision of the West and the South adopted Holly- \"Perhaps all open space to subvert the seeming wood's domestic fiction of a war-free architecture, rather security from which they arose. This normalcy. It was no accident that use of the surreal, or Dada, in film regional \" modernism\" in architecture got its clearest expression from the work than being about became the precursor for Madison Ave- of architects associated with the Bau- nue's adoption of the shock tactic tech- haus, who were party to the Weimar attempt to assert the supremacy of rea- functional standards, is nique of selling: Shirts with eye son over reality [as per]. Willett, The patches neutralized the European New Sobriety, Art and Politics in the Weimar Period 1917-1933, Thames and about love and death.\" vision of apocalypse. With the incor- Hudson , London (1978)]. poration of the restless TV eye into the Modernism predicated an end to the home, the movie eye began to take on irrational , and to evil , all through the cleansing effect of honesty, truth , and decline, gIvIng way to personal the flickering inconsequential regard of clear vision. History records that the dream of reason brought forth mons- labyrinths. minutiae. C.inema verite personalized ters. Hollywood did not address the atavism of Europe and its consistent Films that addressed this discon- the camera but rendered its viewpoint propensity for celebrating the cellars of the sub-conscious. While Ingmar Berg- tinuity had already begun emerging trivial. man could parade his rational country- men through an ominous terrain of from liberated Europe; ironically they chiaroscuro inhabited by throwbacks to visceral terrors , Hollywood confronted Dwere often Hollywood through the glass ziga Vertov asserted in his film death evenly lighted and unam- Man With a Movie Camera that biguously, preferably in the open and darkly of the Occupation. Their prede- by the manifestly technical agency of cessors could be seen in the art movie the camera eye has the power to trans- the gun. houses, coinciding with repeated show- form society. Eisenstein, too, With the Korean War, the seemingly seamless web of cinema reality was dis- ings of Robert Weine's The Cabinet of expressed .his belief in the primacy of placed by the lined screen of television , flickering discontinuity into the flowing Dr. Caligari (1919). the sociali zing role of cinema vision. In open-plan space of house and mind. Widescreen confidence was eroded and At first the sun set on the unifying a curious way, Hollywood worked in replaced with a staccato twitchiness. Discontinuity and Dada juxtaposition belief that clean new buildings would that context as long as naive progress found their way into our waking hours by introducing every world disaster into produce a clean new society uncontami- could be accepted as a social goal. the corner of the eye, mind, and house. What was the gold en age of Hollywood nated by the distortions of the past. Since then, personal existence has dissolved. So, too, with the passing of its sweeping space did an era of archi- Then the myths of Phoenix-like been the focus-not a fruitful matrix for tectural spatial conception begin its destruction re-emerged to challenge architecture. the \"new world,\" and architects were But there was a moment in history thrust into the avant-garde by the ero- when movie eye and TV eye co-existed sion' of a common purpose between in the consciousness of architects, and architecture and community: An ero- architectural representation had the sion affected by the partial realization opportunity for expression. Artists and and wholesale rejection of some of these architects working in the U.K . in the former Olympian visions. Along with Fifties were swept up in both the vision McCarthyism , the primacy of individ- of rebuilding a better world and the ual and subjective interpretation of the promise of ca lm plenty that popular world overtook the underlying assump- Hollywood embodied. tion of modernism in arc hitecture : There was also the belief that social That the application of reason, justice cou ld arise from the assembly unadorned, cou ld provide solutions to line. This mixture of socialism and con- the problems of living. sumerism pervades the world of artist As in Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds Richard Hamilton. His characteristic (1963), deep-focus was also the vehicle picture of this period, $She (1958), fea- for the introduction of horror through tures components of a model housewife shocking \"surprise\" insertions. Euro- (lips, breasts, hips), an open refrigera- 30
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tor door, and a combined pop-up eclecticism as the coming mental as interesting as anyone else's. toaster-cum-vacuum cleaner. Ham- space. In this way,. deep-focus here, Significantly, Archigram did not ilton's series, Interior (1964), uses stills too, provides a hiding place for an omi- of deep-focus interiors to make his nous future. focus on film or any aspect of the \"cam- statements about the emerging world of era eye.\" It latched on to the process ease and justice. One sequence of these T he Smithsons, meanwhile, articu- \"in process,\" and film was shown being paintings uses deep-space stills with a lated the need for an almost cin- screened , thereby mimicking the pro- figure poised in the moment of discov- ema verite observation of the minutiae cess itself. Perhaps it was this separa- ery of a body located in the front of the of living, documenting, for example, tion among their creations and the frame and obscured from the view of children at play. This concern for the phenomenon of film as such that gave the figure by a large desk. Hamilton \"how it is\" of everyday life was endemic their work its authoritative command omits the body and reworks the desk in British culture at the time. Docu- over our world. from Californian mahogany into Brau- mentaries such as Royal Mail , a record nian Eurostyle. While the figure in the of a night on a mail train, were powerful O f course, one can find precedent original sensed horror, it is now posed filmic evocations of a movement that for Archigram in film. Bertolt sensing the designer future. includes \" mass observation\" projects. Brecht had been in the wings, and The Smithsons argued that architects, Jean-Luc Godard made his vision ines- A continuity between this filmic too , must engage with this reality if capable. Archigram brought Brechtian space and architectural space resulted they were to address the future. multi-media to architecture plus cin- from Hamilton's association with Peter ema verite immediacy with populist and Alison Smithson , AA architects Later, their students emerged as the intent. Instant City (1970) visits a com- teaching at the School of Architecture \"Archigram\" group, to take their argu- plete range of media events onto recip- in London. In the seminal exhibition at ments to a logical conclusion in archi- ient towns , transforming them for the the Institute for Contemporary Art tectural terms. Beginning in 1961 with duration into \" instant,\" if temporary, \"This is Tomorrow,\" the Smithsons artless collages of images from every cities of the information era. joined forces with Hamilton , sculptor possible source (including film in the and printmaker Eduardo Paolozzi , and process of being screened), Archigram There have , however, been attempts the constructivist Victor Pas more to cre- developed a canon of future situations, to adapt architectural design and ate a vision of the future . thought to cinematic techniques or Cinema verite ways of seeing and particularly, Eisen- Hamilton's collage- \"Just what is it stein's film theories. Bernard Tschumi, that makes today's homes so different , personalized the architect of the Park at La Villette, so appealing?\" (1956)-is arguably the Paris, and now Dean of Architecture at first appearance of \"Pop\" and is the key camera but rendered its Columbia Uni versity, made direct to the eclecticism that enters architec- application of Eisenstein's .theory of tural thinking as the modernist vision viewpoint trivial. montage in The Manhattan Transcripts recedes. In this collage , a Lincoln (1981), a conscious attempt to explore a stamp and a comic frame hang on the often focusing on particular life parallel method of design . wall as \"Old Masters\" ; a Ford emblem moments and providing an architecture makes a primitive mask lamp shade; a for Hamilton's Hers is a Lush Situation The Transcripts is a book of num- nude wearing a traditional lamp shade (1958): A haunting collision of lips , bra, bered sequential arch itectu ral d raw- twiddles her nipple as if it were a and elements of a Buick Electra posed ings that attempt, as did Eisenstein's switch ; a \" Delicious Monster\" and a in Constructivist tension in front of an theories for film , to deconstruct tradi- bowl of fruit frame a TV set screening a image of the United Nations building tional architectural thinking. The Man- telephone commercial; a large tinned in New York. This architecture ranged hattan Trans cripts exists in four ham sits on a coffee table straddling between the design of \"Cushicles\" episodes: The Park, The Street, The wall-to-wall carpet. To the left, a house- (1966-67)-moving comfort stations Tower (The Fall), The Block. All make wife \"Hoovers\" a staircase, and the that found their filmic apotheosis in reference to specific locations in