VOLUME 20 - NUMBER 02 MARCH-APRIL 1984

APRIL 1984/$2.50 COMMENT

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•SI•SSUe published bimonthly by the Film Society ofLincoln Center Volume 20, Number 2 March-April 1984 World of Our Mothers ..... 11 VCR Fever .............49 Hollywood sent up a howl when the Supreme Court ruled Mothers and daughters: they that you could tape movies and TV shows on your videocas- are the post-nuclear family. sette recorder for free. Imagine: film history in all its splen- Marcia Pally looks at Terms dor available for scavenging on your magic machine. But will of Endearment, then at three you record Ozu's The Flavor ofGreen Tea Over Rice the next foreign films directed by time it plays HBO? Or will you memorialize your favorite women (including Diane Kurys' Entre Nous), to see fantasies of sex and violence, the better to savor them first- what it is parent and child hand? From experience, our David Chute has the answer. have to say to each other Forget Ozu. Grab that fantasy software. (page 11). And James L. Midsection: Cameramen ...31 Brooks, in a rare interview, tells Kenneth Turan about This year's Oscar nomina- 1--.;;;....;;;;.--------...bringing Terms to term (po 18). tions did reward one group of Grand Master 'Flash' . . . . .~--~-----6~2~ young Turks: cinematog- raphers Caleb Deschanel, William Fraker, Don Peter- If 1983's movies didn't take their cue from the frenetic man, and mystery man Gor- surrealism of MTV, they don Willis. Updating our aped familiar sitcom and TV- spcial issue from 1972, Todd movie formats. For our an- McCarthy takes a pano- nual boxoffice review, ramic view of the new gener- Gregg Kilday charts 1983's ation of lensers (page 32). hits and flops, from the syn- And Arlene Zeichner retro- tho-dazzle of Flashdance to spects Hollywood's wizards The Right Stuff. of still photography(page 42). Also in this issue: Lost 'Weekend' 0•••• 0• 0000• 028 Orbits 00000.00000. 000000• 070 Sam Peckinpah's comeback film, The On the eve of Greystoke, Hollywood's Journals 00000000000000000004 Osterman Weekend, went away with favorite Tarzan swung into that big Hoboken's finest filmmaker, John unseemly abruptness. Richard T. Ja- treehouse in the sky. David Thomson Sayles, invades Harlem; Pat Auf- meson was there at the beginning and elegizes Johnny Weissmuller. derheide reports. Dan Yakir screens a files his report now, after the end. rare homosexual film from Israel. Books: Roman Scandals .... 0 72 'Unfaithfully Yours' 0• 0•• 0• 0057 Kenneth Tynan called Roman Po- Ford and Anderson 00 000000024 Compare the new movie with the lanski \"the five-foot Pole you No, it's not a Nostalgia Ticket for the 1948 Preston Sturges classic and you'll wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole\"; Republican Party. Lindsay Ander- find a case of champagne comedy James Toback finds dark and light son's fond , contentious book on John gone flat. By Veronica Geng. sides in Polanski's autobiography. Ford has just been published in the Also: Carrie Rickey reviews Peter U.S., which prompts thoughts from Claudette Colbert 00000• 0• 0• 059 Biskind's book on Fifties films. Richard Schickel on Ford's films and On April 23 the Film Society of Lin- the need for cultural heroes. coln Center pays tribute to the 1983 FILM COMMENT Index movies' most sensible seductress. 0••• 0••••• 00.0 •• 0.00.0.0.076 Oscar Gamble 000000• 000• 00002 Here, Stephen Harvey does same. Match wits with our experts: David Back Page: Quiz #6 00• 0•••• 080 Ansen, Lee Beaupre, Stuart Byron, Independents: World's Fair. 0068 An acrostic puzzle to test your film David Denby, Roger Ebert, Myron A new movie commemorates the 1939 lore. Try it-you'll like it. Meisel, Dale Pollock, Andrew Sarris, World's Fair and its prophecy of a Richard Schickel, Kenneth Turan. new world. By Kenneth Spence. Cover photo: Paramount Pictures. Editor: Richard Corliss, Senior Editor: Harlan Jacobson . Business Manager: Sayre Maxfield . Advertising and Circulation Manager: Tony Impavido. Art Director: Elliet Schulman. Cover Design: Mike Uris. West Coast Editor: Anne Thompson (on leave). European Correspondent: Harlan Kennedy. Research Consultant: Mary Corliss, Editorial Assistant: Marcie Bloom. Circulation Assistant: Deborah Freedman. Accountant: Domingo Hornilla, Jr. . Editorial Interns: Mark Moss, Garth Pritchard, Nancy Swartz. Executive Director, Film Society of Lincoln Center: Joanne Koch. Second class post- age paid at New York and additional mailing offices. Copyright © 1984 by the Film Society of Lincoln Center. All rights reserved. The opinions ex- pressed in FILM COMMENT do not represent Film Society of Lincoln Center policy. This publication is fully protected by domestic and international copyright. The publication FILM COMMENT (ISSNOOI5-119X) is made possible in part by support from the New York State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. Subscription rates in the United States: $12 for six numbers, $22 for twelve numbers. Elsewhere $18 for six numbers, $34 for twelve numbers, payable in U.S. funds only. New subscribers should include their occupations and zip codes. Postmaster: send address changes, editorial, subscription , and back-issue correspondence to: FILM COMMENT, 140 West 65th Street, New York, N. Y. 10023 U.S .A.

Movies for Mondale Supporters A paradox, a paradox, a most ingenious paradox. All year reviews and surprisingly healthy B.O., but Barbra Streisand long the studios scramble to satisfy the \"youth market\" with horror movies, SPFXtravaganzas, and tits-and-zits comedies. was 86'd by the Academy. Then, one day in February, Hollywood proclaims it has a conscience-a guilty one-by announcing the Academy Our panel of movie critics and industry savants has voted Award nominations. In category after category, humanism rears its saintly head with puppy-warm films that may never the straight Terms ticket whenever possible: best picture, have found a big-screen constituency. What's going on here: cinematic schizophrenia, or just another example of art serv- actress , supporting actor, director, and adapted screenplay ing mammon? The Oscar ceremony is, after all, primarily a TV showcase for older, middle-class viewers who may spend awards are predicted for this gentle blockbuster that should more time watching film clips this one night than they ever do sitting in a movie house at the local mall. So why not give the clear $100 million gross by Oscar night. Other awards, the TV audience what it can be comfortable with? The kids are watching MTVanyway. panel says, will go to two Hollywood dues-payers (Robert This year the industry outdid itself in rewarding TV- Duvall for best actor and Cher for supporting actress) and the movies and every tony Brit drama this side of Masterpiece Theatre. Four of the five Best Actor nominees are British; industry's favorite foreign double-dome (lngmar Bergman for three of the five screenplay adaptations are retyped London plays; none of the Best Director finalists is a Hollywood Fanny and Alexander). If there are to be upsets, they may veteran.No teen faves, no Gotterdammerung epics (Scarface) -and no pushy broads. Yentl earned a sheaf of benificent come in two categories with hardly a home-towner or old- timer in sight: original screenplay (will veteran Horton Foote pull the sympathy vote from George Lucas' former colleague Larry Kasdan?) and cinematography (will the Academy re- ward Sven Nykvist for his long association with Bergman, or atone for the A. S . C. 's benign blackballing of Gordon Willis by handing him an Oscar for his first nomination?). A majority of our panel chose the front-runner in each category. He may be as sure a thing as Michael Jackson on Grammy night, or as vulnerable as Walter Mondale in New Hampshire. We'll all find out April 9. -R.C. BEST PICTURE BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY BEST ACTOR The Big Chill, Columbia Ingmar Bergman, Fanny and Michael Caine, Educating Rita The Dresser, Columbia Alexander (RE, AS) (DO, RS) The Right Stuff, LaddlWarners Tom Conti, Reuben, Reuben Tender Mercies , Universal Nora Ephron & Alice Arlen, Silkwood Tom Courtenay, The Dresser Terms ofEndearment, Paramount Horton Foote, Tender Mercies (KT) Robert Duvall, Tender Mercies (DA, (ALL 10) Lawrence Kasdan & Barbara LB, SB, RE. MM. DP, AS, KT) Benedek, The Big Chill (DA, LB, SB, Albert Finney. The Dresser FOREIGN FILM* DO, MM, DP, RS) LeBal Lawrence Lasker & Walter F. Parkes, BEST ACTRESS Carmen WarGames Jane Alexander, Testament Entre Nous (RE) Shirley MacLaine, Terms of Fanny and Alexander (DA, LB, DO, BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY Endearment (DA, LB, SB, DO, MM, MM, DP, AS, RS , KT) DP, AS, RS. KT) Job's Revolt James L. Brooks, Terms ofEndearment Meryl Streep, Silkwood (ALL 10) Julie Walters, Educating Rita ·Swan Byron dedi ned to panicipatc in thi s catego ry. Julius J. Epstein, Reuben, Reuben Debra Winger, Terms ofEndearment Ronald Harwood, The Dresser (RE) BEST DIRECTOR Harold Pinter, Betrayal Bruce Beresford, Tender Mercies Willy Russell, Educating Rita BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR Ingmar Bergman, Fanny and Charles Durning, To Be Or Not To Be Alexander (DO, RS, KT) John Lithgow, Terms ofEndearment Jack Nicholson. Terms ofEndearment James L. Brooks, Terms ofEndearment (ALL 10) (DA, LB, SB, RE, MM, DP, AS) Sam Shepard. The Right Stuff Mike Nichols, Silkwood Rip Torn. Cross Creek Peter Yates, The Dresser BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY Cher, Silkwood (DA, LB, SB, DO, Caleb Deschanel, The Right Stuff AS, RS, KT) (DA, LB, DO, RE, MM, DP) Glenn Close, The Big Chill (DP) William A. Fraker, WarGames Linda Hunt. The Year ofLiving Sven Nykvist, Fanny and Alexander Dangerously (RE, MM) (SB, AS, RS, KT) Amy Irving, Yentl Don Peterman, Flashdance Alfre Woodard. Cross Creek Gordon Willis, Zelig DAVID ANSEN, Newsweek; LEE BEAUPRE, 20th Century-Fox; STUART BYRON, industry analyst; DAVID DENBY, New York; ROGER EBERT, Chicago Sun-Times and At the Movies; MYRON MEISEL, industry analyst; DALE POLLOCK, Los Angeles Times; ANDREW SARRIS, The Village Voice; RICHARD SCHICKEL, Time; KENNETH TURAN, California. 2

\".•--:...~ SHORT STORIES ay. FREDERICK FORSYTH A CAREFUL MAN STARRING DAN O'HERLIHY A CYRIL CUSACK I J I'\" ,. .>. . PIWILEGE STARRING MILO~O'SHEA & GAYLE HUNNICUTT A ONE.HOUR DRAMATIC PRESENTATION WEDNESDAli MARCH 28 HOST: FREDERICK FORSYTH CHECK LOCAL LISTINGS ClOSED CAPTIONED FOR THE HEARING IMPAIRED.

Ghettos: black and white and gay in color. discrimination and poverty. What's odd on any shoot, the men talk to the men, SAYLES IN HARLEM about him is not how otherworldly or and that's a habit that's hard to break.\" 6 p.m. \" Hey. What's the movie impressively naive he is but how well he \"It's been no different for me to work called?\" Clutching his plastic cup, the guy warily thrusts out his chin. Night is fits into the scene; everyone reads his with a black crew,\" Marcus says. \"Peo- falling on 148th St. in Harlem, as the raffish film crew sets up on an aban- silence and befuddlement differently. ple who love this industry have some doned lot. An aimless crowd of kids on bikes, couples on a stroll, and seasoned 6:30 p.m. \"Can I be inna picture? basic similarities. They are sophisti- drunks gathers. Some people are setting up chairs, and those little plastic cups Who do I ask? Lemme be an extra, I'll cated and professional-the movie circulate. The young white woman jug- gling camera lenses says, \"The Brother doitfor$10. \" comes first.\" On this shoot people sit Who Fell to Earth . Or maybe we'll call it The Brotherfrom Another Planet.\" \"No, no me , I'll do it for $5.\" around and talk for an hour after they Suddenly the man straightens up. Sayles wanted to make a movie with knock off for the day. \"Brother, huh ? Good title. What's it about?\" guts that black people would watch. 8 p.m. The tidy middle-aged lady \"A slave from outer space who falls to wearing a cross nods. \"Brother-hmm, earth in Harlem .\" that's good, that's good. I came on over \"Man, he come to the right place. This here is the center of the world. here, see, because nobody who looks Hey, it is out of this world.\" like you ever comes up here unless • they' re gonna tear something down. But John Sayles is making a science fiction movie about a place that might as well bless you with your picture. Bless you. I be outer space to most of us-the streets of Harlem. He's making it with won't be trouble. I'll stay out of your $200,000 of his own money, hoarded from scripting work on Hollywood fea- way now. Bless you.\" tures and from the cushion provided by a MacArthur Foundation grant. The film \"I think coming up here opened the draws from his double-track movie- making background of exploitation and eyes of some whites,\" says script super- mainstream Hollywood work, as well as his Return of the Secaucus Seven and visor Marco Williams, who works with Lianna . John Sayles. the Black Filmmakers Foundation. \"It Brother is science fiction with a twist: sure did, \" says Bob Marshak, who's usu- this time , the alien comes home. An intergalactic slave escapes via an other- \"We knew we had to make it with the ally a potter in Santa Cruz, Calif., but is worldly underground railroad , which- shades of slavery da ys -ends in people of Harlem,\" he says, \"and we here taking photos. \"You come here Harlem. He is pursued by bounty hunters (one of them piayed by Sayles knew we wanted to work with a largely with a certain amount of fear-it's out- himself) but rescued with the help ofthe people of Harlem. Befriended by bar- black crew. The only hard part so far has side your experience. But it's much flys , mugged by junkies, tended by so- cial workers, and first fu ssed over and been that everybody wants to work on it, more neighborhoody than I realized.\" then thrown out by his AFDC-mother landlady, the alien (played by Joe Mor- and you wish you could employ them ' The first day they shot in Harlem, the ton, seen recently in a lead role in PBS' The File on Jill Hatch and in a small role all. \" crew got a quick education in Harlem in And Justice for All) encounters racial Particularly for a low-budget produc- street life. They had locked the keys tion , befriending the locals is crucial for inside their van; a passerby helped them visitors from that other planet below break into it, thus salvaging the produc- 110th St. \"We need to have them want tion schedule. But the man had put us here,\" location manager Paul Marcus down his travel bag to jimmy the win- says. ·\"We're on their turf. But I think it dow, and in seconds the bag-with his makes a difference what we're doing; methadone-had been stolen. Pro- people like the project.\" This is a first- ducer Maggie Renzi spent the rest of the time experience for nearly everybody- day filing a police report so that the making a movie in Harlem. Hell, being street samaritan wouldn't be stranded in in Harlem. need. The crew is a mixture-black and If the white crew members had never white, experienced and novice, women walked the streets of Harlem, neither and men. For many of the blacks this is a had a lot of the blacks. \"I had a thousand big break; for veterans this may be the misconceptions when I started,\" says first time they've not been the only production assistant Kurt Douglas, fresh black on a crew. The interracial mixture from film school downtown. His job is turns out to be surprisingly unimportant. mostly talking to people; \"crowd con- \"I think the male-female divisions are trol\" means something special on this more defining,\" says Fronza Woods, shoot. He admits he secretly hoped he'd working the boom. She came to the get sick to escape this all-night shoot on project after making several shorts with Harlem's abandoned lots. But it's going the Women's Interart Center. \"Just like well, and he says \"it's been fun.\" 4

When you speak of lavish •\\•••S•A$•4•V0•E••••:•• film books, this belongs among Everything you demand of a the Top Three volume tbat retails for $50 Harry Abrams and Ted Sennett had the same happy thought. Abrams is the * 108 gorgeous full-color photos - in- publisher of those sumptuous picture books. Sennett is one of our most cluding 19 double-page and full-page perceptive writers on movies. They go together like Fred and Ginger. * spreads If this were an Abrams solo, a volume of pictorial splendor with no text, we'd 334 black-and-white photos and ads - still use an adjective we almost never apply to film books : thrilling . But it's including 63 double-page and full-page more. Ted Sennett gives us a history of movie musicals that sparkles with * spreads anecdotes and insights on every page. Endpaper reproductions of 14 movie posters in full color So you have this problem. You want to drink in the Sennett text, not miss a word . But every page you turn all but explodes in your hand. The color, the * Beautiful full-<:olor jacket of Astaire graphics - it's like the Fourth of July . * and Rogers Solution: for your first reading or two , give yourself a couple of hours just to Printed thruout on thick, expensive enjoy the dazzling pictures. Then settle back and savor the wonderful text, lOS-pound stock coated for matchless undistracted. Because both pictures and text are , as New York Magazine says , \"everything that a movie lover hopes to find .\" * photo reproduction Filmography of 309 musicals: major Tou,h critics who've seen It all ,or,et themselves casts and credits, production com- and RAVE pany, year \"A large, sumptuously handsome coffee-table book - which is not to knock it. * MASSIVE! 384 huge 10 liz x 13 liz The size means that the many beautiful, carefully chosen stills, in both black-and- white and color, can be given all the room they need, in layouts that are spacious pages. Weighs 7liz pounds! and uncluttered. Superbly reproduced, they fairly leap off the page.\" - New York Times \"The smoothness and the thickness of the paper on which these are printed is like Devonshire cream. The retouching of portraits is positively sanctifying. Everything that a movie lover hopes to find is here - dreamy close-ups of the fixed stars, double-page spreads of the great remembered tableaux, girls as guardsmen, girls as the petals of flowers, girls as angels.\" - New York Magazine \"The most gorgeously packaged all-singing, all-dancing Technicolor extravaganza that ever found its way to a coffee table. It's also the heaviest, the biggest, the most photo-packed and the most expensive .... But considering the wealth of in- formation and seldom-seen, magnificently reproduced photographs, it's worth twice the price.\" - Rex Reed, Gentleman's Quarterly \"A sumptuous, exciting, meaty, delicious 367-page meal . ... Or you can just snack around, sampling bits from the various sections that tell the story of the Hollywood musical in its many periods, and through the various forms it has taken .... The book is a tactile pleasure too, published by Harry Abrams, the noted publisher of splendid art books, and printed on smooth heavy paper remind- ing you of the old days when books were made of beautiful materials, and the black never came off on your hands .... Sennett writes with enthusiasm and af- fection and evaluates perceptively.\" - Betty Comden, Hollywood Reporter \"I intended to leaf through it, figuring there really wasn't much anybody could tell me about the musicals in which I spent my youth. Hours later, I was still there, unable to leave this ten-ton book of talent alone. I can't believe I read the whole thing! Wonderful experience.\" - Liz Smith, syndicated column How to get this $50 beauty for ONLY $9.98 ,---------------------------------------------------------------------------------, How the Club Works . .YI~./e~aI'C~.L'.A.I.I.~I' Every 4 weeks (13 times a year) you get a free copy of the Club bulletin , PREVIEWS , 15 Oakland Avenu e · Hamson . NY 10528 which offers the Featured Selection plus a nice choice of Alternates : t>ooks on films , *TV , music , occasionally records . If you want the Featured Selection , do nothiflg . *It will come automatically . If you don 't want the Featured Selection or you do want an Alternate , indicate your wishes on the handy card enclosed and return it by the I enclose $9.98. Please accept my membership in the MovielEntertainment *deadline date . The majority of Club books are offered at 20-30% discounts , plus a *charge for shipping and handling . As soon as you buy and pay for 4 books or Book Club and send me, postpaid and at no further cost, the $50 Hollywood records at regular Club prices , your membership may be ended at any time, either Musicals by Ted Sennett. I agree to buy 4 additional Club books or records at *by you or by the Club. If you ever receive a Featured Selectioh without having had regular Club prices over the next 2 years. I also agree to the Club rules spelled *10 days to decide if you want it , you may return it at Club expense for full credit. out in this coupon. Fe - 28 For every book or record you buy at regular Club price , you receive one or more Bonus Book Certificates These entitle you to buy many Club books at deep dis- counts, usually 60-80 % off. These Bonus Books do not count toward fulfilling your Name _______________________________________ *Club obligation but do enable you to buy fine books at giveaway prices . PREVIEWS also includes news about members and their hobbies . 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Even for crew members who know in the movies for a black actor,\" he says. states until it had its own cops, thieves, Harlem well, fears die hard. \"I grew up \"And most science fiction is like what and prostitutes. But the old lion's notion on 125th St., and I moved back to Richard Pryor said about 2001-they of society's margin stopped short and Harlem as an adult,\" costume designer mu st think there wo n't be any blacks by now, several decades later, 30-year-old Karen Perry says. \"My daughter goes to then. Amos Gutman has made a film that re- school down the street. But my mother minds that Israel has homosexuals. always told me , 'Don't-go uptown-too \"This role is great because I don' t rough.' When she found out I was work- speak, and it brings out everybody's ex- Though Gutman's Nagooa , which ing at night on 148th St.-well, my pectations when they imagine who I am was translated as Drifting when it was brother has been to the set four times and what I want. The role makes the shown last year at the Montreal and Chi- now , just to make sure I'm OK.\" audience look at Harlem from both cago Film Festivals, actually means white and black perspectives. It's \"contaminated,\" it is the first openly • Harlem seen not as a jungle but from the male gay Israeli movie. Robby (Jona- eyes of innocence. And people get so than Segal) is a homosexual in his twen- 9 p.m. A couple of middle-aged men excited when they hear the story-it'll ties who lives with his quirky grand- amble up , craning to watch Brother dis- finally be a movie where they' ll get to mother and works in her grocery store. cover his mugger dead of an overdose. see themselves on the screen.\" He gets an occasional check in the mail Perry is about to give one of the men a from his mother, who lives in Germany. perfunctory nod when she does a dou- 1 a.m. It's lunch break on the all- After hours, Robby cruises the parks for ble-take: \"Sam, how are you?\" she says. casual sex, often with his friend Ilan They swap stories of showbiz unem- night shift. We straggle back to the com- (Ami Traub). Among the men he brings ployment; they are not just neighbors munity center that is HQ for Brother, home are Omri (Ben Levin), an inno- but colleagues from the days a decade dully staring at posters about blood pres- cent high school dropout who becomes a ago when things looked more promising sure and good nutrition. A bag lady and a whore, and two Arab terrorists returning for black actors. bum are hanging out at the desks-odd , from a mission. because the HQ is off-limits to anyone Filmed scenes keep echoing scenes but crew. But as they line up for beef Robby breaks all the rules. He con- on the street. Fantasies of escape, for stew, they begin to trade advice on siders the political situation, the war, instance. In a bar, actors speculate about agents and contracts. They' re actors irrelevant; and not only does his obses- life in outer space while toying with a who've just finished getting into cos- sion with filmmaking further remove Space Invaders game. Around the set, tume , waiting for their scene to come him from acceptable mainstream occu- locals easily launch into talk of Venus, up. PAT AUFDERHEIDE pations, but he isolates himself in a to- astrology, and UFOs. In the movie a tally gay milieu (most of the film takes small thing like choosing a restaurant IN GAY TEL AVIV place in his apartment). In a society that can become a political act; one character allows limited deviation and virtually no refuses to go below 110th St., even for David Ben-Gurion once said that Is- dissent, Robby doesn't challenge the Chinese food. Harlem dwellers keep as- rael could not expect to be like other culture so much as simply fail to exist for serting their sense of place: people treat its consideration. the film crew at first like tourists to be Jonathan Segal in Nagooa. fleeced and then like foreign dignitaries. Few in Israel anticipated a film with a homosexual anti-hero (particuarly one 10 p.m. Someone gingerly ap- who obsesses about filmmaking) to find an audience in the severely depressed proaches a white crew member. \"Thank moviegoing market in Israel. But, says you, \" he says. \"Thank you for visiting the Hungarian-born Gutman, \"We had Harlem. \" very good reviews and the film almost covered itself, which is rare. It was seen Turf isn' t just to be defended , how- by 40,000 people and cost $100,000, be- ever; it's also something to take pride in cause everybody worked for a percent- and even show off. As much as their age instead of a salary.\" pride of ownership, they register an in- tense will to communicate-on their Like most other local filmmakers, terms. They like the idea of a movie Gutman applied for an Israel Film Fund made not only in their world but about grant-a boon at $100,000, but given to it, and they like the idea of a black man those few filmmakers who deal with starring in it. Harlem wants to go Holly- \" important, relevant\" subjects. The wood, but not if it means leaving draft Gutman submitted to the Fund Harlem behind. They flock around Joe was about the first affair of a youth with Morton whenever he finishes a shot. an older man; it proved problematic. \"After many hesitations, and with the 11 p.m. \"Where's the monster? That support of one Fund member, Rachel Ne'eman, the money was given, and him ? .. \" then withdrawn,\" said Gutman. Everyone wants a glimpse of a movie Ne'eman, a known film critic, resigned, and Gutman convinced two investors to star, and the people of Harlem are no go ahead, adding the filmmaking theme different. Morton is something of a sen- to the picture. sation. They recognize him not so much from his movie work as from the soaps At the Montreal Film Festival, where and especially from an educational TV show called Watch Your Mouth. He is happy to be there, both for them and for him . \" It's almost impossible to find roles 6

