CHANNELN MANHATTAN'S MOVIECHANNEL € YORK FILl F€~TIYAL TRIPUT€ ATTENTION NEW YORK FILM LOVERS! Starting September 28th, UPTOWN kicks off its 3rd Annual New York Film Festival Tribute featuring internationally acclaimed films such as THE DRAUGHTSMAN'S CONTRACT, FITZCAR- RALDO, NAPOLEON, SEEING RED and MOONLIGHTING. It's a special celebration that brings the best in international cinema right into your home. And that's not all! UPTOWN also brings you classic films, current features and foreign films as well as tributes to the world's finest direc- tors. As an UPTOWN customer you will be able to see BERLIN ALEX- ANDERPLATZ, A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE, LA TRAVIATA, THE TWELVE CHAI RS, films by Bunuel and the Marx Brothers, PAN DO- RA'S BOX, and the cable premiere of PAULINE AT THE BEACH in the coming months. It's simple-UPTOWN, Manhattan's Moviechannel offers you the world's greatest films at an affordable price. Don't miss out! Order UPTOWN* now by calling Group W Cable at 567-5150 Ext.10 * UPTOWN is an optional service available only with Metrovision® basic cable service. Group W Cable is available in all serviceable buildings in Manhattan north of 86th Street on the eastside and north of 79th Street on the westside.
•Sl•SSUe published bimonthly by the Film Society of Lincoln Center Volume 20, Number 5 September-October 1984 Indianapolis passes a statute de- H claring pornography a crime against women. Scientists sug- Mean streets and slippery mor- gest that men who watch mov- als. Black knights and yellowing ies like Friday the J3th and 2S¢ paperbacks. All part of the Swept Away take on the hostile hard-boiled world. Novelists attitudes of rapists. And Brian tailing the underside of urban De Palma makes a movie, Body life made a lasting impression Double, confronting every taboo on Hollywood films. Now we in the sociologist's book. To return the favor. In a thoughtful open our discussion of sex and dazzler of an opening essay, violence we presen t excerpts Terry Curtis Fox plots the co- from the Body Double script ordinates of these nightmare ro- (page 9). Marcia Pally investi- mances (page 30). Then gates the political, legal, and ar- Jonathan Rosenbaum writes tistic implications of feminist on Cornell Woolrich (page 36), puritanism (page 12), and has it Richard Gehr on Mickey Spil- out with De Palma (page 13 lane (page 38), Meredith Brody on David Goodis (page Mozart '--\"'L........ 46), Marcia Froelke Coburn on Patricia Highsmith (page The film they said couldn't (or 44), and David Chute on Marc shouldn't) be made is now on the screen as a sprawling musical bio- Behm pic. Amadeus reunites the producer and director of One Flew Over the 19htrope ......... . Cuckoo's Nest, Saul Zaentz and Milos Forman, who talk about Clint Eastwood's Tightrope is a their unusual partnership with melodrama about a good cop Harlan Jacobson (page 50). Au- with a strange kink: he has sex thor Peter Shaffer recalls his with whores in bondage. No doubts and satisfactions in adapt- matter. Tightrope is the one big ing his play to film (page 50). And hit of the late summer. In a rare Michael Walsh disputes the film's extended interview, Eastwood claims to accuracy (page 51). discusses his macho image, his enduring popularity, and his theory of mise en scene . David Thompson was there to listen. Also in this issue: Steve Martin ................ 24 Television: Donkey Days ..... 74 What does a wild and crazy guy do The Democrats threw themselves a Journals ..................... 2 when he turns 38? Go serious? Get rousing party, but TV didn't stay for Mary Corliss samples the fare at a wet serious! The silver-haired smoothie all obt. By Richard Zoglin. Cannes festival. Max Linder, the has turned in his most complete per- French silent-screen comic, is back in formance to date in All of Me. Story Industry: Movie Palaces...... 76 a new compilation by his daughter and interview by Jack Barth. Now they want to tear the old Chicago Maud; Sheila Benson pays tribute. Theatre down. Frank Segers reports. Ermanno Olmi . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 58 Bertrand Tavernier. . . . . . . . .. 18 The wri ter-director-prod ucer-editor- Books: 'D.W. Griffith' ........ 78 The former film critic has a lovely costumer-set designer of The Tree of A review by Richard T. Jameson. new film, A Sunday in the Country, Wooden Clogs has a wondrous new which he previews for our interviewer film, opening this fall. A conversation Back Page: Quiz #9 . . . . . . . .. 80 Dan Yakir. with Harlan Kennedy. Cover photo: Columbia Pictures . Editor: Richard Corliss. Senior Editor: Harlan Jacobson. Business Manager: Sayre M . Advertising and Manager: Tony Impavido. Art Director: Elliot Schulman. Cover Design: Mike Uris. West Coast Editor: Anne Thompson (on leave). European Correspondent: Harlan Kennedy. Research Consultant: Mary Corliss. Circulation Assis[ant: Deborah Freedman. Back Issues: Marian Masone. Accountant: Domingo Hornilla, Jr. , Editorial Interns: Marlaine Glicksman, Amal Morcos. Execu[ive Director, Film Society of Lincoln Center: Joanne Koch. Second class postage paid a[ New York and addi[ional mailing offices. Copyright © 1984 by the Film Sociery of Lincoln Center. All rights reserved. The opinions expressed in FILM COMMENT do not represent Film Society of Lincoln Center policy. This publica[ion is fully protected by domestic and international copyright. FILM COMMENT (lSSNOOI5-119X), 140 West 65th Street, New York, N.Y. 10023. U.S.A., is made possible in part by suppOrt from [he New York State Council on the.Arts and the Na[ional Endowmen[ for the Ar[s. Subscription rates in [he United States: $12 for six numbers, $22 for twelve numbers. Elsewhere: $18 for six number, $34 for twelve numbers, payable in U.S. funds only. New subscribers should include [heir occupations and zip codes. Postmaster: send address changes to: FILM COMMENT, 140 West Sixty-fifth Street, New York, N.Y. 10023 U.S.A.
ournals 'Paris, Texas' in Cannes, France .. .Max at FILMEX MELLOW MIDDLE-AGE Gunilla Nyroos in Hjulstrom ' s A Hill rectors are emerging from the wilder- on the Dark Side of the Moon. ness, groping their way back to the cen- The Cannes Chamber of Commerce ter. Sometimes it works, as in Chantal must have demanded a closed-door keeper; goes to the station to meet his Akerman's contribution to the omnibus meeting with God after this May's Inter- son's family, brings them back to his film Paris vu par . . .20 Years Later: two national Festival of Film. For the second country home to eat, play, and sleep; Left Bank ragamuffins literally sing for straight year, the weather in this Riviera receives his vivacious daughter (Sabine their supper, and the screen ignites with resort-usually a living travel poster for Azema), shares a private moment with impish warmth. Sometimes it doesn't, the good life-was cold and soggy. In- her at a local cafe; sees his guests off; as in Werner Herzog's Where the Green deed , during the 1984 fortnight of films falls into a reverie of sweet moments Ants Dream, a solemn and straightfor- there were only three days totally with his late wife; ruefully considers his ward account of the confrontation be- without precipitation. life as an academic painter against the tween an Australian development com- work of his more daring contemporaries; pany and the aborigines whose sacred Most of the 35,000 producers, distrib- and finally turns to his easel with the land the company plans to displace. utors, and journalists at Cannes each intention of starting anew. Herzog perfunctorily tries to be fair to year are dedicated cinephiles, to whom both sides, but he is no mediator; his the perks of sun and surf are the merest It is hard to say whether Tavernier films are always on the side of the primi- distractions. But there are a few frivolous sees his own earlier work (seven films, tive, mysterious, and magical. Herzog souls who would just as soon catch a tan including The Clockmaker and Coup de should return into the swirling mists of as catch a cold. For them Cannes was a torchon) as too academic; his cool, stud- legend, fantasy, pestilence, and obses- disappointment: no beach soirees, no ied films are, after all, a conscious reac- sion. That is where his films live, and topless starlets, no idle strolls down the tion to the anarchic vitality of the New come alive for his audiences. Croisette, just a numbing ritual ofseeing Wave. Whatever the director's personal the best of international cinema in the views, Sunday in the Country is free, sub- Three old masters showed their latest theaters and wringing out wet socks tle, gracious , conveying with deft brush wares, all disturbingly personal visions, back in the hotel room. Perhaps they strokes the poignancy of a life that looks all released in the U.S. (in one form or may be conditioned to try Berlin next in retrospect like a fading golden dream, another) soon after the festival. Ingmar February. wondrous and all too brief. The cast is Bergman's After the Rehearsal is a twi- exemplary-a true ensemble, a real light meditation on life and art, and on For the rest of us, rotten weather con- family-from Ducreux, carrying the how each manages to trip the other up; centrated the attention wonderfully. weight and wisdom of his years like an the three main actors are wonderful, as is Imagine: a Cannes Film Festival in aristocratic soldier, to Azema, who bus- usual in a Bergman film, with young which the main attraction was films! tles into the film midway through and Lena Olin a lovely and passionate addi- And a tolerable batch of them as well. In lights it up with the megavoltage of a tion to the filmmaker's rep company. the main competition (23 films out of Mary Lou Retton smile. John Huston's Under the Volcano, a dour the 1,000 or so available in screening and remorseless black comedy featuring rooms or on cassettes) the level of com- The past was very much with us at a brilliant star turn by Albert Finney as petence was high , though cinematic in- Cannes: in the settings for the films, in the Consul, proved only that Malcolm spiration and audacity was lacking in all many characters' nostalgia for days gone Lowry's novel is unfilmable, at least by but one or two. Perhaps, two decades by, and in the filmmakers' themes and Huston. Sergio Leone's Once Upon a after the coming-of-age excitement of styles. Even the most adventurous di- Time in America was discussed in these the New Wave and its attendant ripples, pages last issue. A chaotic epic that man- cinema has hit its mellow middle age, ages to suggest that all men are gangsters and critics have no sterner expectations with their women, the film deserves to for films than they would have for the be seen in America in Leone's three- best wines from a mediocre vintage. hour-47-minute version. It will be this fall, minus three minutes of rough stuff Best news first: Bertrand Tavernier's excised to secure an R rating. Sunday in the Country. Phrases like \"small canvas,\" \"delicate palette,\" and The woman as embittered victim- \"impressionistic color\" spring too read- this was a theme that ran through the ily to mind, for this is a film about an three movies just mentioned and in aged painter during one day in 1911 . On many other festival films as well. But the surface, not a lot happens. The old sometimes a woman could stir up a stew man, Ladmiral (Louis Ducreux), on her own. In the excellent Swedish wakes, dresses, consults with his house- film A Hill on the Dark Side o/the Moon a 2
Get 8 great TennesseeWilliams plays FREE and take any3 books for only $1 with membership in the Fireside Theatre Book Club. FOV1l MAYS BY \"\",t\".., chcl<h\"\", I 6064 by David Hare ~@and *7138 ~NiCho~~ Not available In Canada Nickleqy ..,................._.... s.....a.,.....nB\"no\"o.U...C.... 6700 WI'~~·c:~·' aoo~ AIIOl1 l11C'\" HOWU04U\\JWI 6965 -DIiUSiB ~ BAM BHEPAilO *7161 *5843 65n 6080 7484 1479 6551 6346 7153 3970 NotlV.llable in Canida \";Waming: Subject matter Dr language may be oHensive to some . - - -FIRESIDE THEATRE BOOK CLUB®-, HOW THE CLUB WORKS: You 'll receive your 3 books for only Dept. RR-293, Garden City, NY. 11530 $1 (plus shipping and handling) and your FREE book and tote bag when Please accept me as a member of the Fireside Theatre Book Club and accepted as a member. We reserve the right to reject any application . However, once accepted as a member, if not delighted , return the books send me the 3 books I've numbered in the boxes below. Bill me iust $1 within 10 days at Club expense. Your membership will be cancelled and you 'll owe nothing . The FREE book and tote bag are yours to keep in any plus shipping and handling . Al so send my FREE book and tote bag . mine case. About every 4 weeks (14 times a year), you 'll receive the Club bulletin, Curtain Time , to preview the new Selection(s), always at dis- I to keep even if I don't remain a member. I agree to the Club plan as counts off publishers' prices . In addition, up to 4 times a year you may I described in this ad , will take 4 more books at regular low Club prices receive offers of special Selections. If you want the featured Selection(s), do nothing; it will be sent to you automatically. If you prefer an Alternate or during the coming year, and may resign any time thereafter. no book at all, return the order form by the date specified. (A shipping and handling charge is added to all shipments .) You always have at least 10 I FREE 800K days to decide. If you get an unwanted Selection because you had less I #3939 than 10 days, return it at Club expense and owe nothing . Fireside Theatre I If you already own Tennessee Williams Eight Plays , choose another book offers its own complete hardbound editions , sometimes altered in size to I as your FREE gift. fit special presses, saving you up to 40% off publishers' hardcover edition Mr. prices . You need buy only 4 books at regular low Club prices within 1year, I FREE after which you may continue to enjoy Club benefits or resign at any time . TOTE Ms._ _ _ _ _----,;=-=:;--_ _ _ _ __ II WITH (Please print) Address,_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Apt. # _ __ City State Zipl_ _ __ IC') MEMBERSHIP Members accepted in U.S .A. and Canada only. Offer slightly different in _ _ _ _ _ _~L ~nad~ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ~~53~
Ru ss ian math e matician (G unill a Ny- the doting ca re of hi s broth e r and siste r- film comedian Max Linde r, told with roos), th e Ma ri e C uri e of he r fi e ld, proves he rsel f the eq ua l of the most b ril- in-b w. H e is no t te m pe rame m a ll y clips from 42 of his film s. liant me n but unequal to the task of holdi ng he r man (Thomm y Be rggre n). suited to th e long-te rm de mand s of fa- \"This is my fath e r, yet I never knew He is a tru e 1880's fe minist, and in hi s presence she regresses, from woman to the rhood, fo r he li ves by whim and ob- hi m,\" Ma ud L inde r's calm vo ice tells us, ne rvous schoo lgirl to possess ive chil d . T he film writte n by Agne ta Pl eij e l and sess ion. And if anyone is less ti t th an as we look at a trim , dappe r man lazing direc ted by Le nn art Hjul strom, pre- se nts these d ile mm as acutel y and sym- Stanton to raise the boy, it is hi s child- on a formal ga rde n lawn. \"The first time pa the tica lly. T he heroine of Marta Mes- za ros' Nap lo (Dia ri es) rea ll y is a wife Kinski , who has been e mployed in we met, he was smiling on the sc ree n.\" schoolgirl , grow ing up in pos twar Hun - gary and desperate ly in love with a Re- an in-pe rso n te lephone sex ope ration. And long beyond he r reach. M aud sistance leade r who may be he r fa th e r. A littl e contri ved and atte nu ated , the film As a nuclea r fam ily, th is one is a pote n- Linde r was not yet a year old in 1925 satisfi es most as a vehicle for Zsuzsa Czinkeczi, in an inte nse and sensuous tial d isas te r of atom ic propo rtions. w he n he r fath e r, th e n 43, and he r pe rfo rm ance. T he re a re two di zzy dames in Jacq ues Doill on's La Pirate- O n its own te rms, Paris, Texas is co m- moth e r, 20, e nded the ir three-year mar- Ma ru sc hka De tma rs (of Godard 's First Name: Carmen) and Jane Birkin as a pair pe lling and auth e ntica lly acted, espe- riage in a double suicid e pact. T he dead of Pa risie nnes who di ve into a bi za rre love affa ir- but they are hard ly wo rth c iall y by yo un g Hunte r Ca rso n, Kit young woman's promine nt fa mily (he r mention ing, except as the sta rs of th e fes ti va l compe titi on's very worst film . Ca rson's seve n-year-old son and a natu - fath e r had been the mayor of Paris) took In a few film s, me n were allowed to ral-born charme r. T he arid expa nses of charge of the orphaned infa nt, raising strut th e ir eccentricities. Ma rio Camus' The Holy Innocents is a fam iliar tale of sou th e rn Texas a re s trikin gly co n- he r unde r Max's real name, Le uvill e, ru ra l soc ial consciousness- noble peas- ants, ve nal land owne rs, tragic res ults- trasted , in Robby Mu ll e r's cin ematogra- and banishing any me ntion of Linde r th at copped an acting pri ze for F rancisco Raba l, because, one suspects, the vet- ph y, w ith th e tac k y co nges ti o n of from he r life. e ran Spani sh actor fl as hed a set of rotte n tee th and occasionally urinated on his So uth e rn Californi a. And one m ust pay It was not until she was almos t 20 that hands. Even more nob le, th ough no less de ranged , is Ma rcello Mastroianni in th e tri bute , however re luctant, to a fil m th at Maud L e uville happe ned upon a Paris titl e role of Henry IV, Ma rco Be llocchio's fil ming of the P irande llo pl ay. Confined arouses argume nts as strong as thi s one cine ma club play ing Seven Years' Bad for 20 years in a sanatariu m for be lieving that he is the 16th-centu ry F re nch king, already has. One suspects th at the film- Luck (192 1), one of her fath e r's six fea- \" H e nry\" plays dev ious games with hi s wife \" the Q uee n\" (Claudi a Card inale), make rs attac hed th e ir sympa thi es to the ture-l ength film s. T he young woman hi s fa mily, and him se lf. At 60,. Mas- troiann i is still the self-d e precatin g L o- drifte r and hi s wife beca use th ese char- who be lieved she never liked comics sat th ario of so many Fellini and DeS ica film s; Henry IV revea ls that, during all acte rs fit two fa miliar ge nres: th e west- in the back of th e theate r, transfi xed . that wry wooing, he fou nd tim e to be- come a grea t actor. e rn , whe re th e lone r is hcro and a ma n's W hat she saw e ncouraged Maud both to Mad ness and love are at th e cente r of gotta do what a man's gotta do, and th e adopt he r fathe r's name and to begin Paris, Texas, the fes ti val's best-received film (it was awa rded th e Palme d'or ) and socia l-outl aw mov ie , whe re th e forlorn sea rching out his fi lm s. (H e made a stag- also th e mos t co ntroversial. Directe d by Wim We nders from a script by Sa m She- and se lf-destructi ve membe rs of socie ty ge ri ng numbe r- at leas t sOO- co m- pard and L. M. Kit Ca rson, thi s made-in- Ame rica family d rama traces th e journ ey are he roic precise ly beca use th ey do not pared with C haplin 's 72 sho rts and across th e South west by a dri fte r (H arry Dea n S tanto n) who sudde nl y decid es he be long to th e boring, white-bread mi d- eleven features, and Keaton's 35 shorts m ust be re united with his son (Hunte r Ca rson) and estranged wife (Nas tassja dle cl ass. Rep rese ntati ves of th at class and twe lve silent features.) Ma ud com- Kin ski ). Wh y should he be e nco uraged to do it? He does not deserve hi s son; he were, of co urse, the staunchest pa rtisans pil ed an earlie r film , called Max, fro m aba ndoned th e boy four yea rs ea rlie r to of Paris, Texas at Cann es. T he ir state- three of L inde r's features, but it is no side fri e nds will get a chance to decid e yard stick by which to judge this extraor- th e film 's me ri ts for the mse lves th is dinary new work. month. - MA RY CORLISS What is exceptional about The Man in the Silk Hat is the attitude of the woman who prese nts the prints-the one pe r- son who might have reaso n not to che r- ish he r fathe r. Maud Linde r's joy in Max Linde r pe rmeates the film . It is as clea r as he r ow n fee lings of abandonme nt are suppressed . \"The re was never any real explanation for this [he r pare nts' ] trag- edy, and I have neve r tried to find one,\" she says at the close of th e film . Ma ud Lind e r is no t go in g to make heavy weathe r out of this dreadful histo ry, nor drama e ithe r. But unde r th e steel y tact lin gers an untold story riche r and more haunting than fiction. H e r tribute is set pe rfectly in the art- ist's pe riod. Max goes to Pa ris for the Max Linder in 7 ans de Ma lh e ur. first time, and Ma ud shows us the Be lle E poq ue at its peak: Sa rah Be rnhardt as MAX LINDER R ETU RNS H amle t, Co nstant-B e noit Coq ue lin 's Cyrano (for which Maud has combined a F ILMEX hos ted an unu sual ce le bra- wax recording of hi s voice with a pre- tion this summe r: a daughte r p resentin g cious snippe t of hi s pe rform ance), and he r once-famous fa the r to a wo rld that the amazing sw irling drape ries of Loie had almos t forgotte n him . Ma ud Lin- F ulle r. Photos are inte rspe rsed with the de r's richly textured The Man ill the Silk movin g pictures : th e Paris of E ugene Hat is a bi ograph y of th e F re nch sile nt Atget, and e laborately dressed wome n 4
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FILm FORum 1906 (his close-ups, or the particularly fin e came rawork in his series of sports ATWIN CINEMA NEXT DOOR TO SOHO shorts), and we are in awe -but not, perhaps, more in love with Max than we Presenting NYC premieres of independent films were at first sight. & retrospectives of foreign & American classics • September 5-18: AMERICAN PICTURES by Jacob Holdt Maud Linder has collected diligently September 19-0ctober 2: BONA by Lino Brocka over a 30-year period, but never with funding or a foundation grant. Since October 3-16: FAR FROM POLAND by Jill Godmilow Pathe was such a major exporter of film s October 17-30: RECENT CZECH ANIMATION to the United States pre-World War I , it is e ntirely poss ible that important caches October 31-November 13: GHOST DANCE by Ken McMullen of Linder films exist here, as well as in the fl ea markets and with individuals in Open 7 days a week. can or write for calendar & member discount Information. Europe, he r primary sources until now. Just this July, a screening of The Man in 57 watts Street, NYC 10013 Box Office: (212)431-1590 the Silk Hat at the Director's Guild in Los Angeles resulted in two titles offered to Partially supported by the NYS Councit on the Arts & the National Endowment for the Ans her that she had never before seen. who mi ght have posed for L artigue. film medium . In one sho rt, in which It's the thought of similar discoveries Max-w ho looks like a cross between Max's fin gers stick to everything, from that drives Maud Linder now; but she pastry at a bakery to dishes at hi s lady- has not emptied out her life pursuing Terry T homas and G ianca rl o G iannini , fri e nd 's dinne r table, Max see ms the images of this phantom father. For her onl y hand some - is d ro ll , Ga llic, in- ca lm ce nte r of the piece. Every other developme nt of a cultural and informa- te nsely romantic. Th e humor is rare ly actor around him is wav ing and whirling tional van, which toured the cities of c ru e l, f req ue ntl y se lf-d e preca tin g, about like weathe rvanes in a crosswind. France, she was awarded the Legion some tim es startlingly original. In one d' honne ur. In all , Linder spent twelve sho rt he evokes a courtship be tween two Th e co medi an drew on hi s ow n expe- years with \" he r trucks ,\" and many more pairs of high-button shoes - a man's and rie nce to feed the de mand for the Pathe working in and on films. She has worked a lady's, le ft in front of the ir respecti ve sho rts. (Path e him se lf ca n even be in film labs, in cutting rooms, as a pro- hote l room doo rs to be shin ed- which found in th e actor-audition short: a seri- duction assistant, and finally as a bilin- pull the ir ow ne rs along, willingly or not. ous, handsome, work-obsessed figure.) gual production manager, providing lo- In anoth e r, ca tchin g the rh ythm from An incide nt from Lind e r's abortive ca- cations and crews for American film and Max, all th e objec ts in a room begin to reer as a serious stage actor beca me the television companies in Paris. \"You can- dance, pictures on the wa ll , vases, bric- subj ect of one short: Max, dressed as a not only be looking for film s- you get a-brac, every thing. M uske teer, manages to snarl everything nuts,\" she laughs. And yet the thought but the legs of the chair into his shoul- of the mi ss ing film s is always there. Alm ost all hi s film s in volve one strik- de r-length wig. This one e nds with two ing ly pre tty yo ung woman or anoth e r; in wo me n, clad in Me rry Widow corset- Maud Linder has no photographs of life a nd o n sc ree n Max was neve r tops over th e ir vel vet skirts, drawing herself with her father. If any existed, without those. T he mos t te llin g of all swo rd s to du e l to the dea th over Max. they may have been gathered up in the the Max Lind e r still s, from hi s fea ture fury that swept through he r mother's film The King of the Curcys, places an As Max in the snow succeeds M ax on family after the tragedy. (Her maternal e lega ntly dressed Max on th e gro und board ship, and Max playing pi ano and grandparents sold all of her father's ef- gazin g up at a girl on a trapeze; she dancing to a wild Polynesian beat, inter- fects in front of the town hall , including smil es down on him , fri e ndly yet unob- est begins to sag. At 96 minutes, The his Gauguins, a Sisley, a small Rodin.) tainabl e, like a re mote, rising moo n. Man in the Silk Hat may peak about te n But it is som e thing e vanesce nt she minutes be fore it end s. In venti ve and misses most of all. Maud Linder never F rom 1905 to 1907 Linde r wrote, di - charming as the characte r of Max is, he heard her father's voice. A recording was rected (usuall y), and starred in one-reel does not grow e norm ously. We watch made of one of his speeches, and she has comedies for C harles Pathe, with titl es the gags and th e ir de ft exec ution, we hea rd it de scribe d: \"A ve ry precise like Max Takes a Bath, or Max Is Afraid of marvel over th e film tec hniques he voice, very re fin ed.\" She would love to Water. Even the ea rl y Max revea ls him- wo rks with off-h and edl y in 1905 and hear it. Yet her film , ever discreet, never se lf as an actor acute ly attuned to th e mentions that longing, for hearing him. Max Linde r has seemed so completely ali ve. Maud Linder has ac~ieved what she hoped: to exhibit he r father's artistry to new gene rations of filmgoers . Of her own motives she says only this: \" If a man is born with a great talent, then that is much more important than his private life. E ven ifI am his private life. What is important about M ax Linder is what is on the scree n.\" -SHEILA BENSON 6