Man- vacuum hose is tagged \" Ordinary Barbarella (1968)~and Archigram 's hattan and describe real actions . The cleaners reach only this far. \" Through Walking Cities (1964), capable of Park concerns a murder in Central the \"picture window,\" we see a Warner migrating to where the work or the Park. The images recall, as does the Theatre showing The lolson Story . In weather is-an image that is a precursor process of anal yzing photographs, the the foreground are an armchair draped to The Empire Strikes Back (1980). haunting theme of Antonioni's Blow Up with The New York Times and a tape There were pods, c1ip-ons , paks , gas- (1968), in which a murder is detected recorter on. the floor close by, while a kets , drop-downs, and put-ups. These from an enlargement of a photograph bod)bUilder holds a lolly dumbbell , prolific inventions presaged filmic rep- taken in the luminous dusk of a verdant labeled POP. To post-war Britain, these resentations , and achieved their power London park. \"The Street , \" as looming \"goods ,\" all icons of plenty, by sidestepping architectural conven- Tschumi describes in his foreword, is represented the way forward from the tions. They were located without any \" based on a typical street\" composed atavistic values of Europe and its class reference to spatial unity or organiza- of many different worlds and \"does not wars . Hamilton , however, seldom tional overview. Cities happened at the describe these 'worlds ,' but the borders resisted inserting an element of elite whim and behest of every participant, that describe them. Each border and as in the eye of cinema verite, becomes a space with the events that it design. anyone's preferences were as valid and contains, with the movements that Clearly the collage itself works in the transgress it. 'He gets out of jail; they make love; she kills him ; she is free.' \" optimistic deep-focus mode; it is the In \"The Fall,\" \"home, office, prison , content that foreshadows self-centered 32
Sequence 91 in Greenaway's Drowning by Numbers. I I Two numbered sequences from The Manhattan Transcripts. I I II hotel, asylum find a common denomi- t,..,. .6Dl1'PW1J :1' L ____ J_L __ _ nator in the lethal fall of one of their posed, but also developed from shot to shot, so that the final meaning of each inmates.... The drastic alteration of per- shot depends on its context.\" Like film , the sequence of drawings refers to ceptions caused by the fall is used to a real world, but its coherence is inter- nal, its frames can exist either in har- explore various spatial transformations monious progression or in juxtaposition. Some zoom in on details , enlarging or and their typological distortions. \" In focusing on them , others portray a con- figuration of movement within that \"The Block ,\" \"five inner courtyards of space. Rather than portray the struc- tures in actual form , they are reduced to a simple city block witness contradic- their purest geometric form. tory events ... in a context usually alien As Tschumi explains, \"Their explicit purpose is to transcribe things to their activity.\" normally removed from conventional architectural representation, namely According to Tschumi , the Tran- the complex relationship between spaces and their use; between set and scripts \" use a particular structure indi- script.. .. The Manhattan Transcripts also parallel the most common formula cated by photographs that [like a film plot: The archetype of murder. Other phantasms are occasionally used to frame] either direct or 'witness' underline the fact that perhaps all archi- tecture, rather than being about func- events ... .At the same time, plans, sec- tional standards, is about love and death . By going beyond the conven- tions and diagrams outline spaces and tional definition of use , the Transcripts use their tentative format to explore indicate the movements of the different 33 protagonists-those people intruding into the architectural 'stage set.' The effect is not unlike an Eisenstein film script.\" Like Eisenstein's Film Form and Film Sense , the transcripts exist as tools to explore the limits of the space, movements, and events of the architecture. The Transcripts share film's \"frame- by-frame technique\" and with the film close-up the \"isolation of frozen bits of action .... Spaces are not only com- Actor David Hemmings in BlowUp.
unlikely confrontations .... The frame attraction. Attractions could combine power. permits the extreme formal manipula- thematically and rhythmically much Tschumi fell victim, however, to fal- tion of the sequence, for the content of like musical notes, to bring to the congenial frames can be mixed , super- viewer the full range of an experience. lacy, not because of the attempt to hase imposed , faded in , cut up, giving Both Eisenstein and Tschumi took the architecture on a narrative event, but endless possi bilities to the narrative viewer-and hi s interaction with the because the attempt was superficial, sequence.... medium-into serious account. based in the realm of the surface imag- ery of sets and shots rather than derived Since each frame is isolated from the Intriguingly, Greenaway's Drowning organically, foregoing the rigors of next, architecture can begin to act as a by Numbers shares with the Manhattan Eisenstein's method of construction of se ries of surpri ses, ~ form of architec- Transcripts its ,numbering of se- combining \"attractions\" in a sequence tural jump cut... .Thus space can follow quences. In the Trans cripts , each that evokes an underlying \" theme.\" space, not necessarily in order normally sequence is encoded with a number The Manhattan Transcripts conclude expected but in a series of dramatic and a figure. In Drowning by Numbers , therefore as an assemblage of fragments revelations that can announce a new the scenes one to 100 are enumerated of geometric solids, though admittedly spatial structure.... Devices such as the within the continuity of each sequence. in novel combinations. The \" theme\" insertion of any additional space within however was left unexamined; any evo- a spatial seq uence can change the Tschumi concludes, \"Ultimately cation is the result of chance. meaning of the sequence as well as its the spatial relationships and physical impact on the experiencing subject. \" dimensions of objects that change with Tschumi's design was not unusual ; Tschumi compares thi s to the each viewpoint are like movie shots it has some similarity to film 's complex Kuleshov experiment, where film theo- from above that are intercut with those structuring, but was done without nar- rist Lev Kuleshov intercut identica l from below: Reality is made infinitely rative's unity of time, sequence struc- shots of an actor's affectless face first in a malleable , so that emotive, dramatic, or ture, and generally accessible shot of a bowl of soup, then with a child poetic attributes can change and references or associations . in a coffin, then against a sunny land- unfold .\" scape. The inqui ry meant to explore Perhaps Tschumi's students will film construction and demon strate the Unfortunately the Transcripts were give a more filmically, event-based , relationship between context and linked to film sets, and found formal appropriate architectural form to his content. expression only by reverting to purist ambitions. Some do indeed see this geometry, the basis of modern architec- happening in the work of NATO (Narra- One might also compare Tschumi's ture. Unlike Archigram, Tschumi tive Architecture Today), a group of frames to Eisenstein's \"attractions. \" engaged with the powerful images on young architects surrounding Nigel Eisenstein believed that the shot is the the screen and therefore entered into Coates who took over Tschumi's unit at smallest unit of film that acts to deliver the task of representation : Evocation of the AA, though it seems that the distor- a particular psyc hological stimulus \"events\" in concrete immovable archi- tions in this group's architecture are still (later he began to explore the elements tectural structure. But while Archigram fixated on the set (or surface) rather within the shot), which he called an referred to the fact of film , Tschumi than on the communicating role of film attempted a transfer of its immediate as such. 34
Antonioni's The Passenger (1974). Architecture has given derived from elaborate multiscaled Vietnam a wall, butfilm I t remains an intriguing possibility abstractions. that architects may be able to share a has created its myth. The unravelling of intention is, how- \" theme\" with users of their buildings through the juxtapositions of \"attrac- the world. In the work of architect Mic- ever, much more problematic than it is tions\" activated by their movement hael Graves we are invited into the in the cinema where, whatever else through a building or landscape. Some study of a Princeton mandarin, and can may occur, the film rolls off the spool in architects would argue that this is what engage in the witty combinations of a given sequence. No film with as pri- happens in good building anyway; it's a esoteric sources into elegant composi- vate a construction as Eisenman's archi- matter of degree as to the literalness of tions. In the work of Peter Eisenman, tecture could establish an audience for message that is possible. Like films , there is an attempt to establish the- itself. these ventures are firml y located in the matic organization wider than the orbit realm of communication between of a building, with a layering of forms The power of the continual restate- architect and their community. ment of film , yea r by year, can be com- pared to the 60-year amortization Postmodernism has established a period for a building: Mann's Chinese personally motivated eclecticism as its Theatre grows old as its screen flickers modus operandi: At its best we observe with statement after re-statement of the \" lush situation\" of a cultivated col- how we feel about ourselves in the lector of fascinating pieces from around world. ® THE STUFF THAT DREAMS ARE MADE OF -lAw budget \"THE MALTESE FALCON\" features ~ - Shorts - Documentaries The Ultimate Conversation Piece. This collectors 3Smm. sculpture is 10\" H. cast in 16mm/ Super 16. glossy lead black lighting hydrocal. $45.00 PPD or Collectors Edition Bronze and $250.00 PPD. 2 to 4 sound Wk. Del. Satisfaction Guaranteed Ck., Mo. to. packages competitive ~ rates CLIFTON J. SHEELY CO. 212/925-972J PO 2569 Mercerville, NJ 08619 35
