VOLUME 18 - NUMBER 03 MAY-JUNE 1982

Since the future 0 ..........,..,...\"\". the present, the egg could be pure gold. , twice the price of any This is not to pick on Universal, which, with On Golden Pond, Jim Hen- Iventure for 1982, but is son's The Dark Crystal, John Carpen- exhibitor advance guaran- ter's The Thing , and Steven Spielberg's Wi tl1 lics, gam bIers, fac~d by today by a ma- E.T. : The Extraterrestrial, looks to have _ ,p the hot hand in 1982. It is to say 'this, s~ ing organizations that jot , J'anen proffered , however: Hollywood, like any good alow them to swear off anonymously can be mitigated by a mixture of pur- drunk , is more afraid of what will hap- in public, how is it that Hollywood chasing a completed picture (negative pen if it doesn' ~ spree than if it ~oe.% hasn't spontaneously generated a pickup), shared financing, and render- Post~Heaven s Gate , production de- chapter of Runaway Budgets Anony- ing budgets \" cost·efficient,\" which partments must now publicly wear mous? To listen to the din coming out translates as maintaining a niggardly sackcloth and ashes , while s.imuitane- ·ousJy . spending s~agge'fing sums of of the place, you'd think it was the scowl when an yone asks for more money~beybn o ' t,he impetus of ,the inflationary spinil-to attra~t and keep world headquarters of all the penitents beans, please. . whoe¥erliv.~:notGfiuerGlflch,. 'P,ne ~ But think about that. A negative audiences ' the world over, or so tHe industry believe~ . rhe dilemma to ca~i.lil t4~tt}jn . -\" ~ of 1982 is t~at , p,iekup doesn't mean it's cheap. Nor your garden-variety production exec\\.!- tive appears not simpiy as \" How do I yOll ,~alY ,dr ink, ~t, medicate, or does joint financing. And if a scowl is take The Risk?\" but as \"How do I tidiEr . cl'osely--associate yourself into a coma, all it takes to cure the seventy-takes It and not end up like Steven Bachr':, . (the s.emi-martyred VA executive on' but you better not let that budget get syndrome , how is it for instance Tony Beaven's Gate), exiled to ride herd over the production dabblings of a retail away from ya. Street corners all over Richardson ran amok on The Border? dry-goods chain that's been called the Australian Sears Roebuck. the globe are fillet- with Hollywood This could have been a $5-million pic- There's a fine line between a rup-''''', 'l moguls beati that drum and crying ture-$2 million for Jack Nicholson, away budget and a cinematic mile- stone. Arguably, Heaven's Gate was a out \"B Sisters1 I will not the rest for everything else-but came stab at the latter, and everyone, espe- spend, will not spend a in after two years at $26 million . Did cially Michael Cimino, just got caught dime the industry per pic- the mise en scene that rendered Mexico of$11.3 million according a giantjunkyard call for junk by Gucci? The film was produced by Edgar . Ned Tanen. a clever, tal- Bronfman, Jr. (Seagram's Distilleries), fellow who hliPpens to be presi- but still .... of Universal Pictures, snared a correspondent in London to \",-_.\"\" ---~ talk about budgets. Tanen allowed that The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas ./' 49

when their $36- to $52-million arrow Almost two yea rs ago, Ted James , a nancial sensitivity has been mitigated missed the apple and pierced the brain partner in the San Francisco based somewhat by the conglomerization of of the press. Overnight the rules of the Montgomery Securities brokerage the industry (or by the wholesale swal- game changed. The Gate players must house that is a member of the N. Y. lowing and speculated sale of Fox's as- still be reeling after the jolt of such Stock Exchange, turned out a fifty- sets by oil mogul-turned-film-plunger public failure, when, in fact, the land- page research report, demonstrating Marvin Davis), the perception is now scape was already littered with car- that, contrary to popular myth, the public that the same directors who in casses that died huge, horrible deaths Great Depression did not spur film at- the Seventies bailed out Hollywood because someone up high followed tendance. Worrisome enough, but with the Blockbuster-Cimino, H. L. Mencken's credo- \"You'll never then in a section of terms definitions, Spielberg, William Friedkin, Francis lose a buck underestimating the taste James defined \"Auteur\": \"Arch en- Coppola, Robert Altman, Stanley Ku- of the American Booboisie\" -and emy of both 'Schmoozer' (agent) and brick, Peter Bogdanovich, Martin then didn't have the wherewithal to ' Distrib.' Only goes to their parties Scorsese, etc.-can and have gone stanch a hemorrhaging production. when needs production financing. Re- splat, taking balance sheets, com- panies, and certainly careers with • New York Stock Exchange. them. This adds to the current di- senting their ability to finance his pic- lemma: Lord, I must take the Big So now the game is Talk Cheap. But tures, 'Auteur' takes their money and Risk, but don't let me end up a monk. have you looked at budgets lately? usually makes films which appeal to no one at the box office (called 'art' films Why? The life of producing and For example: Using Variety's figures in the trade). Thereby, the 'Auteur' marketing a film is an even greater nar- as a jumping-off point, out of the blue enables a film company to bypass the cotic than the stuff consumed at the storms Harrison Ford in Ridley Scott's crass commercial aspects of merchan- parties. It's fun. You come from hunger Blade Runner at $25 million; Whore- dising the film to get directly to the and you get rich. You moan it's lonely house at $26 million; Peter Yates' Krull point of movie making; i.e. adding at the top and drive off in your at $24 million; George Lucas' Revenge films to the film company's inventory. Mercedes 380 SL to the house you're of the Jedi, now up to $32.5 million; Known as a 'Director' until 'completion building in the Canyon. Girls or Boys Henson's Dark Crystal at $26 million; of his first successful movie, after are yo urs for the asking. If you're good, Inchon, the as-yet-unreleased film which he quickly becomes an yo u make money. If you're lucky, you venture of Rev. Sun Myung Moon, at 'Auteur.' \" make Truth and it makes money. Your $46 million ; Dino De Laurentiis' pro- friends are stars, and either you made duction of John Milius' Conan the Bar- James' jocular definition of an their careers or they made yours. You barian at $20 million; Disney's auteur says less about the real fight need each other, praise each other, and computer-wars Tron, at $17 million; between the creative community and love each other-unless of course you and, of course, Annie, reportedly now the distributors than it does about the hate each other, because a) the picture at $52 million and climbing. major film companies' fear of Wall became too expensive, or b) you took Street, accentuated post-Heaven's one look at the finished artistic vision This is not to mention other films in Gate. No one in the major studios and ordered Marketing to come up development. To wit: Richard Atten- wants either the banks that extend with a poster featuring a spider and borough's Gandhi ($22 million); a So- credit lines or the Wall St. investment Sales to book the film into 500 subrun viet-British co-production of Anna analysts who influence the price of the houses for a week in January. Pavlova ($28 million); David Lynch's stock to think they are continuing to hand over the keys to the wall safe to Then it's war, the real Star Wars, the Dune ($25 million); Cubby Broccoli's top talent. script George Lucas threw away after 007 Octopussy ($25 million); Super- he became a production mogul himself Directors used to be a bankable and established a studio that out-stu- man III ($35 million); Penthouse pub- gambit. Not anymore. Though this fi- dios the studios in sticking to the tried lisher Robert Guccione's probing look and true. into the affairs of state of Catherine, The Great ($35 million); Evita ($20 mil- \"The creative people have to be re- lion); Amadeus ($25 million); Sergio sponsible not only to their craft, but to Leone's Once Upon a Time in America those people who make it possible for ($22 million); a proposed three-film them to practice their craft,\" Mike rendering of The Foundation Trilogy Medavoy, Orion-Filmways production ($30 million); and domestic-televi- head, recently told The New York sion-foreign-theatrical releases of The Times. But there isn't a director alive Florentines ($45 million), Herman who doesn't believe that when it Wouk's The Winds of War ($25 million), comes to having a cinematic vision and and Marco Polo ($25 million). a finger on the national psyche, the director has it-not the distributor, What's going on here? It's true there whose fees off the top and funny are any number of films that are being charges have made financial break- budgeted at the $12-million average even that much more distant. level-not that $12 million isn't a lot of money. There is also some cutback in • the use oflimos and such to conform to the born-again low-budget ethos. But Out of this, the phoenix rising ap- the entire industry seems caught up in pears to be the producer, or rather the pointing accusatory fingers at each role of the producer, largely absent other over where the money is really gomg. 50

during the past decade's rise and fall of Palma his $6-million Body Double. No matter what the party line is the director. It hasn't happened yet, It would be wrong to conclude that these days about the imposition of cost but it's talked about, even longed for as even this cursory list of director- controls, the film industry still believes if all were Ulysses' children, missing a turned-producers reflects only their that in bad times they've got to bring wandering father who could put the desire to maintain the final cut and the circus to town -and that the circus house in order, a rational Corporate budgetary control they probably still costs money. Looking from afar, be- Ego to rein in the Community Id and have. Very few of the above are assum- yond the pre-production techniques of fend off the distant Financial Super- ing any financial risk (perhaps only De advance sales to foreign theatrical and Ego. \"Until you get some Thalbergs,\" Palma). To some extent, they are sim- video markets, the fight in the past ten Blake Edwards told The Times, \"we are ply working harder in order to collect years over how to spread risk has been not going to realize the full potential of fees sooner. about how best to spend the big money this business. \" Perhaps the biggest plunger of them to attract an audience. Stars or special So one watches the fortunes of pow- all is Francis Coppola, who has risked effects? erful producers and production chiefs Zoetrope's solvency and his own home Like directors, the same stars that like Tanen, Medavoy, Ray Stark, shone in one film created black holes Danny Melnick, Peter Guber, Alan in the next. The special effects in Star Ladd, Jr., David Geffen, Dino De Laurentiis, Saul Zaentz, Lester The film industry wings Wars, which bought an ailing 20th Persky, Frank Yablans, David Be- Century-Fox a piece of Pebble Beach of distribution and ex- and the Aspen ski concession, failed in other imitations. Even the hallowed gelman, Warren Beatty, Tony Bill, the Story Line, which has been exalted as hibition that were splitSalkinds, Charlie Joffe, Alan Carr, Mi- chael Phillips, Sherry Lansing, Char- the unsung critical ingredient, gets stale the second time around. Shoot apart for antitrust rea-toff-Winkler, Zanuck-Brown, Stanley Jaffe and on, and on, and on. Some are The Moon and Making Love aren't do- ing the business that Ordinary People sons by the Roosevelt-packagers, some are executives, many have something of Thalberg in them. Truman Justice and Kramer vs . Kramer did . Have we tired of literate soap operas? But the industry is fundamentally dif- The stakes keep getting higher. ferent. Or is it? I'm no Ben Hecht, Departments in the There are more ways to spend fewer leisure dollars, thus Hollywood feels it they're no Thalbergs. Maybe it was the must spend more to stay in business . Although the production rate was late Forties are beingStrontium-90, or the tract housing. •Yet there is interest in production put back together \"chores,\" as the trades call it, among again in the Eighties. higher in 1981 than in the mid-Seven- talent: ties, only eleven films earned more § As the story goes, after the flop than $20 million in domestic rentals, 1941, George Lucas counseled a twice, once on Apocalypse Now and and production stans were down in the shaken Spielberg to return to the genre again on One From the Heart, each cost- first few months of '82. film, then produced Raiders of the Lost ing about $30 million. Coppola also As it is, the basic math of the indus- Ark for him and the pair wrote their backed Hans Jilrgen Syberberg's Our try is out of whack. U.S. boxoffice in own deal at Paramount. Spielberg had Hitler, the grand re-release of Abel 1981 was static, growing no more than served as executive producer on 1 Gance's Napoleon, and a troubled pro- tickets increased in price (about eight Wanna Hold Your Hand and Used Cars duction of Wim Wenders' Hammett. percent). That's also figuring the aver- for the two USC screenwriters who Perhaps Coppola, like so many driven age ticket price at $2. 90-a useful sta- later wrote 1941. people who make big money, needs to tistical index that doesn't reflect the § Spielberg is co-producer of his up- put it all on Black #36, to live on the reality that most of the business tran- comingE.T..· The Extraterrestial, a $15- edge to combat the inertia of money in spires in major cities where the ticket million comedy about an alien's order to continue working. price is $3.50 to $5. And that's a bar- friendship with a kid. Downplaying \"Most of these guys spend so much gain compared with the past. comedy elements, Universal thought time waiting for people to return their Now the post-war Baby Boomers it should sell to a public expecting phone calls, waiting for the next move have moved into their Thirties and Close Encounters redux. Universal to be made, waiting for this one to have begun procreating at a rate no- moved its release closer to MGM 's Pol- commit, or that one to commit, or the ticeable enough to land Jaclyn Smith tergeist, which Spielberg exec-pro- committee to commit,\" observes one on the cover of Time. While that may duced and reportedly directed after screenwriter. \"It's become a business mean a blip in film viewers a dozen relieving Tobe Hooper. Metro is ner- of waiting. They can't make a movie years down the pike, for now it por- vous about Poltergeist. every year. It's two or three years be- tends a great market segment continu- § Beatty produced Reds, Paul Sch- tween pictures. They have five or six ing to be selective about its use of time rader his Cat People, Alan Pakula his in development and maybe one will and disposable income . Dinner, Sophie's Choice, Norman Jewison his come to fruition . Maybe they're pro- movie, and baby sitter cost $40 mini- Best Friends, Sidney Lumet his Prince ducing because they do care, do want mum. As a producer, do you seek of the City, Richard Pryor his new con- to see the movie made right and give funds for pictures aimed at the Baby cert film, Ralph Bakshi his Fire and young guys a chance. But really, a lot of Boomers, or at the kid-to-25 market- lee, Neil Simon his Only When I Laugh it is make-work. It's just a way of keep- or do you go with your gut and hope to and Max Dugan Returns, and Brian De ing themselves busy.\" get everybody? 51

Albert Finney in Annie. the market. The MPAA just formed a committee to study home video Those business-school graduates in ice. Even The New York Times has prospects for its eleven member the film companies, whom everyone formed NYT Productions and hired a companies. chastises for not being Harry Cohn, are film and TV executive as producer. no dummies. So they don't have flair. The theatrical risks are so big on Do you know what they're doing? And so forth and so on. The point is Annie, for instance, that Columbia Pic- that the industry operations that were tures snuck off to Buffalo last winter Having tried in the Fifties to fight split apart for antitrust reasons by the and asked theater owners for 100 per- TV by offering big-budget spectacles Roosevel t-Truman Justice Depart- cent of the boxoffice over the house and wide-screen modifications-and ments in the late Forties are being put expense. The request is far more com- having lost-the major film companies back together again in the Eighties . plicated than that, but it was a new in the Eighties are moving into the high, and Columbia figured to test the new video technology with a venge- At present, the major film com- waters away from the eyes of the trade ance. First they tried an outright com- panies must cut first-, second-, and press to see if anyone would pay it. Can bination (Fox, Columbia, Paramount, third-run theaters into box-office re- you blame them? and Universal along with Getty Oil) in ceipts amounting to, say, fifty percent a pay cable service called Premiere. of every ticket dollar. But if they can While the theater industry con- But HBO, a Time-Life subsidiary, own the companies that will deliver tinues to build those suburban deca- brought an antitrust suit and won in the film to your living room-and cut plexes, the theater companies with Federal Court. End of Premiere. the print and handling costs by beam- cash are in a position to join the video HBO, which competitors complain has ing just one print over a satellite-that party. United Artists Communications used its financial reserves to muscle means goodbye to all but first-run the- is partnered with a Canadian cable them out of the race to buy rights to aters, hello greater revenues. company in UNColumbia Cablevi- films, has meantime partnered with sion. Wometco Theatres of Miami Universal and Paramount in the USA The entertainment companies \"are owns Wometco Home Theatre. And Network, a cable network thus far of- positioning themselves for whatever Redstone Theatres of Boston owns a fering sports and daytime women's may happen ,\" notes one cable re- piece of Columbia Pictures, which programming. HBO also bought into porter. \"The day of pay-per-view is owns a piece of Walter Reade The- Filmways Studios along with Orion coming. You'll sit down, punch a but- atres. Why? Films and another capital group. ton and charge $1-10 to see a movie in your house day-and-date with, or soon The vision of the future is this: Sit- Fox and CBS have formed a joint after, its release in a few theaters. ting in the dark in a first-run theater There are technical problems and po- will soon acquire the cachet of an venture in cable and home video areas. litical problems, but once you get you event, like a symphony or stage play. CBS has entered theatrical production big cities wired, then it's going to hap- Hollywood will always need theaters to and offered its facilities for film pro- pen. I give it ten years.\" create the excitement, di.e \"want-see\" duction to real estate-rich Fox, which by the public, but the economics of the can now begin raising cash from sale of Ten years? Jack Valenti, head of the industry are solidly weighted toward assets. Warner Communication is part- MPAA, tried to reassure a convention of reacquiring the means of distribution nered with American Express (and lost forty years ago. Columbia bought now Shearson) in cable operations, in exhibitors last February after their as- thirty percent of Walter Reade's thir- QUBE (the two-way cable system that sociation president complained \"It teen New York City theaters; how bet- allows purchase of a program on im- doesn't take a genius to figure out how ter to insure its pictures get the pulse), and in a satellite company that attractive [a big cable gross] would be opening they need in the national spot- offers channels of movies, music, and to producers to offset the tremendous light before bouncing the image off the kid programs. Disney is wheeling and cost of $20-25 million for a major mo- moon to every hut in the global village? dealing with Group W Satellite Co. tion picture.\" Valenti got up and told (Westinghouse) in a pay-channel serv- the theater owners that for the \"fore- And while most Wall St. analysts seeable future\" -at least three or four thought Coca-Cola's purchase of Co- years-they'd continue to dominate lumbia a mistake, it's a little early to tell. The entertainment industry is fast moving from the Pony Express era into a recombined, unregulated cartel. So downstairs everyone talks cheap, but upstairs they're taking care of busi- ness. The circus will go on. In a story about the failing Clyde Beatty-Cole Bros. Circus, The Wall Street Journal asked one old hand why he stayed on. \"You get used to the sound of machinery in the wind, to hearing the lions roar at night and the men drinking and partying,\" he said. \"It gets to a point where you can't sleep anywhere else.\" It's true in the movie business . It's a wonderful life. ~ 52