First comprehensive picture-and-reference volume on this major studio RKO was hatched, so the legend goes, at a Manhattan oyster STORY bar in October 1928. The hatchers: tycoons Joe Kennedy and Richard B. David Sarnoff. And here's the giant volume that has the whole Jewell story: all 1,051 pictures from 1929 till the studio distributed its (rI last film in 1960 - PLUS at least one photo from every picture! Vernon It's all here, thanks to film writer Richard Jewell and Vernon Harbin Harbin. Vernon who? Harbin started at RKO in 1931, in Fan Mail. He worked up to executive rank, survived every upheaval, wound up running the Coast office of RKO General tiU he retired in 1976. \"Without his contributions,\" acknowledges Jewell, \"The RKO Story would be a lesser work indeed.\" The awesome features: everything you expect in the definitive volume, and more • All 1,051 RKO films listed by year: plots, ma- SAVE jor casts and credits $30 • Over 1,100 photos and posters, at least one for every film • GIANT in size: 320 9lj4 x 12lj2 pages (on fine paper) • Studio history, decade by decade and year by year • RKO Oscars and nominations, by year • All RKO pictures produced and / or distributed in England, year by year: major casts, director, brief plot synopsis • Exhaustive title index of some 1,250 RKO films, American and English • Massive index of over 7,500 people: per- formers, directors, producers, writers, cinematographers, technicians, choreog- raphers, composers, designers, etc. • EXTRA - and unusual! Endpapers reproduce 26 autographs of key people (mostly actors) in the RKO saga ~'!~ How to get this massive $35 volume for ONLY $4.95 ~~ .-----------------------------------------------------~ ONE OF THE SMALLER OF THE 1,051 ENTRIES Writer Dalton Trumbo and director John Far- 15 OAKLAND AVENUE' HARRISON, N.Y. 10528 row worked hard on the remake of A Bill OJ Divorcement (1932) but to no avail. The I enclose $4 .95 . Please send me the $35 RKO Story, be offered a new Club Selection plus Alternates every Clemence Dane play had somewhat yellowed postpaid and at no additional charge . At the same 4 weeks (13 times a year) in the Club bulletin , with age, and audiences evinced little interest in time please accept my membership in the Movie / En - PREVIEWS. If I want the Selection, I will do nothing its melodramatic rendering of Victorian taboos tertainment Book Club . I agree to buy 4 books over and it will come automatically. If I want an Alternate about mental disease. Maureen O'Hara Oeft), the next 2 years at regular Club prices plu s shipping or no book at all , I'll notify you by the deadline date playing the part that launched Katharine Hep- and handling . I may resign after buying and paying specified . If I should ever receive a Selection without burn's career, and Adolphe Menjou (right) in for 4 books at regular Cl ub prices. I will be offered having had 10 days to decide if I want it , I may return John Barrymore's role as the unbalanced some 200 books on movies and entertainment , the it at Club expense and receive full credi t. PREVIEWS father, were inevitably and unfavourably com- majority at 20-33% discounts plu s shipping and han- also includes news about my fellow members and pared to their predecessors. Despite Trumbo's dling . For every book I buy at the regular Club price, their hobbies . I am welcome to se nd in similar items lucid script, Farrow's delicate direction and an I receive one or more FREE Bonu s Book Certificates about myself and my interests. PREVIEWS will excellent support troupe that included Fay which entitle me to buy many books at far below publish every such item it deems suitable , FREE . Bainter, Herbert Marshall, Dame May Whitty, regular Club price , usually at 60-80% discounts . I'll Patric Knowles, C. Aubrey Smith, Ernest Fe - 31 Cossart, Kathryn Collier and Lauri Beatty, the NAME Robert Sisk production flopped ($104,000 loss). ADDRESS CITY STATE ZIP
Feature Programs From Direct Cinema Limited 4 ACADEMY AWARD The World of Tomorrow Nuclear Issue Films WINNERS THE WORLD OF TOMORROW looks SL·1 l He Makes Me back at the great New York World's Feel Like Dancin' Fair of 1939-40, and the more than America's First Fatal Nuclear Best Documentary Feature 1983 40-million people who glimpsed the Accident Famed ballet dancer Jacques future there. The film uses home d'Amboise and a thousand school movies, films, cartoons, photo- SL-1 uses recently declassified gov- students learning how to dance graphs, and other vintage graphics ernment film footage to recreate the makes an exhilarating program for to evoke that moment when the true story of America's first fatal audiences of all ages. World stood poised between black nuclear reactor accident which took and white and color, between the place over 20-years ago. An Edgar J. Scherick Associates Great Depression and the Second Production World War. A Beecher Film Produced and directed by Emile Produced and directed by Ardolino \" The World of Tomorrow will beguile Dianne Orr and C. Larry Roberts 48 minutes 16mm Color 1984 as it informs those hearts that still 60 minutes 16mm Color/B&W 1984 cannot accept the fact that 1984 has ~ Flamenco at 5:15 actually arrived'.' \"You Love This Planet Richard Schickel, Time Magazine W Best Documentary Short 1983 Academy Award 1982 Produced and directed by Ii\\;, A beautiful record of a flamenco Tom Johnson and Lance Bird 1Best Documentary Short Narration spoken by Jason Robards In a campus talk, Dr. Helen Caldicott, ~\"\"'class at the National Ballet School. Written by John Crowley clearly emphasizes the perils of 82 minutes 16/35mm Color nuclear war and reveals the frighten- National Film Board of Canada B&W 1984 ing progression of events which Produced by Cynthia Scott and would follow a nuclear attack. Adam Symansky Award.Winning Directed by Cynthia Scott Dance Programs National Film Board of Canada 30 minutes 16/35mm Color 1984 Produced by Edward Le Lorrian No Maps on My Taps Directed by Terri Nash 1A Shocking Accident 26 minutes 16/35mm Color 1982 Best Short Film 1982 The first documentary feature from Based on a short story by Graham the maker of SAY AMEN, SOME- No Place to Hide Greene, a young Englishman learns BODY, NO MAPS ON MY TAPS cele- that gentle humor and understanding brates jazz tap dancing . Growing Up in the Shadow of the can cure misunderstandings. Bomb Produced and directed by George T Produced by Christine Oestreicher Nierenberg \"... extraordinary, encompassing . . . Directed by James Scott 58 minutes 16mm Color 1980 Foregoing glibness and nervous 25 minutes 16/35mm Color 1983 laughter, NO PLACE TO HIDE is Kathy's Dance powerful, provocative-matchless'.' 1Sundae in New York Carrie Rickey, Village Voice Best Animated Film 1983 Modern dancer Kathy Posin dances New York's mayor Ed Koch \"stars \" in and teaches in this entertaining and Media Study this energetic, all singing, all dancing educational film . Produced and directed by clay animation musical extravaganza . Produced by Drew Associates Lance Bird & Tom Johnson Directed by Anne Drew 29 minutes Color/B&W 16mm 1982 Produced and directed by 28 minutes 16mm Color 1980 Jimmy' Picker Sweet Sweetback's Man Who Dances: 4 minutes 16/35mm Color 1984 Edward Villella 8aadasss Song David Holzman'S Diary Edward Villella, star of the New York One of the first features under the City Ballet, is seen at a critical point creative control of a black man, this One of the neglected milestones in in his career in this classic 1968 film created a new phenomenon- contemporary film history, this leg- Emmy Award-winning film. the virile, street-smart black hero. endary independent classic captures Made as a cathartic experience for the state of the art in late 60's America . Produced by Drew Associates blacks and a consciousness A film by Jim McBride Directed by Robert Drew expanding one for whites, SWEET- 71 minutes 16mm B&W 54 minutes 16mm Color 11980 BACK is a milestone in the American MY GIRLFRIEND'S WEDDING cinema . is Jim McBride's companion film to Direct Cinema Limited DAVID HOLZMAN'S DIARY Post Office Box 69589 Music Performed by Earth,Wind & Fire Los Angeles, CA 90069 For additional information concerning (213) 656-4700 Written, produced, directed, and these and other outstanding feature film starring Melvin Van Peebles programs contact : .IA,g97 minutes 16mm Color 1971 direct ~ cinema limited @
• The sirens wail and the suspect is Jake, witness to a murder of a beautiful woman he knows on ly through a tele- scope. As Body Double suggests, the players are not who they seem, but then neither is the underlying issue in this script by Robert Avrech and Brian De Palma, from De Palma's story, what the authors intended: a way in to the heart of the debate over pornography and violence to women. Excerpts are no sub- stitute for seeing a film, but these four scenes and a talk with De Palma do frame the question: Do we know porn when we see it? -H.J. Fade In EXT.IINT. PUNK HOOKER MOTEL P.O.V VAMPIRE BI([ swooping down to a bathroom window. Through it he sees a john payoff a hooker. John exits room and hooker gets up out of bed and walks into shower. INT. SHOWER-MOTEL-NIGHT Bat hovers outside the bathroom win- dow . Watching a naked hooker inside tak- ing a shower. We see her only from the shoulders up . Steam rises all around. Her flesh glows, glistens ... Music: lush, ro- mantic. The bat scratches open the window and crawls inside. The hooker is unaware. Closer and closer the figure approaches her from behind. A hand reaches out, en- circling the woman's waist . The hooker turns back infright. The vampire bat, now transformed into a man-JAKE SCULLY- stands there, naked (we see just from the waist up). The hooker recovers, shuddering under his sensuous power. Camera moves closer, holding them il1 a tight two-shot. The Iwoker turns her head to Jake, opening her /ips . Jake's mouth descends upon hers, devouring it in a passionate kiss . Jake's hand moves slowly Down her neck- Across her shoulder- And out offrame- DIRECTOR [off-screen ]: Cut! Cut! Freeze, Jake! They are actors shooting a movie. The shower is turned off. Jake holds rock still. Spews a plume ofwaterfrom his lips. The hooker steps back. She is wearing a strapless bikini. Her face is very pretty. But her body leaves much to be desired- thin, boyish, flat-chested. Wardrobe girl throws a robe over the actress' shoulders. She steps out ofthe shower. DIRECTOR [off-s creen ]: Okay, whe re's the body? 9
a lot of dates out of this one! her hand on the frame. It slides to the side As we hear the director off-screen guid- revealing a recessed wall safe. She turns the combination . The safe opens . She ing lake's hands around Tina's torso , we reaches inside and removes a glittering set see a montage of head shots of lake and of jewels . She slowly puts them on-ear- the actress intercut with body shots oflake rings, necklace, rings, belly chain , an- and the Body Double (Tina). This montage klets. She slowly lies down on the bed, a concludes with two shots: lake baring his sparkling vision of flesh and diamonds. fangs into the neck ofthe actress,followed She slips her hands inside the camisole and by blood streaming down across the Body plays with her nipples. Fondles the soft Double's breasts. .···' '. 'Just Take a Look' inside of her thighs . Touches herself through her panties . Rolls the panties off. . . ... [Sam, an actor friend of lake' s, offers And masturbates. Her muscles tense. She ·...... him a house-sitting job. He leads lake into digs her heels into the bed. Her whole an airy room overlooking a nearby house.] body strains upward. .··.·.......... JAKE [off-screen]: Oh Jes us. INT. A ROOM IN SAM'S HOUSE Deborah Shelton. SAM: There's one very special feature She writhes. Her hand moving quicker to this house. [He fiddles with the viewer. and quicker. A fine sheen of perspiration lake continues holding the rigid pose. Pans to the side, up and down. Finds what shines on her skin. She rolls over on her Prop people scurry about. A handjabsa lit he' s lookingfor.] Come here, Jake. Meet belly, brings her knees up, using both cigarette into lake's mouth. He puffs hands now. Her body quakes. The dia- gratefully. my favorite neighbor. lake approaches. An expression of mondsflash. Another woman steps into frame. She is Her fingers dig deeper. lake squints, naked. And her body is an exquisitely doubtful bemusement on hisface . crafted work ofart. Petfect breasts. Wasp- JAKE: Hey, Sam, what're you ... ? trying to glimpse herface , but the shadows waisted. In short, a fabulous figure. But Sam grabs his arm. Positions him at the still obscure it. All he can see is her long herface is rather homely. The exact oppo- black hair whipping back andforth as she site, in physical attributes, of the other telescope. actress. She wears a shower cap. And is gets closer to orgasm. Muscles dance be- furiously chewing a wad ofgum. This is a SAM: Just take a look. very awkward momentfor lake . Reluctant, but curious, lake leans over. neath taut skin like steel springs. And fi- nally-release. Making her body ripple JAKE [trying not to stare at her body]: Presses his eye to the lens . Hi. I'm Jake Scu ll y. EXT. HIGH ANGLE-ESTABLISH- and shiver. A long powerful orgasm, which gradually dissipates . She relaxes. TINA: Pleased to meetcha. I'm Tina. ING SHOT-NIGHT Listen, I'm getting my period, and my Sam and lake at the scope. Pan off Lies very still. Reaches out and drains the breasts are kind of sore, so cou ld you wine glass. Then, she blows out the can- take it easy on them? Sam's house . die . JAKE: Uh, sure ... fine .... EXT. GLORIA'S HOUSE-NIGHT DIRECTOR [off-screen}: Okay, peo- Darkness. ple, let's do it. Water! [The shower comes Pan to Gloria's house . alive . ] Steam-gimmee steam! [Prop people rush intoframe , pump out clouds of INT. SAM 'S HOUSE-NIGHT 'A Woman's Being Killed!' steam. ] Okay, frame-down. [Camera lake looking through telescope . moves in on Tina's voluptuous torso . ] All right, Jake , bring your hand down just SAM [off-screen]: See he r? [lake isfearful that a man in American like before. The screen is now filled with the naked EXT.l INT. GLORIA'S HOUSE- Indian garb has murderous designs on the torsos . lake's hand descends into frame and slides over her breasts, touching, ca- NIGHT-P.O.V. THROUGH SCOPE woman he has watched avidly through a ressing , slow and sensuous. Over this, super main credit: There in the window, a woman, seated telescope. Most of the sequence intercuts BODY DOUBLE at the dressing table. A candle on the win- the telescope's view ofGloria' s house with ACTRESS [off-screen]: I'm gonna get dow sill. Her face is obscured, like an lake's reactions.] eclipsed sun. The woman, Gloria , is drink- EXT. GLORIA'S HOUSE-NIGHT- ing wine. And touching herself. Slowly, P.O.Y. THROUGH TELESCOPE sensually, her breasts. She puts the wine Gloria walks up to her bedroom, and glass down, stands up, unbuttons her the dog stays downstairs. As she passes blouse, shrugs it off. Beneath, she wears a through the bedroom , she doesn ' t see on thin silk camisole. She unhooks her skirt. It her bed, the telephone, her punched card puddles to the floor. She puts one foot up and the drill lying on the bed. Gloria steps on a chair. Touches her leg. Caresses her- out ofher skirt, shrugsoffherblouse, kicks self· offher heels, and slips into a robe. Into the INT. SAM'S HOUSE-NIGHT bathroom . Runs water in the tub. Adds oil lake at the telescope . Fighting a battle . and bubblebath. Peels off her stockings . And losing . He cannot tear himself away. Goes to the linen closet for a towel. Back Sam smiles. into the bathroom . Closes the door half- SAM: N ice, huh? [He retreats into the way. Drops her robe. bedroom to pack.] Out of the corner of his eye, lake sees EXT./INT. GLORIA'S HOUSE/BED- the door ofa clothes closet in the bedroom ROOM-NIGHT-P.O.V. THROUGH opening. He pans over and sees the Indian THE TELESCOPE holding a huge electric drill . Gloria walks into the bedroom, a white JAKE: Oh God . ... dog is asleep on her bed. Gloria stands in lake pans back to the bathroom. Gloria front of a painting over the bed. She puts is testing the water with her toe. Pans back 10
to the bedroom . The Indian goes to the and the jogger burst inside. Rush past the those eyes out the re watching. I'm going head of the bed, slides the picture aside. camera . There's a hole in the safe. He slowly pulls to come right now. open the safe door and reaches inside . His [NT. GLORIA'S HOUSE-NIGHT GOLDBERG: Well, while yo u' re hand emerges holding a fistful of jewels. lake looks up to see the blood whirling lake pans back to Gloria , pinning up her drill bit coming down through the ceiling, coming, Linda, le t's watch a clip. hair. runs to go upstairs. He is attacked by the LINDA: Aaahh! ... I get hottes t dog at the stairs, giving the Indian just JAKE: Lock the door! Lock the door! elwugh time to make his escape . Finally when I'm watching myself. lake dials her number. It rings. Gloria the jogger pulls the dog offlake, who runs Insert clip from \"Bold Obsession.\" reacts to the ringing phone. Goes into the upstairs . The Indian is gone . GOLDBERG: And now a word from bedroom . Picks it up. We see Gloria drilled to the floor. GLORIA: Hello ... ? lake stares at Gloria. our sponsor. JAKE: Lock the... . TV image cuts to the commercial: X The Indian leaps from behind the bed- 'People Are Watching' pounces on Gloria . The phone drops to the Theater Commercial floor. [lake, despondent over his impassive ANNOUNCER: The X C inema! JAKE: Oh God! Oh God! complicity in Gloria's death , sits at home Muffled through the receiver, he hears flicking the channels of his TV set. He L.A.'s classies t X-rated movie house. Gloria scream. The Indian pins her to the stops to glance at \" Hollywood Inter- This week, see the film that everyone's floor with his foot , choking her. ludes,\" a cable sex show.] talkin g abo ut: \"Ho ll y Does H oll y- JAKE: Noooooooo! wood.\" The Indian turns on the drill. Gloria INTNIDEO-TV SET struggles beneath hisfoot. The Indian low- Sid Goldberg interviewing porn queen, lake hears the title ofthefilm . Sits up . ers the spinning drill toward her chest. Linda Shaw. The \"Holly Does Hollywood\" trailer: lake pans down to see her dog going crazy, GOLDBERG: Okay, fans, we're back An electrician stands outside a dressing running up and down the stairs. with the sensational Porn Star, Linda room trailer. He hears moans emanating lake throws the phone down. He bolts Shaw. Her newest fli ck , \" Bold Obses- from the slatted window. He peeps inside. away from the telescope and runs out of sion,\" will be opening this Friday at the P.O .V through the window ofthe dressing the house . Pix Cinema. Linda, this film has so- room trailer. A girl is masturbating. EXT. SAM'S HOUSE-DRIVEWAY- mething for everyone. But te ll me , what lake looks blankly at the screen. Almost is your bold obsession? too drunk to absorb what he's seeing . But NIGHT LINDA: Well, Sid, I playa girl who this clip . .. something so familiar about it. lake races down hill, toward Gloria's gets off when people watch me . It was a lake leans forward towards the Tv, start- part written specially for me 'cause I'm ing to concentrate on the image . . . house, frantically trying to get the atten- kind of an exhibitionist myself. I ge t all The actress is dark-haired and beauti- tion of a passing jogger wearing a turned on when I know peopl e are ful. She wears a thin silk camisole. Bikini Walkman. He drags him with him . watching. underpants. She lubricates her fingers GOLDBERG: Well, Linda, I sure from a green jar. Rolls offher panties . And JAKE: Get the police! A woman's be- hope they' re out there watching now. touches herself. ing killed! LINDA [starting to fondle herself as lake stares, hardly believing what he she looks into the camera]: Oh, yes. All sees. lake and the jogger jump the fence and She rolls over on her belly, brings up her run up the driveway. knees. lake grabs the edge ofthe TV He pales INT. GLORIA'S HOUSE-NIGHT . . . because he is once again watching Intercut with lake and jogger racing to Gloria. Gloria's house: Gloria flips over, knocking the Indian Craig Wasson as lake. offhis feet. She scrambles across the bed. The Indian goes after her. Gloria grabs a perfume bottle, swings, and cracks the red man on the side of his head. He staggers for a moment. Gloria tries to run . He grabs her leg. She falls , smacks her face on the floor; lies there, stunned, lip split and bleeding . The Indian pulls her up, holds her by the throat, and bends her over backwards. Gloria thrashes, fights with waning strength. She struggles. Is forced down again. The Indian holds her down as the drill gets unplugged. The Indian re- plugs it, pins her to the floor. He raises the drill over the prone body. We hear pounding . INT.l EXT. GLORIA' S HOUSE- FRONT DOOR-NIGHT JAKE: Open up! Open up! More pounding. And finally they throw a cement lion through a window and lake 11
le'Trouble by Marcia Pally Augustine , and the born-agai n refur- work Orange , and Last Tango in Paris It wou ld be easy to say Brian De bishing of Christianity that got rolling 15 which conflated sex with violence; and Palma hates women. He goes after them in th e most grisly ways. Carrie impales years ago is just making the cries of the porno flicks like Deep Throat , The her mother with kitchen utensils, gets pig blood dumped all ove r her (De Pal- brimstone and hellfire louder, slicker, Devil and Miss Jones , and Behind the ma's idea of a prank), and is transformed into a monster to make your skin crawl. and brought from their sponsor. The Green Door that were so sensationalized Angie Dickenson in Dressed to Kill is cut up with a straight-edge razo r in the now- femini st protest took off in the mid-Sev- they nearly qualified for date-night out- famous elevator sce ne. And in De Pal- ma's latest effort, Body Double, a guy enties when women , fresh from the ings. But Snuff was in another league. takes an electric drill to his lady and drills her to the floor. You go tta wonder abortion victory, turned their energies to Here we saw porn itself raping and mur- about the mind that conjures such deli- cacies. If that's the upchuck, what's rape and battery-the catastrophies pos- dering; it is the perfect (if horrifying) churning around inside? sible to us all , the \"single issue\" capable reduction , the worst (if self-validating) \" I like women,\" says De Palma. Let's say he does. But he told Esquire in a of rousi ng the female masses. fears of the antiporn movement. Green January '84 interview, \"Sex is terrify- ing.\" Put them together and you have Along with rape crisi s centers and Door by the way, is about SfM, a sport the straight man's burden: how to get laid when the experience is so flatten- reckoning wi th cops and judges who feminist antiporners began to tackle a ing. (What an ironic worry it is: women's fear of sexual adventure is su pported by co nsidered rape the deserts of women few years ago. Consensual violence is no the assault stats-and the New York Post - yet look who invents vagina dentata.) who asked for it and the understandable better than out-and-out force, they said: De Palma does not like to be terrified restlessness of (white) men , came an it recreates and reinforces the pernicious or, in fact, to have the slightest thing out of his control. Perhaps his oeuvre should analysis of violence against women. Su- power imbalances that make women be seen as part exorcism , part conquest of unruly effects like lights, props or san Brownmiller's Against Our Will was and minorities suffer in real life. No camera angles, or women . Especially sexually eager women. Carrie is tryi ng to one of the earliest and best known ex- more \"0 \"; no more of that letch of a \" find herself\" in spite of a repressed religious nut of a mother, and the plorations of the subject, but in con- marquIs. women in Dressed and Double aren't getting enough. sc iousness -rai sing groups and Take Except for the ERA debacle and So it's fear rather than hate behind Back the light rallies in town and coun- Geraldine Ferraro, the antiporn protest this update on the wages of sin , on bad- girl-gets-it-in-the-end. There are people try an ideology was gaining consensus, has been the most visible-and seem- out there upon whom such subtleties are lost. To the folks in the antiporn move- often di stilled into the slogan \"Porn is ingly uniting-of women's issues. After ment, De Palma's images are up there on the screen inciting people to sin (the the theory, rape is the practice.\" With all , dueling with Hefner, Guccione, or new rig ht), or teaching violence against women (femini st antiporners). That's that, femini sm launched upon its anti- Calvin Klein is a lot sexier than organiz- damaging-and damning-enough. porn journey: WAP and WAVPM began ing the pink collar professions-o r, for The anti porn crusade didn' t sta rt with De Palma. Oh, he gets its attention their organizing efforts; other books hit that matter, the women in the sex indus- when he unleashes a film redolent wi th the bouquet of sex and violence-which the stands (An drea Dworkin's Pornogra- try. (COYOTE, acronym for Cast Off nevertheless gets an 'R' and the serious discussion of critics to boot. But the vari- phy: Men Possessing Women, Susan Grif- Your Old , Tired Ethics, a group run by ous churches have been warning us against the dangers of carnality since fin 's Pornography and Silence: Culture's former and working prostitutes to help Revenge Against Nature, and the Laura women-in-the-Iife, is perhaps the only Lederer edited anthology, Take Back the operation of its kind.) But in the spirit of Night, among others). the democratic process, opposition has The anti porn argument-greatl y sim- spoken up. Obviousl y, the producers of plified , pace Dwo rkin-runs something porn rebutted immediately. Civil liber- like this: len mayo r may not be born tarians cried censorship and set the with murderou s instincts, but at the very movement a step or two back, smarting. least they have developed a culture of (Havi ng been burned , howeve r, most mi sogynist mayhem bequeathed father antiporners steer clear of the First to son. One of the prime conduits of Amendment by caJling, at least in their transit is pornography. From porn, men public appearances, not for the end of learn to hate women (or hate them porn but for the enlightening of the citi- more), to rape them , and that such viol a- zenry.) tion is erotic. So much for the catharsis Less obviously, women who don't theory. Freud, eat yo ur heart out. buy the anti porn line have begun to As though it had been planned, the challenge its hegemony in feminist film industry of the mid-Seve nties pro- thought. The matter of consent should vided the anti porn movement with fuel be brought to discussions of SfM, they for its fire: snuff film s and the slasher argue, and the matter of context-of the flicks like Halloween , The Texas Chain- difference between fantasy and reality- saw Massacre , and Friday the Thirteenth to discussions of porn. They worry about th at followed. To be sure, there had the defensive premise of the antiporn been precursors: the relatively small, argument: men are lusty brutes, women underground porn industry of the Hays their nice but helpless victims. Kept Office yea rs ; the art film s such as / , A busy warding off attack, women will Woman , Straw Dogs, The Devils, A Clock- hardly have the time for their own pur- 12