Borrowed Images: Music \"2by Armond White can't be defined. \" Ferry's intimate trib- the maternity theme for She's Ha ving a HB ,\" the melodic, repetitive ute summed up the interchange bet- Baby, powerfully portrayed the fear and Roxy Music song that Bryan ween movies and music as a romantic's wonder of new biological experience. Ferry w rote in 1972 , is a dilemma. This is a general experience These dramatic performances set mu sical take on a Hollywood image- that takes place in the hearts of the against stream-of-consciousness lyrics Humphrey Boga rt in the white tuxedo culturally alert-usually youth-who reflect a film-derived narrative sense. of Casablanca-in which art-rock fans devour movies and music (and now TV) can recognize their own barely under- as their primary culture. T here 's more than a touch of stood affection for movie lore. \"ZHB \" theater-make that cinema-in was the first pop recording to show the \" It wasn't that I have a thing about the music that brought godhood to emotional synthesis of rock and film Bogart,\" Ferry told New Musical Bruce Springsteen. On his Nebraska language. It's still the most poignant Express. \" It could have been any popu- album the obvious references to Ter- musical expression of the evanescent lar idol of the period or later, James rence Malick's Badlands may have rapture of movies. Dean or somebody. \" been just the imaginative coup that put across the New Jersey native's affecta- \"Words can' t express my meanin g/ Last year, both the group Fishbone tion of American heartland earnestness. Notes cannot spell out the score,\" and the rapper Ice-T focused their con- As Dave Marsh's scriptural account of Ferry sang to Bogart, concluding, \"Your temporary social observations through the Springsteen odyssey reports, a cru- memory stays/It lin gers ever/Fade away the imagery of Superfly. They demon- cial step in the performer's folkloristic never. \" His understanding of a cellu- strated the same fa sc ination with development came when his manager loid image as romantic perfection , a movies as Ferry but without his arch presented him with a copy of Andrew constant ideal imposs ible to achieve in pathos. For them , the movie/music Sarris' The American Cinema. Spring- real life , in fact, spells out how movies boundaries become more fused as the steen's manager even talked him become muse to our desires. Hal Will- pop audience automatically cross- through a TV presentation ofJohn Ford's ner's Stay Awake, a compilation album references its cultural life. The Grapes of Wrath, pointing out of songs from Walt Disney cartoons, details the singer had missed . The cul- and John Zorn's movie theme albums It also helps that the film and music tural edHcation of Bruce Springsteen Spillane and The Big Gundown are the industries take advantage of one amounts to a study of the significance of latest record projects to continue this another. Ice-T's title track for Colors American movie mythology. He learned process. etched a more authentic view of L .A. and then applied its self-conscious lan- gangs and drugs than the movie itself, guage to his increasingly \"serious\" \"Movies are a major influence,\" says and Kate Bush's \"This Woman's Work,\" nationalistic repertoire-the weary, Willner, a visionary record producer dreary work-worn vocals and the simple who function s as a creative artist. \" It The cultural education depiction of hard times and poverty that Ford first defined. ofBruce Springsteen Like Ford, Springsteen is a master of amounts to a study of pop sentimentality-of patriotism with vague politics , history without a clear the significance of (and possibl y di v isi ve) ideology. Nebraska is as complex an artifice as American movies \"ZHB ,\" although less honest about the mythology. ambiguity it employs . Where Ferry rues the foll y of his romanticism, Springsteen defends it in Nebraska's penultimate song \" Reason to Believe. \" Borrowing images from any number of Ford epics, Springsteen creates a tab- leau of already-sanctified rituals- baptism , marriage, loneliness-that strikes a naive listener as true . His musical Americana seeks authenticity by reiterating movie myths. To ques- tion Springsteen's po-faced homilies pits one against the nearly invincible legacy of movie archetypes. This worked beautifully during 36
n each of the group's record jackets appro- priate a film or TV still-from Orpheus, Springsteen's Born to Run phase when suasion of hot-rod, cool-cat movies. In The Collector, Flesh, In the Year of the the intermixing of rock and movie his lyric \"There's an opera out on the Pig , Le Samourai , snapshots of James myths was fresh and ardent-before turnpike/There's a ballet being fought Dean, Elvis Presley, Candy Darling, cynical manipulation and commercial out in the alley,\" Springsteen acknowl- and for the final Smiths studio album, a mendacity set in. Born to Run edges West Side Story as a rocker des- fuzzy photograph of Richard Davalos, enhanced rock's \"Last Kiss\" genre of perate for visual mythology. He accepts the forgotten brother in East of Eden. cars, girls, and teenage fatalism the way movies give literal shape (how- These covers made Morrissey's private through a cascade of movie-drenched ever inaccurate) to the rock imagina- film fetishes public. \"Albert Finney has poesy. Its aural effects were reminis- tion. Mark Knopfler described thi s always been immensely dear to me,\" cent of Phil Spector records , but process in the Dire Straits song Morrissey mock-lamented when Fin- Springsteen's vivid lyrics and song \"Skateaway\": \"She gets rock 'n' rolll ney refused to allow hi s likeness on a titles also claimed a Hollywood influ- On a rock ' n' roll station/And a rock 'n' Smiths sleeve. (Terence Stamp had ence: Rebel Without a Cause, Thunder roll dream/She 's makin g movies on previously litigated use of The Collector Road, Splendor in the Grass, West Side location/She don ' t know what it means/ still , forcing Morrissey himse lf to imi- Story. In 1975 Springsteen could jump But the music makes her want to be the tate the pose for later printings.) back over a generation and communi- story/And the story was whatever was/ cate past ideas about teenage disaffec- The song what it was/Roller girl don ' t Morrissey, who once claimed hi s love tion as if new because they had been worry/OJ plays the movies/All night songs were \"mere guesswork,\" also commemorated in the 1961 film of West long.\" Knopfler's last phrase ensures said, \"most of the way I feel comes from Side Story (and an entire subgenre of the perpetuation of fantasies that are the cinema. I fed myself on film s like A juvenile delinquency films). That score imperative for the modern audience. Taste ofHoney.\" He used movies as the and those images were imprinted in Inculcated to the rhythm of 35mm subtext of many Smiths songs to ani- mass consciousness with a permanence dreams , rockers can now see movies in mate his personal mythology of obses- that shows itself again and again-on musIc. sion and Englishness. The Smiths' best screen in The Warriors (1979), on record album , The Queen is Dead, begins with in Dire Straits' Making Movies (1980), N o musical artist has demon- an excerpt from The L-Shap ed Room of and on video in Michael Jackson's strated his subjectivity more pas- Cicely Courtneidge warbling, \"Take \"Beat It\" (1982). sionately than Morrissey, vocalist and me back to dear old Blighty.\" Her fee- lyricist of the Smiths. His designs for ble longing for past illusions has an Springsteen's grandiosity, which antique sound that venerates Mor- early critics complained about, is a Morrissey used movies rissey's own contemporary despair. It's measure of his fantas y engagement the perfect nutty launching pad for with the films about misunderstood as the subtext ofmany Morrissey's rant against the present. In kids and tough living-a robust mixture of street grit and movie glamour. Born Smiths songs to to Run evidences how some movies animate his personal strike unexpectedly deep chords in viewers. West Side Story did it through mythology ofobsession \"prestige\" and flattery teens could not resist. It had less to do with teens' and Englishness. actual experience than with their imag- ined reality-a glorified dramatization that American adolescents have been born into since the late Fifties via movies and TV. In film terms, Aloha Bobby and Rose (also 1975) renewed the same mythology as Born to Run, and it might have hit had Springsteen's opus not conveyed it all even more felici- tously. His lively arrangements of ring- ing guitars, Stax horns, and honky- tonk piano were a better approximation of street life than West Side Story's fin- ger snapping. Springsteen's method of illustrative excess was founded on the kinetic per- 37