his office at MGM , which is crammed knows for certain he'll be directing is the , sequel to Raiders OfThe Lost Ark, which Steven Spielberg interviewed with electronic games and artwork from he will do in China and India next sum- mer. He also admits that, \"If George by Todd McCarthy his films and seems staffed entirely by ever does Star Wars IVand doesn't want young women, is a small board listing to direct it himself, I could possibly do it. But right now, it's a question whether Steven Spielberg likes to build sand- close to a dozen future productions in George wants to do anymore Star Wars after Number Three, period . It will castles. So does George Lucas. When various stages of preparation. probably happen , but I wouldn't wait for it in the foreseeable future. \" either of the two close friends has a film First up is the film Spielberg calls his Spielberg's \"little utopian dream,\" of about to open, they try to meet in Ha- Annie Hall , a loose reworking of the 1943 which the handful of upcoming inde- pendent films may be a harbinger, is to waii to build one as a good luck charm Victor Fleming film A Guy Named Joe , form a company which would be \" like a children's ctusade of filmmakers. The which will see the picture on its way to called Always. If he can cast it properly, only way you can get into this company is if you haven't made a film before. You success . he' ll shoot this \"wonderful love trian- can be eighry years old or twenty years old .\" He plans to launch this in two or Somehow one can't imagine Woody · gle\" from Jerry Belson's screenplay three years, and anticipates making fif- teen to twenty movies for $15-20 mil- Allen or Martin Scorsese doing that. And come September. lion apiece. while the ritual doesn't explain the phe- Also scheduled for September: a \"se- In the meantime, Spielberg has two films, E.T. and Poltergeist, due out this nomenal success of these two West cret project\" called World's After which is summer. The former was filmed very quietly under the title A Boy's Life and Coast kids, it may help illustrate the being developed first as a novel. Then a concerns the earthly visit of an extrater- restrial, while the latter is a modern notion that both filmmakers are living \" backstage Hollywood musical\" titled ghost story set smack in the middle of suburbia. Poltergeist was not without its out-beyond any reasonable expecta- Reel To Reel by Spielberg and Gary share of controversy, for although Tobe tion-the fantasies of childhood Goldberg; a \"scary and funny\" indepen- through their work. For better or worse , dent picture, Gremlins, this summer; they're creating idealized versions of and Fandango , another independent films they saw twenry-odd years ago and film, from former USC student Kevin still enjoy more than any others. Some- Reynolds, which should also go within how, unlike many others , they re- the next few months. mained innocentofFellini, Godard , and Spielberg and Warner Brothers are de- Antonioni, and have kept their youthful veloping three \"comic art adventures\" dreams intact. from the comic book Blackhawk. Twister Rather than yet another review of is something he's working on for televi~ Spielberg's blazing career, a preview of sion. Two other projects are wrapped in his planned projects might prove even total secrecy, including Starfire with more illuminating as to his continuing Warners. artistic and entrepreneurial interests. In Actually, the only film Spielberg 53

Hooper was personally selected as direc- blowing up flying wings and having It was much simpler. It's the most Harrison Ford hanging from vines and emotionally complicated film I've ever tor by exec-producer Spielberg on the all of this high serialized adventure made and the least technically compli- stuff. I was sitting there in the middle cated, which for me was a breath of basis ofThe Texas Chain Saw Massacre, it of Tunisia, scratching my head and fresh air. The equivalent of the mother saying: I've to get back to the tranquil- ship landing in Close Encounters is, in was widely reported that he relieved ity, or at least the spirituality, of Close E .T. , perhaps a tear out of Henry Tho- Encounters, because I miss it, I miss mas's eye. That was my equivalent of a Hooper much the way Howard Hawks the warmth of that as opposed to just super-colossal special effect, and it was the high adventure of Raiders. Any- nice to be able to scale down to where did Christian Nyby thirty years ago on time I'm into a project, I immediately everything rested on how people felt focus on the antithesis of what I'm about people. The Thing. • - T. MeC. working on. So my reaction was to im- mediately think of a very touching and Did it demand more from you as a Did E. T. evolve directly out of Close tender relationship between an extra- director of actors than some of your terrestrial and an II-year-old child who other films? Encounters, or did it develop out of the takes him in . Yes, on a day-to-day basis it was movie about kids you were planningfor a How did you develop the screenplay of much more demanding. It put me E.T.? more in, let's say, Kazan's shoes than in long time? Or both? Hitchcock's, because I was working I essentially wrote the idea. I was on with a very sensitive screenplay about It evolved more out of my stated location with Harrison and Harrison's the total human condition. But, in a lady, Melissa Mathison, who had co- sense, every movie I've made is about desire over the last ten years to make a written The Black Stallion and Escape human relationships. The ideas or the Artist. She was working on another concepts or the events of my movies picture about young people. Not nec- project. I kept thinking about E.T. and often overshadow the more sensitive where the story was going, and I asked aspects, but they don't diminish the essarily children, but young people. I Melissa if she would care to sit with me fact that all the movies I've made are and let me test this on her. really about people first, although it's had wanted to explore what it was like been misconstrued from film to film as So we sat down, and I told her the being about the event first and people growing up in suburbia because I grew story, and she wept. I thought, \"Gee, second. I've always thought of the she has a tear in her eye. Was it the way character, and allowed the character to up in suburbia. I spent my formative I told the story? Was it my performance encounter a series of phenomenal, or was it the story?\" And I realized that larger-than-life situations that lift us years, from the third grade to junior in it was not my performance at all; so I out of eye-level by inviting the audi- asked Melissa if she would write it. ence to get into an elevator and not high school, in Scottsdale, Arizona. I She said absolutely, and dropped ev- stop for the next two hours. erything. We began working on the wanted to explore that rarified genre outline right in the middle of the Sa- Does E.T. Have anything to do with hara Desert. When we returned to civi- the 8mm science fiction feature you that filmmakers seem to avoid. You lization, Melissa wrote the screenplay made, Firelight? in about ten weeks. know, urban gothic reality seems to be No, more to do with Close Encoun- But what about the project about kids ters than E .T., because Firelight was more heated and hazardous than rural about UFOs. But it was about hostile in suburbia? UFOs. They actually came down; they suburbia, and whatever people feel That was called After School-I de- would harass the scientists; and they essentially stole an entire city and reas- goes along with that-like falling veloped that with Bob Zemeckis and sembled it on another planet. It took Bob Gale. This had absolutely nothing two-and-a-half hours to tell that silly asleep in your lounge chair with a glass to do with E .T. It was simply another story. But it was fun; I mean, it was exploration into my suburban roots. I weekends. Go to school five days a of lemonade by your pool. It's not as merged a story about suburban kids week and on Saturday and Sunday with an extraterrestrial experience, make the movie. The tragedy is, I exciting as being mugged near the cor- and the two married like they had al- don't have the film now. I turned six- ways been meant for each other. teen and we moved to San Jose the day ner drugstore ala Taxi Driver. But I've after the premiere in Phoenix. The I probably enjoyed myself more film cost $500 and we made $600 in always found it, in my own way, very making E. T. than I have any movie I've one showing, so we broke even, with a ever made. I like to call it a four-wall $100 profit. engaging experience. The entire movie takes place in a house, in the front yard and Did you storyboard as extensively on I had developed another project, a back yard. With the exception of the E. T. as on some ofyour other films? end of the picture, which is rather dra- science fiction film about a very vio- matic and adventurous-where there's No, no that much. As a matter of a chase and a rescue-the movie really fact, I began storyboarding, then after lent, hostile attack by aliens on a farm takes place in a home right under the about two weeks, when we had about noses of many adults and parents. half the film storyboarded, I sort of family, the antithesis of what Close En- So it was simpler? counters was about-and, actually, the antithesis of how I feel about outer space, because I've never character- ized space as a hostile environment. It certainly is to anybody who wants to try it without a space suit, but I just never felt that meaningful contact with ad- vanced technologies would automati- cally bring about laser apocalypse. The key, I think, to Close Encounters was that it had a benign view of contact with aliens. Why did you want to do a hostile story? I don't know. I think I might have taken leave of my senses, but I devel- oped a script from an idea I had called Night Skies. It was a wonderfully writ- ten script, but it was essentially a very violent, frightening tale. Is it anything like The Thing? No, not like that at all. It was much more like Straw Dogs, with aliens out- side instead of drunken locals. I was right in the middle of preparing Raiders and I immediately cancelled the sci-fi project. Throughout Raiders I was in between killing Nazis and 54

stopped and said, \"I really want to play Do you consider your two versiom of things are that are just beyond our view this one by ear. I'd like to kind of wing this one and see what happens.\" I ha- Close Encounters as two separatejilms, of the preternatural. In parallel aspects ven't done that since I was a kid with Smm. So this is the first picture in years one better than another? there are similarities between Close that didn't have storyboards, that I es- sentially went onto the set in the morn- My attitude is very simply that the Encounters and Poltergeist, in that one Special Edition would have been the element of the movie is when the first film had I two more months. I youngest child in the home is abducted didn't have the time and so, as a result by an unseen consciousness that holds The extra-terrestrial rides a bicycle in Steven Spielberg's E. T. ing and decided what I wanted to do the entire second act of the first film is her for emotional ransom for quite a that day. We still came in three days for me very unsatisfying. long time until the mother is finally ahead of schedule. Poltergeist was four able to retrieve her. I think it's very days ahead of sched ule. And both films Specifically? spiritual; I think the film is very tender together cost less than Close Encoun- Specifically, the pacing between Ri- in places; in other places it contains the ters, less than $20 million. chard's story and the Fran<;ois. Truffaut most harrowing experiences I've ever story, and the correlation, symboli- dreamed up. Does this dealing with extra-terres- cally, that one has toward the other is trials in E.T. cancel out the notion of much more deliberate in the Special There's already been a lot oftalk about ever doing afurther sequel to Close En- Edition than it is in the original ver- how you were on the set of Poltergeist counters ? sion. But they're the same movie ex- just about all the time and pretty much cept for radical editing of the second controlled every aspect of the film. Do No, I have a sequel for Close En- act, an additional sequence where Ri- you care to be specific about what hap- counters. Not written, but I have a se- chard walks into the mother ship, and a pened? quel in my head which I'll start few extra shots at the beginning of the developing. I don't think I'll direct it, picture and the new sequence of the Well, I don't know if it's better to but I'll certainly produce it. That's discovery of the 350-foot ocean liner in just let speculation reign .... It will couple of years away. I felt Close En- the middle of the Gobi Desert. With anyway, no matter what I say or don ' t counters stopped playing. I just didn't those exceptions, it's the same film. say. I think the film stands on its own want to get into a box-office race as a really good movie without the con- against time. I'd much rather let Close • troversy about who contributed what. Encounters have its era and let that era It's very intense and it's very, very pass and perhaps the next one will be What was the genesis ofPoltergeist? frightening and a lot of people had to an entirely different philosophy. Poltergeist owes a nod to Close En- join hands to make the film turn out counters. It's the study of ghosts the that way. It wasn't as smooth a sail as I Would it include the Richard Dreyfuss way Close Encounters was the study of would have liked originally, but what character? UFOs and their effect on ordinary peo- movie really is? ple; the kidnapping of the child and I doubt it. But it would certainly be a the sheer awesomeness of what these All I can say about my involvement continuation of the story. 55

overall is that I wrote the moviCl:. I actu- might not succeed. I mean, you can't make this picture with you . We want you ally wrote Poltergeist but co-authored tell about these things , because scari- to do a movie about the size of the World an earlier draft with Michael Grais and ness is like comedy. Comedy is either Trade Center. Utilize all the tricks , utilize Mark Victor. I hired them to realize my funny or it's not funn y; fear is either all the effects, utilize all the soundstages, original idea and then I did a complete terrifying or it's uncomfortably divert- and here's the money.\" And , on cue, a rewrite on down the line, but we were ing. I won't even know that until the door opens and wheelbarrows come in all involved in concert to dream up that first preview. with ten-thousand dollar bills. first draft and we all happily share credit. And all I'll say about my in- Today, each project is It was as if, after Jaws , I had been volvement as the line producer with pigeon-holed as a kind of Grand Gui- Frank Marshall is that I designed the really the birth ofa gnol movie maker who was perhaps film. From the storyboards to post-pro- more suited to make Michael Curtiz- duction it's an overall design, much screaming infant. A Raoul Walsh movies than Frank Bor- like William Cameron Menzies might zage, Lubitsch , Capra or Nicholas Ray have designed shots and atmospherics real director never movies. I remember at that point just for Tom Sa wyer or Invaders From Mars. saying, \"Well , my God , these people lets go until the film is really are going to give me as much I'm saying that, I was the David money as I want to make Close Encoun- Selznick of this movie. I won' t go out wrung from his sweat- ters. I'm going to get the $12 million .\" any further on a limb . I'll just say th at I And while the iron was hot, I struck. I functioned in a very strong way. But ifI ing hands by the the- took the $12 million and made the film had my choice to make another movie for $19 million . The budget grew as this way again , forget it. I' ve never ater owners on the mothership got larger. worked this hard in my entire life . I'm exhausted. delivery day. This is very interesting story be- cause I had been on a kind of natural Why didn' t you decide to direct it in When you've made pictures that have film-high. I had gone from Jaws to the first place? made as much money as yours have , Close Encounters . Both films were you' ve clearly earned a lot more leeway enormously successful and both pic- Because I was doing E.T. 'and , you than most directors . And yet you went out tures essentially kept me as busy as a know , it's sort of illegal to direct two ofyour way to be economical on Raiders plant manager in a textile mill-super- movies at the same time. E ven my and your two new films . What's the na- vising so many different departments involvement on Poltergeist as a writer- ture of your relationships with the stu- and so many different individual producer somewhat was flirting with a dios , and your sense of financial craftspeople-that I felt I couldn't moot infringement and I just felt that it responsibility ? cold-turkey on a small picture after would have been impossible for me to Close Encounters. go to Universal and say, \" Listen , I'm Well , I have a lot of new-found re- going to direct Poltergeist but don' t spect for budgets and schedules even My problem as a movie maker is I try worry, fi ve weeks after we wrap Polter- though I' ve pretty much written my to do everybody's job better than the geist I start directing E .T. \" Who could own ticket these last four or five years. people I hire. Most of the time-if I do that, although most directors who 1941 sobered me and Raiders rein- hire well-I can't, but I try. And that worked in the Thirties and Forties- forced my belief that creative compro- gets me involved from beginning to John Ford , Michael Curtiz-used to mise is more challenging than the end , right down to the timing of the do three to three-and-a-half movies a blank checkbook. I remember, after answer print and to the release pattern year, when movies were the equivalent Jaws , I had some very, very small of the film , Sometimes ,this is not a movies I wanted to make. I wanted to blessing. I was on such an emotional of what television is today. Each proj- do Close Encounters and had actually high from these two large-scale, large- ect today is a whole genesis , each proj- been developing and writing it during budget mega-successes, that when ect now is reall y the birth of a Jaws , but I also thought maybe it's too 1941 came along I didn't even think- screaming infant. A real director never big; maybe I should make a small I grabbed it. I said, \"This is my chaotic lets go until the film is wrung from his movie, do my Annie Hall after Jaws and lifestyle, it's my lot and welcome to sweating hands by the theater owners then maybe do Close Encounters as a it,\" and I took 1941 and threw myself on delivery day. kind of pattern: do a big film, a small into it the way I did my last two proj- film, and then a big film again. ects. I suddenly became this overseer What is the film basically about? and forgot to read the script. Very simply, it's a suburban ghost I took a small project to a studio and story. It's the story of one home that I said , \" I can make this movie for $2.5 Is it that you didn' t really focus on the looks like four hundred other homes in million. There's three people in the main line of 1941 ? On the one hand, you a suburban tract that is haunted by a entire cast. It's a wonderful story. \" And feel that Close Encounters was better poltergeist-a poltergeist that multi- they said , \"We don't want you for this because it was more expensive. plies and divides and literally assaults kind of movie. There are a lot of direc- this very middle-class, innocuous fam- tors who can do this as well as anybody. Close Encounters was better because This is a wonderful script and I'm sure it was more expensive. 1941 could il y. that Mark Rydell would like to make 'a have been better had it been cheaper When you set out to make it, was it picture like this , perhaps Paul Mazursky, and simpler mind you , if it wasn't perhaps Robert Benton, perhaps Fran- worth the $26 million it cost, it sure your intention to make one ofthe scariest cois Truffaut-but we don't want to movies ofall time ? was worth five bucks a ticket. It just cost too much. Yeah, I started out origin,ally just to Yeah. The film has done $42 million scare the be-Jesus out of anybody who dares to walk into the theater. Now , we 56