suits, for finding out what they like or want. And some women don 't want to wait till after the revolution. They are wary of prior restraint and the bounda- ries of government: if the state can inter- fere with the running of an adult book- store, is that not a precedent for its closing gay bookstores or bars, abortion clinics or Planned Parenthood? The so- cial climate need shift only a lit- tie ... And they wonder about our ability to define porn: is Brooke Shields in jeans porn, is a nude Reubens art? Or better yet, if an oil canvas of a nude hanging in a gallery is stolen and the thief jerks off to it, is that painting art or pornography? Implicit in the problem of definition is the question of who gets to decide. So much for the pulpits of the Chris- tian right, for intrafeminist or intraleft quarrels; the porn debate has gone mainstream. ACLUers and WAPers have at each other on Nightline, Indian- apolis passes anti porn legislation under the aegis of civil rights law, a woman immolates herself as a protest in a Min- neapolis porn shop. And this past win- ter, the Justice Department awarded Dr. Judith Reisman $800,000 to research the connections among testosterone, por- nography, and violence. In all this brou- haha, Brian De Palma's films don't stand a chance of simply being packaged as genre horror flicks and left at that. In August, De Palma and I talked in his very white, very clean, very spare, very air-conditioned office, about what's going on in the antiporners' minds and what's going on in his. And about Vanessa Williams, voyeurism, the wom- en's movement, Son of Sam, Hitchcock (again), the Sixties left, capitalism, gov- ernment repression, the media, and (briefly) his taste in porn.-M.P. Brian De Palma interviewed by Marcia Pally Do you think the hardcore fucking will get you an 'X'? There is no hardcore fucking. There's making love but nothing verging on hardcore. What about the masturbation scenes? We' ll see if they make an issue of it. I've had good luck with the ratings board before and I'll have good luck again. Where'd you get the image of drilling a woman to the floor? I do a lot of murder mysteries ; after a while you get tired of the instruments. Agatha Christie must've dealt with this day in and day out. You can use a knife , a
rope, but now we have e lectrica l instrll- would never allow pictures with sexual way okay to do itJrom porn ? ments-which are truly te rrifying. violence done to blacks or Jews, and the r hate to give you this tired answer-I But why the drill? Because he's using it to crack a safe. body politic does impose restraints on its must've said this a thousand times ... Did you start with the theft or with the idea ofmurder-by-drill? citizens for the good ofsociety. /' ve probably read it as many times as The th eft. Where 'd you get the razor for Dressed But th at's film as ad ve rtisin g . . . and I you've said it . to Kill ? I read somew he re that the mos t te rri- don't rememberany great Nazi art forms .. . but motion pictures are a kine tic fying thin g for a woman is di sfi gure- ment, that disfigurement is worse than or socia list art form s. art form; you' re dealing with motion and death-that a woman would rathe r be stabbed than have he r face cut up. It You mean high quality anti-Semitism in sometimes that can be violent motion. see med to me a particularly te rrifying Im age. cinema is okay but low quality isn' t? There are very few art form s that let you Do you consider your work porno- graph ic ? No. I'm saying in politically res tricted dea l with things in motion and that's o. But now you' re ge ttin g into what socie ti es where politicians co ntrol art- why Westerns and chases and shoot-outs is and what isn' t pornography. The stuff that is shot and sold as porn is meant to ists, you don't get interesting works of and killings crop up in film . They re- get you aro used and to climax. I don't think my mov ies have people coming in art. quire one of the e lements intrinsic to the ir sea ts . .. I think the antiporn people would agree film : motion. W hen you ' re dealing with an art form , you shouldn ' t be draw n into all kind s of that Nazi films were advertisement and the Rapid motion, percussive motion, em- social and political issues. People can comme nt on yo ur work and write about intention behind your work may not be, but phatic motion may enliven the screen, but it, but I think those making th e form shou ld not be bound by these things. If the effect on the viewer might be the same. then there's the content. You can have an we had people saying yo u ca n' t use cer- tain words, or have violence , or shoot Do you think people learn values or per- arching motion by itself and you can have wome n in this way, what kind of world is th a t ? spectives or even how to actfrom watching that motion be used .to slash someone's Some women feel it's a safe world film ? throat. You can use deep red and silver as where women aren't made into playthings. You're being put in contact with the a color combination or you can have a Does th at mean th at nude portraits shou ld be e limin ated, should we tea r se nsibili ty of one person and yo u' re ei - razor cut someone's face. Why do you down all th ose paintings? the r attracted to that se nsibili ty and yo u choose the violent content? That's the question of what is art or erotica and what's porn . find conn ections with you r own expe ri- It interests me. I don ' t know why. I'd Who's going to decide th at? e nce or yo u don' t. have to be on the couch a long time to People in the antiporn movement insist that they can distinguish, that people can But art is said to affect its audience; art fi gure it out. I seem to be attracted to it. tell what is respectful and what' s \"dehu- manizing .\" that contains racism or misogyny could be You said in an interview in MacLeans a I'd hate to li ve in a wo rld whe re art is left in th e hand s of th e politica l people. just one more thing in our culture that adds few years ago that you didn' t go into medi- I'd leave the country if it ca me to th at- so und s like Russia. weight to them. cine like yourfather because it wasn't pre- In previous interviews you've said that the crucifixion is a fairly gruesome sight, If yo u have a misogy nist outlook a cise enoughfor you. When you direct, you and no one goes around pulling cruc(fixes offmuseum or church walls or ojfthe walls sex ist film co uld strike a chord in you, control a whole world, particularly events ofbedrooms-God only knows what's go- ing on there. Do you think there's a differ- but I don' t think it e ngend e rs sexism . I which , if they happened in life, would be ence between a stilllij\"e ofan action and an enactment ofthat action ? don' t think women are beaten or raped terrifying because you would have no con- No. Mov ing pictures is a Twe ntie th Ce ntury art form. If th ey had film whe n because the rap ist has been affected by trol-like meeting a razor-slashing crazy Rel.lbens was painting, he probably wo uld 've used it. th e e nte rtainm e nt indu s try. If th e re in an elevator. The antiporn argument makes an anal- ogy between misogyny and racism: we we re statistics to prove th at, th ey' d be I don't like to be out of control. I don' t on the front page of every newspa per in see scary film s. That's like ge tting on a the co untry. roller coas te r, you' re out of co ntrol. I One of the projects of the antiporn neve r get on roller coas te rs; I'm amazed movement is to get those statistics, to at people who do. Who wants to be prove that men learn to rape or assault scared? Why would yo u put yourself in a from porn. The line ofthinking goes some- si tuation where yo u were out of control? thing like: boys learn to be contemptuous Are you amazed that people go to your ofwomen , and every time they go to a porn films ? film or a Brian De Palmajilm that attitude I ce rtainl y wouldn't go see them. But is stroked. It snowballs till it leads to the re's a diffe rence between being the violence. marione tte and be ing the puppet mas- Makes no se nse to me. I' ve seen a lot te r. One is a director beca use one wants of mov ies and a lot of porn , and it's not to be the maste r. made me viole nt to wo me n in any way. Do you think men feel women are dan- Anybod y who's had contact with true gerous? viole nce kn ows th e re's absolute ly no They're used to mothers taking care con nection with artistic viole nce .. . of th e m and to a woman being that nur- I was just reading a book about Son of turing partner she had been for so many Sa m. The first tim e he tried to stab centuri es . Now whe n she has her own someo ne, he hit he r and nothing hap- concerns, ca ree r, men have trouble with pened. H e expected he r to fall ove r and that. And women are more sexually de- be dead like in th e movies , but it was manding now: \"Where's my orgasm, nothing like th e mov ies. The differe nce buddy. You ca ll th at an e rection ?\" is so profo und. It's the antith esis of the It was neve r a probl e m for me but I anti porn argument. think me n find women's intelligence What about statements by rapists in and aggress ion , the ir ambition, threat- prison counselling groups who say they e ning. Women aren ' t go ing to make the learned how to do it, or that it was in some te rrible bargains they made in the past; 14
they're too well educated. Why should Nancy Allen in Dressed to Kill. they? atrocities by your pillow. Is that true? tried to get the city ofMinneapolis to pass No. I read nonfiction about murders the Kathy McKinnen-Andrea Dworkin TIult's the modern problem. I wonder if antiporn bill. It takes pornography out of and if I'm doing a film about the cocaine the obscenity area into the civil liberties there's an older issue . First mothers- industry I read about that. I keep most bailiwick and makes porn illegal by claim- women-control little boys' lives. And of my books here-you can go look. ing it violates the civil rights of women . The mayor of Minneapolis vetoed the bill then, as ifgetting outfrom under the moth- What are you smiling at? Why are you but in Indianapolis, the city passed a ver- looking at me that way? sion ofit. er's control weren't enough, when boys grow up they have sex with women so the (Chuckling) Uh, it's just that a per- That woman is someone who made fears one Iuls about sex-about tlult mo- son's face changes when you get to know an extreme personal sacrifice to drama- ment of being overwhelmed or out of con- them. I'm starting to see how you think. tize her political views, but I don't think trol-becomes associated with women yet we should encourage this-whether it's again. In your camera-work, you use the pro- for no-nukes or to stop the war in Nicara- tagonist's or voyeur's point-of-view al- gua. Sex is out of control ... and love is out most all the time-you've got to stop look- of control. Having your emotions in the ing at me like that. I was struck by the difference between hands of someone else is more terrifying attacking porn stores-going after who- than strange, wild sex. It's the nature of (He laughs. I'm getting pissed off; ever you think the enemy is-and attack- love to be out of control. But I like he's just getting off.) Film is one of the ing yourself. women. I get along with them; I went to only art forms where you can give the school with a lot of them. I have long- audience the same visual information It's almost a kind of terrorism, and term relationships. I use women in my the character has. I learned it from unless it has a strong base behind it, it films, and they tend to be strong Hitchcock. It's unique to cinema and it doesn't have any effect. It just looks like women. I like directing women. I'm not connects the audience directly to the some single crazy event, like assassina- Sam Peckinpah , you know, down in experience-unlike the fourth wall ap- tions. Mexico screwing the whores. So I'm a proach, which belongs to the Xerox strange kind of guy to be making the school of filmmaking. Assassins try to get somebody else; this films I make. woman went after herself. By connecting the viewer to the experi- Then why do you make them? ence, the sex becomes hotter, the violence That depends on one's psychology: Because of an aesthetic interest that I more frightening. (He's peering at me do you direct your anger out or in. It's don't have much control over. again.) I'm going to ignore that. The An aesthetic interest? viewerflirts with losing control . .. safer to kill yourself than to kill some- I'm a visual stylist. I like interesting body else, there's no question about visual spaces, architecture. I like photo- You couldn't be a good director if you that. But it doesn't accomplish any- graphing women because they're aes- didn't also feel the arousal, the fear. .. thing. thetically interesting. I'm interested in motion, sometimes violent motions be- .. . but inevitably regains it. When you Except the media blitz. cause they work aesthetically in film. I direct from the protagonist's POY, isn't That's a problem-that people do like mysteries and plots with reversals. I tlult what happens to you, standing behind things for the sake of media attention. have a dark image of society in which the camera, behind the eyes ofthe charac- And the media tends to be attracted to people are manipulating each other. ter? Don't you get aroused or frightened violent, explosive, pornographic acts. Maybe that has to do with the world I and then rein in yourfeelings, get on top of I'm getting very interested in doing a work in. them? movie about this media circus. I'm But tlult's formal stuff again. You ha- working on a script now. When I'm on a ven't said why you use violence. That's the nature of directing. Taking talk show, there's a montage of every I said I'm a visual stylist, a VISUAL control. violent scene from movies and life be- STYLIST (bangs on the table). I'm fore we even begin to talk. People inter- dealing with a white canvas up there and • pret that as news. Then everybody asks I may one be of the few practitioners me how I can make violent movies, and doing that today. Sometimes I feel like Did you see the Times story on the the television program is doing the same Eisenstein; he was a great montage styl- woman who set fire to herself in a porn thing-except they're pretending it's ist. shop in Minneapolis ? She lit herself up as But you don't make abstractfilms. a protest against pornography, and then The content of my films is a second- was hailed as a martyr by the antiporn ary issue. I don't start with an idea about feminists there-tlult was the group that content; I start with a VISUAL IMAGE (more banging). (De Palma starts to smile-oddly, I think. Is he feeling out of control? Is he going to want to do something about it? Am I crazy to be wondering where the drill is? No, razors would be better for the office.) In the Jan. '84 Esquire, one of the women you dated before you married Nancy Allen said you keep a book of Nazi 15
news. T hey put se nsational things on Do you think the pageant is being a little process of growing up . You' re supposed the air in ord er to sell adve rtising space . hypocritical? to be able to di scriminate. People do n' t unde rstand that both pre- se ntations are e nte rtainm e nt. And news Because th e pagea nt ex ploits wo me n Whe n you' re dealing with someone sho uld n' t be e nte rtain ment. in bathin g su its and what's the di ffe r- like Son of Sam who thought if he hit ence be twee n th at and Penthouse? I someone like th ey do in the movies she Earlier you said audiences didn't learn think it's a matte r of degree. We don't would fall dow n dead , yo u' re talkin g to be violent from your films and yet now like to think of M iss Ame rica as a sex about someone who obviously ca n't dis- you say viewers are affected by the news, obj ect, it's more the im age of a pre tty tinguish betwee n a movie and really try- which you say is entertainment just like girl. T he re's a big diffe re nce betwee n ing to get a knife into someone-w hich yourfilms. girl s parading aro und in ba thing suits is a very difficult process, especiall y if and pos in g fo r Penthouse, ju s t like she's wearing a heavy coat. That guy is T he med ia affec ts peop le beca use the re's a d iffe rence between love sce nes crazy. they can beco me stars. T hey do thin gs in movies and hardcore porn . in order to ge t on TV. Yo u do n' t become I think th e antiporn moveme nt is a star by wa tchin g my movies .. . Take ~- d ea lin g w ith d u pli citou s argum e nts. the street riots at the De mocratic co n- They' re wo rried about walking in to one ve nti on: if you turn on cameras and Dressed to Kill. of my film s whe n in the ir neighborhoods lights, people pe rform . T he medi a is What's the difference between a nude th e re are stores sellin g pornographic cas- creating its own ')news\" even ts- and scene in one ofyour films and the shots of settes hand ove r fi st, and the ir six-year- it's a monste r because it need s stuff all Vanessa in Pe nthouse? old can turn on ca bl e T V and see a he ll the time. O ne is co nstructed to aro use and th e of a lot more th an is ever in my movies . oth e r is co nstructed to en hance, or bea u- I think the re are a lot of psychopaths tify, or whateve r. I don't think pictu res The antiporn people are worried about out th e re wa tchin g te lev ision- I don' t of wome n with th e ir legs spread is aes- that, too. think th ey' re watching my mov ies, par- the tica ll y pleas ing. I guess it's in th e ticul arly-a nd whe n they see someone eyes of th e be ho lder, to tally subjecti ve. I should think they would be . T hat's a like Gary G il mo re giving press co nfe r- huge bu siness. T he hi story of radical e nces, they say \" H ey, what am I doing Who gets to decide what's art and move me nts in this country has been that sitting in thi s mote l room whe n I co uld what's porn? the medi a addresses itse lf to th e min or be o ut th e re killin g peo pl e, writin g iss ues beca use the re's no way they ca n books, and be in g a ce lebri ty.\" It's th e Yo u do, each ind ividual. d ea l with the major ones. If peopl e are Taxi Driver idea, the King of Comedy So you're not for closing down Pe nt- wo rri e d abo ut agg ress io n , th e n we idea. And telev ision has a much larger ho use. shouldn ' t live in a capitalist society. Cap- audie nce tha n mov ies. Absolute ly not. I don' t wa nt to be in a itali s m is base d o n aggress ion , and burea ucratic situ ation whe re some peo- violence aga inst wome n has to do with You don' t think people get the message ple ca n decide what the rest of us should aggression. T hat aggress ion is fa nned read and what we shoul d n' t. co ns ta n t1 y. from your films that if they take a razor to I was on a p rogram once with those g u ys w ho di d a s tud y w he re th ey Th e antiporn people think p orno- some woman in an elevator they' ll become showed a group of co ll ege kids a bunch graphic cassettes and cable and maga- a star? of viole nt movies and th e n did a mock zines and your movies are all dangerous. rape trial. T he researche rs co nclud ed No. If yo u' re wo rri ed about viole nce that the people in th e test group were T he n we get in to whe re yo u draw the aga inst women, stop buying Penthouse de-sensitized to viole nce, did not e mpa- lin e and the effects of draw ing that line . magazine. T hat's the simplest way to thi ze with th e girl who was raped , and in C igare ttes are death and we still sell dea l with th at prob lem-a nd th e med ia fact thought if th ey could rape some- th e m. If yo u ca n' t preve nt me fro m is se lling it all ove r the place. body and get away with it, they would. smoking ciga rettes th en you can' t pre- It makes no sense at all to me-that I am vent me fro m buying porn. People have What did you think of the Vanessa Wil- such a brainless foo l that if I see a few a choice: nobody has to walk in to my liams business? viole nt mov ies I'll feel it's pe rfectl y fin e movies ... W hy not have an economic to go out and rape some body. Are we boycott of film s th ey don' t like? S he's very yo ung, and I thought she that impressionable? T hat's the whole hand led th ose reporte rs like a seaso ned Do you think they'd be successful? anchorpe rso n. I be li eved everything she If they got e nough suppOrt they cou Id said-until I saw th e pictures. T hey p ro babl y ... if that's the way society is we re obv iously ca refully posed-thi s go ing to go then I'll have to stop making was no poo r youn g gi rl wande ring in to a mov ies. But to me that's like the revolu- studio- specifically po rn ographic, cre- tio n of the Sixties- trying to create a ated fo r a hardcore ma le marke t. revolution in a society that doesn' t really wa nt a revo lution. I don' t think too But they were rather standard, tame many people wa nt to burn down the shots. banks; they have ca r pay me nts and mortgages . Uh, th at's pre tty hard co re stuff, I P rofit has beco me the moral justifica- tion for se lling cigare ttes. If you say that think . capitalism is the bes t system and free- The lesbian shots? choice is necessary, you' re going to have And the spl it-crotch shots. to acce pt that cigare ttes and porn are Do you think she should've had to re- going to exist. They make a profit, and people have the choice to bu y the m. turn her crown? We ll , afte r all , she's a spokespe rson for a lot of products and obviously it e mbarrasses th e manu fac ture rs. Co me on, any pu blic company would bail out of it in te n second s. 16