\"Rusholme Ruffians\" and \"Everyday textual level-their new sound collages changed every few years,\" Willner Is Like Sunday,\" Morrissey re-creates talk back to the preexisting speeches, says. \"That's why I can have artists like the stylized bleakness of Saturday songs and movies of their experience. The Replacements , Betty Carter, and Night and Sunday Morning and Wish Sophisticated Pop-art guerillas, Public James Taylor on the same side of an You Were Here. Their themes are dis- Enemy plunders the trash bin of cult album. I listen to a lot of things. I tilled into lyrical and rhythmic motifs movies from Flash Gordon to Blue Col- demand to.\" that can be repeated throughout the lar, rearranging bits of music or dia- songs' structure. Morrissey, an exhibi- logue into agit-prop compositions. In The Disney studios supplied Willner tioni stic introvert who is more comfort- \"Prophets of Rage,\" the transformation with original sheet music and a free able speaking through the language of of a famous Richard Pryor line (\"I got a hand at interpretation. He says his idea pop culture, gets an almost permanent right to be hostile , my people are being was \" not to change the songs. I wanted grip on the plangent emotions that an persecuted! \") is a socio-aesthetic feat, to see them explored.\" The recording average film viewe r knows only like Godard intercutting Anna Karina's took three months, stretched over a full fleeti ngly. tears with Falconetti's in Vivre sa Vie. year. \"I had to record a few tracks, then Public Enemy's response to a different, sit back and see where I was,\" Willner Unlike Ferry and Springsteen, Mor- less reputable movie culture is yet intel- says. Aaron Neville's rendition of \"The rissey, the most trenchant white singer lectually agile and imaginative. It's also Mickey Mouse Club Theme\" came of the era, imbues movie images with an act of political resistance. Public first , then Willner hooked up with the erotic longing. Rather than an imposs- Enemy hasn' t just absorbed film, their ible ideal or a poetic rendering of life, sound architects Chuck Ridenhour, JOHN ZORN they represent, like Tennessee Will- Bill Stephney, Hank Shocklee and Eric SPILLANE iams' glass menagerie, a substitute Sadler engage and manipulate movies world. \"I want to go down in celluloid materially. This reflects their impa- N history,\" Morrissey sings in \"Frankly, tience with Hollywood dreams and Mr. Shankly,\" longing to live among rejection of the classic moviegoer's pas- Includes film totems. He surrenders to their sivity. Sixteen years after \"2HB,\" the Two-lane Highway (Feat. Albert Collins) imaginative power even in the most smartest viewers must be aroused to Forbidden Fruit (Feat. Kronos Duartet) bitter Smiths songs that turn kitchen- radical action-that is , creativity- sink realism into absolute morbidity. derived from the movies but distinct West Coast theme-and-program-music savant Van Dyke Parks, who helped Colourbox's sa mpling of movies afrom them. arrange the album's Ringo Starr, Harry recalls Morrissey's method without his bviously, the notion of film plea- Nilsson, and Yma Sumac sessions. obsessive magic . Sound bites from sure has changed along with the \" He's brilliant,\" Willner says. \"Great Duck You Sucker, This Gun's for Hire , audience's inc reasing sophistication fun to work with. I think his vision of and Treasure of the Sierra Madre are about the form. The pop and modernist this record for himself might have been woven between layers of dance pulses eras have enabled the public to articu- truer to Disney's originals, but he gave and pop r&b singing. Made without late their unfathomable enjoyments. the album a start and a picture of where emotional assoc iation , Colourbox's Willner's Stay Awake offers an encyclo- to go.\" movie references have a cold, witty pedia of pop-on-pop neuroses. His effect. They connect movies to music crew of far-flung artists respond to the Stay Awake evoked the art conscious- as a natural part of pop's moderni st stimulus of film rather than just soaking ness of the pop albums that were big cornucopia. it up. He upturns the Disney musical when Willner first got interested in film archive as if it constituted a Pandora's as a teenager. ''At the same time that I It's the same disco-based logic as in box of secret wishes and private thrills. discovered Fellini there were the Beatles' White Album, Her Satanic Maj- \"E = MCz,\" Big Audio Dynamite's This is Willner's fourth pop- esty's Request, We're Only In It For the conscious project. The others were var- Money-conceptual records that were vinyl monograph on the directorial ious artists' collections on Nino Rota, movies for people with the right imag- career of Nicolas Roeg. Excerpts from Thelonious Monk, and Kurt Weill. ination. Also at that time I was a fan of Performance punctuate the steady This time, interpreting the work of an old radio shows, so it's a very easy tran- dance rhythm while the lyrics recount entre.preneurial auteur of children's sition to see music and albums Roeg films from Walkabout to Insignifi- films, Willner finds potent influence in visually. \" cance. More than a tribute, the song the leas t likel y source . His imaginative defines the special appeal Roeg's films mating of unusual artists with unique have for counterculture audiences that material-Sun Ra's Arkestra doing also appreciate Big Audio Dynamite's \"Pink Elephants on Parade,\" Sinead post-punk political di sco. It's the audi- O'Connor on \"Someday My Prince Will ence eager to discover \" that you could Come\" -proves the range of Disney'~ get so much from a picture show,\" as effect. BAD sings-more than what audiences traditionally wanted or expected. Willner describe s each trac k as \"so und mov ies. \" Each performer's How much more is clear in the digital style brings a distinctive tone and appropriation of hip-hop. Public thinking to songs that presumably had Enemy, the era's most adventurous and only a single meaning well understood controversial group, borrows aural by children and adults alike. moments from records and movies , blending the discrete rhythm s into \"I was born in 1956, so my tastes kinetic, dance-inducing patterns. But Public Enemy also has a deeper, inter- 38
Willner says his movie-record pro- carefully structured and improvised Zorn creates a soundtrack for a movie jects answer an expressive need. collages have their own weird, fierce that can only play inside the head. \"There's so much emphasis and atten- imagination . He does what Isham Spillane sounds like the compressed tion put on film and music-it wasn't describes as a film composer's job-\"to performance of more crime films than always like that-that you' re going to make pictures out of the abstract, with you can name , fast-forwarding your have to look at other things for influ- sound. \" consciousness from nostalgia to discov- ence; to make things go farther, you ery. Like the smartest film-loving have to go into the past and adapt your Zorn's pop albums show the influ- musicians-Ferry, Morrissey,' Public approach to it in order to get anything ence of a neglected master and origina- Enemy-Zorn stays awake in the creative done now. When creative peo- tor, Carl Stalling, the head of musical dreamland of movies. ~ ple go into the movies-and they all production for Warner Bros. cartoons in want to-they'll end up doing Porky's the Forties. (Zorn and Willner are curat- CANYON CINEMA III or MeatbaLLs V because that's the ing a commemorative album of Stal- kind of movies being made in this ling's work.) Zorn uses a full orchestra Catalog #6 country. \" and sound effects descriptivel y, re- creating half of the film-watching expe- The complete catalog of films available from Films that feature a Mark Isham rience in which a story emerges by Canyon Cinema, this publication contains score are handy exceptions. From Never suggestion. descriptions for thousands of unique films: Cry Wolf, The Life and Times ofHarvey Animation, Documentary, Experimental/Art Milk, and Mrs. Soffel to Trouble in The speed of Zorn's animated move- Films, Erotic, Narrative, and Classic Shorts by Mind, The Hitcher, Made in Heaven , ments, or montages (there are 60 sec- the Foremost Artists in Cinema. and The Beast, Isham has taken a fresh tions in Spillane's half hour) , is To obtain this 300-page, fully illustrated catalog, approach to movie scoring that is consis- uncannil y cinematic. Many marginal or send name and address to: tent with the transformations recording avant-pop artists have picked up the artists have brought to mo v ie- linearity of film or done faithful genre CANYON CINEMA influenced albums. For The Moderns, parodies (Frank Maya's \"Altoona\" 2325 Third St. #338 Isham submerged his New Age identi- based on Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, San Francisco, CA 94107 fication in a variety of period styles, Stan Ridgway's The Big Heat , even the ranging from jazz to tango , original ersatz cool of The Lounge Lizards, (415) 626-2255 songs to standards. Per director Alan whose leader, John Lurie, does the Rudolph's intentions, Isham's themes cryptic narration on SpiLLane). $13 donation requested fit the emotional tone of a scene or comment on it. Isham's awareness of But Zorn's actual musical structures Pin-Ups • Portraits • Posters • Physique how much musical variety a single film are informed by movies. The musical Poses • Pressbooks • Western • Horror • can contain keeps The Moderns use of contrived sounds that suggest Science Fiction • Musicals • Color Photos • modern-ironicall y by disguising windshield wipers in a rainstorm , or a 80 Years of Scenes From Mallon Pictures instruments in period styles. \"We used clock that ticks restless ly through sev- Rush $2 .00 FOR OUR ILLU STRATED BROCHURE bizarre orchestrations,\" Isham says. eral bars of music conveys the joy of hi s \"Two violins, piano, bass , marimba, cross-cultural inspiration. 