in worldwide film rentals, not includ- interact. make some amends for going way over ing television sale, and I think that's on 1941 , Close Encounters , and Jaws. I real good for a film . Unive·rsal got all But I plunged into the movie with thought the only way to do that would the prints and ads out of it and they got such wild abandon that I didn' t really essentially be to contain my appetite their negative cost back, as Columbia focus on the story I was telling, to for mural art and try to do an ad venture did . But nobody's going to get rich. know whether it was funn y or simply in a rather economical way. stupid or whether the film was getting Does it make you feel guilty that it So when I sat at a table with literally didn't make money, or do you sort of too overblown. In fact it just outgrew four artists, not just one, I put my balance that against how much you made David Lean epic on paper and then on the other ones? its own Calvins and became this Great kicked through the storyboards and cut White Elephant. I think the movie will out seventy percent of the shots. Got it No, I don't really think about that so be appreciated in ten years much more right down to the bones, what I actu- much. I thought about the people who than it i-s now. I really feel the film is ally needed to tell the sto ry. All these either enjoyed it or didn't enjoy it. I'm going to have its strongest legs in the wonderful moments and shadows and more concerned with how audiences future, because there are some scenes dolly shots and coverage and all the respond to the movie than how much in the film that I think are marvelous, little visual touches I like to put in mO'ney the films make. Because I've selfishly speaking. There are other movies, I feasted on for about a month been fortunate enough to make these things in the film that are perfectly -and then, like some sort of psychotic three monsters, people assume that dreadful. So, it was an interesting ex- slasher, I walked into the room and I'm only interest~d in making movies penence. began tearing them down. I boiled it that are more successful than my last down to where I wouldn' t have to ones , when in fact I never knew Close . I really felt that I had blown it be- shoot more than ten set-ups a day with Encounters would make over $250 mil- cause there were alternatives. There interior lighting and no more than lion. are certain films where there are no twenty set-ups a day with exterior sun- alternatives. Francis Coppola cer- Looking back on 1941 since its re- tainly, in my opinion , did not blow One From The Heart , because that was his Spielberg-produced, Tobe Hooper-directed Poltergeist. lease-since I was able to step away vision of the picture from the begin- light. But within each shot I substi- from the national assault on a film that ning. His vision, essentially, was deliv- tuted content for coverage. Packed as was considered, .unfairly, to be a war ered .. . that's how he saw the film at its much action and style and humor into crime-I can say that there were two outset. With me , vis-a-vis 1941, I saw each set-up as I possibly could . ways I could have made this picture; the picture in a smaller way and al- Both ways would have worked much lowed the film to lead me to capricious Do you think it's a better movie be- better than what I did. The first was to eccentric heights. On about the 145th cause ofthat? make it about the dancer, the young day of shooting, I realized that the film dancer-dishwasher and his love for his was directing me, I wasn't directing it. A much better movie. U .S.O. sweetheart, all of this leading Would you still like to have seen some up to the big dance contest, so the film • of the stuffthat you cut? is really about all that wonderful stuff The only storyboards of yours I've Only a little bit. I cut out a wonder- that we saw in Hollywood Canteen and a ever seen were for 1941, which were ful chase through a mountain in a kind lot of the Marx Brothers pictures and incredibly detailed. Raiders must have of mine train . I was looking to cut some Hellzapoppin. It could have gone in been similar. money out of the budget, and a clean that direction as a much smaller story. Raiders contained the most elabo- million dollars was saved by losing that Or it could have been an all-out, full- rate storyboards I've ever done; I've sequence. I would like to have seen blown musical with seven dance num- never done anything that complicated. some of my film noir ideas back into bers where people .stop and sing when Part of that was because I wanted to the movie which I cut out in the initial they feel like it and then continue to bring the film in on schedule and storyboard stage. I would have liked a budget. And I certainly wanted to little more of my black-on-white cloak- and-dagger storyboards. I had shadows 57

thirty feet long walking into rooms hit- ting a wall, crawling up on the wall, hitting the ceiling, and crawling half- way over the ceiling; at that point the Raiders is like popcorn. It doesn'tfill you up, shadow meets the face and you pan all the way around and pan down to the it's easy to digest, it melts in your mouth, and villain's head with a light just hitting you can chow it down over and over again. beneath his chin. I remember doing these really complicated noir concept sketches and then realizing that, on a shot like that, we would start lighting at eight o'clock in the morning and we myself, didn't want to do that to Para- then I essentially tore it up and just would get that one shot at noon and I mount, didn't want to do that to my told the story. would be in London and Tunisia for six friend George. I orgasmed in the first What do you think really was the key to months and I didn't want to do that to two months of my preparation and its phenomenal success? Executive Producing how I discovered Larry Kasdan, and The film's like popcorn , it doesn't asked Universal to buy it for me, which fill you up and it's easy to digest and it You were executive producer on Used they did. Then I went on to hire Larry melts in your mouth and it's the kind of Cars , which a lotoJpeople thought was a for Raiders and George went on to hire thing that you can just go back and pretty good movie. Why do you think it him for The Empire Strikes Back and chow down over and over again. It's a didn't go over better than it did with the Larry's career was off and running. rather superficial story of heroics and public? deeds and great last-minute saves; but Had you originally thought oj direct- it puts people in the same place that I think the film essentially failed based on concept failure as opposed to ing Continental Divide yourself? made me want to make movies as a failure of writing or execution. I think Yeah. I bought it with that in mind, child, which is wanting to enthrall, en- it's the funniest movie Bob Zemeckis tertain, take people out of their seats to and Bob Gale have ever written, and it get them involved-through show- just showed what a good director Bob manship-in a kind of dialogue with Zemeckis is. For me, it was Bob Ze- the picture you've made. I love mak- meckis' rather anti-social, irreverent ing movies like that. I mean, I'd really American Graffiti. still like to do my Annie Hall, but I love It was pretty anti-social. Was there making films that are stimulus-re- perhaps just something intrinsic in it that sponse, stimulus-response. Anyway, I turned people off? never met my Annie Hall. No, because not enough people I understand that Tom Selleck was went to see it in the first week where your original choiceJor Indiana Jones. you could say it turned people off and Out of about two hundred guys, they didn't tell their friends and didn't Tom was my first choice. I introduced attend the second week. It didn't even Tom to George, and they hit it off, and open. When a film doesn't open you we both made Tom's agent the offer- know something's failing in the idea. and then CBS pre-empted Tom be- When a film opens big and it falls off in cause- of the pilot for Magnum P.l. the first or second week, you know it's J George and I feel that we perhaps cre- the film. In this case it wasn't the film I ated too much head trying to get Tom because nobody gave it a chance. It and they probably said, \"Hey, we opened in about six hundred theaters f might have a good thing here,\" and the and no one went to see it in the first show was given a head start because of rM weekend. I think when a lot of people our interest in Tom. Had we been opened the newspapers and saw a pic- , more low key, and played perhaps ture called Used Cars, the first impulse , Robert Zemeckis' harder to get-not with Tom but with the network-perhaps Tom would was to turn the station to something that wasn't showing ~ used car com- but when I got very involved in Raiders have been in the movie, but I must say mercial , to turn Cal Worthington off and decided I couldn't do Continental that Harrison Ford was a product of and to turn the Hollywood Squares on. Divide, I started to develop it as a pro- fate and destiny. Looking back, Harri- And I think that a lot of the resistance ducer. The studio head, a man named son Ford was the only man alive who to attending Used Cars came from an Ned Tanen, decided he didn't like the could play Indiana Jones so master- American kick reflex to turn the used director I chose, a man named Mat- fully. car commercials off during the late thew Robbins, and when all of us were One difference ojopinion between you show. off doing other things and our backs and Lucas concerned Indiana Jones' I understand you still haven' t seen were turned, he immediately put Mi- character. George wanted him to be sort Continental Divide on which you're chael Apted into the picture. We all oj a New York playboy. We never fought about anything, also listed as executive producer. Pre- went our separate ways. I was contrac- but we disagreed as to Indiana's former sumably, you had virtually nothing to do tua\\1y bound to be executive producer lifestyle. I wanted Harrison to be Fred C. Dobbs of The Treasure OJ the Sierra with it . if I wasn't the director, so the name Nothing. I found the script, which is went along with the movie. 58

Madre, and George initially wanted ously. I essentially pulled from the air The Navy-all fifteen episodes-and Harrison, when he wasn't fighting the the same sense of popcorn pleasure we were bored out of our minds. I'd villains and trying to recover the prize, that Ford , Curtiz, Hawks , King Vidor, already said, yes , I'd do this for to be quite suave-more of a cham- and even C.B . DeMille had available George. But I was so depressed that I pagne hero. I wanted him to be more to them. We drank from the same well. walked out of the theater thinking, the muscatel hero. It's always been there for anybody who \"How can I get out of this? How can I wants to dip a ladle. break the news to George that after all You've always gravitated towards Ev- this talk and work and laying out the eryman heroes, rather than elitist heros . Everyone talked about how it was like story and everything that I don't really an old serial, but the old ~erials are re- wan t to make this movie,\" because I Exactly. And that was something I ally not too good. was so laid to rest by the archaic serial felt was very important for the movie. we saw together. So I said to George, \"Look, you No! George and I looked at one. I thought it up , it's your story. But let remember all the serials because when Was it something he' d seen before and Harrison's grizzled irrepressibility be I was a kid in Phoenix they had a re- remembered? one of my contributions to this, hope- vival house and they showed all these fully, continuing series.\" serials. They showed two feature films He remembered it as a kid being and a serial right in between with ten terrific, but he admitted to me as he Were there any other differences in the cartoons. It was a great Saturday, I was walked out of the theater, \"These- conception stage? in the movies all day long, every Satur- things sure don't hold up after twenty- day. I saw Tailspin Tommy and Masked five years .\" And it didn't hold up after No, we agreed on everything. We Marvel and Commander Cody and Spy twenty-five years and, in a typical way both were raised on the same films Smasher-serials like that. When to get over our depression , we just anyway. George and I are, I think, cut George and I first began talking about said , \"Well , we' ll make an original from the same material but on opposite this project, we sat in a screening room movie, like nobody's ever seen before. ends of the cloth. George is much more at Universal and saw Don Winslow In And we won't really base it on the se- business-oriented than I am. He is a rials , but we certainly will tip our hats business genius, as well as a great con- On John Belushi in that direction, because that's where ceptualizer, and I'm much more of a the inspiration first struck. It won't be hard-working drone. I enjoy making John was to me the opposite of his anything like the serials of the Fif- - the movies : getting up early, having to film image. He was a very tender man ties. \" struggle and fight the weather and looking for love and looking for people fight egos and all the things that are who liked him and people he could • always plotting against the completion like back. I found that John was at his of a project. I enjoy rolling up JirlY most outrageous when he was at his I understand that the only days you sleeves and getting into it. I think most insecure about something, and were away from the Poltergeist set were George has fun thinking up the ideas his internal panic led, for me, to this when you left ar:ound the time of the and then sitting back and saying, amazing gift of comedy and slobbery. I Raiders opening. \"Okay, go off and make the movie; it's think John sort of was the messy side of your movie now.\" all of us. John represented messy bed- Yeah , the two days George and I rooms all over America. No matter flew to Hawaii together, the day before George transferred the scepter from whether he was playing this crazy pilot Raiders opened , we built our lucky his imagination to my control, and I in 1941, this animal fraternity brother, sandcastle just before the film opened. went off and through my own instincts, George and I have a sandcastle thing. imagination and sensibilities made the Belushi in Continental Divide. We build lucky sandcastles. Before picture. Ayear later I showed him what Star Wars opened, George built a sand- his idea looked like. I showed it to him or Jake, the Blues Brother, he was al- castle in Hawaii, and a day later Star at his house one day in rough cut, and ways the guy that we secretly want to Wars was a phenomenon , so George he loved it-he said , \"That's how I be, that unkempt side that exists in us and I went back to Hawaii expressly to hoped it would turn out. That's how I all. And that's why John would just a) get away from the opening in town imagined this movie to be, ten years take social responsibility and subvert it and b) to build the sandcastle to wish ago. Thanks.\" That was it, and it was into his own kind of public expression. the movie well. So I essentially built great. I had taken George's dream and He did things that we' ve all thought of the sandcastle with George and I came realized it for George-and, ulti- doing, but for some reason society had back two days later. mately for myself. taught us from childhood not to do those things. But John got away with Did you help him build the Star Wars For preparation on Raiders, did you them on the screen-and everybody one too? look at Curtiz and Walsh films and serials identified with that. for inspiration, or did you just know in George did most of the work on that. your gut what to do , without referring to I essentially sat back and watched the anything else ? tide try to erode the fortress and ... I don' t know whether this is apocryphal No , when I was making Raiders I -if it is, it shouldn' t be-but we never referred to anybody else's bibli- watched the ocean tear down the walls ography. It was essentially all of my of the Star Wars sandcastle and the impressions of what adventure is all ocean never got through the first wall about, which happens to be shared by of defense. many other filmmakers ever since the late, great Silent era. Adventure is just How big are they? something shared-we all wish we Well , the Star Wars sandcastle was could be those heros. We never are, so commensurate with $400 million. And we make up stories about them vicari- the Raiders sandcastle was commensu- rate with $200 million. ® 59