You seem to be pro-free-choice ana crit- pes t in a teapot. When I was making Cinema ical ofcapitalism. Dressed to Kill, suddenl y there were Studies: three books out on transsexua ls, and Capitalism has to be te mpered by transsexuals were on all the talk shows. An education your own se nse of morality. There are One was on Phil Donahue, one on Good for our tiIne certain things you just shouldn ' t do in Morning America. You'd think th ey we re order to get ahead and those things need all over the place. Same thing with th e Film is the art fonn that defines our to be engendered by your family, by gay moveme nt; people think they' re go- time. Films by Eisenstein, Bergman, whoever brings yo u up. ing to take over. Then the craze passes, and Fassbinder, for instance, offer pen- and we move on to the next thing. etrating insights into human behavior, Not by society? cultural change, life as we live it and I don ' t think it would work. Going to There's also something else. We are perceive it At New York University's a communist country isn' t going to do it human be ings; we have certain kinds of TIsch School of the Arts, we believe either. You have to balance the freedoms drives and things we' re attracted to th at the study of film develops analytic of a capitalist world with a se nse of don' t get educated out of us. And I don 't skills, hones critical thinking, and what's good and bad . think I'd want them to get educated out. broadens perspectives. It offers under- That means people will develop differ- graduates superb preparation for many ent moral codes. You smoke but other peo- One last question. You've often been of life's callings. ple think smoking is polluting the air and accused oflifting from Hitchcock . .. killing them . You don't think mell learn to Our program in cinema studies cut women up from your films and other Richard Corliss is a big one on that . .. allows undergraduates to study film people do. What's your 'sense of moral- Given all those accusations, why do you with the same distinguished scholars ity' ? still put bathroom scenes-lifting from who teach our graduate students. The I hate to ge t Biblical, but the Ten Psycho, they call it-in everyone ofyour department's film archives, variety of Commandments work pe rfectly well. films , including the new one? courses, and viewing facilities are 'Do Unto Others' seems to make a lot of I throw it right in the face. I refuse to exceptional. And, students have access sense. To me , the aggressive aspects of be censored by a bunch of peop le who to all the film screenings that make man come from profit being the most have the wrong perceptions of my mov- New York City the richest film center important thing in life. ies. I should listen to these nitwit critics? in the world. Are women affected by the profit mo- I don' t cater to the public, why should I tive? ca ter to the critics? Because film is a truly interdisciplin- Of course. I think it's behind a lo t of Do you put those scenes in as a jab? ary art fonn, the program includes the the women's movemen t. Women want a No. If I'm attracted to something I study of related subjects: art, history, piece of the pie too-and why should shouldn ' t refuse to use it just because psychology, and even film production. they be deprived of what we've had ? Hitchcock was attracted to it too. As a result, our students get a broadly Do you think women are aggressive? What's the attraction of the shower based education as they undertake a Sure. They' re being affected by the scene ? serious study of cinema same sys tem that men have been. If you Hitchcock discovered th at people feel wan t to change all of society you have to safe in the bathroom with the door shut. For more infonnation, return the protest porn and General Motors simul- Not any more . .. coupon below or call (212) 598-7777. taneously. I want to see WAP take that It's a place that when someone comes position. in , you really feel violated. To me it's Tisch School of the Arts Admissions I think a lot ofthem would. almost a ge nre co nvention at this point Then they have to start trying to get - like usin g violins when people look at New York University I legislation against both industries-and each other or using women in situations P.e. Box 909, Cooper Station they will get nowhe re. So they focu s on where they are killed or sexually at- New York, N.Y. 10276 IFCS01984 porn. They get a lot of attention because tacked . You know, the woman in the the media loves to put anti porn stuff on haunted house- I didn ' t in vent that. Please send information on the cinema studies I the air. .. Women, over the history of Western cul- program. I You get the jollies of porn and you get ture , seem to be more vulnerable than I to feel righteous at the same time ... men . It has a lot to do with their being o undergraduate 0 graduate And you get to sell General Motors ph ys ically less strong. They made a too. You can go live in places in this movie with Roy Scheider being stalked I country where the profit motive is not so in a basement. Roy Scheider is the guy important. I'm sure I can go out and live who killed Jaws. Now who is going to IName in Maine and get a job in a mill and earn jump out at Roy Scheider? Obviously I $200 a week-or maybe a month-and children in peril is also something yo u'd I'd be totally unaffected by the profit connect with, but there's something too Address I motive of this country. But if you' re go- awful about that. I don't particularly ing to live in one of the power capitals ... want to chop up women but it seems to I CitylStatelZip II Unless they closed the mill. work. I New YorI< Univenity is an aI!lrmative actiorVequal opporIWIity Then you'd have to go someplace I IIlI1itution else. But don't come into Manhattan • ' - - - - - - - - _ _ _ _ _ ..J and talk about pornograph y-it's ludi- crous. (Picking up pen and paper and hold- I think thi s anti porn business is a tem- ing them out expectantly, the way a priest motions for hi s congregation to rise.) So, Marcia. Can we have a drink so metime? ~ 17
Painting Pictures Bertrand Tavernier uses seve ral anecdotes with no real co n- Ta vernier. nection among th e m as th e structural interview ed by Dan Yakir core of th e film Th e direc tori al urge, prese nt all along, was fulfill ed with Th e Clock- At 43, with e ight film s in the past A native of L yon, T avernie r di scov- maker, fo r w hi c h T ave rni e r c re dits decade to his cred it, Be rtrand Tave rnie r e red the cin e ma at twelve, w ith th e large ly the e fforts of Philippe Noiret: has become the mos t respected F re nch film s of Willi am We llm an and Jo hn \" H e e nco uraged me by acce pting to filmm ake r of his gene ration. His films Ford . The n he discove red the oeuvre of make the film with me . H e fought for seldom fail to ea rn multipl e Cesars; crit- actors such as Gary Coope r. \" I neve r ics praise th e pictures' inte llectu al and found Ame rican cin e ma to be alie nating me. l owe him my ca reer. \" -D.Y. technical sophi sticati on. Since his d e but at all ,\" he says . \" In fact, I lea rned a lot film , L'horloger de Saint Paul (The Clock- What attracted you to Sund ay in th e maker, 1974), Tave rni e r's work has ma- about reality th ro ugh it. It even made Co unt ry? tured gracefull y and consiste ntly. His me awa re of politics: the New D eal in For a long time, I' ve been looking for lates t film , the lyrical Un dimanche a la Grapes ofWrath , th e Indians, and so on. a film which has no plot twist, which I But it was also an in vitation to dream . I conside r mos tl y theatrical, but moves campagne (Sunday in the Country), wo n loved romantic adventure pictures.\" In along b y virtu e o f its c harac te rs . I him the Best Director prize at thi s yea r's his yo uth ful vo raciousness, he discov- wa nte d to make a film that would be Cannes Festi va l and p ro mi ses to be a e re d Re no ir a nd Ca pra- it was a based e ntire ly on feelings. A film whe re highlight of the New York F ilm Festi val \"s hoc k .\" e motions could reach a peak simpl y be- this fall. cause a youn g woman leaves he r fath e r a Late r on, at th e L ycee H e nri IV in bit ea rly on a Sunday afte rn oon-that's Tave rni e r's se nsibility is n' t eas il y Pari s, whe re he studi ed law, \"filmgo in g th e onl y dramatic mome nt in th e film . I classifiabl e. Very much a man of th e beca me more syste matic. I re me mbe r found it irresistible . prese nt, he none th e less is d rawn to co n- th e first triple bill I saw at the C in em a- fro nt th e F re nch pas t: th e fo lli es of th eq ue: Ma lraux's L' espoir, BunueJ's Los T he film is based on a short nove l by L ouis XV I's co urt in Que fa f ete com- Olvidados, and vo n S te rnbe rg'S Th e Blue mence (Let Joy Reign Supreme, 1975), th e Angel. T he first L ang and Keato n retro- Pi e rre Bos t, the las t thing he wrote. It mind and times of a multipl e m urd e re r specti ves were also shocks. By contrast, in th e 19th ce ntu ry in Le j uge et /' assas- a H owa rd H awks prog ram had many dis- was n' t successful , although people like sin (The Judge and the Assassin , 1976) , appointin g film s. Also, C ukor mad e Audibe rti and Raymond Qu e nea u liked th e w rily macabre va lu es of F re nch colo- some te rrible film s before th e war. It it. I liked its sty le, which resembled that nists in No rth Afri ca in Coup de torchon took La Cava, lV/CCa rey and Ca pra to of the Nouvelle Revue Fran~aise : inte lli- (Clean Slate) , a day in the life of an agin g save the re putati on of Ame rica n comedy ge nt and poignant without any conces- painte r 70 yea rs ago in Sunday in the for me .\" sion to fas hion. Razor-sharp. I was take n Country. Tave rni e r's th e mes s huttl e be- by phrases such as \"All sorrows resemble tween the pe rsonal and th e co mmunal, T ave rni e r beca me a film criti c to each othe r. \" I found in it mome nts of with an occas io nal sid e trip into soc ial or make a li vin g; hi s pare nts re fu sed to profound truth. For example , Monsie ur political o bservation from a ca utiously support him if he didn ' t comple te his L admiral wo n't as k his d aughte r if she progress ive point of view. His sty le has law degree. Hi s first interv iew was with evolved from the slow, form alist ea rl y C laud e Sa ute t and th e seco nd with Al- film s to the extravaga nce of Coup de be rto L attu ada- \"a nd vv ithout seeing a torchon and Death watch , an O rwe lli an sin gle film by him! \" nig htm are that marke d th e directo r's first film shot in E nglish. In the ea rl y Sixti es, he found ed with fri ends a cine-club th at re fu sed to sub- Sunday in the Country co ntinues the scribe to the Cahiers du Cinema's aute ur pe rso nal streak T ave rni e r began with th eory: \" We fe lt the Positij gro up was Des enfants gates (Sp oiled Children , stupid for attackin g Fritz Lang and Jo- 1977) and Une semaine de vacances (A seph L. Ma nki ew icz and the Cahiers for Week's Vacation, 1980) . Spoiled Child- attackin g D e lm e r D aves . I still love ren , a May-Septe mbe r romantic me lo- Pride ofthe Marines and I see The Hang- drama, and A Week's Vacation, about a ing Tree and 3:10 to Yuma as among th e yo ung teache r's sea rch for he r id e nti ty, bes t Weste rn s eve r. We fe lt th at the re p rove that d e pth of e motions and a good we re o the r inte resting directo rs apart eye more than co mpe nsa te for a lack of a from th e sac red bunch: H e nry Kin g, Mi- traditi onal plot. Spoiled Children was ad- chael C urti z, Tay Garn e tt. What I de- mittedl y inspired by Dos Passos in th at it mand from a critic is the ope nness to th e notion th at a film may be good eve n if a filmm ake r he des pises made it.\" 18
The famiLy in a warm light . Father Ducreux and Daughter Azema in A S und ay in th e Co untry. has a lover, and she won't say it e ith e r, so You are credited as having saved the che. T we nty years late r, whe n I read it, I as not to hurt him. Both know they have reputation of certain auteurs of the an- asked him why he neve r published it. reason to lie about it. I like th ese little cie nn e vague, such as Aurenche and H e respond ed , \" I didn ' t wa nt to use the mome nts. B ost . same me thods Truffaut used. \" Tell me about your collaboration with The New Wave had des troyed people Truffaut, who's a wo nde rful director, the veteran screenwriters Pierre Bost and unjustly. Truffaut's fa mous attack sin- was right about seve ral points: about the Jean Aurenche. gled out Aure nche's script for Les or- way some film s were shot, about the gueilleux, in which a point is made ve r- production syste m . But I reject all labe ls With Bost I worke d onl y on The bally when the hero decides to cross the and categories. T o lump so many direc- C/ockmaker- he was already sick at the word \" te nde rness\" out of the telegram . tors as th e \" tradition de La quaLite\" or the time. He was a journalist who liked to He unfairly compared a di alogue scene \"New Wave\" or now \" La nouvelle qua/ite say that he knew all about human stu- to a visual one in Hitchcock's Under franr;aise\" is the best way to ignore th e pidi ty. The re was something strong and Capricorn , w he re M ic hae l Wildin g indi viduali ty of each filmm ake r. I'd say rigorous about him. His approach was as waves his jacke t by th e window for In- that the de finiti on of \" tradition de La lean as his ph ysique. In fact, he was so grid Be rgman to see. It was a vicious quaLite\" appli es whe n acade mi sm stands lean that the G e rmans freed him from comparison. T he fault was not in the in the way of expressing e motions. But prison in 1940 for being in a pitiful state. writing- Hitchcock or Scorsese would in certain film s by Allegre t, Jea n D e lan- H e was the son of a Protestant ministe r, have made that scene well with the noy, Juli e n Du vivie r, a nd m os t of whose poor pare nts were forced to rent sa me di a logue -but in th e mise en C laude Autant-Lara's, I do recognize out rooms . Among the lodgers was Jo- scene . By the same toke n, I wonde red if the aute ur's pe rsonali ty. Some times it's seph Conrad's son, whom Bos t me t in the credit fo r Hitchcock's scene should likable and some times it isn' t, but it's his adolesce nce. H e was a real man of have bee n given to th e screenwrite r. the re . Many of Autant-Lara's film s mi- le tte rs whose output was great. nus Aure nche and Bost we re n't g reat. Truffaut late r wrote Bos t a lette r, Th ese are inte rmitte nt aute urs, but By contrast, Aure nche wrote very lit- which I read , in which he stated th at he film s like Du vivie r's Panique or Le temps tle-some poems and one play with didn ' t believe a wo rd of what he himself des assassins or Autant-L ara's En cas de Jean Anouilh. H e was mostly a screen- had writte n. H e said he was a young ma/heur are simply great. write r, and prior to that also a director critic who had to ge t ahead and the refore and author of comme rcials, which he wrote co nttoversial articles. T wo weeks I took Aure nche and Bost not as a made with frie nds like Jacqu es Preve rt afte r he published hi s attack, he wrote reaction aga inst the New Wave, but as and M ax E rn st. Some we re ph oto- Bos t, \" I admire yo u grea tl y. I reall y peo ple who wro te in a mode rn way graphed by M arcel Carne and Yves AlIe- meant to attack Aure nche, not you. \" without aute urist word s, unlike H e nri gret; I show one of them in Coup de Bost never showed the lette r to Aure n- Jeanson and C harles Spaak. torchon . 19
Now, all the young historians of Sometimes I show the famil y in a French cinema, including the critics of warm light, while at other times, I show the Cahiers du Cimimn, are rediscovering family members who forget how to com- Autant-Lara as well as films by Henri municate because they' re forced to be in Decoin and Pierre Chenal. They de- contact with each other. In A Week's stroyed a whole generation , and 25 years Vacation, there's no communication be- later they claim to discover little-known tween Nathalie Baye and her parents, talents! They treat directors like Cam- except for a split second with her father. embert and determine what percentage In Spoiled Children, Michel Piccoli and of fat they contain. And all of a sudden his wife tread on a tightrope so as not to they make a film without any fat-but hurt each other. the filmmakers never asked to be put How do you see the relations between among th e cheeses to begin with! men and women? In Spoiled Children, It happened to me too: in the attempt it's not too optimistic: There's an attempt to reinvent the \"nouvelle qualite fran- to communicate, whichfails. fais,\" I was lumped together with It's curious, but each time I decide to Claude Miller, Alain Comeau, and a make an optimistic film , I somehow end dozen others. We're not at all alike. up tilting it to a darker side. And when I Isn ' t Sunday in the Country your most have a noir subject, such as Simenon's heartfelt film, perhaps alongside Spoiled ClocklrUlker or Coup de torchon, I have an Children? absolute need to lend it a lyrical touch. Yes, but I would add A Week's Vaca- Spoiled Children started as a passionate tion. All my films are close to my heart. I affair with a lyrical mood and I ended up passionately wanted to make all of separating Piccoli from Christine Pascal. them , and I made them the way I By co ntrast, A Week's Vacation was made wanted to make them . And I have no- so as to not let Baye and Gerard Lanvin body to blame but myself for what's get together in the end. But in the edit- The Judge and The Assassin. wrong with them . But given that, it's ing, I felt it was impossible. I called my pletely anti-Semitic, which hadn't been shown in any French film before. I enjoy tru e that after A Week's Vacation I wife, Colo, and sa id, \"They just can't be it, even when it's heavy-handed. I re- joice in inserting a political critique or in wanted to go further in stripping m yse lf apart!\" So we changed it altogether. advocating more positive emotions. I'm very far from the Duvivier or Allegret naked , in unveiling emotions. In Sunday It's because I increasingl y let myself school offilm noir, which was pessimistic and sordid even though it had quality in the Country, I let myse lf go complete- go when I shoot, to the point of disre- and beauty. Even when I des tory, I like to do it with a certain joy, with excite- ly. Maybe it was easier, because there garding the script. I prefer to let instinct ment-as in Coup de torchon. I findjoie de vivre even in horror, which is what I was no intrigue in the film , just music play a large r part; to explore. I don' t like about Jean Genet. Maybe it's be- cause I've been contaminated by the and emotion. want to know too well all the reasons surrealistic side of Aurenche and Pre- vert. Aurenche allowed lyricism into his So you're shifting from the intellectual behind each scene or even behind the life. He taught me to use everything that happens in life in film: the baroque, the to the emotionnl? overall d ynamic of the film. crazy, everything. I love the joyous anar- chism of Autant-Lara's La traversee de That's what I want. In the beginning, Maybe it's partly in order not to judge, Paris . It's neither noir nor didactic. I was pudique and perhaps I lacked self- because there's always another side to How do you account for the difference between Coup de torchon , with its broad confidence, so I didn' t let go. When I everything. strokes and sweeping camera movements as well as emphasis on sUljace, and Sun- made The Clockmaker, I felt very H usto- Peter Brook once said that Shake- day in the Country, with its attention to detail ? nian; I wanted to shoot the story, de- speare was extraordinary because he al- Actually, the two are very close to velop the characters. Now I feel that ways gave each character his reasons. each other in terms of camera move- ments. I'm more and more attracted to what the script doesn't specify is just as But I also agree with Sam Fuller that camera movements that are not func- tional and that have no strategic or ex- important. sometimes yo u have to be strongly planatory purpose. I want them to be not parallel to the action, but either Before now, you weren't ready to speak against something when you make a ahead or behind it. They should always aim to integrate a character with the de- about more personal subjects, such as the film-which means that I want to say family? something, to break accepted notions. In all my films I deal with the family. My first films were a mixture of the two: Even in The Judge and the Assassin, I wanted to give the audience the free- where the solitude of the murderer dom to form an opinion, but at the same stems from the fact that he doesn't have time I wanted to express my own social a family-which the judge also lacks. consciousness. In France, filmmakers My characters are often widowers, but often are afraid to call a spade a spade. don' t ask me why. I don't know. Still, in Once it was because of censorship. Now the other films , the family was explored it's \"good taste,\" the fearofbein g heavy- in a scene here and there , in an episode, handed. while in Sunday in the Country it's no The father-son rapport in Clockmaker longer the backdrop, it's the upfront is something you show anger about. theme. Yes. It's a reality I saw in France, but What is your notion of the family? In Bost had the same anger about the sub- Cou p de torchon it's not exac(ly appetiz- ject. I do like to show my fist once in a ing-it's almost cannibalistic-while while. In The Judge and the Assassin, I here it's lyrical, c!wrmed, sad. show a Catholic journal which is com- 20
Piccoli and Pascal in Spoiled Children. Huppert and Noiret in Coup de torchon. cor, not just to follow the hero. I like a That's true too. My characters are all And I used it within the specific context camera that lingers, explores, discovers. intellectuals and artists who try to com- of the prewar French colonial cinema. I've been interested in that since A municate with the rest of the world- Week's Vacation . I want to make my even Bouvier, the killer in The Judge and I used the steadicam in an opposite camera movements close to music. the Assassin , does it through his poems manner to the way Stanley Kubrick did What I liked about Delmer Daves' The and letters. These characters sometimes in The Shining: not to eliminate prob- Hanging Tree is a movement where a do that through a spectacle, which lems, but to accept them , in order to simple tilting of the camera changes the makes my films a spectacle within a achieve an image that has no center. All perspective of light in the scene. I like spectacle. In Coup de torchon, there's a the French films of the time were com- the camera to discover a rhythm of its film screened. In Let Joy Reign Supreme, posed around the principle ofsymmetry, own that isn't necessarily that of the there's a magic lantern. In The Judge and with the hero in the center. With the characters. the Assassin, an open-air performance. steadicam, I created an image that had Anyway, this gallery of characters en- no center, that kept shifting. It's differ- You mentioned social involvement . ables me to pose my own questions. ent from a hand-held camera, reportage- Spoiled Children is about a filmmaker style; we don't give the impression of who can't create without being part of his What attracted you to Coup de tor- cinema verite. Instead , it has an imper- environment. chon? ceptible, disquieting effect. It's the phys ical equivalent of earth that isn't It's similar to the notion of Death- I often make a film because of an solid. watch. I feel I learn a lot from each film , image or an element that doesn't even and that I live intensely during each end up in the film. I wanted to make A How do you work with actors? shoot, but there's also a danger in partici- Week's Vacation because somebody told Unlike directors such as Amant-Lara pating in the film life at the expense of me a story about a little girl in a class- and Duvivier, who had a totally violent, \"real\" life. In Deathwatch, the question room who said, \"I wish there would be a authoritarian rapport with their actors , I was, when does one have to stop? At wad\" But I never included it in the film. like to develop an affectionate, even which point do creation and the will to passionate rapport with them. I'm closer create end up devouring the creator? You In Coup de torchon, I was attracted to to the rapport Renoir had with them live the battles, challenges, and pangs of the fact that it has so many typical, pre- than to that of Carne or Henri-Georges conscience of others and it all poses an dictable ingredients like a sheriff who Clouzot. insoluble problem. Deathwatch is about cleans up a city; but after a while the I like to meet with them ahead of time someone who doesn' t realize all this un- bizarre takes over and you have no idea and talk about everything, not necessar- til he's already making a movie. You what values are at work and even where ily the film. When I met Jean Rochefort, must be prepared, because the cinema you are. You end up with a comic mood prior to The Clockmaker, we spoke about devours you completely. You become a that gets under your skin-the atmo- Audiberti's poetry. Later, he told me, camera and you start communicating sphere of violence, horror, hypocrisy \"The way you spoke about a certain with others through the film. It's painful. doesn't leave you anything to hold on to. poem made me understand how you But it's not exactly a desperate vision of wanted me to play the character.\" On But isn't that precisely the reason why the world. Nor is it the opposite. You Deathwatch, Harvey Keitel and Harry you make films? simply don't know. That excites me. 21