134 WEST 18th STREET, DEPT. Fe snare drums as basics-then it gets aug- mented with drum machines and Explaining this inspiration, Zorn NEW YORK, N.Y. 10011 things. I would never have written that credits Stallings' concept of time. \"It (212) 620-8160-61 for an album, but to set the mood of a was far beyond any composer in the time, that orchestration helped. Now I 1940s. Stallings makes John Cage look ORIGINAL AUTOGRAPHED feel comfortable with orchestrations like an old fogey. In effect, Stallings CELEBRITY PHOTOS such as that because I know now that it was creating avant-garde composition. has some effect. \" Just as serialism was going out and a Hollywood legends, superstars. new post-serial ism was coming in. The Quality collection, authenticity guaranteed. J ohn Zorn's recent albums The Big kind Stockhausen did years later. \" The Brochure: L&M Gross Gundown, reinterpreting Ennio sound tracks of cartoons and old movies Morricone film scores, and SpiLLane , an spark Zorn's sensibility. \"I first got 2675 Hewlett Ave Dept F all-original evocation of moods (film introduced to movies through movie Merrick, New York 11566 noir, African-American blues, and music-soundtrack albums, TV shows , Japanese cinema) might be the ulti- the music in cartoons. Fantasia , Phan- MOVIE mate musical expression of what film tom of the Opera with Lon Chaney's STAR mean s in the modern imagination. organ music! That changed my life. \" PHOTOS Zorn's notes for Spillane say, \"I grew up in New York City as a media freak, The revelation showed Zorn \"a great One of the world's largest collections of film watching movies and TV and buying new genre. There's modern , blues, personality photographs, with emphasis on hundreds of records. There's a lot of jazz, rock-film music is a new form. rare candids and European material. Send a jazz in me , a lot of blues , a lot of movie Image and music are one for me. I think S.A.S.E. with want-list to : soundtracks. I'm a mixture of all those of myself as making movies by making things. \" As a sonic mixture, Spillane music. Consequently, I approach com- Milton T. Moore, Jr. works even better than Zorn's retakes of posing like a director, using collabora- the eclectic Morricone because these tors, a scenario. I picture camera angles Dept. Fe and lighting. In high school I studied film, but in college I chose music. Now P.O. Box 140280 I think I've gone full circle by coming Dallas, Texas 752 14·0280 back to film. \" 39
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Bravo Borrowed Images: M Ashot from The Golden Palominos' \"Boy (Go)\" video. sionate kiss, bordering a relief of gold roses. Robert Longo interviewed Important art always by Marlaine Glicksman has something to do In the Eighties, Longo's references with hot-wiring ofthe to film also began to grow more clear. In L ike celluloid people, the men culture at the time. \"Now Everybody (for R. W. Fass- and women in artist Robert binder)\" ('82-'83), a cast-bronze figure Longo's \"Men in the Cities\" precariously balances in front of four are propelled through the frame by panels of a demolished European (Ger- manic?) city. The figure's arms are forces outside them, beyond their con- thrown to the sky, his torso splayed upward by an unseen blow to the dia- trol. Initially inspired by a Rainer phragm. In \"Heads Will Roll\" ('84), a Werner Fassbinder movie still, Longo's sold out-to something they probably so rt of constructivist satellite, a la eight-foot, graphite and charcoal fig- don ' t believe in, all for the love of Sputnik, butts against a large tire- track-textured panel, superimposed ures are hurled askew, engaged in a money or power. But the Tide lady has with David Byrne in his big suit. Here the sense of motion seen in his earlier dance with death. Like other artists of the ability to sell thousands of home work is even more developed, as Byrne seems to travel over the painting's sur- the late Seventies-photographer Cindy viewers in a take, and walk away with a face. A screaming nude man on all fours with a massive skyscraper for wings is Sherman , performance artist Laurie bundle when the director says, \"Cut.\" entitled \"Now is a Creature (The Fly)\" ('86), another clear reference to film. Anderson , and musician David Byrne, For Longo's \"Men\" there is no such In the mid-Eighties Longo took the Longo was fueled by popular culture, escape , no walking away-unless they next step: He began to direct music videos. Produced by Victoria Hamburg especially film. Like many choreogra- leap out of a frame. And some-like the for Longo's aptly titled company Pres- sure Pictures, the first was for The phers, musicians, and photographers, figures in \"The Fall\" ('79) or \"Angels Golden Palominos. It presaged an eclectic assortment that includes he incorporates film references and lan- for a Modern World\" ('81)-do. But R.E .M.'s \"The One I Love\"; Living Colour's \"Middle Man\"; New Order's guage into his work. where Woody Allen's movie idol in The \"Bizarre Love Triangle\"; Ruben Blades' \"Hope's on Hold\"; and Mega- When Longo ran out of movie stills, Purple Rose of Cairo leaps with libera- deth's \"Peace Sells.\" Like his other work, Longo's videos are laden with he duplicated the process, directing tion, Longo's figures exit with images that butt against or are superim- posed upon one another. New Order's rigged live models (often Eric Bogosian frustration. \"Bizarre Love Triangle\" begins with medium shots of twisting blue heads, and Cindy Sherman-friends from the After the single-frame, single-image straight from \"Men in the Cities.\" Later, bodies fall through the air, Downtown art scene) as they dodged \"Men in the Cities,\" Longo moved on another reference to the same series. In his videos, Longo also continues his and dashed objects the artist threw at to multi-figured images in the \"White use of flattened color, and flower and city motifs. \"Midd le Man\" is loaded them, while he stopped motion behind Riot\" and \"Corporate Wars\" series, with images culled straight from the evening news. his cameras. Then, like a director in where figures struggle not on ly with A rena Brains, Longo's half-hour postproduction, Longo would project themselves but with one another, whi le film, culminates his movement the images and direct his studio assis- again some invisible force bears down toward narrative film. In it, Longo cap- tures the decline of the Downtown art tants through their completion. upon them . Longo then began to create scene by unveiling the life of an artist (played by Ray Liotta) who debates the The \"Men\" in \"Men in the Cities\" multi-framed or splitscreen work, char- are monumental, black-and-white acterized by the juxtaposition of seem- serial images dressed like characters ingly cacophonous images . In from The Big Clock or Sweet Smell of \"Pressure\" ('82-'83), a windowless Success, without reference to time or building in relief rests atop the head of personality. They are the familiar yet a man in clown face, though , ironically, archetypal characters of modern cul- his look is not of happiness but distress. ture. Like the housewife in the TV In \"Ornamental Love\" ('83), a demol- commercial who loves Tide above all, ished highway overpass collides with Longo's \"Men\" are already sold- and the heads of a couple locked in a pas- 42