Saul Bass and Billy Wilder's name appears on the end of a spring-the motif is Cut and paste. Slash and synthe- one of boxes opening and closing to size. So often, Saul Bass's pioneer- reveal the names of the actors and , ing work in movie title art has by implication, the confining situa- consisted of fragmenting an arrest- tion of a middle-level executive ing image to suggest the main char- trapped in middle-aged reverie. acter's alienation. And yet, however North by Northwest follows this mo- troubled those characters , however tif: graph paper, seen from an angle, troubling Bass's graphics, his work turns into the grid of a modern sky- is all of a piece: coherent, powerful, scraper, the steel-and-glass prison The Big Country. instantly recognizable. More than for Cary Grant's smooth but suffo- any other title artist, he evokes for cating ad man. the moviegoer the sense of a master draughtsman hovering just above Isolation breeds the most severe the film frame , doodling his first fears and follies , and Bass captures idea-which happens to be the per- them in his most graphic credit se- feq idea-for the movie's logo. quences. The frozen face that intro- duces Bonjour Tristesse sports a From that early sketch for The jewel-like tear. The camera pans Man With the Golden Arm to the tele- like an airborne cartographer over a phone dangling at the end of an beautiful woman's face at the start attached umbilical cord in The Hu- of Vertigo, finally moving into one man Factor 25 years later (his eye , from which the credits West Side Story. eleventh credit for Otto Prem- emerge. In Spartacus, isolated parts inger), Bass's title art has explored of a statue give way to a medium the theme of isolation . Even with a closeup of the statue's face, which comedy like The Seven Year Itch- later crumbles and disintegrates. where the letter \"I\" scratches itself, The first image in The Shrike is of a glistening pair of scissors; a hand grasps the scissors and forcefully cuts the pages on which the credits appear. In Psycho this image is ab- stracted: no scissors, no hand , but someone (\"Mother\") is slashing A Walk on [he Wild Side. those titles in violent horizontal strokes-and tipping the viewer off to the schizophrenic nature of the movie's memorable villainless. It is only at the end of Bunny Lake Is Missing that the pieces are put back together-when the cut-out image of the film's missing child is twinned in final closeup by a reas- suring hand. This is not to depict Bass as a mordant mope-or as an artist monogamously wed to \"simple\" graphics. He has illustrated many kinds of films in many different styles: the stalking cat in A Walk on the Wild Side (an early example of specially-shot live-action title art), the cartoon tumblers of It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, the delirious gallery of title effects for That's En- tertainment, Part II. But behind the most elaborate execution is always a Nine Hours to Rama. strong, simple idea-one that de- fines the film's theme and sticks in the viewer's mind. Every title de- signer must be an artist-salesman; Saul Bass is the medium's Bach and Barnum combined. Filmographies appear on page 70. 62 Grand Prix.

slow motion all combined to lead the movie-goer into a world of role- playi ng and intrigue, where nothing is real and everything is true. Even in the more realistic Donen come- dies, Binder's titles are entrancingly devious . In Bedazzled, the neon of city light spins hallucinatorily; in Two for the Road, road signs move every which way across the screen to suggest that Audrey Hepburn . and Albert Finney are going to have a tough time navigating into each other's arms by the final fade. For the Bond films , Binder de- vised the kinetic equivalent of a Playboy wet dream. His first Bond , Thunderball, marked the series' leap into fantasy-in the air (OOTs Maurice Binder rocket-powered backpack) and un- derwater (the climactic armada)- Arabesque: the dictionary de- and Binder was the ideal pitchman fines it as \"a kind of ornamentation for this surge into the surreal. Thun- consisting of a fantastic interlacing derball: nude women swimming pattern . .. sometimes geometric, underwater. You Only Live Twice : sometimes flowing.\" That also de- fines Maurice Binder's title work- Geisha girls and volcanic orgasms. not ju st for Stanley Donen's Live and Let Die: fire-haired Arabesque but for the James Bond women whose faces turn to skele- tons. The Man With the Golden Gun: series and many of his other assign- more water images , more beautiful ments as well. women, and a big phallic revolver. The Spy Who LovedMe: Women per- The Binder Touch is evident form gymnastics on another giant from his first Donen film , Indis- gun barrel. Moonraker: Women's creet. Fade-in to a keyhole; then hair blowing in slow motion across a some stick-lines arrange themselves fog-enshrouded moon. into a large key, which slips into the Anyone who has seen the Bond hole to reveal the image of a bed- films (and who hasn't?) knows that Binder's pictorial essays can't be room-where, the viewer must synopsized. They create a mood hope , Cary Grant and Ingrid rather than deliver a message. But Bergman will spend most of the in Bondage or out, Binder's mood- film's time . synthesizing images can haunt a film . His credit sequence for Bill y Thus began the Binder-Donen Wilder's The Private Life ofSherlock partnership, which represented Holmes shows two men entering a some of the sprightliest work either room to examine the contents of man has achieved. The Grass Is a dusty chest that belonged to Greener offered vignettes of babies at play on the lawns of the plutoc- rats , a class the film will show in all their infantile splendor. With Cha- Holmes . A ye llowed photo of rade-and later, triumphantly , in Holmes and Watson. Handcuffs. Arabesque-Binder displays the Holmes' pipe and cap. A syringe. whirling psychedelia that made his And the cameo of a beautiful name. Animated and live-action woman. The spell is cast; the spirit images overlap and blend into each will linger. Maurice Binder has other; soft focus, tinted emulsions, done his job.

Wayne Fitzgerald apartment house and watches a young Wednesday, the couple was played by couple amble toward their destiny. In Henry Fonda and Elizabeth Taylor. Sergei Eisenstein is alive and well and The Owl and the Pussycat, a sketch of the This time Fitzgerald cleverly blended living in Wayne Fitzgerald. Saul Bass setting sun turns into a rain bowed cut- photos from the stars' early days to cre- may fix on a simple static image, suit- out of Manhattan and then , through a ate another study in dissolution-and an able for title sequence or poster art. water-color dissolve, into a rain-soaked eerily Eisensteinian mixture of fiction Maurice Binder may create a dream Manhattan street. A water-color view of and fact. Finally, Fitzgerald's work for world of deep-sea lap dissolves. But L.A. introduces Farewell, My Lovely- Mame is a knockout: an exuberant, even Fitzgerald means for his credits to move neon and otherworldly. In California lyrical kaleidoscope of scenes from Jazz -four-on-the-floor and no stopping for Suite, the paintings are \"legi t\": David Age Manhattan over an Art Deco back- red lights. Master of montage, wizard of Hockney's cool pastels of tables, pools, ground; it eases us into the film proper the three-minute movie, Fitzgerald water sprinklers, lawn chairs, comple- with an artful combination of newsreel doesn't create title sequences so much mented by a cool-jazz soundtrack. material and sequences shot for the film. as trailers: briskly edited filmettes that provide a dense, but uncluttered , precis More than other ti tie artists, In the interview that begins on page of things to come. This is power-pop art. Fitzgerald has received the peculiar trib- 66, Fitzgerald insists on the collabora- ute of having his credit sequences re- tive-should we say competitive?-na- The bustle of big-city life-or the membered after the rest of the film is ture of the title artist's job. There are spooky quiet ofa metropolis at night-is forgotten . How to Commit Marriage is no budgets and deadlines and ravening a Fitzgerald trademark. As Dave Kehr classic, but Fitzgerald's credit sequence egos to contend with. As a 30-year vet- noted in his FILM COMMENT piece on is: its split-screen vignettes traced the eran of the industry, Fitzgerald knows Dallas (J uly-August 1979), Fitzgerald's deterioration of a marriage with subtle, how to survive. As an artist who can live swooping helicopter shots, which alter- amusing strokes. There the husband with the pressure of selling a product, he nated the Texas plains with the city's and wife were Bob Hope and Jane Wy- has brought more than his share of films bold skyline, immediately established man ; in another forgotten film , Ash alive. the series' dialectic-between the \"pu- rity\" of cattle-ranching on Southfork and the oily venality of). R. Ewing's dealings in town. Another city symphony nearly overwhelmed the film it introduced: in Nine to Five , Fitzgerald and David Oli- ver documented the first two hours in a secretary's hectic day, and their little es- say swung to the metronome beat of Dolly Parton's title tune with much more elan and fidelity than the rest of the picture. In creating his urban images, Fitzgerald is nothing if not resourceful. A helicopter shot sets the portentous mood in Rosemary's Baby: it hovers like a demon angel over New York's Dakota 64

Dan Perri Star Wars: the titles don't crawl so Friedkin): red-lettered credits on a much as zoom, spaceship-like, toward black background, simple but sugges- Saul Bass was born in 1920, Maurice a galaxy far away. Close Encounters: tive. At the end of Exorcist II: The Here- Binder in 1925, Wayne Fitzgerald in tic, the lettering turns momentarily to 1930. Dan Perri, born in 1946, is one chrome-bright on a black background; blue on white, implying Regan's final title artist who is also a contemporary of like Star Wars, but discreet. New York, salvation. Perri has worked with Stanley today's hot you ng directors and studio New York: the title rises like the sun over Donen since Donen returned to the executives. A look at his filmography a Deco skyline. Days ofHeaven: a sepia- U. S. in the mid-Seventies: Lucky Lady is suggests he is also the favorite title man toned journal of 1915 Chicago-street a montage of animated drawings of flap- of those filmmakers. In jtlst one year scenes, buildings, crowds of workers- pers and shieks, Movie Movie is a no- (1977) he created the titles for George ending with a sepia photo of the main nonsense mural of the mythical city Lucas's Star Wars, Steven Spielberg's characters. Blue Collar: the thumping where the film 's double feature takes Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Mar- Ry Cooder score provides the tempo for place. tin Scorsese's The Last Waltz and New tracking shots of an auto assembly line. York , New York, Terrence Malick's Days Like Fitzgerald, Perri looks to find the In a sense, Perri and the other major ofHeaven , and Paul Schrader's Blue Col- appropriate style for the subject, not to title artists create a movie movie each lar. On each film, Perri's titles set the impose his own personality on a project. time they complete a job: the movie you scene and the mood perfectly. The signature is intelligence. came to see, and the \"movie\"-just a few minutes long, made by one of these Perri's first big project was The Exor- four craftsmen-that you remember. cist (directed by young, hot William 65

Wayne Fitzgerald interviewed things going to say the least. On Annie, Warren Beattys {and many Kramers and by Mitch Tuchman he called me and said they had some both Ciminosj. tilm , they had some problems. So, I got \"Yes, there's nothing like applause, and into it, and I did Annie. Yes , but Herbert is probably the clos- a good review and applause is neat, and to est. have people tefl you that they reafl\" like it. Do you get started on Ray Stark pictures When they say the credits are better than before they even get to shooting , or are you To me these two names-Ray Stark and the movie , it's not necessarily vour fault, always ca{fed in after a picture's we{f on Herbert Ross-do not conjure up images unless you ' ve hurt the movie. I use the the way? of daring, avant-garde filmmaking. classic example ofSaul Bass, who did such They're kind ofmiddle ofthe road-it's not a grandjob on Walk on the Wild Side, the Sometimes before. the equivalent of Muzak-but they're not goddamned movie never survived it.\" So that it can' t be said you're only cafled in on the Stark pictures that have Have you seen Penniesfrom Heaven? • problems, or anything like that? I have seen Pennies from Heaven. No, no. A lot of times they' ll know You want to try that again? Who do you work for on a movie: the what they want, or Ray will want to I was going to say something like, why producer, the director.? investigate something, and I'll look into are they coming to you, or why are you it. I did a whole thing on Casey 's working for them? What's the a{fraction? Generallv, the director. The closest Shadow; he wanted to do some mon- contact day to day now is the director. tages I didn' t think he needed, and I r think I'm a very good craftsman and More often than not, he's your dav-to- talked him out of them and [didn't even day, decision-making contact-with the do the title. I got paid to go out and look a technician, so I feel I have that. I also producer being secondary. at some stuff, and I said, \"Hev, vou think I have taste and restraint. And don't need me, Ray,\" and he didn ' t. But maybe restraint is what you find with I'm working on Grease If right now. he investigates. both of those people. I'll tend to back off I've onlv talked to Alan Carr (producer) There are also directors for whom you as opposed to being flamboyant. It's re- a couple of times for an overvievv; the work consistently. ally not mv style. There are times when director [Patricia Birch] is handling it. Well, I think that's reallv more why I you call attention to it. But basically I work for Ray was because of Herb Ross. reallv believe in working into the film When you work on a Ray Stark picture , I think Herbert did the choreography on itself: I feel verY close to the film and are you hired by Stark, and he te{fs the Funny Girl. (Thev wanted to give him part of the film as opposed to something director, \"Wayne Fitzgerald is doing your codircctor credit, and he wouldn't.) He that reallv works to call attention to it- credit sequence\"? did Flinn\\, L(ulv-I don't remember the self. It depends on the whole situation sequence of these now-and I did -and I think those are the kind of Ray, of course, is , I think rather Funnv Lady, but I was working for Her- tilmmakers they. are . Ifsomebodv. wants unique in this business, because he 's bert then , and that was with Ray. I did something really spectacular with a lot of probably one of the few people who Owl and the Pussycat, which was Ray flamboyancy, generally speaking, I works as a producer in the truest sense , Stark and also Herbert. Herbert did a lot don't think thev'lI come to me. in the traditional sense. I don't do all of of the Neil Simon stuff, too, see. his things, to begin with. I probablv do It that your most consistent refasionship Are there sequences you wish you had the ones he's most directlv involved with a director, Ross? Because I see you've done ? Are there movies you had a great with. But I don't even know that, be- done Richards, and vou've done the two idea for, but someone else was hired to do cause the ones I don't ,vork on I don't the sequence ? know how much involvement he's got. But, you know, Ray's got an awful lot of Well, there are pictures that I always want to be associated with . If it's a good 66

THE GRADUATE- - -. --~ ... - --- • picture-yes, I would have loved to done is build a montage of three years of montage, which I won't get credit for- have done On Golden Pond after I did Rocky's championship. The movie it will just say, \"Title by. .. \" Nine to Five, worked right on with Bruce opens with a reprise of Rocky I/-stan- Gilbert and done it. It was a good movie dard-he becomes champion. Rocky 1II But you did the montage. and a high visibility movie. Mainly it opens with his brother in a bar watching That means , I'm doing montages , in was a good movie, and it's nice to work Rocky on television. He goes out and on good movies when they faiL It's nicer he's pissed and he's drunk, and he goes effect. In fact, I'm doing more mon- to work on good movies when they out and smashes a Rocky pinball ma- tages. The Electric Horseman happened don't, when they're very successfuL In chine, and Rocky bails him out of jaiL to be title ; Nine to Five happened to be general, I think the other designers tend Rocky arrives in a gorgeous coat, he's more to be graphically oriented to do looking great, and he's got his Maserrati, title ; but in the case of Rocky 1II, it's something visually interesting unto it- and whatever; he's successfuL But the straight montage , which is the same self, which sometimes is fine. But, in point of the whole thing is that Rocky technique: it is story telling. general, what I'm after is the mood of has had three years of endorsements, the opening. In the case of The Electric TV commercials, and high visibility. Tell me about titles, how they evolved. Horseman, they presented me with, And what they're trying to say is , \"Okay, The first titles go back to vaudeville \"This is what we tried to do . This is you've been champ for three years, and cards, like presenting acts. They did what we want to do. Is there a wav to do you're a little soft, and coming up is this it?\" Well, the answer, then , was to' figure great, big guy who's a killer. \" them on cards. They did them on wall- out a way to do it. paper board . They we re all hand-let- So, it's a parallel story. There's a tered . You say, the mood ofthe opening . That's three-or four-minute montage of Rocky different from somehow trying to summa- doing commercials, similar in a lot of Did any particular artists emerge at that rize the movie in general. ways to Electric Horseman , but the pur- time? pose is different, the thrust is different. Television sometimes you want to The idea is that Rocky is doing charity Not that I know of, although when I summarize. Very seldom do you want to things, signing autographs and playing summarize the film. What you want is with his kids , and this guy's punching started in the business in 1955, all the whatever the mood of the beginning is. the bag and pounding people into the guys who we re doing it back then were It may not necessarily be what the ground. And ultimately, at the end, ac- still doing it. movie's all about even. Rosemary's Baby tually what the guy's watching on televi- is a classic example. You want to set the sion is the challenger saying, \"Give me In the Thirties and Forties were they all mood of that movie as being just, \"Gee, Balboa. Give me Balboa.\" That's what studio employees? those two people are looking for a nice his brother is watching on television. apartment. Aren't they in love? Aren't He's not watching Rocky. So, it's a There were title companies then, but they sweet? Aren't Doris Day and Rock three- or four-minute montage on being Hudson goingto have a good time ?\" And champion with a challenger coming up. some studios had their own title depart- all of a sudden, things don't go that way. Then the titles come over the brother ments. So, that's a mislead, but it sets the mood walking out of the bar and trying to in the beginning of the picture. smash up the pinball machine, so the But there weren ' t \"name\" title de- title's just titles over scenes. But the signers? In the case of Rocky 1II, actually, the title is titles over scenes, but what I've No, because titles weren't that kind of thing. They were strictly book covers. You did an illustration, you put the name of the picture on there , you had about eight titles, and it faded out, and you got on with the movie, and evervbodv sort of ignored it. .. Was the credit crawl considered a big breakthrough ? I don't know that it was. Oddly enough, all the techniques that are used 67