Dean Stanton, who are both sublime, field with colors but no filters or reflec- tors. Just as the cinematography in A had to get a lot of information. At the Week's Vacation wasn't realistic-Na- thalie Baye's apartment is lit in most of same time, Harry Dean gets his part the daytime scenes as ifit were night-I wanted to find an unrealistic tone of Illustrated. The Greatest very quickly. He said, \"I'll play my char- color for Sunday in the Country. I tried to Selection of Things to acter as a cross between Hugh Hefner recreate the monochromatic quality of Show. Videocassettes and David Frost.\" Louis Lumiere. I left all the silver on the film. I had to avoid all the vivid reds and VideoDiscs, slides, I try to establish with both the actors because they became black. There's no super 8 & 16mm films. and the crew an intense feeling of pas- blue in the film and all the green and red All guaranteed to be sion. I want everybody to participate, to hues are pale. But the yellows are en- 100% satisfactory. Our share the enthusiasm. I shoot very hanced, as are the blacks and whites. 57th year. Sabine is a white shock arriving at the country house. I wanted to break the Blackhawk Films quickly, in exhilaration, and I want the cinematic grammar by her arrival: it's actors to give all in each take. like taking out an ax, so to speak. The Dept. 404 roses in the garden seem natural but are, You've worked with Isabelle Huppert, in fact, very pale. Someone said, \"You 1235 W. 5th St., Davenport, IA 52802 found the lighting of[composer] Gabriel Faure.\" I wanted a lighting that had the Nathalie Baye, Christine Pascal. Perhaps splendor of a moment before death. there's a Tavernier heroine .... And the music? We did some of the complicated cam- That's my type ... When I was young, era movements with Faure's music on the set-even moments that weren't I was attracted to Janet Leigh and meant to be made to music. When I write my scripts, I always have the tone Rhonda Fleming. Now I like thin, of the music I want in my head. I don't start writing before I have it. I always ft~\\e.s & -'OA child-women with small breasts. The knew that Duhamel's music for Death- ~~ opposite of the Playboy type. watch would be similar to what he wrote ....'.\" FROM for Pierrot le fou. Made of chords. From ,.- PENMAEN And they're good actresses. Isabelle the outset, I thought of Eddy Mitchell's finds her own pace, makes her own mu- song for Coup de torchon . Has Sunday in the Country been influ- SAVE ON VIDEO sic. But like Romy Schneider, a director enced by Bergman' s Wild Strawberries or MOVIES BY MAIL has to find her rhythm and calculate his by Renoir' sfilms? We've Got Them All! mise en scene around it. She needs long I've never seen Wild Strawberries, al- though I admire Bergman a lot. When I takes. In Heaven 's Gate , she didn' t prepared Sunday, I didn ' t watch any of Renoir's films. I was inspired by Leo come out all that great, because her McCarey's Make Way for Tomorrow. I also screened for my camera operator scenes were heavily edited to help Kris Come Back to the 5 and Dime, Jimmy Dean , because I felt the camera move- Sci-Fi Classics Thrillers Kristofferson. But let her do a four-min- ments there were completely musical and beautifull y inventive. I was also in- Foreign Classics ute scene and she'll reach great heights! fluenced by Joseph Losey's The Go-Be- Rock n' Roll/Jazz/Country Nathalie can do many things she hasn't tween in terms of image composition, done yet. She moves better than any camera movements and the way of see- Cult & Camp & Chic actress I've worked with, maybe be- ing things. But I still can't escape Renoir: you put Comedy Cartoons cause she was a dancer. Her gestures are people in a tavern with dance and music V\\ ¢ollector's Series terrific; she has great control over her and his name comes up. It bothered body. She can be both sexy and exuber- Louis Ducreux, who played the painter \\ VMovie Musicals And More and is a great connoisseur of painting. /\\ ant. He said, \"Why do they speak of Renoir? SAVE $10 AND MORE ON DOUBLE BILLS! Up to Isabelle in Coup de torchon, my The colors of the film have nothing to do with the colors of his paintings.\" And I SAVE $20 AND MORE ON TRIPLE BILLS! heroines moved very slowly. But Isa- believe Renoir the filmmaker had a dif- ferent tone. But, with all modesty, I do SAVE $100 AND MORE ON COLLECTOR'S belle played very quickly, as did Sabine think he would have liked the film. ® SETS AND MANY MORE DISCOUNTS! Azema in Sunday in the Country. I was told , \"You made her play like Truffaut's I /\\ over 500 video film classics \\ heroines.\" Many not available elseWhere\\ Actors like to work with me, because I'm a good public-I like to be as- tonished. When you seek to surprise, you discover wonderful things . And I too want to surprise them. It's so much fun: on Sunday in the Country, we laughed like crazy much of the time. Maybe thi s is because I was influenced FOR A FREE CATALOG WRITE by a director like Jean-Pierre Melville, PENMAEN LTD. who was very authoritarian, very hard. I 1341 OCEAN AVENUE #110 suffered a lot because of that and vowed not to do the same. He discouraged me, DEPT FC said I was a terrible assistant director. I once sent him to see Fritz Lang's r - - - - - - - - - - - - ,SANTA MONICA, CA 90401 Moonfleet , which he hated, and as a pun- Please rush me your FREE ishment, he ordered that nobody speak to me for two days . I CJ IPENMAEN CATALOGUE of over 500 What kind of visual decisions did you I Iclassic video films. I NAME I I ADDRESS I l____________JI I make on Sunday in the Country? I wanted it to be close to an Impres- sionist painting, to have a great depth of 22
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Pennies From Heave n (top). Dead Men Don ' t Wear Pl aid (bottom). by Jack Barth exercises. Unlike Ri gby Reardon in proved that Bill Murray or Woody Allen Dead Men , who leaps out of character to can get the girl, they can still play the Bob Hope's immaculate timing may ask with a leer if he may use Edward homely underdog convincingly. Martin get him through a monologue or a Road Arnold's daughter's panties to make seems more like one of those well- picture, but has he ever done rope tricks soup, All of Me's Roger Cobb sits pas- dressed guys you see at Sunday brunch for the 79th Battalion? Woody Allen may sively while potential jokes go fl ying with last night's party pick-up. He's had be th e \" Bergman of Comedy\" (some- past, like a bemused Darren watching to adapt the pose of Lonel y Guy; instead thing like be ing labeled \"The Female Samantha wiggle her nose on Bewitched. of being the perennial lose r, he's simply Joan Ri vers\"), but he'd soil hi s khakis if confounded by bad luck or untimely stu- he had to perform before 20,000 people. All ofMe is also the first Martin film to pidity. Bill Murray would never begin a Steve Martin's tal e nts are a constant rev- deliver a satisfying ending. In The Jerk, film stuck in a bad marriage to Kathleen elation, so it's no surprise his film work is he's plucked from penury by his share- Turner; he'd have to pursue his femme evolving too. cropper-tu rned-options-trader famil y. fatale. Even PenniesfromHeaven, a mixed crit- Martin's association with Carl Reiner ical success and an unequivocal box of- There is no more physical comedian has been close and steady, from The Jerk fice catastrophe, has an ending that par- than Steve Martin. John Belushi threw through the current All ofMe , including odies movies that parody movies with his weight around on-screen, but that's a a clever but off-putting exercise in style, hokey endings, and the result is hokey demonstration of breadth , not range. Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, and a dis- -and confusing. In All ofMe, a swell of Martin's TV specials show him to be an jointed romp, The Man With Two Brains. happiness ensues when all loose ends excellent dancer, and it hasn't been that Only The Jerk has made big money; all, ravel, with final punctuation when Lil y long since he juggled, played banjo, however, have had moments of mirth Tomlin beams in reflection . wore rabbit ears, and got \" happy feet\" worth the price of admission. Martin's for crowds large enough to pop the other comedy, The Lonely Guy, follows Martin most certainly sits below Bill Pope's eyeballs. In Man With Two Brains the pattern of great gags, iame story. Murray in the box-office pecking order, he's forced to walk a straight line on his despite his Renaissance talents. Murray hands in a \"real tough\" sobriety test. He All of Me is Martin's first comedy to redeems otherwise trite comedies with does coin tricks in Dead Men and rotates subjugate gags to story and characteriza- his ability to make any line of dialogue his head 360 degrees in The Jerk. Maybe tion. Martin does, however, flash his funn y, smartass, and lovable. Martin he's too slick; this sort of sharpie is usu- stuff, including a sensational physical bit films have had gags, jokes, and funn y ally a secondary character in comedy. when he first finds that half his body is premises, so he appears more like a car- But as if to belie this, The Jerk empties female and half male, a concept that toon creation than a vulnerable Everyguy. the whole bag of tricks in a collection of should launch a thousand acting school old stand-up premises (he was born a A rarity among comedians, Martin is handsome. Even though real life has 24
ill The Lonely Guy. With Judith Ivey in The Lonely Guy (top) . Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (bottom). poor black child) and speciously con- tion sure-handed, the dancing golden- sexual frustration and kisses a jar con- nected gags. age, the performances true, and the cin- taining a brain, all for your enjoyment. ematography gleaming, but there's The film hammers away at a pace that • more to filmmaking than just that. suggests the magic number for comedic repetition is not three but four. The Jerk came at the crest of Tv-in- Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid caused Martin fans to worry that he was only The Lonely Guy, directed by Arthur duced Martin-mania. It was the first interested in making oddities. After a Hiller and written by Taxi and MTM fun- few \"films ahead of their time,\" most nymen Ed. Weinberger and Stan Daniels chance to hear the Wild and Crazy Guy movie people can look forward to their as well as Neil Simon (the last man on swear, and the first chance to pay to see next project being shot in Super-8, espe- earth who should be writing for Steve him up close, since his concert venues cially when they \"can't find their audi- Martin), suffers as a series of blackouts by that time were too large for his own ence.\" Dead Men relies a little too heav- without any honest cohesion. The real- good. The film was stuffed with sight ily on its premise of intercutting vintage ity of Martin's character is shattered in gags: a car towing a church or driving film footage, but there's plenty of vin- the first five minutes when he arrives with no tires , Martin \"wearing\" two tage Steve Martin, whether \"adjusting\" home to find his girlfriend in bed with a dogs or dancing like Jerry Lewis in The Rachel Ward's breasts or brewing up dancer named Raoul. He goes through Nutty Professor. The sheer densi ty of the some of his famous mocha-java with the motions of a man just home from humor combined with the truth-in-ad- endless scoops of coffee (reminiscent of work, oblivious to their frolic. The gag vertising title put this one over the top. his nightclub act conclusion: ''I'd like to may play on paper, but it destroys any thank you all for coming tonight. Thank character credibility, and is com- Pennies from Heaven was made at the you, thank you, thank you, thank you , pounded by a weak and forced explana- only possible moment it could have thank you ... \") tion of his behavior. been made. It's hard to imagine a green light on this project, a lavish adaptation The Man With Two Brains is Martin's The Lonely Guy has high comic mo- of Dennis Potter's BBC series of the fluffiest movie, mindless summer men ts , bu t falls far short of All ofMe for same title. MartinIs participation is its laughs. Martin was perhaps advised to sustained delight. Martin sees All ofMe only commercial asset. It's almost a van- stop \"stretching\" himself and return to as the keynote to his future in films. ity picture; despite its razzle-dazzle, the the obvious gagaroonie situations that Rather than stretch himself laterally by tone is so downbeat and the musical paid for the fur lining in his bathroom eating fire or swallowing swords, he premise so weird that an elite cadre of sink (an early professed ambition), and wants to develop as a comic actor in the supporters was predestined, and adven- Kathleen Turner received lavish praise Cary Grant mold, just like Burt Rey- turous fans were stung. Unlike Thirties for what amounted to outtakes from nolds. Martin seems to have a better musicals, the Depression of Pennies was Body Heat. Martin walks up a wall in shot. depressing. Potter's script was lyrical, the music precise, the sets astonishing, the direc- 25
STEVE MARTIN On 'The Lonely Guy' budge t problems that 1 think th ey had to wrap it up a little confu sed. I don't \" I have been co nsciously trying to \" In thi s kind of film , where yo u' re think it's clear th at 1 ac tuall y di e. get a higher level of performance, a all owed to do anything, th e co medy Otherwise, I'm thrilled with the film . real characte r. I'd say All ofMe's a good can be real, ca n be wild. Lonely Guy mesh ; it's go t th e wild ph ys ica l stu ff was a good try. The vi rtues of th e film \" I sit th e re and look at myse lf be ing and the sort of genuine thing. I think are that it was about something that photographed beautifully, and beauti- now th e rea l goal is to get crea ti ve gags was te nd e r, sens iti ve, and funn y at th e ful se ts, skill e d direction , ge ttin g worked into an hones t script. sa me time . The nega ti ve is th at some- places I never went before as an actor, how it didn ' t work. We co uldn ' t get th e dancing and every thing, and 1 co uldn ' t \"A lot of the comed ies now ... are characte r of the girl ri ght, and I think be happi e r. working off peoples' perso nalities , or artistically we just had a wealth of ma- they just sOUJui funn y. In Top Secret the te rial and co ul dn' t put a story arou nd it. \" On Pennies from H eaven. I never quality of the jokes is rea l high, real needed to say 'I just can't say this, 1 crea ti ve, it just didn't have the oth e r \"Charl es G rod in and I wrote the have a problem saying it.' There was a thing. A perfect exa mpl e is a C haplin- park be nch scenes together. T he deal write r [De nnis Potter]. 1 would kill to type film . There th ere are so me trul y was, if we had so me thin g we' d try and get a script handed to me that just in venti ve situ ations, and yo u' re suck- shoot it, but we couldn ' t cover it or do fl owed and sung.\" e red into the characte r, too. it again. On 'The Jerk' \" I find myse lf laughing more in dra- \"A t a certain point in th e ed iting, mas. Whe n so mething funn y happe ns, Arthur Hill er and I reached a point \" I think this was my funniest film. 1 you ge t a much hea rtie r laugh than in a whe re the re was no so lution but to con- worked on the script for three yea rs; 1 little, li ght film that dances aro und. In tinue to di sagree. Looking back, I see had so many jokes in there . When Carl a way, I think All of M e re prese nts th e prob le ms with the script. We res hot Re ine r came along, he gave it a better beginning of a bl e nd of wi ld comedy the e nding. We also had p romotion structure and story. When it first ca me with straight story. proble ms during a regime change at out, 1 was kind of embarrassed , it was U nive rsal. like, \"Oh, The Jerk ... \" But now I'm \"Afte r we got Lil y Tomlin , he r role rea lly proud of it, I'd give anything to was built up . We crea ted th e device \" The Lonely Guy was so peculiar; make a picture that funny. whe re she co uld be see n in the mirror. the re was rea lly no way out of the It's very frustrating whe n you have mov ie . Any e nding would have to be \" It's going to be one of my goals to someone like Lily, who's invisibl e for a seek out th at kind offilm again, where lot of th e film , but he r presence is I \"'., ,.gloppy; he had to get the girl.\" I can bring a new kind of dignity to the rea lly the re. I wo rked with he r closely. / . \"''(, characte r 1 played fi ve yea rs ago, but She would show me how a woman ~ still have that same spirit. It's taken me walks, or he r id ea of how a man wa lks. ~ these fi ve pictures to get to the point That's whe re that co urtroom scene \"\" where I would even want to do it.\" ca m e from . I had to pl ay w ha t I th o ug ht a wo ma n th o ug ht a m a n ~.~ On Jerry Lewis walked like.\" On 'Pennies From \" I have a ce rtain e mpath y for Je rry Heaven' L ewis, beca use 1 respect his talent in movies from the Sixties. I thought he \" I thought the re was a lot of humor was maligned . So when 1 became a in Pennies from H eaven. Evidently successful stand-up comedian, 1would the re wasn' t. I thought it was funny, me ntion Jerry's name and say I'd al- sad and everything when I start si nging ways admired him , and then the press in a girl 's vo ice. But you have to be on would say that I was trying to do him. \" Level Three before th at strikes you as funny. Maybe laughte r isn' t the re- spo nse, but quiet app reciation. What I loved about the British TV thing was, bes ides, of co urse , the perfo rmances, th e shock of all those singing mo- me nts. You' re never led into them- it's all of a sudde n WHAM! \" By the time we got to the twentieth week of shooting, th e re were such 26
On 'The Man With T wo The NYU Film Program Brains' Alumni \"The original idea was just to do a (partial listing) brai n movie. We said , 'Okay, how can we make it moderate ly moral, or have a Martin Scorsese point at all ?'\" director On Stanley Kubrick Raging Bull \"Afte r he saw The Jerk. he had me Chris Columbus up to his house, and we sat around and and Mike Fennell talked. He had an idea. Nothing ever writer and producer came of it.\" Gremlins On Working With Other Comics Jonathan Kaplan director \"One thing I'm working on is Three Caballeros. originally with D an Ayk- Heart Like a Wheel royd and John Belushi . Everybody is a funn y guy in this script. I'd love to Marty Brest work with othe r comics. I'm a straight director man.\" Going in Style On Approaching 40 Jim Brown \" 1 think it's appare nt that yo u can' t and Paul Barnes continue to act stupid into your forties. director and editor I' m 38. 1 think you have to wise up . Musical Passage \"1 fee l real confident of my pote ntial They learned filmmaking in movies in the future. 1 can playa making films at NYU. pretty good range. To find an actor with a sense of comedy is tough. I'm You could too. fairly confide nt in the drama de part- me nt, and my rea l creati vity is in the Tisch School of the comedic departme nt. 1 admire the ca- ree r of, say, Cary G rant. H e re's a guy Arts Aibnissions Nrune________________________________ with a fl air for comedy and a fl air for compass ion. New York University Adm~ si _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ _ \"1 can te ll that th e 'Wild and C razy p.o. Box 909 G uy' stuff has dwind led whe n 1 walk dow n the street and peo ple are n' t go- Cooper Station ing 'Hey, excuuuuse me,' any more, they say, 'The re goes Steve Ma rtin , New York, N .Y. 10276 City/ State/ Zip Code:_______________________ the acto r.'\" ® L JI - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -New York University is an affirmative action/equal 'opportunity institution. - - - - 27
At Leo Burnett, our creative credo is to \"Reach for the Stars:' Because we know what effort is required for excel- lence, we salute the Film Soci- ety of Lincoln Center for their contributions to film making, an art of our time which has earned its place with the crea- tive arts of all time. I LEO BURNETT COMPANY, INC. ADVERTISING Prudential Plaza' Chicago, Illinois 60601 • 312-565-5959
• ection
by Terry Curtis Fox than Valin, Fred Zackel, Richard Hoyt, device, but this is selling Hammett far Stephen Greenleaf, Lawrence Block, too short. The Op's voice is never neu- Mention the hard-boiled detective, and Loren D. Esterman to a field which tral; at Hammett's best, every descrip- and the uninitiate will say Hollywood. a few years ago boasted only George V, tive sentence carries an emotional and Perhaps, more specifically, Hollywood Higgins and Ross Thomas as important moral judgment on the matter at hand. in the Forties, Bogart-style. The trench younger contributors. coat image is so ingrained as the embodi- The Op is also magnificently fallible: ment ofPhilip-Sam Marlowe-Spade that The Hard-Boiled Style: he inevitably becomes over-involved in it is assumed that literary and cinematic Hammett and Chandler his cases (as in The Dain Curse) and fre- styles grew together, side by side, with quently must struggle over his romantic the imagery and rhythm of the movies Like almost all American \"realist\" fic- attachment to various women (most serving as the ultimate determinant. tion, hard-boiled writing is an essentially spectacularly in Red Harvest, but also in romantic construction hiding as its oppo- such short stories as \"The House on The truth is a little more complex site. As defined by Raymond Chandler Turk Street\" and \"The Girl with the than that. The hard-boiled detective has in \"The Simple Art of Murder,\" the Silver Eyes\"). This is hardly the life of a always been at home in L.A., but Holly- hard-boiled detective is the American detached observer. Yet for all of this, the wood has rarely been comfortable with knight, searching for the holy grail of Op's anonymity kept our focus not on the hard-boiled detective. In the Twen- truth amid the dangerous corruption of the hero but on the action in the streets. ties and Thirties, when the hard-boiled the American urban landscape. So pow- Later hard-boiled heroes had names, style was set, Hollywood was a lot more erful was Chandler's definition of the but like the Op, they kept us looking at interested in hiring the people who detective-as-knight (an image clearly what they saw. It is one of the glorious wrote these California novels-as bolstered by Bogart's portrayals) that the paradoxes of hard-boiled fiction that the screenwriters-than it was in the books most famous line in the essay-\"down almost inevitable first-person narration themselves. A novel like Paul Cain's these mean streets a man must go\"- continually points away from the hero. Fast One, which reads today like the has been almost totally stripped of its source of one of the great Los Angeles meaning. When Chandler put the mean This utterly subjective, outwardly- movies never made, remained on the streets first, it wasn't just for the rhythm looking point of view may be the key to bookshelf, while its author (real name, of the prose. Hollywood's uneasy relationship with Peter Ruric) toiled on mundane puzzlers the hard-boiled story. From Sunrise like The Grand Central Murders. There The hard-boiled detective story onward, the cinema proved itself' an are six references to Jonathan Latimer in (which is not, let it be noted, the only ideal medium for stories in which a city Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward's dictio- kind of hard-boiled story) is an exclu- served as a major dramatic force. The nary of Film Noir: none is to a Latimer sively urban fiction. Every hard-boiled multiplicity of scenes meant that, as in a novel. Not even Dashiell Hammett was detective has his own city, and it is pre- Dickensian novel, the entire range of a exempt. To this day, not a single film has cisely the tension between the city as city could be seen within a single work, been made fearuring the Continental love object and the city as destroyer that while deep-focus photography could Op, Hammett's only regularly appearing gives the genre its power. That Ham- place each character and action within a character. (One TV movie, The Dain mett or Chandler viewed women in al- specific urban context. That so much of Curse, starring James Coburn as the Op, most precisely the same way in which he hard-boiled fiction's regionalism came was released theatrically in Europe.) viewed San Francisco and Los Angeles from the West Coast made for a coinci- is hardly coincidental. We are talking dence crying out for exploitation. Those Things are not all that different today. about salvation and fatal attraction here, weren't just any .mean streets Chandler Conventional wisdom-and all wisdom although not necessarily in that order. was writing about: they were the boule- in the movie business is highly conven- vards just outside the srudio gates. tional, bound by strict limits and un- The trip between Hammett's Poison- spoken rules-has it that Robert ville and Robert Towne's Chinatown At the same time, every rule of classi- Towne's Chinatown, everybody's favor- spans almost SO years; in it, nothing and cal cinema says that we are to look at the ite screenplay, couldn't get made today. everything changes. From the Conti- hero, not through him. The hard-boiled This despite the hard-boiled novel's re- nental Op to J.J. Gittes, the hard-boiled detective is a manipulator, a catalyst, a surgence as both historical document detective remains a man as obsessed truth-seeker, an actor, a defender, an and contemporary form. Just try and with American cities as he is with the investigator, a moralist, but he is never find a novel by David Goodis or Jim case at hand. So outwardly directed is somebody who goes through a personal Thompson in your local used book the hard-boiled detective drama that its transformation during the course of a store; and note the emergence in the first great hero, Hammett's Op, doesn't novel. (If he were, he could never reap- past ten years of James Crumley, Jona- even have a name. Because of this, the pear in another one.) He's a storyteller Op is frequently dismissed as a literary sorely out of place in a medium which was supposed to tell its own story. Worse 30