NOW! NEW! THE ULTIMATE MOVIE BOOKS! Announcing the publication of THE MOTION PICTURE GUIDE by Jay Robert Nash and Stanley Ralph Ross from Cine800ks-the most definitive, all-encompassing film encyclopedia ever offered at competitive prices. More information, anecdotes and hard data than any other source books on film (other volumes with much less sell up to $1500) . A MUSTfor serious movie buffs, film professionals, libraries, teachers, students. 10 Volumes, hardbound (8V2\"X 11 \", Set in 2 columns), illustrated, approximately 300 pages each. More than 25,000 Theatrical English-language and notable foreign films (Vols. 1-8), The Silent Films (Vol. 9), a comprehensive biographical index, including a photo gallery, a glossary of film industry terms and a massive film bibliography cross-referenced to each entry; additional indices by genre and appendices listing all Academy Award winners and nominees and other major awards through 1983 (Vol. 10). Sample entry: FORT APACHE·..• (1948) 127m Argosy/ RKO bw Title, Rating, Year of release, Original running time, Production Company, Color or black &white Henry Fonda (Lt.-Col. Owen Thursday) ,John Wayne (Capt. Kirby York),Shirley Temple Title changes in U.S.-U.K., if any (Philadelphia Thursday), Ward Bond (Sgt.-Maj. Michael O'Rourke), John Agar (Lt. Michael O'Rourke), George O'Brien (Capt Sam Collingwood), Irene Rich (Mrs. Cast and roles played O'Rourke), Anna Lee (Mrs. Emily Collingwood),Victor McLaglen (Sgt. Festus Mulcahy), Pedro Armendariz (Sgt. Beaufort), Guy Kibbee (Dr. Wilkins), Grant Withers (Silas Incisive synops is of each film with anecdotal Meachum), Jack Pennick (Sgt. Shattuck), Dick Foran (Sgt. Quincannon), Miguel Inclan info rmat ion (Cochise), Ray Hyke (Capt. Gates), Mae Marsh (Mrs. Gates), Frank Ferguson (News- paperman), Movita Castenada (Guadalupe), Francis Ford (Stagecoach driver), Hank Extensive credits Worden (Bald-headed southem recruit), Harry Tenbrook (Courier), Mary Gordon Pare ntal recommendation for youngsters (V\\.bman at stagecoach station). MPAA rating Superb epic western, first of Ford's U.S. Cavalry triology {others being SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON and RIO GRANDE} with awesome exterior scenes reflecting Ford's early training as a painter. Fonda is a martinet commander bitter at being sent to fight \"digger\" Indians instead of having been assigned to a glory post. He leads his men to disaster but is later, not unlike Custer, presented by the press as a hero. Characterization and humor of Irish cavalrymen who made up the western troops following the Civil War is unforgettable in a supporting players' field day. Wayne, in one of his best roles as an officer concerned for the lives of his men, is the perfect counterpoint to tyrant Fonda. Ford filmed this picture in Monument Valley {a Navaho Indian tribal park at the Arizona-Utah border, 2,000 sq. miles of desert and towering sandstone buttes} , his favorite on-location area, inaccessible except for summer months because of weather; also used area for other films in his trio klgy of the old U.S. Cavalry, all three films taken from stories by James Warner Bellah. Ford told Frank Nugent, screenwriter for FORT APACHE as they outlined the script: \"In all Westerns, the Cavalry rides to the rescue of the beleaguered wagon train or whatever, and then it rides off again. I've been thinking about it-what it was like at a Cavalry post, remote, people with their own personal problems, and over everything the threat of Indians, of death . . :' p, John Ford, Merian C. Cooper; d, John Ford; w, Frank Nugent {from the story Massacre by James Warner Bellah}; m, Richard Hageman; ph, Archie Stout; ed, Jack Murray; art d, James Basevi; set d, Joe Kish; cos,' Michael Meyers, Ann Peck. ~E MP~NR (FJ{124, 189, 322, 414, 505, 765, 988, 1046, 1093, 2765, 5420) References to bibliography (in Vol. 10) for furt her reading and research COMPILERS AND WRITERS OF THE MOTION PICTURE GUIDE: JAY ROBERT NASH, with more than two dozen books to his credit and millions of STANLEY RALPH ROSS, author of 12 screenplays, four world-wide readers, is the renowned encyclopedist and author of many definitive books and hundreds of television shows, has been works in crime, disasters, biography and movies (The Crime Movie Quiz Book, The acclaimed world-wide for his writings, chiefly in the film Toughest Movie Quiz Book Ever, Bloodletters and Badmen, Hustlers and Con Men, industry and is the recipient of Writers Guild and Emmy Among the Missing, Open Files, Murder Among the Mighty, Darkest Hours) . Mr. Nash 's awards. Creator/developer/writer-\"Batman,\" \"Wonder interviews with Alfred Hitchcock, Nicholas Ray and other film personalities have Woman,\" \"Columbo,\" \" Banacek,\" and countless others. appeared in books and national periodicals. He has spent 25 years compiling the He brings more than two decades of research to this hard data for this work. work. SPECIAL OFFER BUY NOW! SAVE $180! THE MOTION PICTURE GUIDE will retail for $40 per volume ($400 for all ten volumes) . Please reserve my 1O-volume set of All 10 volumes will be available by December 1, 1984. Special pre-publication offer (all payments include shipping) : THE COMPLETE 10-VOL. SET WILL BE MADE AVAILABLE THE MOTION PICTURE GUIDE AT A 45% DISCOUNT OF THE $400 COMPLETE SET PRICE IF PURCHASED NOW! (A savings of $180!) The complete 10-Vol. set of THE MOTION PICTURE GUIDE at a o at 45% discount. I enclose my payment for $220. 10% discount if ordered now C.O.D.! (A savings of $40!) Do not send cash! Check or o at 10% discount and ship C.O.D. for $360. money order only. NOTE: All charter purchasers of THE MOTION PICTURE GUIDE will receive their respective 10% and 45% discounts on ali subsequent GUIDE books, the ~ME ______________________________ GUIDE book issued annually, beginning in 1985, and all special book offerings by CineBooks. Authors will autograph all copies. STREET_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ CITY STATE__ ZlP,_______ MAIL TO : CineBooks, 6135-A N. Sheridan Road Chicago, Illinois 60660 10

Nagooa represented Israel, the consular cerned a high school student, son of an that's okay for Israel. office applied diplomatic pressure to actress, who discovers he's gay; \"The \"My film doesn't touch the process of withdraw the picture, saying \"it wasn't second is about a man who leaves his creation,\" Gutman points out. \"It deals representative\" of Israel. The pressures girlfriend for a male stripper-believe with the need to create. Robby's need is failed. In Israel, Gutman said, \"the neg- me, it's no Making Love; a short which real, which is why it doesn't matter what ative feedback I got was not from people ultimately became the full-length fea- kind of film he'll make. What he makes protesting about how I dared dismiss the ture, Nagooa. is, in a sense, Nagooa . It's about an ob- war, etc. but from gays who feared they \"I can speak about this milieu all my session that keeps the hero alive. He has were pomayed in an unflattering light. life without repeating myself,\" he con- no identity other than that of filmmaker. But this isn't a documentary about Is- tinued, \"but a film about homosexuality His homosexuality is not a problem for raeli gays. It's about Robby and his carries a label which is confining.\" Gut- him: he has accepted it. I know most friends. man's next film, which begins shooting audiences would have liked him to be a \"The audience was young-16-17, in June, is about a man of 21 and his little 'nicer,' more considerate, but he which surprised me,\" Gutman said. \"I 16-year-old sister, the offspring of a Jew- comes across as real precisely because he thought I was talking to the 30-40 age ish father and a Christian mother. After isn't. You may not shed tears for him, group. In some cases, men drove their their parents die , they come to Tel Aviv, but he's alive. I didn't care at all about wives to the theater, then left and \"where he tries to create a home for his the whys and hows of homosexuality, picked them up when it was over. sister by working as a waiter, a gigolo ... except that by his lack of structure and Women showed more openness than Is- As you can see, I remain in the margin. family, he is better able to drift. His raeli men.\" And by margin I also mean housewives self-destruction would have taken a dif- • -everybody who doesn't share power.\" ferent direction had he been straight. Having studied film at Israel's presti- This second film won't get any state \"Israel is such a closed society that the gious Beit Zvi in Ramat Gan, Gutman aid either, though Gutman stressed that difficulty of being gay there is too ob- also spent a year at film school in New he doesn't film to shock or provoke. \"If! vious for words. I didn't want to show York at NYU, which he described as \"a really wanted to do that, I'd make a Robby getting thrown out of the army or waste.\" His credits include a highly styl- much more explicit picture,\" he said. fired from his job for his sexuality. I ized documentary about fashion, com- (Nagooa contains very strong language wanted everything that happens to him missioned by Israeli television (\"an un- and some nudity and simulated sex). to take place because of him, because of qualified disaster\") and three shorts \"On the other hand, I don't mean to be his obsessions, and the relationships he which he considers preparations for Na- cautious and give the right blend of poli- creates. Objective difficulties exist ev- •gooa:MakomBatuach (A Safe Place) con- tics and romance etc., to make a film erywhere,\" said Gutman. For Gutman, Nagooa is as autobio- graphical as fiction can be. \"As a kid, movies were my sole source of happi- ness-Doris Day, Lili, Breakfast at Tif- fany's. .. They saved my life. So it seemed natural to want to make movies too. Robby represents my fears; he's not my mouthpiece or an alter-ego. He stands for what could have been the situ- ation, if I hadn't made the film. All he has is the park and the grocery store. For a while, at 28, I worked with my parents in a shoe store they own. I was torn whether or not to do just anything in order to make films. I refused to do documentaries on order, so I resorted to working in the store. \"The grandmother doesn't really stand for my parents, but like her, they considered my passion for filmmaking silly. As to the homosexual subject, in a bourgeois family one accepts almost anything as long as the neighbors don't talk about it. Like the grandmother in A feature-length program of 21 award-winning animated films in 16mm, avail- Nagooa , my parents knew about it but able for theatrical and non-theatrical rental from: chose to ignore it.\" And unlike Robby, who becomes 4530 18th St., jaded, an \"aging boy,\" Gutman is an- San Francisco, CA 94114 chored by his filmmaking. \"It helps me retain my innocence. Especially when I (415) 863-6100 experience fears about the future.\" -DANYAKIR 8

Enter your best work in the Eighth Annual FOCUS Film Competition . This is your chance of a lifetime to make your break, win your share of over $60,000 in scholarships and Nissan automobiles and gain recognition in the film community. Enter your best work now* Th is may be a unique opportunity for you. 1. Filmmaking 6. Film Editing Finished 16mm film. $4,500 awarded in Finished 16mm film. $1,000 scholarship. scholarships. First place win ner receives a new SPONSORED BY BENIHANA OF TOKYO, INC Nissan Sentra . SPONSORED BY AMBLIN Board of Judges: Lynzee Klingman, Carl Kress, ENTERTAINMENT INC Board of Judges: Joe Carol Littleton. Dante, Nina Foch, Michael Hausman, Randal Kleiser, Steven Lisberger. Institution Awards The corresponding college or university of the 2. Documentary First Place winners in the three Filmmaking categories will receive $500 in 16mm film product Finished 16mm film . $4,500 awarded in from EASTMAN KODAK COMPANY for their scholarships. First place winner receives a new film department's use. Nissan Sentra. SPONSORED BY HOME BOX OFFICE. Board of Judges : Saul Bass, Ellen Hovde, Premiere and Award Ceremony Charles Lippincott, Humberto Rivera, Amalie Rothschild. All winners will be flown, expenses paid , to Los Angeles for the FOCUS Premiere and Award 3. Animation/Experimental Ceremony, to be held at The SHERATON PREMIERE HOTEL at Universal City, September 6, Finished 16mm film . $4,500 awarded in 1984. Accommodations will be provided scholarships . First place winner receives a new by The SHERATON PREMIERE HOTEl. Nissan Sentra . SPONSORED BY UNIVERSAL Transportation courtesy of AMERICAN PICTURES. Board of Judges: John Canemaker, Ed Hansen, Faith Hubley, Chuck Jones, Jay Sarbry. AIRLlNES··~~_!· ~~:;;;.~;;~~b 4. Screenwriting Competition Deadline: April 20,1984. Original feature-length screenplays. $4,500 Get a complete set of rules from your Eng lish, awarded in scholarships . First place winner Film or Communications Department. Or write to : receives a new Nissan Sentra . SPONSORED BY FOCUS , 1140 Avenue of the Americas, 20th CENTURY-FOX. Board of Judges: Marisa New York, New York 10036. Berke, Martin Caan, Terri Farnsworth, Syd Field , Sy Salkowitz. Nissan Presents 5. Sound Achievement F~CUS Finished 16mm film. $1,000 scholarship . SPONSORED BY DOLBY LABORATORIES INC Nissan Motor Corporation in U.S.A. Board of Judges: Jim Corbett, Don Mitchell, Frank Warner. u.s.'The entry you submit must have been done on a non-commercial basis by any student enrolled in a college, university, art institute or professional film school. Board of Governors : Lewis Allen· John Avildsen • John Badham • Ingmar Bergman· Tony Bill· M itchell Block· Jules Dassin • John Davis. Robert DeNiro· Stanley Donen • Federico Fellini • Milos Forman· Bob Fosse· John Frankenheimer· Robert Getchell· Bruce Gilbert. Taylor Hackford • Ward Kimball· Herbert Kline· Arthur Knight· Barbara Kopple • Jennings Lang· Norman Lear· Jack Lemm on · Sidney Lumet • Frank Perry. Sydney Pollack • Ivan Reitman· Burt Reynolds· Gene Roddenberry· Herbert Ross· David E. Salzman · John Schlesinger· George C. Scott. Stirling Silliphant • Joan Micklin Silver· Neil Simon· Steven Spielberg· Francois Truffaut· Saul Turell • Renee Valente · Jerry Weintraub· Gene S. Weiss. Orson Welles. Bruce Williamson· Robert Wise· Frederick Wiseman· David Wolper · Peter Yates· Charlotte Zwerin

New Feature Programs From Direct Cinema Limited The World of THE WORLD OF TOMORROW is a feature documentary that Tomorrow answers these questions as it looks back at the great New York World 's Fair of 1939-40, and the more than 40 million people who traveled from around the world to catch a glimpse of their future. The film uses home movies, newsreels, industrial & promotional films , cartoons , still photographs , and other vintage graphics, which turned up after a four year study of the art deco extrava- ganza that was the World 's Fair. The film evokes that moment when the World stood poised between black and white and color, between the Great Depression and World War II . The Fair offered Americans a vision of possible tomorrows with the media of 1939. THE WORLD OF TOMORROW reconstructs those documents and provides audiences , today , with a spellbinding journey back into the future . \"ELEGIAC AND UNSETILING . . . The film celebrates American World Premiere The Film Forum NelN York, March 7-20, 1984 pluck as much as it is wistful about our naivete, leaving us with a wealth of ideas and no neat message.\" Diane Jacobs The Movies Media Study/New York Produced and Directed by Tom Johnson and Lance Bird Was there ever truly an Emerald City? Narration Spoken by Jason Robards Could it have been found on a map of Queens in 1939? Written by John Crowley Did Judy Garland ever really go there? 78 minutes Color and B&W 1984 Did the Tin Woodsman? 51.·1 National Reactor Testing Station near Idaho Falls, Idaho, the subzero night air is filled with radioactive particles as three men Bizarre Beginning . die in a reactor explosion . Not until July 1962 is the cleanup Never Ending . . operation complete . 790 people have been repeatedly exposed to harmful levels of radiation . In all , 1'240 persons are involved in \"A powerful and poignant blend of journalism and drama, SL-1 is the cleanup at the SL-1 site. The source of the disaster is never compelling viewing .\" Weekly Variety proven , but its probable cause is the suicidal impulse of a single \"... cuts through any complacency that might still be hidden in technician . the mind of a viewer. Recommended viewing for anyone still The dramatic impact of these events is revealed through inno- foolish enough to believe that we can survive a nuclear war.\" vati ve cinematic shifts in this new documentary. SL-1 uses re- Judy Stone, San Francisco Chronicle cently declassified government films of the cleanup (shot in the SL-1 is the true story of an almost unbelievable series of events actual explosion chamber) , slow motion evocations of high radi- that led up to and followed America's first nuclear reactor acci- ation zone work where survival is measured in micro-seconds , as dent. On January 3, 1951 at the Atomic Energy Commission 's well as narration and interviews to learn the facts about radiation containment and contamination . SL-1 is a modern story of our ability and inability to deal with the consequences of nuclear accident. This haunting work focuses on key questions of the nuclear age as it contemplates humanity's vulnerability to every nuclear technology. New York Premiere The Film Forum, March 1984 Selected for Screening at the 1983 Telluride Film Festival A Beecher Films Production Produced and Directed by Diane Orr and C. Larry Roberts 60 minutes Color and B&W 1984 No Maps The first documentary feature The Trials of This account details the espion- from the maker of SAY AMEN , Alger Hiss age and perjury case that cata- On MV Taps SOMEBODY, NO MAPS ON MY pulted Congressman Richard TAPS celebrates jazz tap dancing Ni xon to national prominence Rent these outstanding films as a unique American art form . and sent former State Depart- for your group, theatre or class. ment Officer Alger Hiss to \"A movie about dancing that makes you feel like dancing. \" prison . Peter Rainer , Los Angeles Herald Examiner \"A brill iant evoc ation of a most Produced and Directed by anxious age. Vincent Canby George T. Nierenberg 58 minutes Color 1979 A film by John Lowenthal 165 minutes Color 1981 For additional information contact: Direct Cinema Limited ~,~ Post Office Bo x 69589 Los Angeles , California 90069 cinema. ~ (213) 656-4700 limited @

by Marcia Pally Housewives are heroes, too. Trouble Debra Winger and Shirley MacLaine in Terms of Endearment. is, Terms ofEndearment, the blockbuster with the mother/daughter hook, slips Aurora Greenway, Shirley MacLaine, get to choose between them, but usually fleetly from appreciation to endorse- ment-and that's a whole other kettle of that forms the terms of endearment). the choice is not theirs to make. fish. Emma (Debra Winger) marries early, gets pregnant early (and often), Let me tell you what life's really about, When settle-for-Iess messages are on and despite the detractions of a faculty- wife's lot (the tenure of poverty and of Emma says: I am a mother of three dnd I the agenda, it's always best to have a the hubby's post-puberty graduate stu- dents), she respects, likes, and believes have cancer. woman send the word to her sisters. In a in what she's been set on Earth to do. She'll raise those kids, by golly. She is Cancer is this century's martyrdom. later scene, Patsy-Uncle Toming with- not about to let her husband (Jeff Dan- iels) get away with that hanky panky. Replacing the cross, it sets halos atop its out shame-looks bedridden Emma in Thankfully, and cleverly, director James L. Brooks avoids the Pollyanna pitfall by victims; as an update on consumption, it the eye and confides, \"You've been my allowing Emma a little loneliness, frus- tration, and even a warm, friendly affair wrings your heart as you wring your anchor.\" The New Woman salutes the of her own. And you're with her every step of the way. She may be dowdy, but handkerchief. The good woman, who \"little woman\" and tells the audience she's real; she's okay. sacrificed herself for her family all along, just who has been keeping civilization in Her girlhood best friend Patsy (Lisa Hart Carroll) is not okay. Divorced and makes the final sacrifice. Left to clutter place. childless, she moves to New York to pursue a career, and hangs out with up the world instead are beautiful but Such is Brooks' retort (along with nov- other professional women also divorced and childless (or worse, too busy to raise bird-brained career women who' ve elist Larry McMurtry's) to a world where their children themselves; they hire help). And they have . . . how shall we never grown up and accepted adult re- traditional roles are becoming unhinged. say, social diseases. Ifyou had any doubt that you' re not only supposed to applaud sponsibilities. The contrast screams: You see, girls, Emma's got the solution; and admire Emma's life but assume her choices as your own, °a few scenes make who will rear the next generation of chil- while not paradise, it's our best alterna- the prescription patent. dren if you women are spending your tive. It has the lure of familiarity (our Emma visits New York and lunches with Patsy's buddies. Tailored to the afternoons at board meetings and your mothers did it) and apparent simplicity hilt, they prattle about their abortions and shrinks, unsatisfying boyfriends and days off buying Ralph Lauren suits at (get married and rest will take care of yeast infections, and after it all, Emma has her say. Standing in the wind outside Barney's; who will tuck the kids in at itself). But does it have any bearing on the River Cafe and gesticulating like the prophet Isaiah, she delivers her what- night if mothers expect to have sex lives, life? the-hell-is-going-on-here sermon: What's the world coming to when too? Women are indeed grappling with women talk about their ovaries over lunch? These women are frivolous and Now queries of this ilk would be legit these issues, juggling career, love, sex, spoiled, she says in essence (salt-of-the- earth Emma is her mom's daughter to be if posed to fathers as well as to mothers, and children, and we scrutinize-some- sure-and it is this link between her and but even in Kramer vs Kramer and the times much to our liberated surprise- host of paternity films that followed- not only innovative variations on house Author! Author!, Table for Five, Man, and child care but the time-worn divi- Woman, and Child, among others-no sion of the sexes. Most often, when one expects fathers to stay home, \"let faced with these imponderables, we themselves go,\" and give up sex. In fact, look at our mothers. What hurt them, when Dad does stay home and starts what damaged their potential; what did \"slipping\" in Mr. Mom, we know he has they have that we need; what did they to be rescued by gainful employment have that we're losing? and an end to househusbandry. The dis- Some of us go back, unearthing our crepancy is as old as the hills: men get to mothers' early years, the time when we have both a life outside the family and a were too young to understand, or when life within it; women, if they're lucky, we were not yet born. It is an act of 11

Vibeke Lokkeberg and Nina Knapskog clown together for one moment in Kamilla. one. As her only friend is whisked out of her life, Kamilla stands there, nose run- conjuring, of imagination, but also of and garters; she sniffs there too-maybe ning, sobs shaking her body, making her it smells different. It does smell differ- throat and eyes raw; she is crying from identifying with them. It is what Gloria ent. the bottom of her heart. Lokkeberg: \"In KamiLLa , you should feel what it was like Steinem does in her story \"Ruth's Song The gesture tells us all about Kamilla: when you were a child.\" And you do. In just old enough to know she'll catch hell this passage, whatever inttoduced you (Because She Could Not Sing It).\" It is if found but not old enough for the pro- to loss-a pet hit by a car, a best friend hibition to make any kind of sense. The moving away-comes rushing what Diane Kurys does in her film Entre voice of authority and the sway of con- back. The emotion here is only partly for vention-to her arbitrary and whimsical Kamilla's grief, the rest is regret of your Nous, recreating her parents' experi- -can't quite override the simple lure of own. inquisitiveness. When Kamilla is discov- ences of the Forties and Fifties. And in ered, Mom angrily yanks her away, ap- So the child's-eye view is vividly palled not only by the breach of conduct present, but with it Lokkeberg pushes MaLou, Jeanine Meerapfel develops but at the invasion of private places, of through to the adults. Lokkeberg was a the taboo, never stopping to recognize child in postwar Norway, and extrapolat- both a stand-in for her present-day self, the ingenuousness, the artlessness, of ing from memory, she supposes the situ- her child's curiosity. ation of that generation of parents. In searching for her mother, and, in the turn, her hunches about their problems Kamilla's problem is that nobody and solutions, about their children's im- character of Malou, the person her really stops to think about her. Fed, pressions and interpretations, explain clothed, housed, given what toys her bits of the woman this war-baby girl mother was two generations ago. working class parents in poor postwar grew up to be. Norway can manage, she's not abused or Others of us begin from our own neglected. It's just that her parents seem KamilLa's adults aren't getting enough to be missing the point. They love her, love either-not a single one of them- childhoods, remembering our parents as but it's a love that they-especially the and their groping for some of their own father-keep putting on automatic pi- creates Kamilla's lack. Occupied by we saw them then, and figuring from our lot. Lokkeberg: \"People assume that their hunger, they fail to notice when they have to work on a marriage but that she has nothing to eat. And love spread experiences what theirs must have love for their children is always there, too thin is but one of these decent folks' that they don't have to do anything problems. Money, time, space, play are been. This is more an act of projection about it.\" In short, Kamilla is not loved all in tight supply; even the ostensible enough. sexual passion between father and shop- than invention, and it is Vibeke Lokke- girl seems more a stumbling, half- Svein (Kenneth Johansen), the little hearted grasping at any chance for berg's project in KamiLla. The complex- boy from across the street, isn't loved change or excitement than a deep-run- enough either. It's the same story: the ning emotion. ity of the investigation should make mother cares, but somehow her affec- tion doesn't often reach the kid. So Though KamilLa is not without its hu- Brooks blush. • Kamilla and Svein roam around town mor (it is much more a slice of the downs together, watching her father take up and ups of life than unrelenting, bleak Kamilla represents the disintegration with his blond, hip-wiggling assistant grit), in the main, everyone's on the and move with her into the shop down- hunt for love: the father and his fling; of a marriage from the worm's eye per- stairs, leaving Kamilla and her mother to Svein's mother and Kamilla's mother- fend for themselves upstairs. Svein's fa- two abandoned wives-drink and flirt spective of the . .. eponymous seven-year- ther packs up and leaves altogether. with a traveling lingerie salesman, so Eventually, Svein is packed up too, the lonely are they; the shopgirl flirts with oLd... -J. Hoberman, welfare department deeming the or- American sailors who pass through town phanage a better home than his maternal but settles for said lingerie salesman, The Village Voice. leaving Father to see if he can convince Mother to take him in again. And every- Written and directed with tenderness one's on the make for money: the pile of cash Father has stashed away takes on . .. the chiLd's performance is superb. almost anthropomorphic proportions as the bundle is filched by Mother and its -Los AngeLes Times. possession becomes the substance ofthe parents' relationship. But not everyone A chiLd's-eye view of disrupted mar- has the same resources. riage. . . -San Francisco Chronicle. Kamilla has the worst of it, as children often do. With barely any way to articu- It's a child's story, they say, a view of late her needs and no power to satisfy them, she's stuck making the best of the world from a girl's perspective, nei- what comes her way, rebelling when she can't take it any longer-and even these ther cloying nor (the newer tendency in cinema) all sass and savvy. And without a doubt, this is one of Kamilla's fortes. The seven-year-old Kamilla (Nina Knapskog) sits on the too-big toilet, legs dangling, straining, asking mommy to hold her hand and God \"to make the hole bigger.\" And the camera crawls, with the girl, under her father's shop assistant's chair, as the adu lts sit and chatter away, to see just what is between the lady's thighs. She looks up at where the tops of stockings give way to flesh 12