· Multi-Media dollars-and-cents meaning of his art with his critic best friend. Later, he holds a dinner party over Chinese food containers, photographing, then pro- jecting one of his guests as he falls to the floor in an epileptic fit. Written in collaboration with screenwriters Rich- ard Price (The Color of Money) and E. Max Frye (Something Wild), novelist Emily Prager, and actor Bogosian, it stars Sean Young, and R.E.M.'s Michael The struggle of Longo's \"Men in the Cities\" (untitled,1981). Stipe, as well as the writers. Longo switches scenes, characters, and points zine or go downstairs and watch the I followed a girl to Buffalo, which Million-Dollar Movie. was kind of stupid but was the way my of view as one might switch TV chan- life was for a while. She was a home I saw King Kong 50 times . You could economics major. She said they had a nels (a technique also used in his music see King Kong at 9 o'clock in the morn- really good art school in Buffalo . So I ing, 3 o'clock in the afternoon, 8 went to Buffalo. We broke up the first videos, where characters often inter- o'clock at night. I saw so many fucking week. movies. All those John Ford movies. I rupt the music). As in \"Men in the would come up from that basement only Slowly I got much more involved in when my mother called me for dinner. making my work. I discovered the Cities,\" the characters in Arena Brains healthiest thing is if somehow you have It's like the three things in my life some kind of self-love where the only inhabit an imposing New York-style were acting with toys, a stage set, and thing that you want to do is your work. theater things ; then drawing and And in Buffalo there was this horrible city where ominous buildings loom watching TV. Which is kind of my life climate. But the great thing was that it now. I make art, I do theater pieces and had the Albright Knox Art Gallery and overhead. They are also unnamed I make movies. It's like I haven't grown Media Studies with [filmmakers up at all. It's just a bigger panelled Hollis] Frampton and [Paul] Sharits. types, familiar yet anonymous, and like basement. We started a place called Hallwalls and invited [filmmaker] Michael Snow. It the figures in \"Corporate Wars\" and You never wanted to be afilmmaker? was a perfect setting, in a weird way. It just never entered my mind. I \"White Riot,\" they smash into one absolutely believed the medium. The That whole structuralist filmmaking aspect of the process never entered my group is part of my background and another, as though atomic particles at mind. I mean , it's like, film's made? I weapons that I used to make my work. never thought about making art either. And I used to work for Sharits who Three Mile Island. When I was younger, I was really into made the Flicker films, doing his draw- sports. I had these fancy ideas to grow ing and making his films. Longo is now preparing for a fall up and play professional. But I never grew. I was exactly the sa me size I am I used to hang out at the Bleecker retrospective of his work at the Los now when I was in eighth grade. and the Carnegie, watch all those fuck- So I went to college for music. I ing movies. I'd go and see Fassbinder. Angeles County Museum of Art. He flunked out of music. And then I I'd go see every art movie ever made. thought, Oh, marine biology-I like And I was really fascinated by the stills. and Victoria Hamburg are writing a the beach [Laugh]. I got very scared when I flunked out of all these colleges. I started appropriating the stills to feature film entitled Johnny Mnemonic, I went back to a community college at make my work. But then I couldn't night and got a day job. I was very afford the magazines, or I'd buy the based on a short story by William Gib- fortunate to take a drawing class with a magazines and the books and there really amazing woman in her sixties weren't any good pictures in them. So I son, from his collection Burning who helped me. I went from being a kid started describing to myself what who sat in the back of the class to one images I wanted and would take the Chrome. To be directed by Longo, the who sat in the front. And I realized , pictures to make the work from. So I Well, shit, why not? I never thought I'd ended up predicting-rather than film is a thriller about a guy who stores be successful in art, I thought I'd teach appropriating. art. information in his head-\"like a human By doing that, particularly with the early black-and-white \"Men in the brain vault,\" Longo explains-and will range in style from Alphaville to The Terminator, with a \"little bit of Diva\" thrown in. - M .G. H OW has your work evolved? One thing I could always do is draw. The basis of all the media that I work in-film, performance, or static work-is drawing. My parents never established a role model for me. They watched TV. And I lived in this panelled basement down- stairs, in tract housing on Long Island, that Levitt built. And every day, I'd come home from school and either have cookies and milk and look at Life maga- 43
Cities\" drawings, it exploded the whole I'll never show it to anyone. It became I became frustrated trying to do vid - body of work. All of a sudden, it was the medium. I took the poison in a eos. I called the chairman of Electra totally encapsulated-I was totally weird way. And when Anton [Fier] of dependent on myself. I could take peo- The Golden Palominos and I sat and Robert Krasnow-I knew he's an ar~ ple and make them do the drawing. looked at it, Anton said, \"I want your And the drawings were never about the art, I don't want MTV.\" collector. And I said, \"Look, I want to single drawings, they were always do this video for a friend of mine. I'll do about a sequence of drawings, a combi- SO that night, I went home and I took nation between [photographer Ead- A Page of Madness [by Japanese direc- it for very little money. I know his music weard] Muybridge's sequence photo- tor Teinosuke Kinugasa, 1926] and laid real well. I feel real strong about it.\" graphs and a dolly shot around some- it down at the flatbed, and cut all my images into it. There are maybe five He was going to start a home-video body. Less a sequence and more like a seconds of A Page ofMadness left in it. division at Electra. He said, \"Look, we sequential rotation. [And with it] I created the lexicon of the may not be ready right now to do a vocabulary of techniques that I would video, but I want you to do anything So you were essentially working like later elaborate on: With the New Order you want for a half-hour.\" So Victoria a director even though you were working video, I took the fast-cutting technique Hamburg, Jonathan Bender and I pro- with stills ? and enhanced it. It was more like a new duced Arena Brains. element of structural technique. I didn't know what it was . As an I had this script sitting around for a artist, just as in history, your work goes Robert Longo direc'ts Arena Brains. couple of years that Richard Price [The through shifts. It's like a wheel turning, Color of Money] had written for me for like the continuity of time. Both histori- Do you use your images to augment Eric Bogosian called Steel Angel. There cally and personally, there's a formal or to illustrate the music? was no way in the world I was ever going period , a romantic period and a man- to get it made because it's a really nasty nerist period. I never want to illustrate the music. story-it's a,lot like Talk Radio-about But you can evoke the possibilities of an asshole nightclub comedian. The formal period is finding what it the music. There's a section in New is that you're doing. You believe in it, Order where the music went 000- So Richard, E. Max Frye [Something but you don't know what it is, and it's 0000000000000, like a whirlpool. Wild], Emily Prager, Eric and I all really raw. Then you get better, and So I filled a toilet bowl with blue paint wrote little sections about a guy trip- better, and it touches the time and the and flushed it. No one will ever know ping who wants to go out and buy a public. The next stage is the romantic it 's a toilet . That to me is an sandwich. It was a loose narrative with period where you really know what it is illustration .. a lot oflittle short movies in it. We could that you're doing, and you really want make use of different techniques and to load it with confidence. That's when The ending with the hand on the styles of storytelling, to practice. At the my work starts to seem somewhat bom- head and stuff like that is literally a same time, it was an exorcism, a docu- bastic. It's on overload , 'cause I knew com plete ri poff from Michelangelo An- ment of the ending of the Downtown what I was doing and wanted to convey tonioni's L'Avventura. sensibility in Manhattan, of that whole it so much. And then my work started punk scene. It was really a send-up of to fade . That's the mannerist period, But it seems you'd have more artistic Chelsea Girls or Purple Rain. which is the most dangerous period of freedom doing the videos than you do all. It's when you're really, really good making movies. In a perverse way it was about my at what you ' re doing, but you forgot problems about being an artist: The why you ' re doing it in the first place The great thing was that by my artist who is in me is a caricature of all [Laugh]. being an artist they knew what they the artists of my generation who have were getting. That's why they came to just become so inflated with our H OW did the music videos come me in the first place. success. about? I always loved music as a formal On Ruben Blades', I ran out of The characters seem like stock char- mechanism , in the sense that it was free tricks. It is the most illustrated. I cringe acters from commercials. Almost of content, that it was all about what it looking at it because it screams, \"I want generic . sounded like , and that anyone could to make movies!\" bring to music what they wanted to see. Kind of like archetypes? There's that Now, all of a sudden, rock videos were I hate what I see on MTV. I mean, tits fuzzy line between commercials and telling you what the music looked like , and ass and shit like that, I mean come movIes now. trying to force you to see, rather than to on.. . evoke what's there. Advertising is probably the most sig- How did Arena Brains come about? nificant visual development in the last When I started to do the videos, I 30 years. To me, art has always been a was young and real cocky. I thought that kind of commercial for culture. Art is if Hollyw~)Qd was buying my art, of about selling something-you have a course they'd want me to make movies. [finite] period of time to unload it-it's I mean , there was no way in the world it not a product, it's more a way of think- was ever going to happen. So I realized ing, a strategy. So that makes it a criti- that for me to cut my teeth and to learn, cal message. I had to do rock videos. Finally, I did two videos for The Golden Palominos. When you look at a piece of art hang- The first one I made like an MTV video. ing on a wall, it's interesting how many times you can actually look at it versus watching a movie. For art, that time outlasts the movies. Movies had a really positive effect on my art , however, in the sense that it became less depen- dent on being reproducible, in maga- 44