OPBog with Ham art engaged , mett's FaICon . yet, if nobody walked into his office, he . .{ love and hate EmbodIment 0) wouldn't have a story to tell. . Chinatown. From the late Twenties on through Nicholson !It the Thirties, this wasn't much of a prob- lem. The advent of sound meant that The problems with an outwardly di- My Lovely) works because John Paxton's even the traditional English mystery, rected, serial character can be seen in adaptation cast the entire novel as a with its convoluted penultimate revela- some of the early attempts to do for flashback, relegating Dick Powell's tion scene, cOlJld now be filmed. With Philip Marlowe what Huston and Bogart Marlowe to the role of narrator. Fare- Philo Vance and Bulldog Drummond had done for Spade. Murder, My Sweet well, My Lovely is basically Moose Mal- filling up the lower half of every other (Edward Dmytryk's version of Farewell, loy's story, and the picture works by double bill, nobody much cared about character development or logical point- of-view. Just move the plot along, thank you, and never mind the consequences. Indeed, the first two versions of The Maltese Falcon (Roy del Ruthis in 1931 and William Dieterle's Satan Met a Lady in 1936) are shot as if Spade were Vance: they are puzzle fictions without any sense of place or style. (This does not mean that they are entirely without in- terest. The Dieterle is especially nota- ble for Marie Wilson's cat-toting version of Caspar Gutman, one of the most as- tonishingly effective sex changes in the history of adaptation.) The third version ofFalcon was some- thing else again. It wasn't just that John Huston honed tightly to the book, or that Humphrey Bogart's pre-Method acting provided just the right balance of distance and engagement to convey the hard-boiled detective's role, or even that they were working at a studio (Warner's) which didn't mind taking the camera out for a stroll around the neighborhood. Rather, Huston managed to find the only great hard-boiled detective novel in which the hero does undergo a major character change, and did so just at the moment when character drama was reaching its cinematic ascendancy. Sam Spade is not a series character. He appears in only one novel and three short stories. When the Op got too close to the story, Hammett pulled back. Red Harvest may be a masterpiece, but it is the kind of masterpiece which requires active reading: we may understand that the Op is responsible for Dinah Brand's murder, but neither the Op nor his au- thor can ever say as much. (Indeed, the solution to Red Harvest has always seemed trivial and forgettable because of this.) Hammett was working with no such restraints in Falcon: Spade's in- volvement with his partner's wife sets up his relationship with Brigitte O'S- haughnessy, and his final decision is by no means certain. The result is a hard- boiled detective story which is directed at once at the world and at the detective. This anomaly is what makes Falcon the archetypical hard-boiled detective movie. 31 1
cleverly disguising the fact. Robert for the development ofa cinematic hard- was speed-information presented as Montgomery's horrendous version of boiled style, it is fairly obvious that the quickly and economically as possible, Lady in the Lake was another matter en- movies were far more comfortable deal- without any breaks for atmospheric de- tirely. Montgomery understood the ing with non-detective hard-boiled fic- scriptions or long establishing se- outer-directed vision of the hard-boiled tion. Indeed, when Hammett wrote di- quences. The terseness of Hammett's style, but that is all he understood. He rectly for the screen, he chose not to language, like Hawks' overlapping dia- literally had the camera play Marlowe, create a new detective hero, but rather logue, derives from an almost nervous thus treating us to such spectacles as a fashioned his only gangster story, City insistence that we get on with things. sock-in-the-lens. The movie's point-of- Streets . \"Alfred Banbrock ended his story\"- view is so arch that it has no vision. And this is the tag of the first line of Ham- without that, Marlowe makes no sense. Similarly, Hammett's one non-detec- mett's \"The Scorched Face.\" Another tive novel, the political thriller The Glass short story begins with the Op's impa- There was, ofcourse, one great Chan- Key, was filmed twice: by Frank Tuttle tience at having to take all of 15 minutes dler adaptation, Howard Hawks' version in 1935, with George Raft playing the to get through to his client. Funhman's of The Big Sleep. Working from a script semi-hero (N)Ed Beaumont and heroes and heroines may have pasts, but by Leigh Brackett, Jules Furthman, and Edward Arnold as the ambivalent politi- they have neither the time nor inclina- a surprisingly sympathetic William cal boss Paul Madvig; and by Stuart tion to talk about them (as in Dietrich's Heisler in 1942, with Alan Ladd and famous explanation that she came to Faulkner, Hawks surmounted the in- ner-outer dilemma by reworking the Brian Donlevy in the leads. Both ver- Shanghai \"to get a new hat\"). Hard- book so that it becomes a love story sions are much closer to Hammett's nov- boiled stories are always morality tales, between Marlowe and Vivian elistic style than either of the first two and what defines morality is not what Sternwood . That Hawks was dealing adaptations of Falcon, and both are bet- you did yesterday but what you do at the with Bogan and Bacall doesn't hurt. Bo- ter films. Heisler's Glass Key , with a dramatic moment. gart had already been iconized in Fal- script by Jonathan Latimer (a rare , early con, and the stars' love affair in To Have instance of a second-generation hard- If there is no time for a long discussion and Have Not made it perfectly clear to boiled writer adapting a classic hard- of one's past or a lingering description of the audience that this time, novel or no boiled work), holds up particularly well, the city (the place looks like this and it's novel, Marlowe wasn't coming out unat- but in a sense Tuttle's is the more inter- corrupt), then there can never be any tached. esting. A workman-like director at best, long rumination on a person's motives. Tuttle took to the streets with what was Action really is character in hard-boiled Unlike Falcon, The Big Sleep is not a for him astonishing energy. When m!lr- fiction; and, as Hammett understood faithful adaptation; it is, however, a ginally more talented directors like Del but most critics have not, the form's sty- greater film . Along with Raoul Walsh Ruth and Dieterle were faced with Sam listic links are not to ponderous Ernest and Roland Brown, Hawks had spent a Spade, they turned the hard-boiled de~ Hemingway but rather to F. Scott great deal of time developing a cine- tective into his opposite. Given a story in Fitzgerald and John O'Hara. Hope of matic equivalent to the hard-boiled which a conventional hero is nowhere to Heaven is a hard-boiled novel, both in style. Hawks' obsessive concern with a be found, Tuttle was forced to rely on the relentless pace O' Hara sets and professional ethic which demands that momentum and energy. He submitted in the remorseless presentation of char- emotion be subjugated to the task at to the hard-boiled style. acters who use cynicism to disguise hand is a precise equivalent to the hard- emotion. boiled detective's credo. Add to this an Just as Hammett chose a gangster economy of word and image, a precise story as his first original screenplay, so There is a ton of passion in almost definition of place, an understanding of Chandler dropped Philip Marlowe in his every good hard-boiled story-it's just the world as a basically inhospitable en- first original, The Blue Dahlia . (Unlike not treated in an ovenly emotional man- vironment which can only be traversed Hammett, Chandler didn't have to ner. This stylistic distance can be used through character and courage, and a abandon his series character; his contract to son out what is and isn't hard-boiled narrative speed which insists the charac- at the time gave him the right to adapt even between two works of the same ters be judged not by what they say but whatever screenplay he wrote into a genre. Take as extreme examples Wil- by what they do, and you have a movie novel, an option he exercised only with liam Wellman's Public Enemy and Ro- which might as well have jumped off the his final work, Playback.) The story of a land Brown's Quick Millions, a couple of pages of Black Mask. war-ravaged returning soldier and his gangster pictures released wtih~n days of unfaithful wife, The Blue Dahlia repre- each other in 1931. Wellman, the oppo- This style, one should note, was not sents nothing so much as Moose Mal- site of a hard-boiled stylist, wallows in Hawks' alone. Count the Hawks' films loy's story told without the intervention Cagney's death, dumping the gangster's which most notably exemplify the hard- of Philip Marlowe. As with City Streets corpse in front of his mother's house at boiled style and only one (A Girl in Every and The Glass Key, The Blue Dahlia is a picture's end. Brown, the epitome of a Part) was written without the collabora- hard-boiled story in which the point-of- writer-director who transferred the hard- tion of either Ben Hecht or Jules view must be inferred from the style, for boiled style from page to screen, has Furthman. The greatest hard-boiled there is no unambiguous hero to lead us Spencer Tracy riding in a car with two writer who never wrote a novel , through the narrative. We are still out in henchmen as he passes his girlfriend's Furthman seems particularly important the mean streets, but no knight is walk- wedding. Tracy thinks he's going to kid- -a writer whose style was so insistent ing beside us. nap the girl. Instead he gets shot by his that, in Thunderbolt, Underground, and friends who are not about to let passion The Shanghai Express, he could make Without the detective, the hard- get in the way of business. We hear the even Josef Sternberg hew to some of the boiled style is a good deal harder to de- shot; all we see is Tracy's hat rolling to precepts of hard-boiled fiction. fine , if not to recognize. In the Twenties the curb outside the church at which the and Thinies, its most obvious attribute However one wishes to allocate credit 32
wedding takes place. Wellman's final ' s public Enet11'j· image is a bathetic full circle: the corpse . Wellman is wrapped in what can be taken as swad- d coh.orts lrt dling clothes-Cagney has come back Cagney an to his mother as a baby. Tracy's death is not merely austere and economical; it's ing editor of Black Masl(s parent maga- about the American city, where business zine, The American Mercury. While he beats out love, and the closest a former wrote with great success about Los truck driver can really get to a society girl Angeles and its environs, Cain was not is the curb. These are mean streets always an urban moralist; his books were indeed. as likely to take place in rural Appalachia as on the California highway. Most im- The hard-boiled code is not so much portant of all, Cain never wrote a detec- stoicism as a recognition of the fatal tive story. There are no tarnished power of emotion. Let your reason get knights in Cain's fiction-only men and clouded by love, drugs, or alcohol and, women who are seized by a frenzied like the Op in the central chapter of Red sexuality and, as a direct result, enter Harvest (who succumbs simultaneously into bourgeois tragedy. to all three), you may wake up to find your hand on the ice pick that has been Unlike the novels of Hammett and implanted in your lover's chest. Chandler, Cain's fiction was tailor-made for Hollywood. His self-consciously Bourgeois Tragedy: classical structure, with tragic flaws fell- James M. Cain ing the protagonist in proper Aristotelian fashion, was ideal for the \"well-made In no other hard-boiled writer's work film.\" What's more, Cain's great theme is the danger of emotional involvement -men and women succumbing to re- treated as overtly as in the novels of pressed sexuality-perfectly mirrored James M. Cain. Cain is something of a Hollywood's simultaneous marketing man apart in hard-boiled fiction. Alone and avoidance of sex. Like the Hays among almost all the pre-war practition- office, Cain found sex dangerous. There ers, major and minor, Cain never wrote are no tacked-on endings to Cain-de- for Black Mask, although he was manag- rived stories. His characters are pun- ished for exactly the same sins con- demned by the Production Code: sex outside wedlock in The Postman Always Rings Twice and l)ouble Indemnity; ho- mosexuality in Serenade. Indeed, although all Hollywood ap- 33
parently was amazed when Double In- the tone for all hard-boiled detectives Along with this goes a major shift in demnity passed Hays office inspection, it turned out that Cain needed repression who followed, so Cain set the boun- sociology. Lew Archer lives in a barely almost as much as the censors. The de- terioration of Cain's novels in the Fifties daries for hard-boiled tragedies. But disguised Santa Barbara; his clients are and beyond had nothing to do with age and everything to do with the accept- where Hammett's fictive descendants neither rich nor poor but precariously ance of sexuality in American society. The more sexually accepting America achieved an iconographic place in the middle class. Macdonald's novels are became, the less plausible was sexual desire as a tragic flaw. In a world in American mythology, those writers who as outer-directed as Hammett's and which infidelity does not necessarily lead to divorce, it can hardly be seen as bore the mark of Cain remained ada- Chandler's-Archer is a sensibility inevitable cause for murder. In Cain's world, sex and money were of equally mantly on the edge. Some of the most through which we view California desperate weight (something that the Bob Rafelson-David Mamet version of successful-like Edward Anderson, society. But by the Fifties and Sixties Postman managed to get exactly right). When America began to spend both whose Thieves Like Us was twice filmed, society had changed, and Macdonald freely, Cain searched frantically for ac- and James Ross, whose extraordinary records that change as surely and deftly tions and situations which would be ex- treme enough to justify his characters' They Don't Dance Much has never made as Philip Roth reported the shift in behavior. But while Cain found situa- tions which were certainly outside the it to the screen-proved to be one- Jewish life from the Lower East Side mainstream (he twice toyed with in- cest), the result were novels which were shots. Other writers, like David Goodis to New Jersey. merely outre and not fundamentally tragic. and Jim Thompson, produced a sub- Finally, Macdonald's emphasis on The difference between hard-boiled stantial body of work which was regu- psychological guilt eradicated the sexual detective fiction and hard-boiled trag- edy is most strikingly obvious in the larly relegated to the paperback-original guilt found to varying degrees in Ham- relationship between Chandler and Cain. Although the two shared a novel- ghetto. Thompson surmounted Cain's mett, Cain, and Chandler. In Mac- ist's attraction-repulsion toward sex, Chandler loathed Cain's novels. For problem of a permissive society by plac- donald novels, women may be \"guilty\" Chandler, sexual attraction was some- thing to be chivalrously overcome; the ing his characters' sexual excesses in the (a term that spreads well beyond its detective represented the triumph of reason. For Cain, the groin beat the context of a general moral and emotional purely legal meaning), but never be- brain any day of the week. There's no detective in his novels because reason extremism. Goodis, closed to Chan- cause of their sex. The dark women who doesn't stand a chance. dler's romantic vision, let tragedy come so strikingly link the hard-boiled novel In one of those grand ironies ofcollab- oration, it was Raymond Chandler who out of the streets and the bottle. to the American romantic tradition are signed on to write the screenplay ofDou- ble Indemnity. Chandler made two major Goodis and Thompson are especially demystified in Macdonald. An ancient changes in the novel. Recognizing the ,difference between dialogue written for noteworthy because, in placing the em- affair may have dire consequences, but the eye and that composed for the ear, Chandler toiled to rework the very stuff phasis back on the doomed hero, they it does not mean that the perpetrator is a he had been hired to preserve. He and Cain discussed these dialogue changes, took the hard-boiled novel into the psy- threat to the detective. and, to Chandler's (and director/co-sce- narist Billy Wilder's) surprise, Cain con- chologizing Fifties. At the same time, In effect, Macdonald moved the curred. Indeed, the two men actually became friends. More important, however, they were anchored, even hard-boiled detective backward and for- though, was Chandler's shift of empha- sis from the relationship between the more firmly than Cain, in the outskirts ward at the same time. Lew Archer is murderous insurance agent and the woman whose husband he helps kill to of society. It was as if the positions of even more detached than the Op; one that between the agent and his investi- gator-boss. Chandler took Cain's aveng- their heroes-who lived in small can't imagine him waking up from a ing angel and made him a knight. Southern towns or the slimiest sections doped sleep with an ice pick in his hand. Just as Hammett's hard-boiled Op set of Philadelphia-were a reflection of As a moral force, Archer is unassailable. their appearance in the paperback-origi- This made for a great literary sensibility, nal side of publishing. but a lousy movie hero. Archer is Mac- donald, a fact openly acknowledged by Psychological Guilt: the author, and as such he was never Ross Macdonald successfully transferred to the screen. Jack Smight's version ofThe Moving Tar- It took a hard-boiled detective writer get (in which Archer became Harper to to make the entire style respectable satisfy Paul Newman's whim) is a re- again. Ross Macdonald took the hard- spectable piece of work; Stuart Rosen- boiled detective novel out of the streets berg's attempt at The Drowning Pool is as and into the suburbs. Macdonald started meretricious as the rest of Rosenberg's his career alternating psychological fic- oeuvre. The great irony of Macdonald's tion (written under his real name, Ken- career is that the first hard-boiled writer neth Millar) and detective stories (writ- to achieve major recognition as a main- ten under the pseudonym \"John Ross stream novelist is the only superior hard- Macdonald,\" thus arousing the ire of boiled writer never to have a superior John D. MacDonald, who reportedly film made from his work. never forgot and never forgave). Soon he fused the two forms; his hero, Lew The Wrong Goodbye Archer, named for Sam Spade's foolish partner, searches as much for psychic as By the late Sixies, when Macdonald's for legal truth. In the paradigmatic Mac- work was featured on the front page of donald plot, the key to murder lies in The New York Times Book Review, Holly- family history. Characters pretend they wood had become quite self-conscious have no past, only to discover that such a about hard-boiled movies. Robert denial determines all the actions of the Clouse's Darker Than Amber is a decent present. Action is not character in a Mac- presentation of Travis McGee (the John donald novel, and the pace slows consid- D. MacDonald hero who, ironically, re- erably as a consequence. ceived respectable treatment in the 34
western; The Late Show does the same for the private detective film . The Late Show is also the one wholly successful private-eye film of the past 20 years to take place in the present. Benton man- ages this by creating a character who , although he is a new creation , is an old detective. His profession is seen as be- ing part of the past, along with his ethos and his insistence on seeing things through. It took the ingenuity of Benton (and of producer Robert Altman) to cast Art Carney against Lily Tomlin. Here the conflict between past and present is made not only dramatically and themati- cally but behaviorally as well; the differ- ence in the two stars' acting styles be- came the central metaphor of the film . None of these films had nearly the success of Chinatown; none is so nearly problematic. As filmed by Roman Po- lanski, Chinatown is a cynical exercise as fully against the genre as Altman's ver- sion of The Long Goodbye. In both mov- ies, the detective rushes headlong into a solution which has no moral meaning; the result is a complete denial of the . 7 most basic tenet of the genre, in which a de111olt,),. Needed repreSSion. moral man confronts a corrupt society and manages the kind of tentative, per- sonal victory which is the most an indi- vidual can achieve in the modern world. wake of the revival of interest in hard- It is odd when a form which is very The script of Chinatown was some- boiled fiction sparked by Ross Mac- donald's reviews), and Paul Bogan man- much alive is used as an emblem of the thing else entirely. Like Benton , Alt- aged a curious updating of Chandler's Little Sister, which was retitled Marlowe past. But then , the critical and the cine- man, and Penn, Robert Towne used the in the apparent belief that Chandler's hero had been forgotten. But by this matic reconsideration of hard-boiled hard-boiled detective as an emblem of time, hard-boiled images were used more for what they reflected than for writing-as with the \"anti-westerns\" of the past; in this case, Towne took the what they contained. Sydney Pollack used Horace McCoy's masterpiece They the Vietnam era-is best understood love-hate relationships of the hard- Shoot Horses, Don't They? as a medita- tion on the Depression. Robert Altman within the context of revisionist times. boiled detective novels not as subtext did the same in his remake of Thieves Like Us. Altman's attack on the private detective but as text. This is a story about Jake When Altman hired Leigh Brackett movie came hard on the heels of Mc- Gittes Oack Nicholson) and the city of (herself the author of the uninteresting novel No Good From a Corpse) to adapt Cabe & Mrs. Miller, his attack on the Los Angeles. Indeed , Towne's final im- The Long Goodbye, he was angling to use the genre against itself. Altman's Long western. Nor was the peculiarity of a age was the city as viewed from Mulhol- Goodbye is a feature-length argument that the hard-boiled ethic, with its de- particularly troublesome artist. Arthur land (here Mulwray) Drive, first as seen tachment and professionalism, no longer counts. The search for order and Penn, a more intellectual though no less in the late Thirties, then , in a series of truth, which lies at the heart of every hard-boiled detective, is presented as an revisionist director, showed similar ten- dissolves, through the years up to 1974. icon of Hollywood's false past. The source material is important only as an dencies. One could easily couple Little Gittes was able to \"solve\" the mystery, object to be railed against. Altman was after the destruction of the Hollywood Big Man with Night Moves-the fonner a but he could have no impact on the city's movie; instead he succeeded in destroy- ing Philip Marlowe. western without a hero, the latter a de- growth-a growth specifically located in tective story without a solution. Sam a corrupt act. (This particular vision is Peckinpah, who at the height of his ca- historically accurate: the existence of reer was a master at having things both the San Fernando Valley as a residential ways, managed to turn The Wild Bunch community was a direct result of a false into the only simultaneously revisionist water bond issue used to facilitate a ruth- and traditional western; his adaptation less real estate campaign.) of Jim Thompson's The Getaway served The elevation of subtext to text re- the same function for the hard-boiled mains in the finished film. Towne's tragedy. other great innovation does not. Evelyn This same spirit of respect and recon- Mulwray (Faye Dunaway) is an almost sideration in contemplative form can be perfectly Chandlerian female: sexy and found in Robert Benton's first directorial highly toxic. Through most of the script, ventures: Bad Company (written with Gittes' involvement with Mulwray longtime partner David Newman) is seems to place him at risk; he at once both an elegy and a rethinking of the loses his objectivity and refuses to drop 35