Lokkeberg: 'It helps that I either case, a woman with the power to have children but I could've reject; a woman who must be carefully made this film without being won). He plays liberal nice guy for a mother.' whom these liberated gals are too much -and of course, she sets all the terms. outbursts are futile. Kamilla's mother, pie, retains too much of life's damnable \"When I asked her to marty me she said, and Svein's mother, for that matter, complexities to be schematic-an 'If you ever interfere with my work, it's don't-have it much better. Having lost achievement doubl y remarkable for out with you.' So I understood how it her husband, Svein's mom tries to earn a Lokkeberg's having written and di- was going to be from the start.\" And few pennies by delivering newspapers rected the film, and played the role of they know nobody believes it. -and then loses her kids too. Kamilla's Kamilla's mother. (Unfortunately, mom, stunned by her husband's affair, Kamilla's American distributor excised Feminism has succeeded in becom- can think only to hide the money, to several passages which lend dimension ing a standard by which we judge our stretch it as long as possible. Kids, for and nuance to the characters. The men \"liberation,\" but those who foot-drag better or for worse, generally must ac- suffer the most. In the complete ver- sometimes know they pull the wool over cept fate's dealings; what's astonishing sion, Svein's father, for example, is a no one's eyes. Kristiansen, after taking here is the women's immobility, their lout, but also a socialist, a man capable of the baby away for a while (they have two acquiescence. While children usually empathy, and deeply concerned with daughters) so that Lokkeberg and I see their parents as omnipotent, Kamilla workers' right to strike. In a poignant could talk, returned , saying self-mock- -and in a sense, Lokkeberg-knows scene, he begs the folks taking their sun ingly, \"What do you mean you're giving her mother has no place to go. at a seaside park to refrain from buying my wife a hard time about me-and I bananas picked by scab labor. In the cut just took the baby for an hour so you'd \"This is a red line through my films, version, he's a lout plain and simple.) see what a wonderful husband I am. It's giving up in front of oppression because my one effort of the year. .. \" you don't know how-or you can't- But Lokkeberg's films are not only push anymore,\" says Lokkeberg. And exposes of injury and wrongdoing; they So Lokkeberg is married , has two the exhausted ones are always women. do not, in high dudgeon, simply point kids, writes, acts, and directs , and is by In The Revelation (1976), Lokkeberg's the finger at \"the enemy.\" Rather, they no means running out of steam. She has first feature-length film , an unattractive point up how women figure in to their support. \"Terje has always helped me. middle-aged housewife cannot protect own attrition. It is not a matter of being He's helped with money for my films , herself from the demeaning humiliation complicit-they lack the necessary and you can't imagine what it means to that eventually kills her. In Abortion choice-but of running out of steam. have a creative producer. He would (1970) , a television documentary, a even have preferred that he end up in young working-class girl cannot con- • the 'female' role rather than me ... vince the authorities to grant her the operation because she can't make them Eleven or so years ago, Vibeke \"It's important to me to have these understand how pressing are her circum- Lokkeberg married Terje Kristiansen. relationships, to be close with these stances. A variation on \"they don't feel He runs a cinema and has since served as three people. If I were offered a role pain like we do,\" their disregard renders coauthor and producer of a number of where I had to be away for ten weeks, I her not quite human , not like \"us. \" her works, and is now beginning his first wouldn't take it; I wouldn't be away. It's Middle-class women have an edge here, directorial project. Theirs is a romantic Terje who built the editing equipment but only because they have the tools- tale: Lokkeberg saw his picture in the in the garden house so I could continue speech, dress-to wheel and deal with paper and recalls, \"I knew I could have my work. And Te~e regrets his time the medical establishment. In Lokke- something with a man with a face like away from the children.\" His hand berg's TV series on paternity suits (the that, alive like that. I brought him my comes down on the table, then points at mean and niggardly kind where unmar- abortion film and asked him to show it.\" his sucking baby: \"I don't have that ried mothers are forced into court to He was married with two children; they breast.\" Then, more softly, \"My film is claim money from their children's fa- hit it off. \"When I told her I was divorc- about alienation, about alienation from thers, not the rosy Kramer vs. Kramer ing my wife, she looked at me as if to my children.\" kind where feminist fathers fight for cus- say, so?\" Lokkeberg: \"He expected me tody), a young woman is so undermined to jump up with, 'Oh, let's get married. ' Yes, but. His regret, like his support, by questions Stateside cops and judges I said I didn't know; maybe it would last is deep and heartfelt, but there is a point usually reserve for rape victims that she, beyond which it does not spur him. Men like Lokkeberg's other heroines, throws two weeks. I think he's still afraid I'll tell can hold their babies. It is not the same in the towel: okay, don't pay; I'll man- him the two weeks are up.\" He: \"Of as nursing; it is equivalent, much of the age myself. And Lokkeberg's upcoming course.\" Nobody believes it. benefit of breast-feeding-as countless project, still in the script stage, is about a monkey studies tell us-coming from nineteenth-century woman boxed in by They enjoy telling the story, allowing the cradling, the fondling. Men can bot- her milieu. them-as it does-to be dashing and tle-feed , whenever that's appropriate, daring and slightly risque together (re- and men can simply spend time. At a Without being didactic, these films membering the early love) but also to certain point, regret is gratuitous. expose the pathos, the injustice, of lives flirt with roles no longer theirs. She plays worn down and out. Kamilla, for exam- a combination of old-fashioned hard-to- The arguments between them are the get and new-fashioned woman, suspi- contests of a generation: he assumes I'll cious of tradition and long-term ties (in be home in the evening so he can work, he wrote me two pages of reasons why he has a right to that time while I was feeling like a housewife, at home with the children till he came home at 10 or 13

Isabelle Huppert and Guy Marchand in Entre Nous. her own. It is the resignation ofKamilla's mother one generation later, with all the 11 , full of his work, wanting to talk ing; they lost the sense of themselves as mutations of a feminist evolution. She is about it; when he's in conversation, he men. They had become softer because familiar with it, with fighting it, with doesn't hear the baby crying, he goes on that's what they thought women accepting ... even appreciating it, and it talking-he doesn' t hear her; he forgets wanted, but it turned out that women is a force in her films. to feed them if he's not hungry, not still wanted Men, sturdy, with hair on imagining they might be hungry ifhe's their chests.\" \"I had to repeat the family .. . I have not, he doesn't make the identification to be with a man like my father; he with them ; he can work all day at the It runs against their cultural upbring- forms my very idea of what a man is .... cinema, then work all night on his film ings; they give out. Returning to the If I would not go into these relations, my without even coming in for dinner. But: breadwinner role runs with it. And while life would be skimming on the surface. his hours at the cinema aren't adjustable maintaining a career doesn't discomfort It's like an apple on a tree: first it's and \"we rely on that salary. I can work at most women , separation from the chil- green, then ripe, then it becomes rotten home.\" dren, allowing someone also to care for and falls. I have a friend , a director, them, to spend more time with them who's 44 and looks at the world like a girl \"Can. \" She has arranged to be able to than they themselves do (even the fa- -and I can see it in her films. She's work in her garden house (eliminating ther)-these chafe. These run against never been married, no children, and the apparent necessity of going to the our earliest-learned lessons; \"alterna- she makes appointments with men all editing room at the studio); they tive\" work conditions assuage the abra- for a good time. A green apple.\" thought of a way for her to do it, they sion. She can work at home; her sense of spent time and money realizing that so- self is not eroded, rather the picture of One of Kamilla's strengths is the de- lution . For her. Not for him. In the ab- herself, formed in girlhood, acquires a velopment of its characters (including its sence of a flextime utopia , one dances few more strokes. When it comes to two children, from whom Lokkeberg around the usual way of doing things , motherhood and domesticity, women elicited performances all the more effec- improvising new steps-but the rake of have all the fuel they need. tive for their subtlety). Some piece of an the stage is uphill all the way. In the elusive, winding temperament is absence of a lot of steam, men also give To continue to invent new household learned about them with each of their out. arrangements, upturning mistakes, sift- scenes. But Lokkeberg hardly bore two ing through the irritants and anodynes, daughters just to improve on her \"I accept that this is how it is; he isn't adding a newt's eye here, a toad's leg scriptwriting. (\"It helps that I have chil- as connected to the children. But I don' t there , and trying the brew again, re- dren but I could've made this film with- want to make a mother out of him. He's quires tenacity, not to mention concen- out being a mother. I have a way of a man. In Norway we have the 'soft- tration , dedication, psychological matu- dealing with children.\") Her need for man ,' the man who threw aside his ca- rity, flexibility, creativity, a logical mind them is as passionate and inexplicable as reer and became a househusband. He's with a firm grip over the emotions and, the need-in those who have it-for soft; he can cry. I don't want that. It God knows , it's hard to be perfect when men with hair on their chests. doesn't work.\" There are reasons legiti- one has so many other things to do in the mate and suspect. Unrelenting domes- day. So, there is acquiescence in Lokke- • ticity is apparently just as boring for men berg's life, not only to his \"cultural train- as it is for women; men resented it. But ing\" (they argue, but they enliven each The thrust of passion admits little dis- also: \" It goes against their cultural train- other more than harm or restrain) , but to pute; what feels right, clicks, sits well, usually has our way with us. And, adding imprimatur to impulse, society encour- ages women about their intuition, a \"sense of things\" supposedly being our talent. It is how mom-and now femi- nism (giving value to the womanly senti- ment or action)-told us to get along. It's just that it may not get us where we want to go. The stuff of \"gut reactions\" -the men and women our fathers and mothers were, our germinative expecta- tions , first distinctions-is generated by circumstances not all of which we want to repeat; merely \"feeling\" our way may bear false witness, leading us back to where Mom was miserable , to acquies- cence. But also, with confounding irony, to where the green becomes ripe. Part of knowing the difference, of knowing when we grow and when we comply, is the blind business of judging why something feels \"right.\" Is it the comfort of familiarity; the ease of con- vention; the pleasure of that unbeatable boost, the mix of familial joy, pride, and encouragement, that tells you you're 14

Kurys: 'Several ofthe backers wanted an explicit lesbian scene-it's one oftheir mainfantasies. But I don't want to please them. I thought: stay hungry.' tops? Is it what you want? years figuring out what her life has left pitted against the fear of giving away too We are ensnared in an odd conun- me. much of oneself. Meerapfel's Hannah ricochets between willfulness and de- drum, our knee-jerk reactions contain- Meerapfel: It's not her real mother, pendence, engagement and work she ing a fifth column. \" I don't know that I not the real Malou, my protagonist has doesn't take seriously, and as for the am not doing things that oppress me. I to find, but what she inherited from her. man she lives wi th , she wants him to don't know that. \" We cannot do without Hannah has Malou's fantasies: the vi- coddle her like a girl-child and to have them (and men generally need to attend sion of Prince Charming, of protection , nothing whatsoever to say about her life. to them more than they do) but we can- of setting the focus of her life in some- not quite observe them simply, uncriti- one else. The impulses are eclectic, erratic, cally. Individually, gut reactions will and we-like Lokkeberg-wonder prove undependable, unpredictably in- Kurys: She did all that then , now I'm how much of each we want. Work and sightful and misleading; to rely on them in the middle of my life. Am I on the home life, willfulness and dependence as a whole, as information about our- right track? -how does one arrange it (without a selves or as a criterion for our decisions , full-time wife of one's own)? And more , may be atavistic-a throwback to a time We expect some reflection from their what is the effort doing to us ? of less change, when a woman's life lives to illuminate our confusion, but more resembled those who came before what is the difficulty we complain of; Meerapfel's next film : the daughter of her, those who helped seed her assump- why don't we know ourselves better? a \"guest worker\" (the German appela- tions in the first place. In fact, to a time tion for foreign labor) , trying doubly when a woman's life was more like her With feminism, we have been re- hard to succeed (overcoming the handi- mother's. It is to grapple better with charting our course, and now, standing caps of gender and race) , falls in love those gut reactions that women exhume in new country, with a chasm between with a man bailing out of the \"system. \" their mothers' pasts. us and \" back home,\" we're only just He is busy being un-busy, finding, fin- disceming the nature of the break in the gering, getting the feel of the emotions • ground beneath. How do you walk for- he learned to ignore; she is being effi- ward in this place? The older, wiser cient. Meerapfel: \"We are becoming Diane Kurys,jilm17U1ker, age 35, direc- women are not in front of us; most are hard , picking up the worst from men in tor of Entre Nous. behind on the other side, eking nourish- order to make it in their world, shutting ment from ever less generous soil, and out so much , and soon we can have a Jeanine Meerapfel, jilm17U1ker, age 40, every time we go back and cross the gulf man only foran evening, a weekend. We director ofMalou. (if only in our imaginations) for means have our affairs like one more business and answers, we understand a little of lunch; we lose a sensitivity to our- Gloria Steinem , writer, editor, speaker, what we came to learn and much more of selves.\" It is the green apple, and the age 49, author of \"Ruth's Song (Because the gap that separates them from us. We risk it poses must be figured into the She Could Not Sing It).\" learn , over and over, and each time more proportion . deeply, the character of the fault. They want to know: what was my What about long affairs; does that al- mother like at my age? \"We had lunch Certain questions we bear are predict- low for both, the business and the self? on my birthday; I was 32. She was talk- able. There is, for instance, \"How to \"I like to live with lovers, to share the ing about my childhood when I asked Succeed in Business Without Really little things, breakfas t ... ,\" says how old she was when she left my fa- Crying.\" Steinem returned from India Meerapfel. And do you manage both?- ther. She stopped: 'I was exactly your in the Sixties and discovered no one Wolf is democratic-do you have chil- age.' She did all that-had two kids, thought a \"girl\" could cover a foreign dren?-no-do you want to?-no; we moved out, took us to Paris, started a beat; try the style section, dear. She are losing something, no? business by the time she was ... \" The worked her way up. There are the mat- story became Entre Nous. ters of proportion: career and home life , It's a question that can be asked only work and lovers, work and lovers and now, after something has been gained. Old enough now so that when we children and female friends, and books But there's no going back. What we remember our mothers it is women of and time by oneself. Kurys's heroines, learn whenever we try, if only in our our age who come to mind, we try to see her mother and her mother's best friend imaginations, is our need to work. The them as they were, again. We stare down -two housewives suffocating in the core of identity is spun from production; the images in our heads, squint with the hothouse of Fifties provincial life-left linking our needs to the requirements of effort to bring them into focus, wonder their husbands and started a business the effort, we satisfy ourselves as we what it was like for the woman in the together. A decade before Steinem, satisfy it; we make ourselves-as we photograph. We pursue them , and it is a they also worked they way up. make it-sui generis. It's not enough to greedy hunt: what can they tell us about accept someone else's project or to while us? Why am I like this? Can you explain Tougher is the matter of impulse: not away one's hours on a too-small plan. this crotchet or that, why I prefer this just his assumption that you'll make the Steinem: \"When Ruth told me stories of kind of man, that woman? Is this the bed when you're done making love, but her past I used to say, 'But why didn' t way a grownup's life is supposed to feel? catching your own hands as they pick up you leave? Why didn 't you take the job? Can you tell me how to do it? the pillows and straighten the sheets. Deeper still is the desire for nearness Steinem: I know I will spend the next 15

A bridge between past andpresent, Ingrid Caven and Grischa Huber in Malou. Lena and Madeleine ever make love? \"Several of the backers wanted an ex- Why didn't you marry the other man?' itance, what my mother gave me. The plicit lesbian scene-it's one of their She would always insist it didn't matter. energy, the independence of my life main fantasies. But I didn't want to ... If I pressed hard enough, she would comes from her. She never counted on please them. I thought: stay hungry.\" add, 'If I'd left, you never would've anyone.\" been born.' I always thought but never What confidence in her prerogatives, had the courage to say: But you might Lena's is a bequest that suggests a and she is cool and certain facing sex have been born instead. \" way to balance. Perhaps more improvi- and power, while other women still fum- satory, less articulated than the daugh- ble. We feel, if only fleetingly, a mo- This is the gulf between our mothers ter's life, certainly riskier-but still. And ment of alarm in each sexual encounter. and ourselves: the enormous fact of as the deeds of the fathers are visited on Even if we are choosing, maneuvering, work. We come to them with.questions the sons, Lena's legacy returns in Kurys. picking a man up, the caveat echoes of balance and they didn't have the same Like Steinem and Meerapfel, she goes internally: you are about to lose control; weights. They may open up, expose the back to unearth her deceased mother's you are about to become his victim. conditions of their lives and the lessons experience, but she travels with less they bequeathed to us, tacitly, both with self-doubt. She expects to find the gen- It is our mothers' estate and because and without volition (it is a treachery to esis of her strength; they, their contra- we find it in ourselves, we go back. But our benefit). And the legacy is not frivo- dictions. When Steinem talks, her years look at this difference. Kurys gives Mad- lous: it is our cushion against becoming of public speaking are evident: she is eleine and Lena each a scene of sexual hard. But they can't tell us how to man- cogent, relaxed , never tentative. She is pleasure, pure and simple: Madeleine age both. exciting. But in the quiet of writing with a teacher from her art school days, Ruth's Song she must've groped: why did Lena on a train with an unknown soldier • it take me so long? And Meerapfel's hes- -Erica long's zipless fuck. She can itations, pauses at corners she can't see imagine this , allow it, even to house- Kurys's mother worked. From the beyond, are patent: \"We are losing wives of the previous generation. Han- time Lena was in her early thirties, something, no?\" nah, a woman of Meerapfels' genera- when she and Madeleine left their re- tion , flicks ashes onto the lap of a man spective husbands, she supported her- Kurys: \"Directing is very feminine: who's approached her in a bar. She has self and two children, and was sup- the actors try to please you.\" 1 heard the learned to be contemptuous while pro- ported by that intimate, sensual (but as assumption louder than the words: it is tecting herself, but she cannot take him, far as Kurys knows, nor actually sexual) the privilege of women to be pleased, though he is handsome and she is lonely, friendship. \"I have their letters ... 'I the obligation of others to do the pleas- masturbating at night in the absence of love you; I caress you.' They were pas- ing. \"I play the seductress on the set. her lover. She is defensive, even prissy sionate; it was for life.\" And there were But 1 am also the authority, and they (how dare you!) in a modern sort of way; men as well-Lena's and Madeleine's have to try to seduce me. It's ambig- she is not confidently, cavalierly full of version of doing it all. \"It's hard to ex- uous; I like it.\" And she likes the sexual herself. Later, in a particularly self-de- plain that they were still looking for a ambiguity of her film (I can't help think- structive mood, Hannah gets blotto and kind of Mr. Right. But they got the ing: because it leaves her in control). allows herself to be taken advantage of strength to leave their husbands, to go to With all those passionate intimacies, did by a somewhat seedy fellow in a defi- Paris, from each other. That's my inher- nitely seedy hotel. Her desire has little of the legitimacy, her sex, little of the ease, of Lena's, Madeleine's-or Kurys's. Pleasure, pure and simple, eludes her; it is stifled by the maternal creed: sex sullies us, it is the act by which women become contemptible (unless he loves you, in which case it's grand but still double-edged). Kurys's life is not uncomplicated or easy, and she is obviously reflective. But introspection is not doubt. She comes into the arena with self-possession. \"There are so few woman directors in the U.S.-in the avant-garde maybe, but few who try to make it commer- cially. 1 think they don't dare . They think it'll come from the sky or that it's impossible, that they'll never make it. The main difficulty, of course, comes from the men in charge, but some of it comes from the women. They don't dare ... And at times, it's even easier for a woman to direct, easier to get the money or an extra hour of shooting time. We must have the honesty to say it.\" 16

Meerapfel: 'We are becoming cou ld I say, suddenly, out of context in a hard, picking up the worstfrom bustling bar, amid talk of career, of \"par- men in order to make it in laying\" this gig into that, \"Are you afraid their world . .. ' of becoming a Jew again?\" We move through publishi ng and journalism as It's a bit more overt than would be Lokkeberg's unripened friend, it is the bright young people; a yellow star wou ld comfortable for most of us: manipula- Jew keeping blacks out of the neighbor- wipe out that life-our lives-i n an in- tion, especially sexual manipulation , hood; it is the Israelis on the West Bank. stant. It is the shi ve r, a biting anticipa- isn't nice. Kurys assumes not her suc- tion, of where two people can go when cess but her right to get in there and Daughters of Jewish immigrants they start at the end of the rope. fight, and her presumption shocks (a (such useful foils) can't afford not to shocked Meerapfel says: we are becom- make it. We can't afford to maneuver For Meerapfel, it is too much. \"I don't ing hard). But how do we know when ingenuously, to doubt our desert, to feel always want to know; I don 't want him we are losing something and when we guilty about reward . And surely, some- always to know .\" The reticence is her are being, naively, our own worst ene- thing of the traditional woman and tradi- integrity, allowing her, in the face of mies? When are we being obedient to a tional Jew will be discarded. It would be routine and domesticity, to preserve the code of our mothers~ meant only to keep a relief if the assumption of victimization boundaries of her person. With merger, them in their place? How do we know were replaced by integrity-if only we she would lose not only sex but self. when we acquiesce? could quiet the fears our Jewish mothers This is the integrity necessary for the bequeathed to us without stifling the balance . Steinem: \"I will spend the next years rest of the bequest, without sending our figuring out what her life left me.\" How tradition of ethics to the winds, without • will we know when to ignore what they confusing independence with denial. left? And from Lokkeberg: \"I must re- What of love and sex and children of our Our mothers lived with the men they peat the family.\" How will we know own? We are back to the matters of pro- loved , and then with the men they grew when to betray it, knowing it brings false portion, to the balancing act. tired of, took for granted. There was evidence? It is a question asked no less hardly any choice. Bereft of alternative, by children of immigrants than by this Meerapfel lives in West Berlin-an they weathered conditions over which generation of women-by all those who address torn through by more than con- they had no control. They were molded walked, or ran, off the map of their par- tradiction, by trauma , fury, pain-be- by them , the weight of familiarity (too ents' world. No wonder it's these art- cause, at 19, she wanted to get out of her accessible to husband and children, too ists-female and Jewish-who find parents' house and in the Argentina of few protections against incursion) col- these questions inescapable, who the Sixties, young ladies simply did not lapsing much of the self-possession. found their work on them. live alone; the scholarship to study The mold is now in us , informing our abroad was first for Geneva, then Ger- impulses, and because of this , we go • many. She stayed \" because of friends, back. Lokkeberg went back to herself as jobs; I had a life there. \" a little girl and remembered her mother, Diane Kurys, age 35, Jewish, daughter if not actually assenting to a meager lot, of Russian emigrants to France, Holo- \" Do you have Jewish lovers?\" Her then abstaining from more vigorous caust survivors. shoulders sink a little. How to say, \"I am arenas. Steinem and Meerapfel under- not attracted to Jewish men\"? It is the took the trek, trying to slip into Mom's Jeanine Meerapfel, age 40, Jewish, absence of mystery; the impossibility of shoes, and they came upon similar daughter of German emigrants to Argen- seduction which enigma allows. Famil- sights: women on the side of the road , tina, Holocaust survivors. iarity, even with the boons of sympathy run out of steam. Only Kurys's mother and understanding, rushes by the deli- was able to kick up some dust-but she Gloria Steinem, age 49, half-Jewish, cate process; how can one slowly slip had Madeleine. daughter of a \"mixed\" marriage accepta- off some cover, dangle and let it drop? ble to neither side and ending in poverty, It is an irresistible trip , to learn about emotional collapse, and separation. It is the absence of sex. \"Jewish men our legacy of temperament and psyche, are like cousins. \" but it is also narcissistic and romantic. For the children of survivors, of the And finite : we inevitably identify what deracinated and the liminal, the fight to Another conversation. An Argentin- can't be found there-the balance it- make it is desperate, the bottom line ian man : \"For South American women, self, and the balance without guilt for being not just poverty but a blind knock- I am like a father, a brother. They saw our treachery, for taking what our ing about, an eternal trek, the Wander- 'me' in my underwear. They know me mothers offered and discarding what ing Jew. Kurys: \"Our ambitiousness is a immediately. There is no lure, no al- does not suit us in order to keep our- kind of revenge,\" but also a kind of lure.\" But a man of European Jewish selves from becoming them. protection against ever becoming the descent speaks passionately, confesses victims our parents were. But in making the desire for merger. It is the thrill , In the end, we must figure all this, it in the new world, we remake our- beyond recognition or empathy, of iden- and run our lives without either the in- selves in its image, and after we've se- tity-not only of never havi ng to ex- vented images of our mothers as young cured at least a little, we are faced with plain , but of the abandon, the mael- women or the hazy memories of our girl- the possibility that something has strom, into which lovers will pull each hood perceptions. Will and efficacy, fear slipped our grip. Empathy, perhaps. It is other when everything has already been of nearness and of giving away too Meerapfel's \"hard\" businesswoman and said, when what must be known can be much, are ours to weigh. Our gut reac- assumed.To whom but a Jewish friend tions are ours to consider, the acquies- cence ours to discern. The pity of it all is that a fifth column throws even wise and sustaining choices into doubt. ~ 17