today were available then. King Kong's Have you been Stanley Kramer's de- Okay, every now and then I would get got wipes in it and all sorts of things. All signer since High Noon when he worked one through one way or the other, but the techniques were available; they just with Pacific Title ? even then they weren't out of the ordi- didn' t use them. The black on white nary enough to say, \"A big break- was a trademark of Columbia [in the At that time I was just in the art de- through!\" Thirties]. It made a smart-looking partment. I did a design, a very slight design on Judgment at Nuremberg, but I For example, there was Raintree title, but it was also a ve ry cheap way to didn't really work with him . I think the County. \"Raintree County is going to be a do it. They used to have a very shiny first one was Ship of Fools ; that was the big picture-Dore Schary.\" So they sent background they called Columbia tin, start of it. Since then, I've done all his out all sorts of sketches, artwork, back- and it was a highly reflective back- pictures. grounds. I mean, the standard kind of ground; thev put black titles over it. thing. And they said to me , \"Why don't Anyway, I was working at Pacific at you doone,\" you know, \"while you're at The title for April in Paris goes on that time, lettering and proofreading it. \" fore\\'er, because more and more people and so on. I was out of art school , and the were ge tting credit. This was the time only reason I went there was I figured in So I did a thing. I knew the story. I people were really going to sleep during those days you went to art school and knew the book. I did a blue background title s. Durin g the Thirties it really then you went into agency work, adver- with a black drawing on it, a red letter wasn' t long enough, but during the For- tising. Television was starting in '5 1. with a white outline. Red , white, and ties and the early Fifties, God, they' re Obviously, if you knew film, you were blue. And the guy who ran the place at long. There's more credits these days , going to work; they were going to have that time looked at it, and said, \"Put but th ev don't seem as long because to go to television commercials. So I some color in it,\" because in those days they' re e ntertaining now. On Dangerous figured five years there, then I could go the standard line was, ''I'm paying for When Wet (the) titles were put between to an agency and say I know film, but color. I want lots of color. \" two fish tanks . The idea was to get the the more I saw of agencies, the less I fi sh in front and behind , but then we wanted to leave. The more I saw of \"No,\" I said, \"it's red , white, and couldn't make any dissolves because the motion pictures, the more I wanted to blue. It's a story about Americana.\" He fish would move , and we had to go for stav. took the sketch and went out [to the cuts. Schary], because the head of the depart- Anyway, it was horrifying to see what ment always did that; the designer never When did you go to Pacific Title ? they were doing. There were things that talked to the producer. The salesman I went there in '5 1. I got out of school could be done with film , it was crazy not would talk to the producer and then (Los Angeles Art Center) and was horri- to do them . But nobody really wanted come tell you what he wanted; you'd sit bly frustrated with what I saw on film . them . They didn't want to take the there and do it, and then he'd take it Yo'u might get an idea ... they might say time. They didn't want to spend the out. A disastrous way to do business. He they want something different, but, money. Or it was too unusual. They'd called me at home that night. Schary had boy, wo uld they turn it down when they say, \"We want something different.\" bought it. He was stunned. He gave me saw it as being too different! Titles are a You'd show them something really dif- a hell of a raise. reflection of the moviemaker's attitude ferent , and they' d say, \"Too different!\" toward the picture. They were a factory (Saul) Bass really kicked it open. He's operation, they were all studio person- nel. You made so many movies, because everybody was going to go watch them; they (got) a little bit fat and lazy, and the pictures (got) worse. When did they start shooting sequences especially for titles? It's hard to say, but High Noon was a revolutionary title in its time. It's a good example ofdoing things that were out of the ordinary on occasion. High Noon had techniques that everybody accepts now as standard . It's got background action that counts; it's got scenes without titles; it's got a song with a lyric that had some se nse; it's got dialogue you can't hear. It wasn't hand-lettered-it's type-be- cause all they were interested in was the concept behind it. They set up story line, dialogue, and situation; they played a song, and they used editorial techniques. Now, they still put the titles in the middle of the screen as opposed to composing them as you see these days , but it's a revo lutionary piece of work for its time-and you'll see it today and say, \"So what.\" 68

got the talent, the taste, and he had a them to the papers. The onlv way I they'd always had in the backs of thei r guv (Otto Preminger) who would back could show (Arthur) Penn and (V,la rren ) minds didn't seem to be working out for him . He finall y put some titles on the Beatty my idea was on film, because them. They realized they had a prob- screen, and people sat up and stopped pace and sound co unted for so much. I lem. eating their popcorn and said, \"Some- recorded the sound and showed them thing's going on up there ,\" and they the storyboard on film. Thev sa id , So, I went in , looked at the picture, \"vere entertained bv it. \"Okay, fine. \" and it opens up with a shot of a headline that says, \"Cop Killer Sane; M ust Die.\" Wa s Saul Bass the first to get a credit in About that time Jack \\Va rner got into The first question is, \"Well , yo u' ve the credits? the discussion , because Warner was still the studio head. He and Beattv were li ved with it longer than I have . What Yes, as far as I know. That's a first , fighting like hell. And Beattv's a tige r. have yo u got in mind ?\" They sa id , \"We too. Normally, they go out to shoot And Arth u r Pen n's a tiger. So was were going to show headlin es of news scenes for the movie , not for playing Warner. Well, (at) Pacific Title I handled sto ries of 1928 to open the movie ,\" and under titles. (For) The Big Country, they the Warner account. Warner sa id he then they said that they realized-and hired Bass to go out and shoot the wanted to see the test, so I showed it to rightly so-that that meant they we re scenes, and he shot some exceptional him . And Beatty was mad. He said, trying to put titles over head lines, mean- scenes ... a big landscape with a little \"Warner hasn ' t got anvthing to do with ing, vou can't read two things at once. wagon going across. It took fi ve minutes this picture. We'll take care of it. \" And I to get across the screen. Then he put a said, \"Wa rren , it was a little tough for me Quite frequently the best titles are little tin y title on there, so, by God , that to say no to Jack Warner. . .He thought back story. There's two back sto ries country was big. It was exactlv right, and these cuts should be a little longer and here. One is to tell the story of how the that's how it s hould be shot. Bass there should be music in it. \" And Beatty hell the guv got in jail. But that's done in showed that if you put a small title in an said, \"You just said that because Warner the picture; it would have been redun- area where yo u can read it, it's more said that. \" I went home that night, and I dant. The other back story is where'd readable than a big title , and it finally thought , \" The problem is, Beattv's you get the front page? I had one con- caught on, but it took until about 1956 or right, (but) ... I've got to give in to cept which was to shoot scenes showing '57. Warner. Because I don ' t represe nt my- people on the phones , getting the story, self, I can't represent the title. \" I knew and then printing it: ty pe w riters , Did you have any difficultyfinding work in my heart that the title was a winner. phones, hearing the story, guys with ci- after leaving Pacific Title ? So I quit the next day. I finish ed the job. gars. \\\\-'e'll literally phone in that story. I finished everything I had started . You'll hear it as opposed to mak ing the Oh, no. I was in a reasonably good audience read it. But Wilder sa id they position. Actually I left over Bonnie and How is it now , working with producers? had plenty of reporters phoning in sto- Clyde. They originally said they just The Front Page is a good exa mple of ries and all that. wanted white titles on black, like old the way things work now. Wilder and movies. But when I saw the picture and Diamond didn ' t know how to open the We could print the front page, do it in remembered Bonnie and Clyde, I real- show. They got it all shot, and what a verv stylized manner, just on the chase ized the Kodak thing was a natural: Bon- itsel f where yo u put the type. It wo uld nie and Clyde took pictures and sent be verv graphic, but still a legitimate way to go, the simplest wav. The other way was to actually show the linotype machine , go the whole route and actu- all v print the paper. We wou ld take it from downstairs in the press room, com- posing and press rooms. And that's really what caught him, because Wilder wanted to go do wnstairs and shoot all that stuff anyway. He wanted to take Matthau on location, and for budget rea- sons they had finally decided no. But he saw his opening when I came back with the title idea, and he said, \"That's what I want,\" because that's what he'd always wanted. How then do you see your role when you're shooting scenes for a credit se- quence? Director. I direct. I design it and I direct it to completion. If that means shooting, I shoot it. If that means direct- ing a full unit, I do it. If it means direct- ing animators, I do it. If it means editing, I do it. In effect, it's like making pictures. Film is pace. It's mood . It's sound. It's music. And when you put them all together, they work. It really is an exciting profession. ~ 69

FIlmographies Penn) The Comic (Carl Reiner) How to Films are listed alphabetically within year. Commit Marriage (Norman Panama) The Riot (Buzz Kulik) The Secret of Santa Vit-. SAUL BASS (b. 1920) Donen) The Chase (Arrhur Penn) Kaleido- toria (Stanley Kramer) That Cold Day in the Park (Roberr Altman) The Wrecking 1954 Carmen Jones (Otto Preminger) scope (Jack Smight) Promise Her Anything Crew (Phil Karlson) 1970 Catch-22 (Mike 1955 The Big Knife (Roberr Aldrich) The (Arrhur Hiller) 1967 Bedazzled (Stanley Nichols) Little Big Man (Arrhur Penn) Man With the Golden Arm (Otto Pre- Donen) Billion Dollar Brain (Ken Russell) Lovers and Other Strangers (Cy Howard) The Molly Maguires (Martin Ritt) On a minger) The Racers (Henry Hathaway) The Day the Fish Came Out (Michael Ca- Clear Day You Can See Forever (Vincente The Seven Year Itch (Billy Wilder) The coyannis) Eye of the Devil!13 (J. Lee Minnelli) The Owl and the Pussycat (Her- Shrike (Jose Ferrer) 1956 Around the Thompson) Fathom (Leslie H. Marrinson) bert Ross) R.P.M. (Stanley Kramer) TR. World in 80 Days (Michael Anderson) Baskin (Herbert Ross) There Was a Storm Center (Daniel Taradash) 1957 The Taming of the Shrew (Franco Zef- Crooked Man (Joseph L. Mankiewicz) Edge of the City (Marrin Ritt) The Pride firelli) Two for the Road (Stanley Donen) 1971 Big Jake (George Sherman) Carnal and the Passion (Stanley Kramer) Saint You Only Live Twice (Lewis Gilberr) 1969 Knowledge (Mike Nichols) A New Leaf Joan (Otto Preminger) The Young Stranger The Battle of Britain (Guy Hamilton) On (Elaine May) Star Spangled Girl (Jerry (John Frankenheimer) 1958 The Big Her Majesty's Secret Service (Peter Hunt) Paris) 1972 Cancel My Reservation (Paul Staircase (Stanley Donen) 1970 The Pri- Bogarr) Fat City (John Huston) Last of the Country (William Wyler) Bonjour Tristesse Red Hot Lovers (Gene Saks) Limbo (Mark (Otto Preminger) Cowboy (Delmer Daves) vate Life of Sherlock Holmes (Billy Robson) The Little Ark (James B. Clark) Verrigo (Alfred Hitchcock) 1959 Anatomy Wilder) 1971 Diamonds Are Forever (Guy Pete ' n' Tillie (Martin Rin) Porrnoy's of a Murder (Otto Preminger) Norrh by Hamilton) 1972 Young Winston (Richard Complaint (Ernest Lehman) To Find a Norrhwest (Alfred Hitchcock) 1960 Ex- Attenborough) 1973 Live and Let Die Man (Buzz Kulik) Travels With My Aunt odus (Otto Preminger) The Facts of Life (Guy Hamilton) 1974 The Little Prince (George Cukor) The Trial of the Catons- (Melvin Frank) Ocean's 11 (Lewis Mile- (Stanley Donen) The Man With the ville Nine (Gordon Davidson) When the stone) Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock) Sparta- Golden Gun (Guy Hamilton) The Tama- Legends Die (Swarr Millar) 1973 Ash cus (Stanley Kubrick) 1961 West Side rind Seed (Blake Edwards) 1977 The Spy Wednesday (Larry Peerce) Cahill-U.S. Story (Roberr Wise, Jerome Robbins) 1962 Who Loved Me (Lewis Gilbert) 1978 Marshall (Andrew V. McLaglen) The Last Advise and Consent (Otto Preminger) Brass Target (John Hough) The Wild of Sheila (Herbert Ross) Lost Horizon Geese (Andrew V. McLaglen) 1979 Drac- (Charles Jarrott) Oklahoma Crude (Stanley Something Wild (Jack Garfein) A Walk on ula (John Badham) Moonraker (Lewis Gil- Kramer) Run, Shadow, Run (Darren the Wild Side (Edward Dmytryk) 1963 bert) The Passage (J. Lee Thompson) McGavin) 1974 Chinatown (Roman Po- The Cardinal (Otto Preminger) It's a Mad 1980 The Final Countdown (Don Taylor) lanski) The Conversation (Francis Ford Mad Mad Mad World (Stanley Kramer) 1981 For Your Eyes Only (John Glen) Coppola) The Front Page (Billy Wilder) Green Ice (Ernest Day) The Sea Wolves The Godfather-Parr II (Francis Ford Nine Hours to Rama (Mark Robson) The (Andrew V. McLaglen). Coppola) Marne (Gene Saks) Thunderbolt Victors (Carl Foreman) 1965 Bunny Lake WAYNE FITZGERALD (b. 1930) and Lightfoot (Michael Cimino) 1975 Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (Martin Is Missing (Otto Preminger) In Harm's 1956 The First Traveling Saleslady (Ar- Scorsese) The Black Bird (David Giler) Way (Otto Preminger) 1966 Grand Prix thur Lubin) 1957 Raintree County Farewell, My Lovely (Dick Richards) (John Frankeneimer) Not With My Wife, (Edward Dmytryk) Silk Stockings Funny Lady (Herberr Ross) Mitchell (An- (Rouben Mamoulian) The Three Faces of drew V. McLaglen) Night Moves (Arrhur You Don't (Norman Panama) Seconds Eve (Nunnally Johnson) 1958 The Penn) One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (John Frankenheimer) 1976 That's En·ter- Brothers Karamazov (Richard Brooks) The (Milos Forman) Posse (Kirk Douglas) The tainment, Parr II (Gene Kelly) 1980 The Deep Six (Rudolph Mate) 1959 Imitation Sunshine Boys (Herberr Ross) 1976 Amer- Human F actor (Otto Preminger). Directed: of Life (Douglas Sirk) The Man Who Un- ica at the Movies (compilation film) The Phase IV (1974). derstood Women (Nunnally Johnson) Bad News Bears (Michael Ritchie) The MAURICE BINDER (b. 1925) Never Steal Anything Small (Charles Led- Blue Bird (George Cukor) The Missouri erer) Pillow Talk (Michael Gordon) 1960 Breaks (Arrhur Penn) Murder by Death 1957 The James Dean Story (Robert Alt- Portrait in Black (Michael Gordon) 1961 (Roberr Moore) The Seven-Per-Cent Solu- man, George W. George) 1958 Damn Yan- Lover Come Back (Delberr Mann) A Ma- tion (Herberr Ross) A Star Is Born (Frank kees (George Abbott, Stanley Donen) jority of One (Mervyn LeRoy) 1962 Days Pierson) 1977 The Domino Principle Indiscreet (Stanley Donen) 1959 The of Wine and Roses (Blake Edwards) Judg- (Stanley Kramer) First Love (Joan Darling) Mouse That Roared (Jack Arnold) Plein ment at Nuremberg (Stanley Kramer) The The Goodbye Girl (Herberr Ross) Greased Soleil/Purple Noon (Rene Clement) 1960 Music Man (Morron Da Costa) 1963 A Lightning (Michael Schultz) March or Die The Grass Is Greener (Stanley Donen) Child Is Waiting (John Cassavetes) 1964 (Dick Richards) Slap Shot (George Roy Once More With Feeling (Stanley Donen) Bedtime Story (Norman Taurog) Man's Fa- Hill) The Turning Point (Herberr Ross) Surprise Package (Stanley Donen) 1961 vorite Sport? (Howard Hawks) Robin and 1978 Almost Summer (Marrin Davidson) Aimez-Vous Brahms?IGoodbye Again the Seven Hoods (Gordon Douglas) Seven American Hot Wax (Floyd Mutrux) Cali- (Anatole Litvak) 1962 The Best of Ene- Days in May (John Frankenheimer) 1965 fornia Suite (Herberr Ross) The Cheap mies (Guy Hamilton) The Road to Hong Cat Ballou (Elliot Silverstein) Fluffy (Earl Detective (Roberr Moore) Comes a Horse- Kong (Norman Panama) 1963 Call Me Bellamy) Ship of Fools (Stanley Kramer) A man (Alan J. Pakula) Grease (Randal Bwana (Gordon Douglas) Charade (Stanley Very Special Favor (Michael Gordon) 1966 Kleiser) Heaven Can Wait (Warren Beany, Donen) Dr. No (Terence Young) I Could Cast a Giant Shadow (Melville Shavelson) Buck Henry) Lord of the Rings (Ralph Go On Singing (Ronald Neame) The Murderer's Row (Henry Levin) The Si- Bakshi) Up in Smoke (Lou Adler) Who Is Mouse on the Moon (Richard Lester) The lencers (Phil Karlson) 1967 Bonnie and Killing the Great Chefs of Europe? (Ted Running Man (Carol Reed) Sodom and Clyde (Arthur Penn) Hotel (Richard Kotcheff) 1979 . . . And Justice for All Gomorrah (Robert Aldrich) 1964 La Quine) Tobruk (Arthur Hiller) 1968 The (Norman Jewison) Buck Rogers in the 21st Ronde (Roger Vadim) The Long Ships Green Berets (John Wayne, Ray Kellogg) Century (Daniel Haller) Chapter Two (Ro- (Jack Cardiff) The 7th Dawn (Lewis Gil- Rosemary's Baby (Roman Polanski) Where berr Moore) The Electric Horseman (Syd- bert) 1965 The Hill (Sidney Lumet) Re- pulsion (Roman Polanski) Thunderball Angels Go, Trouble Follows (James (Terence Young) Young Cassidy (John Neilson) 1969 Alice's Restaurant (Arthur Ford, Jack Cardiff) 1966 After the Fox (Vittorio DeSica) Arabesque (Stanley 70