the case precisely because of his per- Burr's tortured expression under the glare ofjames Stewart's flashbulbs at the sonal involvement. In Towne's version Black Window: climax of Rear Window comes close to of the story, however, Mulwray's sexual- evoking as much disquiet. A recluse who was morbidly attached to his ity proves fatal not to the detective but Cornell Woolrich mother for most of his adult life, to the villain; instead of dying in China- Woolrich became a diabetic and an alco- holic after her death in his mid-Fifties. town, Evelyn Mulwray heads to Malibu When he died of a stroke at 64 in 1968, he had already lost a leg due to the where she kills her father. As in the best Rear Window, The LeopardMan, Phan- spreading of gangrene. classical hard-boiled stories, there is an tom Lady, The Window, The Bride Wore Direct acknowledgment of Woolrich's homosexuality has apparently made it act of personal resolution which, while Black, Mississippi Mermaid. Considering into print only recently-see Nevins' introduction to Manhattan Love Song utterly incapable of altering the overall that almost 30 features have been Cor- (Gregg Press, 1980), an early novel pre- ceding the thrillers-and inevitably corruption of society, makes Chinatown nell Woolrich adaptations, it seems a leads to a somewhat different reading of his fiction, clarifying an impulse that up read as moral tragedy. genuine anomaly that he should remain to now has received little attention. • so shadowy a figure. He is as central to Emest Hemingway's prose often bris- The Late Show and Chinatown are rare the thriller as OlafStapleton is to science tles with the threat of hysteria, but is almost always held in check by the code examples of meditations on the hard- fiction, and has been comparably of macho rectitude that keeps it from fully busting loose. Josef von Stern- boiled style which also function as origi- eclipsed by a singularity that exceeds berg's fear of losing emotional control haunts his decoupage like the fishnet ofa nal hard-boiled detective stories written and surpasses some genre expectations shadow; there are moments in The Blue Angel and Anatahan when masculine expressly for the screen. Contemporary while grievously falling short of certain hysteria finally bursts out onto the placid surface of his compositions, turning hard-boiled novelists have not fared others. Despite all the purple prose, them into gaping Goyas. Woolrich, a more intermittent artist, expresses hys- nearly as well. George V. Higgins' The tired rewrites, and preposterous plots teria almost nonstop. He can give it a sexual undertone without ever making Friends of Eddie Coyle suffered mightily that crop up in his fiction, perhaps no its meaning strictly gender-based, as it is so frequently in Poe and Hemingway, from an adapter (Paul Monash) and a other writer handles suspense better, or Stemberg and Peckinpah. His heroines tend to be phallic while his heroes often director (Peter Yates) who, unlike Chan- gives it the same degree of obsessional verge on being sissies-and fear be- comes the universal, democratic plane dler and Wilder, could not recognize the intensity. More soft-boiled than hard- on which they can meet as equals. difference between written and spoken boiled in the depiction of his heroes and • dialogue. Ross Thomas, arguably the heroines, Woolrich nonetheless seems Despite all the film adaptations of his work, Woolrich's own minimal contact most interesting hard-boiled writer of central to the overall pessimism of film with filmmaking preceded his writing of thrillers, which began in 1940 with The the past 20 years, has had only one of his nair in the violent contrasts of his moods Bride Wore Black. His second novel, Children ofthe Ritz (1927), won a prize in novels, The Procane Chronical, dully and the dark tempers of his villains. a contest co-sponsored by First National Pictures, and he was invited to come to transferred to the screen as St. lves. Tho- Webster's New Collegiate gives three Hollywood from New York in 1929 to help with the film adaptation. (A title mas himself served as the final adapter definitions of dreadful: \"(1) (adjective) and dialogue writer for First National at the time was named William Irish, and of Joe Gores' Hammett: Wim Wenders' inspiring fear or awe, (2) (adjective) dis- Nevins ascribes Woolrich's later adop- tion of the name as a pseudonym to this film succeeds as entertainment but tressing; shocking; very distasteful, (3) fortuity.) The following year, he eloped with Gloria Blackton, daughter of the never manages the kind of meditative (noun) a morbidly sensational story or founder of Vitagraph Studios, although apparently the union was neverconsum- intensity clearly intended by the proj- periodical; as , a penny dreadful.\" mated. Woolrich retumed to New York shortly afterward, and the marriage was ect. Of the current generation who have Woolrich assumes all these meanings successfully revi ved the hard-boiled and invents a few more of his own. As a novel , not one has been filmed , al- master of dread (rather than ofcharacter, though James Crumley's masterpiece, atmosphere, plot, or prose), he has con- The Last Good Kiss, is frequently men- ceivably no pulp equal. In the checklist tioned as a possible project. appended to Nightwebs-an excellent A sense of speed, a belief in reason as collection of Woolrich stories and an an overriding virtue, an insistence upon ideal introduction to his work-Francis American society as a place where indi- M. Nevins, Jr., lists 22 novels under vidual action has meaning precisely be- Woolrich's name, 17 more under the cause of the overwhelming corruption it pseudonym William Irish, two more as confronts-these fundaments of the George Hopley (including one of the hard-boiled style are hardly the hall- most memorable, Night Has a Thousand marks of the current American cinema. Eyes) , hundreds of stories, and scores of But this style has always been peripheral scripts for film, TV, and radio. The varia- to the cinematic mainstream, just as the tions in quality, as one might suspect, hard-boiled novel has always tended to are enormous, but the closest thing to a teeter on the edge ofliterary respectabil- common denominator is the excruciat- ity. That's the nature of the genre. ing sense of dread . It took three tries and ten years for For a long time, I couldn't understand Hollywood to get The Maltese Falcon why jacket photos of Woolrich were so right. Suddenly, novelists like James M. scarce-until I finally came across one, Cain and Raymond Chandler found on a hardcover edition of Nightwebs. It's their work instantly in demand . One the face of someone who appears never good hit today, and the moral observer of to have seen daylight, a slab of putty so the American city could again become a riddled with anguish that an infinite cinematic cliche. The streets are number of nightmares could be extrapo- meaner than ever. The question IS lated out of it. Among the images in film whether anybody wishes to look. adaptations of Woolrich, only Raymond 36
later annulled. ( Ironically, some movies that ostensi- bly have nothing to do with Woolrich- Vertigo, Psycho , Brian De Palma's Ob- session, Detour, The Seventh Victim. Jac- ques Tourneur's Cat People, Fran<;ois Truffaut's The Green Room, even Tex Avery's Dumb-Hounded-impart more of his compulsive flavor than certain oddball adaptations, such as The Bride Wore Black, Mississippi Mermaid, Night Has a Thousand Eyes, and I Married a Shadow. Tom Milne has nominated Jac- ques Rivette as the ideal Woolrich adap- tor because of his handling of paranoia- an interesting notion, but ultimately a misleading one. In Rivette's work, para- noia finds a social meaning by being bracketed by a leftist, modernist, or post-modernist context. By contrast, the masochistic tone of Woolrich guarantees that every dive into paranoia be inter- preted as a fall, and social critique invari- ably gives way to metaphysics. Truffaut's two Woolrich adaptations -both fascinating works in their own tight-betray the spirits of their origi- nals by attempting to reconcile Hitch- cockian moods and structures with Re- noiresque details. Part of the difference is the casting. If Jeanne Moreau (julie Kohler in The Bride Wore Black) and Catherine Deneuve (julie Roussel in Mississippi Mermaid) had switched parts and films, and Truffaut himself had taken over Jean-Paul Belmondo's part in the latter, the resulting dynamics would have more nearly matched the original novels. Waltz into Darkness (1947), the source ofMermaid, carries the theme of a man's obsession with a femme fatale to such irrational extremes that it is hard to think of any director less obsessed than Woolrich with bringing it off. The rela- tive absence of suspense doesn't pre- vent it from being one of my two favor- ites-along with the equally mad Night Has a Thousand Eyes, which breaks as many genetic rules, and by contrast may have the most sustained suspense of any of the novels, although it paradoxically makes that achievement monotonous through endless elaboration. A characteristically insane detail from the latter novel: The sympathetic, de- voted daughter of a man awaiting his prophesied death around the clock, for weeks on end, secretly sets all the clocks he's surrounded himself with back a 37
couple of minutes. \"That gives him a psychiatrist, and then discrediting him The Atomic Gun: minute or two extra,\" she explains, \"a immediately through his own crude sex- Mickey Spillane little borrowed time, it's the best I can ual interest in her. (The same character do to ease him.\" If the John Farrow film turns up in the equally brilliant The Among the writers of hard-boiled fic- had dared to be as demented as that, it Seventh Victim.) In the stupid remake of tion surveyed here, Mickey Spillane is might have worked the maximum out of Cat People, director Paul Schrader as- undou bted Iy the least fash ionable. John F. Seitz's luscious noir photogra- sumes that the shrink is correct, elimi- Amid your charming Raymond Chand- phy, an interesting Edward G. Robinson nates him from the plot, and imposes lers, lionized Elmore Leonards, and al- performance, and the superb Langian him more insidiously, as Dr. Schrader, most-forgotten Steve Fishers, Spillane on the mise en scene-making garishly still sticks out like Chandler's famous title. As it stands, the drastic plot reshuf- tarantula on the angel-food cake. fling in the script by Jonathan Latimer literal and banal everything that Tourneur and Barre Lyndon compromises wisely kept latent as poetic postulate. (In Two reasons for this. One is that Spil- Woolrich's delirium by diluting it. his script for Obsession-admittedly lane has always outdone everybody else shortened by Brian De Palma-Schrader at their own game. He remains the most The most extreme instance of dis- at least knew how to sustain a mood of hard-boiled egg of them all, on every solving Woolrich, however, comes in Woolrichian hopelessness.) Waltz may front; violence, sex, and retribution Robin Davis' recent I MarriedaShndow, well be a working through by Woolrich of spilled out of his typewriter with a fury which tums the better-titled I Married a his doomed relationship with his mother; unmatched and a tone untempered by Dead Man into a soppy piece of French but if he had approached this theme thera- commercial stylistic dictates. Take this bourgeois uplift out of Diane Kurys, and peutically, after long sessions on the passage from Kiss Me, Deadly as a sam- in the process forfeits Woolrich's magnif- couch, I doubt that it would have regis- ple blood offering from Spillane's fic- icent if implausible horror ending. Even tered as strongly. tional persona, the dinosaur detec- the extraordinary The Leopard Man, tive Mike Hammer: which in individual scenes and moments I haven't been able to track down the perfectly catches the terror ofBlack Alibi 1947 Woolrich story \"The Boy Cried Mur- \"I let out a crazy sound of hate that (1942), finally winds up doing some- der,\" reprinted as \"Fire Escape,\" which filled the room and was at them in a thing less focused, though compelling forms the basis of Ted Tetzlaff's The Win- crouch with the bullets spitting over my enough on its own terms. dow, but according to Foster Hirsch's de- head. I had the guy in my hands feeling scription in The Dark Side ofthe Screen, it my fingers tear his eyes loose while he The lesson in all this is that you ra- sounds pretty close to the film. A power- screamed his lungs out and even the gun tionalize Woolrich's ridiculous plots at ful, neglected film noir, The Window butt pounding on the back of my skull your peril. In the Truffaut adaptations, makes an effective companion piece to didn't stop me. I had enough left to lash Deneuve and Belmondo are simply too Rear Window (based on the 1947 Woolrich out with my foot and hear it bite into charming to qualify as Woolrich mon- story \"It Had to Be Murder\"). Both fIlms flesh and bone and enough left to do sters, and Moreau is too chic; the value offer near-definitive impressions of New something to one of them that turned of these movies must be found else- York during the summer, and both revolve his stomach inside out in my face.\" where. The sustained perversity of around the consequences of someone acci- Waltz, actually closer to Dostoevsky than dentally and elliptically glimpsing a mur- Now, is that nice? Vengeance is al- to James M. Cain, is something that der in a neighboring apartment. ways Hammer's-in spades-and it's a Truffaut can only hint at-in a series of righteous, just, often patriotic cleansing sorties and retreats that anticipate the In The Window, it's Bobby Driscoll, a that usually makes quite a mess at the cautionary measures ofThe Story ofAdele boy sleeping out on a fire escape because same time. H. It isn't until The Green Room (based of the heat. He has a reputation for telling on two Henry James stories) that the tall tales to his parents, so no one believes The other reason Spillane suffers so at crazed Woolrich ian protagonist finally him-except for the murderers them- the hands of critics and other sleazerati is gets a movie fully shaped to his or her selves, who gradually close in on him. that he has been so goddamned finan- sensibility, with Truffaut himself por- James Stewart, a photojournalist in Hitch- cially successful with his trade. By the traying a morbid hero who lives only for cock's Rear Window, sees what appears to late Fifties he'd put six of his novels- the deceased-in particular, his wife Ju- be the aftermath of a murder on the other My Gun Is Quick, Vengeance Is Mine, The lie (a significant name for Truffaut), side of his courtyard, and his own helpless- Big Kill, The Long Wait, One Lonely dead at 22. The film itself goes nuts in ness is insured by having his leg in a cast. Night, and Kiss Me, Deadly-on the all- typical Woolrichian fashion; it builds a In both cases, the plot operates like a de- time best-selling paperback top ten. For mausoleum around Truffaut's tortured scending whirlpool, with the immobilized his time, in terms of popular appeal, cinephilia, with Nestor Almendros' cin- hero caught in the center-a classic Spillane was the Steven Spielberg of the ematography elegantly dressing the Woolrich setup. detective novel. corpse. Edgar G. Ulmer's Detour (and, to a lesser extent, Maxwell Shane's As Hirsch points out, \"The Woolrich Does the parallel end here? Who could Nightmare, which actually adapts a world is a maze of wrong impressions as let it? Spillane, like Spielberg, is noted Woolrich story) evokes the overall for- the author sets traps for his luckless protag- for beinga guy who's all business, and the lornness of a Woolrich plot, enhanced by onists and then watches as they fall into business has little if anything to do con- a mangy, minimal budget. them.\" Perhaps because Woolrich identi- sciously with Art. In a career that has fied with his protagonists so passionately, comprised twenty novels, an uncalcu- Tourneur's Cat People, takes over a he offers in his work a searing account of lated number ofshort stories (and stories basic Woolrich strategy-irrationality self-flagellation that more than a half-cen- for such comic books as Captain Marvel triumphant-and subtly makes it mod- tury of moviemaking has capitalized on, and Captain America), and a screenplay ernist, by assigning all the neat Freudian and imprinted on our worst dreams. (The Girl Hunters), Spillane never attests explanations of its troubled heroine to a to anything other than the desire to -JONATHAN ROSENBAUM 38
.- please his \"customers.\" But at the same sante the violence below the surface is as that much. time (and unlike Spielberg), he is almost likely to be expressed with the women Critics of Spillane tend to accuse him unique in literary annals in a passionate he's with as through Heffron's gory first-person attachment to his literary action sequences. of weakness in character development; stand-in. As the Girl Hunters ads had it: Hammer doesn't change, grow, learn, \"Mickey Spillane is Mike Hammer.\" Stacy Keach, starring in last season's undergo Aristotelian catharsis. Yet Ham- Mike Hammer series on CBS, is a strange mer is so clearly a man outside of society In Tomorrow I Die (Mysterious Press), combination of stupidity and bemuse- and the law that such standards cannot a new collection of Spillane short pieces ment. Keach must play the character as a easily be applied. As he notes in Kiss edited by Max Allan Collins, the Spil- man out of time; this Hammer is a figure Me , Deadly: \"I'm not the law, but plenty lane-Hammer persona is filtered from the Fifties beamed into the Eight- of times there were guys who wished the through various alter egos. In the Ham- ies. He gets a lotof mileage out of brush- law was around instead of me.\" Nor is he mer stories here, the character's sexually ing dames offhis lapels, but without the exactly human either, as the constant stultified interior is translated into bar- cruelty into which the original's sexual references to his physical appearance ren, rocky exterior landscapes. Ham- sublimation was translated. In Spillane's suggest: \"While I sat there I tried to mer's interior monologues define his at- early-Fifties classics, the transformation keep from looking at myself in the mir- titude to the cold, cruel world. He waits of lust into violence could take place ror behind the back bar but it didn't (for the apocalypse), watches (Mike within a single paragraph without any work. My face isn't pretty at all. Not at trouble at all: \"I was thinking of her all all. So I moved to a booth in the back Hammer = \"my camera\"), and wishes the way back to my apartment and that had no mirrors.\" thinking of her when I put my car away. for an end to the misery he constantly I was thinking too damn much to be Yes, Spillane is a sordid thrill monger, perceives around him. \"Oh, it's great to careful. When I stabbed my key in the but an unprecedentedly large reading watch, all right,\" Hammer says in My lock and turned it there was a momen- audience obviously sympathized with Gun Is Quick. \"Life through a keyhole tary catch in the tumblers before it went his apocalyptic visions of violence and .... But remember this: there are things all the way around and I swore out loud retribution. They had every gut reason happening out there. They go on every as I rammed the door with my shoulder to do so: Spillane rigorously refused to day and night making Roman holidays and hit the floor. Something swished couch his theologically grounded sexism look like school picnics. They go on through the air over my head and I and destructive fervor in the warm glow right under your very nose and you caught an arm and pulled a squirming, of fake humanitarianism. If nothing never know about them. Oh yes, you fighting bundle of muscle down on top else, Spillane has been true to his own can find them all right. All you have to of me. If I could have reached my rod I darkest convictions, beliefs that still roil do is look for them. But I wouldn't if I would have blown his guts out.\" Assante in the underbelly of American pop cul- were you because you won't like what or Keach wouldn't have been thinking you'll find. Then again, I'm not you and ture. -RICHARD GEHR looking for those things is my job.\" Once Hammer finds what he seeks, of course, there's a cleansing. Report- edly, Spillane takes his religion seri- ously. As a Jehovah's Witness, he is con- vinced that one day soon God will decide that enough is enough and that it's time for the elect to come on up. You need only consult the titles of Spillane's early novels to get a hint of the final solution he has in mind. Director Robert Aldrich perceived this, and made it lit- eral, in his film version of Kiss Me, Deadly: The world simply ends with a big bang. Ralph Meeker in Kiss Me. Deadly is the best of the batch of actors who've tried their hand at Hammer; he and Al- drich understood the hero's Armaged- don underpinnings. Even Spillane him- self, who starred in 1963's The Girl Hunters (directed by Roy Rowland), couldn't get as grimy a grip on the part in this spy thriller where he's trying to come off more as James Bond than Cos- mic Avenger. Armand Assante, in the 1982 remake of I. the Jury (adapted by Larry Cohen and directed by Richard Heffron) portrays Hammer as a more complicated character thah Spillane might have conceived. Like the origi- nal, he's sexually obsessed, but with As- 39
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PETIT CON a film by Gerard Lauzier a film by Mario Camus THE PLOUGHMAN'S LUNCH LONELY HEARTS a film by Richard Eyre a film by Paul Cox
Missing Persons: loud for an English edition of his book. most of it into blue-chip stocks) or stay- David Goodis ing in a small, depressing hotel. For rec- • reation, he made forays in Watts, look- Helpless, hopeless. This is the mood ing for statuesque black women. that rises like a savory stench from David Loeb Goodis was born in 1917. David Goodis' nihilistic paperback origi- He was already writing professionally by Hollywood inertia began to set in. He nals. You know the ones. The Gold the time he graduated from Temple worked for Jerry Wald on a project called Medal Books that you scavenge through University in 1938. That year Dutton Up Till Now, which sounds like Wald's musty secondhand bookstores to find published his first (and most \"serious\") attempt to make a Big Meaningful Pic- tucked in among the Agatha Christies novel, Retreat from Oblivion, and soon ture full of platitudes about Man in the and Richard Prathers. The yellowing Age of the Atomic Bomb. Production pulps with dark lurid covers and evoca- thereafter he left his local PR firm job to was abruptly canceled by Jack Warner in tive teaser copy. Night Squad: \"They December 1947 only a few weeks before gave him back his badge-and sent him work in ad agenci~s in New York, ending shooting was scheduled to begin. down into the brutal throbbing heart of up at Young and Rubicam. He contin- (Something of Goodis' work on this the slums.\" Street of No Return: \"Only turned up in an atypical novel, The the ruthless survive River Street where ued to write for the pulps. In 1942, Uni- Blonde on the Street Corner, which Lion concrete ends and jungle begins.\" Down published in 1954.) There (which, as the source for Fran~ois versal brought him out to Los Angeles to Truffaut's Shoot the Piano Player, would write a treatment, Destination Unknown. More true tales of Hollywood: Goodis become Goodis' best known novel): He returned to Philadelphia and New wrote two treatments, The Persian Cat \"From the great concert halls of the York and his pulp career, later boasting and Within These Gates, that were turned world-he descended the stairway to that he wrote five and a half million down almost as soon as they were turned hell. \" words in six years under numerous pseu- in. And in January 1948 Goodis was put donyms and for such magazines as De- to work on an idea by James Gunn called With a little rewriting, that last phrase tective Fiction, Popular Spans Magazine, Somewhere in the City. But after Goodis could serve as a tag for The David Goodis Battle Birds, and Daredevil Aces. (He did a script, Anthony Veiller was as- Story. He didn't end up in hell, exactly, had never piloted a plane, never flown signed and did a total rewrite. When the just dead at 49 in Philadelphia. His ca- in one, and got quite airsick when he picture, now called Backfire, came out in reer had begun with a prodigy's success: tried it as a passenger late in life.) Pay 1950, three screenwriters were credited, His first novel was published when he ranged from a quarter of a cent to two but not Goodis or Gunn. was barely out of college; he left his cents a word. He also wrote for the radio Philadelphia home to work in the best serials House ofMystery, Superman, and The last straw was Of Missing Per- New York ad agencies while turning out Hap Harrigan of the Airwaves, of which sons, a project on which Warners had millions of words for the pulps; Holly- he eventually became the associate Goodis write eleven treatments in two wood beckoned after the publication of producer. months, April and May 1948. (He wrote his second novel, Dark Passage, which a 193-page novel from the material in Warner Bros. turned into a respectable It was his 1946 novel Dark Passage two weeks in June, which Warners al- Bogart-Bacall picture-all this by the lowed him to publish; it was his last time Goodis was 30. But within a very that got him away from two cents a word. few years, Goodis left Hollywood, never The Saturday Evening Post paid him hardcover book.) In July, Goodis' agent to return, and buried himself in his old $25,000 to serialize the book, Julian room in the family home, supporting his Messner brought it out in hardcover, and asked Warners' to renew his contract, overprotective mother and retarded Warner Bros. bought the movie rights which would now be $1250 a week; they brother, turning out paperback originals and also Goodis' services as a screen- didn't pick up the option, and he re- for $1500 each. writer (though not, ofcourse, on his own ceived his last check from them the fol- book, which they assigned to staff lowing month. His story editor said that Within a year of his mother's death, writer-director Delmer Daves). Goodis Goodis himself was fed up and wanted Goodis died of heart trouble exacer- demanded and got an unusual six-year to leave. By 1950 Goodis was back in bated by years of smoking filterless ciga- contract providing a guarantee of six Philadelphia, in the family home from rettes, and complicated by a dispiriting months' employment each year as a which he rarely ventured out. What had plagiarism suit against the producers of screenwriter, with six months off to promised to be a healthy Hollywood TV's The Fugitive (not settled until after write a novel, to which Warner Bros. career ended up as a strange interlude. his death for the \"derisory sum\" of would have the right of first refusal. For $12,000) and a severe beating suffered Goodis, 1947 was an extraordinary year. Goodis turned out a book or two or when he refused to give up his wallet three a year. They were written to ad- to muggers. In June, Goodis' first screenwriting as- here to a strict set of conventions, re- garding length (not more than 200 What happened? There is virtually no signment, The Unfaithful, a remake of pages, or less than 160), subject matter biographical or critical information on The Letter starring Ann Sheridan and di- (obligatory cliche scenes of sex and Goodis available in English, but much rected by Vincent Sherman, came out violence, incest and juvenile delin- in Philippe Garnier's quirky, well-writ- and was a big success. Dark Passage, quency preferred), and opportunities for ten, impeccably researched Goodis: La with an unusual subjective-camera facile blurbs and covers featuring se,mi- vie en noir et blanc (Goodis: Life in Black opening reel, also did well on its debut dressed dames. But like the work of and White). I am indebted to Gamier for Hollywood contract directors elevated much of what follows, and I hope out in September. In October Behold This from the assembly line to the Pantheon, the obsessions and manias of David Woman was published in hardcover by Goodis, quintessential Lonely Guy, Appleton, and in November Julian found cult status here and abroad. Lis- Messner brought out Nightfall. Movie ten to critic Geoffrey O'Brien: \"We rights to both novels sold immediately. But Goodis was not happy in Holly- wood. He never really lived there; he alternated between paying a friend $4 a week to sleep on his sofa (this when he was making $750 a week but sinking 42