On HisOwn-'1erms' James L. Brooks interviewed Brooks and ShirLey MacLaine on set ofTerms. by Kenneth Turan Except for the Los Angeles Film Critics plaques for best picture, best di- rection , and best screenplay that sit ca- sually on an extra bed, there is nothing about either the Paramount office or the man who occupies it that announces that James L. Brooks, the man responsible for Terms of Endearment , is in residence here. Co-creator of some of the most mem- orable programs on television, including Mary TyLer Moore , Rhoda, Lou Grant, and Taxi , Brooks is both frank and articu- late, a sensitive defender of his own work and, as might be expected, easy- going and quite funn y. At work on the French version of Terms , he delighted in retelling a story told by The Big ChiLL's Larry Kasdan , of how one translation of \"Can I take a date to the funeral\" came out as \"Can I take a fig to the funeral.\" And though all the current talk links him with film, the most striking thing about the conversa- tion that followed was how much televi- sion continues to mean to him both per- sonally and professionally. If the circumstances were right, he said with- out hesitation, he would go back.-K.T. • Were you a movie-struck kid ? Not in that passionate way you hear about. Going to the movies was an event for me , it Was a luxury, it wasn't a regular part of my life. Did you think about being a writer? No, no, too great a dream . I've com- promised my goals out of the gun. I didn't lower them as things went along, I was compromising my goals from out of high school. I spent a couple of years at N. Y. U. and I listed my major as public relations counselor. Before failure, I an- ticipated failure . I looked for lower jobs knowing that I'd fail trying to get the better ones. How did you get yourfirst job, as a page for CBS? My sister's best friend was secretary to the man who hired pages, so I was able to get my clammy little foot in the door. That job led to being a copy boy and then to being a newswriter. I loved that. I still think about being involved in news agam. TeLL me about your move from New York 18

to California to work on documentariesfor On Terms, the intensity was there. It's like being at war. A battle going on . .. It was life and David Wolper? death for so many ofus . Looking back, the one thing that Arthur Price, Allen and I hired every- television life. seems incredible about it was that I left a body. It was really strange, two writers Okay, then I do Terms ofEndearment. secure newswriting job, which I was de- looking for the guys who would watch lighted with, but clearly not delighted the money. I think we even named the Now the intensity was there. It's like enough. The only component in that being at war. A battle going on. N obody decision I can think of is ambition, and company. says, \"Holy shit, did you ever think my life had not been marked by any sort Things did not go smoothly atfirst? about getting hit by one of those bul- of ambition , so it seems unusual to me. lets?\" Of course you do , because they My life had been marked by struggling That's right. Allan and I flew to New were whizzing all around all of us. It was for survival. And I came out for a very York for a meeting with the network life and death for so many of us. The insecure job-so insecure the company executives, we walked out thinking budgetary restrictions when we started, cut back six months after I was here and we'd gone over rather well, and after we for instance, were enormous. I mean we I was out of work in a strange state. left the room they called Arthur Price were out there with not a penny to spare. and said we'd like to fire those two peo- Really worse than that. We were out What happened next? ple. But Grant wouldn't fire us. The there without enough pennies. I had to I scrambled. I don't know if this is first dry run we did, they don't come any think a long time whether to fly a kid true for everybody, but I had this image dryer, the show was a disaster. The re- from Nebraska to Texas to look at him a of the job I'd have to get, if I couldn't write worked , but even after the first second time before I cast. That plane have the job I chose. For me it was show there were those at CBS who gave ticket was a big decision . I ended up always selling shoes. Either I got a good it almost no chance. Executives would paying for the ticket and that was Troy job or I sold shoes, there seemed noth- call up and literally ask questions on our Bishop, the kid we picked. Still , we ing else in between. But I met Allan scripts like \"Why would you think hu- were only individuals working together, Burns socially, and I wrote a spec script man beings would laugh at that line?\" not this kind of dream world that televi- for the show that he'd created, My And then Bob Wood saw the pilot. He sion was to me. Until-the other night. Mother the Car. That sold , and I started was president of CBS Television and he to pick up a few more. I did That Girl, I was one of the more extraordinary men After the New York Film Critics din- did Hey Landlord, and within a year and who ever held the job. He took us from a ner [at which Terms received awards for a halfI'd created Room 222. It went very time slot where we might have failed to best picture, actress, and supporting ac- quickly right in there. one where we would be seen. He just tor], Debra [Winger] wasn' t there, we Had you ever thought of yourself as a did that, personally, as a man working went to somebody's apartment, Jack from the seat of his pants. He made the [Nicholson] and Shirley [MacLaine] and professional comedy writer? show happen. just a few others and myself, and Debra Well, I always socially trafficked in called and I looked around the room and What were the years on the show like ? for the first time I saw the same kind of comedy-clown kind of stuff. But the They were great. First of all , we were spirit I recognized from late nights with idea of writing comedy, that was another all friends . I mean there were no heavies people I'd worked with on television. \"beyond wildest dreams\" kind of thing. in our lives; there was no \"them. \" Grant And that was very emotional to me. One of the things that absolutely put me provided enormous insulation from the away was when Mike Nichols and network, and the success of the show • Elaine May were a comedy team, or the provided more. The great thing about first time I saw Richie Pryor in a club. half-hour television is that if you had a Briefly, about some of y our other They were major events to me. And notion , or anything happened to you, it shows: on Rhoda, do you feel marrying something you love that much and re- went right into the show. So it's this her offso quickly hurt the show? spect that much I think automatically enormous receptacle with this incredi- seems beyond you. bly talented cast. It was the greatest out- In retrospect I do, but we had nine let, the greatest school in the world. wonderful shows leading up to it that How did your MTM association start? Has the work you've done in theatrical you can't erase. And itwas wonderful on Grant Tinker, who was a television features been that satisfying? the ninth show to do an hour special that programming executive at 20th Century Before an experience I had the other the whole country watched, that we Fox, suggested that Allan Burns and I night, I would have given you a different threw together faster than anybody's become a team, that he would give us answer. Starting Over had a terrific direc- ever thrown together an hour show. the chance to develop an on-the-air tor [Alan J. Pakula] who did enormously Then, yes. The party ended-but it was commitment for his wife, Mary Tyler solid , sometimes brilliant work to realize a great party. Moore. That was an extraordinary plum: the film , but with the possible exception you just shortcut the pilot machinery. of me, it wasn't life and death for any- What about the Paul Sand show? That's the process where you try and sell body there. And I felt then that the I think what happened to that show your idea, and if they let you write a experience of making it lacked the was just about totally my fault. We had a script you have to get them to give you warmth of television, lacked the heat, good cast and we had a terrific pilot. the money to make the pilot, and if you the intensity, the deadlines, the \"Oh, We' d done brilliant post-production make the pilot you go into a selling sea- my god, they didn't laugh at that one\" where we worked so intensely I had an son where the mortality rate is incredi- kind of feeling that I experienced in my experience I'd never had before. I was ble. You go through testing machinery in the editing room, and an editor liter- and I've never had a show test well in ally collapsed . They took him away, and my life. So we shortcut all that and got a new editor replaced him, and I didn't on the air because it was Mary Tyler Moore. And except for Mary's manager, 19

Somebody told me the formula is $3.20 per start saying, \"What do I care to say to 25 ticket, and I keep on trying to figure out how million people,\" I don't know how you many people have seen it, keep on converting finish. We don't have anything to say to dollars into people. 25 million people. But you know what I do with Terms ofEndearment now when I Mary and Rhoda ponder Phyllis' planetary origins. read the box office? Somebody told i'ne the formula is an average of$3.20 spent notice until about a half hour later. But to be actors, guys who want to be prize per ticket, and I'm trying to figure out for some stupid reason which I'll never fighters. I also had been writing so many how many people have seen it, I keep understand, I changed the thing about women that I wanted to do a real male on converting the dollars into people. the show that I always wanted to do. It show. We did a quick research trip to was built on the premise that \"Lovers New York, and nobody ever got more Both in TV and in film, what do you come and go but friends go on forever.\" out of a quick research trip. We discov- think characterizes your work? We had a man having a girlfriend, where ered two things. I saw a dispatcher given it's a sexually viable relationship and ev- a dollar for getting a guy's cab out early. I like to write about people. With me ery once in a while they fool with it, but And that was all you needed, the rest it's always hard to make myself put in basically they're each other's best you could build, and that became the the time to work out all the nuances of friend. And then the girl who was sup- Louis DePalma character. Also, the big the story, to spin a yarn. I love doing posed to be the best friend, we took out problem in my mind is why is Judd television because I love episodes, in the part. We didn't think it was working, Hirsch a hero? About six in the morning, my life and anybody's life. And I had a but instead of fixing it, we just walked we waited for these guys to come in after great experience with Terms because for away from it. Just stupid, just wrong. all night out with their cabs, and this one the first time I was writing about people young charismatic guy came in and we I had no reference to until I started to How did Lou Grant come about? grabbed him and a couple of other guys. prepare myself to do the script. I put in Allen Burns and I were given an on- And the other two were telling us what five months of research into people from the-air commitment by CBS to come up they're really going to do with their lives that area, women of all ages, hundreds with a show starring Ed Asner. We were and he said, \"Me, I'm a cab driver.\" And of hours of conversations. So much of going to make him something else, and that became a key line of the pilot, then the movie came from the research, I Ed said to us, \"Just in terms of your I understood why Judd was a hero. He can't tell you. thinking, I love the character. Do what was a man accepting himself. you want, but I love the guy.\" We asked Yourfirst feature experience was having ourselves, \"When is a spin-off not a We all worked so hard on Taxi, be- your script for Starting Over. Did you spin-om\" and that's when you spin off cause it was very nervous to do a show in learn anything about directing from that? into another form, you take a comedy the shadow ofMary. The Taxi group was character and you go into a dramatic a very different, a gritty, lively raucous The great thing is that I saw Alan form. And that's what we did. group. Taxi parties were always great Pakula take a nap in the afternoon. But Could you talk a bit about Taxi's gen- parties. Mary parties you got home early. it always boils down to that. There were several directors who were enormously esis and why you like it? Were you conscious in your workfor TV generous to me in answering my ques- I wanted to do Taxi for two reasons. ofwriting for an enormous audience? tions. But it would always turn out that the real, intimate information was some- First I was intrigued by an article in New No, you can't be. Its fun afterthe fact, thing you wouldn't expect, like \"Get York magazine on a cab company, with good shoes.\" And with Pakula it Was guys going to law school, guys who want but to be aware of that during is to be \"Take that nap.\" He used to say that unable to do the work. I mean, if you \"Every man's a master of his own en- ergy,\" that you have an obligation not to be totally drained by the machine. How did you come to direct? I never wanted to direct for a long time, because in television I could work very closely with the actors, but then walk away for camera blocking, which was not a lot of fun for me at the time. But even working with the actors, what I thought was when you write it, you've heard it, and then the trick is to get them to do it that way. I never wanted to direct when I thought that was directing. I'm not proud of that, but it's true. Then watching Pakula, it gave me some con- sciousness-raising, because I began to see that hearing it in your mind, you do know a way it works, but you don't know the way it works. And people can come together and create something that nobody expected would happen be- forehand. And that's exciting, that's like writing to me, and I wanted very much 20

to try and be a part of that. And on Terms It was the hardest thing I ever wrote, and I it started to happen not only with the actors but every once in a while with the always have a tough time. I couldn't walk away cinematographer, with the production designer, with the costume designer, from it. It was torture . .. with gifted technical people. That's Brooks shows Jack Nicholson how to fall out ofa car. •great. How did Terms startfor you? What happened then? don't expect to make money, but I think The book was sent to me as a vehicle for a specific actress. I read the book and The movie would not budget-out at it'll do well enough where I'll break I had a great emotional reaction to it, but I didn't want to do it as a vehicle. I 71/z. Even with closing your eyes here even.\" wanted to do it without preconditions, without saying it had to be right for this and there, it would not budget out. Para- How despairing were you when it person. I just wanted to. mount felt that you had to draw the line looked like all your work was going to be Can you say who the person was? I'd rather not. Terrific person, by the someplace. So 71/z million he said, 71/z for nothing? way. Then there was a period of five months after which it became possible million he meant, 71/z million I couldn't The terrible thing is that it was a four- for a stiff price to option the book; Mr. Diller [Barry Diller, chairman of Para- do it for, unless I was willing to not make year story. So this is what happens: first mount Pictures] had to be the one to pony-up. After the research I started by it a location picture, which I was unwill- what you have is zeal, enthusiasm, stick- writing, and it was the hardest thing I ever wrote in my life. And I always have ing to do. So the picture went into turn- to-itiveness. Then it becomes obses- a tough time, so that's significant. Peo- ple had spent quite a bit of money on my around. sion, mania-the words change for the behalf, but it seemed like I couldn't go backwards, I couldn't go forward. I And? same emotion. I think the final word is, couldn't lick it. I couldn't walk away from it. It was torture. And for the only Everybody turned it down. Nobody \"Too bad about him, tsk, tsk.\" It was time in my life, I was going to miss a deadline. I could either turn in to Para- even took a meeting with me. Nobody awful. mount 90 pages that I didn't like or ask them to exercise the option of the book, called me in and said \"Well, we might be You've mentioned that though Shirley which was still another significant piece of money, without having read my interested if you could get so-and-so.\" MacLaine had been preparing for two screenplay. And I asked Michael Eisner to do that, and I'm really grateful that he Just absolute cold turn downs. One ex- years in a Texas accent, you decided right did. I'll always appreciate it, and he did it very casually. He said, \"I think you'll ception: Paula Weinstein and Willie before shooting to change that. do a good enough job so that if we don't want to make it I can sell it someplace Hunt, who were at MGM/UA under The great thing about doing research else.\" David Begelman, said they'd like to do is that when you know something, it What happened next? Then I did the screenplay, turned it it, but there was a certain amount of gives you authority to disregard it as well in, and it got that kind of \"what do we do with it\" reaction. They did like it, they turmoil going on at their company. I as use it. If you spend enough time in did believe it could be an effective movie, but nobody believed it could get could never quite get people on the Texas, now you have a choice. What I laughs. It's hard to tell people, \"No, no, that's a funny line\" when they're read- phone, I could never quite get a drive- started to find in River Oaks were the ing it. They'd always say, \"Yes, you mean witty.\" \"No, no, I mean ha-ha.\" on to the lot. Then nobody was there things that were distinctively American. Then, after it must have been six or seven months, Michael Eisner wrote and at that point I was dead. But I still And I wanted the picture to be more this note. [Reaches for it on the wall be- hind him. ]He said \"Okay, we're going to had my office here at Paramount, and I about America than Texas. Also, there's make your picture.\" And I said, \"Put it in writing.\" So he puts \"Terms ofEndear- was speaking to Michael Eisner and he no such thing as a Houston accent-you ment. Go picture at 71/z million. Delivery said \"I still like it. I still like it for 711z. \" can't find two people speaking the same Xmas of '82.\" And he signed it. I perma- plaqued it. And then my agent thought of going to way down there-and Shirley having the MTM for the money that I needed and accent was a difference for me in Arthur Price agreed. He said to me later whether it was America or Texas. I that his associates told him he was crazy didn't realize this until I woke up the to make the investment, and he said, \"I day before we were to start principal 21

photography, and I really felt it was a to each other and playing a scene bril- ally make a case against myself, I can mistake for her to have a Texas accent. liantly. It's like estranged family mem- argue both sides, but I can't argue both bers in a way. Whenever the situation sides of that one. I do not see where the How did she respond? demands, the estrangement is gone and film is manipulative, I don't. Because She couldn't believe I was doing it to the familial qualities are there. we don't announce in advance what it's her the day before shooting. She just about? Let me just tell you the idea of couldn't believe it. The adjustments When did you first sense how successful how the work was to be conducted. You she had to make, adjustments of charac- a picture this was going to be? know how we sit down in a movie and ter at the last minute. But maybe two say \"Oh, they're going to do this now, I years living with a part is too long. It's my temperament to live with the wonder how they'll do that.\" I felt that Maybe pulling the rug out helps. dark side a lot, so it was very slow in people who are non-professional see a The astronaut character lack Nicholson coming to me. Very slow. I guess that's movie the same way. And if you can plays is a major addition to the book. Why the television training, too, because frustrate that experience early enough did you create it? what you're doing all week is looking for and often enough, that finally you give Again, that came from the research. what's wrong and fixing. \"How can we yourself over to the characters because You can say that women about 50 get save it, how can we help it, how can we you say, \"I can't predict them, let me lonely, but when you sit with them, hav- protect it.\" So you never win. With experience them.\" So how was it manip- Terms we had five previews, and the ulative? ing a drink, and they want you to stay a previews indicated that an audience little longer because their days are bor- Perhaps people are uncomfortable with ing, they are so palpably lonely, it starts Debra Winger and I effDaniels. her having cancer and dying at the end. to have a different kind of impact on you. And then you want to say some- might just like this film, Four were on That's why I was really pissed off thing optimistic about that condition, the lot and the fifth one was in Denver, about some of the things that were writ- that it need not be permanent, that it and it was terrific. I sat near an exit door, ten. I did my research on cancer. And I need not be one filled with compromise. so I wasn't facing the screen, I was fac- have all the paranoia about the disease I I wanted to say something optimistic ing five people in the audience. I was think a lot of people have. I also had about that group of women in this coun- just looking at these faces, all different people in Second City, friends of mine, try. I really did. And the way to do that ages. I experienced the picture with five saying the minute you mention the word was with a romance you could believe. strangers. And I started to be very hope- cancer, the audience doesn't laugh for ful. The whole process is how long can 15 minutes, so I was really scared of that. Did Nicholson like it as soon as he read you entertain the notion that it might Okay, now I start going to talk to cancer it or was he unsure? work. With the preview, we still had a patients, and the one thing I heard from chance. It wasn't like we were in- them is that people never write that life I think he liked it as soon as he read it. \"We're still alive\" was my feeling. And goes on, that we do have laughter, that I think he wasn't sure. [Laughs]. Every- then when Time and Newsweek were sometimes we have great times. body says isn't it great that he and Shir- good, it was the same feeling. We have a ley had no vanity. And I think that's not chance. Okay, so what's manipulative? This it. What's great is they did have vanity, woman gets ill. That's a manipulation? like all of us have vanity, they do care And then, after the picture opened? No, because we don't ask anybody to about all the things we all care about, I had one of the biggest depressions of feel the things you usually ask an audi- and they still did it. my life. Again, no small thing, one of the ence to feel by virtue of that. We don't biggest depressions of my life. There's ask them to feel sorry for anybody. We How about Debra Winger? no way to feel good about people sud- don't jerk tears. And it's not sugar- I think at one time she pursued the denly treating you better. I don't know coated either. I think we serve truth, part, and then Officer and a Gentleman how anybody feels good about that, be- and I think we serve comedy. Truth came out and the pan was pursuing her. cause to me it's retroactive rejection. You first, comedy second. If you talk to five What qualities in her appealed to you? know, you didn't realize how bad they people about this picture, they end up Enormous vitality. The great danger were to you before! talking about themselves; that's how un- in playing Emma the wrong way is to manipulated they are, there's room for make her wispish and rendered pale by • them to put their own lives and their her mother, in a Glass Menagerie mode. own history in it. I don't respect the What the part needed was an original About some of the criticism the film has thought process that comes up with an heroine. So I wanted her strength, and drawn: people feel manipulated to a de- easy word like manipulation. There are somebody who had enthusiasm for com- gree that disturbs them. shots to take at this picture. Not that edy, which Debra sure has. one, though. It's been written that personally she and You know, I swear to God I can usu- Shirley MacLaine did not get along. What shot would you take? There's a real easy way to say that, but [Pause]. Maybe I'm wrong. [Laughs] it's inaccurate. No, they didn't go out, The other main criticism is that the film they didn't talk into the night, they is just like Tv, that it's a sitcom movie. didn't pal around together. But each of First of all, the one thing I know them understood better than anybody something about is television. When else alive what the other was going somebody called Mary a sitcom, we'd be through. The bonds were so deep and furious. We weren't doing sitcom. We singular they could take any kind of be- knew what sitcom was. We had done havior and not be damaged. So every- sitcom. We were doing character com- body would say \"Look how they hate edy. So if we're talking a language of each other\" and you'd find them turning 22

comedy, let's know that language. Now FOCUS ON EXCELLENCE. what am I supposed to do when some- body hits this film with a sitcom brush, Fountain Valley School who doesn't know what sitcom is, proba- Presents bly is not a student of television and probably has a lot of convictions about College and high school The deadline for television that are really ignorant. filmmakers, here's your submitting your work is What do I do with that? What do I start with if the word's wrong? You chance to compete with May 1. For entry forms know, one night I saw the picture and I some of the best student thought, \"This is like the stuff I do. \" films in the country. For 18TH and more information, And I felt really good about it. And then contact Dianne I found a review that attacked me for a our May 11 festival, Harrison, Fountain piece of work because it was consistent Valley School of with my career. [Laughs] . ANNUALshow us the \" reel\" thing Colorado, Colorado STUDENT- in 8mm (including • Super 8), 16mm and FILM Springs, Colorado How do youfeel about the Oscar nomi- 80911, (303) 390-7035. FESTIVALvideo. High school and nations ? The festival is It's hard to imagine Shirley, Debra, college entries will and Jack without nominations , and to be judged separately, dedicated to the tell you the truth , the script, too. I'm proud of my script, though I'm unco~­ except for video. memory of actress fortable saying that. As for the best dI- rector nomination , when I was inter- First place winners Dominique Dunne. viewed after the D .G.A. nominations they said, \"How do you feel about the in film will be Oscar?\" And I said no, they always do this in movies, the moment something awarded $500; o .lJI:~e foUNTAIN happens where you feel this, they move second place VALLEY the finish line. And I won't let that hap- pen with this. I truly didn' t expect the takes $100. • ScHOOL OF D .G.A. nomination , I was really sur- First place in video prised by it and I felt terrific about it •I •IIII°L. CoLORADO because it came from the people who are sophisticated enough to see what I don' t wins $200. know. It wasn't like somebody had FILII/VIDEO pulled something over on them . SUMMERIFALL '84 Finally, though , all the dynamics with having a picture that's well received and FEATURING: does well I think are perverse dynamics. • Four year degree programs It's like the thing that's rough about mar- • FilmlVideo production and film studies riage, that gets you away from the reason • Graduate Studies (Master of Fine Arts) in production and film you' re together and invites role playing. What is a husband , what is a wife, what studies is a director, what is a successful direc- • SUMMER program: day courses in TV and Film Production tor? People starr to relate to the role instead of to you. (May/ June) and an evening course in Screenwriting (May· August). See current brochure for complete details on the After a film this successful, do you summer courses. worry about the difficulty of being able to top yourself? Programs also offered in Dance, Interdisciplinary Arts, Music, Theatre, and Visual Arts, including SUMMER courses in ITALY. I lived with it after Mary. It's very tough ; in some ways I know I never will. For further information, contact: I don' t know whether I'll do another Room 206T, Faculty of Fine Arts, York University, picture where acceptance means people 4700 Keele Street, Downsview, Ontario M3J 1P3 (416) 667-3237 will laugh and cry. What's happening to this picture is singular. What happened to Mary was singular. But I've had get- offs with things that weren't successful. And as long as you can come out with your feelings about yourself good enough to go on to the next thing, they haven't gotten you. As long as you can survive with that, the system hasn't chewed you up. ~ 23