ney Pollack) French Postcards (Willard COLLECTOR'S CATALOG FRESH HOT SEND $3 Huyck) The Muppet Movie (James Fraw- NO.2 NOW AVAILABLE ley) North Dallas Forty (Ted Kotcheff) VIDEO CATALOG 1980 Can't Stop the Music (Nancy Walke r) ONLY $3.00 TO GO! EVER! Carny (Robert Kaylor) Heaven 's Gate (lV[i- chael Cimino) It's My Turn (Claudia Weill) Original ~ The Jazz Singer (Richard Fleischer) Little Posters ~=; Miss Marker (Walter Bernstein) Nijinsky rare Gel s 'em I\"s ' - (Herbert Ross) Nine to Five (Colin Hig- gins) The Nude Bomb (Clive Donner) Pvc. lobby cards \".:t s 'e mitll ' Benjamin (Howard Zieff) Seems Like Old Times (Jay Sand rich) Those Lips , Those CoUections Bought. Sold, Traded Movies Unlimited has 'em all: Eyes (Michael Pressman) 1981 All Night 12 - 6 p.m. Tuesdays· Saturdays Long (Jean-Claude Tramont) Body Heat • Hot new titles. Movie classics. ScI·Fi (Lawrence Kasdan) King of the Mountain (415) 776-9988 • TV shows • Cartoons. Cult classics (Noel Nosseck) Pennies from Heaven (Herbert Ross) Reds (Warren Beatty) 1982 1488 vaUejo St., San Francisco, CA.,94109 • Specialty & collector's items Rocky III (Sylvester Stallone). ...N %1, DAN PERRI (b. 1946) Add an extra $1 for our 1972 Concert for Bangladesh (Saul Swim- sizzling Adult Video catalog or mer) Fritz the Cat (Ralph Bakshi) 1973 send $1 for our super Super 8 catalog Electra Glide in Blue (James William Guercio) The Exorcist (William Friedkin) (catalog fees refundable with first order1 1974 California Split (Robert Altman) Freebie and the Bean (Richard Rush) 1975 MOVIES UNLIMITED Day of the Locust (John Schlesinger) The Hiding Place (James F. Collier) Jacqueline •••••••••••••••••• Susann's Once Is Not Enough (Guy Green) Lepke (Menahem Golan) Love Among the 6736 Castor Ave.• Phila., Pa. 19149 Ruins (George Cukor) Lucky Lady (Stan- ley Donen) Nashville (Robert Altman) 215·722·8298 1976 All the President's Men (Alan J . Pa- kula) Buffalo Bill and the Indians (Robert AMERICAN From Grauman 's Chinese in Hollywood and Altman) Marathon Man (John Schlesinger) the fabulous Fox in Atlanta to the AI Ringling Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese) 1977 Close PICTURE Memorial Theater of Baraboo , Wisconsin and Encounters of the Third Kind (Steven PALACES New York's Radio City Music Hall - they're all Spielberg) Exorcist II: The Heretic (John here l All those enchanting picture palaces of old Boorman) The Late Show (Robert Benton) The Architecture of Fantasy New York , New York (Martin Scorsese) that were every bit as glamorous and exciting as Star Wars (George Lucas) 3 Women (Ro- DAVID NAYLOR the movies they housed . David Naylor's sumptu- bert Altman) Welcome to L.A. (Alan Ru- ously illustrated volume-nearly 300 photos, 70 dolph) 1978 The Betsy (Daniel Petrie) of them in color, and many never before pub- Blue Collar (Paul Schrader) Capricorn One lished - takes you behind the dazzling facades (Peter Hyams) Coming Home (Hal Ashby) into the luxurious interiors of these uniquely Days of Heaven (Terrence Malick) American structures. Naylor chronicles their de- F.I.S.T. (Norman Jewison) Fl'vl (John A. velopment - from humble origins to the golden Alonzo) I Wanna Hold Your Hand (Robert age of the 1920s and '30s-while celebrating the Zemeckis) The Last Waltz (Martin Scor- daring architects and colorful showmen who sese) Movie Movie (Stanley Donen) On transformed them from dreams into realities . the Nickel (Ralph Waite) 1979 Dreamer (Noel Nosseck) Girlfriends (Claudia Weill) 224 pp. , 8'/2 X 11, iI/us ., $24.95 introductory price Going In Style (Martin Brest) Hanover until 12131 181 , $29.95 thereafter Street (Peter Hyams) Norma Rae (Martin Ritt) Players (Anthony Harvey) Promises VAN NOSTRAND REINHOLD , Mail Order Service in the Dark (Jerome Hellman) Sidney 7625 Empire Drive . Florence . KY 41042 Sheldon's Bloodline (Terence Young) The Warriors (Walter Hill) 1980 Airplane! (Jim Send me American Picture Palaces lor a 15-DAY FREE Abrahams, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker) EXAMINATION. After 15 days, I will send $24.95 ($29.95 if American Gigolo (Paul Schrader) Cad- ordered after 12 /31 / 81) plus local sales ta x and a small dyshack (Harold Ramis) First Family del ivery and handling charge - or return the book and (Buck Henry) The Idol maker (Taylor OWE NOTHING. Hackford) The Long Riders (Walter Hill) My Bodyguard Cfony Bill) Raging Bull Name_______________________________ (Martin Scorsese) The Stunt Man (Richard Rush) Times Square (Allan Moyle) 1981 Addre ss _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _- : -_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ Cutter & Bone/Cutter's Way (Ivan Passer) The Fan (Edward Bianchi) The Hand (Oli- City State_ _ _ Zip_ _ _ __ ver Stone) Honky Tonk Freeway (john Schlesinger) 1982 Threshold (Richard Offer good In U.S.A. only and sub/ec l to credit department approval. Pearce) . Payment must accompany orders to P.O. box addresses. Price sub· Jecr to change. 23861-4 F7246 71

Independent American Films From Direct Cinema Limited \"A BllILIaIA!ft EVOCAUOK OF A MOST OTXIOUS AGE. Fascinating, rueful, epic, ambitious and complex.\" Vincent Canby, New York Times Jim McBride's This legendary independent classic captures the state of mind and the state of the art in late 1960s America . It is one of the neglected milestones in contemporary film history. \"Rambunctiously funn y and wise ... \" Vincent Canby, New York Times A film by Jim McBride Starring L. M. Kit Carson Cinematography by Michael Wadleigh 71 minutes Black and white 16mm Bruce Ricker 's The rri'ials of The Lastof the Blue Devils ALGERIDSS The Movie About Kansas City Jazz - A film by John Lowenthal Featuring Count Basie, Jay McShann and Big Joe Turner, this documentary contains performances by the great jazz This is an account of the espionage-and-perjury case that musicians who emerged in Kansas City. catapulted Richard Nixon to national prominence in 1948 \"One of the finest fi lms ever made on jazz :' and sent former State Department officer Alger Hiss to Robert Palmer, Rolling Stone prison . A cause celebre of the Cold War, the Hiss case led directly to the McCarthy era and aroused such intense political \"A triumph ... \" Nat Hentoff, Village Voice passions that it has remained controversial to this day. A film by Bru ce Ricker 92 minutes Color 16mm or 35mm Newsreels and recent intervi ews with Hiss and other partici- pants set forth the case in historical context and as a testing Karen Arthur's of our criminal justice system under pressure . New evidence obtained under the Freedom of Information Act is shown to ~ jurors from the two trials of Hiss, with startling results . An erotic portrait of the breakdown of an affluent American \"Great drama. Spellbinding . It wi ll surprise me if the yea r woman, this film explicitly depicts her sexual musings, produces a more illuminating film .\" obsessions and fears : -Robert Hatch , The Nation \"It steers a nicely balanced course from comedy through desperation to hysteria :' Sight and Sound \"Explosive . An unusually compell ing movie expe rience.\" Produced and directed by Karen Arthur -William Wolf , Cue Written by and starring Joan Hotchkis 94 minutes Color 16mm or 35mm Rated \"R\" \"Dazzl ing . Anyone with the slightest inte re st in modern American history-or in mystery stories fo r that matter- Melvin Van Peebles's won 't want to miss it.\" - Ric hard Freedman , Newhouse Newspapers Once upon a time a guy, black guy, decided , well not re ally decided, he was more or le ss standing in the wrong place \"Milestone in American documentary ... a major work .\" at the right time, to stand up for his rights , or, as they say -Gordon Hitchens , Variety on the block , to get-the-man-off-his-back, which of cou rse is no mean FEET A History on Film Company Produ ction Produced and Directed by John Lowenthal \"Tnese moments re present personal cinema at its best- Edited by Marion Kraft one man , telling it like he sees it, his dream of liberation un- 165 minutes Color 16mm Released 1980 adulterated by studio pressures or commercial considerati ons :'-Paul D. Zimmerman , Newsweek . Written , produced , directed , and starring Mel vin Van Peebles Music performed by Earth , Wind and Fire 97 minutes Color 16mm Rated X Rent these outstanding features for your For sale or rental information contact : ~~, ....J theatre, film society or class. Direct Cinema Limited Library cmema Uo Box 315, Franklin Lakes, NJ 07417 limited (201) 891-8240 co CJ) @

Missionary Positions by Amos Vogel victories that led not only to these main- very same anti-censorship victories that stream self-censorship systems but also led to the pornos, also legitimized pro- Cinematically speaking, the public to the rise of the new kind of ghetto- duction of sexually explicit educational display of our sex organs is in the wrong the porno houses and , more recently, films by such social interest groups as hands. Shouldn't we reclaim poor, old the porno video market. Our self-ap- the National Sex Forum , an acti vity of Eros from the porno houses? Despite pointed censors cannot have it both the Exodus Trust, originally sponsored twenty years of license to express more ways; since these ghettoes were as- by the Methodist Glide Foundation. on screen, sex in commercial films and signed the task of \"taking care\" of mor- The NSF is producing an ever-growing on TV remains truncated, furtive , hypo- ally inferior elements unable to control number of films and videotapes in the critical, titillating, and fraudulent. Is the their animal instincts, their roaring suc- areas of human sexuality used by over enforced absence of realistic sex-the cess must prove that millions of Ameri- eight thousand colleges, universities, true eroticism of penises and vaginas- cans are masturbationists and perverts. social service agencies, .churches , and any less repressive than women's forbid- state and federal institutions. To the re- den ankles in the nineteenth century? The industrv. has not onlv. shunted pressed (and therefore censorious), the sex into a ghetto, it has actually stimu- NSF catalog must appear as provocative The truth, of course, is that the eu- lated the production of porno films. (and, of course, a source of illicit plea- phemistically named Rating and Classi- These purvey their own kind of artifici- sure). Its range is astonishing and ex- fication system of the Motion Picture alities; non-stop sex lacking feelings , plieit; the NSF filmmakers include Association of America and the more feeling-tone , repose , laughter, tension, well-known independents and even honestly named Television Code of the mistakes. Although , if reasonably well- avant-garde artists. Additional films of National Association of Broadcasters this kind are available from other serve as institutionalized systems of cen- Grow Old Along With Me. sources. A sampling (not more) of titles sorship, standing between us and the made, they remain turn-ons for many, follows , indicating their audacious open- image. That sex and not violence re- porno films present impossible fantasies ness to both formal and thematic innova- mains their real target is an interesting of endless, seamless, perfect fuckings tion. comment on our civilization. Brutalitv that have nothing in common with the -compared to its incidence-is vastly eroticism of real life or art. Self-Loving (Laird Sutton , 34 min- exaggerated in film and TV; sex-com- utes, 1976) Eleven women of heterosex- pared to its ubiquity-enormously min- The signification of sexual activity ual, bisexual , and lesbian lifestyles (of imized. Denial of access to. sexually once more becomes sleaziness and \"an i·- all ages and races) share their experi- explicit films by the MPAA to the young malistic abandon.\" Meanwhile, teen- ences with mastlJrbation, vibrators, fan- (the largest audience and sexually most age pregnancies continue to soar, tasies , and orgasmic patterns in a warm active part of the population) represents intolerance of gays and lesbians in- and intimate series of. informal discus- the time-honored terrorism of the older creases as does guilt, while masturbation sion. Their humanity is affirmed by nQt generation's attempt to keep sex for it- or sex among older people, the handi- ever being placed in doubt, and the film self-just as (and because) it is slipping capped, the psychologically disfunc- imperceptibly and gentl y persuades us from its grasp. The economic punish- tional is swept under the rug of public to accept our own humanity as well. The ment imposed by the X-rating is quite consciousness. positive statement about women's sexu- clear by now; it has eliminated the erotic ality serves as an outstanding discussion realism freely available in today's books. No wonder, then , that the antiquated starter for women and men of all ages MPAA and NAB codes-slighting gen- and backgrounds Print is no more protected than films uine and deeply human needs-create by the First and Fourteenth Amend- their own countervailing forces . The Desire Pie (Lisa Crofts, S minutes, ment, yet film is more closely self-sanc- 1977) A totally explicit \"hardcore\" car- tioned. Is not this precisely what the toon exploration of about fifty humans great American anti-censorship battles engaging in possible and impossible and victories of the last thirty years were couplings, it stresses the interchan- all about? Having succeeded in abolish- geability of sexual acts and protagonists ing government censorship, are we now and the universality of it all. Very origi- to bow down to self-censorship by an nal, very \"obscene,\" this significant industry because its wish to avoid time- work was, horror of horrors , made 1) by and-money-consuming lawsuits against a woman and 2) at Harvard. police or state agencies has priority over its defense of freedom of the screen? Titles Available (Laird Sutton, 5 minutes, 1972) Practically dribbling It was precisely these anti-censorship with affected lust, ·a young man de- claims with growing gusto and ever 73