- THE MOST IMPORTANT PUBLISH- The Motion Picture Guide ,. de- Over 53,000 movies ING EVENT OF THE CENTURY FOR scribes and reviews virtually every covered in depth REAL MOVIE LOVERS. English-language feature film ever made ••• plus thousands of foreign The Motion Picture Guide offers films ••• with remarkably complete individual film critiques ••• plot casts and credits. synopses ••• fascinating back- ground material ••• extensive cast Roger Ebert says, \" . •• The Motion listings including the role played by each actor ••• complete production Picture Guide is a marvelously enter- credits ••• videocassette availability ••• and much more. taining 'read' for anyone who loves movies • •• the most complete ency- And your Guide will always be up clopedia of film ever published, 'a de- to date because a Supplement is pub- finitive reference work'.\" And from lished annually, covering all the films Anthony Perkins, \"••• A glimpse into of the previous year. one of these volumes and you 're hooked for the evening!\" What \"Gone With the Wind\" is to epics ••• what \"Singin' in the Rain \" is to musicals••• what \"Casablanca\" is to love stories ••• what \" Citizen Kane\" is to cinema technique ••• that's what The Motion Picture Guide is to film reference works! Call toll-free or send the coupon today and find out how you can add the Guide to your home library. Call toll-free 1-800-541-5701 To receive free information about The Motion Picture Guide, PLUS ••• Yes! Please send me a brochure illustrating and describing for readers of this maga- The Motion Picture Guide;\" sample pages, and a movie quiz. Also zine, a special opportunity to re- let me know how I can obtain the 1986 annual supplement to the ceive the 1986 annual supplement to Guide absolutely FREE. The Motion Picture Guide, I absolutely FREE! I Print Name I I I Address I I © CineBooks , Inc. IL __C_it_y _______________S_ta_te________Zi_p________ .J
zines, for instance. Art is about a that happened in our generation that tysburg. I'd love to make a movie about physical presence, an objectness, that was about what art was. Which is rele- the Civil War. could never occur in a movie. vant in relationship to Reagan talking about family values. Fuck family Why? How did you manage to combine art values-the family is in trouble now. It's the beginning of the America that and entertainment? You've said enter- And it wasn't any better then. It was we live in, and the reaL beginning of the tainment is art expLoding at you. just hidden. Mom was an alcoholic and American industrial revolution. It's the the kids were drug addicts. freeing of blacks, the forcing of Amer- It's also more linear in a sense, more ica to stay together [versus] states consumable. Like the whole idea that they don't rights. It's the new America in the make movies like they used to. Of North, where people spoke different Entertainment? course not. They were made then, why languages and had different religions, Yeah. It doesn't have the respon- should they do them now? We have to fighting the South, where they were all sibility that art has. Entertainment's make things that are different. And the the same. An example of old men send- purpose is to hit, set you on fire and present will always look worse com- ing young people off to war. The whole then fade away. Whereas art is like pared to the past because there's Less of system of the economics, of tract hous- uranium or plastic. Something that just now than there is of the past. How can ing, developed then. never will go away. you compare the last 10 years to the last I went to the re-creation of Get- Art has to be able to identify its time, 300? It gets ridiculous. tysburg last summer. Talk about thea- bu t also talk to the fu ture about that ter: 15,000 Confederate guys, time. It has a responsibility to report. Governor Tom Kean referred to hundreds deep in a line a mile long, Entert?inment is about a direct fix into Leave it to Beaver in his State of New emerge out of a row of trees into a wheat the culture at the time that it occurs. If Jersey address. field. You only see them from their you look at a 15th-century painting, you knees up. And they start walking can probably get a vague idea of what Well, it is weird when Reagan is toward you silently. The only thing the guy in the 15th-century was looking saying, \"Make my day,\" and then Bush that's moving is the wheat. at. But pop entertainment can't give says, \"Read my lips.\" You don't see their feet or their legs you that. It gives you a mythologic or moving, you see them floating , coming nostalgic confusion. Reagan as a president made total at you. And they walk half a mile across I came from such a negative sensi- sense to the generation of artists that I this field to where the Union position is. bility; I thought that through negative came out of. The Democrats are so By the time they get there three- thinking you can make positive imag- stupid, they are still caught somewhere quarters of them are dead. So it was the ery. But now I want to think positive, to end of that whole European way of do positive things. I want to be able to To me, art has always fighting. The whole barbaric idea of have some effect. And to be successful war was ended there. You could load it is not about affecting my life so much as been a kind of with contemporary issues. it is how can I affect someone else's life. What do you think the future will Artistic responsibility is mon- commercial for culture. bring? strously important: Albert Speer is a Art has always been this amoeba, perfect example of an irresponsible in the Kennedy media revolution. The constantly looking for something to artist. Republicans took it one step past that. absorb into it, to help you break a new There's a kind of equation. Making They realized that now you really need trend. As you get older you start to see art is a privilege. And if you can be an actor. You really need someone who trends. You start to realize that before successful at making art, then you must can handle the media. there were hippies and punks there take the success and invest in the were greasers. You could actually expe- privilege. When Reagan got elected, it created rience shifts, you can see them the possibility for strong art because it happening. Y our work emerged at the same was now political. It was interesting to In merchandising, you also see the time as Cindy Sherman's, Laurie read the paper again. Bush is a little invention of shifts. What haven't we Anderson's, and David Byrne's media- scary-he's actually very scary. His exploited yet? WATCHES! We'll make derived work . That movement is dying advertisements were just unbelievable. every different kind of watch. now. SNEAKERS! We haven't exploited The campaigns have become about sneakers, now we'll make .... Some- Not so much dying as drying up. And advertising, about media image. body's looking at human beings and we're still going. going, BELT BUCKLES! We haven't Artists have to be the people who are done belt buckles yet. Artists don't just dream shit up. aware of this. Because who's going to So, predicting what will happen is They respond to something that's hap- pay attention? You can't count on Mar- confusing. It's really pretty clear what pening. And that enables them to illus- vin Kitman-you know, the guy who the major shift is going to be. It isn't trate it. Throughout history, art is this writes that news report in Newsday. You nostalgia for the Sixties but [an aware- incredible report upon its time. Paint- can't depend on the media critics to tell ness] that you can't go on being irre- ing pictures of sunsets right now you what's going on. There has to be sponsible. Art will probably not be real doesn't necessarily make sense- some kind of understanding of that popular again. It's going through the unless you're painting sunsets near landscape. cycle. Three Mile Island. But now-it's entertainment. ~ A re there subjects you'd Like to Important art always has something make fiLms about? to do with a hot-wiring of the culture at My dream movie is [based on] a the time. Whether it's fraudulent in it's book called Killer AngeLs by Michael appearance or not. There's so much art Shaara. It's about the Battle of Get- 46