by Richard Schickel Anderson's book comes at us adorned them, bur because I found that as I ma- by the apparatus of that higher fandom tured many of their films seemed to Hard to think of an odder coupling that so often passes for scholarshi p in the speak to me with new voices, kindling than this one: John Ford and Lindsay film world. Personal reminiscence jos- new responses th~t may not have been Anderson. The social and political con- tles against high falutin critical assertions better than my first ones, but were at servative; the social and political radical. and cosmic meditations on the nature of least different, and thus kept my inner The insider always looking longingly screen poetry, while in the appendices dialogue with their creators refreshed. I out; the outsider always looking long- undigested interviews with some of did not feel that we were repeating our- ingly in. Unscheduled instincts and Ford's actors nestle against correspon- selves as the fire burned low and our schooled ones. Unreconstructed Irish- dence from some of his screenwriters, glasses emptied. man and reconstructed Englishman. If the latter at least implicitly asserting they have anything at all in common as their claim to a greater share of Ford's Ford, by contrast, had begun to seem directors , and perhaps as men, it is a auteurship than he (or his most devoted to me like the author of a favorite series powerful desire not to be understood too apologists) might care to admit. It of boys' books, for which one felt a quickly or pegged too easily-which is sounds a little slapdash, I know. But pleasing nostalgia not just for the works no guarantee that two such prickly indi- there is a forthrightness in Anderson's themselves, but for the time one had vidualists will sense their underlying af- approach, an openness in his enthusi- discovered them and for the self one had finity. asm and in his dislikes that is disarming. been at that time. And I hesitated to And which leads one to want to respond submit myself to these stories again, for But fandom makes for strange bedfel- in kind. fear that they would not hold up any lows. This curious, engrossing book, longer, that their simplicities both of which pulls together (without quite Trouble is, I cannot seem to quite manner and of substance would spoil a binding together) various early efforts by muster the kindness that I thought pleasant memory. Anderson to come to terms with Ford would naturally, automatically, appro- and his work, makes it clear that it was as priately flow from an enforced contem- • a fan that he first came to Ford-his plation of Ford's work. socks, formerly neatly gartered by prim, I still haven't seen a John Ford picture middle-class notions of what art should I suppose I agreed to attempt this lately. And I must say that (except for be, knocked off by a chance encounter review precisely because of a realization making me curious about one or two I with My Darling Clementine. It was as a that in the ten years since the director's have never seen) Anderson's book, vivid fan he began writing his youthful critical death I had not thought of him at all. and often quite sensibly appreciative, essays about Ford as new films ap- References to him had lost all their for- does not make me want to change my peared, attempting, it would seem, to mer resonance and his name evoked ways. He has two not quite mutually rationalize what was, in essence, a blind only a vaguely reverential emotion, a bit contradictory lines on Ford, and both of passion. It was as a fan that he kept like one's feeling for his sometime sub- them make me edgy. As Anderson sees getting in touch with Ford, volunteering ject, A. Lincoln. This was not just a it, Ford's first and most basic virtue, the himself for that alteration of abuse and question of out of sight, out of mind. one on which the second in fact de- affection (both often inexplicable) with Lubitsch, Sturges, Hitchcock, Hawks, pends, is that he was \"from the start, and which Ford treated all acquaintances, to name just a few of his peers in the all his life, a teller of tales,\" a traditiona- whether distant or intimate. pantheon, remained lively, controversial list working for \"an audience who figures, and I kept seeking out their wanted only to be entertained, were not works not only to renew my pleasure in looking for originality or enlightenment ... \" That, of course, is unarguable. Nor 24

can there be much argument about the middle-period works were coming into ent character. If he agrees with Ander- main line of his career. He tended to- release I was no more aware of their son that Ford was at his least effectively ward the historical and the epic, mainly thematic content than I was of their the- poetic when he was at his most self-con- but not exclusively westerns. As Ander- matic unity-or that there were such sciously poetic (in works like The In- son sees it, his main theme in these things as \"middle periods\" in artists' former and The Fugitive), and ifhe shares main-line works was the defense of what lives. Indeed, I was not entirely aware a general admiration for the middle pe- can be summarized as communitarian that movie directors were artists. All I riod with Anderson (though, of course, values when they are threatened byout- was aware of was that somehow these disagreeing in the ranking of specific lawry, otherness (mainly, of course, rep- films were, different from other films films , with Sarris liking, for instance, resented by Indians), the anarchy of that employed similar settings, charac- Fort Apache a little more, The Grapes of ters, generic conventions. They had a Wrath a great deal less than Anderson great historical forces unleashed . distinctive look to them , a singular tone. does) all of this is but a preparation for For Anderson, the film that summa- And that is a point to which I want to their largest disagreement. Anderson return . notes that \"The lyric gift rarely survives rizes what Ford was all about is a rela- for a long lifetime: energy wanes and tively obscure one, a war movie that was • experiences blunt aspiration.\" And so not released until World War Two was he makes of Ford's Fifties and Sixties over, and which like Clementine, the fu- For the moment it is sufficient per- films a long dying fall, not even except- ture filmmaker caught in his early twen- haps to say that Anderson would, and ing everybody's late favorite, The ties. This was They Were Expendable , perhaps could at the time, identify, or at and it is about a PT boat trapped in the least put a word to, the source of this Philippines at the outbreak of the war, distinctiveness. It was Ford's \"poetic\" Searchers. and forced into a fruitless rearguard ac- sense. By that he means that besides Not so, argues Sarris, the past was all tion against the onrushing Japanese having the gift for telling stories cleanly prologue. In his twilight Ford finally hordes. There is not much action in the and simply, so that they appealed to the found the material that was perfectly - film, nothing very flashy in the way of simplest soul in the audience (me, for appropriate to his poetic gift, which was heroics, just a manful acceptance of their lot by the men of the squadron, and a brave attempt to keep their camaraderie functioning as long as they can, despite losses and the separations duty imposes on them. This Anderson correctly iden- tifies as the theme working in the films immediately preceeding this one, and continuing on into the Fifties, when age, illness, a changing point of view and changing public tastes caused Ford to veer off his course, toward the attenu- ated late works (including The Searchers) which Anderson finds very much less to his taste. Sounds right! Whether we are dealing with a real family, like the Joads of The Grapes of Wrath, or a hierarchical pseudo-family like the navy or the cav- alry, or one that is temporarily patched together for mutual protection (the trav- elers in a stagecoach, or in a wagon train heading west), most of Ford's best be- loved and best remembered films from , fohn Ford Lindsay Anderson. say, Stagecoach through , say, Wagonmas- ter set up situations in which the instance), he had the capacity to \" tran- all along to be a \" rememberer of things strength of familial ties were in some scend narrative . .. transform them into past.\" Never mind that the pictorial gift way tested. In these works his style was poems for those who have eyes to see seems to shrink, that most of the later most acutely attuned to his substance. and ears to hear. \" That is a very nice and movies have about them a cramped and Those lonely Monument Valley Vistas elevated thought, but it had a familiar careless air. Sarris finds even The Wings that he offered in such handsomely com- ring to me when I came upon it. I knew I ofEagles \"sublime\" and Seven Women \"a posed, formal images suited his pur- had heard it somewhere before, and so I genuinely great film.\" In this scheme of poses perfectly. Man looked so tiny, so was sent scurrying back to another major things The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance vulnerable in this context. And that critical study ofFord, Andrew Sarris' The not only \"achieves greatness,\" it be- made his modest triumphs, keeping the fohn Ford Movie Mystery. And sure comes a summarizing statement of nos- community together, whatever losses he enough, there it was, a plea for Ford as a talgia for \"the legends of honorable fail- -it-suffered so noble. screen poet. ure, of otherwise forgotten men and I should say that, morally, I approve of Sarris, though , locates the height of women who rode from glory towards this great Fordian theme; but it is a ret- the poetic impulse in a different place, self-sacrifice. \" rospective approval. At the time these and finds it to be of an altogether differ- No wonder they disagree about The 25

Searchers. It does not have much to say 'J about the preservation of communi tar- ian values, everything to say about a Robert Montgomery and John Wayne in Ford's They Were Expendable. man who rode away if not from glory then from comfort and forgetfulness , But here we must pause to consider of us fight the shrinking effects of the into obsession and madness, and into mitigating critical circumstances. All of dutiful years. the old Ford country re-visioned . It is us who follow this trade are desperate for now no longer purifying in its starkness, co herence , and the discovery of it in Still, the obvious danger in the appre- but actively malevolent. One might also apparently messy artistic lives is not only ciative mode is . . . appreciativeness. Its say that in it Ford sent John Wayne rid- a joy for the critic but a significant aspect white light can blind a critic to some ing for the first and last time into mod- of his function. If he is not about this fairl y obvious defects in an artist's work, ernism-or a precinct as close to it as business, what is his business? The trou- and that has happened to both Sarris and either dared to come. ble is that our schemata, especially Anderson in their meditations on Ford. when they have the pleasing symmetry They are so eager to defend their shared It seems to me that , just as each has a of Sarris' or Anderson's, permitting men idol , to assert his claim on the ages, that valid point or two to make about The of generous spirit to round off their con- neither can own up to his general fail- Searchers (though I tend to hold with siderations, of an admired career in dra- ings . They can, of course, admit to Sarris on its overall merits ), they are both matically persuasive ways, often leave points at which he nodded off, films that right and wrong in their overall posi- littl e room for the inconvenient excep- don't quite seem to measure up. tions. On the whole I agree with Ander- tion. son that the Ford films of the late Thir- It seemed to me that Ford's ties and early Forties represent the best In the circumstances, Sarris' generos- weaknesses-which Anderson seems to deployment of his strengths, and offer ity regarding the late works, given the think of as strengths-were always the fewe st blatant examples of hi s lovely spirit in which he writes, is at least there , a part of his sensi bili ty as powerful weaknesses. I also think that Sarris has explicable. But repeated studies of An- correctly identified the spirit Ford was derso n on The Searchers leave one puz- as his gifts. Another way of putting it is groping for in the majority of the later zled. In the end one suspects that he that Donovan's Reef is not an isolated film s, a spirit that was vastly different rese nts the film mainl y because it does phenomenon; there is a little bit of it in from the one that animated his earlier not fit his theory. It is not a paean to almost everything Ford ever made. And work. I think, however, that he very community, or to manly se ntiment. And it is a sadness to me that neither of them largely failed to realize on film what he its appearance-stark and savagely po- will admit it except in passing, and then was trying to say. And I do not believe tent, ambiguous and even mysterious to only to blame the studio system or his this was entirely the result of failing explicate-awkwardly interrupts the co llaborators (Dudley Nichols, the mental and physical capacities. dyi ng fall Anderson has concocted for screenwriter, who pushed Ford to his Ford. more self-conscious poeticizing, gets In some measure he failed because bad marks from both of them) or the the matter in hand , his sense of loss, hi s Contrary to popular opinion, which Zeitgeist. sense that the world was heading in a values the quotable put-down and likes direction he could not apprehend even to think of critics as scandalous fellows, These may have been factors in dis- for purposes of criticism, was a matter in the style of Waldo L ydecker and Ad- torting his vision at this or that historical too subtle' for his art, and would have dison De Witt, the best criticism,criti- moment. But the truly damaging flaws been even in his prime. One may, out of cism that transcends its normal function in his work were in the man . They have affecl:::-n for favors past, indulge so me- as an adjunct of publicity, takes the form to do , very largely, with his Irishness. thing like Donovan's Reef, but to say that of appreciations, for no one can sustain There is , for example, his utter failure to it is Ford's \"Picnic on the Grass just as the act of analys is for the necessary create memorable female characters, Picnic on the Grass is Jean Renoir's The length when one despises the work or possibly excepting Maureen O' Hara's Tempest\" (as Sarris does) is, I think, the sensibility one has taken in hand. feisty shrew manque in The Quiet Man. rather an overstatement of the case. This applies especially to Sarris, who For the rest, they run to Madonnas and Similarly, I find Sarris' close reading of strikes me as the one regular commenta- whores, unless they are entirely desexu- The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance alto- tor on film who has actually grown in the alized by age or by grotesqueness or ap- gether richer, more resonant, than the openness of his responses while the rest pearance. Granted , it's not always easy film itself, though I suspect that here the to work a woman into the genres where stripped-down quality of this most prob- Ford worked most comfortably. I would lematical of Ford 's final works may be a product of hi s failing health rather th an a conscious effort at an autumnal simplifi- cation of majo r themes. Be that as it may, the film plays better in memory, and on the critic's printed page, than it does on the screen . Ford 's means are not equal to the ends he perhaps had in mind ; the crudity of the playing and of the staging vitiates the film , and the sought-for elegiac sense never quite takes one over, the story's obljgation to large emotion is never quite discharged. 26

point out that women are inevitably a politic misses them . But still ... part of almost any community, and that It is, I think, too much to claim that they ought to have had more promi- he successfully poeticized his themes. nence and particularity than he granted Apart from the crudenesses I have al- them as his males ventured forth on ready mentioned , the sheer inarticulate- their protective duties. Nor does it seem ness of his films, their failure to state entirely churlish to point out that Ho- precisely what was on his mind in any ward Hawks, whose great subject was a but the most platitudinous verbal terms much more self-consciously male com- vitiates this claim. He was in no sense a munity, found a way of granting women sophisticated or subtle vernacularist. In not just admission but delightful central- thinking of him, neither Robert Frost ity. nor William Carlos Williams springs to Then there is the matter of the rau- mind. Carl Sandburg, maybe. Or possi- cousness of the oth~ranks. How tire- bly that earliest poet-fan, Vachel Lind- some it was to conS-tantly find Victor say. In other words, Ford was a populist MacLaglen and his pals boozing their with a good deal of humbug about him. way through the sub-plots. It was not Looking back, I suspect that my lin- very funny at the time , and it is even less gering affection for Ford depends some- Now available in paperback so' in retrospect. Again, a comparison what on his crusty, rebellious legend, Pursuits of Happiness with one of Ford's contemporaries and somewhat on the superb first im- The Hollywood Comedy ofRemarriage seems in order. Raoul Walsh was an pression he made, when he placed his Stanley Cavell Irishman, and he had a certain affection unquestionable gift for imagery in the \" No book about the art of Hollywood for Celtic highjinks. But he tended to service of stories a youngster could ap- I have ever read can make its readers stop and think more effectively than stop short of glorifying their excesses, preciate. Almost alone of the great thi s one,\" -s.S. Prawer, and tCl get something tender and even American popular directors he brought Times Literary Supplement Ha rvard Film Studies $7 .95 wistful into his portrayals of their way- this imagistic gift over from the silent Hitchcock- The ward ways. One thinks of the delicacy of films, and almost alone of them he de- Murderous Gaze Strawberry Blonde in this respect, even veloped when the main thrust of mov~es William Rothman the affectionately done roistering and was elsewhere. (King Vidor did the \"The best treatment of Hitchcock to date. It addresses what is unique railing of On the Bowery. And then there same thing, but his stories grew increas- about Hitchcock's films ... Rothman 's book [is] clear, passionate, and witty.\" are other, perhaps more minor matters: inglyexotic, not to say weird.) With more than 600 frame enlargements Ford's execrable taste in music, which Those great classical compositions of - Paul Thomas, ran toward military airs and sentimental Ford's-at once so spacious and so American Film Harvard Film Studies $10.95 Irish and western ballads, for example. stark, seemingly so resonant with large, HarvardiPaperbacks More than one of his splendid images inarticulate thoughts and feelings- From Harvard University Press has been vitiated by the thunderings or were, in our impressionable years, Cambridge , Massachusetts 02138 whimperings of his score. And then knock-outs. They did indeed suggest to Illustrated . The Greatest Selection of Things to there was the way he seemed to lose us large possibilities that most other Show. Videocassette'$ and VideoDiscs, slides, interest in his work, to let the slack or talking pictures did not. And Ford's pic- super 8 & 16mm films . All guaranteed to be the careless scene stand rather than to torialism was perhaps more readily ap- 100% satisfactory. Our 57th year. work it up. prehensible as \"art\"-even as visual po- Blackhawk Films • etry, if you will-than, say, the subtle- These sound like quibblings. They ties of dialogue and of romantic Dept. 404 are not, not if a man is to be defined as a arrangements in Lubitsch. These sailed 1235 W. 5th St., Davenport, IA 52802 \"poet.\" The subject of film mayor may over our heads. But the images of Mon- not be film , but the subject of poetty is ument Valley, with a brave little stage- assuredly poetry. Which is to say that in !, coach bucketing through it or a troop of the end what we value in a poet is his cavalry outlined against one of its ridges, manner, his style. I agree with Anderson those lodged in our hearts forever, preg- (and with Sarris) that Ford's heart was nant as they are with masculine ro- generally in the right place. His conser- mance, once suggestive of great possi- vative, but not reactionary, stress on bilities, now reminiscent of roads not duty, on self-sacrifice, on the need to taken , roads permanently closed. build and defend shared values, to cre- One must not, cannot, reject these ate communities, even if they were only images, for one must not reject one's temporary communities of interest- past, and the good, shaping things it and even when he overstressed a gas- contains. On the other hand, one must eous sort of patriotism as both a cause not make claims for these memories that and effect of this enterprise-was valu- are too large. Especially if one practices able and sometimes movingly (if often the critic's trade, one must resist the too broadly) stated in his artfully simpli- impulse to defend them too fiercely, to fied narratives. I do miss them, particu- make claims for them that are too broad, larly in this age of radical selfhood. I too universal, too ... shall we say, \" po- could even make a case that the body etic\"? ® 27

by Richard T. Jameson sometimes run right up till dawn. But wherein action and character are insepa- . rable. The former, however spectacu- Mandeville Canyon is a quiet, curvy the production, entering its third and larly engineered, is mere setting-up ex- stretch of road a good ten miles from final month, is on schedule and, for all ercise unless infused with, and conse- Hollywood, lined with well-appointed intents and purposes, moving crisply. crated to illuminating, the latter. homes generously separated by shrub and woodland. Where the grade begins • The situations in the script oblige to increase, as if the road aspired to Peckinpah to deal in more gimmickry eventually climbing out of the surround- Neither he nor his admirers have any than he is comfortable with. Sharp has ing high hills, one's eyes cast leftward illusions about The Osterman Weekend as extrapolated a whole new layer of action toward a graciously imposing bluff. a comeback vehicle. The book, as the in keeping with the omnipresent para- Ranks of white fence dominate the near director himself politely put it, \"is not noia of the novel: Virtually everything horizon and reappear brokenly through among Ludlum's best\"; and although its that happens, everywhere, to every- the trees on the hillside beyond. From feverish tale of a ritzy suburban home body, is being covered by multiple- the road they're the only visible sign of under siege in a double-treble-quadru- and often wildly improbable-video \"Robert Taylor's little cabin where he pIe-cross CIA operation contains the ma- cameras. (An entire separate crew is em- used to ride horses\"-in point of fact, a terial for a Straw Dogs Meets the Killer ployed to get this video coverage, at 24 sprawling ranch house replete with baro- Elite, the project is not one Peckinpah rather than the standard 30 frames per nial dining rooms, parlors, studies, bed- originated, or would have chosen to. It second, for eventual merging with the rooms, and enough bars to keep the cli- was, however, the least despicable op- celluloid footage.) Then too, there is the entele of a metropolitan watering hole tion available after Peckinpah's own lat- Space Age weaponry wielded by the happy. est properties (The. Texans, Hang Tough) outlaw CIA types. Much is being made of failed to find backing, and it represents a red laser beams needling through the This particular late-afternoon in De- chance to ply his trade again. brownish-blue fog in the night chases cember 1982, the peace of Mandeville outside the Tanner homestead, and Canyon is not secure. As we park along On the upside, the casting is provoca- Panzer-in costume and grooming the the roadside and climb out for the walk tive, even auspicious. In addition to perfect preppie-keeps dropping in to up the long lane, an abrupt burst of Burt Lancaster as CIA chief and Presi- propose new technological atrocities: light-machine-gun fire rips the twilight. dential aspirant Maxwell Danforth, and maybe a man could be shot with a rifle We are undismayed; indeed, the effect rising Dutch star Rutger Hauer as John grenade, and the grenade explodes as it is reassuring, even charming. Someone Tanner, the network-news glamour boy comes out his back.... At such mo- is tuning up for another night's shooting whose home becomes the focus of a le- ments, Peckinpah puts on his I'm-try- on The Osterman Weekend, the first the- thal war of nerves, Peckinpah had man- ing- to-fi gu re-ou t, -because- I' d- atrical-movie version of a Robert aged to assemble a provocative collec- sincerely-like-to-know, -just-what- Ludlum bestseller and the first film Sam tion of offbeat players variously coming species-of-insect-you-are look, and Peckinpah has directed in five years. on strong or overdue to break out of waits for the conversation to be over. career holding-patterns: John Hurt, One dreads to think what neat inserts EI Jefe himself has been living in the Craig T. Nelson, Meg Foster, Dennis may find their way into the final version guest cottage on this, the cinemageni- Hopper, Helen Shaver, Chris Sarandon, ofthe film, and how many reviewers will cally apt principal location for the Oster- Cassie Yates. Irresistible to flash back to reach for their cliches about \"Peckinpo- man war games. A corner of the main the Sixties and recall how much of the wism\" to account for their presence. house might conceivably have accom- initial Peckinpah magic had to do with a modated him, but every corridor is sev- taste and talent for cajoling volatile per- • eral layers deep with power cables and formances from such eccentric un- and virtually every sector filled with crew little-knowns as Warren Oates, Mariette Still, the work is good. John Hurt members, paraphernalia, and props. Hartley, Strother Martin, L.Q. Jones, (\"He's just brilliant,\" Peckinpah says The cottage is quiet, private, a place Ben Johnson, Bo Hopkins, and James fervently; \"I'm so lucky to have him\") where a fellow can stay in his own good Coburn. plays Fassett, the secretly tormented su- hole between forays onto the working peragent behind the mindfuck games set. Besides, it lies a third of the way The downside is formidable. Peckin- running roughshod over the sociable Os- between ranch house and road , and pah's producers, Peter S. Davis and Wil- terman weekend. We watch him shoot a hence is well out of reach of the liam N. Panzer, are already well on the couple of silent takes, ducking into a mudslides that have been known to way to earning their niche in the hall of closet in the Tanner pool house and then eventuate whenever the \"happy clay\" of ill-fame memorializing a career's worth re-emerging to stare intently offscreen. the hillside seeks a more congenial gra- of producer-compromised Peckinpah There's a gun in his hand and a bar of films. They have denied him the chance vivid light across his eyes in a otherwise dient. to work with his editor of choice, Lou shadow gray environment. It's astonish- Peckinpah at 56 looks ten years older Lombardo, and forbidden him to revise ing. The pool house is jammed with the Alan Sharp screenplay (though word crew and equipment, there's the V of a than he did when we last saw him, four on the set has it that they are more re- support beam between me and Hurt, years previous-not so surprising when ceptive to changes proposed by star you consider that in the interim he sur- Hauer). Peckinpah says he got to do vived what had every right to be a termi- only \"a twenty-minute polish\" before nal heart attack in the middle of a west- the final script was locked in. He con- ern Montana nowhere. He's obviously cedes that the screenplay constitutes a husbanding his strength, especially on vast improvement over the novel, but the present schedule of night shoots that snarls that it concentrates on \"not char- acters but situations\"-the obverse of the formula for a true Peckinpah film, 28