Suzan Pitt' s As paragus, and two shots fro m mounting speed , 250 possibl e titl es of that th e G rand Subve rsive- far from tor simultaneously labels th e m with th e pornograp hi c books \"ava il ab le at yo ur confro nting us with a freeze-frame- most vulga r and obscene slang expres- local book store.\" Staring directly into had all along been offerin g us the swell- sion (thei r numbe r is startling); at the th e came ra while hurlin g all poss ible in g o f th e m e m be r in ex tre me, sa me tim e , th ese sa me \"fo rbidd e n\" \" forbidde n\" word s at us in de libe rate ly impe rce pti ble slow-moti on, until at the wo rds appear in subtitl es. Vaginas next o utrageous combinations, he immed i- e nd a full e rection confro nts us in all its rece ive the sa me treatme nt, but with a ately succeeds in \" desensitizing\" the majesty. Censo rs and protecto r: Ta ke to male vo ice-ove r. Then the two come viewe r so th a t laug hte r s upe rce des th e Hill s! T he re is nothing as th rea te n- togethe r in fo replay and sex, each stage shock. M iraculously, we beco me aware ing (to you! ) th an the erect peni s. What aga in accompanied by the forbidde n ex- of both the e mptin ess of po rnography would our country come to if our de- p ress io n , \" d o ubl e d \" in s ubtitl es . and its contin ued powe r to aro use. T his fe nse sys te m co nsisted offl yi ng armadas T hough th e fi lm apes the codes of in- extre me ly subversive, origina l wo rk is of these sym bols of life rathe r th an our structional doc umentaries, its shocking made do ubly provoca ti ve by subtitles curre nt mi ssiles of death? subj ect ma tte r and techniq ue accom- that d up lica te th e so undtrack. T hi s may pli sh a deepe r purpose: the de mystifica- we ll be one of the clea rest, mos t outri ght Sun C hildren (Laird Su tton, 14 min - tion of fo rbidde n im ages . subve rsions of the sex ual taboo in cin - utes, 1974) A yo un g co uple, at a se- e ma today. c1 ud ed , sun-lit beach, undress, e ngage From pe rso nal expe ri ence, I can test- in mutual oral sex, the n inte rco urse and ify that in a uni ve rsity cl assroo m in five Hermes Bird (James Bro ughton, 10 orgasm , all clearly visible. D espite its minutes th e film subve rted many sexual taboos. T he audie nce, eyes fl as hing, minutes, 1977) T he grea t and wise mas- \"ro m an ti c\" ove ri av of loca ti o n and imme di ate lv and smilin gly launched te r of th e Ame rican film ava nt-ga rd e , so und (b ird cri es and waves), it is a more into an animated ope n discuss ion. Sex is James Bro ughto n, poet and subversive acc urate exa mple of ero tic rea li sm than I a subj ect everyone wa nts to talk about Buddhist, continu es his sly attacks on Am Curious- Yellow, which fa il ed to dis- and feel co mfo rtable doing so: if it didn' t sexual taboos with thi s decepti ve mas- pl ay actu al copulation. Some dav-one aro use such strong fee lings one way or te rpiece. It e mploys hi s customary com- hopes-the new Bertoluccis, De N iros, the othe r, ne ithe r th e MPAA nor the bination of visual poe try and stro ngly and Diane Keato ns will be as hones t in NAB woul d kee p it from us. id eological con te nt. As we stare at an 70mm color and Dolbv so un d. immobil e medium shot of a man's be lly Asparagus (S uza n Pitt, 19 minutes, and fl accid pe nis, th e filmm ake r de- Words of Love (Di rk Kortz, 5 min- 1974-8) Th is powe rful erotic allegory of livers fervid paea n to the orga n's powe rs utes, 1977) T his is poss ibly the most the crea ti ve process- a maste rpiece of and bea uty. T he came ra never moves. \"ex plos ive\" fi lm of th e lot. Rapidl y film magic-v iolates taboos of defeca- In th e co urse of te n minutes of poe try paced th ro ughout (about a second pe r tion and oral sex in a manner th at inte- and pe ni s, howeve r, we grad ually rea lize shot), it begin s with about forty diffe re nt grates these acts into expressions of high pe nises in close-up whi le a female narra- HERE'S THE PERFECT CASE FOR I j~~~~~n~~~o~~~;P. / po. Box 5120 / FILM COMMENT II Philadelphia, Pa. 19141 Avoid misplacing valued issues and Please send me the following I FILM COMMENT Library Cases: protect your copies from wear and tear with these handsome, custom oI 0 $4.95 each I enclose $._ - - designed library cases. Each sturdy case, covered in washable dark blue I 3 for $14 in check or money order I 0 6 for $24 payable to Jesse Jones Box Corp . Kivar with gold logo, holds one full Add $1 per file for postage outside U.S. year of FILM COMMENT and comes with gold transfer so you can record I NAME the year on the spine . Order several I ADDRESS Ifiles at once at reduced prices. Sat- CITY Iisfaction guaranteed or your money ST~AT~E~_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _~Z~I_P _ _ __ L._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ba_ck._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __&. - - - - - - - - - - - - - 74

art (See my May-June 1981 FILM COI\\I- Tbe16tb I\\IENT column). International Grow Old Along With Me (Coni Tournie of Beeson, 12 minutes, 1974) A 60-year old couple (married for thirty years and Animation grandparents) are shown living their al- ternate lifestyle and enjoying sex. \"It's the most effervescent, imaginative selection in River Body (Anne Severson & years, with something to Shelby Kennedy, 8 minutes, 1970) Over intrigue all age groups in eighty nude people face the camera, the family.\" shown in continuous dissolves. Differ- Judy Stone ent heights , shapes , ages , races-and all San Francisco Chronicle \"the same.\" A festival of 20 award-winning animated films of fiction and fantasy from Other titles include Closing the Cir- around the world, highlighted by Academy Award Winner, THE FLY; Acad- cle (sex between a couple in their fifties emy Nominee, HISTORY OF THE WORLD IN 3 MINUTES FLAT; Ottawa and a younger male friend); Nick and Festival Grand Prix Winner, the outrageous UBU; and winners from major Jon (gay sex from foreplay to explicit festivals at Zagreb, Ottawa, and Berlin. lovemaking); Give It a Try (specific techniques in re-establishing sexual re- A feature·length program available for rental from : lationship between a recent quadraple- gic and his able-bodied wife); and The 4530 18th Street San Francisco, Calif. 94114 Squeeze Technique (a graphic demon- stration of Masters' and Johnson's tech- (415) 863·6100 nique for retarding premature ejaculation). C LLECTOR SWEATSHIRTS Achieving Sexual Maturity (John AND TEE SHIRTS Wiley & Son, 20 minutes , 1973) This is the film the Moral Majority attempted FOR MOVIE and failed to ban, thanks to the unwill- LOVERS ingness of film librarians and elected of- ficials to cave in to pressure . A tiltchcock (black), Cocteau (black), Garbo straightforward, conventional, instruc- (navy), Bye Bye Brazil (white), RKO (navy), tional film concerning human physiol- Skating Chaplin (full·color). Not shown: ogy, anatomy, ovulation, menstruation, Bergman's 7th Seal (It. blue or black), Rath· ejaculation, and masturbation , it dispels bone's Sherlock Holmes (5 colors on tan), many myths. A recent Cleveland study Richard Rush's The Stuntman. of 14,000 parents of adolescent girls showed that sixty percent of mothers -Jean Coe ••au Full'color silkscreens- with extraordinary detail never explained menstruation to them, from Tenniel's legendary wood·cuts: Mad Tea ninety-two percent never discussed sex. Party. Not shown: White Rabbit, Mad Hatter, Alice and Caterpillar, The Jabberwock, Alice Whether taboos can be removed or and Baby Pig. Regular or unisex frenchcut only mitigated by rational discourse is a S,M,L,XL (Alice also kids S,M,L). Tees $9.95 complex question. Freud, the great and or 4/$36. Sweats $15.95. Shipping $1.25/item. somber liberator, hurled some of his CA res. 6% tax. Wholesale inquiries invited. sharpest lances at religion, denouncing it as a reactionary, life-denying system of CELEBRITEES Dept. FC56, PO Box 1307, Studio City, CA 91604 illusion. Yet, in 1982, this religious illu- sion continues to exist tenaciously. After centuries of repression , it will take much time to make sex into a \"natural\" sub- ject; to some extent, it is happening. In any case, it seems necessary to support all such efforts so that ultimately articles of this kind will no longer be necessary. (Distribution; Multi-Media Resource Center, 1525 Franklin Street, San Fran- cisco, CA 94109; also Focus Interna- tional, 1776 Broadway, New York, NY 10010. Achieving Sexual Maturity: Me- dia Guild, 118 S. Acacia Ave. Box 881 Solana Beach, CA 92075. National Sex Forum information: Dr. Ted McIlvenna, NSF, 1523 Franklin Street, San Francisco, CA 94109)~ 75

Musicals Are Mordden Merry by Lawrence O'Toole white, tiny, and cheesy; but the scholar- occasionally athletic thinking is his vast ship is truly enviable and the tone store of knowledge. Already the author The Hollywood Musical by Ethan throughout astonishingly democratic. of six previous books-on opera, musi- Mordden, 261 pages, selective discogra- His is a forgiving sensibility-the fan- cal theatre, a social history of the Twen- phy and bibliography, illustration, in- that can't, however, resist a crack (Lu- ties-he's able to make connections that dex, St. Martin's Press, $15.95. cille Ball framed by \"Ponce de Leon have eluded others. Some do the best filters\" in Mame)-the bitchy aesthete. they can with a subject in a long shot; Lovers of movie musicals are an un- And any man who has the courage to Morddenpans. beatable blend of the fan and the aes- proclaim his affection for Shirley Tem- thete, and when the two meet a little ple should either be kissed or slapped. The silents, according to Mordden, dance happens inside the head. One I'm not sur<;: which. \"talked in magic\", enclosing the audi- bent will try to lead the other, creating a ence as ifby a spell. A new sortilege was sensibility that thrives on tension: it's Feeling, tone, and pear-shaped opin- needed when the talkies arrived; the the push-ahead-and-then-pull-away suspense of true romance, as evinced in Busby Berkeley's Gold Diggers of 1933. the Astaire-Rogers \"Night and Day\" duet. The fan wants to marry the musi- ions all aside, The Hollywood Musical is dull thud of words wouldn't last long, so cal; the aesthete is the serious but care- an extremely serious (i.e. , important) it was eventually found in song, for ful suitor. The two, stuck as it were on a work, managing to show the torces- when' 'the feeling's too strong for speak- desert island of contemplation, generate economic, sociological, filmic; and mu- ing\". If the silents were a pre-sexual a goofy grace. sical-that conspired in the musical's stage, then the talkies were puberty and development as a peculiarly American all its attendant anxieties, such as the At long last someone has come along form of endeavor. Mordden takes us horror of Jean Hagen and her crackling with a book filled with understanding of into the archives (one drools to see the corsage in Singin' In The Rain. Holly- the two schizophrenic souls disporting 1928 Fanny Brice My Man) for a second- wood reacted to sound like an awestruck themselves inside the movie musical hand but appreciable hearing of the mu- caveman, eyes fixed on a wheel. The lover. Ethan Mordden is that rara avis- sical's first goos and gagas, a glimpse of camera, which only yesterday had been a scholar with a zing-and in the The its baby s·teps. What distinguishes mobile and fluid, was now girdled in a Hollywood Musical the writing really Mordden as a critic besides his agile and sound booth, refused freedom by seem- soars. When he describes a passage from Her Majesty Love, a 1931 Marilyn Miller vehicle wherein Ben Lyon, in Venice, packs in his troubles by scattering his desk papers into the air, which magically turn into the pigeons at St. Mark's, it's as good a definition as any of both his own blithe style and the manufacture of yearning wonder that's at the heart of the musical. The book is filled with racy, racing ruminations that stop on a dime for an encompassing backward glance. To employ a phrase Mordden has had the balls to use: Hot dog! Most books on movie musicals re- quire a degree in weightlifting to read. The Ray-Conniff texts are never noted for their generosity; glossies, when not ill-chosen, are often insulted by their cutlines. (I spent an evening recently with a ten-tonner called Hollywood Mu- sicals, the only amusingly instructive moment occurring when 1 counted the folds in Deborah Kerr's gown in The King and I.) The fifty-seven illustrations in Mordden's book are in black and 76

ingly insmmountable difficulties. Tran- optimistic tot with curls called Temple. f1:1RTS sposed revues and vehicles depending When the Depression abated and tastes on the draw of performers such as AI changed, the fantasy musical, exempli- Film Music Is Jolson, Eddie Cantor and Brice, the fied by The Wizard ofOz, arrived only to Our Forte early talkie musicals were primitive (and be interrupted by the war and swing. now, with the patina afforded by hind- Exclusive Soundtrack Selections sight) fascinating affairs. But it took two Mordden swings best to the-- beat of And Umited Editionsl imaginatively filmic minds, Ernst Lu- the Thirties, and he sent me back to the bitsch and Rouben Mamoulian, both of Alice Faye shrine begging for forgive- Over 1,000,000 LP'S available: whom Mordden rightly reveres, to cre- ness-a case of uncalled-for neglect. A In-Print and Out-of-Print, an array of ate a genre that melded music and story. sharp sense of historicity unspools from imports, highly-desired reissues, and Describing a passage in Lubitsch's the war years through the Fifties, and he original casts (on and off Broadway). Monte Carlo (1930), Mordden gets the shows how the inflated roadshowoffs whole picture gloriously right in terms of gradually metamorphosized into the We offer the finest service the revolution that was happening: dreck of Dr. Doolittle and height of heb- available - monthly auctions by mail \"The chugging and whistling [of the etude pervading Lost Horizon, in the (rare, unique titles), the only monthly train] turn into the accompaniment to Sixties and Seventies, that nearly suc- Fllmusic Newsletter \"Music Gazette\" [Jeanette] MacDonald's song as she set- ceeded in turning studios into bag-per- tles by the window seat of her compart- son colonies. Occasionally, Mordden For YOUR copy of our extensive ment. The opening wedding had been will indulge in a little unnecessary yarn catalog, a sample of \"Music Gazette\" shot in the rain, but now the sun beams spinning: who needs a precis of Rose ($2 value), and monthly auction, on the heroine: the rules of romance Marie? He shockingly underrates On Please Remit $1.00 TODAY TO: favor beauty. The ostinato of train noises The Town, Easter Parade, and The Band thickens as the voyage roars on and, her Wagon, and I ascribe his affection for RTS, Dept. 19C scarf flying in the breeze and peasants in Fame to some pharmaceutical. Too of- the passing fields waving to her, Mac- ten, too, he will write that something P.O. Box 687 Donald soars through \"Beyond the Blue \"works.\" Not good enough. And where Costa Mesa, California 92627 Horizon,\" voice, music and lyrics, and the hell is a mention of the 1955 My visual expression all expanding in one Sister Eileen with Betty Grable, Janet (714) 544-0740 Tu-Th 12-4pm moment of exhilaration.\" And that, Leigh, Jack Lemmon, and Bob Fosse, sweetie, is how you write about musi- which just happens to be the most ne- ••••••••••••••• CINEMA CITY is a complete service for ••••••••••••••• cals. glected musical in the whole world? cinema collectors , dealing with original movie posters , photos and related collect- But the MacDonald-Chevalier- Yet here is a man who recognizes the ables. Original motion picture graphiCS are Lubitsch triumvirate, in terms of the rare, sensual quality of Petula Clark sought by collector's throughout the world , American musical, had technique but no singing \"Old Devil Moon\" in Francis Original film posters are a unique remem- theme. Theme and technique met in a Coppola's otherwise bloodclotted Fi- brance of a memorable film . and because sleazier milieu: 42nd Street, where the nian's Rainbow. And here is the man who of their limited number, may become fine American musical was born. 42nd Street can refer to the fast-food spirit of both investment pieces. Many Items. with their had zip, sass, tension, and, above all, Can't Stop The Music and Xanadu as \"lit- distinctive artwork . make attractIve waH enthusiasm. In it the energy ofcharacter tle lies in bags.\" Given the peculiar state d~coratjons that are sure to be the tOPIC of produced the energy of the musical. De- of criticism (on anything) these days, discussion among movie lovers. pression audiences empathized: here Mordden should be writing regularly in were kids trying to put on a show-real some worthy periodical. While it's not All material is original - we deal with no kids who had no pretensions and whose something that should be wished on an- copies, reprints , or anything of a bogus only weapon was the putdown. (In Gold yone, really, his voice is too tart, too nature, Our latest catalogue lists thousands Diggers of1933 Ned Sparks, having ap- entertaining, and too perceptive to have of items that include posters, photos (over pointed Aline MacMahon the comedi- to wait for another book. 30 ,000 in stock), lobby cards, pressbooks , enne of the group, tells her, \"It'll be the and other authentic film memorabilia. If funniest thing you ever did.\" Snaps As a commentary on how the Ameri- you 're looking for a particular item that is MacMahon: \"Didya ever see me ride a can musical evolved through its various not in our catalogue , we will try to locate It pony?\") The self-effacing savvy and vul- stages and what the American musical is for you , To rece ive our latest catalogue. gar vitality were the hallmarks of Thir- as a concept, The Hollywood Musical is send $1 .00 (refundable with first order) to ; ties musicals, the optical orgies of Busby the best book I know of-a wordsmith Berkeley, the REMs of the dream just running off at the mouth about dream- 'ClI~ IE~'A\\ '(Jllr\", set in motion. The RKO Astaire-Rogers smithing. He lets the book hang fire at cycle took the lead handed to it and the end, resting laurels and possibilities P,O,Box 1012, Dept , FC forged the dance-romance musical, on the staunch shoulders of The Rose, Muskegon, Michigan 4944 t which of course is no news to anybody. though it's a shame the book couldn't The country was hot for trot and the have waited for the release of the Neil studios, already having lured Broadway Diamond version of The Jazz Singer to babies from their cradles, went after ra- frame itself in perfect symmetry. It de- dio and opera (add class to the sass) as serves being read by anyone assuming well. Some, such as Fox, even lucked he or she knows anything about the onto their own creation, in this case an movie musical. As for me, Ethan Mord- den can slip his words under my head any old time. ~ 77