don't read [Goodis' novels] for style, nor Player, Goodis replied: \"I just tried to for what they tell us about the tougher tell a story, that's all.\" Despite the flurry of publicity, the Truffaut film didn't cre- neighborhoods of the Philadelphia that ate any new work for Goodis. Another Goodis grew up in, but rather for a movie was not to be based on his work steady and undeniable emotional drive until after he died. that sometimes handles language with something like hysteria, or that subsides The French continue to mine the into distinctive plangent largoes. \" Goodis canon for gold. In 1971 , Henri Verneuil filmed Le Casse, based on The Truffaut is the most celebrated of the Burglar. In 1972, ReneCU:mentdidAnd several French directors who have based Hope to Die from a Sebastian Japrisot a movie on a Goodis paperback, but he script based on Black Friooy and Some- was not the first. Pierre Chenal starred body's Done For (aka The Raving Beauty). Maurice Ronet in Section des disparus, And last year Jean-Jacques Beineix based on Of Missing Persons, in 1956, a turned out a delirious The Moon in the year that also saw a very good adaptation Gutter, starring Gerard Depardieu, Nas- of Nightfall (also published as The Dark tassia Kinski, and an astonishing Hilton Chase), directed by Jacques Toumeur McConnico set. Two more French proj- and featuring strong performances by ects have been announced: Street of the Aldo Ray and Brian Keith. In 1958, Co- Lost and, again, Somebody's Done For. lumbia released a low-budget picture, The Burglar, which Paul Wendkos di- Even beyond his death, though, rected in Philadelphia; Goodis wrote the Goodis remained a literary product for script, Dan Duryea was well-cast; Jayne export only. His obituary, in both Variety Mansfield was not. Truffaut's 1960 film and his hometown paper the Inquirer, created new attention for Goodis, which identified him as the author of the delighted him, but made him ill at ease French film Please Don't Shoot the Piano when questioned about his intentions as Player. To be double-billed, one pre- a writer: when asked about the antihero sumes, with Eat the Daisies. and existentialism in Shoot the Piano -MEREDITH BRODY 43
And the Enemy Is Us: cion). Instead, Highsmith's enthralling show a new, less pathological reality. By Patricia Highsmith hook is that she explores what happens tying the reader and the criminal so At first glance, Patricia Highsmith when neurotic fantasies become reali- closely together in the beginning, by seems an unlikely addition to the canon of hard-boiled mystery writers. She ties. rendering so clearly the motives and doesn't work within the genre so much as against it. While the traditional for- By staking out such territory, High- moods behind the actions, Highsmith mula calls for a tough detective pitted against a corrupt and violent society, smith was a natural springboard source extends the reach of culpability beyond Highsmith has chosen instead to con- centrate on the criminal's point of view. for Hitchcock. Yet other directors- the printed page. Another exchange of Her work is an inversion of the hard- boiled style, an act of turning it upside mostly European-have also drawn in- identities has taken place; the reader has down and shaking all the hidden fears and neuroses out of it. spiration from her writing, although no become, at least, an accessory after the Her first novel, Strangers on a Train, one has been able to convey effectively fact. remains her best known one, thanks to Alfred Hitchcock's 1951 movie version. Highsmith's dark, pulsing currents of Ripley Underground and Ripley's Yet the novel differs significantly from the film. The premise is cunningly sim- deception, guilt, and horror. A case in Game pick up the character several years ple: two strangers meet on a train and discover that they each have someone in point: Wim Wenders' The American later. He seems cooler, more at ease with their lives they'd like murdered. One man proposes that, to elude detection, Friend is a perfectly decent, at times himself (or his assumed persona), and so they trade murders. The result will be perfect alibis with no connection to the even admirable piece of filmmaking. detached from the ramifications of his crimes, along with all the emotional and financial benefits. In the movie, ambi- But a viewer would walk away from it criminal acts that they signify little more guities surround the motives of the good-looking, divorce-seeking Guy with no idea of how addictive and har- than an amusing pastime to him. In Haines (played by Farley Granger). But in Highsmith's novel, the intention is rowing Highsmith's series of Tom Game, Ripley seems to want to recreate much less cloudy. From the moment the scheming and ingratiatingly vulgar Ripley novels truly are. his own seduction into this life outside Charles Bruno (Robert Walker) appears on the train, there is little doubt that he There are four Ripley books alto- the boundaries by ensnaring an ordi- is a dark doppelganger, the personifica- tion of Guy's deepest, most forbidden gether (so far), published between 1956 nary, decent family man into commit- desires. and 1980. Wenders merged the middle ting murder. The latest in the series, The Guilt by desire is a theme that High- smith would explore again and again, two, Ripley Underground and Ripley's Boy Who Followed Ripley, picks the de- throughout her next ten books. It is an almost Catholic concept: thinking Game, into the basis for his movie. But liriously sociopathic and homoerotic something is as bad as doing it, and so- short of a lobotomy or death-there can the first novel, The Talented Mr. Ripley, strains of the first novel and weaves never really be any escape from the occa- sions of sin. In Strangers, this pervasive- stands out as a haunting landmark study them together by giving Ripley a pro- ness is pushed a step further, into a sort of literary psychokinesis: by wishing his of a sociopathic murderer. tege. Taken as a quartet, the Ripley wife dead, Guy makes it happen. From that point on, he is trapped in a destruc- At first, Tom Ripley is a man living on novels are an exquisitely detailed study tive pas de deux with Bruno, because they have, of course, done more than the margin, a con artist always looking of desire and guilt gone into a tailspin, of exchange murders; they have, in a dark- night-of-the-psyches-way, exchanged for a new scam. He finds one through a those dark moments when what you identities. Such bait and switch themes are the essence of Highsmith's work. chance encounter with the father of an want and what you'll do to get it fatally The crime itself and its deduction is of minimal interest (in her later works, old school friend, Dickie Greenleaf. combust. crimes often go undetected, or the per- petrator, at least, remains above suspi- Greenleafs father sends Ripley off to Other movies inspired by High- Europe to \"talk sense\" to his wayward, smith's novels include Rene Clement's vagabond son. Purple Noon (also based on some of the Instead the agenda is the slow and Ripley books), Michel Deville's Deep implicitly homoerotic seduction of Rip- Water, and Hans W. Geissendorfer's ley by Greenleafs life. He ends up cov- Edith's Diary. Yet these films, like many eting not Greenleafs body so much as of Highsmith's books, have failed to find his clothes, his money, his style, even- an American audience. Highsmith is a for awhile-his name. One of the nov- formidable presence in Europe, im- el's most chilling scenes occurs when mensely popular and easily attainable in Greenleaf catches Ripley, dressed in any bookstore. But several of her best one of Greenleafs suits, studying him- novels, including the outstanding self in the mirror. It's through the look- Edith's Diary (which traces the slow dis- ing glass and back out the other side, integration of a woman's mind through Highsmith style. Once the exchange of the intermingled recording of domestic identities is complete, the results are details and her happy-ever-after fanta- predictable, just as once Ripley has sies) and the latest, People Who Knock on thought of killing Greenleaf and then the Door (which deals with the born- becoming him, he can find no reason not again movement and the effect of guilt to. In fact, he can think oflittle else but on its followers), have not been released all the systematically reasonable and in the United States. righteous reasons why he should commit Undoubtedly, one reason why High- murder. smith is not so well known here, but Ripley's talents lie in his abilities to lauded in Europe, is that she, like her move, amorally and chameleon-like, to creation Ripley, is an expatriate. High- obtain what he feels is his due. High- smith was born in Fort Worth, Texas, smith's talents, in all of her novels, lie in grew up in New York, and was educated a writing style that engages and melds at Barnard College. Now in her early the reader with the protagonist and the sixties, she has spent most of her adult protagonist's vision of events. Only after life living in France; according to the that bond is solidified does Highsmith jacket notes on PeopLe Who Knock, she is peel away from that point of view to currently living in Switzerland. But 44
physical absence alone can't account for her novels' lack of availability in this country. Europeans have a tradition of embracing certain American hard-boiled writers who are all but forgotten here- Jim Thompson is a prime example of a novelist who's out-of-print in English but available in any bookstore in France -and, unfortunately, Highsmith is now edging into that category. It's a shame, because she deserves a wide audience. Like all hard-boiled writers, Highsmith describes a world where life has gone amuck. Society is corrupted, often vio- lently, always venally. The thoughts we dare not think have sprung, quiveringly, into life and have seeped into the cracks. Neon jellyfish of the psyche glide through the urban streets; in suburbia, our own worst nightmares can be found lurking in the garage or out beyond the patio. However you look at it-and all the hard-boiled writers see it a little dif- ferentl y-it is not a pretty picture. Certain boundaries, Highsmith knows, are easily eroded. Thoughts can be as good or bad and as forceful as actions. Once we understand that, the deepest pockets of neuroses in the crim- inal mind are no longer strange to us. As far as Highsmith is concerned, the crimi- nal is everyone, really. -MARCIA FROELKE COBURN ers on a Train. d Farley Granger in Strang Robert Walker an 4S
Killer Instinct: Jim Thompson His body of work may be the most raw til Th disturbing and the most darkly sadistic of the tough-guy writers now enjoying a e Getawa y. renaissance of critical appreciation. The typical Jim Thompson anti-hero is a the project was never realized. The Get- Arnold Hano, said that Thompson troubled, perhaps even schizophrenic, away was eventually made in 1972 by didn't take at all kindly to the idea of re- misogynist who drinks a lot and kills Sam Peckinpah, an old friend of writing. people when he feels like it. Is it the Thompson's; but the script was by Wal- artless courage of his amoral convictions ter Hill, and Thompson was reportedly Filmmakers who adapted Thomp- that inspires such filmmakers as Stanley unhappy with the movie. Peckinpah son's work were not always willing to Kubrick, Sam Peckinpah, Burt Ken- and Hill had eliminated the novel's follow his stories to their bizarre conclu- nedy, Alain Corneau, and Bertrand nightmarish coda, in which the robber- sions. Alain Corneau's Serie Noire (1979) Tavernier to work with him or to make lovers are trapped in a mythical South adheres to the plot ofThompson's A Hell movies from his books? Sure. When Mi- American kingdom-an exile worse of a Woman with Gallic strictness- chel Ciment (in another context) asked than prison, worse than hell. \"You tell neatly transposing the tale of a small- Stanley Kubrick, \"Are you attracted to yourself it is a bad dream. You tell your- time crooked salesman who gets em- evil characters?\", Kubrick answered, self you have died-you, not the others broiled in robbery and murder-right \"Ofcourse I'm not, bu t they are good for -and have waked up in hell. But you up to the point where the salesman goes stories. \" know better. You know better. There is ragingly schizo, telling two stories in al- an end to dreams, and there is no end to ternating lines of type. In one story, his It was Kubrick who employed this. And when people die they are dead girlfriend cuts his penis off (a recurring Thompson for most of the writer's des- -as who should know better than you?\" motif in Thompson); in the other, she ultory film career. The Gold Medal re- merely laughs at him until he throws issue ofThompson's The Killer Inside Me The Getaway is not the only Thomp- himself out the window. As far as it goes, (originally published in 1952) bears Ku- son novel to move at a linear gallop, then Serie Noire is a successful adaptation, brick's blurb on the cover: \"Probably the suddenly kick into hallucinatory high and Patrick Dewaere gives a funny, most chilling and believable first-person gear in the final pages of the final chap- chilling performance as the salesman. story of a criminally warped mind I have ter. It's as if the writer got a sudden ever encountered.\" According to a 1979 loony burst of speed near the finish line Comeau also wanted to direct a movie interview with Pierre Rissient in the and that energy spilled onto the pulp, ofPop. 12BO-he may even have collab- French magazine Polar, Kubrick cleansing the plot of all coherence. And orated with Thompson on an adaptation thought of making a movie of The Killer once he was done, that was it; his editor, -but the book was eventually filmed Inside Me, but instead decided to work with another script as Coup de torchon with Thompson on adapting the novel Clean Break by Lionel White. This be- came Kubrick's third feature , The Kill- ing, a superb movie of an elaborate race- track heist, beautifully cast with a slew ofjilm noir veterans. Thompson's credit on The Killing was for Additional Dialogue, but his wife Alberta maintained that he wrote the entire script with Kubrick, and that Thompson later won a suit against Ku- brick and James B. Harris, the film's producer. This disagreement didn't pre- vent Kubrick from employing Thomp- son (as well as novelist Calder Wil- lingham) on an adaptation of Humphrey Cobb's Paths ofGlory; the script for this perfectly devised antiwar tract earned Thompson a Writer's Guild Nomina- tion. Thompson also wrote an original screenplay for Harris and Kubrick, Killer at Large, of which nothing is known other than that there was a long se- quence that took place in the New York subway. For producer David Foster, Thomp- son wrote a screenplay of The Getaway, to be directed by Peter Bogdanovich; 46
(Clean Slate) by Bertrand Tavernier. Killer Inside Me is exactly what French The End: While faithful to the story, Tavernier enthusiasts for existential American Marc Behm daringly changed the setting from the violence were looking for in the works of American South to French Equatorial Dashiell Hammett, Horace McCoy, and By the time Mike Hammer had hung Africa, where the local sheriffs patroniz- Raymond Chandler. None of these men up his .45 in the Sixties, the hard-boiled ing, quasi-benign prejudices seemed ever wrote a book within miles of dick had become an anachronism , a right at home. The movie is completely Thompson's.\" Cassill makes a persua- time traveler ill at ease in uncongenial French, and happy in its cast of Philippe sive case for The Killer Inside Me as a surroundings. The best recent tough- Noiret, Isabelle Huppert, Stephane Au- \"novel of ideas\" that \"makes a hard, guy novels do their best to modernize dran, and Eddy Mitchell, yet the perva- scary, Sophoclean statement on Ameri- the surfaces, but the essence hasn't sive mood of nutsy malaise is uniquely can success. \" changed. In James Crumley's wonder- Thompsonian. fully textured The Last Good Kiss (1978), There is little biographical material the locations are post-hippie rustic Claude Chabrol, who has directed on Thompson, and most of that is con- rather than urban; cocaine addiction has films with much of the Thompson at- tradictory or unreliable. The two books replaced alcoholism as an occupational mosphere, wanted to make movies of that purport to be autobiographies, Bad disease; the investigator's pervasive ano- Nothing More than Murder (a devious Boy and Roughneck, are full of fantasy; mie can be traced back to a hellish tour murder-love triangle with a movie the- and his wife Alberta is loath to discuss in Vietnam. But the psychological pro- ater background) and The Nothing Man his problems with alcohol or do much file is familiar. The detective, Sughrue, (one of Thompson's best, with a hero more than offer a character gloss. \"Jim is another embittered hard case who who actually is emasculated, by a land was a gentle, nice, and sensitive man,\" bets everything on pulling one last long- mine, before the novel begins; he says she told Polar. \"He loved animals and shot assignment out of the fire. he regrets he had only one penis to give was a devoted husband and father. I for his country). Long before Burt Ken- can't explain to you why Jim's work was The hard-boiled private eye-the last nedy turned Thompson's most cele- so pessimistic and desperate. Jim was good man in a world like a sewer-has a brated novel into a TV movie (1976), The just the contrary.\" (This of the man who standoffish, adolescent romantic appeal, Killer Inside Me had prompted R. V. Cas- wrote The Alcoholics, the most harrow- and he could conceivably be updated sill to these dithyrambs of praise: \"The ing tale of drink addiction outside the again and again to infinity. In Ridley work of Donald Newlove . At times, Scott's Blade Runner, after all, we've al- though, Alberta Thompson's brief re- ready had a 21st-century version. But as plies strike just the right chord when too an embodiment of forces active in pop much is read into the work. When asked culture as a whole, the tough guy is why Thompson wrote novelizations of washed up. In the wake of feminism , his films (The Undefeated, Nothing But a macho angst (the tough guy's burden) Man) and a TV series (Ironside), she re- seems a bit silly. Clint Eastwood saw the plied, \"He wrote them because they writing on the wall and turned Dirty asked him to and to make money. \" Harry into a cartoon character in Sudden Impact. When the hard-boiled hero is A few scraps of biography: Born in well used these days it's usually in a 1906 in Anadarko, Oklahoma, to a father context assuming some prior knowledge who changed jobs often, Jim Thompson of the formula, and making a point of the held a few odd jobs (bellhop, oil-worker) contrast between outmoded genre ex- before he started writing for the pulps. pectations and up-to-date reality. He married Alberta in 1931; they had (They're almost all movies, too: China- three children. During the Depression town, The Conversation, The Long Good- he was one of the directors of the WPA bye, Night Moves, The Late Show, Body Writers' Project in Oklahoma. Three Heat.) early novels were published in hard- cover during a period when he was also Marc Behm's The Eye of the Beholder writing journalism (for The New York is something else: the first post-hard- Daily News and the Los Angeles Times boiled detective novel. It's one of the punchiest, bleakest, weirdest crime nov- Mirror) and pulp stories (True Detective, els ever written and one of the most and Saga, of which he was editor in original. In surreal, staccato images, like chief). After 1952, when he wrote The a flipbook of strobe-lit snapshots, Behm Killer Inside Me for Alfred Hano at Lion evokes an atmosphere of Americana Books, he published 26 paperback origi- turned malignant, bristling with anxiery. nals. Until recently they were all out of And like all really original visions, this print, but the enterprising Zomba Books one feels chillingly familiar. of London has published an omnibus volume (containing The Getaway, The Behm's dissection of the loner-detec- Killer Inside Me, The Grifters, and Pop. tive legend turns the romanticized con- 1280) in their Black Box Thrillers series. ventions of the genre inside out. His One hopes that more Thompson will protagonist is a nameless, colorless, voy- find its way back into print and onto the euristic near-sociopath who obsessively screen. dogs the footsteps of a bisexual serial -MEREDITH BRODY 47
murderess. In a chameleon-like succes- sion of disguises, the killer, Joanna, wanders the country acquiring and then snuffing one well-heeled partner after another. The slender novel details more than a score of killings. Vicious episodes occur in almost every section of the country, with the back-and-forth travel patterns weaving a web across the U.S. It's a picaresque-epic crime story, a nihil- istic road movie. The Eye (his only moniker) has been boiled down as a personality until there's nothing left except the qualities consis- tent with the term \"peeper.\" He has no ulterior motives or distinctive qualities; he's so nondescript he's virtually invisi- ble. (\"A guard , watching him, saw only a grey smear in a dapper landscape of passing suits.\") Following and watching are now self-sufficient activities: He in- tervenes only to protect the killer, so that he can go on watching her. But he makes no real contact even with his quarty; she functions as a surrogate for a daughter he hasn't seen for decades. The deductive process itself is only a donnee. distracting game, like chess or a cross- word puzzle, creating a buzz of mental genre of Salo and The Night Porter as The static to blot out the inner messages he Eye of the Beholder is to the detective dared omit. The writer who can coolly doesn't want to listen to. The real nerve genre. This one is not so funny. To para- note, \"She killed seven men that center of the stoty lies much deeper, in a phrase Roy Blount, Jr.'s description of night,\" and let it go at that, and who musty grotto miles beneath the surface, Salo , it's a novel in which the Nazis ... leaps over whole decades in a few sen- where the monsters live. Well, take my word for it. tences, has also eliminated thematic ma- Marc Behm, who knows something The Eye of the Beholder falls between terial that's normally considered central about monsters, is an American citizen those two extremes: It's a perverse en- to the form, like the knightly code of in his fifties who has lived in Paris for tertainment that seems to revel in its honor-and he gets along swimmingly more than 30 years, working mostly as a own craftsmanship. Perhaps Behm has without them. In effect, he's de-subli- screenwriter. His big scripts include absorbed so many of the shortcuts of mated the entire genre. Charade (co-written by Peter Stone, pulp storytelling from his movie work Beholder is an archetypal one-of-a- who makes a furtive appearance in The that he now feels free to play with them kind book, however, like William Eye of the Beholder) and, for Richard and to push them further and further, Hjortsberg's apocalyptic-occult detec- Lester, Help! and The Three/Four Muske- like a zestful juggler. But while the story tive stoty, Falling Angel. Marc Behm teers. Among his potboilers are the new seems to cry out for screen treatment (it isn't lighting a path that any sane person Sylvia Kristel version of Lady Chatter- was originally written as a script), The would try to follow, but he sure has ley's Lover and The Hospital Massacre, a Eye of the Beholder is such a visionary cleared a lot of ground-like a forest Golan-Globule slash-'em-up that occa- downer that no American producer fire. No writer who accepts the implica- sionally plays on cable, trimmed, under would touch it with a ten-foot pole- tions of Behm's achievement can go on the title X-Ray. although a certain famous five-foot Pole producing straight-faced stories about Behm is an opera and history buff could probably do great things with it. heartsick/loner detectives. The Eye whose literary specialty goes beyond the So could Brian De Palma. The book has marks the absolute dead end of that pro- banality of evil to the innocence of evil. already been filmed once in France, by cedure. The character goes beyond ei- His monstrous characters are distilled, Claude Miller, as Mortelle Randonnee, ther alienation or existential posturing. purified personalities. He allows us no with Michel Serrault as the Eye and He no longer wrestles with the fragmen- judgmental distance from the madmen Isabelle Adjani as Johanna the death tation of society. Instead, he lives in he writes about; we see them as they see goddess. But it's a quintessentially airless gaps between the fragments, a themselves, caught in the same unde- American horror tale, like Badlands, and free-fall zone in which his fixations can rtow. In Behm's third and newest book, only a sun-baked, dust-drenched do- expand. To a degree, of course, we all The Ice Maiden (to be filmed, alas, by mestic version could do it justice. live there-when we zonk out in front Jean-Jacques Beineix), the approach The Eye ofthe Beholder is a private-eye ofMTV, or talk to ourselves in traffic. In a produces comedy, because the charac- novel to end private-eye novels-and period almost exclusively devoted to ters are real monsters-vampires, in private-eye movies. Behm's minimalist distractions in popular culture, God only fact. Behm's first novel, however, The instincts compel him to elide elements knows what's simmering beneath the Queen of the Night, is to the Nazi-porn that no previous author in the form has surface. -DAvmCHUTE 48
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