Peckinpah directs Osterman Weekend in funny hat. cal threat. Walter Kelley, longtime member of the Peckinpah company, but over there in his corner of the room, ming pool and fire, with a toy crossbow, small-part player, dialogue director, and the actor seems to be part of not only at a profesional assassin toting a machine past master at supplying offscreen imita- another plane but another order of real- gun. Hauer is uneasy with Peckinpah's tion-gunfire cues (followed by a graceful ity. He's already a movie image, lucid, concept for the scene. \"Ideally I'd like flamenco bow to the appreciative on- unnerving, more absolute than the rest to have a long bow, but I'm afraid the lookers), is going to get to fire a machine of us. action of the water ... [He mimes a gra- gun for real. Framed malevolently in a diose archery move spoiled by the weight bedroom doorway, he delights in impro- Other images do not come so readily. of the water] . .. This is my rebirth .... \" vising a deadpan \" Die, you scum! \" be- Peckinpah is having a plate of eggs in Peckinpah finally speaks: \"It's a good fore releasing a burst into the camera. the cottage when his John Tanner comes effect. A big man; a little weapon. I like The sound man squatting right under in, dressed in the camouflage jacket he it.\" Hauer lingers, hunched over, peer- the weapon is taken by surprise, and will wear through the climax of the Os- ing up from under blond forelock. He visibly recoils from the shock wave; tak- terman weekend, and otherwise ready says, \"I don't think we ought to lose this ing the earphones off his head , he re- for confrontation. \"Can we talk?\" Hauer movie over a little disagreement.\" Peck- marks , \"Well, I guess he's going to fire asks softly, and takes a stool on Peckin- inpah says nothing more. After a mo- now!\" Peckinpah sits quietly on the pah's left. Only an occasional phrase is ment, Hauer gets up and leaves. edge of the bed and says, \"Fine. \" audible a few feet away: \"It's showtime .... If you'll let me, I can sell it .... \" Up at the main house, it's time for a Kelley must charge through another The scene is coming up in which Tanner man's castle, already infiltrated by fear door and straight into a fireplace poker must rise from the bottom of the swim- and suspicion, to be breached by physi- wielded by Bernie Osterman (Craig T. Nelson), the one weekend guest to- gether enough and straight enough to throw in his lot with Tanner in defend- ing against the marauders. Peckinpah will take great pains with this bit of ac- tion: it shouldn't be easy for a Beverly Hills TV writer, even one who works out with an Oriental martial-arts trainer, to kill a man face to face. Nelson knocks Kelley down and then grinds the poker into his groin, grunting equally from physical and emotional agony. The di- rector steps in to demonstrate the grind- ing motion he wants. \"You got a fucking real poker and a real human being here,\" mutters Kelley from the floor. \"I want to get the dying quiver,\" says Peckinpah. An effects man asks , \"How about blood trickling from the nostril?\" \"No, no blood-trickling-from-the-nostril shit.\" One more pass by Nelson and Kelley is satisfactorily deceased. Next another member of Fassett's kill team must charge through a second door, startle Tanner and Osterman into fleeing, and lunge after them, pausing an instant to take note of the fallen Kel- ley. The stunt player in the role man- ages to muff the various stages of his action again and again, so that multiple retakes are necessary. Win Phelps, Peckinpah's excellent first assistant, stands in for the now-absent Hauer. Craig T. Nelson, sweating like a pig from the exertions of the previous setup, nevertheless remains on set, continuing to supply the (entirely offscreen) pres- ence for the second killer's eyes to focus on. By and large, cast and crew seem to be responding with a similar degree of loy- alty and commitment to Peckinpah's enterprise. In addition to effortlessly 29

Peckinpah and CIA ChiefBurt Lancaster. ethics of television with his TV director, or Joe Cardone (Chris Sarandon) making covering the thousand-and-one respon- ing,\" and there was much tut-rutting love to one of his investment clients and over a credit sequence of Merete Van subsequently discussing the incident sibilities of the first assistant, Phelps Kamp, as Mrs. Fassett, masturbating in with his wife, The Osterman Weekend is closeup before being brutally murdered resolutely drawn farther away from the supplies Peckinpah with the kind of by KGB men. Leaving aside the lamen- realm of quirky, inhabited character and table habit of supposedly sharp ob- deeper into mechanically contrived situ- teasing, mutually testing badinage the servers for saying \"it was confusing\" ation, as Peckinpah had resisted. Given when they mean \"I was cop.,fused,\" one the intransigently unsympathetic pres- director relishes in his closest compan- wonders how any movie faithful to the ence of Rutger Hauer (as John Tanner, constantly shifty nature of truth and illu- he looks at his eleven-year-old son in ions. A distinguished art director who sion in Ludlumland could fail to be much the way Blade Runner's android \"confusing\" without erring on the side Roy Batty looked at the denizens of collaborated on earlier Peckinpah mas- of infidelity. As to the masturbation (a Earthside), and the now-piecey suggestion of which persists in the re- glimpses of the other old friends falling terpieces is on hand-if officially not lease cut), it's a logical extension of the out during the Osterman weekend, lovemaking that immediately precedes there is little reason for caring much there at all-to replace the non-union it, and seems a evocative index of the about who does or doesn't get chewed theme of violated privacy so pervasive in up in the plot-counterplot machinery, production designer who proved unsat- screenplay and film. Had anyone save and why. Peckinpah shot it, it would undoubtedly isfactory. John Coquillon, cinematog- have been hailed as a radical gesture of What remains? Enough for a profes- liberation. sional filmmaker to take pride in. The rapher of Straw Dogs, Cross ofIron, and gaunted, private frenzy of John Hurt's Needless to add, the Osterman Week- Fassett, a family man (there was once a the hurtfully beautiful Pat Garrett and end on view in theaters as of October stronger parallel to Tanner) taking re- 1983 was not Peckinpah's cut. Playing it venge against a soul-killing system. Billy the Kid, presides over his team cagey, the director agreed to give x num- Craig T. Nelson's beleagured equa- ber of interviews on behalfof the promo- nimity as a self-described \"nihilistic an- looking for all the world like a twinkling tional effort, and assured the press that, archist who lives on residuals.\" A not whereas he was disappointed at losing very essential but lovingly elaborated in- reincarnation of Clarence Odd body, \"some bits of humor and character that I tersection of truck, taxicub, motorcycle, had injected into the picture,\" he hadn't and a long length of pipe punching its AS2: \"It's a goodie, Jimbo! Thank you been so badly screwed over by the pro- way through a car windshield, then rear ducers this time. \"I had the option of window, as the dreamy montage antici- .... We can use a wee fill back in either having the credit as 'A Sam Peck- pates the next element of mayhem: a inpah Film' or removing it, so I removed train thundering toward a railway cross- here .... Das ist besser. Add a little it. But I'm glad to see 'Directed by ... '.\" ing. And finally, out of the video gim- mickry he loathed having to indulge, a shower curtain, young Jim .... \" And Without such (scripted and shot) characteristic, bitterly comic Peckinpah scenes as John Tanner discussing the indictment of a modernity wherein ev- again and again, trundling amid the ca- erything is screened and mediated , where life is television and the audi- bles, stepping around the mounts and ence, perhaps, deserves no better. Ludlum's book, Sharp's screenplay, and boxes, hoisting dauntingly complex- the producers' yen for cheap thrills all dicated that the head of the Tanner fam- and rich-looking lenses from one hand to ily's pooch should be sacrificed to a hor- rific turn of the plot. Peckinpah insisted the other, crew members meet one an- that the dog's head in the refrigerator turn out be a fake. He spares the real other's eyes and ask, with great gravity pooch for a devastating penultimate im- age: the stand-in for the TV (and Oster- and circumspection, \"But what does it man Weekend?) audience, mouth bound shut, staring at the TV screen from all mean?\" • which his master's voice issues. That line a bit of insiderish drollery He may not have written the line and he wouldn't endorse the character who about the complicatedness of the mov- delivers it, but one suspects Sam Peck- inpah smiled wryly at Maxwell Dan- iemaking process would echo frequently forth's words in roping John Tanner into the CIA conspiracy: \"Comfort yourself in another key as The Osterman Weekend with the notion that you never did have a moved onto semipublic and then public choice. It's usually the case.\" ® screens almost a year later. Industry types attending the one contractually guaranteed preview of Peckinpah's cut complained that the film was \"confus- 30

· ection 31

Hollywood Style '84 Caleb Deschanel directs photography on The Right Stuff. by Todd McCarthy had supplanted black-and-white almost with favor on their British counterparts, totally by the mid-Sixties; location lens- who spoke the same language literally In the beginning was Bitzer. As D . W. ing had been on the upswing since the and visually: their careful craftsmanship Griffith's cameraman, from the Bio- \"runaway\" Fifties; faster film and more generally paid homage to standards set graph one-reelers in 1908 to the epic portable camera equipment was being and developed in Hollywood. But it was America in 1924, Billy Bitzer can lay fair developed; non-union or independent not until 1968 that a true \"foreigner\" claim to being the cinema's first intelli- productions encouraged a freer, docu- (Pasqualino De Santis on Romeo and Ju- gent camera eye. And through the end mentary-style visual vocabulary. Just as liet) won a cinematography Oscar, and of the silent era, Bitzer's colleagues and important, many of the Old Masters- not until 1973 (Sven Nykvist for Cries successors saw to it that most advances pioneering veterans like William Dan- and Whispers) that a foreign-language in the art of the cinema were inextrica- iels (Garbo's glamorizer), Lee Garmes film was nominated; it also won. After bly linked to the increased sophistica- (Rembrandt lighting), James Wong Sven, the deluge. Since 1978, no Ameri- tion and beauty of screen photography. Howe (artist on roller skates); and John can has won the best cinematography Until well into the Sixties, Holly- Alton (Mr. Film Noir)-were dying or Academy Award. Honoring foreigners wood produced the most beautiful films retiring, thus creating vacancies in Hol- may, in this case, be a convenient way of in the world-a world of glamorous stars lywood's most exclusive union. overlooking much of the trend-setting and seductive settings created with light and troublesome work being done by and shade. No official industry group consis- Americans. tently proved itself more resistant to out- In the Sixties, as the studio system side infiltration than the cinematogra- The preferences and prejudices of began to crumble, so did acceptance of phy branch of the Academy of Motion the Hollywood elite aren't gospel when the traditional Hollywood \" look.\" Color Picture Arts & Sciences. The Holly- it comes to movie photography. Argua- wood lensmen might occasionally look bly, the two most critically acclaimed 32

cameramen of the Sixties were Raoul in the old Hollywood was that they Monte Hellman or a Robert Altman was able to sneak a Nestor Almendros or a Coutard and Nicolas Roeg, and their wanted to see the actors' eyes, always Jean Boffety into the country only when they filmed in Southern right-to-work names are nowhere to be found in Acad- the eyes. They said they would have states. But ever since Dino De Lauren- tiis imposed Sven Nykvist on the New emy records. The cinematography for A been fired if they' d shot that [Willis's] York camera local by threatening to shoot King of the Gypsies elsewhere un- Man and a Woman, Blowup, and Elvira way.\" less the Swede was permitted to work, foreigners seem to have shot the major- Madigan-all immensely influential in The inevitability of aging is already ity of prestige films made in New York City and, indeed, everywhere in the the late Sixties-was considered too reshaping conservative tastes. Lucien country outside Hollywood . (Some union prejudices are almost impossible \"radical\" to be officially recognized . Ballard , Joseph Biroc, William Clothier, to correct.) Claude Lelouch, after all, operated his and Robert Surtees have all recently re- Among the major directors who habit- ually select foreign cinematographers own camera on A Man and a Woman; tired , and with them the last lingerings are Sidney Lumet (Oswald Morris, An- drzej Bartkowiak), Mike Nichols (David such presumption had not even been of the Old Hollywood visual tradition. Watkin, Giuseppe Rotunno , Miroslav Ondricek), Bob Fosse (Rotunno, imagined in Hollywood since Josef Von In their place is a new generation of Nykvist), Alan J. Pakula (Nykvist, AI- mendros), Paul Mazursky (Nykvist, Sternberg muscled his way into the cinematographers, with credits stretch- Don McAlpine), Robert Benton (AI- mendros), and Bob Rafelson (Bruno American Society of Cinematographers ing back only a decade or two. Ironically, Nuytten on Brubaker, from which the director was fired, and Nykvist). Except back in the mid-Thirties. And if the most of the men are well into middle for Nykvist (who is both an A.S.C. and a union member), foreign lensers are still natural light of Elvira Madigan (which age, since the union's entry procedures effectively prevented from working on union productions made in Hollywood. many who saw it in 1967 called the most mean a long apprenticeship even today. When Francis Coppola shot One from the Heart, he gave Vittorio Storaro a beautiful film of all time) became the In general, U.S. cinematographers are \"Photography By\" credit, while a union man was cited as \"Director ofPhotogra- norm, what was to become of Holly- older than the directors they work for. phy.\" wood's gaffers, electricians, and other Judging the work of these new cine- We may lay one more grievance at the union's door. With the possible excep- studio personnel? matographers is fraught with difficul- tion of music scoring, cinematography remains the branch of the film industry No surprise here. The Academy has ties. Many of the younger directors to- completely dominated by men. So far as I know, only one Hollywood studio film always existed to honor its own; non- day are super craftsmen who know (Anne Bancroft's Fatso) has been shot by a woman (Anne Murphy). Why nu- American film craftsmen are members precisely how they want their films to merous women have made it to the di- rector's chair but not to the DP position of a cinematic Foreign Legion. A more look; I am convinced that if even I were remains a disturbing mystery. formidable threat to traditional cinema- What follows is an assessment of the top American cinematographers work- tography comes from within its own ing today. My personal pantheon of world lighting cameramen would in- ranks. The Hollywood Establishment clude Storaro, Almendros, Rotunno, Morris, Watkin, Coutard, Douglas Slo- may indeed be a stodgy men's club, ever combe, Freddie Young, Henri Alekan, Robby Muller, and Gerry Fisher. While ready to blackball originality, but the most of these men have shot large inter- national productions, which could be town's elite group of cinematographers called American pictures, they have still done most of their work abroad. Vilmos is also highly sensitive to the notion of Zsigmond and Laszlo Kovacs were born and educated in Hungary, but their pro- artistic achievement. What others con- fessional careers have taken place en- tirely in the United States; hence their sider as prejudices, they deem as artistic inclusion here. principles. Case in point: the Gordon Willis controversy. Everyone knew something was up when the two Godfather films, shot by Willis, were nominated in virtually ev- ery category except cinematography. And when Willis was similarly ignored for All the President's Men and numerous Woody Allen pictures, the suspicion sur- John Cronenweth's Altered States faced that he was being unofficially blackballed for having ruffled feathers in assigned to photograph a film for John Hollywood earlier in his career. (The Boorman, Steven Spielberg, or Ridley Oscar nomination Willis finally re- Scott, it would still look great. A few ceived, for Zelig , is as much a citation of strong stylists, like Robert Altman and his wizardry in matching old film stock Ken Russell, have developed distinctive to new as it is a tribute to his style.) looks despite having shuffled camera- There may only be a conspiracy of men almost randomly. Conversely, the artistic conservatism: Many of the older camera-eye sophistication of, say, John cinematographers just don't like Willis's Schlesinger's films varies considerably style. What appears richly textured and depending upon the cinematographer, broodingly evocative to some seems with the Nicolas Roeg, Conrad Hall, dark and obscurantist to others. The and Billy Williams efforts towering over Willis look runs counter to the accepted collaborations with Adam Holender and aims of Hollywood cinematography over John Bailey. the last 60 years. Dismayed by the rejec- In general, good directors attract good tion of Willis's work on the Godfather cinematographers, and vice versa. And pictures, Conrad Hall convened a sym- it must be noted that the infiltration of posium at the American Society of Cine- foreign cameramen into the United matographers. \"The older guys all hated States is currently proceeding at an un- his work,\" Hall told me. \"A cardinal rule precedented pace. A decade ago, a 33

The Golden Dozen ing-c1ass setting; the vast stretches of while most of his color pictures are bleached of primaries and consist ofvery JOHN ALONZO: Hollywood's be- darkness, metal, and concrete were the little but browns, blues, and whites. It is nighted attitude toward out-of-staters gave Alonzo his start in \"A\" pictures. correct visual building blocks for the par- therefore no coincidence that Martin When Hal Ashby couldn't get permis- Scorsese chose Chapman to shoot his sion to use Gordon Willis on Harold and anoia of Blue Thunder; and on Scarface two most brutal, assaultive films- Maude, Alonzo got the job. Two years achieving a kind of hyper-verite-while later he replaced Stanley Cortez on Chi- Alonzo scaled down director Brian De hiring other cinematographers to light natown, one of the supreme photo- production designer Boris Leven's im- graphic works of the mid-Seventies. Palma's pristine slickness by several maculate sets in New York, New York and Quite a few films of that period at- The King ofComedy. In this respect, Per- tempted to evoke, in color, the dreamy, notches and developed a look nearly as sonal Best marked a significant depar- nostalgic look of Hollywood in the early ture. The modest promise of his first Panchromatic Age (the Thirties); no one vulgar as the film's settings and charac- feature as a director, All the Right Moves, succeeded more spectacularly at this leaves the future direction ofChapman's than Alonzo and director Roman Po- ters. Within the fairly conventional lanski. During shooting, Chinatown pro- career an open question. range in which he has worked, Alonzo MICHAEL CHAPMAN (b. 1946) 1974 has continued to prove his adaptability The Last Detail (Hal Ashby) The White Dawn (Philip Kaufman) 1976 Taxi Driver (Martin without appearing either eccentric or Scorsese) The Front (Martin Ritt) The Next stylistically stagnant. JOHN A. ALONZO (b. 1934) 1970 Bloody Mama (Roger Corman} Vanishing Point (Richard C. Sarafian) 1971 Harold and l\\'laude (Hal Ashby) 1972 Sounder (Martin Ritt) Get to Know Your Rabbit (Brian De Palma) Pete ' n° Tillie (Martin Ritt) Lady Sings the Blues (Sidney J. Furie) 1973 The Naked Ape (Donald Driver) 1974 Conrack (Martin Ritt) Chinatown (Roman Flying high in John Alonzo's Blue Thunder Raging Bull (dp. Michael Chapman). ducer Robert Evans was heard to com- Polanski} 1975 Once Is Not Enough (Guy Man (Richard C. Sarafian) King Kong; co-phot plain that Alonzo's dailies weren't look- ing as good as those for the Schlesinger- Green) The Fortune (Mike Nichols) Farewell, (john Guillermin) 1977 Fingers (James Toback) Conrad Hall The Day of the Locust. An- other evocation of Los Angeles in the My Lovely (Dick Richards) 1976 The Bad 1978 The Last Waltz; co-phot (Martin Scorsese) 1930's, Locust was gorgeous frame-by- frame but in sum too gorgeous and stud- News Bears (Michael Ritchie) I Will , I will ... for Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Philip Kauf- ied for its sordid material. Chinatown, chic and gritty at the same time, remains Now (Norman Panama) 1977 Black Sunday man) 1979 Hardcore (paul Schrader) 1980 Rag- the pinnacle of L.A. \"period\" photogra- phy, followed closely by Alonzo's work (John Frankenheimer) Which Way Is Up? (1\\Ii- ing Bull (1\\Iart.in Scorsese) 1982 Personal Best on Farewell, My Lovely, a nouveau nair burnished bytheSummerof'41 sun. chael Schultz) Close Encounters of the Third (Robert Towne) Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid When not working in period, Alonzo Kind; co-phot (Steven Spielberg) 1978 The (Carl Reiner) 1983 The I\\lan With Two Brains can achieve a delicious, deliberately achieved garishness. Norma Rae (one of Cheap Detective (Robert I\\loore) 1979 Norma (Carl Reiner). As director: 1983 All the Right seven collaborations with director Mar- tin Ritt), Blue Thunder, and Scaiface are Rae (Martin Ritt) 1980 Tom Horn (William Moves. • not \"pretty\" movies, but each was lighted and shot in ways absolutely ap- Wiard) 1981 Back Roads (1\\lartin Ritt) 1983 propriate to its subject. Norma Rae's graininess and primary colors allowed no Blue Thunder (John Badham) Cross Creek JORDAN CRONENWETH operates false glamour to be attached to the work- (Martin Ritt) Scarface (Brian De Palma). As di- under a curious handicap. So many of his rector: 1978 FM. • credits have come on pictures by direc- MICHAEL CHAPMAN. With The tors whose films are beautifully shot no White Dawn (1975) and Taxi Driver matter who photographs them (Altman, (1976), Chapman vaulted to the front Jan Troell, Ken Russell, Ridley Scott) rank of American cameramen. He has that it is hard to define his cinemato- specialized in urban personal dramas graphic style. Nevertheless, the man (The Front, Fingers, the dazzling black- behind the camera on Brewster Mc- and-white ofRaging Bull), with time out Cloud, Zandy's Bride, Altered States, and for fun matching old black-and-white especially Blade Runner, as well as the Hollywood footage with new on Dead visually distinctive Play It As It Lays, Men Don't Wear Plaid. His black-and- Citizens BandlHandle with Care, Rolling white work tends toward very high con- Thunder, and Cutter's Way obviously trast, washing out the middle ranges, knows what he's doing. Brewster Mc- 34

Cloud, for instance, is slicker and A desolate street scenejromJohn Cronenweth's Blade Runner brighter than most other Altman films, grain and blinding background light out orcist II: The Heretic, 1941, and War while Zandy's Bride and Cutter's Way re- of his system, along comes another film Games, Fraker's virtuosity is impossible where he loads it on again. Fraker's to ignore. On The Heretic, Fraker and veal an exquisite pointillism closer to widely acclaimed 1968 duo, Bullitt and John Boorman reportedly fought each Vilmos Zsigmond or Bruce Surtees. Rosemary's Baby, were fuzzy when they other every step of the way, and the end Even on the meretricious Best Friends, should have displayed a hard urban result certainly looked more like Boor- Cronenweth contributed a heightened, edge. And Heaven Can Wait must be one man's other work than it did Fraker's. of the ugliest recent films to have been But whatever else may be said against luminous naturalism to the interiors that nominated for a camera Oscar; the char- this film and 1941, they rank among the belies his reputation for having too dark acters often appeared so atomized that most stylistically ambitious soundstage a style for anything other than brooding they looked ready to dissolve into the creations of the New Hollywood, and dramas. And whoever's responsible, smoggy sunlight. Fraker brought lots of unfettered crafts- manship to both of them. Blade Runner stands as one of the most Still, when one considers the funky staggering photographic feasts in the badlands mood of Rancho Deluxe, the WILLIAM A. FRAKER (b. 1923) 1962 For- appropriately gloomy Looking for Mr. bid Them Not 1967 Games (Curtis Harrington) history of studio-enclosed cinema. Goodbar, the Floyd Mutrux collabora- The President's Analyst (Theodore J. Flicker) tions (especially American Hot Wax), Ex- 1968 The Fox (Mark Rydell) Fade-In (Allen JORDAN CRONENWETH (b. 1940) 1970 Smithee/Jud Taylor) Rosemary's Baby (Roman Brewster McCloud (Robert Altman) 1972 Play It As It Lays (Frank Perry) 1974 Zandy's Bride Caleb Deschanel's The Right Stuff (jan Troell) The Front Page (Billy Wilder) 1975 The Nickel Ride (Robert Mulligan) 1976 Gable and Lombard (Sidney J. Furie) 1977 Rolling Thunder (John Flynn) Citizens Band/Handle With Care (jonathan Demme) 1980 Altered States (Ken Russell) 1981 Cutter and Bone/Cut- ter's Way (Ivan Passer) 1982 Blade Runner (Rid- ley SCOtt) Best Friends (Norman Jewison). • CALEB DESCHANEL. By far the youngest man in the top twelve, and the one with the fewest credits, Deschanel came to immediate prominence in 1979 with his one-two punch, The Black Stal- lion and Being There. Startlingly differ- ent in mood-the former going beyond picture-postcard beautiful into a nearly metaphysical union of artistry and na- ture, the latter pushing the limits of hard-edged darkness to ideally situate the story's mysterious mirth-they nonetheless share a cleanness of image and a brilliant luminosity. Hardly less impressive was Deschanel's third 1979 feature, More American Graffiti, in which he mimicked the styles of four different movie periods from the early Sixties to the late Seventies. After di- recting one feature, the attractively mis- fired The Escape Artist, he returned to DP status for The Right Stuff, another mixed-bag of visual materials for which Deschanel's simple, uncluttered com- positions provided consistency and balance. He has most recently finished work on Barry Levinson's period base- ball fantasy, The Natural. CALEB DESCHANEL (b. 1941) 1979 Be- ing There (Hal Ashby) More American Graffiti (B. W. L. Norton) The Black Stallion (Carroll Ballard) 1982 Let's Spend the Night Together; co-phot (Hal Ashby) 1983 The Right Stuff (Philip Kaufman) 1984 The Natural (Barry •Levinson). As director: 1982 The Escape Artist. WILLIAM A. FRAKER. In many ways the dean of the New Breed cine- matographers, Fraker was among the first to make heavily diffused lighting fashionable, indeed epidemic. Just when he appears to have gotten grave 35