OffWith Their Heads! by Dan Yakir It's 1:33. Do you know (2.62: 1) required three projectors and a where your ratio is? Movie audiences are often subjected curved screen. CinemaScope, as well as to a form of tyranny of which they aren't 1:33 Techniscope, Franscope, and Panavi- necessarily aware. By showing films sion (all 2.35: 1) mandated special without regard to the format in which 1:66 lenses. A simpler process which shared they were shot, stingy exhibitors and the benefits of the wide screen without ignorant or sloppy projectionists actually 1:85 the above complications was put to use. appropriate the filmmaker's right to a It involved partial masking of the height final cut. Perhaps some viewers will al- 2:21 of the image so as to make it appear ways be too busy following the subtitles wider than before. While the aspect ra- in foreign films to realize they haven't 2:35 tios in question veered between 1.66: 1 actually seen the full shape of the he- (used in most Western European films roes' heads. Others may have the uneasy after 1953) and 1.85:1, the latter has feeling that what they have been ex- become the standard screen size in the posed to is an aesthetic vision or a narra- U.S. for 35mm films. Seventy mm pic- tive technique so tampered with as to tures use 2.21:1. make the filmmaker's original intent un- recognizable . Francis Coppola, whose One From the Heart is projected in 1.33: 1, told The With the exception of the Museum of Film Journal , \"The 1.85: 1 ratio is just an Modern Art and the New York Film F es- exhibitor's scam to give the public a tival, few first-run theaters in Manhattan phony wide screen . . . They show regu- are equipped with the proper lenses and lar 35mm with top and bottom cut off so aperture plates to show movies in the that it looks like a panoramic frame, but five major aspect ratios. When Dan Tal- it really is just a normally proportioned bot met his projectionists prior to the 1.33: 1 frame.\" opening of his new Lincoln Plaza The- aters, \"to talk to them about the stan- Needless to say, the choice of aspect dards I expected from them,\" he was ratio by a filmmaker is hardly arbitrary. stunned when \"not a single one had ever Explains John Boorman, \"1.85: 1 is abor- heard of what I was talking about! They tive, because it crops so much off the were taking notes! It was like a new usable frame. I wanted to shoot Excali- world to them: they had worked in other bur in Academy-the full frame 1.33: 1, theaters in Manhattan, where the only but theaters aren't equipped for it at all, aspect ratio used was 1. 85-to-one ... \" so 1.66: 1 was as close as I could get to it. I've done several films in Panavision an- A movie's projection format affects its amorphic, and I liked it a lot-Point shape, not size: prior to 1953, all movies Blank, Deliverance, Zardoz-but in Ex- were shot in the 1.33: 1 (as is everything calibur there are a lot of verticals (trees, shot for television today-from films to castles, whole sets), which I couldn't commercials), namely, four feet wide for work out in anamorphic. It didn't seem every three feet high. With the decline to fit. When I made Point Blank, MGM, in theater attendance after World War II for whom I made the film, was making and the arrival of television , the studios all its pictures in Panavision. I tried to felt that the only way to recapture the deal with it by devising compositions audience was via the grand spectacle which suited that shape. I actually got to that TV couldn't reproduce. In 1952, like it, but it's difficult because you can't both Cinerama and 3-D were intro- move the camera in the same way-a duced , and a year later 20th Century- pan is particularly difficult because it's so Fox opted to have all its productions wide that it's hard for the eye to take in. shot in CinemaScope, just as Paramount It bends'-you tend to get 'key-stoning' rediscovered VistaVision (which actually and blurring in the pans. But Point Blank had been invented in 1919) for its own had a very cold, static camera and stark projects. The introduction of Cinerama compositions-and it worked. \"In Excalibur.,\" continues Boorman, 78

\"there's an enormous amount of track- intimate nature notwithstanding. By Academy Award ing and it wouldn't have worked well in contrast, in Andrzej Wajda's Man ofMar- Nominee Panavision. In The Heretic , I elected to ble. for all the frenetic pace and almost go with spherical (1. 70:1) rather than \"hysterical feel, there isn't much land- IIBest Feature Documentary\" anamorphic but I had to squeeze it out of scape. It's an intimate psychological por- the studio. I used it because there were a trait, shot in 1.33: I.\" \"A fine tribute to a hectic, pained, lot of special effects in it. Now it's buoyant, decent, exceptionally changed-after Star Wars they've devel- \"In 1.85: 1 the eye has the maximum radiant life. \" oped a lot of equipment because there possibility of resting,\" Talbot continues. are so many effects in it, but at that time, \"It offers a calmer, more peaceful field Robert Coles a lot of optical cameras didn't function of vision. And 1.66: I is a refinement on The New Republic with anamorphic lenses. So it was easier it. A wonderful co mpromise, a crowd to do your special effects straight. pleaser, it's more relaxing on the eye yet \"The compleat guide to a perceptive has the virtue of being intimate. It's critic, a sensitive author, and a \"In spectacle, both the characters and much easier to take than 1.33: 1,\" where complex man. \" the relationships tend to suffer: since the eye has less space to roam about they take a long time to shoot, the freely. Village Voice rhythm-setting-up scenes-is slow. It's very hard to sustain characters and In fact, although 1.85: I became the \"A brilliant new film-a perfect relationships over a long timespan. You standard format in the U.S. , studios monument to the subject.\" have less time to spend with the actors shoot in 1.33: 1, thereby relinquishing to on the characterization and the intimate projectionists the responsibility for cor- Media Digest scenes than you do on a small picture, rectly masking the extra height. Ken- where you can devote your whole time neth MacGowan writes: \"Of course, \"A strong, insightful look at an excel- to them. In a spectacle, ninety percent cropping a picture could hurt the com- lent writer.\" of your time is spent on the logistics of position . To make sure that heads and moving extras, etc. That's why in spec- feet weren't cut off in the projection of Writer's Digest tacles the characters are rather wooden. I these films , cameramen had to 'com- always consider the intimacy between pose loosely.' This meant keeping the \"A pearl! \" the characters important, which is why I action well away from the top and bot- shot Excalibur in 1.66: I .\" tom of the frame .\" Media and Methods Federico Fellini , who agrees that But the power remains ultimately in \"Superbly crafted.\" \"1.66: I is best for intimacy,\" adds, \"I the hands of theater owners and their shot Satyricon in Panavision and La projectionists. What happens when a Film News Dolce Vita in CinemaScope (in fact , To- film is shown in a format other than the talscope) because I needed a wide, hori- one originally planned? When a 1.33: 1 Undeniable dramatic power.\" zontal view-without a sky. I shot City or 1.66: 1 is shown on a 1.85: 1 frame, L.A. Times of Women in 1.85: 1, because it was a heads get cropped (as well as legs in old spectacle. \" American movies though subtitles in \"A sparkling documentary!\" foreign film s obviously remain intact). A Boston Globe In his book \"Behind the Screen\" close-up in 1.33:1 might end up as a (1965), Kenneth MacGowan writes, medium shot on 1.85: 1 while the sense \"Startling, revealing, absorbing.\" \" ... there seemed to be no question that of spectacle would be entirely lost in a Washington Post the wide screen would be given over to reverse (less frequent) case. Not only are historical spectacles, big Westerns, mu- the rhythm and composition of a picture * \"A significant subject-an im- sicals, and melodramas with outdoor likely to suffer, but its very sense and pressive film.\" chases. \" meaning become distorted. Trying to squeeze a CinemaScopc picture onto Booklist Dan Talbot asserts that \" 1.33:1 is the the small screen, for example, is impos- standard format now used in Eastern sible, which is why those movies had to Available from: Europe, while in Western Europe it's be cropped scene by scene to fit the 1.66: 1. The Italians, unlike the French 1.33: 1 ratio-with a dramatic loss. This JAMES AGEE FILM PROJECT and the Germans, seem to prefer 1.85: 1. is especially serious since CinemaScope BJX 315, Franklin Lakes, NJ 07417 But in Hungary and Poland , for exam- has fewer CLltS to begin with and more (201) 891-8240 ple, the preference for 1.33: I is not so characters in each frame. - much a function of their technology as it is a recognition that it's the ideal format At least in movie theaters, the prob- for the intimate psychological dramas lem , according to Talbot, can be solved they make. Their movies are shy on at a cost of no more than $5,000 per landscape and big on internal conflict exhibitor, which would cover the neces- and sociological shuffle. They grapple sary extra sets of lenses and aperture with very real everyday problems- plates. \"In the better theaters in Paris their life is hard, and hard life is more and Munich,\" says Talbot, \" theyaccom- accurately represented by 1.33: I ... \" If modate all the different ratios-they Godard shot Contempt in Franscope, have more of a sense of craft and love for Talbot suggests, it's because he saw it as the cinema than in America.\" Here, it an hommage to American cinema-its seems, we still have a long way to go.:.ti 79

o \"Who Does Television Think You Illinois University July 29 through Au- ise and creativity of young artists born in California. Entrants for the competi- Are?\" will be the topic this year at the gust 6. The topic of the Conference tion must be between 20 and 40 years of age. Complete information and entry British Film Institute's annual Sum- this year is \"International FilmNideo/ forms can be requested from Film Arts Foundation, 2940 16th Street, room mer School. The School will be held TV: Impact and Influence\" and a num- 105, San Francisco CA 94103. 415/552-8760. Deadline is June 10. at the University of Stirling from July 31 ber of workshops, panels and The Film Fund, has a Fund through August 7. Information and ap- screenings will be held. For informa- Raising Kit for independent film, video-tape and slide show producers. plication forms are available from: The tion contact: Department of Cinema The Kit, a comprehensive introductory guide, is available from The Film Fund Summer School Secretary, Education and Photography, Southern Illinois for $3.75. Contact: The Film Fund, 80 East 11 Street, suite 647, New York NY Department, British Film Institute, 81 University, Carbondale IL 62901. 618/ 10003.212/475-3720. Dean Street, London, WI V 6AA, Eng- 453-2365. The Sierra Film Society announces the 3rd annual Nevada City Film land. 01-4374355. The 12th Annual Summer Insti- Festival to be held May 22 and 23 in Nevada City, California. This year's Entries are now being accepted for tute for Media Arts will be held July Festival is divided into two parts. The first is a tribute to a film artist and the the Sixth Annual San Francisco In- 11-25 at Endicott College in Beverly, second is a showcase of amateur and in- dependent films from around the coun- ternational Lesbian and Gay Film MassachusettS. The Institute offers a try. Deadline for entry of films is May Festival to be held in San Francisco wide variety of workshops and seminars to. For ticket information and/or entry June 21-26. The Festival has been es- in the fields of film, photography, forms contact: Nevada City Film Festi- val, PO box 1387, Nevada City CA tablished by Frameline, a non-profit video, computer graphics, and related 95959. 916/265-3622. lesbian/gay film and video collective, to media arts . A compkte brochure, with develop an audience for these films. course descriptions , faculty biogra- Awards totaling more than $2,500 will phies, fees, registration form, and be given to the outstanding works in housing information is available from: the categories of feature, documentary, Summer Institute for Media Arts, PO short, super-8, and video. Deadline for box 83, Lincoln Center MA 01773. entries is May 15. For more information The Film Arts Foundation an- and entry forms write: Frameline, PO nounces a call for entries for the 1982 box 14792, San Francisco CA 94114. James D. Phelan Award in Film- The University Film and Video making. The $7,000 award, sponsored Association announces its 36th An- by the San Francisco Foundation, nual Conference to be held at Southern seeks to recognize the individual prom- CONTRIBUTORS OSCAR UPDATE VALE ATQUE AVE The revolving door hasn't stopped Dean Billanti is a freelance writer. Don't look for any FILM COMMENT swinging lately for FILM COMMENT editorial staff; but the quality ot the Carlos Clarens, former film critic of press releases on this year's Oscar pre- \"browsers\" is so high, it makes our of- fice feel like Cartier's. Anne Thompson the late Soho Weekly News, is preparing dictions. Our panel of eight experts, completed her remarkably productive year's tour as Associate Editor in a book with Mary Corliss on art direc- who breezed through the past two March. Brooks Riley, crackerjack Asso- ciate (now Senior) Editor since 1974, tion to be published by Knopf. Andy years' prognostications, was less clair- returned for her valedictory issue, and now ankles for sunnier climes, to be re- Klein writes for the L.A. Herald-Exam- voyant this time around-as were most placed by Harlan Jacobson. Harlan was a New York reporter for Variety, then iner. Austin Lamont is President of other Oscar handicappers. Two of our edited In Cinema magazine, and re- cently wheeled and dealt on Wall the Boston FilmNideo Foundation. J. I mavens, David Ansen and Myron Street. We are pleased he is bringing his informed experience to FILM COM- Hoberman is a film critic at The Village Meisel, got seven of the ten winners MENT; and we wish Anne and Brooks all the best as they pursue their new ca- Voice. John Milius' credits include the correct. Lee Beaupre, Stuart Byron, Al- reers out West. screenplay for Apocalypse Now and as jean Harmetz, and Todd McCarthy got director, Dillinger, The Wind and the six. But only Ansen and Andrew Sarris Lion, and Conan the Barbarian. Mary picked Chariots of Fire as Best Film; Richards, film archivist and critic, is only Meisel guessed Katharine Hep- (a) not gay and (b) not associate pro- burn as winner for Best Actress (his vote ducer of a local TV news program. was misrecorded in our last issue); and Amy Taubin wrote about film and nobody picked Colin Weiland (Chari- video for the late Soho Weekly News. ots of Fire) for Original Screenplay or Richard Zacks writes for TV Digest. Mephisto for Foreign Film. Better luck Arlene Zeichner is a video critic. next time, guys. PHOTO CREDITS: Avco Embassy: page 7. Courtesy Saul Bass: p. 60 (1),62 (8). Berlin Film Festival: p. 21 (2), 22 , 23 (2). Courtesy Maurice Binder: p. 60 (1), 63 (8). Courtesy Skip Blumberg: p. 4. Cinema 5: p. 13 (1). Columbia Pictures: p. 52. Courtesy Wayne Fitzgerald: p. 61 , 64 (2), 66, 67, 68, 69. Foc.us International : p. 73. Courtesy Harlan Kennedy: p . 20. Courtesy Austin Lamont: p. 2. MGM-UA: p. 1 (1), 19,53, 57. Movie Star News: p. 24 (2),25 (3), 44, 58, 59. Multi-Media Resource Center: p. 74 (2). Museum of Modern Art/Film Stills Archive: p. 9, 10, 11 (2) , 12, 13 (1), 14 (1), 17 (1), 26, 29, 30 (2), 31 (2), 76. MTV: p. 14 (1). Courtesy Edward C. Topple: p. SO. Twentieth Century-Fox: p. 15. Universal Pictures: p. 1 (1), 27 , 28, 55. Zoetrope Studios: p. 1 (1),33 , 45,47 (2), 48. 80

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