- Borrowed Images: Dance 35mm Next Wave Festival of the E ightie·s. While many major postmodern by Bob Morris dance eve nts of the Sixties and Seven- Y OShikO Chuma, Stephen ties could be performed in street Petronio, and Fred Holland, clothes and staged in gymnasiums and three young postmodern cho- loft spaces, in the Eighties they also reographers with diverse visions, all began to surface as splashier hi-tech find inspiration in film . They represent events produced by fin anciall y the most recent wave of an avant-garde endowed institution s (BAM) or as fea- in choreography that originally forced ture acts in trendy East Village clubs the world to accept that any kind of like The Pyramid and the now-defunct movement, natural or formal, when 8 B.C. framed in a dance context could be called dance. Stephen Petronio dances in \"#3. \" M oving away from the original use of poetic minim alism and cool Fueled by the Happenings staged in transition to film several years later, natural moveme nt derived from ordi- the late Fifties and early Sixties, the Rainer projected a moving image of nary activities, much of the younger postmodern dance movement has legs from the knees down , walking generation of pos tmodern choreogra- always involved interdisciplinary col- toward a volleyball on a screen that phers embraces an ironic and stylish laboration . Over the past 25 years, inde- dominated the stage. Li ve dancers theatricality in their work. For the most pendent filmmakers including Jonas walked in patterns behind the screen, part, it was film 's formal, graphic, even Mekas, Stan Vanderbeek, Shirley their legs dwarfed by the film images . spiritual quality that intrigued choreo- Clarke, Doris Chase, and Walter Gut- graphers through the Sixties and Seven- man, musicians John Cage, Philip In the mid-Seventies, choreographer ties. Represe nting a New York cross Glass , and David Byrne , and visual Lucinda C hilds collaborated with artist section of the most recent activi ty in the artists Robert Morris, Elizabeth Mur- Sol LeWitt on the mesmerizing Dance. field , postmodern choreographers ray and David Salle, among others , LeWitt hung an enormous scrim in Chuma, Petronio, and Holland have have contributed to its legacy. front of the opera house stage at the shifted with the rest of the avant-garde Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) and toward the narrati ve, humorous, Film made its first appearance on the projected close-ups and long shots of splashy, and emotional. In addition to postmodern dance scene as a design the same intricately patterned , mini- using film s and media in their colorful element to enhance and comment visu- mal dance the dancers were performing work, they are heavily influenced by ally on the choreography. Early on , from behind . This was one of the suc- the movies. Merce Cunningham projected abstract cessful collaborations at BAM that pre- film images as a fleeting backdrop for ceded the slickly packaged , large-scale Yoshiko Chuma, whose company his dances. Later, he created eclectic The School of Hard Knocks has been choreography for film (with Charles performing with her since 1982, started Atlas) and TV (with Nam June Paik) not as a dancer/choreographer but as a that specifically referred to the two- filmmaker. When she came to America dimensionality of the screen. Contem- from Japan in 1977, Chuma met film- porary choreographer Twyla Tharp, maker Jacob Burckhardt and soon after now working in a more classical context was doing move ment in front of his at the American Ballet Theater, also Bolex in Maine. expressed interest in the two- dimensional screen as \"space\" when \"When we got the film back, I star- she choreographed pieces conceived for ted editing on a Moviola,\" Chuma says. the experimental TV lab at PBS and \"I was amazed at how you can go for- later, for director Milos Forman's films ward or backward , fast or slow. You can Hair and Amadeus. cut together one movement to another or take them apart. You control all the I n 1962, one of the first \"official\" action and movement with your tWo postmodern dance concerts at hands! So the Moviola became like a Judson Church (NYC) opened with drug for me , and I would edit for 12 chance-edited film footage, outtakes, hours at a time . We fini shed seven and a clip from W.C. Fields' The Bank movies in three yea rs, all of them very Dick. Later, in 1968, as part of her low-budget 16mm black and white. In seminal evening-length work The Mind film , you have images cut into scenes Is A Muscle , Yvonne Rainer choreo- and frames , and that's how I approach graphed a dance called \"Film.\" Antici- putting move ment together in my pating her eventual and complete choreography.\" 47
C huma choreographed her first live Created in collaboration with pop work has recentl y become more formal performance in 1983. Called Five singer Nona Hendryx, who performed than Chuma's, it is equally as frantic. In Cars Pile Up, it was a \"rush-hour several of her own songs in th~ piece, a concert of works presented in Decem- extravaganza\" of 100 dancers in London The Big Picture dumped choreography, ber, Petronio used two percussive musi- Fog raincoats performing at a frantic text and music into what looked like a cal compositions, one by David Linton, pace. At the time, Chuma had just randomly structured dance with traces the other by Peter Gordon, to achieve a finished shooting a film with a cast of of a pseudo spy-flick plot. Chuma cho- cinematic quality packed with quick 100 performers that included Eric reographed her version of cuts, pans, edits, varied angles, zooms, and pans. Bogosian , whom she knew as curator of zooms, angle changes, and movie His dances are sexy with an obvious dance at the Kitchen Center for Video, director-like interruptions in an ambience of abstract violence and Music, Dance, Performance and Film attempt to aestheticize the point of danger. in SoHo. With her debut as a choreogra- view of a moviegoer. pher, Chuma embraced live perfor- \"Because I'm always looking for mance, leaving her last film unfinished. In choppy scenes set between short movement ideas, I rely a great deal on sequences of dancing, her company the look of the film ,\" Petronio says. Marked by quickly cut sequences of performed various \" takes\" in which \"Zooming and panning have become talk, pop-song singing, music, sound, they played travelers on an international part of my vocabulary. I run my dancers acting, and a rambunctious style of flight from Berlin to New York. They up close to the audience for a zoom dancing inspired by everyday move- would act out an invented movie, direct effect, or I pan them by having them ments , Chuma stages her pieces in the- one another in it, and describe the repeat a movement over and over again aters, on streets, and recentl y, in a action by reading sequences from a as they move across the stage. \" swimming pool in Astoria , Queens. In scripted \"screenplay\" or commenting addition to her fascination wi th formal Petronio did not discover dance until film structure, much of her work is inspired by the filmmaking process, Yoshiko Chuma and The School of Hard Knocks. he was in college. In 1979, when he and man y pieces have Hollywood- started dancing professionally with Tri- based titles . on their performances, while the sha Brown, he also began creating his painted backdrop gradually zoomed own pieces. \" I love the whole drama of the into location , from a view of the Earth, movie-making process,\" Chuma says. to a Times Square movie theater \"I wasn't a trained dancer, and I \"For me, the location itse lf is like the entrance. never went to the theater, so film was performance. I got interested in acting, my exposure to culture,\" Petronio says. especially the moment before and after \"The idea comes from the camera \"I was looking at a lot of Hitchcock. His they shoot a scene, the cut and the take. eye and what it does to scale,\" Chuma camera moves were so self-conscious I like to look at the faces of the actors says. \"The script starts with a view of and beautiful that I stole them for my before the take, then after, relaxing. the Earth and ends at the movies. But choreography. He's a great one for illu- The actual filmed moment is compact as you zoom in along the way, you see minating an object and having it jump and concentrated into a short period of different aspects of making and watch- out at you from its background. I love time , but there's so much going on ing movies. While one character directs that technique. around it. I started to adapt all of these a scene, another dances or performs it, t ypes of moments into my and a third has a personal recollection \"In Suspicion , Cary Grant walks up choreography. \" triggered by the scene. The Big Picture the stairs with a glass of milk, and as he is how we live. Each individual is the comes closer to the camera, you're face In 1984, Chuma created a four-part director. \" to face with this glowing glass of milk. I event called A Night in Millionaire's just stole that image right off the screen Club at the Pyramid Club. Once a C horeographer Stephen Petronio and had 20 dancers in identical suits week for a month, Chuma, with her demands pure technical virtu- holding glasses of milk. I know the clapboard and company of non-dancers osity from his dancers , and though his would prepare 25 \" takes\" to perform. Acting as director, Chuma might say, \"Scene Two . Go!\" and one of her per- formers would begin acting. Or she might say, \"Take 45: Two guys naked with their socks and shoes on in the corner. Slow-motion movement. Go!\" With a soundscore collage by Burck- hardt consisting of movie sound effects and melodramatic soundtrack music from King Kong , The Big Sleep, and other detecti ve movies, Chuma and The School of Hard Knocks ended up performing 100 \"ra ndom takes\" in four nights. Pushing the movie idea even further, Chuma recently presented The Big Pic- ture, which derived its structure and inspiration from the language of film. 48
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