Polanski ) Bullin (Pe te r Yates) 1969 Paint Your Close Encounters (co-d.p. 's William A . Fraker and JohnA. ALonzo). Wagon (J os hu a Logan) 1971 Dusty and Sweets McGee (F loyd M utru x) 1973 T he Dav of the tyk (Ri cha rd F lei sc he r) 1975 1>. la ndin go ( Ri- policy of working with beginning direc- D olphin (M ike N ichols) 1975 Rancho \"Delu xe tors (Peter Bogdanovich, Dennis Hop- chard Fleischer) 1976 King Kong; co p hot (john per, Altman, Bob Rafelson) proved for- (Frank Perry) The Killer In sid e Me (Burt Ken- tunate; more recently, things have not ned y) Coo nskin (Ralph Bakshi ) Aloha Bob by G uill e rmin ) 1978 T he Furv (Bri an De Palma) worked out quite so well Gohn Byrum a nd Rose (F loyd Mutrux) O ne F lew Over the on Heart Beat, Graeme Clifford on Who'll Stop th e Rain (Kare\"1 Reisz) Tilt (Rud y Frances). Even his recent films with Cuc koo's Nes t; co-ph ot (!,vlilos Forman) 1976 commercially established directors Durand) 1979 Sta r Trek: T he Motio n Pi ctu re (Mark Rydell , Scorsese, Richard Don- Gator (Burt Revnold s) Lipst ick ; co-p ho t (La- ner, Richard Lester) went mostly un- (Robe rt Wise) 1980 To uched bv Love (Gus Tri- seen. Such is the luck of the draw; it can mo nt Jo hn so n) 1977 Exo rcist II : The He re tic hardly invalidate Kovacs's standing as konis) T he Compe titi o n (joel \"O li ans ky) 1981 one of the most consistently brilliant cin- (John Boo rm an) Looking fo r Mr. Goodba r ( Ri- ematographers to have emerged in the c hard Broo ks) C lose Encounters of the Third Bodv H eat (Lawre nce Kasdan) 1982 Death New Hollywood. Kind ; co-ph ot (Steve S pielbe rg) 1980 Divine Wish II (1). li chae l Winn er) 1983 1>.lan, Wo man Kovacs's early cheapies for Richard Rush (HeLL's AngeLs on Wheels, The Sav- Madness (1'vlic hael Ritchi e) S harky's Machine a nd Chi ld (D ick Richards) Brea thl ess (jim age Seven) and Bogdanovich (Targets) (Burt Reyno ld s) H o ll ywood Kni ghts (F loyd M u- are marvels of dynamic efficiency and, McBride) Deal of th e Ce nturv (Willi a m tru x) 1982 The Best Littl e W ho re ho use in Texas (Co lin Higgin s) 1983 WarGames (John F ri edk in )\" \" Badha m ) 1984 Irreco ncil ab le Differences\" As direc tor: 1970 Monte Walsh 1973 A Re fl ectio n • of Fear 1980 The Legend of thc Lone Range r. LASZLO KOVACS. Rightly consid- • ered the full equal of his fellow Hungar- RICHARD H. KLINE. More than ian emigre Vilmos Zsigmond as they en- any other cameraman in the top dozen , joyed a parallel ascendancy through the Kline tend s to vary his work drastically mid-Seventies, Kovacs has had the bad depending upon the identity of his di- luck to have worked largely on commer- rector. Breaking in (surprisingly, given cial flops in the pas t few years, while his the size of the project) on the sky-blue friend has landed almost nothing but Big and earth-toned CameLot, he did unre- Pictures. Early in his career, Kovacs's markable work for nearly a decade until William Hurt , KathLeen Turner and Richard Crenna in Richard Kline's Body Heat the 1975 Man£iingo, a period melodrama characterized by a burnished amber that stopped just short of the arty. The equally unanticipated King Kong dis- played sharp, coherent wide-screen im- ages similar to those of Leon Sham roy and Fred Koenekamp in their prime. In 1978, Kline won his diploma as a stylist with Who' ll Stop the Rain and The Fury, both of which evinced a subtle mastery of color organization and focal length. Kline was just hitting his stride. In the 1981 Body Heat , he met the challenge- frequently attempted but seldom real- ized-of evokingfiLm noir in color. Last year's BreathLess, with its lurid , comic- book coloration, just about fulfilled its stated ambition as a pop art movie. Why, then , given his inventive palette, does Kline persist in his collaboration with Michael Winner, for whom his photogra- phy is unpleasantly cheesy and careless? And why do some of his other recent pictures look so anonymous? One is left hoping that the strong indications of steady growth will continue to be achieved, and that in the future Kline's selectivity in projects will match his sen- sitivity and ambition. RICHARD H . KLINE (b. 1926) 1966 C hamber of H o rrors (H v Ave rb ac k) 1967 Came- lo t (Joshua Loga n) 1968 H ang 'E m Hi gh (Ted Pos t) The Bosto n S tra ngle r ( Ric ha rd F le isc her ) 1969 Gaily, Ga il y (No rman Jew ison) A Drea m of Kings (Daniel Mann) 1970 The rvloo nsh ine War (Richa rd Quine) 1971 The Andromeda Strain (Robe rt Wise) Kotch (jack Lemmon) 1972 H amm e rsm ith Is O ut (Pe te r Us tin ov) When the Lege nd s Die (Stuart Millar) The 1>. lec ha ni c (1). li - chac l Winne r) 1973 Sovle nt G reen ( Ri cha rd Fleischer) The H arrad Expe rim ent (Te d Post) Battle fo r the Planet of th e Apes (j\" Lee Thomp- so n ) The Don Is Dead ( Ri chard Fleischer) 1974 The Terminal Man (M ike H odges) 1>. 1r. 1>.lajes- 36

Mary Kay Place and Robert De Niro in Laszlo Kovacs' New York, New York ni she d (\" Iatteo O ttav ia no) H e ll 's Ange ls on Whee ls (Ri chard Rus h) A \" Ian Ca ll ed D agge r along with Russ Meyer's pictures in the ural ism held the style back from undue same period , are among the best-shot slickness. ( Ri c h a rd Ru s h ) 196 8 Ta rge ts ( P e te r low-budget films ever made in America. He then became house cinematog- Of his hard-luck pictures , Heart Beat Bogda nov ic h ) T he Savage Seve n ( Ri c h ard rapher for BBS Productions (Easy Rider, boasts a sensationally intelligent visual Five Easy Pieces , The Last Movie, The scheme: Its splashes of bright but Ru sh ) Psyc h- O ut ( Ri chard Ru sh ) 1969 Easy King of Marvin Gardens) . Although he fuzzed color represented a vibrant cor- had never shot a black-and-white fea- relative to its drugged , drunk, fitfully Rider (De nni s Ho ppe r) T hat Co ld D ay in the ture before, he adapted himself beauti- brilliant characters. Butch and Sundance: fully to the Gregg Toland-style wide-an- The Early Days almost required sun- Park (Robe rt Altm an) 1970 Ge ttin gS traight (Ri - gle and long-take precision in Paper glasses for viewing, so dazzlingly bright Moon . And in At Long Last Love and New were its images of snow, sky, and gleam- chard Ru sh) F ive Easy Pi eces (Bo b Rafe lso n) York, New York , he proved his instant ing guns. While Zsigmond's darker, mastery as a studio classicist. His most more textural style has prevailed in re- Ale x in Wo nd e rl and (p'aul Mazu rsky) 1971 Di- mature job, and a synthesis of the two cent film fashion , Kovacs has continued major strains in his work, was Shampoo. to favor a brighter, cleaner, sharper look. rec ted by John Fo rd (Pe te r Bogdanov ic h) T he The film required glamour and got it, History will prove him a prophet with Ma rri age of a Yo un g Stoc kb ro ke r ( L aw re nce particularly in the exquisitely modu- honor. T urm an) T he L as t Mov ie ( D e nni s Ho pper) LASZLO KOVACS (b. 1933) 1965 \" lark of lated interiors, but Kovacs's residual nat- th e G un (Wall y Co mpo) 1966 T he Noto ri ous 1972 Poc ke t Mo ney (S tu art Rose nbe rg) W hat's D aughte r of Fa nn y Hill 1967 Sin gle Roo m F ur- Up , Doc? (Pe te r Bogdanoy ich ) Kin g of M arv in Jason Miller and Max von Sydow in Owen Roizman's The Exorcist Ga rd e ns (Bob Rafe lso n) 1973 S teel ya rd Blues (A lan \" Iye rso n) Slithe r (H owa rd Zi'cff) Pape r Moo n (Pe te r Bogdanov ich ) A Re fl ec ti on of Fea r (Willi am A. Frake r) 1974 Hu ckl e be rry F inn 0 . L ee T hom pson ) Fo r Pe te 's Sa ke (Pe te r Ya tes) F reeb ie and th e Bea n ( Ri c hard Ru sh ) 1975 Shampoo (H al As hby) At Long L as t L ove (pete r Bogdanoy ich) 1976 Baby Blue Ma rin e (J ohn Hancock ) H arry and Wa lte r Go to New Yo rk (Ma rk Rydell ) N ic k e lo d eo n (P e ter Bogdanov ich) 1977 New Yo rk , New York (Ma r- tin Sco rcese) 1978 \" F.I. S. T. \" (No rm an Jewi- so n) Th e L as t Waltz; co-phot (Martin Sco rsese ) Paradi se All ey (Sv lves te r Stall one) 1979 Th e Runn e r Stumb les' (S tanley Krame r) Butch and Sund ance : Th e E arl y Years (Richard A. L es ter) 1980 H ea rt Bea t (j ohn Byrum ) Th e Lege nd of the L one Range r (Willi am A. Fraker) In side Moves ( Richard Donne r) 1982 France s (G rae me C liffo rd ) T he T oy ( Ri c hard D o nn e r) 1984 C rac ke rs (Lo ui s rVlalle ) G hos t Bu ste rs (I va n Reitm an ). • OWEN ROIZMAN. Roizman has evolved from a gritty N ew York street photographer into one of the slickest cameramen on the current scene; few can match him when it comes to clean, well-organized images that simply- and not so simply-please the eye. Be- cause Roizman has worked more often with actors' directors (Herbert Ross, Elaine May, Sidney Lumet, and , re- peatedly, Sydney Pollack) than with high-powered cineastes, his film s with these directors are almost invariably more sophisticated visually than are those film s by the same directors with other cinematographers. Without ever becoming overtly stylized or self-con- scious, without ever shooting an effect for effect's sake, Roizman often tends to feature bold patches of color combined with looming areas of darkness (The Ex- orcist, Network) . His quartet with Pollack (Three Days of the Condor, The Electric Horseman , Absence of Malice, Tootsie) are superior by both modernist and classical stan- dards , with Tootsie standing as a model of a comedy's visual style: splashy but not vulgar. The cinematography of The Exorcist contributed crucially to the re- quired mood and tension. Roizman's shooting through a perceptible fog of cold and smoke foreshadowed the dry- ice style to be popularized by rhe com- mercials-trained British directors several years later. OWEN ROIZMAN (b. 1936) 1970 S top 37

1971 T he Ga ng That Co uldn ' t Shoo t Straight Eastwood, Surtees has done excellent bert Ross) 1978 Big Wednesday (j ohn Milius) work on niggardly budgets. The Outlaw 1979 Escape from Alcatraz (Don Siegel) 1980 (j ames Go ld ston e) T he Fre nc h Co nn ec ti o n Josey Wales displayed an exquisite sensi- All Washed Up 1982 Inchon (Terrence Young) (William F ri edkin ) 1972 Play It Agai n, Sam bility in the choice of lenses and a sensi- The White Dog (Samuel Fuller) Firefox (C lint tive responsiveness to nature and the Eastwood ) Honky Tonk Man (Clint Eastwood ) (He rbe rt Ross) Th e Hea rtbrea k Kid (E laine change of seasons. His other period 1983 Bad Boys (Rick Rosenthal) Risky Business May) 1973 T he Exo rcist (Willi am Friedkin ) pieces for Eastwood , Bronco Billy and (Paul Bri c kman) S udden Impac t (Clint 1974 T he Takin g of Pelham One Two Three Honky Tonk Man (the latter made for a Eastwood ) 1984 Tightrope. preposterously low $2 million, exclusive (j osep h Sa rge nt ) T he Ste pford Wives (Brya n of Eastwood's salary), were muted but • Forbes) 1975 T hree Days of th e Co nd or (Syd- still sparkling. The Prince of Darkness ney Poll ac k) 1976 The Re turn of a Man Call ed just about disappeared but Firefox was HASKELL WEXLER. It is probably so underlit that one could sometimes Horse (I rv in Ke rshn e r) N etwork (S idn ey Lu - barely see the black Russian plane the archetypal Hollywood story of the me t) 1978 Straight Time (U lu G rosbard ) Sgt. against the murk of Surtees's style. changing of the Old Guard and the ar- Pe ppe r's Lone ly He artS C lub Band (Mic hae l Surtees's sole epic to date, the calami- Sc hultz) 1979 The E lectric Horseman (Sydney rival of the Young Turks. Mike Nichols, Poll ac k) 1980 The Bl ac k I\\l arble (Haro ld Be- cke r) 1981 Tru e Co nfessions (U lu Grosbard ) fresh from Broadway and eager to make Abse nce of Ma lice (Sydn ev Poll ack) 1982 Too t- sie (Sydn ey Poll ack). . . a visually arresting first film , showed Fellini's 8112 to veteran studio lensman Robert Surtees and proclaimed, \"That's the style I'm looking for.\" \"That?\" Tom Cruise in Bruce Surtees' Risky Business Owen Roizman's Electric Horseman tous Inchon , is best unseen for other rea- huffed Surtees. \"That's murky junk.\" So Surtees was out and Haskell Wexler, BRUCE SURTEES. He is the son of sons. Sam Fuller's suppressed White whose first feature was the appropriately one of Hollywood's great cinematog- named The Savage Eye, won an Oscar on raphers ; but on his first film , Don Dog has more detailed and interesting Nichols's Who's Afraid ofVirginia Woolf? Siegel's The Beguiled, Clint Eastwood Since then , Wexler has worked on an gave Bruce Surtees his artistic nick- work in interiors and night shooting than impressive range of Hollywood and in- name: the Prince of Darkness. One look dependent features, political documen- at The Beguiled explains the name: It is a on its sunlit exteriors but is a film unusu- taries, and commercials; his one feature beautifully realized mood piece swathed film as director was the ambitious cin- in sepia tones and an astutely judged ally dependent upon its imagery for its ema-verite Medium Cool (1969). The graininess. THe Great Northfield, Minne- nervous, chiaroscuro effects of Virginia sota Raid carried the look of a muted , artistic effect. Last year's Risky Business, Woolf soon gave way to impeccably slick desaturated, muddy West even further. color craftsmanship on Norman Jewi- With Blume In Love, Surtees must have co-photographed with Reynaldo Villalo- son's In the Heat of the Night and The blinked like a mole emerging into the Thomas Crown Affair. light; its crisp, sunny modernism makes bos, is the last word in Eighties chic and it still the best-looking of all of Paul In the mid-Seventies Wexler shot all Mazursky's films. Surtees proved en- atypically slick for Surtees. Disconcert- or parts of such major photographic ac- tirely responsive to Bob Fosse's semi- complishments as American Graffiti (re- doc, B&W demands on Lenny but was ingly erratic, Surtees has nevertheless placed original cinematographer), The debatably obscurantist on Arthur Penn's Conversation and One Flew Over the Night Moves. proved he can do just about anything- Cuckoo's Nest (departed after differ- ences with the directors), and Days of As house cinematographer for Clint when he feels like emerging from his Heaven (completed the work of Nestor favorite black hole. BRUCE SURTEES (b. 1937) 1971 The Be- guil ed (Don Siege l) Play Misty for Me (Clint Eas twood ) Dirty Harry (Don Siegel ) 1972 The Great No rthfi e ld , Minn eso ta Raid (Philip Kauf- man ) Co nqu es t of th e Plane t of th e Apes (J. Lee Th o mp so n) Joe Kidd (j ohn S turge s) 1973 Blume in Love (Paul Mazursky) High Plains Drifte r (C lint Eas twood ) T he Outfit (j ohn Fl ynn ) 1974 Le nn y (Bob Fosse) 1975 Night Moves (Arthur Pe nn) 1976 Leadbell y (Gordon P a rks) The Outl aw J osey Wa le s (C lint Eastwood ) The Shooti st (j ohn Way ne) Sparkl e (Sam O 'Steen ) 1977 The Turning Point (Her- 38

Almendros). In the 15 years after Tho- GORDON WILLIS. His admirers ar- Mel Bourne's for Zelig , and Dean Ta- mas Crown, Wexler collaborated from gue that no one so talented could have voularis's for The Godfather Part II. His first to last on Hollywood films only with been ignored by the Oscar committee obscurantist tendencies may have lewison's former editor, Hal Ashby: for so long. His detractors see him as an reached the point ofdiminishing returns Boundfor Glory and Coming Home were East Coast Bruce Sunees without Sur- on Comes a Horseman, but he also pho- two spectacular examples of Wexler's tees's dramatic flair; \"He wants to tographed Roben Benton's lovely and gritty romanticism. Last year he teamed achieve Rembrandt effects with a ten- delicately muted Western Bad Company. with Blake Edwards on The Man Who watt bulb,\" said one critic. At its most He may never win an Oscar (or even a Loved Women, a film of such disturbing extreme, Willis's style does begin with a nomination), but few will deny Willis's ugliness that Wexler-the most widely screen of total darkness that allows light place as one of the rnost influential styl- known and honored oftoday's U.S. cin- in only grudgingly. His detractors will ists of recent years. ematographers-seemed perversely to often point to his one credit as a director, GORDON WILLIS (b. 193 1) 1969 End of be demonstrating he had forgotten more Windows , as evidence of what Willis will about his art than anyone else could do if left to his own devices-it should the Road (Aram Avakian) 1970 Loving (Irvin hope to learn. have been called Shutters. HASKELL WEXLER (b. 1926) 1960 The Nevertheless, to quote Andrew Sarris Linda Manz in Haskell Wexler's Days of Heaven Savage Eye (Ben Maddow , Sidney Meyers, Jo- on George Cukor, Willis's filmography is Virginia Woolf (d.p. Wexler). seph Strick) 1961 The Hoodlum Priest (Irvin his most eloquent defense, and films Kershner) Angel Baby (Paul Wendkos) 1963 A such as All The President's Men and A Kershner) The Landlord (Hal Ashbv) The Peo- Face in the Rain (Irvin Kershner) America, Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy and the ple Next Door (David Greene) 197i'Little Mur- America (Elia Kazan) 1964 The Bes t Man musical numbers in PenniesfromHeaven ders (Alan Arkin) Klute (Alan J. Pakula) 1972 (Franklin J. Schaffner) 1965 The Loved One ; serve as conclusive testimony that his The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola) Bad also co-prod (Tony Richardson) The Bus; also work can on occasion be as bright and Company (Robert Benton) Up the Sandbox (Ir- prod , scr (Haskell Wexler) 1966 Who's Afraid of clean as that of Kovacs and Roizman. vin Kershner) 1973 The Paper Chase (James Virginia Woolf? (Mike Nichols) 1967 In the Heat Rarely has the problem of pervasive low- Bridges) 1974 The Parallax View (Alan J . Pakula of the Night (Norman Jewi so n) 1968 The Tho- overhead lighting been mastered so ef- The Godfather, Part II (Francis Ford Cappola) mas Crown Affair (Norman Jewison) 1969 \\'vle- fectively as with the fluorescent menace 1975 The Drowning Pool (Stuart Rosenberg) dium Cool; also co-prod , scr (Haskell Wexler) of President's Men. And in Loving, The 1976 All the President's Men (Alan J . Pakula) 1970 Gimme Shelter; co-phot (David and Albert Landlord, Klute, Up the Sandbox, the 1977 Annie Hall (Woody Allen) September 30, MayslesJ 1971 Brazil: A Report on Torture ; also Godfather films, Annie Hall, Manhattan, co-prod (Saul Landau, Haskell Wexler) Inter- and Broadway Danny Rose, Willis 1955 (J ames Bridges) 1978 Interiors (Woody Al- view with President Allende; also co-prod (Saul proved himself the post-romantic poet Landau , Haskell Wexler) 1972 The Trial of the of the New York look. Ien) Comes a Horseman (Alan J. Pakula) 1979 Catonsville Nine (Gordon Da vidson) 1973 Manhattan (Woody Allen) 1980 Stardust Memo- American Graffiti (George Lucas) 1974 Intro- It should be pointed out that many ries (Woody Allen) 1981 Pennies from Heaven duction to the Enemy; also co-prod, co-cr (Chris- modern pictures are not just photo- (Herbert Ross) 1982 A Midsummer Night's Sex tine Burrilli, Jane Fonda, Tom Hayden , Haskell graphed but intricately \"designed,\" and Comedy (Woody Allen) 1983 Zelig (Woody Al- Wexler, Bill Yahraus) 1975 One Flew Over the Willis has proved time and again that he Ien) 1984 Broadway Dann y Rose(Woody Allen). Cuckoo's Nest; co-phot (Milos Forman) 1976 is remarkably capable of adapting him- As director: 1980 Windows. Underground; also co-prod, co-scr (Emile de An- self to overall \"designs\" as different as tonio, Mary Lamso n, Haskell Wexler) 1976 Ken Adam's for Pennies from Heaven, • Bound for Glory (Hal Ashby) 1978 Coming Home (Hal Ashby) Days of Hcaven (Terrence VILMOS ZSIGMOND may be the Malick) 1980 No Nukes (Julian Schlossberg, Danny Goldberg, Anthony Potenza) 1981 most in-demand of current Hollywood Second Hand HeartS (Hal Ashby) 1982 Loo kin ' to Get Out (Hal Ashby) Richard Pryor Live on cinematographers. His success came the Sunset Strip (Joe Layton) 1983 The Man Who Loved Women (Blake Edwards). early and impressively. After the unjust- ly neglected New Look Western The Hired Hand, Zsigmond lent his soft, im- 39

Up and Down Three cinematographers have repeat- edly shown that they are capable of su- pe~ior work, but their careers are simply too littered with questionable credits to quite rank them with the others at this point. In the mid-1970s, BILL BUTLER seemed like a new master due to The Conversation, Jaws, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and Alex and the Gypsy. Since then he has trailed off on largely lackluster projects, especially Alan Carr's Grease and Can't Stop the Music, which were as vulgar visually as they were otherwise. ANDREW LASZLO showed early promise on the period evocation of The Diane Keaton and Woody Allen in Gordon Willis' Annie Hall Night They Raided Minsky's, then went mostly unnoticed until producing that pressionistic palette to McCabe and Mrs. sterslVampire Men of the Lost Planet (AI Adam- astounding cinematic action painting son) 1971 The Ski Bum (Bruce Clark) Red Sky The Warriors. Another collaboration Mbriilnlegrin, gDtheeliivrerreaspneccet,ivaenndatuSrcaal rseecttrionwg~ at Morning (James Goldstone) McCabe and Mrs'. with Walter Hill, Streets ofFire, is forth- Miller (Robert Altman) The Hired Hand (Peter coming. to poetic life and making him the darling Fonda) 1972 Images (Robert Altman) Deliver- of young critics and filmmakers. A mas- ance (John Boorman) 1973 The Long Goodbye PHILIP LATHROP seemed like an terpiece on every level, The Long Good- (Robert Altman) Scarecrow (Jerry Schatzberg) instant frontrunner after Point Blank, bye represents the apotheosis of both Cinderella Liberty (Mark Rydell) 1974 The They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, and Altman's and Zsigmond's styles; the Sugarland Express (Steven Spielberg) The Girl Wild Rovers but earned high marks ever-moving camera and constantly from Petrovka (Robert Ellis Miller) 1975 Sweet thereafter only on the visually contrast- zooming lens served as a profound visual Revenge (Jerry Schatzberg) Obsession (Brian ing Walter Hill pictures Hard Times and metaphor not only for the whodunit plot The Driver, the former being as vivid and but for the sense of dislocation and im- De Palma) 1977 Close Encounters of the Third planar as the latter is dark and unedged. permanence endemic to L.A. The Sug- Kind ; co-phot (Steven Spielberg) 1978 The Lathrop'S work on All Night Long bore a arland Express (1974) owns a place in the Last 'vValtz; co-phot (1\\lartin Scorsese) The Deer pleasingly pastel coloration, but his good cinematography record books by virtue Hunter (1\\lichael Cimino) 1979 Winter Kills work still hasn't proclaimed itself over of its featuring the first extensive use of (William Richert) The Rose (Mark Rydell) 1980 the routine stuff. Heaven 's Gate (Michael Cimino) 1981 Blow Out (Brian De Palma) 1982 Jinxed (Don Siegel) The Border (Tony Richardson) 1983 Table for Five (Robert Lieberman) 1984 The River (Mark Rydell). the Steadicam. A surprising amount of Zsigmond's work from the very beginning has been in the wide-screen format. This has served him well of late, as he proved himself the ideal contributor of both size and strong visual texture to Close En- counters of the Third Kind and The Deer Hunter, not to mention Heaven's Gate. His rapid progression from iconoclastic impressionist to bold master saw him become more readily accepted into the Hollywood fraternity than any of the other camera mavericks. In view of his high stature and deep influence within the Hollywood community, Zsigmond represents the healthiest of cinematic l radicals. Stylistically, he subverts from '~ within. VILMOS ZSIGMOND (b. 1930) 1963 The Foggy morning in The Big Chill, shot by John Bailey. Sadist (James Landis) 1964 The Time Travelers (lb Melchior) Rat Fink (James Landis) 1967 Mondo Mod; co-phot (James Landis) 1968 The Name of the Game Is Kill (Gunnar Hellstrom) 1969 The Monitors (Jack Shea) Five Bloody Graves (AI Adamson) Picasso Summer (Serge Bourguignon) 1970 Horror of the Bloody Mon- 40

Camera Comers The Jury's Still Out one still couldn't say it was outstand- in gly photographed. The Anderson Tapes, Minnie and Moskowitz, and Next Of the many new cinematographers BOBBY BYRNE showed real talent Stop, Greenwich Village are nice jobs; to have emerged in the last few yea rs, for color on Blue Collar and Chilly Scenes Charly, Death Wish, and An Unmarried several have displayed unmistakable tal- ofWinter, but he hasn 't been getting the Woman were not so hot. ent, but their credits are too few to yet important assignments that might estab- CHARLES ROSHER, JR.looked like rank them decisively. lish him more decisively. a worthy successor to his great father JOHN BAILEY has proved himself a REYNALDO VILLALOBOS collabo- after 3 Women, but perhaps most of the reliable craftsman on virtually every out- rated successfully with James Bridges on credit must go to Altman, since little ing so far, and his work with director The China Syndrome and Urban Cowboy, Rosher has done since has remotely Paul Schrader and visual consultant Fer- did lackluster work on 9 to 5, then compared with it. dinando Scarfiotti on American Gigolo shared the honors with Bruce Surtees on DONALD THORIN made a strong and Cat People has been even better Risky Business . mark with Michael Mann with the dark, than that. Ordinary People and The Big ANDRZEJ BARTKOWIAK took the mean, wet, and wild look of Thief, a Chill were less showy but very sophisti- dark look to new depths of arty affected- sensational debut that promises more. cated jobs, and Honky Tonk Freeway ness with Sidney Lumet on Prince ofthe stands as his only underachievement. City and The Verdict, and Terms of En- There is little doubt that Bailey will dearment is little more than crafts- shortly earn his place at the top. manlike. We'll see. RALF D. BODE hasn't yet shown a ARTHUR ORNITZ represents a cu- FILM consistent style, but his work on Coal rious case. Some love his rough, \"sponta- HISTORY Miner's Daughter and especially Dressed neous ,\" New York street style, and per- to Kill is too good to ignore. haps Serpico is a good case in point; its STEPHEN H. BURUM has become a urgent , quick-set-up look perfectly name to reckon with by virtue of his two served the artistic aims of the film, but Coppola films, The Outsiders and the Film Before Griffith visually remarkable Rumble Fish; his work on Death Valley, The Escape Artist, Edited by John L. Fell I and Something Wicked This Way Comes A new and exciting reconstruc- was almost equally attractive. tion of the production, distribu- DEAN CUNDEY rose into the major tion and exhibition circumstances leagues with John Carpenter from Hal- that characterized popular loween , The Fog, Escapefrom New York, motion pictures in their earliest years. The studies in this state- and The Thing, but it remains to be seen of-the-art anthology encourage what he can do on his own. rethinking of many assumptions and claims made by earlier ALLEN DAVIAU shot Steven historians, sometimes asking Spielberg's 1969 featurette Amblin' , radical readjustments of our then disappeared until Spielberg called previous perceptions. $24.50 on him for E.T. and , subsequently, Twi- hardcover, $10.95 paperback light Zone: The Movie, on which he And two new paperbacks- lensed Spielberg's and George Miller's A Technological episodes. History of Motion Pictures and TAK FUJIMOTO has been a camera- man to watch ever since his early New World credits: Caged Heat , Death Race Television 2000, and Cannonball. He finally at- tracted major attention on Jonathan Edited by Demme's Melvin and Howard. Raymond Fielding JOHN HORA did uncommonly fine $10.95 low-budget photography on Joe Dante's The Inquisition The Howling, and his Dante episode in in Hollywood Twilight Zone was certainly the most in- teresting of the four photographically. Politics in the Film Community, 1930-1960 FRED SCHULER has gained some- thing of a reputation , especially in New by Larry Ceplair 1 York, for his fine work on Gloria, Arthur, and Steven Englund Soup for One, and The King of Comedy, $9 .95 '\\ but the fact remains ihe shot Stir Crazy. At bookstores RIC WAITE infused The Long Riders with plenty of texture and also did Tex University of and The Border, but his handful of Ric Waite shot the spiffy Footloose. California Press credits thus far is equally balanced be- tween pros and cons. Berkeley 94720 41



• trich contains so many notations for the Thirties and Forties, exemplified in the retoucher that the original and the revi- work of now-recognized photographers by Arlene Zeichner sion seem like two totally different George Hurrell and Clarence Bull, re- works. The photographers of the great stars lied on tricks familiar to society portrait- played a leading role in young Holly- This romanticized studio style of the ists throughout the ages: the play oflight wood's myth-making machine. Their and shadow, the use of poses and simple images of performers as icons in arrested props that implied station in life. Vamps motion dominated printed pop culture smoked cigarettes and exposed their from fanzines to news magazines. No shoulders; simple flowers sufficed for one doubted that their work was key. the pure at heart. Leading men also During their 1920's strike, the studios' smoked and rarely smiled ; perhaps wary wheels ground to a halt. Then the war of losing distinction , they seemed capa- came and with it, change. By the Fifties ble only of turning the corners of their the work had lost its power, the photog- mouths. The style's immediate prede- raphers their prestige. Since then their cessors can be found in glossy magazine mundane images, shipped by publicists to magazines across the world , have Steve Shapiro recalls classic still vaLues/or Risky Business. ended mostly in the local trash bin. \"Once upon a time any major studio would turn out half a dozen pictures a month,\" recalls publicist John Springer, whose mammoth stills collection is a part of the Bettmann Archive, \"and any movie with a recognizable star would have hundreds of photos that came out of it.\" In this fabled time, the studios' heyday of the Thi rties and Forties, ide- alized portraits of the stars could entice the film-going public to see their favor- ite personality. And, after the reels stopped turning, these fairy-tale images that bear only symbolic resemblance to real life became the material remnants of film fans' shared dreams. The photographers who took these glamorous photos were anonymous- but well-respected-craftsmen who la- bored long hours on the set and in the \"portrait gallery, \" movieland's photogra- phy studio. The portrait gallery photog- raphers, working with slow and cumber- some 8xlO and 4x5 cameras capable of producing negatives with exquisite de- tail, took as many as 65 celebrity por- traits each day. Some stars were reluc- tant subjects, but their contracts stipulated at least two days of posing per film . After the images were developed , retouchers worked the negatives, re- moving the small town or tenament blemishes the way the publicity depart- ments erased names that had survived persecution, poverty, exile, and steer- age. One original print of Marlene Die- 43

photographs of the Twenties, especially sential to prop, wardrobe, makeup , and fewer films, phased out the contract those in Vanity Fair. lighting continuity. players, and slashed the publicity de- partment's once-mammoth budget. One of Vanity Fair's most popular The work of the unit photographers Lacking vested interest in the overall photographers was Edward Steichen , exposes still photography's great weak- careers of individual actors , studio atten- whose numerous shots of the stars- ness: it isn't a strong narrative form. tion to players now lasted only as long as Garbo, Colbert, Adolphe Menjou , Glo- Even done well, it's hard to understand the film remained in theatrical release. ria Swanson-relied on theatrical light- the context and impossible to find the As a result, the portrait galleries slowly ing and strong graphic design. MGM's subtext. That's why \"clinch\" shots of disassembled . leading Thirties studio portraitist two stars romantically entwined , in pro- George Hurrell took Steichen one file , from the waist up are a staple. And , Technical changes abounded, too: slightly garish step further, using dra- for the most part, the pictures are as large format cameras were gradually re- matic lighting and stagey poses to make compositionally inventive as a sermon: placed by 2'/4 cameras and 35mm im- stars like Joan Crawford and Norma The stars, posed like characters in an ports from peacetime Germany. The Shearer seem like creatures from fan- amateurish wax museum tableau , are al- new cameras were faster, cheaper, and tasy's promised land. Hurrell's contem- most always placed in the very front of lighter and enabled a photographer to porary at Paramount, Eugene Robert the picture plane, guarding against our carry several black and white and color Richee , created such gauzy pictures of entry into their space. cameras. Yet they produced smaller neg- Marlene Dietrich they seemed impres- atives , providing less detail and much sionistic. And this work certainly owed a The unit and portrait pictures were less surface area to rework. Retouching debt to another Vanity Fair photogra- gathered by the studio publicity depart- the negative became an almost lost and pher, Baron De Meyer, whose shots of extremely expensive art form. The Charlie Chaplin and other Hollywood A gauzy Dietrich in Dishonored. usual approach involved airbrushing a luminaries graced the magazine in the ment and placed in contact books, orga- print and then rephotographing it, to the Twenties. nized both by stars and by film. They detriment of print quality. constituted the base of each film's print- Then came a shift: the magazine pho- oriented ad campaign . Key sets-as • tographers of the Thirties began to es- many as 500 photographs of \" key\" chew theatricality for naturalism. Cecil scenes and stars-were drawn from The incursions of (sur)real TV and Beaton shot candid star portraits against them and sent to hundreds of newspa- magazine photo-spread realism forced a backlots, lighting beams, and half-con- per and magazine editors. Special sets change in unit photography's style: the structed sets. Imogen Cunningham shot were compiled for fan clubs and maga- adoption of a photojournalism aesthetic. Joan Blondell and James Cagney in nat- zines; by 1948, when it donated its col- (Though Life and Look began in the late ural light. Cinematographers followed lection to The Museum of Modern Art, Thirties, the photojournalistic style this trend only in the late Forties, after PhotopLay had assembled more than a didn't have much effect on the movies publications like Vanity Fair, aimed at million stills. The photos also provided until the early Fifties, when the two the educated elite, had reworked mass the visuals for lobby cards, posters, ads , mega-photo magazines regularly sent and publicity manuals sent to film ex- their own photographers to the sets.) taste. hibitors. The photojournalism aesthetic was al- To the modern eye, Hurrell's and Ri- most directly opposite that of the movies But the studio system crumbled in and fashion magazines, relying upon chee's work may appear puffed up, too the postwar era. The studios released brutal realism and reader confrontation. obviously retouched and unrealistic. It's Many, like Robert Capa, first achieved no surprise that their work is similar to fame for their combat work. All wanted that of fashion photographers, albeit ear- to communicate the human condition. lier ones-both are dressing up products Social realism wasn 't much Hollywood's for mass consumption. In fact, Richee idea of entertainment. could change style at a moment's notice to suit the star/product. His superbly The photojournalists infiltrated the graphic shots of Louise Brooks allow Hollywood film, and unlike studio still only her head , hands , and a hip-length photographers, they exposed the illu- strand of white pearls to emerge from a sion and artifice of movies. Early work black background; a later shot of Carole by Capa for Notorious (1946) was one of Lombard captures her features reflected the first to depict an actress (Ingrid in three mirrors. Bergman) at work on the set. Later, W. Eugene Smith, one of America's best • photojournalists (he shot Thalidomide babies for Life in the Sixties), was as- Though shot for a particular film 's signed by Life to cover the production of Limelight (1952) and presented the publicity campaign, the portraits often once-loved clown Charlie Chaplin as a had little to do with the film 's story. serious director. Documenting the film itself fell to the unit photographers. The units stayed on Life portraitists were very much the set and were considered important welcomed by publicity-hungry stars. players on the production team; direc- Philippe Halsman, who shot 101 covers tors held up shooting until they could for Life, was perhaps its most eminent record each scene. Their shots were portraitist. His style harkens back to the used not only for publicity-capturing a great studio portraitists, though his vis- film's major scenes and the stars in char- acter-but also as records of detail es- 44

ual vocabulary was more limited. He back from the close-up to revea l other them could be blamed for the barely relied too heavily on bust and head shots people, sets, backgrounds , and the par- workmanlike execution of their duties: differentiated only by a few stiff expres- ticular period in which the photographs directors rarely waited for them to record sions etched onto a star's face , resulting were taken. By doing this we see the a scene, actors often refused to pose. in shots that mainly documented the stars dethroned. We don't want them (For example, Stanley Kubrick won't al- well-honed facade. Halsman always adorning our walls because they no low units on his set.) In an era that ex- showed a woman to her best advantage; longer promise us lives we could only tolled personal creativity, units shot im- his shots of Monroe, Taylor, and Hep- wish for. It's like they've become card- ages controlled by others-the lighting burn are sexy and yet somehow whole- board cutouts whose inner presence is man , actors, the director. They became some. He also created a few humorous absent. Something is missing. \" And mere recorders shooting over the shoul- references-like Hitchcock with birds something is amiss: Still Life's shots lack ders of the cinematographers. on his hands and head. Life's other favor- the old-world gleam of the glamour por- ite portraitist, Alfred Eisenstaedt, was traits ; they replace savoir faire with un- The attitude offilm producers toward more of a realist than a craftsman. His certainty. The shots seem as stand-ins unit photographers over the past fifteen shots of the stars were awkwardly com- for Hollywood itself-the debunked years has remained \" Let's get a monkey posed but relaxed. Yet his work, too, myth-making machine trying to grapple in here with an Instamatic, \" according to remains remarkably incapable of divulg- with a too rapidly changing world . still photographer Bruce McBroom. ing character. McBroom has found some sympathetic Many of the shots in Still Life were colleagues, including Steven Spielberg, Influenced both by Life and by the shot by freelance photographers known who chose him to photograph the E.T. \"informal\" glimpses of Mary Pickford, as \"specials\" who met the increasing and Poltergeist still images. Yet, despite Clara Bow, and other luminaries in fan need for images by the news magazines his considerable success , McBroom magazines of the Twenties, the studios that did not have in-house photogra- readily acknowledges the units' plight: Scene from Still Lives. Mitch Epstein deglamorizes Annie's Rockettes. pushed a Hollywood version of photo- phers. Hired by the studios, the first they are outcasts on the set and the arms journalism. Candid was in: the stars special was Bob Willoughby, whom of the studio publicity department. were shown at home, on holiday, and in Warner Brothers commissioned to cover awkwardly posed tableaux. They be- Judy Garland on A Star is Born. His The unit photographers union , IATSE, came real people, sort of. photos of the shoot were included in hasn't encouraged the transfusion of seven periodicals , including The New fresh, talented blood into its demoral- • York Times and the now-defunct Col- ized ranks. The units are the lowest lier's. Later, he enjoyed a privilege other rung of this union that includes, in the Hollywood's peculiar postwar reality specials lost: director William Wyler following order, Directors of Photogra- is perhaps best preserved in a book co- would stop shooting for him and then phy, Camera Operators, 1st Assistants, edited by Marvin Heiferman, a re- comment on the photographer's per- 2nd Assistants and, finall y, units . Its cri- spected art photo dealer, and actress- spective. teria for entrance, like those of so many photographer Diane Keaton. Called Still unions in Hollywood , is a treacherous Life (Nick Callaway Editions), it By the Seventies, the once equally maze of Catch-22's that is indifferent to presents telling selections of late Forties powerful studio publicity and produc- the quality of an applicant's work: you to mid-Sixties tableaux and stars-at- tion departments were reevaluated. Pro- can't get into the union unless you are home shots. In these pictures, the ro- duction got the power and prestige; working on a union film, and yo u can't mantic glamour of the earlier stills is publicity became a cross between a get on a union film unless allllnits on the gone, and the gap between filmic arti- travel agency and an escort service. Unit roster are at work. As one of many units fice and real life, however unintention- photographers suffered in this shuffle, said (off the record), \"It's corrupt-Iotta ally, is exposed. As Keaton points out in featherbedding. \" In fact, there weren't her introductory essay, \"The photos pull becoming regarded as hacks. Few of 45

Holly Bower expands the exotic for Easy Money's comic tone. Fire. A very few savvy units have persisted any women in the union until New York Polaroids . Moreover, portraits have be- unit Holly Bower fought a two-year dis- come the realm of other photographers to produce eye-catching photos that crimination suit against Local 644, the specially brought to the set. Though skillfully exploit the multiple markets New York branch of IAT SE, finall y win- paid a union-negotiated minimum of for their work. Bruce McBroom ex- ning in 1974. Her suit made entrance a $250 per day for the duration of produc- plains, \"I look for photos that could be bit more fair-handed, opening the doors tion , the units became-and still are- ads, for photojournalist photos, special- to other women and men without con- the members of the crew with the least ized behind-the-scenes stuff that could nections. to do, and hence the least prestige. be used by American Cinematographer They have been given ont: relatively and special effects magazines. All in all, Though the union's ranks expanded, new task: shooting photographs that are I shoot for maybe a dozen purposes, but the amount of work decreased with the featured in the film itself. Holly Bower's my main responsibility remains captur- Seventies' fall· off in film production. shots were featured as Faye Dunaway's ing major scenes.\" To do so requires a Despite union regulations, units found work in Three Days of the Condor, and staggering amount of film , on the aver- their work usurped by others: Crew Bruce McBroom did Nick Nolte's age 200 rolls of color and 300 of black members from wardrobe to lighting warfront photojournalism for Under and white. have been taking continuity shots with These detailed freeze-frame syn- opses are sent to the studio publicity department. After filming is completed , the photos are organized on contact sheets and edited down for out-of-focus, uncomplimentary, or outtake shots. Since directors and stars have photo ap- proval written into their contracts, the edited set is also sent to them. By the time the executive and creative people have had their say only a mere 100 or so shots remain from the original 18,000. A further honing effort ensues to make the key set. Modern key sets contain be- tween six and 15 photos carefully chosen to depict the major scenes in the film and its leading characters. Since most special effects scenes (created by in- camera or computer technical wizardry) never exist in real space, PR photos of these sequences must be taken directly from the film frame. Doing so is difficult and time-consuming: the 35mm motion picture frame is half the size of the still Bruce McBroom's stilLfrom Under Fire. Shapiro used props and composition for Lovesick and Unfaithfully Yours. 46

photo frame, and its slower shutter speed engenders still photos that often are out of focus and need extensive re- touching. The completed key sets are sent to thousands of print outlets. Many editors thus complain about the quality of the stills issued by the studios: mechanically reproduced, the prints lack tonal subtlety and detail, not to mention decent composition. These ed- itors may not realize how much more beautiful and evocative stills from a half century ago are than those of today. Flip through the 4 million photos in the Film Stills Archive of The Museum of Mod- ern Art and you will see sparkling shots from De Mille movies of 1919 next to muddy, boring stills from the latest Para- mount picture. The stinginess of today's studios with photos, the lifeless quality of the unit work released, and the fre- quent refusal to grant magazines exclu- sive use of a photo have let the work of the special photographers overtake the work of the units . • Most of these photographers are rep- resented by photo agencies , chief among them Gamma Liaison and Sygma. Photo agency representatives market stills to magazines and maintain ongoing relationships with editors and film publicists. With Look gone and Life a monthly, the strongest national mar- kets for photos have become Time, Newsweek, and People. The reps and editors may begin photo-session plan- ning while a given film is in pre-produc- tion. Jim Watters, Entertainment Editor ofLife, often reads the script to pick key scenes for coverage and then, depend- ing upon the logistics of the shoot, either sends a Life photog or decides to carry the work of a special. At rates ranging from $500 to $1,500 a day, specials cover the film one at a time . They try to get a fresh angle on a film, to see something that the unit, tightly bound to the mundane realities of daily shooting, might miss or can't get. Un- like units, specials are not tied to scene duplications and instead try to capture the film's essence. Leading special pho- tographer Steve Schapiro, creator of the romantic shots publicizing Robert Alt- man's McCabe and Mrs. Miller, as well as the chiaroscuro-laden, Mafioso-style shots in The Godfather, says, \"The best approach is to figure out a particular style to suit your film .\" Dan Weaks, special photographer for Reds and Yentl , creates \"constructed realities,\" built-up images from several different negatives modi- fied by darkroom techniques that are 47

meant to be \"pictures of the whole film tration. His shots of Robert Altman and ing eye. Strick illuminates what he calls rather than a particular scene. \" The Big ChiLL cast owe more than a little the \"circularity, the organic connection debt to his mentor, Diane Arbus. James between life as it's lived in a company Most work by special photographers Hamilton, too, tries to be persuas ive, to town and the tremendous influence the is straightforwardly commercial: the convey images of the stars that make us film community has had , literally chang- tried and true needs of rack magazine want to get to know them, to make us ing the way people live and act.\" Gallery editors, their most avid clients, deter- wonder about the private person behind photographer Cindy Sherman has fo- mine style. And as Schapiro explains, the public facade. Annie Leibovitz, like cused on how Hollywood stills create the \"job is to get as many covers as Hamilton and Selkirk, considers herself and enforce cultural stereotypes-espe- possible.\" His clever shots have graced a photojournalist: she shoots on location cially the representation of women. Her the covers of more than 50 People maga- and aims for the unexpected revelation 75 Untitled Film Stills features her as the zines. Yet the style promoted by PeopLe of private personalities. Leibovitz works leading actress in scenes seemingly bor- and its peers-a pseudo-snapshot, a closely with her subjects, posing them rowed from Fifties' and Sixties' movie falsely intimate view of a star's life with symbolic props, strange lighting ef- sets. Like fakes by master forgers, these mixed in with a few imitation Avedon fects, and weird angles to create a photos reveal both the artistry and the glamour shots-does not lend itself to graphic photograph that extends rather pictorial cliches of the originals. compelling image-making. In fact , its than dispels myths , much like the old patently false objective stance and its glamour photographers. Perhaps the • too often second-rate composition com- most touching tribute to the old portrai- bine the worst of the photojournalism Too few photo-artists have been per- and portraiture traditions. \"In 20 years, this wiLL be glamour.\" suaded of the possibilities inherent in an examination of Hollywood images. Unit With the rise in readers' educational turestyle occurred when George Hurrell and special photography is the principal and visual sophistication, the work of was asked to be the special for Mommie visual record of movie making, and today's specials is more intriguing and Dearest. His session with Faye Duna- much of this heritage has been lost: stu- reminiscent of the journalistic style cre- way as Crawford was captured by Terry dios have destroyed or thrown away ated by the great Magnum photogra- O'Neill (Dunaway's husba nd) for Life. thousands of stills. When the right stu- phers. These modern reporters-Mary dio executive is in the right mood, ar- Ellen Mark, James Hamilton, Davi d For most specials, movie projects sup- chives can benefit: Fox and Columbia Strick- produce images of stars that port their poor avocation, photojournal- stills have gone to UCLA. MGI'\"I/UA photos hint at the private person behind the ism. Marv Ellen Mark covered One Flew to the Motion Picture Academy, public facade, that create the illusion of Over the Cuckoo's Nest. After principal Warners stills to the University of Wis- closeness. photography was over, she stayed on at consin, and stills of all studios to The the Oregon mental hospital and cap- Museum of Modern Art. Other stills The work of today's specials for tured the real patients, with compassion have found their way into the collections readers with slightly more sophisticated and attention to their true condition. A of such resourceful scavengers as Marc visual expectations appears in maga- few years later, she published a project Ricci of New York's Memory Shop, zines like Vanity Fair, Vogue, and Rolling about pro stitutes in India , called Paula Klaw of Movie Star News, and Stone. It's less reminiscent of fashion FalkLand Road. Maureen Lambray, au- archivist-entrepreneur John Kobal. photography and more akin to the jour- thor of a book of portraits of America's nalistic style of Cartier Bresson, who great directors , also belongs to this Kobal , who has published several col- aimed to capture the \"decisive mo- group. lections of glamour photography and as- ment\" in quotidian situations. Modern sisted l\\IOMA stills archivist Mary Corliss reporters have been freed from narrating In hi s absurdist photographs, David in devising a star-portrait exhibition now the photostory and can provide viewers Strick for the past seven years has been on tour in Paris, is among those who with glimpses into-not full-blown tales documenting Hollywood with a know- lament the passing of the studio glamour of-the film industry that pretend to be portraits. They believe no modern pho- neither idealized portraits nor amateur tographer has captured the public's snapshots. This work cannot aim to be imagination. Mike Berman, head of as objective as true photojournalism , stills at Paramount, disagrees: \"If they since it must sell glamour industry prod- shot today's stars like they did Gary ucts-stars, directors, and fashions- Cooper, everybody would laugh. It's all yet it does have an element relatively in their minds. In 20 years they' ll say new to the work of movie-industry pho- John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever tography: irony, a sense of humor about was glamorous. \" Hollywood fantasies. Mary Ellen Mark covered Tootsie ; her most popular shot By picturing the stars as we want to depicted the wardrobe man looking up see them, still photographers have pro- Dustin Hoffman's skirt. In a shot for Day vided us with a quick study of each era's ofthe Locust, she caught workmen carry- aggrandized self-image, what Marvin ing a bed from one love scene to another Heiferman eloquently describes in Still -with the unrobed stars still in it. Life as a \" lopsided history of American life, defined by images of trysts , meet- Portraiture by specials often provides ings, ceremonies, fears, fights, love, planned improvisation within a limited kisses and death. \" After nearly seven range. Neil Selkirk catches his subjects decades, unit and special photographers in arrested motion, somehow achieving continue to create an invaluable record fuzzy photos with psychological pene- of Hollywood make-believe. ~ 48